Getting away from the manor was anticlimactic. There was no challenge, no fighting, only, Finn was not with them. Nor was he at the inn when they reached home.
An awkwardness grew between Will and Jake. Will refused to answer any of Jake's questions, (he had many, some about Finn's secret work, some about Will and Bella) or even, after a couple of days, to acknowledge them. Every night, Will left the inn and was gone till morning, searching alleys and taverns, asking for news of his acquaintances and contacts. Will even knew the whereabouts of the first house that had sheltered Finn in London. Finn had led him there. Jake had not known how close they were.
Three days after the wedding, Will brought Jake a letter he had found among Finn's goods. It was addressed to both apprentices. Jake, he urged to find a place with Henslowe or Alleyn, the two chief playmasters. He praised Jake's talent for mimicing all types of person in the town, but asked him to put his faith a little in other people if he was ever to use his talents fully. Will's message was on a separate sheet, and he did not share it.
Will was exhausted and losing weight. Jake wondered if Will remembered Sean's death every time he looked at Jake. The reverse was true.
He did demand that Will resign from Walsingham's employ. Will told him that he had sent back the Italian ring but heard nothing in return. Walsingham was sick, it was said.
Jake also searched for Finn, with as little success as Will. The company was fraying, members leaving for whatever secure place they could find. They had not performed a play in days.
Calhoun sent Jake in livery to Lord Burleigh with a sealed letter. Burleigh was Calhoun's most powerful friend, and had a spy network which included Walsingham as an underling. Whatever he knew, Jake doubted he'd tell. Crooked Cecil, Grace's escort, was his only son.
Waiting for Burleigh to read through the letter, Jake looked casually at his desk. Sketches he recognised, of the Southampton set, fixed his attention. There were other images in the same hand, but upside down in relation to him. Burleigh caught him craning his neck and dismissed him sharply.
Two days later and much the worse for sleepless nights, Jake heard that Sir Francis was dead. The Walsingham household had a blessedly stagestruck cook. Jake was encouraging her to buy him a pint - he needed to keep his spirits up - when she confided that it was not seemly, really, for her to be in a tavern, with the master dead this morning. Jake urged her to a corner out of the drafts and other gossips for a minute's comfort, and questioned her anxiously. All of the household were to attend the funeral that very night, in St Paul's church. No kin or friends would have time to journey in from beyond London town. "How hasty. How... private," said Jake. Shifty, he thought. The cook, defensive, said that outward pomp would be unfitting for so godly a man. Jake was reminded that while Walsingham's trade had been worldly, his religion was not. He spoke words of comfort to the wench and he drank her ale.
So. Walsingham's house would be deserted for one night. Here was Will's chance, if he but knew it, to recover any documents that linked him to Sir Francis. Will, Jake told himself mournfully, was a man with a future. Soon he would be living in Calhoun Hall, cheek by jowl with his ideal woman.
Unlike Will, unlike the other refugees, Jake was one of the core company who had no other options, not ones he would take willingly. Acting was his best hope, and London was due for a glut of actors when Calhoun's Men dispersed. He hung on, and waited, for he knew not what. He might be drawn in and accused of Irishness, for all he knew. He feared. He pitied Jacob Pratt sincerely over an ale he had bought himself.
Of course, he had nothing to lose.
He could go and fetch the papers. He owed Will nothing. (Will had been vile to live with lately.) But that goes to show how heroic it would be. He pictured himself throwing the papers in Will's face, with choice remarks about people who didn't tell people the truth about other people.
He was not in a sufficiently Christopher Marlowe frame of mind to compose very good choice remarks. He went out and dipped his face in the chill rainwater of a horse drinking trough.
The house would still be empty. Drunk, partly on ale but mostly on the beauty of his own despair and nobility, Jake set out for Walsingham's house in a state of altruism and bravado.
And afterward, what else? Jake's plan was to run. To get out of there. They (unspecified but menacing authorities) were not going to let him continue quietly with his life.
Furtively, silently, Jake pushed open the door onto a scene of disarray beyond any spring cleaning he had ever seen. He was not the first one here. A tall figure in dark clothing stood over the chests and desk in Sir Francis' study, overhanded swings bringing an axe down over and over to reduce the wood to kindling. Like Jake, he clearly expected hidden drawers in the thing. Jake stared - it was Hamish. Jake had no idea why in God's name he was here. What he was doing was clear. A linenfold panel Jake would never have picked out hung open, the door to a hidden cupboard. The cupboard had been ravished of all its contents.
Ham was ripping papers out from among the shards of walnut and packing them in a hempen sack to take away. But where? Whose shilling had he taken?
Jake's mind's eye flashed back to Burleigh's desk covered with Ham's sketches of the courtiers allied with Essex.
Hamish was in the pay of the Cecils, and had been so all along.
Sweet Jesu. Jake felt a black wave of shame sweep over him. All this time, he had been condescending to Ham as a simple, little, country boy. What must he have thought of Jake's swaggering and ruffling it as a Man of the Town. He had not even (crowing peacock that he was) had the worldliness to look at a stranger unprejudiced.
He stood frozen. He wanted to flee his life, and become a new person. He could go to Plymouth and join the frowning puritans in the new world.
Mentally, he was wildly cramming his goods and gear into Finn's second-best satchel when Ham's head jerked up, the better to stare at him in the shadowed doorway. "Close the door behind you," he ordered.
He was right. Even now in the candlelit church, the reversed torches were probably being doused as the coffin was lowered. Soon the mourners would be back. Jake glanced once over his shoulder and obeyed. "I'm here for Will."
"Aye. He was Walsingham's man."
"You found his name." O, thank God. "He's repented of his word."
Ham shook his head. "I've not had time to go over these papers."
"You can, though." Jake said eagerly, "Before you pass them to Burleigh. You can take out references to Crodsky. He had not-" Jake paused for a way to put it, delicate, not to offend another agent. Ham is an agent! Nay, I cannot believe it. "He had not run any errands for the spymaster yet."
Ham had returned to his search of the room. "Come and help," he said.
"What?"
"You have told me before what fine agents actors make; now, come and help."
"You are getting old letters back, not lifting the State out of true," Jake said recklessly. He supposed a minister of the crown was the best heir of Walsingham's doings. A jewel rolling on the floor caught the moonlight and he picked it up.
"Papers," Hamish emphasised, rolling a map into a scroll.
"It's a poison ring." Jake plucked at the edge of the cameo until the hinge gave and the hollow was revealed. When he sniffed, it smelt of almonds. "Italian. Have you checked his bedchamber?"
Hamish looked blankly at him across the ravaged study.
"Sir Francis was the biggest gull for folk remedies in London. He took to his bed in season and out. His work was done from there, these last weeks."
Ham nodded, shouldered his sack of papers, and followed him, absently tucking a decryption key in his sleeve. "Where is Will?"
"Out on the streets, looking for Finn."
"Finn is dead. His body will be found soon."
Jake shuddered. He had feared for Finn, but the confirmation shook him.
Hamish lifted the latch to Walsingham's own room, and slid in, checking the window (there was a filbert tree within reach with good climbable branches) while Jake stood slack jawed. He looked round impatiently. The room was a treasurehouse of herbal remedies but otherwise unpromising.
Jake recovered while Ham tore the chests and cupboards apart. He hauled back the bed curtains and ran a hand under the feather bolster. Walsingham had kept a knife there. He no longer needed it; Jake slipped it into his belt. Also, he found some unmedical documents sifted through the recepts for ague and plague by the bed. "Finn watched the court for the Gaelic Irish beyond the Pale," he guessed.
"Yes." Ham was leafing rapidly through a household accounts book. After a moment, he added it to his sack and started tapping the walls. The chests and cupboards in the room, which now hung open, were ransacked.
"And you? Who are your masters?"
Hamish bent to look under the bed. Jake already knew he would only find the necessary there. He treats me as if I were not a threat. He must despise me. Jake hated that.
"I am from Scotland."
You are from James VI. Of course Jake thought, the Cecils would open negotiations with the next monarch. The Queen is old and waning, and the Cecils take the long view in politics.
"Soon," Hamish said in answer to his thought, "England and Scotland will share a monarch."
Do not dismiss her majesty so carelessly. "Yes." Hamish had still not looked in his direction. Contempt. To think of the hours Jake had spent straining for Hamish's attention and approval. "Is this what you are looking for?" Jake held up his sheaf of papers fanned between finger and thumb.
"What are they?"
"Lists of names, and amounts paid. Who is Doctor Lopez?"
Hamish looked dangerously intent.
Jake concealed his nervousness. He could play the part of a fearless roaring boy. He was an actor born. "I want Will out of this."
"Done. That, I already meant to arrange." Hamish twitched the papers out of his hand and swung the sack over his shoulder, full now. "We have lingered too long."
Outside, a link boy lit the mourners home along the lane from St Paul's Church.
"Out the window and down the tree?" suggested Jake.
"Down the stairs and out by the garden gate."
When they got outside, they ran. A half mile away, breathless in the lee of a bowling alley, Jake's heart thumped hard. Being able to move had raised his spirits; he would have welcomed a fight in this mood.
"Where did you find the list of agents?"
It had been by the bed sifted among medical receipts for the regulation of choler. Jake ignored the question. "What is your plan now?"
"To get out of here is the plan. Report to Cecil, then back north. They're not going to let me live quietly after this. And you?"
That, Jake did not know. Finn's death would break up the company. He could act (maybe Henslowe would hire him) and herd cows, and had various gifts he could turn to account. "Finn is truly dead?"
"I saw him laid low by Southampton's hireling. Will you come north with me?"
"Jesus, why?"
Hamish shrugged. "You showed me London."
Jacob gave him a hard stare.
"You were a help tonight. And you showed Crodsky loyalty since I have known you. You are a good friend. For long, I had thought you Crodsky's Ganymede."
Jake was all surprise that he should think that, or even know the term. "A ganymede is a, a-"
"Catamite." Yes, Hamish did know the term.
"He was cupbearer to the gods, and beloved of Jupiter." Somehow, Jake had picked up Will's habit of sharing his education gratis.
"An honourable estate." Ham's forefinger grazed his collarbone through a layer of broadcloth doublet.
Jake shook the finger off and glared like a cat. "You see yourself as Jupiter?"
"No."
Jake relaxed. He had won this bout of conversation.
"But I would have you worship me."
Jake took the challenge and challenged back indignantly. "What, on my knees?"
Hamish clasped his face between both hands and kissed his mouth.
Jake arched away from him. "That was not an offer."
"Oh." Hamish looked chopfallen, though not so much so as he would if Jake had not kissed back. "A basis for negotiation maybe?"
Jake edged away, thinking of his barren prospects. He was on poor ground to negotiate anything, with the company's imminent demise, Will off to tutor Master Scout, and always more actors in London than there were places. "What will you do now?"
"North. I think I will work my way as a peddler and sell knots of ribbon and kitchen spices to farmsteads on my way. You'd make a fine huckster, sweetheart." He smiled teasingly.
"And then, Scotland. Spy." Just to be clear about that.
"No, I am a courier only. I report to my king and take his orders."
"A foreign king." Jake had witnessed executions. He had heard the cry, "behold, the heart of a traitor," while a twitching piece of offal was held high.
"He is old Elizabeth's heir. When she is gone, he will rule your country, too. He is not plotting to hurt her - no need. He is scarcely older than we two. He has all the time in the world for his designs."
Jaw dropping, Jake stared at him as if he were a monster out of John Mandeville's book. All this while, Jake had thought he knew Hamish, that they were becoming friends, and all this time Ham had been keeping so great a secret from him. It was not a secret Ham could have shared with an Englishman, Jake knew that, yet still, he felt betrayed. All this time, he had not seen the real Hamish at all.
This situation was intolerable. He fled, stumbling, back to the inn, back to the inn run by the Flemings. He had nowhere to go that was not Hamish's territory, and no useful options or levers to use. Unless he was willing to betray the boy, and now he realised that he was not so willing.
It was a sleepless night that followed, passed alone in the stable loft. No matter how he stoked his anger, he still wanted to be Hamish's friend; trying to impress him, stealing glances at him, mocking his outre accent. He was as honourable a man as Jake, if one remembered he was an honourable Scotsman. He was a stranger, but Jake knew one of his faces already.
When dawn coloured the east a sickly tint, Jake stood, brushed a wisp of straw from his rump, and stalked to the bolthole under the stairs where Ham slept. He rapped sharply on the wood.
He was not certain what words he would use, but he had hopes of kissing.
END
notes: sorry for the boring element of this - I wanted to see if I could write this a bit "period," and the sentences got rather clunky.