Blood Red Sea

10

They sailed on a merchantman two days later, and came to London in the bleak days of January. They shivered like aspen leaves in the chilling east wind.

‘I had forgotten. .’ stammered Hodge, nose blue.

They bought woollen cloaks. People stared at them in the streets, one man barged them and called them Gypsies. They tossed back their cloaks and showed their swords and were left alone.

They lodged in Cheapside and requested audience at the Palace.

Stanley had not lied to them, about some mysterious higher influence.

Three days later, they were to attend Her Majesty at Greenwich.

‘Her Majesty,’ whispered Hodge. ‘After all I’ve seen, this is still the most. .’ He could find no more words.

In an outer chamber they were first addressed by an elegantly bearded chamberlain in a black fur robe. Told to kneel before her, not to look directly at her. Only to answer questions, to ask none.

‘And it is known that you are Catholics still, and loyal to Rome. You will, of course, leave off your swords.’

They unbuckled, Nicholas saying, ‘Yet I am loyal to my Queen also, and would die to defend her.’

The chamberlain smiled a thin smile. ‘She will judge your loyalty for herself. She is a very fine judge of men indeed.’

Hodge could not have looked directly at her if he had tried. He would have been blinded. Her dress was white satin, there were many pearls in her hair, she was as a white of countenance as an angel, though her hair was flame red. A woman still only in her thirties, yet it was wrong to think of her as a mere woman. A queen, radiant, from another world.

They knelt and waited for a long time. At last she spoke, her voice feminine yet commanding.

‘There is a trusted confidant of ours, a wealthy merchant in Constantinople, who has done us some service in the past. He has no great liking for the Catholic princes of Europe, and in that at least we have a common interest. Now he sends us a letter. A request, in return for the many good deeds he has done us in the past. He says that you are of a party of four Englishmen — the other two being Knights of St John, and Englishmen disavowed.’ Her voice was crisp with contempt. ‘He says the four of you did brave service to his people, in the city of Nicosia in Cyprus.’

Joseph Nassi. It was Joseph Nassi behind it all.

‘Speak,’ she said.

‘Your Majesty,’ stammered Nicholas, head still bowed, ‘we did a small thing, to protect some citizens, albeit Jews, from cruel treatment. Families who were to be driven out in front of the Turkish guns. We protested, and the decision was revoked. Not a sword was drawn, nor a drop of blood spilled.’

‘Bloodshed is no sure sign of bravery. If you stand firm, peace will often come rather than war. Stand.’

They stood, knees aching.

Her blue eyes were hard upon them.

‘Your words are to our liking,’ she said. ‘Claiming only small courage for yourself, and therefore more credible. You would hardly credit the extravagant tales we hear from our more. . heroical sea captains.’

The chamberlain and others tittered.

Nicholas could not help a slight smile. She saw it and smiled frostily too.

‘Now, to this request. It is requested that we admit you once more into our kingdom, as free men, to go untroubled.’

There was a pause. A very long pause. Nicholas’s heart sank. She could not admit to this. Some other reward would suffice instead, before they were sent on their way once more, into exile.

She seemed to hold her breath, and then breathed out a little. ‘We grant this request.’

They were home. In England. With no need to wander more.

Beside him, Hodge began sobbing.

‘Come, Master Hodge,’ said the Queen. ‘It is Hodge, is it not? More manly. You have seen worse things than this in your travels, I am sure.’

‘Worse, yes, Majesty,’ sobbed Hodge. ‘But none better. To be back in England.’

Few things moved the Queen so deeply as an Englishman’s simple love of England.

‘There’s an honest Englishman,’ she said. ‘Even if he is burned black as the devil’s own heart.’

‘Please, Your Majesty, it’ll soon wash off in the English rain.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said. ‘Hodge, it is such as you that shall make our England the glory of the world. And as for you, Nicholas Ingoldsby — Sir Nicholas Ingoldsby, I should say — your late father, Sir John, was by all accounts a good gentleman, though not one for the Court.’

‘No, Majesty. He liked the country.’

‘Hm. You too?’

‘I too. The Court is not my world. The old hills of Shropshire. .’

‘After all your adventures?’

‘Yes, Majesty.’

She pursed her pale lips. ‘Nevertheless, your father entertained Catholic knights in secret at his Shropshire home. During arrest he resisted and died of natural causes. Yes?’

Nicholas swallowed. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘His estates passed into the hands of the local magistrates, and their value to our exchequer. We see nothing remiss in this. But now further enquiries suggest that the Justice of the Peace, one Gervase Crake, has provoked widespread dissatisfaction. There are reports of cruel treatment, and worse, peculation against the Crown. Action will be taken against him in due course. But I should say that if meanwhile Sir Nicholas Ingoldsby himself, though still barely more than a boy, were to go back to his native Shropshire and demand the return of his ancestral lands — by force if necessary — the Crown might at least wink at such proceedings.

‘In the future, perhaps this Ingoldsby might make a very serviceable Justice himself, and servant of the Queen. But for that he would have to abandon his Popish religion and swear loyalty to the Church of England.’

Nicholas said nothing. What could he say?

Her Majesty understood very well what agonies of conscience could make a man say nothing. She herself had spent much of her life in careful silence, not choosing, and would no doubt spend years more that way. Silence was a friend who would never betray.

‘You will write of all your travels,’ she said. ‘I have never travelled outside England, not even to Wales, nor desire to. You have wandered far and wide. You will write up your adventures, what you have seen. You will tell all. We want to know the customs of Shrove Tuesday in Cadiz, the weather in Naples, the winds in the Messina Strait. The fortifications of Malta and Cyprus. .’

Nicholas bowed. He had never contemplated setting down his experiences in writing, but now it was a royal command, he had no choice in the matter.

‘You will have half a dozen men-at-arms to recover your property.’

‘With gracious respect, Majesty, that is not needed. I have a man-at-arms worth a dozen.’ He nodded at Hodge.

‘He is an Achilles, this Hodge?’ she said with irony.

‘He is,’ said Nicholas without irony.

‘I cracked a few unbelieving skulls, Your Majesty, it’s true,’ volunteered Hodge, against all court etiquette. The chamberlain winced. ‘They took some crackin’ and all.’

The Queen smiled now. ‘Hodge, Hero of Malta, and better yet — Englishman. I decree an annual pension of five pounds for life.’

Hodge gasped.

For many years after in Shropshire, the tale was told. Of how Gervase Crake, the hated but powerful Justice, had been overseeing the whipping of a vagabond girl at the cart’s end in a market square one bleak February day. And two grim-faced strangers rode into the square, just as had happened, so folk memory said, some six years before. They were on horseback, and they carried swords, and they looked as if they knew how to use them. They were as sunburned as Spaniards yet they spoke English.

They demanded the weeping girl be set free. Crake opposed them with a sneer. Had he not six ruffians for his guard? More than ruffians. Three of them carried tattoos on their brawny forearms, showing they were mercenaries who had fought with the dreaded free companies, in the German wars of religion.

A fight broke out, and in a matter of minutes four of the ruffians lay dead. The two others fled, sore wounded, and were never seen again in the county. The two strangers bore a few knocks and bruises too, but fewer than Gervase Crake. He was then stripped and whipped and thrown in the dog pound until some later use could be found for him. As a chimney sweep, perhaps, or tavern turnspit.

One of the strangers was the long-lost son of old Sir John Ingoldsby, come to claim his inheritance. The old hall that Crake himself had been living in! So of course it was all shipshape and handsomely cared for. Then the son of old Ingoldsby found his sisters in another gentleman’s house, two of them now in service as maids. A third had died in his absence. Their reunion was such a thing to see, they said, it would make a stone weep.

And afterwards, a serving-man said he had glimpsed the long-lost son of old Sir John Ingoldsby go into the barn there at the hall, near sunset it was, and find the things of his boyhood still hanging on the walls. A child’s leather saddle, the one he’d learned to ride on. A hoop and a stick. A toy sword made for him by the gardener, long since lain in the churchyard. And the son had fallen to his knees and wept, till his man Hodge came and helped him into the house.

But others said it was wrong of the serving-man to spy and worse of him to tattle. For surely that young Ingoldsby had travelled wide and seen many things, more than most of them in the village would ever see in their lives. And doubtless his heart was full of all the beauties and the sorrows of the world.