Keeper of the King's Secrets (8 page)

By the time they reached the outside door, Gittens had stopped choking. He tried to twist away, made himself a deadweight.

Parker threw him headfirst into the garden.

Gittens landed well, rolling to the side and trying to scrabble to his feet, but Parker had his sword out and just short of his eye while he was still on his knees.

“I’m the Cardinal’s man.” Gittens licked his lips, nervous little flicks of his tongue like a lizard’s.

“Aye. It makes it all the more interesting, doesn’t it?” Parker moved his blade lightly down the side of Gittens’s cheek.

Gittens shivered but held firm. “He won’t take this well.”

“I think whatever Wolsey feels about this personally, he
will not go complaining to the King about me. Or no more than he usually does.” Parker smiled. “Because he has tried to get rid of me so many times now, the King simply ignores him. Like the little boy who cried wolf.”

Gittens shrank back. “What do you want?”

“You caused harm to my page so your master could molest my betrothed. That’s two wrongs you’ve committed against me, Gittens. Two serious wrongs.”

Gittens shifted his gaze to Peter Jack, then back to Parker. “I didn’t know she was your betrothed.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “She didn’t come to any harm—”

“No thanks to you. And certainly no thanks to your master.”

Gittens shivered again, through his whole body. “The Cardinal is not himself.”

“What’s he hatching?” Parker lifted his blade back to Gittens’s eye.

Gittens held very still. “He don’t tell the likes of me.” His voice was rough, bitter. “Plays everything very close. Always has. But it’s to do with that Frenchie, I’m guessing.”

Parker held his face blank. “Frenchie?”

Gittens looked despairingly at the blade at eye level. “Never seen his face. Hardly seen
him.
He slips in and out like a shadow.” He leaned back from the tip of Parker’s sword a little and raised his eyes. “Wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.”

“Is that so?” Parker lifted his blade and Gittens flinched
back. He sheathed it and stepped away, gestured to Peter Jack. “All yours.”

Gittens’s face was bleak. “I didn’t think the dose’d affect you that bad. Forgot you weren’t full-grown.”

Peter Jack looked at Gittens, his eyes going over the mud splashed on his shirt and covering his legs, flecks of it drying on his cheeks and forehead. “When I
am
full-grown, don’t ever turn your back on me.”

He spun on his heel and walked away, leaving Gittens gaping after him.

The lad had been watching and listening. Parker would give him that.

The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can, and for this they will be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.

—Machiavelli
, The Prince,
chapter 3

P
arker heard the murmurs and mutterings of complaint before he reached Wolsey’s antechamber.

He stepped into the room and found it crowded with well-dressed merchants and noblemen. A contingent of some kind.

“Parker, you here to join us?” Edward Malory, a landholder from near Parker’s own country estates, elbowed through the crowd and stood before him.

Parker shook his head. “What is this about?”

Malory cast a poisoned look at Wolsey’s door. “That criminal has bypassed Parliament and issued a writ to levy a grant from the clergy and the laity. Calls it the Amicable Grant.”

“On whose authority?”

Malory looked suddenly uncomfortable. “We hope his own. If the King’s behind it …”

Parker swung his gaze around the room. If the King was behind this, it would make it harder to fight. But if it was illegal, the King might well pretend to have nothing to do with it, even if he was the instigator.

“What does Wolsey say the money’s for?”

“To raise an army to invade France.” Malory gestured behind him. “All well and good, but on top of the other taxes, this is too much. There are going to be people dying of starvation if this goes through. We can’t afford for the people to be so affected. The men who work in the town around my lands are agitated enough to cause some real damage, and I can’t blame them.”

“What do you plan to do?” Parker wondered if Wolsey had foreseen this kind of trouble.

“Fight him. In the courts if we have to. Through Parliament. Whatever it takes.”

“Is he in there?” Parker jerked his head in the direction of Wolsey’s door.

“We think so. We saw him come in here, but he won’t come out.”

Parker moved toward the door and gave a short, sharp rap against it.

There was silence. The men in the room had gone quiet, too.

Parker cupped a hand over his mouth. “It’s Gittens, my lord. Message from the King.”

He heard the thud of footsteps and a scrabble in the lock. The door swung open, and Parker ducked beneath Wolsey’s arm.

As the men in the antechamber surged forward, Wolsey slammed the door shut and turned the key.

“Parker.” Wolsey stared at him stony-faced, his lips as thin and mean as a stale crust of bread. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles under them. His face was sheened in sweat as though he had a fever, and he was the deathly white of a funeral shroud.

“You tried to molest my betrothed last night, Wolsey. Did you think I would let it go?”

Wolsey started. “Your betrothed? I had heard the King has given you leave to marry, but I did not realize—” He cut off. Rubbed his temple with a plump, ink-stained finger. “I remember hearing something, but I have been overwhelmed recently and did not comprehend …”

Parker said nothing, and the silence stretched out between them.

One of the men in the antechamber slammed a fist into the door, and Wolsey jumped at the sound.

He caught himself, seeming to realize what he looked like, hiding in his own chamber.

“Get out, Parker.” Those thin lips twisted in a snarl and he lifted his arm dismissively. “There is nothing you can do to me, and the wench is fine, although why you would want a harridan like that—”

Parker pinned Wolsey to the door with a forearm under his neck.

Wolsey gave a shout of surprise, tried to pull himself free. He stopped as Parker’s knife came up to his throat, and his
eyes widened as the blade came to rest lightly against his skin.

“I want to kill you. It won’t be easy to do, but if you try anything like that again, I will find a way.” Parker tugged his other knife from his boot and stepped back, a blade in each hand.

Wolsey sagged against the door. “Be gone, Parker. I can hire a blade to run you through far easier than you would be able to kill me without repercussions.”

“You mean your French assassin?” Parker thought Wolsey’s knees gave a little more. He put his knives away. “I wouldn’t count on him anymore.”

“What?” The question came out in a croak. Wolsey stepped away from the door and used the wall to keep himself steady.

Parker dipped his head in farewell, turned the key, and threw the door open. “Gentlemen, he’s all yours.”

H
arry was looking more dangerous every time Susanna saw him. It disturbed her, made her chest tighten.

His hair had been a dark, matted mess when she’d first met him, his face dirty and his clothes rags. Now that Parker was paying him, and providing him and his little gang of lads with lodgings a few streets away, he didn’t look like a feral urchin anymore.

His hair was clean and a beautiful golden brown. His clothes were warm and serviceable, just the right quality and cut for an apprentice or a merchant’s aide. He was filling those
clothes out better, too. They no longer hung on him like a scarecrow’s wardrobe.

She’d invited him into the study when he’d arrived at the back door, and he was watching her now with eyes as keen and sharp as they’d ever been.

Eyes like Peter Jack and Eric. Eyes like old men.

“Parker could find you a real apprenticeship, Harry.” Susanna sat and gestured to Parker’s chair.

“The arrangement I have with him seems very real to me.” Harry sat stiff and straight, not the slightest bend in his back.

“It
is
so real, you must surely be the image of him at the same age, hair and eye color aside.”

Harry seemed very pleased by that. Too pleased.

“Parker went down the road he did because he had no choice, Harry. He had no benefactor as you do now. He had no one to give him a chance at advancement.”

Harry stared back at her. “Don’t you like what Parker is?”

“Like?” She laughed. “I love Parker exactly as he is. But he lived a hard, cold life, and a lonely one. I want to protect you from that if I can.”

Harry thought about it for a moment. “And Peter Jack and Eric?”

“Peter Jack is often at Parker’s side; he’s learning the respectable end of Parker’s business. It worries me you are learning …” She sighed. She did not know how to proceed without causing offense.

“The darker side?” Harry smiled.

It reminded her so much of Parker, it hurt. She nodded.

“The darker side suits me better.” Harry lifted his hands with a shrug, leaned back a little in the chair, and allowed it to take his weight.

Susanna clenched her hands into fists in her lap, but there was nothing else to say on the matter. “You came to report to Parker?”

“Aye.” Harry was watching her again, as if weighing up whether to tell her the news instead of Parker. “An urchin dropped a note at the Duke’s this morning. Norfolk came flying out of the house when he got it, but by then the urchin had gone.”

“You followed the lad?”

Harry nodded. “He had just nipped around the corner for the rest of his money. Foreign man gave it to him. I thought you might like to know that when he spoke to the lad, his words sounded like yours.”

Susanna started. “You mean he spoke English like I do? Like a person from the Lowlands?”

“It is a most pleasant accent, and I recognized it immediately.”

Susanna blew out a breath. This should not surprise her. Jens had been involved, after all. Why not more of her countrymen? “Did you follow the man after he paid the lad?”

Harry raised a brow at her and despite herself, she laughed. “Of course you did.”

“He walked back to one those narrow houses set on London Bridge.” Harry looked suddenly uneasy.

“What?”

“They seem to be packing up and leaving.”

“Right now?” Parker was at Bridewell. It would take at least an hour to fetch him back.

“They are heaping their things into a cart at the door.”

“Perhaps I can slow them down, if they are from the Low Countries. Pretend some connection to them?”

Harry’s fingers gripped and released the wool of his breeches. “Parker will not like it.” But the excitement of the chase was in his eyes.

Susanna stood. “Parker does not like a lot of things. But he will dislike losing this man even more.” And she would go out of her way to foil any plan of Norfolk’s.

“You can take me to London Bridge. I’ll send Eric to wait for Parker and Peter Jack outside Bridewell, to tell them where we are.”

Harry nodded and rose, too.

“You hoped I’d suggest this, didn’t you?” Susanna watched him form a denial, then nod, a tiny movement of his head.

The thrill of the chase. The determination to bring down the prey. Maybe it was living on the streets, as Parker had—although Peter Jack had done that, too, and he didn’t have the same wild edge as Harry.

Whatever the reason, Susanna was glad Parker had found Harry and taken him in.

He was already a strong adversary, and when he grew into the promise of his height and his hands, he would be almost as dangerous as her lover.

And loyal only to him.