Bartholomew Fair (29 page)

There were two doors opposite me. One stood half ajar and seemed to lead to a larder with stone shelves for keeping meat and fish cold. The other was closed and probably led to the main part of the house. Nothing seemed amiss.

Then I noticed that a hatch in the floor was open, the trap door laid back against the wall below the shelves. That must be where the sound of rusty hinges had come from. There were three candles lit on the huge scrubbed table of pale wood which stood in the middle of the room. I picked up one and carried it over to the hatch.

It was black as shipwright’s pitch down there. A cellar of some sort, reached by a ladder. Then I saw that it was not entirely black. A tiny gleam like the eye of a cat winked in the darkness. My hands were shaking, but I must see what was down there. Whatever Borecroft had done, it must have something to do with opening the hatch.

I could still hear the shouting from the street, but as I climbed below the level of the floor, the sound was cut off. All I could hear now was a faint fizzing noise. Could there be a cat down here, hissing at me? But I had seen only one eye, not two. When I reached the floor, I raised my candle and looked around me. There were rows of barrels here. This would be where they kept the beer and ale. Against the far wall there were racks of bottles, French wine by their shape. No doubt part of Drake’s loot. He was not above a little piracy against the French as well as the Spanish.

Nothing. It all seemed perfectly normal. I turned to climb back up the ladder, then my heart gave a sudden jerk. A face was looking up at me from the floor. My hand was now shaking so much I nearly dropped the candle, but as I brought its light nearer, I saw that it was not a human face, though I recognised it.

Scarramuccia leered up at me from the damp stones of the cellar.

Nearly life size, the puppet who had represented Drake in the show at the Fair  was easily mistaken for a body in the half light. Yet he was not quite his same dapper self. Gone was his wooden sword, his strings had been cut off, and instead of his elegant shape he had now developed a huge belly, more grotesque even than Arlecchino’s.

I stared at him. This at last was evidence of the connection between the puppeteers, Borecroft, and the Herbar. But why had the puppet been tampered with like this? And above all, why was he here in the cellar of Drake’s home?

My attention was caught again by the hissing sound. Perhaps a cat was trapped down here. He would be frightened by this figure, which looked human but was not. I turned slowly, so as not to scare the animal. There in the shadows was the tiny glow I had taken to be a cat’s eye. I walked over to it. It was not a cat, and the hissing noise seemed to come from the same place. I bent to look at it closer, aware that the candle was nearly done and the last of the melted wax was running down over my fingers.

Lying at my feet was a piece of thin rope, the end of it burning with a small yellow light. Rope does not normally hiss when it burns. This rope must have been soaked in something. I followed it along with my eye, realising at the same time that it was burning quite fast. The rope led to Scarramuccia. It had been sewed to his back, like a mocking monkey’s tale.

I gasped as I remembered the discussion I had had with Phelippes about gunpowder and the mining of castles. Scarramuccia was a mine, his belly stuffed with gunpowder, and there was no more than two feet of his fuse left. I yelped as the end of the candle fell over and landed on the floor. Suddenly I had nothing but the light coming from the hatch to see by, but even with that small amount I saw that the dying candle had hit the fuse and started another spark, this time barely a foot from the puppet.

As soon as the spark reached Scarramuccia, he would explode. I must get out of here. Then I remember the servants in their beds upstairs, the men in the street, the neighbours hanging out of their windows. I stamped on the burning fuse again and again, but I could not put it out. Whatever the fuse had been treated with, it would not go out that easily. There was only one thing to do. I grabbed the macabre figure around the chest and hoisted it over my shoulder. It was as heavy as a well grown child. I needed a hand to climb the ladder, but the puppet kept slipping and in the end I had to steady it with one hand and keep letting go of the ladder with the other to stop it sliding down my back.

The burning fuse was licking at my hand now, but I bit down on my lip and climbed through to the kitchen. The door was still open. No one had followed me inside. I could still hear the shouting from out in the street. I yelped with pain as the fuse burned into my hand, but I thought if I could clamp my hand around it, it might go out. You can snuff out a candle by pinching its wick, could I not do the same with this?

Sobbing with pain as I closed my left hand round the burning portion of the wick which was nearest to the puppet, I stumbled out of the door and along the alley.

‘Out of the way,’ I shouted, ‘out of the way.’ I pushed through the crowd, elbowing them away from me relentlessly.

I nearly fell into the horse trough, but managed somehow to heave Scarramuccia off my shoulder and fling him into the water. I held the figure down by the chest with both hands, its face staring up at me as if I were drowning a real man. Drake at the bottom of the ocean. At last I saw the two burning sections of the fuse fade and go out. The pain in my hand seemed to shoot right up my arm, so I kept it down in the water to cool, leaning against the edge of the trough, feeling sick.

Berden was beside me, staring down at the drowned puppet. A dirty cloud was rising from that awful paunch, staining the water. I snatched my hand out of the trough in horror, and looked blankly at the reddened and blistered skin.

‘What in Jesu’s name?’ he said.

‘The puppet,’ I said. ‘The gunpowder is in the puppet. I managed to reach it before the wick set it alight.’

Then I slid to the ground and the world went black.

I cannot have been unconscious long, for when I came to myself the men were still crowded round Nicholas Borecroft, whose sobs had turned into gasping hiccoughs. Phelippes was leaning over me in concern, his spectacles catching the light from the doorway of the nearest house. Beyond him Berden was hanging over the horse trough, trying to fish out Scarramuccia without soaking the sleeves of his doublet. He shouted to one of his men to bring a stick.

Outside the Herbar, I could hear Borecroft saying over and over again, ‘Thank God! Thank God it didn’t go off! I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice.’

I sat there, feeling very tired and wishing dully that the pain in my hand would stop. The sleeves of my doublet and shirt were soaking wet up to my armpits. I wondered what they would do to Borecroft. I knew vaguely that I ought to get up and fetch my satchel, which I had dropped when Borecroft came running out of the house. I must salve my hand, though the best ingredients were probably to be found back in that kitchen.

‘Kit?’ Phelippes put his hand on my shoulder. Nervously, I thought. ‘Are you all right? That was a brave thing you did.’

‘The gunpowder,’ I said muzzily. ‘It won’t explode now, will it?’

‘Nay, it will not,’ Berden said, holding up the dripping puppet. ‘But we had better warn people not to let their horses drink from that trough until it has been drained.’ He ran his free hand over his eyes. ‘Jesu, Kit, I thought you had run mad, rushing out of the house carrying that puppet. What a monstrous thing.’

‘And what a monstrous deed.’ I could barely hear my own voice. I glanced over my shoulder at the Herbar. A scared group of servants was standing in front of it in their night shifts, some with cloaks, others barely decent.

‘They likely owe their lives to you.’ Berden jerked his head toward the servants.

I nodded vaguely. At the moment, I could hardly think. At least the explosion had been stopped.

‘We must do something for that hand of yours,’ Phelippes said. ‘Tell us what is best to do?’

I tried to rouse myself, but I still did not trust my legs to hold me.

‘If someone could look in that kitchen,’ I said. ‘I need white of egg beaten together with honey, then the whole pounded with a little grease – any animal grease will do. It will make a paste. It needs to be done quickly, to save the skin.’

I looked at my burnt and blistered palm clinically, as if it belonged to someone else, one of my patients. I tried to struggle to my feet, but Phelippes pressed down on my shoulder.

‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘I will see to it.’

I wish I could have seen Phelippes in that immaculate kitchen. I do not imagine he had ever separated an egg in his life. It must have taken him several attempts. Too tired to tell him the amounts, or how to work the ingredients together, I continued to sit on the ground, leaning back against the trough with my eyes closed. As water began to soak through my breeches and hose, I realised I must have splashed a good deal of it on to the ground. I supported my left wrist in my sound right hand as if it were a fragile piece of glass. If my hand were to be permanently damaged, I would not be able to continue to practice as a physician.

Someone touched me lightly on the shoulder and I opened my eyes to see Phelippes anxiously holding out a fine porcelain bowl toward me. Something else Drake must have looted on one of his voyages and much too fine to use for mixing up a paste for burns. I hoped Phelippes had not broken anything.

‘Will this do?’ He held out the bowl to me.

‘Thank you. Egg white, honey and grease?’

‘Aye. I found some bacon grease, will that do?’

‘Fine,’ I said. Though I will not eat pig, I have no objection to its medical uses.

I balanced the bowl on my knees. The mixture looked as it should, so I scooped some up and spread it over my burned and blistered palm. Despite my best efforts, I gasped at the pain.

‘Does it not soothe the burn?’ Phelippes was frowning worriedly.

‘It will in the end. Just touching it at the moment hurts. Thank you again. I do not think I could have done it myself, with only one hand.’

I got up slowly, still feeling somewhat dizzy.

‘What is happening?’ I asked. ‘Has Borecroft told you anything of use?’

‘Aye, he has told us where the soldiers are lying low. He can’t talk fast enough. He’s terrified of them and terrified of us. We’ll have no trouble with him. Nick has sent one of his men to rouse the constables and another to fetch the militia. They will surround the house, and also the house of the merchant di Firenze. We should soon have them all in hold.’

‘And what about Poley?’

He shook his head.

‘Borecroft does not know what has become of Poley.’

I have only a confused recollection of the next few hours. Somehow we were back at Seething Lane and I was sitting by a hastily lit fire in Phelippes’s office, shivering in my wet clothes. Phelippes had offered me a change, but I had, of necessity, refused. I could hardly strip in front of him.

‘I will dry out by the fire.’

I remembered saying that.

Sir Francis came in, followed by a servant with a flagon of the rich red wine he obtained from France. Then a maid servant, hurriedly and untidily dressed, brought bread and cheese. I was glad of the wine, for it helped a little with the cold which had seized me, which I knew was the effect of shock. I did not think I could eat anything, but when Sir Francis himself set down a plate of bread and cheese beside me, I found I was hungry after all. When I had finished both wine and food, I looked around.

‘Where is Nick?’

‘Dealing with Borecroft,’ Sir Francis said.

‘I hope he will not deal too harshly with him,’ I said. ‘I think he was merely a tool of other people, forced to act by their hold over him.’

Phelippes looked grim. ‘You can thank him for that burned hand of yours.’

‘They do not need to deal harshly with him, to get him to talk,’ Sir Francis said, with a short bark of laughter. ‘The difficulty will be to stop him talking. When I looked in he was telling them everything he knew.’

‘He’s here?’ I said. ‘In this house?’ I remembered that, back at the time of the Babington conspiracy, Walsingham had made arrangements to interrogate some of the men involved here at Seething Lane.

‘Who is questioning him?’

‘Berden and one of the sheriffs, Richard Saltenstall,’ Phelippes said. ‘I stayed for a while myself, but they have it in hand. Francis Mylles is acting as clerk. We want to keep the whole affair as quiet as possible. No need to start a panic.’

I wondered how it would be possible to keep it quiet, when all the inhabitants of Dowgate must know about the attempted explosion, even if they knew nothing else.

‘Have the renegade soldiers been rounded up? And the Italians?’

‘Aye, we have the soldiers held in Newgate,’ Phelippes said. ‘The Italians are more difficult.’

‘But why? We already knew where they were.’

Sir Francis answered me. ‘Giancarlo di Firenze is refusing to let the constables enter his property. He has powerful friends on the Common Council and has appealed for protection to the Italian ambassador. We may have trouble there, but I hope we may arrest them in the end.’

‘Do you think that was all the gunpowder the soldiers had?’ I asked. ‘The gunpowder that was in the puppet? There is not any more that could still be used?’