“You’ll be hanged by then.”
“Not Quire. Besides, Gloriana hangs no one. And even if the Law were changed I’d survive. For I am Quire the Trickster, Quire the Thief-I’ve too many deeds undone, as yet-too great a fascinated audience for my art, awaiting my masterpiece.” He sheathed the long sword, slipped knife in boot, poignard at his back. “And I’m Quire the Shadow. I’ll need a cloak.”
She shrugged, her smile doting, as upon a wicked, charming son. “Downstairs. Choose one on the run and it may be the owner won’t notice.”
“Thanks.” He pinched her arm to show gratitude and she watched him go through the door, into the glooms, the light from the landing window catching his gleaming eye for a moment before he had flown down the stairs, taking her advice. She heard a scuffle, a bench go over, a yell, then prepared herself to soothe the fresh-robbed diner.
Quire plunged in stolen fur through the dirty snow of London’s lanes, where men and women cursed and slipped and children slid and giggled in and out of the mist while breath and steam mingled at foodstalls set up to provide high-priced soups, pasties and nuts to the shivering, desperate crowd as it flowed. His pursuer was too cold to follow far, and Quire took Leering Street, piled at the sides with frozen snow mixed with urine and manure from the mews flanking it, turned into covered Rilke’s Passage, into Craving Lane, beside the gothic walls of the Platonic College, to a plaza in which a frozen fountain (Hercules and the Hydra) shone with pink and green lights, reflections of the lanterns on the walls of some fashionable ordinary. Another archway or two, through a crowd of snow- fighting boys, into a darker mist, half-fog, half-smoke, from a glueman’s brazier, out of that and Quire was back at last in his alleys, slowing his pace as he reached the peeling door of an alehouse most men would have preferred to pass, Bale’s. Quire sniffed the hop-sweet air before he tried the door and found it open. He left cold and damp behind him and entered stifling heat while unshaven features turned suspicious eyes over hunched shoulders, for there was not a client of Bale’s who did not earn a living by thievery or begging; the place was shunned by the jack-thieves and other rogues of higher rank, and this suited Quire, for he found no enemies here, only admirers, or those who betrayed a thin sort, a safe sort, of envy, not worth his considering. At the far end of the long, narrow room, behind his counter, lounged the unwholesome Bale with his jugs of beer and cider and his pouch of farthings and ha’pence, and on the left of him, leaning where the bar met a black beam set into a lath and plaster wall, snag-toothed Tinkler, sword jutting under a dead watchman’s leather coat.
Quire was surprised. He approached the counter, waving aside the mug Tinkler offered him. “Here already? Did you visit our friend as I told you?”
“Aye. I’m from there, just now.”
Quire put out his hand. “You have the documents to save us further dodging?”
Tinkler scratched his exposed tooth and shook his head, his eyes confused.
“What? Are we without a patron, all at once?” Quire betrayed a hint of frustration, perhaps of consternation. He lifted his arm and placed it round Tinkler’s bony shoulders.
“He refuses a blank this time. It’s too serious, Captain.” Tinkler whispered, even though Bale, tactful from experience, had moved to the far end of the counter and was counting copper.
“I thought he wanted his Oriental extinguished.”
“He calls our work clumsy. He disapproves very greatly.”
Quire agreed. He sighed. “So it was. But it was an accident, the Watch. You paid the ruffler? King?”
“Half an angel, as agreed.” Tinkler showed the split coin on his palm and grinned. “There it is.”
“You killed him?”
“No. I took it back from him at dice before I left for our friend’s. So much terror filled him, because of the Watch being on the hunt, that he could not think. I was good to him, Captain, as you suggested. He has all the Saracen’s effects now and doubtless will have tried to pawn some ring, or that jewelled cutlass.”
“He’ll betray us, of course, when caught.” Quire laid a palm upon his heavy jaw. “I expected no more. But without our papers we’ve no alibi.”
“Bale here would speak for us. Or Uttley at the Seahorse.”
“No good. Who’d believe ‘em? We need our patron’s powerful signature. Won’t he scrawl it at all, Tink?”
“He’s angry. He says to give yourself to the Watch. Then to Sir Christopher Martin’s inquisition. You must plead a plot against you, speak of King’s rivalry-a common ruffler. Something of a stolen hat and cloak-yours. And so on.”
“And I’m transported.”
“No. If you’re swift to do this our friend will send Sir Christopher evidence that you were elsewhere-on Queen’s business-and you’re free. But he says you must act immediately, for you’re needed-an urgent task. You must be clean before you begin, or his plans are tangled. See?”
“Aye, but he could be tangling me.”
“Why be so complicated?”
“Because he knows I’m hard to murder. He could use this to ensure my exile. But it doesn’t smell of that sort of scheme. Every spider spins his own web and the work can always be recognised, after a while.”
“Then you’ll present yourself to Sir Christopher’s men?”
“No choice, Tinkler. Still, I’m resentful of the time it’ll take, particularly if there’s urgent business to follow. When shall I sleep?”
Tinkler, putting a leather cup to his twisted lip, looked surprised, as if he had never imagined his master anything but forever awake.
THE FOURTH CHAPTER
Cold light, entering from high windows in the domed roof, made the Audience Room brilliant. Each window contained a rainbow of coloured glass: abstract patterns as complicated and geometrical as snowflakes. There were no areas of shadow anywhere in the great circular chamber, save behind the throne, where curtains hid the door by which, on ceremonial occasions, Gloriana entered. The door led also to her Withdrawing Room. Panelled and bearing chiefly pastoral scenes in light colours (greens, blues and browns), the walls were white and silver, curving up to join the roof. Six doors gave the Throne Room a deceptively hexagonal appearance, and across these, too, were curtains, some in plain colours, some of tapestry. Footmen stood at the main doors, which were tall and double and painted like the panels, and through them now came venerable Dee, white-bearded, in scholar’s cap and gown, charts under arm, spectacles like a badge of office on nose, bowed at the shoulders as if by knowledge, yet almost the height of the Queen herself, entering the Audience Room in the wake of his sovereign to see that she held private court, for there was no one present but Una, Countess of Scaith, smiling in blue, and Lord Montfallcon, massive and stony, who seemed unusually agitated and unwilling to be present.
Queen Gloriana was settling herself in her padded throne of gold and marble, her outline clarified by the pure light from above, her face framed by her high collar of wired gauze, her golden velvet kirtle winking with all the tiny jewels set into it. “You’ve brought your diagrams, Doctor Dee?”
He waved them. Lord Montfallcon rubbed rapidly at his nose and looked from Queen to magus. In common with most of his contemporaries he regarded Dee as a charlatan-his appointment as Councillor of Philosophy a woman’s folly. Montfallcon was aggressively sceptical of Dee, and Dee in turn was almost entirely amused by the Chancellor’s scepticism.
“You promised to describe your cosmological theories in detail,” the Queen reminded Dee, “and the Countess of Scaith would hear them. Lord Montfallcon is invited in an effort of ours to broaden his mind.”
The Lord Chancellor grunted and sighed. “I would remind Your Majesty that I have urgent duties. Poland….”
“Of course. We’ll detain you a few moments.” She looked towards the great filigree silver clock on the distant wall facing the throne, and seemed to sway in time with the pendulum, as if mesmerised. With neat fingers, she pulled a petticoat in place, gestured for Una to seat herself in the chair at the side of the dais, enquired with an eyebrow of Lord Montfallcon if he’d take the chair on the other side, shrugged when he shook his head and smiled
