His Dark Lady (25 page)

‘I … erm … expended them, Your Majesty.’

‘I see.’ She sighed. ‘Well, who are these men that must be paid? I presume the execrable Parry is not among their number this time? For I am beginning to doubt your skill in knowing a loyal spy from a turncoat.’

Walsingham’s smile was thinner than ever. ‘No, Your Majesty. This is a most trustworthy man whom I am sending abroad to find and follow your enemies. He is highly skilled and has worked for the
good
of England many times.’ His gaze slid to Robert’s face, his voice suddenly smooth and empty of all meaning. ‘Indeed, he is the self-same man whose skill and daring helped to foil the assassination attempt at Kenilworth almost ten years ago.’

‘Then he did not work alone,’ Robert pointed out. ‘As I recall, my own people also helped to foil that plot. Several gave their lives to protect the Queen that night.’

‘Indeed, I had forgotten the small part played by your own men.’

‘And by Lucy Morgan,’ Robert threw in for good measure, his frown very dark.

Elizabeth watched the two men, amused by their sharp exchanges and posturing. ‘Come, sirs, let us not lose sight of the point. Exactly how much am I to lay out for this … what is the brave fellow’s name?’

‘Master Goodluck, Your Majesty,’ Walsingham supplied, turning back to her with a sombre smile.

‘Ah yes, I remember his name. How much am I to give you for Master Goodluck’s mission?’

‘I shall draw up a list of what is required, Your Majesty. I merely wished to be sure it would be agreeable to you if I sent spies back into France to discover these English Catholics who have made their homes there.’

‘It is most agreeable to me, and Leicester there will be your witness to that effect.’

Walsingham bowed, his look very earnest. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty. It is by measures like these that we shall curb Catholic plots once and for all, and settle your throne in peace.’

‘Yes, and you had better do so quickly,’ Robert remarked, seating himself on the edge of the Queen’s bed with an impudent grin in her direction, ‘for now we have all signed the Bond of Association, there may be rich lands and goods up for grabs once certain English noblemen have been proven to be traitors.’

‘Robert!’ she reprimanded him, but could not help laughing as Walsingham took himself away with a hurried bow. ‘You are incorrigible.’

‘This latest suspicion, that the Arundels are involved in some plot to put your cousin Mary on the throne, seems to depend on a letter of dubious origin. More’s the pity, for I’d be glad to see them all
executed
, if they have indeed conspired against you.’ He looked at her with a wry smile, and she had a taste of the old Robert, the one before his unwise marriage to Lettice, before the tragic death of his young son. ‘I have no love for these great Catholic families who sit through our plain service with pained expressions, then rush off to their gilded family chapels for a less than secret High Mass.’

‘Nor I,’ she agreed.

‘Yet if treason could be proved, who would take their lands under the terms of the Bond of Association?’

She smiled, and answered him as coolly as she could. ‘What, are you hungry for yet more wealth and status, Robert? For more land and the power it brings a man when he owns most of England?’ He sat up, stiff-backed, instantly on his guard. Her eyes warred with his, only half-joking. ‘Sometimes I fear you mean to become more powerful than your queen.’

‘If you believe that, Your Majesty, strip me at once of my lands and possessions, and send me begging on the streets of London.’ His face was passionate. ‘I am still your most loyal subject, and would be even then, as a filthy beggar at your feet.’

‘As a filthy beggar at my feet,’ she pointed out, ‘Walsingham or Lord Burghley or one of my guards would soon have you dragged away by force. Yes, and put in the stocks for daring to approach the Queen!’

He seized her hand and kissed it again, this time more lingeringly, reminding her that they were alone together in her bedchamber at Hampton Court.

Elizabeth sat there in her curtained bed, in a nightgown and lacy cap, and looked at Robert sitting next to her, as intimate with her as a husband, just as he might have done if she had agreed to marry him.

‘Stay with me tonight,’ she whispered daringly, and felt his lips still on her hand.

Robert looked up at her searchingly, and she realized that he was still not himself. His eyes were dark with pain, with a desperate longing she had long since forgotten if she had ever experienced, and there was an anguish in his face that left her in no doubt of his suffering.

‘Elizabeth,’ he began haltingly, then closed his eyes. His hand
clenched
on hers compulsively. ‘Your Majesty, you honour me too much. I … I regret that I cannot stay. I came to beg your permission to leave court for Christmas, to spend a few days at home and return for the New Year festivities as always.’

She stared and could not seem to breathe. Robert had not come here tonight to make love to her, to tell her that everything was back to how it had been before his marriage to that she-wolf Lettice, the woman whose name she could hardly bring herself to speak. He had come instead to ask if he could return to his wife’s bed for Christmastide, and she, like a doting fool, had believed his smiles and kisses tonight were for her alone, for his beloved Elizabeth.

‘Get out,’ she managed hoarsely, and turned her face away so he would not see the tears. She heard Robert go quietly to the door and stop there, still hesitant, still waiting for her reply. She gave her permission wearily, closing her eyes to shut out the glare of the firelight. Her voice rang hollow in the great bedchamber. ‘Not a day later than New Year.’

Twenty-one

WALSINGHAM GLANCED UP
from the letter he was writing and, seeing who was at the door, put down his pen. ‘Master Goodluck. Yes, do come in.’

Goodluck bent his head to enter the low-ceilinged, dark-panelled study in Walsingham’s house, and stood waiting, his cloak and jacket still drawn tight against the chill January weather, his travelling bag slung over one shoulder. Below, he watched a groom saddling a horse in the small yard that backed on to Seething Lane.

Walsingham got up stiffly to unlock a box on the table behind his desk. He took a small pouch out of the box, then closed and locked it again.

‘Thank you,’ he told his personal secretary, who was still hovering in the doorway, ‘that will be all for tonight.’

When they were alone, he gestured Goodluck to sit. ‘You’re ready to leave tonight?’

Goodluck nodded. ‘I have everything with me that I’ll need.’ The fire in the study was still burning brightly, and the room was warm after the wintry chill of London’s streets. He stripped off his gloves and laid them carefully across his knee. ‘The ciphers and alphabet key I brought you in the summer, have they proved useful yet?’

Pouring wine into two glasses that stood on the table by the window, Walsingham nodded thoughtfully. ‘Indeed they have. Wine?’

Goodluck accepted his glass of wine gratefully, for he felt on edge tonight and needed something to steady his nerves. He was more
used
to ale these days, and to the stink of common taverns, but red wine was a pleasant alternative. The taste of expensive wine always reminded him of his long-gone youth, in the halcyon days before his father had been executed for treason, his family disgraced, and he himself disinherited and left to wander the country penniless and lost to good sense.

Taking the other glass, Walsingham sat down behind his desk again and rummaged among his scattered papers. ‘Here,’ he said in the end, and handed over a sheet of strange scrawlings and symbols which would have meant little to most men, but to Goodluck meant a coded letter. He studied it while Walsingham continued, ‘Interesting, isn’t it? This was taken from a man landing at Dover three nights ago. Using the alphabet key you brought me, I was able to decode it with very little effort. And what do you suppose it is?’

Goodluck raised his eyebrows, waiting.

‘It is a set of instructions,’ Walsingham told him coolly, ‘on how to separate the Queen from her guards in broad daylight and bundle her away to a private place of execution. It even includes details on which prayers should be said before and after that heinous act. Good Catholic prayers, one need hardly add.’

Goodluck was deeply shocked. He looked at the coded sheet in his hand and felt his skin creep with horror. He knew how desperately some of these disenfranchised Catholics desired to regain England for the Roman faith, and how self-righteous would-be assassins of the Queen were when captured. Even so, he could not conceive of how such a letter could be sent in cold blood.

‘To whom was it addressed?’

‘It bears no name, nor closing signature. Which tells me that its writer was a cautious man, for all his boldness in setting forth the art of royal assassination.’ Walsingham accepted the sheet back from Goodluck and, after glancing through it once more, threw it back on to his desk as though it meant nothing. ‘It also tells me that he knew we might intercept it.’

‘And that there may be others like it out there which were not intercepted, and have found their targets.’

‘Indeed,’ Walsingham agreed grimly. ‘Which brings me to your part in this great comedy. This past year, I have begun to compile a list. On that list are the names of various courtiers suspected either
of
having dealings with men like the writer of this letter – those who would rid England of Protestant rule for good – or who are themselves the instigators of such treacherous schemes and plots.’ Walsingham paused, his expression troubled. ‘It is not as short a list as I hoped at the start. But some of the names may appear there in error, and some, perchance, may be persuaded to turn against their fellow conspirators in return for the Queen’s pardon.’

‘And my part, sir?’

‘Your task is to befriend the men whose names are in the paper I am about to hand to you, along with this purse, which is frighteningly heavy and should suffice to buy you priestly vestments and other necessary accoutrements of a Catholic priest, as well as pay for your passage into France. When you encounter these men, as I say, you will persuade them not only that you are a Roman priest, but that you are privy to many plots against Her Majesty and are keen to put them into action.’ He smiled. ‘You will need to trim your famous beard for this mission, I fear. My apologies.’

Goodluck’s mouth twitched. ‘In the Queen’s service, anything.’

‘I want you to send me reports whenever you are able to do so without rousing suspicion. I want names and intentions. I want to know who is involved at the English court. I want to know details and timings of any assassination attempts you uncover. And I particularly wish to be informed if the Queen’s Scottish cousin is ever mentioned as having given her consent or blessing to these plots.’

‘Sir?’ Goodluck stared at him, only now realizing the enormity of the task he had been assigned. His discovery in such a role would almost certainly mean his death. ‘How long am I to stay in France and make these reports? Six months? A year? Longer?’

‘Here, too,’ Walsingham said, ignoring his query, and passing Goodluck the purse and several papers, ‘is a pass allowing you to enter and leave any English port at will, no questions asked. Also a note that you may produce in case of arrest. You will see my mark on the paper there. That should get you through most difficult situations.’

Weighing the purse in his hand, Goodluck frowned. ‘So I am to pose as a Catholic priest, sir?’

‘I hope your Latin’s up to it.’

Goodluck grimaced. ‘
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
?’

‘Amen.’

‘Amen, indeed, if I muddle my declensions.’

‘Don’t worry. A few days’ study and you can begin baptizing the faithful.’ Walsingham nodded irreverently at Goodluck’s untouched glass. ‘Talking of the blood of Christ, you had better down that and be on your way before this conversation becomes redundant.’ He turned to consult a book that lay open on the table, its pages covered with tiny crabbed print. ‘According to my almanac, the next tide leaves at eight in the morning, and you must go with it to France.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Goodluck stood and drained the wine glass. He set it down carefully on the table, admiring the delicate fluting of the stem, the tiny bubbles in the coloured glass.

‘Why me, sir? You must have other, more educated spies to choose from, ones who could more easily pass as a priest in a Catholic seminary.’

‘Because your French is excellent, your Italian almost perfect, you’re quick-witted, and you’re skilled at living in disguise for many months without discovery.’

Goodluck’s eyes narrowed on Walsingham’s face, having sensed a slight hesitation. ‘
And
?’

Walsingham smiled wryly. ‘And you’re already dead, Goodluck. Such a convenience to have a dead spy who can still move about unsuspected.’

That had not been the true reason for his hesitation, Goodluck knew instinctively. But it was the only answer he would get tonight.

Tucking the heavy purse inside his jacket, Goodluck turned at the door. ‘Sir?’ he asked, determined not to leave England without discovering what he had intended to find out for many months now. ‘How is my ward? How is Lucy Morgan? I know you must see her at court from time to time.’