Her Last Assassin (13 page)

‘Mistress,’ he said, bowing his head and trying not to drip all over the rushes on the floor. ‘Forgive me for troubling you at this late hour, but I need to speak with Sir Francis at once. I saw that the house is in darkness though. Is your master away from home? At court, perhaps?’

The housekeeper stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘Sir Francis Walsingham is dead, sir.’

‘
Dead?
’

‘Aye, sir.’ She was frowning. ‘Where have you been that you did not know it?’

Goodluck’s chest hurt.
Walsingham was dead
. He heard himself speak, and barely knew what he was saying. ‘I have been abroad for nine months. Tell me what happened, mistress. Was it poison?’

‘No, sir, only that same malady against which he had long fought. Sir Francis was a brave man, but he was very sick towards the end and suffered most dreadfully in his last hours. But the Queen would not release my poor master from his duties until he was so close to death, there was nothing the physician could do but give him poppy for the pain.’ There was a note of bitterness in the old woman’s voice. ‘Sir Francis left many debts unpaid. Even this house may have to be sold to pay them.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ Goodluck muttered, then stood a moment like a man at an unmarked crossroads, suddenly lost for which direction to take. He had not thought any further than his meeting with Walsingham tonight. And now it would never happen. To whom should he convey his information, what little there was of it? And how to recoup his expenses from his long months abroad?

‘Forgive me,’ he asked the housekeeper, ‘but Sir Francis left no message on his deathbed? No final instructions?’

She looked at him as though he were mad. ‘No, sir.’

A thought struck him. ‘But what of his papers? His letters and books?’

‘Some gentlemen of the court came by yesterday and took away several chests of his private papers and other items, sir. I know nothing more.’

‘His widow?’

‘Lady Walsingham has gone into the country, sir.’ The housekeeper hesitated. ‘Perhaps you should ask at court if there is some special instruction you seek.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed blankly, realizing that she wished him to leave. And indeed there was nothing here for him any more. Walsingham had summoned him home for some reason, then abruptly died. Though one could hardly blame a man for dying.

Outside on the lane again, Goodluck stood under the rain and stared up at the house. Walsingham’s study had been on the corner that jutted out, looking down on to the stable yard below. Its fine latticework windows were unlit, the master of the house departed from this world. Goodluck himself would never wait for Walsingham there again, nor take payment and secret papers from his master’s hand, nor be given instructions for any new mission. And whatever reprimand he had been facing would now never be delivered.

The game was at an end, it would seem.

The house in Cheapside was also in darkness. So Lucy was still at court. He felt a dullness creep over his heart and almost laughed, chiding himself for such frailty. She was in her world, he was in his.

So much the better for Lucy, he thought grimly. He would not wish to inflict this broken world on her youth and beauty, his life narrowing and darkening each day towards oblivion. This was her time to shine. His time was almost done.

Goodluck fished a door key from his purse and let himself into the house, finding it cold and damp. He fumbled for a candle and tinderbox on the shelf where they were always kept, and soon the kitchen was full of trembling light. Lucy had not been home for many months, he suspected, inspecting the dusty pans on the table and prodding the crumbling white ashes in the hearth with his boot.

He carried the candle upstairs and stared down at Lucy’s mattress. It lay stripped of its linen now, the chamber musty and cobwebbed, her clothes chest shut and locked, a long-dead mouse lying amid the rushes under the shuttered window. He remembered their last meeting, and told himself it was best if his ward never came home again.

What did he have to offer Lucy now? He was a tired old spy, his master dead and his purse empty. That young villain Shakespeare was better placed to provide for her now, even if he was already married.

At least Lucy seemed happy to be Shakespeare’s mistress, since she could not be his wife. When life was so cruel and short, surely happiness must count for more than blind obedience to the rules by which they were forced to live? Of that heresy, he was growing more convinced every day.

Suddenly exhausted, he dragged off his sodden clothes, found an old cloak in which to wrap himself, then lay down on Lucy’s bare mattress to sleep.

Just before he snuffed out the candle, he wondered again to whom he should report his meagre findings from the Low Countries. But with no answer forthcoming, sleep soon overtook him, and he dropped away into a dream where he was hanging from a crumbling cliff by one bloodied hand, and his shouts for help could not be heard above the roar of the sea below …

Goodluck woke to the sound of knocking at the front door. He stumbled down, still wrapped in his cloak, and found a neighbour on the doorstep, red-faced and stout. ‘Master Giles?’

‘I heard you come back in the early hours,’ Giles admitted, looking him up and down with a doubtful expression, then held out two letters. ‘These came for you while you were away, Master Goodluck. This one about six weeks past, this one only a few days ago. Though we do not see you often, I told the messenger I’d hold on to them for you, rather than turn the boy away with his errand undischarged.’

‘That was very kind of you, Master Giles.’ Goodluck took the letters, trying to curb his impatience to read them until his neighbour had gone. ‘I would offer you a bite to eat, but my cupboards are empty. I am not a good housekeeper, I fear.’

Giles laughed. ‘Well, you are a busy man. Any fool can tell that, for you are never at home.’

‘Has my ward Lucy been here lately?’

His neighbour thought a moment, then shook his head. ‘Not since the summer. She still travels with the court though, doesn’t she? The Queen and her court were out at Hampton, last I heard. You could send word to her there.’

‘Yes, perhaps I shall.’

‘And feel free to come to us for your dinner,’ Giles added brusquely as they shook hands. ‘If you’ve nothing in the house, be sure my wife will always welcome you to our table.’

Goodluck stared, unsure how to respond. All these years he had kept this house at Cheapside and yet never been in any of his neighbours’ homes, though he knew some of them to nod to in the street. ‘I thank you. Again, you are very kind, Giles.’

‘Well, the offer is there.’

Alone in the chilly kitchen, still shivering in the old cloak, Goodluck made sure the door was secure, then lit another candle and sat down to read his letters.

The older letter was from Kit Marlowe, a note asking briefly if they could meet at the Angel on the Hoop one Friday evening a month past. This he set aside, frowning.

What had Kit wished to discuss? Too late to discover it now. But that could be a useful contact to develop now that Walsingham was gone. Kit was well known as a university man and, it was claimed, had friends at court; he might know how the Queen intended to administer her spy network in the wake of his master’s death. For there must be many like him who had been cut adrift, unable to make their reports or meet their expenses on her account.

The more recent letter took him aback. Unrolling it, he glanced absently at the signature, then sat like a block of stone, staring down at it.

Agnes Goodluck.

His brother’s wife. What could she want after all these years? He had sent word of his address back home when he first took this place in Cheapside, but had never once heard from his brother. Now a letter. It could mean only one thing.

Dear Faithful

You will doubtless wonder at my writing after so long an age of silence between us, but your brother Julius is in dire need of you. He fell from his horse yesterday morning, jumping the hedge at Fletchers’ Brook. He was carried back to the house at once, but the physician fears his back may be broken. I do not know if you are at home to receive this letter, or even if you are yet living. But if you are, I pray you return home to Oxfordshire at once and lend us your brotherly comfort.

Your sister-in-law, Agnes

Postscriptum: I was saddened to hear of the death of your sister Marian. Though she and Julius were not close, she was still family, and it grieves me that we were not there at her funeral. I hope all was done as Julius would have wished it to be.

Goodluck sat a moment longer, re-reading the letter, then laid it aside. Giles had said this letter had arrived a few days ago. It would have taken a good day or two to reach him from Oxfordshire, even by urgent courier.
The physician fears his neck may be broken
.

By now his brother might be dead.

The candle flame flickered, surly and reluctant in the shadowy kitchen. He stared at it blindly.
Julius Goodluck
. His older brother. His only kin now that Marian was gone, the woman who had always looked after young Lucy while he was away.

It grieves me that we were not there at her funeral.

No more was I, he thought grimly. He had been away in France when Marian died of a fever nearly three years before, and not even Lucy had heard of her death until it was too late to pay her respects to the woman who had raised her.

He hurried upstairs to fetch dry clothing, pulled on his best kidskin boots – barely ever worn – and a better cloak than the one he had slept in, then locked up the house again and made his way to the stables beyond Moorgate where he occasionally hired a mount.

It would still take two days at least, but the swiftest way into Oxfordshire was on horseback and Goodluck wished to travel swiftly, though he knew there might be little need for it if his brother’s neck had indeed been broken. By now, he could be going home to bury his brother, not make his peace with him.

Two

T
HAT SPRING, THE
court had moved from the stuffy corridors of Whitehall to the vast, turreted riverside palace at Richmond. Lucy had always thought the grounds and gardens there beautiful, yet now she found she could not lift her heart even with the sight of delicate white blossom along all the woodland paths that surrounded the palace. The Queen had sunk into a deep and heavy-eyed lethargy since learning of Sir Francis’s death, to be roused from this state only by her rage over the wayward Earl of Essex, who had run away from court like a naughty boy fleeing his nursemaid and joined the fleet without royal permission. Elizabeth had sent a volley of furious letters after him, commanding the earl to return to court at once. But news had soon come back from the coast that Essex had already sailed for Spain, commandeering one of the ships under Drake’s control and swearing he would not be bound by an old woman’s authority.

‘Let the Earl of Essex return now,’ she had been heard to say to a visiting dignitary, ‘and the executioner shall have his head before the week is out. He is a rogue who has dishonoured our throne with his unruliness. As we have authority to rule, so we look to be obeyed.’

The expedition to ransack Spanish towns had been a pitiful disaster. Thousands dead of fever and little treasure to show for their efforts. Yet the Queen had forgiven Essex within days of his return. There had been a violent row – Lucy listened outside with the other ladies-in-waiting as the tempestuous pair shouted at each other in the Privy Chamber – and then silence.

They had not dared to enter the chamber, though Helena had knocked and been told shrilly by the Queen to ‘Depart!’

One of the younger girls had made a face. ‘I expect he is kissing her, to keep her quiet. Such an old woman too! It’s horrible.’

‘Hush, child! How dare you speak of the Queen in such a rude and impertinent manner?’

Helena had boxed the girl’s ears for her impudence, sending her red-cheeked and howling from the Queen’s chambers.

But any rumours that Essex would charm her into a late marriage were laid to rest when it emerged that he had secretly married Walsingham’s daughter, Frances.

Lucy knew Frances only a little. The widow of Sir Philip Sidney, she was a tall slender woman with a tragic air, and still young. Young enough, indeed, to be an affront to Queen Elizabeth when she heard of their secret wedding ceremony, performed only a short while before Sir Francis died.

‘How dare he?’ she had fumed.

The court waited to see what would happen. But it turned out to be nothing. After a brief period of disgrace, with the young couple banished to Essex House, Robert was seen again at court.

Lady Helena had shrugged. ‘Essex can do no wrong in her eyes,’ she commented to Lucy, watching them dancing together in the Great Hall at Richmond. ‘This period of favour won’t last though. One day he will cause Her Majesty such offence, she will not be able to forgive him.’