Night settled into the corners of an alehouse by the docks in Vlissingen. The alewife threw a handful of sticks on the fire, the only light in the low-ceilinged room. Flickering shadows improved the scene, masking the smoky grime that smeared the long table and highlighting the dingy white of the alewife's partlet. Rough straw covered the floor and rougher men sprawled across the benches.
Caspar von Ruppa waved his mug. The alewife shook her head at him. "No more for you. Food first."
"I'll drink my supper, woman." He pounded his mug on the table, startling his companion out of slumber with a wet snort. He'd dropped his head to his arms after only three mugs. Caspar had kept on drinking.
What else was there to do while they waited for the wind to change? A job in England was all very well, but they didn't get paid until they started work and they couldn't start work until they got to the estate and they couldn't get to the bloody estate until the wind shifted to the bloody east so they could get across the bloody French Ocean to Ramsgate and up the bloody Thames.
"More!" Caspar pounded his mug on the table again. The alewife shrugged her fat shoulders and obliged him. His gaze followed her broad backside as she swung her hips to avoid the groping hands of another customer.
The alehouse door swung open, letting in a cold draft. Wind from the west: it stank of frustration. A man clothed from head to toe in plush black velvet ducked under the lintel and stood blinking in the firelight. He scanned the room, upper lip twisted in disgust. Caspar had stopped noticing the smell of the place hours ago.
The man's gaze fell on Caspar, studying him, head tilted to one side. "Caspar von Ruppa? The stone carver?"
"Who says I am?" The man was dressed like a wealthy Dutch burgher, but he spoke with the lisping accent of a Spaniard. The sound burned Caspar's ears, but he would listen nevertheless. He might have a job to offer that didn't depend on the godforsaken wind.
The man smiled, a thin smile under a thin moustache. "Your apprentices, down by the ship, told me to look for a man 'the size and color of a block of limestone, but with a broken nose.' An apt description."
Caspar frowned and scratched his short gray beard. He'd give the cheeky bastards the back of his hand when he was done drinking. "What do you want?"
"To make a proposition. Care for a walk?"
"I'd rather drink."
"My proposition is not for everyone to hear."
Caspar drained his draft in four noisy gulps. He slapped the empty mug on the table and belched open-mouthed. The Spaniard closed his eyes as if pained. He was probably used to courtly Spanish manners. He must have quite a proposition to bring him down to the docks. Maybe he had lots of silver reales to go with it.
Caspar stood for the first time in hours. He wobbled on his stiff knee, grunting, and supported himself with a heavy hand pressed hard against his snoring companion's back. He got his weight balanced over his two feet and shook his knee out.
The Spaniard gestured at the door with a mocking bow. Caspar squared his shoulders and strode carefully across the room. They walked out into a brackish breeze. It reeked of fish and dockside refuse and yet was fresher than the fusty air inside the alehouse. The chill slapped Caspar's cheeks, sobering him up. Now he'd have to start again from scratch.
The Spaniard pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his nose. Caspar caught a whiff of lavender and sneered. Stinks never bothered him.
"I hear you're a man who likes money," the Spaniard said.
"Are there men who don't?"
The Spaniard ignored the question. "You did a favor for my colleague last year, carrying some items into England for him along with your tools."
"Ah, that kind of proposition," Caspar said. Now he understood. He would bet half his pay that the Spaniard wore a silver cross under that fancy ruff and had a rosary hidden inside those well-padded trunk hose. "What do you want me to carry this time?"
The Spaniard smiled. "Only a few sheets of paper."
"Paper with words on it, I'll wager."
Well-dressed Spaniards who recruited in alehouses were unlikely to be smuggling lace. Those sheets of paper were probably religious pamphlets, illegal in England and dangerous to transport.
The Spaniard shrugged, one of those Latin shrugs that carried a whole conversation. "We wouldn't need you to deliver sheets of blank paper." He stopped abruptly and gripped Caspar's arm with fingers like iron cables. "These papers are important. You must understand that. They must be delivered on time. They are vital to the future of Europe."
"So important as that?" Caspar doubted these papers were anything more than the usual nonsense, but Catholics loved conspiracies. Everything they did was a matter of eternal life or death. Why anyone would care about someone else's afterlife was a mystery to him.
The Spaniard's dark eyes glittered in the moonlight. "The English have strayed from the path of God. Like errant sheep, they must be brought back into the fold. They've even forgotten how to worship. These pamphlets will teach them, remind them. They are holy lessons to guide them back to the truth."
Caspar said nothing. He remembered the lesson the Spanish had taught the good citizens of Antwerp ten years ago. They called it the Spanish Fury: three days of horror while raging tercios sacked the city. Seven thousand Flemish Protestants had learned their lesson that week. Had they gone to heaven or to hell? The English should be grateful to be receiving papers instead of soldiers. Maybe they would be better pupils. He didn't care, as long as he got paid.
They reached the ship that would carry Caspar, his apprentices, and his tools to London, where they would transfer to a boat going upriver. Caspar was looking forward to a few days in the English capitol, mainly for the beer, but also for a personal errand. A friend had caught a glimpse of his wife on the street there recently. Dear little Clara: she'd run away from him. He wanted her back. Perhaps he would teach his errant sheep a little lesson.
The Spaniard snapped his fingers and a man materialized from the shadows rolling a cart, followed by another with a torch. On the cart were six square bundles wrapped in hemp and tied with coarse twine. The carter untied one of the bundles to reveal a block of arebescato marble that shone like captured moonlight.
Caspar's heart beat faster at the sight. He loved fine stone. He often gave himself up to drink between jobs, but when he was working, he was one of the finest stone carvers in the Low Countries. No one sculpted a more regal lion, and his gryphons were prized from Rouen to York.
"This is the first half of your payment," the Spaniard said. "The second half will be paid in silver, on delivery."
Caspar nodded. Those small blocks of Italian marble were worth a year's wages. With them, he could carve a pair of fireplace piers that would so dazzle their patron he'd pay double without so much as a blink. He started conjuring figures worthy of such stone.
"Where do I take these stacks of important papers?"
"Do you know a place west of London by the name of Gray's Inn?"