Lune took advantage of the pause to reach for her own wine and conceal her face behind the rim. Madame Malline was staring into the fire, clearly working through the ramifications of this. Searching for a way to turn it to the benefit of the Cour du Lys. They had their own conflicts with Spain, with Italy, with heathen fae across the Mediterranean Sea.
Surely Madame Malline could work out why Lune would fear Invidiana’s retaliation, once she had spoken.
The French elf’s eyes finally moved back to Lune’s face. “I see,” the ambassador said, her voice slightly breathless. “I thank you, Lady Lune. Your Queen has listeners on this room, of course, but I have paid them off. For your honesty, I will do more than have you freed; I will also protect you from her retaliation. She will hear from her spies that you told me a persuasive lie. I cannot promise it will be enough, but it is all I may do.”
Lune smoothed the lines of worry from her own face. Rising from her seat, she curtsied to the envoy. “You have my most humble thanks, madame ambassadrice.”
THE STRAND, OUTSIDE LONDON: April 13, 1590
The list Beale gave Deven was depressingly short.
Gilbert Gifford had been granted a handsome pension of a hundred pounds a year for his work in passing along the letters of the Queen of Scots, but Thomas Phelippes had reported more than two years ago that he’d been arrested by French authorities and slung in prison. So far as Beale knew, Gifford was still there. By all accounts, he was as untrustworthy and mercenary a man as Walsingham had ever hired; rumors said he’d later tried to arrange Elizabeth’s murder with Mendoza, the former Spanish ambassador to England. He might well have been serving another master. But Deven could not very well question him when he was in a French jail. And his cousin among the Gentlemen Pensioners, though a dubious character in his own right, was not useful to Deven.
Henry Fagot was another informer Walsingham had suspected of coming too easily to hand, but he was even less accessible than Gifford; no one knew who he had been. He had passed information out of the French embassy some six or seven years before, but hid behind a false name. The potential suspects, of course, were long gone from England.
And those were his two strongest prospects. From there, the list degenerated even more. Some individuals were dead; others were gone; others weren’t individuals at all, but rather suspicions of “someone in the service of Lord and Lady Hereford,” or leads even less concrete than that.
This was the information Walsingham had not given him, for fear of prejudicing his mind and leading his thoughts down paths others had already explored. Having considered it, Deven had to agree; the past would not give him the answer. He had to look at the present. If Walsingham was right, and the player was still active, with a hand in the Irish situation… a great many ifs, as Beale said. But what other lead could he follow?
Nothing save his suspicions about Walsingham’s death. And Beale had argued well against those.
Carrying a message from a council meeting at Somerset House to St. James’ Palace, his cloak pulled tight around him in feeble protection against a driving rainstorm, Deven abruptly remembered Beale’s words.
“I know it would be easier to believe that someone poisoned or cursed Sir Francis…”
Poison, no. But Deven could think of at least one man who might have the capacity to bring about a man’s death through infernal magic.
Doctor John Dee.
He raised his head, heedless of the water that streamed down his face, and stared blindly through the gray curtain of rain. Dee. A necromancer, they said, who trafficked with demons and bound spirits to his will. But also Walsingham’s friend; would Dee have betrayed him so foully?
There were other problems. Dee had been on the continent for six years — six crucial years, in the tale of the Queen of Scots. But Fagot’s work in the embassy had begun around the time that Dee departed. And Gifford, too, had conveniently shown up in that time.
Could they have been working for the astrologer, while he was abroad?
Someone had persuaded Elizabeth, possibly by meeting with her in person. Dee could not have done that, unless someone had gone to a great deal of effort to fabricate rumors about his travels with Edward Kelley. It was a stretch to imagine the man working so effectively through intermediaries. And what would Dee care about events in Ireland?
Deven shook his head, sending water flying. Beneath him, his bay gelding kept stolidly putting one foot down after another, ignoring both the rain and the preoccupation of his rider. Too many questions without answers — but it was the strongest possibility yet. Before his departure for the continent, Dee had spun out grand visions of England’s destiny in the world, with Elizabeth upon the throne. The Queen of Scots would have been an obstacle to those visions, one he might take steps to remove.
And perhaps his difficulties now stemmed, at least in part, from Elizabeth’s disillusionment over how she’d been managed into killing her Scottish cousin.
What did Deven know about Dee’s activities now, the positions and benefits for which he was petitioning the Crown?
The answers came obediently to mind — and with them, something else. The reason why he knew those answers.
Anne.
“’Tis listening, not spying, and you are not asking me. I do it of my own free will.”
Yes, she had volunteered information on Doctor Dee quite eagerly. Deven knew all about the man’s penury, the theft of books and priceless instruments from his house at Mortlake, the dispute with his wife’s brother over the ownership of that house. Even Burghley’s attempts to get Dee’s confederate Edward Kelley back to England, so he could put his Philosopher’s Stone to work producing gold for Elizabeth. Information Deven had taken in and set to one side, because he could not see what to do with it.
The thought of Anne twisted like a knife in him. They hadn’t spoken since that confrontation in the orchard; shortly thereafter, according to the Countess of Warwick, Anne had begged and received permission to leave her service. Deven did not know why, nor had he asked; the subject was too painful, the unresolved questions between them too sharp. These thoughts, however, cast the entire situation in a new and unpleasant light.
What she could possibly be doing in Dee’s service, he did not know. But if Dee were the player…
More ifs. He had so few names to chase, though. And going after Dee directly would not be wise.
Was he thinking of this because he truly suspected Anne, and thought finding her would accomplish something? Or did he just wish to see her again?
“A bit of both,” he admitted out loud, to no one in particular. The gelding flicked his ears, scattering droplets of rain.
By the time he arrived at St. James’ Palace, drenched and shivering, he had made up his mind. He stopped to change clothes only because it would not do to drip on the floor of a peer.
The Countess of Warwick frowned when Deven asked what reason Anne had given for leaving. “She did not speak of your argument, though I suspect that played a part. No, she named some other cause….”
Deven stood in his wet hair and dry clothes, and tried not to chafe with impatience.
“’Tis hard to recall,” the countess admitted at last, looking embarrassed. “I am sorry, Master Deven. An ailing family member, perhaps. Yes, I remember, that was it — her father, I believe.”
“I have no father,” Anne had said, when he asked her why she could not marry.
So either she had lied to the countess, or to him. And she had lied to him before.