Van Treslong thinks not. “West,” he says, cutting the blade of his palm down. “Out into the ocean, to catch the trade winds.”
“To New Spain?”
“Sure. Maybe. Why not?”
But his venture in Ireland excepted, Smith is no fool.
“It is not New Spain he is heading for! It is the Northwest Passage! That’s where he is sailing to! They’ve decrypted DaSilva’s pages! They know where it is! By Christ, Walsingham, you have put us out of the pan and into a fire that will roast us for a very long time!”
Walsingham opens and closes his mouth. At some point he knows he is going to have to tell them: that the DaSilva documents were elaborate forgeries of his own device, made with the help of an old exile, Jerome Cardan, whom he recruited in Paris, and who claimed—with some justification, clearly—to know his way around a natal chart. But he will not tell them yet. Not until this scheme has run its course. Not perhaps until Quesada’s fleet is wrecked upon the shores of Newfoundland or gripped fast in the ice farther north.
Van Treslong looks incredulous.
“The Northwest Passage?” he wonders. “You found it?”
Smith will not share the tale with a mere Dutch Sea Beggar.
“We almost did,” he snaps. “Until Master Walsingham here lost it in one of his foolhardy schemes of espial.”
Gratitude does not last long, Walsingham thinks.
“Pity,” is Van Treslong’s opinion.
“If what you say of the state of our defenses is true,” the Queen says, “then it is a blessing that Quesada has been diverted, even if it is to find the Northwest Passage. It will allow us time to make reparations. To recruit men. To fetch masts from Sweden. Bend your energies that way, Sir Thomas, rather than waste time in fruitless recrimination.”
Smith is incandescent but can say nothing further.
“But Meneer van Treslong,” the Queen continues. “What of the other task with which we entrusted you? What news of our most trusted and entirely beloved Dr. Dee?”
Later, Francis Walsingham will think about this moment, and think that Willem van Treslong was panicking, but at the time, when the Dutchman stands about to say something, only to stop and close his mouth with a snap, he thinks only that Willem van Treslong is regretful. He is stoppered up, Walsingham believes. He wishes himself elsewhere so that he need not be the one to pass on bad news. Only his eyes move as his gaze roves about the glade, looking for safe berth.
It dawns on Walsingham what Van Treslong cannot bring himself to say.
“He is dead?” Walsingham asks.
Van Treslong nods once, very slowly.
Walsingham cannot believe it. Dee—dead? Another soul to stain his conscience. But then he thinks, if Dee is dead, then how did Quesada come to decrypt the chart, or so they believed? And what is Van Treslong even doing here? Can he wish to bring the good news so dearly? Ah no: his ship. He wants the Queen to offer use of the dry dock.
Meanwhile all look to the Queen, who has shut her eyes, and tilted her head back to prevent the tears leaking down her powdered cheeks. She is utterly, unexpectedly grief-stricken.
“Oh, John,” she says. “Whatever will I do without my eyes?”
Her eyes. It is the nickname she had for Dee, Walsingham recalls, from some silly symbol Dee’d once scratched on the wall of his cell when they were both in the Tower together. He—Walsingham—has the report somewhere. A monad? Something like that. It was one of the many things that had spurred Leicester to act—without her knowledge, of course—to separate the two, so that she did not fall further under Dee’s influence and succumb to his more outlandish theories.
“Well, good riddance,” Smith says. “I never liked him. Too clever by half.”
There is a moment’s surprise, for this is disloyal in the extreme, but Smith is actually beaming with pleasure, and might even dance a jig, while the others, Walsingham notes, the others think more or less the same thing.
“The bastard punched me once,” Leicester says. “I have never forgotten that, though…”
He seems of two minds.
“Nevertheless, gentlemen,” Walsingham says, “he has performed a most valuable service for his Queen and his country, and… and…”
He indicates the Queen, who is still sitting with her eyes shut.
The others mumble their reluctant acceptance of his point. Gethyn coughs softly and looks at his kerchief as if for traces of something. Smith shoots him a strange, gloating look. Walsingham tries to recall why Smith so hates Dee.
It was something to do with his infernal colony in Ireland, he remembers now, and how Dee suggested the Queen invest what little money she had elsewhere in the New World rather than in Smith’s scheme in Ulster. Smith had taken it very badly.
“With Your Majesty’s permission,” Walsingham starts, “I will show Meneer Van Treslong to our kitchens. Perhaps give him a bun.”
The Queen opens her eyes.
“Yes,” she approves.
But Van Treslong hesitates and simpers a little. He indicates his ship, out at anchor in the river.
“I was hoping,” he says. “My ship… We’ve made some repairs, but…”
He trails off. It is not an unreasonable request, but the Queen is ever prudent with money. This time, though, she honors her debts.
“Meneer van Treslong has taken pains on our behalf,” she says, “and in recompense for his efforts, especially in regard to our beloved John Dee, I am more than happy to offer him such assistance as he needs to furnish his good ship anew.”
Van Treslong straightens the tips of his mustache and bows in gratitude.
Walsingham leads him in retreat through the garden, on which the Dutchman has some thoughts.
“Absurd, these strange patterns of hedges and beds.”
“Celtic knots,” Walsingham tells him.
“Pffft.”
When they are beyond earshot, Walsingham speaks.
“What happened with Dr. Dee?” he asks.
Van Treslong’s smile falters, and he pulls a face. He shakes his head.
“I did as the Queen instructed,” he says, “but
