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It was surprising, and he had thought he could never be surprised again. That alone was enticing.
But he could not afford to be enticed by Anna, or to have anything to do with her at all. If she knew the truth about him—about what he was doing at the White Heron—she would castrate him herself with a rusty stage rapier and toss his severed member into the Thames.
Rob turned away from the window and the piercing daylight that rose above the jagged rooftops, pulling his rumpled, ink-stained shirt over his head. The morning moved apace, and he had work to do.
If only today’s task was half as pleasant as being in the garden with Anna Barrett. He could easily face every danger if such a reward waited at the end.
But it was thinking like that—careless and impulsive, seeking pleasure at all costs—that had brought him to this place. It was the Alden family’s downfall, always.
As Rob splashed cold water from the basin over his face and bare chest, he thought of his family. He usually refused to think of them at all. Memories of his time before London, before Southwark, were futile and foolish. They were gone and he had made his choices. The past was no more. His parents would have disowned him for all he did now. His short stint in prison after a brawl had shown him what his life had become—how far he was from his old life. His parents would have been disappointed, indeed.
But his sister—pretty Mary, gone from him now for so long—she still lingered with him. Sometimes he seemed to sense her sad spirit at his shoulder, and it was that memory that drove him forward, that kept him alive amidst all the danger and his own careless ways. He had to do right by her, to fulfil his goal before he could let go and be at peace.
That had long been the implacable force driving him onward. He wouldn’t let Anna Barrett be an obstacle, no matter how well she kissed. No matter how much he wanted her.
Rob scrubbed hard at his face with a rough cloth, as if he could wash away last night and the emotions it had aroused in his long-cold heart. Wash away all the past. That was impossible, but he could at least make himself look a bit more respectable. Like a man with important business to conduct.
He pulled on a clean shirt and reached for his best doublet—the crimson velvet sewn with gold buttons he’d worn last night and which lay discarded on his rumpled bed. But it still smelled of roses and night air, of Anna and their closeness in the garden.
‘God’s teeth,’ he muttered, and tossed it aside. His next-best doublet, a dark purple velvet and black leather, would have to do, and was more sombre, anyway. Better for where he was going. He donned it quickly and smoothed the tangled waves of his hair before he reached for his short black cloak—and the packet of papers.
He had to journey to Seething Lane before the day was too far gone.
‘Anna, dearest? Are you well this morning?’
‘Hmm? What did you say, Father?’ Anna asked as she stared out of the window of the dining room. The garden in the morning light, with the slow traffic of Southwark waking up just beyond, seemed so—ordinary. The same trees and overgrown shrubs she saw every day. How had she ever been so carried away by dreams and fantasies in such a place? Even under night’s cover?
It was a terrible, twisting puzzle that had kept her awake until dawn.
‘It’s just that you seem distracted, daughter,’ her father said. ‘You’re about to spill that beer.’
Anna looked down, startled, to see that the pitcher of small beer she was pouring into pottery goblets was indeed about to spill. She quickly put it down on the table, and reached for a cloth to wipe up the last drops.
‘Fie on it all,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry, Father. I suppose I’m just a bit tired today.’
‘Sit down and have some bread,’ Tom said, pushing a platter of bread and cheese across the table to her. ‘I shouldn’t have asked so many people to supper yesterday. We talked too late into the night.’
No, he shouldn’t have asked them, Anna thought as she listlessly poked at a piece of bread. Maybe then she would have spent the evening quietly with her book, not wandering off in dark gardens with Robert Alden, forgetting herself and acting like a fool.
She felt her cheeks turn hot at the memory of their kiss, of the way she’d flung herself onto his lap and held him so tightly, as if she was drowning and only he could save her. But there had been such a feeling of inevitability about it all—like the fate that led characters in a play to their inescapable ends. Something dark and needful had been growing between them for a long time. Something she didn’t understand and didn’t want.
Anna took a long sip of the beer. Perhaps it was best something had happened. Now it was done and past, and they could forget it.
But what if it was not so past? What if it happened again and she found she truly was a strumpet with no control?
She almost laughed at the thought. Strumpet or not, she knew Rob was pursued by so many ladies—Winchester geese and fine Court women alike. She saw them all the time at the White Heron, his admirers clustered around the stage with shining eyes and low-cut bodices. He certainly didn’t need a grey-clad widow like her.
She just had to forget him—put last night’s folly down to a wild dream and move forward. It was as simple as that.
Only that didn’t seem so very simple, even in the hard light of day.
‘We will have a few quiet evenings for a time,’ her father said. ‘No more late dinners. I can meet with the actors at the tavern to read the new plays.’
‘Invite them here whenever you like, Father,’ Anna said. She refilled his goblet, careful not to spill any beer this time. ‘I do not mind.’
‘I don’t want to make more work for you, dearest, not when you do so much already. Perhaps you would like a holiday in the country?’
‘A holiday?’ Anna said, startled. Her father was a London man, born and bred; the dirty water of the Thames was in his blood. He never thought they should go to the country.
‘Aye. You seem to need a rest, and soon the hot weather will be upon us. What if the plague comes again?’
‘It won’t.’ But the country—fresh air and quiet, long walks, space to think, to be. A place away from the theatre and Rob Alden. It sounded quite enticing. But … ‘And I have too much work just now to go away.’
Thomas shrugged. ‘If you say so. But think about it, my dear. We could both use a change of scene—especially right now.’
Anna laughed. ‘You would die of boredom away from London, Father! Why this sudden urge to go to the country?’ A suspicion struck her. ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’
‘Trouble? Certainly not!’ he blustered. But he wouldn’t meet her gaze, and his rough, lined cheeks looked red. ‘Whatever would make you say such a thing? When am I ever in trouble?’
All the time, Anna thought. Southwark was ripe with trouble around every corner—especially for men like her father, who had business concerns in every narrow street and dark corner. Yet he’d never wanted to run away from it before. He seemed to enjoy trouble.
Just as Robert did.
‘I will think about going to the country for a time,’ she said. ‘When business grows slow in the hotter weather. But for now I have things I must do.’
Her father nodded, somewhat mollified. But his face still bore that guilty flush. ‘What are you doing today, my dear?’
‘It’s rent day, and a few tenants are still behind in their payments. I’m going to visit them myself and have a word with them. You must keep a watch on the rehearsal at the White Heron, Father, or they will waste away the whole morning.’
He nodded, but Anna feared he was inclined to laze away the morning with them. She rose from her chair and kissed the top of his balding head. The old rogue—how she loved him, despite everything. He was all she had, her only family, and she was all he had, as well. She had to look out for him.
‘I will be back by afternoon, Father,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’
He reached up to pat her hand. ‘I don’t worry, Anna. Not while you are here.’
Anna left the dining chamber and went up to her room to fetch her hat and shawl. As she pinned the high-crowned grey hat to her neatly coiled hair, she caught a glimpse of her pale face in the small looking glass. Usually she only took a quick look, to be sure she was tidy, but today she looked longer, studied herself.
Her father had always claimed she was pretty because she looked like her mother, but Anna had never thought herself so. She saw the finely arrayed Court ladies, with their golden curls and rouge-pink cheeks, their white bosoms displayed above jewelled bodices. She saw the admiration they gathered from men, and knew she did not resemble them. Her hair, though thick and long, was brown and straight, her eyes too tilted and her chin too pointed. She was pale and thin, her gowns plain grey, as Rob had pointed out. Her lips were fine enough, but were too often pressed thin with worry.
She was not a vivid beauty, likely to catch and hold the eye of a handsome devil like Robert.
‘He must have been very ale-shot last night,’ she said, and jabbed the pin harder into her hat. Perhaps she had been, as well—or at least drunk on the moonlight and on his words, the rare glimpse he’d given her of his past.
But that had been last night. This was today, and she had work to do.
Anna looped her wool shawl over her shoulders and reached for her market basket. Her father was still at the table with his beer when she went downstairs, looking uncharacteristically sad and reflective. Something was happening with him, she was sure of it. But she had no time to puzzle it out now; the mysteries of men would have to wait. She had business of pence and pounds today, and that she could decipher and understand.
Men, she vowed, she would never fathom.
Anna was nearly to Mother Nan’s bawdy house, her first rent-collecting stop of the day, when she caught a sudden glimpse of Rob through the crowd. He was taller than most of the people passing around him, the plumes on his cap waving like a beacon, and her heart suddenly beat faster at the sight of him.
There was no time to prepare herself for seeing him again after last night, and she felt very flustered and uncertain. She hated that feeling. How dared he make her feel so discomposed?
And—and how dared he not even notice her?
As Anna watched him, pressing herself against the whitewashed wall in case he glanced her way, he kept walking quickly on his path, looking neither to the right nor the left but just straight ahead. The people around him, the crowded, quarrelling knots and tangles of humanity, made way for him as naturally as if he was a prince. They didn’t jostle him or grab his arm to entreat him to buy their wares, and no one dared try and rob him. It was extraordinary.
Yet Rob appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. Under the narrow brim of his fine cap his brow was furrowed, his expression dark as a storm cloud. There was not even a hint of reckless laughter about him, only some intense purpose that drove him onward.
Where on earth was he going? Anna was intrigued in spite of herself. In her world it never paid to be curious. Only minding one’s own tasks kept trouble away in this neighbourhood, and not even always then. And Rob always seemed to bring trouble with him.
‘Oh, what am I doing?’ she whispered, but she followed him anyway, as if her feet could no longer obey her. She hurried after him, keeping those plumes in sight as her guide. She had to be very careful not to let him see her.
She had never known Rob to be like this before, so solemn and purposeful, so lost in his own thoughts. Was he in some sort of debt or planning a crime? Or perhaps he was planning to sell his new play right out from under her father’s nose.
They left the most crowded streets behind, leaving the thick knots of people and the busy shops for the pathway that ran alongside the river itself. Luckily there were still enough people gathered there for her to stay out of sight, using them for shields. Boatmen plied their trade, looking for passengers to ferry to the opposite bank, and fishmongers announced their fresh catch.
Robert kept walking, and Anna had to quicken her steps to keep up with him. They passed warehouses, close-packed merchants’ houses, and London Bridge came into view, with the boiled heads of the executed staring down sightlessly at the crush of humanity. Rob started to cross the huge edifice and Anna realised with a sudden cold shock where he was heading—towards the silent stone hulk of the Tower.
Anna shrank back from its tall, thick walls and gates, its waving banners and the guards who patrolled the ramparts. She had never been there herself, but she had heard such terrible tales of what happened behind those blank walls. Pain and blood and fear as could only be faintly imagined in revenge plays were a reality there, and most who were swallowed up by it never returned. Even from where she stood, at a safe distance along the river, she could feel the cold, clammy reach of it.
What business could Rob have there? She could well imagine he would do something to cause his arrest. Actors were always getting into fights and being thrown into gaol, and there had been rumours he had once fetched up in Bridewell. Yet surely no one, not even a bold player like Rob, would voluntarily go near the Tower?
She hurried across the bridge herself and stood up on tiptoe, straining to catch a glimpse of him. She finally saw his plumes again, and to her relief he was not entering the dark environs of the Tower but continuing along the river on the other side. She ran after him, dodging around pedestrians to keep him in her sight as he made his way into the tangle of streets just beyond the Tower’s walls.
He went past more shops and houses, not even glancing at them. Gradually the buildings grew farther apart, with large gardens and empty spaces between them and the road, until he came to what had once been the entrance to an old Carthusian monastery. A vast complex had once lain here, covering many acres and containing churches, dining halls, scriptoriums and butteries and barns. Now there were large homes, quiet and watchful behind their new gates.
At one of them, a tall half-timbered place of solemn, tidy silence and glinting windows, Rob stopped at last. He glanced over his shoulder, and Anna dived into the nearest doorway to stay out of sight. As she peeked out cautiously, he sounded the brass knocker on the heavy iron-bound door. A black-clad manservant, as solemn as the house, answered.
‘He has been expecting you, Master Alden,’ the man said as he ushered Robert inside. The door swung shut, and it was as if the house closed in on itself and Rob was swallowed up by it as assuredly as if it was the Tower itself.
Anna stared at the closed-up structure in growing concern. What was that place? And what business did he have there? She did not have a good feeling about it.
A pale heart-shaped face suddenly appeared at one of the upstairs windows, easing it open to peer down at the street. It was a woman, thin and snow-white, but pretty, her light brown hair covered by a lacy cap and a fine starched ruff trimming her silk gown. The watery-grey daylight sparkled on her jewelled rings.
Anna realized that she recognised the woman. She sometimes visited the White Heron to sit in the upper galleries with her fine Court friends. It was Frances, Countess of Essex—wife of one of the Queen’s great favourites and daughter of the fearsome Secretary Walsingham, whose very name struck terror in everyone in Southwark.
‘Oh, Robert,’ Anna whispered. ‘What trouble are you in now?’
Chapter Six
‘Wait here, if you please, Master Alden,’ the dour manservant said to Rob. He gestured to a bench set against the wall in a long, bare corridor. ‘The Secretary will receive you shortly.’
‘I thought he had long been expecting me,’ Rob said, but the man just sniffed and hurried on his way. Rob sat down on the bench to wait; it was a move no doubt calculated to increase the disquiet any visit to this house in Seething Lane would cause.
He had been here too many times, heard and seen too many things in its rooms and corridors to be too concerned. Still, it was always best to be gone from here quickly.
The house was dark and cool, smelling of fine wax candles, ink, and lemon wood polish. The smooth wooden floors under his feet were immaculately clean, the walls so white they almost gleamed. Lady Walsingham was a careful housekeeper.
Yet underneath there was a smell of something bitter and sharp, like herbal medicines—and blood. They did say Secretary Walsingham was ill—more so after the stresses of the threatened Spanish invasion the year before. But not even the great defeat of the Armada, or this rumoured illness, seemed to have slowed the man at all.
He was as terribly vigilant as ever. No corner of England escaped his net.
And no filament of that net, even one as obscure as Rob, ever escaped, either.
He swept off his cap and raked his hand through his hair. This was the only way he could protect the ones he cared about—the only way he could see them safe. He had always known that. But lately it had become harder and harder.
Especially when he thought of Anna Barrett, and the way she looked at him from her jewel-bright eyes …
‘Master Alden. My father will see you now,’ a woman’s soft voice said.
Rob forced away the vision of Anna and looked up to find Secretary Walsingham’s daughter watching him from an open doorway. Her fine gown and jewels glistened in the shadows.
‘Lady Essex,’ Rob said, rising to his feet to give her a bow. ‘I did not realise you were visiting your family today.’
‘I come as often as I can. My father needs me now.’ She led him down the corridor and up a winding staircase, past the watchful eyes of the many portraits hung along its length. ‘Don’t let him keep you too long. He should rest, no matter how much he protests.’
‘I will certainly be as quick as I can, my lady,’ Rob said. He had no desire to stay in this house any longer than necessary.
She gave him a quick smile over her shoulder. ‘My friends and I did so enjoy The Duchess’s Revenge. We thought it your best work yet.’
‘Thank you, Lady Essex. I’m glad it pleased you.’
‘Your plays always do—especially in these days when distraction is most welcome, indeed. When can we expect a new work?’
‘Very soon, God willing.’ When his work here in Seething Lane had come to an end.
‘Don’t let my father keep you away from it. We’re most eager to see a new play. Always remember that.’ Lady Essex opened a door on the landing and left him there with a swish of her skirts. Rob slowly entered the chamber and shut the door behind him.
It was surprisingly small, this room where so much of England’s business was conducted. A small, stuffy office, plainly furnished, with stacks of papers and ledgers on every surface and even piled on the floor.
Walsingham’s assistant, Master Phellipes—a small, yellow-faced, bespectacled man—sat by the window, with his head bent over his code work. The Secretary himself was at his desk in the corner, a letter spread open before him.
‘Master Alden,’ he said quietly. Walsingham always spoke quietly, calmly, whether he remarked on the weather or sent a traitor to the Tower. ‘Have you any news for us today?’
‘Nothing that can yet be proved,’ Rob answered. ‘But work progresses.’
Walsingham tapped his fingers against the letter, regarding Rob with his red-rimmed, murky eyes. ‘Were you working when you took part in that little disturbance outside the White Heron? A quarrel over a bawd, I hear.’
‘It may have seemed so. I had to come up with a quick excuse to cover my stealing of this.’ Rob took out a small, folded packet of papers and passed it across the desk.
Walsingham glanced at it. ‘A step in the right direction. Yet we still do not have the names of the traitors in Lord Henshaw’s Men. We know only that they pass coded information to Spain’s contacts via plays and such. Surely you are well placed to discover them?’
Rob watched Walsingham steadily. He had no fear of the Queen’s Secretary, for he had never done him double-dealing in his secret work here. But Walsingham held so many lives in his hands, and one slip could mean doom for more than himself. This was Robert’s first task of such magnitude—tracking down a traitor in Tom Alwick’s theatre. It was a change from coding, courier work and fighting. It was a dangerous task on all sides.
He could not fail at it. No matter who was caught in Walsingham’s wide net.
He pushed away the image of Anna’s smile and said, ‘I am close.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Walsingham answered. ‘Phellipes is busily decoding a letter another agent intercepted, which should be of more help to us in this matter. Once we have that information I will send you word. But for now, tell me all your impressions of Lord Henshaw’s Men and their home at the White Heron …’
It was a half hour more before Rob left Walsingham’s house, ushered out through the door by Lady Walsingham herself, whose pale, worried face spoke of her concerns for her husband, working so hard through his illness. Once outside in the lane, he drew in a deep breath. Even the thick, fetid city air of the Tower Ward was better than the dark closeness of the house.
Rob frowned as he thought of Walsingham and Phellipes, bent over endless letters, tracking down traitors among the theatre people he spent his own days with. One of them used his art for a darker purpose, but which one and why? He could not be wrong in this. So very much was at stake.
He put on his cap and turned back towards the river. His thoughts were still in that dark house, and for a moment he didn’t notice the lady lurking across the street. But then a flash of grey, a surreptitious movement, caught his eyes and he swung round with his hand on the hilt of his sword.
To his shock, he saw it was Anna Barrett who tried to duck down a side street out of sight. What was she doing so far from home, so near the lion’s den? What was she looking for—and what did she know?
Rob strode after her, determined to find out.
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