On Wednesday afternoon, Lady Russell retired to her bedchamber after dinner to ease her aching back. Trumpet offered to leave her in peace, deciding to spend the afternoon attending upon her aunt. Then she and Catalina went out to the stables and submitted to the indignity of being perched behind grooms to make the treacherous journey into the wilds of Bishopsgate.
As they plodded up St. Andrew’s Hill, she considered her options for this unexpected afternoon of liberty. First thing, she’d send a note to Tom. They should go back and talk to that whore again. Something about her story smelled false. Catalina had a good nose for the lies of whores, having been one herself, more or less. If there was anything to get, she’d get it.
Any fresh tidbit would help cheer Tom up. He’d been dismally cast down by Marlowe’s shredding of his precious conjectures. But that was Kit, not truth. The man lived to throw stones at established beliefs. What was Tamburlaine if not a stone cast at God Himself?
Kit knew nothing. But Trumpet felt that tingling at the back of her neck when she thought about John Dando. He had something to do with all this. He might be Martin’s minion, collecting her packages and trotting them up to Sir Richard of Fawsley. She had nothing certain, but she’d keep plucking at that thread until she pulled something loose.
They had to wait at Cheapside for a coach to pass with an entourage of mounted retainers. The Earl of Oxford, by the arms painted on the door. She gave thanks once again that she wouldn’t have to marry him since he was already married to the Lord Treasurer’s daughter. Unhappily, by all accounts. He had a dire reputation, which of course did no harm to a man’s prospects. Still, another arrow dodged.
They resumed their plodding course northward, edging pedestrians aside. A boy with a jaunty manner caught Trumpet’s eye — her new minion, Jack. He must have followed them from Blackfriars. When their horses plodded into her aunt’s stable, she spoke to the groom before he had even landed her feet onto the hard-packed floor. “You may both return to Lady Russell’s house at once. My aunt’s men will bring us home. Tell the housekeeper not to expect us for supper.”
She pretended to let Catalina dust her skirts until the men had remounted and ridden away, then she went back out into the alley, where Jack appeared out of nowhere.
“News?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady. He left, like you said, only at dinnertime. Good thing we were watching!” He cocked an eye at her, but she wasn’t that easily swayed.
“Not a groat until I hear it all.”
He told her, with much elaboration, the tale of following the printer’s apprentice to a brick wall alongside a pleasure garden in Shoreditch, where he had removed a loose brick and stuffed the oilcloth package inside the hole. Jack had left his brother to find that loose brick and followed the apprentice back to Blackfriars.
“Well done,” Trumpet said. “If we can find that loose brick, you’ll get a whole extra penny.”
“We’ll find it, my lady.”
Jack led them north through Bishopsgate into the sprawling liberties north of the City wall, where labyrinths of three- and four-story tenements had replaced small farms. The new buildings were chiefly inhabited by the lesser sort, but a few great estates had been divided into a patchwork of pleasure gardens where the well-breeched could while away a summer afternoon drinking sweet wine in a breezy banquet house or challenging their friends to a game of bowls.
Trumpet’s aunt, Lady Chadwick, spent her afternoons in that fashion with her friend Lady Fulburne, who owned one of these Shoreditch parcels. So Trumpet was well familiar with the narrow passages running through the area.
They spotted Jack’s brother sitting in the middle of a brick-lined alley with his back against the wall, in the shade of an overhanging lime tree, munching on a handful of plums. He jumped up when he saw them and pointed at a brick higher than his head. Trumpet started toward him, but Catalina caught her arm. “Don’t go in, my lady! Someone may be watching.”
Trumpet gestured at the nine-foot walls. “Where could they be?”
Catalina treated her to a full Iberian shrug, both arms slowly rising with open palms. “A tree, a window. Why choose such a place if not to watch? He may see us now.”
“Then we should stop clustering here at the entrance and march on through.” She shook her arm free and nodded at Jack. “Pretend to drop something when we get to that spot.”
He did as she bade him, but no one could see them in the middle of the alley — unless there was another hole in the bricks in just the right place for peering.
That was an ugly thought. Trumpet shook it off. It was broad daylight, with people within screaming distance of both ends of the passage. They had nothing to fear — but best be quick.
Jack’s brother had marked his brick with a strip of sticky plum skin. The brick slid out easily enough, spilling grains of loose mortar onto her skirt. If this hole had been used since the beginning, it had now been removed and replaced twice times six manuscripts. The last one, her cobbled-up bait, now lay inside the hole, which was just wide enough to house a wrapped pamphlet. She replaced the brick and nodded at her band of intelligencers. “Let’s go. Walk out the other end at a normal pace and turn left, back toward Folgate. Wait there.”
They did as she instructed. Trumpet paid the boys a penny apiece and bade them watch each entrance of that alley. She considered asking them to follow whoever collected her package, but they couldn’t very well travel all the way to Northamptonshire or even know for certain that the collector hadn’t passed the thing on to someone else inside a crowded inn. The best they could do was to watch and remember. She promised an extra farthing to the boy who noticed the most telling detail.
They scampered off to their posts, leaving the two women at loose ends. “You know,” Trumpet said, “I’m not certain, but I think that wall might belong to the property next door to Lady Fulburne’s. Let’s walk back past it and see.”
Which they did, and which it was, the last in a row of six walled gardens laid out side by side with shared walls running between the middle properties. They rang the bell at Lady Fulburne’s and were admitted by her manservant — a slender, gray-haired man with a sprightly manner. He clapped his hands with joy to see them, inquired solicitously after their health, and led them briskly past square flowerbeds to the banqueting house, which was a small, octagonal building with large windows and a fancifully crenellated roof. It was raised up some seven or eight feet from the ground to catch breezes otherwise trapped between the walls.
The two senior ladies reclined on couches like Roman senators, both facing the same pair of open windows. “My dearest, darling Alice!” Lady Chadwick crooned. “What a delightful surprise!”
Her delight was echoed in still fruitier tones by Lady Fulburne. Judging by the expansiveness of their welcome, the women were more than a little drunk and getting bored with each other’s company.
“Sit, sit, sit!” Lady Fulburne sang, waving her hand as if to summon more couches from the aether. Her servant drew up two ordinary armchairs, placing Trumpet’s where both ladies could speak to her comfortably without blocking the view through the windows. He seated Catalina by the wall, where only Trumpet could see her. He poured tall cups of wine for everyone, assessed the supply of sweets and pastries, and bowed himself out.
“We were just talking about you,” Lady Chadwick said. “Any new offers?”
“Not good ones.” Trumpet told them about the rude baron in Lancashire.
“Unacceptable!” Lady Fulburne declared. “What did Lady Russell say?”
“She agreed with you,” Trumpet said, “although at greater length.”
“Ah. Then he must not be one of her kind,” Lady Fulburne said. The two ladies traded meaningful looks. “You know what I mean. One of those” — she dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper — “Presbyterians.”
More dark looks, followed by deep draughts. These pleasure-loving ladies had no patience with Puritans.
“What else are you about this afternoon, Niece? I doubt you’d give up an afternoon at the theater to visit a couple of old gossips.” The ladies giggled at one another.
“It’s too hot for the theater,” Trumpet said. “The groundlings smell like composting socks. I wanted a walk. We’ve been all around this little district here, peeking through gates at everyone’s pretty gardens. Yours is by far the nicest, Lady Fulburne.”
“Why, thank you, Lady Alice! Isn’t that kind of you?”
Trumpet smiled sweetly. “What sorts of people do you have as neighbors here, my lady?”
“Only the best, I assure you. These six gardens were created all at once by Lord Hoxton, oh, twenty years or so ago. His Lordship was very particular about whom should be allowed to acquire them. He’s descended from Edward the Third, you know.”
“I did not know that.” Trumpet nodded as if this were a most valuable bit of news. “So is my father.” That descent was very indirect, but it didn’t hurt to underscore the fact that, while she was younger than the other women, she outranked them. These ladies were the widows of mere barons.
They possessed that most desirable of estates, however: a well-endowed widowhood. They had everything Trumpet wanted, but they chose to squander their freedom in the pursuit of pleasure — a very lazy pursuit at that. She would do more with her time and wealth when she had them in her power. She didn’t know what yet, but she had plenty of time to discover it.
She asked, “Did Lord Hoxton’s ancestor owe knight service to King Edward?”
Lady Fulburne blinked at her. “Why, I suppose he must have. That was rather the purpose of the nobility in those days, wasn’t it?”
“She’s thinking of her friend, Lady Russell’s ward,” Lady Chadwick put in with a swift frown at Trumpet. Her refusal to cut off all contact with Tom was a bone of constant contention.
“Oh,” Lady Fulburne said. “That poor boy! Well, then, yes, my dear, I suppose these gardens would fall under the aegis of the Court of Wards — the greedy beasts. If anyone in your family tree has ever owned so much as a toothpick that once belonged to a monastery, you had better be careful to stay alive until your heir reaches his majority!”
“Or hers,” Lady Chadwick said. “Thank God you’re safe in that regard, Alice.”
“My father is hale and hearty, thanks be to God.” Also fearless, reckless, and addicted to the most dangerous sport in the world — privateering. But she’d inherited her sturdy constitution from his side of the family. “Are your neighbors friendly people?” she persisted. “Do you meet them?”
“Not often. The place on the right is owned by the Earl of Huntington’s wife’s favorite nephew, but he spends summers in the country. The one on the left is owned by Sir Richard Knightley of Northamptonshire. His wife is the youngest daughter of the late Duke of Somerset, you know. Unfortunately, Sir Richard is one of those.” She traded disapproving grimaces with Lady Chadwick.
“One of the worst,” Lady Chadwick said, “according to my son, who likes to attend debates in the House of Commons when he’s in town. Every bit as intolerant as your Lady Russell — not that she isn’t the ideal guide and advisor for you in this difficult year, Alice.”
“Thankfully, he never comes here.” Lady Fulburne smirked at her friend. “Sir Richard doesn’t approve of pleasure.”
“Or leisure,” Lady Chadwick quipped, sending them both into bubbling gusts of laughter.
Trumpet was grateful for their besotted condition because that name had startled her so much she might actually have jumped a little. Catalina had noticed, but the ladies hadn’t.
So Sir Richard Knightley owned the wall with the loose brick, behind which Martin’s last masterpiece now waited to be taken to — Fawsley, it would seem. By whom?
She trilled a short laugh, catching up with the others as they wound down. “It seems a shame to waste such a lovely property. Doesn’t anyone ever go there?”
“Oh, it isn’t wasted, my darling girl.” Lady Chadwick winked broadly at her friend. “Sir Richard has a cousin, or is it a nephew? A very pleasant young man named John Snorscombe, who has the most charming gentlemen friends.”
“Charming in every way,” Lady Fulburne said, and they both giggled.
“As a matter of fact,” Lady Chadwick said, craning her neck to look through the window into the neighboring garden, “it ought to be about time, oughtn’t it?”
“Here they come,” Lady Fulburne sang out, hoisting herself into a more upright position and fastening her gaze on the window overlooking the next garden.
Trumpet twisted around on her hard chair and saw two young men with excellent legs, fashionably dressed in closely fitted doublets, thin silk stockings, and very short melon hose, pace across the long strip of grass next door, setting up jacks for a game of bowls. When the shorter one turned in their direction, she ducked, though he wasn’t looking at her.
There, as close to her manuscript as she was to Catalina, stood John Dando, weighing a ball in his right hand, preparing to take the first turn.