The Scar-Crow Men (31 page)

‘For the moment, we will keep you safe,’ Carpenter snapped, glaring at his companion. ‘Now fetch your records.’

The two spies accompanied their anxious colleague down the three hundred steps into the nave. Outside in the rumble of cartwheels and the reek of dung, Carpenter pulled his cap low and sidled up to where his love, Alice, waited with a pot of New World paprika
for the palace kitchens. ‘Tell Swyfte’s assistant we have our man Shipwash,’ he whispered. ‘He may yet have the information we need.’

‘Can I kiss you?’ the kitchen maid teased, her eyes sparkling.

‘No!’ The scar-faced man’s cheeks flushed, though it was more with excitement than embarrassment. ‘Alice, I thank you for what you do. But take no risks. I could not bear it if—’

‘Hush,’ she said. ‘If I can help bring this terrible business to an end and we can be together once again, then that is worth any risk.’

Full of gratitude, Carpenter could only give a curt nod and hurry back to his companion.

‘You are a fool,’ Launceston said with surprising emotion. ‘You play games with her life.’

‘Alice is her own woman. I have no more power to drive her away than I have with … you.’

The two spies held each other’s gaze for a long moment. Behind them, heels suddenly clattered on the worn flagstones surrounding St Paul’s. The men spun round to see Shipwash racing away through the crowds swarming into the nave in search of work.

‘Damn him,’ Carpenter cursed. The scarred man and the Earl plunged into the throng, hurling bodies out of their path. Past the bellowing preachers they ran, knocking over booksellers and upending servant girls, elbowing merchants and kicking out at children. But by the time they reached the cart-clogged street, their former captive was nowhere to be seen.

‘Ah,’ Launceston said, placing a finger to his lips in reflection. ‘That went well.’

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

IN A FRENZY OF GLEAMING BLACK WING, THE CROWS FEASTED ON
the fine banquet of young Edward Tulse. Eyes gone, white bone shining through the tatters of his face, the kitchen boy was losing his identity one peck at a time. A day after his life had been taken, the lad still hung from the gallows at Nonsuch, and there he would remain until another victim was chosen to take his place.

And that will not be long
, Grace thought.

Hurrying silently along the first-floor corridor, the lady-in-waiting tried to avert her eyes from the grisly sight, but the deteriorating corpse said too much about life in the palace. The boy, who struggled with some deformity of the mouth, had been as good-natured as anyone consigned to labour all day near the hot ovens during the summer. He could never have been a spy reporting back to his secret Catholic masters.

The young woman paused at the end of the corridor and listened. Outside the crows had been disturbed, taking wing as one, a shadow of black feather and bloody beak passing across the sun. So soon after dawn only the kitchen staff would be up preparing the morning meal, but she could not take any risks. Everywhere she went someone was watching her with beady, suspicious eyes. And not just her.

Accusations were coming thick and fast to the Privy Council: of treason, atheism, unnatural acts, and any other crime that could be imagined. Men and women looked at their friends and acquaintances and wondered who was reporting on whom, and which person could be trusted, and who had most to gain by bringing another down.

‘You are well?’

Grace stifled a cry of surprise. It was Nathaniel, who had crept up on her as stealthily as a cat.

‘You said to be light of foot,’ he muttered. He looked pale, with dark circles under his eyes.

‘I did not say scare me into an early grave.’

‘This creeping around takes its toll, ’tis true. I have not slept well since we parted company with Will. At every noise, I feel they are coming for me in my sleep.’

‘What have you uncovered?’

‘I whiled away an hour with Jane Northwood in the gardens yesterday evening,’ he winced, ‘and someone owes me a great debt for that. After listening to all the gossip of every dalliance and slight and rivalry in the entire court, I began to feel my life drain from me. But by the time the bats were flitting overhead, a lull in the conversation finally appeared and I could ask my question. She tells me Master Cockayne is away in London on some business.’

‘Come, then,’ Grace said, excited. ‘We must search his chamber.’

Her friend’s face grew grave. ‘And if we are caught we will be hanging out there with Edward Tulse.’

‘Now, Nat, before the palace awakes,’ the young woman urged softly.

With a sigh, Nathaniel nodded. He led the way through the still corridors to Cockayne’s chamber, three doors from the spymaster’s own room. Grace listened at the door. No sound came from within, and after a moment she steeled herself and stepped inside.

The chamber was barely bigger than a box, with a trestle, a chair, two stools and mounds of parchments and books. The woman felt her heart sink as she surveyed the piles of papers, but she gave a weary nod to Nathaniel and they began to sift through them. Grace tried to picture Cecil’s adviser at work in the room, a small man, ruddy-faced and grey-haired, hunched over these volumes deep in thought. Where would he hide the play?

The young man tossed parchments aside with seeming disregard. ‘At least we will have some distraction from all this misery,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, what?’

‘Jane Northwood told me there is to be a masque, to take the Queen’s mind off the plague drawing closer to her palace. Costumes and music and dancing, with the most lavish scenery and devices and machines ever to grace Nonsuch. All paid for by the Earl of Essex.’ Nathaniel flashed his friend a grin. ‘If he cannot fawn enough, he will buy his way into the Queen’s favour. They say he has even hired Sir Edmund Spenser to pen the words and verses. Perhaps not the best choice when his
Faerie Queen
antagonized Lord Burghley so.’

The sound of footsteps echoed outside the chamber.

Nathaniel quickly moved to a corner out of immediate sight from the entrance to the room, but Grace stood transfixed.

The door swung open to reveal a scowling Tobias Strangewayes, rapier drawn. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled in a low voice.

The woman flinched from the spy’s gaze. Her blood growing cold, she approached the man, holding her hands before her. ‘Please, Master Strangewayes, I beseech you. This is not how it appears.’

Every fibre of her being thrummed with awareness of Nat only feet away.

The spy began to look around the room. Grace snatched out a hand to touch his cheek. The shock of that contact almost threw them apart.

Keep your eyes upon me
, the woman silently prayed.

She forced a flirtatious smile, like the ones she had seen Meg conjure so easily. Her fingers remained on the man’s cheek, hot and tingling and so brazen it might have been an embrace. Uncomfortable, Grace thought,
I have never been so forward before
.

‘It appears that you are one of the traitors at large within Nonsuch Palace.’ His tone was harsh, and he began to look around the room again.

Panic made the woman’s heart flutter. Forcing herself to overcome her resistance, she parted her lips and stepped so close to Strangewayes that her body brushed against his. She balanced on tiptoes, wavering, so that he knew she could easily fall forward and press her breasts against his chest. Her cheeks flushed with awkwardness, but she widened her smile to turn it into a colouring of passion.

Strangewayes swallowed, his brow furrowing. His gaze still wanted to dart.

Keep. Your. Eyes. On. Me
.

‘You are a brave and honourable defender of our Queen and I am but a lowly servant of Her Majesty, but we wish the same thing: her safety and security,’ Grace breathed. ‘I followed a hooded man to this part of the palace, but lost sight of him. Then I saw this door was ajar—’

The red-headed spy made to step into the chamber. Her heart beating faster, Grace leaned forward so her lips were close enough to kiss him.

‘If I was seen … why, I fear for my safety. I have no strong protector here at court.’ She held his wavering gaze until a faint smile leapt to his lips.

‘You have one now,’ he said gently. ‘My master sent me to …’ He hesitated. ‘To request some information from Master Cockayne …’ His voice tailed away.

At this time of day?
Grace thought. It seemed that the Earl of Essex was taking advantage of Cockayne’s absence to look into the business of his rival, Sir Robert Cecil.

‘Would you walk with me awhile until I find peace?’ the woman whispered.

Strangewayes nodded, eager to be away from the chamber now he had been caught out.

Her blood throbbing at the close call, Grace flashed a glance at a rigid Nathaniel as she left the chamber.

She knew she had earned only a brief reprieve. Before she had been all but invisible; now that Strangewayes had discovered her among Cockayne’s things she had been noticed. One more false step would bring her immediately to the attention of the powers at Nonsuch, and then her life would truly hang by a thread.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

‘SOMETHING FOLLOWS US STILL. DO YOU SEE?’ SILVANUS POINTED
down the rolling Staffordshire uplands to where the lush meadows fell against a dense strip of shadowy woodland. Will followed the line of the gypsy’s finger. Squinting, he could glimpse a grey shape flitting among the trees, though under the slate-grey skies at the end of the day he could not be sure it was not a trick of the light.

‘The same thing you have seen for the last three nights?’ the spy asked.

The man bobbed his ochre turban in a grave nod. His face was painted scarlet from the festivities in the village they had just left, where the gypsies had played their roles as fortune-tellers, magicians and performers. They had been given enough scraps of food to last them three days. ‘It draws closer with each day, sometimes appearing from the east, sometimes the west, searching for a break in our defences. It plans to attack if it can find a way in, or it would have left us alone long ago.’

The spy looked back at the children chasing each other alongside the laden horses of the caravan. What kind of man was he to show such callous disregard for the lives of the people who had protected him? Meg appeared to care little about the harsh decision they had taken for the greater good, but Will felt it weigh heavily on him every moment of the day.

The Moon-Man returned to his wife Sabina, who rode a horse with baskets hanging down its flanks. Their two boys, Goliath and Samuel, had taken a liking to Will, enjoying his tales of adventure. He felt another pang of self-loathing at their warm glances.

He looked back down the slope, but the shadow was gone. Whatever was out there would be back soon, though, he was sure of it.

He strode back to the slow-moving column where Red Meg played with the gypsy children. She had warmed to the Egyptians during the seven days the two spies had accompanied the caravan, sharing the travellers’ food round their fires under starry skies, and listening to the lilting poetry of their strange, secret language. On their journey across the flat Midlands plain, Will had seen his Irish companion peel away layers of deception to reveal what he believed were her genuine feelings. At times, he had almost grown to trust her.

The sun broke through the clouds as the caravan made its way steadily upwards. It was hot and muggy with the threat of rain. The dusty air of the track across the lowlands gave way to the scent of fern and cool, damp vegetation. As a dark band of forest loomed ahead of them, Silvanus made his way back. He wore a relieved smile.

‘We are nearing a safe place,’ he said, dabbing at the sweat on his brow with a red kerchief. ‘We have made camp here many times before. The tracks through these hills are always dangerous, with footpads and rogues roaming constantly. But there are many places nearby that the Good Neighbours call their own. When we move so close to their realm, we always take more care.’

Meg looked at the hillside and then down into the lowlands where the shadows of clouds scudded across the woods and meadows. ‘This reminds me of home,’ she said with a note of yearning. ‘Where are we?’

The Egyptian pointed from the shimmering line of the River Dane in the green valley towards the nearest heavily wooded mountain beyond the hillside. ‘That is the White Peak and this wood ahead is Back Forest. In there is our destination. Lud’s Church.’

‘A church?’ Meg asked. ‘You are God-fearing men, then?’

Silvanus grinned. ‘This church has been here much longer than the ones you know. It was old before the Bible was written.’

‘And who worships in that house of God?’ Will enquired.

The Moon-Man only smiled.

When the caravan wound its way under the cool canopy of Back Forest, the singing of the Egyptians grew quieter. The children kept closer to their mothers, wide, bright eyes searching the shadows among the trees. They could hear birdsong and the movement of small woodland creatures in the verdant undergrowth, but they all felt an odd weight upon them, as if the forest was holding its breath, watching the strange beings wandering into its midst. Will found the sensation unsettling, but not threatening.

The two boys, Goliath and Samuel, stepped in close to the spy, taking his hands. ‘Tell us a story, master,’ Samuel, the older boy, whispered, trying to be brave. ‘Tell us again how you fought the bear with your bare hands.’

Picking up Goliath, Will continued to hold the other boy’s hand as he spoke again about his exploits. Meg rolled her eyes at her companion’s heroic exaggerations and the weakness of his jokes, but she stayed by his side nonetheless, head down as she listened to his words. Glancing down at Samuel, Will had the strange feeling that he was looking at himself, on his way to hunt for birds’ eggs with his friends in the Forest of Arden. He was surprised by a brief but powerful pang of loss.

The caravan wound through the ancient greenwood, the track wide enough only for
one person at a time. Their low, rhythmic singing rolled out among the gnarled trees. Although the Moon-Men were moving up into the highlands, Will noticed the front of the column had started to dip down. Eventually he came to a set of uneven steps cut into the grey bedrock, so old and worn by generations of feet they might have been formed by nature. The steps led into a chasm that had been created by a great landslip, as wide as the height of two men, the bottom lost to the dark. The singing stopped as each man, woman and child began their descent. Shafts of evening sunlight slashed through the jumble of overhanging trees, illuminating areas of moss-covered sandstone on the sheer walls.