On the third day a messenger came to them with commandment to attend the First Secretary himself at Greenwich in the instant. Lord Cecil.
‘Mother Mary,’ muttered Nicholas, ‘what did they make of my account of Malta and Lepanto? This is like going to see the headmaster back at grammar school.’
They waited for hours, were given more wine than they wanted, were moved from chamber into grander and grander chamber, listened to the stately ticking of a fine Italian wall-clock and sighed away most of the afternoon. At last, after it had struck six, they were summoned before William Cecil himself. The most powerful man in the kingdom, perhaps, after the Archbishop of Canterbury.
A small man, hunched, beady-eyed, pallid. Her Majesty was supposed to call him ‘My little elf’. And a brain as elfin and cunning, nimble and far-seeing as any in Christendom. If a ruler’s first duty was to choose his counsellors wisely, then Elizabeth had certainly fulfilled it.
He greeted them abruptly, voice thin and sharp, and asked where they were staying.
‘The Mermaid, at Wapping.’
‘Wapping?’ said Cecil with distaste. ‘That’s where we hang pirates.’
‘Just nearby,’ said Hodge. ‘Can smell ’em hangin’ there in an east wind, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Cecil looked at him sourly. Hodge had already taken a strong dislike to the First Secretary, for keeping them waiting three hours or more, so he pressed on, just to annoy him, ‘And the doxy upstairs is only sixpence for half an hour, he says she’s his daughter but I shouldn’t wonder if she isn’t just the same age as he is!’
Cecil winced. ‘You are …?’
‘Master Matthew Hodgkin of the County of Shropshire, Gentleman, and Queen’s Pension of Five Pounds for Life for services at the Great and Gallant Battle of Lepanto against the Wicked Turk.’
Cecil eyed him with eyes as cold as a fish on a marble slab. ‘Fascinating. But would you mind waiting outside? It’s Ingoldsby here I must talk with.’
Hodge was guided firmly to an outer chamber. Seeing his expression as he went, Nicholas had to suppress a smile.
The door shut again and Cecil talked with the precise rapidity of the highly intelligent and highly pragmatic.
‘Your report of your travels, which the Queen perceived might prove so useful to us.’ He glanced down at it on his desk. ‘Excellent. Valuable material. Only occasionally over-written.’
‘Over … ?’
‘Extraneous detail. We in government are not interested in Maltese flora or Cypriot fauna.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘But information on winds, tides, coasts, fortifications, armaments, all useful. The account of the flaying and murder of this Bragadino at Famagusta, before the Battle of Lepanto … shocking, shocking.’ He did not sound remotely shocked. ‘We will want you to work for us again.’
‘I, I … I am not a … I do not work for you, I am a simple Shropshire farmer.’
‘And baronet.’
‘And baronet, yes.’
‘Who travelled widely in the Mediterranean when younger – on some kind of idealistic pilgrimage or crusade in memory of his late father, Sir John Ingoldsby, former Knight of St John – and who ended up at both the Siege of Malta and the Battle of Lepanto.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Who has seen much, therefore, of manners and men abroad, and whose knowledge and experience would be useful to us.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And you are a Catholic, are you not?’
Nicholas hesitated. ‘I am devoted to Her Majesty, and a loyal churchgoer in her church.’
‘You are a Catholic. You have even fought alongside Spaniards and Italians at Malta and Lepanto – Spaniards who are rapidly becoming our gravest enemies. Or do you deny Rome, deny Peter?’
He froze. No, he could not.
‘You are a Catholic,’ repeated Cecil, voice like a scalpel. ‘Things can be difficult for Catholics. Increasingly so nowadays. Unless they demonstrate clear loyalty and service to our State.’
His mind reeled. This he had not expected. Cecil wanted him to be a spy.
‘You have travelled widely, have fought well in the Turkish wars, you speak some languages – French, Italian, Spanish, passing Turkish – am I right?’
He must be honest. Cecil would see through everything. ‘And a little Arabic, yes, and Greek. Traveller’s Greek, not scholar’s.’
‘You’ll not be translating Homer.’ Cecil switched abruptly, the seasoned interrogator. ‘Your two companions – they are safely lodged?’
Be non-committal. ‘I believe so.’
‘In London?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do not know where?’
‘I do not.’
Cecil came round from behind his desk and very close to him: almost a head shorter, but radiating a kind of power. ‘You do not,’ he agreed softly. ‘But we do.’ He turned away. ‘We see their every move.’
He ordered Nicholas to sit. He walked about, small neat hands clasped behind him. ‘A delicate matter has arisen. Unusual, to say the least. Unusual, too, for such a matter to be entrusted to a Catholic – of however wavering a sort,’ he added sarcastically. ‘But I know you have told the truth so far. There are a number of things in your account which the intelligence of this kingdom knew already. For example, you have merely corroborated for us the details of Nicosia’s defences in Cyprus.
‘We know very well you attend your church regularly, you foment no dissent, you talk no religion. Within your household there is still a Catholic missal on your bookshelf in your study, that belonged to your father – his name is on the flyleaf – but you do not look at it regularly, and you have no priest visiting in secret.’
How Cecil loved such knowledge, and the look in this Ingoldsby’s eyes, the alarm and the helpless admiration! Intelligence was everything in this brave new world. Knowledge was power. ‘Yes, it pays to keep watch on one’s subjects – especially the more wandering sort.’
He turned over Nicholas’s account on his desk and laid it face down, as if the matter was closed. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Whitehall Palace, ten o’clock in the morning. Her Majesty will see you then. And – leave your friend behind.’
He grasped Hodge’s hand in the outer chamber.
‘Cheek,’ muttered Hodge. ‘Well?’
‘I need a drink. And more than small beer. That man knows everything.’
The second time in his life he had come before Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, Enemy of Rome.
Today she was wearing a gown of old gold, embroidered with pearls and gold beads and the shapes of aged oak leaves. Nicholas wasn’t quite sure it matched her red hair but he thought it wiser not to say. He bowed low.
Cecil stood close by her. She feigned forgetfulness. ‘Remind me who you are.’ He explained as clearly as he could. She waved a slim white hand. ‘You have taken a long time to complete the account we asked you for.’
‘Alas, yes, there was an estate to run, and my sisters—’
‘You have taken a very long time.’
He bowed low again, teeth clenched. ‘I have taken a very long time.’ Much as he revered his monarch, it angered him to grovel. ‘Yes, Majesty. My regrets.’
‘As well I did not command an account of your entire life, or it would have taken you a lifetime to complete.’
He laughed gracefully. ‘I am not a fast writer, Majesty.’
‘Evidently. Fortunately I am a somewhat swifter reader, and read your account in a single night.’
Three hundred pages? Quite possibly. She was a woman of awesome intellect, as powerful as any man’s – more powerful than many men’s, indeed.
‘You are with your … friends at Wapping?’
Nothing was named directly in this world. She would never use the phrase ‘Knights of St John’. All was double talk and allusion.
‘I am with my old comrade Hodge. The others lodge elsewhere.’
‘Your old friends have experience of the court of Constantinople which will be invaluable. We have had some communication with them. The family of one, the Stanleys, are an old family, largely Protestant, loyal servants. But you do not need to trouble yourself with the complex business of high politics, you a simple, slow-witted yeoman farmer.’ She smiled. ‘So you are under new command from us, firstly to sail for Constantinople.’
‘As spies?’
‘As ambassadors and merchants,’ said Cecil sharply. ‘Merchandise and money are welcome the world over, regardless of religion.’
So it was true, what Smith and Stanley had hinted before to him. They were bound for Constantinople! The heart of the enemy itself. Fabled city of minarets and bazaars, palaces and fountains, negro slaves, sherbet, secret assignations in dark streets under the crescent moon …
‘You will take gifts from us, to the Sultana Safiye herself,’ said the Queen. ‘You know of her?’
‘I have some idea – she is Italian by birth, is she not?’
Elizabeth eyed Cecil, and he spoke in a voice like an encyclopaedia. ‘She was born Sofia Bellicui Baffo, in Venice, about 1550. Her father was governor of Corfu. The romantic tale goes that she was captured by Mohammedan pirates, forced into concubinage, earned the favour of the Sultan Murad, the third of that name, and by great good fortune became the mother of his first-born son, the future Sultan Mehmet. So now she has become Sultana, most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire. She is still only some twenty-four years of age, and reputed a great beauty—’
Elizabeth, over thirty years of age and no great beauty, though often flattered as such, interrupted sharply. ‘Or perhaps she is just a common Venetian whore who has crawled to the top with her usual harlot’s bag of bedroom tricks. What matters is that she has written us a letter, requesting friendship and sending gifts. She writes to us in most eloquent terms, sends us – as I recall – “so honourable and sweet a salutation that a choir of Nightingales could not attain the like, for the love we have for each other is like garden of pleasant birds …”’
‘She’s been out East too long,’ he muttered.
Her Majesty heard him and smiled. ‘You are merchants, but also our ambassadors. We wish to know all about this Sultana Safiye – her new Turkish name. You know what Safiye means in Turkish?’
Nicholas struggled to remember.
Elizabeth smiled a thin smile. ‘It means The Pure. Very amusing. So you will have an audience with this Pure Whore, charm her, do whatever you need. You have good looks, modesty and courtliness. Our agent there tells us she has information useful to us. She is now a Mohammedan convert – for the furtherance of her career – but was born a Christian. You will cement our alliance – for though the religion of Islam is assuredly the enemy of Christendom, yet we both in England and the Ottoman Empire have an enemy in Rome. Perhaps this makes us unlikely temporary allies, of a sort.’
Politics was always complicated, compromised. And how on earth could Smith and Stanley be going on this mission too?
She read his thoughts. ‘Your friends – from Malta – are at much greater risk than you are. But that is their affair. We have their assurance that their Order, at least, feels no special duty to fight against fellow Christians, or assassinate Protestant rulers.’
‘I believe this is true,’ said Nicholas.
‘Then comes a more delicate mission,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You will sail on over the Pontine Sea to Russia, and up to the Grand Duchy of Muscovy.’
The Black Sea is flooding north, through summer meadows.
‘Russia?’
‘Just so. Increasingly a great and powerful enemy of the Ottomans.’
‘So – our enemy?’
Her thin smile. ‘Not so naive, Master Ingoldsby. Very much our friends, and esteemed trading partners. Christian, but not of Rome. And, potentially, very, very wealthy. How on earth could this combination make them our enemies?’
He felt quite lost. Bowed again, for good measure.
‘The journey up to Muscovy alone will, I am sure, be … interesting. You will have to pass through Tatar lands, and vast, lawless plains ruled by mounted bandits called the Cossacks. But I am sure you will cope admirably, and again you will gather all information useful to us. We already have the good maps and the reports of our loyal servant Anthony Jenkinson, Captain-General of the Russia Company. Here. See.’
She indicated and a steward unrolled a magnificent illustrated map: a work of cartographic art. In the bottom left was the image of a memorial stone that read,
Russiae, Moscoviae et Tartariae Descriptio.
It showed a country of many rivers and exotic creatures. In the far north was a land, Samoyeda, where Jenkinson had pictured men in furs kneeling down before stone idols or squares of hide suspended from long poles. Beyond the last city to the east was an empty land called Sibir. There was a Cassac, and Colmack, and Kirgessi praying to trees, and from some of the trees were hanging corpses.
There were camels and conical tents among the Tumen, wild leaping horsemen at Astrakhan and in the Crimea, a great river called the Don, known to the Greeks as the Tanais, and the Neper, or anciently, Borysthenes … It was a lot to take in. And towards the north was a small city on a small river, called Moskva.
‘In Russian,’ said Cecil, ‘Moskva means dark or troubled waters.’
‘But Master Jenkinson is a merchant to his soul,’ snapped the Queen. ‘Much fanciful illustration, and reports of crops and timber and beeswax, less about armies and fortifications, in which your eye is more experienced.’
‘Truly, Majesty, I was only ever a soldier by accident—’
He was going to remind her that he really was only a yeoman farmer, even if he had inherited a baronetcy from his father; that he had only gone to Malta as a naive, vainglorious boy, imagining himself on some noble crusade in his father’s name, had only become caught up in the battles of Cyprus and Lepanto as little more than a vagabond, along with his faithful friend Hodge. But she ignored him entirely.
‘In addition you have a sharp eye and an agreeable style in prose. You were tutored in Cicero?’
‘My father was a great admirer of Tacitus. He said Cicero’s sentences were too long.’
‘Ah yes, perhaps your style is Tacitan. “They make a wasteland and they call it peace,”
yes?’
He bowed. Her Majesty was known to be a very fine scholar – and not chary of displaying her scholarship either.