When Nick climbed into a boat, Hector sat there panting noisily, his long tongue lolling, his face split into a tired but contented doggy grin. From time to time, he leaned over the edge of the boat and tried to lap at the river water, but because it was salty, he reared back, tipping the boat alarmingly and making the boatman catch a crab with his oars.
“Don’t you realize the river is an estuary?” Nick said, ruffling the dog’s head. “It’s seawater, you dolt.”
“There’s a bucket of freshwater under the seat,” the boatman said.
Nick held it for Hector to drink. He lapped up half of it, then, finally sated, rested his shaggy head on Nick’s knees and promptly went to sleep.
“I could do with one of them,” the boatman said, nodding at the slumbering dog, “for when I get awkward customers. One look from him and they’d sit down proper instead of arsing around and nearly tipping us out. Problem is, he takes up half the boat.”
Nick caressed Hector’s head. “I wouldn’t part with him for a thousand gold angels,” he said.
“Don’t blame you. He’s a right noble beast.”
Nick had found Hector dying from a savage beating in the dockland area of a Spanish port when he was spying on the shipyards some years ago. Hector had been a puppy, but still huge, and Nick had carried him back to his inn and nursed him back to health. Nick had named him Hector for his heroic refusal to give up and die despite multiple broken ribs and a fractured leg. Now they were inseparable, and as he was a sight hound, Nick had trained him to take not only verbal commands but visual ones as well. This silent communication between them had saved Nick’s life on numerous occasions.
Nick had the boatman row him to Old Swan Stairs, hard by the western side of London Bridge. Before meeting Robert back at The Mermaid, he had to check something in a district east of St. Paul’s and west of St. Mary-le-Bow. This stretch was known as Goldsmith’s Row, and it had been the center of the manufacture and sale of gold and jewelry in London for hundreds of years. Nick chose a jeweler at random and entered the shop.
When he came out, the bells of St. Paul’s and St. Mary-le-Bow were chiming ten o’clock in the morning. By five after ten, Nick was walking into The Mermaid. He nodded to the barman and a serving wench who was making the rounds with a tray balanced on her hip. In the back room was a man he recognized. He lifted his hand to him and ran up the back stairs to where Robert had taken two adjoining rooms in the rear of the tavern.
“Do you have all the documents?” Nick asked, hugging his brother.
Robert pointed to a table set against the window. On it were legal documents, drawn up, an ink stand, sand, and sealing wax. Because the window was open to the mild spring breeze, the documents were weighted down with Robert’s knife.
“All ready,” he said. “What time did you ask him to come?”
“Half past the hour. He should be here soon.”
Nick signaled for Hector to go into the other room, and after placing a bowl of water and a large lamb bone that Robert had saved from his dinner the night before on the floor for him, he put his fingers to his lips and then shut the door. Hector, he knew, would remain silent unless Nick told him otherwise.
Both brothers sat down in chairs on either side of the fireplace. Between them were a flagon of ale and three goblets.
“Will he come, do you think?” Robert asked.
“He’ll come,” Nick said.
In their discussion the previous evening, they had decided to restore Edmund’s farm and ancestral lands to him.
As the present earl, only Robert had the legal power to give those lands to Edmund, as they had reverted to the Binsey House estate. So Robert had summoned Francis Bacon to the inn late last night and asked him to draw up the relevant documents. Robert and Nick had chosen Bacon because they knew he would report back to Edmund after he returned to Leicester House. That way, Edmund would know Robert and Nick were in earnest.
Now all that was required was Robert’s signature and seal, Edmund’s signature and seal, and Nick’s signature as a witness. In the message Nick had left at Leicester House the previous day, he had briefly explained to Edmund what he and Robert wanted to do. That was why he was certain Edmund would show up. Tomorrow he left for the Netherlands with Essex, so today was his last chance to restore his family’s fortunes.
Nick had thought long and hard about this decision. In his way, Edmund had been loyal to his father, although Nick considered that loyalty misplaced, considering Edmund’s father’s venal character.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Robert said.
Edmund entered. His face was flushed, as if he had been running. Both Robert and Nick stood up and shook his hand.
“Have a seat,” Nick said. He poured ale into the goblets and handed one to Edmund first, then one to Robert, and kept one himself. Holding up his cup, he made a toast.
“To the reversal of wrongs,” he said.
Edmund held up his cup but hesitated before drinking. Nick smiled at him and drank. So did Robert. Then Edmund took a small sip and put his goblet down on a side table next to his chair.
“I cannot thank you enough, my Lord,” Edmund said to Robert. “This is a great day for me and my family. A great day indeed.”
Ten years Nick’s senior and sporting a bushy beard instead of a clean-shaven, scarred face like Nick’s, Robert looked like a benign uncle. He beamed. “Nick and I thought it unfair that the son should have to pay for the father’s crimes.”
At the word crimes, Nick saw spots of color appear on Edmund’s cheeks, but he smiled nonetheless.
“Not many would see it like that,” Edmund said.
“My brother is a just man,” Nick said. “As was our father.”
Edmund looked at him quickly, his expression unreadable. His eyes kept straying to the table by the window and the documents waiting to be signed.
“Shall we?” Robert said, indicating the documents.
Edmund leapt up. Robert and Nick approached the table more slowly, Nick hanging back, as he was going to be the last to sign.
Robert bent over the table, inviting Edmund to do the same. He read out the legal language conferring the land to Edmund as the oldest son, to revert to him and his heirs in perpetuity.
“Is that to your liking?” Robert asked, when he had finished reading.
Edmund gave a great sigh. “Oh, yes, my Lord. I thank you with all my heart.”
Robert picked up a pen and dipped it in the inkwell. “Then let us sign and affix our seals without more ado.”
Edmund was fingering the chain around his neck.
Robert signed. Then he held the lump of red sealing wax to a candle flame until it softened, dripped a great drop onto the parchment, and without taking off his seal ring, pressed it firmly into the wax.
Courteously, he handed Edmund the pen.
Edmund signed. Then he put down the pen and unclasped the chain around his neck. He took off the ring threaded there and held it up. “This is my father’s seal ring,” he said. “But, as you can see, it has lost its seal through age and use.” He showed them the blank metal where a family crest should have been. “I can draw my family motto on the seal from memory, if you are willing to accept that as a substitute?”
The brothers looked at each other.
“It’s a bit irregular,” Robert said.
“It’s not Edmund’s fault the ring wore out,” Nick replied. “I say, let him draw it. That, along with his signature, will make it legal.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said. He was looking at Nick strangely, as if seeing him for the first time.
“All right,” Robert said.
Edmund bent to the document again and carefully inked out an image. Then he sprinkled sand on it to dry the ink and blew off the excess.
“Now,” Robert said, picking up the document and coming to stand beside Nick in the middle of the room. Both brothers were now facing Edmund. “If you would sign as a witness, Nick
? It won’t be legal otherwise.”
“Before I do,” Nick said. “I have something for you, Edmund.”
While Robert had been speaking, Edmund had been smiling at Nick expectantly. But when Robert had picked up the document, his smile had faltered. He now looked uncertainly at Robert and then back at Nick. “I really could not accept anything more. You have been too kind as it is.” His eyes had become watchful.
Nick dug his hand in his pocket. “Oh, I think you’ll want this.” He withdrew his hand and held it out palm up toward Edmund. In the middle of it was the small medallion Hector had found in the shed at Wood Wharf. “In fact,” Nick went on, “you returned to the wharf to search for it the day Stace and Gavell beat you up. At the time, I thought you were just following me.”
Edmund stood as if turned to stone.
“At first I thought this was some kind of medal worn on a chain about the neck,” Nick said. “Except it had no hole in it to take a link, and I noticed that the chain you wore already had a ring on it. So that got me thinking. Today I visited a jeweler, and I asked him about this. Want to know what he told me?”
Edmund did not reply.
“I’ll tell you anyway. He told me that solid seal rings are expensive to make. Like Robert’s, who inherited it from our father and our grandfather before him and so on. It’s made from a single chunk of gold. That gold is poured into a cast with a family crest engraved on the bottom. When it cools, the whole ring comes out in one piece, crest and all. That way, it doesn’t wear out as quickly. But it costs a fortune.”
Nick took a couple of steps toward Edmund, who backed up against the open window.
“But people who can’t afford a seal ring made from solid metal, or who are too mean to pay for it, like your father, I might add, choose another method. They take a gold or silver coin—in your father’s case, a shilling—and give it to a blacksmith. Illegal, of course, but when did that ever stop your father?
“The blacksmith heats the coin,” Nick went on, “then hammers the silver flat so all trace of it being legal tender is gone and only a round disc remains. Then a crest is engraved into the top. It’s affixed to the top of an existing ring with heated metal. Problem with this method is that the seal can come loose. That’s what happened to this”—Nick took a step closer—“when you were torturing Simon Winchelsea.”
“What?” Edmund stammered. “Me? You can’t think? Annie is the one who murdered him; she is the traitor.”
“Give up the act, Edmund,” Nick said. “I have proof. Not only for Winchelsea’s murder but also for Thomas’s poisoning and even the assassination attempt on me.”
All at once, Edmund’s eyes became flat and reptilian. Nick now knew he was looking at the real Edmund, the man who hid behind the hapless, lonely ingenue who used his formidable acting skills to get close to the people he hated.
Nick remembered Machiavelli’s dictum: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Edmund had clearly taken this to heart.
“You fucking smug, self-satisfied, lordly little prick,” Edmund snarled. “You always thought you were better than me, didn’t you? You and that oaf you call a friend. Shame he didn’t die. I hit him hard enough.”
Nick’s hand went to his sword. “You thought John was me.”
Edmund laughed. “You still haven’t figured it out yet, have you, Holt? I knew it wasn’t you. It was John I wanted to kill. Your best friend. The friend you were always going off with at Oxford. A servant. That’s all he was. But me?” His face twisted with hate and something else, perhaps puzzlement. “I was a gentleman’s son, but you preferred to keep company with riffraff. I suppose you thought I was unworthy of you because we had lost everything?”
Now Nick realized what had been bothering him ever since Gavell and Stace had brought John back to The Black Sheep gravely injured. The day had been warm; John had not taken his cloak with him, nor a hat. Thus, his attacker had known precisely who he was when he had tried to kill him. Edmund’s malice had always been aimed at Nick; Winchelsea’s death was an anomaly. Poor Simon had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the killing itself had triggered something long dormant and festering in Edmund and had set him on his bloody path of revenge.
At least Nick now knew that his guilt about John being mistaken for him was completely unfounded.
“It was never about agents, was it?” Nick said. “Winchelsea saw you with del Toro, so you had to get rid of him. Why did you put out his eyes, Edmund?”
Edmund shrugged. “He saw me. It seemed fitting, somehow.”
Nick swallowed. Edmund’s nonchalant response revolted him. Here was a man who was completely detached from other men. Indeed, Nick wondered if Edmund even saw others as human beings at all, subject to cold and hunger and desire as he was himself. In all probability, Simon, Thomas, John, the nameless woman on The Dalliance, Stace, and even Nick himself—no matter how much Edmund hated him—were merely obstacles to be gotten rid of by whatever means possible.
But there was also a love of cruelty in Edmund, the kind that made small boys pull the wings and legs off flies and take delight in their helpless suffering. The correlation between Winchelsea recognizing Edmund and losing his eyes for it confirmed this. And the poisoning of Thomas. It took a particular kind of devilry to subject another human being to a slow and painful death through poison. No wonder Edmund had hesitated to drink; a poisoner would suspect others of the same evil. That was why the punishment for poisoning was being boiled alive in a vat of oil or lead. A hideous death befitting a hideous crime.
Nick glanced at Robert, who was standing gray-faced beside him. He regretted dragging his brother into this, but Nick needed him as a witness.
“You had to kill Winchelsea because he realized you were selling information to the Spanish.”
“What’s my country ever done for me?” Edmund said. “I needed the money if I was ever to buy back my family land.”
“Killing Winchelsea gave you an idea, didn’t it, Edmund?” Nick went on. “Target Walsingham’s agents, and everyone would be looking at a political motive. But the motive was always personal, wasn’t it? Like Hamlet.”
“Exactly,” Edmund said. “Hamlet was a hero.”
“Hamlet wasn’t a traitor.”
Nick saw Edmund flinch at the word. He remembered how rapt Edmund had been during the performance of The Ghost, how enthusiastically he had clapped when the actors gave their bows, the only member of the audience who had seemed to enjoy the play. But then its theme had mirrored Edmund’s life—a son avenging a wrong done to his dead father. Of course Edmund would regard Hamlet as a hero. He himself was a hero in his own mind. What was it his family seal said? Ego permanere. I will remain steadfast. And the symbol for it was the evergreen tree, unchanged whatever the season.
Ever since his father died shortly before Edmund came up to Oxford, he had kept his hatred of Nick and the Holt family alive, nursing it by putting himself close to Nick, trying to insinuate himself into Nick’s life. When that had not worked, they had gone their separate ways. But Edmund had not forgotten Nick. In fact, Nick was certain Edmund had come to London and attached himself to Essex’s spy network not only to be close to Nick but to rival him in his profession as Essex was trying to rival Sir Robert Cecil, his hated adoptive brother. Perhaps, as with Nick at Oxford, he had tried to become friends with Essex, but Essex had spurned him more unkindly and openly than Nick had done, contemptuously treating him as an inferior, a servant. In his own mind, Edmund must have thought history was repeating itself, that Essex was treating him like he believed Nick had treated him at Oxford. This must have fueled his hatred even more.
Edmund’s decision to follow Essex to the Netherlands was not made out of loyalty but from expediency. He needed to get out of England and allow the memory of Winchelsea’s murder to fade. Then he would return and try to kill Nick again.
He must have been astonished to receive the message from Nick the day before. Perhaps he had even
thanked God that he had not succeeded in killing Nick on the London Road.
It was time to talk of Oxford.
“You went to Oxford to meet up again with del Toro,” Nick said. “Why was that when you had already seen him?”
“He owed me money,” Edmund said sulkily.
“But you couldn’t find him. Then you heard I was in town, and you remembered where John and I used to drink.”
“The Spotted Cow.”
“Did you know that you missed bumping into del Toro by a few minutes?”
Edmund’s gaze sharpened. “You lie.”
“No. I was tasked to trail him. I didn’t count on Annie whisking him away under my nose.”
“Annie?” Edmund looked genuinely confused.
“In her whore getup. Very convincing. And as I had not had the pleasure yet of meeting her, I didn’t recognize her. She spirited del Toro away. When I came back to the tavern after trying to find them, you were talking to Robert here.”
“What was Annie doing there?” Edmund asked. For the first time, Nick saw panic in his eyes.
Nick was too weary and too revolted to answer him. As Francis Bacon had advised, he was laying out all the pieces so that Robert could witness them, but he had no stomach for rehearsing such evil. It sickened him to the depths of his spirit.
But Robert was doing more than just standing in as a witness. He had brought with him some interesting information concerning the stranger who had attempted to assassinate Nick on the London Road.
“You murdered a former servant of your family,” Nick said.
Again, Edmund shrugged. “He botched the job. I realized I had to remove him as a witness.”
When Nick had seen the name of the man who died—Walter Harcourt—he realized that Edmund must have murdered him when Nick had rolled into the ditch away from the horses’ hooves. Then Edmund had wounded himself in the shoulder to make it look convincing. Nick had been completely taken in.
The Course of All Treasons Page 25