“You have made yourself at home, I see.”

Catherine could not help being acidic. He was here on sufferance, solely because she was being blackmailed into doing something she had no wish to do, in order to save her silly brother’s life, and Tom was already behaving like the master of the house.

He must learn—and learn soon—that he could take no liberties with her. Alas, his next words simply went to prove that he had every intention of doing so.

The Beckoning Dream
Paula Marshall

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PAULA MARSHALL,

married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely, has been a swimming coach and has appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.

Author’s Note to the Reader

This novel, like all of mine, is firmly based on fact, and is dedicated to the memory of Aphra Behn, wit, poet, dramatist, novelist and secret agent, who lived the life of a free woman in the mid-seventeenth century—no mean achievement. It has taken three hundred years for her reputation to be revived and her many talents to be properly appreciated.

One of her greatest achievements as an agent in Holland was to warn the British Government in 1667 that the Dutch Navy was about to launch a major attack on the naval bases of Sheerness and Chatham on the River Medway. Her warning was ignored, as she recorded in her autobiography, and for three hundred years her biographers and critics mocked her for having claimed that, had the Government heeded her report, a major disaster for the British Navy would have been avoided.

Three hundred years later, Aphra’s claim was vindicated when her letter, giving details of the proposed attack, was discovered in the State Papers. In the same way, her right to be seen as the mother of the English novel and as the writer of a number of witty and actable plays was also derided until the Sixties of the present century when her work was looked at with fresh eyes.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Prologue

“True love is a beckoning dream.” Old saying

Two men from the court of King Charles II at Whitehall sat on the side of the stage of the Duke of York’s Theatre in the early spring of 1667. One of them was short and plump and was wearing a monstrous blackcurled wig. The other was tall and muscular; his wig was blond, and his hooded eyes were blue. Both of them were magnificently dressed and were wearing half-masks so that it was impossible to detect their true identity.

They were watching a play called The Braggart, or, Lackwit in Love, which had just reached the scene where, as the script had it, the following ensued:

Enter to LACKWIT, BELINDA BELLAMOUR, disguised as a youth, one LUCIUS.

LACKWIT Ho, there, sirrah! Art thou Mistress Belinda Bellamour’s boy?

BELINDA Nay, sir.

LACKWIT How “Nay, sir’? What answer is that?

Art thou not but just come from her quarters?

BELINDA Aye, sir, but nay, sir. Aye, sir, I have come from her quarters. Nay, sir, I am not her boy—my mother was of quite a different kidney!

So, aye, sir, nay, sir!

LACKWIT Insolent child! (Makes to strike her with his cane.)

BELINDA (Twisting away.) What is the world coming to when a man may be beaten for speaking the truth!

LACKWIT Man! Man! Thy mother’s milk is still on thy lips!

BELINDA Aye, sir—but it is not Belinda’s!

By now the audience—which was in on the joke of Belinda’s sex—was roaring its approval as Belinda defied Lackwit by jumping about the stage to dodge his cane, showing a fine pair of legs as she did so.

Master Blond Wig drawled at his dark friend, “Now that she has chosen to show them, her legs are better than her breasts—and they, when visible, were sublime. A new star for the stage.”

He took in the pleasing sight that the actress playing Belinda presented to the world in boy’s clothes; lustrous raven hair, deep violet eyes, a kissable mouth and a body to stiffen a man’s desire simply by looking at it!

“Aye,” agreed Black Wig, who was also appreciating Belinda. “And a new playwright, too. The bills proclaim that he is one Will Wagstaffe.”

“Will Wagstaffe!” Blond Wig began to laugh. “You jest, Hal.”

“Nay, Stair, for that is what the playbill saith. And the doxy who affects the boy is none other than Mistress Cleone Dubois, who made a hit, a very hit, as Clarinda in Love’s Last Jest by that same Wagstaffe whilst thou were out of town.”

“Did she so? I do not believe in Will Wagstaffe, and nor should you,” exclaimed Blond Wig. “But I have a mind to play a jest of my own.”

The action of the play had come close to them whilst they spoke, as Belinda and Lackwit sparred. Blond Wig picked a fruit from the basket that the orange girl had left before them, and threw it straight at Belinda, whom nothing daunted, either as Belinda playing a boy on the stage or in her true nature when not an actress. On seeing the orange coming, she caught it neatly and flung it back at Blond Wig as hard as she could.

He retaliated by rolling it across the stage towards her as though it were a bowling ball. Mr Betterton, the doyen of all Restoration actors, who was playing Lackwit, jumped dexterously over it, so that it arrived at Belinda’s feet.

She bent down, picked it up, and examined it before beginning to peel and eat it, segment by segment, exclaiming as she did so, “Why, Sir Lackwit, I do believe that the fruit thou hast refused is better than the wit. For that is dry, and this orange is juicy. I shall tell my Mistress Belinda that whilst you may have pith and self-importance, you lack the true Olympian oil which the Gods bestow on their favourites.

“But for the orange peel, this,” and she threw the shards of the peel straight at Blond Wig, who was on his feet applauding her improvisation, as were the rest of the audience.

“The doxy is wittier than the man who writes her lines,” exclaimed Blond Wig after bowing to the audience, who applauded him as heartily as they had rewarded Belinda. “And if you and the audience cannot see the jest in a man who writes plays calling himself Will Wagstaffe why, then, you and they are duller than I thought.”

“Enough of this,” whispered Betterton to Cleone as they grappled together in a mock and comic wrestling match. “Improvisation is well enough, and one of Rochester’s Merry Gang interfering with the action on stage may have to be endured, but you need not encourage him.”

“Need I not? But the audience, who is our master, approved.”

“Aye so, but we risk every fool in town wanting to be part of the play.” He turned himself back into Lackwit again in order to declaim in the direction of the pit, “Why, I vow thou art as soft as a very girl, Master Lucius. You need some lessons in hardening thyself.”

“Dost think that thou are the man to give me them, Sir Lackwit?”

The pit roared again. Some of the bolder members threw pennies on to the stage at Belinda’s feet. Blond Wig had produced a fan and waved it languidly in her direction.

“I vow and declare, Hal,” he whispered to Black Wig, “Master Wagstaffe is as bawdily witty as his master, the other Will.”

“And what Will is that, Stair?”

“Why, Shakespeare, man. Will Shakespeare. He who wags the staff. Is all the world as thick as a London fog in winter, these days?”

Black Wig couldn’t think of a witty answer to that. He might be Henry Bennett, m’lord Arlington, King Charles II’s Secretary of State who ruled England, but his wit was long term, carefully thought out, unlike that of his friend Blond Wig, otherwise Sir Alastair Cameron. Stair Cameron was known for his cutting tongue as well as his reputation for courage and contempt for everything and everybody. He was also known for his success with women.

And now, if Lord Arlington knew his man, his latest female target would be the pretty doxy on the stage who was back in skirts again, teasing and tempting Lackwit—as well as every red-blooded man in the audience. Her charms were such that she might even attract the attention of the King himself.

The pretty doxy on the stage was well aware that Blond Wig was making a dead set at her, as the saying went. At the end of the first Act, he bought a posy from a flower girl and tossed it to her as she left the stage.

She tossed it back at him.

In the second Act, he kissed his hand to her whenever the action on stage brought her near him.

Halfway through the third Act, Belinda pretended to woo Lackwit, and to allow him to woo her, her true lover, Giovanni Amoroso, being concealed behind a hedge to enjoy the fun. At the point when Lackwit had worked himself into a lather of desire, Blond Wig drew off one of his perfumed gloves and slung that in Belinda’s direction at the very climax of her scene with Lackwit.

“Why, what have we here?” she extemporised, holding up the glove. “What hath Dan Cupid sent me as a love token?” She sniffed at it. “Fie upon him, it hath a vile stink. He may have it back.”

And she slung it back at Blond Wig, who rose and bowed to her.

M’lord Arlington applauded him vigorously, whispering to his friend as he did so, “The wench will serve us well, will she not? Old Gower hath the right of it again. A pretty wit and a quick one. As quick as thine, Stair, I do declare.”

“But shallow, like all women’s wit, I dare swear. But I agree, she will do as well as another—and better than some. And mayhap she will tell me who Will Wagstaffe is, and where I may find the fellow.”

“Hipped on Wagstaffe, Stair?”

“Aye, hipped on any pretty wit—particularly one of whom I do not know.”

“Make the doxy thine, friend Stair, and she will tell thee all. Look, Lackwit hath learned that he truly lacks wit, and that Amoroso and Belinda are about to sing their love duet to signify that the play is over, and that he was cuckolded before he even wed his Mistress and made her wife!”

The play was, indeed, ending. Belinda was reciting the Epilogue, a poem in which she averred that she had followed the beckoning dream which led towards true love, and might now marry Amoroso.

“Truly a dream, that,” Stair whispered to Arlington. “But not the kind one of which the lady speaks. I can think of no nightmare more troubling than that which ends in marriage.”

The Epilogue over, Mistress Dubois, Betterton, and the pretty boy who played Amoroso linked hands and were bowing to the audience, which was on its feet again, applauding the actors. Blond Wig was shouting huzzahs at Belinda, who refused to look at him.

“To the devil with him,” hissed Belinda, or rather Mistress Cleone Dubois, to Betterton. “He tried to ruin all my best scenes. Another courtier come to entertain himself by destroying us.”

“He got no change from you, Cleone, my pretty dear. On the contrary, your quick wits had them laughing at him as much as you.”

“And who the devil is he? I know his friend, Sir Hal Bennett, late made Lord Arlington, but not the human gadfly in the blond wig.”

Betterton smiled and bowed, his head almost touching his knees before he led the company offstage, before saying, “Sir Alastair, known as Stair Cameron, Baronet. Rochester’s friend—everybody’s friend, aye, and enemy, too, gossip hath it. Avoid him like the plague that hath just left us. He would be no friend of thine, Cleone—or of any woman’s. Mark me this, he will be in the Green Room this evening, to pursue you further.”

“May God forbid,” Cleone shuddered. She trusted no man, least of all those who infested Charles’s court. “I want naught of him.”

But he wasn’t in the Green Room. Sam Pepys was there, and Lord Arlington, who bowed at Cleone and said in a butter-melting voice, “My felicitations, Mistress Dubois. You have grown since I last saw thee at Sir Thomas Gower’s when you were Mistress Wood. A very child, were you not?”

He tittered a little behind a fine white handkerchief edged with lace. “You look about you, mistress. Is it my friend you seek?”

The violet eyes were hard upon him. “Nay, m’lord. Unless it is to teach him manners—if indeed it were possible to teach him anything.”

Sam Pepys, standing by them, gave a jolly guffaw. “Come, come, mistress, you are too harsh. Stair Cameron is a right good fellow.”

Cleone rounded on him, shaking her fan in his direction, Belinda’s fan. She knew who Sam Pepys was. The Secretary to the Navy, a womaniser and a gossip—but there was no harm in him.

“Fie upon you, too, sir. What, I wonder, would you say, if Stair Cameron entered your office and upset the contents of your inkpot on your newly written letter to your master, the King, ruining it? Would you think the destruction of your work a jolly jest to be applauded? For such were the offences he committed against me!”

Lord Arlington clapped his hands together, and even Sam himself joined in the joke. “Why, madam,” m’lord offered, “you are as spirited a lady as you were a lass. I should introduce you to Sir Stair. How the fur and the feathers would fly, for I vow that in spirit you are well matched.”

Cleone stared at him, nothing daunted by his name or his position, something that pleased the man before her mightily. Oh, he had plans for Mistress Wood, also named Mistress Dubois, great plans. And now he could go to Sir Thomas Gower, his spymaster supreme, to tell him that Cleone Dubois was a lass of spirit who would serve them well.

What she said next had him laughing again behind his lace-gloved hand. “For,” smiled Cleone, “it would please me greatly never to see Sir Stair Cameron again, either on stage, or off it. Unless it were to hand him such a congé from a woman as he has never received before. But enough of him. To talk of him wearies me. What thought you of the play, m’lord?”

Graciously, m’lord Arlington told the lady that he had enjoyed it, his smooth face even smoother than usual.

And all the time he was laughing to himself as he thought of the delightful possibility that the spirited lady and her tormentor might soon meet again—and wondered which of them would come off the best, as the fur and the feathers would inevitably fly like the orange, the posy and the perfumed glove!

Chapter One

1667

“Who the devil can that be at this hour, Catherine?”

Rob Wood had just carved himself a large chunk of cold bacon for his breakfast to go with the buttered slice of bread that his sister, whom he always insisted on calling by her true name, had cut for him.

He had no sooner transferred the bacon to his pewter plate than a vile hammering had begun on the door of their small house in Cob’s Lane, London, not far from the Inns of Court where Rob was studying to be a lawyer. Or was supposed to be studying.

Rob was as idle as his sister was diligent. The only hard work he did was to write pamphlets attacking the rule of King Charles II and praising that of the late usurper and regicide, Cromwell. This was a particularly foolish act since England was at present at war with the Netherlanders—fighting them in order to prevent them from seizing the major share of the world’s trade. Opposition to the king was thus bound to be seen as treason.

Catherine, who was busy buttering a slice of loaf for herself, said crossly, “Answer the door, Rob. Don’t stand there yammering. It’s probably Jem Hollins come to clean our chimneys.”

Grumbling, Rob rose to do as he was bid. Although he was living entirely on his sister’s earnings in the theatre, he resented that fact rather than being grateful for it. Their father, once a rich country gentleman, had supported Cromwell in the late Civil War. Charles II’s Restoration had seen his estates confiscated; he had died penniless, leaving his two children to make their own way in the world.

Rob thought of himself as a dispossessed Crown Prince and behaved accordingly.

He never reached the door. Tired of trying to attract their attention, the Woods’ importunate visitors ceased their knocking abruptly.

Shouting “Ho, there, take heed and attend to us,” they knocked down the house door with iron-tipped staves of wood, before rushing in, seizing Rob and throwing him to the floor.

A third man, carrying a large piece of parchment importantly before him, put one foot on the struggling Rob, whilst a fourth placed himself between Catherine and her brother in case she tried to come to his assistance.

“By what authority—?” she began, using all the power of her stage voice to try to overawe them.

“By the authority vested in me by his most noble majesty, King Charles II, I hereby arrest Robert Wood for the crime of high treason, and detain his sister Catherine Wood, also known as Cleone Dubois, actress and whore, for questioning as to his activities.”

“My sister’s no whore,” shouted Rob as he was hauled to his feet, his hands pinioned behind his back, “and I know of no law which says that a man may not speak or write freely of his opinions—unless you have just invented one.”

If only Rob would learn to keep silent when challenged he would not find life so difficult, mourned Catherine as the leading tipstaff struck her brother across the mouth, bellowing, “That should silence your lying tongue, you treacherous rogue.”

He and two of his fellows began to drag Rob outside. The fourth seized Catherine roughly by the arm with one hand, while running the other across her breasts.

Hissing at him, “No need of that, I have no desire either to have you fondle me, or to escape,” Catherine brought her high-heeled shoe down hard on his instep. The tipstaff let out a shrill cry before striking her across the face with such force that she was thrown against the wall.

“Had I the time, you insolent bonaroba, you whore, I’d serve you as a man should serve a whore—later, perhaps,” he roared at her as she tried to recover her balance.

And who am I to criticise poor Rob for not keeping his tongue under guard when I can’t keep mine shut, either? Catherine thought as she walked painfully into the street. Outside a small crowd had gathered to watch the two Woods dragged away. She looked around her; where are they taking us? To prison? To Newgate? Or to the Tower of London itself?

She was destined for none of them, it seemed. She and Rob were half-walked, half-dragged to the nearest wharf on the Thames where two wherries were waiting. Rob was shoved into one, and she into the other.

The last she saw of him was his wherry making for the Tower, whilst she was rowed off in the opposite direction. To the Palace of Whitehall, no less, the King’s home in London, and consequently, the seat of government. Catherine’s mounting curiosity almost overcame her fear for herself, even as she worried over poor Rob’s ultimate fate.

No time for that, though. She was bustled along Whitehall’s gravelled walks towards one of the many buildings that made up the Palace precincts. The tipstaffs waved their staves, doors were opened for them, and presently, after traversing a number of long corridors, they came to a pair of double doors, on whose panels the tipstaffs knocked more subserviently than they had done in Cob’s Lane.

Beyond the doors was a largish room, one wall of which consisted almost entirely of latticed windows looking out on a garden. A number of finely dressed gentlemen were standing about, but they left the room even as Catherine entered it.

At the opposite end from the doors was a long table, where a man whom she immediately recognised sat in state. Behind him, covering the whole wall, hung a huge tapestry showing the Greeks pouring out of the Wooden Horse to capture and destroy Troy.

Catherine had no time to admire wall hangings. She was too busy staring at Sir Thomas Gower. Sir Thomas had taken her father, Rob and herself into his household for a short time after King Charles’s Restoration had made them homeless. He had been as kind to her father as his position as a powerful Royalist had permitted him to be.

Why had she been brought here? She was soon to find out.

“Come here, Mistress Wood,” Sir Thomas bade her, and then, “Bring the lady a chair, she seems distressed. Place it before me. Sit, sit,” he commanded her as she walked slowly forward, rubbing her arm, bruised where the tipstaff had seized it.

Now that she was near to Sir Thomas, Catherine could plainly tell that he had aged since she had last seen him. His face was lined with over sixty years of life, but he still possessed the calm gravity that had been so different from her father’s impotent rage at what had happened to his pleasant life.

She could also see that level with herself, and in front of Sir Thomas’s grand oak table on which books, ledgers and parchments stood at one end, was an armchair in which a man lounged. A man who was staring at her, not with Sir Thomas’s kind and paternal stare, but hungrily, almost ferally, his blue eyes cruel.

Bewildered, but still retaining the steady calm for which her fellow actors admired her, Catherine returned Sir Thomas’s grave look. She must not show her fear, but must keep her head so that Rob might not lose his, and pray that there might be a way out of the dire situation in which he had placed them.

“My dear Catherine,” said Sir Thomas, kindness itself, “I fear that your condition—or perhaps I should say, your brother’s condition—is a sad one. Treason!” He shook his grey head helplessly. “An ugly word, my dear. Nevertheless, God willing, we might find a way through the wood for you.”

What wood was he speaking of? The good old man, Catherine thought dazedly, was being so tactful that she hardly knew what he was saying. The lounging fellow on her right, whose eyes were still so hard on her that she could feel them when she could no longer see them, grunted “Ahem’ in a meaningful tone—although his meaning escaped Catherine!

But apparently not Sir Thomas, for he threw a sideways glance at his unmannerly aide, and said smoothly. “Ah, yes, Mistress Wood. I must be plain. We are not engaged in one of Master Wagstaffe’s comedies, are we?”

“No, indeed,” agreed Catherine.

“Whoever Master Wagstaffe is,” drawled the lounging man. “Another mystery.”

“No matter.” Sir Thomas was a little brisk. “I put it to you, Mistress Wood, that you do not share your brother’s Republican views.”

“I doubt—” and now Catherine was dry “—that he shares them himself. Rob is a weathercock. An attack of the megrims and he is all for the late usurper. If the weather is fine, and there is good food on the table, then it is ‘God save King Charles II’.”

Sir Thomas was suave. “All the more reprehensible of him, then, mistress, to put his life in jeopardy by writing treason. You, I understand, are a good and loyal subject of the King?”

Since his question seemed to invite the answer “Yes”, Catherine gave it to him.

“Oh, excellent,” smiled Sir Thomas. “So you would be willing to do the state some service. You speak Dutch, mistress, do you not? Your late mother being a Netherlander, as I remember.”

This seemed neither here nor there, and its relevance to poor Rob seemed questionable, but doubtless there was some point to this that escaped her. The lounging man was fidgeting again.

Sir Thomas gave him a benevolent stare. “Patience, Tom Trenchard, patience. We are almost at the heart of the matter.”

“Oh, excellent,” drawled Tom Trenchard, mocking Sir Thomas’s earlier remark. “I had thought that we were trapped in the outworks for ever.”

This time Catherine favoured him with a close examination, particularly since Sir Thomas was allowing him more freedom than was usually given to an underling. The principal thing about him was that he was big, much bigger than any of the men in Betterton’s company.

His shoulders were broad, his hands large, and he appeared to be at least six feet in height. His hair, his own, was of a burning red gold—more gold than red. It was neither long like the wigs of the King’s courtiers, nor cropped short like one of Cromwell’s Roundheads, but somewhere in between. It was neither straight nor curly, but again, was also somewhere in between, waving slightly.

His clothes were rough and serviceable. His shirt had been washed until it was yellow, and the weary lace at his throat and wrists was darned. His boots were the best thing about him, but even they were not those of a court gallant. Neither was his harsh and craggy face.

She already knew that he was mannerless, and he gave off the ineffable aura of all the soldiers whom she had ever met, being wild, but contained. Or almost contained. He saw her looking at him, and nodded thoughtfully. “You will know me again, mistress, I see.”

“Do I need to?” Catherine countered, and then to Sir Thomas, “Forgive me, sir, for allowing my attention to stray,” for she knew that the great ones of this world required all attention to be on them, and not on such lowly creatures as she judged herself and the lounging man to be.

He forgave her immediately. “Nay, mistress, you do well to inspect Master Trenchard. You will have much to do with him. As you have not denied either your loyalty, or your knowledge of Dutch, I am putting it to you, mistress, that you might oblige us by accompanying him to the Netherlands, there to use your skills as a linguist and as an actress. You will join him in an enterprise to persuade one William Grahame, who has done the state some service in the past, to bring off one final coup on our behalf.

“William Grahame has indicated to us that he is in a position to give us information about the disposition of the Dutch army and their fleet. He has also said that he will only do so to an emissary of my office who will meet him in the Low Countries at a place of his choosing. Once he has passed this information to us, and not before, your final task will be to bring him safely home to England again. He is weary of living abroad.”

He beamed at her as he finished speaking. Tom Trenchard grunted, mannerless again, “And so we reach the point—at long last.”

“Tom’s grasp of diplomacy is poor, I fear,” explained Sir Thomas needlessly. Catherine had already gathered that. She was already gathering something else, something which might help Rob, even before Sir Thomas mentally ticked off his next point.

“You must also understand, mistress, that success in this delicate matter—if you agree to undertake it—would prove most beneficial when the case of Master Robert Wood comes to trial—if it comes to trial, that is. The likelihood is that, with your kind co-operation, it will not.”

“And if I refuse?” returned Catherine.

“Why then, alas, Master Robert Wood will pay the price for his folly on the headsman’s block on Tower Hill.”

“And if I accept, but fail, what then?” asked Catherine.

“Why then, you all fail. Master Tom Trenchard, Mistress Catherine Wood and Master Robert Wood. Such may—or may not be—God’s will. Only He proposes and disposes.”

“Although Sir Thomas Gower makes a good fist of imitating Him,” drawled Tom Trenchard. “Particularly since it will not be his head on the plate handed to King Herod, whatever happens.”

So there it was. The price of Rob’s freedom was that she undertake a dangerous enterprise—and succeed in it.

“I have agreed with Master Betterton—” Catherine began, but Sir Thomas did not allow her to finish.

“Nay, mistress. I understand that Master Wagstaffe’s masterpiece has its last showing tonight—at which you will, of course, be present to play Belinda.

“Moreover, Master Betterton would not, if asked by those who have the power to do so, refuse to release you for as long as is necessary. Particularly on the understanding that, when you return, you shall be the heroine of Master Wagstaffe’s proposed new play—The Braggart Returns, or, Lackwit Married. I look forward to seeing it.”

This time the look Sir Thomas gave her was that of a fellow conspirator in a plot that had nothing to do with his bully, Trenchard, or with William Grahame in the Netherlands. Unwillingly, Catherine nodded.

“To save Rob, I will agree to your demands.” She had been left with no choice, for Sir Thomas had not one hold over her but two. The greater, of course, was his use of Rob to blackmail her. The lesser was his knowledge of who Will Wagstaffe really was.

And it was also most likely sadly true that the only reason why the authorities—or rather Sir Thomas Gower—had ordered poor Rob to be arrested was to compel her to be their agent and their interpreter.

“That is most wise of you, Mistress Wood. Your loyalty to King Charles II does you great credit.”

To which Catherine made no answer, for she could not say, Be damned to King Charles II, I do but agree to save Rob’s neck. Tom Trenchard saw her mutinous expression and read it correctly.

“What, silent, mistress?” he drawled. “No grand pronouncements of your devotion to your King?”

“Quiet—but for the moment. And I have nothing to say to you. Tell me, Sir Thomas, in what capacity will I accompany Master Trenchard here?”

“Why, as his wife, who fortunately speaks Dutch—and French. You are an actress, mistress. Playing the wife should present you with no difficulties.”

“Playing the husband will offer me none,” interjected Tom meaningfully.

“And that is what I fear,” returned Catherine robustly. “I will not play the whore in order to play the wife. You understand me, sir, I am sure.”

“I concede that you have a ready tongue and have made a witty answer,” drawled Tom. “And I can only reply alas, yes, I understand you! Which may not be witty, but has the merit of being truthful.”

“Come now,” ordered Sir Thomas, “you are to be comrades, as well as loving husband and wife. Moreover, once in the Low Countries you are both to be noisily agreed in supporting the Republicans who wish to replace the King with a Cromwellian successor. Master Trenchard will claim to be a member of that family which followed the late Oliver so faithfully.

“And you, being half-Dutch, will acknowledge the Grand Pensionary, John De Witt, to be your man, not King Charles’s nephew, the powerless Stadtholder.” He paused.

“As a dutiful wife,” remarked Catherine demurely, “I shall be only too happy to echo the opinions of my husband.”

Tom Trenchard’s chuckle was a rich one. “Well said, mistress. I shall remind of you that—frequently.”

Sir Thomas smiled benevolently on the pair of them. “I shall inform you both of the details of your journey. You will travel by packet boat to Ostend and from thence to Antwerp in Flanders where you may hope to find Grahame—if he has not already made for Amsterdam, where I gather he has a reliable informer.

“You will, of course, follow him to Amsterdam, if necessary. You will send your despatches—in code—to my agent here, James Halsall, the King’s Cupbearer. He will pass them on to me.

“You will pose as merchants buying goods who are sympathetic towards those unregenerate Republicans who still hold fast against our gracious King. To bend William Grahame to our will is your main aim—because like all such creatures he plays a double game. Why, last year he sold all the Stadtholder’s agents in England to us, and now word hath it that the Stadtholder hath rewarded him with a pension—doubtless for selling our agents to him.

“Natheless, he is too valuable for us to carp at his dubious morals, and if gold and a pardon for his past sins brings him home to us with all his information—then so be it, whether there be blood on his hands, or no.”

Sir Thomas was, for once, Catherine guessed, dropping his pretence of being a benevolent uncle, and doing so deliberately in order to impress on her the serious nature of her mission. She heard Tom Trenchard clapping his hands and laughing at Sir Thomas’s unwonted cynicism.

She turned to stare at him. He was now slouched down in his chair, his feral eyes alight, one large hand slapping his coarse brown breeches above his spotless boots. The thought of spending much time in the Netherlands alone with him was enough to eat away at her normal self-control.

“It seems that only a trifle is needed to amuse you, Master Trenchard. I hope that you take heed of what I told you. I go to Holland as your supposed wife, not as your true whore. Remember that!”

“So long as you do, mistress, so long as you do.”

The insolent swine was leering at her. He might not, by his dress, be one of King Charles’s courtiers, but he certainly shared their morals. It did not help that Sir Thomas’s smile remained pasted to his face as he informed her that she was to pack her bag immediately, and be ready to leave as soon as Tom Trenchard called on her.

“Which will not be until after your last performance tonight. And then you will do as Tom bids you—so far as this mission is concerned, that is.”

Catherine ignored the possible double entendre in Sir Thomas’s last statement. Instead, looking steadily at him, she made one last statement of her own.

“I may depend upon thee, Sir Thomas, that should I succeed, then my brother’s safety is assured.”

“My word upon it, mistress. And I have never broke it yet.”

“Bent it a little, perhaps,” added Tom Trenchard, disobligingly, viciously dotting Sir Thomas’s i’s for him, as appeared to be his habit.

Catherine, after giving him one scathing look, ignored him. She thought again that he was quite the most ill-favoured man she had ever seen, with his high forehead, strong nose, grim mouth and determined jaw. Only the piercing blue of his eyes redeemed him.

She addressed Sir Thomas. “I may leave, now? After the commotion your tipstaffs made, my neighbours doubtless think that I, like my brother, am lodged in the Tower. I should be happy to disoblige them.”

“Indeed, mistress. I shall give orders that your brother be treated tenderly during his stay in the Tower, my word on it.”

And that, thought Catherine, is as much, if not more, than I might have hoped. She gave Sir Thomas a giant curtsy as he waved her away. “Tell one of the footmen who guard the door to see thee home again, mistress,” being his final words to her.

She had gone. Tom Trenchard rose to his feet, and drawled familiarly at Sir Thomas, “Exactly as I prophesied after I toyed with her at the play. The doxy has a ready wit and a brave spirit. I hope to enjoy both.”

He laughed again when the wall hanging behind Sir Thomas shivered as Black Wig, otherwise Hal Bennet, m’lord Arlington, emerged from his hiding place where he had overheard every word of Catherine’s interrogation.

“The wench will do, will she not?” said m’lord. “She may have been the fish at the end of your line, Thomas, but you had to play her carefully lest she landed back in the river again. I observe that you did not directly inform her that she is to use her female arts on Grahame to persuade him to turn coat yet once more—he being a noted womaniser. That may be done by Master Trenchard in Flanders or Holland—wheresoever you may find him!”

He swung on Tom Trenchard, otherwise Sir Stair Cameron, who was now pouring himself a goblet of wine from a jug on a side-table. “She knew thee not, Stair, I trust?”

“What, in this Alsatian get-up?” mocked Stair, referring to the London district where the City’s criminals congregated. “I doubt me whether she could have recognised the King himself if he were dressed in these woundy hand-me-downs.”

“Well suited for your errand in the Netherlands, Stair. None there would take you for the King’s friend, rather the King’s prisoner.”

“Or the friend of m’lord Arlington who turned the Seigneur de Buat away from the Grand Pensionary and towards the Peace party—which cost Buat his head,” riposted Stair.

Arlington’s reply to his friend was a dry one. “His fault, Stair. He was careless, and handed the Pensionary a letter from me, not meant for the Pensionary’s eyes. Do you take care, man. No careless heroics—nor careful ones, either.”

Stair Cameron bowed low, sweeping the floor with his plumed hat that had been sitting by his feet.

“An old soldier heeds thee, m’lord. My only worry is the lady. She may, once she knows what her part in this is, take against Grahame and refuse to enchant him. Furthermore, playing the heroine at the Duke of York’s Theatre is no great matter, and coolness shown on the boards might not mean coolness on life’s stage when one’s head might be loose on one’s shoulders. We shall see.”

Arlington dropped his jocular mode and flung an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “If aught goes amiss, Stair, and the heavens begin to fall on thee, then abandon all, and come home. Abandon Grahame to the Netherlanders if you have cause to suspect his honesty. Let the wolves have the wolf—we owe him nothing.”

“And the lady?”

Arlington looked at Sir Thomas Gower, who shrugged his shoulders. “Deal with her as common sense suggests. She is there not only to seduce Grahame, but to help you with your supposed insufficient Dutch and to give an air of truth to your claim to be a one-time solder turned merchant. You will both claim to have Republican leanings and in consequence are happy to spend some time in God’s own Republic—which is the way in which the Netherlanders speak of Holland.”

Stair toasted Arlington with an upraised goblet. “Well said, friend, and I swear to you that I shall try to persuade the Hollanders that I am God’s own soldier—however unlikely that is in truth.”

Arlington ended the session with a clap of laughter. “The age of miracles is back on earth, Stair, if thou and God may be mentioned in the same breath. Forget that—and come home safely with Grahame and the lady in thy pocket. Great shall be thy reward—on earth, if not in heaven.”

Stair Cameron bowed low again. “Oh, I beg leave to doubt that, Hal. From what I know of our revered King Charles and his empty Treasury, I shall have to wait for heaven. What I do I do for you, and our friendship. Let that be enough.”

Sir Thomas Gower, who had poured a drink for himself and Arlington, had the final word. “Long live friendship, then. A toast to that, and to the King’s Majesty.”

Chapter Two

Catherine Wood, posing as Mistress Tom Trenchard, hung over the packet boat’s side, vomiting her heart up. A spring crossing from London to Ostend was frequently unpleasant, and this one was no exception.

Nothing seemed to have gone right since the afternoon on which Tom Trenchard had called at her door to escort her to the docks. His appearance was as fly-by-night as it had been forty-eight hours before in Sir Thomas Gower’s office. Behind him stood an equally ill-dressed manservant who had been pulling a little wagon on which Tom’s two battered trunks rested.

The day was cold and a light drizzle had begun to fall. Tom was sporting a much darned cloak about his shoulders: it suitably matched his shabby lace. He leaned a familiar shoulder on the door post, grinning down at her from his great height.

“Well, mistress, do you intend to keep me standing in the rain forever? A true wife would invite her husband in.”

“I am not your true wife, sir,” Catherine riposted coldly, “but natheless you may come in.” As Tom removed his hat in order to enter, she added, “Do you intend your man to remain outside growing wet whilst his master enjoys the fireside indoors? He may sit with my serving maid in the kitchen.”

Tom was nothing put out. “Ah, a kind wife, I see, who considers the welfare of her husband’s servants, as well as her husband. Do as the mistress bids, Geordie.”

Geordie doffed a much-creased hat whose broad brim drooped to his shoulders. “And the trunks, Mistress Trenchard, may they come in, too?” He was so ill-shaven that it was difficult to tell whether he was as poorly favoured as his master.

Catherine nodded assent and followed Tom in. He was already seated before the hearth, and was pulling off his beautiful boots.

“You have made yourself at home, I see.” Catherine could not help being acid. He was here on sufferance, solely because she was being blackmailed into doing something which she had no wish to do, in order to save her silly brother’s life, and Tom was already behaving like the master of the house.

He must learn—and learn soon—that he could take no liberties with her. Alas, his next words simply went to prove that he had every intention of doing so. “Look you, Mistress Wood, or rather, Mistress Trenchard, from this moment on you are my wife, and what is a wife’s is her husband’s for him to do as he pleases with. If you are to pass as my wife without attracting comment, then I suggest that you remember that. A tankard of ale would not come amiss, wife.”

Oh, it was plain that the next few weeks—pray God that they were not months—were going to be difficult ones, if the start of this misbegotten venture was a sample of her future! Unwillingly, Catherine bobbed a mocking curtsy at him in a broad parody of a stage serving maid before bustling into the kitchen to do as she was bid. She could hear him laughing as she stage-exited right, as it were.

Once in the kitchen, she found that Geordie had made himself at home also, and was not only drinking her good ale, but was eating a large slice from a freshmade loaf, liberally spread with new-churned butter. At least he showed a little gratitude, pulling a greasy forelock and offering her a bobbing bow.

The whole effect was spoiled a little by his bulging cheeks and eyes as he stuffed more bread into his mouth. Plainly Master Tom Trenchard did not feed his servant well.

Tom accepted the ale she handed him as his due—waving her to a seat by her own fireside as though the house were already his. From what pigsty had he graduated to arrive at King Charles’s court? If he were from the court, that was. His rank and standing seemed dubious to say the least.

By his clothes he was virtually penniless, some sort of hireling, called in to serve the nation’s spymaster—for that was surely Sir Thomas Gower’s office. Yet Sir Thomas had treated him almost as an equal, and he had not hesitated to mock at Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas had said that they would pose as merchants. He seemed an unlikely merchant.

So, was he a gentleman down on his luck? And what matter if he were not? These days gentlemen were as nastily rapacious where women were concerned as their supposed inferiors, and at Whitehall the courtiers, led by such debauchees as m’lord Rochester, were the nastiest of all. No woman was safe with them. It would be as well to remember that.

“You are very quiet, wife? What ails you? A silent woman is a lusus naturae—almost against nature.”

“I mislike sentences which assume that all women are the same woman. Men would not care to be told that because some men are dissolute rakes, then all must be so.”

“Oh, wittily spoken—good enough for Master Wagstaffe, I vow. Tell me, my dear wife, does reciting the well-found words of learned playwrights result in your own lines in real life becoming as witty as theirs?”

Catherine widened her eyes. “La, sir, your intelligence quite overthrows me! Let me try to enlighten you. Am I, then, to suppose that Sir Thomas Gower and Lord Arlington’s wisdom must transfer itself to you when you frequent their company?

“I see little sign of that; on the contrary, you maintain your usual coarse mode of speech. From this I deduce that my wit is therefore my own, and not the consequence of mixing with the geniuses who frequent the Duke’s Theatre, be they actors or scribblers.”

Tom was laughing as she finished, and before she could stop him he had put a large arm around her waist and hefted her on to his knee. “Shrew!” he hissed affably into her ear. “It is a good thing that you are not my true wife or you might earn a lesson in civility. As it is, let this serve.”

He tipped her backwards and began to kiss her without so much as a by your leave, just like the rapacious gentlemen whose conduct she had just been silently lamenting. First he saluted each cheek, and then her mouth became his target.

The devil of it was that she would have expected him to be fierce and brutal in such forced loving, but no such thing. His mouth was as soft and gentle as a man’s could be, stroking and teasing, rather than assaulting her, so that her treacherous body began to respond to him!

Fortunately, just when Catherine’s senses were beginning to betray her, he loosed her a little to free his right hand, and her common sense immediately reasserted itself. Wrestling away from him, she broke free—to slide from his lap to the ground, and found herself facing his man Geordie, who wandered in still chewing as though he had not eaten for a week.

“I gave you no leave to do that, sir,” she told him severely.

“Oho, that were quick work, master,” Geordie announced, spewing crumbs around him, “not that one expects slow work when an actress is your doxy.”

Catherine picked herself up from the floor and slapped the face, not of her unwanted would-be lover, but of his servant.

“Fie and for shame,” she cried, “after I have warmed and fed you. I gave him no leave to kiss me, nor you to call me doxy.”

“Bonaroba, rather,” suggested Tom from behind her, using Alsatian slang to describe a whore.

Enraged, Catherine swung round and boxed his ears, too. “We might as well start as we mean to go on,” she announced. “I will not allow liberties to my person at your hands, nor liberties about my person from his tongue. You, sir, are a hedge captain, and your servant is naught but a cullion who needs to acquire a wash as well as manners.”

Tom was openly laughing at her defiance. “Well, I at least am clean,” he told her smugly. And, yes, that at least was true as she had discovered when trapped on his knee. His clothes might be shabby but his body smelled of yellow soap and lemon mixed.

“Oh, you are impossible, both of you,” she raged. “Like master, like man. How am I to endure this ill-begotten enterprise in such unwanted company?”

“By accepting that, for the duration of it, we are man and wife, and Geordie is our only servant.” Tom’s tone was suddenly grave.

“I may not take my woman with me, then?”

“Indeed, not. The fewer who know anything of us, the better.”

“But Geordie—” and Catherine’s voice rose dangerously “—is to be relied on?”

“Very much so. We have been to the wars together, and he has twice saved my life.”

To her look of disbelief at the mere idea of such a scarecrow saving anything, Geordie offered a brief nod. “True enough, mistress. Only fair to say that he saved mine more times than that.”

“I trust him,” said Tom belligerently, “and so must you. Your life may depend on it.”

“Oh, in this ridiculous brouhaha everyone’s life depends on someone else,” declaimed Catherine bitterly. “Mine on you, yours on me, and both of us on Geordie, and poor Rob’s life depends on all three of us. It’s better than a play. No, worse than a play, for no play would be so improbable.”

“You’re the actress, so you should know,” was Tom’s response to that. “In real life, my dear, everyone does depend on everyone else. ’Tis but the condition of fallen man.”

Fear, impotence and anger, all finely mixed together, drove Catherine on. Her tongue turned nasty.

“Oh, we have turned preacher now, have we? Not surprising since we are to pass as canting Republicans. Canst thou whine a psalm through thy nose, preacher Tom? Or is that a trick to learn on the way to Antwerp? Pray learn it quickly so that you may leave a poor girl’s virtue untouched as a good preacher should.”

To her own surprise Catherine found herself half-laughing as she finished, and Tom’s powerful face was also glowing with mirth. Geordie was watching them both with his rat-trap mouth turned down.

“Loose tongue,” he muttered, “may loosen heads on shoulders, master. Because you have allowed your tongue to wag in the past and paid no forfeit for it, doth not mean that you may escape punishment for ever.”

“There,” exclaimed Catherine triumphantly, “even your servant can teach you common sense.”

“Oh, is that what he is muttering at us? Come, mistress, we must have a council of war, but only when you have sent your serving maid to market to buy our supper for us.”

This shocked Catherine a little. “You intend to stay here tonight?”

“Aye, mistress. The packet doth not sail until early tomorrow. We must be up at dawn and away.”

What can’t be cured, must be endured, would obviously have to be her motto, was Catherine’s last despairing thought as she turned away from him. But he had not finished with her yet.

“Your baggage is packed, mistress?” he asked her commandingly. “You have an assortment of clothing both plain and fancy and are ready to leave?”

She had the satisfaction of assuring him that she was more than ready—at least so far as her luggage was concerned.

“And there is yet another thing, mistress. No good follower of the late Lord Protector would be saddled with a wife called Cleone—a heathen name, indeed. Your true name is Catherine, and so you shall be known. Or would you prefer Kate?”

More to annoy him for the orders he was throwing at her than for any other reason, Cleone replied tartly, “Catherine will do. As old Will Shakespeare said, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ so what shall it profit that I am called Cleone or Catherine: they both begin with a C.”

Tom bowed as gracefully as any court cavalier. “Catherine it shall be. And I am Tom, always uttered with due humility as befits a good wife.”

He gave her his white smile again and, for the first time, Catherine saw that it quite transformed his face. Not only were his teeth good, but the relaxing of his harsh features showed her the boy he must once have been.

Nay, Catherine, she told herself sternly, you are not to soften towards a hired bully who plainly sees you as his prey. To do so is to deliver yourself into his hands.

Surprisingly he made no demur when, later, after they had supped, she showed him into Rob’s bedroom. She had thought that he might take advantage of her, try to pretend that she was his wife and must do a wife’s duty. Instead, he had flung down the small pack he had carried upstairs, given her another of his slightly mocking bows and told her to try to get a good night’s sleep.

“For, madam wife, we have several hard days ahead of us, and I would wish that you arrive before Grahame as fresh as a daisy in spring—or the violets that your eyes resemble.”

“Fair words butter no parsnips with me, Master Trenchard,” Catherine told him tartly.

Only for him to say, blue eyes mirthful, “Tom, dear wife, always Tom. Most wives would be happy to receive such a compliment from a husband to whom they have been married for the last five years.”

“Ah, but as a Puritan and a preacher such fair words would lie ill upon thy tongue.”

“Oh, a man may be a Puritan and a preacher, but he is still allowed to love his wife, lest the world end. Go forth and multiply, the Lord hath said, and how shall we do that if there be not love?”

“And the Devil can quote Scripture to achieve his own ends,” Catherine replied smartly. “Goodnight, dear husband, and sleep well.”

“I would sleep better if I did not sleep alone,” Tom informed the door soulfully as it closed behind her—and chuckled as she banged it.

And now, after boarding the packet without further incident, or much talk, and enduring a morning that began fair, but ended in storm and a high wind, Catherine found herself in the throes of seasickness. More than ever she wished that Rob had had the wisdom not to put his treasonous thoughts on paper.

A hand on her shoulder as she straightened up had her whirling around. It was Tom’s. He was not being seasick, no, indeed, not he. Far from it—he looked disgustingly healthy, rosy even. Behind him lurked Geordie, looking green; a violent lurch of the ship brought him to the rail to join her in her offerings to the sea.

“Below with the pair of you,” ordered Tom, laughter in his voice. “You will be better below decks.”

“Not I, master,” and, “Not I,” echoed Catherine, but Tom was having none of it.

“Do as I bid you,” he ordered Geordie, and as Catherine reached a temporary halt in her heavings he swept her up, to set her down only when they reached the companionway into the hold.

Below decks was truly nasty, as Catherine had expected, smelling of tar and worse things, but the boat’s heavings did seem less distressing. Tom, having laid her down on what he called a bunk, brought over to her a large tin basin. Sitting beside her, he said, still vilely cheerful, “Use that if you feel sick again.”

“I am over the worst, I think,” Catherine told him, hoping that she was, but a moment later a huge wave sent the boat sliding sideways, which had her stomach heaving again. With a tenderness that surprised her, Tom held her head steady in order to help her, and when her paroxysms at last ended, he laid her gently down and pulled a dirty sheet over her.

How shaming to behave in such an abandoned manner before him! Not that he seemed to mind. On the contrary, having removed the basin, he came back again with it empty, carrying a damp cloth with which he gently wiped her sweating face.

This seemed to help, and he must have thought so, too, for he said in a kinder voice than he had ever used to her before, “This time, I think, the worst is over. Do you feel able to sit up yet?”

Speech seemed beyond Catherine, so she nodded, and struggled into a sitting position. From nowhere Tom produced a pillow with which he propped up her aching head.

“Geordie!” he bellowed at that gentlemen, who had been engaged in heaving his heart up into a bucket, but now seemed a little recovered. “Bring me my pack, if you can walk, that is.”

Geordie appeared to take the “if’ as an insult. “Course I can walk. I ain’t been ill.”

This patent lie amused Catherine, and she gave a weak laugh. Tom looked at her with approval as the staggering Geordie handed him his pack. He opened it, and produced a small pewter plate, two limes and a knife.

Catherine watched him, fascinated, as he cut the first lime in half, handing one half to her, and the other to Geordie.

Geordie began to suck his, and Catherine, after a nod from Tom, followed suit, her mouth puckering as the acid liquid reached her tongue.

“Good,” Tom told them both, “that should make you feel better!” He cut the second lime in half, and began to suck it vigorously also. “And now, some schnapps.” His useful pack gave up a small tin cup, and first Catherine, then Geordie and finally himself, offered what he called, “a libation to the Gods of the sea, only down our throats and not over the side!”

Like the lime, the strong liquor seemed to settle, rather than distress, Catherine’s stomach. She began to feel, as she told Tom, the drink talking a little, “more like herself”.

He put a friendly arm around her which she felt too weak to reject—and then he gave her his final present, a disgusting object which he called a ship’s biscuit.

“Eat that, and you will be quite recovered.”

Her head spinning from the combined causes of an empty stomach brought about by seasickness, followed by a large draught of the strongest liquor she had ever drunk, Catherine managed to force it down. Her poor white face bore testimony to her revulsion as she did so.

Her reward was “Good girl!” and a tightening of Tom’s arm. Her gratitude to him was expressed by her leaning against his strong warm body for further comfort. This resulted in a soft kiss on her cheek before Tom laid her down again, covering her with the sheet that had slipped its moorings during his ministrations.

“Try to sleep,” he told her. “I am going on deck to stretch my legs a little.” He beckoned at his man. “You, too, Geordie.”

“Growing soft, are we, master?” growled Geordie at Tom as they reached the deck. The storm had lifted and the sea had grown calm again whilst they were below decks. “The schnapps did its work right well and the doxy would not have objected to a little—well, you know what!”

Tom’s expression was an enigmatic one. “Oh, Geordie, Geordie—” he sighed “—you would never make a good chess player. At the moment I need her trust more than anything else in the world. Later—when it is gained—might be a different thing, a very different thing!”

Oh, blessed sleep “that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care”, as old Will Shakespeare had it, thought Catherine drowsily as she awoke to feel refreshed. She was not alone. Tom Trenchard was seated on a bench, watching her, a tankard in his hand.

He lifted it to toast her. “You are with us again, dear wife, after sleeping the day away. Your colour has returned, I see.” He drank briefly from the tankard, his brilliant blue eyes watching her over its rim before he handed it to her.

“Drink wife. We shall be in Ostend shortly, and there we may find shelter.”

“Oh, blessed dry land,” sighed Catherine, taking a long draught of ale. “I shall never wish to go to sea again.”

“You were unlucky,” Tom told her, “to find yourself in such a storm on your first voyage.”

“And was it luck that you were not overset like poor Geordie and me?”

“Oh, I am never seasick,” grinned Tom. “I have good sea legs. It is but one of my many talents,” he added boastfully.

Catherine laughed and, easing herself out of the bunk, handed the tankard back to him. It was odd not to be sparring with him. She decided to prick the bubble of his conceit a little.

“Why, dear husband, I vow that you would well match the play wherein I late acted. The Braggart by name—or Lackwit in Love. Which title best befits you, do you think?”

Tom met her teasing look and answered her in kind. “Why, Master Will Wagstaffe may write a play taking me as hero, calling it St George, or, England’s Saviour—and, if you do but behave yourself, you shall be the heroine. A new Belinda, no less.”

Something in his tone alerted her. “You saw me play Belinda, then? At the Duke’s Theatre?”

“Indeed, mistress, I had that honour. And a fine boy you made. I ne’er saw a better pair of legs—not even on a female rope dancer—and that is a splendid compliment, is it not?”

The look in Tom’s eyes set Catherine blushing. He was stripping her of her clothing in his mind, no doubt of it. She swung away from him lest she destroy the new camaraderie that had sprung up between them since he had succoured her in the storm.

After all, they were to live together for some time, although how long or short that might be Catherine did not know, and t’were better that they did not wrangle all the time.

By good fortune, to save them both, Geordie came down the companionway, his long face glummer than ever.

“Bad news, master, I fear.”

“And when did you ever bring me good?” Tom exclaimed. “’Tis your favourite occupation! Spit it out, man. We had best all be glum together.”

“Nothing less than that we may not dock at Ostend. There are rumours that the plague may be back, and the packet’s master has decided that we must risk all and go on to a harbour near Antwerp.”

“And that is bad news?” Tom taunted him, brows raised.

“Aye, for those of us who do not like the sea.”

“Antwerp or Ostend, it is no great matter. I have enough schnapps left to make both you and my dear wife drunk and insensible for the rest of the sea trip should the storms begin again. Tell me, wife, will that do?”

For answer Catherine made him a grand stage curtsy, saying, “I know my duty, husband, to you and to our gracious King, and if I must be rendered unconscious to perform it, I shall be so with a good grace.”

Tom rewarded her with a smacking kiss on the lips as she straightened up. “You hear that, Geordie? I shall expect no less from you.”

“Oh, aye, master. But don’t expect any pretty speeches from me.”

“Certes, no. The next one will be the first! Back to your bunk, wife, to rest. So far, so good.”

He was being so amazingly hearty that he made Catherine feel quite faint—and he was apparently having the same effect on Geordie, who sat grumblingly down on the dirty floor, complaining, “It’s as well that some on us are happy.”

Tom came over to sit on Catherine’s bunk. “And that shall be our epitaph, or, as you stage folk say, our epilogue. Will Wagstaffe himself could not write a better, nor his predecessor, Stratford Will. Rest now, wife.”

So she did, her mouth still treacherously tingling from his last kiss. Oh, he knew all the tricks of seduction did Master Tom Trenchard, and she must never forget that.

Chapter Three

Oh, the devil was in it that Hal Arlington had decided that William Grahame could best be snared by the wiles of a pretty woman so that, instead of carrying out this mission on his own, Stair was saddled with an actress who carped at his every word. And her every word was devoted to denying him her bed, which would have been the only thing that made having to drag Catherine around the Low Countries worthwhile!

The pox was on it that he had ever volunteered to try to turn Grahame at all! One last such junket, the very last, he had told Arlington and Sir Thomas, having at first refused to oblige them.

“I am seven years away from being a mercenary soldier for anyone to hire. If anyone deserves a quiet life, it is I. I have served my King both before his Restoration and after—as you well know.”

“The Dutch War goes badly—as you equally well know, Stair, and yours are the special talents we need.”

In a sense that had pained him, for were not those talents the ones that he had needed to survive in the penury which exile from England had forced upon him during the late usurper Cromwell’s rule? Cunning, lying, cheating and killing, yes, killing, for that was the soldier’s trade. Leading men in hopeless causes that he had won against all the odds, by using those same talents.

He thought that he had done with it, that he was now free to live a civilised life in peace. Not simply enjoying its ease, but also the pretty women to whom he need make no commitment, as well as music, the playhouse, books and the blessed quiet of his country estates, both in England and Scotland, when he was no longer at Court. Estates most fortunately restored to him when Charles II had come into his own again.

God knew, he no longer needed the money in order to survive. If he did this thing, he would do it for nothing, which, of course, Gower and Arlington also knew and was partly why they had asked him to be their agent in the Netherlands. As usual, the King’s Treasury was empty, and not needing to pay him would be a bonus.

So, he had agreed. Only to discover that they had also decided that he needed a woman to pose as his wife, and a pretty woman at that, skilled in seductive arts, for Grahame had a reputation for being weak where women were concerned.

“As a bird is caught by lime, so will he be caught by a pair of fine eyes,” Sir Thomas had said. “And we know the very doxy who will turn the trick for us.”

In consequence, he had found himself in his own proper person at the Duke’s Theatre, in company with Hal Arlington, trying to test the nerve of the young actress whom Sir Thomas knew that he could blackmail through her indiscreet and foolish brother.

And nerve she had, no doubt of it, by the way in which she had refused to let his unsettling jests with oranges, posies and gloves disturb her. She had also displayed a pretty wit, which she was now constantly exercising at his expense—except when she was seasick, that was.

Sir Stair Cameron, to be known in the Netherlands only as Tom Trenchard—Trenchard being his mother’s name, and Tom his own second Christian name—was leaning disconsolate over the packet’s side as it neared land, musing on his fate.

He lifted his face to feel the rain on it. Blessed, cleansing rain. By God, when this is over, he vowed, I shall refuse to engage in such tricks ever again, but now I must go below and help my disobliging doxy to ready herself to be on dry land again.

Tom did not reflect—for he never allowed the possibility of failure to trouble him—that having to take a young, untried woman with him might put his mission in hazard, even cause it to fail. He had made such a point to Gower and Bennet but they had dismissed it. And so, perforce, had he to do the same.

All the same, the idea was there, very like a worm that secretly eats away at the foundations of a seemingly secure house until at last it falls.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. No more mewling and puking over what was past and could not be changed, he told himself, no looking backwards, either. Forwards, ever forwards, was the motto his father had adopted on being made a baronet, and he would try to live up to it, as had always been his habit.

The day was growing late, and it was likely that they would not dock until the morning. Once on shore they would travel to Antwerp where they might, please God, find Grahame and finish the business almost before it was begun.

Time to go below to wake his supposed wife from her schnapps-induced sleep.

“Aye, that will do very well, mistress, very well, indeed,” announced Tom Trenchard approvingly. Catherine had dressed herself in a neat gown of the deepest rose. Its neckline was low and boat-shaped, but was modestly hidden by a high-necked jacket of padded pale mauve satin, trimmed with narrow bands of white fur, which reached the knee and was fastened with tiny bows of fine gold braid.

Round her slender neck was a small pearl necklace, and her hair, instead of being arranged in the wild confusion of curls popular at King Charles’s court, was modestly strained back into a large knot, leaving a fringe to soften her high forehead.

This had the effect of enhancing rather than diminishing the delicate purity of her face and profile.

For his part, Tom had also changed out of his rough and serviceable clothing. Although he was not pretending to be a bluff and conventional Dutch burgher, he looked less of a wild mercenary captain and more of a man who was able to conduct himself properly out of an army camp as well as in it.

He was wearing jacket and breeches of well-worn, but not threadbare, black velvet, trimmed with silver. His shirt was white, not a dirty cream, and he sported a white linen collar edged with lace that, if not rich, was at least respectable. His boots, as usual, were splendid. He had also shaved himself carefully so he looked less like the wild man of the woods, which Catherine had privately nicknamed him.

His hair was, for the first time since she had met him, carefully brushed and fell in deep red-gold waves to just below his ears. He carried a large steeple-crowned black hat with a pewter buckle holding its thin silver band.

The whole effect was impressive. No, he was not handsome, far from it, but he had a presence. The French had a saying, Catherine knew, that a woman of striking, but not beautiful looks, was jolie laide, which meant an ugly woman who was pretty or attractive in an unusual way. It could, she grudgingly admitted, be applied to Tom, who was better than handsome.

It did not mean that she liked him the more, simply that his brute strength attracted her more than the languor of the pretty gentlemen of King Charles’s court did. She had held them off when they had tried to tumble her into bed, and so she would hold off Tom. She would be no man’s whore, as she had told Sir Thomas Gower.

“Deep in thought?” offered Tom, who seemed to be a bit of a mind reader. “What interests you so much…wife…that you have just left me in spirit, if not in body?”

She would not be flustered. “Nothing, except that this morning, for the first time, I feel dry land firm beneath my feet again.”

Forty-eight hours ago they had docked at a wharf on the coast well outside Antwerp itself, which by the Peace of Westphalia was closed to shipping. Antwerp was not Dutch territory, being situated in Flanders, territory still under the heel of the Austrian Empire, and it was always known as the Austrian Netherlands. Being so near to Holland, it would be a useful place to work from—if one were careful.

Once safely on land again, Catherine had found the ground heaving beneath her feet as though she were still on the packet. It had needed Tom’s strong arms to steady her.

Today, however was a different matter. The inn at which they were staying was clean after a fashion that Catherine had never seen before. Its black-and-white tiled floors were spotless. A serving maid swept and washed them several times a day. The linen on her bed was not only white, but smelled sweet, as did the bed hangings. It was a far cry from the inns in which she had slept on the occasions when the players took to the roads in England.

The furniture in the inn was spare, but had been polished until it shone, as did the copper, pewter and silver dishes that adorned the table and sideboards. In the main inn parlour there was a mirror on one wall, and on the other hung a tapestry showing Jupiter turning himself into a swan in order to seduce Helen of Troy’s mother, Leda.

Few private houses in London boasted such trappings as this inn in Antwerp. Tom had told her that everywhere in the Low Countries might such wealth and such cleanliness be found—“We are pigs, by comparison, living in stys,” he had ended.

And now they were to visit the man whom Tom hoped would be their go-between with Grahame, one Amos Shooter, who might know where he was to be found. Early that morning, Tom had visited the address of the house that Sir Thomas Gower had given him as that of Grahame’s lodgings, but had been told that no one named William Grahame had ever lived there!

“Not true, of course,” Tom had said to her and Geordie, who was also tricked out like a maypole—his expression. “But this business is a woundy chancy game.”

Game! He called it a game! Catherine was beginning to think of it as a nightmare.

“Now for my second man. One I think that I might—just—trust.”

“Thought you trusted no one, master,” sniffed Geordie.

Tom ignored him. “We must look well-found,” he had ordered her. “Not as though we are beggars come to cadge money from a rich friend. Do not overdo matters, though. That would be equally suspicious. Do you not have a small linen cap that you might wear, mistress? Bare heads are for unmarried women.”

Catherine shook her head. “A pity, that,” he sighed. “Well, a good husband would be sure to buy his modest wife one, so we shall go to market tomorrow. Too late to go today!”

So, here they were, knocking at the stout oak door of a respectable red-brick mansion in Antwerp, not far from the market place, which was lined with medieval guild houses. It was opened by a fat, red-cheeked serving maid who bustled them through into a large room at the rear of the house, which opened on to a courtyard lined with flowers in terracotta tubs.

“Amos has done well, I see,” Tom whispered in Catherine’s ear as they followed the maid, for the house was even cleaner and better appointed than their inn. “I had heard that he had married wealth, but had not realised how much wealth. Ah, Amos, my old friend, we meet again,” he said as Amos, a man as large as Tom, came to meet them.

Amos’s welcome was warmer than Tom’s. He threw his arms around him and embraced him lustily. His wife, a pretty woman, plump and rosy, greeted Catherine much more sedately.

Embraces over, Amos held Tom at arm’s length, saying, “Old friend, you are larger than ever, and the world has treated you well enough, I see. And this is your wife? I thought you vowed that you’d never marry, Tom. Not after the beautiful Clarinda deceived you so!”

“Aye, Amos, but ’tis not only a woman’s prerogative to change one’s mind. This is my wife, Catherine, and yes, I thrive—a little. But not like you,” and he gave Amos a poke in his fair round belly. “You carried not that when we were comrades in arms together, nor were you so finely housed and clothed!”

“Oh, but that was long ago. I am quite reformed these days. I am a respectable merchant now—and it is all Isabelle’s doing.” He threw his arms around his blushing wife and gave her a loving kiss.

So, the beautiful Clarinda—whoever she might be—deceived him, did she? thought Catherine. She must have been a brave lass to manage that! But she ignored this interesting news for the time being, concentrating instead on talking of polite nothings in French to Isabelle.

Polite nothings, indeed, seemed to be the order of the day. Amos bade Isabelle see that food and wine were served to their unexpected guests, and then began a loud discussion of long-gone battles and skirmishes with Tom, as well as memories of comrades long dead.

Tom had volunteered to her earlier that the greatest virtue a successful agent needed was patience. It was, perhaps, just as well that Catherine had learned it in a hard school, for at first Tom talked of everything but anything connected with their mission. It was very pleasant, though, to sit and laze in this well-appointed room, drinking wine and eating what in Scotland were called bannocks, well buttered.

Was Tom lazing as he laughed and talked and drank the good red wine? Or was he picking up hints and notions from his idle gossip with his friend? Catherine could not be sure. Names were flying between him and Amos. Tom had told her earlier, before they had left the inn, that Amos had no true convictions and had always signed up with the side that paid him the most. “Republican or Royalist, Turk or Christian—all were the same to him.”

“And you?” she had asked him. “Were you like Amos?”

“Oh,” he had told her, giving her the white smile that transformed his face, “you shall tell me your opinion of that when this venture is successfully over.”

He was as slippery as an eel—which in this kind of an enterprise was almost certainly an advantage. Seeing him now, one booted leg extended, wine glass in hand, one might have thought that the only care he had in the world was to gossip with an old friend, chance met.

“And William Grahame,” Tom said at last. “What of him? I had heard that he had set up his household in Antwerp these days.”

Was it her imagination or did something in Amos Shooter’s bland, amiable face change? Did it harden a little so that something of the severe mercenary soldier that he had once been peeped through his genial merchant’s mask? If so, the expression was so fleeting that it was gone almost before Catherine had seen it. He was laughing again.

“William Grahame, Tom? I had not thought that you knew him. Not your sort of fellow.”

“True. I know him not. But I was told that he might be a useful man to make a friend of.”

“No doubt, no doubt. He lodges but a mile away from here. He wanders, I am told, from town to town. About his business. Whatever that might be.”

Did Amos Shooter truly not know aught of Grahame but his possible resting place? Both Tom and Catherine were asking themselves the same question, and getting the same answer. He did, but for whatever reason he was not admitting that he did.

Tom took a deep draught of wine—and changed the subject. The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Mistress Shooter showed Catherine around the courtyard, and then took her through a little gate into a garden where herbs and vegetables grew, and, in summer, fruit on a sheltered wall.

Before they returned indoors, she said in her fractured English that she had learned from Amos, “Your husband should not trust this man Grahame overmuch. I tell you for your own good.”

“Why?” asked Catherine, trying to look innocent, and succeeding. After all, she did not need to be a great actress for it to appear that she knew nothing—for that was true.

Isabelle Shooter shook her head at her. “I cannot tell you. I should not have said what I did. But you seem to be a good girl, even if your husband is perhaps not quite the jolly man he pretends to be.”

Like Amos, then, thought Catherine cynically. But I would never have called Tom jolly. But, of course, he had been a jolly man this afternoon.

She said no more—for to know when to be silent is as great a gift, if not greater, than the ability to talk well, her Dutch mother had once said—which had the result that, when they returned to the big living room, Isabelle was holding her affectionately by the hand. She said to Tom as they left, “You have a pretty little wife, sir. Take care of her, I beg you.”

“Now what brought that on?” Tom asked her once they were on their way back to the inn, Geordie walking behind them. He had spent a happy few hours in the servants’ quarters, and was rather the worse for drinking a great quantity of the local light and gassy beer, although he was still able to walk.

“What?” Catherine asked, although she knew perfectly well what he meant.

“Amos’s pretty wife holding you so lovingly by the hand?”

“She thought that I was an innocent, and needed protection. She told me that you were not to trust William Grahame overmuch.”

“Did she, indeed? Believe me, I have no intention of trusting him at all—or Amos, either. And…?”

“There is no and…She said nothing more. Other than that you seemed a jolly man, but she did not think that you were. That you were pretending to be.”

Tom stopped walking, with the result that the overset Geordie, his head drooping, walked into him and earned himself a few curses from Tom, before he answered her.

“Did she so? A wise lady, then. Which begs the question, that being so, if she were wise, why did she wed Amos?”

Catherine shrugged her shoulders. “Why does one marry anyone? For a hundred reasons—or none at all. And did the jolly Amos tell you where William Grahame might be found?”

“That he did. But he did not warn me, as his wife warned you. I fear that he may think me as devious as he is and that therefore I do not need warning. That bluff manner of his is not the true man.”

“So I thought. But you and I are not the true man or the true woman either. So we are all quits—except, perhaps, for Isabelle.”

Tom gave a great shout of laughter, which had the heads of the few passers-by turning to look at them, and Geordie absent-mindedly walking into him again.

“I can see I must watch my words, wife. You would make Will Wagstaffe a good secretary—the kind who embroiders his master’s words. There are many such around Whitehall. Why not in the playhouse?” He turned to throw a second set of oaths at Geordie for treading on his heels.

“Why not, indeed? And do not curse poor Geordie, for I swear that you probably drank more than he did.”

“Ah, but I hold it so much better. Remind me to teach you the trick of it.”

“I thank you, husband, but no. No man would wish a toping wife.”

“Well said, and now we are home again. We must begin our campaign by deciding on what to say and do when we at last meet the elusive Master Grahame. Battles are won by those whose planning is good, and lost by those who do not plan at all. Remember that.”

“As a useful hint to employ in the kitchen? My soldiers must be carrots and cabbages, all arranged properly in rows.”

Bantering thus, they reached their rooms, where Tom called for more drink, and some food to stay them for the morrow.

Well, thought Catherine later that night as he staggered to the bed that he had made no attempt to share with her, sharing the unfortunate Geordie’s instead, one thing was sure. Whatever Tom Trenchard might, or might not be, life with him was certainly never dull.

Nor did it so prove the next day. This time Catherine was told to dress more modestly, in an old grey gown, with a large shawl. On the way to the address that Amos had given them as that of William Grahame’s, Tom brought her a white linen matron’s cap, elegant with its small wings, and its lace frill that framed her face prettily even if it hid the dark glory of her hair.

Tom was soberly dressed too, in a brown leather jacket, coarse canvas breeches, his frayed cream shirt, and, of course, his beautiful boots. They were always constant! As was his black, steeple-crowned hat with its battered feather.

Geordie, their ghost, followed them. Since arriving in the Low Countries, he was wearing something that passed as a livery: a shabby blue jacket and breeches, grey woollen stockings and heavy, pewter-buckled shoes. He carried a large staff with a silver knob on the top. His sallow face was glummer than ever. One wondered why he served Tom at all since he seemed to take so little pleasure in the doing.

Tom had talked seriously to Catherine before they left. “Hal Arlington told me that Grahame has a weakness for pretty women. Now you are a pretty woman, but a married one, so if you are to attract him—and distract him—you must do so modestly. Killing looks from swiftly downcast eyes. A glance of admiration should he say something witty. Later, when you know him better, then you may go further.”

Catherine threw him a furious look. For the last few days she had been spending her time worrying over Tom seducing her, and all the time she had been brought along to try to seduce Grahame!

“And, pray, how far is that ‘further’ to be? Are you here to play pimp to my strumpet? For if so, I tell you plainly that you may be in love with your role, but I am certainly not about to play the part which you and your two masters have assigned to me.”

“No need for that,” Tom told her swiftly. “You are to tease him only. Draw him on. Nothing more.”

Distaste showed on Catherine’s face and rang in her voice. “And that is almost worse than going the whole way! To lure a poor devil on with hopes that you are never going to satisfy is more indecent than being an honest whore.”

“Your choice,” grinned Tom. “If you prefer being the honest whore…”

“Oh—” Catherine stamped her foot “—if I were not between a rock and a hard place so that Rob’s life depends on my complicity, I should take ship for England straightaway.”

“Well said, wife. I like a woman who knows the way of the world—so few do.”

“Oh…” Catherine let out a long breath. He was impossible, but there was no point in telling him so. So she didn’t.

After that, when he bought her the cap, she was minded not to thank him, but the expression on his hard face was so winning when he gave it to her, that she did so—even if a little ungraciously.

Grahame’s house turned out to be a small one-storied wooden building on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by vegetable gardens with a dirt road running through them. A boy was poling along a small flat boat loaded with cabbages on the small canal that ran parallel with the road.

“Not lodgings, I think,” Tom said thoughtfully as they left the road and walked up the path to the house through a neglected garden. “Something rented.” He looked around him. “It’s deathly quiet.”

He shivered. “Too quiet. I would have thought a man of Grahame’s persuasion would prefer to be lost in a crowded city than isolated here. Safer so.”

It was the first time, but not the last, that Catherine was to hear him say something which had an immediate bearing on what was about to happen—and of which he could not have known.

For, as they reached the door but before they could knock on it they heard, coming from inside, the noise of a violent commotion, and male voices shouting.

“What the devil!” exclaimed Tom—and pushed at the door, which was not locked and opened immediately. He strode in, Geordie behind him, pushing Catherine on one side, and telling her not to follow them but to wait outside.

An order that she immediately disobeyed.

Chapter Four

Catherine found herself in a large room in which two, no three, men were struggling together. Tom was standing to one side, doubtless trying to decide which of them was the one he had come to meet—and must try to rescue.

It suddenly became plain that one of the men was losing an unequal fight with the two others and therefore was almost certainly William Grahame. Tom seized Geordie’s staff and brought its metal tip hard down on the head of the man who now had Grahame by the throat.

He fell to the ground, unconscious. Tom then tossed his staff back to Geordie, and drew from inside his coat a long dagger. On seeing Tom coming at him with the dagger, Geordie behind him, the fellow of the unconscious man loosened his hold on Grahame and threw him bodily at Tom with such force that Tom lost his balance and collapsed across a settle, Grahame on top of him.

Having done so, the would-be assassin ran through the open door at the far end of the room, Geordie in pursuit, for Tom was busy disengaging himself from Grahame who was gasping his thanks at him.

“For,” he said feelingly, “had you, whoever you are, not arrived in such a timely fashion, I was dead meat. I give you my thanks.”

“My pleasure,” said Tom. “And you, sir, must be William Grahame, whom I have come to speak with. Who is this—” and he prodded the man on the floor who was now stirring and groaning “—that with his fellow he sought so desperately to kill you?”

“Why, as to that, I know not,” replied Grahame, who was visibly distressed by what had just passed. There were bruises on his face and throat and he had some difficulty in speaking. “Only that the two of them broke in through the door there and set about me.” He pointed at the one through which his assailant and Geordie had disappeared.

For some reason Catherine—who had been standing back staring at the action, which was far more exciting and dangerous than that in any play in which she had acted—did not believe him. She wondered whether Tom also thought that Grahame might not be telling the truth.

Tom had sheathed his dagger again inside his coat, was hauling the groaning man to his feet and throwing him down on the settle, since he appeared to have difficulty in standing.

“Come, mijnheer,” Tom began in broken Dutch, for he was of the opinion that these might be assassins sent by the Grand Pensionary, John de Witt, to dispose of a double agent whom he might now consider dangerous, “who sent you here to kill Master Grahame—and why?”

The man shook his head and seemed not to understand what Tom was saying. Grahame began to interrogate him, but Tom stopped him, saying, “Do not distress yourself, sir. My wife speaks good Dutch. Mine is poor and he may not understand what I was asking him. Wife?”

Catherine stepped forward, just as Geordie reappeared, looking glummer than ever.

“My apologies, Master, but I lost him. There is a small wood beyond the gardens where the path forks and I must have taken the wrong track…”

“No matter.” Tom was brief. “Our friend here will soon tell us all. Begin, wife.”

Catherine questioned their captive in Dutch and then in French, being proficient in both. He understood not them, nor English either—or so his shaking head and uncomprehending face appeared to say.

Tom lost patience. He surveyed the man silently for some minutes. He was anonymous in both face and dress, being like a score such as one might see in the street. At last he leaned forward to pull the man upright.

“Wife,” he said, not turning his head towards Catherine, “do you go into the garden and not return until I call for you. I would fain question this piece of scum more severely and I would not have you present. Go!” he ordered her fiercely as she hesitated.

Nothing for it but to leave with Geordie, for Tom bade him to go with her and, “to look after the mistress with a little more care than you chased yon assassin!”

Catherine never quite knew what followed next for her back was towards Tom, Grahame and the would-be assassin when, just as she reached the door, she heard a shot behind her.

Shocked, she swung round to see Tom facing the assassin who was sinking to the floor, blood gushing from his mouth. Behind him stood Grahame, his face grim, a pistol in his hand.

“Now, why the devil did you do that?” enquired Tom of Grahame.

“To save you, of course,” returned Grahame hardily. “See, he had drawn a dagger on you, it is on the floor near his hand. I had a pistol in my belt that I was not able to use against my assailants, their attack being so sudden, and I used it to save you, as you had saved me.”

Tom’s expression was deadly, thought Catherine, shivering a little, and he did not seem at all grateful to Master Grahame for saving his life.

“No,” he said, his voice so cold and severe that Catherine scarcely knew it, “I was in no danger from this poor fool, despite his dagger. And now that you have slain him so incontinently, we can know no more of who paid him to slay you.”

Grahame’s expression was a sad one, but his voice was patient. “Forgive me. I had no time to think. I saw you being attacked, and acted accordingly.”

Tom stood silent before giving a short laugh. “No, you must forgive me. You thought I was in danger and you acted promptly. For that I must thank you. You were not to know that I have been for many years a mercenary soldier who would not easily have fallen victim to such an amateur creature as this. After all, he and his accomplice were making heavy weather of killing a solitary man, unable to use his weaponry.”

Well, Catherine thought, a trifle indignant on Grahame’s behalf, at last Tom had thanked Grahame, even if his thanks were belated.

Grahame inclined his head. “We are quits, I think,” he said, smiling. “And now you must tell me who you are, and why you have sought me out here. And, most of all, who told you where to find me. I had thought this place unknown to all my enemies, and most of my friends.

“Then, in a few short minutes, there arrive both enemies and friends, for I take you, your wife and your servant to be my friends. Indeed, if you arrived as strangers, your actions have made you my friends.”

He smiled at them, before announcing, “Wine,” and going over to a buffet—the Low Countries word for a sideboard—where stood a decanter and several goblets of fine glass, a little at odds with the rough style of the house and the furnishings of the rooms in it. “We must drink a toast to our survival.” He had needed to step over the assassin’s corpse to get there. Catherine felt quite faint at the casual way in which all three men were treating his death.

She was not surprised when Tom shook his head, saying, “Wine later. First we must decide what to do with him,” and he pointed at the body. “If I am wrong in supposing that you do not wish to inform the authorities of what has passed this day, forgive me. If I am right, however, the evidence needs to be disposed of.”

Grahame continued to pour wine as though discussing murderous attacks and the hiding of dead bodies was an ordinary, everyday matter.

“There are enough canals about here, to hide a dozen such as he. Depend upon it, no one will seek to know what happened here today. The odds are on it that his companion will not return to confess his failure. These were but poor hirelings sent to dispose of me. It was their bad luck that you arrived.”

And ours that we did, thought Catherine to whom a glass of wine seemed a most desirable thing. I have had a real baptism of fire today. If I had ever imagined that this enterprise was not a risky one, this episode has proved exactly how risky it is! I feel quite faint, but will not confess it.

She looked away from the dead man, and saw Tom gazing at her enquiringly. She gave him a small wry smile to try to tell him that, whilst she was shocked, she was not about to disgrace herself—or him—by doing anything so stupid as faint.

Pleased—and relieved—by her stoicism, Tom handed her his glass. “Drink up,” he bade her. “It will make you feel better.”

She made no demur, but drank down the good Rhenish wine, and listened to Tom and Grahame discussing what to do with the corpse.

“Your man may help me to carry this poor fool to the shed in the garden. He may lie until darkness falls when the canal shall be his resting place—for the time being, that is,” said Grahame, his manner almost cheerful.

Geordie pulled a long face, but did as he was told. Tom said nothing, but he was thinking a great deal. No stranger to violence himself, he found that Grahame’s equanimity in the face of violent death—and a violent death which he had needlessly inflicted—was telling him something of the man quite other from what Gower and Arlington had believed of him in London.

This was no puling scholar who simply paid for the information which he painstakingly—almost safely—gathered and used to sell to either the Dutch or the English government, according to whichever would pay him the most at the time. He had killed before, and would doubtless kill again.

No, Grahame was a very dangerous man and not to be trusted. And who, exactly, was trying to kill him? And why? These questions ran through Tom’s head, as he took the empty wine glass from Catherine and refilled it for himself. Other thoughts were troubling him.

Were Gower and Arlington playing a double game with him and Catherine? Had they employed the assassins who had tried to kill Grahame—and so nearly succeeded? And had he and Catherine been sent as a blind so that they might disclaim responsibility if Grahame were found murdered? Their argument being that they would scarcely waste time sending emissaries to deal with a man they intended to kill.

Or was the Grand Pensionary responsible? Was it not possible that he, like Gower and Arlington, might have tired of Grahame’s devious games, and decided to do away with him?

Worse still, were he and Catherine being manoeuvred by Gower and Arlington into a situation where they might be accused of killing Grahame? The possibilities were endless; instead of cursing poor Catherine’s presence, as he had been doing, might he not be better employed asking himself why he had been so foolish as to agree to this dubious venture at all!

“So, sir,” Grahame said, handing Tom his glass of Rhenish and seating him in a large chair opposite to him, Geordie having been left in the garden to keep watch at the back of the house. “Pray tell me who you are, and why I am honoured by your presence,” and he lifted his glass to Tom, almost fawning on him.

Oh, the greasy swine! Tom had difficulty in not laughing out loud at such a seductive attempt to charm. There was something odd about Grahame, but exactly what the oddness consisted of Tom did not yet know.

“My name is Thomas, Tom, Trenchard. I am a member of that family, noted as a supporter of the late Lord Protector. Colonel Ned Trenchard, now a soldier for the Hapsburgs and the Empire, is a distant cousin. I met him once in Nurnberg, when I was still a mere lad.”

Now that, at least was true, for Tom mixed truth with lies to achieve a greater truth—as all such conspirators do, and if pushed could describe Ned Trenchard accurately, aye, and others who were opposed to King Charles as well.

“Indeed, indeed, Master Tom Trenchard. And what does this cousin of Ned Trenchard come to me for? On whose behalf? Not on his cousin’s, I dare swear.”

“No, indeed. On the contrary, for although my inclination lies towards the late Cromwell’s cause, I do not wish to see my country brought low by a foreign power, even to bring down King Charles. That were to leave us helpless before any European state which might wish to conquer us. And knowing my mind on this, I am sent by my masters in London to offer you what they believe you most dearly wish…”

Tom paused, and waited for Grahame to answer.

“And that wish is? Tell me, Master Trenchard, since you have just claimed to know my mind, what my mind is.”

Oh, a devil! A most cunning devil! He and Tom were a good pair, were they not? This was Catherine’s immediate reaction to this conversation between two men, neither of whom could be trusted to tell the truth. She waited for Tom’s answer.

It was his turn to raise his glass to Grahame before speaking. “Why, Master Grahame, I believe that you have a great mind to return to the land of your birth, but that you do not wish to meet the headsman’s axe shortly after arriving there!

“That being so, I am to inform you that a pardon awaits you if you give my masters, through me, not only what you know of the dispositions of the Dutch Army and Navy, but also what you have learned of the arrangements of the French forces. You see, I am being frank with you,” Tom ended, trying to look as sincere as a man being insincere could.

“Oh, I do like a frank man,” exclaimed Grahame, “frankness not being much of a commodity on any exchange these days! You will, I know, be well aware that I may not be equally frank back. For it is my head that will roll if I accept this offer at face value. Pray forgive me for speaking the language of commerce, but we are in the Low Countries where commerce reigns, and commerce is what we are engaged in, is it not? Yes, I must have time to think.”

“I am authorised to give you time,” Tom told him, “but not a great deal of it.” Which last, at least, was truthful.

He had not expected, nor had Gower or Arlington, that Grahame would fall on his neck, and agree to come home immediately—hence their insistence that Catherine accompany him to act as bait.

Grahame’s next words were unexpected. “Your wife speaks Dutch well, and French also, not always accomplishments which English women possess. How so?”

Truth would serve again, Tom thought, and Catherine should tell it. “My wife must answer you, Master Grahame, if she be so willing.”

So this was to be her baptism into the devious business of spying. She must not falter—nor did she, saying eagerly, “Indeed, husband. My father was married to a Dutch lady of good birth who spoke both Dutch and French well, and insisted that I learned to speak both languages well. And Latin, too, for she thought that girls as well as boys should have the education that the Dutch gave them, which the English do not.”

She ended by rising and dropping Grahame a neat curtsy.

“Convenient,” was all that Grahame had to say to that. Tom did not inform him that Catherine was an actress—for that was no business of his, and he was pleased that her answer had been short and sweet with nothing volunteered that had not been asked for. She was now sitting down again, head bent, looking both submissive and wifely.

A strange warm feeling swept over Tom. It was not a feeling he had ever experienced before. He had no time to analyse this new sensation further, for he had more pressing matters on which to ponder.

He had probably gone as far as he could in this first meeting. He had laid Gower and Arlington’s proposition before Grahame, and whether, if he returned to the English fold, they would hold to their promises to him, he did not know. It was not his business, but it was Grahame’s. And if Grahame were as wily as Tom thought he was, it was likely that he would take a deal of time before making up his mind.

So far as Tom was concerned, there were other questions that needed an answer. Item: Why was Grahame living alone in the country without servants or helpers? Item: What was his connection with Amos Shooter, that Shooter should know the whereabouts of a double agent who was obviously in hiding?

All this whilst watching Grahame watch him as they drank their wine. Silences, Tom thought, often told one as much as words. Grahame ended this one by pouring Tom more wine, saying as he did so, “And who, may I ask—for perhaps I may not—told you where to find me?”

Again the truth was best. “Oh, you may ask, no secret there. None but my old friend and late companion in arms, Amos Shooter, now a fat burgher with a rich and pretty wife.”

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