His Dark Lady

by Victoria Lamb

  Six

  GOODLUCK DRAGGED HIS cloak tighter and set his head against the driving rain, his hat soaked, boots squelching in the muddy quagmire that was Bishopsgate. He was early, and deliberately so. He did not doubt John Twist, but a certain measure of caution was always required when there were others involved in a meeting. The Catholic informant he had asked to meet might have been followed, or even have changed his mind and betrayed them. Either way, Goodluck wanted to look over the place in advance, not least to see whether anyone else was engaged in the same activity.

  Lucy’s message had been brief: a time and place only, scrawled hurriedly in code, with no signature. Goodluck had recognized both the hand and the code though, not needing to see the name.

  The note had reached him via Lucy’s cloaked and hooded maid, a frightened-looking girl who had handed it over without a word and then fled, not even glancing at the penny Goodluck had held out to her. No doubt the girl had been taught that players were next to beggars, and as likely to rape her and slit her throat as give her a penny for her trouble. And with some players, he thought drily, she would not be wrong.

  Lucy had certainly made some powerful friends since that summer at Kenilworth when she had first come to the Queen’s attention. To have her own maid was a mark of the respect and wealthy patronage she must be receiving at court.

  Goodluck could not help feeling a little uneasy, though. There had been something brittle about Lucy when they had met outside the Cross Keys Inn. Life at court had changed his ward over the past few years, and not for the better. Lucy was no longer the sweet-faced innocent he remembered from her childhood, that little girl whose smile had lit up his heart. But he was willing to swear she was still untouched, still a virgin.

  Goodluck paused outside the Dun Cow, glancing up at the ancient building, which leaned to one side and was so dilapidated it could not be long before it was knocked down to make way for some new hostelry. The mud-spattered door was closed and the narrow front windows had been shuttered against the rain, but he knew the place was open. He could hear the hubbub from inside, and had seen several men staggering away in the rain as he approached, their faces red from too much ale.

  Goodluck pushed his way through the smoky taproom. There were several tables still empty. He pulled up a chair and began to remove his sodden cloak and hat.

  ‘Sir?’

  Goodluck smiled up at the plump serving girl who had stopped to clean his table. Businesslike, her sleeves rolled to her elbows, she wiped up a spillage of ale with her coarse, dirty apron, and straightened a fallen chair, all the while sizing him up, as though trying to decide how much money he might be carrying in the purse that hung from his belt.

  He leaned back in his chair and met her look openly. No doubt there was more to buy from this girl than ale and a pie, but she was out of luck. He was not in the mood for a girl tonight, however comfortable her ample breasts and belly.

  ‘A tankard of ale,’ he ordered briefly. ‘And a bite to eat. Something hot and simple will do me well enough.’

  ‘Bread and hot pottage, master? Or salt pork with beans?’

  He shrugged. ‘Whatever is cheapest and to hand.’

  The girl turned away, clearly disappointed, and disappeared into the back kitchen with his order.

  Goodluck waited in silence, discreetly examining the men in the taproom. He knew a few faces, but most were unfamiliar. John Twist was not among them. So he had maybe half an hour to kill before the meeting.

  Lucy had not always been so wary of men, he thought, remembering the caution in her face when he had called after her in the street. She had fallen in love with that boy at Kenilworth, and what had happened? The young fool had got himself killed defending the Queen. Small wonder Lucy preferred to keep herself aloof these days.

  Though that was not all the story, surely?

  Goodluck suspected that, despite her striking beauty, Lucy had found it hard to catch the eye of an honest man at court. Her black skin and outlandish hair must set her apart from the other women in Elizabeth’s service, making it harder for any courtier to pursue her without drawing both the Queen’s attention and displeasure.

  He frowned, wondering if she had already had trouble of that sort. Fond though he was of Lucy, Goodluck knew that if a man of noble birth ever looked sideways at Lucy’s fascinating black skin and high breasts, it would be for reasons other than marriage. She had neither fortune nor title to tempt an ambitious man, and ambitious men were the only sort who lived off the court. Yet they would be interested, and try to persuade her into their beds.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you here, Master Goodluck,’ said a soft voice at his elbow.

  Goodluck turned to see who had come in from the rain. It was Master Parry, one of London’s most slippery businessmen, a man who was well-known for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person, and yet who always seemed to end up on top. He was in company tonight with a young, curly-haired man Goodluck did not recognize, though by his swagger he perhaps ought to have done.

  Goodluck stood and shook hands with Parry. ‘Nor I you, Master Parry. You are in good health, I trust?’

  ‘I can’t complain, though I could do without the rain.’ Parry wiped his face and beard dry with the underside of his cloak. ‘God, this weather is appalling. But at least there’s a good fire in here, and better company than we had in the Fighting Cocks. May we share your table, Goodluck?’ He nodded over his shoulder. ‘This is Kit Marlowe, by the way, a young friend of mine just down from Cambridge.’

  Goodluck shook the lad’s hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Master Marlowe.’

  ‘Kit,’ the young man insisted, and smiled, not showing his teeth.

  By the look of his pointed beard and slashed velvet doublet, Marlowe was not one of Parry’s business associates. He did not look like a poor student either, but more like a theatrical. And for a young theatrical to be in Parry’s company meant one of two things. Either he was of the same persuasion as Parry, who rumour had it enjoyed young men the way the decadent Romans used to, or Marlowe was a spy. Possibly both at once.

  Kit Marlowe was looking Goodluck over in the same assessing way, his dark eyes narrowed. ‘Will you take some ale with us, sir?’

  ‘I’ve already ordered mine. Here it comes now.’ Goodluck could see the plump serving maid threading her way across the crowded taproom with a tray. The girl kept halting to slap away a groping hand or two, though she seemed more amused than angered by the attention. ‘I’m just waiting for …’

  Goodluck hesitated, then thought better of mentioning John Twist. He seemed to remember there was some bad blood between the two men. He did not want to frighten Parry off. Parry was a weasel and a turncoat, everyone knew that. But he had been known to serve Walsingham as a spy from time to time, and he might have some useful information about the latest Catholic plots.

  ‘Well, no matter. Come and drink with me, both of you.’ Goodluck drew up some chairs for them. ‘It’s been an age since we last met, Parry. Lisbon, wasn’t it? Before Philip of Spain took it.’

  ‘Madrid,’ Parry corrected him.

  ‘Both dangerous cities for Englishmen these days.’ Goodluck smiled as the serving maid banged his tankard and supper down on the table. ‘Thank you.’

  The two men ordered their drinks.

  Once the girl had gone, Parry turned back to him with a frown. ‘You think Spain more dangerous for Englishmen now? So things will soon come to a head between our queen and King Philip, is that what you’re saying? Well, I cannot pretend I’m surprised at the enmity there. Philip very gallantly offered to marry her, you know, after Queen Mary died. They say Elizabeth sent him a lemon, as a token of the bitter hospitality he could expect from her.’

  Goodluck sipped at his ale, trying to hide his grimace. The ale tasted bitter too, though not to an unpalatable extent. Some claimed the ale around Bishopsgate was traditionally ‘improved’ with a little piss. That would certainly explain the taste, he t
hought. ‘Come, these wild taproom stories get us nowhere. You know as well as I do that the English Catholics grow more daring and ungovernable every day,’ he said, not bothering to lower his voice.

  It was not treason to speak against the Catholics, only to speak for them. But he saw Kit Marlowe’s hands clench on the arms of his chair and wondered at it. Was the boy playing both sides?

  ‘Spain has become the seat of their passionate hatred for the Queen,’ Goodluck continued easily. ‘This is not news. Any fool with half a brain can see that.’

  ‘Aye, well, I know more about that than most,’ Parry muttered. ‘England shall have war before the year is out. And I say we shall lose if Elizabeth does not marry, and soon. For what country ever won a war with an unmarried woman on the throne?’

  ‘A war between England and Spain?’ Goodluck glanced about the crowded taproom to see who might be listening. This was open and dangerous talk even for someone as foolhardy as Parry. ‘I would not care to bet on that, Parry. There are those who might mistakenly think I had some special knowledge.’

  ‘And do you?’

  Goodluck laughed, and began to tear his coarse bread into strips. He dipped a piece into the steaming bowl of pottage.

  ‘You are a bold man, Parry, and a clever one. All the world knows that, and I should not dare dispute it. But I am not so bold. I have no special or intimate knowledge of Spain, nor of what the Catholics may be planning. I am merely hungry, and my supper is getting cold.’

  Parry watched him in silence for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘One day you will come to me for a favour, Master Goodluck. On that day, I trust I may give you a more favourable reply than this you give me.’

  ‘You must forgive me, friend, but there is nothing I can tell you. I am not the fount of anti-Catholic information you think me.’ Goodluck drank deep from his tankard, pretending disinterest. With a shrug, he set to eating his supper again. ‘Though it’s true that sometimes I hear certain things as I go about the city. If you wish me to keep my ears open …’

  ‘Let’s just say, you would be serving your country well if you did so.’

  Goodluck smiled, and wiped his mouth. ‘In that case, Master Parry, you may consider it done.’

  ‘I am glad.’ Parry rose, pulling his cloak about him. He tossed a few coins on to the table; one rolled across and fell on the floor at Goodluck’s feet. Parry jerked his head at Marlowe, like a man summoning his hound. ‘That should cover what we ordered. When the girl comes back, you can tell her we went elsewhere. The ale tastes like gnats’ piss here, anyway.’

  Once the two men had gone, Goodluck bent slowly and picked up the fallen coin. It was a ha’penny.

  Frowning, he turned the small coin over in his hand and stared down at the Queen’s head before throwing it back on to the table.

  What was Parry up to? Despite his patriotic enquiries, it was clear he was not interested in Queen Elizabeth’s fate, nor indeed that of England itself. Philip of Spain had ‘very gallantly’ offered the Queen marriage, had he? Now there was a man who could happily live once more in a Spanish England, as the suffering English had done under Mary’s reign.

  Was it possible that Parry, for all his weaknesses and underhand dealings, could be the traitorous mastermind Goodluck was seeking? The man who had helped fuel the assassination plot at Kenilworth in ’seventy-five and was even now engaged in drawing a secret force against the Queen from within her own court?

  The round-faced serving maid arrived with the unwanted drinks and stared in dismay at the empty chairs. Goodluck explained the situation to her delicately, handing over the money and leaving out the remark about ‘gnats’ piss’. If there was one sure-fire way to get your ale liberally laced with urine, it was to complain to the landlord that it already was.

  The door swung open and Twist came in at last, wrapped in a dripping cloak and looking half-drowned from the violent downpour lashing the city.

  Goodluck waved him over with a sense of relief. ‘Here,’ he said, shaking hands with his old friend. ‘I have a table, and drinks already served. Do you want to eat?’

  ‘I’ve already eaten,’ Twist said, and embraced him. ‘By our Lady, it’s good to see you.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘I don’t much like this tempest, though. Did you bring it with you from the Continent?’ Twist unwrapped himself gingerly. He was wet underneath the cloak as well. ‘Look at that. I’m soaked through. But here I am complaining about the weather, when you have been several years in a Roman prison. How are you?’

  ‘Older and fatter, for all my captivity.’

  Twist laughed, and leaned back in his chair. ‘It comes to us all in the end.’

  ‘Now don’t go wishing the end on me. I’ve a few years left in me.’

  ‘Amen to that.’ Twist took a swallow of ale without any sign of disgust. ‘This ale is good. Just what I need to take the theatre dust out of my mouth.’

  ‘You’re playing at the Curtain, is that right?’

  ‘For my sins, yes. One show today, another two tomorrow. Sometimes we play at court. No, don’t look so hungry to return. The crowds are huge on a good afternoon and the money is useful, but working in the theatre these days is enough to kill a man. Our masters work us too hard. And then the city fathers accuse players of loose morals, and of keeping a whore in every house between here and Spitalfields.’ Twist laughed. He shook out his sleeves, rearranging the frayed lace cuffs. ‘I ask you, when am I supposed to sleep, let alone fuck?’

  ‘I haven’t had the pleasure myself since returning to London. Though I hear the rate for a clean whore has grown beyond my slender pockets now.’

  ‘Whoring has become an expensive habit of late,’ Twist agreed ruefully. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Goodluck. ‘So you got out of Rome alive. You were away so long, I was beginning to wonder if I should come after you. What happened?’

  ‘Someone gave me away.’

  ‘You were betrayed?’ Twist frowned. ‘Do you know by whom?’

  ‘Not yet. But I intend to find out.’ Goodluck met his gaze. ‘Now to the letter I sent. Did you find the man I was looking for?’

  Twist shook his head. ‘I’m still asking around the town. But it’s difficult. No one is talking. The Catholics are lying so low right now, you could trip over one in the street and not notice. Every day brings rumours of a fresh plot against the Queen. Walsingham’s agents are all around, but some of them play both sides of the net, and there’s no guessing their allegiances until it’s too late. It can be dangerous to draw attention to yourself by asking too many questions of the wrong man.’

  Goodluck smiled. ‘I learned that lesson the hard way in Rome.’

  ‘Torture?’

  ‘I didn’t talk, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ Goodluck called the girl over for another tankard of ale, deciding to make a night of it. ‘You’re safe enough.’

  Seven

  Whitehall Palace, London, winter 1583

  ‘IF YOU WOULD only allow me to rub in some oil of cloves again, Your Majesty, the pain would abate. I swear it.’

  ‘Fool, your vile oil burns, and I will have none of it!’ Elizabeth roared, and knocked the tiresome apothecary away, his tray and bottles clattering to the floor.

  Toothache again! The unfairness, the injustice of it. The sunlight hurt her eyes. Why had the shutters been thrown so wide open on her bedchamber windows? She stared about at her women in silent accusation. Was she expected to rise and be dressed and rule the country in such agony? Did nobody care how she suffered?

  ‘Where are my doctors?’

  Lady Helena was at her side at once, offering a cup of wine and a fresh platter of lavender-steeped cloths. She at least knew how to treat a queen. ‘They await your pleasure, Your Majesty, in the antechamber. You told them to … to go hang themselves yesterday. Shall I send them in?’

  God’s blood, her jaw was on fire!

  ‘Yes, yes, send them in at once,’ Elizabeth managed, cla
sping a dampened cloth to her cheek, where the pain throbbed most viciously. When would this agony cease? God had sent her this repeated affliction as a punishment. No woman was intended to rule alone, and she had been given chances to marry, only to spurn them. Her monthly courses, never easy to predict, had grown strange and difficult of late. Her womb ached some nights and prevented her from sleeping. What other explanation could there be? She should have married and produced a child. Instead her body was beginning to tumble down like an old tower under siege, more broken and ramshackle with every year that passed.

  Her physicians came in, dark-cloaked and hatted, with long staffs and impressive wooden chests of medicaments, bowing and making their customary noises. ‘Your Majesty, the remedy is simple.’ She waited for the inevitable, glaring at them, daring them to say it. ‘The tooth is rotten and must be drawn. There is no other cure for the toothache.’

  ‘I will not lose any more teeth!’

  She rocked in pain as her tooth throbbed violently, as if a hot wire was being drawn swiftly back and forth through her body. Her spine was on fire, tendrils of flame reaching even to the tips of her fingers. Her body would be left hollow soon, like a burned-out tree, nothing remaining but the pain of this tooth still smouldering in the ashes. Give me a mallet, she thought. A great bloody mallet to smash this jaw into pieces and grant me peace. Let someone drive a stake through the top of my head and pierce the agony where it grips me.

  No, no, no. Her mind groped for control. She must preserve what teeth she had left. She would not lose another one. She refused to gum her food like an old woman while the younger courtiers gaped and laughed behind their hands.

  ‘Lord Jesu in heaven, look down and help thy servant in her pain and distress,’ she moaned, and crossed herself. ‘I cannot lose this tooth. I shall not lose this tooth.’

  No answer came from on high. The pain continued unabated, swelling and beating her jaw like a drum. It must indeed be a punishment from God, she thought hazily. Is it Thy Will, O Lord, that I should wish to throw myself out of the highest tower window rather than live through another hour of this agony? God was angry with her for rejecting Robert, for turning her nose up at so many suitors, for having wriggled out of her written agreement to marry the Duke of Anjou, for never having married. Now she must suffer and feel His displeasure.