Divided Loyalties: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller Read online

  Divided Loyalties

  Steven Veerapen

  © Steven Veerapen 2019

  Steven Veerapen has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: The Rules of the Game

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Part Two: Splitting the Deck

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Part Three: Double Dealing

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Part Four: Following Suit

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  The North, Summer, 1570

  He rapped a gloved hand against the door. Nothing. Tried again, a little louder. Eventually, the hollow sound of boots on wood came from somewhere inside. He chanced a look behind him, away from the mean little shack. The street was deserted, the only sound some pigs grunting down an alley. The lock clicked and light spilled out.

  ‘Please, father,’ he said. ‘Please, I would speak with you.’ The man who answered hesitated, his hand on the door. But he opened it a little wider.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Owen, father. I heard tell there were a priest here, of the old faith.’

  ‘Keep your voice down, please.’

  You wouldn’t take the man for a priest, thought Owen. He could not have been more than twenty-one, his face beardless and his hair an untidy mop. Rather than vestments, he was wearing a plain, buff-coloured pair of breeches and a stained white shirt. He might have been an apprentice boy. That was probably how they hoped to survive in England. The youthful priest looked over his visitor’s shoulder, his eyes wide. His voice trembled when he spoke. ‘Were you seen?’

  ‘No, father. I were right careful none should see. But better it were that I come in. It’s advice I need, that these bloody ‘eretics can’t give.’

  Another hesitation. ‘Yes. Yes, come in, Goodman Owen.’

  ‘Just Owen.’

  ‘Just so.’ He threw the door open and stood back, a nervous, friendly smile exposing good teeth. A fair lad, thought Owen, probably from a good family. Still smiling, the priest closed the door as soon as his guest was inside, before leaning over to turn the key. ‘Pray call me Father John. Speak freely, please. I have time until–’

  His words were cut off. Whilst his back was turned, the man calling himself Owen had pulled out a thin loop of cord and brought it down over his head. He yanked hard.

  Father John went down easily. He was not to die – not quite yet – but it was a delicate matter choking someone just to the point of unconsciousness. Mistime it and they would die or come around too quickly. Owen gritted his teeth as he gripped the cord. The young man’s hands flailed at first, scrabbling uselessly at his throat, but as his face reddened, he went limp. Owen let him slide to the floor, a small and weightless bundle. Not that it mattered: take even a giant’s throat by surprise and he’ll drop like a stone.

  There was not much time; the other one would return soon, and things had to be made ready. The little hovel was a depressing place. Two mattresses lay against the far wall, a broom stood in a corner, and a couple of upturned crates were doing duty as tables, stubs of candles glowing on them. It would not take long to search. He moved the candles in their cheap holders onto one of the boxes and lifted the lid of the other. Nothing. He reversed the process and found what he was looking for. Typical, he thought – you never got it on the first try. He pulled out the robes, crucifix, and beads. The searchers who came would have found them in the box, of course, but one could never underestimate the stupidity of northerners. They had proven that with their hare-brained rebellion. Better to ensure the baubles were found, and found quickly and publicly. He took them to one of the mattresses and half-hid them underneath, the crucifix poking out like a broken finger.

  ‘Now, young man,’ he mumbled, turning back to the unconscious John. ‘This will not be pleasant.’ He lifted him under the armpits and dropped him face-down on one of the makeshift beds. The young man grunted in his throat. Owen retrieved the broomstick, returned to the mattress, and pulled down the man’s breeches. He looked away before doing what he did next, his face an impassive slate. Yet his heart began to race, as it always did before he was about to kill, no matter how much discipline he tried to impose on himself. As he had expected, the pain of defilement roused life back into the priest, and it was only then that his captor did him the service of finishing him off with the cord. There was no resistance. He pulled out the bloodied broom and left the corpse, retreating to a corner of the room.

  Time seemed to spin out as he waited. He knew that the priest who shared the shack, an older mentor to the dead man, did his rounds amongst the local papists until late into the night. He had been studying their pattern for over a week, and had even managed to purloin one of the elder fellow’s letters of introduction to sympathisers, the better to learn his handwriting. It was an ugly business and he did not like it. Not the murders – that was simply part of the job – but the instructions he had been given to leave the bodies posed just so. There were rules to murder, whether it were done for sport, business, or necessity. He had come to learn them all, he fancied, and the first was that, whenever possible, bodies must disappear. That risked questions, of course – people loved a mystery – but it prevented any accidental evidence. No carelessly dropped gloves, no buttons or locks of hair clasped in dead men’s fingers. If the bodies had to be found, though, then the only thing to do was to make the whole thing look explicable. The diamond plot, however, would require display. It would require artistry. On the wings of the musing he reached under his coat and pulled out the scribbled note he had tucked into his belt.

  ‘I cannot live with the burthen of these my great sins and commit myself to one last. May God forgive me.’ Would a priest write such a thing? he wondered for the hundredth time. The knave would know, but he could not gain passage to England until the job was done. So, also for the hundredth time, he assured himself that it did not matter. People would believe it of them. He dropped the note next to the dead man and reached under his coat again, this time retrieving a coiled length of rope. With one end tied in a noose, he slung the other over a roof beam and secured it. All was ready now. He inspected the end of the broom handle and silently urged the other priest to hurry up, to return whilst the blood was still wet. Then he blew out all but one candle and moved the box well away from the body.

  When Old Father Time returned, he would see nothing amiss until it was too late. Perhaps he would be gone out of the world before seeing anything at all.

  The man who had called himself Owen stationed himself against the wall next to the door, his garrotte held tight in his hands, and waited. He allowed himself a little time to think. Did his northern accent need work? Possibly. He would work it on it. And no more ‘Owen’ – a stupid Welsh name.

  Would he be well rewarded? A ghost of a smile passed his face at that. Men who excelled at their profession always were, and few could touch him. He was the ace of diamonds, and those above him would have further use for him. Would killing priests damn him to the fires of Hell? He grinned. If there were a such a place, h
e had bought passage to it long ago, and at least now he would be a prince of it. His finger wandered under his coat, to the little diamond-topped pin that they had each been given. Satan himself would probably build him a throne made of the fools he had sent before him. Before long it would be a throne to rival the Queen of England’s and the Pope’s combined.

  He shook his head free of thoughts of Hell.

  Since childhood, he had been told that only God had the right to kill. In childhood he had learnt that man has spent every year on earth rejecting that foolish notion. He visualised ancient Egyptians burying men and women alive, and Moors swinging strange blades from atop huge Barbary horses, heads flying from spurting necks. It passed the time.

  Before ten minutes had gone by, the sound of a key turning in the lock signalled the night’s last job of work.

  Part One: The Rules of the Game

  1

  Old Aberdeen, August 1570

  The child’s cry pierced the air, shrill and insistent. At any other time, in any other place, it might have been a welcome sound, joyful, proclaiming new life. ‘Hush, Maria,’ said Anne. ‘Kat, you must hush her.’ The little Scottish girl, round-faced and wide-eyed, lifted the baby from her cradle and rocked her. Instantly the cries ceased. ‘Bless you, Kat.’

  ‘She smiles, my lady. She looks for you. Come see.’

  Anne Percy, countess of Northumberland, turned away. In truth, she found it difficult to look upon the little girl she had brought into the world only months before. Since fleeing England after the Northern Rising and becoming separated from her husband, her life had been one of uncertainty and continual movement. It seemed a cruel act to bring a child into such a life. Rather than taking her daughter in her arms, she paced the room, her shoes making dull thumps on the bare boards. It was a miserable place, Old Aberdeen – the town had no great house to coddle and protect her. Even the building she was in, the Chancellor’s Manse, she was told, was far from even a good-sized townhouse. With longing, she thought of Strathbogie, the magnificent castle cradled in the hills northwest of the burgh. She might have been safe there, she and Maria. Safe for a while but cut off from the world.

  She moved to the whitewashed stone wall and cracked open a shutter, letting morning sunshine spill in. The house looked down on an empty alley, but the breeze was welcome. Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes. The late-summer sun was deceptive; unless you stood directly in its gaze, the North Sea wind groped its way under clothing. She was shaken from her thoughts not by the baby or the weather, but by the sound of footsteps coming upstairs. Tensing, she opened her eyes, flashed a warning look at Kat, and turned towards the door. It opened slowly.

  George, Lord Seton, stepped over the threshold, a travelling cloak pinned over his shoulder. The hard face, which seldom saw a smile, lit up. Anne returned it, though not without a trace of anxiety. ‘What news? All is well?’

  ‘Passing well, my lady. It’s a fine ship I’ve had made ready for you – The Port of Leith. We maun make haste, though.’ He crossed to her and then, hesitantly, took her hands in his. She smiled again, more fully, tossing her head back and showing her teeth. Rather than letting her hands go limp in his, she traced a finger over his knuckle.

  ‘There is nothing from Lennox? Morton? From any of them?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘No whispers in the wind of this diamond league?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. His voice, she noticed, was a little cracked. Satisfying. A man in love was a man who could be trusted – even a stern-faced older man. Not for the first time she wondered if he was even aware that he had fallen for her. Probably not – his wife was equally eager to embrace her in friendship.

  ‘Then we are free to leave.’ She laid emphasis on the ‘we’. No harm in reminding him that he was coming with her. Since coming into Scotland with nothing she had drawn a team of adherents to her side: refugees from the north of England, Catholics from Europe eager to pledge their support, and the many who supported Queen Mary, though she still languished in confinement in England. No man, she supposed, could have done better.

  The people of northern Scotland, especially, had adopted her, despite the regent Lennox and his bulldog Morton proclaiming her to be of the northern English stock that had long bedevilled their country. A hollow attack, given the world knew that Scotland’s new rulers, the rebels against the rightful queen, were Queen Elizabeth’s lapdogs.

  Yet little could be achieved in war-torn Scotland, not whilst the Protestant rebels held the reins of power. They could be dealt with later, as could the bastard queen of England. First, she needed to secure her country’s future in Europe – the heart of the world. She was undertaking no midnight flight from hazard, but a triumphant entry on to a stage larger and more splendid than the island Elizabeth had poisoned with heresy and blood.

  ‘Aye, my lady,’ said Seton. ‘Aye. I’ll be by your side. You shan’t be alone.’ A furrow deepened his brow. ‘I’ll do the queen service winning her friends and freedom in Europe. Not fighting her rebels here. And,’ he added, averting his eyes, ‘your husband’s too. Of course.’ She pursed her lips at the justification. Reluctantly, she thought, he released her hands. ‘If you could get your servants in order, we’ll march through the town and take ship. We’ll be flittin’ this day.’ Her lip twitched at the word ‘march’. A show of defiance indeed, for a group of people scurrying out of the country in secret.

  ‘I shall see to it. Bless you, my lord.’ She averted her own eyes to the ground in a sham of innocent helplessness. ‘I just cannot think what I should have done without your friendship. Without your protection. I should be lost, in faith. Truly lost.’

  ‘Aye,’ he repeated, inclining his head. And then, a little awkwardly, ‘I’ll see to the menfolk. Downstairs.’

  When he had gone, Anne folded her arms over her chest and exhaled. ‘Kat, see to the child. I shall send others up for my things.’ Her things, such as they were, had already been packed into rough wooden coffers. Now that she knew they were going she was desperate to be gone. Before she could crouch down under the low lintel to follow Seton out of the room and down the stairs, a frenzied tumble of steps announced another visitor. In the doorway appeared a young girl, her mousy hair pinned up under a mob cap. Anne looked at her blankly for a few seconds, and then registered the face, but not the name: one of the English girls who had come into her service only a few weeks before. A northerner, she recalled.

  ‘My lady,’ said the girl, almost out of breath.

  ‘Ah, bless you, girl – see to these coffer-’

  ‘No time, no time – they are coming for you!’

  Anne did not need to know who they were, only which colours they wore. ‘Morton or Lennox?’ Her voice was business-like.

  ‘Morton.’

  ‘They are in the town?’

  ‘No, but they are making for it.’

  ‘My Lord Seton, he knew of no surprise. Has he just discovered this?’

  The girl, Anne thought, looked suddenly evasive, and yet seemed to draw taller in stature. ‘I can’t speak for the Lord Seton.’

  ‘Then for whom do you speak?’

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘You hus-’ Anne looked towards Kat, who had given up wrapping the baby in blankets and was watching the two other women in rapt silence. ‘Kat, do you know this girl? Or her husband?’

  ‘No, madam, I’ve no’ spoke with her.’

  The countess turned her gaze again to the intruder, this time with narrowed eyes. The name came back to her. ‘Margery, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean …’ The girl seemed to deflate. ‘My name is Amy, my lady. Amy Cole.’

  ‘You have lied to me. Who are you? Do you serve my enemies, do you mean to stay my passage? I can have men in here before you can touch us.’ Anne moved in front of Kat and the baby, her dress sweeping the floorboards.

  ‘I … I did lie, but I don’t – my husband – we don’t serve any Scotch lords. Not truly. Please, my lady, I speak honestly. M
y husband has been in with the Scotch Protestants, but he-’

  ‘A heretic!’

  ‘No!’ The girl’s voice had rose in pitch and a look of angry determination passed her face. ‘No, madam, no heretic. My husband is a Catholic and he is sworn to see you across the seas. Yet he knows people and knows that the rebel Scots are coming for you. He has fled them and raced ahead to warn you. Please, you must trust us.’

  Anne put a hand to her head and rubbed at her temple. ‘I shall trust you now, in trust that you shall explain yourself later, girl.’

  ‘Amy,’ replied the servant, and put out her lip. Anne glowered back at the insolence. ‘My husband is Jack Cole, and we are to be your saviours today. Please, bring the child. No time for the chests.’

  With little choice, Anne nodded. Amidst protests of, ‘but the kists, yer things’ from Kat, the women moved downstairs.

  The courtyard of the house was a tumult of conversation, servants’ voices raised in a jangle of languages. A young man, his hair falling in a fringe over one eye, was moving from group to group, waving his arms in the air. He was splattered with mud and steam rose from the horse he had presumably rode in on. Anne shielded her eyes from the sun and raised her voice. ‘We must go, now. Bless you, my good people – I hear we are to be surprised.’

  Stunned silence fell across the courtyard and then the voices again began tearing at one another. ‘Where is my Lord Seton?’ Anne shouted. The frantic chattering stilled again. The young man stepped forward and bowed.

  ‘He has gone for the docks, my lady. I missed him.’

  ‘You are, I think, that impetuous young whippet’s husband?’ At this, the young man grinned broadly, and the girl, Amy, moved to stand beside him.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘A fine pair of creeping folk you are. Is it true? Are the rebels marching on us? Have you had eyes in their camp?’

  Before he could answer, a hooting sound passed over their heads. A hunting horn, Anne thought, and her heart began a deep, hammering thump. Yet her mind remained calm, analytical. It was excitement that powered it. This strange new life, still dreamlike, was a world away from the library and closets of Topcliffe. The horn flattened and died out. Still some distance away but carrying low on the wind. ‘Them?’