The Spymaster's Daughter (32 page)

She glanced beyond the dray horses as the sun broke through the clouds and rising dust on the road to Chartley Manor, wondering what this day would bring that no day before had brought. That was the part of being an intelligencer that she loved: No day was ever the same.

They had crossed the river Blythe and were surrounded by the green, rolling countryside of Staffordshire. Sunlight glinting through leafy old horse chestnut trees cast spun gold patterns across the road. She thought of Aunt Jennet's beloved embroidery and was warmed by the memory. As a girl, she had not prized her stern aunt, though now she did. No letter had come from her old nurse in France. Letters were dangerous. Still, there had been word that she did well and was content in her exile. She had children to teach and her Catholic faith to live openly, a faith that condemned her to death in England, just as Frances's own Protestant beliefs would condemn her in France. Where would these enmities end…with the death of queens? Not Elizabeth, pray God, not Her Majesty. Frances could not picture the realm without the last Tudor.

A line of carters passed them, taking their animals back toward Burton for market day, their milk goats tied to the tailboard, wooden cages full of squawking chickens and green cabbages. She pulled her cap down and looked straight ahead as Robert responded to hearty greetings and salutes, leaving the brim low to shade her face, lest she return to Greenwich berry-brown. How to explain, after rising from her sickbed, the complexion of a husbandman's wife?

This trip had been unlike any she had known or, no doubt, would know again. She had never been seated in a brewer's dray, nor dreamed of adventuring with a much-loved man. She was aware of Robert's every move beside her, his voice urging on the horses, his shadow moving down the road as if leading her forward. She felt his shoulder and arm pressed against hers on the narrow seat, heating her almost to a sickness.

“‘Which breaks the clouds and opens forth…'”

After hearing herself speak Philip's words, she took a deep and dusty breath, looking off to the side, away from Robert's sight, tears starting suddenly for no reason. She tried to stop them, to hide them, but she could not.

Robert pulled to the side in the deep shade and turned to her. “Tell me what word I have spoken that brings you to tears, or…” He took a deep breath. “Or is it a memory of your husband's words?”

Choking on the dust of the road, she said, “Neither.” She could manage just that one word.

He reached for her hand. “All will be well, Frances. Trust me in this. If this venture should become known, I will explain to your father that I thought a boy necessary and there was no other one to trust on such a charge. I will take the blame on myself and you will not be—”

She covered her face with her hands. “You would protect me
from my own folly? Sweet Jesu, Robert, you have not an understanding of what is…and I cannot explain without betraying…”

He jerked toward her. “Betrayal? Who? What have you done?”

“I am a married woman….”

R
obert was confused by her words, though his heart leaped against his shirt with what they might mean, what he wanted them to mean. There were words she was trying to say—or was she trying not to say them? Could she love him, or was she a lonely young wife left at court, seeking adventure while her husband was away? He could not believe it of her, but where was this leading? To the Tower for him? To adultery and hell for them both?

“Frances, I have known…since first I saw you…your deep unhappiness,” he said, his words broken. He was uncertain how far to go with them. “Is there naught I can do?” He paused again as she turned toward him, open to his words. Was she also open to his arms? How could he allow himself to think that she wanted him? He had lost his good judgment, his ability to know what secrets faces did not reveal. He forced his mind to stop all such imaginings.

He was aware that she was trying to form words, and sought to end her confusion. “Frances, sweet lady, do not say what you will regret and I will ne'er forget.”

She lifted her chin, as if determined not to make of herself fool enough to set him laughing.

Robert took his handkercher from his sleeve, poured out some ale from his flask, and, lifting her chin with one finger, wiped away the dusty tear streaks. “Apprentice boys do not allow their masters to see tears, Frances.”

“Did you never cry for what you lost when you became a brewer's apprentice?”

Robert snapped the reins. “Ho, Quint! Claudius!” He turned
the dray back onto the road. “I have no memory of boyhood tears, Frances. Bastard apprentices cannot wash away their station, though they cry tears enough to fill the river Thames.”

While he was apprenticed to the brewer, she had been the cosseted only child of the queen's spymaster, living in the manor of Barn Elms with servants and all the luxuries allowed in a Puritan household. He understood little of her life, except her loneliness. That he understood full well. Sometimes, as now, his body ached for her, almost betraying him. Each time it was more difficult to calm himself to softness. He demanded much of his manhood for her sake.

T
hey moved on at a good pace, though they now had a wagon heavier for the full casks and barrels.

“‘And give us sight to see,'” Robert said quite suddenly, finishing the couplet she'd begun at least two furlongs earlier, but his words came so softly she scarce knew whether she imagined them or heard him speak softly over the sounds of horses' hooves and rumbling dray. Finally, she was unsure that he had actually spoken. And, if he had, how could she respond?

She cast a quick sidelong glance at him, trying again to read what he could be thinking. He looked ahead, though she saw his jaw tighten, as if he dared speak no further in an intimate manner. She was sore-tempted to ask him, but dared not. She wanted to know and was afraid to know. She was all mad confusion.

Robert had been a polite but silent partner on this trip after the first night. He had allowed her to cling to the seat beside him rather than amongst the barrels of the dray. She had thanked him politely, though he assured her that he was giving her only her apprentice's due, since she had proved to be so willing.

He seemed to know Philip's poems to Stella as well as any young man at court—better, perhaps. But she sensed that he was not thinking of Stella when he spoke Philip's words. Not for the
first time Frances wondered whether there was another woman he thought of, longed for. Her heart shrank from the possibility, but her mind would not give it up. A young and pretty lady's maid, perhaps, or a lonely widow in a cottage by the road he visited on his travels? Or both a lady within and one without the court?

Hold!
she ordered her runaway mind. She did not really want to know about Robert's women. It never helped a woman's heart to know a man's secrets. She looked at his profile, hoping he would turn her way, but he did not. In spite of her better cautions, she yet wanted to know his mind. When would they ever be like this again? “What do you think of Philip's sonnets? You have never said.”

“You have never asked.” He blinked rapidly but did not turn to her, keeping his eyes on the road. “Now that you do ask, I will tell you. I think Philip Sidney's sonnets speak the heart of every man who cannot have the woman he loves.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, knowing the truth of what he said for herself. “Is there a woman you love and cannot have, Robert?”

His jaw tightened and he lifted his strong chin. “God's grace, Frances, I have loved women.”

“You do not take my meaning.”

“I take it, Lady Frances, but I choose not to answer. Even a servant can have his own privy thoughts, his privy heart.” So saying, he pulled his wide hat down to shield his eyes from the sun, and perhaps from her, and tugged on the reins as the road turned toward Chartley Manor.

She had angered Robert. He had a dignity that she should recognize by now, since it matched so closely the conduct she tried to make her own. Yet she had to say what was true. “A servant is not allowed to choose his life. Neither can a wife.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Then we are much the same.” Robert grinned, though he shook his head in disagreement. “Yet we are far from the same in many things. But maybe in one thing…”
Again, he slapped the reins sharply over the horses' backs to stop his thoughts from becoming words that he would very likely repent.

They rode ahead with speed and in silence.

A torrent of wondering thoughts filled her now. She had admitted far too much without really saying unfaithful words. What would Robert have thought of her?

They mounted a hillock, the manor of Chartley and the castle ruins beside it coming slowly into view on the rise. Abandoned since the Battle of Bosworth a hundred years ago, the castle keep, towers, and crenellated battlements still stood guard beside the newly built, impressive timbered manor. “The castle and manor belong to the Earl of Essex,” she said, somewhat surprised that she voiced the thought aloud.

“Say nothing more, Frances. Apprentice boys do not comment.”

She nodded. “Aye, master brewer.”

They passed over the moat and into the outer bailey, the place strangely quiet for the hour after dinner. Were all the household out in the deer park hunting, or were they resting out of the heat inside the thick timber walls?

Robert hailed a passing groom. “Here be good Burton ale for Sir Amyas Paulet.”

“You are not the old brewer.”

“Nay, he went for the easy life with a sister in London.”

The groom laughed. “Aye, he was e'er complaining of his back.”

“While he rests his back, I have good ale here for the manor, and a special keg of double ale to deliver to the papist queen.”

“Hold there, brewer. No one passes but with Sir Paulet's orders, and he allows no man to go to the Scots queen's chambers. She has charmed better than you.”

Frances whispered to Robert, “Will they allow a boy?”

“I will hold here in the bailey,” Robert said. As soon as the groom left, Robert warned, “Frances, do not move or speak.”

Robert wrapped the reins about one of the stakes on the side of the dray that held the kegs in place. He jumped from the wagon and led the horses to a trough for water. “A groom here to brush the dust of Staffordshire from coats and manes,” he shouted, holding a silver penny aloft.

A boy ran from the stables, brush and cloth in hand, and soon the dust was flying and the horses' gray coats began to shine again. The boy looked up at Frances: “Boy, ye be blessed in yer master. He pays others to do yer work.”

Frances held her breath at the stable boy's puzzled look until he shrugged and walked back to the stables, clutching his penny between his teeth.

Robert busied himself beside the dray, his hands testing the ropes holding the larger barrels.

“When will Sir Paulet come?” she asked softly, looking toward the multistoried timbered manor. “He has seen me in the presence chamber alongside Her Majesty.”

“Do not fear. He will not expect a lady of the presence to be on a dray in his bailey. It is the unusual man who does not see what he expects.”

“Paulet is not the usual man,” Frances said, still worried.

“Then deny and grovel. All men of his rank believe a cringing lad.”

“I have learned how to shrink myself to nothing.”

He looked at her and nodded thoughtfully.

She could see a large formal garden stretching beside and behind the manor. Essex's mother, the Countess of Leicester, Lettice Knollys, was said to be fond of gardening when she was not at Leicester House in London. She had gardening in common with her cousin the queen, though Elizabeth hated her Knollys cousin for marrying the Earl of Leicester. Lettice's eldest son, Essex, had
spent his boyhood at Chartley with his sisters and returned as often as his court duties allowed.

Paulet suddenly came from around the stables. “Hold there, brewer!” The words came from a deep, rumbling voice in a chest too small to hold it.

Frances watched with some foreboding as Sir Amyas took manful steps forward on his short legs. She remembered him from the presence as a small man who made much of his bearing. A pack of hounds bounded and frolicked about him.

Frances coughed, preparing to speak as a boy if addressed, though she hoped a dusty-faced apprentice would not even gain Sir Amyas's notice. She could not hear Robert's words, though from Paulet's face, he was questioning the new brewer with mistrust. Somehow Robert must gain entrance to the Scots queen's quarters, or their mission would fail, and with it their chance to put an end to Mary's scheming.

A pup broke loose and ran toward the horses, nipping at Marcus's legs, barking furiously. The team shied, rearing in their traces, and jerked the dray forward into the trough.

“Whoa!” Frances yelled, and quickly grabbed the lines, hanging on.

Sir Amyas walked toward the cart, picked up a pebble, and threw it at the pup. It yelped and ran away, tail between its hinders.

“Brewer, control your team. Your boy is too lean to hold them.”

Robert reached the team as Sir Amyas gave the order. “Come down, lad.”

Frances quickly complied, remembering not to extend her hand to Robert for support.

Sir Amyas strode to the wagon with his big man's style that had brought giggles from the ladies beside the queen. Frowning, he poked amongst the barrels and kegs. “Which one is for Her papist Majesty?”

Robert pointed to the small keg under the seat. “That be it, good sir.”

“Bring it down,” Sir Amyas ordered.

Frances held her breath as Queen Mary's keeper inspected the keg, turning it this way and that, knocking on it in several places. “It has not a hollow sound,” he said, opening the bung and letting ale spill to the ground. He nodded, satisfied.