Clarenceux was sleeping when Sir Gilbert Dethick called. He had spent the night attending to Annie, reading to her from the Bible, tending her when she cried out in pain, which she often did, and mopping her brow when she was hot. Awdrey had taken over from him at first light and Clarenceux had crept off to sleep. Now, as the city bells chimed ten and Sir Gilbert Dethick, Garter King of Arms, knocked on his door, he was snoring in his bedchamber.
Thomas did not know Dethick well. He did know who he was, however, and that Clarenceux trusted him even less than he trusted Francis Walsingham, and liked him even less than that man too. Their verbal fights were famous. Clarenceux would inevitably rise to the bait, with wall-shaking eloquence, and would throw down some impossible gauntlet to the superior herald that, while it left a profound impression, also made him seem both a maverick and unreliable in the eyes of those watching. Part of the problem was that Clarenceux refused to like Dethick on principle. Dethick’s grandfather had been a German armorer and Dethick had lied about his birth to gain English denization, even changing his name from Derrick to Dethick to claim a false ancestry. Clarenceux objected to the highest heraldic office in the kingdom being awarded to such a man. It did not help that Dethick’s father had married a Dutchwoman and Dethick himself had also married a foreigner. It was not their foreignness that Clarenceux objected to so much as their willingness to do anything to advance themselves. It was as if there was no principle to which they would remain firm, no single truth to which they were loyal.
Clarenceux was honest enough to admit that he also resented the foreigner being given several important diplomatic missions to Germany and Holland instead of him; that did not make him feel any warmer to the man. It did not help either that Sir Gilbert Dethick was particularly good-looking. Although nineteen years older than Clarenceux, he looked more handsome even now, in his late sixties. With his mustache preened, “devilish” was not an inappropriate term to describe his looks.
“I wish to speak with Mr. Clarenceux,” announced Dethick from his horse, sheathing the sword with which he had struck Clarenceux’s door.
“He is not well, Sir Gilbert,” said Thomas with a bow. “But I shall go and inquire if he is well enough to wait on you.”
Thomas met Awdrey on the stairs and explained that Dethick had arrived. “Like the fly that settles on an open wound,” she whispered, heading down to the door while Thomas went to rouse Clarenceux.
When shaken awake, Clarenceux blinked and tried to go back to sleep. He heard Dethick’s name and ignored it. Only when he thought of his daughter did he awake. “How is Annie?” he asked, getting out of bed.
“She is unchanged, Mr. Clarenceux.”
He put on his breeches and rinsed his face. “You know, Thomas, over the last few years I have been chased along the top of London Wall in the snow, been attacked in the street, fought a duel in a cavern, been dragged through the sea behind a pirate ship, climbed through Sir William’s latrine, and fought a naval battle against impossible odds. And now I would rather do any of those things again than have to speak to Dethick.”
“I am sure he holds you in equally high affection, sir.”
Clarenceux smiled. He drew a clean shirt from his clothes chest and put it over his head. “Well, let us see.”
Clarenceux stepped out from his front door and looked at Dethick astride his horse, wearing his sword openly, which he was permitted to do as a knighted gentleman. Across the street, Greystoke was leaning against the front door of the house in his usual white shirt, with a sword in his belt—worn openly despite the law. Above there was a man watching from the first-floor window.
“Sir Gilbert, greetings. How might I assist you?”
Dethick tugged at the reins as his horse shied away from Clarenceux. “You can help by doing what you have promised to do, what you have been asked to do, and what you are obliged to do on behalf of her majesty. You cannot simply put off the visitation until it is convenient to you. You have a duty to perform.”
There were few people in the street, and no one who looked as if they were eavesdropping except Greystoke. “A woman broke into this house on Sunday,” Clarenceux said. “She had two guns: one loaded, the other unloaded. The unloaded one she fired at me. The loaded one she fired at my daughter, who is now lying in bed, suffering from the wound. If the guns had been reversed, to whom would you be addressing your comments? Because it certainly would not be me. The College would have no Clarenceux.”
“Do not tempt me, Clarenceux. You know you need to do this work. Tell me when—that is all we need to discuss.”
Clarenceux shook his head. “In all sincerity, I will set out when the bullet wound in my daughter’s shoulder has healed—and not before. Is that clear enough?”
Dethick did not answer. He looked down disdainfully on the upstart herald while his horse jittered in a circle and, without a word, rode off down to Fleet Bridge.
“Tell me,” called Greystoke from across the street, “are all the heralds like you? I would hate to be your employer.”
Clarenceux walked across to him. “Garter herald is not my employer,” he said, looking down the street and watching Dethick cross the bridge and ride up the hill through Ludgate. “He is responsible for the administration of the College of Arms but he has no right to dictate to me.” He looked Greystoke in the eye. “I want to talk to you. I want you to come with me.”
A short while later, when he was properly dressed, Clarenceux led Greystoke up Shoe Lane to St. Andrew’s Church, where they turned right to Holborn Bridge. There the road divided around a single rickety house: the left-hand lane went around the city to the north and the right between the merchants’ houses straight to Newgate. They took the right turn, passing long lines of timber-fronted houses. All the way, he questioned Greystoke and Greystoke answered without hesitation. He explained where and how he had met Walsingham—at the house of Signor Giuseppe Buzzaccarini in Padua, in the company of the earl of Devon. They had both been twenty-three. Walsingham had been eager to know more about Italian government. From Padua they had traveled to Venice together in the company of the earl of Bedford. Walsingham was fascinated by the machinations of the Venetian noblemen and their elaborate safeguards against plots. They had been guests at the doge’s palazzo together, and Walsingham had supported Greystoke when he had been forced to fight a duel with the husband of a woman who had fallen for his readiness to whisper lines from Dante in her ear.
All the while they were moving toward the great church now called Christ Church—once the home of the London Greyfriars. At the gate, Greystoke was surprised to find that the church itself was the building to which Clarenceux was leading him. He obligingly removed his sword and left it leaning against the wall behind the door. It was no warmer within than it had been outside: the huge echoing space only grew warmer when the parishioners crowded in on Sundays and feast days. They spoke in low voices. But Clarenceux walked on until he came to a particular arch in the nave.
Greystoke pointed up at the stained-glass window above them, which included a number of coats of arms. “You are testing me, Mr. Clarenceux.”
“I am.”
“The answer to the question is that the Greystoke arms therein were in memory of my great-uncle, another John Greystoke. He was buried in the north aisle. Obviously the tomb has now gone.”
“Does that not make you yearn for the return of the old religion?”
Greystoke shook his head. “If we have learned anything from the events of our own time, it is that England has started to change again. Every five hundred years it experiences a revolution. You can see it in the chronicles of Britain. Two thousand five hundred years ago, Brutus came to these shores. Five hundred years after that, Gorboduc’s sons pulled the kingdom apart in a civil war. Five hundred years on, the Romans invaded. Move on another five hundred years, the Saxons invaded. Five hundred years after that, the Normans invaded. That was exactly five hundred years ago. Now, England is torn over a matter of faith. It is like an invasion from within, tearing ourselves apart—as in the days of Gorboduc. There will be war, if we do not guard against it.”
“Your mother’s family was Dacre, was it not?” replied Clarenceux. “Argent three escalopes gules, yes?”
Greystoke pointed to the Dacre coat of arms in the window further along the nave. “There. Gules, three escalopes argent. You see, Mr. Clarenceux, I am what I say I am. I am John Greystoke and I have been sent by Francis Walsingham to protect you. Ask him yourself.”
“I already have,” replied Clarenceux stiffly, moving back to the door. “But I don’t trust him any more than I trust you.”