The Play's the Thing by Ann Swinfen

Author:Ann Swinfen [Swinfen, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780993237249
Google: 2AjHjwEACAAJ
Amazon: B01DWDA830
Publisher: Shakenoak Press
Published: 2016-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

A few days later, as I was walking along Gracechurch Street, I met Thomas Phelippes, whom I had not seen since the death of Walsingham. He greeted me with surprising joviality and drew me in to an inn, where he insisted upon treating me to a meal and wine.

Having in the past been Phelippes’s young assistant, I had not expected this eagerness to please me, although we had in time become close friends during my final years in Walsingham’s employ. Perhaps his manner had something to do with my apparel. The weather had taken a strange twist. Although thunderclouds still threatened from the west, a sudden wind had blown in from the north, bringing with it unseasonable cold, so that, as well as my physician’s gown and cap,. I wore a cloak lined with rabbit skin which I had purchased – secondhand but in good condition – with some of my earnings from my new patients. I suppose I must have seemed to Phelippes much changed from the young lad who had first been brought in to assist him five years before.

‘Now, Kit,’ he said, when we were well fed and sitting over the last of our wine, with our legs stretched out to the unaccustomed fire. I had shed my cloak and felt pleasantly entertained, with no fear that I would be unable to withstand any proposal he might make. He took off his spectacles and polished them on his sleeve. Without them his eyes looked vulnerable. Until that moment we had spoken of general matters, London gossip. I could tell from the change in his tone that we were coming to the reason for his treating me. I decided to take some control of the conversation.

‘And how are you yourself, Thomas?’ I asked, boldly. ‘Are you employed?’

He smiled a little at my manner. Before, I would not have called him Thomas. He put his spectacles on again, and at once became the sharp-eyed code-breaker and merciless intelligencer.

‘Indeed, indeed, I am employed. Francis Bacon is drawing together many of us who used to work for Walsingham. When his brother Anthony returns from France he will have charge of the new service. Both brothers have long been friends of mine.’

This was not quite what I had heard, that Phelippes was a clerk in the Customs House. Although I remembered that someone had spoken about the Bacon brothers.

‘Francis and Anthony Bacon?’

I knew of them, certainly, but they held minor government appointments. They had neither the money nor the position to organise a service like Walsingham’s.

‘They are, of course,’ he said, ‘in the service of a greater man.’

‘Of course.’

He leaned forward confidentially. ‘My Lord of Essex.’

I felt myself recoil physically. This was unexpected. The brothers were Burghley’s nephews, first cousins to his son Sir Robert Cecil. How could they ally themselves with the Cecils’ greatest enemy, when Lord Burghley himself was setting up an intelligence network? Here was more of this dangerous rivalry, whose repercussions might bring about unforeseen trouble.

‘My Lord of Essex imagines himself the new Walsingham?’ I asked, heavy with sarcasm.

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