All the Queen's Spies by Oliver Clements

Author:Oliver Clements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Leopoldo & Co.
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

A day or so later, when Dee is feeling stronger, he does.

“I hoped you’d come with me to the Old Town,” Dee says. “To buy a pair of gloves.”

Marlowe looks at him with some surprise, wondering if that is a euphemism, perhaps, but then says: “Why not?”

They stand in the upstairs room—Dee in an unaccustomed grass-green coat and red cap—and they search the lane in front of Master Hajek’s house. There is nothing to be seen of the back of the arcades opposite, however, where a whole army might shelter out of view, so then Marlowe leaves first and turns left up the lane. Sure enough, a man emerges from the shadows to follow. Blue coat, black hat, no sign of a sword but he’s sure to have a knife.

“Damn it,” Dee says. “He’s back.”

He means the knife sharpener. Or a new one, at any rate.

They wait several moments, by which time Marlowe has walked around the block and reappears at the other end of the street, just in time to meet Edward Kelley as he steps out of the door—wearing Dee’s black cloak—and turns right. They pass on the street and nod. Another man steps out of the shadows of the arcade to follow, and the two trailing men dither as they pass, but they keep on.

“Two of them,” Dee murmurs. “Surely two is enough?”

A moment later Dee watches as Hajek leaves, accompanied by Edwin. No one follows.

Two is enough.

Good.

Dee hurries down and out of the door, leaving Frommond to lock it behind, and he turns right onto the river’s bank. It is another bitterly cold day, and the streets are blue with ice and frozen snow, and Dee shivers even in his new coat. A moment later Marlowe appears at his shoulder. He’s lost his trailing spy. They walk for a bit, past the Bethlem Chapel, hoping to avoid passing the bridge, though Dee is anxious to see if all he has heard of the rioting mob is true. Before then, though, he needs to know something else.

“How is it that you know Master Beale?”

“Bobby Beale? Old family friend he is. Sort of, anyway.”

Dee notices that Marlowe oftentimes changes his voice, but he cannot decide if it is his courtier’s accent that he exaggerates, or his dockside accent, for he is yet to discover what he is hiding.

“But you were working for Francis Walsingham?”

“Odds and ends. Keeping an eye on some types in Cambridge.”

“And what do you make of Thaddeus?” Dee asks.

There is a slight waver in Marlowe’s next pace.

“Of Master Hajek?” he checks. “I thought he was a friend of yours?”

“He is.”

“Ahh. But—?”

“Exactly.”

Dee supposes Thaddeus will be passing on to someone in the castle the same sorts of odds and ends that Marlowe himself had passed on to Walsingham while he was at Cambridge. He supposes Thaddeus will be speaking to someone in the chamberlain’s office about his new houseguests, and Dee asks if either Marlowe or Jane have been at all indiscreet?

“About what?” Marlowe wonders.

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