“Mr. Bacon?”
The voice sounded like a summons from far away. Francis had been waiting in his uncle’s marble portico for so long his mind had wandered back into the arguments he was developing for his Advertisement. Fresh metaphors stimulated men’s minds and engaged their hearts. His sense of injury at being kept waiting had borne a small fruit — a pleasing turn of phrase. The wound is in no way dangerous, unless we poison it with our remedies.
He repeated the phrase under his breath. He liked it. Easy to understand, neatly balanced, and apt.
“Mr. Bacon?”
Francis blinked and returned to the present place and time. He didn’t recognize the man standing a few feet away, but he recognized the style and manner of a member of Lord Burghley’s staff: well-framed and well-groomed, wearing a modest but well-cut suit of clothes, an unremarkable face framed by closely trimmed brown hair and beard. The man’s only distinctive features were his unusually sharp eyes. Intelligence was outweighed only by discretion in the selection of a confidential secretary.
“Yes?” Francis answered.
The man smiled. “We’re sorry to have kept you waiting so long. The press of business . . . you understand.”
“Of course. Is my lord uncle ready to see me now?” Francis laid a slight emphasis on the term of kinship.
The man tilted his head to acknowledge the term. “I’m afraid my Lord Burghley is unable to speak with you. He isn’t feeling well. Still suffering, you know, from his terrible loss.”
“A great loss for us all.” Lady Burghley, Francis’s mother’s eldest sister, had died in April. Her death was in truth a great loss since she had been a tireless supporter of the poor. Who would take up that standard now?
“My master, Mr. Cecil, is fully apprised of the matter at hand. He is ready now to speak with you, if you would be so good as to follow me?” He leaned toward the stairs, gesturing with both hands.
Francis swallowed his pride at the substitution. He could hardly refuse to see his cousin after sitting here waiting for half an hour. It would be churlish — and childish. But he knew Robert understood the slight and would enjoy it, in a small way.
“Very well.” Francis rose and followed the secretary up the marble staircase to a chamber facing the front of the house. The room was pleasant enough in terms of size and light, but far more utilitarian than Lord Burghley’s exquisite study, which looked onto the orchards at the rear. Here, traffic clattering out on the Strand rose above the high stone wall and drifted in through the open windows. The view included little to rest the eye upon beyond a single oak with a stone bench at its feet.
Robert had probably chosen this room because it overlooked the gatehouse controlling access to this center of power. Although even that failed to capture his attention. He sat hunched at his desk, glancing up at the new arrival with his quill in his hand as if he’d been caught in mid-sentence, snatching the precious interval between visitors to catch up on his Sisyphean correspondence.
“Ah, Frank! There you are.” Robert didn’t trouble himself to rise. He preferred to meet people while seated to mask his dwarfish stature and his malformed shoulder. Besides, they were cousins. Robert was two years Francis’s junior, and their mothers had been good friends as well as sisters. They’d spent many months in each other’s company during their boyhood years.
Robert’s late mother, Mildred, was the eldest of the renowned Cooke sisters, students in the world’s first female university, which they established under their father’s roof. They received a thorough education in classical literature, humanist philosophy, and Protestant theology, developing and sustaining an outlook shared by Queen Elizabeth. How not, when they had shared so many brilliant tutors?
Robert and Francis, reared by such extraordinary mothers, also had exceptional fathers. William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, had counseled the young princess when her future was uncertain. He had risen to become the most powerful man in the realm, sitting at Her Majesty’s right hand. If Sir Nicholas Bacon had lived, he would undoubtedly be seated on her left. Alas, he had died when Francis was only eighteen, leaving his youngest son without an advocate at court. Now he scrambled to pick up crumbs, like invitations to write advice letters and odd commissions that could never be openly acknowledged and thus earned little tangible reward. Robert, in contrast, climbed steadily upward on the ladder of influence and power.
Francis helped himself to the best armchair in front of the cluttered desk. “I dropped my own work to answer my lord uncle’s summons.”
Robert turned toward the secretary. “Thank you, Mr. Hollowell. That will be all for now.”
The secretary bowed his head and left, closing the door behind him.
Robert held up a finger of his left hand while scribbling a few more words. Then he set his quill in its holder and rubbed his fingers with a bit of linen. “I do apologize for the delay, Frank. My father meant to see you himself when he sent that note, but he doesn’t have the stamina he once had. He was flagging. We insisted he go up to rest on his bed for a while.”
“I understand. I share your concern. He works too hard; he always has. England is the better for it, but he, I fear, is the worse.”
“Just so,” Robert said. “I’m trying to relieve him of whatever work I can. Now that I’m married and settling into the obligations of adulthood, it’s time to take up my share of the burdens of state, including his intelligence service.”
Francis granted that not-so-subtle dig a tight smile. Sitting on the board of governors of the most prestigious of the Inns of Court might also be considered a sign of maturity. And what was that about taking over his father’s stable of intelligencers?
He demonstrated his superior restraint by focusing on the task at hand. “My lord’s note mentioned a task requiring both me and my clerk. That suggests a confidential investigatory commission along the lines of the work we did in Cambridge a year or so ago.”
Robert nodded. “This would be similar, insofar as the present problem also concerns Presbyterian zealots. I assume you’re familiar with Martin Marprelate and his works.”
“His works, certainly, but not the man. Martin remains unidentified.” Francis’s stomach clenched. “Surely you don’t expect me to find Martin Marprelate! I’m only one man — or two, counting Tom. What could I do that the archbishop’s army of pursuivants hasn’t already tried?”
Robert shook his head. “They’re not particularly clever, I fear. A more subtle approach might yield better results. But no, my lord father preferred not to meddle in the archbishop’s efforts, and we believed the whole uproar had started to die down.”
“Until today,” Francis said, “I thought Martin had abandoned the field. He had made his point, after all. He’d thumbed his nose at the Church and won the public’s acclaim without getting caught. He could retire to some safe haven, and none would ever be the wiser.”
“Leaving the applause ringing in the archbishop’s ears. His Grace could never tolerate that. He turned the whole pursuit over to Canon Bancroft. He’s the one who stirred up the anti-Martinists, hiring satirical pamphleteers to answer Martin in his own terms.”
Francis gaped, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “Do you mean to say Canon Bancroft deliberately poured oil on the dying embers of Martin’s incendiary tracts?”
“I’m afraid so.” Robert shook his head, weary disbelief on his face as well. “His timing is dreadful. Martin is nimble, where the Church is cumbersome. It must have taken Canon Bancroft many weeks to arrive at the plan, choose his men, and give them time to compose their first ripostes. You must have heard the results all the way out at Gray’s — the songs, the jeers, the obscene comedies. An utter cacophony. Much of it written by Bancroft’s men, but others are jumping aboard now as well.”
“I can’t even visit my bookseller without some antic clown leaping across my path or some obscene broadside being shouted into my ears.” Francis met his cousin’s eyes. “That may be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”
Robert smiled grimly. “I suppose Bancroft meant to discredit Martin in public opinion, but he’s only succeeded in drawing him back out. I assume you’ve seen Martin Junior’s Theses Martinianae?”
“A copy found its way onto my desk this morning. No surprises, apart from its comprehensiveness. But now I’m wondering if drawing Martin out again wasn’t Bancroft’s true intention. As long as he stayed hidden, he could never be caught. The trail had gone cold.”
“That’s too devious for our good canon. More likely, neither he nor Archbishop Whitgift could bear to let Martin have the last word. You know His Grace and his demands for impossible oaths. He wants more than mere compliance. He wants absolute commitment. Martin’s cleverness poses a greater threat to him personally than the Spanish fleet did to our sovereignty as a nation.”
“That’s a little overstated,” Francis said. Then he granted his cousin a small chuckle. “But perhaps not by much.”
They traded knowing glances, each having inherited his father’s pragmatism rather than his mother’s religious devotion.
Francis asked, “What do you want me to do? Attempt a ‘more subtle approach’ to catching Martin?”
“Leave Martin alone,” Robert said. “Let Bancroft exhaust the archbishop’s resources. They’re stirring up more tumult than they’re suppressing. And you know how my father hates tumult.”
Francis nodded. He shared that view. “Better to ignore Martin than to mock him. The second blow makes the fray. What do you want me to do?”
“Have you heard about the recent murders of two pamphleteers?”
“No. Two of Bancroft’s men?”
“No, but I believe his men were the intended victims.”
“That sounds murky.” Francis sighed. Another perplexing series of murders with tricky political ramifications. “What’s our interest? These writers live precarious lives, many of them. They rove between St. Paul’s churchyard and the theaters in Shoreditch snuffling up anything that pays for a little quill work, then spend it all in the nearest tavern. Those murders most likely have nothing to do with Martin Marprelate.”
“We would be pleased if you returned that result, but from the little I’ve learned thus far, I think it’s too great a coincidence. And there is a motive. These writers, especially the one calling himself Pasquill Caviliero, seem to have gotten closer to Martin than any of the official pursuivants.”
“Pasquill! Don’t tell me you’ve read Martin’s Mirror?”
Robert sighed with the infinite weariness of the overburdened public servant. “I receive summaries of almost everything that’s published. That’s one of the chores I’ve lifted from my father’s desk along with the rest of his intelligencing services.”
“Hmm.” Francis let his gaze be diverted to the gatehouse, through which an elegant coach pulled by two handsome gray horses now passed. No doubt the passenger was one of Lord Burghley’s noble wards, returning from a game of tennis at Whitehall or a gallop through Richmond Park. And here sat Robert the dwarf, skimming endless mountains of chaff, searching for that one grain of wheat that needed to be ground more finely.
“You would hate it, Frank,” Robert said, following his cousin’s thoughts. “I must spend nine hours a day in this chair, leaving my new wife at home, meeting with everyone from my father’s pampered wards to ruffians who style themselves as intelligence gatherers. Your visit is a respite for me. For a rarity, I don’t have to explain everything three times.”
“But there are rewards.”
“Not from the intelligence work, I assure you. Even Hollowell has to double as an official in the Court of Wards to earn any kind of salary.”
The Court of Wards was the most corrupt — and lucrative — institution in the realm. As master of that court, Lord Burghley had scraped enough off the top of every wardship sold and every lawsuit prosecuted to build a palace in Yorkshire that rivaled anything belonging to the Crown. Now it would seem Cousin Robert was being fitted for that office as well.
“We patch our livings together as best we can,” Francis said dryly. “My job, then, is to identify the murder of two pamphleteers. My clerk will appreciate the excuse to get out and about. However, I must remind you that murders in the London streets are rarely solved.”
“But you’ll have a direction in which to look. If we’re correct and the real targets were Bancroft’s writers, you might be able to set a trap. You’ve done that sort of thing before, haven’t you?”
“Ah.” Now Francis understood why he had been favored with this impossible commission. He’d designed several masques for the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn and the court. He had also staged scenes to catch a murderer once or twice. “Very well. I will endeavor to catch your killer or frighten him off into eternal obscurity. Either way, Bancroft’s pet provocateurs will be protected.”
Robert chuckled at the alliteration. “This goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: be as discreet as you can. My father wants to quiet the uproar, not increase it. And serve justice for the murdered men, of course.”
“Of course. But does my lord believe Martin Marprelate had a hand in the murders?”
“Not Martin himself, who may not even know about them. It’s more likely an accomplice with a growing fear of the gallows. Martin may have powerful friends, but what about the printer and his men? They may not know who Martin is either, and if they’re caught and can’t surrender him, they’ll almost certainly hang.”
“May God protect them.” Francis swallowed, preparing for the most difficult question. “There is the matter of compensation . . .”
“That is a matter for my lord father to determine, and naturally it will depend on the outcome.”
“Naturally. But there will be expenses. My clerk no longer has his own funds, but he’ll have to visit these writers’ haunts and buy drinks, perhaps pay a few small bribes.”
Robert gave him a flat look. He knew all too well that Francis could not hold on to money to save his life. “Send your man to Hollowell for funds. Within reason, mind.”
“Thank you.” That should satisfy Tom. Francis gathered himself to leave, then thought of one last question. “Just between us, Robert — who do you think Martin is?”
“I think what everyone thinks. He’s an educated gentleman, a member of Parliament, with powerful friends and possibly a family whose very name provides a shelter.” His lips curved in a sly smile as he met Francis’s eyes. “In short, Coz, someone very much like us.”