Winter Blockbuster 2012 (63 page)

Only
that
didn’t seem so very simple, even in the hard light of day.

‘We will have a few quiet evenings for a time,’ her father said. ‘No more late dinners. I can meet with the actors at the tavern to read the new plays.’

‘Invite them here whenever you like, Father,’ Anna said. She refilled his goblet, careful not to spill any beer this time. ‘I do not mind.’

‘I don’t want to make more work for you, dearest, not when you do so much already. Perhaps you would like a holiday in the country?’

‘A holiday?’ Anna said, startled. Her father was a London
man, born and bred; the dirty water of the Thames was in his blood. He
never
thought they should go to the country.

‘Aye. You seem to need a rest, and soon the hot weather will be upon us. What if the plague comes again?’

‘It won’t.’ But the country—fresh air and quiet, long walks, space to think, to
be
. A place away from the theatre and Rob Alden. It sounded quite enticing. But … ‘And I have too much work just now to go away.’

Thomas shrugged. ‘If you say so. But think about it, my dear. We could both use a change of scene—especially right now.’

Anna laughed. ‘You would die of boredom away from London, Father! Why this sudden urge to go to the country?’ A suspicion struck her. ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

‘Trouble? Certainly not!’ he blustered. But he wouldn’t meet her gaze, and his rough, lined cheeks looked red. ‘Whatever would make you say such a thing? When am I ever in trouble?’

All the time
, Anna thought. Southwark was ripe with trouble around every corner—especially for men like her father, who had business concerns in every narrow street and dark corner. Yet he’d never wanted to run away from it before. He seemed to enjoy trouble.

Just as Robert did.

‘I will think about going to the country for a time,’ she said. ‘When business grows slow in the hotter weather. But for now I have things I must do.’

Her father nodded, somewhat mollified. But his face still bore that guilty flush. ‘What are you doing today, my dear?’

‘It’s rent day, and a few tenants are still behind in their payments. I’m going to visit them myself and have a word with them. You must keep a watch on the rehearsal at the White Heron, Father, or they will waste away the whole morning.’

He nodded, but Anna feared he was inclined to laze away the morning with them. She rose from her chair and kissed the top of his balding head.
The old rogue
—how she loved him, despite everything. He was all she had, her only family, and she was all
he
had, as well. She had to look out for him.

‘I will be back by afternoon, Father,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’

He reached up to pat her hand. ‘I don’t worry, Anna. Not while you are here.’

Anna left the dining chamber and went up to her room to fetch her hat and shawl. As she pinned the high-crowned grey hat to her neatly coiled hair, she caught a glimpse of her pale face in the small looking glass. Usually she only took a quick look, to be sure she was tidy, but today she looked longer, studied herself.

Her father had always claimed she was pretty because she looked like her mother, but Anna had never thought herself so. She saw the finely arrayed Court ladies, with their golden curls and rouge-pink cheeks, their white bos oms displayed above jewelled bodices. She saw the admiration they gathered from men, and knew she did not resemble them. Her hair, though thick and long, was brown and straight, her eyes too tilted and her chin too pointed. She was pale and thin, her gowns plain grey, as Rob had pointed out. Her lips were fine enough, but were too often pressed thin with worry.

She was not a vivid beauty, likely to catch and hold the eye of a handsome devil like Robert.

‘He must have been very ale-shot last night,’ she said, and jabbed the pin harder into her hat. Perhaps she had been, as well—or at least drunk on the moonlight and on his words, the rare glimpse he’d given her of his past.

But that had been last night. This was today, and she had work to do.

Anna looped her wool shawl over her shoulders and reached for her market basket. Her father was still at the table with his beer when she went downstairs, looking uncharacteristically sad and reflective. Something was happening with him, she was sure of it. But she had no time to puzzle it out now; the mysteries of men would have to wait. She had business of pence and pounds today, and
that
she could decipher and understand.

Men, she vowed, she would never fathom.

Anna was nearly to Mother Nan’s bawdy house, her first rent-collecting stop of the day, when she caught a sudden glimpse of Rob through the crowd. He was taller than most of the people passing around him, the plumes on his cap waving like a beacon, and her heart suddenly beat faster at the sight of him.

There was no time to prepare herself for seeing him again after last night, and she felt very flustered and uncertain. She hated that feeling. How dared he make her feel so discomposed?

And—and how dared he not even notice her?

As Anna watched him, pressing herself against the whitewashed wall in case he glanced her way, he kept walking quickly on his path, looking neither to the right nor the left but just straight ahead. The people around him, the crowded, quarrelling knots and tangles of humanity, made way for him as naturally as if he was a prince. They didn’t jostle him or grab his arm to entreat him to buy their wares, and no one dared try and rob him. It was extraordinary.

Yet Rob appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. Under the narrow brim of his fine cap his brow was furrowed, his expression dark as a storm cloud. There was not even a hint of reckless laughter about him, only some intense purpose that drove him onward.

Where on earth was he going? Anna was intrigued in spite of herself. In her world it never paid to be curious. Only minding one’s own tasks kept trouble away in this neighbourhood, and not even always then. And Rob always seemed to bring trouble with him.

‘Oh, what am I doing?’ she whispered, but she followed him anyway, as if her feet could no longer obey her. She hurried after him, keeping those plumes in sight as her guide. She had to be very careful not to let him see her.

She had never known Rob to be like this before, so solemn and purposeful, so lost in his own thoughts. Was he in some sort of debt or planning a crime? Or perhaps he was planning to sell his new play right out from under her father’s nose.

They left the most crowded streets behind, leaving the thick knots of people and the busy shops for the pathway that ran alongside the river itself. Luckily there were still enough people gathered there for her to stay out of sight, using them for shields. Boatmen plied their trade, looking for passengers to ferry to the opposite bank, and fishmongers announced their fresh catch.

Robert kept walking, and Anna had to quicken her steps to keep up with him. They passed warehouses, close-packed merchants’ houses, and London Bridge came into view, with the boiled heads of the executed staring down sightlessly at the crush of humanity. Rob started to cross the huge edifice and Anna realised with a sudden cold shock where he was heading—towards the silent stone hulk of the Tower.

Anna shrank back from its tall, thick walls and gates, its waving banners and the guards who patrolled the ramparts. She had never been there herself, but she had heard such terrible tales of what happened behind those blank walls. Pain and blood and fear as could only be faintly imagined in revenge plays were a reality there, and most who were swallowed
up by it never returned. Even from where she stood, at a safe distance along the river, she could feel the cold, clammy reach of it.

What business could Rob have there? She could well imagine he would do something to cause his arrest. Actors were always getting into fights and being thrown into gaol, and there had been rumours he had once fetched up in Bridewell. Yet surely no one, not even a bold player like Rob, would voluntarily go near the Tower?

She hurried across the bridge herself and stood up on tiptoe, straining to catch a glimpse of him. She finally saw his plumes again, and to her relief he was not entering the dark environs of the Tower but continuing along the river on the other side. She ran after him, dodging around pedestrians to keep him in her sight as he made his way into the tangle of streets just beyond the Tower’s walls.

He went past more shops and houses, not even glancing at them. Gradually the buildings grew farther apart, with large gardens and empty spaces between them and the road, until he came to what had once been the entrance to an old Carthusian monastery. A vast complex had once lain here, covering many acres and containing churches, dining halls, scriptoriums and butteries and barns. Now there were large homes, quiet and watchful behind their new gates.

At one of them, a tall half-timbered place of solemn, tidy silence and glinting windows, Rob stopped at last. He glanced over his shoulder, and Anna dived into the nearest doorway to stay out of sight. As she peeked out cautiously, he sounded the brass knocker on the heavy iron-bound door. A black-clad manservant, as solemn as the house, answered.

‘He has been expecting you, Master Alden,’ the man said as he ushered Robert inside. The door swung shut, and it was
as if the house closed in on itself and Rob was swallowed up by it as assuredly as if it was the Tower itself.

Anna stared at the closed-up structure in growing concern. What was that place? And what business did he have there? She did not have a good feeling about it.

A pale heart-shaped face suddenly appeared at one of the upstairs windows, easing it open to peer down at the street. It was a woman, thin and snow-white, but pretty, her light brown hair covered by a lacy cap and a fine starched ruff trimming her silk gown. The watery-grey daylight sparkled on her jewelled rings.

Anna realized that she recognised the woman. She sometimes visited the White Heron to sit in the upper galleries with her fine Court friends. It was Frances, Countess of Essex—wife of one of the Queen’s great favourites and daughter of the fearsome Secretary Walsingham, whose very name struck terror in everyone in Southwark.

‘Oh, Robert,’ Anna whispered. ‘What trouble are you in now?’

CHAPTER SIX

‘W
AIT
here, if you please, Master Alden,’ the dour manservant said to Rob. He gestured to a bench set against the wall in a long, bare corridor. ‘The Secretary will receive you shortly.’

‘I thought he had long been expecting me,’ Rob said, but the man just sniffed and hurried on his way. Rob sat down on the bench to wait; it was a move no doubt calculated to increase the disquiet any visit to this house in Seething Lane would cause.

He had been here too many times, heard and seen too many things in its rooms and corridors to be too concerned. Still, it was always best to be gone from here quickly.

The house was dark and cool, smelling of fine wax candles, ink, and lemon wood polish. The smooth wooden floors under his feet were immaculately clean, the walls so white they almost gleamed. Lady Walsingham was a careful housekeeper.

Yet underneath there was a smell of something bitter and sharp, like herbal medicines—and blood. They did say Secretary Walsingham was ill—more so after the stresses of the threatened Spanish invasion the year before. But not even the
great defeat of the Armada, or this rumoured illness, seemed to have slowed the man at all.

He was as terribly vigilant as ever. No corner of England escaped his net.

And no filament of that net, even one as obscure as Rob, ever escaped, either.

He swept off his cap and raked his hand through his hair. This was the only way he could protect the ones he cared about—the only way he could see them safe. He had always known that. But lately it had become harder and harder.

Especially when he thought of Anna Barrett, and the way she looked at him from her jewel-bright eyes …

‘Master Alden. My father will see you now,’ a woman’s soft voice said.

Rob forced away the vision of Anna and looked up to find Secretary Walsingham’s daughter watching him from an open doorway. Her fine gown and jewels glistened in the shadows.

‘Lady Essex,’ Rob said, rising to his feet to give her a bow. ‘I did not realise you were visiting your family today.’

‘I come as often as I can. My father needs me now.’ She led him down the corridor and up a winding staircase, past the watchful eyes of the many portraits hung along its length. ‘Don’t let him keep you too long. He should rest, no matter how much he protests.’

‘I will certainly be as quick as I can, my lady,’ Rob said. He had no desire to stay in this house any longer than necessary.

She gave him a quick smile over her shoulder. ‘My friends and I did so enjoy
The Duchess’s Revenge
. We thought it your best work yet.’

‘Thank you, Lady Essex. I’m glad it pleased you.’

‘Your plays always do—especially in these days when distraction is most welcome, indeed. When can we expect a new work?’

‘Very soon, God willing.’ When his work here in Seething Lane had come to an end.

‘Don’t let my father keep you away from it. We’re most eager to see a new play. Always remember that.’ Lady Essex opened a door on the landing and left him there with a swish of her skirts. Rob slowly entered the chamber and shut the door behind him.

It was surprisingly small, this room where so much of England’s business was conducted. A small, stuffy office, plainly furnished, with stacks of papers and ledgers on every surface and even piled on the floor.

Walsingham’s assistant, Master Phellipes—a small, yellow-faced, bespectacled man—sat by the window, with his head bent over his code work. The Secretary himself was at his desk in the corner, a letter spread open before him.

‘Master Alden,’ he said quietly. Walsingham always spoke quietly, calmly, whether he remarked on the weather or sent a traitor to the Tower. ‘Have you any news for us today?’

‘Nothing that can yet be proved,’ Rob answered. ‘But work progresses.’