“Could the gent have been a woman disguised as a man?” Nick asked.
The tapster looked at him incredulously. “Are you having me on?”
“I assure you, I have never been so serious in my life.”
“It were definitely a man,” the tapster said sullenly.
“Weren’t you even a tiny bit curious why he wanted to rent out the rooms?” Nick pressed, not bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice.
The man looked at Nick as if he were daft. “It were money, weren’t it? Doesn’t pay to ask too many questions in my line of business.”
Looking around at the miserable tavern, Nick could well believe it. He suspected that the tavernkeeper turned a blind eye to all kinds of shady business dealings going on under his nose, like the fencing of stolen goods and prostitution. In fact, Nick was certain the upstairs chambers were usually used by whores as a place to take their johns, with a kickback coming to the tavern owner from their pimps.
“When did the ‘gent’ reserve the use of the rooms?” Nick realized that both rooms would have been paid for even if only one of them was used. This was to ensure that the conspirators had privacy. Once they came down the stairs, they could easily mingle with the crowd or slip out the back door. Nick had seen for himself the previous day how little notice was given to people’s comings and goings there. This was also a mark of an establishment where illegal business was conducted, a kind of unspoken agreement to mind one’s own business. If the authorities came calling—as he and John were now doing—it made lying to them so much easier.
“A month ago?” The man scratched his head. “It were raining, that’s all I remember. Can’t keep the floors clean with people tracking in mud all day.”
As it had rained nonstop throughout the months of March and most of April, this was of no use at all. In fact, it was calculated to be utterly vague. And as the floor was filthy, Nick identified this answer as prevaricating, to say the least. He decided he was beating a dead horse.
Nick also knew it was useless to stake out the tavern to see if Annie, del Toro, or the “gent” returned. Nick’s discovery of their hideout had rendered this place dangerous for them now, and they would not return. Even if they thought Nick was dead, they would assume the body would be found and the tavern would become known to the authorities.
“Let’s go,” he said to John.
* * *
Their next stop was the house Nick had seen Annie enter disguised as a whore and leave dressed as a youth. Unlike the tavern—a public house—this was a private residence, a single-story house joined on one side to its neighbor on the end of a row of similar dwellings. The house had been selected carefully, situated in Moorgate near the north side of the old city wall; the front door did not give out onto the street but looked down an alley, allowing the inhabitants to come and go unobtrusively. The open expanse of Moorgate on the other side of the alley, with sheep grazing placidly on the grass, only added to the privacy of this entrance. The row of houses looked to have been built at least in the last century for shepherds who kept their flocks on Moorfields for the London butchers. With a back door that led to a narrow strip of overgrown garden leading to a lane at the back of the property, it was an ideal bolt-hole for a traitor who could change her appearance like a chameleon. In addition, the house adjoining it on the other side seemed to be derelict, so there would be no nosy neighbors.
“Want me to go around the back,” John asked, “in case she tries to flee?”
Nick shook his head. “No point. She’ll be long gone.”
The front door was locked. Looking up and down the alley to make sure they were not being observed, Nick kicked it in, instantly regretting it as a bolt of lightning shot through his head.
“I could have done the honors,” John said, seeing Nick wince.
“Now you tell me.”
They entered a dark hallway with two doors leading off each side and a door at the end, presumably leading to the garden at the back. The door to the left opened to a bedchamber; the door to the right revealed a room with a chair and table at the front near the window and a kitchen area with a fireplace at the back. Both rooms were narrow and ran the length of the house.
“I’ll start with the bedroom,” Nick said. “You take the other room.”
The first thing that struck Nick was the vast amount of clothing hung on hooks and draped over chests—women’s petticoats, stomachers, skirts of velvet and plain linen, stockings and garters, men’s doublets and hose, even a codpiece. Hanging on the wall next to the window so that it received the most light was a lady’s dressing table and chair; above it hung a large Venetian mirror of tin coated in mercury with a sheet of glass laid on top. Set into the front of the frame were tin candlestick holders to give light at night. Nick’s mother, the Dowager Countess Agnes, owned such a mirror—a present from his father—and it had cost the old earl a king’s ransom.
Scattered on the dressing table were cosmetics of every variety—kohl and charcoal sticks to darken eyebrows or, as Nick had seen, cunningly give the impression of stubble on a man’s chin; a jar of ceruse, a white paste made of white lead and vinegar to give the fashionably pale look the Queen herself favored; a pot of vermillion to give the appearance of rosy cheeks and red lips. But there were also items that no lady would have on her dressing table—fake mustaches, eyebrows, and a pointed beard made from real hair, with a pot of glue and a brush so that they could be stuck onto the face. Nick had been in awe of the way Annie could transform herself not only into other characters—whore or lady—but into the opposite gender. This room was where the magic happened, much like the tiring room behind the stage that actors used to change their costumes. Nick’s friend Will Shakespeare would die and go to heaven if ever he saw the contents of this room.
Draped over the headpost of the small bed was a flowing blond wig. Nick had seen it before on the head of the whore sitting on del Toro’s lap in The Spotted Cow in Oxford. This was proof that Annie had been meeting with del Toro and had intervened when she saw Nick was watching him. Cleverly, she had removed him from Nick’s surveillance. Now Nick recalled being passed on the road by a carriage when he was on the way to Oxford. He had not seen who was seated inside because the blinds had been drawn, but he would guess this was Annie, bringing a chest full of her tricks of the trade in case she had to disguise herself. As it turned out, her whore costume had come in handy.
As much as Nick was enraged by Annie’s perfidy, he could not help but admire her skill as a spy. Seldom had he met anyone who possessed such consummate spy craft as she. If only she were working for Walsingham and not the Spanish. In some ways, he regretted the need to hunt her down and bring her to justice, which meant the headsman’s ax. Such a waste of talent, he thought. But it would not stop him, however much Nick preferred not to have to do violence to women. A traitor was a traitor. And Annie had Simon Winchelsea’s blood on her hands and had tried to kill Nick and Thomas. When it came to it, Nick would show no mercy.
Unfortunately, one of the signs of her professionalism was that he discovered nothing at her house that would tie her to del Toro, no letter buried in one of the chests under the wigs and other paraphernalia, no secret hoard of Spanish gold. John reported the same after his search of the other room.
“Seems like this was a place to store her disguises,” John said, lewdly fitting the codpiece over his privates. “How do I look?” It was one of those absurdly inflated ones designed to make the wearer appear as generously hung as a prize bull.
“I’ve never understood the fashion for those,” Nick said. “It suggests you have something to hide. Like a freakishly small …”
John threw the codpiece onto the bed as if it had burned him.
CHAPTER 18
The Palace of Whitehall
After they left the house in Moorfields, Nick had no choice but to continue on to Whitehall in order to inform the Spider of Annie’s treason and her collaboration with a Spanish agent, as well
as his conviction that she was responsible for the death of Simon Winchelsea and the attempted poisoning of Thomas. He was also convinced that Annie had arranged the assassination attempt on him, for he now knew for certain that the whore he had seen in The Spotted Cow had been none other than Annie.
Nick’s snaillike progress through the London streets was due to the fact that each step he took sent a shock of pain through his head—it was like having the worst hangover of his life without the benefits of getting rip-roaringly drunk the night before. But he was also in the unenviable position of having to confess to Cecil that he had let del Toro slip through his fingers a second time. In short, Nick was in a foul mood, exacerbated by the fact that they had found no evidence at either the tavern or the house.
“I should have realized that the reason she was drinking so much was to make the flagon lighter so she could throw it at me,” he said for the umpteenth time. “Stupid, stupid.”
“I think that’s pretty clever,” John said.
Nick gave him an irritated look. “I mean, I’m the one who’s stupid.”
“No arguments there.” But John slapped his friend on the shoulder to take the sting out of his words.
“Tell me again what happened when you followed Gavell and Stace,” Nick said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t too alert last night.”
“You nodded off in the middle of my account.”
After Rivkah had patched him up, Eli had walked with Nick back to The Black Sheep. The taproom had been full and the noise was agony on Nick’s head, so Eli had helped him up the stairs to his bedchamber. John and Hector had followed them up.
“What the hell happened?” John exclaimed, seeing Nick’s bandaged head.
“Softly, John,” Nick moaned.
Hector had jumped onto the bed and rested his huge head on Nick’s knee, his eyes looking mournfully into his as if to say, Look what happens when I’m not around to protect you.
“He was hit over the head with a poker by an irate woman in drag,” Eli told John. “Lucky he’s got a hard head.” Then, grinning at the stupefied expression on John’s face, Eli had taken his leave.
* * *
“I followed Gavell and Stace to a tavern and watched them drink all afternoon,” John said as they made their way through Cheapside. “At some point, they were joined by Edmund.”
“I thought they hated him?” Nick said, remembering how the hired thugs had attempted to beat Edmund up at Wood Wharf.
John shrugged. “They were pretty drunk, and Edmund was buying.”
Nick could never remember Edmund being flush enough to stand drinks for everyone before. He hadn’t appeared to have two groats to rub together. Perhaps Essex was a generous paymaster to his spies? Nick remembered Francis Bacon complaining about Walsingham’s parsimoniousness; his presence at Leicester House must mean that he sensed profit to be made paying court to Essex.
They slogged on through the mud of the London streets. Early spring had been the wettest and coldest in memory. Nick remembered sleet falling on his journey to Oxford. But the gray clouds that had hung over the city for months had now miraculously cleared and blue sky could be seen above the buildings, although the sunshine did not penetrate where the upper stories of the buildings hung tipsily over the streets. It was only the more open spaces like St. Paul’s Cross, Finsbury Fields, Convent Garden, Moorfields—where they had just come from—or the Royal Parks that received full sun, and there the trees would be beginning to show their buds. Here in the warren of streets in the heart of the city, it was perpetual dusk.
Still, the air was milder, and sensing the coming of spring, London’s collective voice had miraculously grown less quarrelsome.
“Morning, gents,” a grocer’s lad called out cheerily. “Apples only five a penny.”
“You can stick your apples …” Nick began. His head was throbbing, and the joyous sounds of London awakening to spring were more than he could bear. Even the birds cheeping raucously from the eaves was a torture. He longed for a cold, pelting rain that kept everyone huddled miserably indoors.
Quickly, John pulled Nick on.
“Misery guts,” the lad yelled after them.
Nick was also sick of people staring at the bandage around his head as if he were Lazarus emerged from the tomb, so he took it off and stuffed it inside his jerkin. The last straw would be the palace guards making jests at his expense. He also did not want to advertise to the Spider how thoroughly Annie had bested him. If he was truthful, it was the fact that she had managed to outwit him a second time that was the real reason for his bad temper. His pride had been far more sorely injured than his head.
“Rivkah will have your guts for garters,” John remarked.
“Only if you tell her,” Nick said, smiling for the first time that day. The thought of Rivkah’s professional pique filled him with gladness and brought back the feel of her fingers as she held his hand, the steadiness of her voice as she recounted an experience of such horror that it would have broken the spirit of someone with less courage. She had also told him that Thomas was out of danger and would live.
Suddenly, Nick felt churlish to be so out of sorts with the day. The advent of spring now appeared like a good omen: not only would his head mend, but he would track down Annie and bring her to justice. Even the knowledge that she was a traitor and a murderer could not destroy his everlasting thankfulness that now there were no more secrets between him and Rivkah, secrets that had kept him sleepless for many a night and had haunted his days.
* * *
Leaving John to drink a pint of ale with the off-duty lads at the Guard House, Nick made his way to Cecil’s rooms. He walked straight in without knocking and, before Cecil could open his mouth to protest, told him that he had incontrovertible proof that Annie was a double agent working for Spain. As he spoke, Nick saw Cecil’s irritation at being interrupted evaporate. By the end of his account, Cecil was positively beaming, a sight that Nick found a little unnerving, so seldom did the Spider show happiness.
“Why, that’s absolutely splendid,” Cecil said. “Well done.” Then, as an afterthought, “How’s your head?” Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and began pacing the floor, rubbing his hands together. With his small size and the hump on his back, which had caused the Queen to nickname him Pygmy, he looked to Nick more like a troll prowling in his cave. “We’ve got him now,” Cecil said. “By God, we’ve got him.”
“Sorry?”
“Essex. He’s done for. The Queen won’t tolerate this. A traitor and a murderess in his vaunted spy network. Oh, this is splendid.” Cecil was virtually chuckling with glee. It was as bizarre a sight as Nick had ever seen. And as infuriating. Cecil seemed to have forgotten the death of Winchelsea and Thomas’s near death. All he seemed to care about was showing up Essex for an incompetent fool and discrediting him with the Queen. It was as if he had been transformed into a malicious boy. He couldn’t wait to run and tell tales on his hated adoptive brother.
“Remember that Walsingham did not want the Queen to know about del Toro,” Nick cautioned. He still didn’t understand why that was, but he was prepared to trust Walsingham’s judgment, at lease for the present. Whether the Queen knew or not did not affect Nick’s ability to search for del Toro and Annie.
“Are you mad?” Cecil said, stopping his pacing and staring at Nick. “She will have to know that Essex is employing a traitor. Walsingham is ill. He wasn’t thinking straight.”
It’s you who isn’t thinking straight, Nick thought.
“I sent a courier with a message informing him,” he said.
“You did what?” Cecil almost shouted. “Damn. I shall have to act fast. Come on,” he said to Nick.
“Where are we going?”
“Why, to inform the Queen about Essex, of course.” Cecil looked at him as if Nick were a particularly stupid pupil.
Nick shook his head. “Not me.”
“Might I remind you that you work for me,” Cecil said.
“And you work for Walsingham. For whatever reason, he did not tell the Queen of del Toro’s presence in London. I don’t know why, but he must have his reasons. If you inform Her Majesty that Annie is a spy, then you will have to tell her that Annie is working with del Toro.”
“Are you questioning my loyalty?” Cecil demanded.
“No. Just your judgment. I think you’re letting your rivalry with Essex get the better of you. All you can think about is discrediting his spy network, a network that he set up in competition to yours. There may be more things at stake here than your personal hatred for Essex. At least wait until the courier returns with a reply from Walsingham.”
“Get out,” Cecil said.
Nick turned and left.
“I shan’t forget your insubordination, Holt,” Cecil shouted after him. “It will go ill with you and your family.”
CHAPTER 19
Leicester House
Nick brooded on Cecil’s none-too-subtle threat to his family all the way to Leicester House. Coupled with the fact that del Toro had confessed that he was talking to prominent recusant families, it meant that Robert and his entire family could be in grave danger. Nick had to own that one of the reasons he favored keeping the knowledge of del Toro’s presence from the Queen—at least for the time being—was so that this aspect of the Spaniard’s mission would not come out. He thanked God that Robert had not actually met with del Toro. In fact, Nick had Annie to thank for that, he realized, for she had whisked del Toro away before Robert had arrived at The Spotted Cow. And there were plenty of witnesses to attest to this, Alan the tavern owner for one.
Not for the first time, Nick found himself in a cleft stick: if he captured del Toro and Annie and brought them to justice, it would come out that the Spaniard was soliciting support from recusant families, Robert included, and that would place his own family in jeopardy. If he did not, then a murderer and traitor would go free.
The Course of All Treasons Page 17