The Traitor's Daughter (20 page)

She drank some, a rich mellow claret, and welcomed the warmth that slid to her stomach. It relaxed her a little. Matthew cut her a slice of bread. “Here, eat. We have a full night ahead of us.”

She munched, glad in fact to eat something, though she scarcely tasted the bread.

He sat down opposite her. “You've done well, Kate.” From under his brows he regarded her with such admiring intensity she could not help recalling Owen's words:
He's in love with you, poor fellow.
She had a deep respect for Matthew. His perseverance in working long hours over hills of paperwork was inspiring, and she was grateful for the care he took to safeguard his agents. She also felt a tug of pity. Would he ever find love? She doubted that many women looked past his afflicted posture, that constantly bent head, to see his fine qualities as she did.

“It will get harder from here, though, won't it?” she said. “In Sheffield, I mean.”

He poured himself more claret. “You'll do fine.”

“Will I? This is all new to me.” She crumbled the bread, imagining a road on barren Yorkshire moorland and Mary's agents surrounding her.

“You've handled Castelnau beautifully. You'll do the same in Sheffield. You have his instructions about the meeting place. Harkness, isn't that the name he gave you?”

“Yes.”

“So there's nothing to do but hand over the letters to this Harkness.”

“And wait to be given Mary's replies,” she pointed out. That was the crucial step. Bringing back evidence that could implicate Mary.

“Yes. You can either stay in Sheffield until they contact you again, or go to your aunt's, as long as you tell them to send word to you there.”

“How long should I wait?”

“As long as it takes. But she's usually quick. Her replies always came to Griffith within a week. Don't worry, Kate. Remember, they have no reason to suspect you.” He said again, soothingly, “You'll do fine.”

She nodded, pretending agreement, but feeling frightened. “Have you had any more word from Owen?”

He seemed to hesitate. Then: “A note came from him this afternoon.”

“Oh?”

“Very brief. No breakthrough. But he says he has developed a source of information.”

“Northumberland is confiding in him? That's wonderful.”

“No, not Northumberland.”

“A kinsman? A servant?”

Matthew looked down, swirling the wine in his goblet. “I am not at liberty to say.”

Kate had known this might happen. As just one cog in his machinery she could not be privy to all the information he collected, even from her own husband. Matthew himself was but a part of Sir Francis Walsingham's extensive spy network, one of several secretaries who handled agents. And there was probably much that Walsingham did not share with Matthew. They all had their own parts to play, sometimes in concert, but usually alone. Kate felt especially alone tonight. She missed Owen and was worried about him. “If anything should happen to him . . .”

Matthew reached across the table and touched her hand. “We'll always take care of you, Kate. Remember that.”

It flustered her. She hadn't meant she was concerned about her
own
future, for heaven's sake. But clearly there was no point in asking him anything more about Owen. She and Owen, on separate missions, were segregated in Matthew's mind. She withdrew her hand.

He briskly changed the subject. “I have money for you. You'll need it for your journey.”

“Thank you.”

“I'm leaving tomorrow, too. For Bristol. Rumblings from the Irish. Again.”

Kate knew little about the troubles in Ireland except that two years ago the King of Spain and the pope had financed a planned invasion of England led by Irishman James Fitzmaurice. Her Majesty's forces had surrounded Fitzmaurice and his five hundred troops at Smerwick and crushed them.

The men Matthew had summoned arrived, six of them, coming up the stairs and walking in with looks of quiet excitement. They came singly, but all had lodgings nearby and they had hastened. Kate knew them all, having worked alongside them whenever a cache of information like this had to be copied quickly and, if possible, decoded quickly. Lately the decoding took longer and longer. Mary's agents and friends constantly changed their codes.

Of the arrivals, two were young law students under twenty. Two were in their thirties, men with some education, but few prospects. These four were copyists, in need of Matthew's pay. One was older, perhaps forty, a shy, sallow-skinned man with a slight cough. He was an artist fallen on hard times. The sixth, Thomas Phelippes, was an expert at deciphering, like Kate. Phelippes was thirty, slender, with dark yellow hair and a face pitted by smallpox. Educated at Cambridge, he was fluent in French, Italian, and Latin. Matthew had used him in Paris to intercept letters and decode them. These men could all be trusted, and not just because they needed the money. They knew a noose awaited anyone foolish enough to betray Walsingham. After exchanging brief greetings now, everyone made for the workroom. As the copyists set about sharpening quill pens and setting out paper at the desks, the artist arranged his pencils and his own paper. Phelippes set up a portable desk that Matthew brought out from a closet.

Without preamble, Matthew handed the artist the letters. “Get started, Muspratt.”

The others chatted quietly as Muspratt sketched in minute detail the design of each letter's seal, reproducing them on his paper. This was in case the seals broke in the removal process. When he was done Matthew handed him his payment in coins. Muspratt left. He hadn't spoken a word.

Now, the rest sat waiting for the man they could not begin without, Arthur Gregory. He lived the farthest away, in Cripplegate Ward.

The five sealed letters to Mary lay on the desk waiting to give up their secrets.

“Apologies, Master Buckland,” Gregory said, hurrying in ten minutes later with a forehead beaded from the fog. “It's dark as a Puritan's pleasure out there.”

“Next time I'll arrange for a full moon,” Matthew said dryly, gesturing for him to take a seat at a desk.

A bankrupt merchant's son, Gregory was about twenty. His fleshy, apple-cheeked face seemed at odds with his stringy frame. He was the expert at opening and resealing letters; his special skill was in forging seals. Kate had heard he'd been trained in engraving precious metals, a helpful background. He opened the kit he'd brought and set out its contents. Knobs of sealing wax the size of a baby's fist, in a variety of colors. Three small knives with fine-tipped blades. Tweezers. Engraving implements. A spoon. Two stubby candles. Everyone watched in silence as Gregory deftly prized off the seals. He lifted off each one in an unbroken disk. They all smiled at his skill. Muspratt's drawings would not be necessary.

Now it was the copyists' turn. Their quills scratched out careful copies, their fingers touching the originals as little as possible, for Mary must not know that the letters had been intercepted. As each man finished, Gregory went about his delicate job of resealing: heating wax in his spoon to match the original wax colors, then engraving on the soft wax a duplication of the original seal, referring to the original disks and to Muspratt's drawings.

Meanwhile, copies in hand, Kate and Phelippes set to work examining the words. In four of the letters it was soon clear that these were codes they were somewhat familiar with. Two of the letters were from Thomas Morgan, Mary's chief intelligencer in Paris. Within three hours Kate had decoded both, sent ten days apart. Morgan was informing Mary of meetings he had had with the Earl of Westmorland and William Allen, leader of the English seminary in Douai. He gave no details, however, saying only that his discussions confirmed information that Mary already had. A dead end.

Two other letters were from Archbishop Beaton, another of Mary's longtime supporters. Phelippes was working on those, and by midnight he had broken enough of the code to discover a reference to the Earl of Northumberland. Kate heard him tell Matthew this, and she instantly thought of Owen. What danger might he be in? But Phelippes had much more decoding to do before the Beaton letters were clear.

Kate wrenched her attention back to her own task, the fifth letter. It was written in a dizzying new code. She could not even decipher its author. But some of the symbols correlated to the Thomas Morgan letter she'd been working on at her grandmother's. She noted a repeated use of two question marks together, which she had earlier deduced to mean the King of Spain. The backward
B
meant the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza. The number 5 kept cropping up, and she knew this meant “ship.” And, again, the symbol of an
L
inside a circle. In the letter at her grandmother's that symbol had appeared three times. Here, it occurred four times. But Kate still had no idea what it referred to.

However, one phrase in rudimentary code was clear:
the Netherlands.

Whoever had written this seemed to be telling Mary that ships, perhaps paid for by the King of Spain, would sail from a port in the Spanish-occupied Netherlands.

What port? How many ships? Under whose command? Preparing to land where? What or who was the circle with an
L?

By two in the morning Kate was so weary her eyes ached. The copyists and Gregory had long gone, though the stuffy room still smelled faintly of their sweat as she and Phelippes struggled on. Codebooks and mathematical diagrams and notes covered both their desks. Matthew had put the original letters safely inside a pouch for Kate to take to Sheffield. Earlier, Caruthers had stoked the fire in the main room's hearth and served them all hot spiced wine, but their cups were now empty.

Matthew said, “That's enough for tonight. Phelippes, you can carry on tomorrow.”

Phelippes said good night and trudged down the stairs. Kate and Matthew remained alone. Frustrated, she scratched a line through a column on the mathematical grid she'd drawn. It had been no help. “I wish I could crack that circled
L,
” she said. She hated that it eluded her.

“Phelippes will.” Matthew gently took the quill from her hand. “You need to rest for your own mission.”

She nodded, rubbing her itchy eyes with the heels of her hands. Come daylight she would take a wherry back to her grandmother's and pack for her journey north.

“You'll take my bedchamber, of course,” Matthew said, a hint of embarrassed pink in his cheeks. “Madame Mercier put clean linen on the bed this morning.”

Kate said good night. In his room she washed her ink-stained hands in the basin of water by the bed. She undressed down to her chemise and let down her hair and crawled between the sheets. Sounds seeped through the door, the scuffles of Matthew bedding down on a pallet that Caruthers had made up for him on the floor by the hearth. For a long time Kate lay awake, the code tormenting her.

A circled
L
. A place? A thing? A person? Names of suspected people on her lists tumbled through her mind. Scots: Archbishop Beaton . . . Bishop Ross. Spaniards: Ambassador Mendoza . . . Alava, their ambassador to Paris. English exiles: William Allen . . . Charles Paget . . . Sir Francis Englefield. English Catholics here at home: Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel . . . Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Frenchmen: Ambassador Castelnau . . . the Duke of Guise.

Guise.
She sat suddenly upright. Could it be that simple?

She pulled the blanket around her as a robe. Dressing would take too long. She hurried out to the main room.

“Matthew?” He was asleep. “Matthew!” she said more urgently.

He jerked awake, blinking up at her. “What is it? What's wrong? Kate, are you ill?”

She went down on her knees beside him. The fire's embers glowed orange. “No. I have a question. About the Duke of Guise.”

“What?” Awkwardly, he propped himself up on his elbow, still looking confused. She saw his eyes flick over her loose hair, then over her bare left shoulder where the chemise had slipped. Again, his cheeks colored.

She tugged up the blanket to cover her shoulder. “The Duke of Guise. What are his titles?”

“Why?”

Henri de Guise was one of the most powerful men in France, head of one of its richest, most influential families. A daring military commander, he was a fierce defender of the Catholic faith. Ten years ago he had been among the leaders who had secretly planned and carried out the horrific St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants in Paris. Later he had instigated the Holy League. Mary Stuart was his cousin.

“His titles, Matthew. List them.”

He cleared his throat, struggling to think, to focus. “Titles . . . yes. Prince of Joinville. Duke of Guise. Count of Eu. Grand Maître of France. Chevalier of—”

“But the original one. His birthright.”

“Well, I suppose he's plain Henri of Lorraine.”

“Exactly! It was the circle that threw me. Morgan added it as a half null to make it look like a symbol. But it's not, it's just a letter. A plain
L.
Lorraine. Matthew, I think he's another link in the chain. They're all connected. Westmorland. Philip of Spain. Guise.”

He was very still as the implication sank in. “The English exiles. Spain. And now, if you're right, France, too.”

They stared at each other. One thought loomed in Kate's mind and, she was sure, in his. The coalition so feared by England was taking shape. Catholic Europe, united, bent on invasion.

13

The Visitor

T
he countess, on hands and knees, shouted “More!” at her climax. Owen, behind her, inside her, clamped his hand over her mouth. Damn the woman! Her husband was just across the courtyard.

She bit his palm. Only a nip, but still he winced with a grunt. She laughed.

He pulled out of her and flopped onto his back on his narrow bed. Satisfying Catherine was an athletic endeavor. Finished, he lay naked, thankful for the breeze cooling his sweat. She had come to his room above the stable at daybreak and woken him with her tongue in his ear and her hand on his cock. Having roused him in both senses of the word she had hiked up her skirts and straddled his head, her cunt at his mouth. Christ, her boldness would make a dead man's prick salute. He'd responded with animal energy. Now, he lay spent, his lust a memory, mindless and meaningless. The air smelled rankly of their rutting.

She rolled onto her back, too. Fully clothed, she tugged her rucked-up skirts back in place. “Good morning,” she purred.

He avoided her eyes. “Is it?” He felt caged. Rain spat at the rickety shutters on the unglazed window. Wet gusts had infiltrated the slats, dampening the floorboards beneath. His room was not much bigger than a horse stall.

“You should go back,” he said. “He'll be awake.”

“He's already up. He has a visitor.”

“At this hour?”

“Last night, a late arrival. They went into his study before dawn.”

Owen itched to ask who it was. Catherine appeared to trust him, but not with everything. She was almost as closemouthed as her husband about his activities. Was he plotting treason? Owen still didn't know. He had teased some information out of Catherine during their couplings, but he always had to be careful about how much he asked. That first time, at Arundel, he'd learned that the guest, Captain Fortescue, was actually a Cambridge-educated priest named John Ballard come from Paris, and yesterday, as he'd banged her against the wall in the wine cellar, he had found out that three men had sent Ballard. One was William Allen. No surprise there; he ran the English seminary in Douai. Another was the exiled Scottish Archbishop Beaton, also no surprise. But the third name Owen had not heard before in connection with the others: the French Duke of Guise. That was startling. And worrying. Guise was a power to be reckoned with. Was his involvement a new threat for England? And if so, what exactly was Ballard's mission?

This morning, waking to Catherine's groping hands and then tumbling with her, he'd had no chance to coax out further information, so he could not now let her leave without trying.

“I've been thinking about bravery,” he said, arms crossed under his head.

“Oh?” she murmured, uninterested. Having settled on her side she ran her fingers through the hair of his chest.

“Wondering if I'd have the courage to suffer and die the way men like Campion have, for their faith.”

“Father Campion is a saint.” She kissed his nipple and added dryly, “I don't believe you'd qualify.”

“Or even someone like this fellow Ballard. Spreading the word of God in England takes courage. I hope the people who sent him appreciate that. I mean, the Duke of Guise lives like a prince. Can he really imagine the fear of an ordinary man for the terrors of rack and rope?”

“What do you know of how a prince thinks?” She gave him a probing look. “Or care?”

Her look told him to push no further. His liaison with her was dangerous enough. Hard to forget that this very room had belonged to Rankin, the porter Northumberland had drowned. Owen dared not spark Catherine's suspicion.

He said lightly, “I'm a playwright, my lady. My mind plays in the minds of other men.”

He swung his legs over the bed and got to his feet, taking his breeches from the hook. He pulled them on, then grabbed his shirt, glad to see Catherine sit up, too, and tidy herself. They were done.

“You should go,” he said again, pulling on the shirt. “Before he leaves his study. You'll get wet going in through this rain and you don't want him to see you like that.”

A thought of Kate ambushed him. In his mind he had walled off what he'd been doing with Catherine, had kept it separate from his life with Kate. His love for her stood apart, inviolate. But now he imagined her standing before him, looking at Catherine on the bed, stunned by what she'd just watched them do. Kate . . . her eyes filling with disgust . . . turning away from him.

He needed air. He went to the window and pushed open the shutters. The stable courtyard below was empty, the cobbles slick with mud. The air stank of horse shit. Rain misted his face and wet his chest where his shirt lay open. He welcomed it, a cleansing.

Across the courtyard the kitchen door opened and a man came out. Head down, he made for the stable, hunching his shoulders in the rain. He disappeared through the stable doors. Owen hadn't seen his face.

Catherine came up behind him and squeezed his buttocks. “Next time I'll ride
you.
” She nibbled his ear.

He looked back at the house as the kitchen door opened again. Northumberland's retainer, Burkitt, the one with the mutilated ear, held the door ajar and looked toward the stable door. His ragged ear, as red as raw meat, was the only splash of color in the gray courtyard. He stepped back inside. Northumberland stepped out.

Owen lurched sideways, out of view, yanking Catherine with him.
Christ, is he coming for her?
She gave a small gasp as she caught sight of him.

Heart thumping, Owen said quietly, “Stick to what we agreed.” She nodded. Their story was that she had come secretly to commission him to write a poem for Northumberland's birthday.

In tense silence they watched him cross the courtyard. He was making for the stable's main doors, not the side door that led up to Owen's room. Thank God. He had thrown on a cape against the rain and was nearing the stable when the stranger emerged on horseback, keeping his mount at a walk. Owen could see Northumberland's face, but not the other man's, only his back. The two halted as they met and exchanged words with evident earnestness, though the words were impossible to hear. Then the horseman turned his mount's head and kicked the animal into a trot, making for the open gates. Northumberland went back into the house with Burkitt.

Owen let out a breath of relief. So did Catherine.

“Who was that?” he asked, his eyes on the departing horseman.

“Are you jesting?”

He turned and caught her skeptical look. “No,” he said. “Who is it?”

“You don't know your own brother-in-law?”

He could not hide his astonishment.
Robert Thornleigh?
He twisted back to look. The horseman had disappeared past Petworth's walls. Questions exploded in Owen's mind. Stunned, he said truthfully, “No, I've never met him.” He added, stalling until he could think straight, “And I'm out of touch living here.”

“Well, you'll soon be up to date,” she said, turning away from the window. “You're going to London, as we discussed, to watch his house.” She gathered her cloak from the chair and whirled it on. “Lord Thornleigh's son is a new acquaintance of my husband, who can sometimes be too trusting. In his interests I want to know more about this prodigal son's return, and where exactly his father stands. You'll leave immediately.”

She turned back to him and said soberly, “You'll report only to me. For my husband's sake, I want to know what's going on between Robert Thornleigh and his father.”

 

The rain did not let up all day. The roads were bogs of mud that caked Owen's horse's hocks and spattered his boots up to the knees. By late afternoon, when he approached Southwark across the river from the capital, he was soaked, cold, and bone-weary. His mind was a bog, too. Why had Robert Thornleigh been in secret conference with Northumberland? Every possible answer he'd considered was dark and slippery, linking Robert to treason. He was deeply sorry for Kate's sake. She would be devastated to hear how badly she had misjudged her brother. But Owen knew there was no option. He had to inform Matthew Buckland.

The rain finally let up as he trotted across busy London Bridge and turned onto Thames Street. He wished he could go to Kate before reporting to Matthew. He longed to see her, despite the unsettling news he was bringing. In fact, he wished for so much more—that they could step out of the shadows of their work and be together as man and wife, unburdened and independent. She was at her grandmother's and everything in him wanted to keep going westward through the city to its edge, past Charing Cross, and on to Lady Thornleigh's. But he resisted and grimly turned north at Paul's Wharf, heading for Matthew's lodging on St. Peter's Hill.

Matthew's landlady knew him, but she eyed his sodden garments and muddy boots as though wanting to send him around to the kitchen door.

“Dear Madame Mercier,” he said, theatrically kissing her hand, “what a courageous woman you are to come and live among us despite our English downpours.”

She snorted with a grudging smile and showed him in. Upstairs Matthew's earnest young clerk, Samuel Norton, opened the door, pale faced and black clad as ever. Owen had apparently interrupted him at work. A drift of dossiers lay on the table by the hearth where a low fire struggled to warm the room.

“Master Buckland was called away, sir. He's gone to Bristol.”

“What's in Bristol?”

“Informers from Ireland. There's trouble anew in that barbarian land of papists.”

Owen could not fathom the Puritans' special loathing for the Irish. Young ones like Norton seemed the most hardhearted. But Matthew trusted this cheerless fellow and occasionally installed him here in his absence to liaise with agents. “When do you expect him back?”

“Not for another week at least. Goodness, sir, it seems you've had a wet journey. Do come in. You're welcome to dry off by the fire.”

“I'm fine. But I'll come in and write a message you can send him.”

Five minutes later he came out into the street and untethered his horse. What now? Again, two claims on him were at odds: the job he had come to do for Catherine, and his desire to see Kate. Catherine had sent him to spy on Lord Thornleigh's house on Bishopsgate Street and he had his own reason for wanting to do so. Kate's brother, he'd learned, was living there now and he wanted to find out about Robert for himself. But there was no question of his knocking on his father-in-law's door—he would not be admitted. No, for his private investigation, and the report he would concoct for Catherine, he needed an informant inside Thornleigh's household. So he should go and observe the house to see who went in and out. Again, it was his duty.

But, again, everything inside him longed to see Kate. That went deeper.

He decided to go see her first.

He rode west through the city, then under Temple Bar and along the Strand. Past Charing Cross the fields and woods to his right stretched northward. To his left the setting sun crimsoned the rooftops of the riverside mansions. Swallows swept across Lady Thornleigh's roof slates, supping on gnats on the wing.

The closer he got to Kate, the more relieved he was to be away from Catherine. How his London theater mates would jeer if they knew.
Too much of a hardship?
they would taunt, having fun with the word “hard” amid much laughter.
I'll help out if she's too much for you!

What a tangle he felt inside. He hungered to see Kate, but part of him squirmed. In spirit, God knew, he had not betrayed her, but he certainly had with his body. Just eight months married, and already a crude secret to hide. But hide it he must. Kate meant too much. He would not lose her over this.

 

“The blue wool, Susan, and the embroidered russet one,” Kate told the maid, pointing out the gowns laid out on the bed along with chemises and stockings. “But the satin one can stay.”

“Yes, mistress.” The girl began folding the velvet bodice.

I won't need satin finery where I'm going,
Kate thought with a twinge of nervousness as she went to her dressing table. Once Susan was gone she would take the packet of letters from their hiding place. Sitting down, she poured a cup of warm mulled wine from the earthenware pitcher Lady Thornleigh had thoughtfully sent to her bedchamber. She took a swallow. Its warmth was soothing. At supper she had told Kate, “Get a good rest, my dear. Your journey will be tiring.”

But Kate didn't think she would get much sleep. She would be worrying about keeping the letters safely hidden among her packed underclothes when she set out in the morning for Sheffield. Despite her nerves, she was eager to be on the road. The day's torrent of rain had delayed her departure. Following her night at Matthew's the downpour had deluged London. But tomorrow morning she finally would leave.

“Oh!” Susan exclaimed.

Hearing the maid's surprise, Kate turned. Owen stood in the doorway. She jumped up, astonished. “Owen!”

“May I come in?”

“Of course! Thank you, Susan, I'll finish packing.”

“Yes, mistress.” The girl bobbed a curtsy and left.

Kate rushed to Owen. He took her in his arms. His kiss thrilled her. He held her so tightly she felt the tremor in his muscles, just like when they'd embraced outside the Marshalsea after his six months inside. It sent a wave of desire through her now and she returned his passion hungrily. It was as if they had been apart for months, not days.

She broke off the kiss as she realized he was soaking. “Oh, my love, you've come through all that rain!” she said, pulling away. His clothes were clammy, his face chilled.