The Point of Death by Peter Tonkin Page B

the Campo in Siena there were fourteen of them not counting the Palazzo Publico. And he had travelled widely in his studies - and in respite from his studies. He had seen most of the major palaces in Italy - the Duomo, the Doge's Palace, the palaces at Rome. Further afield, he had visited Versailles and the Louvre in Paris. He had been to the Alhambra. Whitehall Palace was bigger than any of them. There were twenty-three acres of it, from Whitehall Stairs at Thames'side in the east to the Royal hunting grounds of the Green Park, which ran away westward almost endlessly; from Westminster Abbey in the south to Charing Cross. Like the Louvre, it had public roadways running through it spanned by great gates which doubled as bridges leading from one section to another. Tom had stood on the greatest of these thoroughfares, King Street, to see the Queen on Sundays. He had joined the jostle on Accession Day during his first November back, to see the tilting and the splendour.
    But the maze of rabbit warren passages he walked through now went far beyond any part of the palace he had ever imagined, let alone visited. At last his guide turned into a small, dark antechamber and motioned Tom to wait as he went through into the next room. Standing in the shadowy cell, Tom looked through the next door into a larger, brighter chamber with wide windows looking over the river. Like an actor, he rehearsed in his head what he wanted to say to Secretary Collingwood, for the murder of a man among the players he had supported could damage the reputation of even a deceased patron - and rouse the ire of the rest of the Stanleys, one of the most powerful families - dynasties - in the country.
    Tom's years of travel and study abroad had hardened him in many ways. The quick thinking, decisive, deadly man standing in Secretary Collingwood's antechamber was as far removed from the callow youth of the Flanders battlefield as the Ferrara blade at his side was removed from his great-grandfather's short sword. But even so, there was a stench of such naked power in these corridors that even the new Tom, the deadly blade and icy detective, could not help but rehearse his coded warning again.
    'Come through.'
    Tom moved, sweeping in through the half open door, pausing to deliver a careful bow, straightening swiftly to look the Secretary in the face, drawing in his breath as he did so.
    But he was not allowed to deliver his well rehearsed message yet.
    'You are late,' snapped Collingwood. 'You have kept matters waiting for a day too long. Have you any idea what it can cost them to be away from Her Majesty's side so long? Come through, man.' The folded, wizened, grey-bearded man twirled even as Tom's mouth opened. In a twinkling he had crossed the room, a-buzz with energy and urgency.
    'Sir Walter, you mistake me.' Tom was not a man to allow misapprehensions such as this to go unchallenged. But Collingwood had crossed to a hanging and, sweeping a curtain of cloth-of-gold aside, he was opening another door secreted behind it. 'Sir Walter.' But Sir Walter was gone through and Tom had no choice other than to follow.
    He found himself in another passage, ill-lit and twisting. Collingwood was dressed like any clerk in a long, dark gown and Tom cast all thoughts of further conversation aside as he hurried forward, fighting to keep the old man in sight.
    As he half ran through the maze of passages on the Secretary's hurrying heels, however, Tom was unable to stop some part of his mind whirling away in wild speculation. He had been mistaken for someone else, that was clear. Someone from the Rose. Now, there were in Southwark alone the Rose and the Little Rose - two taverns side by side. God alone knew how many taverns were named for the Red Rose of York, the White Rose of Lancaster, and the red and white Tudor rose of peace. And yet had he not told the keeper of the water gate 'Rose Theatre'? He was certain that he had. Allowing that, then, he had to assume that there was