CHAPTER 15
Rain spattered against the windowpanes. Francis Bacon held the letter he was reading toward the window to try to catch more of the dim light. His brother's crabbed and much-abbreviated script was difficult enough in full sun; he'd go blind trying to decipher it under these conditions. His servant, Pinnock, knelt beside the hearth, stirring the embers under a fresh-laid faggot.
Francis felt restless. He needed a walk, weather notwithstanding. He wouldn't mind a roaring blaze maintained at someone else's expense and a hot cup of hippocras. It was only ten of the clock. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone. More, if his shot was lucky.
He spoke to the boy. "Don't build up the fire on my account."
"Sir?"
"I'm going out."
"In this?" Pinnock's voice squeaked with incredulity.
Francis wrapped himself in a thick cloak and hood and tramped the short distance to Holborn. The Antelope Inn was a hollow rectangle, three stories tall, longer than it was wide. On a dark day such as this, the walls glowed whitely. Yellow firelight danced in the diamond panes of the windows fronting the tavern, enticing to a man with raindrops speckling his lashes.
The painted sign creaked over the arched entrance to the courtyard. Rain cackled on the gravel, which looked as if it had been churned up by a tournament. The place seemed desolate in spite of the fire-lit windows. Most of the guests — spillover from the Inns of Court — had moved out that morning, going home to their families for the mesne vacation.
All to the good. Francis wanted a quiet chat with the proprietress.
He pushed through the door into the tavern and felt instantly suffused with warmth. He noted the confined space, with all the doors and windows closed and the roaring fire generating heat. One of the things he often pondered, in between other thoughts, was the exact nature of the Form of Heat. Air was not warm in and of itself, unlike fire or the rays of the sun. Out of doors, exposed to the exhalations of the earth and other influences, air was variable, impossible to examine. In a confined space, however, one might control the experiment. He had thought of using air captured in earthen jugs. But perhaps Mrs. Sprye would lend him her taproom for an afternoon of philosophical inquiry?
He half turned to go out again to revisit the contrast between the unfettered air, which was cold and wet, and the cloistered air within, which was warm and dry. But then he realized that Mrs. Sprye had noticed him and was even now rising to greet him.
He froze where he stood, torn between the desire to investigate and the fear of seeming foolish.
"Mr. Bacon? Are you coming or going?" Mrs. Sprye walked toward him. She wore a fitted gown of red worsted over a dark pink kirtle banded in black. Her brown hair was tucked into a netted caul, topped by a stiff linen cap. A partlet of lawn veiled her ample décolletage. Her hands were lifted in welcome.
The matter was decided.
Francis smiled, offering no explanation in answer to her raised eyebrows. He knew she wouldn't press. He had always liked her for that. He scanned the room, hoping no one less forbearant had seen him dithering on the threshold. Luckily, it was nearly empty. Two men sat by the inner wall reviewing a long rolled document. The barmaid perched on a stool behind the counter at the back, polishing pewter cups. Mrs. Sprye had been sitting alone at her accustomed table in the far corner, writing.
"Dolly, come take Mr. Bacon's cloak."
The maid hopped off her stool and hurried forward to accept the weight of wet wool as Francis shrugged it off his shoulders. She hung it in the nook behind the fireplace to dry.
"Thank you," Francis said. She giggled at him.
"Stop that giggling, you silly girl," Mrs. Sprye scolded. "Mr. Bacon doesn't care for such foolishness."
"I don't mind," he said. Dolly giggled again.
"You'll want something hot, I'll wager. Dolly, let's have a nice cup of mulled wine for Mr. Bacon. Quick, now! And one for me too, while you're about it."
"Yes, Madam." Dolly bobbed a curtsy and scurried through a door behind the counter.
"Come sit beside the fire," Mrs. Sprye said. "I'm astonished you trudged all the way here on such a foul morning. I would have expected every lawyer in London to be sleeping the day away today."
Francis sighed the sigh of a man with many burdens. "Alas, there is always work."
"And how is your brother Anthony?"
Francis drew in a sharp breath. Mrs. Sprye knew more than she ought about Anthony's intelligence work in France and about his own role in editing and decrypting his brother's letters. Anthony was ostensibly stranded in southern France by his fickle health, but his covert brief was to observe and analyze the political situation. He was well connected and friendly with both Protestants and Catholics. He sent relatively transparent reports directly to the Earl of Leicester and Secretary of State Walsingham. He sent the more sensitive details to his brother to interpret and transmit appropriately. Francis's work was unpaid, unthanked, and now made more difficult by his recent gaffe at court.
Lady Bacon must have been indiscreet with the Andromache Society. Francis bit his lip and met Mrs. Sprye's gaze with a level look that asked her not to probe. "Well enough. He loves Montaubon. He may never come home."
She smiled to show her understanding of the unspoken request then clucked her tongue like a simple gossip. "He will if your mother has anything to say about it."
Francis shrugged. They both knew that the power of maternal influence attenuated over long distances.
He waited until his hostess had seated herself and then chose a stool that placed his back at an oblique angle to the fire. He would be warm, but not overflushed.
Dolly returned with her fixings on a tray. She set her long-handled pipkin at the edge of the fire and began to mix spices, honey, and slices of fruit. Francis inhaled the scents of cinnamon, anise, and warming claret and sighed again, contentedly. This was what he'd wanted.
While they waited for their drinks, Francis and Mrs. Sprye chatted about gardening, a diversion they both enjoyed. They were not especially close friends, but they had known each other since Francis had first come to Gray's. Each had taken the measure of the other, adding it up to mutual liking augmented by mutual respect. Francis found Mrs. Sprye to be a more comfortable co-conversant than most women he knew. She accepted him as he was rather than regarding him as a block of clay to be molded or a pear tree to be trained against a wall.
When the wine was hot, Dolly filled two pewter goblets, served them, and took her tray back to the kitchen. Francis blew across the top of his drink to cool it. He hated to burn his tongue. He caught Mrs. Sprye's expression of patient expectation. The time had come.
"I have a question for you," he said. "Perhaps two."
"I thought you might. Your boy is perfectly capable of making hippocras."
"Not as good as yours."
She accepted the compliment with a tilt of her head.
"I've been tasked with examining the circumstances of Tobias Smythson's death."
"By your uncle, I presume."
Francis merely raised his eyebrows.
"I thought poor Toby was murdered by a cutpurse."
"The question remains open. My uncle's concern is that some of Smythson's less public activities might have been a factor."
"That his spying got him killed, you mean," Mrs. Sprye had little patience for the circumlocutions of political discourse.
"Yes." Since he could be direct as well, Francis added, "He should not have told you about that."
"He asked me to watch my guests for covert activities and keep him informed. Informed! As if I would allow Jesuits to hide under my beds or secret masses to be chanted in my rooms! Do you think I want my queen murdered by popish scalamanders?" Indignation glowed in her cheeks.
"Did Smythson uncover any such activities at Gray's?"
"I think he did, but he wouldn't tell me what. Or, more importantly, who." Her hazel eyes sparkled. "I like to think he was concerned for my safety, but it's more l
ikely that he feared censure from Lord Burghley for lack of discretion."
Francis let his admiration for both the insight and the sparkle show. "I'm sure concern for you played the larger role."
"Now you're flattering me, which means you haven't yet learned what you came to ask."
He nodded, hesitated, and took another sip of wine. "In all honesty, I don't know how to begin."
Her laughter rose in a musical trill. "Ah, Mr. Bacon! If that's the case, I think I can guess your question. You're wondering about the nature of my friendship with Tobias."
"I am, Mrs. Sprye. And thank you."
She sighed and chafed her cup between her palms. "Let us say that Tobias discovered in himself an attraction to some of my less tangible attributes."
That was opaque yet candid. Francis admired her verbal agility. She knew, in other words, that Smythson was seeking influence rather than romance.
He pretended to study her, like a man appraising a work of art. "Yet the tangible attributes are so appealing. Your shining hair, for instance."
She batted her lashes at him. "My flashing eyes."
"Your Venus figure and your Athenaic wit."
Another trill of laughter. She beamed at him. "Mr. Bacon, you astonish me. Dare I imagine that I've acquired another suitor?" She snapped her fingers over her head, signaling Dolly for more wine.
"My mother would be horrified," Francis said, leaning forward confidentially.
"Not quite the demure young baroness she imagines for you."
"Not quite. But I believe you would be the superior companion." His mother persisted in urging him toward marriage, preferably noble, although even she was beginning to realize that his tastes ran more to lords than ladies. Though he wouldn't say no to a baroness with money.
Dolly returned with fresh supplies to make another round of drinks. Dogging her footsteps with a scowl darkening his brow was Treasurer Avery Fogg.
"What's going on here?" He stood before the table, dominating it with his bulk, his fists planted on his hips. He glared down at Francis. "What do you think you're up to?"
Francis blanched. He loathed physical confrontations. Fortunately, he was not undefended.
Mrs. Sprye swatted at Fogg's arm as if batting away an intrusive but beloved dog. "Fie, Sir Avery! What do you mean by this bluster?" She tugged one of his fists away from his hip. He resisted long enough to let her feel his strength and then allowed her to capture his hand. "Am I not allowed to have a quiet conversation with an old friend?"
"Doesn't sound like a friendly conversation to me," Fogg said. "'Venus figure and Athenaic wit?' Sounds more like courtship."
He stared daggers at Francis, who tucked himself well back on his stool. That bumped him against the lush-figured Dolly where she knelt beside the fire with her pipkin. So he pulled himself up very straight and folded his hands in his lap. Then he feared that the gesture might be misconstrued as coverage and refolded them on the tabletop. Fogg watched all of this with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.
"Stop it this minute, Sir Avery," Mrs. Sprye said. "You're frightening the boy."
Francis closed his eyes to shut out the humiliation. How had he gotten himself into this situation? He'd gotten confirmation, of a sort, that someone was smuggling Catholic literature to or through Gray's, but he hadn't managed to learn who, specifically, Smythson had suspected.
At least he had learned from unbearable personal experience how easily Avery Fogg's jealous temper was inflamed.