The Gunpowder Plot

Chapter 1-2

“You have served me well over the years, Lark, and now I wish to expand your duties. What I want you to do is to start keeping your eyes and ears alert about the palace and about the city. You will bring me any information you think I need to hear.”

Insulted, I rose to my feet. “I will not be a pickthank, my lord.”

“Sit down, boy.”

I sat at once. “Forgive me, my lord, but I will not stoop so low as to tell tales and gossip about my fellows.”

“That’s not what I am asking, Lark. I care not if the King’s cooks are stealing a chicken here and there. I do not want to know if a guard is f*****g a kitchen maid.” For a moment he looked deeply into my eyes. Lord Salisbury’s were green but not attractively so. “I do want to know if one of Queen Anne’s maids of honour is allowing a lord who is not her husband to have her, because who knows what she is telling him after the act about what she might have heard in the royal bedchamber. If you hear gossip about insurrection or treason of any kind, you will bring it to me. If you should hear of or know of anyone practicing the Catholic mass, I want to know who they are. I do not wish you to be a teller of tales. I wish you to help me keep His Majesty safe. From now on you will be my intelligencer. My spy.”

My hands trembled and I caught my breath under the weight of this new responsibility. “But why, my lord? Why me?”

“You come from a good Protestant family that has always been loyal to the crown. I have chosen you because I have known you a long time and I trust you, and because you are a very clever young man and seem able to fit into any company while making yourself agreeable. People like you.”

“Men already take advantage of me whenever they can get away with it. I will not be a doxy to get information.” I spoke with sober respect knowing Lord Salisbury’s great power, but even with his affection for me, I was treading close to the gallows.

His smile gentle and his tone kind, Lord Salisbury said, “I don’t expect you to be a doxy. Merely keep your eyes and ears alert. You’re good at that. When we were last at Theobalds you pointed out an owl in the night sky that no one else spotted. That told me you are aware of your surroundings. Just a few weeks ago you saw a groom picking the pocket of a lord in the great hall. The man himself did not realise what had happened until you went after the groom and demanded he hand the purse back. You notice things others do not.”

It was true. My eyes were everywhere, at least, when I was not tired as I was just then.

“But you must learn to use a sword in order to protect yourself properly.”

“I am very good with my dagger, my lord.”

“Yes, but it didn’t help you this night, did it?”

Head hanging, I muttered, “No, my lord.”

“You will be compensated for the extra work. Your salary will be commensurate to your success. Your star will rise high at court if you do well. What do you think, Lark?”

I met his pleasant gaze, seeing only fatherly kindness. “I do not deny I would take pleasure in more interesting and exciting work, though I cannot complain. I’ve had my fair share of pleasures and life has been good at Whitehall. I’ve accompanied you to all the great houses because you follow the monarch. I’ve enjoyed many benefits and few misfortunes while in your employ, my lord. But a spy? I never thought to be a spy.”

“You will begin at once to watch with stealth. You will scope out information and you will bring it to me. Above all, you will tell no one what you are about, on pain of death.”

If there was one thing I knew from my time at court, it was that one didn’t actually have to be guilty of a crime in order to end up with one’s head on the block. “Yes, my lord. I understand.”

“In due course, I will employ another servant to take care of my personal matters. You are moving up in the world, but for now you will continue to wait on me.”

Certainly my father would be overjoyed that I was no longer a maker of my master’s bed, but what would I call myself from now on? I could tell no one I was a spy.

I rose to open the door, but my lord bade me sit again with a wave of his hand. “I have never in all these years asked you about yourself, Lark. I know only the important details, but tell me why you came to court at such a young age.”

Suddenly I grew shy. No one ever asked me about myself. I was a servant and servants were barely acknowledged as people, though my lord had always been kind to me.

“Why are you called Lark?”

“Lark was my mother’s favourite bird, though she herself didn’t bestow my Christian name, having breathed her last breath as I drew my first. My father named me in her honour.”

“Is he a good father? I have met Master Christopher Alleyne once or twice and I knew at once he was not a loving or a sentimental man.”

“No, he is not. But he loved my mother and so he hated me. My first sin was causing my mother’s death by bleeding. My second was being born a boy.”

“Most fathers want sons,” my lord said, squinting in confusion. “Why did yours not?”

“After six sons in a row, one born each year for six years, my mother, Alys, didn’t conceive for the following five years, and then she fell pregnant with me. She had wanted a daughter, and after she died, my father needed one. My family is landed gentry, as you know, my lord. We are wealthy, but not enormously so. A cook, a couple of servant women, a man to do the outdoor work, and a steward to take care of the land and the tenant farmers are all the servants my father can afford. With my mother’s passing, who would sew the family’s clothing or embroider a fine altar cloth for our small chapel? Who would supervise the fancy cooking when there was an important guest?”

“Who indeed?” A smile crossed my lord’s face. His plain visage was always improved by a smile.

“As a punishment, or so he thought, my father threw those tasks at me. From the age of six he sent me to various women in the family to learn from them. When I didn’t balk and, worse still, proved to be very good at the feminine arts, he hated me all the more.”

“Then why did he send you away?”

I looked down for a moment, before meeting my master’s gaze squarely. “One warm summer’s day, my sire caught me kissing the son of his good friend. The boy, Peregrine, was willing enough, but it was I who had pushed the intimacy, which he had promptly told his father and mine. Being less worldly than now, I admitted my sin, and my father beat me with a heavy stick in front of Peregrine and his father until my rear end bled and the ground beneath my feet ran crimson, but I didn’t give my father the pleasure of seeing my tears. I kept those for night-time when I snuggled in bed between my brothers. Never had I seen such venom in the eyes of a man looking at his own son as I saw in my father’s face that day.”

“Ahh. I see it all now,” my lord said, his gaze gentle.

“A fortnight later, my sire told me as we sat at supper that he could stand the sight of me no longer and was sending me to London to be a servant at Whitehall Palace. Letters were written and answered. My father’s second cousin served Queen Elizabeth directly, and a place was found for me as a servant to you, my lord. You being the Queen’s Secretary of State, it was a great honour to my family. My father had business in London a month hence, and I travelled with him and remained behind when he left.”

“I remember what a sad little boy you looked in those first weeks. But you did well and I was glad to have you.” My lord patted my knee with his bony hand. “You cannot help the way God made you, Lark.”

“My sire thought I could. He told me, ‘They’ll teach you to like girls at the palace’. The look in his eyes made me fearful of what he meant and I urged him to elaborate. He said Whitehall was running with men of all types and that I’d be plundered before I had been here a week. ‘You’ll soon turn away from your own s*x, finding girls much kinder and gentler.’”

Under my sire’s theory I would grow averse to the touch of men when I had been sufficiently abused by them. I had looked around the table at my older brothers, Christopher—whom we always called Kit—Henry, Charles, Edward, Gabriel, and Miles, who had hung their heads under the gravity and cruelty of our father’s words.

“The next day, Kit, my eldest brother and my greatest protector, took me out into the field and presented me with his dagger. May I show it you, my lord?” It was a grave error to draw a weapon without permission in the presence of a member of the nobility.

“Yes, take it out, Lark.” I handed it to my lord, who said, “What a beautiful weapon. Such a fine jewelled hilt.”

“And the blade is so sharp, Kit used it to shave. Pater had given it to him the Christmastide before.

“It was very kind of Kit to gift it to you.”

I sank into silence as I remembered Kit’s words when he gave me his dagger. ‘You have no idea how pretty you are, Lark. You look like our dear mater, with the softest long brown hair, so dark and shiny, and the sweetest big blue eyes. Your figure is lithe and as straight as an arrow.” He had pulled me to his chest in a tight hug. ‘Pater is right. You’ll not be safe, and I won’t be there to protect you.’

“Go on with your story,” my lord said in the face of my silence.

“Part of my problem was that being the youngest of seven boys and so despised by our father, my brothers had rallied around me and spoiled me with affection. They had coddled me and given me gifts and fed me the best morsels from their plates until I thought they were angels of God and my father the devil. Since there is only one devil and a legion of angels, I had assumed myself safe in the world.”

My lord nodded. If anyone knew Whitehall, he did. “But you were not safe. Whitehall is more than a palace. It is a small city within London, with the same dangers as any other city.”

“Yes, my lord. Over that next month, Kit taught me how to use the blade, and by the time Pater left me at the palace, stoically holding back my tears, I was fairly proficient at defending myself—and Kit was right—even at twelve and a half years old, I needed to be.”

“And you are still learning.” My lord rose and I rose with him. “Lock your door, Lark,” he said as he left.

“I do, my lord. Every night.”

Just before I closed my closet door, William Cranmore, standing in the shadows along the passage, moved into the halo of light from the torch. “Get some sleep, Lark. You will need it for tomorrow.”

“Why particularly?”

“Do as I tell you.”

I hoped for a moment he might come in, but he merely held my gaze and then walked away.