The Incendium Plot

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Gripped by fear …

  In the England of Elizabeth I, plague, insurrection and invasion is constant, heresy and dissent simmer beneath the surface.

  Surrounded by enemies …

  Lawyer Christopher Radcliff is the Earl of Leicester’s chief intelligencer. His task is to investigate treachery at home and the ever-present papist threat from abroad – and he is under pressure to get results.

  With a fanatic on the loose …

  Then he and his network of agents and informers hear rumours of a chilling new plot against the queen that would tear the country apart. And the only clue they have is a solitary whispered word: Incendium.

  What does it mean, and who lies behind it?

  The fuse has been lit and time is running out …

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by A. D. Swanston

  Copyright

  The Incendium Plot

  A. D. Swanston

  For Susan, with love

  CHAPTER 1

  London, June 1572

  THE TWO FIGURES outside the narrow house beside the Cripplegate cobbler’s shop were unremarkable – both of middling height and wearing white kersey shirts and black breeches with grey hose, soft caps pulled low over their brows, and short capes. They could have been scriveners, clerks, or members of any one of numerous respectable trades.

  One had crossed the river from Southwark by row-boat and thence come on foot to Cripplegate. The other had come by Fleet Street and Smithfield. The guards at the city gates had not detained them. They had met at the house and had waited in the shadows until dawn before knocking on the door. They were in no doubt about its being the right house – it exactly matched the description they had been given.

  Early as it was, they were not surprised that their knock went unanswered. One of them tried again, this time with a little more force. He did not want to wake inquisitive neighbours by shouting or forcing the door. But he did want to get the job done and be gone before day women carrying milk churns and fruit-sellers and poultrymen arrived through the Cripplegate to tout their wares. The risk of being marked and remembered then would be high.

  From an upstairs room they heard the sounds of movement. A window creaked open above them. ‘What churl calls at this hour?’ demanded a petulant voice, made hoarse by ale and sleep. ‘We are not yet risen.’

  One of the men glanced down the street to make sure they were not observed. ‘Do I address Mr Houseman?’ the other asked politely, his voice that of an educated man.

  ‘You do, although I would you did not. I do not welcome visitors when it is scarcely light and I have not yet filled my piss-pot.’

  ‘The hour cannot be helped, sir. We are sent from Stationers’ Hall on a matter of great urgency.’

  ‘What can be so urgent that it has taken me from my bed and my wife?’

  ‘If you would be good enough to open the door, sir, we shall be able to tell you. We will not detain you for long and you will soon be back in your bed beside your wife.’

  ‘Come back later, damn you, when I am risen.’

  ‘We are messengers, sir, and must be on our way. We carry important news for all members of the guild. Our instructions are not to delay.’

  They heard an oath and the window was closed with a force that rattled its frame. At first, they thought that Houseman was going to leave them to kick their heels. Then there were footsteps on the stair, a key turned in the lock and the door bolts were drawn back.

  They waited until the door was opened an inch or two, put their weight against it and crashed into the house, knocking Houseman to the floor. They were on him immediately, one forcing into his mouth the tip of a heavy knife of the sort that a butcher might use, the other tying his hands and feet with short lengths of rope. Houseman could do nothing but struggle feebly and make mewling sounds deep in his throat.

  As soon as he had made the knots fast, the other dashed up the stair. Houseman’s wife had heard the commotion and was standing in her nightgown at the top. At the moment she opened her mouth to scream, he grabbed her hair and held a slim dagger to her throat. They had not brought firearms for fear of a neighbour hearing a shot. The scream was stifled. He growled into her ear, ‘Not a sound, woman, or you will die like a stuck pig and pleading for quarter.’ He forced her down the stair and into a small parlour.

  Her husband was hauled in behind her and lay helpless on the floor. One stood silently over Houseman, the other held the woman. ‘Now, you will tell us what we want to know or your wife will be stripped and swived before your eyes. And not by me, by this.’ He held up the dagger. ‘She will not enjoy it. And you will not enjoy the taste of your own pizzle.’

  The knife was pulled from Houseman’s mouth, bloodying his lip, and pressed against his cheek. He managed a strangled croak. ‘Do not harm her. Take what little we have and go.’

  ‘It is information we seek from you, bookseller, not your money.’

  ‘What do you wish to know? I will tell you if you do not harm my wife.’

  ‘Very well. If you lie or the woman screams, she will die. Do you understand?’ He held his blade under the woman’s chin and pressed it into her flesh just hard enough to draw a trickle of blood.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good. What do you know of Incendium?’

  Houseman had recovered a little courage. ‘Incendium? I am a member of the Stationers’ Company. I read Latin. Of course I know what it is.’ The blade cut down the length of his wife’s nightgown, revealing her breasts and belly. She was a comely woman, plump and smooth-skinned.

  At a signal the knife was pressed harder into her husband’s cheek. ‘That is not the answer we seek.’ The man holding her smirked. ‘On second thoughts, perhaps I shall take her first.’

  ‘For the love of God, husband, do as he asks,’ sobbed the woman. Despite the warmth of the house, she was shaking. There was a sharp smell of piss from the puddle at her feet.

  ‘Swear that you will not harm her further.’

  ‘She will not be harmed if you tell us what we wish to know. What do you know of Incendium?’

  ‘It means fire. I have heard it spoken in the Hall.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I believe there may be a body among the stationers who call themselves by this name.’

  ‘How do you come to believe this?’

  ‘A word here and there. Whispers overheard.
Nothing more.’

  ‘What purpose has this body and why would it choose such a name?’

  ‘I do not know.’ The point of the dagger traced a line of blood from the woman’s throat to her belly. She bit her tongue and managed not to cry out. ‘If you hurt her, I shall say nothing more.’ The words came out in a desperate gasp.

  ‘You do know. You have been asking questions. Why?’

  ‘Curiosity, no more.’

  ‘What have you learned?’

  ‘I know only that there are those of its members who would see a return to the old ways of worship. That is against no law and there are many in London of the same opinion.’

  ‘Why then stick your nose into it?’

  ‘I have told you. Curiosity.’

  ‘Who knows of this body? Who have you told?’

  ‘I have told no one.’

  The man cupped the woman’s breast in his hand and reached around her to hold the blade to a brown nipple. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I have told no one. Would I put my wife’s life at stake by lying?’

  ‘Your final chance. What do you know about the word?’

  ‘I have told you what I know. There is no more. Now keep your word and release her.’

  ‘I gave no word.’ The knife slashed across the woman’s throat. Blood spurted from the wound and she fell dying. The bookseller cried out and tried to get to his feet. He was kicked back by a booted foot.

  ‘You should not have meddled in affairs that do not concern you.’ The slim blade sliced again. Blood gurgled from the wound and spread out over the floor. Houseman’s eyes opened wide in shock. In less than a minute he was dead.

  The killer wiped the blade on his victim’s nightshirt. ‘Search the house. Find a sack and take what silver and coin there is. We will return tonight to clear away the blood and get rid of the bodies. There must be no trace left. Make haste.’

  It did not take long. They found little money and few pieces of value. One of them took the key from the door and locked it from the outside. They went quietly back the way they had come and were seen only by a single night-soil man who paid them no heed. By that night all traces of the murders would have been removed.

  CHAPTER 2

  THAT SAME MORNING, the second day of June, Christopher Radcliff awoke early, rubbed sleep from his eyes and cursed himself for having finished the bottle of sack before retiring. He struggled to his feet, splashed his face with cold water from the ewer in his chamber and ran his fingers through his unruly mop of yellow hair. A glance in a hand mirror that had once been his mother’s, and he reckoned himself presentable enough. He slipped on a much-mended white shirt and a pair of black breeches. He eschewed London fashion and was never comfortable in a doublet, which made him feel like an uncommonly tall jester at the court of King Henry.

  After nearly two years in London he had become accustomed to a bed too short for him – at an inch above six feet, most beds were too short for him – but last night, despite the sack, he had slept fitfully. He did not relish the task he must carry out that day.

  In the kitchen, he swallowed a slice of cold chicken, washed it down with a beaker of small beer, and left the house as the bell of the church of St Martin rang out six. He tucked his poniard, its blade so slim that it was almost a needle, into his belt, locked the door carefully behind him lest thieving eyes were watching, looked up and down the street, saw nothing untoward and set off for the river. As always, he wore his academic gown and cap.

  The Earl of Leicester’s message had arrived the previous evening. The queen had travelled by royal barge from Whitehall Palace to the Tower and there spoken privately to the warden. The execution of Thomas Howard had been set for eight. The earl had instructed Christopher to attend and to report to him at Whitehall Palace immediately afterwards. That the earl preferred not to be there was no surprise – his own father, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had died under the executioner’s axe and the earl himself, together with his brothers, had languished in the Tower under sentence of death. There was nothing the earl would wish for less than to witness another execution in that dreadful, menacing place.

  Twice that year the queen had signed the death warrant and twice she had rescinded it at the eleventh hour. On the first occasion a furious mob of disappointed onlookers had taken out its anger on the vagrants and whores who infested the narrow lanes and alleys around the Tower, cracking heads and breaking bones. On the second, the crowd was appeased by the spectacle of two lesser executions hurriedly arranged to provide their entertainment.

  This time, surely, there would be no reprieve. This time the Duke of Norfolk, the queen’s cousin, would die on the scaffold. And he would die as plain Thomas Howard. He had been tried and found guilty of plotting her death, and sentence would at last be carried out. And, at the Earl of Leicester’s command, his chief intelligencer in London, Dr Christopher Radcliff, would be there to witness his death. Whether to be pleased or vexed that he was the one to take the earl’s place, Christopher was unsure. Did it put him on the top of the dung heap or underneath it?

  In one respect, Norfolk was fortunate. Thanks to his position, he would not face the gruesome end that awaited other traitors. He would not be hung by the neck, cut down while still alive, sliced open, his entrails burned before his eyes until finally his body was hacked into four pieces. As the queen’s kinsman, Norfolk had been granted a swift end. He would be killed by a stroke of the axe, albeit on Tower Hill in full public view, not, like the queen’s own mother, within the private confines of the castle.

  Norfolk’s death would mark the end of what had become known as the Ridolfi Plot, named for the Florentine banker who had devised and financed it. Christopher had wondered if the queen might have been more merciful if the plot had not followed so soon after the uprising in the northern counties, a rising led by the earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland. The queen’s advisors, the Earl of Leicester foremost among them, had finally persuaded her that Howard, royal cousin or no, had to die. Only the queen’s mercy had saved him so far. It would save him no longer.

  Christopher did not care to ride if he could avoid it and in London travelled on foot or by wherry. To save time that day, he would use the river. He walked briskly down Blackfriars Lane, head down and purse safely under his shirt. Even at that hour, London was awake and there would be cutpurses and pickpockets and maunderers about. Each week he saw more and more of them, lurking on street corners and huddled in doorways – vagrants and paupers pouring in from the countryside where they could not eke out a living on land being enclosed for animals, and could no longer turn to the charity of the old religious houses. For all their extravagance and corruption, the ancient monasteries had provided food and shelter to the poor and sick of their counties. Now London grew larger, dirtier and more overcrowded with each day while Londoners grumbled and cursed and demanded an end to the river of vagrants and harsher penalties for their crimes. But to no avail. A man had only to walk along Fleet Street to see that the problem was getting worse by the week.

  On the corner of Pilgrim Street, butchers and bakers were already setting out their stalls and aiming kicks at the half-naked urchins who scrabbled about in the dirt, squabbling over a stale crust or a scrap of offal. The urchins had to be quick. Hungry dogs sniffed about while kites watched hopefully from the rooftops. Christopher saw a bird swoop from its perch, take a morsel in its beak and flap away before it could be frightened off.

  A filthy child saw him and dashed across the street to demand a coin. She grabbed his gown and held on like a terrier with a rat until he gave up trying to free himself and tossed a groat from his purse on to the cobbles. She was on it as quick as any rat. He hurried on. Near Blackfriars stairs, a painted orange-seller appeared from a dark doorway, thrust out a hand and grabbed his sleeve. He shook it off with a wrench of his arm. From her he was more likely to buy the pox than an orange.

  There was no one else at the stairs and he did not have to wait long for a
wherry. Soon enough, a grizzled old waterman with a single eye steered his narrow boat alongside. Christopher handed him a shilling and stepped in. He pulled his knees up to his chin and settled on to a low seat at the rear of the boat. ‘To the steps at the Tower. How is the river today?’ he asked.

  ‘Stinking like a whore’s quim, sir,’ growled the old man. ‘But calm as a pond, as you can see for yourself, and no tide to speak of. The bridge will not detain us.’ When the river was flowing fast, the waters funnelling under London Bridge were dangerous. There were drownings every year. ‘Tower Hill for Howard’s head, is it?’

  Christopher ignored the question. ‘Make haste, man. I must be in good time.’ He took off his cap lest it be caught by a fluke of wind and lost to the river, and gathered his gown around his shoulders. The wherryman dug in his oar. It caught in the water and when he jerked it out, sent a spray of water over Christopher’s sleeve. ‘Take care, oaf,’ he growled. ‘I do not wish to be soaked.’

  Even during the summer stench, the river held a strange attraction for him. As different as could be from the quiet Cam which flowed through Cambridge and along which he had often walked after a morning studying or teaching. An ancient path ran beside it to the hamlet of Grantchester, but more often than not he had only swans on the river and cows in the meadows for company.

  And to his surprise, he also liked the movement of the Thames, the bustle, the comings and goings of the cargo ships, the wherries and row-boats, the strange languages, the faces and voices of the men and women who made their living by it. The foul-mouthed wherryman that morning was an exception. Most river people were different to the people of the streets. On another day he would have enjoyed the early morning journey and the greetings and insults shouted across the water by the wherrymen. That day, however, his mind was elsewhere. It was on the foolish, doomed affair that, in less than two hours, would send Norfolk to his death.

  To the Privy Council the facts had been clear. Norfolk had conspired with others to assassinate the queen and replace her with the Queen of Scots, whom he would then marry. Supported by an uprising of Catholic sympathizers and an invasion force of ten thousand Spanish soldiers, they would restore England to the ways of Rome. That both Norfolk and Mary had been three times married had not deterred Pope Pius from giving them his blessing or from excommunicating the Queen of England from the Catholic Church. To Christopher’s mind, the plot had been driven as much by a raging lust for power as by religious fervour.