infection rate in Gresham's men had been insignificant in comparison to the other troops on campaign.
'They came up from behind,' said Cameron, feeling gently with his tongue at a loosened tooth. Tried to rush me into an alley, but I heard their noise, sensed what was happening. So I stopped and ducked down, and they bounced off me rather. Then one of them clubbed me on the head. He'd have got me, I think, but we were in the public street and he had to try and half hide the blow. So I saw most of the stars but kept conscious and tried to run between the legs of the nearest one. He used the knife, caught me here on the shoulder.'
'What then?'
'I stuck my knife into his guts and cut the other one's face. The last man backed off and I was able to run.'
'When did you last appear in a law court?' asked Gresham, bringing a mug of ale to him. 'It doesn't strike me that your legal skills are your greatest strength at the moment, or the ones you use most often.'
'Ouch!' said Cameron, as Mannion touched the entry point of the wound. Cameron felt round the wound gingerly, grimaced, and then yanked something out. It was a tiny splinter of steel. 'Thought so,' he said. 'Point of his dagger. Cheap stuff. Like the men. Och, me and the law? I was in court only last week, actually. I do like to keep my hand in. Unfortunately the woman in question's supposed marriage to the man who walked out on her wasn't supported by any documentary evidence, unlike his actual marriage to the other woman he'd lied about to the first. If you follow me.'
'But the law isn't your primary concern?' continued Gresham, who was beginning to realise that the Scottish advocate was a more interesting figure than he had first thought.
Cameron sighed. 'You could say that. I fear my… other activities have tended to dominate in recent years. Not least of all because they were more profitable. That was at the time, of course, when I had a reason to want more money.'
'Forgive me,' said Gresham, 'but did your wife and children actually exist?'
'Oh yes,' said Cameron. 'I take the point, and in the spirit it was intended. Wonderful sob story, isn't it? But, as it happens, it is true. With one final twist. I became a spy, as distinct from a respectable if rather dowdy lawyer, because it gave me more money. And, if I'm being honest, because it was more exciting. I thought the only danger in it was to me, that I was running the risk. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when my wife and children caught their illness from an agent who asked us to shelter him for two nights in our home. We gave him the children's bedroom. Space is at a premium here in Edinburgh, even for reasonably wealthy families.'
He took a drink from the mug, ran his hand up the side of his face, examined his fingers. There was only a little blood on them.
'You have to admit that life has a sense of humour. We'd just sacked a maid, but let her stay on for two days out of kindness to find somewhere else to go to. Her last job was to change the sheets on the bed. My wife was scrupulous about these things. Except the maid never changed them, and for the first time in her life my wife did not check. She was going to, had actually set off, when there was a knock on the door and her dear mother made one of her unannounced visits. I suspect my friend the agent left some of his fleas as a parting present. He was dead a week later anyway, my wife and children a few days after that. So that's the story. I seem to be left with the job I did for them. And I do seem unable to get myself killed.'
'We're leaving, now,' said Gresham, the alarm bell tolling in his head. The intrigues in the Court of London were like walking through a deep marsh in a thick fog. In Scotland it was like doing the same walk not only in fog but in the pitch black of night.
'I need a fast passage to England,' said Cameron. 'May I take passage on your boat?'
So as to knife me in the back all the more easily, thought Gresham. Out loud he said, 'Why so urgent?'
Cameron grinned. 'For some reason James trusts you to deliver this package to Elizabeth.'
'We sail within the hour. If you can be there by then, you may take passage. If not, we leave regardless.'
Gresham and Mannion both noted the man who scurried away as soon as they left the lodgings, but if he was going to call out help to stop them he failed to do it in time. They made it to the Anna unmolested.
'Why the hell are you lettin' that freak come along with us?' asked an incredulous Mannion.' 'E's about as trustworthy as a spoon with an 'ole in the middle of it!'
They were on the quarterdeck, watching the smoke of Edinburgh recede. Cameron was somewhere down below. ('Probably knocking holes in the bottom of the boat' muttered Mannion.) Jane was standing nearby.
'Trustworthy?' said Gresham. 'Women are witches when it comes to judging character. Here, Mistress Jane, what do you think of our new acquaintance Cameron?'
Jane thought for a moment.
'I think he is evil,' she said, 'and you are mad to bring him with us. Why have you?'
Gresham tried not to show his shock at the certainty of her judgement and its intensity.
'Like you,' he said, 'I don't trust him. Yet I'm like a tennis ball being hit between the factions at Court, and being hit from one Court to another. Already someone's tried to murder us. Cameron is the only enemy I can see! If I can keep him in sight, he might lead me to the others.'
Cameron chose that moment to join them. Before he could offer the time of day, and without dismissing Mannion or Jane, Gresham spoke, 'You're clearly up to your neck in the intrigue of both Courts. You're clearly trusted by King James. It was quite clear he only saw me because of your intervention and that he didn't actually want to come, so you must have serious credibility with him.'
Cameron waved a hand, neither confirming nor denying.
'And I remember where I saw you before. In winter. In the English Court. You were hanging round at the back. I only remember you because you looked so odd in your drab clothes. I only caught a glimpse of you. But you walk in a peculiar manner, slightly sideways, like a crab. You did it as you got off the horse on the quayside. What were you doing in Elizabeth's Court?'
'Saving her life, as it happens,' said Cameron.
'How so?'
Cameron sighed, 'in front of these?' he asked disparagingly, motioning to Mannion and Jane.
'It's the price of your passage,' said Gresham. 'Unless you want to swim home.'
'I suppose you have to know,' Cameron eventually replied, after a good few seconds when he looked to be seriously considering the swim. 'James received a tip-off that there was going to be an assassination attempt on the Queen's life. All we knew was that the assassin was Scottish, an exile who no one had seen for three or four years. It was his father who tipped us off, though God knows how he knew. Scottish families work like no other. James sent me down to the Court. Under cover of doing work for the Earl of Northumberland. The Earl agreed without knowing why. The Earls of Northumberland and the Kings of Scotland have been trading like this since time began.'
'To stop the assassination? Those were your instructions?'
Cameron looked uncomfortable. The motion of the boat was rising and falling in the easy swell, now they had cleared Leith, but Cameron's discomfort had nothing to do with the sea.
'Well, no, as it happened. My instructions were simply to identify the boy, find out who he was working for, if the plot was real.'
'And did you?'
'Identify him? Yes, though he was surprisingly well buried. Find out if the plot was real? There was reason to believe so. The boy was living above his means, had purchased two very fine pistols and so on. As for finding out who he was working for, no. That was our failure.'
'And your master would have let him do his work?' Gresham asked.
'Aye, well… that was left rather open.'
'It would be, wouldn't it? James must be desperate for the throne of England. Elizabeth's death might be seen as simply speeding up an event that is going to happen anyway.'
'If you mean that the relative poverty of our country and the perceived wealth and splendour of England has given many of our noble families a gleam in their eye that outshines the star at the nativity, yes. And James himself would deeply love to leave the intrigue — and, aye, the threat to his own life — behind him.' Cameron paused for a moment. 'That was why I had to think long and hard before I stopped the man. In the act, as it happens.'
'You stopped him?' said Gresham, fascinated.
'We'd actually been given a date for the attempt. Except it was a week later than when the fool actually tried
