The Portuguese Affair

The

Portuguese

Affair

Ann Swinfen

Shakenoak Press

Copyright © Ann Swinfen 2014

Shakenoak Press

Kindle Edition

 
Ann Swinfen has asserted her moral right under the

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as the author of this work.
 

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Cover images

Coat-of-arms of the Portuguese royal dynasty of Aviz

Contemporary drawing of the English army on the march

Cover design by JD Smith
www.jdsmith-design.co.uk

For

David

Chapter One

London
, December, 1588

F
or two years I had believed myself safe from Robert Poley, that scheming viper of a double agent. As long as he remained a prisoner in the Tower, the secret of my identity was safe, a secret which could cost me my life. He had played an ambivalent part in bringing the Babington plotters to justice and I was still unsure where his loyalty lay, if indeed he had any. Had he been a sympathiser as the conspirators had believed, almost to the end? Or had he been truly working as an agent for my sometime employer, Sir Francis Walsingham? Perhaps even Sir Francis himself was unsure. Whatever he believed, he had ensured that Poley was securely locked away in the Tower when the plot was uncovered, but unlike the other conspirators, Poley was not executed by that most brutal of methods – hung, drawn and quartered. Instead he had remained for more than two years a prisoner, yet a prisoner (so it was said) who lived like a lord. And had murdered a fellow prisoner, the Bishop of Armagh, with a gift of poisoned cheese.

The source of his riches was one of the many mysteries which surrounded Poley. A man of obscure birth, dubious employment and cautious patrons, he yet commanded considerable wealth. When I had first encountered him he was a prisoner in the Marshalsea, yet there, too, he lavished his money on rich food, receiving his mistress at fine dinners in his room, while refusing to see his wife and daughter.

We were sitting, Simon Hetherington and I, beside a generous fire in a tavern on Bankside, south of the river and not far from the Rose, where Simon had just given his first performance in a man’s part, having at last been able to turn his back on the women’s roles he had played with such success as a boy. It was a double celebration, being also Simon’s nineteenth birthday, and several of his fellow players had joined us – Guy Bingham (musician and comic), Christopher Haigh (young romantic) and Richard Burbage (heroic), second son of James Burbage, head of Simon’s company. It was not Burbage’s company which had been playing at the Rose. Simon had been on loan to Philip Henslowe, who was short of players, three having died in the late summer of the sweating sickness.

‘It was no great part,’ Simon said, modestly but truthfully, ‘but at last I have shed my petticoats and wigs.’

Christopher raised his glass. ‘I never saw a halberd carried with such a flourish. We shall have you back with us and speaking at least six lines before we know it.’

Simon flushed, but took the teasing in good part. He turned to Richard.

‘And is there any word yet from your father?’

‘He hopes to join us here,’ Richard said. ‘He had a meeting with Lord Strange this afternoon.’

Burbage’s company had been, for many years, Leicester’s Men, but the Earl of Leicester had died in September. It was now nearly Christmas. They had been allowed to carry on performing until the end of their planned season, but could no longer continue without a patron. Despite the growing importance and popularity of the playhouses, in the eyes of the law of England a company of players without a noble patron would be classed as vagabonds and could be imprisoned. They could even lose an ear or a nose, a fate no player dared contemplate. Burbage’s men would have ceased performing anyway as winter closed in, for audiences would not come to the open-air playhouses in bitter weather, but if the company were not to drift apart Burbage must secure a new patron soon. He had received an encouraging reply from Lord Strange to his request for a meeting, and the present company, who had come to cheer Simon in his small part, could ill conceal their anxiety beneath all the banter.

‘Simon Hetherington!’ A big man, built like an ox, had approached our table. His dark hair sprang from his head like coils of wire, surrounding a bald circle, a secular tonsure, while more dark bristles sprouted from his ears and nostrils. There was something familiar about him, but I could not place him.

‘Arthur!’ I was not sure Simon was quite pleased to see the man. He was not hostile, but rather embarrassed. He turned to us.

‘Arthur is the gatekeeper at the Marshalsea. I used to lodge with his sister. How is Goodwife Lucy?’

‘Hearty as ever,’ said the man, hooking a stool with his foot and drawing it up to our table. He sat down and drank deeply from his jar of beer, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. I remembered now where I had seen him.

The other players looked faintly amused that the man should join us, but they were a motley, tolerant lot. The gatekeeper looked round at us all, then pointed at me with a finger like a well-filled sausage.

‘And I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re the physician’s boy Simon fetched that time to the prisoner Robert Poley, who thought himself poisoned.’

‘Aye,’ I said drily. ‘Poisoned himself with eating bad oysters. I remember.’

The man shook his head. ‘Never had a prisoner like him. Entertaining his mistress, that slut Joan Yeomans, like any lord. Playing at cards or dice with the other sad papists and cheating them of the little they had before they went into exile or to the fire.’ He glanced round the table and nodded sagely. ‘Mark my words. Never have dealings with Poley. He will beguile you either of your wife or your life.’

Having delivered himself of this pronouncement, he buried his nose again in his beer and drained it.

‘No danger of that,’ Simon said, smiling lazily and tilting his stool back. He was still glowing in the aftermath of his performance, a state of mind I recognised. ‘He’s locked away from all decent men in the Tower.’

The doorkeeper waved his empty mug at the potboy and grinned. ‘That he is not. I see you are behind with the news. Robert Poley was released from the Tower yesterday evening. He’ll be about his devious business in
London by now.’

I felt bile rise in my throat as Simon shot a glance at me. He knew I feared Poley, though he did not know the reason. My jaws were locked together and beneath the table I felt my leg jerk convulsively.

‘So,’ said Guy, ‘the men in authority, they’ve decided Poley bore no guilt in the plotting two years ago.’ He sipped his beer thoughtfully, and looked at me. ‘I wonder.’

‘I’ve heard the fellow was employed by Walsingham to spy on Babington,’ said Christopher. ‘He certainly used to work for
Leicester. I’ve seen him with the Earl, God rest his soul. And later with Walsingham’s cousin Thomas.’

‘And wasn’t he in
Sidney’s household, when he and his lady lived in Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane?’ Richard Burbage turned to me.

The players all knew that I had worked in the past as a code-breaker for Sir Francis Walsingham. Such a thing was impossible to keep from them, for players are as eager for gossip as bees for nectar. They were not aware of my other activities within Sir Francis’s secret service. Simon knew or guessed a little, but nothing dangerous. Any time now Richard and the others would be probing me for what I knew of Poley. This was not the place to speak of it, this public drinking house, where the very ale jacks have ears. And the man Arthur had already caught their eyes fixed speculatively on me.

At that moment the door was flung open and a blast of snow and icy air blew James Burbage in and across the room to us. The fire swooped and flung a cloud of smoke into the room. Men cursed. Someone kicked the door shut.

‘Snow!’ Someone else exclaimed.

‘Just managed your performance in time,’ Christopher said to Simon. ‘With this snow starting up there’ll be nothing more doing in the playhouses now till spring.’

Burbage was roaring at the potboy to bring more beer for everyone, and a dish of collops and onions. He swept his arms over us all, including the doorkeeper.

‘Fill your bellies, lads!’ He was wearing a magnificent cloak usually reserved for stage kings. He must have borrowed it from the costume baskets.

‘Good news, then?’ Guy asked. The lines of worry I had noticed round his eyes had vanished.

The potboy arrived, ladling out mugs of beer as if he were dealing cards. One of the maids came with a copper pan from which a stomach-teasing steam rose, another maid brought a stack of pewter plates.

Burbage was still on his feet, flourishing his beer like a trumpet.

‘I give you, gentlemen, the Lord Strange’s Men, signed, sealed and delivered. To continue to perform at the Theatre. And,’ he paused for effect, ‘to perform at Lord Strange’s house in the Strand, this day sennight.’

They raised a cheer. It meant a secure future for them. In their joy at this auspicious news, they had had forgotten that other news, of little account to them, that Robert Poley was free again to walk the world and work his devious, self-serving schemes.

But I had not forgotten.

Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, was heir to the Earl of Derby, but on his mother’s side he ranked even more highly, very highly indeed, for he was descended from King Henry’s sister Mary, who was grandmother of Lord Strange’s mother. In his last will, setting out the future for England, King Henry had named Lord Strange’s mother – his great-niece – as next in line to the throne, should all his three children die childless, of whom our present Queen Elizabeth was the last. As this now seemed more and more likely, given the Queen’s age and unmarried state, it meant that Lord Strange was second in line to the throne. In securing him as patron, James Burbage was biting his thumb at the Queen’s Men, who, in the past, had stolen a number of the best players from Leicester’s Men, including Richard Tarlton. This had all occurred before ever I had come to know the players, but I was well aware that it still rankled.

It seemed that Lord Strange already had a company called Lord Strange’s Men, but they were nothing but acrobats and jugglers, simple performers for after-dinner amusement, possessing their own skills, certainly, but more fit for Bartholomew’s Fair and a far cry from the sort of plays Burbage’s company had begun to perform. When I asked a tentative question about this, the next time I saw the players, Guy answered with enthusiasm.

‘Ah, but you see, Kit, my lord is a great lover of poetry and a patron of poets. He has been wanting his own company of dramatic players, so was eager to welcome Burbage’s proposal.’

‘And that is why you are rehearsing here?’ For despite the bitter December weather, and half an inch of snow on the very boards of the stage, the company had gathered at the Theatre. They were muffled to the eyebrows in cloaks and scarves, but were determined to rehearse where there was space enough to move and declaim.

‘Aye. We are to perform
The Spanish Tragedy
at my lord’s house on Thursday. There is no time to prepare anything new, but we shall give of our best.’

‘Who is to play Bel Imperia?’ It was a woman’s role Simon had played in the past with great gusto, but no longer.

Guy shrugged. ‘It will have to be Edward Titheridge. He has not Simon’s fire in the great female parts, but he will do well enough.’

I remembered Simon training young Edward in how to walk like a woman and suppressed a smile.

‘Have you brought the pastilles?’ Guy said.

‘Aye. And a honey tincture as well.’ Some of the players were suffering from sore throats and feared for their voices before this all-important performance. ‘You were better not rehearsing in this cold air.’

‘We are nearly done.’

Indeed they made an end soon after, for the snow had begun to fall once more and even the most dedicated player could not perform in such conditions. We parted hastily, the players home to their lodgings and I back through Bishopsgate and across the city. By the time I reached Newgate, the snowfall had become a regular blizzard and the hot chestnut seller who had his place there was packing away his gear, for there were but a handful of people left on the streets. I bought my usual farthing’s worth, with another for the Newgate prisoners crowded behind the grill, where they were allowed to beg for food from the passersby. There seemed to be fewer faces than usual in the dark chamber sunk below ground level behind the grill. It must be bitterly cold beside the open grill and they could not hope for many people on the streets, fewer still inclined to be charitable. On second thoughts I thrust my own paper cone of chestnuts through after the first. There would be a meal waiting for me at home, while these poor creatures had little to hope for, unless they had money to send out for food. They must live on whatever scraps might be given them. I pulled the hood of my cloak over the woollen cap I was wearing instead of my physician’s bonnet and hurried on to
Duck Lane, through snow that danced like dervishes, blurring the lines of streets and buildings until all seemed the insubstantial landscape of a dream.

It proved the onset of a bad winter. After all the rejoicing of the summer and autumn, following our defeat of Spain’s Armada, a kind of lethargy seemed to have settled on England. All the desperate frenetic energy which had driven our resistance to the enemy had sapped our strength and we were exhausted. In the aftermath of the war, far more men had died of disease than the hundred or so killed in battle, as typhus and the bloody flux had swept through the ranks of soldiers and sailors. Those who had survived and managed to struggle home, begging their way, were paid late and grudgingly. It was not a situation to lift the spirits of the nation. Added to this, the Spanish attack and the subsequent outbreaks of disease had occurred at harvest time, so that labour was scarce in the countryside and the crops gathered in fell short of what was needed to feed the people, especially in a great city like London, which could not feed itself.