gazed at the girl innocently asleep, Cat abandoned all thought of abduction.
Not because of the difficulties of carrying out such a scheme, the layout of the house, the crowded streets, finding a way to get Meg alone—Cat was confident she could surmount all of that.
What stayed her was the thought of that little girl whose father was everything to her and the look on Martin’s face when he had kissed his daughter good night.
No matter how badly she wanted to get back to Faire Isle and Ariane, she would not be stealing anyone’s child. That left her with no other choice than to remain in London and guard Meg until she persuaded Martin to change his mind.
Quietly exiting the room, Cat stretched herself across the threshold to begin her watch.
W HITEHALL SPRAWLED OVER TWENTY-THREE ACRES OF L ONDON , a city within a city. The palace was a haphazard jumble of architectural styles, a warren of fifteen hundred rooms where Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers jostled, fought, and intrigued for scraps of the royal favor.
But neither queen nor court were in residence, Elizabeth preferring her palace at Richmond during the summer months. As Martin followed his escort through a maze of corridors, their footsteps echoed in silence through empty halls. Many of the walls were bare, the costly tapestries taken down and removed with the queen, but some of the portraits remained, particularly those of the late king, Henry VIII. It was as though Elizabeth was determined that no one should ever forget whose daughter she was.
Martin’s usher was a laconic young man who looked bored, as though it was mere routine to be escorting dubious characters to meet with the principal secretary of the realm at such a late hour, and very likely it was. Sir Francis Walsingham was rumored to employ a legion of shadowy men, of whom Martin feared he was but one more.
The page left Martin waiting in a small antechamber while he announced Martin’s arrival to Sir Francis. The small room was occupied by a clerk with a yellow beard and a face pitted from a bout of smallpox. He labored wearily with quill and ink over some parchment. Glancing up with tired, red-rimmed eyes, Thomas Phelippes acknowledged Martin’s presence with a curt nod before returning to his work.
Phelippes’s taciturnity left Martin nothing to do but pace and wish himself elsewhere, back home with his daughter. Once, the kind of furtive dealings he had embarked upon with Walsingham would have been like a heady wine to Martin, but his taste for such intrigue had begun to pall.
“
We are respectable folk now,
” Martin had told Meg, but that was not true and never would be while he continued in Walsingham’s secret employ. He hoped that the information he had recently acquired might suffice to bring his service to an end.
The page returned to inform Martin that Sir Francis would receive him now. Martin followed the young man into a study crammed with books. Sir Francis was said to be fluent in at least five other tongues besides his own, and the volumes lining the shelves represented a diversity of languages as well as interests.
There were books on history, law, politics, castles and fortifications, as well as treatises on training militia and tactics of war and ledgers of the expenses for the queen’s many households and estates.
It made Martin’s head throb just to contemplate it all. He often wondered how Sir Francis coped with such a staggering array of detail and information, to say nothing of the locked cabinet containing more-secret matters, to which only Walsingham had the key.
One could hardly see the man seated behind his desk, the surface was piled so high with copies of treaties, correspondence from ambassadors, maps, and haphazardly stacked paperwork.
Somewhere in the midst of this avalanche, Walsingham set his seal to a letter he had just completed. Absorbed by his task, he barely looked up as Martin entered.
Sir Francis was a man of lean stature and long narrow
Not because of the difficulties of carrying out such a scheme, the layout of the house, the crowded streets, finding a way to get Meg alone—Cat was confident she could surmount all of that.
What stayed her was the thought of that little girl whose father was everything to her and the look on Martin’s face when he had kissed his daughter good night.
No matter how badly she wanted to get back to Faire Isle and Ariane, she would not be stealing anyone’s child. That left her with no other choice than to remain in London and guard Meg until she persuaded Martin to change his mind.
Quietly exiting the room, Cat stretched herself across the threshold to begin her watch.
W HITEHALL SPRAWLED OVER TWENTY-THREE ACRES OF L ONDON , a city within a city. The palace was a haphazard jumble of architectural styles, a warren of fifteen hundred rooms where Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers jostled, fought, and intrigued for scraps of the royal favor.
But neither queen nor court were in residence, Elizabeth preferring her palace at Richmond during the summer months. As Martin followed his escort through a maze of corridors, their footsteps echoed in silence through empty halls. Many of the walls were bare, the costly tapestries taken down and removed with the queen, but some of the portraits remained, particularly those of the late king, Henry VIII. It was as though Elizabeth was determined that no one should ever forget whose daughter she was.
Martin’s usher was a laconic young man who looked bored, as though it was mere routine to be escorting dubious characters to meet with the principal secretary of the realm at such a late hour, and very likely it was. Sir Francis Walsingham was rumored to employ a legion of shadowy men, of whom Martin feared he was but one more.
The page left Martin waiting in a small antechamber while he announced Martin’s arrival to Sir Francis. The small room was occupied by a clerk with a yellow beard and a face pitted from a bout of smallpox. He labored wearily with quill and ink over some parchment. Glancing up with tired, red-rimmed eyes, Thomas Phelippes acknowledged Martin’s presence with a curt nod before returning to his work.
Phelippes’s taciturnity left Martin nothing to do but pace and wish himself elsewhere, back home with his daughter. Once, the kind of furtive dealings he had embarked upon with Walsingham would have been like a heady wine to Martin, but his taste for such intrigue had begun to pall.
“
We are respectable folk now,
” Martin had told Meg, but that was not true and never would be while he continued in Walsingham’s secret employ. He hoped that the information he had recently acquired might suffice to bring his service to an end.
The page returned to inform Martin that Sir Francis would receive him now. Martin followed the young man into a study crammed with books. Sir Francis was said to be fluent in at least five other tongues besides his own, and the volumes lining the shelves represented a diversity of languages as well as interests.
There were books on history, law, politics, castles and fortifications, as well as treatises on training militia and tactics of war and ledgers of the expenses for the queen’s many households and estates.
It made Martin’s head throb just to contemplate it all. He often wondered how Sir Francis coped with such a staggering array of detail and information, to say nothing of the locked cabinet containing more-secret matters, to which only Walsingham had the key.
One could hardly see the man seated behind his desk, the surface was piled so high with copies of treaties, correspondence from ambassadors, maps, and haphazardly stacked paperwork.
Somewhere in the midst of this avalanche, Walsingham set his seal to a letter he had just completed. Absorbed by his task, he barely looked up as Martin entered.
Sir Francis was a man of lean stature and long narrow
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