The Queen's Men

by Oliver Clements

  “Well, there is always her birthday,” she supposes. “There will be dancing at that.”

  That is the beginning of September. The Queen takes her birthdays seriously, for having reason more than most to be thankful she has survived another year.

  “I will be back for that,” Dee says, “if I get an invitation.”

  He did not last year, but then she was ill.

  “Still, though,” he says, “we might have two months of this.”

  Sunlight dapples the bank where the may is already fading.

  She breathes deeply, and with some delight.

  “I can still smell the hold, sometimes,” she says. “As if it is soaked into my skin.”

  She sniffs her fingertips.

  They walk on for a bit. Christ, he is happy doing this. He tries to think what else he would be doing: trying to eke the gold out of Admiral Frobisher’s stubborn ore, he supposes, or perhaps he would be readying himself to go to Wales. He wonders if, when this is over, that is what he will do. He should go back to London, of course, back to Mortlake, but there is nothing to stop him going west, straight from here. It is early in the year, but he has all he needs. Yes, he thinks. He will do that.

  * * *

  The next week a letter comes from Overbury, forwarded from Ness’s sister in Ely. He is wounded, it tells her, by an exploding arquebus, and she is to send him money for his recuperation before he comes home. Until then she is to pay not one penny more for some delivery or other, and that she is to evict some tenants and sack a reeve. Ness writes to him in Munster to tell him he is to be a father. Her handwriting is much improved, and they must roughen it up a little. Beale leaves the house again, and later that day, just before noon, Dee believes he sees the same man in the orchard, this time watching Beale, who paces the gravel by the stockfish pond and pulls on his hair.

  Dee slips out of the house, but by the time he is there, the man is gone.

  This time he does tell Beale. Beale is alarmed. More so than Dee would have imagined. He wonders if they should leave the hall, go back to life.

  “How much more is there to teach Ness?” he asks.

  “A great deal,” Dee supposes, “though perhaps her head is full?”

  Beale ignores the unintended slight.

  “I would have liked to test her on someone who knows the Queen somewhat, but she will soon start to show too much.”

  They watch her shooting a bow in the garden and there has been a definite shift in shape. Dee tries to clarify his thoughts on Ness Overbury. At one point he felt a troubling lust for her, but this soon gave way to frustration at what he thought was her frivolity, and her inability to concentrate for more than a few moments at a time, which led, he has to admit, to a mild dislike of her, but that has faded, and now he is powerfully fond of her. She is like a well-fed cat, he thinks: playful, affectionate, curious, and self-reliant, but also apt to drift away about her own pleasures, caring nothing for no one. She lacks the intensity, and the storminess of the Queen, but then, as Frommond says: she has not had her father prosper by having her mother’s head struck from her shoulders before a cheering crowd of hundreds.

  “It would be too risky to try it on someone who did not already know of the scheme,” Dee tells Beale. “It will have to be Walsingham, or Cecil. They both know.”

  Beale shakes his head.

  “They would never agree to meet her. Not until—God forbid—Her Majesty dies.”

  “Then who?”

  “Honestly? No one. But try telling her that. She is itching to try her act on some unsuspecting fool.”

  “Don’t let her.”

  “I won’t.”

  But Beale does. It is not his fault. It is a misunderstanding. Lawrence Washington comes uninvited while Ness is in as close to full regalia as they can manage in clothes that have been bought, begged, borrowed, and stolen, and she sits on a stool, framed in the doorway between house and kitchen garden, holding, to signify the scepter and orb, the first of this year’s beetroot in one hand and a willow wand in the other, and on her head Beale’s cap for a crown. Her face is blank with powder, and Ness is, for once, trying to keep a straight face. It is in imitation of a painting of the Queen’s coronation that hangs in the Presence Room in Whitehall.

  “My God,” Dee tells her. “It is not half bad.”

  They hear Francis bark the moment before Washington comes around the corner, into the kitchen garden just as if he owns the place—he does—and he draws up short and stares at the spectacle. Ness sees him first, over Dee’s shoulder, and starts to try to juggle with the ball and scepter.

  “We are mummers,” she calls out. “We are rehearsing for a pageant. For the Queen’s birthday!”

  He looks very doubtful.

  “I am Athena, the goddess of wisdom,” Ness improvises. “These three shall be my attendants, and if you should see us when they, too, are fully dressed, and upon our stage, you would believe yourself back in ancient Rome.”

  Athens, Dee says silently.

  There is a long moment of silence.

  “Right you are,” Washington says, and he touches his cap. He thinks they are just mad.

  “Can I help you, Master Washington?”

  “Came to say John Samson—the constable—says there’s been sightings of a man around here and abouts. A stranger. Thought he might be connected with… with whatever it is you’re doing.”

  He gestures at Ness. They look at one another before shaking their heads.

  “Nothing to do with us, Master Washington. Is there any description?”

  “No.”

  When he is gone, they let out their breaths.

  “He didn’t even recognize me!” Ness laughs.

  “One day you are going to meet someone who actually knows what Her Majesty looks like,” Beale tells her, “and then we will be in trouble.”

  But Dee thinks about the stranger.

  “Who is he to us, if he is also a stranger to them?”

  They look at one another, and then hurry inside the hall.

  A period of cautious confinement follows. Either Beale or Frommond is usually at a window, watching the margins of the garden, the orchards, the outbuildings—waiting. Sometimes Francis barks for no obvious reason. Ness becomes even more frustrated but her embroidery improves. It rains all week, so that makes it easier.

  * * *

  Then it is June and Ness is six months pregnant and can no longer move as the Queen moves, but she sits and listens to Dee try to teach her as much geography as he knows, and the importance of tides, and the rudiments of metallurgy, and Frommond teaches her how to cheat at primero, and at piquet, and how far she might take advantage of her position as Queen to push a dice.

  That night, the middle of June, the Great Comet fades to nothing. Dee takes Frommond outside to show her.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  She is silent for a moment or two.

  “Well, that was interesting,” she tells him.

  He thinks back to his friend Digges, suggesting the comet might have a personal message to bring, or a personal warning.

  “The meaning of such messages are oftentimes opaque,” he tells Frommond.

  He hears her smile, though that may be impossible of course.

  No word from Overbury, though Beale hears from Walsingham: another massacre in Munster.

  The next day, at dawn, they see the watcher again.

  “Is it the same man?”

  Dee thinks so. None of them can stand the thought of sitting hiding in the hall until Saint John’s Day.

  “Ness will never wear it,” Beale admits.

  She is asleep upstairs.

  “Besides, we should find out who he is and what he wants.”

  So Frommond keeps Francis within, while Dee takes the hunting bow, and Beale his sword, and they leave the hall by the front door, under the arms of Her Majesty, and part: one goes one way up the track, the other down it, and each makes a loo
p around the property to enter the orchard from its far end. Dee nocks his arrow and feels his pulse in his teeth. My God, he thinks, I am hunting a man. He steps into the shade of the rough hedge. The grass here is beaten down to make a path. Above the loamy hedgerow Dee can smell stale urine. Has he moved in? he wonders. He steps forward. And there, suddenly, in the shadow of a tree: the man in black. He looks young and broad, with a saddlebag over one shoulder, in a dark doublet and breeches, with worn riding boots and a sword designed for more than mere decoration. He stands with his back to Dee and is peering up at the house, careless of what unfolds behind. Dee sees Beale approach through the trees from the other side. Beale signals that Dee is to shoot the man in the back.

  Dee has knowingly killed only two men. One: a Spanish priest in the crypt of the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel who would have killed him, and two: the man who kept him and Frommond locked in the hold of a barge. He has never considered shooting a man in the back, even with a hunting arrow, until now, and he finds he does not like the thought of it. Besides, do they really want him dead?

  Beale is mouthing at him. Do it. Do it now.

  Some sixth sense alerts the man that his death is being contemplated, or perhaps he catches a glimpse of Beale from the tail of his eye. He turns sharply. Dee draws the bow and looses. The arrow flits through the sun-dappled space and catches the man’s shoulder. He shouts with the pain and turns to find Dee, and seeing him, he draws the sword and comes running at him, swinging the blade.

  “You fucker!”

  Unarmed, Dee thrashes the bow wildly, just catching the blade, clipping it so its edge flashes past his ear and then his shoulder. The man barrels into him, and they both go flying. Dee lands on his back, the man atop him, jabbing the fingers of his left hand toward Dee’s eyes. Dee, stunned and half blinded, tries to buck him off, but the man is strong as a bull, and desperate. Thank God, just then Beale comes with his sword. He chops the man across his back. The man cries out and lets Dee go. He arches upright and lashes out at Beale. Beale parries the blow, stops the sword.

  “Who are you?” he shouts.

  The man reels away, on his feet now, and he stumbles into the bushes. Just then gunshot noise fills the clearing and the swordsman staggers backward into sight and falls by Dee’s still outstretched legs. His chest is a terrible mess of glossy blood. He lifts his hands as if to pat the wound, or stanch the blood, but he is dead before they reach it, so they drop to his sides.

  Beale stands motionless, staring. Dee, too. A man steps out of the shadows of the trees, in dark wool, carrying a still-smoking handgun. He touches his cap.

  “Master Beale,” he says. “Dr. Dee.”

  “Oh Christ,” Beale breathes. He lowers his sword. “Gregory.”

  Dee’s heart is still racing.

  “Who are you?” he asks, lifting himself on his elbows.

  “This is Arthur Gregory,” Beale tells him. “Probably not his real name. One of Walsingham’s men.”

  Beale turns to Gregory.

  “Why did you shoot him? Now we’ll never know who he was.”

  “I was trying to save your lives.”

  “I had it in hand,” Beale tells him.

  Gregory scoffs.

  “What are you doing here, Arthur?” Beale asks.

  “The boss sent me.”

  “To keep an eye on us?”

  Gregory shrugs. Of course.

  Beale grunts.

  “Of course.”

  “And now we need to hide him in case Washington heard the gunshot. Come on, help me.”

  Beale and Gregory grip one of the corpse’s bloodied wrists, and together they drag him through the long grass up to the house, leaving a broad, bloody trail, a sword, and a leather bag that Dee collects and takes up to the hall.

  “My God!” Frommond breathes as she lets them in.

  Francis starts whining.

  “Shush, Francis,” Dee tells him. “It is just a dead man. Nothing to be worried about.”

  They dump him before the fire, face up. There is a hole in the sole of his boot, as well as the one in his chest.

  Gregory takes a seat. He is sheened with sweat.

  “Not used to it,” he admits.

  He could almost rest his feet on the dead man’s chest.

  “Who are you?” Frommond asks.

  She means Gregory. Introductions are made.

  “And who’s he?”

  Now she means the dead man.

  “No idea. But he’s been watching you for weeks. And then… he was getting away. If he’d had half an inkling of what you are up to— Christ. I do not dare think about it. And, anyway: I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Dee opens the man’s bag. There is an apple in it—very green—and a leather flask of liquid. Also, a purse of very few coins, and a letter.

  “What does it say?”

  Gregory, who had been sitting a moment earlier, snaps the letter from Dee’s fingers. Dee is outraged.

  “This is a matter for Her Majesty’s principal private secretary,” Gregory tells him. That does not soothe Dee, but after he has read it with a frown, Gregory passes it to Beale, and he sits back in the chair with a loud creak of protesting wood. Beale reads the letter.

  “Oh Christ.”

  Dee collects the letter from his fingers.

  It is written to a John Rhys—the dead man, presumably—instructing him to “keep eyes on and bring to the light so that it may be discovered as to its true purpose and intent, the most recent activities of Master Robert Beale, late in the employ of Master Francis Walsingham, who has this day taken up residence in Sulgrave Manor, in our county of Northampton, and to send word posthaste once the purpose of the said design is revealed.”

  Dee reads it with mounting alarm, but it is only once reaching the last line that he sees what Gregory and Beale have seen.

  “For and on behalf of Sir Christopher Hatton.”

  Christ.

  At that moment, the door resounds to three hefty blows.

  “Open up! It is John Samson here! Constable of the county!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  London, third week of June 1578

  Francis Walsingham is on the river again, and the weather—being warm and sunny, with a light breeze from the west—mirrors his mood perfectly, but after landing at Wool Quay and walking up through the city, he finds Arthur Gregory waiting at his gate, looking done in. He bears a message from Robert Beale. One look at his face, and Walsingham knows it contains bad news.

  “What is it?”

  “You’d best read it yourself.”

  Walsingham opens it and finds the contents encrypted.

  “Come on, Arthur,” he says. “It will take an hour or more to decrypt this. Just tell me what it is.”

  Gregory refuses. This cannot bode well.

  “Wait here.”

  Gregory nods and retreats toward the kitchens as Walsingham climbs the stairs to his chambers, swearing under his breath. He unlocks the three locks and then locks them behind him and settles down to decrypting the message hidden in Beale’s rushed and rudimentary substitution code. When he has finished transposing, half an hour later, he sits in his chair, unable to move, as if buried in rubble.

  Between them—Robert Beale, John Dee, Jane Frommond, Arthur Gregory—they have managed to kill two men—one a constable, the other belonging to Sir Christopher Hatton—and they have managed to reveal—to Sir Christopher Hatton of all people!—that they have been plotting to replace the Queen with a woman who looks like her.

  Walsingham picks up his decryption and looks at it again. Can he have gotten it wrong? Can he have gotten this sentence wrong?

  “But all not lost as Ness now with child & not like HMQ.”

  HMQ is Her Majesty the Queen. So one of them—he cannot stand to do the sums, but he instantly knows that it is Beale—has also managed to impregnate the woman whom they’ve been teaching to imitate the Queen?

  Walsingham sit
s in the chair and tries to recall an intrigue that was more doomed to disaster. Perhaps that is what the comet signified. If his memory served him right, the word disaster comes from “bad star” in Latin.

  He returns to the decryption: they have gathered up all their possessions and quit the house in Northamptonshire, it goes on, and Dee and Frommond are coming back to their own lives in London, while Beale has taken Ness back to her sister’s house in Ely, and there awaits instruction from his wise master, by whom he means Walsingham. He signs off as being a good and humble servant.

  By Christ, Walsingham thinks, he ought now to turn on him. Have him arrested before Hatton starts pulling on the strings and finding how well-connected they are. Christ. That is what he must do. He must cauterize this wound now. Protect himself. He stands, and paces, around and around. He can hear the boards creak under his feet as if he were in a ship at sea. He knows that if he moves against Beale now, he will be signing not only his death sentence, but also Frommond’s, Dee’s, and this Ness of theirs. And Arthur Gregory’s, too.

  My God! He suddenly realizes that he has never read any of Gregory’s reports. In his defense, he is sent about a hundred reports a day, from all over Christendom and beyond, and Gregory’s never seemed as if they might contain anything of instant import. He finds them now, slotted away neatly, each still sealed. He breaks open the first: and there it is, the first inkling that Beale and Ness are lovers, meeting in a physician’s house in Bury St. Edmunds and that afterward Beale walks as if he has been bled of a pint or more blood. He alerts Walsingham that Ness looks very similar to Her Majesty, insofar as he has glimpsed her, though Ness is altogether more of a country woman, who rides rather than go by carriage. Gregory approves of this, though adds that this is not to disparage Her Majesty.

  The messages continue to relate their meetings, and their toll on Beale, who has clearly, as Gregory writes, become “cuntstruck.” At one point Beale is seen falling asleep in his saddle and falling from his horse. Gregory writes to ask if he should continue to follow Beale, who is like a ram to ewe, or Ness, whose husband must suspect she is engaged in lewd activity, for she returns from Bury St. Edmunds “much flushed and mussed about with.” Of course, Walsingham does not answer, so Gregory continues following Beale, to and fro London and Bury St. Edmunds, always reporting the same, until in a flurry of excitement, he reports that Beale is moving Ness across country, to a village in Northamptonshire, with John Dee and a woman he as yet cannot identify.