The Course of All Treasons

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  “It’ll be like old times,” John said, punching Nick on the shoulder. He was referring to their Oxford days. “Except that we’ll have to let Edmund tag along this time.” John pulled a face. He had never liked Edmund.

  “He’s all right,” Nick said. “He did save my life.”

  “Then you saved him from being beaten up. So, you’re even. Let the little milksop look after himself from now on.”

  “I don’t want anyone to know you are helping me,” Nick said. “Not even Edmund.”

  “Do you suspect him?”

  “No. But I don’t trust his judgment. He’ll blab anything we find out to Essex in order to curry favor. You have to be completely invisible.”

  “Got it,” John said.

  “You’ll have to watch out for Annie. She’s very hard to spot when she wants to be.” Nick had told John of how she could change her appearance like Proteus.

  They had been following the riverbank west, water on their right, a straggle of shops and tenements on their left that began to peter out as they neared Paris Garden, an enormous swath of open land where the river curved south. Across the black expanse of the river, they could make out the occasional flicker of lights in the windows of individual houses, like fireflies in the darkness. But it was the great palaces of Whitehall, the Savoy, and Somerset and Leicester Houses that were lit up like signal beacons as the river turned south in a wide curve. Only the very wealthy could afford to transform night into day by burning a fortune in candles and pitch; the rest of London went to bed with the sun and rose with it, seeking relief from the dank April nights in their beds. If Nick was honest, that’s exactly what he would have liked to do. He longed to hibernate like a bear and only come out when Winchelsea’s killer had been caught and Essex had buggered off back to the Netherlands where he would become Leicester’s problem and not Nick’s.

  He and John stood for a moment on the bank looking across the river. Nick remembered how he had felt at the beginning of his murder investigation in the autumn when it seemed as if he were looking into a black void with only occasional lights showing in the darkness. Now he experienced the same feeling of helplessness—as if, like Winchelsea, he had been blinded.

  With a sigh, Nick turned back toward The Black Sheep, John and Hector keeping pace beside him.

  “At least you don’t have to go to Oxford,” Nick said. He had told John that del Toro had been spotted in London. “Start with The Red Bull. You never know. He may be stupid enough to return there.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Bankside

  Early next morning, Nick and John dropped by the house of Eli and Rivkah. Brother and sister were sitting in their tiny kitchen having breakfast. Eli made room for them at the table, and Rivkah cut more bread and pushed a pot of honey towards them. Eli sloshed small beer into their cups.

  “Thanks,” Nick said.

  John saluted them with his beaker, his mouth already full.

  “To what do we owe the honor?” Eli said.

  Looking at brother and sister sitting opposite him at the table, Nick was amazed anew at how identical in feature they were. Both had black hair, brown eyes, small, straight noses and wide mouths. Both had the same sardonic and slightly wary gleam in their eyes; both would do anything for a patient.

  Eli wore his hair to his shoulders, tied back with a leather thong. Rivkah’s hair was pulled back into a thick braid that she had wound at the back of her neck. Mercifully she was not a slave to the court fashion that called for frizzy topknots and kiss curls, making the court ladies appear as if they each had a poodle on their head. As it was the Queen who had set the prevailing fashion with her wigs, Nick had kept his aesthetic opinion to himself. Nick happened to know that Rivkah’s hair was so long she could sit on it; he had first seen her in her nightdress with her hair loose. Every time he’d seen her since, he’d longed to stroke the gleaming smoothness, fancying it would feel like silk.

  Nick saw Eli’s medical satchel sitting by the door. He knew Eli started each day by holding a morning infirmary at St. Mary Ovarie in Bankside for the poor of the parish. The parish priest, Father Anselm, had set aside the church crypt for the hospital, where the sickest of Eli and Rivkah’s patients could stay until they either recovered or died. But the siblings also ministered to walk-ins: laborers with broken bones or sprains; children with measles, chicken pox, or the croup; infections from cuts that could develop into gangrene or lockjaw in less than a day; many cases of the flux due to bad water and spoiled food. And when the summer came with the pestilence, the infirmary would be crowded, the graveyard of St. Mary Ovarie even more so.

  Anyone with an ailment, whether Bankside resident or traveler coming into London on the Southwark Road, was welcome. Eli would even dispense herbal remedies to those inebriates who had woken in the rushes of the bull-baiting ring or the downstairs parlor of Kat’s brothel with a pounding hangover. As their house was situated between the Bear Garden, the bear-and bull-baiting ring, and London Bridge, it was not unheard of for people to knock on their door to pick up some palliative before staggering back across the bridge to face their employer or an irate wife.

  Neither Eli nor Rivkah discriminated among their patients, something Nick had always found remarkable, considering that they were Jews and had been burned out of their home in Salamanca and forced into exile. In Nick’s opinion, his two friends showed more Christian charity than most Christians he knew. If their patients could not pay them, then they either went without or accepted payment in kind. The house they lived in was owned by Black Jack Sims, the local crime lord, and Nick happened to know that he demanded no rent from them in return for an endless supply of gout medicine that Rivkah prepared in her kitchen.

  Rivkah’s basket sat beside Eli’s satchel. Usually she went first to Kat’s brothel to check on the girls who worked there—she was also Kat’s personal physician—before joining her brother at the infirmary. This morning, Nick knew, she would be going across the river to see how Thomas was progressing. Nick was hoping they could share a wherry. Anything for a little more time in her company, even if John’s amused gaze would be on him the whole time.

  John also knew Nick was terrified of Rivkah finding out he was a spy who spent most of his time spying on her countrymen. If she ever found out, Nick was convinced she would believe their friendship was nothing more than a way of extracting information about their homeland. He couldn’t bear the thought that she would believe he had been using her and her brother, that he was just another Christian who had betrayed her as she and Eli had been betrayed before.

  When they finished eating and Eli had cleared the table, Nick took out the two knives he had taken from Gavell and Stace the day before at Wood Wharf.

  “Could these have been used to cut Winchelsea’s throat?” he asked Eli, who had examined the corpse.

  John looked askance at Nick and tipped his head at Rivkah. He was more traditional than Nick and thought women should be protected from the harsh realities of life, especially violent murder.

  Rivkah caught the look and, picking up one of the blades, went to stand behind John. She held the knife to his throat and John went very still. Nick grinned.

  “Could this have done the job, do you think, Eli?” she said.

  “Point taken,” John croaked. “Literally.” He fingered the spot where Rivkah had laid the tip of the knife.

  Eli tested the sharpness of the knives by paring some cloth. “They could,” he said. “The trouble is that they are of standard design with ordinary wood handles. Aside from the wealthy, almost every man carries a knife like this.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Nick said.

  Rivkah was examining one of the knives closely. “There’s some blood in the join between the haft and the blade and on the handle itself, but it could be anything: rabbit, mutton, human. Impossible to tell.”

  Unless the handles were made of an impermeable material like metal or horn, the untreated wood tended to stain quickly. Most people
carried cheap knives with which to eat, and wooden handles absorbed blood, grease, ale, and wine until they were stained almost black. Gavell’s and Stace’s daggers were no different.

  Next Nick placed the silver medallion on the table. “What do you make of this? Some kind of coin or charm?”

  Rivkah picked it up and turned it in her fingers, rubbing at the discoloration. Then, going to a shelf in the corner of the kitchen, she picked up a pot and a rag. She sat down again. “Chalk,” she informed them. She proceeded to clean the silver with the rag she had dipped first in water and then in the chalk. Soon the medal was as gleaming as the day it was first made.

  “Look here,” Rivkah said, handing it to Nick. “It’s a tree of some kind with writing around it.”

  Nick squinted at it, then took it over to the window at the back of the kitchen to get better light. “It’s an evergreen tree,” he said. He looked closer, turning the tiny disk around in his hands. “Ego permanere.”

  “I will remain steadfast,” Eli translated.

  “How old do you think it is?” Nick said, handing it to John.

  As the son of the steward at Binsey House, John’s father had begun to train his eldest son to take over his duties before he realized that John was not cut out for looking after a stately home. John’s younger brother had shown much more aptitude for facts and figures and was now steward. But John had absorbed more of his father’s teaching than he cared to let on. Silver was one of the things he knew something about, as Nick well knew.

  “I would say it was pretty old,” John said. “See how scratched it is, and the beveling around the edges is worn down.” He turned it over to look for a hallmark, but there wasn’t one. Not legal tender, at any rate. A medal of some kind.

  “Perhaps a shilling melted down and then stamped with a design. It’s a cheap way to make a medallion.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Rivkah asked. “To melt down currency?”

  John nodded. “But it happens all the time. A local blacksmith could do it and no one would be the wiser.” He laid the medal down on the table.

  Eli picked it up and studied it. “A family coat of arms, do you think?”

  “No escutcheon,” Nick said. Then, seeing the incomprehension on Rivkah and Eli’s faces, “No shield. It’s not a martial symbol. The evergreen means fidelity. The killer must have lost it when he was dragging Winchelsea into the shed. He would not have realized he lost it until after the fact.”

  “That’s the only opportunity for Winchelsea to have fought back,” Eli agreed. “After that he was trussed by a belt. He was still bound when I examined him on the dock.”

  Nick told the others where he had found it—well, where Hector had found it, to be strictly truthful.

  “Where is he, by the way?” Rivkah asked. Hector was a great favorite of hers.

  “Back at The Black Sheep, sulking,” Nick said. “I had to leave him as a substitute for John.” He paused a beat. “A more intelligent substitute, or at least that’s what Maggie said.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The trip across the river was quick but wet. Nick’s opportunity to feast his eyes on Rivkah during the crossing was thwarted by the fact that she was huddled deep inside the voluminous folds of her cloak’s hood with only her nose peeking out.

  “Bloody awful weather for April,” the wherryman said cheerfully as he pulled with easy grace at his oars. Young and with the massive shoulders and arms of a man born to a life on the river, he seemed oblivious to the rain drizzling down. Nick grunted a response and thought longingly of the cover on Essex’s barge.

  “Do you put in at Wood Wharf often?” Nick asked when they landed and he was handing Rivkah out of the wherry onto the dock.

  “Not much call nowadays,” the wherryman said. “Now, in my grandfather’s day it were another matter. Lots of business doings hereabouts, merchants and such. The toffs at the big houses on the Strand mostly use Temple Stairs. And their own stairs, of course.”

  All the great houses had their own private landing docks with stairs going right down to the river—York, Leicester, Somerset, and Savoy Palace. Wood Wharf, with its splintering dock, warped stairs, and derelict watchman’s shed, was a decaying remnant of a bygone era.

  “What about a fortnight ago, late?” Nick didn’t have much hope, but it was worth a try. Most wherrymen would not row across the breadth of the river at night, but some would be willing to row along the northern bank, especially where the great river curved to the south because the great houses between the Middle Temple and Whitehall were often lit up with entertainments and there were fares to be made. It was safer to hire a wherry, even in the dark, than to risk the pitch-black London streets at night. Only the aristocracy who could afford to hire an armed guard to discourage the cutpurses and bully-boys who lurked in dark alleys would dare to cross the city at night.

  “Funny you should mention that,” the wherryman said. “Me and the lads were just talking about it the other night in The Water Beetle. Sam said there were a lantern on the wharf and he thought it were a fare wanting to be picked up, so he made for it. He were down at Whitefriars. Not a hard pull with the tide coming in. Then, as he got nearer, he shipped his oars and glided in silent. Heard two men on the dock arguing. One had a funny accent. Foreign-like.”

  “Dutch? Spanish?”

  The man shrugged. “Dunno, just foreign. The other gent spoke normal. You know, proper English.”

  Nick saw Rivkah hide a smile at the man’s unselfconscious bigotry.

  “You say gent,” Nick said. “You mean he was a gentleman?”

  The wherryman shrugged. “Sam didn’t say.”

  Nick had the feeling this was the most valuable information the man could provide. The foreigner was probably del Toro; the Englishman, a traitor, if he were meeting a Spaniard in a deserted place at night. Either of them could have killed Winchelsea.

  “Is there any way the second person Sam heard was a woman?” Nick asked. He was thinking of Annie.

  The wherryman frowned. “He said the voice was soft, if that’s what you mean. Could have been a young gent, I suppose.

  “Anyway,” he went on. “Sam were about to shout out his rates when one of them left. The other took the lantern and went off over there.” He pointed to the shed.

  “What time would this have been?” Nick asked.

  “Bells had just spoke twelve, Sam said.”

  That was accurate enough. The noise from all the churches tolling the hours was cacophonous, even at night. A born Londoner could count the hours without stirring in his sleep, so used was he to the din. If all the bells were suddenly to go silent, the townsfolk would wake in a panic.

  “Did Sam tie up at the wharf?” If so, then he could be a witness to Winchelsea’s murder. But the wherryman shook his head.

  “Nah. He decided to call it a night. Shoved off and rowed home.”

  Nick hid his disappointment.

  “Good day to you,” the man said, tugging his cap.

  Nick paid him above the going rate in gratitude for his information, although he did not think it would lead to anything.

  “Is that where the agent was murdered?” Rivkah asked, pointing to the shed. “And his body found in the water along this dock?”

  Nick nodded. He took her arm and tried to hurry her on, away from this place of violence and betrayal, but she shook him off. She stood looking at the abandoned wharf and shed. A lone white swan resolved itself eerily out of the tendrils of river mist and silently glided up to the dock. It seemed completely unafraid of them. As swans were normally seen in pairs because they mated for life, it was unusual to see one alone.

  Rivkah crouched down and, taking a piece of bread out of her basket, offered it to the swan. It took it from her fingers delicately. Nick shivered. For a moment, he fancied the swan was the spirit of Winchelsea haunting the place of his murder.

  “A lonely place to die,” Rivkah said.

  It was as if she had uttered Winchelsea’s ep
itaph, and it made Nick feel ashamed that he had been too concerned with his irritation at Essex and Walsingham’s spy games to have given much thought to the man who had died so terribly and, as Rivkah had reminded him, so alone. As they walked up to the Strand and made their way through the streets to Thomas Brighton’s lodgings in Cheapside, Nick vowed that he would bring Winchelsea’s killer to justice.

  * * *

  Rooms of Sir Thomas Brighton, Aldersgate

  Nick, John, and Rivkah climbed the stairs to Thomas’s room. The door was ajar.

  “Thomas, you old malingerer,” Nick called, knocking lightly on the door. “Up for visitors?”

  They entered when there was no reply. Thomas was lying across the middle of the bed on his back, his arms flung out, as if he had been sitting on the side of the bed and had toppled back. He was gasping for air, his limbs shaking. A wineskin lay on the floor at his feet, its sticky contents already drying in a brownish stain on the wood boards. Rivkah rushed over to him and put her fingers against the side of his neck.

  “His pulse is racing,” she said.

  Nick bent to pick up the wineskin.

  “Don’t touch that,” Rivkah said. “Thomas has been poisoned.”

  Now Nick could see flecks of some darkish substance at the corner of Thomas’s mouth, his face pouring sweat as if from a high fever, his hands plucking convulsively at the coverlet.

  “He must be moved to the infirmary at St. Mary Ovarie,” Rivkah said. “But a ride in an uncovered wherry in this weather will kill him.”

  “John,” Nick said, turning to his friend, who was staring aghast at the twitching figure on the bed. “Run to Leicester House. Beg Essex for the loan of his barge. Have it pull up at Blackfriars Stairs, closest to Aldersgate as the crow flies, and wait for us there. Make sure you tell him there’s been another attempt on an agent’s life. Then return here with Edmund so we can move Thomas to the barge.”

  “Christ’s Hospital is nearest,” John said.

  Nick shook his head. “Not safe. Whoever did this can find Thomas there and finish the job. We need to get him over the river to Bankside. Besides, it’s closer to Rivkah and Eli.”