The Course of All Treasons

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  “Sorry,” Nick said, feeling even more miserable. Now he was taking out his problems on nurslings.

  John got to his feet and carried Jane into the back of the tavern, where he and Maggie had rooms. On his way back, after having put the child to bed, he swiped another cup off the counter and picked up a jug of wine.

  “I reckon we need something stronger than ale,” he said. He poured for both of them and sat down again.

  A few customers wandered in, and Maggie and Matty were busy serving them. The low hum of voices at that end of the room gave them the cover they needed.

  “It’s more likely del Toro is behind the attempt on your life. We have to find him,” John said, leaning forward and pitching his voice low.

  Nick pulled a face. “I agree. But it looks like I’m stuck in London dancing attendance on Essex. I have no idea where del Toro might be. Probably back in Spain by now.”

  “I can go to Oxford and try to track his movements,” John said.

  “Wait until after I see Walsingham. It’s possible del Toro is back in London.” He had received no summons yet but was expecting one at any moment. Nick wasn’t looking forward to it. By now, Walsingham would know he was expected to turn over one of his best agents to a man he detested.

  “I think you were targeted because you are Walsingham’s agent, not just an agent,” John said. “He left the tavern before you in order to set up the ambush. His man was waiting for you.”

  It made sense. Nick remembered the whore. Perhaps she had been in on it too?

  “I suppose the proof that it is somehow political will be if there is an attempt on another agent,” Nick replied. And if this happened, then Spain must be trying to provoke an international incident that would lead to an open declaration of war. They were already building ships for an invasion as fast as they could. Nick himself had reported this to Walsingham. When they were ready, they would attack.

  “Or another attempt on your life,” John said.

  Their conversation was halted by the arrival of Will Shakespeare, who immediately came over to them. For once, he was not drunk, although there was plenty of time for that, Nick thought, shaking his friend’s hand.

  A relative newcomer to London, Will had been born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a glove-maker, but had burned to become an actor. Even more than acting, he longed to write plays of his own and was always trying out bits of dialogue and plots on his friends. As far as Nick knew, he kept body and soul together by stabling the horses of theatergoers. Lately, he had joined Essex’s acting troupe. Will was always hard-up, so Nick was willing to run a generous tab at The Black Sheep for his friend because he sensed Will had enormous talent and would go far. Besides, he liked Will and found him one of the most intelligent men he had ever met. Even in his cups, Will was witty and charming. Unlike Nick’s other playwright friend, Kit Marlowe, who grew bitter and morose when inebriated.

  Will leaned forward. “I heard about what happened on the London Road.”

  Nick threw his hands up. “It seems like the whole world knows.” Another proof, if Nick needed it, that London was really a glorified village with a preternaturally efficient gossip mill.

  “Edmund told me.”

  Then Nick remembered that Will too was familiar with Essex’s set because Essex had taken over the day-to-day patronage of his stepfather’s acting troupe, the Earl of Leicester’s Men, established by royal patent in 1574. It seemed that Essex was always taking over that which others had established—the spy network, an acting troupe—as if he lacked the essential imagination to found something unique. In this way, he was like a flea, a parasite that feasted on a host, Nick thought. “How do you tolerate Essex, Will?” he said. “I was in his company for ten minutes this afternoon and I wanted to do him a mischief.”

  Will shrugged. “His stepfather is a patron of the theater. Besides,” he added. “He’s not so bad once he’s away from court.”

  Will drew up a stool and sat down, his dark eyes flashing with intelligence. “It’s actually quite fascinating to watch, the change that comes over him when he’s at court and in the public eye. It’s as if he becomes another person entirely. When he’s at home, he’s relatively normal.”

  “Ha!” Nick said. “Define normal.”

  “Well, not normal, exactly. What nobleman is?” Then he became aware of what he had said. “Not you, of course, Nick. You’re immensely normal. Superlatively normal.” He cocked his head, reminding Nick of a giant robin eyeing a worm. “That was a contradiction, wasn’t it? Or was it an oxymoron? I get them mixed up. How about normally normal?”

  Nick laid a hand on his arm. He knew his friend’s love of words, and Will could go on like this all night. “Go get yourself a drink.”

  “Bugger off, you mean?” he said with a grin. “I can take a hint.” But he got to his feet, nodded to John, and sauntered over to the bar, where they heard him address Maggie: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

  “The usual then, Will?”

  * * *

  Kat’s Brothel, Bankside

  Nick was up to his neck in hot water.

  Submerged in a tub in the back of Kat’s brothel, he was soaking off the accumulated grime and sweat from his abortive trip to Oxford. He was having less luck washing away the memory of the crossbow pointed at his heart.

  There was a small shriek and the sound of water slopping onto the tiles.

  “What are you doing with your foot?” Kat demanded. She was sitting facing him in the bath. It was a tight fit, but Nick thought that just made it all the more interesting.

  “Just exploring,” he murmured, his eyes closed.

  “Well, you can stop exploring right now. I have to get dressed. I’ve a business to run, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Kat was the madam of a Bankside knocking shop. She and Nick had been friends and occasional lovers for five years.

  “Call me Sir Francis Drake of the bath,” Nick said. “I don’t need an ocean to discover new lands. My ambition is far more modest.”

  “There’s nothing modest about what you’re doing.”

  Nick opened one eye and grinned. Then he grabbed a shapely ankle. More water slopped onto the tiles.

  * * *

  “Harder,” Kat gasped.

  “I’m trying,” Nick grunted.

  There was a knock on the door, and before either of them could move, the door opened and Joseph, Kat’s business partner and a former wrestler, stuck his head round.

  “There’s a messenger arrived for Nick,” he said, and closed the door.

  “You didn’t pull it tight enough,” Kat said, “but it will have to do.”

  Nick obediently tied the strings of her corset. “Can I help roll up your stockings?”

  In reply, Kat threw his doublet at him. “I would have thought you’d seen enough. Now hurry up and get dressed. It seems you’re wanted outside.”

  When Nick emerged fully clothed, he spotted a disreputable-looking character slouched on a stool. The man’s eyes were glued to the young ladies in various stages of undress who were sitting at a long table in the main room. It was morning, so the brothel was empty of customers and the girls were having breakfast. Some were feeding small children on their laps and one was nursing a baby. None of them was paying the newcomer the least attention.

  “How goes it, Harold?” Nick said. He recognized him as one of Walsingham’s runners, a wizened runt of a man with lank hair and a face like a ferret. He looked like a rat-catcher, which, oddly enough, was exactly what he was.

  “His Nibs wants to see you,” Harold said, jerking his thumb at the door, as if Walsingham were sitting in a coach and four outside. “It’s urgent,” he added when Nick grabbed a hunk of bread and a cup of ale off the table.

  “Not urgent enough to miss breakfast,” Nick said between mouthfuls. Then, seeing Harold’s doglike slavering, he tossed him a small loaf and handed him a cup of small beer.

  “Ta, Nick,” Harold said, devouring the bread. He d
rained his cup, wiped his mouth on a rancid sleeve, and stood up. “I’ll tell His Nibs you’re on your way, shall I?”

  “Don’t nag, Harold,” Nick said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have to pick up something first.” He tossed the man a small coin. “Make sure you spend that at my tavern,” he said. Then, seeing Harold looking wistfully at the whores, “Forget about it. You can’t afford the prices here. Especially for all the unnatural things you want to do.” This provoked a fierce blush in Harold and a gale of raucous laughter from the girls as Harold fled.

  CHAPTER 5

  Seething Lane

  The something Nick wanted to pick up was Hector. He had missed his dog on his trip north and wasn’t about to leave him pining at the tavern all day. But this wasn’t the only reason he had delayed: not only would Walsingham have been fully apprised of his cock-up with del Toro, but he would also have been told that the Queen had ordered him to lend Essex one of his best agents.

  Nick was glad when John insisted on accompanying him.

  “You can bribe the turnkey for a swank room when Walsingham has me thrown in the Tower,” Nick joked.

  Judging from his expression, John did not seem to find this amusing.

  “Don’t forget to drop in at the Guild,” Maggie called after them.

  In answer to Nick’s questioning look, John said, “Maggie is thinking of brewing her own beer so we can join the Brewers’ Guild. What do you think?”

  “Fine with me if she has the time.”

  “Now that Matty helps with Jane, she has more time. Besides, she wants Henry to learn a trade. She’s worried about him. He’s been hanging around the bear-baiting ring with the actors.” Henry was Maggie’s fourteen-year-old son by her first marriage and John’s stepson. As the euphemism went, he was going through an “awkward phase,” mooning over anything in a skirt and writing idealistic verses about the fairer sex. Considering that the “fairer sex” were the toothless hags who made up the tavern regulars and supplemented their meager income by quickies in the alley, his poetry was startlingly Platonic in nature. Nick had once had a quick peek when he found Henry’s notebook left on the bar. There were lots of references to beautiful shepherdesses and lovesick swains, a tremendous feat of imagination considering that Bankside was populated mostly by whores and criminals.

  “Will’s all right,” Nick said. “So is Kit Marlowe beneath all the bravado.” They crossed onto London Bridge and headed north over the Thames.

  “Henry wants to be a poet,” John said glumly. “A poet, God help us!”

  “He’ll grow out of it,” Nick said, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “I see you’ve been taking lessons from Codpiece,” John said sourly, but Nick had seen his mouth quirk up in a slight smile.

  They continued across the bridge; turned right on Thames Street heading toward Billingsgate Fish Market, Hector’s nose twitching at the pungent smell; took a left at All Hallows church by the Tower; and arrived at 35 Seething Lane hard by the Crutched Friars. The house resided in Tower Ward within the walls of the ancient city of London. Nick had often wondered if Walsingham had chosen the location so he could gaze at the Tower from his garden, knowing that at any given time a traitor he himself had caught likely languished there, awaiting death.

  A gangly youth was just leaving as Nick arrived, a hat pulled low over his forehead. Mumbling an apology for momentarily blocking the doorway, the lad hurried off, face averted. He looked too young to be an agent. Probably a runner like Harold the unemployed rat-catcher, Nick thought, stepping over the threshold.

  On the few occasions Nick had been inside the house on Seething Lane, it had looked as if a bomb had gone off in a paper factory. This visit was no exception. There were sheets of parchment everywhere, covering the wooden floors, piled on chairs and tables, emerging from open chests like stuffing out of feather bolsters. The scene gave the impression of utter chaos, and yet, Nick knew, Walsingham and his secretaries had the uncanny ability of laying their hands almost immediately on whatever document they needed and extracting a single name from the hundreds, even thousands, contained within the house’s four walls.

  It must make cleaning a nightmare, Nick thought, as he tried to tread only on the infrequent glimpses of floorboard. It made him feel as if he were traversing a river on stepping stones. A river of paper. He traversed alone, as John and Hector were told firmly by Walsingham’s chief secretary, Laurence Tomson, that they must remain outside. John said he would pop along to the Brewers’ Guild with Hector and meet Nick back at the house in an hour. The Guild was located not far away in Cheapside.

  “His Honor’s feeling a bit poorly today,” Tomson whispered as he led Nick upstairs to his master’s study.

  That was an understatement. Walsingham had been in ill health the whole time Nick had known him. Long suspected of being a hypochondriac famous for his kidney ailments, he had recently been diagnosed with testicular cancer. It was now rumored that the Queen’s Secretary of State did not have long to live.

  When Nick saw him, he believed it. The man’s face was the color of parchment and deeply lined, his body emaciated. He held himself carefully, as if he were in acute pain, but it was typical of the man to be at work. Nick had heard that when he was forced to keep to his bed, he ordered his servants to prop him up on his pillows and put a large tray on his lap, on which papers were placed by Tomson, who sat beside him on a chair. Nick didn’t know whether to admire the man for his Calvinist work ethic or pity him for an obsession with traitors that bordered on mania. But one thing Nick knew for certain: Walsingham was fanatically loyal to the Queen and to Protestantism. Unlike Essex, who was fanatically loyal to only one man: himself.

  Walsingham was sitting hunched over his desk writing when Nick was shown in.

  “Just a moment,” he said without looking up.

  Tomson waved Nick to a chair and left. The only sound was the scratching of Walsingham’s pen, and Nick had the strange feeling that the room he had entered was the inside of the spymaster’s mind—a cluttered space filled with secrets and dark corners. Against the wall he saw a chest labeled A BOX OF RELIGION & MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL and knew that it contained, among other things, the names of Catholic recusants, his family’s names included. At any time, Walsingham could decide to fish them out and institute an inquiry. It was the reason Nick was sitting here now. When His Nibs asked for a meeting, it was prudent to show up. Especially if you had ballsed up an assignment and were now working for the competition.

  At last Walsingham stopped writing, meticulously sanded the wet ink, shook the sand off, then picked up a small bell on his desk and rang it.

  A man of slight build with a blond beard came in so quickly that Nick got the impression he had been waiting outside. He did not so much as glance at Nick but went straight to his master. Nick recognized him as Thomas Phelippes, fluent in many languages and a genius at deciphering and creating codes.

  “Code this in Petty Wales Standard, will you, Tom?” Walsingham said, handing over the sheet of paper. “And then seal it with the usual. It must be delivered into the hands of Captain Shawe of the merchant ship Arachne by the evening tide.”

  “Very good, Sir Francis,” Phelippes replied. He bowed and left the room.

  At last Walsingham sat back and surveyed Nick with surprisingly placid brown eyes, considering he must have been enraged by the Queen’s request.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said in a low and mellifluous voice.

  Walsingham was famed for the politeness of his speech. As a staunch Protestant, he abjured all coarse language and despised metaphor and flights of rhetoric, preferring cold, hard facts. More than once, Nick had wondered how Walsingham would react if he ever came into contact with Bess, his parrot. The parrot’s previous owner, Kit Marlowe, had taught the bird a few choice words concerning the dour spymaster. But that meeting, of co
urse, would never happen. Walsingham considered Bankside to be nothing less than a worldly precursor to hell itself. He had been heard to remark that, detestable papist though he was, Dante had gotten it right when he created the Inferno, and if it were up to him, he would condemn all actors, whores, Jews, Catholics, and thieves of Bankside and Southwark to the flames there. As that neatly categorized almost all the people Nick called friends, he was pretty sure where Walsingham thought he was headed in the afterlife. Now he gave Nick a particularly disarming smile.

  Here it comes, Nick thought, bracing himself. He had a sudden conviction that his family’s names had indeed been plucked from that ominous chest in the corner. With mounting panic, he thought of the ruin of his family’s fortunes, their imprisonment, perhaps even death. Even though the room was chilly, he had begun to sweat. This was what those poor unfortunate sods Walsingham personally interrogated must have felt like, he thought. Either that or Walsingham was very, very pissed off about Nick losing del Toro.

  “The body of Simon Winchelsea was found floating in the river the day you left London for Oxford,” Walsingham said.

  Nick blinked. Having braced himself to be given a bollocking for losing del Toro, to be forced to listen to a rant about Essex and the Queen, this was the last thing he’d expected. His conversation with John came back to him: if another agent were killed, in addition to the attempt on Nick’s life, they would know the Spanish were behind it. Walsingham wouldn’t have bothered to mention it if Winchelsea’s death had been accidental.

  Nick hadn’t known Winchelsea well but vaguely recalled a slight, wiry man with the weathered face of someone who had spent most of his life outdoors in all weather.

  “His death was … unexpected.”

  This was as close as Walsingham would ever get to expressing dismay, Nick realized. The spymaster was gazing at Nick, but his eyes were sightless, turned inward on his own thoughts, as if he were pondering his next move after an opponent had unexpectedly checked him.

  The spymaster grimaced. “Throat cut. After his eyes were put out.”