* * *
Cecily pulled the dappled mare to a halt with a sharp tug on the bridle that brought the lathered animal to an instant halt. Slipping to the ground with a careless grace, she tossed the reins to a short stable boy who led the exhausted mare toward the stable. If anyone had ventured to suggest that she had been cruel to the animal, Cecily North would have been incredulous. “But it’s my horse,” she would probably have said.
A tall man was stepping out of a coach in front of the wide steps that led into the boxy mansion designed by Inigo Jones, England’s most sought-after architect. As she advanced, the man turned, and she called out, “Gilbert!” and a quick smile touched her lips as she ran forward to greet him.
“Cecily!” Gilbert took her hands, and her beauty caught him off guard, so much that he stood there staring at her, speechless. Finally he said, “You’re lovely in the morning!”
“Morning! It’s almost noon!”
“Well, you’re even more beautiful at high noon!” he grinned.
“Come inside. I demand to know why you’ve stayed away so long. I warn you that I have an unerring ear for a romantic lie, so you may as well confess to all your indiscretions!”
As she pulled him into the stately foyer, he said, “I’ve thought about you since we parted.”
“And you came only to see me, didn’t you? Nothing to do with my father or business?”
Gilbert faltered slightly. “W-well, to be truthful . . .”
Cecily threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, you perfidious creature! Caught in the act! And I thought you were such a romantic suitor!”
“I trust to prove myself just so—but I do have to see Lord North at once.”
“Tomorrow,” Cecily said firmly. “Tonight you’ll escort me to the Duke’s ball!” She called loudly, “Thomas, show Mr. Winslow to the guest house and make certain he’s taken care of.”
“Cecily . . .”
“We’ll leave at seven, Gilbert.” She swept out of the room, and Gilbert followed the servant out of the house.
For the ball Gilbert wore clothes provided by his host: red velvet coat and breeches, yellow waistcoat with ruby buttons, and yellow hose above his shoes with gold buckles. The red hat with the large yellow plume was almost too much, but he shrugged and tucked it under his arm as he walked across the garden to meet Cecily.
Cecily achieved a triumph by choosing a simple gown ornamented with very small pink roses against vertical stripes of silver set off by sky blue. He took the scarlet cape lined with dark blue from her maid and as he slipped it over her smooth shoulders, said, “I didn’t think it possible for anyone to outshine your beauty, Cecily, but I fear it has come to pass.”
She shot him a smoky glance and asked in an icy tone, “And who has eclipsed my beauty, may I ask?”
Gilbert made an elaborate gesture with his plumed hat, sweeping it downward to indicate his elaborate dress, and said with a grimace, “Me! I feel like a tailor’s ape, Cecily—fool of a coxcomb in ribbons and hose!”
Her lips curved into a smile, and she said, “You look well enough.” She took in his lean athletic form, the slightly crooked smile and the coppertoned hair that framed the intensely masculine wedge-shaped face, and then added, “You are a beautiful man, Gilbert—you’re most likely to charm the ladies of the court, I fear.”
Gilbert was embarrassed at her comment on his appearance, but turned it off by saying with a rueful laugh, “Faugh! If your father finds me unsatisfactory for his service, I can always become a gigolo, can’t I?”
The ball was a blaze of splendor that Gilbert could afterward remember as some sort of fantastic dream. He brushed shoulders with the demigods of British royalty, and was amazed—and somewhat shocked—to find out how strictly human they were. The Countess of Wentmore, fabled like Helen for her fabulous beauty, looked well enough at a distance of twenty feet under artificial light, but Gilbert was repelled to discover that she had apparently never discovered bathing. “Scratch me!” he exclaimed under his breath to Cecily. “But she smells like a hog in a ditch!”
Simon Roth turned from a group to stare at Gilbert, and Cecily quickly led him away.
“Why did you do that? Pull me away?” Gilbert asked.
“My dear, I didn’t want another duel like the last time you met.” She took the glass of wine he got for her and looked over it at him, her eyes catching the gold of the plate and the glare of the chandeliers. She took a sip, then murmured, “You know he hates you, don’t you?”
“It’s quite obvious. And there can only be one reason.”
“Yes. He wants me.” It sounded crass, but she shrugged and added, “He’s always gotten what he wanted—and I suppose he’ll get me, too.”
“Do you love him?”
“No. But he’s rich and attractive in a strange sort of way. Mother wants him for a son-in-law. Father wouldn’t object.”
Gilbert stared at her and said angrily, “You sound like love doesn’t enter into it!”
“I don’t think it does.” Cecily reached up and touched his cheek, then said with a sad smile, “You are such an innocent man! You would be terribly shocked if you knew how rarely love is a factor in marriage.”
“You’re different, Cecily!”
She gave him a warm smile then, and pulled his arm close. Looking up at him she said quietly, “You think I am, don’t you, Gilbert? Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to you—a penniless man with no title. But it’s so good to find one man who’s not blinded by money or my father’s position!”
“You’re woman enough for any man,” Gilbert said, and would have pulled her into his arms in the center of the crowded room.
She laughed, bit her lip and drew back. There was the glimmer of tears in her eyes—the first Gilbert had seen, and in the softest voice he’d heard her use, she whispered, “Thank you, Gilbert. I—I’ll treasure that!” Then she swept her hand across her eyes and with a laugh pulled him to the floor and made him dance with her.
* * *
The following day, Thomas handed him a letter. Cecily watched as he opened it, and the summons from Tiddle to be at Whitehall the next day was a cold shock.
“You have to go, don’t you?” Cecily asked.
“I fear so.”
She walked to the window and stared out, saying, “It will be lonely here without you.”
“And even more lonely for me.” He turned her around to face him, and said, “I’ll come back.”
“Will you?”
“I would always come back for you, Sweet.”
He kissed her then, tenderly, yet she clung to him fiercely, like a lost child. Finally she drew back and said, “I’ll have Smith drive you to London. What time must you be there?”
“As soon as possible, I fear. Tiddle urges all haste.”
Cecily bit her lip and nodded, then they parted. Gilbert threw his things together, ignoring Thomas’s attempts to help, and in half an hour was in the coach on his way to London. He did not see Cecily, and there was such confusion in his mind that he had to be spoken to twice by the coachman when they arrived.
He got out of the coach, gave the man a coin, and went inside the large inn Tiddle had mentioned. The clerk informed him that instructions had been given for him to occupy a room next to that of Lord North. “And I think—yes, there’s a letter for you.”
Gilbert took the letter, opened it, and read Tiddle’s blunt script. “Come to Whitehall as soon as possible. The clerk will give you directions.”
“Have these things put in my room, please; and can you tell me the way to Whitehall?”
“Well, sir, will you walk? It’s not far.”
“All right.”
“You’ll have to pass through a pretty bad section, sir,” the clerk warned. “Perhaps a coach . . .”
“I’ll walk; just tell me the way.”
A high wind was whistling down the Strand from Charing Cross, driving the sooty drizzle from chimney pots. It endangered hats and flapped the
curls of periwigs, then set the street signs dancing. Gilbert paid no heed, but passed through the half-deserted streets in the falling twilight.
Passing east along Pall Mall, he passed into a section the clerk had called Dead Man’s Lane—one of the many old sections of London grown gray with age and mossy with time.
Darkness was filling the sky, and he was caught off guard when a voice said, “Would you pass by here, Mister Jackanapes?”
Instantly a sense of danger scraped across Gilbert’s nerves, as he saw a tall man blocking his way. He responded harshly, “The only pass I make will be through your rotten heart!” He drew his sword and whirled to face the man who had accosted him. He was lean, his tattered coat fastened tightly to his body with pewter buttons to the neck. He wore an old scabbard, but the sword in his hand was new, and there was a leer on his face as he crowed in a harsh voice, “I heard you fancied yourself as a good blade. But cock of the hectors am I, that can spit a running fowl through the neck, and am here to do quite as much for you!”
“Your health will remain good if you step aside,” Gilbert smiled grimly.
Instead the man shouted, “God rot ye!” and lunged in quarte for his opponent’s chest. Gilbert’s hand swept to the left across his own chest knocking the thrust wide, yet so close to the body that the blades hissed together.
Twice more the blades darted and rattled, and then Gilbert did something that Paul Dupree had taught him. It was a secret botte, a sword trick. If a man fights closed-up, and ventures little more than a half-lunge, his antagonist comes to underestimate his reach. But if he draws his right-angled foot up close to the left foot, as Gilbert did, he has an incredibly long leg-lunge when he goes forward. His arm and sword, rigid as a rod together, seems far longer.
As his long-legged opponent launched his own thrust, Gilbert’s blade tapped that of the other, then swiveled upward, and the extra distance he gained from the botte allowed Gilbert to stretch just far enough. The tip of his blade caught the man through the upper throat not far under the chin. It ripped up behind the teeth, crashed through the roof of his mouth and lodged in his brain. In the next instant Gilbert ripped the blade free; it came away in a gush of blood that spattered heavily on his hands and cuffs.
For half a second the long-legged form stood upright, hardly swaying. The gaunt corpse tried to take a step, but he was already dead. He fell full length, face down, and Gilbert asked bitterly, “Still cock of the hectors, are you?” Then Gilbert remembered his words: I heard that you fancied yourself a good blade! and he knew at once that the fine hand of Lord Roth lay behind the attempted murder!
Quickly he wiped his blade on the dead man’s clothing, sheathed it, then hurried away before the watch came. Twenty minutes later he walked up the high steps of Whitehall palace, the London residence of King James, the royal majesty of England. Glancing down at the drying blood on his cuffs, he thought, first a betrayer, now a manslayer!
Winslow was aware that there was no way under heaven to prove that Roth had any connection with the attempt on his life, but he was in too deep to back out, so he marched up to the guards bearing silvery armor and said, “Mr. Gilbert Winslow of Leyden to see Lord North!”
CHAPTER NINE
AT WHITEHALL
Gilbert spent the night in a small room after being unable to contact either Tiddle or Lord North. Rising at dawn, he found both men eating a sumptuous breakfast after which North led the way through the maze of rooms that made up the palace.
“We have an audience with the King in one hour,” Lord North said. He led them through a tremendous ballroom with fully a thousand lights in chandeliers and iron-gilt holders.
Gilbert trailed along behind as North led them down several corridors to the southeastern corner of the hall into a shut-off space with a fireplace built in the very angle of the wall. Four high folding screens, of heavy leather with brass nailheads and thickened with three inches of padding, had been drawn around to form an intimate space in the large room. There were several Oriental chairs, draped and padded for comfort, and seated in two of them, Gilbert saw, were Lord Roth and Bishop Charles Laud.
“Ah, North, there you are . . .” the portly clergyman beamed. He waved a fat hand toward the chairs, saying in his rich baritone, “His Majesty will arrive shortly—but before he comes, perhaps we can have a brief report from Mr. Winslow, eh?”
“Have you discovered the whereabouts of Brewster, Gilbert?” Lord North asked quietly.
“I regret, sir, that I have not.”
“No progress at all?” Tiddle rapped sharply. “You had enough time, it seems, to find out something.”
Gilbert plunged ahead to explain how he had attained membership in the Green Gate assembly, and made the most of the fact that he had been entrusted with a message to Cushman. While he was trying to explain that Brewster would try to join the expedition to the New World, the door swung open, and James the First, dread sovereign of England, walked into the room.
As Gilbert joined the others in making a low bow, the King said, “No ceremony! No ceremony, if you please!” As he seated himself on one of the chairs, Gilbert took occasion to examine the ruler of England.
He was of middle stature, more corpulent in appearance than in reality, for he wore his clothes large and easy, the doublets quilted for stiletto protection, his breeches in great pleats and fully stuffed. There was something of a timorous disposition in his face, which no doubt explained his dagger-proof doublets, and his large eyes rolled over the men in front of him with a trace of suspicion. His beard was very thin, and as he began to speak, Gilbert noted that his tongue seemed too large for his mouth, which made his speech muffled. He took a cup of wine from one of his attendants, and seemingly had to wallow the liquid to the sides of his mouth in order to drink.
As Lord North replied briefly to a question, the king got up and walked in a circular manner, and Gilbert remembered having heard about the weak legs which some attributed to some sort of foul play on his youth, or even before he was born, for James had not been able even to stand before the age of seven.
“Enough of that, North!” James interrupted, and his eye fell on Gilbert. “Is this the spy?”
Hearing the matter stated so bluntly, Gilbert turned pale and North said quickly, “This is Mr. Gilbert Winslow, Your Majesty, a very accomplished gentleman who has generously agreed to interrupt his own career to help root out Your Majesty’s enemies.”
Roth said in a strident tone as if Lord North had not spoken, “Yes, this is the fellow I told you about, Sire. I believe I mentioned he left Cambridge after developing a distaste for the ministry.”
A wave of anger shot through Gilbert, and he opened his mouth to make a defense, but Tiddle hurriedly said, “I must add to that, my Lord, that Mr. Winslow left the university in order to enter the service of Lord North under my care. He has made an excellent beginning, and will prove a useful subject to the crown.”
“I believe you are acquainted with Mr. Winslow’s brother, Edward?” North asked.
“Oh—Edward Winslow? Yes—yes—an able man!” James nodded rapidly, and the suspicion in his weak eyes faded. He sat back and asked, “Well, what has been done about this Brewster fellow? I’ll have him drawn and quartered, d’ye heed me?”
Catching the slight nod from Lord North, Gilbert plunged again into his report which the King listened to carefully. A murmur of approval went around the circle as he ended by saying, “The Separatists will leave England soon, Sire; in fact, they must leave by August if they are to make landing in the New World before the dead of winter.”
“What then, Winslow?” James snapped. “How does that bring Brewster into my hands?”
“Why, it is certain, my Lord, that he will make this journey,” Gilbert answered. “He is the leader of the congregation—and besides, he must know that he will be apprehended sooner or later if he stays in England! I have made a close acquaintance with one of the Separatists. Brewster has written to this young woman often, a
nd is sure to do so again. Sire, I must return at once to Leyden, for time is running out! Brewster will be contacted—he must be! They may wait until the last possible moment to attempt to get him aboard the ship, but that will work to our advantage.”
“How is that?” the King asked.
“I am in the confidence of the leadership of the group at Leyden. They are aware that I know the country and that I travel freely. I will put it in their way to ask for my assistance. Be assured, Your Majesty, the moment I find the man, he is as good as in your hands!”
“That soundeth well, Winslow!” the king cried out and got to his feet. Moving toward the door, he exclaimed, “I said at the beginning I’d make them conform or harry them out of the land! See to it, man, and ye’ll not go unrewarded!” He left accompanied by the bishop, and a silence ran around the room after the door closed. Then Tiddle said, “You’ve not mentioned your adventure last night, Gilbert.”
North nodded and there was a serious look on his face. “We got a report early this morning on your encounter in Dead Man’s Lane. When they found you were connected with me,” he added, “the authorities brought me the report—and left it in my hands.”
“Otherwise you might be cooling your heels at Tyburn prison,” Tiddle nodded grimly.
“It was a matter of self-defense—the witness made that clear,” North mused. “A robbery, I take it—but the woman said she never saw anything like the way you dispatched the varlet.”
“What then?”
“Murder—or an attempt at it.” Gilbert carefully kept his eyes away from Lord Roth as he added, “The varlet knew me, my Lord. He made it clear that I was marked as a victim.”
North had a puzzled look on his face. He glanced at Tiddle and said, “That makes things more difficult, I suppose?”
The Honorable Imposter (House of Winslow Book #1) Page 9
