plague pit.
Tom pulled off his shirt and, being but little of the Puritan attitude these days, he slid the smock up Constanza's shuddering length and cast it aside before he began to practise his most powerful assaults in the battles of love - techniques, like those at cards, among other, darker, things, that he had learned at Siena, though not in the school of Maestro Capo Ferro. Almost coldly he worked on her body, bringing her burning voluptuousness soaring nearer and nearer to climax. At the crest of the wave, he paused, lingering out her desires. 'How do you come to know these things?' he asked her.
Her eyelids flickered. Her eyes seemed to engulf him, grown huge and dark, as though she had drizzled belladonna in them, as Italian lovers are sometimes said to do. 'I hear it by the way,' she breathed. 'I hear everything that happens in the south. My ears are like seashells. They carry a whisper of their home in their depth, be they never so far away.'
Chapter Eleven - The Master of the North
A little before noon next day Tom stepped out of the wherry on to the lowest of the Whitehall Stairs and tossed a groat downwards before turning to run on up. He had been back to his rooms in Blackfriars already to change and was wearing his finest. Black cloth of the Italian cut, Spanish kid boots. Boat-bellied doublet in the fashion of Spanish armour, dagged with slashes puffed with tobacco silk, and black galligaskins of the latest style, loose across his thigh but laced tight at the knee behind the high tops of his beloved boots. His short black cloak was laced with silver and left the hilt of his rapier convenient to his kidgloved hands. He was out of the very point of fashion only in that he disdained a hat. Even so, he could have passed for any sort of a courtier, up to a man possessed of a title, and would have walked into the Presence Chamber without too much difficulty.
Except that the Court was not here at Whitehall. It was at Nonesuch, and likely to move again soon. For the Court was where the Queen was. Her own law ran 'under the verge' within thirteen miles of her person in any direction. The power of the throne resided where she did and she could sign state papers at Whitehall, Westminster, Nonesuch, Richmond or Hampton Court. She had even done so from ships she had been visiting: 'from Due Repulse , where this day I have been, Elizabeth R'. The governance of the country in summer followed her from palace to palace.
Or, most of it did. For messages- messengers - came from all over the kingdom, all over the continent; sometimes even from remoter parts of the world, nowadays. And the palaces at Whitehall and Westminster retained small secretarial staffs to meet such men and redirect them to where the Queen was at the present time, and to oversee any other little routine matters that did not require Her Majesty's direct personal involvement.
And one such secretarial guide was Walter Collingwood, Secretary to a committee of the Court of Star Chamber, who had added to his other duties that of winding up the last details of the estate of the late Ferdinando Stanley, Earl of Derby, patron of the Burbages' Company, Lord Strange. Lord Strange had died less than two months since and the last of his bequest to his players was keeping the Burbage half of the Rose Company afloat while they sought another patron. But they could only do that if Romeo and Juliet was a great enough success to attract the attention of the distant Court away down in Surrey.
There was a guard at the top of the steps. 'State your business,' he challenged.
Tom was well enough prepared for this. 'I come to see the Secretary Collingwood,' he said. 'I have come from the Rose. The theatre.'
The guard paused for an instant, then he turned and poked his head into a small guard chamber. 'Take this man to Secretary Collingwood,' he said; and a guide appeared like a spirit summoned to take Tom in hand.
Tom knew something about palaces. Around
Tom pulled off his shirt and, being but little of the Puritan attitude these days, he slid the smock up Constanza's shuddering length and cast it aside before he began to practise his most powerful assaults in the battles of love - techniques, like those at cards, among other, darker, things, that he had learned at Siena, though not in the school of Maestro Capo Ferro. Almost coldly he worked on her body, bringing her burning voluptuousness soaring nearer and nearer to climax. At the crest of the wave, he paused, lingering out her desires. 'How do you come to know these things?' he asked her.
Her eyelids flickered. Her eyes seemed to engulf him, grown huge and dark, as though she had drizzled belladonna in them, as Italian lovers are sometimes said to do. 'I hear it by the way,' she breathed. 'I hear everything that happens in the south. My ears are like seashells. They carry a whisper of their home in their depth, be they never so far away.'
Chapter Eleven - The Master of the North
A little before noon next day Tom stepped out of the wherry on to the lowest of the Whitehall Stairs and tossed a groat downwards before turning to run on up. He had been back to his rooms in Blackfriars already to change and was wearing his finest. Black cloth of the Italian cut, Spanish kid boots. Boat-bellied doublet in the fashion of Spanish armour, dagged with slashes puffed with tobacco silk, and black galligaskins of the latest style, loose across his thigh but laced tight at the knee behind the high tops of his beloved boots. His short black cloak was laced with silver and left the hilt of his rapier convenient to his kidgloved hands. He was out of the very point of fashion only in that he disdained a hat. Even so, he could have passed for any sort of a courtier, up to a man possessed of a title, and would have walked into the Presence Chamber without too much difficulty.
Except that the Court was not here at Whitehall. It was at Nonesuch, and likely to move again soon. For the Court was where the Queen was. Her own law ran 'under the verge' within thirteen miles of her person in any direction. The power of the throne resided where she did and she could sign state papers at Whitehall, Westminster, Nonesuch, Richmond or Hampton Court. She had even done so from ships she had been visiting: 'from Due Repulse , where this day I have been, Elizabeth R'. The governance of the country in summer followed her from palace to palace.
Or, most of it did. For messages- messengers - came from all over the kingdom, all over the continent; sometimes even from remoter parts of the world, nowadays. And the palaces at Whitehall and Westminster retained small secretarial staffs to meet such men and redirect them to where the Queen was at the present time, and to oversee any other little routine matters that did not require Her Majesty's direct personal involvement.
And one such secretarial guide was Walter Collingwood, Secretary to a committee of the Court of Star Chamber, who had added to his other duties that of winding up the last details of the estate of the late Ferdinando Stanley, Earl of Derby, patron of the Burbages' Company, Lord Strange. Lord Strange had died less than two months since and the last of his bequest to his players was keeping the Burbage half of the Rose Company afloat while they sought another patron. But they could only do that if Romeo and Juliet was a great enough success to attract the attention of the distant Court away down in Surrey.
There was a guard at the top of the steps. 'State your business,' he challenged.
Tom was well enough prepared for this. 'I come to see the Secretary Collingwood,' he said. 'I have come from the Rose. The theatre.'
The guard paused for an instant, then he turned and poked his head into a small guard chamber. 'Take this man to Secretary Collingwood,' he said; and a guide appeared like a spirit summoned to take Tom in hand.
Tom knew something about palaces. Around
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