He remained motionless for a few breaths, and she wondered if he would try to extort some further service out of her. But then he moved, and drew from inside his cloak a small bundle of velvet.
Holding it just short of her extended hand, Vidar said, “I want to see you eat it now.”
“Certainly,” Lune replied, easily, with just a minor note of surprise. It made no difference to her; adding a week of protection now would not negate the remnant she still enjoyed. Vidar must suspect her of hoarding the bread, instead of eating it. Which she had done, a little, but only with great care. The last thing she wanted was to see her glamour destroyed by a careless invocation to God.
The bread this time was coarse and insufficiently baked. Whether Vidar had chosen it from among the country tithes, or Invidiana had, or someone else, it was clear the chooser meant to insult her. But it did the job whether it was good bread or bad, so Lune swallowed the seven doughy bites, if not with pleasure.
The instant she was done, Vidar straightened. “There will be a draca in the river from now on. If anything of immediate import develops, inform it at once.”
This time Lune failed to completely hide her surprise, but she curtsied deeply. “As my lord commands.”
By the time she straightened, he was gone.
RICHMOND PALACE, RICHMOND: March 3, 1590
As much as Deven would have liked to present Walsingham with a stunning revelation set in gold and decorated with seed pearls, after a fortnight of investigating the Irish question, he had to admit defeat.
It wasn’t that he had learned nothing; on the contrary, he now knew more than he had ever expected to about the peculiar subset of politics that revolved around their neighbor island to the west. Which included a great deal about the Irish Earl of Tyrone, and the subtleties of shiring Ulster; there were disputes there going back ages, involving both Sir John Perrot and the current Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam.
But it all added up to precisely nothing Walsingham would not have known already.
So Deven laid it out before his master, hoping the Principal Secretary would make something of it he could not. “I will keep listening,” he said when he was done, and tried to sound both eager and determined. “It may be there is something I have missed.”
For this conference he had been permitted into Walsingham’s private chambers for the first time. They were not particularly splendid; Deven knew from Beale the financial difficulties the Principal Secretary faced. He had understood from his earliest days at court that many people there were in debt, but the revelation of Walsingham’s own finances had disabused him of any lingering notion that the heaviest burdens lay on ambitious young men such as himself. A few hundred pounds owed to a goldsmith paled into insignificance next to tens of thousands of pounds owed to the Crown itself.
Of course, Elizabeth herself was in debt to a variety of people. It was the way of the world, at least at court.
But Walsingham did not live in penury, either. His furnishings were understated, like his clothing, but finely made, and the chamber was well lit, both from candles and the fire burning in the hearth to drive away the damp chill. Deven sat on a stool near that fire, with Walsingham across from him, and waited to see if his master saw something he did not.
Walsingham rose and walked a little distance away, hands clasped behind his back. “You have done well,” he said at length, his measured voice giving nothing away. “I did not expect you to discover so much about Tyrone.”
Deven bent his head and studied his hands, running his thumb over the rough edge of one fingernail. “You knew about these matters already.”
“Yes.”
He could not entirely suppress a sigh. “Then what was the purpose? Simply to test me?”
Walsingham did not respond immediately. When he did, his voice was peculiarly heavy. “No. Though you have, as I said, performed admirably.” Another pause; Deven looked up and found the Principal Secretary had turned back to face him. The firelight dancing on his face made him look singularly unwell. “No, Michael — I was hoping you might uncover something more. The missing key to a riddle that has been troubling me for some time.”
The candor in his voice startled Deven. The admission of personal failure, the use of his given name — the choice of this chamber, rather than an office, to discuss the matter — Beale had said before that Walsingham had an occasional and surprising need to confide in others about sensitive matters. Others that included Beale.
Others that had not, before now, included Deven.
“Fresh eyes may sometimes see things experienced ones cannot,” he said, hoping he sounded neither nervous nor intrusive.
Walsingham held his gaze, as if weighing something, then turned away. His hand trailed over a chess set laid out on a table; he picked up one piece and held it in his hand, considering. Then he set it down on a smaller table next to Deven. It was a queen, the black queen. “The matter of the Queen of Scots,” he said. “Who were the players in that game? And what did they seek?”
The non sequitur threw Deven for a moment — from Ireland to Scotland, with no apparent connection. But he was accustomed by now to the unexpected ways in which Walsingham tested his intelligence and awareness, so he marshaled his thoughts. The entire affair had begun when he was very young — possibly before, depending on how one counted it — and had ended before he came to court, but the Scottish queen had more influence on English policy than most courtiers could aspire to in their lives, and her echoes were still felt.
“Mary Stewart,” he said, picking up the chess piece. It was finely carved from some wood he could not identify, and stained dark. “She should be considered a player herself, I suppose. Unless you would call her a pawn?”
“No one who smuggled so many letters out through the French embassy could be called a pawn,” Walsingham said dryly. “She had little with which to fill her time but embroidery and scheming, and there must be limits to the number of tapestries and cushions a woman can make.”
“Then I’ll begin with her.” Deven tried to think himself in her place. Forced to abdicate her throne and flee to a neighboring country for sanctuary — sanctuary that became a trap. “She wanted… well, not to be executed, I imagine. But if we are considering this over a longer span of time, then no doubt she wished her freedom from confinement. She was imprisoned for, what, twenty years?”
“Near enough.”
“Freedom, then, and a throne — any throne, from what I hear. English, Scottish, probably French if she could have got it back.” Deven rose and crossed to the chessboard. If Walsingham had begun the metaphor, he would continue it. Selecting the white queen, he set her down opposite her dark sister. “Elizabeth, and her government. They — you — wished security for the Protestant throne. Against Mary as a usurper, but there was a time, was there not, when she was considered a possible heir?”
Walsingham’s face was unreadable, as it so often was, particularly when he was testing Deven’s understanding of politics. “Many people have been so considered.”
He hadn’t denied it. Mary Stewart had Tudor blood, and Catholics considered Elizabeth a bastard, incapable of inheriting the throne. “But it seems she was a greater threat than a prospect. If I may be so bold as to say so, my lord, I think you were one of the leading voices calling for her removal from the game.”
The Principal Secretary did not say anything; Deven had not expected him to. He was already considering his next selection from the chessboard. “The Protestant faction in Scotland, and their sovereign, once he became old enough to rule.” The black king went onto the table, but Deven placed him alongside the white queen, rather than the black. “I do not know James of Scotland; I do not know what love he may bear his late mother. But she was deposed by the Protestant faction, and branded a murderess. They, I think, did not love her.”