Read The Queen's Man for Free Online Page A

maidservant. When Boltfoot returned with the unwelcome news that the Blue Boy had closed its doors, he took himself to bed for want of anything better to do.
    I n the morning, hungry and ill-rested, he took breakfast at the tavern, and then strode along Seething Lane, avoiding the piles of horse-dung and human waste that clogged the way. The stench did not help his mood. Why in God’s name had the gong farmers not cleared this path overnight? A kite wheeled overhead, searching for its dinner. Another perched on the roof of St Olave’s, pecking the juicy muscle meat from some rodent. London, once a lion among cities, was becoming more and more like a sick tomcat.
    Arriving at Walsingham’s mansion, he sought out the senior intelligencers. This house, close by the Thames and the Tower, was one of Sir Francis’s two residences. On Walsingham’s advice, Shakespeare had deliberately found a house close by for his own dwelling. ‘If you wish to work for me, I expect nothing more than your body and soul, John. That means you either live with me, or near me. I cannot be doing with sending messengers to fetch you.’
    Near to him seemed the better option.
    He found Thomas Phelippes in a back office. The room was stacked high with books and documents and smelt of sweat. Phelippes was peering down hard through his small round spectacle-glasses, examining a scrap of paper, his lank yellow hair falling about his pox-ridden face.
    ‘Mr Phelippes.’
    ‘Wait.’
    Shakespeare pulled the paper from the table. ‘No, Mr Phelippes, this will not wait.’
    Phelippes tried in vain to snatch back the paper. ‘So the fledgling crow thinks it has talons?’
    He ignored the barb. ‘I have come from Mr Secretary at Oatlands. A Frenchman named François Leloup has landed covertly and is at large in England. It may be that he has gone to Sheffield. I am to ride there this day. You, meanwhile, along with Mr Gregory, are to raise a search for him in London and the south.’
    ‘Do you think to command me?’
    Shakespeare had had to put up with Phelippes’s goading ever since he joined Walsingham’s service and it was becoming tiresome. Phelippes knew very well that the order had come from Walsingham. ‘I will tell you about Leloup.’
    The codebreaker laughed. ‘I know all about the good Dr Leloup. I know more about him than does his own mother.’
    ‘Then you will know under which stone to look.’ Shakespeare replaced the paper on the table. ‘Good day to you, Mr Phelippes. You know what is required of you.’
    Shakespeare turned to walk from the room, but he felt the clasp of Thomas Phelippes’s hand on his sleeve.
    ‘Wait, Shakespeare. Let us talk more of this Frenchman.’
    Shakespeare paused, shaking off Phelippes’s hand. ‘Very well. What I know is what Mr Secretary has told me, that he is about fifty, elegant, assured, dark-haired when last he saw him, with a prominent nose and only one arm. He will not find it easy to hide.’
    Phelippes nodded. ‘His arm was carried away by a cannonball at Jarnac, where he was helping the wounded. In France they know him as Le Museau du Loup .’
    ‘The Wolf’s Snout. Mr Secretary mentioned that.’
    ‘Guise will have ordered him to prepare the way for his invasion fleet. He wants the bosom serpent free and our own sovereign lady murdered. These are all parts of the whole.’ Phelippes leant forward excitedly, all signs of hostility gone. ‘I have come from Bruges this week. I learnt there that Guise and the English exiles have sent priests to England who have been told that their mortal souls are safe however many they kill, so long as their victims are Protestants. It accords with everything that Mr Secretary’s man Lawrence Tomson discovered from the papal agent in Bologna.’
    ‘Did your Bruges contact name the priests?’
    ‘He named one. Benedict Angel, originally of Warwickshire. Find him and we may find Leloup too.’
    F ather Benedict Angel made the sign of the cross and