His Dark Lady (24 page)

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘Just people.’ She bit her lip, watching him. ‘I’m sorry. Ned was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? A bad end, too. The priest wouldn’t even give him a decent burial, so I heard, because he killed himself. I saw his wife follow the coffin out through Southwark, and his five children too, one only a babe in arms.’

He passed his hand over the candle flame again. Several men dead from his old team of theatrical spies. And deaths that could hardly be considered natural. Who was left?

Only Master Twist and Goodluck himself, whom Twist thought safely dead, stabbed and left to drown in the River Thames months ago.

How Twist must have rejoiced at the old man’s boldness, running Goodluck through with his pike as he stood staring down at the river! No need for Twist even to sully his hands with his blood.

‘Where’s Twist now?’

Hannah looked at him with a wary expression, but said nothing, too quick-witted not to have understood the gist of the conversation so far and realized the danger to herself.

‘Tell me, Hannah,’ he said, as persuasively as he could. He rattled the purse at his belt. ‘There’s another few shillings in it for you.’

‘Out of town,’ she said at last.

‘For how long?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not his whore. I work for myself now.’ She licked her lips, and he saw fear in her blue eyes. ‘If I tell you where he keeps his lodgings these days, will you let me go and say nothing to Twist about me? Nor anyone else? If he finds out that I talked to you, he’ll kill me.’

That was true enough.

‘I’ll tell no one.’

‘Swear it,’ she hissed, and drew a battered silver crucifix from her purse.

He stared at it, then at her. ‘You could be whipped for possessing that. Hanged too, if they think you’re a Catholic.’

‘What do I care for that? It was my grandmother’s. Now hold the cross and swear that you’ll never speak a word to Twist about me.’

It irked him to do so, and was dangerous, besides, if anyone happened to be listening at the door. But the old ways still meant
something
to the girl, so he held the Catholic crucifix in his hand and swore in Christ’s name never to mention her to Twist, nor any other man, then handed it back.

‘Satisfied?’

She hid it away in her purse and nodded, a smile on her lips. ‘You know the Saracen’s Head?’

He nodded. A tavern with a dubious reputation, it stood off a narrow lane a few hundred yards down Long Southwark.

‘Three doors down from the inn, there’s a green gate across an alley. His place is the first on the left inside the alleyway. Go up a flight of steps. The key’s kept under a loose floorboard at the top. His mark’s on the door, though you won’t see it in darkness.’

‘And he’s away from London, you say?’

‘I saw him a few days ago. He said he was travelling into the country for a while, down Surrey way. Something about a girl he had to see.’

‘I wish him joy of her,’ Goodluck said drily, and stood up. ‘Surrey’s not far, though. I’d better search his place now while he’s away.’ He felt in his purse and gave her two more shillings.

‘He won’t come back into the city after dark, though, will he?’ she pointed out, putting the money away. She stood up too, knocking the stool over, her head almost equal with his. Then she smiled at him knowingly and began to unbuckle his belt. ‘John Twist’s either there now or he won’t be back until dawn at the earliest. Which gives me a good while yet to earn those six shillings you gave me earlier.’

‘To earn them?’

Hannah folded her long legs beneath her to kneel at his feet. She reached out to massage his groin with an expert hand.

He stopped her. ‘That’s not necessary.’

She looked up at him, surprised and perhaps a little hurt. ‘You don’t want me?’

Goodluck smiled regretfully. ‘Of course I do, Hannah. But that pleasure will have to wait for another time. My errand tonight is too urgent.’

Following Hannah’s directions, Goodluck swung himself over the green gate into the alleyway near the Saracen’s Head, and up the
short
flight of steps to the left. His back was hurting again, but he tried to ignore the pain. Jensen had said she thought it would improve with exercise, and so he must hope, too. The top stair rattled underfoot and he paused, remembering. It took only the blade of his dagger, twisted in the narrow gap between boards, to prise it loose. Beneath lay the key to Twist’s lodgings, which he removed gladly. The door was of surprisingly thick oak and would have been difficult to shoulder open; no doubt that was why Twist had chosen this place. Silently, Goodluck traced the mark on the door. Master Twist lives here, it announced. He listened, but there was no sound from within.

The door unlocked, he crept inside, his dagger in hand. The room lay in darkness, an added danger as he tried not to collide with furniture on his way to the window. He fumbled with the shutters to let in the moonlight, then found a candle and tinderbox. To his relief, and as Hannah had rightly predicted, there was nobody home.

By candlelight, he set about a careful search of Twist’s scanty belongings, trying not to make it too obvious that anyone had been there. If Twist was the traitor he had been looking for – and he felt pain at the very possibility – then it would not do to alert him that his betrayal had been discovered.

Twist’s clothes and book chest revealed nothing out of the ordinary. But it did not take Goodluck long to find, by knocking along the wood and listening to the hollow reply, a false back to the alcove cupboard where Twist kept his candles and tinder. He reached into the dark space and drew out an oblong tin box hidden there. Even its intricate French-designed lock did not last long against the thinnest of Goodluck’s lock-pickers.

Inside the tin box, he found various seals and lists of ciphers, an alphabet key, and a bundle of letters secured with a black ribbon.

Goodluck unrolled one of the letters and took it to the candle flame. He stared down at the signature, but could not make it out. It had been marred soon after writing. The letter was more clearly addressed, however, to Philip, Earl of Arundel, a suspected Catholic and one of the Queen’s own courtiers. It was dated June twenty-seventh, and made some uncertain references to ‘faith’, ‘the need for secrecy’ and, once, to ‘Her captive Grace’.

He frowned, studying it for a moment. Either the letter had not been sent to Arundel for some reason, or else this was a copy, made by Twist himself – or perhaps sent on to him by whoever had penned the original.

Either way, the matter to which the letter referred would seem to be treasonous in the extreme. ‘Her captive Grace’, he read again with foreboding. That could only mean one person: Mary Stuart, the exiled Queen of Scots, who was being held as a royal prisoner by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth.

Was it possible that John Twist had involved himself with the very Catholics they had been working together to uncover? That he was, in fact, one of their number himself, and sympathized with the cause of the Scottish Queen?

Goodluck found an inkwell and quill on the table, tore out a page from one of Twist’s books, and copied the ciphers and the alphabet key as swiftly and accurately as he could. If still in use, they might unlock the secrets of other coded messages that fell into his hands. He also took a brief note of the seals, and of the names and substance of the letters he had found, suspecting they could be of interest in the future.

Then he replaced the contents of the tin box exactly as he had found them, locked it and pushed it carefully back into its hiding place.

Sir Francis Walsingham must know of this hoard. Goodluck had thought it too dangerous to visit Seething Lane before – though a coded note had informed Walsingham he was not dead, but in hiding. Now that he was sure of Twist’s complicity, to take news of these letters to his spymaster was his only possible move. He only hoped it would not be seen as a double bluff, intended to reveal Twist’s guilt while concealing his own.

If Walsingham had ever suspected him of treachery, this find could help to clear his name. Either that or condemn him to a traitor’s death.

Twenty

Whitehall Palace, London, December 1584

ELIZABETH SAT UP
even straighter in her curtained bed and stared at her spymaster through the flickering firelight, not quite able to believe what he had just relayed to her.

‘Parry said
what
?’ she demanded stiffly.

Walsingham looked apologetic. ‘That our new law against the Catholics and Jesuits was unjust and would prove injurious to England.’

‘And this insolent judgement was declared in the Houses of Parliament in which my generosity placed him only this year?’

‘I fear so, Your Majesty, yes.’

‘Then you must arrest this man at once.’

Walsingham bowed, a little smile on his face. ‘It has already been done, Your Majesty. Sensing the ugly mood of the Commons, and fearing a riot if he was not taken straightaway into custody, Sir Christopher Hatton made the arrest himself, there and then. Even as he was being escorted out of the Commons under guard, Parry attempted to continue with his inflammatory speech to any who would listen.’

Elizabeth shook her head in disbelief. ‘What was Parry thinking of, to be speaking so dangerously and against our express will? Was the man drunk?’

‘No, Your Majesty. I have examined him myself, and he genuinely
considers
himself to be in the right. He feels that we do Catholics an injustice by treating them as traitors and driving the old faith underground.’

‘Does he indeed?’

‘I begin to think he may be a madman.’

‘A madman?’ she repeated, staring at him rigidly. ‘This is the same Parry, is it not, who has spied for you in the past? Who has carried letters for me of a most private and delicate nature? Good God, man, this creature has been allowed access to my person on your own recommendation. Master Parry has come into my Privy Chamber late at night with tales of assassins and high treason and Catholics landing unseen on our shores – and now you tell me he is a traitor to the throne?’

‘An error of judgement on my part, Your Majesty. But one I am working to rectify.’

She sniffed at this, unconvinced.

Walsingham continued, ‘I have released Parry and set men to watch his house. We have little evidence at the moment, and a false accusation would merely lose us valuable information. If Parry attempts to make contact with anyone we know to be in league against you, he will be arrested again and tried for treason.’

‘Very well,’ she said, frowning impatiently as the door to her chamber opened. Helena stood blocking the doorway, as though to prevent someone from entering. ‘What is it, Helena?’

‘Lord Leicester wishes to speak with you, Your Majesty.’ Helena’s face was grave and unsmiling. She disapproved of Robert’s marriage to Lettice, and had never made any show of hiding her feelings. But then, her loyalty to Elizabeth was beyond question, and she objected to anything that might upset her queen. Her Swedish accent was most pronounced tonight. ‘I have told him it is very late and you will not wish to be disturbed, Your Majesty. But he would not listen and is insisting that I announce him.’

Robert? Come to see her so late at night?

Elizabeth experienced a flicker of girlish excitement she had not felt in a long time, and saw Walsingham’s dark, intelligent gaze narrow on her face.

She steadied herself and tried to look unconcerned. Robert was a married man again now, just as he had been in the first years of her
reign
. It would not do to encourage the same vicious old gossip by allowing him free access to her chamber late at night. But just this once would not do any harm.

And if it should come to his wife’s ears that he was visiting the Queen at night again, so much the better.

‘Very well,’ she said coolly, and nodded to Helena. ‘You may invite his lordship to enter.’

Robert strode to her bedside. His appearance was still as haggard as it had been ever since the death of his little son in July, she noted, and surprised a sympathy in herself for his loss. Yet it was six months since the boy had died. Was he never to recover from that blow? But then, Lettice must be too old to bear another heir to the earldom, and so his line would be broken. His grief must be bitter indeed.

Robert went down on one knee, his cap in hand. When she gestured him to rise, he kissed her hand and muttered, ‘My queen!’

Walsingham’s eyebrows rose. He cleared his throat, and Robert looked searchingly in his direction.

‘What, you here too?’

With a slight bow, Walsingham nodded. ‘My business is almost concluded,’ he reassured Leicester, then turned to Elizabeth. ‘All that remains to be said to Your Majesty is that I have decided to bait a trap for our Catholic friends. It may take some time to lay the foundations for this trap, and it will be costly. There are men to be paid, and travel arrangements, and other sundry expenses. But if I could be assured of remuneration …’

His voice tailed off meaningfully. She transferred her stare from Robert to Walsingham, suddenly realizing his true purpose in visiting her tonight. ‘You want more money?’ she demanded. ‘Already? What happened to the last expenses I granted you?’