And so she shivers like a greyhound.
Accompanying her are three ladies-in-waiting and Lord Burghley. Burghley wants passage only to his house on the Strand, for he is ailing of some complaint and wishes to consult his own physician from the comfort of his own bed.
Her Majesty’s barge is a luxurious craft: a sharp prow, eighteen oarsmen, a small deck on which a chair may be placed so that she may be seen by the city’s populace. Then: a cabin with glazed sides in which she may retreat should the miasma on the river prove too much, screened by dense velvet curtains the color of blood, and aft, a deck for the helmsman and bargemaster.
Her bargemaster sends word that he aims to pass under the bridge just as the tide is on the slack.
Above them, she believes the star in Cassiopeia is brighter than ever.
* * *
As Francis Walsingham and Dr. John Dee make their way back up Seething Lane there comes the hue and cry.
“What is it?”
“A murder!” a bedel tells them. “Some fucker’s been slit from bollocks to chops.”
It is not a matter for them, but for the various watchmen, bailiffs, and bedels such as this one, who are gathered on corners threatening passersby with their clubs and their questions, looking for someone to blame.
“He’ll be fucking covered in blood,” the bedel tells them once Walsingham has identified himself. “He’s made a right mess in there. Gralloched the fucker he has, begging your pardon, sirs, like a butcher.”
They are looking for a tall man with a long parcel, the bedel tells them, “like a longbow, but heavier.” Neither Walsingham nor Dee have noticed a man fitting that description, so they leave him to it.
As they walk Dee feels he may faint.
“By Christ, Walsingham, I have not eaten for three days.”
They stop at the Angel. Once seated, Walsingham orders them ale and a greasy pigeon pie to share and they find a corner with only one dog. Dee has stolen both Van Treslong’s letters and he produces them now. He looks down at them with head-hung, sorrowful incredulity. Walsingham thinks he says, “Bess, how could you?,” but he hopes not.
After a moment Dee looks up. He has stumbled on something.
“Look at the edges,” he says, passing Walsingham the smaller of the two, the second one instructing Van Treslong to kill Dee. When Walsingham looks at it, he sees what Dee means: the cuts of the four edges of the document do not match; two are old, blurred by time and touch, two are new, still pale.
“It is a corner,” Walsingham says. “Cut from a larger letter.”
Which explains the off-set seal. But so what? Saving paper is only prudent, and the Queen is nothing if not that. But then, the more he looks at it, the more he sees the disconnect between this matter of saving paper on one hand, and an unconditional offer of seventy ryals on the other, in advance—and with no mechanism for refund should Van Treslong fail to kill Dr. Dee. He would expect the first of Her Majesty, but the second is entirely out of character.
“Put them together,” Walsingham tells Dee. “Side by side.”
They study the handwriting. There is one less ornate underlining of the word Elizabeth in the second one, but that might easily be explained by the limitations of space. And it is the same with the date. Written on this day the first day of September, in this the year of our Lord, 1572. The second is dated the day after.
“Both are in the same hand,” he says.
Walsingham nods.
“Where was she when she wrote these letters?” Dee asks.
“What difference does it make?”
“Someone must have slandered me,” Dee says.
That makes sense, Walsingham supposes. He has heard many accusations leveled against Dee—he has been the author of some himself—but never that Dee is an agent of Rome, sent to kill the Queen. That is a new one.
“It was whoever the Queen listened to between writing that first letter, and the second letter; they must have told her I was a… a papist and so on.”
Again, Walsingham agrees.
“Then who was it? Where was she? Surely you keep her diary, Walsingham?”
Walsingham nods. Of course there’s a diary of the Queen’s movements. It’ll be there in black-and-white, secretary hand.
“Well, where is it?”
“Whitehall,” Walsingham tells him. “Or wherever she is.”
“Let’s go there now then.”
He shakes his head.
“Dee,” he says, “I have been on the road for two weeks. I hardly had chance to say hello to my wife before you pointed your guns at me. Can I just have one night’s sleep in my own bed?”
“Walsingham! This is important!”
“I know, Dee. Believe me, I know. But the diary will still be there in the morning. It is safe under lock and key, and there are any number of copies that can be found. I do not happen to have one to hand, that is all.”
“Back at your house?”
“No, Dee. You go back to Mortlake. I will send for you tomorrow when I have the diary.”
Dee has no choice. He sighs loudly again.
They can hear running feet and much shouting in the street outside.
“Have they caught him?” Walsingham wonders.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Dee says. “Listen, shall we get something stronger?”
A bottle of French brandy, the best in the inn, appears before them.
“So I suppose you have to wonder if she still wants you dead?” Walsingham asks.
Dee drinks very deeply and shudders. “Can we talk about something else?”
Walsingham tells him about Mary Queen of Scots, and how she saw through the second part of Walsingham’s plan to lure her into disclosing her means of communication, and perhaps even the whereabouts of Hamilton. He tells him how she turned it to her own advantage. Dee laughs the bitter laugh of a man who hardly cares anymore. He drinks more brandy, listening to Walsingham’s story of his wild-goose chase up to Scotland, and about the silver shaft. Dee spits brandy onto the table and laughs as if brought back to life.
“But who was she communicating with?” Walsingham wonders to himself. “And what was she saying?”
“You think she was tipped over into something… what? Rash? When she learned Quesada wasn’t coming?”
“Of course, but what?”
Dee shrugs. They both know what.
“That’s it? A shrug? Christ, Dee, we are talking about someone trying to kill the Queen!”
“Well, she has just tried to have me killed, Walsingham, so I hope you will pardon me when I tell you I am not too bothered by what happens to her now.”
Walsingham is shocked, though he does not altogether blame Dee for thinking that, at the moment. He hopes it will pass though.
“What will you do?” he asks.
“I will finish this bottle of brandy—hup!—and then I will go home, as you suggest, to my mother, my books, my instruments. You will have noticed the new star in Cassiopeia. I should like to have a moment to myself to study that.”
Dee downs the rest of the brandy and bangs his cup on the table.
“Come on then,” he says.
But outside they are met with a great shout.
“There you are!”
It is a guard made up of the Queen’s troop, sent by Robert Beale to find Master Walsingham and bring him home.