Perfect Shadows

chapter 33

In a small room near the Royal apartments and furnished as an office Cecil offered the prince the room’s only chair, although he was himself trembling with fatigue, and almost too tired to think. He had had an exhausting interview with Essex that day, as well as overseeing the confessions of several of the other conspirators. A painful meeting with Essex’s mother, the strident and aging Lettice Knollys (now Blount), had followed, and it had taken all his strength to sit through the torrents of mixed invective and supplication she poured over him. He passed a weary handover his eyes, and was startled to feel the touch of a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, but was firmly guided to the chair and gently pushed into it. The thought that the man could easily murder him floated idly through his mind for a moment and he found with a sort of distant surprise that he was too tired to care. He sat looking at the prince’s back as words were exchanged with the man-at-arms outside the office, and realized with a start that he had actually nodded off for a time as Prince Kryštof turned back to face him with a small black bottle in his hands, which he set on the desk before turning to search about in the cupboard. Cecil cleared his throat and the prince turned to face him, two small cups in his hands and a smile which, though rendered slightly sinister by the eye patch, seemed genuine enough. He poured them each a dollop of brandy, putting the cup into Cecil’s hand and raising his own to drink first. That I might not think he is trying to poison me, Cecil thought muzzily, and downed his own before the cup had left the prince’s lips. Being an abstemious man by nature, he rarely took brandy, and drank even his wine well watered. The fiery liquor burned into his belly, and he promptly choked. He wiped his streaming eyes and held out his cup to the prince for another dose, answering the sympathetic smile with a wry one of his own. Kryštof ’s teeth flashed in the candlelight as he poured, and then thumped the cork back into the bottle.

“How did you get in to see Southampton, your grace?” Cecil asked carefully, sipping at the second cup. He would regret the liquor soon, he knew, but just now it was enabling him to get through one more bit of work, and he was grateful to the foreigner for thinking of it. Kryštof, half sitting on the table, considered for a time before he spoke.

“Bribery, my lord,” he answered levelly, and Cecil nodded.

“I do not suppose you would be able to point out to me the men who accepted your bribes?”

“I fear that one Englishman in livery is very like another,” Kryštof replied with a shrug.

“Just so. And I would suppose that the earl said nothing about the rebellion?”

“Only that he would I had persuaded him to stay by me instead of jaunting about London that day,” Kryštof answered carefully, framing his words so as not to be of use to Cecil in his prosecution. The Secretary felt his head sinking to rest on his arms and was distantly aware that his breathing had become faint snores. When he woke some time later he found that the prince had taken up a cloak from the chest near the door and covered him as he slept, before taking leave.