The Queen's Men by Oliver Clements

Author:Oliver Clements [Clements, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria
Published: 2021-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Whitehall Palace,

second week of January 1578

It is past Christmas, past New Year’s, even past the Epiphany when Master Francis Walsingham takes his first tentative steps in public on a pin-bright day; joined by Robert Beale, he walks down to the Custom House at Wool Quay, there to take a barge upriver to Whitehall. It is a journey he has made many times, but not having made it in so long, he notices the changes not only in Robert Beale—who looks worn out, with dark circles under his eyes—but along the way, too.

“I see they’ve finally pulled the tooth,” he says, indicating the missing house on the bridge above as the barge slides under an arch.

They reach Whitehall as the tide turns and are taken by a gentleman usher to find Mistress Frommond not in one of the rooms in the Queen’s privy apartments as expected, but out in one of the gardens, sitting on a stool in a shaft of thin winter sunlight and wrapped in furs and blankets lent her by Her Majesty and by Lettice Knollys, who has begun, Frommond tells them, to treat her as one of her daughters.

“Forgive me, masters,” she says, “I was desperate for fresher air.”

Her breath is a gauzy veil, and through it she is very pale, almost ethereal, her eyes remain like pure liquid honey in the sunlight, and Walsingham recalls his first thoughts of waking up in a bed next to her. Perhaps it is her lips: they are always slightly chapped, and it puts him in mind to kiss her. The scar on her cheek is mending nicely, he thinks, though it will never be invisible.

Greetings are exchanged and gratitude to God is offered up for her deliverance. She thanks them and asks after Dr. Dee, and Master Walsingham takes a certain amount of pleasure in telling her that Dee is restored to life and is about the Queen’s business on the Isle of Sheppey.

“Oh,” she says, disappointed. “I should like to thank him in person, though perhaps not now until he returns.”

Walsingham sends for two more stools, and a table, and when they are produced, they sit and from his bag Beale brings out the things he claims Mistress Frommond asked him to find in the barge. They carry about them the distinctive reek of the hold, and Walsingham is pleased they are sitting out in the open. He waits to find out why they meant so much to Frommond, but she shows little interest in them.

“May I ask why you wanted them?” Beale must ask. “The limning I can understand, if he is someone to you, but a dirty glove?”

“The glove belonged to Alice Rutherford,” she tells them.

Walsingham sits back.

A momento mori then? Well, why not?

“I found it in the forest,” Frommond goes on. “Between the road where Alice was shot and the barge.”

Walsingham sits forward and looks at it afresh.

“How ever did it get there?” he wonders.

Beale picks it up and examines it.

“I do not know,” Frommond tells them, “but it was used as a privy clout.

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