The Betrayal (5 page)

‘That’s right, Missus. And when we gets back it’ll be too late for vittles, and Matron takes our sixpences off us
and
our new gloves and cloaks, so all we’ll be left with is what we’ve scoffed. If we don’t get nothing here I’ll starve.’

I was about to sympathise when Merryl waved her hand to draw my attention. ‘We are both very cold!’ she hissed at me accusingly, so I quickly bade goodbye to Isabelle, saying that I’d be in the market place the next morning and that we could talk then. ‘I have much to tell you about the queen,’ I said in a low voice.

Isabelle’s eyes gleamed. ‘News of Her Grace? I shall see you tomorrow!’

The little boy pulled at my hand. ‘Are those two girls yours, Missus?’ he said, nodding towards Beth and Merryl.

‘Do I look old enough for that?’ I said, smiling. ‘No, I’m their nursemaid.’

‘And do you all live in a big house together, with their ma and pa and so on?’

‘We do.’

‘Well, ain’t that nice,’ he said, and turning to the girls, he gave a little mock bow in their direction.

I patted his head, forgetting how much little boys hate this and causing him to scowl at me. ‘I hope you get some vittles,’ I said.

I glanced over at the family mourners before I left the church. The two ladies had retired into their carriage but a dozen or so gentlemen – including the imposing Sir Francis – were standing about the newly dug grave while the minister gave his eulogy.

I bade farewell to the goodwife and the girls and I set off for home. I didn’t find out until later that someone was watching intently to see the direction we took …

The next morning, Isabelle heard my story of the queen and Sir Robert Dudley, gasping with surprise all the while.

‘God save us all!’ she said when I’d finished. ‘And what do you think will happen to Sir Robert now?’

‘She’ll take away all his privileges, no doubt. And for sure she’ll ban him and his new wife from Court.’

Isabelle nodded. ‘Perhaps she’ll look again at her list of suitors and choose one to marry to make Sir Robert jealous.’

‘Perhaps she will,’ I agreed. ‘They say foreign princes surround her like bees about a hive.’

‘But do you think she’ll ever marry?’ Isabelle mused. ‘What she seems to enjoy best is having a parade of dashing suitors competing for her attention with expensive presents and jewellery.’

I nodded and could not help but smile, for we were
talking once more of our favourite subject: the queen and her would-be lovers. ‘But once she’s chosen someone, then the compliments and gifts and gee-gaws from all the others will stop coming, and she won’t like that a bit!’

I’d found Isabelle at her usual place in the market, selling onions. There was a wooden crate full of these in front of her, all nicely rounded, looking firm and of a good colour. Behind her, however, there was another crate and some of these were misshapen, some sprouting, some with a greenish tinge. Whenever a housewife stopped in front of the stall, drawn by Isabelle’s strident call of ‘Fresh and strong onions!’, she would proffer one of the good onions to feel and then, if the housewife wanted to buy, serve her from the other box (but with such clever sleight of hand that they did not see that they’d been hoodwinked).

I asked if she’d eaten well at the Walsingham’s funeral breakfast.

‘We did not eat at all,’ she said indignantly. ‘We followed the empty carriage back to the Walsingham estate – ’twas a goodly walk – but were sent packing with our sixpences before we’d hardly glimpsed the house. We went home with empty stomachs!’

‘Then the little boy I spoke to didn’t get his roast swan?’

She shook her head. ‘Someone came along, herded all the Christ’s Hospital children into a cart and took them back to London.’

‘Shame!’

She nodded. ‘Off they went with rumbling stomachs and many complaints.’

‘It must be hard to live in such a place as they do. They can’t get much care and attention.’

‘But ’tis better than being on the streets,’ Isabelle said. ‘Sonny – for that was the name of the boy you spoke to – told me that he’d lived a year or more in an empty beer barrel, coming out to beg his food by day and creeping back into it at night-time.’

I was shocked. ‘Do you think that true, or was he just saying it to gain your sympathy?’

She shook her head. ‘There are many who live like that in London – that and worse. I heard of two sisters who slept all year round on the foreshore of the river and had to move themselves every time the tide came in.’

‘’Tis much harder in a city,’ I conceded. ‘At least a homeless child around here could find a hedge to sleep under, or double up with the animals in a barn.’

A housewife came up to be served and insisted that she be allowed to pick and choose her own onions, so I left Isabelle to it and went home.

There I found Mistress Midge in a high old flap and much more like her usual self, bustling about, swearing under her breath, throwing utensils and crashing pots around for no good reason.

‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘You and I are to go to London the day after tomorrow! Dr Dee has secured
us a place on a hired wherry going downriver, and we are to be taken as far as Puddle Dock – which is supposed to be close to the new lodgings.’

I felt a great surge of excitement.

‘But how we are supposed to get there with all the stuffs we have to take, the Lord only knows. Boxes of books for the master, household pans, linens for the bedchambers and bits of this and that – there is no
end
to it. I don’t know how two bodies can achieve it, indeed I don’t!’

‘What are the lodgings like?’

She shrugged. ‘Shabby, I should say, for no one has lived in them for some time. Someone has offered them to Dr Dee, however, and as long as they are cheap and near enough to Whitehall, that’s good enough.’ She gave a snort of derision. ‘And no matter if we have to work our fingers to the bone scrubbing, scouring, brushing, cleaning and making ready!’

‘When will the family follow us?’

‘Just as soon as we have near-killed ourselves getting things nice, I suppose.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But the mistress has just discovered she’s with child, so she may want to take a little more time about it.’

‘She is
again
with child? But the babe is only …’ I counted on my fingers, ‘four months old.’

‘These things happen.’ She shrugged. ‘And she’s not feeding Arthur herself. That might have safeguarded against another pregnancy.’

‘So that’s why she didn’t seem to recover from her
lying-in,’ I said, for the mistress was weak and had hardly moved from her rooms all the time I’d lived in the house.

‘That will mean two Dee babes with a wet nurse by the end of the year – that won’t be cheap.’

Interesting though this line of conversation was, my main concerns were how I’d fare in London and how quickly I’d see Tomas. ‘How long do you think we’ll stay in the city?’ I asked.

She shrugged again. ‘Lord knows, and the Lord’s not telling. Now where’s that list of things we must take?’

For the rest of that day we were in a rush and a flurry, fetching and carrying things from Dr Dee and the mistress and packing them in boxes. Dr Dee supplied some old documents in order to wrap the kitchen bowls, and I studied them carefully, hoping to see what it was that he and Mr Kelly were continually working on. Not one word could I read, however, for although it was all written in Dr Dee’s neat hand, it was either lists and tables of numbers, or signs and cyphers.

Packing for Dr Dee was especially trying, for as soon as we had several of his great leather-bound volumes carefully wrapped and stowed he’d discover that he needed to consult them, or wanted to change them for others. While Mistress Midge’s lips moved in many a silent oath during these changes I managed to go about my duties smiling, for I was very much looking forward to being in London – especially knowing that for some little time Mistress Midge and I were going to be on our
own. This, of course, would leave me more time to undertake tasks for Tomas.

I’d sewed myself a big cloth bag to keep safe my few possessions: my washing cloths, a comb, a piece of looking-glass mirror, some reddening for my cheeks and lips that Isabelle had given me and a chunk of soap and a towel. I neatly rolled my kirtles and bodices and fitted these in the bag as well, and found room also for a spare petticoat, my house slippers and a pair of high pattens to lift me above the London cobbles (for everyone said that mud and muck lay thick on London streets whether the weather was good or no).

That night, Mr Kelly stayed until very late, he and Dr Dee (I observed from my visits to the library to make up the fires) spending hours over their mathematical tables. By eleven of the clock, however, Mr Kelly went at last to his own lodgings and Dr Dee retired for the night, so I made one last call to the library to damp down the fires and make sure the candles were properly extinguished.

Both fires were still glowing slightly when I went in and there was the moon shining through the end window, so it was not entirely dark. This window was of stained glass, however, and the light it cast blue-tinted and somewhat eerie, causing me to hum a tune under my breath just to prove to myself that I wasn’t afeared.

I’d brought a bucket of wet leaves with me and I
pressed a handful of these on to the first fire to dampen it down, and was about to move to the other when I heard a pattering noise, causing me to down my bucket and lift the skirts of my kirtle immediately. If there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s mice, for I have an irrational fear of them running up between my petticoat skirts and not being able to find their way down again. The pattering turned into a different sound, however, and I stood immobile for a moment, just listening.

I might have supposed it to be something supernatural, seeing as I was in the very heart of a magician’s lair. I did not, however, because I knew a secret about this room: in the large disused fireplace there was a hidey-hole which had been made for the use of Catholic priests after performing an illegal Mass. I’d found it when the girls and I had been playing hide-and-seek, and had actually hidden there myself in order to see the queen when she visited Dr Dee. It was from this direction – the old fireplace – that the sounds were coming from.

I stood very still, waiting, and after a moment a dark, stooped shape appeared in the fireplace opening. This made me fear for an instant – not that it was something supernatural – but that it might be a robber with a knife who could slit me open in a trice and make off with Dr Dee’s valuable things.

Thinking this, I should have screamed and roused the household, but did not, for something told me that this person meant no harm. (Besides, if it was a robber,
it was a very small one.)

I waited until the figure had emerged into the room, then, realising who it was, let out a little gasp of surprise.

The figure started back. ‘Go to, Missus, you gave me a fright!’

‘And you gave
me
a fright!’ I retorted. ‘What are you doing here?’

The small boy before me – Sonny, as Isabelle had named him – scowled at me. His coif was off and his head gleamed in the light from my candle. ‘I’m here because I don’t want to go back to Christ’s Horspiddle. I hates it there.’

‘So you followed me?’

‘Nah. I saw which way you went and I asked your lady-friend what house you lived in. She told me ’twas the magician’s house.’

I looked at him severely. ‘And then?’

‘Well, when the cart came for us to go back, I hid. No one missed me. Then I just asked about till I found me way here.’ His shoulders sagged and he gave me a forlorn look, such as I’d seen beggars on the streets give. ‘I thought, there’s a kind gel there, one who’d give a poor boy an ’ome.’

I ignored this blatant attempt to gain my sympathy. ‘But how did you get in without anyone seeing you?’

‘I bunked in through the kitchen window late last night. No one saw me ’cept the monkey – and he’s not telling.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘Had summat to eat from the larder, then walked about the house for a bit and found this little hidey-hole. I been here all day. I went to sleep while those old coves were talking on and on.’ He gestured around at the contents of the library. ‘And ain’t this a right queer set-up?’