She gathered the reins together and turned her weary horse round, glancing over her shoulder at Robert as she did so.
‘Asleep, my lord host?’
Robert shook himself, recovering his composure.
‘I am at your service, Your Majesty,’ he replied promptly, turning his stallion aside to allow her to go first on the trail. His voice was polite, courteous as ever, but all the fierce, pulsing excitement she had sensed in him earlier appeared to have dissolved with the end of the chase. ‘A noble death, indeed.’
Twenty
DISGUISED AS A stout ribbon-seller of uncertain age, goodluck made his way across the ford – at a low ebb, thanks to the recent dry spell – and stopped at every lodging between there and Lower Farm, to make his approach more conspicuous and therefore less likely to arouse suspicion. He was watching for young Massetti, who had been allotted a room in Lower Farm, one of the larger houses beyond the ford in Kenilworth village. It had good grazing land to the rear and a fair prospect to the east where thick woodland had been cleared to make way for a new building.
Search M’s rooms at Lower Farm, Walsingham’s note had ordered him. To put my mind at rest.
So Massetti’s innocent face and perfectly credible story of falling on hard times were not enough for the Queen’s spymaster. Well, it would not be the first time an enemy had presented himself in the guise of a smiling friend, though it seemed to Goodluck that even solid evidence of conspiracy would not condemn this young man to the gallows. For Massetti had done what Walsingham could not. He had conveyed Walsingham’s wife and child safely out of Paris at the height of the Protestant massacre. There were some debts that weighed so heavily on a man’s conscience, they could never be repaid.
Reaching Lower Farm a little before noon, Goodluck settled himself comfortably on the grassy bank opposite the gated entrance to the farmyard, and unwrapped the bread and cheese he had brought with him. This he ate very slowly, lying back in the sunlight, watching the narrow windows and front door to the farmhouse for signs of movement. Every now and then, someone would pass in front of a window, or go about some business outside in the yard. He observed all this under cover of combing his beard or swatting away the thick-bodied blue flies which had gathered overhead to share his cheese.
Soon, a young girl came trotting along the lane with a basket over her arm. It seemed likely she was heading for Lower Farm.
Coming level with him, she stopped and gave him a curious look. ‘Are you another of them visitors from up at the castle?’ Her gaze moved down his coarse, shabby clothing to his muddied boots, and then back to his face. ‘You’re not with the court. Who are you?’
‘I’m John,’ he told her cheerily, and drew a green silk ribbon from the leather pouch at his belt. ‘I’m here to see if any round these parts need fancy ribbons. Go on, take it. Have a good look. I make them myself – me and my son, that is. He’s back at home in Warwick. Perhaps I’ll bring him with me next time I’m travelling. He’s a handsome boy, and he likes girls as pretty as you.’
She took the ribbon admiringly. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Though I imagine you wouldn’t look at my son while you’ve got all these foreign lords and who knows what else staying up at the castle,’ he mused.
‘Not just at the castle,’ the girl corrected him, and a smile lit up her face. ‘We’ve four young men quartered here at Lower Farm. But only one foreigner among them. From Italy, he is, though I don’t think he’s a lord. None of them are here now, of course. They spend every day up at the castle, or out on the hunt.’
‘One from Italy?’ He winked at her. ‘I expect he’ll be dark and handsome, that one.’
‘Oh,’ she laughed, and there was a sudden spiteful look to her fair-skinned face. She handed back the ribbon. ‘I don’t know about that. He has a handsome servant though. His name’s Jack. Or … Jacomo. Or some such name. And my elder sister doesn’t mind him.’
‘Taken a shine to the Italian servant, has she?’
She indicated the farmhouse with a petulant jerk of her head. ‘She’s in there now with him, asked me to go on an errand up to the village while she …’ She collected herself, and a closed look came over her face. ‘Well, I’d best make sure the chickens have been fed.’
With that, she disappeared into the side yard of the farmhouse, clucking with her tongue and calling to the hens in a high, childish voice.
Goodluck followed her through the gated entrance to the farmhouse, then slipped round to the other side and let himself into the back of the property through a narrow barred gate. An extension had been added to the house, with the result that the front was more impressive-looking than the back; here, hidden from passers-by, the precarious slant of the walls and the filthy, crumbling plasterwork were indicative of its age.
Goodluck studied the upper windows briefly, then climbed on to the roof of a lean-to wood store, ignoring its resentful creaks under his feet. From there he swung himself up on to a crumbling ledge below the upper windows, and made his way along it towards one that was open. Several times he had to stop and feel forwards with his foot, his ears straining for any noise inside the house. The last thing he wanted was to disturb the young lovers at their play, but from the low murmurs and occasional giggle he could hear through the wall, he guessed them to be in the room adjoining the one with the open window.
There was a thick curtain in the way. Climbing on to the sill, he pushed it aside and squeezed through into the room. After waiting a moment to allow his eyes to adjust after the brightness of the sunshine outside, he let himself slip down to the floor.
The chamber in which he stood was narrow and gloomy. Goodluck listened for a moment, to be sure his entrance had not been noted, but he could hear nothing but the lovers murmuring through the walls.
There was a sweet, almost sickly scent in the air, which did not appear to emanate from the floor rushes.
Perfume? Or poison?
To put my mind at rest, Walsingham’s note had said. Or to wreck its peace instead.
At that moment, a sudden breeze lifted the edge of the curtain, and the room shimmered with sunlight. Goodluck glanced swiftly about, taking his bearings in those few seconds before the curtain dropped again.
There was a bed against the wall, draped in a red coverlet, with a cloak thrown across it as though someone had discarded it in a hurry. A shallow curtained alcove stood open near the window holding a few books, a bowl for water and a brush and razor for shaving.
The centre of the room was dominated by an old oak desk, its surface almost entirely covered by papers, some of them spread open and weighted down for reading. A pair of shoes sat beside this desk, along with a large wooden travelling chest that held more shoes and cloaks, various suits of clothing, and two jewelled, golden daggers, their blades blunt, perhaps intended more for ornament than practical use.
Goodluck walked round behind the desk and chair, squinting to read the crabbed hand on the parchment. They were letters, written in Italian. As far as he could make out, they were innocent communications from his family back in Florence. My dearest Petruccio, etc. Nothing of a political nature at all. He unrolled a few of the other scrolls but, as he had expected, they were insignificant.
Anything of political importance would be in code – and not left here on the desk, in plain sight, where an intruder might too easily find and decipher it.
Goodluck wondered if Massetti’s servant slept here or in another room. Presumably he did not share his master’s room, else he would have been tempted to entertain the farmer’s daughter here, the bed at least being rather more impressive than a servant’s bare mattress.
As he moved around the desk, something crunched under his foot. Stooping, he retrieved a small, misshapen twist of black metal. It looked like part of a ring that had been broken, the kind that might go through a bull’s nose. He slipped the metal fragment inside his jacket for later examination.
There was a small locked chest on the desk.
It was of dark wood, ornate, intricately carved with human figures, and reminded him of the old holy relic boxes he had seen once or twice in Mary’s reign, before such Catholic nonsense was once more banned from churches.
What’s in here, he wondered, eyeing the foreign lock. Choosing his slenderest tool from an inner pocket, a mere sliver of iron with a filigree end, he inserted it delicately into the lock and, with eyes closed, bent to listen to the scrape of metal against metal.
The box did not take long to give up its secrets. Smiling with satisfaction, Goodluck laid the pick carefully on the table – he must not forget to lock the box again before leaving – lifted the wooden lid and looked inside.
There were a few tiny scraps of parchment, mostly blank. One bore a list of Italian names, none of which he recognized, though he committed a few to memory before putting it aside. The carved box contained an unmarked bottle with a few fingers of some cloudy liquid left inside – the source of the sickly scent he had smelt on entering the room, he confirmed, sniffing at it cautiously – and a seal with the figure of a bear on it.
Startled, he recalled Leicester’s well-known family device, the bear with the ragged staff, then shook the thought aside. He was beginning to look for treachery where none existed.
Did this mean that Massetti could be the ‘Bear’ of whom he had heard in Pisa? This device showed only the head of a bear, and had no staff or other embellishments – just a few traces of red wax still clinging to its edges. No, it could not be Massetti’s personal seal – that lay openly on the desk – but it was a mark he had never seen before.
Examining the desk again, and the floorboards immediately beneath it, Goodluck found more traces of red wax, some not yet fully hardened. So letters had been sent, and recently too, using this private seal. But to whom, and why?
Frowning, he replaced the items and carefully relocked the box. From the room next door, there was a muffled female cry and the creak of a mattress.
Smiling drily, he turned to examine the rest of the room.
So the farmer’s daughter had not proved slow at introducing Massetti’s man to the pleasures of an English country rose. All to the good. Now he could be sure not to be disturbed for another half-hour at least; these amorous Italians liked to draw out their lovemaking almost as long as their siestas.
But even as he bent to check through one of the letters lying on the desk, there was a shout from outside in the road.
‘Massetti!’
Next door, the mattress creaked again, and then the floorboards. The girl started to complain, her voice plaintive, and was roughly shushed, as Massetti’s servant jumped out of bed to listen at the door.
Another shout, this time in Italian, and the thud of heavy boots came up the stairs.
‘Hey, Massetti! Stop hiding now, come out and face me!’
A coarse oath in Italian issued from next door at this, followed by the sound of a man hurriedly dressing and falling over in his haste.
The owner of the heavy boots was nearly at his door. Goodluck did not bother to make for the curtained window but slipped instead into the covered alcove, knocking the empty water bowl from its stand with a crash. He could only hope that Jacomo’s breathless appearance on the landing, and his loud exclamation at the sight of this unexpected visitor, had covered the noise of its falling.
His heart thundering, Goodluck dragged the thin cloth across himself just as the door began to open. Standing rigid behind it, he counted on the dim light in the chamber to keep him hidden.
‘So he’s not here? Well, you can tell your master,’ the other man was saying in Italian, his tone threatening, ‘that we want our money. Or we will make sure his master knows what Petruccio Massetti involves himself in here in England.’
‘You cannot be seen here, Alfonso. It is too dangerous,’ the servant hissed, pushing the door shut. ‘We are not alone in the house.’
‘My people have already acted for your master. This kind of business is expensive. We want more gold, you understand?’
‘Get out!’ the servant repeated, his voice shaking.
There was a quick rasp of metal, the unmistakable sound of a weapon being unsheathed, and the servant stepped back hurriedly, knocking over one of the chairs.
‘Now listen, there is no need for this to become unpleasant,’ Alfonso said, his tone deceptively friendly. ‘When he comes back, you will tell Massetti that we know where his family is, and where his fine young son has been hidden away. A clever boy, I am told, and handsome too. It would be a shame for such a son to die over a few handfuls of gold.’
The servant made a groaning noise. ‘Please, have pity—’
‘All we want is the gold we were promised, and before the thing is done. Not after.’
‘I will tell him. Now go!’
Hearing the chamber door creak open again, Goodluck seized this chance to peer round the edge of the curtain, but all he saw in the poor light was the servant’s back and the hooded figure of Alfonso in the doorway. Left behind was a thick, musty odour of … what? The stables? Goodluck could not be sure, and he had no time to consider, for almost at once the servant left the chamber too, locking the door after him and hurrying away down the stairs.
The water bowl Goodluck had knocked to the floor was chipped. Hoping the damage would not be noticed, he replaced it on its stand, tidied the curtain and the various papers he had touched on the desk, then trod silently to the window.
Safely down, he climbed the crumbling wall at the back of the farmhouse and set off across the meadow into woodlands, taking the long way back to the castle to avoid crossing the servant’s path. The sunlight fell green through a dazzle of leaves, and Goodluck found himself whistling under his breath. As he walked, he thought of the young couple making love while he searched Massetti’s room, the sound of their love-play through the wall, the creak of bedsprings, the whispers and muffled laughter.
Young love …
It seemed half a lifetime ago since that night Lucy’s mother had come running round the corner, crying and with her cheap gown torn, her breasts and rounded belly on show.
Goodluck had pulled her aside into a doorway, laying a hand across her mouth to silence her breathless sobs. He had waited until her pursuer could no longer be seen before taking her home with him, knowing he could not leave a woman pregnant and penniless on the streets.
Shutting away the dazzling memory of her face, Goodluck concentrated instead on Massetti and the furious exchange he had just overheard in the Italian’s chamber.
So there was indeed a plot in hand, and Massetti was involved, though not his ‘master’ – which meant what, exactly? His employer back in Italy, or Francis Walsingham himself?
Whichever it was, it sounded as though Massetti might be an intermediary, bankrolling the Queen’s enemies on behalf of a third party. For someone must have supplied the gold to pay the assassins, and it would not have been Massetti, whose impecuniousness had been mentioned by Walsingham. From the threats he had overheard just now, it seemed likely that Massetti was in over his head – and, with his son held hostage, against his will.
All we want is the gold we were promised, and before the thing is done. Not after.
But what was this ‘thing’?
Finding no easy answers, Goodluck crossed a small clearing in the woods, raising his face to the generous warmth of the sun.
When did the Italians plan to carry out their attack?
My people have already acted for your master.
Now this had a sinister ring to it. Yet Goodluck doubted that Walsingham could act on this information, for they still did not know what was being planned, nor who to arrest.
Goodluck sighed, his heart heavy with foreboding. He knew only too well that if a high-ranking English nobleman was behind this latest plot to assassinate the Queen, Walsingham would wish to discover that individual’s name before making his move, even if it meant baiting a trap with the Queen herself.
Twenty-one
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br /> HIDDEN AWAY AT the rear of the hunt with the other ladies-in-waiting, Lettice sat sore and limp, exhausted by many tedious hours of jolting side-saddle over rough terrain, following Kenilworth’s hounds up and down steep banks and even through briar patches. Her hands trembled with fury on the reins, but she kept a smile pinned to her face. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – her lover, the man she would call husband if she were not already shackled to the unspeakable Essex – had not so much as glanced in her direction the whole afternoon.
And why? Because Elizabeth, with her wrinkled face and false red hair, had been monopolizing him for hours. Indeed so deep had her talons been buried in his flesh that Robert had been unable to leave her side for even a moment. Powerless, Lettice had been forced to watch as Elizabeth, the bastard daughter of an adulterous whore, had ridden in state with the leaders of the hunt, laughing and shouting out to the huntsmen on foot, her voice loud and coarse as that of the commonest fishwife.
Lettice was not even sure that Robert had noticed her, despite her extravagant, low-cut gown – the furthest she could push Elizabeth’s peevish injunction that none of her ladies should wear anything but black or white. This, she had claimed, was to preserve their chastity and protect them from vanity. Chastity! Elizabeth was, Lettice knew, no more a virgin than she was. And as for vanity – it was plain to Lettice that Elizabeth wanted to be certain that none of her ladies-in-waiting outshone her at court.
Even little Kitty, with her mousy brown hair and simple smile, could outshine a woman so clearly past her prime. For all her gorgeous silks and jewels, her fantastical gowns and hair dressings, Elizabeth Tudor was old enough to be a grandmother – had she served her country with proper female submissiveness, that is, and married some virile prince while still young enough to bear him heirs to the throne of England.
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