The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN




IN THE RUDDY LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN, GRACE HURRIED ALONG the Grand Gallery from the Queen’s chambers at the end of her day’s labours. With his black cloak wrapped around him and his red hair hidden beneath a felt cap, Strangewayes waited in the shadows to intercept her. He thought how beautiful she looked with her chestnut hair tied back with a blue ribbon, and a bodice the colour of forget-me-nots emphasizing her slim waist. From the moment the Earl of Essex’s spy had first laid eyes upon her, he had not been short of lascivious thoughts, imagining the body beneath the skirts, the young breasts, the pleasure of throwing her breathless with passion upon his bed.

But from that day in the garden when she had offered him only sympathy and care after he had heard the news of his brother’s death, Strangewayes had been shocked by deeper feelings, each slow emergence changing how he felt about himself and how he saw the world.

‘Grace.’ He stepped out into the gallery.

‘Hello, Tobias.’ The young woman showed no surprise.

Strangewayes was stung by the lack of warmth in Grace’s face, but it had been that way for days. ‘I do not want it to be this cold between us. You have ignored me for too long—’

‘I have work to do, Tobias. The Queen needs my full attention.’

‘I spoke harshly that day we stood outside the garden door. You had concerns. I was wrong to brush them aside as if they … as if you did not matter.’

The woman gave the spy a practised smile and made to push by him.

‘Grace, you are the only person to have shown me any warmth in many a year,’ Strangewayes said, the desperation forming a hard weight in his chest. ‘I want us to be friends again.’

In a moment of madness, the young man grabbed Grace’s shoulders and pulled her to him. He expected her to resist in her usual high-spirited way, but she folded compliantly into his arms and he pressed his mouth upon her. The spy was disturbed to find her unresponsive lips had a texture like fish-skin, and when he opened his eyes, she was staring at him, unblinking and emotionless, as if he had merely enquired about her health. Ruffled, the red-headed man broke the embrace.

‘What will it take to win you back?’ Tobias stuttered.

Ignoring the question, the young lady-in-waiting gave another chill smile and walked away. The spy felt crushed.

‘I will do what you asked of me,’ Strangewayes called. ‘I will prove to you that I am deserving of your affection.’

Grace continued on her way without looking back.

The spy wanted to hate the young woman for making him feel such a fool. He had always mocked the lovelorn, and yet there he was, in the midst of great danger, facing a plot that could sweep away the Queen and important affairs of state, and all he could think of were his own petty feelings.

Clenching his fists, Tobias swept through the deserted palace corridors. The Privy Council was meeting late and all of the advisers and record-keepers and snivelling hangers-on would be gathered in the Banqueting House, waiting for their masters to emerge from their discussions with Her Majesty. He had a brief opportunity.

The sun had set by the time he reached the quiet rooms of the Secretary of State. None of the candles had yet been lit and he realized he would have to complete his business in the dark. Kneeling in front of Cockayne’s door, he took out his velvet pouch of tools and set to work.

While probing the brass tumblers, he wondered if his loathing of Swyfte had been fired by the gossip that Grace mooned over his rival like a little girl, or if it had been because England’s greatest spy received all the adulation that he so deserved. When Essex had recruited him into his nascent spy network, the red-headed man had dreamed of fortune, adventure and acclaim. He had learned to loathe the less flamboyant spies of Cecil’s network – the killers, the thieves, the liars and torturers – and all the choices, and his future, had appeared clearly delineated. When had it all changed?

The tumblers turned with a dull clunk. Strangewayes slipped into the chamber. Through the single window, the moon cast a silvery light over the jumbled piles of parchments, charts and books.

After a few moments, the spy realized it would take him all night to sift through every paper in that cluttered chamber. He had to think clearly. Stepping back to the door, he looked around the sparse furniture and the towers of dusty volumes. There was nowhere to hide something of importance.

Moving around the chamber walls, Tobias gently rapped each wooden panel. When none sounded false, he turned back to the room in frustration. In that moment, his gaze alighted on the honey-coloured Kentish ragstone of the hearth.

Grinning, Strangewayes bounded across the chamber. During the hot summer, there had been no need to light the fires in the palace and the grey ashes in the rusty iron grate were long undisturbed. Reaching one hand up the chimney, he felt around, wrinkling his nose at the shower of sticky black soot. His fingers closed on rough sackcloth blocking the flue.

In jubilation, the spy tore down the sack, coughing at the black cloud he raised. Inside was a sheaf of papers with Marlowe’s scrawled signature clear on the front.

‘Who are you? What are you doing in my chamber?’

Strangewayes started at the harsh voice. Spinning round, he saw that Cockayne had entered silently. In his black robe, the adviser was a pool of shadow by the door with only his ruddy face and shock of grey hair visible.

Tobias reeled from the terrible consequences of being discovered in the chamber of an adviser to the Secretary of State. ‘I … I was just—’ he stuttered.

‘Thief!’ Cockayne called, turning to the door. ‘I am robbed!’

The younger man threw himself across the room. Clamping one hand across Cockayne’s mouth, the spy wrestled his opponent into the door with a crash.

‘Hush, I mean you no harm,’ Strangewayes hissed. But suddenly he could see no way out of his predicament. His reputation, and Grace, had been lost.

The struggling adviser clamped his teeth on the spy’s fingers. When the younger man snatched his hand away with a cry of pain, Cockayne called out, ‘Traitor!’ and in that instant Strangewayes realized he had lost his life too.

‘No!’ the spy barked, tears of desperation stinging his eyes. Furiously, he flung the older man across the room. Books and papers flew everywhere. The chair was upended, and Cockayne crashed into the wood panelling next to the fireplace. Strangewayes was on him in an instant.

‘Traitor!’ the adviser barked.

Tobias was consumed with fear. He drove his fist into the older man’s face. The nose burst underneath his knuckles. ‘Be quiet,’ the spy hissed. ‘I have no wish to harm you. Be quiet.’

Yet Cockayne continued to struggle. ‘Essex’s man,’ he muttered through split lips.

Half sobbing, Strangewayes made a decision. He pulled out his dagger and thrust it into the adviser’s chest. Recoiling, he snorted through hot tears of angry frustration, ‘I never meant for this.’

Sucking in a juddering gasp of air to calm himself, the red-headed man tried to think clearly. There was still a chance the adviser might have returned early and no one had overheard the struggle. Forcing aside the thought that he might have killed an innocent man, he plucked up the sooty sack and leapt to the door.

The spy allowed himself one glance back at the body of his victim – and was rooted in horror.

It was no longer Cockayne.

In disbelief, Strangewayes stepped forward to see more clearly. His eyes widened, his wits whirled and he thought he would go mad.

Gripping the dirty sack to his chest, the spy bolted from the chamber.