The Spymaster's Daughter (9 page)

She heard Essex's steps close behind her and walked faster. “You are too kind, my lord, but I must be on my way.”

The earl seemed capable of hearing only agreement to his requests for her company, no matter how plainspoken her refusals. Then again, perhaps she was being unfair to this shockingly handsome young man who sought her company as no one ever had. She should never hold court gossip, no matter how alarming, against a man. Alarm was the nature of court gossip.

And he was sweet to want her company. Maybe she should learn to accept determined male attention as a compliment. Yet why did he seek her out? Did she have some needful look about her that would draw a young man to a possible new conquest, especially when he was said to have swived four of the queen's waiting ladies already? She must watch her face and eyes, lest she be seen as too forward and encouraging, or did he see what he wanted to see
no matter what her face revealed? She suspected the latter from so accomplished a romancer.

Still, it was not wise to ignore the queen's new favorite. At the turning of the corridor, she looked back with a smile and lifted her hand in farewell. There, that was just friendly enough, without being forward.

She made her way for a second day to sit by her father's bed, nearly covered with vellum sheets, letters from everywhere in France, the Low Countries, Rome, and Spain. She bent to exchange the cloth on his fevered brow for a cooler one from a basin of rose-petal-filled water. Pain had marked him with deep lines, and his dark face bore a yellow tinge, as it did when his malady fell upon him.

His doctors had bled, purged, and dosed him with a decoction of campion herb to help him expel urine, and, judging from the rank odor in the chamber, had also extracted many stools. He was too weak to feed himself, though the doctors had insisted he drink ass's milk, a universal curative. Although she knew from past attacks that he was in great pain, the only indication he made was a sudden intake of breath, or a hand making a fist on the coverlet.

She walked to the brazier to reheat the bull's broth that his doctors had also ordered to strengthen him. She tried to spoon some into his mouth.

He turned his head away. “No, daughter, I cannot.”

“Lord father, you must have nourishment to cure your weakness.” She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “My mother, Anne, would want it so.” The plea had worked on him before.

His eyes remained closed tight, but he opened his mouth and swallowed two spoonfuls.

“How does Robert Pauley in your service?” he asked suddenly.

“Well enough…when he is with me.”

“His service is not to your liking?”

“It is well enough, Father,” she repeated, and then realized that
was unfair. “Nay, Father, he is diligent as my guard, remarkably so, though I do not understand him.” The words were out of her mouth before she could think how strange they must sound. What understanding was needed between mistress and servant? She quickly added to explain herself, “He does seem a man of great confidence for his rank.”

“Do not judge him too harshly. You do not know his origin, daughter.”

“He is your man, and that recommends him to me.” She had said the dutiful words before she thought to question him about Pauley's beginning, though she would when her father was stronger.

“Then call him to me, daughter.”

Her father would dictate more letters, or notes to himself for later action. There was no keeping him from his work, and from long experience she did not try.

She stepped to the door to summon Pauley and found him waiting there. His eyes were half closed from lack of sleep. “My father calls you.”

“Is he stronger?” Pauley asked. His expression was concerned as he brushed past her into the darkened room, and that heartened Frances. Most men feared her father, yet this man seemed to have a fondness for him.

Pauley stopped to hear her answer, but did not turn to her.

“In one way, he is the same as ever, needing to work.”

Pauley went to sit beside Walsingham's bed. “Mr. Secretary, what would you have of me?”

The spymaster did not open his eyes. “Is there word from my intelligencer David Cobrett in Dieppe?”

“No word, sir.”

“Write to him in his personal cipher and ask him for news of the English college at Douai. How many priests and Catholic Bibles are they spewing out, and how many are on their way across the channel to do mischief to Her Majesty's rule and to our true
Protestant faith? I must have names and descriptions so that my agents at Dover and Plymouth can arrest them before they disappear into their priest holes in the west country, or north to Lancaster, or here in London itself.”

The many words exhausted him, and his arm, which had been waving in the air as if he were ciphering himself, dropped back to his side.

“At once, sir. Do you wish to sign it?”

“No. Use my cinquefoil seal and get it off by means of swift courier. I must have news of their traitorous plans. There has been quiet from Cobrett for too long.”

“Aye, Mr. Secretary, at once, as you wish.”

“Bring my agent's answer to me as soon as it arrives, if I am yet in this devil-cursed bed.”

Pauley nodded, bowed, and turned to leave, nearly running into Frances. “My pardon, Lady Sidney.”

She saw that her father had fallen into sleep, his fever seeming somewhat abated. Leaving the bedchamber door ajar to overhear if he stirred, she followed Pauley into the corridor, where the air, though chilly, was almost sweet. “You promised to take me to my father's offices. I would come with you later….”

“My lady, I do not remember such a promise.”

“You did not deny me.”

“Sometimes we can think our dearest wish has been granted when it has not.”

“I do not imagine…”

At that moment some roisterers stumbled into the corridor, led by the Earl of Essex dressed as a harlequin. Seeing her, he bowed and waved his peaked hat in greeting. “Hey-ho, Lady Sidney, I am gladdened to find you…yet so beautiful this late of day.” He swayed, the worse for wine, and caught his balance against the wall. “Forgive me; I am very tired. Her Majesty has kept me from my bed playing at Maw for three nights running.”

“Did you win, my lord?” Frances asked for something conversational, especially since she had heard he had allowed the queen to beat him.

He shrugged. “Not often,” he said, grinning. “The queen hates to lose a trick and adores to win the pots, even the small ones. A few groats from my purse makes her happy, and she counts it a good month to take forty pounds from me.” He laughed and bent forward, whispering, enveloping Frances in sweet Madeira wine fumes: “And she changes the rules if she is not winning.” His eyes softened and sobered as his handsome face came closer to hers. “Ah, your faithful dog is near.”

Pauley stepped forward and bowed. Frances thought, without considering his rank, that he had more natural dignity than the earl.

For a moment, Essex looked like a petulant boy. “Lady Frances, I have tried in every way to be your friend…for your husband's sake.”

“My lord, forgive me; my father is very ill, and my worry burdens me and makes the delights you offer…”

He regained his bright smile. “All the more reason that you should have sun and fresh air. It is not good for the complexion to spend many hours in a darkened sickroom. Her gracious Majesty agrees, and commands that you come riding tomorrow morning. Your servant there can help the doctors care for Mr. Secretary. We ride out at first light.” He bowed and walked away, as if all would be done as he wished.

Pauley spoke behind her. “The queen's command cannot be ignored, my lady. I think you should ride to the hunt in the morn. I will sit with Mr. Secretary. He will have work for me and all of his intelligencers.”

His assured voice startled her, though for a man's low voice it was not heavy. It was comforting, in truth.

For a moment Essex had so o'erwhelmed the space that she had
forgotten Pauley was behind her. “You advise it, then,” she said, turning toward him with a half smile.

“If you will forgive me an opinion, my lady.”

She swallowed a laugh. “Why ever not? It is only one of many, and I daresay not the last. But I thought you would warn me away from riding with the earl.”

“The queen will see to it that he does not pay you too close attention…welcome or unwelcome.”

She was half-intrigued and half-annoyed in turn, as she always seemed to be with Pauley. “You will allow the queen to see to my safety?”

“I trust her next to myself, Lady Frances.”

He had to be jesting, and she rewarded him with a smile. “You do have very decided views on many things.”

“An undecided view is of no use to anyone.”

He bowed low, but she saw no mockery, although it could be well hidden in such a clever man. “My thanks to you, then, sir.”

“Anything to be of good service, Lady Frances. And now, I must to business.” With another and hastier bow, he turned and left her for the intelligencer offices on a lower level. She knew he would work through the night to cipher her father's message to the intelligencer Cobrett in France. And she knew another thing: Pauley did have her safety at heart. His presumption might once have angered her. She wondered why it no longer did.

T
he next morning it was yet dark when she rose from bed to dress for riding in a green velvet habit with a peacock-feathered cap on which was mounted some modest blue sapphires.

Her aunt Jennet brought out her new buskins. “You do look fine enough to ride with the queen, Frances,” she said wistfully. “You have grown in good qualities in the past month. The excellent ladies of the court have had more influence than I ever could. You will soon have no use for me.”

“Aunt,” Frances said, embracing Jennet, fearing tears were about to start, “I will need you all my life. You have been mother and teacher to me. What little sense I have, you thrust upon me…and I bless you for it.”

Jennet blinked back tears that had been ready to flow, and her face brightened. “Frances, you are a sweet liar.”

“I speak only truth, Aunt.” And she did. Jennet had always been near, and though at her time of life she had become a little quarrelsome, Frances believed her aunt had only her good at heart. Although her aunt's idea of good and her own were not always the same.

Jennet pushed her playfully to the polished-steel mirror on the wall of the outer chamber. “See how fine a lady you look! Sir Philip should see his fair wife now; he would take the fastest ship home.”

But not to me
, Frances thought, though she realized with bitter comfort that whatever wound had once been in her heart was now healed, leaving only a scar that was growing fainter.

Jennet fussed with Frances's sleeves until she was satisfied with her image in the mirror and bent to brush her new-made buskins.

“Thank you, sweet aunt,” Frances said, leaving a kiss on Jennet's cheek before rushing next door to see her father.

“I am better, daughter,” he announced, his voice slurred by a tincture of Paracelsus's pain potion the doctors must have given him to bring healing sleep. “Your bull's broth did strengthen me. I will be out of this intolerable bed tomorrow.”

“Do your doctors agree?”

“Never. They are loath to lose a patient! Still, I must be at my work.” A rare smile played upon his lips. “The queen sent me a bottle of her special herb physic, and she expects that it will work to my good…and quickly.”

This was as close as her father came to a jest, and so Frances almost believed that he was indeed feeling less pain. Tomorrow, she
knew, he would be in his offices until late at night, but it was his way and he would not be changed. Just as she would not be swayed from her purpose to make his work her own, by 'ods blood! She stopped short of blaspheming aloud. “I am riding to the hunt with the queen, her other ladies, and my lord Essex this morning. I will be with you as soon as the queen's audience in the presence chamber is finished.”

“Good, daughter. You need to take the air. Your fair skin is losing its bloom.”

She put her hand to her face, vowing to get more exercise.

“Now, Pauley, let us to my letters.”

She hadn't noticed the man sitting out of the candlelight across the room. Had he been there all night?

He stood, walked forward, and bowed to her. “My lady, I will help you with your mount.”

“There will be many grooms in the stable yard.”

“True, Lady Frances, but I would make certain they have cinched your saddle and that you are properly seated.”

Her father spoke approvingly. “Yes, see to my daughter, Pauley, and then we will to our work.”

So it was decided for her by others, as everything seemed to be. For a moment she was truly envious of Pauley walking behind her toward the palace mews. Although he was in her service, he seemed to have a strange kind of independence. It was in his quiet manner and obvious self-regard. She realized at that moment that he was a man in no doubt of his qualities, in spite of his lower station and bad leg. She longed for that self-regard. Her father had it. The queen had it. Was such self-contentment not for the likes of her? She lifted her head, vowing that she would know more of such ease, and soon.

They walked into the crisp morning air washed by an early shower and through the orchard, past Henry VIII's tennis court, arriving at a mews crowded with snorting horses being led back
and forth by grooms to exercise them. A stable hand came toward her with a sleek black mare. “My lord Essex ordered this mount for you, Lady Sidney.”

Frances ran her hand over the neck of the fine horse. “A good choice, don't you think, Pauley?”

He was checking the cinch and the reins, even opening the horse's mouth, as if searching for some hidden thing.