Текст книги "The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez"
Автор книги: Ann Swinfen
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
Because of the early dusk on this January day, the performance took place early. Afterwards, Master Burbage treated the company to a supper at the Dolphin, to which my father and I were invited. My father declined and set off home, but I went gladly enough. After our supper, we sat over some good French wine, which I suspected might have been smuggled in through one of the Sussex ports, and people exchanged Twelfth Night gifts. I had bought a large box of crystallised fruits for the company, which went the rounds of the table. For Simon, however, I had an individual gift, a beautifully tooled leather belt with a silver clasp. He put it on at once, rolling up his old belt and stuffing it in his pocket.
‘This is very fine, Kit! Thank you.’
‘I am told it is Spanish. It does look Spanish. Probably some of Drake’s loot.’
He laughed. ‘I shall wear it with a swagger then. I have this for you.’
He handed me a small square parcel wrapped in a piece of blue cloth. There was no mistaking what it contained, from the feel and weight of it.
‘Oh, Simon.’ It took my breath away. It was a volume of Sir Philip Sidney’s poems, privately printed and bound in soft blue leather, the same colour – the azure of a midsummer sky – as the piece of cloth in which he had wrapped it. It must have cost a month of his wages. I gave him a quick hug and longed to do more. Yet dared not. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away. My life had been filled with books before I met Simon, but they were learned works by serious scholars, on astronomy and mathematics and medicine. Simon – and Guy, too – had opened up for me a whole New World. The world of the poets and play-makers. Before I knew them, the nearest I had come to this had been the words of songs, but I was beginning to understand that words by themselves possess the power of music, and can sing and soar even as music does.
‘This is doubly welcome,’ I said. For all I could do, my voice was somewhat hoarse. ‘It is not only Twelfth Night today. It is my seventeenth birthday.’
At that everyone had to drink my health, and I am afraid we made a rather raucous party.
The Christmas festivities were over, though the epidemic of winter illness was not, when Cassie arrived at our door one noontide with a request from Sir Francis that I would come to see him. I insisted that Cassie should take a bowl of Joan’s thick soup before we set out, for his hands were blue with the cold. There was a bitter wind blowing up the river from the east and the feel of snow in the air. Up until now it had been bitterly cold, with a heavy frost every morning, but there had been no snow.
‘Do you know why Sir Francis wants to see me?’ I asked, as we battled our way into the wind, crouched forward.
He shook his head. It was too cold for conversation.
Sir Francis greeted me kindly, wished me good fortune for the year ahead, and steepled his fingers as we sat down in front of his desk.
‘And are you busy at St Bartholomew’s Kit?’
‘Very busy, Sir Francis,’ I said, and embarked on an account of overflowing beds, more patients every day, the epidemic of chest infections. I could make a shrewd guess as to why I was here. But I was more confident now, better able to withstand persuasion. As far as I knew, there was no treasonous conspiracy afoot, although of course I was no longer privy to secret knowledge, as I once had been. Besides, Poley was a prisoner in the Tower and could do me no harm. I was safe in my male disguise as long as he was confined there.
‘Thomas is also very busy,’ said Sir Francis. ‘Although the late conspirators have been dealt with, there is still much activity in France and Spain, which causes us concern. He misses your assistance.’
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘if you are about to offer me further employment here, I will save you time and trouble, and say that I cannot accept. My days are fully occupied at the hospital. I was glad to be of service to you during the crisis last year, but I cannot return now.’
My heart was beating very fast as I defied one of the most powerful man in the land, but I was relieved to see that he was not angry. I think perhaps he expected my answer, though he sighed.
‘Very well, Kit. I promised Thomas that I would ask you, but I see that you are determined not to be persuaded.’
We both rose.
‘However,’ he said, and my mouth went dry, dreading what he might say next, ‘if another crisis should arise and we should be in serious need of your assistance, might you be willing to return?’
‘If that should happen, and my work at the hospital is not too heavy,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘I might be able to help. For a short time.’
On my own terms, I thought. Without the threat of Poley.
We both bowed. At the door I turned back.
‘Please wish Master Phelippes God speed for the new year,’ I said. ‘And Arthur Gregory and Thomas Cassie. And of course Nicholas Berden and Master Mylles.’
He was smiling broadly now as well. I think we understood each other. ‘I will do so,’ he said gravely.
As I went down the back stairs, perhaps for the last time, I realised unexpectedly that I would miss them all. And I would miss Hector. And I would miss the excitement of deciphering an unknown intercepted letter or a report smuggled out of Paris. Was Gifford still there, spying on the Duke of Guise? With an angry shake of my head, I dismissed these thoughts. I was well rid of them all.
As I came out into Seething Lane, where the first flurries of snow were beginning to drift in on the east wind, I was surprised to see Simon, standing in a doorway, stamping his feet and swinging his arms for warmth..
‘Simon? What are you doing here?’
‘I called at your house and Joan said Sir Francis had sent for you. Are you going to work for him again?’
‘He wanted me to, but I refused.’
Simon let out his breath in a puff of misty air and grinned. ‘You refused the Lord Secretary?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
I still felt a little light-headed about it, but my heart gave a leap for pure joy. I was free! Free, above all, of Robert Poley.
He gave a soft whistle. ‘I’m not sure I would have dared.’
‘I wasn’t sure I would, until I did it.’ I gulped, and grinned back, somewhat shakily. ‘But I am done with secrets and play-acting.’
We both laughed.
‘By Jesu,’ he said. ‘It’s cold out here. And this snow is going down my neck.’
He linked his arm in mine. ‘Is there an inn near here where we can have a tankard of Hippocras and a warm by the fire? I’ve been standing there half an hour.’
This was an exaggeration, for I had not been with Sir Francis for half an hour.
‘This way,’ I said. ‘It’s small, but they also serve very good pies.’
We began to make our way along the street, holding each other up as we slithered on the icy cobbles.
‘Oh, have you heard?’ Simon said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Tower.
‘You know how Guy always has the latest gossip? He came to the playhouse today, full of news about someone you know.’
I stopped dead and turned towards him. A great gust of wind flung a cloud of frozen snow in my face, like a fistful of bitter sand.
‘What? Who?’
‘You remember – there was one man escaped out of the bloody conspiracy to murder the Queen? No one knew, yea or nay, whether he was a villain or not?’
‘Who?’ I said it again, though my voice was whipped away on the wind. My heart had stopped in my chest.
‘Robert Poley. He’s to be set free from the Tower.’
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THE AUTHOR
Ann Swinfen spent her childhood partly in England and partly on the east coast of America. She read Classics and Mathematics at Oxford, where she married a fellow undergraduate, the historian David Swinfen. While bringing up their five children and studying for an MSc in Mathematics and a BA and PhD in English Literature, she had a variety of jobs, including university lecturer, translator, freelance journalist and software designer. She served for nine years on the governing council of the Open University and for five years worked as a manager and editor in the technical author division of an international computer company, but gave up her full-time job to concentrate on her writing, while continuing part-time university teaching. In 1995 she founded Dundee Book Events, a voluntary organisation promoting books and authors to the general public.
Her first three novels, The Anniversary, The Travellers, and A Running Tide, all with a contemporary setting but also historical resonance, were published by Random House, with translations into Dutch and German. Her fourth novel, The Testament of Mariam, marked something of a departure. Set in the first century, it recounts, from an unusual perspective, one of the most famous and yet ambiguous stories in human history. At the same time it explores life under a foreign occupying force, in lands still torn by conflict to this day. Her latest novel, Flood, is set in the fenlands of East Anglia during the seventeenth century, where the local people fight desperately to save their land from greedy and unscrupulous speculators.
The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez is the first book in a series featuring Kit Alvarez and Walsingham’s secret service.
She now lives on the northeast coast of Scotland, with her husband (formerly vice-principal of the University of Dundee), a cocker spaniel and two Maine Coon cats.
www.annswinfen.com
More by This Author
The Anniversary
The Travellers
A Running Tide
The Testament of Mariam
Flood
Praise for Ann Swinfen’s Novels:
‘an absorbing and intricate tapestry of family history and private memories … warm, generous, healing and hopeful’
Victoria Glendinning
‘I very much admired the pace of the story. The changes of place and time and the echoes and repetitions – things lost and found, and meetings and partings’
Penelope Fitzgerald
‘I enjoyed this serious, scrupulous novel … a novel of character … [and] a suspense story in which present and past mysteries are gradually explained’
Jessica Mann, Sunday Telegraph
‘The author … has written a powerful new tale of passion and heartbreak ... What a marvellous storyteller Ann Swinfen is – she has a wonderful ear for dialogue and she brings her characters vividly to life.’
Publishing News
‘Her writing …[paints] an amazingly detailed and vibrant picture of flesh and blood human beings, not only the symbols many of them have become…but real and believable and understandable.’
Helen Brown, Courier and Advertiser
‘She writes with passion and the book, her fourth, is shot through with brilliant description and scholarship...[it] is a timely reminder of the harsh realities, and the daily humiliations, of the Roman occupation of First Century Israel. You can almost smell the dust and blood.’
Peter Rhodes, Express and Star
