The Course of All Treasons

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  John nodded and left the room.

  Nick regretted involving Essex, especially as he did not know who was trying to kill off Walsingham’s agents, but felt he had no choice. They had to get Thomas to the infirmary as quickly as possible.

  “What can I do?” Nick asked. He had absolute faith in Rivkah’s skill; if anyone could save his friend, it was she.

  “Help me prop him up on the pillows. He cannot breathe on his back.”

  Nick lifted Thomas and laid him lengthwise on the bed. Then he stacked pillows behind him so that he was almost sitting up. Immediately, Thomas’s breathing became less labored.

  “I need water and salt,” Rivkah said. “A lot of both.” She lifted each of Thomas’s eyelids and saw that the pupils of both eyes were unnaturally enlarged, giving him a staring look. “Hurry, Nick.”

  Nick ran down the stairs and out into the street. Three doors down he found a tavern and burst through the door.

  “I need a bucket of water and as much salt as you have,” Nick demanded of the tavern-keeper. He placed a silver crown on the bar. “As quick as you can. It’s a matter of life and death.” Briefly he explained what he needed it for, and the tavernkeeper ordered his boy to draw two buckets from the well and to help carry them to Thomas’s lodgings. His wife silently handed Nick a large cake of salt wrapped in burlap.

  Back at Thomas’s rooms, Nick watched Rivkah shave the salt into a goblet of water and stir vigorously. Then she picked up a bowl of fruit from a table, dumped out the contents onto the floor, and placed it on Thomas’s lap.

  “Tip his head back and pinch his nose,” she instructed.

  Seated on one side of the unconscious man, Nick held him up and cradled his neck in the crook of his arm so that his head lolled back, although his body was upright. Then he pinched Thomas’s nose while Rivkah poured as much of the salt water down his throat as she could. Thomas gagged and thrashed, trying to resist. It was the first sign of awareness of what was happening to him that Nick had seen. He looked for reassurance to Rivkah that this was an improvement, but her eyes were fixed on her patient, a small frown on her face, watching for any sign that Thomas was not too far gone for his body to reject the poison he had unwittingly imbibed.

  Suddenly Thomas arched back, then threw himself forward and violently vomited the contents of his stomach into the bowl Rivkah was holding. His convulsions seemed to go on and on, but at last he went limp and they laid him back on the pillows. Rivkah climbed off the bed with the bowl and examined the contents, swirling the bowl and sniffing it.

  “Belladonna,” she said. “He was lucky he only ingested a small amount and we found him so soon. Otherwise he would be dead.”

  Nick thought guiltily of the wine he himself had brought Thomas on his last visit and had encouraged him to drink, despite Rivkah forbidding it. Belladonna, or deadly nightshade, was one of the most common poisons; it grew wild as a weed, and almost anyone could gather it and use the berries or roots. In small doses, it was used as a remedy for palpitations of the heart. In large doses, it sent the heart into fatal arrest. Its name—belladonna, or beautiful lady—derived from the fact that women used it to enlarge the pupils of their eyes so that their eyes looked bigger.

  Rivkah cleaned out the goblet of salt water and refilled it with fresh water from the bucket. Then she held it to Thomas’s lips.

  “Drink,” she ordered.

  Thomas’s eyes flickered open briefly. “Yes, Doctor,” he managed to croak. She hushed him and dribbled some water into his mouth. Exhausted with the effort, Thomas’s eyes closed again, and he seemed to slip away into a deep slumber.

  “Will he recover?” Nick asked, mopping his friend’s brow with a rag he had dipped in the clean water from the bucket.

  “Time will tell. He’s already weak from the influenza, but he is a strong man and has recovered well from wounds before.” Rivkah was referring to the sword and musket scars on Thomas’s torso. “But we must get him to Eli.”

  At that moment, there was a clattering on the stairs, and John, Edmund, and Essex burst into the room.

  “How is he?” Essex asked Nick. Then he caught sight of Rivkah.

  “I am Sir Thomas’s physician,” she said to his unspoken question. “We need to move him to your barge with all speed.”

  If Essex was surprised at Rivkah’s gender or her quiet authority, he didn’t show it.

  “My carriage is waiting downstairs. I thought it easier than carrying him through the streets to the barge.”

  “Thank you,” Nick said. And meant it. In his state, Thomas might not survive being carried in the rain across town to the river. Even with foot traffic impeding the carriage’s progress through the streets, at least he would be dry and warm.

  Together the men wrapped Thomas in a coverlet and carried him down the stairs. He was still unconscious, but his eyelids flickered occasionally as if he were at least in part aware of movement.

  “Will he die?” Edmund asked.

  Nick glanced at Edmund’s face and saw it was as pale as when he had killed the assassin on the London Road. Another thing that made him unsuitable as an agent: Edmund was squeamish about violence and sudden death.

  “We don’t know,” Nick said.

  Carefully, they laid Thomas along one of the seats of the carriage, covering him with furs that Essex had been thoughtful enough to bring. Rivkah climbed in beside him and placed Thomas’s head in her lap so she could monitor his breathing.

  “You go too, John,” Nick said. “Tell the bargemen to row for St. Mary’s Queen Dock. They can help you carry him into the infirmary from there.”

  John nodded. St. Mary’s Queen Dock was located at the southern tip of London Bridge, directly opposite St. Mary Ovarie Church.

  “Eli will still be there,” Rivkah said. “He will know what more can be done for Thomas.” What she did not say, but what everyone understood, was that she did not know whether it would be sufficient to save his life. That all depended on how much poison had been purged by the vomiting and how much remained in his body. Only time would tell.

  “I will return to The Black Sheep later,” Nick said to John. A look passed between them. Their plan for John to watch Nick’s back had just gone up in smoke with the attempt on Thomas’s life. And that attempt now made it certain that Walsingham’s agents were being systematically targeted.

  Nick leaned into the carriage, his voice so low only John and Rivkah could hear. “Watch over Thomas until you can get one of Black Jack Sims’ boys to do it. There may be another attempt on his life. And, John,” Nick said. “When Thomas is able to talk, find out who brought him the wineskin.”

  “The wine was fresh,” said Rivkah. “So it would have been siphoned from a barrel relatively recently.”

  “Good to know,” Nick said. That meant tavernkeepers’ memories would also be fresh and they might remember someone purchasing a wineskin in the last couple of days.

  “What’s the killer’s motive?” Rivkah asked. “Don’t tell me robbery.”

  Nick knew she had worked out that the attempt on Thomas’s life was connected to the attempt on his own and was not, as he had allowed her to believe before, a botched robbery.

  To avoid the accusation in her eyes, Nick slapped the rump of the leading horse, and the carriage pulled away down Aldersgate, turned right at Newgate, and was gone.

  Rivkah’s look of sorrow burned in his chest. His refusal to answer her proved that he had been lying to her through omission. Given that she knew Sir Thomas was one of Walsingham’s agents, it was no stretch of the imagination to assume Nick was also in the same business. Somehow he would have to put things right between them. How, he did not know, unless he came clean about his secret life. He shuddered at the thought.

  When Nick got back to Thomas’s room, he found Edmund holding the wineskin. “I thought I would throw it on the midden behind the building,” Edmund said. “That way, no one will be tempted to use it again.”

  “It’s evidenc
e,” Nick said. “We need to show it to every tavernkeeper in the area and find out who bought it.”

  “Good,” Essex said. “Edmund can do that.” He looked at Edmund standing there. “Well, you heard Nick.”

  “At once, my Lord,” Edmund said, leaving the room, face averted.

  Nick turned his back on Essex and started searching the room; he was mortified that his friend had been treated so peremptorily in front of him. Once again, Essex seemed oblivious of his rudeness. It was as if he regarded all men beneath his own exalted class as mere servants, tools to be used. No wonder his presence in the Netherlands had been so disruptive; he had the uncanny knack of putting people’s backs up without being aware of it. Nick himself was only just holding on to his temper despite his gratitude to Essex for loaning his barge and carriage to transport Thomas.

  Essex was a strange, mercurial mix of generosity and callousness, thoughtfulness—witness the fur rugs he had included in the carriage—and utter obliviousness to others’ feelings. It was as if there were two men inhabiting one skin—one whom Nick despised; the other whom he couldn’t help but like.

  And if Nick was honest with himself, he also despised Edmund’s servility. Perhaps that was why he had avoided him when they were at Oxford. There was something about Edmund’s very desire to please that set Nick’s teeth on edge. Nick hated himself for it and suspected it made him more like Essex than he would have believed possible.

  To distract himself from these depressing thoughts, and the knowledge that his friendship with Rivkah might be irretrievably damaged, Nick concentrated on searching Thomas’s room. He stripped the bed, but found nothing except Thomas’s dagger under the pillow, and examined the cracks in the flooring to see if anything had fallen between them. He was looking for some clue to the identity of the person who had brought the poisoned wineskin to Thomas, but he knew it was hopeless. Whoever it was could have placed it in Thomas’s room while he was sleeping; it would have been easy enough, as Thomas had not kept his door locked. One thing Nick did know: whoever had tried to poison Thomas knew he was sick in bed and knew he had visitors who brought wineskins. Nick had not only been seen the last time he visited, but he had unknowingly provided the killer with the perfect means to murder Thomas.

  “Seems like you have everything in hand,” Essex said. “I’ll be off. I must report to the Queen what has happened.”

  Get in before Walsingham has a chance, thought Nick uncharitably. But the Queen would have to be told, and Nick would rather Essex break the news to her than do it himself. He was also relieved not to have Essex hanging over his shoulder while he investigated.

  * * *

  Once Essex had gone, Nick went onto the landing on Thomas’s floor and knocked on the door opposite.

  “Who knocks?” a voice boomed. “Speak, gentle, or forever hold thy peace.”

  Nick blinked and wondered briefly if he had stumbled into a farce, perhaps as the hapless messenger to a king. “Open up in the Queen’s name,” he shouted. Mention of the Queen usually did the trick, Nick found, and this was no exception.

  The door flew open to reveal a man so enormous that he entirely filled the doorway, blocking all view of inside. Even though it was still morning, he was holding the leg of a capon in one fist and a tankard in the other. His chin was shiny with grease, and as he chewed, he regarded Nick through tiny, intelligent eyes sunk deep into the folds of his face like currants in a suet pudding. His jerkin was fouled with not only his present repast but many earlier meals, judging from its malodorous condition. Nick wrinkled his nose at the sour smell coming off the man, at his unwashed, unshaven appearance. But despite the overwhelming impression of a pig in a trough, the man’s expression was cheerful, as if he was delighted to be interrupted in the middle of his breakfast by a stranger.

  “Greetings,” the man said, waving the capon leg as if it were a royal scepter. “Prithee, enter.” He backed away so that Nick had room to squeeze through the doorway. A table groaning with food sat under a window with a chair pulled up to a platter with the rest of the dismembered capon on it. The rest of the room was littered with past meals, shriveled apple cores, bones picked clean, the sour smell of spilled wine and ale. It was truly a sybarite’s palace.

  “Sack?” the fat man offered, holding up a jug.

  “No, thanks,” Nick said. “But don’t let me stop you. I just have a few questions.”

  “Please,” the man said grandly. He sat down heavily in the chair and carried on eating. “Don’t mind me,” he added. “I have to keep my strength up.”

  “Did you see anyone deliver a wineskin to the room opposite either today or yesterday?” Knowing Thomas, he would have poured himself a drink almost as soon as he got the wine.

  “So that’s where it went,” the man said.

  “I don’t follow,” said Nick.

  “My daily wineskin. I have one delivered every morning from The Rising Sun tavern, only yesterday it didn’t come.” He regarded Nick dolefully. “It just goes to show, does it not, that you cannot trust your neighbors. And Sir Thomas seemed like an honorable sort, not one to filch another fellow’s tipple.” He sighed as if the perfidy of the world weighed heavily upon his soul. “What’s this about?”

  “I’m afraid Sir Thomas has been poisoned.”

  The man’s face turned pale, and he looked balefully at the tankard in his huge fist.

  Before Nick could point out that the man would certainly have known about it by now if his sack had been tampered with, there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and Will Shakespeare burst into the room.

  “Sir John, you old devil,” he cried. “How goes it?”

  “Will?” Nick said.

  “Hello, Nick. Sorry about Thomas.”

  “How did you hear?”

  “We were rehearsing at Leicester House when John came rushing in with the news. Thought I would come over and see if I could help.”

  Nick sighed. As a spy agency, Leicester House was a joke. It leaked like a sieve. “You obviously know this gentleman.” Nick pointed to the fat man.

  Will laughed. “Sir John Staffington is a generous patron of our acting troupe.”

  Clearly overcoming his qualms about his sack being poisoned, Sir John raised his tankard in a toast. “Here’s to you, immortal thespians.”

  So that explained Sir John’s initial greeting, Nick thought. He was a theater buff. Which meant that half of what came out of his mouth was pure fiction and the other half pure intoxication. It hadn’t taken Nick long to figure out that Sir John was already three sheets to the wind despite it being only midmorning.

  “Can we get back to business?” Nick asked.

  “Sorry, Nick,” Will said. “I’ll keep mum.” He sat opposite Sir John and, after sniffing at the flagon, helped himself to a cup of sack. The fat man and the would-be playwright chinked tankards. Nick sighed. But for the absence of scantily clad nymphs, Nick felt like a Puritan who had inadvertently stumbled into a bacchanalian orgy.

  He pressed on manfully. “You were saying that you did not receive your usual wineskin yesterday from The Rising Sun, Sir John.”

  “That’s right. Most peculiar. I flatter myself I am their best customer.”

  I bet, Nick thought, eyeing Sir John’s enormous girth.

  “I heard footsteps and I thought, ‘Aha, my wineskin has arrived. Oh, joy!’ But when I opened the door a little while later, there was nothing there. Most disappointing.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Not a soul.” Sir John looked downcast; then he brightened. “Lucky for me, eh? Otherwise it would be me that was poisoned.” Then, as an afterthought. “Poor Sir Thomas.”

  “Indeed,” intoned Will.

  “You might ask the landlady downstairs,” Sir John said. “A Mistress Shrewsbury.” He laughed, a huge sound that boomed off the walls. Will looked at him fondly, Nick not so fondly, as he was sure he was now partially deaf. “Shrew, more like.” Sir John slapped his knee with delight
at his own wit. “Mistress Shrew.” He jerked his head at the floor. “Lives below in the nether regions.”

  Nick felt sorry for the poor woman. He would not like to have a neighbor the weight of Sir John galumphing around just above his head at all hours of the day and night.

  “Thank you, Sir John.” Nick could now inquire at The Rising Sun and find out who delivered the wineskin and precisely when. Perhaps Edmund had already done so.

  “Not at all, young sir. My infinite pleasure. And please convey my deepest commiserations to Sir Thomas. I trust he will recover?”

  “We hope so.”

  * * *

  The woman who opened the door to Nick on the ground floor was so tiny and wore so many layers of clothing that she did indeed look like a shrew peeking out of its nest. To add to this impression, her long nose twitched at the sight of him, as if Nick had brought the rank odor of Sir John with him; tiny, black eyes darted over his face and clothes, assessing him as a possible threat. Nick had to suppress a smile at the aptness of Sir John’s name for her. In addition to a cap, she had a shawl over her head and a blanket around her shoulders.

  “Mistress Shrewsbury,” Nick said, bowing. “I hear that nothing goes on in this building without your knowledge.” A bit of flattery never went amiss, Nick reckoned. “May I come in and ask you a few questions? I am on the Queen’s business.”

  “Is this about poor Sir Thomas?” the landlady said in a surprisingly strident voice that belied her diminutive appearance.

  “It is.”

  “Then you’d better come in,” she said. “Make sure you wipe your feet on the mat.”

  After dutifully wiping his feet on a threadbare rug just inside the door, Nick was free to look around the room. It was cold and dark, with an empty fireplace despite the large basket of logs standing on the hearth. In other circumstances, this lack of a fire would have suggested poverty, but Nick could see that the furnishings of the room were of good quality—a solid oak sideboard with silver candlesticks (candles unlit) against one wall; a threadbare Turkey carpet; a glimpse of a four-poster bed hung with painted cloth through the doorway into the bedchamber beyond. The room was literally stuffed with belongings, and Nick surmised that Mistress Shrewsbury was a widow who had rented out the rest of her house to make ends meet and had somehow managed to cram all her furniture and knickknacks from the entire house into these two rooms. The lack of a fire and light was probably her mistaken notion of economizing, although he couldn’t see that she needed to with the high rent Sir Thomas and Sir John undoubtedly paid in such a respectable neighborhood as Aldersgate.