A preliminary search of the desk revealed nothing more incriminating than a collection of letters written by Blaise to his father from school and university.
“How are you going to get into the drawers?” Lady Frances asked, unfolding one of the letters.
Mal extracted a number of skeleton keys from his boots, hat brim and dagger scabbard, placed there against the threat of arrest and imprisonment.
“Fear not, I’ve learnt a few tricks as part of my profession.”
Taught to him by his wife, though he was hardly going to tell Lady Frances that. He began probing the first lock. Lady Frances put aside her husband’s letters and came over to watch.
After a few tries the lock gave way, and its fellow yielded to the same skeleton key. The left hand drawer turned out to be empty, but the right hand one contained a small sheaf of letters in various hands, including several from Lord Burghley.
“Have you found anything?” Lady Frances asked.
Mal showed her the letters.
“Nothing strange about Burghley and my father-in-law exchanging letters,” she said. “He was Lord Treasurer, after all, and had dealings with all the great lords of the realm.”
“And too old, I think, to be a danger. He must be past his threescore years and ten by now.”
“Nearer four score. And in poor health besides. Baron Buckhurst has had to take his place on the council.”
Buckhurst. His name wasn’t on Selby’s list, nor was Burghley’s. Was that significant? Come to think of it, none of the Privy Councillors were named. That boded ill. Mal began to feel more certain than ever that it was the omissions that mattered, not the names on the list.
On a hunch he pulled out both drawers, and let out a low whistle. The empty one was a hand’s breadth shallower than the one he had found the letters in. A secret compartment! Remembering Baines’s training, he took out his riding gloves and felt around cautiously. One could never rule out poisoned needles and other traps. There. The back panel tilted when you pushed on the top and sprang back into place when you let go.
“I’ll need something to hold it open,” he said, and drew his dagger.
A few moments later he was staring at a small bundle of letters tied with silk ribbon. Love letters? Hardly daring to trust his luck he pulled the ribbon loose and began reading.
Right honourable my good and dearest lord, my most humble and bountiful thanks for all your kind wishes for my health. The days wax long in your absence, and my heart is so afflicted that I curse the sun for its mockery of my dark humour. I greatly fear that time will soon be upon me when my soul shall be taken up to Heaven, but I know that with your care I shall be delivered safe into a new life.
“This is it,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Clear evidence of Jathekkil’s amayi.”
“I know not that word, amayi. It is not Latin, though it sounds much like it.”
“It is a skrayling word, my lady, meaning a trusted companion.” When she looked puzzled, he recalled that she still believed the late duke had plotted against the skraylings, not that he was one of them. “Forgive me. I spend too much time with my brother. I forget that others do not understand our private speech.”
He scanned to the end of the letter.
I pray most earnestly for your own good health and happiness. Your very assured and loving kinsman, Wm Selby. Sent this viijth day of June, 1575.
“No, this cannot be correct,” he said aloud. “Selby was a young man when this letter was written. Why would he fear imminent death?”
He sorted through the other letters. This was the last, and some went back as far as the 1540s, written in a boyish hand.
“These are not from the man I arrested.”
Lady Frances tapped a folded letter against her lips.
“Selby. Selby.” Her dark brows drew together in concentration. “The late Sir William inherited Ightham from his uncle, also Sir William Selby.”
Mal swore under his breath. “And did he die twenty-three years ago, as these letters suggest?”
Lady Frances shrugged. “Thereabouts, as I recall. I know not the precise date. Why?”
There was nothing for it but the truth, or some version of it that Lady Frances might believe.
“Our enemies believe in reincarnation, like the followers of Pythagoras. They choose their recruits from those they believe are their dead members reborn.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened in shock. “Then they are heretics as well as traitors.”
“Indeed, my lady. Now you understand why I must root them out.” He shuffled the letters distractedly. “The person I seek is twenty years old or so. Most likely another courtier, and one more powerful than Selby, judging by their schemes so far.”
“Oh dear Lord.” Lady Frances turned pale and sat down.
“My lady?”
“The Earl of Rutland is courting my daughter Elizabeth. He is twenty-two years old, I believe.”
Another guiser trying to get close to Grey’s network? That was all they needed. “He is only one man. Who else can you think of?”
Lady Frances counted on her fingers. “There’s Nottingham’s eldest, Lord Howard of Effingham. He’s only twenty-one, but he was elected to Parliament last year. Unfortunately his father’s investiture as earl made him ineligible for the Commons, so he left for Ireland under the Earl of Essex.”
“Hmm. A possible candidate, though it leaves the young prince vulnerable. Go on.”
“Northumberland’s brother Josceline is around two-and-twenty also.”
“Christ’s balls! How I would love that strutting codpiece to be discovered a traitor. I’d take great pleasure in gutting him myself.”
Lady Frances ignored the outburst.
“And then there’s Elizabeth de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford,” she went on. “She used to be lady-in-waiting to Princess Juliana, until she married Lord Derby.”
“When was that?”
“Four years ago.”
“The year after your father-in-law died, and less than a year after Prince Henry was born. Do you think perhaps someone wanted her away from court, and away from the prince?”
“If they did, they failed. She is more often at court than at her husband’s home; indeed, it is quite the scandal. She is said to have had affairs with Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Essex, though my sources have been unable to confirm it.”
“The girl has spirit, then, and she’s ambitious.” Reminds me of someone I once knew… “Well, that’s given me plenty of food for thought. Thank you, my lady.”
Mal walked home, his mind awhirl. So, two generations of guisers in one family. Just like Sandy and Kit, and possibly the Shawes as well. After all, what better place to raise another guiser than within your own family? Damn it, he had been a fool not to think of it sooner. If he compared Selby’s list against the names Lady Frances had suggested, it might reveal some pattern. Then there were the young candidates themselves. None were sufficiently well-placed to be influential at court, but perhaps not all guisers aimed for high office. A man of power was constrained by duty and could not always go where he pleased. Better to be a relative nobody, or a young wastrel like Jos Percy. Indeed the web of connections to Northumberland made the earl’s brother a very plausible candidate.
As Mal neared the Sign of the Parley he noticed that the front gate was ajar. He paused in a doorway on the other side of the street. This was it. Should he run, or let them arrest him?
Long moments passed, with no sign of armed guards. At last the door opened and a fair-haired lad in travel-stained clothing stepped out into the street. Mal burst out laughing with relief, and ran across the road to greet his wife.
Coby hunched over the kitchen table, poking a spoon distractedly into her own pottage whilst watching Susanna feed Kit. It was a messy business, since Kit was old enough now to use a spoon himself, and provided harmless amusement for them all. Even Sandy managed a smile, though he was grey-faced from a sleepless week on the road.
As soon as they had finished supper Mal ushered her upstairs, insisting that the dishes could wait until morning. In truth she was only too glad to get out of the filthy clothes she had been wearing for the past few days, and her nakedness had the predictable effect on her husband.
“Not too sleepy yet?” he asked, getting into bed beside her.
She chuckled and ran her fingers through the dark wiry curls covering his chest. There were a few more silver ones than she remembered. “Perhaps not that sleepy…”
The night was mild and close, and sweat quickly pooled between their bodies as they moved together. She couldn’t help but giggle as they parted with a loud squelch, like a boot being pulled out of mud.
“You find my lovemaking ridiculous, do you?” Mal pulled a face, barely visible in the late evening gloom.
For an answer she drew him closer and kissed him again.
“Oh, I have missed thee, good wife,” he sighed when she let him go. “Though unless you have other garb in your saddlebags, methinks my wife had best disappear and we will put it about that her cousin Jacob is back in London.”
“No, I have nothing else besides the gown I lent to Susanna,” she said quietly, staring up at the shadowed canopy. “We were able to save very little from the fire.”
He sat up in bed and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I cannot believe Frogmore betrayed us.” His voice was steel-edged, as if a different man sat by her side than the one who had made gentle love to her. “Is there no one we can trust?”
“We have each other,” she said. “And Sandy, and Kit.”
“Aye.”
She looked up at the bitter tone in his voice. “It wasn’t your fault–”
“No? If I hadn’t made such a bold move against Selby, the other guisers would never have taken their revenge on… on my loved ones.” He slammed a hand against the bedpost, making Coby jump. “Damn it, you nearly died, and Kit and Sandy too. And Rushdale is…”
She reached out a hand to comfort him, but pulled it back. She knew he wouldn’t thank her for fussing over him as if he were Kit with a scraped knee.
“The house can be rebuilt,” she said softly. “We still have the land and all its income.”
“I can’t do it anymore.” His voice was so low, she had to lean closer to make out his words.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t keep up this fight against the guisers. Not if…” He looked down at her. Coby swallowed. She had never seen him so wretched, not even after he had been tortured by the Venetians. “I can’t lose you.”
“We can’t give up, not now–”
“Yes we can. We can go back to France, or even further. Venice wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Coby shuddered at the memory of the devourers coursing through the narrow city streets, tearing people apart. London was dangerous enough, but no power on Earth would get her back to Venice. She reached out a hand and laid it on his.
“And what about all the other lives they will steal in our absence? If we stand by and let them do this blasphemous thing, how will we ever live with ourselves? What reason will we give, come Judgement Day, for abandoning our countrymen to their fates?”
“Perhaps you are right,” he said after a moment. “But we cannot fight them alone. We need allies.”
“Much good our alliances have done us so far.”
“I was perhaps unwise to trust the Huntsmen,” he said. “They are too easily swayed by their hatred of the skraylings, too easily manipulated into turning against anyone connected with them.”
“Then who? Is there anyone we can trust? Anyone we can be sure is not a guiser, or one of their allies?”
“I don’t know.” He lay back down. “Let us sleep on it. Perhaps inspiration will strike when I am less weary.”
Coby laid her head on his shoulder.
“Promise me one thing?”
“Hmm?”
“Promise you won’t send me away again.”
“I–”
“We have to stay together from now on,” she said, levering herself up on one elbow and fixing him with her gaze. “If they come for us, I would rather die by your side than hundreds of miles away.”
He hesitated, and she narrowed her eyes at him, preparing to argue further.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I promise.”
“Good. And I think Lady Catlyn will rise from the ashes after all. I can make more gowns easily enough, especially if I sell some of my jewellery.”
“So anxious to be back in skirts?” he asked with a smile.
“No, but I will not give those villains the satisfaction of thinking they have us beaten. And in any case, you will need a pair of eyes – and ears – amongst the ladies of the court. This Lady Derby could just as easily be a guiser as any of the men.”
“Very well. I’ll ask Lady Frances, and perhaps she can exert her influence to get you a place in the Princess of Wales’s household. But promise me you’ll be careful.”
She lay back down and snuggled close to him. “I’m always careful.”
She refrained from adding, It is you who needs to be careful, my love.