Her Last Assassin (19 page)

Sally Dun looked up at Will through her lashes and smiled, making her interest only too plain.

Will’s gaze dropped inadvertently to her full breasts in the tight country gown, and he felt a stab of desire for his friend’s wife that shocked him with its intensity.

Hurriedly he backed away, laughing to cover his lust. ‘I fear Anne might have something to say to that,’ he told them, pretending to believe it was a jest, though he knew the woman at least to be in earnest. ‘Which reminds me, I must find a gift for my wife on one of these stalls. So if you will excuse me …’ He bowed to them both. ‘I will have left Stratford by Sunday. But perhaps next time I will be in town longer and we can dine together, Christopher. For old times’ sake.’

He caught up with his mother at Mistress Clovelly’s farm stall, and was almost relieved to listen in to their homely discussion of cheese and butter-making, and look at the new churn the farmer’s wife recommended for use at home.

As a happily married youth, leaving for the city that first time, Will had thought to return to Stratford in triumph one day, a well-known playwright with money in his pocket and fine clothes on his back. But never in these dreams of untold success had he thought that a life in the theatre would push his wife into another man’s arms, nor bring him so many invitations to love outside his marriage bed.

A better man would be able to resist such offers, Will told himself with scathing self-contempt, but knew it was no use. From being an honest husband, looking only to his wife for comfort, he had gone in a few years of London life to being as lascivious a player as Burbage or Alleyn, men who thought nothing of tupping their mistresses in the tiring-room at the theatre, then going home to their wives for seconds.

It was one thing to keep a secret mistress in London and a wife in Stratford. But to betray Anne here, among her own friends in her home town, would be an insult beyond what any wife should have to bear.

Six

T
HE YEAR
1592 was on the turn into Autumn; birds could feel it and were gathering in the leaden skies, the leaves beginning to turn yellow when Goodluck finally decided to return to London. For too long he had lived idle in the country, and now was itching to be back in the saddle. He had heard from passing tradesmen that plague had returned to the city over the summer, more virulent than ever, and thousands were dead. Theatres had been closed, and other public entertainments banned. Now though, the air was said to be clearing again and those who had fled the city during the worst of it were beginning to return.

Besides, it had been an age since he had seen Lucy. Foolish though it was, he felt nervous not knowing how she fared at court nor if she still had dealings with that good-for-nothing Shakespeare.

‘I wish you well, Julius.’ He laid a hand on his older brother’s arm. ‘I will try to visit you again next summer and see how your recovery is progressing. Fare you well until then.’

He fastened his cloak and made his way outside into the muddy farmyard where his horse stood saddled and waiting amid the noisy geese and chickens. He felt some guilt at leaving them, but this was not the life he wanted, spending his days tending livestock in place of his brother, or walking the boundaries of the farm and brooding on the failures of the past.

After the terrible fall from his horse, his brother’s recovery had been slow. Julius was unable to walk even a few steps without a stick, though he could sit up and was carried downstairs to his desk by the servants every morning. His wife and daughter had been forced to take over the arduous business of running the farm, though young Eloise at least seemed to relish the task.

Agnes embraced him. ‘We shall miss you, Julius most of all. I am glad you came and healed the breach. Brothers should not quarrel.’

‘I only wish I could be in two places at once.’ He kissed her on both cheeks, then turned to embrace Eloise. ‘But I have stayed far longer here in Oxfordshire than I had planned. I have business in London and cannot tarry longer. Julius seems on the way to health again, but I fear he may never walk without a stick. Will you write if he worsens this winter?’

‘With all my heart,’ Agnes agreed. ‘Though I shall write even if he mends. I fear that once you are back in London, you will quickly forget your family out here in the country.’

He grinned, swinging up on to his horse. ‘How could I forget such a beautiful sister-in-law and such a pretty niece?’

Eloise giggled, looking away, and her mother shook her head at him in mock disapproval. ‘You are a naughty man, Faithful. But you are good and true to your name, however you may seek to hide it with jests.’

‘Farewell,’ Goodluck told them, then kicked his horse to a trot out of the farmyard.

He would miss hearing his Christian name every day, though he was glad none in London knew it. Master Goodluck was how he preferred to be known there. But it was time to put aside his fears for his brother’s health, and the land they farmed so precariously, and think ahead to what he would do on his return to the city.

It was several years now since he had confided in Sir Francis Walsingham the information that a new plot had been hatched against the Queen’s life, and also that young Kit Marlowe might be spying for Sir William Stanley, traitor to the throne and his country. But it was possible that ill health – followed by his final trial, death – had kept Sir Francis from divulging what he knew to the Queen. Either that, or Goodluck’s reports had been investigated and found to be fruitless. The man planning the attempt on the Queen might have been caught, for all he knew, and dispatched long ago. Kit might have admitted to playing a double game and been paid to continue, or else defected to the Catholics with everything he knew.

Time to find out how the land lay since Walsingham’s death, then. And to see his Lucy again, if she could be persuaded to return from court for a few days. He would dearly love to take her out to his family, let her meet Julius and Agnes, and see how she would get on with young Eloise.

Seven miles down the narrow track to Oxford, he came to a familiar crossroads and paused a while, sitting his horse in silence as it fidgeted.

‘Ride on, you fool, and let the past be,’ he muttered to himself, but did not obey his own command, his gaze brooding as it followed the narrower track to where it bent away into brambles and hedgerow.

Greenway Manor lay that way.

In all the time he had been staying at his brother’s farm, Goodluck had resisted the urge to go home; to revisit the manor house and lands where he had spent his childhood and youth. For Greenway Manor no longer belonged to the Goodlucks. Confiscated at the time of his father’s execution, it had been granted by Queen Mary to a family of pious Catholic gentry instead.

Impulsively, before he could change his mind, Goodluck turned the horse’s head and made his way down the track. ‘Just a quick look at my old home,’ he told the uncaring animal as it plodded along, ‘and then we’ll be back on the road. God willing there’ll be no more rain to wet us even if we do not make Oxford before nightfall.’

The track to Greenway was even more narrow than he remembered, barely wide enough to take a cart, the high hedgerows overgrown and even collapsed in places. Twice he had to bend his head to avoid a low-hanging branch, and where there had once been a well-maintained ford at the dip in the valley bottom, the mossed stones were broken and slippery, the stream running across the track with a noisy clatter, picking its own path. His horse splashed through weedy shallows, the water surprisingly high for summer’s end, and emerged into marsh-grass and bulrushes on the other bank. There the track climbed another few minutes, then turned sharply to the left, where the gate to Greenway stood open, the path turned to mud by the cattle who still grazed beside it, nothing barring his way to the manor.

He pushed slowly on along the path, remembering each familiar twist and turn, how the way passed by a small green pond where he and his brother had collected frogs and their spawn as boys, then opened out into a leafy woodland ride. This led to the house along an avenue of beech trees planted by his great-grandfather during old Henry Tudor’s reign, the Queen’s grandfather, their broad trunks mossed with age, leaning mildly above the track.

He could see the house through the trees now, and drew rein, sitting back in the saddle. Whatever angry spirit had driven him here down the track to Greenway, it had vanished, leaving nothing but a bad taste in his mouth. This was no longer his family’s place, for all that he had been born and brought up here as a lad. It belonged to somebody else now, and he was nothing but an intruder, trespassing on another man’s land.

‘Come on, time to go,’ he muttered, and dragged on the reins, meaning to turn back towards the Oxford road.

But then he saw a pair of booted feet, dangling from an upper branch in one of the beech trees, and lifted his head to see to whom the feet belonged.

A young boy was sitting in the tree just ahead, staring down at him. He had long curly brown hair that hung over his eyes like a wild pony’s mane, and wore a filthy misshapen rag which barely covered his legs and arms. On closer inspection, it appeared to be an old sack, cut open at both ends to make a kind of garment. The boy seemed unafraid at the sight of Goodluck, though he did not look very welcoming either. He piped up, ‘What is your name, stranger?’

Goodluck hesitated, looking up at the boy assessingly. He did not wish to land his brother’s family in trouble by using their name. ‘My name is Faithful,’ he replied on a whim, then immediately wished he had chosen another, one of the many false names he kept in his head for just such moments. ‘What is yours?’

‘I have no name. Nor any parents. I was found in the woods yonder as a baby, wrapped in a blue cloth. So they christened me John Sky.’

‘And is that why you spend your days up a tree, Master Sky? To be closer to your namesake?’

‘Perhaps.’

The boy swung himself down from the branch, landing perfectly in front of Goodluck’s horse, which whinnied nervously and jabbed at the bit.

The boy shook back his long brown mane of hair and seized hold of the bridle, patting the horse above its noseband. He seemed on easy terms with the animal, and clearly had no fear of it.

‘Did you take a wrong turn, Master Faithful? There is no one up at the manor if you were thinking of calling there. I can lead you back to the Oxford road for a penny, if you have one.’ He looked dubiously at Goodluck’s patched clothes and shoddy boots, still muddied from his brother’s farm. ‘Are you a farmer?’

‘No, by the grace of God.’

‘A messenger then, perhaps?’ The boy seemed more hopeful of his penny with that possibility. His eyes narrowed. ‘I know a shortcut through the forest that will set you on the road to St Giles. Or near it, at least.’

A wind rustled in the trees all around, making a wild sound like the sea. Goodluck looked down at the broad, whitewashed house through waves of shifting beech leaves.

‘You say there is no one up at the manor. Where are they, then? Gone to market in Oxford?’

‘The house has been empty these past five years.’

‘
Empty?
’ Goodluck stared down at the boy. ‘But how? Why did they leave?’ He saw the boy’s surprise, and tried to disguise his interest. ‘That is, I heard it belonged to a family of Oxford gentry. Do they no longer keep it?’

‘The family name is de Bere,’ the boy explained, squinting up at Goodluck as the sun came out from behind a cloud. ‘They left for the Low Countries just before the Armada came. I served them in the stables or wherever I could earn a crust. Now there are no horses, not even a donkey. I keep the herb gardens free of weeds though, and the chimneys swept clean, just in case they come back some day. But I don’t think they will.’

Goodluck was frowning as he pieced together the history of Greenway Manor since his family had been evicted from the safety and comfort of its ancient walls.

‘Joined the Catholics in exile abroad, did they?’ he asked tightly.

It was hard not to let his anger show. His ancestral home had been handed over to these Catholic de Beres, who twenty years on had turned traitor and joined the Spanish when they thought King Philip might be on his way to knock Queen Elizabeth from her throne.

‘Aye, master.’ The boy’s grin was wry. ‘A poor choice, I’d say, after our ships swept the Spanish before them and smashed their great sailing castles on the rocks.’

When Goodluck laughed, Sky joined in, then wiped his hand across his face, a mischievous light in his eyes. ‘But the place is empty, like I said. Even the housekeeper’s not there. She’s gone to Banbury for a sennight to visit her sick old mother. I’m left in charge of the chickens and pigs.’ He hesitated. ‘I seen you looking at the manor a long time before you saw me up in the tree. Do you know the house, master?’

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘Then will you come up and take a closer look for a shilling? The door’s not locked, and there’s no one to chide us.’

Goodluck smiled. ‘Sure you’re not called Providence, boy?’

‘I’m sure.’ John Sky jerked at his reins, dragging the horse forward. ‘Come on then. It’s only an old house and it don’t bite.’ He started cheerfully up the track with Goodluck behind him on his horse; no doubt the boy was keen to earn his fee. ‘There’s not much to eat but hens’ eggs, and the windows are all shuttered against the wind and damp, but you can stop the night for two shillings. I daresay there’s chambers enough for ten gentlemen … if you don’t mind a bit of dust.’