The Point of Death by Peter Tonkin

said and split in his turn, holding the card for her to see without looking at it himself. Her eyes went from his face to his card and she smiled. 'Swords it is,' she said. 'Though which is the Master and which is the Knave, alas I cannot tell.'
     
    Constanza had a room up in the private section of the Elephant up near the eaves. It was spacious enough to accommodate a sizeable bed and an eager pair of lovers, with a window opening at its end to show a gleaming view north across the quicksilver river from the Bridge to the Bridewell. As they looked across at it, they pulled leaves from the pots of basil Constanza kept on her window sill here and chewed them to freshen their breath in the Italian fashion.
    The city was mostly dark, but it glittered beneath the waning moon as though silver smiths had been at work alongside the thatchers and the tilers on the roofs. Since he had brought Constanza back from Siena last year, Tom had seen her housed in his own rooms and then in a wider range of accommodation - for she was not such a woman as could ever stay faithful to just one man. Nor was she a woman content to live off a man's earnings when she had abilities that would make her independent of any man, no matter how hotly she burned for him from time to time.
    But Tom was here on business more important than cards or carnality. As he often did, without second thoughts, he came to her for gossip. As they stood at their favourite end of her room, chewing on their salad of fragrant herbs, gazing across the city the thieves' cant called Romeville, centre of the world, he pulled loose the laces of her clothing leisurely, caressing her under layer after layer. And they talked.
    'Bella,' he began, using her love-name as he untied the knots at the back of her bodice, easing her warm ivory shoulders free, 'have you heard of any strangers in town of late?'
    The tone of the question warned her that he meant the sort of strangers she might hear about. 'Gambling men? Or Mediterranean men?' she asked, her voice trembling a little now.
    He pushed the wings of her bodice wide and fell to loosening the catches holding her fashionable skirts under the decorated swell of her farthingale. Her own hands were unloosening the farthingale's fastenings, shaking with desire as they did so. 'Mediterranean men,' he said, easing her out of her skirts and leaving her in her warm, damp, fragrant shift. 'I seek a Master with skills the equal of my own. And, I think, an ambidextrous.'
    She caught her breath; but that could have been revelation, superstition or reaction to his fingers running up the velvet column of her thigh to settle like birds nesting in the shadow bush up there.
    'None from Italy of recent note,' she breathed as his fingers fluttered and settled, playing and pecking like restless chicks. 'Nor France. I have heard of no Greeks, nor Ottomans, nor any new merchants from Jerusalem, from Alexandria, from Aleppo ...' Tom suddenly realised that she was drawing out the list in order to continue the sensation of his caresses at the tops of her thighs. He substituted a lover's pinch for his more gentle ministrations.
    The ravishment of her delicate flesh drew a quiet squeal from her, compound of a tincture of agony and a tun of acquiescence. 'There is a Spaniard lately arrived,' she admitted, twisting free and falling back on to the bed as Tom rose to strip off his black garments.
    'A Spaniard? Hell's teeth. What could a Spaniard do here? Now?'
    'Word is that he is seen at Essex House. A Don fresh from Cadiz, reporting to my Lord of Essex on matters in the Queen's business. Friend to the Don that's there already, Don Perez. Essex you know has quite a Spanish court there. Your man will be one of them, I am certain.'
    That was almost information enough. Almost, but not quite. For Tom lived in a new world now, where information was not merely a pastime or an investment - where it could be a cutting edge and a coffin. Or, rather, a noose in the maw of a