‘Desist, madam!’ Clarendon cried, backing away in alarm; Holles looked on enviously, clearly wishing she would assist him with his hair. The Earl reversed frantically until he reached his desk, and when she followed, he scrabbled about until his groping fingers encountered a quill. He brandished it like a sword, and Chaloner struggled not to laugh aloud.
‘Lock the doors,’ announced the bird. ‘And give us a kiss.’
The Lady giggled, obviously taken with the creature, and Chaloner saw an acquisitive light in her eyes that told him she intended to have it, no matter what she had to do. Temple grimaced at her antics.
Clarendon sneezed a second time, transparently relieved when she turned her predatory attentions to the bird. ‘It is very kind of you, Temple,’ he said weakly. ‘Green is my favourite colour.’
‘I know,’ gushed Temple. ‘It is why I chose it.’
‘It is mine, too,’ said Lady Castlemaine, turning abruptly back to the Earl. He cringed when she walked her fingers up his sleeve towards his shoulder, and shot Holles a look that begged for help. But the soldier was gazing on with a silly smile that said there would be no assistance from that quarter.
‘You cannot have it, My Lady,’ snapped Temple, becoming angry with her. ‘I told you – it is for Lord Clarendon. And why did you come with me anyway? I thought Bristol asked you to stay with him while I completed my business here.’
‘I do what I like,’ she hissed, a little dangerously. She shrugged out of her cloak, letting the garment fall to the floor. Holles made a strangled sound at the back of his throat, and the Earl squeezed his eyes tightly shut. ‘You keep your rooms very well heated, My Lord.’
‘Bugger the bishops,’ announced the bird casually, performing some intriguing acrobatics on the branch that served as its perch. ‘And make way for the Catholics.’
The Earl sneezed a third and a fourth time in quick succession. ‘It has very controversial opinions,’ he said, opening his eyes, but keeping them on Temple.
‘I did not teach it that,’ said Temple uneasily. Lady Castlemaine looked smug.
‘I heard there is a miasma around foreign birds that can prove dangerous to some men,’ she said, brushing imaginary dust from Clarendon’s collar. ‘They start by sneezing, but finish not being able to breathe. It can be fatal, so I am told.’
The Earl jerked away from her, and ink shot from his quill in a long, dark arc across the pale satin of her shift. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said hoarsely.
Lady Castlemaine shrugged, to show she did not care. ‘The King will buy me another. But you are full of surprises today, My Lord. First you punch an elderly Hollander, and now you hurl filth at His Majesty’s favourite companion. Bristol will be intrigued to hear about this particular incident, I am sure. Of course, I shall say nothing, if a parrot comes my way.’
‘Take the bird, woman,’ said Clarendon, scrambling away from her. He turned to Temple, who was regarding him in dismay. ‘The gesture of friendship is deeply appreciated, sir. I shall let it be known what you have done, and perhaps it will help to close this rift between our factions.’
They were obviously dismissed, so Lady Castlemaine grabbed the cage before he could change his mind. Temple trailed after her, his toothless mouth working helplessly as he tried to think of a way to salvage his plan. When the door had closed behind them, Chaloner heard him berating her in a furious whisper. There was a short silence, then a guffaw of genuine mirth when she saw how she had inadvertently foiled his ‘cunning’ attempt to undermine the Earl. The parrot joined in, and their joint cackles echoed away down the corridor.
Clarendon dabbed at his nose and sniffed. ‘I think she may have been right about that miasma. With any luck, it may adversely affect ladies, too.’
Time was passing, but there was still no sign of a surgeon. Chaloner glanced out of the window, and saw Eaffrey strolling arm-in-arm with Behn on the opposite side of the courtyard. He supposed she had not considered Brodrick’s request pressing, and was grateful his was not a genuine emergency.
‘Did you hear about the murder of a man called Webb?’ he asked emerging from his hiding place and going to join Holles and Clarendon at the table. Both had poured themselves large cups of wine after the encounter with Lady Castlemaine, although for completely different reasons.
‘I did,’ said Holles. He went to retrieve her cloak from the floor, and pressed it to his face like a lovesick youth. Almost immediately, he hurled it away from him. ‘Ugh! Onions!’
‘What did you hear?’ asked Chaloner.
‘It is a bad business when a man cannot walk home from his Company dinner without having a rapier plunged into his breast,’ said Holles, sitting down again. ‘Damned shameful.’
The Earl frowned. ‘Are you talking about Matthew Webb? The Guinea merchant?’
Holles nodded. ‘He was stabbed three weeks ago. You knew him, of course, My Lord. He owned the house next to yours on The Strand, and he invited you to dinner once. You declined when you learned his wife was going to be there, too.’
‘The dreadful Silence,’ mused Clarendon. ‘A more misnamed person does not exist. Have you met her, Heyden? She is a pickle-seller’s daughter, and an exceptionally large lady – fatter than me and taller than you – but insists on wearing dresses suitable only for the very slender. And her voice … ’ He trailed off, waving a plump hand, as words failed him.
‘Loud and vulgar,’ elaborated Holles. ‘And she has no sense of occasion. It was her who made that awful faux pas last year at the funeral of Henry Lawes the composer. Everyone talked about it for weeks. Do you remember, Heyden?’
‘No,’ said Chaloner patiently. ‘I was in Holland last year.’
‘So you were,’ said Holles. ‘Well, it was warm for October, and you cannot organise a decent funeral in Westminster Abbey outside a month, so Lawes was … well, suffice to say Silence brayed about the stench all through the service. And then she complained about the choice of anthems.’
‘Unfortunately for her, the music had been specially selected by the King himself,’ said Clarendon. ‘And His Majesty was none too pleased to hear from a pickle-seller that his artistic tastes were lacking. Why are you interested in this, Heyden?’
‘A man called Dillon has been convicted of Webb’s murder,’ explained Chaloner. ‘And I think Dillon might know the beggar who was shot yesterday.’
He could have told the Earl then that the ‘vagrant’ was a surgeon called Fitz-Simons, but he wanted more time to explore the connection before sharing his findings with anyone at White Hall – what the Lord Chancellor did not know, he could not inadvertently reveal to the wrong people.
‘Dillon will hang next Saturday, I believe,’ said Holles. ‘He and two others were sentenced to death, although there were actually nine names on the anonymous letter of accusation that was sent to Bristol.’
‘Bristol!’ spat the Earl, unable to help himself. ‘He probably devised a list of men he does not like and sent it to himself. Why else would he be the recipient of such a missive?’
‘It seems to me that the real question is not who received it,’ said Chaloner, ‘but who sent it.’
‘No one knows who sent it,’ said Holles. ‘And its authorship was discussed at length at the trial, because Dillon argued – not unreasonably – that he should not be convicted on the word of a man unwilling to reveal himself.’
‘You seem to know a lot about this,’ said Clarendon. ‘It sounds as though you were there.’