The Queen's Men Read online

  They cross the Fleet and enter the city through Ludgate, and from the begging windows down at knee level come the usual pitiful cries of prisoners, hands stretched through the bars, begging for anything to help them live through the day, or get out alive. She usually gives one of them a penny, for she can run to that, but today the stink billowing from the windows is very fierce and grips her by her throat, and anyway, John tugs at the pony’s reins, for he has no time for them.

  “They stand as a fair warning not to get into debt, don’t they, mistress?”

  Ahead, even in this weather, there are more beggars, and the usual mob of thieves milling about by the conduit under Saint Paul’s, awaiting a moment’s carelessness from their victims, overseen by the various sheriffs’ and constables’ men, though to Frommond’s eye the villainous are indistinguishable from the virtuous, and the inchoate mass radiates menace. She huddles low. Wishes they had chosen a brown pony.

  “Gutter Lane is just ahead, mistress,” John says once they turn onto Cheapside. The street stretches down toward the Tower and is lined on either side by gold and silversmiths’ shops; the atmosphere changes, and she feels less fearful. A little along, and there is a left turn, into a darker little street. Gutter Lane.

  “We must find a man named Nicholas Hilliard,” Frommond reminds John. She has asked one of the ladies-in-waiting whom she might ask more about having a limner make a portrait, and Hilliard was the first name that came to her mind.

  John asks a boy of about his own age.

  “Know a Nicholas Hilliard?”

  “After commissioning a limning, are you, mistress? My master is half the price, twice as quick. Master Hilliard takes a month, costs a fortune, and his paintings are so small they cannot be seen save under the noonday sun on Saint John’s!”

  “We are after him in person,” Frommond interrupts.

  “All right, mistress, all right. His workshop’s up on the right, but you’ll most likely find him in the Mitre about now.”

  He nods back at the tavern, the way they have come.

  Here is a pretty problem. Frommond cannot go into the tavern on her own, nor with John, for then who will guard the pony? And nor can she stand outside while John goes in, for fear of what might happen to a lady standing on her own on a street corner. They are about to ask someone to go into the tavern to see if they can summon Master Hilliard for them when a tall man comes walking very quickly up Cheapside in a very plush moss-green velvet doublet, but a shirt with what looks to be a burned collar; shabby breeches; and boots not at all suited to the weather. He looks somewhat harried and is carrying a bag laden with something heavy.

  “Why, it is Dr. Dee!” John shouts.

  Dee flinches, as if being hailed by a bailiff. Then he recognizes the boy John and offers a relieved smile.

  “John,” he says, “God give you good day!”

  They shake hands, almost as equals, and Dee commiserates on the death of John’s father, apologizing for missing his funeral for not being at his own leisure.

  “I heard you was banged up the Tower,” John says.

  Dee looks startled.

  “You did not hear it from Whitehall, did you?”

  The boy is confused. Frommond, too.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” Dee says. He glances over his shoulder, then at Frommond, who waits patiently.

  “Mistress Frommond,” he says, “I recognize you from the night the Queen was shot at.”

  He removes his cap. He has iron-gray hair, cut close to the scalp, a livid scar working itself through one side, the result of a sword fight, perhaps, or of an experiment involving hot metal gone awry.

  “I very much admire your coat, Dr. Dee,” Frommond tells him, though her eye is drawn to that burned collar, and is it her imagination, or does he carry a strange sharp and foreign smell about him?

  “Hah! This old thing? I will pass your compliments on to my tailor. He will like that.”

  He flicks the sleeve with his free hand. He is wearing a very fine pair of gloves, too: leather, the color of the best butter. Again, he cannot resist glancing back over his shoulder.

  “Are you waiting on someone, Doctor?” Frommond asks.

  “I am most especially not waiting for anyone, Mistress Frommond,” Dee says, laughing. “But are you yourselves here for someone or something? Or is it the tavern? I myself am sometimes overtaken by a virtually unquenchable thirst for ale at this time of day, and often succumb. There is no shame in it, if that is your heart’s desire.”

  “We are after a fellow named Hilliard,” John tells Dee.

  “Points the Painter? Nicholas Hilliard? Are you in the market to have him limn your likeness, mistress?”

  “I am not. I would pick his brains about it, though, and we believe he is within.”

  She gestures to the tavern courtyard. It is a run-down sort of place, unchanged for a hundred years, since it was frequented by friars and their companions.

  “Then let us go in,” Dee says. “We are old friends, Points and I, though do not count on him to stand a round.”

  “I am not after a drink, Doctor.”

  They leave John with the pony and enter the hall of the inn. It is as untouched within as without, with a fire in its center and smoke that sifts up through the double height of the hall to escape from the roof above. Flitches of bacon hang from the rafters, letting slip the occasional bead of savory smoked fat to drop on the heads below. The friars used to like it, Dee tells her, and stood with their tongues out, making bets on whose tongue the drop would first fall. Around the fire is a horseshoe of long deal tables, their benches filled with men in worsted; and the smell of wet wool, burning coal, and frying pork is strong in the smoke-thick air. Faces look up as Mistress Frommond enters, for this is largely the preserve of men, and even the serving girls—who have knocked about a bit—look over with interest.

  John Dee seems fairly well-known among the habitués of the Mitre, to some of whom he appears to owe money. Among them Dee identifies Hilliard, sitting slightly apart in conversation with another two, who divine Dee’s intent and make way for him and Frommond to take a bench opposite the man whom Dee then greets as Points, but who introduces himself to Frommond as Nicholas Hilliard.

  She removes her glove and they shake hands. His are long and cool, slightly grippy. He gives her the look with which most men greet her and she carefully bats it away. He smiles, not at all put out: if you do not ask, even without asking, you do not get.

  “So what can I do for you?” he asks.

  Dee suggests he buy them a drink.

  Hilliard admits to being hard up.

  “A temporary thing,” he promises. “I am just waiting to be paid for a limning I have finished just this last week.”

  Even to Jane Frommond’s ear, this sounds as if he might have said it before. Hilliard’s gaze takes in Dee’s coat.

  “But you yourself, Doctor, you look to be prospering.”

  Dee laughs.

  “I have been in the Tower,” he tells them, “making use of their facilities.”

  He dips into the bag he carries and shows them a gold ingot.

  Hilliard is amazed.

  “You have done it? Made gold?”

  Dee shushes him and rubs the coin with his thumb.

  “Well, not quite,” he admits. “It turns green after a day or two. Too much copper, perhaps? But yesterday poor old Roger Cooke broke the Constable’s last alembic, so I am unable to tweak the receipt. Anyway, it is good for a day at least, as this attests.”

  He indicates the sleeves of his coat; his gloves; and then shows them a small pouch that he has, and in it, a beautifully polished flat red stone that fits sweetly in his palm.

  “What is it?” Hilliard asks.

  “A scrying stone,” Dee tells them. “I have just bought it from a goldsmith for eight pounds.”

  Hilliard whistles.

  “You do know that is theft, don’t you, Doctor?” From
mond asks.

  Dee swings his eyes her way.

  “I think of it more as an I.O.U., Mistress Frommond. When tomorrow, or the day after, the goldsmith comes to see his gold is tarnished he will think to himself: Bloody John Dee! But he knows where to find me.”

  “He will have to join a queue, mind.” Hilliard chortles.

  As does Dee.

  “And in the meantime,” he says, “a man must live. Ale?”

  “Wine, if you are buying,” Hilliard says, nudging his cup forward.

  Frommond has money of her own, though, real money. She signals to a serving girl and orders them a jug of warm wine against the cold, and an eel apiece, with sops. She has a pie sent out to John, who stands with the pony.

  “So?”

  So now it is Frommond’s turn to delve into her sleeve to produce the limning of Alice Rutherford’s… what? She still doesn’t know what to call him. Man? Paramour? Rapist? Betrothed? She has no idea as to the nature of their relationship. Frommond watches Hilliard look it over. Her entire being is clenched. She so wants to hear him say that the work is his, and to tell her the boy’s name.

  He doesn’t.

  “Fine piece of work,” he says. “Very delicate, the brushwork, and look at the boy’s expression. You feel you know him. But who is he?”

  Frommond deflates.

  “I don’t know,” she admits.

  “But you’d like to?” Hilliard asks.

  Frommond sighs.

  “Just because I am a woman, you assume this is some romantic thing?”

  Dee is delighted.

  “May I see?”

  She shows it to him. He peers at it very closely.

  “I am certain I have seen this fellow before. Where though?”

  She stares at him.

  “Was he a student?” he asks himself. “At Cambridge perhaps? Or Leuven? He is at the edge. Behind a shoulder? A servant? No.”

  He shakes his head.

  Meanwhile Hilliard peers very close.

  “That badge,” he says. “It looks like a pilgrimage badge. Like the Catholics keep.”

  “Oh, I am certain he is not a Catholic,” Frommond says, but she does not know why she is so certain.

  “Anyway,” she goes on, “please think on it, Doctor.”

  “I will,” he tells her. “It will come to me in the night and I shall shout it out.”

  The wine comes. Hilliard apologizes for his earlier assumption.

  “So it is not your work?” she asks.

  “No. Not mine. If I were to guess, then it looks like the hand of Mistress Teerlinc.”

  Frommond has never heard of Mistress Teerlinc.

  “Levina Teerlinc. Daughter of Simon Bening?” Hilliard says. “Surely you— No? Well, she took the place of Hans Holbein at court. She painted the Queen’s father, her brother, and her sister, if I have that right. She taught me almost everything I know about the art of limning.”

  “And you think she did this? Where can I find her?”

  Hilliard makes a clucking sound.

  “You may find her body in Stepney, but her soul, alas, has risen to heaven, may God assoil her.”

  Frommond sits back. A wasted journey, a wasted jug of wine, and a wasted dish of eels, perhaps.

  “But I am in touch with her son, Marcus,” Hilliard goes on. “In fact, he is the one person in the whole world who owes me money.” Hilliard looks at the limning once again.

  “Fifteen hundred seventy-six,” he says. “Last year. So if this is by her hand, it must be one of her last. Marcus will remember that, surely. He is also a painter—of sorts—and I believe he has preserved her workshop more or less as she left it.”

  “Would you take me there?” she asks Hilliard.

  “We will both come,” Dee announces.

  “Have you nothing better to be doing, Dee?” Hilliard asks.

  Dee smiles.

  “People keep asking me that.”

  So Stepney it is.

  “Are you sure you want to come with us, John?” Frommond asks the stableboy when she has paid the reckoning and stepped outside the tavern. “It is a long way out of your way?”

  He is determined though.

  “I will not let you down,” he tells her and she almost laughs at how solemn he is.

  * * *

  When they reach Stepney, they find a handsome village, with a battlemented church named for Saint Dunstan, and Hilliard steers them up a rougher lane to a small, time-wearied house of two halls behind a garden, given over to a tethered pig. To one side is a shed with its rush roof slumped against a brick-built chimney from which slips a thin scarf of smoke.

  “Marcus!” Hilliard calls.

  When he comes to the door of the shed, Marcus Teerlinc is almost a Dutchman, in a long shirt, wooden clogs, and very close-set eyes. His large hands hang on very long arms and are smutted with charcoal.

  “Master Niklaas!”

  He suddenly seems to realize something because his pleasure dries up and he steps back. Both Hilliard and Dee recognize the signs and laugh.

  “I have not come for the money!” Hilliard tells him.

  Teerlinc relaxes.

  “Unless you have it?”

  Teerlinc looks askance. Of course not. Hilliard laughs once more and pats Teerlinc on the back. Dee offers to help Frommond from her saddle. There is something in Dee’s eye she likes. A companionable interest. She lets him help her down. John remains outside with the pony.

  The shed is a workshop, lined with sagging shelves on which sit cobwebbed earthenware pots, bottles, jugs that might once have held wine, and scores of scrubbed-out brushes. There are saws and carpenter’s tools on a workbench and in the vise a frame for a painting you can instantly see will never be square. A low coal fire smolders damply in the grate and there is a bank of candle stubs on the floor before a low bed that is covered with a surprisingly rich blue cloth.

  “Still going at it, Marcus?” Hilliard asks.

  “I do my best,” Teerlinc admits.

  He picks up a pair of owlish eyeglasses and studies Frommond, top to bottom, as if he were costing her by the inch. When he meets her eye, he takes the eyeglasses off.

  “Sorry, mistress,” he says. “It is a habit, of my trade.”

  “What is your trade?”

  “Master Teerlinc makes woodcuts for printers,” Hilliard answers for him. “Printers of the sorts of books you are unlikely to find in the Queen’s library.”

  Teerlinc tuts.

  “Are Chaucer and Boccaccio too lewd for the Queen?” he asks. “Is Dante?”

  “Yes,” Dee and Hilliard say together, laughing. To save her blushes Frommond thrusts the limning of Alice Rutherford’s man at him.

  “I am here to see if you can tell me about this. I hoped it might be your mother’s?” At the mention of his mother, Teerlinc’s face softens.

  “Moeder’s? May I?” He takes it from her and holds it to the light falling through the tall windows. He stares at it a long moment.

  “Oh yes,” he says, not looking up. “This is Moeder’s all right. Her last. I remember it. I remember him.”

  Frommond feels a warming thrill of discovery. Whether she can believe Alice Rutherford died happy or died heartbroken depends on the word she is about to hear. Teerlinc keeps looking down at the painting. His face has hardened.

  “Marcus?”

  He looks up at them.

  “Oh,” he says. “Yes. I remember him all right. He drove Moeder mad, this one. He took her ages. He would come and go, and he kept unchristian hours. Here one day, gone for weeks the next. And in the end, he would only pay half or something.”

  “But who was he? What was his name?”

  Teerlinc shakes his head.

  “I never knew,” he says. “I never met him. Didn’t want to. Moeder, may God rest her soul, she said he gave off a vapor. That he was poisonous, like a serpent, do you know? She used to hate him coming, and I swear—and this sounds stupid—but I swear he drov
e her to an early grave. She was fine that day, I remember. Painting away. It was the last day he came. She was happy to be done with it, with him, and then that evening, a little while after he’d gone, and they’d had an argument about something. He wouldn’t pay, though look at him: his clothes. He was good for it. And anyway, she just—she sat down, exhausted. Then she lay down and couldn’t breathe. I fetched the physician, but by the time we got back, she was coughing up blood and there was nothing we could do to stop her, and she just seemed to spew up her lungs, you know? Her heart? So much blood.”

  Tears fill his eyes.

  “I still blame him,” he says. “I still blame this one.”

  Frommond takes back the illumination. Her spirits are sinking.

  “But your mother must have kept papers,” Hilliard presses. “Receipts? Bills? Even I do that.”

  Teerlinc looks around at the room—half helpless, half hopeless—at the shelves with their assortment of jars softened by spiders’ webs.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Yes. Maybe?”

  They start to look among the detritus of the old woman’s artistic life. On her desk: All those brushes scrubbed out; all the dried-up pots of paint; the dusty palettes, long since scraped dry by one or other in a pile of rusting knives; the desiccated wishbone of a long-dead chicken; paint powders hardened to stone in their bowls. Tracks of mice and their shit and spiders’ webs everywhere.

  “This perhaps,” Hilliard asks. He has found a leather folder on the workbench. Teerlinc leaps across to stop him opening it.

  “No!” he says. “That is my work. For a… private collector.”

  Under the folder is another one, though, dusty, curled, and much nibbled by mice.

  “Yes, try that,” he says, clutching the newer leather folder to his chest. Hilliard opens it. Within are five or six sheets of paper and an old, ink-crusted pen. He stands back to let Teerlinc have the first look.

  “Just descriptions of paintings,” Teerlinc says. “Agreements to paint this or that. A bull and a gate. An old man and his stick. Here is an agreement with a gilder. Two portrait frames in miniature, oval. An agreement with a man for the tooth of a ferret.”