by Anne Lyle
"This is the ambassador's bedchamber."
"Of course. How else are you to guard him day and night?"
"I–" Mal shivered. If he had known he would be living cheek by tattooed jowl–
"Well, I'll leave you to it. Monkton will be along shortly."
After Leland left, Mal went back down to the small parlour to wait for the captain. He glanced at the door to the ambassador's room. Don't be ridiculous, he told himself. You're no longer a small boy scared of the ghosts in the attic. He marched up the stairs and wrenched the door open.
Really, it was not so very different from his parents' chamber in Rushdale Hall. In addition to the canopied bed, there were chests for linens, a washstand with basin and ewer, and a close stool containing a Delftware chamber pot. The walls were hung with thick tapestries, though on a blazing August day they were scarcely needed. Another large iron-studded door in the far left corner appeared to lead to the walkway to the next tower. Mal tried the handle, but it was locked.
He was about to leave the room when he saw one of the tapestries stir. Drawing his rapier slowly and silently he padded towards it. The tapestry remained motionless. He prodded it with the point of the rapier. Nothing. He stepped to one end of the hanging and raised the edge with his blade.
There was no one there, only a small door. It was locked, but peering through the keyhole he could make out a tiny chamber beyond with a carved wooden screen and coloured glass in the windows. A chapel? If so, it had been locked to prevent desecration. He let the tapestry fall and sheathed his blade.
It may have been a false alarm but it reminded him that, skrayling or not, the safety of the person sleeping in this room would be his responsibility. Lurking assassins were only one threat; Baines had told him of men being poisoned by all manner of cunning means. He put his old riding gloves on and ran his hands over the furniture, looking for concealed needles or protruding nails. Whilst examining the beds he even sniffed the sheets, in case they had been suffused with poison. The linen was musty from long storage, with a faint perfume of entombed lavender, but he could smell nothing amiss.
Satisfied he had done everything necessary to fulfil his duties, he returned to the dining room to wait for Captain Monkton.
Monkton's tour began at the old royal apartments south of the White Tower. The Great Hall had been hastily refurbished for the ambassador's visit, with a new timber roof and tiled floor, but the windows were still empty of glass.
"Why go to all this work, when the Queen has palaces aplenty?" Mal asked.
"The Prince of Wales ordered it done," Monkton replied. "All great royal ceremonies begin at the Tower. The Queen stayed here the night before her coronation."
As will the prince, when he succeeds to the throne? Perhaps he already looks ahead to his mother's death.
After a brief examination of the hall Monkton showed Mal up onto the walkway of the inner curtain wall and through each of its towers. There were no prisoners here at the moment nor, Monkton told him, had there been any since the Prince Consort's death. The whole country seemed to have settled into a sombre peace, untroubled by rebellion or religious strife.
"The calm before the storm, no doubt," Monkton said. "When the Queen dies, Robert will come down hard on Catholics. He is his father's son."
Last on their itinerary was Beauchamp Tower, where Mal was shown the bed in which Robert Dudley had died, and the elaborate carving made by his elder brother John many years previously, when he was imprisoned here during Queen Mary's reign.
"Did you meet the Prince Consort?" Mal asked.
Monkton grunted. "I was not here in his day."
He unlocked another door and they went down a narrow stair, emerging on the Tower Green near the lieutenant's lodgings.
There they were shown through the antechamber into a small dining parlour. Leland was pacing up and down before the fire, a sheet of paper in his hand. A stocky man in his midthirties with sunburnt features and bright, almost manic eyes sat watching him, his lips moving silently.
Leland greeted the two men somewhat distractedly, and continued with his pacing, muttering something unintelligible. Monkton appeared to be accustomed to the lieutenant's eccentric behaviour; he went straight over to the table, where a silver flagon steamed, giving off a scent of cinnamon and apples.
"Splendid idea," Leland said. "This damnable language turns a man's throat to dust."
Monkton poured a little of the hot, spiced wine into silver goblets and handed them to Leland, Mal and the stranger.
"Your health, sirs," Mal said.
"The Queen," Leland replied.
"Of course. The Queen."
Mal took a cautious sip. It was the last of the old vintage, its sourness tempered with sugar and spices.
"You have met Thomas Lodge?" Leland asked, gesturing to his other guest.
"No, sir," Mal replied. He sketched a polite bow, unsure of the other man's status. The stranger was fashionably dressed, but his garments lacked the jewels and intricate embroidery that only the very rich could afford.
"Lodge is newly returned from a voyage to the New World," Leland said, "and will be our translator for the ambassador and his party."
So this was the man with whom he would be working for the next few weeks. He would have to keep an eye on him, in case someone tried to use him as a go-between to get to the ambassador.
"You are a sailor?" he asked.
Lodge flushed a deeper shade of red. "I am a poet. You may have heard of A Looking Glass for London and England…?"
Mal racked his memory. Yes, Ned had once mentioned copying some sides of that play for the Admiral's Men.
"I have not heard it played," he said, "but I am told it is very entertaining, especially the casting of Jonah out of the belly of the whale."
Lodge sniffed in disdain. "There is a great deal more to it than spectacle."
Leland stepped into the awkward silence.
"The voyage must have given you many ideas for new plays," the lieutenant said.
"Indeed it did," Lodge replied, looking pleased with himself. "I have sold one already – but I say too much." He put down his wine.
"The Queen of Faerieland," Mal said. Now he knew where he had heard the name before.
Lodge narrowed his eyes. "Are you a spy?"
"Me? No!" Mal laughed nervously. "Merely an acquaintance of Suffolk's Men. I've been taking lessons in Tradetalk from their young tireman."
Lodge raised an eyebrow. "Really? What did you make of it?"
"It was surprisingly simple to learn."
"Simpler than this, then," Leland said, handing Mal the piece of paper he'd been studying.
The sheet of paper bore three short sentences written in clear round-hand.
Kaal-an rrish, senlirren. Kaalt tokuur London-an iin tuuraq. Iin kaal-an lish hendet tutheeq.
"His Grace the Duke of York insists the visitors are greeted in their own tongue," Leland said with a pained expression. "Wanted me to do the whole damned speech in it, but the Queen's ministers argued him out of it, thank the Lord."
"It certainly looks very odd," Mal replied.
"That's what I told Lodge here, though he swears he has it aright."
"I spent nigh on a year in Vinland," Lodge said, his pale eyes glinting. "I promise you, Sir James, this is their tongue, faithfully transcribed to the best of my skill."
"It had better be, sirrah, else Her Majesty will have you swinging from a gibbet faster than you can say 'Hey nonny nonny'."
Lodge muttered something under his breath, but did not press the point. Leland took back the sheet of paper, folded it up and slipped it into a pocket. Gesturing to his guests to sit down, he took his own place at the head of the table. The servants brought in dinner, and whilst they ate Leland regaled his guests with stories of the Tower's long history and its more colourful inhabitants, whilst Monkton tried unsuccessfully not to look bored.
"Do you smoke?" the playwright asked, holding out a leather tobacco pouc
h whilst tamping down his own pipe with a yellow-nailed thumb.
"Thank you, no," Mal said.
"Quite right too," Leland said. "Damned filthy foreign habit."
Lodge shrugged. He went over to the fire and lit his pipe with a bit of kindling.
"Of course it wouldn't do to say that in front of the ambassador," Leland added. "Help yourself to more wine, Catlyn."
"Perhaps Master Lodge could tell us more about his adventures in the New World," Mal said. Better put the man at ease, if he was going to get anything useful out of him.
"Absolutely," Leland put in. "Do enlighten us, Lodge. Did you see any of their women? What are they like?"
Mal leant in closer, curious to know if Lodge had better information on the topic than young Hendricks.
"I regret to say I cannot confirm their existence, except in legend," Lodge replied. He paused to suck on his pipe. "Though I sailed all along the coast of Vinland and round the Isles of Antilia, I was unable to gain admittance to the Seven Cities. The race dwelling therein is quite different from the skraylings who visit our shores, and they are not welcoming to strangers."
"They are hostile?" Monkton asked.
"No," Lodge said. "Merely aloof. Almost monastic, one might say."
"But no women, eh?" Leland said.
"That was the peculiar thing," Lodge replied. "My skrayling guides referred to the city-dwellers as iiseth, which in other contexts translates as 'women', but from the little I saw of them, I can only assume it was a misunderstanding. The citizens were squat burly folk with bluish skin and short raven-black hair. They wore no face paint but in other respects were unmistakably skraylings."
"Perhaps the word was intended as an insult," Mal suggested.
"No," Lodge said, "my guides were very respectful towards them."
"No accounting for foreigners, eh?" Leland said.
"Well, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I'm for bed," Lodge said. He tapped out his pipe on the hearth, refilled his goblet and carried it off with him.
When the playwright had gone, Leland went over the arrangements for the visit at length: who would be attending the arrival ceremony, which noblemen were out of favour and especially to be watched, and the duties expected of Mal.
"Day and night, mind," Leland said in conclusion. "I want no assassins creeping up on our guests whilst they are my responsibility."
"Will the skraylings not bring their own bodyguards?" Mal asked.
"Undoubtedly," said Leland. "But what do they know of Christians? Can they even tell an Englishman from a Spaniard?"
"Even if they could," Monkton said, "I hardly think our enemies would be so clumsy as to send one of their own openly."
"Perhaps not." Leland drained his glass, and looked at Mal, his eyes narrowing. "But there are plenty of Papist sympathisers here in London. A man who could claim to have broken up our alliance with the skraylings would find rich rewards in Spain. Or France."
Mal nodded. "Sark."
"Quite. The French haven't forgiven us for handing the island over to the skraylings."
"I will be most vigilant," Mal assured him. "No villain will get within five yards of His Excellency, I swear."
As Ned walked home from the Bull's Head, the sun was sinking between the houses at the far end of Bankside in a blaze of gold. Perhaps that was why he didn't see the man standing in his path until it was too late.
"Scuse me." He tried to step around the fellow, who was built like the piers of London Bridge, the ones they called "starlings". The man clamped an enormous hand on Ned's shoulder.
"We want a word with you, sirrah," a voice hissed in his ear.
Ned tried to turn, and found himself being pushed into an alley by two men. Alleys he was used to, but two men at once was more than he cared to handle.
"Look, gentlemen, I'm happy to have all the words you want, but is this the place for it?"
Starling slammed him against the wall. "Shut yer gob!"
First they want a word, then they want me to shut up, Ned thought. I wish they'd make up their minds.
At last he got a look at the second man, or at least as good a look as could be managed in the shadows. He was about Ned's own height, a slight, weasel-faced man wearing a fustian doublet that had seen better days. Ned felt sure he had seen the fellow before, but then there were plenty like him in Southwark.
"You a friend of that whoreson Maliverny Catlyn?" Weasel Face asked.
"What?"
"You 'eard him." Starling took Ned's left bicep in his huge fist, and squeezed.
"Ow, yes, yes I know him. But not all that well–" He clenched his teeth against the pain as the big man squeezed again.
"You sure about that?"
"Yes," Ned gasped.
Starling squeezed, his iron-hard nails biting into the muscle, until Ned was sure his fingers must meet in the middle. He felt tears welling in the corners of his eyes, but he refused to make a sound. He'd had worse than this from some of his customers.
"That's enough," Weasel Face said. "We're not getting anywhere."
The iron grip loosened and Ned sagged against the wall, nursing his bruised bicep.
"Nah," he went on, "there's a much easier way to get what we want."
Ned looked up. There was something in the man's voice that made his flesh creep.
"Got your attention, have I? So, you're going to tell me everything you know about Catlyn."
"And if I don't?"
"Well, now, let's see." The man took a knife from his belt and began paring his nails. Ned watched him, waiting for the threat to come. Sweat trickled down the back of his shirt. The knife didn't look particularly sharp, but depending on what they had in mind, it might not need to be. He weighed up his options. The big man wasn't holding him. How far could he get before they grabbed him again? Probably not far enough.
The knife slammed into a timber beside his ear.
"Don't think of running," Weasel Face said. "Won't do you no good anyway."
"Why not?"
"Because when you hear what I have to say, you'll be glad we're here with you and not somewhere else."
Ned stared at him.
"What's the phrase?" His captor leered. "Oh yes. 'We know where you live.'"
"You wouldn't," Ned growled.
"Ah, but we would, you see. And you'd better believe it." He sheathed the knife. "So, are you going to tell us what we want to know, or are me and my friend going to pay a visit to your dear, sweet, silver-haired old mother?"
The dream began in darkness, but this time it was different. One moment he was riding through the woods, surrounded by masked men, next thing he knew he was on foot and alone. The trees thinned and he found himself on open moorland. Short wiry grass rippled underfoot, though there was no wind. The sky above was a dull nacreous grey; not storm clouds, he realised with a shock, but a sky without moon or stars, as if all the lights of heaven had been smeared like paint across a black canvas.
The moor was studded with great limestone boulders, some taller than himself. Things lurked behind each one; he couldn't see them but he knew they were watching him. He wanted to turn and run but he knew they would pursue him. He looked beyond the boulders, wondering if he could slip past the waiting creatures. In the distance, warm lights burned here and there – farmsteads perhaps? No, too many. A town, a city even. The lights seemed to multiply before his eyes; a few winked out, but were replaced by more. He watched for what felt like an eternity, and eventually the lights began to disappear. He sensed the creatures' disappointment. They had been hoping he would try to cross the moor.
Then from the edge of sight came a new light, searing bluewhite that flooded his vision. He flung up his arms and squinted, desperate to see if this new arrival were friend or foe, but his eyes would not obey. He had to keep his eyes open or the others, the cruel ones, would be upon him in an instant–
Mal jerked awake. A valet was setting down a plate of bread and a tankard on a small table.
"
Did you say something, sir? Anything I can get you?"
"No." His mouth was sour and sticky with sleep. "Wait. I need a clean shirt–"
"We have your new livery laid out ready, sir," the man replied.
"Livery? Oh, of course."
The valet snapped his fingers, and two body-servants stepped forward, linen towels draped over their arms. "Perhaps a shave, sir, before you break your fast?"
Mal gratefully accepted. The last thing he wanted was to turn up to the ceremony with bloody scrapes on his face. He got out of bed and took a chair by the hearth, leaning his head against its back and listening to the crackle of the kindling as the fire caught. Rain rattled against the many-paned windows. Autumn was coming early this year.