The Spymaster's Daughter (5 page)

Frances was puzzled. “Father, what should I be ready for?”

“He has great pride for a commoner, but is a good man for all that, and a trustworthy one.”

This information barely reached her before her father, scowling, was walking swiftly toward his waiting barge, his back straight despite the cost to him in aching joints.

She had to clutch tight to the bench to stop herself from running after him, begging his forgiveness, trying to make him understand. No, that would need more time than he had. She would convince him at court.

Patience…she must learn patience. If she would be an intelligencer, patience was a prime skill to have, and she must own it in plenty. Somehow she would convince her father that she was worth more than he thought, and through him perhaps she could convince Philip. Staring after her father, she lifted an already wilting rose to her nose, the petals drifting across her breasts. Perhaps convincing Philip would take even more than her father's great skills. She surprised herself with how quickly her girlish dream was revived. And it was too late…altogether too late. It had been too late for her the first day Philip saw Penelope as a just-blossoming girl at Chartley.

Lifting her gown from the dusty path, Frances ran to the dock to wave her father off. She watched the oarsmen take the barge to midstream and pick up the tide, its flags flapping in the wind, a drum in the bow thumping as the oars kept time. She waved her kerchief, and once her father lifted his hand in farewell, as if half forgiving her.

Frances raced back to the manor house. She was going to court!

T
he next three days were a happy frenzy of airing her gowns, making them more fashionable with the addition of cutwork lace and the black and gold silk embroidery of Jennet
and the maids. Several seamstresses were called in from nearby Mortlake to sew new gowns, bodices, oversleeves, and cloaks. Panels and taffeta lining were added to good country gowns so that they would be full and outstanding enough for court, although Her Majesty had declared they must be no wider at the hem than four feet. Two of her favorite places, Nonsuch Palace and her hunting lodge, Oatlands, were small. Moreover, no other gowns could be as wide as the queen's.

Cobblers were called, and the sound of hammers echoed through the great hall from early morn until dark. In a few days many pairs of pinked leather slippers in a rainbow of colors, some with fashionable wooden heels, all lined with satin or tufted velvet to match her gowns, were quickly made. Frances tried on every pair, testing the best of them for the hop and leap of the lavolte, the queen's favorite dance, knowing that she often asked her ladies to dance for her.

Frances smiled at the story her father had told her of Queen Elizabeth dancing the lavolte alone every morning for exercise.

At almost the last hour, Frances remembered the queen rode out on many a fine day, and she ordered buskins with heels for riding. Perhaps she would be among the ladies of the queen's party, especially once Her Majesty saw how well her new lady sat a horse.

Frances oversaw the packing of lace-edged gloves and upstanding neck ruffs, heavily starched and pleated in their wooden forms. When they were finished, she added close-knit hosen with ribbon knee ties. Lastly, her coffer of books and writing materials was included, and all carried to the great hall below.

Frances was unable to sleep the night before she was to leave for court. She lay awake, sensing that her life was about to change in ways she dared not allow herself to imagine. Watching clouds pass before the moon, she wondered what the next weeks and months would bring to justify the excitement she was beginning to feel for a court position she did not truly want.

Though she had been to court several times, she had gone as Sir Walsingham's young daughter, and not as a lady in the queen's own entourage. Was that why she felt such anticipation and yet some unease, as if she were entering an unknown and dark forest track, unable to clearly see the road out and into sunlight? Finally she was wearied from her own thoughts. It was always so much easier to read other people's. She smiled at that, thinking how unladylike her father would consider it.

She turned from her window and sank into her soft bolster, eventually easing into slumber.

A
fter eating a bowl of thick pottage, barely warm when it reached her from the distant kitchen, Frances made her way with Jennet to the carriage and drivers her father had sent from London. Her washerwoman and maid of the chamber climbed into a wagon that would follow.

Her father's man, called Pauley, was tall, with a thin mustache tracing his upper lip and leading to a strong, beardless chin. His clothing was well cut of very good cloth and drape on his wide shoulders and well-proportioned body, all worn with an ease of manner that separated him from other servants.

He held the carriage door open and lowered the step for her.

“You must be Robert Pauley,” she said.

“I am, and have no doubt from your father's description that you are Frances.”

Jennet quickly stepped forward and in a guardian's voice said, “Lady Frances to you.”

The man bowed low. “I beg pardon, my lady. I am used to hearing your father speak of you as Frances.”

She was surprised to hear a learned man's speech, and more surprised that her father had spoken of her to his intelligencers. “He speaks of me?”

Pauley bowed again, and Frances remembered that her father
had called him overconfident for a commoner…nay, proud. She would be on the watch for any self-importance that might lead to disobedience. Her face might betray her youth, but not the steel behind it. She would never be one of those poor creatures who was ruled by her servants.

“He is very proud of his daughter, the wife of England's foremost poet…of love.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Pauley's mouth. Was he mocking her? She was ready to be furious if the man was sly or arrogant, both insufferable in a servant. He held an obvious good opinion of himself, clearly much above his station.

“Well, Pauley, please make certain that all my chests are securely tied,” she said dismissively, treating him as the servant he was supposed to be. She was able to recognize in his proud manner that he was ill at ease with his position, since she, too, was never quite at ease herself, always pretending to be someone she was not.

He moved quickly toward the wagon to verify the stowing of all her belongings. Without appearing to watch, she saw him check the tie ropes, cinch one, and say something to her maid that made the girl giggle and blush. This Pauley merited her close attention if he sought to jolly every serving maid in sight. A mistress must set the rules early and keep to them.

When he returned to the carriage, Frances noticed that he moved with a slight stiffness, different from the one caused by her father's swollen joints. Pauley swung his right leg so that it bent but little at the knee. He stopped at the manor entrance and picked up a bundle. The object was wrapped in an old doublet, which fell away to reveal an ivory-inlaid Italian-style guitar with a slightly curved head. Pauley hesitated outside the carriage.

Surely the man did not presume to ride inside with her.

With a flourish, Pauley bowed to Frances, assisting her into the carriage first, and with similar courtesy handing Jennet inside and waiting as she took the far seat beside her niece. “Lady Sidney, if it
please you, may I leave my instrument in the carriage, since I think a westerly rain is coming on?”

He carried his bundle as if it were a newborn babe. Truly, it would be ungracious to refuse him so small a request. She nodded.

He laid the guitar flat on the unoccupied seat facing her, his doublet fastened around the instrument. For a moment he kept a loving, protective hand on the fretboard before bowing to Frances and climbing up on the wheel to sit above. The driver called to the horses, the whip cracked, and the carriage lurched forward toward the London Road.

For a moment, Frances wondered how a commoner had come to own an instrument of such quality. So, who was he? Intelligencers had secrets to sell, but if Pauley could not be trusted, surely her father would not keep him. She would discover Pauley's secret by careful questioning.

They were scarcely out of sight of Barn Elms when the rain began, not an on-and-off misty summer shower, but a downpour that quickly turned the dusty road into a bog.

Pauley's guitar bounced toward the edge of the seat, and she reached for it.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Jennet asked.

“I would not have such a beautiful instrument damaged.”

“Then the man should take it with him.”

“In this rain? Jennet, I could not countenance such destruction.”

Frances pounded on the ceiling and the coach stopped. “Master Pauley, please come inside.” At Jennet's look of disapproval, Frances added, “You'll be of little use to me if you contract consumption.”

“I thank you, my lady,” Pauley said, opening the door and bowing, rain running from his large-brimmed hat and sealskin cloak. He grasped the top of the door and swung inside.

She handed him his guitar.

“Thank you for your care of it, my lady. It was my father's.” He began to shiver, but clenched his shoulders to control it.

She could see the resolve in his eyes and on his unyielding face. Where did a servant get such strength and assurance, and how did he have a father who could give such a rare gift? Her curiosity was aroused. Pauley's fine features, his educated speech, and now this show of family pride marked him as from a good family of some consequence. He could be the by-blow of a shire knight or even of some higher lineage. But that stiff leg? She hardly realized that she was staring at him.

He answered her unspoken curiosity with no timidity. “Lady Frances, my leg was broken and badly set. When I was an apprenticed lad a loaded ale wagon rolled over me and a barber-surgeon was not called. I set it myself.” He smiled. “And discovered I had no skill for the work.”

She flushed at being caught out in her impolite and personal curiosity.
He set it himself!
She could not imagine it. “I am sorry for your pain, sir.”

Jennet pinched her, and Frances realized that she had given him a courtesy his station did not merit. But his bearing, his temperate, correct speech did. They no longer seemed bold, as she had first thought…. She must remember to be less hasty in her judgment.

“You are kind, Lady Sidney,” Pauley said. “I am limited in no way. Better you know, since I am to be in your service…except for special duties for your father.”

Aunt Jennet now sat in rigid, disapproving silence, often casting warning looks at Frances for being in such personal conversation with a male servant.

Frances ignored the warning. She was a married woman going to court. It was past time to escape her nurse's constant scolding. “Can you play your guitar in this jouncing carriage? I have never heard such a fine instrument as you have.”

Pauley nodded so eagerly that his hat slipped to his lap, exposing hair as black and curling as her own. He smiled and unwrapped the instrument, and she saw it had five double strings in the Italian style. Holding it gently, he began to play and sing in a baritone soft and rich enough to lull Jennet into sleep.

“Under the Greenwood Tree” was a tender song Frances had always loved, and today, of all days, it brought tears to her eyes. Mothers sang it to their babes, and young lovers sang it to each other. She could barely remember her mother, and Philip had never walked with her under the greenwood trees. She didn't even know whether he could sing.

Frances blinked and turned her head toward the passing fields glimpsed between the curtains hung to keep out the dust billowing up from the wheels, or as today, the rain. She must have a care and refuse to sink into self-pity, which could age a woman faster than years.

Pauley stopped playing, concern showing on his face. “I did not mean to sadden you, my lady. Forgive my poor playing. I have been in France and admit to being unpracticed of late.”

Now she saw something comforting in his manner, though by no means was it the fawning way of some servants. It was a positive attitude that invited confidence. She smiled, yet kept her mouth firmly shut on all her thoughts.

She waved her hand, dismissing his apology. “Not so, Master Pauley. You are very skilled at the instrument.”

“Is there something I can play to improve your sad humor?”

“I am not in a sad humor; I am merely thoughtful of my new
position with the queen,” she said, determined to crowd out the heartache that she was surprised to feel, and even more surprised to hear he understood. She would not mourn a husband who did not love her, or long for more than she had.

Jennet, awake again, had heard more than enough. “Frances, let us have silence, I beg you,” she said; yet as they complied, she almost instantly nodded off into a slack-mouthed, snore-filled slumber.

Frances looked at Pauley and they shared muffled amusement, then sat silent for a time as the carriage slowed for a stream crossing, the downpour having ceased. But she could manage only so long in her own thoughts without conversation to distract her, especially since this Robert Pauley intrigued her. He had the carved features of noble descent to go with his speech. There was a story there, and any good spy would want to discover it.

She did not sleep easily, as Jennet did, or close her mind against the crack of the driver's whip and the snorting of horses dragging the heavy carriage along a road never free of ruts even in high summer.

He didn't break the silence again until he smiled at a particularly loud, rumbling snore from the older woman. “Is there any place where your good nurse cannot find deep sleep?”