by Anna Castle
Mrs. Eggerley knocked sharply on the door. He emerged from that chamber of stink and followed her into her room. She had shed her outer garments and was wearing only a linen shift with a low square neckline and elbow-length sleeves. Her round hips shifted temptingly beneath the filmy fabric.
“Touch nothing,” she commanded, reading his mind. She closed and locked the door. Then she directed him toward a painted screen at the end of the room. Behind it, he found a round wooden tub draped thickly with sheets and filled with water, from which arose a fragrant steam. Red drapes hanging over the window beyond the tub cast a warm glow through the candles burning on tall stands. A coarser sheet was spread out on the floor in the far corner. She pointed at it with a stern finger. “Stand on that to undress. Every stitch.”
Tom had to hop to pull off each boot. He did his best not to scatter specks of mud as he tugged at his lacings. Margaret watched the entire performance, sighing softly as his breeches fell to the floor. He echoed that sigh as he lowered himself into the hot water. The blend of balsam, ginger, and sage soothed his aching muscles. He sank deeper into the tub, raising his knees to get his shoulders under.
“All the way, please,” she directed. “I’m going to wash your hair.”
He held his breath and slid all the way down, scrubbing his beard with his hands as he went under. When he slid back up, she poured scented soap onto his head and began massaging his scalp with her strong fingers.
“By my quivering soul, Margaret, that feels like heaven.” Tom closed his eyes and thought of nothing, letting the pressure of her fingers and the healing steam soothe his weary brainpan. She tended him in silence, granting him many minutes of simple bliss.
After a while she murmured, “Eyes closed?” and slowly poured a pitcher of warm water over his head, rinsing the suds from his hair. “That’s better.” She kissed him on the ear. “I knew there was a man under all that mud.”
He tilted his head back and kissed her on the lips. “He was waiting for you to discover him.”
“Lean forward.” She poured soap on a cloth and began to scrub his back. “Now you can tell me. What did you get yourself into today?”
Tom told her about the Rogation Day procession in Sawston, toning down the religious aspects and making it sound like good country fun that ended in a hearty brawl, as such festivals were so often wont to do.
She wasn’t fooled. “I’ll bet that odious Steadfast Wingfield started it. There’s something wrong with that boy. I can see you all at dinner, you know, through my squint. Before you befriended him, he would sit through his meals staring grimly at his plate, as if he feared to be contaminated by our wicked ways. As if there were any wickedness in this college!”
She scrubbed harder as her ire was aroused. When she ground her cloth into a fresh bruise, Tom flinched. She soothed the hurt with a kiss, then returned to a gentler rhythm. He sighed and leaned forward to give her room to work.
He’d forgotten about her squint — the peephole looking from the gallery down into the hall. A second one overlooked the chapel.
“Steadfast is all right,” Tom said. “He was a good sophista. We got to be friends during my disputation.”
“During which you got into another altercation, which I’d wager good money he started as well.”
“Well . . .” Steadfast had thrown the first punch then too. He was quick with his fists, no question. But could any man stand by and watch some village lout grope his sister’s arse? Tom would have laid him out the minute his hand touched her shoulder. That was a brother’s job. “He was provoked. This knave made a rude remark about his sister.”
“That girl! I’ve seen her, here and about in the town. Mark my words, Tom, that sort of shallow prettiness fades very quickly. She’ll turn into a hag after the birth of her first child.”
She began scrubbing his chest in large, rhythmic circles. Tom felt a delicious tensing in his lower body. The real fun would soon begin.
“Those Wingfields are no better than they should be.” Margaret sniffed. “A parson’s children are always starved for attention. Their fathers are out tending their flock or giving a sermon or off to some meeting somewhere. I know. My father was the rector of St. Mary’s Church in Chilton. The shoemaker’s children go barefoot and the parson’s children run wild.”
“In a way,” Tom said, “Simon Thorpe is responsible. He’s the one that riled up the yeoman and that’s what got the son going.”
“Which yeoman? Whose son?”
“I never learned his name.” Tom tested the flex in his jaw. “Though I’ll never forget his fists. He’s one of ours though — Corpus Christi’s, I mean. He and Thorpe were arguing about the entry fine for his lease. We got pulled into that somehow and one thing led to another.”
“Hm.” She patted his shoulder to signal that she was done with his back. “Leg, please.” He obediently raised one leg, resting his calf on the edge of the tub. She stroked her cloth from thigh to ankle. “My husband may need to have a few words with our new bursar.”
“Overstepping his bounds, is he?”
“Never you mind, darling.” His foot twitched as she washed between his toes. “At least those meddling busybodies have stopped your brooding about poor Bartholomew Leeds.”
“I wasn’t brooding,” Tom said. “Why does everyone say I was brooding?”
“Who else says it?”
“Mr. Barrow, for one.”
“Oh, him! He’s another one you could see less of and please me more. He’s not half as amiable as wants you to believe. Trust me; I know.”
Tom knew how she knew, but he also knew enough to keep the knowledge to himself. Women, for obscure reasons of their own, always wanted you to think you were their first. Even when they were married and had two children to show for it.
She smoothed his wet hair back from his brow. “You were brooding though, dearest, for a while. I could see it in your eyes. I could feel it in my own heart.” She pressed the wet cloth to her chest, leaving a transparent damp patch in exactly the right place. “I saw the way you went about, asking everyone your sad questions.”
Between her squints and the parlor window, she had nearly full coverage of the college. Tom hadn’t realized how well she could keep track of the daily goings-on.
“Mr. Leeds was my tutor. I wanted to find out what happened to him, that’s all.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Nothing, really.” Which was the sorry truth. The wine was drugged and the letter was faked, but he had no idea by whom. He’d had no news from Dorset about the noose other than that the package had arrived along with his other gifts. He’d ruled out Marlowe on the slender basis of his gut feelings but had yet to produce a better candidate for the deed. Unless he could find someone who had seen Steadfast outside the church during Perkins’s sermon . . .
“He hanged himself, Tom.” Margaret sighed, her wet shift clinging to her breasts as they rose and fell. “Sometimes a man strays into a dark thicket and becomes so entangled that his life becomes unbearable. I believe Bartholomew was led into such a thicket of despair by the unwholesome influence of that profane Christopher Marlowe.”
“Ah, Margaret, that’s hardly fair. He’s all talk, Marlowe. He likes to shock people. He doesn’t do any real harm. My sense is that Leeds was under too much strain, what with that melancholy book and the bursaring —”
“Oh, bursaring is nothing!” She clucked her tongue. “Strain? Fie! Do you think we’d let Simon Thorpe have the job if it were so difficult?” She rapped him on the knee. “Other leg. You know quite well what I mean. Marlowe is dangerous. Everyone thinks he’s so clever and charming, but when their backs are turned, well, that’s another story. Those sharp little eyes and that smirky little smile. My husband can’t keep his —” She snapped her lips together. “Let’s just say I’m glad he’s gone and leave it at that.” She scrubbed his left foot so roughly he had to grit his teeth and hold on to the side of the tub.
T
om smelled jealousy. He remembered Marlowe saying she’d made a play for him and been rebuffed. This could be merely spite. Or perhaps her husband had a taste for junior Fellows. Kit would have sent him scurrying home with a flea in his ear too. Humiliated enough to try to get him blamed for murder? Possibly. But would Dr. Eggerley commit murder himself just to punish Marlowe? Surely not. Still, it was worth reporting to Bacon.
“But now I’ve reminded you of all those sad things. That was too bad of me.” Margaret fluttered her lashes at him. “Whatever can we do to make it right?”
She ran her soapy cloth to the top of his leg and began to caress him. He moaned at the pleasure. “Up,” she said. He rose to his feet and stepped out of the tub. She wrapped him in a big towel, rubbing him vigorously from head to toe, shaking them both into bursts of excited laughter. When she reached his ready member, she paused. “Onion? Or tar?”
“Onion, and it please you, Margaret.”
She wrinkled her nose. “As you wish.” She picked up a jar and removed its wooden lid, releasing the sharp aroma of onion juice. She dipped the corner of her towel in it and anointed his cock liberally. She claimed it prevented conception. The other choice was to paint him with tar. The smell was less distracting, but Tom had visions of his cock being stained forever black so that he’d be forced to piss in private lest his fellows suspect him of bearing a pox.
Preventive measures applied, Tom earned his bath and then some, loving every minute of his work. Somehow during his labors they migrated to her bed. After they were spent, they lay with their legs twined, face-to-face with their heads on her silk-clad pillows. She sighed contentedly and closed her eyes.
He kissed each tender lid and studied her face with affection. Tiny crow’s-feet were forming at the corners of her eyes, not yet visible from a distance. Another pair of fine lines bracketed the corners of her mouth and the little hairs above her upper lip were slightly darker than the rest.
A thought struck him. “Say, sweetling. Do you ever use safflower and blanchet for your face?”
Her eyes popped open. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest. “Me? No! Why? Do I need to?” She glared at him as if he had accused her of whipping her daughters with a cat-o’-nine-tails. “It’s that girl, isn’t it? That Puritan hussy with the outlandish name — Absurdity or Incontinence or what have you. She’s no good for you, Tom. She’s about as innocent as a tiger, and her father is practically destitute.”
Tom wrapped his hand around her head, twining his fingers in her thick red hair, and kissed her soundly. He let her be first to end it, then smiled into her eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and meant it. Crow’s-feet were nothing. He liked all kinds of women, especially the kind that would lie abed naked with him on a Thursday afternoon.
He couldn’t break it off with her now after he’d made her feel old-ish and unlovely. Next time. Or the time after that. He hadn’t made Barrow a specific promise, and what Francis Bacon didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Clarady:
Our mutual friend is impatient for results. We still do not know whether the synod is planned for July or September, nor do we have any knowledge of the proposed agenda. We hear rumors of a secret assembly in Warwickshire planned with similar intent; this cancer in the body of our Church is spreading. Time grows short. Our friend’s resources are stretched thin. He will need weeks to coordinate a response sufficiently finely tuned to extract the principal malefactors without casting the whole county into disarray.
You must move more quickly. Hasten your way into the inner circle. Your supposition regarding Wingfield seems sound. If he is not at the center of the web, he is near it. Do not let your friendship with his children deter you. Measures can be taken to protect them. Study Job: “Remember, I pray thee, whoever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off?”
Use your influence with the Wingfield children to contrive an invitation to dinner. Listen for talk of “a church within a church.” This is one of their more pernicious strategies, to establish their presbytery within our established episcopacy. They will divide the churches of England into separate islands of conformity and nonconformity, laying their eggs in our nests like cuckoos. “They hatch cockatrice eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” Isaiah 59:4-6.
Press harder. Work faster. You must snare the instigator before he drags your friends to their destruction.
From Gray’s Inn, 13 May 1587
Fra. Bacon
P.S. There is a new instrument for writing called a pencil. They may have some at the university bookseller’s. They’re square and somewhat messy but more portable than quill and inkhorn. See if you can acquire one. It may facilitate the recording of notes when away from your desk. The lists are good. Keep sending them. Daniel 10:21: “But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth.”
P.P.S. While I appreciate your heightened sense of discretion, I beg you not to use Law French as any sort of code. At least I think those were attempts at Law French. That specialist language is not suited for general purposes, nor do you have even the most basic understanding of its grammar. Plain English will do for your letters, with care in their handling.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tom hunched in the privy in the corner of the Babraham churchyard, scribbling names on a folded sheet of paper with his new pencil. The wooden shed was well built and thus dark; the merest slivers of light slipped between the boards. He could barely see the gray lead lines forming under his instrument, but the notes were mainly an aid to memory to help him write up his report that evening. Overall, he was delighted with the pencil. It saved him having to compose a little ditty to fix each name in his memory.
The names were those of men from outside Babraham who had attended Parson Wingfield’s service today — important because it was Whitsunday. Anyone who would forgo the traditional plum rolls and morris dancing to sit in a plain white box listening to a thundering sermon against idolatry was most likely a dedicated Puritan.
Sitting in the midst of the Wingfield children, as usual, Tom had gotten the names of the newcomers from Tribulation, the most ill-named of the Wingfield children. Diligence truly strove to do what was asked, Abstinence had yet to grant him even a small kiss, and Steadfast’s unwavering strength defined his every act. But Tribble was a giggly, rosy-cheeked gossip. She’d leaned against Tom’s shoulder throughout the service, whispering vivid descriptions of each member of her father’s congregation.
Most were university men, but they were still a more diverse group than he would have imagined a month ago. Men came far and wide to show their disdain for this important holiday. Men whose fathers were of many sorts and occupations: the fervent weaver, the bitter bell-ringer, clerics, lawyers, and prosperous mercers. Even some gentlemen’s sons chose to ride to humble Babraham.
Some of these men were no more committed to the complete Reformation than Tom was. They were there to ogle Abstinence, no question. He refolded his piece of paper to expose a blank quarter and began a new list: Men who attend the parson’s services merely to admire his daughter. He wrote furiously, pencil lead crumbling away from the leading edge of his script. If they thought they could impress Abstinence by wearing silk ribbons and plumed feathers in their hats, they had another think coming. The only way to impress a godly woman was through righteousness, and that meant rigorous, daily study of the Word and constant struggles with your inner demons. Constant. Calvinism was a man’s religion, not a game for prancing, lace-wristed, feather-wagging fops. They fooled no one by turning up on Whitsunday. They’d be off to the taverns as soon as they realized their adored one would grant them not so much as a blink of her heavenly eyes.
He finished both lists and packed his paper and pencil back into his purse. He couldn’t dally overlong or his friends would worry about his digestion. He joined Steadfast beside the path to the
parsonage. They stood together in silence, watching Parson Wingfield shake hands with the worshippers as they exited his church. After exchanging a few words, men drifted over to the group near the Cambridge road while women and children gathered on the opposite side of the churchyard.
Another excellent way to spread the word about a secret meeting. All the parson had to do was lean over the clasped hand and murmur, “Tuesday week, Adamson’s barn,” and the job was done. Tom wondered if he should have waited to jot his notes so he could come out the front door and shake hands like the other men. Would he have been given the message too? He hadn’t on previous occasions. Either they didn’t trust him yet, or there wasn’t any message. He wished he could get closer. Parson Wingfield was the leader, he was almost certain of it. But Francis Bacon and Lord Burghley needed something more solid than a twinge in Tom’s gut.
The last couple left the church and separated to join the chatting groups in the yard. Parson Wingfield stood for a moment on the porch, hands on hips, surveying his flock with a satisfied air. His gaze turned at last toward his children and Tom. He stepped off the porch and strode toward them, arms wide.
“I almost thought you were one of mine, Thomas. You fit so well among my brood. Fair hair and shining faces. Why don’t you join us for dinner today?”
***
Parson Wingfield waved at the group of men chatting beside the road, then turned and walked toward the parsonage, his family trailing behind him. They were soon joined by four Cambridge men: Abraham Jenney, John Barrow, William Grady, and another man from Emmanuel College — Mullen or Miller. Tom felt a powerful sense of kinship to both the Wingfield family and his university brethren. He had learned that one of the strangest aspects of intelligencing was how you could feel so strongly connected to the group you intended to disrupt.