by Jane Feather
She was escorted to the stables, where Thomas, black-faced as before, waited with Jenny and his own horse. “You can consider yourself fortunate Sir Francis has you in charge,” he said, almost throwing her into the saddle. “If you were left to me, you’d be regretting the day you were born.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Rosamund muttered, reflecting that at least she had one reason to be thankful for her cousin’s protection. As they rode to Seething Lane, her mind focused miserably on the upcoming meeting with Lady Walsingham. What would she have been told? Presumably the truth. What would she think of the girl she had taken into her house with such kindness and generosity?
Would she see only monumental ingratitude? Would she cast her former protégée aside as a wanton? Beyond the pale, a waste of all her efforts? Beside the prospect of Ursula’s disappointment, Thomas’s barely controlled rage was nothing to bear.
At Seething Lane, Thomas told her curtly to go inside. He was not to accompany her. She dismounted without his assistance, handing him Jenny’s reins, then, full of trepidation she knocked on the door.
It was opened almost immediately by the familiar Mortlake, who held the door for her. She stepped into the hall, with its wonderfully familiar scents of beeswax and lavender.
“Lady Walsingham is in her parlor. You’re to go to her there,” Mortlake said behind her.
She nodded, took a deep breath, and went to the parlor, where she had so often freely entered at will. Now the door was closed and she knocked, tentatively.
“Come in, Rosamund.” Ursula’s voice was soft and pleasant as always, but her eyes were grave as she regarded Rosamund, who, after opening the door, curtsied, then stood silent in the doorway.
Ursula beckoned. “Close the door.” Rosamund did so.
“Come and sit down. You look as if you’ve had a very difficult day.”
At the note of sympathy Rosamund was afraid she would burst into tears. It was the first kind word anyone had spoken to her since she had left Will that morning, which seemed to have happened in another lifetime. She sat down on a low stool in front of Lady Walsingham.
“Well, what a pickle you seem to find yourself in,” Ursula said matter-of-factly. “You shall tell me the whole shortly. First, when did you last eat?”
“This morning, at breakfast, madam.”
“Good God, have they kept you all day without food?” Ursula reached for the bell and rang it vigorously. When a servant answered, she gave order for bread, meat, and wine to be brought immediately. Then she leaned forward, tilting Rosamund’s chin on her forefinger. “Poor child. It is a den of thieves, I did try to warn you.”
“Oh, madam, you did,” Rosamund exclaimed, horrified that Ursula should blame herself for any of this disaster. “I couldn’t quite believe in how truly, truly horrible the women can be. It was all my own fault. I was stupid and I should have known better. I am so very sorry to have let you down. I must seem so ungrateful, but I am not, I am so grateful to you for all your kindness.” She seized Ursula’s hand in a fervent clasp. “You must believe me.”
“Oh, I do, my dear. I know what traps are there for the innocent and unwary.” She sighed, patting Rosamund’s hand. “Now you shall eat and drink, and then, when you feel refreshed, you had better tell me the whole, because I do not believe that my husband has done so.”
The servant had laid a cold roast fowl, a loaf of bread, and a flagon of wine on the table and Ursula gestured to Rosamund. “Go to, child. Go to. You will feel better directly.”
Will Creighton forced himself to go through the day as if nothing had happened to disrupt his usual easygoing nonchalance. The morning’s scandal was on every tongue, the disgrace of the newest maid of honor a delicious morsel to be savored, chewed over, speculation as to the identity of the lover a delightful topic. His anxiety for Rosamund was sometimes greater than the fear for himself, and sometimes took second place.
Part of him wanted to leave the palace, flee to his lodgings and bury his head, as if that would keep him safe from the chamberlain’s knock, and the order of court banishment. Would the queen order him to the Tower? However often he told himself he was too insignificant for such draconian measures, he couldn’t convince himself. But then he would see that urgent movement of Rosamund’s hand, her eyes burning their message into his head, and he would want to weep for her selflessness, for her courage. No one knew her fate, except for the simple fact of banishment.
Will agonized over possibilities. Had she been sent home, back to Scadbury? Had her family cast her out, a disgrace to the name? Where would she go? Where could she go?
As the day wore on and there was no hand on his shoulder, no harsh summons, he began to allow himself to hope, and he comforted himself with the thought that as long as he could stay above the scandal, keep his position and his freedom, then he could perhaps at some point be of service to her.
Yet it seemed impossible that she had withstood interrogation by Sir Francis Walsingham. Had she managed a convincing lie? It seemed unlikely, but as the hours passed and he remained unmolested, his hope grew into conviction. By the evening, when the queen appeared in the Great Hall and seemed perfectly good-humored, willing to be pleased by dancing and music, he knew that Rosamund had stayed true.
He saw Joan Davenport standing alone and threaded his way through the lines of dance to her side. She looked up with a pathetically eager smile as he bowed.
“I give you good even, Mistress Davenport.”
“Master Creighton.” She curtsied, blushing.
“Will you join the dance?” He offered his hand and she took it instantly.
He led her to the floor, to join the couples in the vigorous movements of the galliard, and for a few measures the lively triple tempo offered no opportunity for conversation, but finally he was able to comment casually, “I daresay the queen’s ladies have been agog with the scandal concerning Mistress Walsingham.”
“Oh, such excitement, Master Creighton, as you wouldn’t believe.” Joan was slightly out of breath with the dance, but more than ready for gossip. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “ ’Tis said the queen has banished her from court for life. She’s to be imprisoned somewhere, not in the Tower, but some other prison, for deceiving the queen. I always knew there was something not quite honest about her.”
Will felt his hackles rise, but he kept his voice cool as he said, “What made you think that?”
Joan tossed her head. “Oh, she was a sly one, disappearing from the dorter before anyone was awake, and then pretending she’d gone for a walk, when it was clear as daylight she’d been up to something . . . meeting some man, I’m sure. And she thought she was better than any of us because the queen favored her for her drawing and penmanship. ’Tis good riddance, if you ask me. We all think so.”
Will closed his lips firmly on a heated response, saying instead as casually as before, “So no one knows where she’s gone?”
“Only that Sir Francis Walsingham, her cousin, had a hand in her removal.” Joan put her hands on her hips, performing the quick series of hopping steps demanded by the dance.
Will decided he’d better leave well enough alone now. He had no wish to draw attention to himself with undue curiosity about the fate of an ordinary maid of honor. If Rosamund had protected him, then he couldn’t risk undoing her good work. But nothing could reassure him as to Rosamund’s fate, and as soon as he could, he left Joan and went to find friends in whose company he could slip into the burgundy waters of Lethe.
He caught sight of Thomas Walsingham late in the evening, looking morose, his mouth set in a thin line, his eyes hard. Walsingham beckoned him with an imperative gesture. Will instantly felt queasy. If Walsingham had heard of his sister’s clandestine afternoon at the theatre, dressed as a page in Will Creighton’s company, he would draw the inevitable conclusions. Will made his way over to him.
“You wanted me, Walsingham?”
“Aye. Where’s Babington this evening?”
&nb
sp; Will reported directly to Thomas Walsingham in this affair of Scots Mary, and Will felt a wave of relief at this straightforward question.
“He told me he was going into the country for a few days. His father had a bad turn and summoned him. A summons Babington can ill afford to ignore without cutting off the purse strings.”
Thomas nodded. “If he’s gone more than two days, you’re to go after him. Impress upon him the urgency of returning to London. He needs to be here when Ballard returns from France and I’ve been told to expect the good father within the week.” With a curt nod, Thomas turned and walked off.
Will decided he’d had sufficient scares for one day. He returned to his lodgings and drank until oblivion claimed him.
Thomas was in a foul mood that evening. If he’d been permitted to vent his fury at his sister’s perfidy, and he considered it nothing less than a betrayal of him and everything he had done for her throughout her short life, he would by now have recovered some of his habitual insouciance at life’s vagaries, but he had been balked from exacting the vengeance he considered his just due, and as soon as he’d passed on his instructions to Creighton, he left the court.
As he stalked down the corridor to the side door that would provide the shortest access to the mews and his horse, Chevalier de Vaugiras rounded a corner ahead. The two men stopped, hands automatically going to their sword hilts. Thomas felt a jolt of savage satisfaction at the prospect of taking his anger out on such a worthy target. He had half slid his sword from its sheath before he remembered that it was treason to draw a sword under the same roof as the queen.
The chevalier saw Thomas’s hand drop from the weapon and a thin smile flickered across his mouth. He continued walking forward.
“We will have our meeting, de Vaugiras.” Thomas spoke through barely opened lips. “But I’ll not commit treason under her majesty’s roof . . . you’re not worth it.” Deliberately he spat on the ground at the chevalier’s feet, then shouldered him aside and continued on his way.
Arnaud, white-faced, stood very still for several minutes. He breathed slowly until he had mastered himself. It had been a day of reverses, but when one door closed, another always opened. The time would come. He walked on following the sounds of music and revelry emanating from the great hall.
Thomas mounted his horse in the mews and with a vicious slash of the whip set him at a canter out into the street. He rode beyond the city walls to a district called Norton Folgate, in the liberty of Shoreditch. It was close to the theatres, and its rooming houses, tenements, and mean cottages offered the kind of cheap lodging affordable for theatre folk, the playmakers and actors, the apprentice actors and the managers.
He stopped outside a rooming house set just off Hog Lane and still sitting his horse looked up at a first-floor window. A light burned despite the late hour. Kit was up then.
Thomas dismounted, tethered his horse to a post at the door, and picked up a handful of stones from the dusty lane. He hurled them at the window in a satisfying scattershot and within seconds the window was flung open and Kit leaned out.
“Who’s so rudely disturbing the muse?” he demanded in the thick but jovial voice that Thomas recognized as indication that the playmaker was more than two sheets to the wind.
“Let me in, you drunken sot,” he called up. “I’ve need of brandy and your company, my friend.”
“Oh, ho, so that’s the way the wind blows.” Kit’s muffled laughter faded, then the narrow front door squeaked open on unoiled hinges and Marlowe peered out, blinking in mock bemusement. “Why, if ’tis not the most honorable Master Walsingham who deigns to grace my humble abode. Is it a tumble in the sheets you’ve come for, a little ride-a-cock-horse, then?”
“Hold your tongue, you foulmouthed loon.” Thomas pushed past him and stormed up the stairs into the single chamber where Kit wrote, and occasionally slept, and even more occasionally ate. A half-eaten loaf of stale bread stood on the table with a moldering piece of cheese; beside it two empty flagons of wine lay on their sides, two more upon the floor. An overfull chamber pot half-hidden beneath the narrow cot lent its aroma to the general stink.
Thomas looked at Kit as he lounged in the doorway. His hair was a tangled mess, his eyes bloodshot and sunken in his thin cheeks, his countenance bearing an almost febrile flush. “Are you ill, man?” For a moment something other than his own concerns penetrated his anger.
“Not a bit of it.” Kit passed a hand through the air in a nonchalant gesture. “But I have penned some goodly lines, Thomas. You shall hear them.” He went to the rickety table, took up a sheet of parchment, and began to declaim:
Now hast though but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Despite himself, Thomas was riveted. “That does not come from your Tamburlaine,” he stated with conviction.
“No . . . no, of course it does not.” Kit picked up an empty flagon and tipped it up with a mournful air. “Damn it to hell!” He hurled it to the floor. “It comes from my play I shall call Faustus. I have it in mind to write of the devil.” He flung up a hand and cried, “The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.”
He laughed, a drunkard’s laugh, reckless and causeless. “Looking at you, Tom, dear Tom, I would say the devil is already amongst us. You have a look as black as any I have seen this side of hell.”
Thomas hurled his hat to the floor and with an oath reached for Kit. He pushed up his face and kissed him with a roughness that left them both breathless. Then they fell together to the cot in a violent tangle of limbs, oaths mingling with words of desire as their clothes fell to the floor and the white bodies twisted and turned, above and beneath, in the lustful sharing that brought them to the furthest edge of pleasure. And when it was over, Thomas felt purged of rage by the acts of love, and Kit, still drunk, lay on his back, one hand over his eyes, and murmured further lines from his Faustus.
Chapter Twenty-one
SIR FRANCIS SENT for Rosamund the following morning when she was at breakfast with Ursula. She set down her tankard of small beer and rose. “If you’ll give me leave, madam?”
“Yes, of course, my dear. You had better go directly.”
Rosamund made her way to the business side of the house and knocked at the secretary’s door. He bade her enter and she went in, trying to conceal her trepidation. “You wished to see me, sir.” She curtsied as she spoke.
“Yes.” He didn’t immediately look up from the papers he was reading, but waved towards an armless wooden chair across from the desk.
Rosamund sat and contemplated the floor at her feet. After some minutes, her cousin set his quill in the inkwell, clasped his hands together on the desk, and regarded Rosamund with drawn eyebrows. “You are well?”
“Yes, sir. Puzzled, though.”
“Hmm.” He frowned, pursing his lips. “By what?”
Rosamund had the unmistakable feeling she was hovering on the brink of something important, something that would have longstanding consequences. She knew she must answer honestly but with wisdom. A near impossible feat when she had no idea what the secretary had in mind.
She plunged straight in. “You told me yesterday that you had a use for my wit, Sir Francis. I am puzzled as to your meaning, and somewhat apprehensive that I may not fulfill your expectations.”
He gave a grim smile. “With good cause. I would expect nothing else. Very well. Listen, do not interrupt. When I have finished, you will have the opportunity for questions.”
Rosamund listened in stunned disbelief as he told her what he wanted of her. She, who had no skill at prevaricating even in the most minor matters, was to become someone else. A Catholic sympathizer, an ardently devoted follower of Scots Mary, so devoted that when she had been disgraced at court, she had begged the queen to permit her to share Queen Mary’s imprisonment as her banishment. And the qu
een had been pleased to grant her that boon. She was to offer herself to Mary for any service, however menial. And she was to listen, to draw, to keep a journal of everything, however trivial, that was said and done in the Scots queen’s prison at Chartley Hall.
“If it is a prison, how will my records reach you?” she asked when Sir Francis seemed to have concluded his recitation.
“If it’s possible, you will utilize the same method that Mary uses to communicate with her own agents. Thomas will explain that to you later. Alternatively you may be contacted by one of my agents. There are many of them working in this affair at present. One or other of them will make themselves known to you. You may also trust Mary’s jailer, or guardian as he is more properly known. Sir Amyas Paulet. He will know your identity, although he will not distinguish you with any kindness. You will be treated in the same manner as Mary and her other ladies. And I need not stress that any contact you have with him outside the Scots queen’s quarters must be unknown to those on whom you report.”
Rosamund’s gaze found the floor again. She stared at the bare oak boards as if she could read some kind of an answer in them. But an answer to what question? She had to obey this order. It was not offered as a choice.
She raised her eyes. “What if I cannot accomplish this deception?”
“I do not admit failure in those who work for me. You will do this, and you will do it well.” He spoke without emphasis, and his gaze was calm and steady across the desk.
“How . . . may I ask how long I must do this?” Her voice was tentative as she wondered if it was a permissible question. It could seem as if she was setting conditions of her own.
“Until I consider your task completed.”
Enough said there. Rosamund nibbled her lip, frowning in thought. “Forgive me, sir, but will not Queen Mary be suspicious of someone bearing the name of Walsingham? She must know that you are her implacable enemy.”
“Which is why you will take the name of Rosamund Fitzgerald. A good Catholic name. Your family is from the Catholic stronghold of the north, and while your family has made peace with the Protestant church and its queen, hence your service at court, you yourself find it impossible to forsake your faith. You prefer martyrdom with the true queen to a life of heresy.” Sir Francis’s lip curled slightly as he spoke, and there was derision in his tone. Elizabeth’s secretary of state had no time for heretics, and no time at all for martyrs.