Gifford smiled thinly. “Perhaps. I would like to be of use to someone. I have no particular passion for the Catholic faith, my family notwithstanding, and I judge your cause to be in the ascendent. Though perhaps my willingness to switch sides is reason enough for you not to trust me. I am no ideologue for anyone’s faith, yours included.”
“I deal with men of the world as much as with ideologues.”
“I am glad to hear it. So that is my situation: I was sent to find some way to restore secret communications for Mary Stewart, so that her allies here and abroad might be able to plot her release once more. If you wish to block that communication, you can stop me easily enough — but then they will find someone else.”
“Whereas if I make use of you, I will know what is being said.”
“Assuming, of course, that I am the only courier, and not sent to distract you from the real channel of communication.”
The two men sat silently, watched by the third, while the fire crackled and gave out its warmth. There was no illusion of warmth between Walsingham and Gifford — but there was opportunity, and in all likelihood both preferred that to warmth.
“You have been publicly arrested,” Walsingham said at last. “What will you tell Morgan?”
“He’s a Welshman. I will tell him I told you that I came here to advance the interests of the Welsh and English factions against the Jesuits.”
“Whereupon I, favoring any sort of internal strife among my enemies, released you to proceed about that business.”
Gifford smiled mockingly.
Walsingham weighed him for a long moment, his shrewd eyes unblinking. At last he said, “You will keep me informed as you make contact with the Queen of Scots, so that we may devise a way to keep her correspondence under our eye.” He took up the letter from Morgan and passed it back to Gifford. “Go to Finch Lane, near Leadenhall Market. There is a man there named Thomas Phelippes. You will give him this letter, and keep in his company until I send you onward. The delay will not be remarked; the Scottish woman’s residence is being moved, and until it is settled once more no one will expect you to contact her. Phelippes will return the letter to you when you go.”
Gifford accepted the letter and tucked it away. “May this be profitable to us both.”
But when they released him, he did not proceed as instructed to Leadenhall. The time for that would come, but he had other business first.
The house he sought out stood hard by the fishy stench of Billingsgate, but despite its location, its windows and doors were boarded up. By the time he arrived there, he had shaken off the Secretary’s men who had been following him, and so he entered the tiny courtyard alone.
Dusk was falling as he knelt with fastidious care on the ground and ran his long fingers around the edge of one flagstone. With a small grimace of effort, he pried it from its rest, revealing not dirt beneath, but a vertical passage, with a ladder propped against one wall. When the flagstone settled back into place above him he reached out, found smooth stone, and laid his lips on it in a grudging kiss.
A whisper of sound as the stone shifted, and a rush of cool light.
He stepped through into a place which both was and was not beneath the courtyard of the house near Billingsgate. As he did so, the last vestiges of the facade that was Gilbert Gifford fell away, and with a disturbingly fluid shrug, a new man revealed himself.
He had cut it very fine; much longer and his protection would have faded. He had underestimated how cursedly slow travel could be, when confined to slogging along ordinary roads on ordinary horses, and food not specifically given in offering did nothing to maintain his facade. But he had reached the Onyx Hall in safety, and he could explain away his delay in getting to Phelippes.
First, he would report to his Queen.
With one last rippling shiver that shook off the lingering stain of humanity, Ifarren Vidar set off deeper into the Onyx Hall, to tell of his work against the Scottish woman, and to prepare himself for more time spent imprisoned in mortal guise.
RICHMOND PALACE, RICHMOND: March 6, 1590
The draca was not the only fae around Elizabeth’s court. Lune was the only one living as a human, but others came and went, to gather secrets, visit lovers, or simply play tricks. Sometimes she knew of their presence; other times she did not.
But she assumed, even before she left the Onyx Hall to lay the groundwork for Anne Montrose’s entrance, that someone had been set to watch her. With the endless peregrinations of Elizabeth’s court, it was necessary; they could not spend more than a month or two in one residence before it became fouled by habitation, and the Queen’s whim could send everyone packing on a moment’s notice. The sprites and goblins assigned to bring Lune bread on Fridays had to know where to find her.
That was hardly the watcher’s only purpose, though. She never let herself forget that someone else was reporting back on her actions.
Since Vidar’s appearance at Hampton Court, Lune had conducted herself with even more care than usual. Her ostensible purpose there was to monitor Walsingham and gain access to him via Deven, but she might at a moment’s notice be asked to take action on the Irish affair. A less subtle fae might charm one or more courtiers into behaving as desired; Lune knew her value lay in her ability to work through human channels. Invidiana did not want her influence over the mortal court betrayed by indiscreet use of faerie magic.
So she gathered secrets, and tallied favors, and waited to see what would happen, one eye ever on the few tiny scraps of information about her own court she was able to glean from her contacts.
The draca in the river was useful. Water spirits were often garrulous, and this one was no exception; it might not have access to the daily life of the Onyx Court — it never went past the submerged entrance in the harbor of Queenhithe — but it spoke to other water-associated fae, and even (it claimed) to the Thames itself, which was the lifeblood of London. More news came its way than one might expect. When surprisingly warm and sunny weather descended on them one afternoon, Anne Montrose persuaded the countess to go out along the river, and Lune spent nearly an hour talking to the draca, learning what it knew.
When Elizabeth summoned the countess to attend her at Richmond, the draca followed them downriver. Lune never used it to send word to Vidar and Invidiana, but one blustery day in March, the draca gave her a warning: Vidar himself would bring her bread that night.
Lune was not surprised — she had expected she might see him again, given the apparent importance of Ireland to both courts at present — but she might have been startled, if she came upon him unawares. She thanked the draca, rewarded it with a gold earring purloined from the countess, and went about her business as if nothing were unusual.
Someone was always watching.
Richmond was smaller, and more difficult to sneak around in. Lune left the countess’s chamber well in advance of her appointed rendezvous, and sacrificed her careful illusion of Anne Montrose for the purpose of disguise. It was possible to turn mortal eyes away, but tiring; far easier to appear as someone who had a right to be up and about, even at odd hours. A servant of the household in this part of the palace; a man-at-arms in that part, though she impersonated men badly and would not have wanted to attempt a conversation as one.
One careful stage at a time, she made her way outside and into the night.
When at Hampton Court, she met her courier along the river; here, the appointed meeting place lay within the shadows of the orchard. She ducked beneath the drooping, winter-stripped branches of a willow and, straightening, discarded her appearance of mortality entirely.