The Prince of Lies: Night's Masque - Book 3 (4 page)

“I will provide you with a full report, my lord. Every particular known to me.”

“Good.” Grey rocked his cane back and forth thoughtfully. “Including your friends?”

“My lord?”

“I am well aware of your… companions. I saw them at my father’s house, and met one of them subsequently. A lad of about sixteen, and two more a little older. I believe one of them is an actor?”

“Aye, my lord. Gabriel Parrish, formerly with your father’s company of players. Though he is as much a playwright as an actor these days.”

“No matter. You will provide full and accurate details of these three, as well as the other men in Lady Frances’s service.” This time it was not a question.

“If it please my lord. Although the youngest one, Jacob Hendricks, has gone back to his family in the Low Countries, I believe. I have not seen him this past year or more.”

Grey leaned forward. “If he knows your business, he is a weak spot in our defences. All the more so since we have no control over him. In fact, I think you should recall him to your service.”

Mal was tempted to say that “Jacob” was dead, but his wife might need the disguise again some day.

“Aye, my lord.”

“You anticipate some difficulty?”

“No, my lord, but it may take some time.”

“Give it your highest priority, after making your reports on the others.”

“Aye, my lord.”

Grey waved a hand irritably in his direction.

“Enough for one night. I have much still to do.”

Mal bowed and withdrew, his thoughts already racing ahead of him to Southwark. Grey was not the only man with much to do tonight.

The Sign of the Parley stood in one of the many new streets that had spread southwards from Bankside as the suburb’s population soared. A timber-framed gatehouse with workshops either side fronted onto the street, with behind it a small courtyard, and the owners’ house beyond that. The sign that gave the establishment its name – a mailed fist clutching a roll of paper – hung over the gateway; a jest of Ned’s, but one that always gave Mal a pang of guilt. If he had not taken him to Venice, Ned would never have lost his right hand to the devourers. The brass-and-steel replacement designed by Coby was poor compensation for a man who had formerly earned his living as a scrivener, hence Mal’s sponsorship of Ned to become a master of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and his purchase of this house-cum-workshop in which his friend could practice his new trade.

The print shop had closed up for the day, so Mal let himself in by the wicket gate. As he crossed the yard a blonde head poked out of the upstairs window. Mal broke into a smile – the very man he sought. If anyone could dream up a few fictional weaknesses to present to Grey, it was a playwright.

“Catlyn!” Parrish called down. “How went your enterprise?”

“Middling well. But I need to talk to you.”

“Sorry, I have business with the Prince’s Men tonight. Is tomorrow soon enough?”

“Tomorrow will do. Where’s Ned?”

“In the shop, I think. He’s been working late on a rush job.”

Mal saluted him and went through the back door of the shop. Immediately his nose was met by the sharp bitter smell of ink and the vanilla must of paper. He picked his way around the stacks of pamphlets and boxes of type and eventually found Ned at his desk in the office. The younger man looked up from his ledgers and broke into a grin.

“Good news, I hope?”

“When is there ever good news in our line of work?” Mal replied. “I see you’ve been busy.”

“Burbage got wind of a half-arsed copy of
Romeo and Juliet
doing the rounds, so he wants us to have an official version to sell in its place. I’ve been manning the press on our other jobs so we can get it typeset in time.”

He yawned and flexed his ink-stained left hand. The right rested motionless on the ledger, the edges of its intricate brass joints shining like molten gold in the lamplight.

“You deserve a beer,” Mal said. “And I need one.”

“All right. I’m about done here anyway.”

Mal followed Ned across the yard to the kitchen. The fire had been banked for the night, but Mal lit a spill from the embers and touched it to a candle stub whilst Ned moved about the darkened room with the ease of familiarity.

“So,” Ned said, bringing two leather jacks of beer to the kitchen table, “what’s afoot?”

Mal told him about Grey, everything except the instruction to report on the other agents. Ned interrupted from time to time, often with questions that Mal had no answer to, and cursed Grey at regular intervals. At last the tale was done and they sat in silence, drinking their beer.

“You reckon there’s any way we can get out of it?” Ned got to his feet and went to refill their tankards.

“Working for Grey? No, I doubt it. Besides, this could be the very chance we’ve been looking for.”

Ned looked up from the beer tap. “How so?”

“Right now we only know one guiser’s identity for certain. Prince Henry, the Duke of Suffolk as was.”

“Blaise’s father.”

Mal nodded. “Coby said that Grey had a substantial collection of his father’s paperwork, not just that book Sandy stole. And now we have an ally within his very household.”

“It’s a good start. But wasn’t the book useless?”

“Aye, but there could be other evidence: letters from their fellow conspirators, perhaps even a diary. But getting our hands on that will take time. In the meantime, I need you to redouble your efforts.”

“I’m doing my best, Mal–”

“I know, but if Grey gets his hands on Walsingham’s papers, that could be the last we see of them. I can stall him for a while, tell him I need them in order to compile the reports he wants, but after that…”

“All right. One of my journeymen has a nephew looking for an apprenticeship, so I dare say I could take a bit more time away from the presses.”

“Thank you.” Mal drained his tankard. “I’ll do what I can to help, but I don’t have your eye for handwriting, you know that. And if I don’t get up to Derbyshire before the summer’s out, my wife will have my guts for lute-strings.”

CHAPTER III

Someone was knocking on his bedchamber door. Or perhaps the palace was falling down. Mal rather hoped it was the latter, so that it wouldn’t be his problem.

“Go away,” he groaned, and buried his face in the bolster.

The knocking came again. More like hammering, to tell the truth. Only one person could knock like that. And if he’d bothered coming all the way to Whitehall, it must be important. Mal cursed under his breath. This was all he needed.

“Come in!”

He struggled upright, tangling his legs in the sheets. It had been a warm night for May and he was wearing naught but what he had been born in. A little self-consciously he pulled the sheet up around his waist.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering,” Ned said, closing the door behind him. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Mal made the sign of the fig at him.

“Pass me that decanter,” he said, waving at the dresser on the other side of the room.

“Aye, milord. Whatever you say, milord.” Despite his tone Ned obeyed, tucking the sheaf of papers he was carrying under his right arm so that he could lift the flagon with his good hand. “You look as crapulous as a cardinal. Late night, was it?”

Mal rubbed a hand over his face. “Could say that. Southampton dragged us all to the new theatre in Blackfriars, and then back here for a late supper. A very late supper.”

“You love every moment of it,” Ned replied. “Swanning around with the flower of the court.
Sir
Maliverny Catlyn, intimate of the Prince of Wales.”

“Robert wasn’t there. He said he had more important things to do. And no, I don’t love it. I’m too old for this game.” He took a gulp of the wine. It had gone a little sour overnight; perhaps he should send for sugar? Perhaps not. The sourness suited his humour. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“I have a letter for you. From your wife.”

Mal took it, pressed his lips to the creased paper and tucked it under the bolster. Was it only two weeks since he had left them? It felt more like a year.

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Later.” He would savour her words in private, without Ned breathing down his neck. “You didn’t come all this way so early in the morning just to bring me that letter, did you?”

“Early? It’s almost noon.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Ned sat down on the end of the bed with a sigh. “I have the information you wanted. But you’re not going to like it.”

“Oh?”

“I went through all the papers you sent me, looking for mentions of the late duke and his intimates.”

“And?”

“One name seemed out of place. Sir William Selby.”

“Selby, Selby…” Mal scratched his brow. “Sounds familiar, but I can’t think where from.”

“He’s a Member of Parliament for Northumberland, owns a small estate down in Kent. In and out of London all the time.”

“That fits the pattern. Still, small fry by the sounds of it. So what’s the bad news?”

“Ten, fifteen years ago, he was a captain in the Berwick garrison, where he passed on letters from Scottish spies to our late master, Sir Francis Walsingham.”

“An intelligencer? He’s not still active, though, is he?” Mal said.

“Perhaps not. I had to dig deep into Walsingham’s old records to make the connection.” Ned shook his head. “Christ’s balls, Mal! What if he’s not out of the game? He was doing this long before we were; he could be in league with someone like Baines and we’d never know.”

Mal slapped Ned on the shoulder. “Don’t look downcast! We can use this to our advantage.”

“How?”

“Leave that to me. But thank you. For the first time since we returned to England, we have a glimpse of the enemy.”

The manor of Ightham Mote lay some thirty miles southwest of London, near the town of Sevenoaks. Mal’s intelligencers’ reports had led him to expect a fortified manorhouse with thick stone walls falling sheer to a moat, and in that he was not disappointed. The outward-facing windows were small, and the only entrance lay across a narrow wooden bridge. Mal’s conviction that here was a guiser stronghold deepened. There was still a risk that he was wrong, of course, and that all his careful planning of the past few weeks would come to naught, but he had delayed long enough. He had to start somewhere, and Walsingham had taught him that to break a conspiracy apart, you always targeted the weakest link.

He reined Hector to a halt at the bridge’s near end and dismounted. The planks of the bridge sounded hollowly under his booted feet; a sign of age, or was it deliberate, to make it harder to approach the house unnoticed? He wished there had been a way to find out more about the house before coming here, but too much attention would only have aroused Selby’s suspicions. Strangers were conspicuous in a quiet village like Ightham.

The low entrance door opened at his approach and a middle-aged man in russet livery greeted him.

“The master will see you in the great hall,” the porter added with a sniff, looking him up and down. Mal supposed he must look dusty and rumpled from his ride. “I’ll send a boy to tend to your horse.”

Mal stepped into the gatehouse and made a show of dusting himself down whilst surreptitiously glancing around. A hook near the doorway held a large iron key; stronghold or no, it appeared they did not lock the door during daylight hours. Careless of Selby, but it would save a good deal of trouble later.

The porter showed him across the courtyard and into a spacious chamber with a wide stone fireplace and half-panelled walls. A liver-and-white spotted hound lazed before the fire, but at Mal’s entrance it raised its head and growled.

“Quiet, lad,” a voice said from the opposite doorway.

Mal turned to see a well-dressed man of about forty with receding hair and doleful blue eyes. “Sir William?”

“Aye. And you must be Sir Maliverny Catlyn.”

A moment’s awkward pause, then Selby gestured to one of the heavily carved chairs by the fire. Mal edged around the hound and sat down.

“Let’s get to the point, shall we, Catlyn? You said you had a business proposition for me, one you needed to discuss in private.”

“Aye.”
Carefully does it now. There’s still a chance that Selby is no more than he appears: an ex-soldier come into a handsome inheritance. How oddly alike we are.
“I believe we have some acquaintances in common. The late Sir Francis Walsingham, for one.”

Selby smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Alas, poor Sir Francis. I don’t think I saw him after he fell sick in the winter of ninety-four, and I ceased working for him some years before that.”

“Did you know that Lord Grey has taken over his intelligence network, since his betrothal to Walsingham’s daughter?”

“No, I did not.”

There was no hint of duplicity in Selby’s expression. If anything he sounded worried.

“Then we have common cause,” Mal said. “Grey has sworn to Robert that he will hunt down his father’s former associates.”

“And what business is that of mine?”

“You are named in a good many of Walsingham’s papers, in conjunction with the duke.”

A curious expression crossed Selby’s features, amusement warring with sudden dread. “I dare say there’s been some mistake.”

“No mistake, Selby. And if I can find you out, so can he.”

“Why are you telling me all this? Do you expect a reward? Some favour in return? I have little influence except my vote in parliament.”

“I told you, we have common cause.” Mal stretched out his damp boots towards the fire. The hound twitched an eyebrow but otherwise ignored him. “How’s Prince Henry these days?”

“What? How should I know? I am no hanger-on at court.” Selby looked ruffled now. “Are you accusing me of something, Catlyn?”

“Not at all. I just thought we might share an interest in the prince’s welfare. The line of succession is so important, is it not?”

Selby sprang to his feet. “If you have come here to recruit me into some treasonous scheme, sir, you can leave now.”

Mal held up his hands placatingly. “You misunderstand me, Sir William. I know you have a special fondness for our young prince, that is all. As you did for the late Duke of Suffolk.”