She may have failed this time, she thinks, and Master Walsingham has succeeded perhaps, but she can fail as many times as necessary, whereas Master Walsingham need only fail once.
And then she shall be queen.
“And there is a new girl come?” she asks.
“Yes, Your Grace, from Paris.”
“Not one of Walsingham’s stooping whores then? I am glad.”
“She is as demure as a dove.” Mary Seton laughs. It is a silvery tinkle, nervous.
A thought crosses Queen Mary’s mind.
“A virgin?”
There is a tiny intake of breath.
“Of course, Your Grace.”
Queen Mary’s blood, thick and cold, stirs.
John Dee and Thomas Digges are back in Dee’s orchard, measuring the movement of that star again, this time with Digges’s perspective glass.
“None,” Dee says.
“It is definitely fading, Doctor,” Digges says.
“I believe you are right, Thomas. But what does it mean?”
Digges is silent for a long moment. Then he says: “I wonder if the stars we see at night are just a fraction of those that exist? Perhaps there are many millions more of them, running off from our sight in numbers we cannot imagine, into eternity?”
That night Dee dreams of doves in a dovecote, and of Gethyn laughing when Beale joked that Smith was up north to see a man about a dog, and of Sir Thomas Smith himself, but at dawn, before he’s able to make much sense of his dream, he is woken by thunderous knocking at his door.
“John Dee! Open up! We know you are in there! You are under arrest for debts owed to His Grace the Bishop of Bath and Wells amounting to the sum of five marks, eight shillings, and sixpence. Plus interest.”
Later, the Queen summons Master Francis Walsingham to Hampton Court. She is wearing silk the color of alabaster, and a very fine eau-de-Nil collar. Her hair is up, kept in place with jeweled pins that look like the nails you’d find in a sacristy door.
“I thought you’d be more cheerful, Master Walsingham,” she tells him. “After all, your scheme worked out in almost its entirety?”
Almost, he thinks. He did succeed in diverting Quesada’s fleet, and he foiled James Hamilton’s attempt on the Queen’s life, and he discovered—albeit too late to stop her—how Queen Mary sent word to the outside world, but he did not get so much as a glimpse of her cipher, nor did he discover how she herself received word. He asks himself why not? Why did he not put Nicholas Gethyn to the rack? He cannot say. Or he can, really. It was because of what Dee had said, when they stopped in Epping. That he thought what he was doing was good.
Had Gethyn harmed Rose Cochet, then Walsingham would have stretched the man himself, but the girl was happy, beloved, well cared for in the center of Gethyn’s sprawling family, and Romilly Gethyn seemed to care for her likewise. It will be a shame to send her back to her grandfather, he thinks, but he supposes grief will have already intruded in that particular paradise.
And the Queen is waiting for his answer.
“Yes, Your Majesty. It worked out almost in its entirety.”
She waits.
“This time,” he finishes.
She nods.
“Thanks be to God,” she says. “And to John Dee.”
Walsingham laughs.
“And to John Dee,” he echoes.
By God, he has almost become fond of the rascal.
“But what of next time?” he wonders aloud. “We cannot pretend our enemies have gone away.”
“Admiral Quesada has.” She laughs.
“Yes,” he agrees, “but you know how many more like him there are in France and in Spain, and when they come—we have no men to defeat them on the battlefield, nor yet ships at sea.”
“I cannot raise taxes further, Master Walsingham. Already my barons are squealing like squeezed pigs, and the wool trade is ground to nothing by the Dutch wars.”
Walsingham nods. This is old territory.
“We need a new kind of weapon.”
“Such as—what?”
“We need a company, or a guild, of men—and women—to collect intelligence and implement procedures that are paid for and directed outside the prescribed structure of oversight.”
The Queen is puzzled. “Go on,” she says.
“These men and women, they’d be obligated in certain instances to effect action central to the completion of a specific and critical task without regard for ancillary repercussions.”
“I see.”
“I mean, men loyal to Your Majesty, but whose actions cannot be connected to you. Men who work in the shadows. In the underworld. Who can pass unnoticed, unheralded, to take our fight to the enemy, to their very heart.”
The Queen thinks for a long moment before nodding her approval.
“A secret service,” she says.
“Yes,” Walsingham agrees. “Your Majesty’s Secret Service.”
“That has a ring to it.”
“I have taken the liberty,” he says, “of compiling a list of those I think might contribute their skills.”
He has with him the book he has brought from his room in Seething Lane, the simple clothbound book, the sort in which any wool merchant might keep his figures of profit and loss. He opens it and turns the pages until he comes to a back page on which is written a short list of names and numbers.
“Who is he?” the Queen asks, pointing at the name Christopher Marlowe.
“He is a bit young,” Walsingham tells her, “but shows great promise. A playwright.”
The Queen sniffs. “Master Raleigh, lately of the Pelican—him, I know. He should be back to Cambridge this term. And ‘006 – Francis Drake.’ He was with Hawkins, wasn’t he? In New Spain?”
Walsingham agrees he was. “I suggest that to preserve their identities, they be known only by the numbers as they appear here in my manifest.”
“Double oh one. Double oh two,” the Queen says, running her finger down the names. “Yes. I like it. But there are only six names here. Tell me. Where is John? John Dee. Why is he not numbered here?”
Walsingham sighs.
“He… he has certain scruples,” he tells her. “This business with Isobel Cochet, and Willem van Treslong,
