Edward Marston - The Mad Courtesan

Harry Fellowes reeled from the grim warning. It was his first meeting with the Bishop of London and he knew instantly that he would not seek to renew the acquaintance. John Aylmer was a sturdy man of middle height with a challenging religiosity about him. In his distress, it never occurred to Fellowes to wonder why a man who hailed from the Norfolk gentry spoke with a Welsh lilt.

Lord Westfield read out the stern indictment.

‘Harry Fellowes, Clerk of Ordnance, we charge you with fraud and embezzlement in the execution of your office and summon you to appear before Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The allegations are as follows, that you did wilfully indulge in false recording in the office books, that you did sell Crown property into private hands for your own profit, that you did misappropriate government monies, that you did maliciously and unlawfully …’

It was all there. Harry Fellowes was hit with such a powerful blend of fact and conjecture that he did not pause to disentangle the two. Guesswork was cruelly on target. He was arraigned for sending unserviceable shot to Barbary, for shipping a consignment of unwearable boots to the army in Ireland, for selling ammunition, already paid for, to a naval depot so that he could pocket the second amount, for listing equipment in the two ledgers delivered to the Auditors of the Prest which had not been purchased as stated, but simply taken from the Ordnance store. Indeed, it was Fellowes’s skill at making departments pay for things they never received or requisitions they never made that was the basis of his fraud. One consignment of muskets circulated between six different regiments without ever leaving the boxes in which they were stored. Harry Fellowes embezzled with a sense of humour.

Lord Westfield rolled on remorselessly, John Aylmer lent his ecclesiastical presence and the black-clad secretary wrote down every word. Fellowes could not have done it alone and they soon prised out of him the names of his now wealthy accomplices, Geoffrey Turville, the Purveyor of Materials and Richard Bowland, the Keeper of the Store. Collusion between the trio defeated all the administrative precautions taken and allowed Harry Fellowes, as the instigator of the various schemes, to amass a large personal fortune which he either disseminated throughout his family or used to finance a series of highly profitable loans. When Lord Westfield put the tentative figure of deceits at £ 10,000, Harry Fellowes admitted it at once in order to conceal the fact that it was almost twice that amount.

John Aylmer, Bishop of London came back into action.

‘All that you have said has been taken down, Master Fellowes. Read what my secretary has written. If it be a fair and true account of your confession, sign it forthwith then pray to God for mercy.’

‘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.’