"Surely There Weren't Any Female Spies?" Pardon?

ajordanfreelance

Oct 12

7 min read

“Surely there weren't any female spies in history?”

That was the question I was once asked during a radio interview about my Kit Scarlett Mysteries, my series about a female spy in the sixteenth century.

I remember thinking: Really?

It is an understandable question, perhaps. We tend to imagine spies as men in dark coats, lurking in shadows, passing coded messages and looking as though they haven't slept since 1572, but once you start looking for women in the history of espionage, something rather wonderful happens.

You find them.

Lots of them.

A woman in disguise at Kenilworth

Let's start in 1265.

England was in the middle of the Second Barons' War, with Henry III and his son Edward fighting the forces of Simon de Montfort. Edward was trying to find out what was happening inside the rebel stronghold at Kenilworth Castle. According to the medieval chronicler Walter of Guisborough, he received vital information from a spy named Margoth. There was just one small detail about Margoth. She was a woman, and she wore men's clothes.

The chronicler describes her as an exploratrix — a female spy — who had gathered intelligence about the rebel army. The information she brought back helped Edward launch a surprise attack.

It is an extraordinary little glimpse into medieval espionage.

Unfortunately, that is almost all we have. Margoth appears in only two medieval chronicles, and later writers have embroidered her story in various ways. Some versions turned her into a lover or a romantic figure; others concentrated on the cross-dressing, but the original account is rather refreshingly straightforward.

A woman gathered intelligence whilst disguised as a man, and she brought the information to Edward. There's no details of a seductress or fluttering eyelashes, no helpless damsel waiting for a knight to arrive. No, a woman is the adventurer.

And Margoth wasn't the only one

English Heritage points out another remarkable medieval example: around 1209, a French woman called Alice of Saintes travelled to England in the service of King John to report what she discovered. Again, she is described by the Latin word, exploratrix — literally a female explorer, scout or spy.

That little word is fascinating, because it tells us that medieval people did have a vocabulary for women doing intelligence work. They weren't inventing the concept of the female spy in the twentieth century, because they had already existed. The surviving evidence is simply much harder to find, but it goes back the best part of a thousand years.

That is one of the problems with uncovering women's history generally. We have become accustomed to looking for women in certain places — queens, wives, mothers, saints, victims, muses — and can easily overlook them when they turn up somewhere less expected. Such as a military intelligence report.

Then the fifteenth-century women of Flanders turn up

This is where I get particularly excited.

Recent research into the Flemish Revolt of 1488–89 has uncovered evidence of a network of women involved in gathering and carrying intelligence for the city of Ypres. Not one woman. Not a curious little anecdote buried in a chronicle, but a network.

The women were working during the revolt against Maximilian of Austria, when Ypres and other Flemish cities were trying to resist Habsburg control, and the city paid women to gather information. Their missions could involve finding out where enemy troops were stationed, what forces were moving through the region and what was happening in other towns. Some carried messages; others actively gathered intelligence.

This is exactly the sort of discovery that makes historians — and writers — sit up a little straighter. They were being paid for intelligence work.

Meet Josine Hellebout

One of the most fascinating women in this newly uncovered network was Josine Hellebout of Ypres.

The surviving city records show her undertaking repeated intelligence missions during 1489. Not one mission. Not two, but eleven.

She was paid for her work and travelled through territory where gathering information could be dangerous. Her assignments included finding out what enemy forces were doing and where they were moving, as well as gathering political intelligence.

At this point I feel we should probably stop calling these women “unlikely spies”. They were spies. They were doing espionage, and somebody was keeping the accounts so we can prove it. When the craft of espionage is so steeped in mystery too, you have to wonder how many women worked as spies where the records no longer survive, or never existed in the first place, to show it.

There were other women involved too alongside Josine, including Crispine Sroys, Beatrice Cambiers and Tuenine Pepers. One woman was paid to “gather news” about Maximilian of Austria; another travelled to find out what was happening in a particular town.

These aren't romantic legends created centuries later. They're appearing in financial records and administrative documents because someone had to pay them. Which means, wonderfully, that the bureaucracy of medieval government has preserved evidence of women's clandestine work.

Then we reach Aphra Behn

Fast-forward to the seventeenth century and we meet a woman whose espionage career is much better documented: Aphra Behn.

You may know her as a playwright and novelist — and she deserves to be remembered as one of the most important women writers of Restoration England, but before she became famous for her writing, she was involved in intelligence work.

In 1666, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Behn was sent to Antwerp on behalf of Charles II's government. Her mission involved William Scot, the son of a regicide who was living among English exiles on the Continent. Behn was supposed to persuade Scot to become a double agent and provide information about Royalist opponents of Charles II. We even know her codename; it was Astrea.

This wasn't exactly a glamorous assignment. Behn's surviving letters reveal the financial realities of espionage rather beautifully. She struggled for money, had to pay messengers and at one point even pawned her ring. There is something wonderfully human about that.

The glamorous spy fantasy: Secret messages! International intrigue! Dangerous missions! The reality: Could someone please send me some money because I've had to pawn my jewellery?

Behn also used a cipher, and her letters demonstrate just how precarious her work could be. She eventually returned to England and reinvented herself as a writer.

And then comes Joséphine Baker

By the twentieth century, we have a woman whose espionage credentials are impossible to dismiss.

Joséphine Baker was already an international celebrity when the Second World War began.

She was an entertainer, a star and a woman who could walk into rooms that might have been closed to a more conventional intelligence agent, and that was precisely what made her useful.

In 1939 she began working with French military counter-intelligence. Her celebrity allowed her to attend diplomatic receptions and social gatherings where she could collect information. She could talk to powerful and connected people at important events, and people talked back.

Apparently, they didn't always notice what or who she was listening to.

During the war she gathered intelligence about Axis activity and passed information to French intelligence. She also helped shelter resistance members and refugees at her home. When she travelled, she could sometimes use her status as an entertainer as cover, and then there were the papers that survive to this day. Information was written in invisible ink on her sheet music and carried across borders.

Think about that for a moment.

The glamorous international performer turns up with her music, and nobody thinks twice, except the music contains secret intelligence.

That is spycraft with rather more sparkle than the average trench coat and camera pen.

Baker continued intelligence work in North Africa and elsewhere, eventually serving with the French Air Force. Her wartime service was formally recognised, and she was awarded with the Médaille de la Résistance.

So why do we keep asking whether women were spies?

This is the part that both fascinates and infuriates me.

The evidence is there, but the way we tell history can make it surprisingly difficult to see.

Margoth's story is tucked inside a medieval chronicle. Alice of Saintes appears in a brief reference. The women of fifteenth-century Ypres survive in city accounts and payment records. Aphra Behn's intelligence work is tangled up with her later fame as a writer. Joséphine Baker is so famous as an entertainer that it can be easy to forget that she also had a military intelligence career.

Perhaps that is why. We remember women through the roles that have been made most visible. For a spy? That must mean you were excellent at your job.

Women didn't have to look like spies

Perhaps this is the secret. A spy doesn't necessarily look like our twenty-first century caricature of a spy with fine suits and gadgets in every pocket, because the truly brilliant ones knew exactly how to hide in plain sight.

Margoth could disguise herself as a man. Alice of Saintes could travel as an agent for a king. The women of Ypres could move through contested territory gathering information. Aphra Behn could arrive in Antwerp as a woman of letters while secretly attempting to recruit a double agent. Joséphine Baker could walk into a diplomatic reception because everyone knew exactly who she was.

People didn't necessarily expect women to be intelligence operatives, and that was to their advantage. They were overlooked.

This is why I love the historical rabbit hole

When I began writing the Kit Scarlett Mysteries, I wanted to tell stories about a woman operating in a world where information could be every bit as powerful as a sword.

The more I research, the more I discover that I am not having to invent the idea of the female spy. History has already done that work for me.

The fascinating part was finding the women, and those who have read the Kit Scarlett series may see glimpses of her in the women above, but let me assure you, there are many more women spies out there, recorded online and in books, who I just simply didn't have the time today to write about. Another day, I shall make the time.

I don't doubt that there are many more still waiting to be found, because sometimes, tucked away in a document that looks completely unpromising, you find a woman who was carrying intelligence across a battlefield, slipping through enemy territory, recruiting agents, passing messages or simply listening very carefully at the right dinner party.

So, was there really such a thing as a female spy in history?

Oh yes. There were plenty.

If someone asks me that question on the radio again, I think I'll have my answer ready and waiting.

“Yes. Would you like a list?”

Image credits:

Adele Jordan