“Do you know if they have access to some buildings by the Tower, probably near the Goat’s Head?” That may have come out more as a squeal than a deep manly question, but Mary left off her, umm, ‘activities’ for the moment and gave the question some thought. “Lizzie said that Clemmie wuz always pestering ‘er to come with ‘im to an old abbey down towards the river. It was ‘alf ruins. They reckoned it were built by an ancient queen.”
Ned nodded and allowed the hand he’d been holding to briefly escape. The fingernails grazed his chest eliciting a whimpered gasp.
“Well Clemmie reckoned it ‘eld his promise o’ a lordship’s wealth, but Lizzie would ‘ave naught said. ‘e stank worse ‘n a cesspit and was blacker than an ‘eathen, affer ‘e were there fo’ awhile.”
Got them, thought Ned as his resolve wavered and dissolved. Damn, he could have been dead last night! Ned’s daemon whispered urgently that he wasn’t going to get a better offer if it was handed to him on his uncle’s finest gilt plate. Well why the hell not, he wasn’t a monk was he? Why shouldn’t he? Ned smiled and bent closer grazing Mary’s beckoning lips with his. Such a sweet lass-just like her cousin.
The old priest used to talk about the sweetness of forbidden fruit and how Satan had tempted the mother of mankind, Eve, into grievous sin, and ever since then the passions and lust of women had been the downfall of all mankind. The old fellow really worked up his own passion with those sermons. Ned could still remember the glazed expression in Father John’s eyes, as he went through his admonishment, his shaking hand and quivering jowls, and at every word he had his eye fixed on the plump diminutive figure of Alice Fletcher sitting quietly in the third row.
Then after the mass, regular as clockwork, Father John would limp down the lane as fast as he could to Mistress Alice’s house for his Sunday serving, as Uncle Richard so wryly observed and thus do lusts and appetites make fools of us all.
For Ned it was a memory recalled too late as the door to the cabin slammed open.
“Ned! Ned, I came as soon as they gave me word!” The urgent welcome shuddered to an abrupt halt as Mistress Black beheld the scene in the bunk.
*
Ned knelt down on the slimy stones of the starling. He didn’t have a choice and so another set of hose was ruined in this foolish affair! If he survived till tomorrow, finding a way to have presentable clothes for the audience with Sir Thomas More was going to be a challenge. However lamentable that occasion turned out to be, it couldn’t surpass the scene he had recently escaped in the shipmaster’s cabin. It wasn’t that he had actually done anything with Mary or that he and Meg Black had behaved in any manner that implied a marriage contract was imminent or needed. So the ensuing rage, tears and distress of Mistress Black really shouldn’t concern him. He’d maintained his honour and dignity, well once he’d grabbed the sheet and fled the cabin. Luckily Tam had the heart of a lion and ventured back into the disputed territory to rescue his clothes. So it really shouldn’t have made him feel such a traitor to slink off here. He really did have urgent matters to attend to. The angel at his shoulder made a few whispered aspersions regarded his conduct, and a good part of Ned was forced to agree.
This must be the spot. He couldn’t have washed much further along or Skelton wouldn’t have been able to pull him out. It was definitely this starling-he remembered the distinctive windows in the house above. He’d used it as a sighting mark yesterday evening. And then the slightest hint of colour hiding in a crevice caught Ned’s eye, and without thinking too much about what he was doing, he drove his hand down into the murky space. This was not a task he would normally have considered but desperation was its own imperative.
In theory the tidal race washed these piers clean twice a day, pity this wasn’t enough. Ned groped downwards, his fingers crawling over…well he actually didn’t want to know what they were encountering until the very tips of his nails scraped something that felt familiar. Steeling himself for a more painful effort, he took a risk and stretched that bit further until he could grab the object and pull it out. This took more skin off bruised knuckles, but damn the pain, this morning had been humiliation enough.
In the morning sunlight he turned the prize over in his hand and sneered. Well, how unexpected! Another measly orange! He supposed the plotters could have been more inventive, but when the Queen invested in several hogsheads of oranges, well they had to be used for something.
Ned thoughtfully weighed this one in his hand. There was a problem. He had, by now, become familiar with the usual size, weight ratio of this piece of fruit as well as having become closely acquainted with its innards recently. This orange differed from those others-it definitely much heavier than it should be.
Irritated with Meg Black, Skelton’s brutal assurance and the plotters pretentious arrogance, he ripped the orange apart. Its contents dropped, ringing on the stones of the starling. Some bounced back into the slimy crevice, while others winkled their metallic flash before disappearing into the foaming waters.
Ned must have been more affected by the experience of drowning than he thought, for instead of instinct taking over, he just stood there watching the cascade of coins with a surprised look on his face.
Anger gave him a metaphorical boot in the cods, what was this? Were all conspirators dumber than pig’s dribble? Secreted messages and hidden codes he could understand, but what sort of dim-witted fool hides gold coins inside oranges? They were already an expensive luxury. Why go to so much trouble? A few discreet purses or the ‘gift’ of a small chest and your bribes were sorted without going through all this rigmarole.
Ned bent down and picked up a couple of the remaining coins. One he knew well, an old ‘copper nose’, a more recent issue from the mint with a reduced amount of precious metal. Well it was one way to make His Majesty’s funds go further, but it did play merry hell with trade. The other coin was different though. It was a Rhenish florin, one of the accepted standards of trade across the channel, especially in the Imperial territories. The lost coins had the appearance of sovereigns or marks, as they had tumbled away, and at a guess the orange had held five or so coins.
So the cargo that Don Juan Sebastian risked all to take downriver of the bridge was one or more large baskets of oranges, the like of which Ned had lugged up three flights of stairs to the Queen’s rooms at Richmond palace. As he had cause to remember, just one of those baskets was over a hundred weight. Now, with the added burden of the coins, that would push it closer to two hundred weight per basket-really unnecessary and overly dramatic.
Ned shook his head in bemusement. If he’d any lingering doubts as to Imperial involvement, they’d vanished now. This collection of oranges came from the ambassador’s residence, and not from the abode of the Stafford women where the others with the secreted messages originated. Unless of course this was another set, separate from the first, but that would be just confusing. Unless there was a purpose for the division?
Ned could feel a return of the post Meg Black’s entrance headache coming on. This plot was become too bizarrely complex for his liking. Here he was, on London Bridge, mid way between the city and Southwark, also equidistance between Westminster and Smarts Key. He could go anywhere from this point, even flag down a wherry and jump on board a vessel sailing for France. And then he could forget all about this past week and all its travails.
No! Unfortunately the time for cutting and running was well past by several days. Ned had till tomorrow, mid morning, to remove the threat of the Lord Chancellor’s writ and still he lacked the last pieces of the puzzle for any form of credible explanation or leverage. As for the rest of the tasks, they were so tantalisingly close to a solution-Skelton had apparently been impressed by his bravado and condescendingly gave a short reprieve on the Spaniard hunt, though Cromwell’s writ to investigate the Queen’s plots would only be cleared if the Orange affair was resolved, while poor Master Robinson was still missing, and as Ned was now certain, connected with the murderous powder sorters, whom due to last night’s excitement he’d been unable to visit this morning.