Blackbird.
Calming an unsteady heart, Lucy clasped her hands before her chest – as she had been taught to do by Mistress Hibbert – and drew breath to sing.
Fourteen
ELIZABETH SMILED. ONCE again Robert had brought her a prize worth having at court. She liked this girl’s spirit and her respectfulness, and even the innocence which shone from her dark eyes and clean black skin. What use were these shameless young women who were meant to attend her in chastity and obedience night and day, yet could think of nothing but their next sexual conquest? Better to have a true innocent like Lucy Morgan at her side, for at least a virgin would hold her mistress’s interests close to her heart, and not be forever panting after some young man with more bulge in his hose than was decent.
The inner court had fallen silent. A refreshing wind threaded the grasses while the people waited for the song, leaning against walls in the blinding sunshine or propped up on their elbows on the grass. There was the briefest of pauses. Then, in her simple gown and chaste white cap, Lucy Morgan opened her mouth and began to sing.
Ah, Robin, gentle Robin.
Tell me how your leman doth
And thou shalt know of mine.
My lady is unkind, I wis.
Alas! Why is she so?
She loveth another better than me
And yet she will say no.
Ah, Robin, gentle Robin.
Tell me how your leman doth
And thou shalt know of mine.
I cannot think such doubleness
For I find women true.
In faith my lady loveth me well,
She will change for no new.
Ah, Robin …
Elizabeth glanced across at her courtiers, surprised by their unaccustomed stillness as they listened to the sweetness of Lucy’s voice. Then she looked back at Lucy, and for a moment she too forgot her pain at Robert’s disloyalty, the sting of his faithless indiscretion temporarily soothed by this beautiful songbird.
Ah, Robin, indeed.
Then the song finished and Robert was suddenly there, kneeling before her like a knight errant, his hand resting on his sword-hilt in a grand gesture, as though about to draw his blade and battle monsters for her.
‘Your Majesty, please accept this gift of a curiosity and forgive my negligence at leaving your side earlier. My business took longer than intended.’
When she did not reply, his gaze touched awkwardly on Lucy, who stood still before the assembled courtiers. Her graceful hands hung loose by her sides as she waited, drinking in the long silence that followed her song.
Robert spoke. ‘Does my new find please you, Your Majesty?’
‘It does indeed.’
‘Will you hear another song from young Lucy Morgan, Your Majesty?’ he asked, glancing again at Lucy, who stood silent and unmoving in the midst of all this colour and heat. ‘Or would you rather witness the strangeness of a troupe of green crabs disguised as Florentine acrobats?’
‘No crabs, I pray you. Let us go inside, where it’s cooler, and hear more of this child’s heavenly singing while we take lunch,’ Elizabeth declared. She saw her ladies’ faces lighten with relief.
It was too hot, in truth, to be outside, even in the shade. Nor did she think the temperature would drop until the weather had broken in a storm. Even the breeze from the lake was too warm to be refreshing. No wonder Lettice had gone to bed with a headache. Despite the shade from the canopy and the coolness of the grass underfoot, she herself felt a little faint, the last notes of Lucy’s song still ringing in her ears, high and plaintive.
Nonetheless, she managed a sunny smile for Robert as he stood, gallantly holding out a hand to help her rise. ‘And you must have a refreshing glass of wine, my lord Leicester. All this rushing about has left you flushed.’
Robert bowed, his eyes lowered. ‘I am your humble servant, Your Majesty.’
Fifteen
GOODLUCK ADJUSTED THE black skullcap on his head, forced a little more stoop into his walk, and rapped feebly on the door of Walsingham’s secretary. The door opened and Goodluck spoke at once, feeling for the man’s shoulder with one trembling hand.
‘Your master. I must see … your master. The augurs …’
Walsingham’s man looked down on him with obvious distaste. His lip curled and he held a handkerchief to his nose, leaving Goodluck to wonder if he had applied the duckweed oil too liberally. But the man, who no doubt had seen many odd characters at his master’s door over the years, showed neither surprise nor disbelief at this request, merely turning to consult a black ledger lying open on the table.
‘Do you have an appointment? What is your name?’
‘My name is Malchance. I come bearing a message from … from John Dee, the Queen’s astrologer. The omens are bad, very bad. Saturn and the Moon are coming into conjunction in the third quadrant. I must be allowed to speak to your master at once.’
‘Master Walsingham is much occupied with writing a letter this afternoon,’ the man began with a weary air. Suddenly he stopped short, his face intent as he turned his head towards a tiny creaking noise from within.
Over his shoulder, Goodluck saw that the ornate wooden door behind him – presumably to Walsingham’s private rooms – had opened a bare crack.
The man nodded as though someone had spoken. He dipped a pen in the inkwell and scratched briefly in the ledger. ‘You may go through. My master is expecting you.’
Walsingham was at the window, its plain wooden shutter thrown open, gazing down into the courtyard below. An ethereal voice floated up through the sunlight; it was Lucy, singing a solo for the court. Both men listened in silence for a moment.
‘So the Queen has a new plaything. Let’s hope she doesn’t tire too quickly of this one.’ Walsingham closed the shutter and pulled the bar across to secure it. He turned, and smiled at Goodluck’s unlikely appearance. ‘An astrologer. Whatever next?’
‘A Catholic?’
Walsingham seemed to recoil at the suggestion. He shook his head and sat behind his small walnut desk, indicating with a nod that Goodluck should take a seat opposite. ‘You have a strong stomach for this work, Goodluck. But not strong enough for that, surely? I received your note. The wording was surprisingly abstruse. It took me a while to follow you correctly.’ He rearranged the papers on his desk; Goodluck’s note had been written in a code not used between them for many years, but clearly Walsingham had managed to decipher it. ‘I take it the man you sought is here?’
‘Quite openly, it seems, posing as a travelling entertainer.’
‘A knife act?’
‘He has a dancing bear. Though it should be a knife act, I agree.’ Goodluck allowed himself a quick grin. ‘As you’ve told me in the past, the best assassins play to their strengths.’
‘Indeed.’ Walsingham glanced at the flagon of ale on the desk. ‘I’m afraid I cannot offer you refreshments. These are for a young friend, even now on his way to visit me.’
Goodluck was surprised but schooled his expression not to show it. ‘A young friend, sir?’
‘A Florentine Italian, one of these younger sons of minor nobility who must make their own way in the world. I doubt that you would know him. His name is Petruccio Massetti, and he was working at the embassy in Paris when I was there in ’seventy-two. I believe he was a junior secretary. He had a fine hand, as I recall, and a gift for languages.’
‘And now he comes to visit you in England?’
‘His purse is a little light, he tells me, and he hopes England may make it heavy again. You must understand, I owe Massetti a great debt of gratitude. He helped smuggle my wife and daughter out of Paris when those murdering Catholics began to drag the Protestant families out into the street – men, women and children alike – and massacre them in the most bloody fashion imaginable.’ Walsingham sighed, then looked across at Goodluck with a twisted smile. ‘Massetti comes bearing fresh information against our exiled Catholics in Italy, or so his letter claims, and I a
m glad to hear him out. A young man of great daring and initiative, and with his heart in the right place.’
‘So I have come at a bad time. Should I leave?’
‘No, for I would like you to listen to his news and give me your opinion afterwards.’ Walsingham regarded Goodluck’s outlandish outfit for a moment. ‘But out of sight. A man never talks easily before witnesses, in particular those who look and smell as unpleasant as you do. Come, there is a place here with a spyhole. You shouldn’t have long to wait.’ He stood and pressed a panel above the carved stone mantel; a low door opened in the wall, revealing a dark recess beyond. He gestured for Goodluck to enter. ‘A novelty, isn’t it? Leicester never ceases to amaze me with his attention to detail.’
Bending lower than his hunchbacked astrologer would have attempted, Goodluck slipped into the recess and stood a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark. The door was closed behind him and for a moment he felt a sense of rising panic at being incarcerated in the dark, cramped space. Uneasily, he recalled an unpleasant night in a Provençal safe house where he had been required to kneel for some twelve hours in an underground cell somewhat smaller than this hole. He closed his eyes and silently recited a few lines from Dante’s Inferno. The Italian verses steadied him; after another minute, the queasiness subsided and he was able to turn in the narrow space, locate the spyhole – its sharp pinhole the only source of light – and put an eye to it.
And not a moment too soon. He heard the muted tones of Walsingham’s man in the outer office, then the door opened and Walsingham stood to greet the Italian, his stern black figure entirely blocking Goodluck’s view.
Goodluck wondered why Walsingham should wish him to overhear this conversation. Perhaps, accustomed as he was to listening for the holes in every man’s story, he did not quite trust his young Italian friend, his ‘great debt’ notwithstanding. What other reason could there be for asking Goodluck’s opinion of the youth?
‘Massetti, my dear young man,’ Walsingham was saying in perfect Italian. ‘I’m so pleased to see you again. I was not able to send out a letter to thank you properly after those dreadful days in Paris. There was such chaos on the streets and we were held under close arrest for our own safety until the bloodshed had ceased.’ He turned, still obscuring Goodluck’s line of sight. ‘Please, sit down. May I offer you a drink? It’s not what you will be used to in Italy but it’s good English ale, very refreshing in the heat.’
There was a chink of glasses, then Walsingham sat down behind his desk and at last Goodluck had a clear view of the visitor’s face.
He was a handsome young man, with a trustworthy face and nut-brown eyes that smiled openly up at his host. He certainly did not have the careful, covert air of an intriguer, nor the shadowy look that dogged those who had tumbled in over their head. Goodluck studied him at length, seeing nothing in Massetti’s face but honesty and the warmth of an old friendship renewed.
Was this all he was intended to see? Goodluck settled his back into the recess, and prepared to listen. Only time would tell.
Sixteen
DUSK WAS FALLING as Lucy made her way across the tiltyard and through the Gallery Tower at the southern end, her throat hoarse from singing. She paused outside the tower gateway and slipped on her wooden pattens, the clogs she wore to protect her best shoes from the earthen mess of the Brays. Then, composing herself again, she struck out across the makeshift camp, unsure of her direction. In the morning it had taken only a few moments to pick her way through the tents and rough wooden huts towards the castle proper. Now though, with the sun’s rays failing and half the camp cast into shadow, she had little idea how to reach the quiet sanctuary of her room.
The narrow smoky lanes between makeshift dwellings thronged with life, despite the late hour on a Sunday, for it was here that the vast crowd of commoners that accompanied the Queen on her progress had been allowed to set up camp for the duration of their stay. She saw jugglers and theatricals practising their craft, and acrobats tumbling or climbing on each other’s shoulders, much to the amusement of a small crowd of children who had gathered to watch. A scrawny performing dog in a frilled ruff ran past her at the turn of a corner, barking violently, its barefoot owner pursuing it with rude shouts and whistles.
Lucy felt out of place in her new silk gown, procured by Leicester earlier that morning so she would not disgrace the Queen’s presence with her tatty make-do skirts. Lucy did not wish to put herself above her fellows but if his lordship expected her to dress so finely, with this heavy gold chain about her neck and rings on her fingers, she would soon be in danger as she crossed the Brays every night and morning.
‘Hey!’
She glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting to see one of the London entertainers, perhaps another lost soul looking for their lodgings.
But the shout had not been directed at her.
A dark-robed man walking a little ahead of her had also turned at the shout. He retraced his steps, passing her as he did so. She could not see his face – it was too deeply in shadow, and a black cloth had been wound about his chin and drawn up almost to the nose – but she caught the glint of dark eyes and looked hurriedly away. There was something about those eyes which unsettled her, a troubling intensity that spoke of the zealot. She had known men like that in London, living and working in the diseased honeycomb of streets near the river.
The hooded man disappeared into a heavily stained and patched tent set back from the rest, a few hundred yards along the lane. Lucy heard a hubbub of furious, unintelligible conversation as the flap fell shut behind him.
She gazed at the tent, her curiosity sparking, and suddenly recalled the Italian and his angry bear. He too had worn long dark robes and had a fanatical look to his eyes. Nor could it be denied that the oddly striped material of the tent, and the green and red ribbons trailing from its central pole, suggested a foreign owner. And whoever lived in the tent was burning some kind of sweet herb, for a little aromatic smoke escaped from the tent flap as it opened and closed.
Were these more Italians? Friends of the bear-tamer, perhaps?
Years of listening through the floorboards to Master Goodluck’s stories of adventures overseas gave her the courage to creep a little closer. She knew she ought to mind her own business, but there was no one about in this quiet corner to catch her spying. The entrance to the tent was closed, the dying sun lit up the sloping roof and Lucy stood safe in its shadow, listening to the men inside. The language they spoke did not seem to be French, of which she knew a few common phrases, but the discussion sounded urgent, that much she could tell.
Beware Italians …
Was that not what Master Goodluck had warned her?
Her instincts told her there was something wrong, that she should fetch someone – one of the guards on the Gallery Tower gate, perhaps, or even Master Goodluck himself. Yet what accusation would she bring against them? She knew no law against being a foreigner.
The sweet smell of smoke from the tent grew stronger. It was seeping out of the tent flap now, thick and heady, leaving her faint. Inside, the men had fallen silent, though she could hear one voice still, intoning a string of foreign words in a hushed, priest-like tone that dropped to a hoarse whisper.
It sounded almost as if they were celebrating Mass, and not a good Protestant one. There was certainly a law against that.
Jumping at the dangerousness of such an idea, Lucy hurried away from the tent and began to pick her way back down the lane, telling herself not to be such a fool. Sheer tiredness must have turned her brain tonight, and now the sun had almost fallen below the earthen walls of the Brays. If she did not find her lodging soon, she would be searching for it in the dark.
Suddenly, there was another shout behind her, sharper this time, and Lucy turned to see two men in the entrance to the tent, staring after her through the rising smoke. Both were dressed in dark hooded robes, and she knew from the way the shorter man held himself that he was the one she had seen en
tering the tent.
Horrified, Lucy picked up her skirts and hurried away without looking where she was going. She tripped over a pile of sticks left at the side of the lane, stumbled back to her feet, and looked anxiously about for someone to call to for help. But everyone seemed to have melted back into their dwellings now the sun had almost gone.
The two men were following her; she heard their footsteps in the gloom behind her.
They must know she had no chance of escape. The tents and wooden huts in this part of the camp were so densely packed, she would not be able to turn off until she reached the wall at the far end – by which time they would easily have caught up with her.
Suddenly, she spotted a narrow opening between two tents and darted through it. Jumping over a still-smouldering bonfire, she headed into the dark. For a moment she felt safer and slowed to look back over her shoulder, but the sight of two hooded figures also vaulting the gap between the tents sent a chill to her heart.
She was going to die. Those men could murder her out here in the Brays, and no one would ever know what had happened.
Panic lent an unexpected speed and power to her legs. Running with her full stride, as she had not run since she was a child, Lucy plunged down the alley with her skirts held high, lurched out of the opening at the far end into another dark lane and began to double back towards the castle. Indeed, she was within sight of the gate when she realized they had almost caught up with her again.
Rounding a corner, she pulled up short, faced with two lanes, both smokily dark and empty of people.
To her right a broad lane led towards the Gallery Tower, but they would catch her before she could reach the safety of the guarded gate. To her left, what looked and smelt like a pigsty stood open, inviting her into its comfortable stench-filled blackness. Outside, a few mud-streaked pigs lay asleep in the gathering dusk.
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