‘Yes, your grace.’
Fellowes read the document, startled by the range of frauds which had been detected and relieved by the number which had escaped scrutiny. He signed with a shaking hand. Lord Westfield produced another document for perusal.
‘Here is a warrant for your arrest, sir,’ he said with due solemnity. ‘It is signed by Sir Robert Cecil who helped me to initiate these investigations.’ He turned to the guards. ‘Take the villain away!’
Stripped of his office, the Clerk of Ordnance was duly delivered to the Constable of the Tower who promptly incarcerated him in a dank cell and left him there to contemplate the miseries that lay ahead. Nicholas Bracewell joined the deputation as they left by the main gate. They were some distance from the Tower before they broke into laughter. Lord Westfield was gleeful.
‘I should be a member of my own company!’ he said. ‘But it was John Aylmer here who really put our man to flight.’
‘I’ve always wanted to be a bishop,’ admitted Owen Elias, playing with the cross on his chest. ‘But I’d not waste myself on London. Make me Bishop of Wales and let me lead my wayward people back to the Lord.’
They adjourned to a nearby inn where Nicholas had already reserved a private room. The Bishop of London became Owen Elias again, his secretary emerged as Matthew Lipton, the regular scrivener to Westfield’s Men, and the two soldiers were now restored to their status as hired men with the company. Impersonation on that scale rendered all four of them liable to prosecution but Nicholas felt the risk was worth taking. A fraudulent Clerk had been outwitted by a fraudulent Bishop. With a signed confession, Lord Westfield could now hand the whole matter over to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As he battled for his survival, Harry Fellowes would forget all about the ruse which had entrapped him.
Lord Westfield had a final word alone with Nicholas.
‘The deepest pleasure of all is yet to come,’ he said. ‘Roger Godolphin, Earl of Chichester, will be ruined by these disclosures. Instead of making a queen of Arabella Stuart, he has simply made an arrant fool of himself!’ He chuckled happily. ‘This will make those lions rampant on his coat of arms lie on their backs with their feet in the air!’
Nicholas recalled the coach he had seen outside the home of Beatrice Capaldi. Its identity was now confirmed. The coat of arms had belonged to the Godolphin family. The Earl of Chichester was not using all the money he borrowed from Harry Fellowes to finance his daring bid for political power. Some of it went to subsidise his pleasures at the house in Blackfriars. It was an interesting coincidence.
Nicholas wondered if Giles Randolph knew about it.
Beatrice Capaldi reclined on her four-poster and sipped wine from a Venetian glass goblet. Even when naked and covered with a film of perspiration, she still had natural poise and distinction. A toss of her head turned unkempt hair into a faultless coiffure once more. A lift of her black eyebrow restored full hauteur to her mien. She was an aristocrat in a profession of commoners. Beatrice Capaldi was no ordinary whore who could be bought by anyone with enough money. She was a voluptuous woman of high ambition and a discerning taste. Suitors of all manner besieged her but she rejected the vast majority and chose only the select few. Giles Randolph, actor-manager with Banbury’s Men, was one of those chosen few. Indeed, he had been encouraged to believe that he was now the only one of them.
He lay beside her and fingered the new love-bite she had just implanted on his chest. Still panting from his exertions, he threw down a mouthful of wine and smiled. ‘You are a woman in a thousand, Beatrice!’
‘Ten thousand.’
‘A hundred thousand, a million!’ He kissed the porcelain skin of her shoulders. ‘And you are all mine!’
‘Yes, Giles. I am all yours.’
‘No wonder Firethorn wants you so much!’
‘Can any man resist me?’ she said easily.
‘Not if he has red blood in his veins.’
She laughed and gave him another little bite. Randolph nestled back in the pillows to marvel at her wonder afresh. Beatrice Capaldi was the child of an Italian father and an English mother, inheriting her passion from the former and her dignity from the other, then adding capacities for guile and intrigue that were all her own. Her slender body could deliver all its rich promises, her succulent mouth could draw the very soul out of a man. He was hers. Giles Randolph saw her as his conquest but he was very much her possession. A rich and successful actor, he had money enough to keep her and charms enough to amuse her. When he involved her in the capture of Lawrence Firethorn, she played a game at which she was a consummate expert. Both were ruthless and neither would stop at anything. They were kindred spirits.
‘Tomorrow night we will celebrate,’ he said fondly.
‘All will be achieved.’
‘Firethorn will be outlawed and his company disbanded.’
‘Banbury’s Men will be unrivalled.’
‘Yes,’ he said, looping an arm around her. ‘One day will change both our lifetimes. A queen will die and a new king will attend his coronation in the theatre. We will stay together for ever and rule the whole city.’
Beatrice Capaldi smiled with determined pleasure.
‘I expect no less …’
London awoke at first light to begin the fateful day. The markets were erected and filled with bustling urgency by noisy stallholders. Butchers set out their meat, bakers their bread and fishmongers the latest catch. Farmers streamed into the city with their animals and produce to increase the pungency of the odours and swell the general pandemonium. Careful housewives were up just after dawn to find the best bargains. Children, dogs, beggars and masterless men filtered into the throng. Major streets were turned into human rivers that ebbed and flowed with tidal force. Market time was one long continuous act of collective lunacy.
Cornelius Gant was among the first visitors to the maelstrom. Though nobody knew him by sight, he heard his name on dozens of tongues as the miraculous Nimbus was discussed. Bills had been posted up to advertise the attempted flight to the top of St Paul’s but it was word of mouth which would bring in the bulk of the audience. Gant would be ready for them. Aided by a boy with a handcart, he bought up baskets of doves, pigeons and any other birds he could find. When the baskets were piled high on the cart, he and the boy pushed its cooing, cawing, fluttering cargo in the direction of the cathedral. Gant was keeping an appointment with the verger.
Further downriver, another market was being held. The unintentional vendor was Queen Elizabeth herself and the commodity on sale was nothing less than her crown. Whitehall Palace was no seething mass of urgent bodies but the figures who glided about in profusion were no less intent on making a profit on their transaction. A buoyant Lord Westfield was there with his entourage and a chastened Earl of Chichester loitered with his adherents. Other alliances stood in other corners and eyed the competition with resentful enmity. It was a market where most would be turned away disappointed. There was only one item for sale and its price was rightly exorbitant.
The Earl of Banbury scurried in with high hopes that were dashed instantly by the leader of his campaign. News of the arrest of Harry Fellowes had been communicated to the Master of Ordnance. Chichester had funded his enterprise with tainted money. The consequences were too frightful to reflect upon. His reputation would never survive the scandal and all who were associated with him would be stigmatised. The watching Lord Westfield saw the face of his rival turn puce as he received the intelligence. It was worth getting up at such an ungodly hour to observe the priceless discomfiture of the Earl of Banbury. Dreams of endless bounty from the gracious hands of Queen Arabella vanished at once.