Gregory House - The Queen's Oranges

Once all the pieces of the plot had been assembled, it was really rather simple. First the friars that infested the city preached that the Lord’s wrath of fire and destruction would fall upon those who supported the King’s Petition. Next the messages in the oranges warned those caught up in the plot to start agitating, stirring up riots, and other discontent.

Normally it shouldn’t have been so easy. However the clever bit was the careful use of More’s pursuivants. They had been setting the scene for the last month with strikes all across the city, supposedly looking for ‘heretics’, building up a climate of suspicion and threat. All so that the friars and the oranges holders would have a fertile field of fear to sow.

And then the final part. Ned thought himself quite brilliant to have worked this out. It all came back to the King’s Gonne powder and that weasel, Welkin. The Master of Ordinance was being paid in gold to vastly over order hundreds of barrels of the volatile powder. So simple. The one person in the kingdom who everyone expected to have the most regulated and checked armaments and here he was stacking it up for another use. It was those two powder sorters who’d given the game away, played up by their greed and ready access to the stores.

It was the information from the riverside punks that helped to solve the final piece of this conundrum. It was the old monastery in Petty Wales. Ned recalled the decayed set of buildings. He was surprised they hadn’t already collapsed, though usefully, the crumbling collection sprawled for almost a block. If one were too perhaps stack them full to the brim with hundreds of barrels of powder and pitch, and then say, fire a couple of shots from the Tower Gonnes, all of east London would go up in one great conflagration.

No doubt the other great ordinance would do its part in spreading destruction, but according to the Doutch brothers, there were drawbacks to using them. They took a great deal of time to load, so between each salvo of shot you would have a considerable gap and the quantities of powder were well above the voracious appetites of those city smashers.

From that convenient spot the two powder sorters had figured out their own scheme for enrichment. They’d want to get as much gold as possible before tomorrow, for on Sunday Petty Wales would be lit up. It was the only option left, and it wasn’t as if they were planning to lay siege to the city. That was just impossible.

It was in its essence a very ruthless and evil plan-the casual and arrogant bloodiness of slaying thousands just to further the ambitions of a bitter Queen. Just another ploy in the game of princes. It was an act of utter barbarity that Ned found difficult to encompass. However his reading of the histories revealed that the great were none too scrupulous about the shedding of common blood in the pursuit of their aspirations.

So with these revelations sounding their dread knell within his brain, Ned made his preparations. The coffins of the two slain Hanse were taken off the ship, escorted by a wailing troupe of punks. They made very convincing mourners when given the right incentive. Ned had heard of Joachim’s rigid beliefs and just hoped that the fellow’s soul had a sense of humour at such a passage. His nephew may have appreciated it. Even more poetic was the heavily painted and skirted Albrecht accompanying the procession. Tam had been every graphic, describing to the Hanse the methods of leaving the ship either disguised as a punk or as Tam preferred, in a number of weighted sacks dropped over the side. With his loss of the beard Albrecht was indeed a new man, or rather a new woman, though it would have to be a pretty drunken sailor on a moonless night who’d fumble under those skirts.

Ned had made arrangements for the deceased to lie at the small parish church of St Mary Magdalene on Milk Street by Cheapside, where his family had a few useful connections. Their poor bodies were unlikely to be disturbed, and Ned had left a couple more precautions. From there it was only a few paces to his uncle’s house, and Rob had a letter detailing in the fullest extent his discoveries so far. True, it was risky, but Rob Black had his wood wright’s gang and a couple of Gryne’s men for protection so there should be no trouble.

Then it came to his other mission, the discovery and capture of the dammed Spaniard, Don Juan Sebastian. Ned had tried last night and came so close, it was maddening. However last evening’s disaster had established his reputation with Skelton and so tonight he planned to play on that. A simple message sent by one of Emma’s brats should do the trick and Skelton would find himself with Rob and Meg at the powder sorter’s stash. Whether the Spaniard was there or not mattered little to Ned. Skelton’s band of northern savages would prove useful to his friends in frustrating the evil scheme.

So all had been prepared. His pieces had been primed and set into play. Now all that was required was his part. At the agreed time he had the crew cast off the vessel, and with the aid of the tide and a couple of wherry boats, they floated down river to the Tower wharves.

Belsom’s party were not hard to spot. The short, stout figure was standing between two warehouses at the wharf, flanked by twenty of his minions complete with lanterns. It was a bit of a give away. Sir Roderick had once more gone for the full martial splendour of half armour. His resemblance to a gilt pot was even more pronounced in the flickering light, so if the hand over was to be as innocent as it had been presented, then the pursuivant was definitely over-dressed.

Ned had sauntered down the gang plank, followed by two of Gryne’s men and while still a dozen feet away, had given what he considered his most courtly bow to the Lord Chancellor’s servant. It should have worked! It was supposed to work, and damn him, if he could have foreseen the trap!

The rest of Gryne’s men poured over the bulwark of the docked vessel in a screaming, howling flood at the agreed signal. It was just that Sir Belsom didn’t seem at all flustered by the sudden arrival of Ned’s retainers, and just stood there with that smug smile on his face. A shadow of doubt bloomed into dreadful certainty as the doors of the flanking buildings swung open to reveal the threatening snouts of two of the King’s Great Gonnes.

Ned threw up his hands, and his previously unstoppable charge skidded to an abrupt halt. It wasn’t going to work. Gryne’s men would cheerfully commit mayhem and violence to whosoever their paymaster of the time indicated, and risk the same bloody fate they dealt out. But asking them to face the annihilation promised by the black maws either side of them was past the bounds of paid loyalty. There was a grumbling clatter of dropped weapons as Ned’s band complied with the menaced request of More’s grinning pursuivant. Every man there had a fair idea of the consequences of non compliance. However when it came to the next logical stage of the ambush, Ned was surprised and humbled by the actions of Tam Bourke. His fearsome bodyguard refused to budge from his post by Ned’s side. It took the further persuasion of several aimed matchlock harquebus to convince the glowering retainer to join the rest of Gryne’s men, now secured in one of the warehouses.

Then began the questioning. That may not have been so hard to endure, but then the ‘friars’ turned up, and it got so much worse, so, so much worse!

Ned rocked with another punch to the stomach, breathing interrupted recriminations.

A querulous trembling voice, the First Inquisitor, sounded in his ear. “Come along Master Bedwell. We don’t have all night. Where’s my gold?”

Another louder voice interrupted, oh yes the Second Inquisitor . It was a lot less timorous with an overtone of impatient panic to its falsetto squeak. “Damn the gold man. Forget it. Where the hell are the weapons? Fifty sets can’t just disappear!”