CHAPTER 5

Seething Lane

The something Nick wanted to pick up was Hector. He had missed his dog on his trip north and wasn’t about to leave him pining at the tavern all day. But this wasn’t the only reason he had delayed: not only would Walsingham have been fully apprised of his cock-up with del Toro, but he would also have been told that the Queen had ordered him to lend Essex one of his best agents.

Nick was glad when John insisted on accompanying him.

“You can bribe the turnkey for a swank room when Walsingham has me thrown in the Tower,” Nick joked.

Judging from his expression, John did not seem to find this amusing.

“Don’t forget to drop in at the Guild,” Maggie called after them.

In answer to Nick’s questioning look, John said, “Maggie is thinking of brewing her own beer so we can join the Brewers’ Guild. What do you think?”

“Fine with me if she has the time.”

“Now that Matty helps with Jane, she has more time. Besides, she wants Henry to learn a trade. She’s worried about him. He’s been hanging around the bear-baiting ring with the actors.” Henry was Maggie’s fourteen-year-old son by her first marriage and John’s stepson. As the euphemism went, he was going through an “awkward phase,” mooning over anything in a skirt and writing idealistic verses about the fairer sex. Considering that the “fairer sex” were the toothless hags who made up the tavern regulars and supplemented their meager income by quickies in the alley, his poetry was startlingly Platonic in nature. Nick had once had a quick peek when he found Henry’s notebook left on the bar. There were lots of references to beautiful shepherdesses and lovesick swains, a tremendous feat of imagination considering that Bankside was populated mostly by whores and criminals.

“Will’s all right,” Nick said. “So is Kit Marlowe beneath all the bravado.” They crossed onto London Bridge and headed north over the Thames.

“Henry wants to be a poet,” John said glumly. “A poet, God help us!”

“He’ll grow out of it,” Nick said, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

“What if he doesn’t?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“I see you’ve been taking lessons from Codpiece,” John said sourly, but Nick had seen his mouth quirk up in a slight smile.

They continued across the bridge; turned right on Thames Street heading toward Billingsgate Fish Market, Hector’s nose twitching at the pungent smell; took a left at All Hallows church by the Tower; and arrived at 35 Seething Lane hard by the Crutched Friars. The house resided in Tower Ward within the walls of the ancient city of London. Nick had often wondered if Walsingham had chosen the location so he could gaze at the Tower from his garden, knowing that at any given time a traitor he himself had caught likely languished there, awaiting death.

A gangly youth was just leaving as Nick arrived, a hat pulled low over his forehead. Mumbling an apology for momentarily blocking the doorway, the lad hurried off, face averted. He looked too young to be an agent. Probably a runner like Harold the unemployed rat-catcher, Nick thought, stepping over the threshold.

On the few occasions Nick had been inside the house on Seething Lane, it had looked as if a bomb had gone off in a paper factory. This visit was no exception. There were sheets of parchment everywhere, covering the wooden floors, piled on chairs and tables, emerging from open chests like stuffing out of feather bolsters. The scene gave the impression of utter chaos, and yet, Nick knew, Walsingham and his secretaries had the uncanny ability of laying their hands almost immediately on whatever document they needed and extracting a single name from the hundreds, even thousands, contained within the house’s four walls.

It must make cleaning a nightmare, Nick thought, as he tried to tread only on the infrequent glimpses of floorboard. It made him feel as if he were traversing a river on stepping stones. A river of paper. He traversed alone, as John and Hector were told firmly by Walsingham’s chief secretary, Laurence Tomson, that they must remain outside. John said he would pop along to the Brewers’ Guild with Hector and meet Nick back at the house in an hour. The Guild was located not far away in Cheapside.

“His Honor’s feeling a bit poorly today,” Tomson whispered as he led Nick upstairs to his master’s study.

That was an understatement. Walsingham had been in ill health the whole time Nick had known him. Long suspected of being a hypochondriac famous for his kidney ailments, he had recently been diagnosed with testicular cancer. It was now rumored that the Queen’s Secretary of State did not have long to live.

When Nick saw him, he believed it. The man’s face was the color of parchment and deeply lined, his body emaciated. He held himself carefully, as if he were in acute pain, but it was typical of the man to be at work. Nick had heard that when he was forced to keep to his bed, he ordered his servants to prop him up on his pillows and put a large tray on his lap, on which papers were placed by Tomson, who sat beside him on a chair. Nick didn’t know whether to admire the man for his Calvinist work ethic or pity him for an obsession with traitors that bordered on mania. But one thing Nick knew for certain: Walsingham was fanatically loyal to the Queen and to Protestantism. Unlike Essex, who was fanatically loyal to only one man: himself.

Walsingham was sitting hunched over his desk writing when Nick was shown in.

“Just a moment,” he said without looking up.

Tomson waved Nick to a chair and left. The only sound was the scratching of Walsingham’s pen, and Nick had the strange feeling that the room he had entered was the inside of the spymaster’s mind—a cluttered space filled with secrets and dark corners. Against the wall he saw a chest labeled A BOX OF RELIGION & MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL and knew that it contained, among other things, the names of Catholic recusants, his family’s names included. At any time, Walsingham could decide to fish them out and institute an inquiry. It was the reason Nick was sitting here now. When His Nibs asked for a meeting, it was prudent to show up. Especially if you had ballsed up an assignment and were now working for the competition.

At last Walsingham stopped writing, meticulously sanded the wet ink, shook the sand off, then picked up a small bell on his desk and rang it.

A man of slight build with a blond beard came in so quickly that Nick got the impression he had been waiting outside. He did not so much as glance at Nick but went straight to his master. Nick recognized him as Thomas Phelippes, fluent in many languages and a genius at deciphering and creating codes.

“Code this in Petty Wales Standard, will you, Tom?” Walsingham said, handing over the sheet of paper. “And then seal it with the usual. It must be delivered into the hands of Captain Shawe of the merchant ship Arachne by the evening tide.”

“Very good, Sir Francis,” Phelippes replied. He bowed and left the room.

At last Walsingham sat back and surveyed Nick with surprisingly placid brown eyes, considering he must have been enraged by the Queen’s request.

“Thank you for coming,” he said in a low and mellifluous voice.

Walsingham was famed for the politeness of his speech. As a staunch Protestant, he abjured all coarse language and despised metaphor and flights of rhetoric, preferring cold, hard facts. More than once, Nick had wondered how Walsingham would react if he ever came into contact with Bess, his parrot. The parrot’s previous owner, Kit Marlowe, had taught the bird a few choice words concerning the dour spymaster. But that meeting, of course, would never happen. Walsingham considered Bankside to be nothing less than a worldly precursor to hell itself. He had been heard to remark that, detestable papist though he was, Dante had gotten it right when he created the Inferno, and if it were up to him, he would condemn all actors, whores, Jews, Catholics, and thieves of Bankside and Southwark to the flames there. As that neatly categorized almost all the people Nick called friends, he was pretty sure where Walsingham thought he was headed in the afterlife. Now he gave Nick a particularly disarming smile.

Here it comes, Nick thought, bracing himself. He had a sudden conviction that his family’s names had indeed been plucked from that ominous chest in the corner. With mounting panic, he thought of the ruin of his family’s fortunes, their imprisonment, perhaps even death. Even though the room was chilly, he had begun to sweat. This was what those poor unfortunate sods Walsingham personally interrogated must have felt like, he thought. Either that or Walsingham was very, very pissed off about Nick losing del Toro.

“The body of Simon Winchelsea was found floating in the river the day you left London for Oxford,” Walsingham said.

Nick blinked. Having braced himself to be given a bollocking for losing del Toro, to be forced to listen to a rant about Essex and the Queen, this was the last thing he’d expected. His conversation with John came back to him: if another agent were killed, in addition to the attempt on Nick’s life, they would know the Spanish were behind it. Walsingham wouldn’t have bothered to mention it if Winchelsea’s death had been accidental.

Nick hadn’t known Winchelsea well but vaguely recalled a slight, wiry man with the weathered face of someone who had spent most of his life outdoors in all weather.

“His death was … unexpected.”

This was as close as Walsingham would ever get to expressing dismay, Nick realized. The spymaster was gazing at Nick, but his eyes were sightless, turned inward on his own thoughts, as if he were pondering his next move after an opponent had unexpectedly checked him.

The spymaster grimaced. “Throat cut. After his eyes were put out.”

If Walsingham could imagine Winchelsea’s state of mind as he was being blinded, then murdered, he gave no sign. His voice was low and uninflected. As always.

The defining experience of Walsingham’s life, one that explained his fanatical hatred of Catholics and had hardened his resolve to establish an English Protestant state, had been when, as English ambassador in France, he was in Paris during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve fourteen years earlier. There he had witnessed the wholescale slaughter of French Huguenots—men, women, children clinging to the skirts of their mothers, babes in arms, and the infirm elderly. Bravely, he had given sanctuary to as many of the terrified populace as the embassy could hold and barred the doors. Then he and his staff had stood guard with drawn swords all night, refusing to give up the Huguenots under his protection to the baying mob while the streets of Paris ran ankle-deep in blood and the screams of the dying had continued unabated throughout the night like a hellish chorus.

Like Dante emerging from the Inferno, without the consolation of the Paradiso, Walsingham had returned to England a changed man, his soul seared by the sights and sounds of unimaginable horror, by the dark knowledge of what man was capable of doing to his fellow man in the name of God. Perhaps that was the reason he dressed all in black, Nick thought. Not because he was a Puritan, but because he was in perpetual mourning.

“Judging from the lack of bloating,” Walsingham continued, “we think he went into the river the night before. Your physician friend confirmed this at the scene.”

Walsingham was referring to Eli, the Jewish doctor who had performed the examination of the body of Lady Cecily, the first lady-in-waiting to be murdered at court. Rivkah had examined the body of the second lady-in-waiting. The Queen had sanctioned their involvement, knowing that Nick thought highly of their medical skills. Cannily, she also knew that a Jewish physician would keep silent about what he discovered because Jews were tolerated in England on sufferance. As long as the Jews proved useful, she would turn a blind eye to their faith and leave them unmolested.

As for Walsingham, he was not above recruiting people he would ordinarily abhor if it served his purposes, especially if they were protected by the Queen’s favor. So long as they remained useful to him, they were relatively safe.

Still, the fact that Walsingham had taken it upon himself to enlist the help of Eli made Nick profoundly uneasy, as if the tentacles of the spy business were reaching across the river and encircling the sanctuary Nick had built for himself in Bankside. He knew he had only himself to blame. It was he who had suggested Eli examine the body of Cecily in the first place.

“He found three sets of footprints at the scene of Winchelsea’s death,” Walsingham continued. “The actual murder took place in a shed near the wharf. I am proceeding on the assumption that this third unknown person murdered Winchelsea.”

“But surely a third set of footprints cannot tell us who murdered whom?” Nick said. “Just that there were three people. They could easily have been left by a witness or left there days before?” Nick was astonished that Walsingham should be so sure the murderer was the third man and not the mark whom Winchelsea had been tracking. The obvious series of events, in Nick’s mind, was that the man had discovered he was being followed and had deliberately led Winchelsea to a deserted place so he could kill him.

“I am certain the third man killed Winchelsea.” Walsingham’s eyes were shuttered. Nick could read nothing in them. But this fact alone told him there was something more at stake here than just the murder of one of Walsingham’s spies.

Nick waited for Walsingham to elaborate, but he did not. Instead the spymaster picked up a quill, then thought better of it and put it down, clasping his hands on the desk so tightly his knuckles whitened. Another sign that His Nibs was profoundly disturbed. As with Cecil and his obsession with Essex, Nick wondered if the normally unflappable Walsingham was coming unraveled. Witnessing this made him feel as if he had stepped into quicksand and was sinking fast.

“It is imperative that you find this third man,” Walsingham said. “Do you understand?”

Nick didn’t understand a damned thing except that something had gone terribly wrong with the spymaster’s grand design, whatever that might be, and he knew it was useless to ask. An actor had stepped from the shadows onto the center of the stage, one who had not been written into Walsingham’s script, and had irrevocably altered the plot.

“How am I going to find this man?” It was not an unreasonable question, Nick thought.

“I will come to that,” Walsingham replied testily.

Time to change the subject.

“How was the body discovered?” Nick asked.

“He was bound with a belt, and it snagged on a nail under the jetty. Otherwise we might never have found him.”

The Thames was tidal, and bodies had been known to travel miles downstream toward the Wash.

If Nick had been tempted to regard the attempt on his own life as a one-off, he could now forget it. There was clearly something going on—another operation afoot—and it was serious.

He felt a brief surge of relief that his loan to Essex had nothing to do with Catholicism and his family before his anxiety returned. Was he to blame because he had lost a Spanish assassin and set him loose to kill with impunity? He had trudged all over London inquiring at inns before he had finally located del Toro in The Red Bull only a few hours before dawn. At the time, he had chided himself for not starting his search there first, considering the proximity of the inn to the road to Oxford as well as the curious aptness of the tavern’s name. Did Nick have Simon Winchelsea’s blood on his hands?

Despite St. Bartholomew’s Eve, or perhaps because of it, Walsingham was not a squeamish man, nor had he ever balked at sacrificing one of his agents if the larger game he was playing required it. Like Machiavelli’s prince, Walsingham believed the end justified the means. No individual life was more important than the holy cause he labored for, the cause of Elizabeth Regina, the great Protestant Queen. Even his own life was expendable. In this, Nick thought Walsingham had much in common with the religious fanatics who had butchered the Huguenots in Paris, but he was equally certain Walsingham was blind to this terrible irony. Doubtless Walsingham’s last thought on earth would not be for his wife or daughters nor even for his own soul poised on the brink of eternity, but for the safety of the realm he had spent his life protecting. In some ways, this made Walsingham admirable; in others, diabolical.

As if reading Nick’s mind, Walsingham gave a weary smile.

“Essex’s interference has played into our hands,” the spymaster said. “I had intended to fire you and let it be known it was because your carelessness led to Simon Winchelsea’s death.”

When Nick opened his mouth to protest, Walsingham held up his hand.

“Let me finish: that was the only plausible reason for letting you go. However, now that the Queen has commanded you to work for Essex, there is no need.”

Nick was glad someone was happy.

“Who was Winchelsea tracking the night he was killed?” Nick asked. “Was he a Spaniard?”

Walsingham frowned. “That does not concern you.”

“I need to know if I am to catch Winchelsea’s killer,” Nick said, allowing his frustration to show. “The fact that he was blinded means that whoever killed him was trying to extract information.” This was so obvious to Nick, he was astonished Walsingham had not mentioned it. His disquiet was growing with every word that came out of Walsingham’s mouth.

And every word that did not.

“Cecil suspects Essex is behind both the attempt on your life and the death of Winchelsea,” Walsingham said, as if Nick had not spoken. “And that there may be more attempts on my agents. Cecil may be right. Essex is certainly rash enough. Now I am informed by the Queen that Essex believes it is his agents who are being targeted.” Walsingham gave a little wince, whether from pain or disgust, Nick couldn’t tell. “Whatever the case, this can be turned to our advantage.”

Like the Queen’s use of the possessive plural, Nick took this to indicate that Walsingham still considered Nick very much on his team. He was surprised at how relieved he felt.

“Now the Queen has ordered that you be loaned out,” Walsingham was saying, oblivious to the way it made Nick sound like a bull passed on to a neighboring farmer to impregnate his cows, “Essex will, no doubt, make overtures to you to come work for him permanently.”

“That will never happen,” Nick said. “Just to be clear.”

“Yes, yes,” Walsingham said wearily. “Your loyalty to me is highly commendable. But to return to the matter at hand, if I may: I know Essex well and he would not miss the opportunity of suborning one of my own men. And there is the advantage that you are a man from his own class. He is such an insufferable snob that that will count the most in your favor. Her Majesty’s … generous suggestion that you aid Essex may well work to our advantage.”

Generous, my arse, thought Nick savagely. She’s besotted. Her wits are gone.

“Surely del Toro is a more likely suspect,” Nick insisted. “He certainly had time to kill Winchelsea the night before he left for Oxford. I didn’t locate him until after Winchelsea was killed.”

Walsingham nodded. “Locating him is part of your brief. We believe he has returned to London. But you are also to look within Essex’s network.”

“You know that I will not be able to act independently,” Nick said. “Essex will likely task Edmund to keep me under surveillance.”

“Ideally, I would have used Sir Thomas Brighton for this assignment. But as he is ill, and now that the Queen has intervened, that is not now possible. Besides, your past acquaintance with Lovett will go a long way in allaying Essex’s suspicions that you are a plant in his network. That and your aristocratic birth. I am not concerned about Lovett.”

Easy for you to say, thought Nick. It wasn’t Walsingham who had to operate with one hand tied behind his back. Aside from John and Hector, whom he trusted with his life, Nick preferred to work alone. Given the foolishly naïve way Edmund had blithely approached the assassin on the London Road, Nick knew he would be considerably hindered in his investigations by Edmund’s rank inexperience. In effect, Nick would be his nursemaid.

“I want you to flush out the rat in Essex’s employ,” Walsingham said.

That rat would be me, thought Nick, glumly. Out loud he said, “I don’t really have a choice now the Queen has taken an interest.”

Walsingham didn’t even bother to nod. “You are in a perfect position to find out who is murdering my agents and why. This talk of Lovett being the target is complete rubbish. Of course, ultimately the goal is to discredit the earl so that the Queen revokes her favor.”

In other words, Walsingham wanted Nick to prove that Essex was complicit in the murder of Winchelsea and the attempted murder of Nick. This case reeked not only of agents double-crossing each other but also of court politics, the nastiest smell of all. And if the Spanish really were behind the killing of Winchelsea, then that threw international politics into the mix as well. Compared to this assignment, Nick’s catching of the Court Killer last autumn had been child’s play.

Perhaps scarpering off to the Continent, as Codpiece had jokingly suggested, was the wisest thing to do. Then Nick thought of John and Maggie, Rivkah and Eli, not to mention his own family and the perilous future they would face as recusant Catholics without him to keep the likes of Cecil off their backs, and he discarded the idea. That didn’t mean he would cease to try to talk sense.

“But why would Essex employ me as an agent if he tried to have me killed?” Nick asked.

“Having you close to him will provide plenty of opportunity to try again,” Walsingham said.

That was comforting, Nick thought.

Edmund had not recognized the assassin, but that did not mean the man had not been hired by Essex. There were plenty of men who would kill for a purse of gold, no questions asked. And it would have been an easy matter for Essex to find out that Nick was traveling to Oxford, although Nick had not felt he was being followed, and his instincts had never let him down before.

“He will think that the fact that his man saved your life will count in his favor, but it will not,” Walsingham continued. “It will count in ours. He will assume that you now owe his man a debt. He will, therefore, be less inclined to suspect your loyalties.” Then Walsingham frowned as if struck by an unwelcome thought. “The meeting between you and Lovett was by chance, was it not?”

“Yes,” Nick replied firmly. He saw again Lovett’s surprise at seeing him walk through the door of the tavern and his obvious pleasure. Walsingham was devious enough to entertain the possibility that Lovett had been part of the plan to kill him. “Lovett was wounded trying to protect me,” Nick said. “He saved my life.” And however cynical Walsingham made it sound, Nick was, in fact, in Lovett’s debt.

“Essex would be mad to pass up an opportunity of trying to turn an agent like yourself who could supply so much information about my network.”

“I would never …”

“Yes, yes,” Sir Francis said. “That goes without saying. Laurence will supply you with interesting, though ultimately useless, facts that you can pass on. In short, you will be acting as a double agent.”

Nick noted that Walsingham had never actually asked him if he was willing to take on the assignment. He flirted with turning him down, then just as quickly discarded the idea. He wanted to know who had tried to kill him and who had murdered Winchelsea. Besides, even if he himself was the son of an earl, there was no way he could refuse a request from His Nibs. He was far too powerful.

“By now word will have got out that you were summoned here. And after you leave, news will leak out that you are in disgrace.” Walsingham rang the bell again on his desk, and instead of Phelippes, Laurence Tomson appeared.

“Laurence will brief you on what you are to pass on to Essex,” Walsingham said. “And it goes without saying,” he added, “it is vital that Her Majesty does not hear about our suspicions of Essex. You are to discuss this with no one outside these four walls.”

“Perish the thought,” Nick replied.

*   *   *

“So that’s what’s afoot,” Nick said. “The usual clandestine horseshit.” He had just finished telling John what Walsingham wanted him to do, confidentiality be hanged. There was nothing Nick and John did not share. They were in a dark corner of The Saucy Salmon opposite Billingsgate Fish Market, and the stench of Thames slime—a particularly noxious variety, considering that all of London’s waste was dumped into the river—was overpowering.

“I don’t like it,” was John’s response.

Hector seconded that with a low whine. He was staring mournfully into Nick’s face, his ears twitching as if he understood every word. Nick scratched him reassuringly under the chin, but he was not mollified and flopped down with a huge sigh, his chin on Nick’s foot. Neither was John happy when Nick told him that Walsingham had specifically ordered him not to take John with him when he was summoned to Leicester House.

“I don’t buy the fact that Essex is bumping off agents. Why would he risk a full-scale war with Walsingham?” John said.

“Because it destabilizes Walsingham’s network. Essex will simply step in and save the day. He sees himself as a knight-errant riding to the rescue of the Queen.”

“Bloody silly, if you ask me. My money’s on del Toro. He has far more reason to want you out of the way. You were following him, for God’s sake.”

Nick stretched. “Oh, I’m not ruling him out, John. I am going to be keeping my eyes peeled, believe me.”

“Sheer lunacy,” John said, banging his fist down on the table and making the tankards jump.

Nick surveyed his friend affectionately. “No, John, it’s not. It’s better you stay in the background. I may need you to shadow me.” When his friend started to protest, Nick laid a hand on his arm. “Besides, I have a task for you. Walsingham said that del Toro was back in London. I want you to try to locate him.”

John looked slightly mollified.

Nick tossed back the last of his ale. Even to his own ears, this sounded thin. If he was in trouble, it would be difficult to get a message to The Black Sheep. Nevertheless, he smiled reassuringly. “You and Sir Thomas Brighton can be my cavalry.”

“His illness means Thomas can hardly sit on a horse right now, let alone ride one.” John frowned into his ale. “Walsingham’s sending you into the lion’s den. Naked.”

“That’s so that when I get eaten, he’ll know who the lion is that’s chomping on my liver,” Nick replied.

“It’ll be a bit late by then.”

“I expect Walsingham won’t lose any sleep over that.” Nick had meant to say this lightly, but it came out laced with bitterness. “He’s desperate to pin something on Essex. If he ordered a murder—two murders, if you count me—then the Queen will be unable to ignore that. She might even send him to the Tower.”

“What are you going to do now?” John asked as they made their way to the door.

“Pretend to be sulking after being given the boot,” Nick said. “And wait for my summons from God Almighty.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Relax,” Nick replied. “I wasn’t being metaphysical. I was referring to a summons from that prick Essex.”