I looked at the document, and what I saw didn’t surprise me.
It was a death warrant like Anne had said, of course it was.
Another one.
I scanned the page for a moment before my tired eyes picked out the key name.
‘Arch High Priest Rantanen,’ I said, and for a moment I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing, much less saying. ‘The highest fucking priest in the country. He conducted the queen’s own funeral, for Our Lady’s sake.’
‘You’re not quite awake yet, are you?’ Rosie said.
I shook my head and sat down at the table, still staring at the paper in my hand.
‘Apparently not,’ I said.
‘He conducted Her Majesty’s funeral,’ Rosie said, echoing my words. ‘I weren’t there, but I still know what happened. Too many people know what happened, Mr Piety. The common folk listen to a High Priest, and folk repeat what a High Priest says. Folk listen even harder to the Arch High Priest, and many of them believe a man that holy ain’t even capable of lying, so if he says a thing then it’s true. Best if he doesn’t say anything more about it, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Aye,’ I had to say.
Again I wondered if Anne truly knew what sort of woman she had fallen in love with. Rosie was as common as me, not an aristocrat like Ailsa, but she was every bit as deep in the Queen’s Men as my own lady wife was. Rosie understood business the way it was done in Dannsburg better than I did myself, I realised. I knew she had been right, before. I should be making better use of her than I had been.
‘How the fuck are we going to do this, then?’ I asked her.
She looked surprised that I had asked, and perhaps pleased about it too. All the same, she shook her head.
‘It’s going to be a bugger of a job, Mr Piety,’ she admitted. ‘There’s no getting to him in that fucking temple, that’s for sure. The place is guarded almost as hard as the house of law is.’
‘Rosie,’ I said, ‘seeing as we’re plotting the murder of the Arch High Priest together, I reckon you can call me Tomas now.’
That made her laugh, and she raised her mug of beer to me before she took a swallow.
‘Aye, good,’ she said. ‘You’re maybe starting to trust me at last, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ I said, and I meant it.
She nodded, and showed me a smile that said she appreciated it.
‘Well, I’ve got some questions out on the streets already. I still know some of the working girls in Dannsburg from back when I was a kid. Those of them who are still alive, anyway. There ain’t no priest so holy he doesn’t like his cock sucked now and again, in my experience, and someone’s bound to know something. Luka’s on it as well, greasing palms around the taverns and baths and gambling houses like he does. Between us we’ll find out where this bugger goes and what he likes to do when he ain’t in the temple, you mark me on that, Tomas.’
I did, I realised. Rosie was a skilled, experienced spy, and I marked her very well indeed.
I just hoped that Bloody Anne did as well.
Chapter 26
We went two nights later.
Some of Rosie’s working girls knew one of the Grand High Temple’s junior priests, as it turned out. One of them knew him very well indeed, and she knew what he liked and how to make him talk. He gave up his boss in the end, as many men will when they find themselves faced with a saucy wink and a promise and a pretty face.
People are so fucking weak, in my experience, and everyone has a lever that moves them. Father Braun was moved by sex, and that was cheap enough in Dannsburg. That a man of stature like him could be moved by something so base and easily obtained was disgraceful, but priests are only human, after all. I of all people should know that.
Braun told Rosie’s friend that Arch High Priest Rantanen actually was celibate, much to her surprise, but apparently he had a shocking weakness for gambling. Worse than that, and utterly inexcusable to my mind, he was shit at it. The Grand High Temple of All Gods itself was in debt to the tune of some hundred and thirty thousand gold crowns, so we heard, and all due to the weaknesses of its Arch High Priest.
Of course, he could hardly frequent the public gambling houses of the city. A man in his position had to be seen to be holy, and it wouldn’t have done for any of his highborn congregation to have recognised him in whatever gaming rooms they themselves might frequent. No, the Arch High Priest had to find private tables to play at, and naturally Fat Luka had already discovered where those tables were. That was what I paid him for, after all.
That was the night when I began to fully appreciate how the power of the Queen’s Men really worked, in Dannsburg.
It’s a thing that has to be understood, I think, that the great unwashed masses have the potential to carry the power in any centre of population. They might not have the money, no, or the influence in politics, but there are a fucking lot of them. I remembered when I had been arrested in Ellinburg the previous year, and how hundreds of common folk from my streets had come to watch me be released the next morning. That could have gone another way, of course. If I hadn’t been released, there would have been a riot up there on Trader’s Row. A riot that could well have brought
