The next day, Trumpet and Catalina left the house in Blackfriars to go shopping on London Bridge, or so they told Lady Russell. She sent a groom to accompany them, but he was happy to accept an angel and be sent to the Old Bell instead. Over the course of her months of penitential semi-captivity, Trumpet had learned which of Her Ladyship’s servants could be bribed and which could not.
Their first stop was Field’s print shop around the corner. She had spent the past week writing another short pamphlet, unbeknownst to Lady Russell, cobbling together bits and pieces from their earlier works. She didn’t expect it to be published. This one was intended as bait.
She handed the package to Wat Whyting with a great batting of lashes, winning a sigh of longing. She did not ask any questions. She merely said, “Thank you for being so trustworthy a soldier in our godly campaign.” Then she turned and walked calmly out the door.
As soon as they turned the corner, she put her thumb and forefinger between her lips and blew a shrill whistle. Two small boys trotted up — Jack and his brother, roundabout ten or eleven years old. She and Catalina had been interviewing urchins since their last manuscript delivery, stopping to talk with those who danced around them begging for a coin. Jack was far and away the brightest of the lot and had the added advantage of a ready assistant.
She took a penny from her purse and held it up. “He’ll go after work, if he goes. You know who I mean.”
Jack nodded. “The tall one with the spots. We know ’im.”
“Good. It might not be tonight or even tomorrow, but he lives with his master above the shop. If he goes anywhere, follow him. Don’t let him see you.”
Jack scoffed at that improbability.
“Mark where he goes and what he does. He should be carrying a package about so big.” She measured a thin book with both hands. “Mark what he does with it. He’ll leave it somewhere or give it to someone. Mark the spot where he leaves it if you can and then come running, quick as a wink, to find me. Understood?”
Jack nodded, his eyes on the penny. She flipped it to him with a grin. “You’ll get another one just like it when you come back with my news.”
“Two,” Jack said, pointing at his brother.
“One. Plus another farthing for every day you have to wait.”
Jack nodded, grabbed his brother’s arm, and scampered off, no doubt to buy food to munch on while they lurked about Field’s shop. Trumpet didn’t worry about their being noticed. Boys like that were ubiquitous, anonymous, and nigh invisible in their dirty clothes, which appeared to be dirt-colored to begin with.
She hoped they would succeed, and soon. This was her last idea.
She and Catalina hurried on to Lady Chadwick’s house to change into their gentlemen’s garb and then walked back past St. Paul’s toward the Stationers’ Hall. Trumpet planned to do Tom’s job for him, using Mr. Bacon’s name to get inside.
Nice of Tom to hand her that excuse, even while telling her to go home and sit on her hands like a good little girl. They’d be sacrificing their Thursday afternoon of tavern-hopping, but times of crisis demanded sacrifice. Let it never be said that Alice Trumpington failed to rise when the call for action sounded!
She couldn’t allow Tom and Mr. Bacon to solve this case, not completely. She couldn’t even let them get too close to Martin’s minion, who must be the man who collected her oilcloth packages. There couldn’t be more than one person delivering manuscripts to the printer and bringing printed copies back. Each visitor to that hiding place brought new risk.
She had an advantage, all right. She held one end of the string leading from Martin to his accomplices in her hands. If she could pull hard enough, she could draw out the murdering minion and somehow persuade him to stop before Bacon shifted his attention from his uncle to his aunt.
But she couldn’t do brain work with a grumbling tummy. So they popped into a fishmonger’s to slurp up a dish of scallops minced with pepper and cumin. Trumpet ate like a fastidious courtier under Lady Russell’s critical eye but couldn’t resist the savory aromas wafting from the stalls of the food vendors dotting the city. She and Tom had competed with each other to try them all during her glorious year at Gray’s. Yet another pleasure denied to her on account of her sex and status. A tradesman’s daughter could eat spicy fish standing in a pocket-sized shop. A gentleman could do it. But she, in her own persona, could not.
They leaned at the rough counter and accepted the wooden plates and spoons from the fishmonger’s wife. The food was delicious and they ate in silence at first, listening to the fishmonger and his wife bicker placidly about whether the mackerels should be displayed noses out or tails out.
“When I am mistress of my own house,” Trumpet said, “we’ll eat whatever we want whenever we want it.”
Catalina nodded, but added in a low voice, “Until you become pregnant. Then you will eat what you want and throw it right back up again.”
Trumpet grimaced. “Don’t tell me things like that. I have enough problems facing me right now. I’ll cope with the future when it gets here.”
“A new proposal today?” Catalina asked in the same low murmur. “I saw a letter came and you spoke an hour with my lady in her estudio.”
“Another bad one.” Trumpet picked out a piece of shell and flicked it out the window into the street. “Some baron in Lancashire with two sons already. He doesn’t need me to supply a third, so he doesn’t care about my rumored lack of virtue. He just wants his eldest to be an earl.”
“Where is Lancashire?”
Trumpet shrugged. “Far away. Don’t worry, we won’t go there. Lady Russell was more offended than me.” She sighed. “We still have the other one.”
“It is good enough, the other one. He is young, Mr. Trumpet. I think he will be not so bad. I think he may be gallant and handsome and jolly for you.”
Trumpet gave her a weary look. “He will be none of those things. Most importantly, he won’t be Tom.”
“Only one there is of Tom. But he will still be here. He must study his law.”
Trumpet surveyed her empty plate, wondering whether to order another. Best not. “He may be here, but he won’t be free either. Lady Russell has compiled a list of marriage prospects for him. She asked me if I knew any of them, which of course I don’t. Merchant’s daughters, mostly.”
“Mr. Tom is too young to marry.”
“He’s the same age as my one acceptable suitor. But if Lady Russell can arrange a match for him, she’ll get a nice fat fee from the bride’s family. What’s more, if she presents him with a plausible match and he refuses it, she gets to hold on to his estates until she extracts twice the value of the match from the rents.”
Catalina shook her head. “You English have more ways to take money from each other with your law than any other peoples, I think.”
Trumpet nodded. “Never become a ward of the state, my friend. It is a fate to be avoided at all costs.”
The sole reasonable proposal she’d received hung over her head like the fabled sword of Damocles. She’d have to accept it soon, like it or not.
She paid for their food, and they went on to the Stationers’ Hall. Bacon’s name worked like a charm. In a matter of minutes, they were ensconced in a room as small and breathless as Tom had predicted.
No matter. Trumpet didn’t have to study all the membership records for the past twenty years. She only wanted to look up two names: Richard Field and Walter Whyting.
Catalina sat on a stool on the far side of the small square table. She pulled a book at random from the shelf, opened it, and began sounding out words under her breath. Trumpet had taught her to read, but she could always use more practice, especially with handwritten documents.
Trumpet set to work, humming the song she’d been practicing at the music master’s that morning: Can she excuse my wrongs? The singer lamented the injustice of his lover, but he addressed her plaint to Dame Fortune. Shall I call her good when she proves unkind? She intended to have it played at her wedding supper, as a subtle complaint about the injustice of her limited marital options.
She tilted her head sidewise to read the labels on atlas-sized volumes stacked three or four high. Richard Field had taken over the Blackfriars shop not long ago. Two years? Three? She found the volume for the past five years and wrestled it onto the tabletop.
She’d forgotten how much these things weighed. She’d done most of her studying at Gray’s with Tom and Ben, strong young men who had done the labor of reaching and lifting fat law books without a second thought. She sorely missed those days. Benjamin Whitt continued to serve as her principal legal advisor, although now they communicated only in writing. And Tom — well, she’d have to get through many years and at least one husband before she could spend a tranquil afternoon reading in a library with Thomas Clarady again.
She banished the might-have-beens from her mind. She unpacked her writing instruments from the small leather case she’d used as a law student, then got Catalina to help her put two more volumes on her stool to raise her to a more comfortable writing height. Another useful trick she’d learned at Gray’s. When she’d first proposed her scheme to her uncle — her terms for keeping a treasonable secret she’d stumbled onto — he’d warned her she’d be spending most of her waking hours trapped indoors studying. She and Tom had both had trouble adjusting to that regimen, but she’d discovered she had both an aptitude and an appetite for the work.
Even apart from the basic grounding in the common law, she’d learned a host of useful things that year. The secret life of boys and men, for example, hidden from most women, especially young ones. Martial arts, scaled to her size and strength. No need to list gambling, drinking, brawling, burping, and rambling about the city just to see what could be seen.
And she’d met Tom, whom she’d banished from her thoughts once already. It must be the smell of the ink, which she still bought from the same stationer. Would writing tools forever remind her of him? Now there was fitting punishment for her youthful folly.
She scolded herself again and turned her full attention to the task at hand. It didn’t take long to find Richard Field’s name in the register. He had taken ownership of the Blackfriars shop along with his former master’s widow this past year. He came from a town in Warwickshire with the grandiose name of Stratford-upon-Avon. It was probably little more than a damp patch on the banks of a muddy river. Lady Russell owned land in Warwickshire, but Trumpet didn’t need to go that far to find a connection to the shop around the corner.
On the same page, however, she found something potentially more interesting. Field had two apprentices. One she’d never met and didn’t care about, but here was the entry for Walter Whyting, the lovelorn youth who took charge of her special packages. He came from Northampton, the principal town of Northamptonshire, the county where Nashe had turned up his best hints about Martin Marprelate.
Now that was something. She noted the particulars in her commonplace book. Then she sat nibbling on the end of her quill, wondering what else she could look for while she was here. She wished there were a registry of writers, but they were too motley a group by their nature. However, licensed works were registered, presumably with the author’s name along with the publisher’s.
She hopped up and found another volume on a different shelf, labeled “Works, 1589. January – June.” She had Catalina help her get the beast onto the table and began at the first page, looking for any of the writers involved in this affair.
She found Robert Greene and John Dando at once, in many entries. Greene published at a breathtaking rate. He must write faster than Thomas Nashe could spout nonsense. Most of the entries just paired authors and titles. Only a few added the printer or publisher. Frustrating!
She turned the page to scan the entries for the month of March, and Fortune’s wheel took a turn in her favor at last. Here, in the record of yet another of John Dando’s silly fables about the bay horse, she found the line, “alias Barnaby Snorscombe, gent., Northamptonshire.”
Barnaby Snorscombe. No wonder he’d changed his name. That line had been written in a different hand and a slightly different color. Perhaps a clerk with a grudge against the successful Mr. Snorscombe?
Although a laughable name wasn’t the only reason a pamphleteer might want to conceal his identity. Gentlemen didn’t publish popular tripe, and they didn’t publish for money either. They wrote short books expounding the secrets of fishing or growing fruit, religious meditations, or small books of poetry. They published to share their wisdom or flatter a superior.
Dando might be the black sheep of his family, fallen into dissolution and disgrace, condemned to scrape a living with his quill. Or more likely, a brother or cousin paid him a monthly sum to keep his bad habits away from home. Trumpet didn’t care about that, although she wanted to meet the man more than ever. His family lived in Northamptonshire. She had no idea how large that county was, but it couldn’t be pure coincidence that it kept appearing wherever they looked for Martin’s minion.
She’d bet a shiny new angel Tom didn’t know anything about Mr. Snorscombe and his Northamptonshire connection. She would move heaven and earth — and Lady Russell — to be there when he found out. She giggled while she scribbled the new tidbits into her book.
“You have found your name?” Catalina had been fanning herself with a sheaf of paper that had been left on the table. “May we go soon, Mr. Trumpet? It is hot in here.” A light sheen of sweat gleamed on her forehead.
“I have.” Trumpet closed the heavy registry book with a thump and packed up her writing materials, casting a glance around to make sure she hadn’t left anything. They’d leave the books for the Stationers’ clerk to put away.
She was close, very close. She could feel the tingling on the back of her neck that she trusted the way Tom trusted his gut. She knew more than he did, that much was certain. Another piece or two and it would all come together.
She cocked her head at her faithful servant. “Let’s go get a drink. Let’s have a look at that Goose and Gall we’ve heard so much about.”