in detail what would be required of me in Walsingham’s service and the rewards I could expect.
It meant a new life for me. I traveled to Paris and to Rheims, traveled into danger to gather names of those Catholics who spoke of returning to England, of working to return England to the Catholic fold, and also those who whispered of the Queen of Scots. Until now I had been largely untouched by the religious fervor that swirled through the University, and I told myself that it mattered little to me what happened to the men whose names I so callously dropped into the Secretary’s ear, men whose trust I abused. What mattered was the coin in my pocket, the food in my stomach, and the fine clothing on my back.
I had my portrait painted. I looked every inch the gentleman, I thought, in my new slashed doublet, made new for me and trimmed with gilt buttons, my falling band and cuffs of cobweb lawn, my left hand tucked carefully away to hide my ink-stained fingers. But when the painter, had asked me for a motto to inscribe the work, I had found myself unable to stop laughing, laughter tinged with hysteria. “Quod me nutrit me destruit!” I had gasped: That which feeds me, destroys me. And then later, standing before the Masters, resplendent in my new affluence, to be told that my degree was to be withheld from me, on the grounds that I was one of these selfsame religious maniacs with whom I had associated only upon Walsingham’s request! It was not to be borne! Within two months I had, by the Council’s own demand, been granted my degree. I spurned the expected Holy Orders (a fine divine I would make!) and took London by storm with my play Tamburlaine.
It was yet twilight when I arrived at Crosby Place, still brooding upon my meeting with Poley. The steward, still after all these weeks looking somewhat askance at the raffish poet and playwright, brought me wine in the little study where I had first met Nicolas. There was a fog rising and the night air was chill. I was glad of the fire and, gazing intently at it, did not hear Rózsa come in. She dropped down beside my chair, the firelight through her hair, turning it to burnished bronze.
“You are troubled, my love?” She refilled my cup and rested her hand on my knee while I drained it, then filled it again. “You will be drunk, Kit,” she added.
“I mean to be,” I said shortly. She let her resting hand trace the muscle on the inside of my thigh, moving slowly higher. “Only, perhaps, not just yet?” she said slyly, licking her lips and smiling sideways up at me. I laughed despite myself.
“Wanton! Are you never satisfied?” She stood and pulled me to my feet, and still holding my hands, led me up the stairs to her chamber. I collapsed on the bed and let her undress me, my mind blessedly muddled from the wine I’d tossed into my empty belly. I vaguely realized that she was tying me to the bed-frame and before I could muster a protest she had done. I was tied securely but not uncomfortably, spread-eagled; I felt a shiver of alarm growing in the pit of my stomach, matched by a growing excitement, and I raised my head to try to grin at her. “What—” I started, but she, smiling dreamily, placed her fingers over my lips then trailed her hand slowly over my chin and throat, down my chest. “Trust me,” she murmured.
That night she taught me much about my body’s responses, things I would have once delighted to share with Tom. Time and again she brought me to the point, then paused to let the passion recede, only to build it again to an ever higher pitch. When she finally bestrode me, her cool body enveloping my fevered flesh, I wanted to scream with the release, and then again when her sharp teeth sank into my throat, and the familiar ecstasy drowned me.
I was roused sometime later by a discreet knock on the door and found I was free. Rózsa answered the knock and brought the delivered tray to the bed, whereupon I raised myself on one elbow and reached for the wine. She poured my glass full, then began feeding me with finger-sized strips of tender, rare roast beef and fritters of young sorrel leaves. I reached out to her, and