The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE




IN A FRENZY OF GLEAMING BLACK WING, THE CROWS FEASTED ON the fine banquet of young Edward Tulse. Eyes gone, white bone shining through the tatters of his face, the kitchen boy was losing his identity one peck at a time. A day after his life had been taken, the lad still hung from the gallows at Nonsuch, and there he would remain until another victim was chosen to take his place.

And that will not be long, Grace thought.

Hurrying silently along the first-floor corridor, the lady-in-waiting tried to avert her eyes from the grisly sight, but the deteriorating corpse said too much about life in the palace. The boy, who struggled with some deformity of the mouth, had been as good-natured as anyone consigned to labour all day near the hot ovens during the summer. He could never have been a spy reporting back to his secret Catholic masters.

The young woman paused at the end of the corridor and listened. Outside the crows had been disturbed, taking wing as one, a shadow of black feather and bloody beak passing across the sun. So soon after dawn only the kitchen staff would be up preparing the morning meal, but she could not take any risks. Everywhere she went someone was watching her with beady, suspicious eyes. And not just her.

Accusations were coming thick and fast to the Privy Council: of treason, atheism, unnatural acts, and any other crime that could be imagined. Men and women looked at their friends and acquaintances and wondered who was reporting on whom, and which person could be trusted, and who had most to gain by bringing another down.

‘You are well?’

Grace stifled a cry of surprise. It was Nathaniel, who had crept up on her as stealthily as a cat.

‘You said to be light of foot,’ he muttered. He looked pale, with dark circles under his eyes.

‘I did not say scare me into an early grave.’

‘This creeping around takes its toll, ’tis true. I have not slept well since we parted company with Will. At every noise, I feel they are coming for me in my sleep.’

‘What have you uncovered?’

‘I whiled away an hour with Jane Northwood in the gardens yesterday evening,’ he winced, ‘and someone owes me a great debt for that. After listening to all the gossip of every dalliance and slight and rivalry in the entire court, I began to feel my life drain from me. But by the time the bats were flitting overhead, a lull in the conversation finally appeared and I could ask my question. She tells me Master Cockayne is away in London on some business.’

‘Come, then,’ Grace said, excited. ‘We must search his chamber.’

Her friend’s face grew grave. ‘And if we are caught we will be hanging out there with Edward Tulse.’

‘Now, Nat, before the palace awakes,’ the young woman urged softly.

With a sigh, Nathaniel nodded. He led the way through the still corridors to Cockayne’s chamber, three doors from the spymaster’s own room. Grace listened at the door. No sound came from within, and after a moment she steeled herself and stepped inside.

The chamber was barely bigger than a box, with a trestle, a chair, two stools and mounds of parchments and books. The woman felt her heart sink as she surveyed the piles of papers, but she gave a weary nod to Nathaniel and they began to sift through them. Grace tried to picture Cecil’s adviser at work in the room, a small man, ruddy-faced and grey-haired, hunched over these volumes deep in thought. Where would he hide the play?

The young man tossed parchments aside with seeming disregard. ‘At least we will have some distraction from all this misery,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, what?’

‘Jane Northwood told me there is to be a masque, to take the Queen’s mind off the plague drawing closer to her palace. Costumes and music and dancing, with the most lavish scenery and devices and machines ever to grace Nonsuch. All paid for by the Earl of Essex.’ Nathaniel flashed his friend a grin. ‘If he cannot fawn enough, he will buy his way into the Queen’s favour. They say he has even hired Sir Edmund Spenser to pen the words and verses. Perhaps not the best choice when his Faerie Queen antagonized Lord Burghley so.’

The sound of footsteps echoed outside the chamber.

Nathaniel quickly moved to a corner out of immediate sight from the entrance to the room, but Grace stood transfixed.

The door swung open to reveal a scowling Tobias Strangewayes, rapier drawn. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled in a low voice.

The woman flinched from the spy’s gaze. Her blood growing cold, she approached the man, holding her hands before her. ‘Please, Master Strangewayes, I beseech you. This is not how it appears.’

Every fibre of her being thrummed with awareness of Nat only feet away.

The spy began to look around the room. Grace snatched out a hand to touch his cheek. The shock of that contact almost threw them apart.

Keep your eyes upon me, the woman silently prayed.

She forced a flirtatious smile, like the ones she had seen Meg conjure so easily. Her fingers remained on the man’s cheek, hot and tingling and so brazen it might have been an embrace. Uncomfortable, Grace thought, I have never been so forward before.

‘It appears that you are one of the traitors at large within Nonsuch Palace.’ His tone was harsh, and he began to look around the room again.

Panic made the woman’s heart flutter. Forcing herself to overcome her resistance, she parted her lips and stepped so close to Strangewayes that her body brushed against his. She balanced on tiptoes, wavering, so that he knew she could easily fall forward and press her breasts against his chest. Her cheeks flushed with awkwardness, but she widened her smile to turn it into a colouring of passion.

Strangewayes swallowed, his brow furrowing. His gaze still wanted to dart.

Keep. Your. Eyes. On. Me.

‘You are a brave and honourable defender of our Queen and I am but a lowly servant of Her Majesty, but we wish the same thing: her safety and security,’ Grace breathed. ‘I followed a hooded man to this part of the palace, but lost sight of him. Then I saw this door was ajar—’

The red-headed spy made to step into the chamber. Her heart beating faster, Grace leaned forward so her lips were close enough to kiss him.

‘If I was seen … why, I fear for my safety. I have no strong protector here at court.’ She held his wavering gaze until a faint smile leapt to his lips.

‘You have one now,’ he said gently. ‘My master sent me to …’ He hesitated. ‘To request some information from Master Cockayne …’ His voice tailed away.

At this time of day? Grace thought. It seemed that the Earl of Essex was taking advantage of Cockayne’s absence to look into the business of his rival, Sir Robert Cecil.

‘Would you walk with me awhile until I find peace?’ the woman whispered.

Strangewayes nodded, eager to be away from the chamber now he had been caught out.

Her blood throbbing at the close call, Grace flashed a glance at a rigid Nathaniel as she left the chamber.

She knew she had earned only a brief reprieve. Before she had been all but invisible; now that Strangewayes had discovered her among Cockayne’s things she had been noticed. One more false step would bring her immediately to the attention of the powers at Nonsuch, and then her life would truly hang by a thread.