by Neal Roberts
“Oh, no,” he mutters. There, in all his glory, is Finerty, the cross-eyed blue dog, his lolling tongue pressed against the window.
Noah returns to the stairs and enters the inn. The floorboards in the hallway creak loudly, and he wonders vaguely why they never seemed quite so loud before. Jonathan’s door is open. Noah sticks his head in.
“You look as though you’ve been dragged through the streets,” says Jonathan. “Where have you been?”
“Out,” replies Noah.
“Oh, well, that clears things up nicely.”
“Um … the dog?”
“Dog? Oh, Finerty.”
“Yes. Finerty. He’s on guard in the dining room window.”
“So it seems,” Jonathan says, grinning.
“Why, may I ask?” asks Noah impatiently.
“Well, you know Bleffingham left the courtroom immediately, before I had a chance to gather our things.”
“And?”
Jonathan is abashed. “Three of my friends restrained me, while another made away with Finerty. Next thing I knew, he was … where he is. I’ll gather him up later, after everyone’s asleep.”
“Good.” Noah weighs telling Jonathan about the name given him by Henry, but decides against it, as Jonathan might then try to discover where he learned such information. If Jonathan is told sometime the following day, it will be soon enough, and Jonathan will probably not be so tempted to research where Noah has been. “Um, could you wake me just after seven this evening? I need to clean up before I go out.”
“You certainly do … unless you’re attending a masquerade as a drunken barrister — in which case, you’ll need to wear some flourish to distinguish yourself from the real drunken barristers attending without costume.” Jonathan looks at an open brief on his desk. “I’ll be here. Go. That gives you barely two hours’ rest. Take my advice, and drink some water that’s been boiled.”
“Where can I find some of that?”
Jonathan reaches into a bag, draws out a water bladder, and tosses it to Noah. “One can never be too prepared,” observes Jonathan. As Noah turns to go, Jonathan says, “By the way, nice job in court this morning.” Noah nods his thanks as he leaves, barely able to remember an event so long ago. He climbs the stairs, swallows the entire contents of the bladder, about a quart in all, and only wishes there were more. He drops face first onto his bed, and knows no more for a while.
It’s almost full dark in his room when Jonathan tugs at his shoulder. “Time to get up, old man. I’ve got to go. Sit up, so I’ll know you’re alive. Do you feel all right?”
Noah sits up slowly and puts both feet on the floor. He feels surprisingly refreshed. “Strangely enough, I do. Thanks.” He flexes his injured hand, which emits barely a twinge.
“Not at all,” says Jonathan, closing the door as he goes.
Noah lights a candle, and scrubs up thoroughly. It’s even warm enough in the room for him to wash his hair and comb it out. He brushes the sour taste from his mouth with salt and water, breathes deeply, and looks closely at his reflection in the mirror.
“Hmm. None the worse for wear.”
He dresses in fresh robes, and plods down the inner stairs, bringing along his walking stick. He puts on a light wrap, and descends the outer stairs into the evening. The night air is fresh and cool, with just the slightest scent of spring left over from the day’s warmth. So far as he can tell, no spy stands watch on the square. The evening feels full of promise.
As he turns onto High Holborn, he sees many people out and about. Happy noises spill out of the open windows of several taverns — the clink of glasses, a loud guffaw, a few competing songs. In what seems a mere moment, there he stands in front of Marie’s house, which is darker than he expected. He hopes he has not misjudged the time, as there appears to be no one bustling about supper inside. Indeed, there seems to be no one at home.
He knocks politely on the door. A moment later it opens, seemingly on its own, and Marie’s face appears, illuminated by soft light emanating from an interior sconce. She bears the strangest expression, a mixture of desire and doubt, of hope and resignation, inspiring a sympathetic swirl of emotions in his own breast. He aches for her. Silently, she invites him in. The place is even darker than it looks from outside. She closes the door quietly behind him.
He barely has time to put down his walking stick before she takes him by the crook of his arm and leads him up the darkened stairs.
Chapter 8
IN A MOMENT, Noah finds that Marie has led him into a deserted upstairs parlor dimly lit by two candles in a corner. Through the main window, he can see Gray’s and the adjacent Mountjoy’s Inn. Yet all is peacefully quiet here. Even with several windows ajar, the jovial sounds of pedestrian and tavern traffic are pleasantly remote. He turns to her, uncertain what’s expected of him in the dark parlor.
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. To his amazement, she leans into him and hugs him tightly. In a moment, her tears come in torrents and her breathing in heaves, as though no time at all has passed since that awful day when her husband was murdered. He places his arms gingerly around her shoulders, and she snuggles into his embrace.
As he can do nothing but silently hold her until the tempest has passed, he revisits the pain he felt upon losing Rachel, and how terribly long it lasted. Indeed, the pain remains to this day, and he feels somehow that Marie is weeping for his loss, as well. He draws her in closer, and they stand there for an indeterminate time in mutual grief. While he’s still not sure what will come next, he resolves that it will have to be she who decides when this embrace is through.
When her weeping subsides, she looks up at him, her moist eyes glistening with reflected moonlight. Her expression speaks of embarrassment, but he comforts her with a chaste kiss on the forehead. Though this almost starts the torrent again, she turns away, removes a kerchief from her sleeve, wipes her eyes, and blows her nose gently.
He clears his throat and says quietly, “I know what it’s like being strong for everyone else.”
She turns and embraces him once again, this time more in sympathy than grief.
“Where is everyone?” he whispers.
“As I mentioned, the children are in Surrey.”
“And the servants?”
“They made supper, and left it for us. I sent them home.”
He leads her away from the windows to a divan, and sits down beside her. As he struggles for the perfect words to ease her pain, she turns to look at him, candlelight reflecting off her clear, questioning eyes. Ah, well, he realizes, sometimes words fail even me.
She hugs him again, her sweet scent ample invitation to stay in this embrace forever, to die here, if that’s what’s meant to be. After a brief respite, she rises and adjusts her dress. “Wait here,” she whispers in the dark. “I’ll fetch us some food.”
Noah smiles broadly. “Would you like help?”
“No need. There’s red wine over there on the sideboard. Help yourself.”
He closes his eyes, listening to the comforting sounds of slippered feet shuffling down to the kitchen, the opening and closing of cabinets, and the clink of plates and silverware. Outside, the sounds of revelry have dissipated, and the night is nearly silent, but for the occasional song of a nightingale.
At infinite peace, he rises, pours himself a cup of wine, and amuses himself by locating his rooms at Gray’s Inn as best he can, there being no light in his window there. Although the full moon is rising, the inn casts an impenetrable shadow on Gray’s Inn Square. As he takes a sip, furtive movement catches his eye. Try though he might, he cannot find it again. A trick of the moonlight, perhaps.
Behind him, Marie’s slippered feet reach the landing. Her footsteps cease, as she hesitates a moment before stepping into the parlor. As she’s no doubt bearing a tray with plates and food, he turns to the doorway to help, but, before he can take a step, she glides across the threshold, carrying a tray holding a covered chafing dish, two plates, and silverware.
She places it carefully on the table and gazes at him silently, her expression too clouded to read.
Perhaps it’s the way the soft light plays about her face, and sparkles in her questioning eyes. Or the way a stray tress has come loose and fallen down to frame her cheekbone. It might be the clean womanly scent of her body as she enters the room, or the bottomless sadness in her eyes that resonates within his own heart. Whatever it is, at that very moment he falls hopelessly in love with her.
He takes her into his arms, and kisses her mouth.
“The food will get cold,” she reminds him.
“Damn the food,” he murmurs huskily.
Noah awakens in the dead of night, unsure where he is. Now he recalls. They ate the mutton stew she brought up from the kitchen, and she led him to a soft couch where they kissed for a long time and then drifted off together. He has no idea what awakened him, perhaps the lark announcing the morning. But he has no recollection of that.
“Is everything all right?” she inquires, awakened by his stirring.
“Yes,” he says uncertainly, and rises. Their plates are strewn about the table carelessly, just where they were left. The large clock on the mantel chimes once, announcing two-thirty in the morning.
He goes to the window. It’s still dark, but the full moon has risen high enough to illuminate Gray’s Inn and the square. There, beneath Anthony Bacon’s window, stand two men in quiet conversation, evidently confident of being unobserved, one elegantly attired, wearing a big floppy hat, and another dressed more plainly.
Marie shuffles up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “That’s Bacon. He’s often there at this hour.”
“Anthony?”
She shakes her head. “Francis. Unless Anthony is a sodomite, as well.”
He has no need to ask how she knows Francis is often outside Gray’s Inn in the middle of the night, recalling only too well that grief shows no respect for day or night, but rather haunts the wakeful mourner at all hours, enlisting him in his own haunting.
“Who is that with him?”
Marie squints. “Is that Marlowe?” she guesses. After a moment, she shakes her head. “No, not Marlowe, although he’s often out there with Sir Francis. Sometimes, they kiss so deeply I wonder they don’t swallow one another.”
Noah scratches his head, and shakes it in bewilderment.
“So, you don’t approve of sodomy?”
“I just cannot understand it. Men are hairy, smelly beasts. Why would anyone wish to make love with one?”
She laughs. “Why, indeed!” she says, and kisses him on the cheek. “I saw Sir Francis hand Marlowe a letter a few nights ago. You don’t suppose they write love letters to one another like men and women, do you?”
Noah shrugs. “I suppose so. Why not?”
“Well, what would happen if such a letter were discovered? Might it not disqualify someone like the great Francis Bacon for high public office?”
Now that he thinks about it, he realizes it might. For a quiet interval, he’s left to his own thoughts.
“Something on your mind?” she asks.
He nods.
“Oh? A secret?” She giggles.
He turns to her in the dark. “This is serious.”
She leads him back to the sofa, and sits him down next to her. “You tell me your intimate secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.”
He marvels that, had he fully succumbed to his own lust, she would already know one secret that could cost him his career as a barrister. He smiles saucily, and plays dangerously near the subject on his mind. “Shall I boast to you of my unusual manliness?”
She titters. “If you like.”
He laughs and shrugs. “I don’t know there’s much that’s unusual.”
She seems to have something to say, but hesitates at first. “Stephen was circumcised, may he rest in peace.”
“Was he?” asks Noah, surprised at both the fact and her frank revelation of it.
She nods. “He had some Jewish blood, God rest his soul. He was … discreet about it.”
“Had he?” Noah feels a sudden kinship with her deceased husband. Although he’d already felt pity, somehow this disclosure makes him feel as though it was he who suffered that murderous blow.
“He always said so. He told me that his family had considered abandoning the practice of circumcision a couple of generations ago, not wishing to be denounced as heretics.”
“So, he was papist, and then Church of England, but thought of himself as a Jew?”
“Yes.”
“Did he observe any rituals of the Hebrew religion?”
“Only one. Every year, he would … ” The words choke her.
Noah touches her hand. “He would light a candle for the dead?” It’s too dark to see, but he senses her nodding. A tear falls on his hand. “Common enough. Would you like to do that for him?” he whispers.
“Yes,” she says, holding back a sob.
“That can be arranged.” He chooses his words carefully to avoid giving anything away. “I do that, too, for my deceased wife.”
She places her hand on his shoulder. “Oh, let’s do that for him. I so wish to do something for him.”
“Most people light a mourner’s candle on each anniversary of their loved one’s death. That would mean you and I could light a single candle to commemorate both our beloveds, as they died on the same day of the year. Let’s resolve to light our candle together next year. I’ll bring my candlestick here.”
She nods and sniffles, seeming a little comforted.
He wonders whether there will ever come a time when he feels confident enough of her affections to reveal his own Jewishness. It would be a relief simply to say it outright, but such a profoundly dangerous revelation will have to wait. This seems the right occasion, however, to reveal to her what he originally intended. “I have a secret, too,” he says, “this one touching the manner of Stephen’s death, God rest his soul.”
As she waits, Noah considers carefully how to couch what he’ll say next. He needs to be careful of her feelings, and watchful of any doubts about his honesty that might arise from his having withheld it this long. Even more importantly, he must consider that her simply knowing what he’s about to tell her might place her very life in danger. Then again, not knowing it might be even more dangerous. On the other hand, in the unlikely event she’s in league with Southampton and Essex, and she repeats to them what Noah is about to tell her, then both Noah and Jonathan might well pay with their lives.
While Noah considers himself no expert in judging the character of women, it seems clear that Marie genuinely loved her deceased husband, which makes it very unlikely that she would align herself with his murderer. Under ordinary circumstances, he would be inclined to clear up the matter of her connection with Southampton, but now is clearly not the time. She’s far too vulnerable. Nevertheless, he can no longer withhold the secret about Essex. Not after they’ve shared their feelings for each other.
“Marie, that awful day … you heard Essex say that he’d seen the attack?”
“Yes.”
He braces himself for her reaction. “He had not. I know precisely where he was when your husband was attacked. He was still in the theater, and there were no windows providing a view to the place where it happened.”
She’s silent for a moment. “Do you think he was … involved?”
He hesitates, as now he’s entering the field of speculation, which he knows by training to be a perilously far cry from fact. “I’ve mulled over that question often this past month, and cannot come up with an explanation that entirely exculpates the earl. There’s something else. Your husband had a note in his pocket written and signed by Walsingham, who was the Queen’s spymaster until he died a few years ago. Evidently, your husband had worked for Walsingham. Master Neville and Essex’s man both thought it best to leave the note with the constable.”
“With that idiot?”
He nods.
She shivers hard enou
gh to shake the sofa. Though she is preponderantly horrified, he detects an undercurrent of anger, which he can only hope is not directed toward him. He feels awful, having waited so long to tell her.
“There is one bright note,” he offers hesitantly, “although I am unsure what to make of it, exactly. Do you know who the distinguished young spectator was, in the court gallery this morning?”
“No.”
“He was Sir Robert Cecil, second most powerful man on the Privy Council. His father Lord Burghley is the most powerful.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, and together they’re Essex’s most powerful opponents.”
“Why did Sir Robert come to court?”
“Although this may sound delusional on my part, I expect he came to observe … me.” He turns to Marie. “He knows that you have sought my assistance in investigating Stephen’s murder.”
“But … what interest would Cecil have in a murder investigation … and why would he come to observe you?”
“I think he already suspects that Essex was somehow involved in Stephen’s murder. Cecil may be looking for allies, such as I might be.”
“Would Essex’s involvement in the murder of a commoner be sufficient to garner Cecil’s attention?”
This is an excellent question, and Noah considers it seriously. He couches his reply carefully.
“Probably not … unless the murder were part of a greater conspiracy endangering the welfare of the whole state.”
That thought hangs in the air a few seconds.
“I have a couple of confessions, too,” says Marie, chafing her shoulders with her hands.
Noah braces himself.
“I lied when I said that we import and export only with Spain. We do a good deal of business with the Netherlands, as well. They’re under Spanish domination. So, in a sense, they are Spain.”