A Second Daniel

by Neal Roberts

  “And you were fluent in Hebrew?”

  “I had become so under Master Savile’s tutelage, Sir Henry.”

  “Why have you come here this evening?”

  “Well, sir,” says Noah, “I was wondering whether you would recall the single occasion on which I saw you many years ago.” He’s more than a little embarrassed. What is he doing here? Why is he bothering this sick man?

  “Sorry, I don’t recall seeing you at all.”

  “You did not see me, Sir Henry.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Oh, this was many years ago, sir. More than thirty.”

  “Thirty? Why, you cannot be much older than that now.”

  “I was but a small boy at the time.”

  “I see,” says Sir Henry. “And what was the occasion?”

  “It would not be memorable to you, sir. You were at the Tower of London.”

  “Well, you’ll have to be a bit more specific, I was often at the Tower at that time.”

  “On this occasion, sir, although Queen Elizabeth had been named successor to Queen Mary, as yet she had not been crowned.”

  Sir Henry nods gravely. “She was under close watch at that time, for there were many papist assassins about.” Sir Henry snaps his fingers. “I remember one time when she ‘slipped the collar,’ so to speak.” His eyes fix on a point by his feet. “Cold autumn night. We must have placed a dozen guards about her chamber. More, perhaps. She was in the middle of undressing for bed, surrounded by ladies in waiting, when the next thing anyone knew … poof! She was gone!” He chortles. “I finally found her in one of the outbuildings. A little cottage. I think it was used as a kitchen at the time.” He turns to Noah. “Was that the occasion?”

  Noah smiles to see the old man’s total recall of the event. “It was, sir.”

  “And you were there?”

  “Aye, sir. I watched you through a window as you discovered Her Majesty safe in the cottage.”

  Sir Henry nods. “But what would you have been doing there?”

  “I’d been helping my uncle deliver groceries. He heard the shouts and went to offer assistance, leaving me alone. I was in the cottage but a moment when Her Majesty entered and quite surprised me. I’d no idea who she was.”

  “Your uncle? Come to think of it, I do recall the grocer asking if he could help. But he was wearing … black … ” Sir Henry drifts off for a moment, and returns to Noah with a puzzled smile. “You’re not that little Jew-boy she raved about, are you?”

  Henry intercedes. “No, Father — ”

  Noah smiles, and tenderly pats Sir Henry’s hand. “Yes, Sir Henry. I am that little Jew-boy.”

  Henry’s eyes go wide. He’s dumbstruck.

  Sir Henry continues. “Oh, so that’s who you are! Oh, my! She went on and on about you. Didn’t stop talking about you for days after that! You were so bright, and so … English! Tell me, Master … ”

  “Ames, sir.”

  The old man cocks his head skeptically.

  “That was not your uncle’s name. He was a little Spaniard. Añes, wasn’t it?”

  “Right, sir. That was his name. Avram Añes, Queen’s grocer.”

  “Tell me, young Master … Ames. How have you fared upon the path chosen for you by Her Majesty?”

  “Well, sir. I attended Eton and Merton College, Oxford, where I was fortunate to meet your son Henry. As you can see, I am a barrister now.”

  “But, family, man. That’s what’s important. I have often wondered what happened to those few whom the Queen saw fit to favor, especially the one or two who were Jews.”

  “I am widowed, Sir Henry. I have a daughter. She is here at Billingbear now. Oh, but her Jewish heritage is a secret, sir. Please be sure not to give it away. She has married into the nobility.”

  “Hah!” laughs Old Sir Henry. “Good for her! Now that would open a few eyes, wouldn’t it, Henry?”

  “It would, Father. It would open your eyes to see her. She is a great beauty.”

  “Well, bring her here so I may look upon her, for heaven’s sake. My waning life has few enough pleasures.”

  “I shall bring her tomorrow, Father.”

  Sir Henry turns back to Noah. “Henry tells me that Marie Miller has caught your eye. You seem to have an eye for beautiful women, but be careful. This one has a sharp sting!”

  “So I have been told, Sir Henry, although I have seen no real evidence of it, as yet.”

  Sir Henry regards Noah suspiciously. “You’re not a moneylender, are you?”

  Noah smiles. “No, Sir Henry. I’m afraid I haven’t the money to lend.”

  “Ah! England’s only honest lawyer.”

  “Perhaps, sir.”

  “My son tells me that you may be in trouble with Essex.”

  Henry tries to interrupt. “Father — ”

  Sir Henry waves him off. “No, no. Let us not mince words. If this fellow is an adversary of Essex, I very much wish to help him, and so should you.” He turns to Noah. “I do not know how the Queen could favor someone like Essex. Yet, she seems to have unbounded affection for that self-aggrandizing lout.”

  “Father!” says Henry.

  “Oh, please, Henry. I am an old man. If I cannot speak my mind now, then I may never speak it at all. Master Ames, you are precisely the opposite of Essex. You were favored with a small royal grace and have turned out true to the Crown, where he has been lavished with every royal advantage, and yet refuses so much as to acknowledge the authority of the one who showers her bounty upon him.”

  He grumbles, “I’m not a believer in all that ‘God’s anointed on earth’ nonsense. Some of these royals are no better than what the Italians call onorevole. Have you heard the term, Master Ames? It means ‘honorable man,’ but it is often used sardonically to mean quite the opposite. Some of the royals are simply ruthless in their pursuit of power and money.”

  “Father, please!” begs Henry.

  “Don’t you try to stop me from speaking my mind, Henry!” Old Sir Henry is becoming exercised. “My father was put to death by that monster Henry the Eighth. My father Edward Neville had been Esquire of the Body, and overseer of the king’s entire household most of his life. He even looked like Henry, to the point where he was taken to be the king when he appeared at a masquerade dressed as him. And yet, when my father was overheard pointing out that there may have been a technical imperfection in Henry’s title to the throne, Henry had him put to death. My father!”

  “Father,” interrupts Henry. “We’ve been through this countless times. Edward’s careless talk had more weight behind it than mere idle chatter.” Henry turns to Noah. “The ‘technical imperfection’ my esteemed father mentions was the supposed illegitimacy of King Henry’s forbear Edward the Fourth, whose father may … I say, may … have been cuckolded by his wife, whose name happened to be Cecily Neville.”

  Sir Henry sits up with a bulldog expression. “This was your grandfather, Henry. So both their names were ‘Neville.’ So what?”

  “Edward Neville and Cecily Neville knew each other, Father. Although she was much older, she survived until he was twenty-four years old. She may very well have told him of her faithlessness, which would have upset the entire line of succession, and would incidentally have placed Edward’s own sister in the new line. Our Queen Elizabeth would never have become Queen.”

  Before his father can respond, he continues. “And, regardless of whether Cecily in fact confirmed her cuckoldry to Edward, people suspected that she had. When Edward said it, they believed it! And with good reason.”

  Sir Henry relaxes onto his pillows, and directs his closing remark to Noah. “And for that, they take a man’s life!” he says with disgust.

  Noah changes the subject. “Sir Henry, have you tried the new medicine for gout? It works very well, they say.”

  But Sir Henry is not quite over his outburst. “Physicians. Bunch of quacks!” He waves dismissively.

  Noah decides to make a personal appeal. “Si
r Henry, would you do me a great favor? Would you please try the medicine for a few days? You see … ” Noah allows his voice to trail off.

  “Out with it, young man!”

  “You see, in light of my problems with Essex, I am concerned for my daughter’s welfare, and would truly appreciate it if I might entrust her to your care, in the event … there is any violence.”

  Sir Henry regards him skeptically. “And you believe that this medicine may enable me to assist in this?”

  Noah nods grimly. “I’ve little doubt of it, sir.”

  Sir Henry equivocates. “Very well,” he says, at last. “I shall take the medicine for her sake. Henry, please bring me some tomorrow.”

  “I shall, Father. You rest now.” Henry touches his father comfortingly on the shoulder.

  “I shall. I’m sorry I get so upset whenever … ”

  Noah says, “I can well understand, Sir Henry. Please try to rest.”

  Sir Henry closes his eyes, ready to nod off. Henry signals Noah to the door, and extinguishes every candle but the small one in the glass jar beside the bed. They creep out, descend the stairs, and depart quickly and quietly.

  They’ve walked halfway back in silence when Henry stops in his tracks. Noah turns to him.

  “Good lord,” says Henry, “you are such a fraud!”

  “How do I offend, Master Neville?”

  “He’s to take care of your daughter, is he? He can barely sit up!”

  “Yes, Henry,” says Noah, doing his best to look guilty. “And I shall have to carry on my conscience to my dying day that your father’s pain was relieved in his final years by medicine I defrauded him into taking. Oh, how foul am I!” He beats his breast, though very lightly.

  Henry laughs, and resumes walking. “Did you know that there was a rumor that my father was an illegitimate son of Henry the Eighth? In fact, it gained such currency that Queen Elizabeth, upon seeing my father, once stopped an entire procession to greet him, calling him aloud ‘my brother Neville.’”

  Noah laughs. “Do noblemen ever have relations with their own wives?”

  “Not if they can help it!”

  Noah regards Henry quizzically. “So that’s the deception you’re preoccupied about. The medicine. Not my being a Jew. Did you already know?”

  Henry shakes his head. “You could have knocked me over with a feather. I hadn’t a clue! I still don’t know what to make of it. I’ve always thought of you as one of us, but that perception has been knocked off its axis, and is spinning out of control. And since the moment you said it, I’ve been trying to figure out how you’ve passed for one of us all this time. Without a hitch! Did you attend religious services every morning?”

  Noah laughs. “As you would have known if you had ever attended,” he says pointedly, “I assisted in the conduct of the service.”

  “Oh, that’s right! I saw you there once.”

  “Must have been Christmas. I was there all the time.”

  “And you became a barrister, as well.”

  “There are some very important initials on the waivers in support of my admission to Oxford and the bar. Eton, too.”

  “I would imagine.” A moment of silence ensues as Henry thinks deeply. “You know, Burghley must have known all this time, yet never said a word to me.”

  “I suppose he may have forgotten. The Exchequer finished paying my tuition and rooming bills a long time ago.”

  “Burghley forget?” Henry chortles. “Not likely. Knowing him as I do, I think you may be of interest to him because you’re a Jew who has passed as one of us.”

  With this cryptic remark, they bid each other good night and go up to their separate rooms, Noah wondering just how much his world will soon change.

  Chapter 22

  A FEW DAYS later, Cheerful delivers three letters to Noah in his room. One is from Jonathan.

  The other two weather-beaten letters were picked up by Cheerful from Noah’s pigeonhole at Gray’s Inn. They’re from Marie. As they bear no outer markings disclosing which was sent first, he selects one at random and slits it open. It provides sparse news of the seas, and of Marie’s arrival at Antwerp with young Stephen. Apparently, Stephen is being heartily accepted into the field of international shipping in place of his father.

  As the letter is short, he rereads it a few times. It contains a few odd phrases. Instead of saying that one of the museums in Antwerp is unimpressive, it says “the museum did not walk well.” It also contains a few careless transpositions, such as “this would not have made much anyhow difference,” instead of “difference anyhow.” Beneath each row of text is a thin broken line made with a straightedge, as may be used to guide one’s handwriting.

  The second letter is dated about a week later than the first. According to Cheerful, the two letters arrived at Gray’s Inn less than a day apart, so the first must have been delayed by rough seas. By the time of Marie’s second writing, she and Stephen had traveled north to Amsterdam. This letter contains a few archaic spellings, as well as a couple of transpositions, much like the first. And yet, she took the same care to keep her writing straight with a thin line under each row of text.

  Before turning to Jonathan’s letter, Noah refolds Marie’s and stares out of the window, imagining the joy he would have felt traveling alongside her to all these foreign cities. It saddens him greatly that she wrote no private things. No oaths of love, no little intimacies, almost as though she expected her letters might be read by others, as indeed they might. Still, it might have mollified the misgivings he’s harbored since their parting, if only she’d given him something to hold onto.

  Then he remembers the guidelines and the strange wording. Could they be a cipher, a code? But she never mentioned she’d write in code, and she and Noah never agreed upon an encryption method. On the other hand, perhaps she happened upon information that she needed to convey secretly. If she’d become privy to secret matters, wouldn’t she improvise a simple cipher, and expect him to recognize it? Perhaps her bizarre usages were adaptations of her clear message that were necessary for her to conceal a secret one.

  He shuts the door quietly, sits at the desk, and withdraws pen, ink, and a single sheet of paper. He carefully examines the outside of Marie’s letters. When he’s satisfied they’re devoid of markings, he turns them over and spreads them out on the desk, placing a small weight on each to prevent it from wafting away on the breeze. He examines them side by side.

  He expects that the letters which are most heavily underscored will spell out a message. After deciphering a paragraph, he realizes that, although the cipher is not quite so simple, it is nearly so. The letters spell out something backwards, so he decides to begin the deciphering process from the end of the later letter and work his way backward all the way to the beginning of the earlier letter.

  A few minutes later, he puts his pen down and reads the message. As he turns it over to consider its significance, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Henry. Noah places his fingers before his lips and ushers him inside, closing the door behind him.

  “I was going to ask you about your correspondence,” whispers Henry.

  “Marie’s letters were encoded,” Noah whispers softly.

  “What’s the message?”

  Noah hears a slight rustling in the hallway. He signals Henry to be silent, creeps to the door, and opens it quickly. Although no one’s there, a sound comes from down the hall, like a slippered foot skittering along a polished floor. Ah, well, the culprit’s escaped … for now. He reenters and closes the door. “Whoever it was is gone,” he says, and turns over the decrypted message for Henry to read silently:

  MESSENGER TINOCO, BUT FOR DOC RL, NOT DON A

  “Let’s go for a private walk,” says Henry. “But first, you must choose whether to keep these letters on your person at all times, or invoke the safer alternative of burning them. Do they hold sentimental value for you?”

  “Oh, I suppose not,” says Noah regretfully. In fact, he’d hoped to
reread them many times, a practice in which he often indulges, but which has become a luxury in this new day of boundless suspicion.

  “We’ll burn them, then, but not in this room. Let’s go elsewhere, perhaps out of doors, so no spy can be confident you’ve burned anything.”

  “Wait. I’ve not yet read Jonathan’s letter.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait. Just don’t read it aloud.”

  Noah slits open Jonathan’s letter, and goes to the window for better light.

  Dear Noah:

  You and I might deem it pointless to seek a pardon for someone who’s been acquitted of a crime, as he may never be tried for it again. But less than a month — a little month — after being acquitted of murder, Ingram Frizer has been pardoned by the Queen for the death of Christopher Marlowe.

  As Frizer’s acquittal by the coroner might have prevented his later criminal prosecution for Marlowe’s murder in any event, the purpose behind pardoning Frizer for Marlowe’s murder must have been to complicate my investigation of Stephen Rodriguez’s murder. While I have been trying to act the part of the intuitive Noah Ames during such gentleman’s absence, I have been having a devil of a time coming up with an alternative explanation. Pray, if you run into Master Ames, please ask him to assist me in this!

  Plague has receded. In case you cannot tell from this writing, I am frankly exhausted. In light of the Queen’s pardon, there seems little point in my remaining in town for the next few weeks. (Trinity Term is already a shambles.) Look for me when least expected.

  Hawk.

  P.S. I’ve learned from Arthur that Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil have been there with you since shortly after Marlowe’s murder. Perhaps you might ask them whether Her Majesty is accustomed to signing pardons that they have not first approved. On the other hand, if they did approve this pardon, I hold out little hope of obtaining justice for Goodwife Rodriguez, as then everyone of importance is against us.