‘Ah! Yes!’ Timothy recruited his strength with another gulp or two of wine, forgetting in his agitation to give it the respect he claimed it deserved. ‘The unhappy fact is. .’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged him grimly.
‘Well, sad to say, we need a. . a fresh face in Paris to. . er. . to replace poor Hubert Pole, who. .’
‘Who what?’
‘Who met with an accident,’ Timothy finished in a rush. ‘Have some more of this excellent Rhenish.’ He refilled my mazer with a generous hand, ignoring his recent injunction to me not to get drunk.
‘What sort of accident?’ I pushed the cup aside, untouched.
‘He. . er. . Well, strangely enough, he was found drowned in the Seine. The poor fellow must have slipped and fallen in.’
‘Slipped and fallen in, my left foot!’ I exclaimed with unusual restraint, adding caustically, ‘Such a quiet river, the Seine, by all accounts. I don’t suppose there was anyone around to pull him out. . Now, suppose you tell me the truth.’
‘It did happen at night,’ Timothy explained hopefully.
‘Of course it did. And I expect this Hubert Pole was just enjoying a quiet nocturnal stroll, minding his own business, no threat to anyone.’ I sat up straight on my stool, clasping my arms across my chest defiantly. ‘You can find someone else, Timothy. I’m not going.’
‘You won’t be in any danger as long as you follow instructions. One of the reasons it has been decided to send you and the lady as husband and wife is that a married couple is less likely to arouse suspicion. In any case, you aren’t being sent to winkle out closely guarded state secrets. In all probability, the information wanted by King Edward — if, unfortunately, what he fears should prove to be true — will be common knowledge by Christmas.’
‘In that case,’ I interrupted angrily, ‘why are we going?’
‘His Highness wishes to be forearmed.’
‘About what?’ Although my tone of voice was still forbidding, I relaxed my posture a little.
Timothy was quick to notice it and breathed more easily himself. ‘You know, of course, that negotiations have been proceeding for some time for the betrothal of the Princess Elizabeth to the young Dauphin of France.’
‘No.’
My companion, taken aback by this flat denial, looked his astonishment. ‘You must do,’ he protested.
‘I’ve been otherwise occupied,’ I snapped. ‘Toiling up to Scotland, for example, and then nearly being murdered. Or had you forgotten?’
‘But. . Oh, well, never mind. Just accept my assurances that this is so. There’s been a flurry of diplomatic activity between London and Plessis-les-Tours for months. Ever since February, in fact.’
‘Plessis-les-Tours?’
‘It’s where King Louis mainly resides these days. A château on the Loire. In fact, the rumour is that he has withdrawn there permanently with the French court. He has never liked Paris.’
‘So? Princess Elizabeth is going to marry the Dauphin. That seems simple enough. English princesses have married French princes before now, and vice versa.’
Timothy shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, rumours have been reaching us of late of a change of heart by Louis. There’s talk — nothing substantiated as yet, but the information is from trusted sources — that he is ready to repudiate the English alliance and marry his son to Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret. Worse still, it’s said that Burgundy is ready to make peace with France and that this marriage will be a part of the peace terms.’
I absorbed this information in silence. There was no need for Timothy to spell out exactly what this would mean for England. The Duchy of Burgundy had been our closest ally for many years now, and, equally important, if not more, the chief customer on mainland Europe for our wool exports. King Edward’s own sister, Margaret, had been the third wife of the late Duke Charles, but his death five and a half years ago had left only one child, Mary, the daughter of his first marriage, and she had married Maximilian of Austria. Immediately, Louis had moved to bring back the duchy — for many decades now a palatinate, owing little but lip-service to the French Crown — to a fiefdom under France’s control. Maximilian and the dowager duchess had appealed for England’s support in vain: King Edward refused point-blank to jeopardize the substantial annual pension paid to him by King Louis ever since the Treaty of Picquigny, seven years earlier. Even the disapproval of his own people, expressed in shouts and insults whenever he showed his face in public, had failed to change his mind. He had sown the wind: now, it seemed, he was about to reap the whirlwind.
I shrugged. ‘What did His Highness expect when he left Burgundy to struggle on against France alone? It was surely inevitable that Maximilian would eventually be forced to make peace. And after the death of his wife, I imagine that what little remained of the will to fight went out of him.’ (Mary of Burgundy had died the preceding spring after a fall from her horse.)
Timothy regarded me approvingly. ‘I’ll say this for you, Roger,’ he conceded generously, ‘you’re never such an ignorant fool as you look.’ I thanked him acidly, but he ignored me and continued, ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t argue with you on that score: nor would a lot of other people. But that’s not our business. Our business is to carry out the king’s commands, which are that you and the lady in question go to Paris and try to discover the truth of the matter. Separate rumour from fact.’
Before I could reply, there was tap at the door of the room in which we were sitting and Timothy rose, pushing back his stool. ‘Ah! This must be the lady herself,’ he muttered, giving me an oddly apprehensive glance. He braced his shoulders and went to let her in.
Two
I did not recognize her immediately. She was wearing a long blue cloak with the hood pulled up, and for a brief moment I wondered if she was the woman I had noticed earlier, at the top of the water-stairs. Then I dismissed the idea. She was surely somewhat taller, and the other woman’s cloak was brown.
Timothy stepped forward to greet the new arrival. ‘Mistress Gray,’ he murmured, bending gallantly over her extended hand. He indicated me. ‘You. . you. . er. . remember Master Chapman.’
The lady gave a gurgle of laughter and shed her cloak to reveal a slender, willowy form in a plain dark red woollen gown, the colour of garnets, and ornamented with nothing more than a simple leather girdle and a solitary gold chain about her throat. Her long white fingers were innocent of rings. The fair, wavy hair, which curled luxuriantly over a small, neat head, had been coaxed into a silver net at the nape of her neck, but had obviously, at some time, been cut short like a boy’s, and, if loose, would, I reckoned, be barely shoulder-length. A pair of large violet-blue eyes regarded me appraisingly.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘How could I forget him?’ Her voice had an underlying lilt to it, slight but unmistakable, that transported me straight back to Scotland.
And that was when I knew her, the moment the scales dropped from my eyes.
Now, it’s one thing to be rendered speechless once in a while, but twice in the same day is too much. I made inarticulate gobbling noises as I backed away from her, overturning my stool as I did so, and gestured furiously with my hands as though to ward off the evil eye; all of which seemed to afford her the greatest amusement, but angered Timothy, who could plainly foresee another interminable argument with me.
I finally found my voice. ‘Oh, no!’ I exclaimed savagely. ‘Oh, no! There is nothing on earth will persuade me to go to France — indeed, to go anywhere — with her!’
The spymaster’s mouth set in a grim line. He had evidently done with trying to cajole me. When he spoke, it was with the voice of authority, reinforced by royal command. ‘You’ve no choice, Roger. I thought I’d made that perfectly clear. Mistress Gray is your travelling companion whether you like it or not. If you refuse, I shall have no alternative but to place you under arrest.’