The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1

by Anne Lyle

  "Yes. Look, what is this all about? Leland told me to report next month–"

  "Leland ain't the one giving orders. Not directly, anyhow."

  "I know this commission comes from the Queen. And you don't look like an officer of the Crown."

  Baines sighed. "Are you going to put that pig-sticker away so we can discuss this like gentlemen?"

  "Why should I trust you?"

  "Because," Baines sneered "if I wanted you dead, you'd already be spilling your guts in the rushes."

  Mal sheathed his sword. He didn't doubt the man's words.

  Baines moved towards the empty fireplace. Mal noted he kept to the edges of the room, as if to avoid being silhouetted against the window.

  "You work for Walsingham," Mal said. This was starting to make sense, of a sort. The Queen's private secretary was said to run the largest network of intelligencers in Europe.

  "Give the man a round of applause. Yes, Walsingham. Christ's balls, you college boys aren't half slow on the uptake."

  "What does he want with me?"

  "That's for him to say. Me, I prefer not to know." He probed the corner of his mouth with a finger and flicked something into the fireplace. "Walsingham's house, Seething Lane, five o'clock. Tell no one where you're going."

  Baines left, closing the door behind him. Mal watched him through the window, realising as he did so that this was where Baines had stood to watch for his own approach. He shook his head. What was he getting himself into?

  After dinner Coby ran some more errands for Master Naismith, collecting the tradesmen's bills for the latest building work on the new theatre and delivering a list of the company's intended performances to the Office of Revels in Clerkenwell. She didn't mind the running back and forth; whilst her feet were busy, her mind was free to think and plan. It was one thing to arrange to meet this Catlyn fellow, quite another to get information out of him. Annoying he might be, but he was unlikely to be a complete fool, otherwise he would not have been chosen for whatever wicked scheme the ambassador's enemies had planned. She would have to be discreet and tactful.

  On returning to Thames Street she found Gabriel Parrish in the parlour drilling the apprentices in deportment and womanly manners. Though apprenticed to Master Naismith, the boys took much of their instruction from Parrish since he had the most recent experience of playing women's roles.

  "No, no, no!" Parrish cuffed Oliver around the ear. "Bend at the knee, not the waist. You're not a Bankside whore. Show him, Philip."

  The older apprentice dipped gracefully and picked up the handkerchief that lay in the middle of the floor. At almost sixteen, Philip Johnson was at the height of his career, an experienced actor of female roles hovering on the brink of manhood. This would probably be his last summer of glory, before his voice broke and his boyish charms faded.

  Coby cleared her throat.

  "What do you want, Jacob?" Parrish asked without looking round.

  "I need Philip for a short while, sir, to do a fitting for tomorrow's performance."

  "If you got it right the first time," Philip said, "I would not have to–"

  "It's your own fault. You fidget."

  "Enough. Ladies, please!" Parrish rolled his eyes. "Philip, go with Jacob. Oliver, on with your practice. We will get this right if it takes all day."

  Oliver dropped the handkerchief on the floor, and Philip pointedly stepped on it as he strode across to the door Coby held open for him. The boys were encouraged to behave like ladies at all times, in order that they avoid picking up masculine mannerisms, but this only added girlish spitefulness to their rivalry.

  In the attic where Coby did most of her sewing, Philip stripped to his underlinens and stood in the centre of the room with arms folded. He was still at the gangly stage, all knees and elbows but yet to gain a man's full height or broad shoulders. Coby studied him out of the corner of her eye, anxious to learn every detail of boyish demeanour, even if her best model was one skewed by an actor's upbringing.

  "How women stand this all their lives, I know not," Philip said, thrusting his arms into the corset she held out. Coby laced it up the front with brisk movements; it was much like the one she wore under her own shirt, but cut lower, to enhance rather than conceal. Not that Philip had anything to enhance.

  "You should eat more," she muttered. "Being so skinny makes you look too much like a boy."

  "I eat every scrap on my plate. It's Master Naismith's fault, the miserable old skinflint. Anyway, you're one to talk."

  She stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm not the one who needs to look rounded and womanly."

  She held out the farthingale, and he stepped into it. Coby fastened it at the back then walked around him with her head on one side, peering at the hemline.

  "Are you standing on tiptoe again?"

  "No. See?" He lifted the front of his skirts to mid-calf and dropped them again.

  "Then stop growing, will you?" She placed the end of her measure on the ground and squatted to count off the markings. "I'll have to sew another two inches of guard on all your gowns at this rate."

  She crossed to the baskets filled with neatly folded fabric remnants, and began searching through them for a length of black taffeta to match the farthingale.

  "Short is fashionable. To show off my pretty ankles." He poked one foot from below the skirt, toes pointed.

  "And your yard-long feet," she replied. "No, the hems must touch the ground, or the illusion is spoilt."

  Philip heaved a sigh and folded his arms again. She draped the green-and-gold shot taffeta skirt over the farthingale and again measured the deficit.

  "Want to come to the bear-baiting when we're done?" Philip asked. "I'll lend you an angel to bet with."

  "No, thank you. I have far too much work to do, thanks to your sprouting. And where do you get so much money, anyway?"

  Philip smiled slyly. "De Vere sent me a pearl carcanet. Said I ought to wear something queenly for the contest."

  "And you sold it?" She stared at him in dismay. The cheap fake pearls from the costume chest would not pass muster from the lords' gallery.

  "Pawned it. I can get it back any time before the performance."

  She thought of Catlyn, pawning his lute and running behind on his payments.

  "And what if you can't?"

  Philip shrugged. "There'll be others. I reckon Southampton would cover me in pearls if I let him touch my cock."

  Coby felt herself blush. "You wouldn't…"

  "Course not. Sam from the Admiral's Men reckons you can get more with promises than surrender." He frowned, staring at his own raised hand as if imagining it adorned with jewels. "Still, could be worth it…"

  "You don't mean that. I–"

  "What? You going to rat on me, Jakes?" Philip unfastened the skirts and let them fall to the floor.

  "No."

  "Perhaps I should start spying on you. I'm sure you have some tasty little secret you wouldn't want Master Naismith to find out."

  He stepped towards her over the silken folds. Coby turned away for fear her expression would betray her, and rummaged in her sewing basket.

  "You Dutch are as thick as thieves," Philip went on. "What is it you get up to on Sundays, anyway? Can't spend the whole day at church."

  "Master Kuyper reads to us from the Bible after dinner," she replied.

  "Whited tombs!" Philip attempted a deep hectoring tone, like a street corner preacher. "Full of dead men's bones, and all filthiness!"

  "Don't you quote scripture at me, Philip Johnson. Or I might turn the page to Saint John. Starting with the whore of Babylon."

  The blood drained from Philip's face, and she thought he was going to hit her. Instead he growled something under his breath, snatched up his clothing and marched out. It sounded very like You'll regret that, Jakes.

  "You have all the wit of a cow pat, and are less use withal," she shouted after him, but her words were lost in the slamming of the door.

  She gathered up the fallen
garments, shook them out and hung them back up. She really shouldn't goad Philip, but one of these days she was going to wipe the smile off his simpering, beardless face.

  The streets were becoming busy by five o'clock, as the citizens of London swarmed home for their supper. No doubt that was Walsingham's intent; one more man amongst the throng was unlikely to be noticed.

  Seething Lane lay a stone's throw from the Tower, a narrow street of tall, well-kept houses built close together to make best use of the valuable land. Second to last on the right, Baines had said, with a door knocker in the shape of a lion's head. Mal scarcely had time to lift the heavy bronze ring before the door opened and he was ushered inside.

  He found himself in a bright atrium with white-painted panelling and a black-and-white tiled floor. A wide oak staircase dominated the space, and arched doors led off into the house to either side. The man who let him in wore servant's garb, but his face bore the same guarded expression Mal had seen on Baines's face. Was there anyone working here who wasn't an intelligencer?

  "This way, sir," the man said.

  He opened a door Mal had not noticed before, concealed as it was in the panelling under the stairs. Mal half-expected to see a flight of steps running down to a dungeon. There were many rumours about what went on in the house in Seething Lane.

  Instead he was taken along a short whitewashed passage to a spacious parlour overlooking a walled garden. A gaunt-featured man of about sixty, dressed in a black gown and skullcap, sat in a high-backed chair by the fireplace.

  "Maliverny Catlyn, sir."

  Walsingham raised a hand in acknowledgment. The servant bowed and withdrew.

  "Come closer, Master Catlyn."

  Mal approached the Queen's private secretary and stood to attention, eyes fixed on the plasterwork coat of arms above the fireplace. The design was very plain: a horizontal bar on a vertically striped field. Either an ancient blazon, or one chosen by a man with no taste for the fantasies of the modern age.

  "You understand why I sent for you?" Walsingham asked. His voice was deep, and surprisingly steady for one in evident ill health.

  "No, sir." He had a shrewd idea, but he was not about to admit it.

  "Sit down, Master Catlyn." Walsingham gestured to the chair opposite.

  "I prefer to stand, sir."

  "And I prefer not to crane my neck. Sit."

  Mal obeyed. Walsingham leant back in his own chair, and Mal caught himself on the brink of doing likewise. Allowing himself to relax in this man's presence would be a grave mistake. Perhaps literally.

  "You were seen at Court on Tuesday, talking to Blaise Grey," Walsingham said.

  "He and I were at Peterhouse together. Sir."

  "Yes, well, we will come to that later. But as to the present… You would do well to take more care in the company you keep."

  "Sir?"

  "When the son of one of the most powerful men in England rebels against everything his father stands for, you can be sure it comes to my notice. Blaise Grey attracts malcontents like wasps to a wind-fallen apple. For you to seek him out… well, you must see how that looks."

  For once Mal did not have to feign contrition.

  "I'm very sorry, sir, I did not think–"

  "You young fellows never do. What precisely were you up to?"

  "I–" A half-truth was safer than a lie. "Sir James Leland didn't say how long this commission would last, and as I am sure you know, sir, I have no other means of support."

  "Hmm. Well, you would do well to seek a better patron than Grey."

  "Yes, sir."

  Walsingham folded his long pale hands in his lap.

  "What think you of the skraylings, Catlyn?" he asked, in the idle tones of a gentleman indulging in scholarly debate.

  Mal paused, wondering what answer the spymaster expected.

  "I believe they are part of God's creation," he said at last, "for the devil cannot create any living thing, only the semblance of it. I also believe that, since the Bible is the word of God and of His Son, and there is no mention of skraylings therein, the message of Christ is not meant for them."

  "Then they are damned?"

  "That is for God in His infinite grace to decide, not I."

  "A very pretty answer," Walsingham said. "But I speak of policy, not theology."

  "May I be frank with you, sir?"

  "I wish for nothing less."

  "I think they play a dangerous game," Mal replied. "They rely on fear and awe as a protection, on rumours that they possess magicks far more fearsome than the toys and fancies they show us."

  "Dangerous to themselves, or to us?"

  "Since we are allies against Spain, both."

  "Then you think Her Majesty wrong to continue this alliance?"

  "Not at all, sir." Mal swallowed. Men had had their hands cut off – or worse – for criticising the Queen. "Far better for them to be our friends than the friends of our enemies."

  "Just so. The Spanish would gladly invade England and put a Catholic on the throne if they could muster the forces to do so, the French are allied with our old enemies the Scots… If the skraylings were to abandon us and seek friends in other lands, we would be hard pressed to defend ourselves."

  "You fear the French or Spanish have designs on the ambassador?"

  "If they have not, they are fools."

  "I am already pledged to defend the ambassador with my life, sir, or will be once I take up my duties," Mal said. "Is there aught else you expect of me?"

  Walsingham looked thoughtful for a moment.

  "I knew your father, you know, in Paris. We were both at the English embassy, during the massacre on Saint Bartholomew's Day. Perhaps he mentioned it?"

  "No, he… He didn't like to talk about his work when he came home." Mal paused. "I remember, the summer before my fifth birthday, Mother bought guns for the servants and said there would be no more riding or playing cricket for a while. At the time I was just jealous that Charles was old enough to be given a gun and I was not. Afterwards, I found out she feared reprisals against Catholics."

  "You are a Catholic?" The spymaster's voice remained level, but a dangerous glint appeared in his eye.

  "My mother was. I do as my queen commands, in all things."

  "As should we all." He tapped the arm of his chair absentmindedly, then looked up, fixing Mal with his dark gaze. "Do you know why you were chosen for this commission?"

  "Sir James Leland told me it was the Queen's own command."

  "A convenient fiction. Your name was presented to me by the head of the skrayling merchant-venturers, on behalf of the ambassador himself."

  "What? How–?"

  "How did the name of an obscure country gentleman of no fortune come to the attention of the most important skraylings this side of the Atlantic? Why did they choose you, when there are so many worthier men at Court? I was hoping you could solve that conundrum for me."

  "I– I have no idea, sir." It was truth, of a sort. If the skraylings knew anything about the Catlyns, surely they would have chosen someone – anyone – else. "There must have been a misunderstanding."

  Walsingham smiled thinly. "Our dealings have been beset with misunderstandings, as I recall."

  The letter he had received at college. The one with a discreet "W" seal.

  "That letter was from you, sir?"

  Walsingham nodded, and Mal silently cursed his former naivety.

  "I thought it was a prank by one of the older students." Or worse, a trap to flush out Catholic sympathisers. "I could not believe the Queen's private secretary had any use for me. And besides, there were my studies to consider."

  "The masters at Cambridge know better than to punish those in my employ for lack of attendance at lectures," Walsingham said. "Arrangements could have been made. We did it for Marlowe, after all."

  "Kit Marlowe? But he's–" Playwright Christopher Marlowe had been killed at an eating-house in Deptford, back in May; a quarrel over the reckoning, or so rumour had it.


  "Dead? Yes. A pity. Brilliant fellow, one of the finest poets of our age." Walsingham sighed. "A shame he kept such ill company."

  His words finally sank in.

  "Marlowe was a spy," Mal said.

  "He served his queen and country." Walsingham laced his long pale fingers together. "The offer stands, Master Catlyn. Except that it is no longer an offer."

  "I see."