2 Henry VI, 3.1.339-40
At the Seething Lane house a little fire burned on the hearth in a small library. Brown leaves drifted past the windowpanes, and Sir Frank sat at his desk, hands against his eyes. Stretching, he lowered his hands, looked again at Marley, and spoke softly.
"A problem presents itself in shape of Gilbert Gifford. Gratley-Lodge and Berdon found him in his rented lodging-chamber at Paris, hanging dead from a ceiling beam. He did it himself."
"Perhaps, your honor, he couldn’t bear the thought of deceiving the Queen of Scots."
"Probably so. I’d been counting on working through Gilbert out of his father’s place at Chillington – now that’s shot. Paulet is looking at several other houses that might be suitable to hold the Scottish queen. There are alternative places, but so far there’s no alternative plan."
"Fortunate you learned of Gilbert’s death before you moved Queen Mary to Chillington."
Walsingham sighed. "Young Gifford did get the letter of introduction from Morgan. When Lodge and Berdon walked in, the body was still warm. They found the letter in his jacket pocket."
"More good fortune, your honor – to come on the remains before the concièrge arrived!"
Walsingham shoved a piece of paper across the desk. "Shame we can’t use it – perfect opener for the job."
|
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| Mary Stuart |
Kit picked up the note and studied it. It was in the hand of Mary’s former correspondence secretary Thomas Morgan, dated 15 October, Paris. In it Morgan introduced Gilbert Gifford to Mary of Scotland as her loyal Catholic subject, of Chillington, dedicated to finding her a way to send and receive private letters via a secret channel so far as the French embassy in London, from which they’d be forwarded with diplomatic immunity to Morgan himself, her Paris postmaster.
Walsingham spoke slowly. "You understand why it’s vital Mary should believe she could gain a private channel for her mail. 1 She possesses, in France and here, a growing crowd of supporters who’ve been working since ’81, not only to free her, but to do away with Queen Bess. We watch these knaves. Any action on their part, to be largely successful, would require the presence of Catholic troops from abroad. But, Marley, I’ve seen protestants die at the hands of furious Catholics, and our queen is but mortal. These idiot plotters, even if their broad plan fail, could kill our sovereign lady," Sir Frank leaned forward, his large eyes fixed on the younger man’s face, "unless we develop a new capability – a way to give Mary’s partisans free rein and watch them, very, very closely. And the loss of Gilbert Gifford has destroyed a workable plan. Mary would have put faith in the name Gifford."
Shaking his head, Kit shoved the letter back across the polished board. There was a silence during which both men watched the fire.
Kit knew what Walsingham wanted to hear, and finally he cleared he throat and said it. "Well, your honor, why not use a ringer for Gilbert Gifford? Install the Scottish queen in a house as close as possible to Chillington, and use some dark, small young man familiar with Dr. Allen’s Catholic college at Reims and with the whole Catholic controversy – someone who could tell the Scots queen he's Gilbert Gifford, just come from Chillington to help her. Does Gilbert’s family know he’s dead?"
"No one knows but you and I, Lodge and Berdon – and Morgan – they told him. Lodge and Berdon took the body downstairs that night, minus identification, slipped it into the Seine and took Gilbert’s extra clothes and his papers to their own lodging."
Kit swallowed. "I take it – I understood talking to Gilbert at Reims – he was somewhat alienated from his family?"
"He left home I think eight or nine years ago. He’s been in England recently only to see me about secret work."
Kit, who’d been standing in front of the desk, now boldly leaned across it. "Sir, are you thinking what I’m thinking? That with careful disguise I could pass for Gilbert, so long as I could keep away from his friends and family? 2 Maybe even fool some friends and family, if they haven’t seen him for eight or nine years. . ." He strode to the window, arms crossed, hands inside his sleeves nervously scratching his elbows. "His cousin Dr. William Gifford was Gilbert’s close friend – gave sermons at Reims, but I missed ‘em – I’ve never seen him. If I can keep clear of him and the seminarians who’ve known Gilbert in these last years – that would mean avoiding the hedge-priests on mission here who knew him, and me, at Reims – and if I avoid Cambridge friends, well, it might work, sir. Best if I’d play Gilbert Gifford only to Queen Mary."
"Well, whoever took the job would have to be Gilbert as far as the French embassy here, to arrange for secret mail."
"How about Morgan, sir?"
"Morgan’s in my pay. I’d send you to meet him before we start this operation, with a letter of introduction from me so he’ll know everything’s kasher. And Marley, after you go to Morgan – he’s in the Bastille, in Paris – a disguise as Gilbert Gifford would be useful in gaining the confidence of the expatriate Catholics there. I wanted Gilbert himself to do that last summer but it seems all he did in Paris was go to Morgan and then destroy himself. He never sent me a letter of information. If you introduced yourself as Gifford, they’d take you to their hearts."
"Paris would be dangerous, though. Dr. William Gifford does turn up there – one look at me and he’d know I was a fooler. With some preparation, I could get by with the others."
"Same here in London. You might hear important revelations if you as Gilbert visited Catholic homes where the family knows the name Gifford but never met Gilbert. Still and all, Marley, the mainmost point is this: how could you, as Gilbert, get into the Scots queen’s apartments? She must never believe we’ve relaxed the guard."
"There’d be a way, if she’s in a house far enough from Chillington so I won’t bump into Giffords but close enough so I can say I walked over. First I’d need a brief on how she’ll be settled in her apartments."
A branch scraped the outside wall as the wind picked up, and a burning piece of wood settled between the firedogs. Sir Frank tapped the letter on the desk, and thought. "Young Robin Devereux owns a park northeast of Chillington – with a house, Chartley Hall. It’s commodious, nicely kept. It has a moat. Lad, will you try it?"
Kit spoke slowly. "Sounds like a right place, and yes, I think I can do a copy of the man. He – talked like this, right? And if I had his clothes and jewelry. . .But sir, his hair and beard – you know, I’d have to let mine grow – thin it, oil it. . . Lengthen it."
"How long?"
"About down to here, sir, in a horse-tail – and the beard in two pieces, like Dr. Allen’s."
"No, I mean how long will that take?"
"I’d guess, maybe six weeks? Just long enough for you to move Queen Mary to Chartley.. But I couldn’t do it at Cambridge, sir. There’s a rule about short hair. Only last term over at Trinity College, one of the scholars was made example of by the Master. He cut the boy’s hair with a bread knife on the bread-board in the buttery."
"So grow it at home. Take what study-materials you can gather and pack home to Canterbury. Wait there in private and turn into the best imitation of Gilbert you can manage. I’ll let you know how things shape up soon’s I can. Dangerous!"
"I’ll chance it, sir."
They left it at that.
Next morning Kit stopped by Gray’s Inn and deposited two playscripts with Francis Bacon for approval. Then he rode post to Cambridge to pick up his own books and some clothes suitable for the adventure ahead.
The night before Kit left for home he and Tom Nashe spent the late hours together in an upstairs chamber of the Golden Dolphin, turning over ideas about Sir Frank’s project. How to persuade Mary her mail could go through?
The oil lamp guttered out – midnight sounded, then the early morning bells, up and down Trumpington Street. Kit’s elbows were peeled red.
At last Tom got up, found an extra blanket (a cool rain was falling past the broken oilskin windowpanes) and lay down with his friend. After some stirrings he whispered in Kit’s ear, "Oh, man, I’m going to put a message up your bunghole. . ."
Like a spring released, Kit sat up; he laughed, wrestled Tom, rolled him to the floor, pursued him, grabbed him, pounded on him, held him till some peace descended and Tom said, "What was it, magic man?"
Kit sighed. "You got it! Hollow bungs to hold Mary’s messages! The beer for her household is brought in under guard every week, Tom. She can use hollow bungs as mailboxes! Hollow bungs, see? Each solid at one end with a removable cap on the other! Roll up the letters into pipes, wrap them in oilskins, stuff them in and cap the bungs!"
"So then?"
"I’ll tell her the empty barrels will go directly to the storeshed of the Gifford family’s loyal Catholic brewer – the brewer that my own family has always used – that’s what I’ll tell her – and in that shed, I, Gilbert, will collect all the hollow bungs, remove her letters – I’ll tell her this – I’ll deliver ‘em to the French embassy, return with whatever private mail is waiting there for her and stuff those letters into the hollowed bungs in the full beer barrels waiting to be delivered to her buttery! Her mail will come with her beer, in perfect privacy! That’s what I’ll tell her."
"But truly. . ."
"Truly, as soon as the empty barrels get inside the shed of the so-called Catholic brewer (who will really be working for the state—an honest man), I'll retrieve her mail, but I’ll take it to show the jailer, then ride with it to London and Sir Frank’s cipher-man Phelippes. He’ll read and copy it; we’ll seal it up again, and only then will I take it to the French embassy and exchange it for her incoming secret mail. That, too, will go to Phelippes—be opened, deciphered, copied, resealed, wrapped in oilskin – then carried up north to be put into the hollow bungs of the full barrels on their way to Mary’s apartments. Not bad?"
"Well," said Tom, slowly. "How about that opening and resealing part?"
Kit smiled in the darkness. "Since ’83 Sir Frank’s man Phelippes has used a trick I got from my dad’s shoeshop: there’s a sharp little knife cobblers use to cut the stitches that hold the uppers to the sole – sharp all around. If it’s heated, without smoke, just enough, it can be slipped quickly under the wax seal – the seal lifts off – to be set on a flat place. When the letter’s ready to be re-closed, the seal's put back in place with the hot knife, made just warm enough to stick – not hot enough to ooze around. Phelippes can do it, but I can do it smoother" 3
Tom shrugged, grinning. "So you’re set. No worry! Sounds as if this queen is Schreibselig – give her a chance and she’ll write herself into a corner! Come on, let’s get some somnus before the bell for chapel. Recumbentibus! And they rolled over and closed their eyes.
At Canterbury, John and Kate Marley still lived in the big old house they rented in the center of town; Kate still took in two roomers every year – students at the King’s School – and with Sir Roger sponsoring John in the bail-bond business and with shoemaking, cobbling and extra bits Kit brought from Walsingham jobs, family money-worries had faded.
Three sisters were living at home: Meg, twenty, was kitchen manager and helpmeet for Kate and Nan, the maid. Anne, fourteen, and Dorthy, twelve (red-headed like her dad) together took care of chickens, kittens and a new puppy. Their brother Tom, nine years old now, sang in the choir at the cathedral. Joan, the middle sister, had married shoemaker John Moore three years before, when she was almost thirteen. She and her husband lived nearby and Moore and John Marley were thinking of merging their shoemaking establishments.
When Kit appeared early in November the family was surprised. 4 He’d been home in August on his way to Cambridge from Reims, and no one expected him back so soon. But he fit in; he helped Kate bring home the turnip and beet-root crops from the garden plot out at St. Stephen’s – they used the big hand-cart – and he went with John to fetch finished leather from their friend the currier, Lennie Doggerell.
Kit’s writing and drawing shed still stood out back by the wrenching tubs – his mouldy old trunk inside. He took time now to sift through it and even sat down at his table and polished up Birth of Merlin for Christmas at Cambridge, then sketched out a dramatic version of a true Kentish murder story – it might make a production for Bacon's Theatre Wing. Kit called the piece Arden of Feversham. He worked eagerly, for Bacon had been friendly; he’d kept both of Kit’s other scripts and said he’d show them to Ned de Vere, who was directing Theatre Wing productions this season.
Remembering his plan for a play-cycle about the Wars of the Roses and how they ended, Kit started a drama about Henry V – tailored, he hoped, to attract the Lord Oxford, who might include it among next season’s shows. These rough scenes, unfinished, he called The Famous Victories.
Weeks passed, and then one day a messenger appeared at the Marley home. Kit thought the message would be a summons from Walsingham – cause for worry, since his hair and beard still weren’t long enough. But it was a note from Sir Roger: On Sunday would Kit go with John Marley and some other responsible man to the Widow Benchkin’s house to witness her new will? 5 Roger explained in his letter that this would be a favor to him, for Mistress Benchkin would soon be an in-law: her daughter had married old John Hart, ship-owner and merchant (in the Russia Company, and partner of Walsingham and Alvaro Mendes), and John Hart’s grandchildren were promised to marry Roger’s children Peter and Anne.
Kit was flattered – it made him feel like family – so on the next Sunday after church, he, John Marley and Joan’s husband John Moore walked down Stour Street toward Katherine Benchkin’s big old house. At the corner of Ballock Lane they met the widow’s stepson John, whom Kit knew as a freshman at Bene’t, and Kit’s own uncle, Thomas Arthur, also on their way to review the will.
Young Benchkin greeted Kit, asking why he’d been away from school and why his hair was so peculiar.
Kit was looking for an answer when Benchkin said, "You still owe me, you know, for that game of primero at the Eagle. What you going to do about it?"
Tom Arthur, who’d never liked Kit, said sarcastically, "Like old times, eh?"
To Benchkin Kit said, "Why not charge your beers to my name on the Buttery book till we’re even?"
The youth agreed, and the five men turned in at the gate.
A maidservant led them into a downstairs parlor were Mistress Benchkin waited by a cheerful fire. A birdlike woman, still darkhaired and seemingly in excellent health, she brought from a cupboard two papers, threw one into the fire and handed the other to Kit, explaining that this was the will she’d use. She asked him to read it out loud, slowly, which he did – the testament of a canny good-hearted woman – not rich, but used to managing money: blood thicker than water, older generations more generously remembered than younger, except for her stepson-executor.
After Kit finished reading he and the other witnesses signed the document. Katherine made an X and Kit wrote, "This is Katherine Benchkin’s mark."
All were invited to stay for dinner, and when at last the witnesses left the house, their avian hostess gave Kit a kiss and whispered, "Would that thou wert marrying our Francie!" Kit kissed her back with thanks.
November stretched out. At home, Kit finished a first draft of Arden and completed preparation of hair and beard. At last directions came: he was to cross the Channel on a ship waiting at Dover with special papers for him. A letter to Morgan from Walsingham introducing Kit as agent would be among them. He was to proceed to Paris, pick up Gilbert’s effects – papers, clothes, jewelry – from Lodge and Berdon, then go talk to Morgan, giving him Walsingham’s letter before returning to England on a ship that would come in to Rye. All this to be done quickly as possible. More instructions later.
Early in December a dark, soberly dressed young man stepped off a French ship at Rye – to be roughly apprehended by the police. 6 He was hustled to the customer’s office for examination, and later the officer in charge let it be known around town that the man was Gilbert Gifford of Chillington Hall, a Catholic deacon from the English college at Reims, come as missioner to England to pervert faithful anglicans into papists. He'd be taken under guard to the queen’s secretary Walsingham in London.
So he was. Looking much like the real Gilbert, with slicked-back hair, long moustache and severely styled dark doublet – and new limp-reducing boots by John Marley of Canterbury – Kit was ushered into Sir Frank’s upstairs study, ostensibly a prisoner to be grilled but truly coming to trade ideas about the project.
Walsingham nodded as Kit outlined his method of channeling Mary’s mail. "Jerome Horsey," Frank recalled, "made a trip overland home from Russia in 1580. He brought her Majesty secret papers hidden in the false side of a small cask of aquavit – hid the cask under his horse’s mane. Yes, it might work! But how will you gain entrance to the lady’s apartments?"
"Let me go look, your honor. She’s at Chartley?"
"Not till Christmas, but everything’s set."
"A map, sir? A floor-plan?"
Sir Frank fumbled in a pigeon-hole on one side of his desk and pulled out a paper. "What Paulet likes best about the place – he’s Mary’s keeper, now – is that it has this big deep moat – see? – all around." Walsingham’s dark face cracked into an uncharacteristic little smile. "It pleases him, he says, because Queen Mary’s laundresses won’t need to go to town to do the wash. They can boil up right there, at this sort of platform here on the castle-side of the moat, using that water. When they go to town, you see, they must submit to an embarrassing search whenever they come back."
Kit studied the drawing. The doors to Mary’s spacious apartments would be guarded, of course. "What’s this big ground-floor room, sir, on her side?"
"A laundry with drying-lines for hanging wet-wash in rainy weather."
"How many laundresses, sir?"
"Three."
"English?"
"Yes, but Catholic."
"There’ll be a guard, or guards, stationed here at the door to the platform by the moat, sir?"
"Always."
"What if there was some excuse to move the laundresses a little farther around there to do their bucking-up? Out of sight of that door?
Walsingham began to see what Kit meant.
"On a rainy washday I’ll swim over, give angels to the laundresses, tell them I’ve come to help their queen and would go talk to her, unseen by the guards. I’ll pay the girls to let me get into the laundry basket, to hide me there, covered with wet linen, and then to ask the guards to carry the basket into the laundry-room and leave it there. See, sir?" Kit pointed to the house-plan. "A service stair! Once the guards are gone out, I’ll run up to Mary’s quarters and put it to her, and none the wiser over here in the presidio!"
Though Sir Frank remained impassive, he was secretly impressed. "Might work, at that."
"I’ll try to get Mary to give me outgoing mail that very day, sir. She could wrap it in the same oilskins I’ll wrap Morgan’s letter in, and the French ambassador’s. If we wrap and seal her letters well, I’ll swim back with them and leave them with Phelippes right off, if he could come to the nearby inn. . ."
"Might wet the paper. Could you hand it up to a guard before you leave?"
"No, sir. Better that everyone in Queen Mary’s private quarters should see me all the way across the water. I thought I’d bring a rope with me so I could go out a window from her apartment into the moat – then I’d be in sight all the way. I could put her letters in my cap, sir, and hold my head high." 7
Sir Frank spread his fingers, palms up, as if to say, whatever! He rose and walked to the door of the chamber, Kit following. "Your father wants to see you right away, lad. But tomorrow go over to Phelippes’ place and spend a couple of days there. He can show you examples of Gilbert’s handwriting; you must learn to duplicate the style. And learn details of the lives and present whereabouts of the Gifford family members. When you’ve absorbed that we’ll try you out in a social evening or two with selected Catholic families in London – some who have never met Gilbert – or, of course, Christopher Marley. Families who’ve heard of the plots Mary’s followers have been fomenting."
"How about the plotters, sir? As Gilbert Gifford, should I meet them?"
"Not now. The leader of one group is a priest, ordained at Reims a couple of years ago – before you went there. Name of Ballard, AKA Fortescue. A newer force is Sir Anthony Babington, a rich young man,twenty-five. Knew Mary when he was 18. Those two men have merged their thoughts and plans. You could meet them later, perhaps. Remember me to Sir Roger. Bonne chance!"
Soon after Christmas Walsingham sent Phelippes to Chartley to tell Mary’s keeper Paulet about the plan and to hire a brewer – not Catholic – one who could be trusted in the pay of the English government. When preliminary arrangements were completed (they included overseeing a start on crafting hollow bungs which would hold the rolled-up spills of oilskin-wrapped letters) Phelippes rode back to London, where he arrived on 12 January.
Meanwhile Kit as Gilbert had been discussing Mary’s predicament, talking with Catholic families in London. He’d also spoken to the French ambassador’s secretary, Cordaillot, revealing to him the plan for conveying private letters to and from the Queen of Scots and asking him to persuade the ambassador, Guillaume de l’Aubespine, Baron de Châteauneuf, to write her a letter. Reluctantly Châteauneuf wrote her a carefully noncommittal note and gave it to the eager messenger Gilbert, who said he’d soon be riding to Staffordshire, and Chartley.
Next Monday morning a light snow was falling on Otmanslow Hundred, its flakes melting in the big ditch around Chartley. Kit, his introductory letter from Morgan and the note from Châteauneuf tied up in oilskin and tucked in the lining of his cap, was taking off his boots at the edge of the woods just back of the sedgey march by the moat. He took off his cloak, too, wrapped the boots in it and stuffed the package into a space under a tree root. He waded through crackling thin ice at water’s edge, taking a sight on the smoke and steam rising from the laundresses’s encampment just under Chartley House wall.
Without hesitation, holding his head well above the black surface of the still water, he slid forward and swam. Immediately the cold grabbed his heart. He gasped. The silver angels in his doublet pockets and the rope around his waist weighed him down. He thought of the day Kate had pushed him – with a rope around his waist – into the surf at Folkstone. He tried to think of August afternoons when he’d swum with his friends at Grantchester Pool. He kept going. Now he could hear a girl’s voice: "Alice, gi’us a hand, lass!"
He saw their wooden beetles rising and falling, pounding the sheets. He could smell the lye soapsuds they were pouring out of the bucking tubs. He tried to slip to land beside them. . .
"My God! Look there! A burglar!"
"Be you a burglar, young man?"
"Nay, he’s but a poor drownded lad!"
Blue with cold, Kit crawled onto the slimy snow-spotted shelf beside the piles of wet sheets.
"Betty! Help me drag him to the fire! Ah! He’s trying to speak!"
"D-d-d-don’t call the g-g-guard!" said Kit hoarsely. "Do you love your Lady M-Mary? And our father in Rome?"
The girls nodded, amazed, as Kit pulled two fistfuls of shining coins from his soggy jacket and pressed them into their rough soapy hands. "Then don’t call the guard! I’m not a burglar, I’m a neighbor – I live not far away. Gifford’s my name. I can aid your mistress, maybe free her!"
He sat up, warming to his work, helped by the burning sticks beneath the laundry tubs. "Take me to her!"
"No way!" said the one called Betty. "The door’s over there by the guards, and any minute now they’ll come by here. . ."
"Put me in one of your washbaskets – please! Cover me clear over with that pile of sheets!" Kit pled with irresistible intensity. "Then ask the guards to take it into Queen Mary’s own drying room!"
Still in shock, the girls looked from the dripping youth to their new-found coins and decided in his favor. A minute later he was curled in the biggest basket, completely covered with folded wet wash and pressing his forefinger hard against his upper lip to ward off a sneeze.
He heard the deep voice of a guard: "Fenton, take the other end, there; let’s get this in out of the weather for these lassies, before they catch a death!"
The basket was heaved up – it swayed along. A litter at the service of a bad spirit, thought Kit. A long journey through darkness, the guards’ shoes sounding on stone. It ended with a thud and a grunt from Fenton. "What’s in there, Alice? A dead body?"
"A double load! You know our lady’s abed with fever and wants a change a’ linen every morning!"
Footsteps grew fainter. There was silence. A wait. Then came the girls’ hands, lifting off the covers, helping him out. Giggling now, the laundresses whispered, "Take the little stone stair! There!"
"Go with me! Please! Go first! Explain me!"
So they did, trooping up full of importance to meet Mary’s cook and baker, Martine and Nicol, 8 in the queen’s own big kitchen, to tell them the news. Kit was scrutinized and dried off a bit, and then all of them paraded to the office of one of Mary’s secretaries, Gilbert Curle. By now Kit was able to recite his story to good effect.
Curle, excited, took him by the hand and led him to the door of the queen’s chamber, telling the whole crowd (the undercook, turn-broches and pages added to the number of onlookers) to wait quietly while he prepared his queen for a possible interview.
A warm mist laden with the fragrances of licorice and artemisia wafted out when the door was opened. Curle slipped through, and the little cortège of servants – French, Scottish and English – stood nervously around their still-dripping captive till the secretary reappeared and nodded to Kit.
"Only you," he said curtly. "Everyone else back to work!"
Kit entered the half-darkened chamber, something inside him holding him back. Shocking doubts of the probity of his mission raced around the other thoughts in his mind. Sir Frank had assured him he’d be serving the state of England, and Roger had said, ‘All men be liars, Kit. You can do good by subtle means; it’s proof we need.’ But Kit heard old Willim Arthur’s voice: ‘Roger Manwood’s a very divil. . .’
Shutters were half-closed over the windows, but Kit could see by firelight that the heavy bed curtains had been opened a crack, and the aromatic mist which filled the room came from a little pot boiling above a tiny ceramic oil-stove set on a pedestal just inside the curtain at the head of the bed. A figure stretched on the bed under a down comforter was revealed when a lady attendant fully opened the brocaded rideaux. Now the queen’s head was visible, resting on embroidered pillows, her hair almost covered with a lace cap. At the other end of the mattress, at its very bottom, Kit saw that under the covers her toes were wiggling, and she moaned, as if moving them hurt her. Kit was astonished. The Queen of Scots must be at least six feet tall!
The head slowly lifted on a long, smooth, slightly goiterous neck, and Queen Mary regarded Kit with pink-rimmed eyes. Faded red wisps of curls escaped from the edges of her cap to frame a pale face more handsome than pretty. Her creamy complexion was slightly flushed with fever, and her beautifully-formed rosy lips opened to show perfect teeth. She was breathing with difficulty, and her long straight nose was inflamed at its tip – from sickness, Kit wondered, or from weeping?
Stiffly flinging herself back on her pillows, she spoke, sounding querulous: "Barbara – l’appui pour ma jambe pitoyable!" Her glance fell on Kit, then on the secretary: "Qu’est’ce que tu me dire, Curle? Quelle éspérance peut offrir cet enfant abandonné?"
"Madame," Curle began, but she continued in English flavored with Scottish and French inflections: "Maun I suffer more intrusion? The lad sud be delivered to Monsieur Paulet. Ahh! Je n’espère plus rien!
The secretary persisted, talking to her gently, leaning close to her ear.
At last she lifted herself on a long slim arm and looked at Kit with real interest. But at that moment Kit, overcome by the chill of his soaking clothes and the dreadful warnings of his conscience, slumped to the floor.
Mary now sat erect, calling out imperiously: "Bastian! Annibal! Come! The lad is drookit! Strip off the wet things! spread them in the kitchen to dry, and search them as you do! Dry the puir bairn – quickly – with towels from my bath. Wrap him in a dark sark, and do it here!"
She reached for a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses from her night-stand, put them on and blew her nose noisily. Steam from the boiling licorice-root shavings and wormwood bits continued to issue from the bedside. "Take this staun’ stracht awa’, Barbara," she cried. "Plus qu’il n’en faut! Cela suffit!"
Kit, undressed, his escape rope uncoiled from his waist, was being thoroughly rubbed down, to the lady’s amusement. "What a wee-un!" she laughed, her eyes sparkling.
When Bastian finally wrapped the youth in a belted Turkish robe, Mary, propped into a sitting position with the aid of new pillows, said, "Now, Monsieur Giffard, tell me a’ your thoughts."
At this point the door opened and little Silvé the kitchen boy came in with two pieces of paper that had just been found inside the lining of Kit’s cap. The child handed them to Curle and backed out.
Silence as Curle perused them and passed them to Mary. "Ah!" she said, "from Aubespine. . ." and "Ahh! from Tomas! At last!" Another pause, and Kit could see two tears running down her rosy cheeks. She beckoned to him and spoke earnestly:
"I am a queen, you know – the true queen of Scotland, England and all its isles. I was Queen of Scotland when I was six days old – Queen of France at sixteen years. Born to rule, and sairly suppressed. But if my friends remember me, there’s hope. You bring me hope. Come, stracht awa’ the noo, tell me thy plan."
As Kit recited his proposal Mary listened with increasing enthusiasm. "This’ll be the way," she interjected, "to correspond – sans censors! It could bring liberty – power – victory!" She lifted her long slim lace-decked arms as if she were flying. "I can’t wait for my new barrels – can you take back a letter to l’Aubespine? Tonight? Tomorrow? In your cap, as you brought me these?"
Dazed, Kit nodded.
"Feed this lovely boy! Gillis! Beau! Take him to the kitchen while I write! Curle, open the shutters all the way — bring me my little desk!"
She gave order for Nau, her other secretary, to be awakened and brought to help. She consulted her watch – a handsome octagonal piece with crystal cover, kept under her pillow.
Before leaving the room, Kit spoke up: "Your Majesty will note the useful cipher attached to the baron’s letter – even with private pipes, we can’t be too careful. . .and my own personal cipher is marked on a tiny sheet there. I’ll be keeping you up to date with notes, as the barrels come in every Saturday." And he was ushered from the chamber.
Mary wrote easily, eagerly, then handed her notes to Curle and Nau to be transcribed. They’d been frowning over the unfamiliar ciphers (Kit’s was a mix of Greek letters). Their work dragged on. Mary subsided, whispering to the lady sitting by the head of the bed, "I’m lying’ badly, Barbara."
When the ciphered notes for the French ambassador were ready she studied them, signed them, returned them to Curle. "Gi’ ‘em to Gilbert, aprés les enfermant dans un petit sac de cuir cirier.
She lay back thinking and seemed exhausted. "How can Gilbert gang hame without bein’ seen by the beast Paulet?"
"I imagine, Madame, his rope is for that purpose."
"He ought to wait, and soom when darkness falls."
"The snow is sticking, Madame. When darkness falls, it’ll be even colder out there than it is now."
It was dusk when one end of the rope was made fast and Kit was let down on the other, into the icy blackness of the moat. Somehow he reached the marsh and the woods and found his cloak and boots packed in under the tree root. But he barely made it to the Burston Inn, where Tom Walsingham was waiting.
Paulet himself came over later that evening to find out what had happened. By then Kit was in bed under a mountain of covers, chilled and feverish, on the edge of delirium. The hostess had brought him hot milk laced with aquavit. Its primary effect was to release a flood of tears, and afterwards Kit sank into a series of hallucinations. He did hear Paulet talking to Tom, but very faintly – Tom agreeing to take Mary’s letters to Phelippes, starting in the morning, Paulet muttering about finishing the reaming-out of the beer bungs to make the secret compartments. The honest man, the brewer of Burston, was providing the labor.
The men’s low voices, the firelight, the gassy little oil lamp with its defective wick burning in fits and starts – all faded from Kit as he lay shivering. What appeared to him with startling clarity was a view of his good angel walking away into endless distance down an infinite corridor – a perfect image of his fair new friend from St. John’s College – Hen – walking in the glow of a fitful light – walking nude, his beautiful back graced with a pair of folded white wings. Kit called, and at once dark voices began pressing close to his own shoulder – his bad angels – two devils, breathing, breathing. Hard to see. Sir Frank and Roger? "The soul, the soul. . ." While they were breathing and whispering, Kit was swept into swirling clumps of commas and periods, crowding his mind.
"Only physician for miles is Burgoigne, the Queen o’ Scots’ man," said Paulet.
"Call him, and we’d really blow it," said Tom Walsingham. "Wait it out. He’ll come ‘round." He doused the lamp and he and Paulet went downstairs, leaving Kit in the dark.
1. An account of Mary Stuart’s last effort to free herself from Elizabeth’s supervision is found in Conyers Read. Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth. Vol.iii, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925, pp.1-70. It is not without confusions and inaccuracies. Back
2. Antonia Fraser. Mary, Queen of Scots. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969. pp. 470-493, details the progress of the two last intertwined plots to achieve Mary’s escape and Elizabeth’s death, generally thought of together as the Babington Plot. Fraser notes (p. 482) that Gilbert Gifford had said "no one in Staffordshire was likely to recognize him, not even his father or his sister, since he had been abroad so long; as he still looked strangely young, his real identity would remain unsuspected. This story hardly matched with his early offer to make a…visit to Staffordshire on the excuse of seeing his father…the French embassy themselves never totally trusted Gifford, especially when he turned out to be lodging in London with Thomas Phelippes, one of Walsingham’s chief agents." Back
3. The method of opening and reclosing sealing-waxed mail by means of the shoemaker’s hot knife has been successfully tested for me by Wayne and Marty Scott, professional makers of handmade shoes for the clowns of the Ringling Bros Circus. Back
4. Kit at home in Canterbury in November 1585. John Bakeless. The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe. Vol. I, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970. Back
5. For something about the signing of Katherine Benchkin’s will (with photo of the last four lines and signatures) see A.D. Wraight and Virginia F. Stern. In Search of Christopher Marlowe. New York: The Vanguard Press. 1965. p. 228. The complete text of this will is printed in William Urry. Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury. London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988, Appendix III. That her son-in-law John Hart’s son George was the same George Hart (his father was John) who married his children to Roger Manwood’s son and daughter, is conjectural but probable – I’d be grateful to learn true facts of this genealogical bit. Back
6. "Gilbert Gifford’s" apprehension at Rye is mentioned in both Read’s and Fraser’s works, as well as in Sidney Lee’s DNB monograph on Gilbert Gifford (Several well-substantiated happenings are misdated in this last article). Back
7. No historian has ever figured out how Mary came to learn of the plan for transport of her private mail. Both Read and Fraser fudge this essential part of the plan. Read lamely says that Phelippes was sent "to Chartley to arrange a means" – but how? Fraser simply says that Gilbert went and told the plan to the French embassy – which he did, later. But how Mary, incommunicada, came to be informed, is nowhere revealed. It had to be "Gilbert" who created the scenario, and Marlowe in his own ciphers clearly tells us he was impersonating Gilbert Gifford. (Ciphered messaged have been discovered in The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus, Measure For Measure, and All's Well That Ends Well, mentioning Marlowe as 'Gilbert Gifford' — see the Appendix below.) Back
8. Names of the servants on Mary’s household staff near the end of her imprisonment at Chartley are found in The Letterbooks of Sir Amias Poulet. London: Burns and Oates, 1874. Back
Other chapters:
The Home page of Roberta Ballantine's site dedicated to Christopher Marlowe
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