not need to tell her what you found in that chamber. But we owe it to her to reveal we have this prize.’
Reluctantly, the spy nodded. ‘Very well. Break the cipher. Then I will do whatever is necessary to oppose this plot. I have a stain upon my mind that I can only expunge with honest toil, and if it costs me my life, so be it.’
The young man studied the older, and felt a wave of compassion. Never would he have imagined seeing the arrogant, unpleasant spy brought so low. He was interrupted by a knock at the door.
‘Grace,’ Nathaniel said, answering the door to find his friend waiting there. ‘We were just talking about you.’
The young woman stepped in and looked from one man to the other. ‘I confess, I saw Master Strangewayes making his way here. How are you, Tobias? I have missed you.’
The red-headed man looked surprised by her comment, but forced a weak smile. ‘It is good to see you too, Grace.’
Nathaniel closed the door and ushered the woman to the table. ‘You will not believe this. We have the play. Finally. Master Strangewayes recovered it from Master Cockayne’s chamber.’
Grace gave a strange smile.
The door swung open. Nathaniel spun round. ‘We are uncovered.’
The spy leapt to his feet, drawing his rapier.
In stepped Grace, another Grace, her face flushed, her brow knitted. ‘Now we shall have a reckoning,’ she hissed.
Before the two men could move, the newly arrived Grace strode across the chamber and grabbed her counterpart, throwing her against the wall. Snatching a candlestick from the mantelpiece, the furious young woman swung it with force at the temple of her rival. The first Grace slumped to the rushes, unconscious.
Nathaniel and Strangewayes gaped. Before either of them could make sense of what they had witnessed, another figure slipped into the room and closed the door.
‘What a merry dance,’ Red Meg O’Shee said with a sly smile. ‘There have been fools aplenty in these fun and games, but now we start to peel away the masks.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
‘I WANT TO SEE WILL SWYFTE’S BLOOD WASHING ACROSS THE quayside and into the filthy Thames,’ Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, announced from his commanding view over the legal quays. Dressed in his favourite white and gold doublet, he stood on the roof of a carriage surrounded by fifteen spies, one hand on his rapier. ‘By this day’s end, the man who was once England’s greatest spy will be dead.’
The air was thick with the stink of pitch from the barrels along the quayside, but behind it floated the sharp smell of cloves and the sticky aroma of cinnamon from the spice ships. Shielding his eyes against the morning sun glinting off the glassy, slow-moving river, Devereux surveyed the forest of masts that obscured the north bank. Only the grey Kentish stone bulk of the Tower of London loomed above the long queue of ocean-going vessels waiting for a free berth. Almost a hundred stretched prow to stern, from the shadow of London Bridge past St Katharine’s, bobbing in the gentle breeze.
Though London was still subdued under the yoke of the plague, the legal quays were throbbing with the yells and shanties of seamen and dockworkers, the slap of sailcloth and the creak of rigging, and the hammer of wooden mallets where hasty repairs were being carried out. Customs men buzzed back and forth assessing the cargo that had been landed from the foreign ships.
Swyfte had chosen his arrival point well, the Earl thought with a nod. In that hive of busyness, the spy could lose himself in the throng of sea-dogs shuffling towards the crowded ale-houses on the river bank, or in the jam of merchants’ carts, or the groups of cat-calling doxies seeking trade.
Devereux smiled to himself. Swyfte thought himself clever, but this time he had met his match.
Leeman, a plump, red-faced spy with a missing eye, clambered on to the seat of the carriage, wheezing. ‘All the cut-throats are where they need to be. I told ’em, not a penny until they brought Swyfte to us. Dead. You are still certain of that, sir?’
‘We take no chances, Master Leeman. Swyfte has proved himself a cunning dog. You would not want his sword between your shoulder blades, no?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then dead it is.’
The Earl brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead, reflecting on the curious change that had come over his Queen. A passing thing, he was sure. He watched the barrels being unloaded along the wharf while