Midnight Never Come (14 page)

Now, at last, they were coming to the true reason Walsingham had picked up that first chess piece and asked about the Queen of Scots. Deven did not mind playing the role of the Secretary’s hound, when set to such a compelling task. And he even knew his quarry. “Ireland.”

“Ireland,” Walsingham agreed.

With these recent revelations in mind, Deven tried to see the hand of a hidden player in the events surrounding Perrot, Fitzwilliam, and Tyrone. Yet again the muddle defeated him.

“I do not think our player has chosen a course yet,” Walsingham said when he admitted this. “I had suspected him the author of the accusation against Perrot, but what you have uncovered makes me question it. There are oppositions to that accusation I did not expect, that might also be this unknown man’s doing.”

Deven weighed this. “Then perhaps he is playing a longer game. If, as you say, he manipulated events surrounding the Queen of Scots, he has no aversion to spending years in reaching his goal.”

“Indeed.” Walsingham passed a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I suspect he is laying the foundations for some future move. Which is cautious of him, and wise, especially if he wishes his hand to remain unseen. But his caution also gives us time in which to track him.”

“I will keep listening,” Deven said, with more enthusiasm than he had felt when he said it before. Now that he knew what to listen
for,
the task was far more engaging. And he did not want to disappoint the trust Walsingham had shown him, revealing this unsolved riddle in the first place. “Your hidden player must be good, to have remained unseen for so long, but everyone makes mistakes eventually. And when he does, we will find him.”

M
EMORY
:
December 1585

T
he man had hardly stepped onto the dock at Rye when he found two burly fellows on either side of him and a third in front, smiling broadly and without warmth. “You’re to come with us,” the smiler said. “By orders of the Principal Secretary.”

The two knaves took hold of the traveler’s elbows. Their captive seemed unassuming enough: a young man, either clean-shaven or the sort who cannot grow a beard under any circumstances, dressed well but not extravagantly. The ship had come from France, though, and in these perilous times that was almost reason enough on its own to suspect him. These men were not searchers, authorized to ransack incoming ships for contraband or Catholic propaganda; they had come for him.

He was one man against three. The captive shrugged and said, “I am at the Secretary’s disposal.”

“Too right you are,” one of the thugs muttered, and they marched him off the dock into the squalid streets of Rye.

With their captive in custody, the men rode north and west, under a gray and half-frozen sky. Three cold, miserable days brought them to a private house near the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, and the next day brought a knock at the door. The leader muttered, “Not before time, either,” and went to open it.

Sir Francis Walsingham stepped through, shaking out the folds of his dark cloak. Outside, two men-at-arms took up station on either side of the door. Walsingham did not look back to them, nor at the men he had hired, though he unpinned the cloak and handed it off to one of those men. His eyes were on the captive, who had risen and offered a bow. It was difficult to tell whether the bow was meant to be mocking, or whether the awkwardness of his bound hands led to that impression.

“Master Secretary,” the captive said. “I would offer you hospitality, but your men have taken all my possessions — and besides, the house isn’t mine.”

Walsingham ignored the sarcasm. He gestured for the two thugs to depart but their leader to remain, and when the three of them were alone in the room, he held up a letter taken from the captive, its seal carefully lifted. “Gilbert Gifford. You came here from France, bearing a letter from the Catholic conspirator Thomas Morgan to the dethroned Queen of Scots — a letter that recommends you to her as a trustworthy ally. I trust you recognize what the consequences for this might be.”

“I do,” Gifford said. “I also recognize that if those consequences were your intent, you would not have come here to speak privately with me. So shall we skip the threats and intimidation, and move on to the true matter at hand?”

The Principal Secretary studied him for a long moment. His dark eyes were unreadable in their nest of crow’s-feet. Then he sat in one of the room’s few chairs and gestured for Gifford to take the other, while Walsingham’s man came forward and unbound his hands.

When this was done, Walsingham said, “You speak like a man who intends to offer something.”

“And you speak like one who intends to negotiate for something.” Gifford flexed his hands and examined them, then laid them carefully along the arms of the chair. “In plain terms, my position is this: I come bearing that letter of recommendation, yes, and have every intention of putting it to use. What I have not yet determined is the use to which I will put it.”

“You offer your services.”

Gifford shrugged. “I have taken stock of the other side. No doubt you have a file somewhere detailing it all, Douai, Rome, Rheims —”

“You became a deacon of the Catholic church in April.”

“I would be disappointed if you did not know. Yes, I studied at their seminaries, and achieved some status therein. Had I not, Morgan would not now be recommending me to Mary Stewart. But if you know of those things, you also know of my conflicts with my supposed allies.”

“I am aware of them.” Walsingham sat quietly, with none of the fidgeting that marked lesser men. “You mean to say, then, that these conflicts of yours were a sign of true disaffection, and that your recent status was achieved in order to gain their trust.”

Gifford smiled thinly. “Perhaps. I would like to be of use to someone. I have no particular passion for the Catholic faith, my family notwithstanding, and I judge your cause to be in the ascendent. Though perhaps my willingness to switch sides is reason enough for you not to trust me. I am no ideologue for anyone’s faith, yours included.”

“I deal with men of the world as much as with ideologues.”

“I am glad to hear it. So that is my situation: I was sent to find some way to restore secret communications for Mary Stewart, so that her allies here and abroad might be able to plot her release once more. If you wish to block that communication, you can stop me easily enough — but then they will find someone else.”

“Whereas if I make use of you, I will know what is being said.”

“Assuming, of course, that I am the only courier, and not sent to distract you from the real channel of communication.”

The two men sat silently, watched by the third, while the fire crackled and gave out its warmth. There was no illusion of warmth between Walsingham and Gifford — but there was opportunity, and in all likelihood both preferred that to warmth.

“You have been publicly arrested,” Walsingham said at last. “What will you tell Morgan?”

“He’s a Welshman. I will tell him I told you that I came here to advance the interests of the Welsh and English factions against the Jesuits.”

“Whereupon I, favoring any sort of internal strife among my enemies, released you to proceed about that business.”

Gifford smiled mockingly.

Walsingham weighed him for a long moment, his shrewd eyes unblinking. At last he said, “You will keep me informed as you make contact with the Queen of Scots, so that we may devise a way to keep her correspondence under our eye.” He took up the letter from Morgan and passed it back to Gifford. “Go to Finch Lane, near Leadenhall Market. There is a man there named Thomas Phelippes. You will give him this letter, and keep in his company until I send you onward. The delay will not be remarked; the Scottish woman’s residence is being moved, and until it is settled once more no one will expect you to contact her. Phelippes will return the letter to you when you go.”

Gifford accepted the letter and tucked it away. “May this be profitable to us both.”

But when they released him, he did not proceed as instructed to Leadenhall. The time for that would come, but he had other business first.

The house he sought out stood hard by the fishy stench of Billingsgate, but despite its location, its windows and doors were boarded up. By the time he arrived there, he had shaken off the Secretary’s men who had been following him, and so he entered the tiny courtyard alone.

Dusk was falling as he knelt with fastidious care on the ground and ran his long fingers around the edge of one flagstone. With a small grimace of effort, he pried it from its rest, revealing not dirt beneath, but a vertical passage, with a ladder propped against one wall. When the flagstone settled back into place above him he reached out, found smooth stone, and laid his lips on it in a grudging kiss.

A whisper of sound as the stone shifted, and a rush of cool light.

He stepped through into a place which both was and was not beneath the courtyard of the house near Billingsgate. As he did so, the last vestiges of the facade that was Gilbert Gifford fell away, and with a disturbingly fluid shrug, a new man revealed himself.

He had cut it very fine; much longer and his protection would have faded. He had underestimated how cursedly slow travel could be, when confined to slogging along ordinary roads on ordinary horses, and food not specifically given in offering did nothing to maintain his facade. But he had reached the Onyx Hall in safety, and he could explain away his delay in getting to Phelippes.

First, he would report to his Queen.

With one last rippling shiver that shook off the lingering stain of humanity, Ifarren Vidar set off deeper into the Onyx Hall, to tell of his work against the Scottish woman, and to prepare himself for more time spent imprisoned in mortal guise.

R
ICHMOND
P
ALACE
, R
ICHMOND
:
March 6, 1590

The draca was not the only fae around Elizabeth’s court. Lune was the only one living as a human, but others came and went, to gather secrets, visit lovers, or simply play tricks. Sometimes she knew of their presence; other times she did not.

But she assumed, even before she left the Onyx Hall to lay the groundwork for Anne Montrose’s entrance, that someone had been set to watch her. With the endless peregrinations of Elizabeth’s court, it was necessary; they could not spend more than a month or two in one residence before it became fouled by habitation, and the Queen’s whim could send everyone packing on a moment’s notice. The sprites and goblins assigned to bring Lune bread on Fridays had to know where to find her.

That was hardly the watcher’s only purpose, though. She never let herself forget that someone else was reporting back on her actions.

Since Vidar’s appearance at Hampton Court, Lune had conducted herself with even more care than usual. Her ostensible purpose there was to monitor Walsingham and gain access to him via Deven, but she might at a moment’s notice be asked to take action on the Irish affair. A less subtle fae might charm one or more courtiers into behaving as desired; Lune knew her value lay in her ability to work through human channels. Invidiana did not want her influence over the mortal court betrayed by indiscreet use of faerie magic.

So she gathered secrets, and tallied favors, and waited to see what would happen, one eye ever on the few tiny scraps of information about her own court she was able to glean from her contacts.

The draca in the river was useful. Water spirits were often garrulous, and this one was no exception; it might not have access to the daily life of the Onyx Court — it never went past the submerged entrance in the harbor of Queenhithe — but it spoke to other water-associated fae, and even (it claimed) to the Thames itself, which was the lifeblood of London. More news came its way than one might expect. When surprisingly warm and sunny weather descended on them one afternoon, Anne Montrose persuaded the countess to go out along the river, and Lune spent nearly an hour talking to the draca, learning what it knew.

When Elizabeth summoned the countess to attend her at Richmond, the draca followed them downriver. Lune never used it to send word to Vidar and Invidiana, but one blustery day in March, the draca gave her a warning: Vidar himself would bring her bread that night.

Lune was not surprised — she had expected she might see him again, given the apparent importance of Ireland to both courts at present — but she might have been startled, if she came upon him unawares. She thanked the draca, rewarded it with a gold earring purloined from the countess, and went about her business as if nothing were unusual.

Someone was always watching.

Richmond was smaller, and more difficult to sneak around in. Lune left the countess’s chamber well in advance of her appointed rendezvous, and sacrificed her careful illusion of Anne Montrose for the purpose of disguise. It was possible to turn mortal eyes away, but tiring; far easier to appear as someone who had a right to be up and about, even at odd hours. A servant of the household in this part of the palace; a man-at-arms in that part, though she impersonated men badly and would not have wanted to attempt a conversation as one.

One careful stage at a time, she made her way outside and into the night.

When at Hampton Court, she met her courier along the river; here, the appointed meeting place lay within the shadows of the orchard. She ducked beneath the drooping, winter-stripped branches of a willow and, straightening, discarded her appearance of mortality entirely.

The fae who waited for her there was not Vidar.

Lune swore inwardly, though she kept her face smooth. A change of plans? A deliberate deception on Vidar’s part? Or just the draca lying for its own amusement or self-interest? It did not matter. Gresh, one of her more common contacts, was waiting for her.

“Your bread,” he grunted, and tossed it at her without ceremony. Like most goblin fae, he was a squat and twisted thing; ceremony would have been a painful mockery on him. Lune sometimes thought that was why so few of them occupied places of importance in the Onyx Court. In addition to their chaotic and unrefined natures, which disrupted the elegance Invidiana prized, they did not look the part. Mostly they operated as minions of the elfin fae, or stayed away from court entirely.