The dense rain pounded the parlor window until Anne Cooper couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond Sheffield Manor. A chill seeped to her seat near the door, which made her think there must be a crack, somewhere, between the window and the wall. How these poorly built estates weathered the generations, she didn’t know. But then, she had better things to think about than the history of the English manor. Anne’s hands were intent upon the knitting she’d taken up half an hour ago, moving independently of her attention. That remained on Thomas Morgan, who sat at the desk beneath the window composing a letter. The snap of the hearth underscored the sound of his pen. If only she could glean the words he wrote from the scratching on the page…
From the couch, Mary sighed. “You must nearly be finished, Thomas,” she said. Her accent—from a childhood spent at the French court, which despite everything she made no effort to shake—imbued the words with yet more exasperation.
“Nearly, madam,” Morgan said. He did not look up.
“Tell him he is long overdue,” Mary said. She sat up straighter, to impart her own urgency into Morgan’s writing. “Tell him I do not intend to wait by the fireside, embroidering handkerchiefs and waiting for the axe.”
Anne looked at her mistress, surprised. Mary had strong cause to expect persecution, but she had never yet proclaimed without prompting that she feared her own death.
Morgan set aside the letter. Anne imagined he meant his expression to be reassuring, but his temperament was ill-suited to comfort. “You are safe here, madam,” he said. “Rest easy.” Not for the first time, Anne wondered how Morgan rose to prominence in Mary’s household, when he couldn’t tell a lie to save his life.
“I do not want you to speak in platitudes,” Mary said. “I want you to write to him. If you will not, I will do it myself.”
Chastised, Morgan nearly upended his inkwell in his haste to resume the letter.
“Remind him,” Mary said, “that Dante wrote about a special circle of hell for traitors. And that if he proves incapable, I can find others to take his place.”
Anne was so much part of the fabric of life at Sheffield that Mary and Morgan had forgotten she sat near them. Listening had long since taken precedence over knitting, and her sock suffered the consequences. She had dropped several stitches ten rows ago, and the sock now shrank at a diagonal. But what did that matter, when Mary spoke the word traitor? Was this only irrational suspicion, or a real threat bearing down on the house?
Instead of pressing the point, Morgan set down the pen again and glanced to the door. “Madam,” he said.
Anne, turning her listening ear outward, heard the footsteps as well.
“Yes,” Mary said. “I am expecting someone tonight.”
“Quite right, madam.”
There could have been a murderer in the hall and Morgan would have said, “Quite right, madam.” Anne hadn’t yet decided whether Mary’s confidant suffered from an excess of political ambition or a shortage of spine.
“Anne, if you would?” Mary said.
If given the choice between supporting her mistress against threats of betrayal and playing porter, Anne would have let the visitor find his own way through Sheffield. But she’d been given an order, not a choice. She rose and ducked from the room.
The manor’s entryway was elegant, Castilian marble floors and wood paneling along the walls. It, like Mary, belonged better in a Venetian palazzo than here, three miles from a village rife with pigs and straw and shit. It was a manor fit for a queen, even a displaced one, which made the shivering man dripping mud on the marble seem painfully out of place. A young man, slim in a way suggesting poverty, with short brown hair soaking wet against his forehead. He smelled of horse and rain and something that might have been incense, but was more likely tobacco.
Anne frowned. She knew enough of the world to make distinctions among men. There was an air, a way of standing, a habit of dress that united all respectable people, and this man didn’t have it. A man like this had no business calling on a Stuart. He shook the water from his hair, like a dog out of the rain. Anne’s scowl deepened.
“What’s your business in Sheffield, sir?” she asked.
“So this is Sheffield. Excellent.” He flashed her a grin. Liking him less by the second, she didn’t return it. “It’s impossible to tell where you’re going in weather like this. I was worried I’d ended up in Southampton.”
“Your business?” she said, this time without the sir.
“This is the Earl of Shrewsbury’s manor, home to Mary Stuart, isn’t it?”
Anne nodded. No use denying that, although she didn’t trust the man’s habit of answering questions with another question.
“I’ve been sent as a footman to Her Ladyship. I believe I’m expected.”
This was possible. The Privy Council arranged the bulk of Mary’s staff, filling it with cowards and sycophants who could pose no threat. But no savvy London politician would dispatch this insolent madman. She scanned him as subtly as she could, and while she saw no weapons, an assassin could hide a knife any number of places. She couldn’t dismiss him—there was a chance he meant what he said. And Mary expected him—there was a chance he was only who he claimed to be. But Anne had no intention of letting her guard down. These were dangerous times. Mary wasn’t the only one with reason to fear.
Anne gestured toward the parlor. “The lady is within, Master…”
“Marlowe. Kit Marlowe. At your service, mistress. In any way you might want.” He winked, and Anne understood everything at once.
By the Virgin. Was that all this was? Not an assassin. Just a fool who didn’t know where his flirtation wasn’t wanted. Men. Every time.
She opened the door and preceded him into the room. Mary watched them enter with interest. Morgan barely mustered a glance in their direction.
“Christopher Marlowe, madam,” Anne said, taking her previous seat near the door. Let Marlowe cope with Mary as best he could. She almost hoped he’d try his would-be seduction on her mistress. It would be the last thing he did on this earth.
Marlowe stood some feet short of Mary, so as not to drip mud on the carpet. Anne watched him, first with disdain, then with shock. She must have blinked and missed some change, one actor substituting for another. This wasn’t the arrogant rake she’d met in the hall. He’d metamorphosed—somehow—into an aristocrat’s perfect servant. His every step spoke deference, every breath an apology.
“My lady.” Marlowe bowed. “I apologize for my lateness and my, well—” He made a self-conscious gesture toward his sodden clothes.
“Marlowe,” Mary said. “I blame you for neither your lateness nor your wetness. I would ask if you had a pleasant journey,” she added, glancing toward the deluge outside, “but it seems evident you have not.”
“The rain did slow me, madam, but it wouldn’t stop me.”
Well done, Anne thought. Transforming lateness into a sign of dedication. Shortcomings into virtues. Someone had taught this man well.
“I am glad to hear it,” Mary said. “You may retire to the servants’ quarters on the third floor. Master Beton, my chamberlain, will direct you in the morning.” She wrinkled her nose. “A bath, I think, may be in order before then.”
Marlowe ducked his head, choosing gratitude over offense. “Thank you, my lady. With your permission?”
A small smile passed across Mary’s lips. She waved a hand, granting him leave. Marlowe inclined his head at Morgan, whose terse, unwelcoming silence was an art form in itself. Then he swept a final bow, striking the perfect balance of circumspection and extravagance, and left the room.
Morgan could learn one thing from this Kit Marlowe, Anne thought. The man was the best liar she’d ever seen. She liked him better for it, and did not necessarily trust him less. A skilled liar could be either a friend or a risk, depending on whom he lied for.
Either way, he was worth watching.