dead … murdered, they say.”
“Killed in a fair fight,” I replied.
She glanced at me, and Tom, too.
“We went to get a sick man he’d taken away to let die, and they were waiting for
us. We were all in it, Jeremy as well, but it was I who killed him, man to man
in a duel.
“The old man he’d taken there to die had been a friend to my father, so we went
to bring him back for proper care. Genester expected to inherit if the old man
died, and Genester intended to let him die. But Genester has friends at court,
and I have none.”
“They’ll throw you into Newgate until there’s a trial,” Tom warned. “And it’s a
pure hell, filthy and crawling with lice. There’s good people in there for debt,
and every kind of human vermin you can find mixed in among them.”
“I did only what had to be done,” I said. “Now I must see Peter and board my
ship.”
“Won’t they be watching it?”
“They will.” I looked over at Mag.
She leaned her forearms on the table. “Virginia,” she said, “Raleigh’s land. Is
it so grand a place, then?”
“A broad land, with forest and running streams and meadows the like of which
you’ve never seen. A beautiful land, Mag, a place in which to rear tall sons.”
“I have no sons,” she said.
“You’ve time, lass. Get that sailorman of yours and come to America. Raleigh is
said to be making up a group to settle there, and if all goes well my ship will
be back. Peter will know when it comes, for he’s to buy and sell for me. Come, I
will find a place for you.”
“My father sailed with Hawkins in ’67,” she said. “He talked much of the new
lands, the savages, and the Spanish to the south.”
A thought came to me. “Mag, you’ve others here?”
“One man only now. A fortnight or more he’s been here. Paid in advance, he did,
and well.”
“A seafaring man?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Who knows? Conrad Poltz, he is, and polite enough, but
he does not stop to talk. Not after the first day.”
“What, then? He asked questions?”
“He claimed knowledge of Jack, that he’d known him. But I do not think he had.
He was asking about others here. He rises early and spends the day along the
river, watching the ships.”
Conrad Poltz. I knew not the man.
My friend Coveney Hasling might know this Conrad Poltz, but Hasling was also
known to be my friend and might be watched. It was Hasling who had, in a way,
given me my first chance. He was a kindly old man who was interested in
antiquities, and wandered about the country buying old things found by diggers
of ditches, cutters of peat, and such like. When I found several ancient gold
coins, I had taken them to him, and he bought some, and saw to the selling of
others.
Tallis might also know this Conrad Poltz.
Peter Tallis was a man of parts, a man of many strange talents. He was a
skillful forger, and had been known to prepare documents, alter others, connive
in many ways. It was to him I had gone when I wanted a copy of Leland’s book on
the old places of England. The book was known to exist in manuscript, but no
printing had as yet been made, and until I went to America, I’d thought of
searching for antiquities to sell.
Little happened in England that Peter Tallis did not know, and his booth in St.
Paul’s Walk was well situated to hear all that went on, and was the clearing
house for information and gossip in all of London.
London was a vast melting pot, changing rapidly from the somewhat provincial
city it had been. Ships were coming and going from the new lands, fishing,
trading, attacking Spanish vessels. They brought strange wares to the market
places of London, and stranger stories. Men who had been prisoners returned with
their tales of the Barbary Coast, of the Levant, of the Guinea coasts and the
islands of the sun. And it was Elizabeth who pulled the many strings from behind
the scenes as well as in the open.
More than one vessel that went out to the Spanish Main was secretly financed by
the Queen herself. King Henry VIII, who desperately sought a male heir to carry
on his building of the English empire, died not knowing what an heiress he had
sired in Elizabeth. From his seat in the Valhalla of dead kings, he must have
looked back with amazed pride to see what Anne Boleyn had given him in that
small red-haired daughter he had seen but rarely.
My father had often talked to me of kings and men, of governments and battles
and the leading of peoples. “A king must think not only of today,” he had told
me, “but of tomorrow and tomorrow. When a law is passed, he must understand its
consequences. Moreover, he must always think of the succession.
“Henry the Eighth saw very clearly all the enemies England had, and that he must
have a strong hand to follow him. We are a small island in a stormy sea, and
there are many enemies for such. King Henry knew that we must have the strength
to stand alone, and as the years passed and he had no heir, he saw all his work
coming to nothing.
“He married again and again, but there was no son who lived. Of course,
Elizabeth … a daughter by Anne … he had her, but he had no faith in the
ability of a woman to stand against the storms that would assail England. There
were women enough for Henry without marrying them. What he wanted was a son, an
heir, one who could sit upon the throne of England with wisdom and power. He
died not knowing what he had sired in Elizabeth.”
Peter Tallis had echoed many of the things my father had said, and we had talked
much in those days before my first voyage to America. Now I would see him again.
We went to our room to wait for Peter. As we lay half asleep, a faint stirring
came from the room above me, as of someone moving quietly, not wishing to be
heard. It was very early still, and at that hour anyone might move quietly, not
wishing to awaken those who wished to sleep. Yet I listened and gradually my
ears became familiar with the natural creakings and stirrings of the old house,
and could easily distinguish those other sounds, however faint they might be.
A door above closed softly, and faint creaks on the stair told of someone
descending.
Mag had returned to her room across the hall. Whoever it was came softly along
the hall to our door and paused there, listening. I could hear his breathing and
was tempted to leap up and jerk open the door, but instead lay very still.
After a moment his footsteps retreated along the hall and I heard the outer door
open, then close.
Instantly, I was up. Tom’s eyes opened and I explained. “I don’t like it,” I
added. “He may be a spy.”
I rose, buckled on my sword, and went across the hall to Mag’s room. She opened
at my knock.
“Mag, tell Peter to meet us at the Prospect of Whitby. This man Conrad Poltz
worries me. We shall be at the Prospect by eleven of the clock, and we will wait
one hour. No more. If Peter does not find us there, or cannot come at that hour,
let it be at The Grapes. We will stay there. Then we must be off for the ship.”
Hurriedly we went to the stable. My horse was gone!
A glance was all that was needed. Turning swiftly, we went out the gate. At a
fast walk I led the way to the river.
“If it is a boat you have in mind, he would have thought of that,” Tom warned.
“Upriver then, quickly.”
By divers lanes and alleyways, we wove between buildings and across barnyards,
which were many in London. We came suddenly to the old tavern where I had first
met Jeremy Ring.
A man was leading a horse to the water trough and I knew him at once as one of
the rowdy crew who had been drinking with Jeremy Ring that night when first we
met.
“You’ll be remembering me?”
His smile was wry. “If need be, but I can forget as easily.”
“Well, then. Remember me long enough to tell me if there’s a boat about, and
then forget you’ve seen me.”
“I’ve a boat at the old dock below, but I’d not wish to lose it.”
“Do you know The Grapes?”
“Aye.”
“You’ll find your boat there, when we’re done with it, nicely tied. In the