Rosie shrugged. ‘You’re buying, then.’
That was fair, I supposed. I took two bottles of brandy from the innkeeper on my account and followed Rosie up the wooden stairs to the floor where our rooms were. Her and Anne had a room at the end of the corridor. She pushed the door open and coughed to tell Anne she wasn’t alone.
‘Boss is here,’ she said.
Bloody Anne was lying on the bed with her boots off, her grimy bare feet pointed at me and a sour look on her face. There were spare clothes hanging in the open armoire, Rosie’s kirtles and shifts and some of Anne’s britches, and one of them had stretched a line of freshly washed linens under the window to dry. It seemed Anne even wore men’s smallclothes, which was something I hadn’t ever really given any thought to. I lifted a bottle in my hand and raised my eyebrows.
‘Are we still friends?’ I asked her.
Anne glared at me for a moment, then snorted laughter and sat up. ‘If you stop looking at my fucking knickers, aye,’ she said.
I kicked the door shut behind me while Rosie went and got some glasses off a tray on the cupboard.
‘I’m sorry, Anne,’ I said. I opened a bottle and poured for us all, then lifted a glass to her. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did. That was ill done of me, and I apologise.’
‘Aye, well,’ Anne said. ‘Might be I started it. It’s this fucking city, Tomas. I don’t understand how it works, and I don’t like it.’
I nodded, and took a drink. ‘I thought I understood it, but perhaps I was wrong about that. Fat Luka had some hard words to say to me earlier too, about things I’d never even thought about.’
‘We’re all strangers here,’ Anne agreed.
‘I’m not,’ Rosie said. ‘I was born in Dannsburg. South of the river, of course. I’m no noble lady, you ought to know that much, but I know how to get shit done here.’
I thought of the cart Rosie had arranged to come to the barracks, and the quiet boys she had found to take the wet bundles away with them.
‘I noticed that,’ I said.
‘Then why ain’t you making more use of me?’ Rosie demanded. She sounded . . . I don’t know. Not angry, exactly. Almost hurt, in truth. ‘I worked for Ailsa before you, and for another man before her. I’ve been an agent of the Queen’s Men since I had thirteen years to me, and I’ve never had a boss didn’t trust me before. Why don’t you?’
I sighed, and turned to look at her. I was there to make things right between us all, and it seemed that perhaps that meant being honest with her.
‘I do trust you, Rosie,’ I said. ‘I trust you to work for the Queen’s Men, but I don’t know you. Not really I don’t, and that makes it hard for me to trust you to work for me. Do you see the difference?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I do,’ Anne said. ‘You run your own crew here, don’t you, Tomas, just like you did back in Ellinburg, and you maybe don’t trust all the other Queen’s Men as much as you’d like. Is that about the lay of things?’
I nodded. Anne had been in charge of the Pious Men long enough to understand how that sort of business worked, I realised. She trusted Florence Cooper, was even friends with her, but not enough to name her as her second. This was the same thing, to my mind, and it seemed she saw it the same way. She was a shrewd woman, was Bloody Anne. Very shrewd indeed.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Rosie, you worked for Ailsa before me and now you work for me, but Ailsa’s still here. The one before her got himself killed, I know that, so she never had to worry on this, but I do. If it came to it, where does your loyalty lie? Who do you stand with, me or Ailsa? Or is it Vogel?’
Rosie looked at me for a long moment, and her face set into a hard mask that either meant she was back to having the arse with me or she was trying not to cry, and right then I wasn’t sure which it was.
‘Ailsa was all right to me,’ she said, ‘but I only worked for her a couple of years. The one before her, as you call him, his name was Heinrich. He pulled me out of a whorehouse south of the river when I only had eleven years to me, and he took me in and he taught me my letters and how to figure accounts. He taught me how to read and how to write and how to understand things, and he fed me and clothed me and he never laid a hand on me, not in that way he didn’t. He was a good man. He was . . . he was the closest thing to a da I’ve ever had.
‘When my thirteenth year came and he started finding me little jobs to do – people to follow and people to listen to – I did them and I was glad to do it because everyone has to work and it was better than sucking cocks. It took me a while, but I worked my way to it in the end – who he must be, and who he must work for. When he got sent to Ellinburg I went with him willingly, and I did what he wanted when we got there. All I’ve ever known is whoring and spying, and I know which one I prefer. Vogel I’ve never even fucking met, and I never expect to. The likes of him don’t talk to whores, do they?’
‘You’re not a whore,’ Anne said quietly, and she reached out and put her arms around Rosie.
I turned away and poured myself another brandy, and I could hear Rosie crying into Anne’s shoulder,
