In a Treacherous Court (8 page)

The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier:
Not to renn, wrastle, leape, nor cast the stone or barr with men of the Countrey, except he be sure to gete the victorie.

Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman:
To be esteamed no lesse chast, wise and courteous, then pleasant, feat conceited and sober.

S
usanna and Parker stood before the Boar’s Head public house. It looked warm and inviting, especially now the snow had started. Thick, fat flakes drifted down, each feather-light touch to her cheeks and neck an icy kiss as they melted on her skin.

“The vestry business of St. Michael’s is conducted in a tavern?” she asked Parker dubiously.

He slanted her a look, still barely controlling his anger at the latest attempt on her life. She suspected he blamed it on her. “St. Michael’s is the livery church of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers. The company prefers meeting here with the parish priests. It’s warmer than the vestry and there is more space.”

He looked up and down Crooked Lane and, satisfied the street was clear of assassins for the time being, opened the heavy wooden door of the tavern.

Susanna stepped forward, but he shook his head. “They could have someone planted in the Boar’s Head, for all I know.” There was an edge to his voice, sharp as a stiletto.

If there was someone biding his time on the other side of the door, waiting to kill her, she felt sorry for him. Parker would show no mercy, parish priests as an audience or no. The veneer of civility, the fine outer layer of the courtier, had been worn down. Worn through. The real Parker lurked just below the surface.

She shivered, and this time it wasn’t because of the snow.

She noticed a flick of his right hand, and saw his blade drop into his palm before he stepped inside.

He held the door for her, but his eyes swept the room.

“Master Parker!”

The priest who hailed him was sitting at a long table with eight or nine other men. All had tankards of ale and bread and cheese before them. A large wooden bowl of apples had been pushed to one side, their red-green skins like gems against the black clerical robes. A fire roared in a massive fireplace behind them.

Susanna sighed. This was a scene she did not need to subvert. Priests sitting easily with a group of plumbers in a pub—it was perfect.

“Father Haden.” Parker made his way to the priest, his hand firmly on Susanna’s arm.

She smiled at them all, holding the painting as it would be firmly in her mind.

“Who is this lovely lady with you, Parker?” Another priest, his light blue eyes glinting in the glow of the fire, stood and bowed to her. The other men followed his lead with a scrape of chairs.

“We don’t see him for weeks on end, and then he appears with a beauty on his arm. Ho-ho, Parker, you are a dark one.” The man who spoke was no priest. Susanna could tell by his clothes and his hands, which had seen enough hard labor to scar and mark them. She placed him in the painting, leaning on his elbows, his head thrown back in a laugh, his hands resting easily on either side of his mug.

“Gentlemen.” Parker bowed, showing no reaction to the lighthearted teasing. “Father Haden, if we may have a private word?”

A look passed among the men, and they sat again, watching Parker carefully, their faces alight with curiosity about Susanna.

Father Haden rose slowly under the weight of his old bones, and Parker drew him aside. “I would present Mistress Susanna Horenbout, Father. She is the King’s painter, newly come from Ghent.”

“Horenbout?” Father Haden cast her a swift glance. His body was bent with age, but his energy was undiminished. A lively fire burned in his dark brown eyes, and his white hair, though clipped into submission, looked as though it had a life of its own. “I have heard of Horenbout. Gerard Horenbout
painted the portraits of the King for the glass windows at St. Nicholas in Calais.”

“You have seen them, sir?” Susanna asked him.

“Aye. I made a small journey some years ago.”

“Gerard Horenbout is my father.”

“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, mistress.”

Parker’s mouth was a hard line. He was clearly impatient to get on, to take action. And he could take no action unless she was safe.

“There is something afoot at court, Father.” Parker’s voice dropped so low, both Susanna and the priest had to lean forward to hear him. “Mistress Horenbout has been caught up in it, and the King has set me the task of ensuring her safety.”

Father Haden kept silent, waiting for Parker to explain.

“An attack was made on her in my own courtyard not two hours past, and I have a suspicion who it may have been. But I cannot leave her alone again, and I ask if she can be part of your company in the tavern this afternoon.”

“We are not trained soldiers, Parker.”

Parker shrugged. “There are ten of you. And some of the plumbers are able enough. Master Selby alone would give an attacker pause.”

“Surely you have the full guard of the King at your disposal?”

“Aye. And not a one could I trust in this matter.”

Father Haden looked grave. “That is the way of it, then?” He watched Parker’s face, then gave a decisive nod. “Of course Mistress Horenbout is welcome to sit with us.”

“Father.” Susanna placed a hand on the old priest’s arm. “Would it be rude of me to paint you instead? You make such a wonderful scene, all sitting at the table.”

Father Haden laughed. “Well now, I never would have said we were pretty as a picture. But if that is what you want.”

She nodded, her hand already inside her bag, touching the small oak panel within. She had not known what to expect in England on her arrival, had not known if the King would require immediate work, so she had a panel already primed and plenty of ground pigment for her paints.

“I can see the light of inspiration in your eyes, Mistress Horenbout. And I am not one to stand in its way. Let me introduce you to the others, and then you can begin painting some old men at rest.”

As he took her arm, Parker reached out and held her shoulder. “Do not leave the tavern. For any reason. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Take care.” Susanna touched his hand with a light brush of her fingertips, and blinked at the spark she felt. She saw something flare deep in Parker’s eyes, then deepen even more when he noticed her reaction.

Parker took a step back, and her hand fell to her side. “It is not I who needs to be on guard today,” he answered, his voice rough. He sketched a salute to the priest, then dipped a quick bow to the rest of the table.

As he walked toward the door, Susanna noticed the blade had never left his hand.

T
he docks. It kept leading back to the docks. His old haunting ground.

Parker counted the connections as he dodged a cart piled with fish, the cartman swearing as he strained to push it over the potholes in the cobbled street. First Harvey, a merchant and spy who’d gleaned most of his secrets in harbor taverns. Then Eric’s man, the mysterious dockhand. And now Gripper.

Halfway through Susanna’s description of the attack, Parker had known it was Gripper. It had to be.

The worm would expect Parker to come after him, and would be hiding in the darkest sewer he could find.

And Parker knew just where that sewer was. He’d hidden there himself a time or two. Before fate had intervened and taken him from pauper to gentleman. One of the King’s new men, as Norfolk contemptuously called them. No pedigree but their own efficiency and intelligence.

Parker thought there could be no higher compliment—not that Norfolk had the wit to realize it.

“Master Parker. Roughin’ it, are ye? Miss the stews?”

Parker stopped short and turned to the figure huddled against a wooden warehouse wall. She was wrapped in so many rag layers, she resembled a hessian sack. “Mistress Goodnight.” Parker bowed, and heard the old crone cackle with delight. “I would hardly call the docks the stews.”

“Then ye’d be blind.” She shuffled away from the wall and
hunched as the wind tugged at her wrappings. “Lookin’ for Gripper?”

Parker hid his reaction, but he couldn’t fool her. There was a gleam of triumph in Gladys Goodnight’s eyes.

“Naught c’n get a fright into that lump like you, Master Parker. And he ran like the six divils of hell were after him when he came past.”

Parker nodded slowly in understanding. “Clutching a cloak in his hand?”

“Ye always was a quick ’un, Parker. Aye, winter is that bitter and I’m not for much longer lest something changes. Like I gets me a new cloak.”

Parker slipped a hand into his money pouch and brought out a sovereign.

Gladys squawked like a chicken. “Just the cloak’ll do it.”

“The cloak
and
this, Mistress Goodnight. My business with Gripper is … urgent.”

“Eh?” For the first time, Gladys looked worried. “You ain’t going to really kill ’im, is yer?”

Parker shrugged. He wouldn’t lie. Killing Gripper would be more satisfying than a shipload of new crossbows.

“Thing is …” Gladys shuffled on the spot. “I can’t be party to killin’ one o’ their own, Parker. They’d be stickin’ the knife in me ’fore your back is turned.”

“They?”

“Strange sorts around the docks these days. ’Tain’t wise to provoke ’em.” Gladys sniffed, then wiped her nose on a filthy sleeve. “Ruthless, they are.”

“And Gripper is in league with them?” The freezing wind seemed to claw into his bones, but he waited patiently.

Gladys laughed. “You always spoke fancy, even when you spent yer afternoons here as a lad, but now you’re right royalty. Gripper’s in league wif ’em, all right. In league.” She sniggered.

“So where is he?”

Gladys weighed the scales, and must have decided Parker wouldn’t kill Gripper. “Hidin’ in back o’ the Squealin’ Pig.”

Well, well, well. Gripper had changed his hidey-hole—from a sewer to a pub that served the contents of a sewer.

Parker turned on his heel, lifting his hand in a wave of thanks. He hadn’t seen Gripper in—could it be nearly a year? He’d been busier for the King than he’d realized. And that old life was slipping away.

It hadn’t been much of a life. He hadn’t fitted in on the docks, either. He’d been from too good a family.

Parker would have smiled at the irony, but the wind had frozen his face to stone.

He ducked around the corner of the Squealing Pig and made his way up the dank alley that ran between it and a warehouse storing cured hides, by the stink of it.

The back door to the Squealing Pig was propped open with a half-brick, just enough to let out the steam and smoke from the cooking without losing too much of the heat.

Parker stepped inside, taking it all in at once. There was a clatter of dishes to the left and the vibrating twang of spoons against copper pots. He saw two girls and an old woman stirring
stew and stacking bowls. Gripper wasn’t in sight, and Parker eased along the wall, as yet unseen.

There was a door off the kitchen, partly open, and as he drew closer Parker could hear the buzz of conversation from within.

Nothing like the advantage of surprise.

He gripped his blade and exploded into the room. The door bounced off the wall and slammed closed behind him.

Gripper and two other men looked up at him from a small table, eyes wide. Parker reached forward and grabbed Gripper, lifting him from his chair and snaking his arm forward so his knife came to rest on the left side of Gripper’s throat, just under his ear.

“Good day, Gripper.”

Gripper went stiff with fear. “Parker.”

“Now, why are you holed up in a tavern playing one-and-thirty when you should be on your knees in church after what you got up to today, eh?”

“I’m that sorry, Parker,” Gripper whined, glancing across to his companions, who now stood huddled against the far wall of the tiny closet.

Parker smiled. He had Gripper in an extremely difficult position.

He couldn’t apologize to Parker without losing face. But Parker’s knife was digging into the soft skin under his chin.

Parker waited to see what he would do.

“Let my friends go, at least,” Gripper said at last.

“So they can call reinforcements? I don’t think so, Gripper.” Parker applied a slight pressure to the knife.

“Ow. No. What do you want?”

“You have done some stupid things through the years, Gripper, but attacking someone under my protection on my own property?”

Gripper swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the sharp edge of the blade. “I had no choice.” His voice was a whisper, and Parker bent to hear him better. “Someone needed her dead, and I knew the lay o’ the land.”

“Why do they need her dead, Gripper?”

Gripper was silent, his eyes closed, his body trembling.

He wasn’t going to answer.

He’d given himself up for dead at Parker’s hand, which told Parker he’d decided he was a dead man either way, and Parker’s way would be the less painful one.

Parker pushed the thirst for revenge aside. He’d love to put the worm out of his misery, but they’d keep sending people to kill Susanna. Until he knew why, he couldn’t make it stop. And for all his vigilance, someone just might get lucky.