The Course of All Treasons Read online

“Righto, Your Honor.” The tapster behind the counter, Alan, was a wizened, gnomelike man, with a bald head as wrinkled as a winter apple left too long in the barrel. Old enough to have known Robert and Nick since they were students at the university, he seemed not to have aged a day. Grinning toothlessly, he toddled over with a jug of ale and another cup.

  “Thanks, Alan,” Robert said. “How’s the missus?”

  “Tolerable, I thank thee,” Alan said. “And her ladyship and the young’uns?”

  “Well, thank you, Alan.”

  “And you, young master?” the tapster asked, his rheumy eyes surveying Nick affectionately.

  Nick hid a grin. However old he got, he suspected Alan would always address him as he used to when Nick was fifteen and had first come up to Oxford. “Not so bad,” he returned. “Still serving the same old rot-gut, I see.” He lifted his tankard in a salute.

  “Better than the piss you serve,” Alan replied equably. He and Nick had a harmless rivalry about the respective quality of their ales.

  Over Alan’s shoulder, Nick saw the whore climb off del Toro’s lap and, taking him by the hand, lead him toward the back door of the tavern.

  “Speaking of piss,” Nick said, getting up. “Nature calls.”

  Quickly, he pushed through the knot of undergraduates crowding the doorway, but when he got to the alley, the prostitute and del Toro had vanished.

  “Hell and damnation!” Nick ran to the end of the alley and looked up and down St. Helen’s Passage, then ran to New College Lane. Aside from a few students shying stones at the gargoyles jutting out from the sides of the college chapel—something Nick himself had done in his undergraduate years—the street was empty.

  “Seen a man and a whore come this way?” Nick called.

  At the word whore, they sniggered and nudged one another, falling over their barge-sized feet like overgrown puppies.

  “I wish,” one of the lads said. “She might have given us one for free.”

  “Not you,” said a runt of a lad with shocking pimples. “You’re too ugly.”

  With their sticking-out ears and chins as smooth as a baby’s bottom, Nick thought it more likely they would have run a mile if any woman approached them, let alone a woman of ill repute.

  “I’m sure she would have found you all irresistible,” he said kindly.

  They grinned, oblivious to Nick’s irony.

  Nick stood for a moment considering his options. He could, of course, follow New College Lane to the High and hope to find del Toro there. But he suspected they had disappeared into a room where the woman plied her trade, and there were hundreds of such rooms in a college town catering to randy youth on the razzle. It would have been like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. In addition, Robert’s unexpected arrival meant Nick was not free to pursue his quarry without giving away his real purpose for being in Oxford. Cursing himself for a fool, Nick returned to the tavern.

  Walking in, Nick saw Robert in conversation with a man who was fair-haired and approximately his own height. Nick found himself looking into a face he recognized but couldn’t place.

  Then the penny dropped. “Edmund?” he said. “Edmund Lovett?”

  The man gave a sheepish smile and stuck out his hand. They shook. “It’s been a long time,” Edmund said. “I’m amazed you remember me. I thought I recognized your brother, the earl.”

  When Nick looked surprised—Robert had long since gone down from Oxford by the time Edmund was there—Edmund added, “He’s well-known in the county.”

  That was true: next to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Robert was one of the biggest landowners in Oxfordshire and was held in high regard for his honest dealings, like the old earl before him.

  Edmund Lovett had been a year below Nick at Oxford. The son of a gentleman farmer near Binsey House, Nick’s ancestral home, he had spent his first year trailing after Nick and his best friend, John Stockton, the son of his family’s steward. Both Nick and John had found Edmund’s company tedious and embarrassing. Nick seemed to remember something about a scandal involving Edmund’s father illegally enclosing common land, thus depriving the locals of their ancient grazing and wood-gathering rights, but he couldn’t be sure. At fifteen, Nick had been more concerned with chasing dairy maids and had paid little attention.

  Now Edmund seemed to want to chat about old times. In truth, Nick had barely any memory of the man at Oxford, as he had been much too busy living it up with John to spare Edmund much attention. What he did recall was a gangly youth with a shock of blond hair falling over his eyes and a habit of swiping it off his forehead with fingers whose nails were bitten to the quick. In Edmund’s second year he had finally gotten the message and left Nick alone.

  The bones of Edmund’s face had thickened, giving his face a square look; his hair had darkened to a pale brown, but he still favored an untidy fringe as if determined to preserve the last vestige of his youth. Though hatched with lines at the corners, his blue eyes retained a wide-eyed innocence, and his nails were still bitten. In short, the boy was still recognizable in the man.

  Robert got up. “Must be off,” he said to Nick. “Got to meet with the lawyer.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t worry,” Robert said. “I’m not disinheriting you, however disreputable you’ve become.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Just some land leases that need sorting.”

  Edmund was following their conversation with avid interest, and Nick felt a small stab of irritation. One thing had not changed. Edmund was ever the hanger-on.

  “Will you be staying over?” Robert asked Nick. “The snowdrops are coming up in the orchard.”

  For a moment, Nick felt a pang of homesickness, remembering the joy he had always felt as a boy when the first white froth of spring had appeared miraculously beneath the winter-bare trees.

  “Besides,” Robert added. “Mother wants to talk with you.”

  “She can always write to me,” Nick said.

  “She prefers face-to-face.”

  Agnes, the Dowager Countess of Blackwell, was a formidable woman, and although she and her husband, the old earl, had dutifully attended Anglican services once a month, Nick suspected she still practiced her Catholic faith in secret. Robert, too, for that matter. The prospect of the authorities finding a priest hiding in Binsey House kept Nick awake at nights. It would only take one servant to betray them and all would be lost.

  Nick’s heart sank, as this suggested that what his mother had to tell him was too dangerous to be committed to paper.

  “Tell her it will have to wait,” Nick said. If he was following a Spanish spy, Nick could not afford to tangle his family up in his business. It was imperative that no one else in his family have any contact with Catholics from abroad. He did not elaborate but saw understanding flare in Robert’s eyes. People habitually took his brother’s blocky, stolid appearance for bovine slowness, but Robert was far from stupid.

  Even though Robert did not know Nick was a spy, he did know Nick sometimes worked directly for the Queen. Just last winter, the Queen had commissioned Nick to track down the murderer of two of her ladies-in-waiting. Robert correctly interpreted Nick’s laconic reply to mean he was again on the Queen’s business and must return posthaste to London.

  “Give my love to Elise and the brood,” Nick said. “And to Mother.”

  “Next time you are in Oxford, come and stay at the house,” Robert said. “We miss you.” It was Robert’s way of telling Nick that what their mother wanted to communicate was important.

  Nick nodded. He felt guilty about not seeing his family more often, but he dreaded finding out that his mother was still practicing the old religion, even harboring priests at Binsey House. One day soon he would have to broach the subject with his mother, and his brother.

  Robert shook hands with Edmund and left.

  “Fancy another?” Edmund said, lifting up the flagon.

  “I really must be going,�
�� Nick said, “before I lose the light.” He would have to look for del Toro in all the inns along the London Road. If he didn’t find him, he would have to report his failure to Cecil. Not something he was looking forward to. This knowledge increased his impatience with Edmund, although he knew he was not being fair to the man.

  “One more can’t hurt.”

  “All right.” Inwardly cursing himself for being weak, Nick picked up the tankard Edmund had filled. Maybe it was a guilty conscience. He remembered Edmund standing forlornly in the middle of the quad at Balliol as Nick told him he and John had things to do elsewhere. And Edmund was not invited.

  “So, Edmund,” Nick said. “What have you been up to since going down from Oxford?”

  “This and that,” he said vaguely. “I’m returning to London today.”

  Nick’s heart sank. It looked as if he would be stuck with Edmund’s company all the way back to the city.

  “I fell in with the Earl of Essex’s set,” Edmund explained. “Did some work for him and then got hired on as one of his agents.” He brushed the hair off his forehead and casually picked up his drink. Even in the half gloom of the tavern, Nick could see he was watching Nick for his reaction. Nick was careful to give none, although he cursed inwardly.

  * * *

  The twenty-one-year-old Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, was a thorn in the side of Sir Robert Cecil. Passing to the wardship of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, after the death of his father in 1576, Devereux had grown up with Robert Cecil. They had spent their boyhood engaged in a jealous rivalry for Burghley’s affection, a mutual antagonism that had only grown worse as they attained manhood. That alone should have made him a favorite of Nick’s. But the man was a spoiled brat, puffed up from being the pampered scion of an ancient aristocratic line and first cousin twice removed of the Queen.

  Essex was a man who modeled himself on The Book of the Courtier, a handbook on courtly manners written by Castiglione in Henry VIII’s reign, the favorite read of useless toffs. The fact that Henry had also taken Castiglione’s book as his personal bible did nothing to recommend it, given that the syphilitic king’s definition of courtly love was to lop off the heads of two wives, divorce two, lose one in childbirth, and be outlived by another. Not a stellar track record, in Nick’s humble opinion. And, indeed, Essex had a reputation with the ladies to rival Henry’s, although no one at court was brave enough to tell the Queen.

  Nick considered Essex to be a dandified lightweight who would have been laughable had it not been for Elizabeth’s outrageous favoritism. The spectacle of the aging queen flirting with a man young enough to be her son was both embarrassing and sad. Even Nick’s friend, Richard, the Queen’s dwarf, known to the court as Codpiece, went quiet when Essex was around. It was rumored that Essex was the replacement for longtime favorite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who was currently in Holland aiding the Dutch in their revolt against Philip II of Spain. Only Baron Burghley had had the balls to warn her about Essex.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she had retorted. “Robin makes me laugh. Which is more than I can say for you, Old Woman,” she said, vindictively using the nickname Burghley’s enemies used behind his back.

  Burghley had wisely taken the hint and never raised the subject of Essex again.

  Much more serious than the Queen making a fool of herself, in Nick’s opinion, was the fact that Essex had set up a rival spy network to Walsingham’s. It meant that, in practice, spies were often working at cross purposes to each other, as neither side knew the identity or allegiance of the other, and in addition, inside each separate network, agents were often ignorant of each other’s identities. This only added to the chaos. In short, Essex was a rash, idealistic troublemaker with enough money and royal favor to make him dangerous. Somehow Nick wasn’t surprised that the gullible Edmund had taken up with him.

  “I hear we’re in the same business,” laughed Edmund, toasting him with his tankard. “Who would have thought?”

  Who indeed? Nick mused. He had never known anyone to be so prone to hero worship as Edmund. Nick raised his own tankard in polite acknowledgment but kept silent. It was not his habit to blab about his employment in strange places and to people he had just met. Painfully, Edmund’s willingness to do so seemed an attempt to prove that he was just like Nick.

  Nick was just wondering if one tankard of ale was enough for old time’s sake or if he was duty-bound to gag down another when the tavern door opened and a man stuck his head in, caught Edmund’s eye, and closed the door again.

  “It’s for me,” Edmund said, leaping to his feet. “A message I’ve been expecting,” he explained over his shoulder as he went to the door.

  Edmund left the tavern, shutting the door behind him. Nick was surprised he didn’t bring the man in to get warm by the fire, which was crackling merrily in the grate and putting out a fair bit of heat. But shortly after Edmund went out to confer with the man, he returned alone.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “An urgent message that needed a reply.” Edmund said this as if he wished Nick to know he was even now on Essex’s business, but once again, Nick did not react.

  Instead, he stood. “I’ve got to be going,” he said. “As long as the weather holds, I hope to make it to Wallingford by tonight.”

  “I’m going that way,” Edmund said. “We can keep each other company.”

  This wasn’t what Nick had planned, and he was not best pleased. After the day’s debacle, he had no stomach for company, least of all Edmund’s, now that he had seen how little the boy he had known had changed. But he tried to put a good face on it, telling himself that, once they reached London, they could go their separate ways.

  CHAPTER 2

  The London Road

  Once they had cleared Headington Hill and Cheney Lane, Nick set a punishing pace on the London Road, justifying this to himself by observing that the sky was looking leaden, as if it might snow. In truth, it meant he and Edmund had no chance to talk. He had been surprised that Edmund did not seem curious about Nick’s life since going down from Oxford and was more interested in talking about himself and his achievements. But if Nick was being honest, this was a small price to pay for the way he had ignored Edmund when he was a lonely adolescent in a strange new town.

  They had been riding for some time and were approaching Didcot when Nick spotted a lone horseman ahead. He was sitting on his horse in the middle of the road. Immediately wary, Nick slowed down, then reined up within hailing distance of the man.

  “What is it?” Edmund said, pulling up beside him.

  “Not sure,” Nick replied, studying the stranger carefully. He was wearing a soft cap pulled low on his forehead and a muffler around his neck so that most of his face was hidden. He was turned sideways on the road, effectively blocking it, one hand holding the reins of his horse, the other concealed by the angle of his body. Instinctively, Nick moved his cloak back over his left hip and, transferring his reins into his left hand, placed his right hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “I’ll go see what the fellow wants,” Edmund said, and before Nick could prevent him, he was spurring his horse into a canter toward the stranger.

  “God’s teeth!” Nick muttered, and dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. “Hold up, Edmund,” he shouted.

  But by now Edmund had reached the stranger and seemed to be conversing with him. Just as Nick drew up, the man brought his right hand from behind his body and pointed a small crossbow at Nick. For a moment, Nick stared in freezing disbelief at the deadly iron tip of the bolt pointed straight at his heart, before he flung himself sideways from his saddle. Simultaneously, he heard the wicked snap of the bolt being fired, then the ground rushing up to meet him with bone-jarring impact. He rolled desperately away from the lethal surge of hooves stamping and rearing around him and managed to make it to a ditch at the side of the road. Crouching for cover in case the assailant had managed to reload, he drew his sword and peered over the top of the bank before scram
bling up and running to Edmund’s aid.

  But it was all over.

  Their assailant was slumped over his pommel, and as Nick approached, he slid slowly down the side of his horse, smearing the terrified horse with his blood, and fell to the road, where he lay still. The horses were prancing and rearing in panic at the smell of blood, and Nick could see Edmund struggling to master them.

  Nick dragged the man clear of the horse’s hooves, then placed the tip of his weapon against the supine man’s chest. But there was no need. The man was dead, pierced through the throat, his eyes regarding Nick with grotesque surprise, his mouth open as if in midshout, the front of his jerkin drenched in gore. Nick did not recognize him. Swiftly, he glanced around, looking for another rider, but the fields on the other side of the hedges were empty.

  “Is he dead?” Edmund asked, at last managing to dismount. He was clutching his shoulder.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing. Just a scratch.”

  Nick noticed that the dead man was holding a dagger; his crossbow lay on the road. He must have discarded it as soon as he realized he had missed and dropped it in favor of the knife. Crossbows were notoriously slow to load in a skirmish.

  Nick tore off a piece of linen from the dead man’s shirt and bound up Edmund’s arm. The three horses had calmed and were now cropping the grass on the verge of the road as if nothing had happened.

  “Do you know this man?” Nick asked, squatting down and going through the dead man’s pockets. When Edmund didn’t reply, he glanced up. Edmund had turned pale, as if he had just realized he had killed a man. He shook his head.

  The only thing Nick found on the body was a small purse of gold.

  “A cutpurse?”

  “Perhaps,” Nick replied. But the manner of attack seemed too deliberate for a spontaneous robbery. It was almost as if the man had been waiting for Nick. He saw again the iron bolt aimed directly at his heart. There was no happenstance here. The man had been sent to kill Nick. He wondered if Francesco del Toro had spotted Nick tailing him and arranged to have him taken off the board.