by Jeane Westin
“Oh, nay, my lady, not your beautiful hair.”
“Quickly, Meg.”
When Frances had the scissors to hand, she held her breath, closed her eyes, and cut off one side of her hair that fell far below her shoulders, almost elbow length. “Meg,” she said, her eyes yet closed against what she must do, and to avoid the strange-appearing boy in her mirror, “you cut the rest, and do not be timid.”
“The same all round, mistress?”
“Aye, Meg. Do it.”
The scissors made cutting sounds, and hair fell against Frances’s hands as they were clasped tight in her lap. When Meg ceased, Frances opened her eyes. She was transformed indeed. Before her sat a boy, not full-grown to man size, but tall and long limbed, with one hose falling down to wrinkles, as with most boys. She reached for her hair, curling up now with the weight of it reduced. She donned the cap and stared into the mirror, scarce recognizing the smooth-faced boy staring back at her. Without her gown and shifts, she looked taller and much thinner, perhaps not strong enough to be a brewer’s boy.
Meg eyed her. “My lady, do not walk so confidently, or someone will notice that your face is not bearded, though your height declares you to be nigh to a man.”
Frances nodded. “Thank you, Meg. Now, take you to a wig maker in London and have a wig made of this hair, a wig like the queen’s, with ringlet curls placed in a large bun on either side.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“If there is inquiry made while I am gone, give out that I am abed with my monthly flux.”
“How long will you be away?”
“It could be a fortnight.”
“I’d better add another flux.”
Frances smiled at her quick wit. “As you will, but do not allow anyone to come in to see me.”
“Measles, then.”
“Aye, but doing well enough. I don’t want alarm to spread among the servants of the palace.”
“I will take great care, mistress.”
Frances reached into her pocket and retrieved a coin. “Give this to your mother for her babes.”
Meg looked her thanks, then showed it: “Let me go with you to the stables so that we look a very maid and her lover.”
Frances smiled her gratitude. “You are experienced, Meg?”
The girl shrugged. “Perhaps, mistress.”
The maid and boy left Frances’s chambers arm in arm, moving along the hall quickly to the kitchen stairs. Everyone glanced up at them, but quickly back to their supper dishes without lingering interest.
They made their way to the stables, where Frances saw a heavy brewer’s cart drawn up in the yard, four great black sturdy and dependable Percheron horses dozing with their heads down, twitching away flies. Meg went on to distract the stablemen while Frances climbed across the tailgate and slid her slender body between the barrels. It was too late to change her mind; nor did she want to, though, to her surprise, her hands shook. She gripped the boards tighter. She had not long to wait.
“I’m off, lads.” It was Robert’s voice. “Did you give these horses feed? Water?”
“Aye,” came the answer from the stables.
“What are their names?” Robert asked the stableman.
“The lead horses are Quint and Claudius. The wheel horses are Marcus and Colby. But your barrels are empty, Master Pauley. Why do you need four dray horses for so light a load?”
Robert raised his whip. “The barrels won’t remain empty.”
“So you’ll have drink on that dry road.”
“Aye, but first I’ll stop at every inn along the way,” Robert said cheerfully, to the stablemen’s laughter.
“Quint! Claudius!”
Frances heard the slap of reins and the wagon jerked forward, bouncing her between two rows of barrels, though she had little room to move. She clung to the loosely fitted bottom boards of the dray, which allowed her fingers just enough purchase, and wondered how many bruises, if not broken bones, she would collect through her thin boy clothes, though the wool was woven thick enough to make her itch. Fortune must be with her. God’s grace, the ale barrels were well lashed and did not roll atop her.
Questions raced through her mind, and she damned herself for not thinking of them before. What if the Scots queen’s men had a spy in Walsingham’s office? It was possible, though her father was careful, very careful of new men. If Robert’s mission was known, there could be an attack anywhere along the road.
She shivered a little and prayed that they had only brigands to fear, and not desperate men trying to save themselves from the rack in the Tower.
After what seemed hours, she could sense in the dryer, warmer air that they had moved away from the Thames and into the woods on the road north. Clamping her teeth together, she hung on to the swaying, lurching wagon, hitting every bump and hump in the road. Surely she was being pulled by the most cloddish, ill-gaited horses in the realm. She would complain to Robert Pauley about his taste in horseflesh, if she were still able to speak when they stopped. She grimaced to herself. Perhaps complaints were not called for from an unwanted passenger.
She shivered a little, knowing she could not pretend even to herself that this was a jest on Robert. The road ahead was too full of danger. All the local sheriff’s men could not protect the roads from bands of thieves that would as soon take lives as a wagon and horses with empty ale casks.
Still, she understood why he had chosen the big Percherons. They could pull heavy loads and make seven miles an hour, day after day.
She shifted here and there, but still could not get herself comfortable. Endurance was called for, a quality every intelligencer must have. In this ale wagon, that important skill found her.
Frances guessed it was near three hours, with the sun beginning to sink down to the western treetops, before Robert stopped in an inn yard to water the horses and his throat. She welcomed the opportunity to assess her bruises, though she wondered at her ill planning—a flask of ale, some bread, and cheese had been forgotten in her haste.
Robert had not been so negligent. She heard the sound of ale leaving a flask and making its way down his throat. Next the scent of the sun-warmed bread and ripe cheese reached her, and her stomach rumbled so that she thought sure to be found out. Another hour, she promised herself, her lips pressed tight, and it would be too late to return her to Greenwich…just until the sun was truly gone. She hung on.
Last light was still shining through the wooded verge some time later, when Robert hauled on the reins and the wagon stopped so suddenly that Frances was thrown against the barrels. At her outcry she was discovered.
Robert jumped down from the seat and climbed onto the wagon. “What folly is this?” His hand grabbed hold of her leg and pulled. “Come out of there, boy!”
“Stop!” she shouted, as if he still followed her orders.
He began to shake her hard and her cap flew off. “Frances?” He stared at her, dropped his arms, then reached to touch her hair. “Your lovely hair…”
“Off to the wig maker’s, in anticipation of my return,” she answered, brushing the dust from her breeches, trying to show a casual manner she did not feel. “I asked you to take me,” she reminded him.
“Ah, I see. This deception is a fault of mine.”
She nodded vigorously, trying to hide her fear and rubbing her arms contritely, hoping that the sight of her bruises would elicit some forgiveness.
“I could put you on the next cart going toward the river.”
“Aye, you could, but I pray you won’t.”
He frowned. “Prayer is indeed called for, my lad.”
“I pray that I will be an intelligencer in all ways once in my life.” Her voice trailed away, though he heard her next words, which were scarce more than a breath: “Until Philip returns and I am shut away forever.”
He took hold of the lead horses’ lines and pulled the wagon farther onto the verge, where all four began to crop the grass.
Robert turned his stern face to h
er. His words were harshly spoken. “Now, lad, we need wood for our supper fire.”
She lifted her head, hope in her voice. “So you will allow me to be an intelligencer in truth and be part of this deception?”
“Since you act deception so well…” He bit down on his angry words, but continued firmly. “I will allow you to get the firewood, boy, and mind you it be dry.”
Frances walked about, gathering twigs as large as she could, piling them in the crook of one arm, almost wishing she had an apron to fill. A little proud, she raced back and dropped them in front of Robert.
“Two times as much,” he said without looking up at her.
He was testing her, and she knew it. However, she was determined not to fail, and this time took off her doublet, filling it with all the dry wood she could find, though it grew darker as she bent to her work, aware with every low bow that she was aching in almost every joint.
“There!” she said, triumphantly emptying her doublet on the ground in front of him, expecting his praise.
“Did you see a stream?”
“Aye.”
“Fill this pot,” he said, pointing to a small black iron pot hanging on a hook from the side of the dray. He rested his back against a tree trunk, a contented smile on his face.
“What are you doing?” she said, tired of being used like a…well, like a servant.
“I am resting, my lad, since I’m the brewer and you my apprentice. It is a position you sought, is it not?”
In ill temper, she snatched the pot from its hook, washed it in the stream, and filled it with water. If he thought to show her a servant’s way, then she would be a good one. An intelligencer, like an actor, must learn many parts.
When she returned with the pot full, he motioned to the buckets hanging alongside the dray. “Fill them several times for each horse. These big horses need thirty gallons a day.”
She held their pails while they drank, lest they turn them over, Claudius nudging her shoulder for more. “You big clod,” she whispered, as he flicked an ear closer. She liked him. He was warm and friendly, and she needed both.
It was full dark when Frances finished, having damned herself a dozen times for this fool’s errand and having no kind thought of Robert. She shivered a little.
“Come to the fire if you need to warm yourself,” Robert said, compassion in his voice. “When the sun goes down it can be cold nights.”
“I am very warm,” she said, watching him throw some grain into the boiling pot hanging from a wood tripod. “I’ve worked like a horse; now will I eat like one?”
“They have been kind enough to allow us some of their grain and dine only on grass.”
“Grain and water?” Her stomach spoke its hunger.
“Perhaps some bread and cheese, as well.” He grinned. “Then I’ll send you packing back to Greenwich on the next decent coach. By this time, I think you are eager to go.”
His words erased her aches. She knelt near him, prayerfully. “Please, Robert, please give me this one chance to show what I can do.”
“I would think you have shown that by now.” He knelt to stir the pot, the grain beginning to thicken. “If I allow you your desire, Sir Philip—your husband—will see I never come out of Fleet Prison.”
She sat suddenly. “He will not care so long as I do not make him a cuckold.”
He did not look at her, continuing to stir the pot. “I cannot promise that.”
Frances stared at him, her heart beating so wildly that he must see it, her lips trembling, all the while searching for something to say and finding only the ridiculous. “Then you make no mind of my short hair.”
Robert handed her a spoonful of hot oats, which she was hungry enough to eat. And another after that. “Can you perform apprentice work with a better will?”
“Yes.”
“And cease to talk when I ask it of you?”
Her answer came more reluctantly this time. “Yes.”
“A lad may be needed. I do not know, but sending you back could make gossip that could reach the Plough Inn and alert the plotters when now they are sure of their success.” He looked into her face. “You make a right handsome boy, Frances, but a far prettier maid.” He knew to turn his back at the look on her face and roll up in his cloak. “We’ll start again as soon as the horses rest,” he muttered.
“Where will I sleep?”
For answer she heard his steady breathing and crawled under one edge of his cloak, her back to his, his warmth her mantle. The earthy green scent of trees and grass cooling after a warm day filled her lungs, reminding her of the woodland at Barn Elms. Behind her an owl hooted.
With difficulty, Robert breathed steadily as if asleep, until sleep came truly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Love…which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light
That doth both shine and give us sight to see…”
—Astrophel and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney
Lammastide, August 1
ON THE ROAD TO CHARTLEY
The brewer and his apprentice had filled their ale barrels and loaded the dray at the Burton Brewery, where some of Walsingham’s Staffordshire men had taken charge. Frances’s shoulders ached from carrying the smaller kegs, including one with the cipher for Queen Mary, from the brewery to the dray, as any good apprentice would. A deeper ache came from sleeping on the cold stone floor.
For half the night she had wondered why she had ever thought a man’s life was easier in this world. In the morning, she had waked to find Robert’s doublet tucked about her shoulders and the man scent of him in her nostrils. When had he placed his doublet there? Had he watched her sleeping? She smiled at such a thought and knew the wondering would stay with her far longer than her aching shoulders.
She averted her eyes from the man beside her driving the dray, yet saw all of him, his image engraved on her mind, his strong hands grasping the reins in front of her. He began to sing as he had that first day on their way from Barn Elms to London.
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn her merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat…
He was teasing her. A man who was on a mission to fool the Scots queen, and almost surely to save the queen of England’s life and her realm from papist conquest, could yet sing a joyous song. She could sing one as well. So she did, lifting her voice to blend with his.
He turned his face to her, smiling, and despite the woodland’s shade, she saw that his eyes were bright with good humor.
“By my faith, lad, you are a daring woman,” he said, laughing at the absurdity of his words.
“Some would call me foolish, mad even.”
“Aye, that, too,” he said, opening his shirt to allow the cooler air under the trees to reach his skin. “And you should never wear the white mask again over your…lovely face. Why pretend youth when you own it?”
Frances turned her head from his sweet words, but not before she had allowed herself to look upon his broad, muscled chest with a swatch of dark hair disappearing lower under the linen.
Her life was not over, she thought, hugging the idea to her heart, not over before it began, as she had feared. Then with one special insight came another: She could not turn aside from him, from what she now saw so clearly as a great and deeply felt love for Robert, a love she had felt for no other man, nor ever thought she could. Aye, Lady Frances Sidney, the wife of the realm’s most admired poet of love, a lady of the queen’s presence, yearned for the arms of a bastard and landless commoner, a servant. She ached with a love that ravaged through her like a sweet plague.
She had not been able to accept her forbidden feelings at court, but here in the countryside atop this dray in disguise there were no distinctions of rank. In truth she had new sight to see what had ere now been so poorly lit.
Once, she had thought that being an intelligencer was all she wanted in this world, having given up hope of more.
Yet the hope had returned with Robert. She wanted more. It was not greed, but need that had grown in her since first she had looked on him. She had not known it at once, indeed had misnamed such shadowed feelings, and pushed them away when they first began to clear. How blind she had been. What months she had wasted.
She glanced beyond the dray horses as the sun broke through the clouds and rising dust on the road to Chartley Manor, wondering what this day would bring that no day before had brought. That was the part of being an intelligencer that she loved: No day was ever the same.
They had crossed the river Blythe and were surrounded by the green, rolling countryside of Staffordshire. Sunlight glinting through leafy old horse chestnut trees cast spun gold patterns across the road. She thought of Aunt Jennet’s beloved embroidery and was warmed by the memory. As a girl, she had not prized her stern aunt, though now she did. No letter had come from her old nurse in France. Letters were dangerous. Still, there had been word that she did well and was content in her exile. She had children to teach and her Catholic faith to live openly, a faith that condemned her to death in England, just as Frances’s own Protestant beliefs would condemn her in France. Where would these enmities end…with the death of queens? Not Elizabeth, pray God, not Her Majesty. Frances could not picture the realm without the last Tudor.
A line of carters passed them, taking their animals back toward Burton for market day, their milk goats tied to the tailboard, wooden cages full of squawking chickens and green cabbages. She pulled her cap down and looked straight ahead as Robert responded to hearty greetings and salutes, leaving the brim low to shade her face, lest she return to Greenwich berry-brown. How to explain, after rising from her sickbed, the complexion of a husbandman’s wife?