The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (8 page)

  She glanced from Catlyn to Faulkner and back again. The two were friends but evidently not lovers; Catlyn appeared unmoved by the fact that Faulkner and Master Parrish were exchanging glances and whispers like a courting couple. That suggested one approach, though it was her stratagem of last resort. The risk of exposure was too great.

  When Master Eaton paused to take a drink of beer, she seized the opportunity to enter the conversation.

  "Do you come to hear plays often, sir?" she asked Catlyn.

  "Not as much as I would like," he said, with a polite nod towards Master Naismith. "And I fear that when I am on duty in my new position, my thoughts will be engaged elsewhere."

  "You think there's a threat to the ambassador?" It was a crude gambit, but what if she did not get another chance to speak to him?

  "Quiet, lad!" Master Naismith turned to her, glowering. In a low voice he added, "Walsingham and Cecil's spies are everywhere."

  Chastened, Coby lowered her gaze. Since Sir Francis Walsingham's unexpected recovery from a grave illness three years ago, the rivalry between the Queen's private secretary and his understudy had become intense. It was not wise to attract their attention with careless talk.

  A serving-man arrived with supper. Coby poked her horn spoon into the mess of boiled vegetables and gristly grey lumps of something vaguely animal. Tavern food was good work for the jaws, if not the belly.

  The conversation turned to a comparison of the two royal princes. Robert, the elder, resembled his father in looks and his mother in temperament, and everyone agreed he would make a great king, perhaps one even more famous than his grandsire Henry the Eighth. It was his younger brother Arthur, however, who was the people's favourite, taking after Henry in his love of jousting and spectacle.

  "Shall the princes attend, if we perform at the new theatre?" Coby asked, drawn back into the conversation despite herself. The thought of being mere yards from the Prince of Wales set her stomach a-flutter with nerves.

  "Surely you will be invited to play at one of the royal palaces?" Catlyn asked.

  Master Naismith recounted Master Cutsnail's instructions, leaving out the matter of whether the theatre would be ready in time.

  "Thank you for this intelligence, sir," Catlyn said. "It explains why Her Majesty requires an additional bodyguard for the ambassador."

  "This contest is a sham," Dickon Rudd, the company's clown, muttered, pushing away his empty bowl.

  They all looked at him.

  "How so?" Catlyn asked.

  "Do you really think the ambassador will risk offending the Queen by choosing any but her own son's company of players? Mark my words, the Prince's Men will win. I would put good money on it."

  Parrish leant forward, a sly smile on his lips.

  "You will be close to the ambassador," he said to Catlyn. "Could you not put in a good word for your friends?"

  "Why should I care who wins?" he replied. "And what makes you think I have any influence over the skraylings? I cannot so much as speak their tongue."

  Coby saw her chance, and seized it.

  "I can."

  Everyone stared at her.

  "Well, I can. Only a little Tradetalk, I confess."

  Catlyn looked at her thoughtfully. "Could you teach me?"

  "I–" She turned to Master Naismith. She would have to play this carefully if she was not to arouse suspicion. "I have work to do, have I not, sir?"

  "I am sure you could be spared one afternoon a week," he said after a moment's pause. Leaning around Rafe's back he added, "A wise man does not turn down an opportunity for advancement."

  "I am in your debt, sir," Catlyn told Naismith. "If there is anything I can do for you – within the bounds of my duty to Her Majesty, of course."

  "Of course."

  Catlyn got to his feet.

  "Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have business elsewhere."

  Coby joined the chorus of farewells and watched him leave. An afternoon a week for, what, almost two months? Surely she could find something out in that time, enough to satisfy Master Dunfell.

 
 
 

On his return to the Faulkners' house, Mal was met in the hall by Ned's mother, Mistress Faulkner. In the gloom of the narrow windowless passage her lined features resembled a death mask, pale as wax.

  "What is it? Are you unwell, ma'am?"

  She shook her head.

  "There's a man waiting for you," she whispered. "I had to let him in–"

  "What? Where's Ned?"

  She held up a finger to her lips.

  "Gone to Henslowe's house to do some copying work. I'm not expecting him back until curfew."

  "Hell's teeth! Who is this man?"

  She shrugged. "Never seen 'im before. He said he was come to talk to you about this new job."

  Dear God, not another disgruntled young cockscomb looking for a fight. It was bad enough being accosted in the street, without them following him home and frightening poor old women out of their wits.

  "Go and visit one of your neighbours," he told her. "I'll get rid of him."

  She bobbed her head gratefully and hurried out of the door. Mal waited until she was out of earshot, then opened the door to the Faulkners' parlour.

  A solidly built man of about forty stood to one side of the window, leaning against the crumbling lath-and-plaster wall. From his mousy brown hair to his workaday brown boots, he was as ordinary a man as Mal had ever seen. He made no move as Mal entered the room, only watched him calmly as if he were the host and Mal the unwelcome visitor.

  "Who are you?" Mal said, drawing his rapier.

  The man's eyes flicked to the blade then he raised his hands, holding them away from his own weapons.

  "You can call me Baines." His accent was that of the city: gravel grating on the underside of a Thames wherry.

  "What do you want?"

  Baines looked him up and down. "Leland told you about the job."

  "The ambassador? Yes."

  "And you accepted."

  "Yes. Look, what is this all about? Leland told me to report next month–"

  "Leland ain't the one giving orders. Not directly, anyhow."

  "I know this commission comes from the Queen. And you don't look like an officer of the Crown."

  Baines sighed. "Are you going to put that pig-sticker away so we can discuss this like gentlemen?"

  "Why should I trust you?"

  "Because," Baines sneered "if I wanted you dead, you'd already be spilling your guts in the rushes."

  Mal sheathed his sword. He didn't doubt the man's words.

  Baines moved towards the empty fireplace. Mal noted he kept to the edges of the room, as if to avoid being silhouetted against the window.

  "You work for Walsingham," Mal said. This was starting to make sense, of a sort. The Queen's private secretary was said to run the largest network of intelligencers in Europe.

  "Give the man a round of applause. Yes, Walsingham. Christ's balls, you college boys aren't half slow on the uptake."

  "What does he want with me?"

  "That's for him to say. Me, I prefer not to know." He probed the corner of his mouth with a finger and flicked something into the fireplace. "Walsingham's house, Seething Lane, five o'clock. Tell no one where you're going."

  Baines left, closing the door behind him. Mal watched him through the window, realising as he did so that this was where Baines had stood to watch for his own approach. He shook his head. What was he getting himself into?

 

After dinner Coby ran some more errands for Master Naismith, collecting the tradesmen's bills for the latest building work on the new theatre and delivering a list of the company's intended performances to the Office of Revels in Clerkenwell. She didn't mind the running back and forth; whilst her feet were busy, her mind was free to think and plan. It was one thing to arrange to meet this Catlyn fellow, quite another to get information out of him. Annoying he might be, but he was unlikely to be a complete fool, otherwise he would not have been chosen for whatever wicked scheme the ambassador's enemies had planned. She would have to be discreet and tactful.

  On returning to Thames Street she found Gabriel Parrish in the parlour drilling the apprentices in deportment and womanly manners. Though apprenticed to Master Naismith, the boys took much of their instruction from Parrish since he had the most recent experience of playing women's roles.

  "No, no, no!" Parrish cuffed Oliver around the ear. "Bend at the knee, not the waist. You're not a Bankside whore. Show him, Philip."

  The older apprentice dipped gracefully and picked up the handkerchief that lay in the middle of the floor. At almost sixteen, Philip Johnson was at the height of his career, an experienced actor of female roles hovering on the brink of manhood. This would probably be his last summer of glory, before his voice broke and his boyish charms faded.

  Coby cleared her throat.

  "What do you want, Jacob?" Parrish asked without looking round.

  "I need Philip for a short while, sir, to do a fitting for tomorrow's performance."

  "If you got it right the first time," Philip said, "I would not have to–"

  "It's your own fault. You fidget."

  "Enough. Ladies, please!" Parrish rolled his eyes. "Philip, go with Jacob. Oliver, on with your practice. We will get this right if it takes all day."

  Oliver dropped the handkerchief on the floor, and Philip pointedly stepped on it as he strode across to the door Coby held open for him. The boys were encouraged to behave like ladies at all times, in order that they avoid picking up masculine mannerisms, but this only added girlish spitefulness to their rivalry.

  In the attic where Coby did most of her sewing, Philip stripped to his underlinens and stood in the centre of the room with arms folded. He was still at the gangly stage, all knees and elbows but yet to gain a man's full height or broad shoulders. Coby studied him out of the corner of her eye, anxious to learn every detail of boyish demeanour, even if her best model was one skewed by an actor's upbringing.

  "How women stand this all their lives, I know not," Philip said, thrusting his arms into the corset she held out. Coby laced it up the front with brisk movements; it was much like the one she wore under her own shirt, but cut lower, to enhance rather than conceal. Not that Philip had anything to enhance.

  "You should eat more," she muttered. "Being so skinny makes you look too much like a boy."

  "I eat every scrap on my plate. It's Master Naismith's fault, the miserable old skinflint. Anyway, you're one to talk."

  She stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm not the one who needs to look rounded and womanly."

  She held out the farthingale, and he stepped into it. Coby fastened it at the back then walked around him with her head on one side, peering at the hemline.

  "Are you standing on tiptoe again?"

  "No. See?" He lifted the front of his skirts to mid-calf and dropped them again.

  "Then stop growing, will you?" She placed the end of her measure on the ground and squatted to count off the markings. "I'll have to sew another two inches of guard on all your gowns at this rate."

  She crossed to the baskets filled with neatly folded fabric remnants, and began searching through them for a length of black taffeta to match the farthingale.

  "Short is fashionable. To show off my pretty ankles." He poked one foot from below the skirt, toes pointed.

  "And your yard-long feet," she replied. "No, the hems must touch the ground, or the illusion is spoilt."

  Philip heaved a sigh and folded his arms again. She draped the green-and-gold shot taffeta skirt over the farthingale and again measured the deficit.

  "Want to come to the bear-baiting when we're done?" Philip asked. "I'll lend you an angel to bet with."

  "No, thank you. I have far too much work to do, thanks to your sprouting. And where do you get so much money, anyway?"

  Philip smiled slyly. "De Vere sent me a pearl carcanet. Said I ought to wear something queenly for the contest."

  "And you sold it?" She stared at him in dismay. The cheap fake pearls from the costume chest would not pass muster from the lords' gallery.

  "Pawned it. I can get it back any time before the performance."

  She thought of Catlyn, pawning his lute and running behind on his payments.

  "And what if you can't?"

  Philip shrugged. "There'll be others. I reckon Southampton would cover me in pearls if I let him touch my cock."

  Coby felt herself blush. "You wouldn't…"

  "Course not. Sam from the Admiral's Men reckons you can get more with promises than surrender." He frowned, staring at his own raised hand as if imagining it adorned with jewels. "Still, could be worth it…"

  "You don't mean that. I–"

  "What? You going to rat on me, Jakes?" Philip unfastened the skirts and let them fall to the floor.

  "No."

  "Perhaps I should start spying on you. I'm sure you have some tasty little secret you wouldn't want Master Naismith to find out."

  He stepped towards her over the silken folds. Coby turned away for fear her expression would betray her, and rummaged in her sewing basket.

  "You Dutch are as thick as thieves," Philip went on. "What is it you get up to on Sundays, anyway? Can't spend the whole day at church."

  "Master Kuyper reads to us from the Bible after dinner," she replied.

  "Whited tombs!" Philip attempted a deep hectoring tone, like a street corner preacher. "Full of dead men's bones, and all filthiness!"

  "Don't you quote scripture at me, Philip Johnson. Or I might turn the page to Saint John. Starting with the whore of Babylon."