Slyguff walked a step ahead of him, his hand gripped on the hilt of a dagger that was thrust in the belt buckled tight about his narrow, wiry waist.
Only at the last moment, as they came near, did Shakespeare avert his gaze from the woman and see that she was with Charlie McGunn, deep in conversation.
The woman looked up with nonchalant curiosity at Shakespeare’s approach. Her eyes were black, like still, dark water. She raised an eyebrow questioningly. McGunn turned to him, too, and a grin broke across his fleshy, bald face. “Ah, Mr. Shakespeare, I believe you have seen sense. Welcome to the fold.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you will introduce us, Mr. McGunn,” the woman said.
“My apologies, Lady Rich. This is Mr. Shakespeare. Mr. John Shakespeare.”
Shakespeare bowed. “My lady.” Of course, he had seen her portrait. Penelope Rich, sister of the Earl of Essex, was said to be the most beautiful woman at court, if not in the whole of England. It was an assessment that Shakespeare could not dispute.
“Mr. Shakespeare,” she said, “you must be brother to the other Mr. Shakespeare, the Earl of Southampton’s poet, for I can see that there is a little family likeness in your eyes and brow, though you are taller.”
“Indeed, my lady. And I am a little older, too.”
McGunn clasped his arm around Shakespeare’s shoulders. Too tight for friendship. Shakespeare winced at the memory of his viselike hand taking him by the throat. “Mr. Shakespeare has agreed to join our great enterprise of all the talents, Lady Penelope. He is to seek out and find the mysterious lost colonist, if one such really exists.”
“Oh, I am sure she exists, Mr. McGunn. It is an intriguing tale. Do find her, Mr. Shakespeare. I should so like to hear what she has to say for herself, about the perils she has endured in the New World and how she came to make her crossing of the ocean home to England. It will be the talk of the court. And, of course, it is certain to discomfit Ralegh, which will be most amusing.”
“I will do my utmost.”
She smiled the sweetest smile he had ever seen. “And I want you here tomorrow evening for the summer revels. Do say you will come.”
“Well, my lady…” He thought of Catherine, back home, turning from him, not even admitting him to her presence. How long was it since he had seen her smile at him like that?
McGunn’s grip about his shoulders tightened. “He’ll be there, Lady Rich. I’ll vouch for him.”
“That will be wonderful. I believe you were an intelligencer for Mr. Secretary Walsingham and saved Drake from some Spanish hellhound. I want to hear all about it from your own lips, Mr. Shakespeare. But for the moment, I am afraid I have to leave you.” She reached out and touched his face with the fingertips of her gloved right hand. “The She-wolf summons me and I must obey…”
He watched her move away from him along the hall. She wore a dress of gold and deep burgundy, almost brown in its intensity, with full embroidered sleeves and a sharply pointed bodice. From behind she seemed to glide, like a slender royal craft upon the Thames.
McGunn loosened his grip, then slapped him playfully on both sides of his face. It stung. “Watch yourself, Shakespeare. You’re a married man and she’s a married woman, and no good can come of it.”
“You do Lady Rich a disservice.”
McGunn laughed aloud. “But then, you don’t know the Devereux women, do you? It’s not for nothing that she calls her mother the She-wolf.”
“I heard it was Her Majesty the Queen that gave her the name.”
“Yes, but it was the She-wolf herself who earned it. Except that she hunts and eats men, not lambs in the field. And her daughters are no different.”
“I am astonished at your temerity, Mr. McGunn, to speak of the Earl of Essex’s mother and sisters so.”
“Would you have me kiss their feet?”
Who exactly was McGunn that he could display such disrespect and familiarity to Essex himself and to the ladies of his house? Shakespeare wondered. And how would the lady Lettice take it if she heard this man and her own daughter refer to her as the “She-wolf”?
McGunn opened a purse of soft leather and took out coins, which he handed to Shakespeare. “Here, fifteen marks in gold. Now, come with me. I run things for Essex and I have something to show you.”
Shakespeare took the coins, though he felt unclean in doing so. “Are you his steward? His factor?”
“What do you think, Slyguff? Is ‘steward’ the word for what I do for Essex?”
Slyguff said nothing.
“Ah, call me what you like, Shakespeare, I care nothing for titles. But a little warning before we proceed: never cross me. Never. For I always repay a slight. But if you are a good fellow, you will find me the truest friend a man ever had.” He grinned broadly, as though he had never made the threat. “Come. I will arrange letters-patent in my lord of Essex’s name. That will grant you access wherever you require it in your inquiries.”
They left Slyguff in the long hall and went up a narrow, twisting stairway of stone steps to a high room in a square turret at the back of the house. The room was tall-ceilinged with deep oriel windows, and lit by many candles. The three men seated there, poring over papers, looked up as they entered. Shakespeare recognized them all.
“Old friends, Mr. Shakespeare,” McGunn said. “They insisted you were the man to help us with this little task.”
The three were Francis Mills, Arthur Gregory, and Thomas Phelippes, all senior intelligencers with Walsingham in the old days. The last time they had all been together was five years since. They had been an effective if incongruous crew, each working directly for Walsingham rather than as a team.
The room was a mass of documents and books, a sort of library. What, exactly, was Essex trying to do here? Re-create Walsingham’s intelligence network?
Shakespeare looked at them each in turn. He shook Gregory by the hand but hesitated over Mills’s proffered hand, recalling the problems he had caused by being too close to Topcliffe. Phelippes did not rise to shake hands, but merely pushed his glasses up his pox-scarred nose and returned to his papers. Shakespeare thought it unlikely that either Mills or Phelippes had suggested his name to Essex or McGunn. Perhaps Arthur Gregory was the man.
“Mr. Sh-sh-shakespeare,” Gregory stammered. “It is a delight to s-s-see you once more.”
“And you, Mr. Gregory.” Shakespeare liked him. His face was as pink as a young pig’s, and he was clearly suffering in these hot days. His expertise lay in his careful hands and his uncanny ability to open a sealed letter, read it, and replace it so that the intended recipient was none the wiser. He also devised invisible inks and could easily reveal the supposedly invisible writings of others.
Mills was another matter. He and Shakespeare had been equals under Walsingham. Like Shakespeare, he was tall, but he was sticklike and more stooped than Shakespeare remembered him. He had been an interrogator, sometimes working together with Topcliffe in the Tower rack room. Mills would speak with soft, coaxing words while Topcliffe raged and foamed and turned the screws tighter on the rack and uttered unspeakable threats and obscenities. Yet this was not the sum of Mills’s abilities: he also had a cold, inquiring mind that could sift through the mass of intercepted correspondence from Spain and Rome and spot what was of importance. He was as valuable at a table of documents as he was in the tormenting chamber.
Phelippes, though, was the undisputed master of the intelligencer’s craft. His face was so pockmarked and unpleasant to look on beneath his lank yellow hair that children would shy away in fright, but his brain was as taut and beautiful as an athlete’s sinews. His talent was with ciphers and the breaking of them, be they French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Italian, or English; it was Phelippes who had enabled Walsingham to bring Mary of Scots to the headsman’s block.
“Surprised, Mr. Shakespeare?” McGunn said. “You had not expected to find these old friends here, I would happily wager.”
“Yes, ‘surprised’ is the word.”
“Well, feel free to use their expertise, for I want this woman found. My lord of Essex will allow for no failure in this. You will find much of the information you need among these papers. Come and go at will, Mr. Shakespeare, and report to me what you find. Sooner rather than later, if you will. Good evening to you.”
Shakespeare watched McGunn leave the room, then looked about him. This was Walsingham’s old library, he was certain. All his old papers were stacked here, high on shelves and over tables-a great mass of secrets that any
