CHAPTER 26

The Palace of Whitehall

Annie’s death meant that Nick’s letter to Walsingham over a week before was now moot, although he was still puzzled as to why he had not had a reply.

But he did receive another letter. It was from his brother, Robert, who said he was coming to London to see how John was—his own steward was John’s brother—and also to purchase a house in the city; that he would be staying at The Mermaid Tavern so as not to put a burden on Maggie at this terrible time; that he would send Alan, his page, with a message when he arrived; that Elise, his sister-in-law, and their mother, Agnes, sent their love.

Nick was glad Robert was coming. For one thing, it would bring solace to Maggie and the entire Stockton family back at Binsey House. John’s parents were both dead, and his brother could not get away from the estate, nor could his married sisters come to visit. So Robert would carry their love and take news back with him. As head of the family, this would be deemed not only appropriate but also a great kindness and a public sign of Robert’s deep regard for the Stocktons, who had served the earls of Blackwell for generations, something to be talked about with approval in the villages and crofts on the Blackwell estate. It was a country custom but one that had been followed time out of mind.

Nick also had another reason for being happy to see Robert. He wanted to warn him of what del Toro had revealed, that he had intended to seek Robert out as the head of a prominent recusant family, perhaps to persuade him to join cause with Mary, Queen of Scots, and a treason plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Nick’s blood ran cold when he thought that Robert and del Toro had so very nearly crossed paths in The Spotted Cow.

Del Toro was back in Paris, but that did not mean another approach might not be made. With Annie gone, there was now no witness besides Nick himself to testify that del Toro had had his sights on Robert at all. Nick wanted it to stay that way.

*   *   *

Nick was in a wherry being rowed across from Bankside to the Palace of Whitehall. It was May Day, and he could hear the bells of London proclaiming the holiday with joyous abandon. Even in Bankside, a maypole had been set up in Paris Garden, and people were flocking to the fields with picnic baskets. A May Queen had been chosen—ironically, one of Kat’s girls—a sylphlike, fair-haired creature whose profession had not yet marked her face with cynicism and suspicion. In Bankside, it was not considered odd to have chosen a whore to be Queen of the May when, traditionally, it was a virgin who was chosen; in fact, the community would have been hard-pressed to find any female who was not beyond the pale of the law. There were a few such living in Bankside, of course, Mistress Baker for one; but as she weighed fifteen stone, was homely of countenance, and possessed biceps that any wrestler would envy thanks to a lifetime of lifting heavy batches of bread from the oven, she was automatically disqualified in favor of the willowy, and enthusiastically willing, Ursula.

The joke already circulating was that she was going to be the Virgin Queen for the day. The fact that this jest depended on an almost treasonous reference to the Queen’s vaunted virginity made it all the more hilarious.

Nick would have much preferred to see in the May with his neighbors and friends, especially Eli and Rivkah, but he had decided to accept the Queen’s invitation to the May Day festivities in the tilting yard. The play Essex was putting on in her honor—The Ghost, written by Will Shakespeare—would be in the evening. Even though Will was only on the outer margins of the acting troupe—being a lowly horse stabler and scene shifter—he longed to write plays and had secretly submitted his play to Essex for his approval.

Before deciding to attend on the Queen, Nick had volunteered to stay and watch over John so that Maggie could go to the May Day celebrations. But Maggie had refused.

“It wouldn’t be the same without John,” she said. “Matty, Jane, and Henry are going with Rivkah and Eli. You go and enjoy yourself.”

Nick wasn’t planning on enjoying himself. But once he was in the boat, such was the beauty of the day, the sound of the bells, the caress of the breeze on his face that the gloom that had descended on him since John’s wounding and Annie’s death began to lift just a little.

Compared to the last time Nick had been rowed across the river to Leicester House, this ride was a delight and not a misery of cold wind and rain, even though he and Edmund had sheltered beneath an awning on that previous voyage. Then, Essex had sent his own barge, hoping to entice Nick into his employ. Now Nick and Essex were on the outs, but Essex could not prevent Nick from attending—he was coming at the Queen’s behest.

“Terrible thing that ship going up in flames,” the boatman observed. He said it evenly, hardly out of breath despite the vigor with which he was plying the oars and the way he constantly scanned the water for other boats, maneuvering out of their way with consummate skill.

Nick should have been prepared to discuss the sinking of The Dalliance with a boatman. All those who plied their trade on water feared fire above all things, as they lived and worked in a world of frail wooden vessels with only a thin plank between themselves and eternity. Astonishingly, most of the sailors Nick had known had not been able to swim, although the boatmen who plied the Thames were usually good swimmers, having grown up on the river. But Nick did not want to relive the experience of the ship exploding, nor the sight of Annie’s and Stace’s burned corpses. He grunted a response and hoped the boatman would drop the subject. No such luck.

“I was talking to one of the sailors who escaped,” the man said. He broke off to yell a curse at another boat that was crossing perilously close to his bow.

It contained a party of two ladies in summer dresses and parasols to keep the sun off their white skin and their beaux at the oars, their fine cambric shirts open at the necks to catch the breeze, their faces red and sweating in the warm sun. “Sorry,” one of the ladies called, waving her parasol. The material of the parasol caught the breeze, and the boat rocked alarmingly, scraping the hull against the side of the wherry. The women shrieked and stood up; the men cursed and told them to damn well sit down and shut up. Both women complied, pouting, oblivious to how close they had come to overturning in the middle of the river.

“Fucking idiots,” the boatman muttered with the contempt of a professional forced to watch amateurs give his livelihood a bad name. “They’ll be in the drink soon enough, mark my words. Them ladies will sink like stones in them dresses.” He said this with a little too much relish, Nick thought.

“Anyway,” Nick’s boatman continued, pulling smoothly away from the disaster waiting to happen in the other boat, “this sailor told me a mad man came running from the cargo hold shouting that the boat was on fire and to get out. If it weren’t for him, the sailor said, they’d all be cinders. Said that he hoped the man escaped. Must have, seeing as the rumor was he saw a trollop asleep before the fire broke out. Said he tried to wake her but she was too drunk, most like.”

Annie, Nick thought. But why was she asleep if she had just tried to kill him? Perhaps this was the proof he was looking for: that it had been Stace, not Annie, who had shoved him into the gunpowder room. Now that he was dead and Gavell was leaving Essex’s employ, Nick would never be able to prove it. And perhaps there was no need; being blown up was punishment enough for Stace. After all, that was the death he had intended for Nick.

Gavell was another matter: he might try to exact revenge for the death of his friend, even though it was Nick who had been the intended victim. It would be just as well if Nick did not let down his guard, even if Gavell had appeared friendly at Annie’s funeral.

But even if Annie was not responsible for the attempt on his life, Nick was certain she had killed Winchelsea and had attempted to kill Thomas and John. Justice had been done.

Let it go, he told himself.

The boatman lapsed into silence as he concentrated on steering through the crowded part of the river that ran alongside Whitehall Palace. Boats were three deep at Whitehall Palace Stairs, with revelers being dropped off for the May Day celebrations. As many of them were already drunk despite it being only morning, getting these passengers safely from the rocking boat to the dock took time. One severely inebriated man fell in, much to the amusement of not only his companions but himself. He was hauled out by his friends, his starched linen ruff sadly drooping, the dye in his vermilion hose running into his slippers like blood.

“Just call me Neptune,” he hiccupped, “risen from the deep.”

“A tosser, more like,” the boatman remarked, rolling his eyes.

At last, it was his boat’s turn to dock at the stairs. Nick paid the boatman and climbed out.

“Want me to come back for you later on?” the boatman said. “It’ll be bedlam trying to get a boat then.”

Nick was tempted, but he did not know when the play would be over. He told the boatman as much.

“Good luck to ye, then,” the boatman said cheerfully, and shoved off to go seek out another fare. The first day of spring was one of the busiest days in a boatman’s year; he would be up and down the river perhaps fifty times or more that day, but despite his exhaustion at the end of the day, he would be very much the richer.

Nick joined the stream of revelers flowing through the palace toward King Street and thence to the tiltyard west of the palace grounds, through the Great Court and main palace gates. On his way he passed by the chapel where the body of the Queen’s youngest lady-in-waiting had been found last winter. She had been placed on the altar and had looked as if she were sleeping. This reminded Nick of what the boatman had told him about the sailor on The Dalliance who had seen a woman sleeping in the ship and been unable to wake her. He remembered how the sailors had tried to go up the ladders first until Nick had thrown them back so the whores could escape first. Most probably, the sailor the boatman told him about had been too concerned with saving his own skin to try to rescue a sleeping Annie.

This thought made Nick sad, a mood that was completely at odds with the merriment of the people around him, jostling each other in their eagerness to reach the tiltyard and the festivities there, shouting out greetings to those they recognized, the women arm in arm to steady themselves on their high cork-healed slippers, the men slapping each other on the back.

All were courtiers, all richly dressed in their brightest colors with flowers and greenery adorning their hair, as was the custom on May Day. Some paused to stare at Nick, for he had not bothered to trick himself out with flowers or greenery or even his best shirt and doublet. He had, however, bathed and shaved. That was the best he had been prepared to do when he was racked with worry over John and still deeply perplexed by the strange twists and turns of this recent case, a case he knew had been solved by Annie’s and Stace’s deaths but nevertheless still bothered him.

Why, then, this deep unease, a feeling that he had missed something? It must be the specter of John’s death that was haunting him, Nick thought. He resolved to try his best to join in the fun of the day, but in all truth, he was dreading it and would have much preferred to be in Bankside just then. Or anywhere else except the court. As with Annie’s sad little funeral, the celebration of Nature’s renewal of life and the hope of a good harvest seemed deeply ironic in view of John’s perilous condition. Nick said a quick Ave Maria that, like the seeds lying in the ground all winter, John would awaken from his deathlike sleep.

In Moorfields, Finsbury Fields, and Convent Garden, as well as outlying districts of London like Shoreditch where the city had not yet overtaken the countryside, and on village greens all over England, maypoles would have been set up. These giant poles, fashioned out of birch trees, were chopped down by the young men of the village at dawn and trimmed of their branches so they were smooth, except at the top, where they were left leafy and green to symbolize new life. Decorated with flowers and ribbons by young maidens, the pole was then erected in the middle of a green sward by rope and tackle, shirtless young men eagerly showing off their brawn to the catcalling and giggling girls.

In poorer communities, a cart was used as a throne for the crowning of the Queen of the May, but at the palace, Nick saw that the royal enclosure on the viewing platform for the jousting had been festooned with flowers so thickly that they completely hid the wood beneath. In the center of the stage was the throne, no doubt borrowed from one of the lesser audience chambers, covered in a green velvet banner with the face of the mysterious Green Man worked in silver thread over it. On either side of this throne, and slightly raised on their own small platforms, were two other thrones—one for the Queen, traditionally dubbed Maid Marian for the day; and one for her chosen consort, Robin Hood. Nick would lay his last groat on Essex having been chosen to play Robin Hood for the day, perhaps as a sop to his pride before Elizabeth packed him back to the Netherlands.

The maypole itself was the tallest and most elaborate Nick had ever seen. He imagined that the Queen’s chief forester had been tasked with finding one of superior stature months ago. Silk ribbons of every hue fluttered from its topmost branches, and like the stage, every inch of the pole had been festooned with flowers. St. James’s Park and the countryside around must have been denuded of spring blooms in order to cover such a monstrosity, Nick thought, thus denying poor villagers one of the only really colorful and beautiful things in their otherwise drab lives.

Still, Nick thought, it did make a pretty show. He wandered in the direction of the tables spread out along where the barrier for jousting was usually erected and helped himself to the free wine being served in pewter goblets by an army of royal pages, for once all wearing clean livery. Nick noted that a fair number of them had obviously been sampling the wares; the boy who served him belched loudly.

“Pardon me, Your Eminence,” he muttered. The boy was so far gone in his cups, he had mistaken Nick for an archbishop.

“You are forgiven, my son,” Nick solemnly intoned, making the sign of the cross over him, then deftly grabbed the wine ewer from him when the lad gagged and turned a faint greenish hue.

As the pages ranged in age from eight to sixteen, the younger boys had obviously not yet learned that, with wine especially, a little went a long way. Nick suspected that more than a few of them would be discovered puking in the bushes and sleeping it off under the table by the end of the day.

Perhaps they had the right idea, Nick thought, emptying his goblet and refilling it. He sauntered off, still carrying the ewer, leaving the poor lad heaving behind the table. If he drank enough, there was a chance his bleak mood might improve.

The tiltyard was full of courtiers now, awaiting the arrival of the Queen as Maid Marian, and her consort, Robin Hood, whoever that might be. After that the Queen of the May would process in and be crowned. Then the dancing around the maypole would begin.

Nick sat down on one of the top tiers of the viewing stands, blessedly empty, as everyone else had formed up on either side of the entrance to watch the approaching procession. Nick leaned back and closed his eyes. The sun was hot on his face and he felt himself growing drowsy, the buzz of the crowd getting fainter and fainter until it was a distant hum, like bees moving over a lavender bed in a summer garden. Then a trumpet sounded to herald the arrival of the Queen, and he opened his eyes and looked straight at a young man standing at the edge of the crowd. Nick was about to close his eyes again when the young man turned. Nick sat up.

The man looking back at him was Annie.

The man started moving away behind the crowd and managed to push his way through the onlookers around the gatepost of the tiltyard. Fearing that Annie was there to assassinate the Queen, Nick sprang to his feet and pursued, fighting against the crowd. Just as he reached the exit, Elizabeth swept through, dressed in green silk worked with silver thread and pearls. On her head was a jaunty hunting hat tilted down over one eye. She carried a silver bow and a quiver of arrows to signify her role as Maid Marian. She was arm in arm with Robin Hood—Essex, of course, trying to look jolly, but his mouth kept turning down when he forgot to smile—dressed in Lincoln green with a sharply peaked hunting cap on his head and also carrying a silver bow and quiver of arrows. Codpiece danced ahead of them, thwacking anyone within reach with an inflated pig’s bladder on a stick and calling out obscene greetings. He was covered in bells and jingled like a purse full of change.

Cursing the delay, Nick made a hasty leg. Codpiece bonked him on the top of his head. When Nick looked up, irritated, Codpiece winked.

“Hello, Richard,” Nick said. “Less of the pig’s bladder in the face, if you don’t mind.”

The Queen’s eye fell on him.

“Ah, Nick,” she said, stopping. She bent to whisper in his ear, giving Nick the full treatment of her breath, eye-watering from a mouthful of rotting teeth. “Congratulations on resolving our little problem.”

Possibly not so resolved, Nick thought, plastering a smile on his face for his monarch. Elizabeth was, of course, referring to the death of Annie, a rogue agent and traitor.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” was the only fitting response before so many witnesses. He couldn’t very well tell her that a ghost had just appeared right under the royal nose.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Elizabeth said loudly, plucking a flower from her hat and tossing it to him. What others heard was a much-coveted open invitation into the royal presence; what Nick heard was a command to give the Queen a full report by day’s end, or else.

The Queen sailed past, inclining her head graciously to her fawning courtiers, each of them eyeing Nick enviously because she had stopped to speak with him and not them. Not only that, but she had given him a favor; in chivalric terms, the flower she had tossed him was tantamount to choosing him to be her knight for the day. The scowl on Essex’s face clinched it. Others in the crowd had understood the implication of Elizabeth’s gesture as well. But before they could latch on to him like voracious lampreys in hopes of the Queen’s favor rubbing off on them, Nick slipped through the gate.

To his right was the Old Staircase leading to St. James’s Park. Briefly Nick considered that Annie might have run that way, but then he concluded she would know she’d be much more inconspicuous in the palace complex, with more chance to blend in with other people, so Nick turned left toward the palace. He emerged into the great open road outside Whitehall. No sign of the young man. Nick entered the vast inner courtyard of the palace and looked around. Servants were scurrying to and fro along the gravel paths outside the building that housed the wine cellar and the great kitchens. Nick walked toward them.

“Seen a young man come this way a few moments ago?” he asked a young kitchen girl carrying a bucket of bloody chicken and duck heads to throw on the midden behind Scotland Yard, the furthest yard to the north of the palace.

“I wish,” she said with a coquettish grin. Then she spoiled the effect by wiping her runny nose on her sleeve.

Nick sighed and pressed on. He entered the palace by the door near the wine cellar.

Instinctively, Nick was making for the river on the east side of the palace. If it were he who was trying to escape, he’d jump into the nearest wherry and be lost in the myriad craft on the river in the blink of an eye. But when he came out at Whitehall Stairs, there were no boats pushing off, only two that were disembarking passengers. Nick asked the same question he had asked the kitchen skivvy. He got only shrugs from the boatmen and blank stares from their fares.

“Want a ride, mister?” one of the boatmen called.

Sorely tempted, Nick nevertheless shook his head. The Queen wanted a report on Annie, and now he would have to tell her that he had seen her alive and well. Either that, or he was losing his mind.

He couldn’t face returning to the tiltyard to watch the crowning of the Queen of the May and the dancing around the maypole, not to mention put up with Codpiece larking about at his expense. What he really needed was somewhere quiet where he could think, so he reentered the palace and made for the room he had been loaned last winter when he was conducting inquiries in a murder investigation. He knew it was likely to be empty, as it was kept for visiting dignitaries and contained such amenities as a fireplace with chairs in front of it, a window looking out onto the Privy Garden, and a four-poster bed.

As he suspected, the room was unlocked and empty. Thanking God for small mercies, he entered and closed the door. Instantly, a great weight of weariness fell on him. Instead of sitting in a chair by the empty fireplace, he opened the window to let in the soft, spring air, then took off his sword and boots and stretched out on the bed.

For days, it seemed, he had been keeping vigil at John’s bedside, or accepting the condolences of his neighbors, all the while trying to come to terms with the deep guilt he felt about John being mistaken for himself. If only he had not asked him to stop by Seething Lane; if only he had gone himself. The day John was attacked had been one of the first days of spring weather; the other had been the day they went to the tavern where Annie and del Toro had met, and thence to her secret house. He had taken off the bandage around his head because he’d felt that people were staring at him like Lazarus coming out of the tomb—Lazarus … Annie’s funeral … spring … the maypole with leaves growing out the top … Protea …

Nick tried to follow his thoughts, but they kept twisting like the woolen skeins in his mother’s tapestry basket, hopelessly tangled. As a boy, one of his jobs had been to separate each strand and wind it back on its corresponding ball of wool: jasper like blood; emerald like new grass, like the new growth of wood and copse. But when he reached out his hand to take hold of one thread, it changed into another color and he had to start again.

*   *   *

Nick was walking in a forest of maypoles, each tree towering into the sky above his head, the trunks smoothly silvered, the tops covered in round balls of wool of every color of the rainbow, loose windings trailing down like ribbons.

An old woman lying on the ground blinked once at him; Nick tried to wave, but his arm was too heavy to lift. Codpiece stuck his head around a tree, winked as if he and Nick were in on some private joke, and then vanished.

Edmund walked by, his fingers playing with something on a chain around his neck, but did not say anything, did not even look at Nick. Then he, too, vanished.

No leaves rustled; no birdsong riffled the air; no brook tumbled over stones. Nick’s footsteps made no sound, and when he looked down, he was not walking on grass but on green silk figured with silver thread. A single daffodil lay beside his foot; he picked it up and put it to his nose. It smelled of sandalwood.

Then Nick glimpsed a lock of red hair against silver bark.

“Annie?”

A low laugh. “Catch me if you can.”

Nick started running toward a great golden light that glowed brighter and brighter the deeper into the forest he ran. Suddenly, he was on the edge of the forest. He stopped, breathless, staring. Floating in the air, impossibly huge, was a great fiery ship with pennants flying, sails bellied, and tilted to one side as if beating into the teeth of a gale. The flames did not consume it but made it as radiant as the sun. Leaning on the rail, high above him, was Annie, red hair streaming in the wind.

“Goodbye, Nick,” she called. “Goodbye.”

“Wait!”

Suddenly Nick was sinking, water climbing up to his waist, his shoulders, his chin. Desperately he tried to stay afloat, but he felt hands grasp his ankles, pulling him down. The murky green closed over his head and he saw John’s face floating white and bloated, his hair lifting and swaying like seaweed in the current, his eyes open, fixed on Nick as if he had an urgent message to impart. Then, like a monstrous leviathan, the dark hull of the ship passed over them, and everything went black.

*   *   *

Nick woke gasping, drenched in sweat. The room had grown warm, the covers tangled around his legs, the faded tapestries on the bed close and hot and airless. He crawled off the bed and staggered to the window. Opening it wider, he leaned out, drawing in great draughts of fresh air, feeling the sweat cool on his back, his mind beginning to clear.

The sun had passed its zenith and was beginning its downward descent into the west, its rays striking Nick full in the face, causing him to squint. Beyond the palace, the citizens of London were returning to their homes, tired and happy, thankful that the first day of summer had come at last, praying for a good harvest so they would not starve this winter.

Somewhere out there in the maze of streets and alleys and low-rent dives, a dead woman moved among the living like a ghost.