The Tudor Conspiracy - Gortner Christopher W. (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .txt) 📗

I had reached the whorehouses.

I came to a halt, uncertain of which way to turn. In the night it all looked the same-filthy, decrepit, and corroded by suffering. The visceral pain of Peregrine’s death collided with my understanding of the damage Renard brewed with Mary’s marriage, which would pit her in a battle against her Protestant subjects, and all of a sudden I wanted this errand done with. I wanted to fulfill my mission and get as far from the court and London as I could.

When I finally espied Dead Man’s Lane, I kept to pockets of shadows, my senses attuned. The Hawk’s Nest came into view, a far different building from its daytime incarnation-the shutters of the upper story pulled back, candlelight winking in the mullioned glass, the faint sounds of music and laughter drifting on the cold air.

The front door opened. Two men staggered out, silhouetted by the light spilling from inside. I could see at least one of them wasn’t from the neighborhood. He was tall and well built, with a fur-trimmed mantle tossed across his shoulders: a courtier by the looks of it, and of evident means. His companion was slender, smaller. As they careened down the alley where I lurked, the boy let out a lascivious giggle.

I palmed my blade. They came closer, tripping over each other and laughing. I could smell the alcohol wafting off them from where I hid in a doorway. All of a sudden, the boy yelped as the courtier swung him to the wall and began groping him with drunken urgency, the boy emitting squeaks of feigned protest.

I pounced.

The courtier froze when he felt my blade at his throat. “He’s a little young, don’t you think?” I hissed in his ear, and the boy pressed against the wall opened his mouth to shriek.

I glared. “I don’t want you. Get, now!”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Slipping around his companion, the boy ran off.

The courtier tried to elbow me. I pressed my poniard on his neck hard enough to give him pause. “Gutter rat thief,” he slurred. “Kill me if you like, but I don’t have anything to give you. That boy-cunny took all my coin.”

“I don’t want your money,” I said. “Just tell me the password. Or would you prefer I turned you in to the night watch for consorting with an underage boy?”

He chortled, swaying. He could barely stand upright. If I hadn’t had my arm about him from behind, he’d have impaled himself on my blade. “That’s a fine one. They’re all underage, you fool. That’s the Nest’s specialty.”

“Password,” I repeated. I pressed harder, enough to make him gasp.

“Fledgling,” he said, and as I lessened my pressure on the blade, he abruptly whirled about, less drunkenly than I’d supposed. I had no choice but to slam him on the side of his head with my poniard hilt.

He dropped like stone.

Grabbing him by his sleeves, I dragged him into the doorway and yanked his mantle from him. It was expensive, a dark green damask lined in fleece, the outer edges trimmed in lynx. I threw it over my own cloak. Hopefully the bastard wouldn’t freeze to death.

Tugging up the mantle’s furred cowl, which almost covered my entire face, I shoved my knife in my boot and strode to the brothel door.

* * *

The clouds overhead had scattered, and the glacial moon now shed a colorless glow over the building. I rapped on the door and waited, counting the seconds under my breath.

A slot in the door slid open. “Fee,” said a gruff voice.

“Fledgling,” I replied.

The sound of bolts grinding preceded the door’s opening. The smell of wood smoke and a blast of warmth greeted me; as I heard the clanking of tankards and laughter, I realized I faced a closed passageway lit by cressets on the walls. There was another door at the end of the short corridor, from which the sounds of entertainment reached me.

The front door slammed shut behind me. A hand yanked back my cowl. The voice barked, “Weapons, if ye please. And yer cloak, too.”

He hadn’t recognized the mantle had a previous owner. Nevertheless, he posed a problem-a titan with the crunched features of a pit mastiff and hands the size of hams. He also had a wheel-lock pistol shoved under his wide studded belt; despite my misgivings, I was impressed. One didn’t see a weapon of that caliber every day.

The man glared at me. Slowly I unhooked my sword harness and wrapped it in both of my cloaks. “Be careful with it,” I said. I had no intention of relinquishing my hidden poniard. He eyed me up and down, my fine Toledo-steel sword gripped in his fist.

“Fee,” he said again.

I frowned, started reaching into my pouch for coin.

“Fee!” he roared.

God’s teeth, were there two passwords? I said coyly, “I’m new, you see, and a friend recommended that I-”

He grasped me by the front of my doublet, thrusting his face at me. If he decided to start using his fists, I wouldn’t stand a chance unless I could get my blade out.

“Who recommended ye?” he asked, and I replied softly, “His lordship the Earl of Devon. He suggested we meet here. He says it’s the finest establishment of its kind.”

“Earl, ye say?” He tightened his fist about my doublet, scrutinizing me. Just as I began to think I was going to have do something very unsavory to get myself out of this predicament, he grunted and let me go, signaling to the door at the end of the passage.

“Earl’s man’s in there. See ye report to him first. I don’t like strangers who don’t know the fee, and he don’t like visitors who come lookin’ for his master.”

I bowed my head and stepped past him; without warning, I felt his hand shoot between my legs. He gripped my codpiece in a breath-quenching vise. “Nice,” he said, his breath rank in my face. “Come see me later, if ye like, pretty man.”

“I’ll consider it,” I managed to utter, feeling as if he had just castrated me. He gave me another breath-quenching squeeze. As I gulped against the urge to double over and cup my genitals, he reached up to a box above the shelves where a multitude of customer weapons and cloaks were stashed. He pulled out a thin cloth mask and thrust it into my hand.

“No faces in the common room. Rule of the house.”

I muttered my gratitude, affixing the white lawn mask in place and tying its ribbons about my head. My groin throbbed; I feared I’d lost my ability to ever raise my yard again.

Apprehension coiled in me as I stepped through the far door and into the common room. Laid out like any well-to-do alehouse, it was ample, with herb-strewn rushes underfoot to reduce the chill of the plank flooring and tallow lights flickering on wide board tables, where men sat drinking, playing cards, or dicing.

All ordinary enough, until I realized the wavering figures by the hearth who swayed against each other were all men; the lithe servers weaving their way between tables carrying flagons or platters were male, too. There wasn’t a woman in sight.

Every customer who turned to stare at me wore a mask.

Two men seated at a nearby table, both clad in open doublets of patterned cloth, expressed interest; one smiled invitingly at me while his companion whispered in his ear. I returned the smile but moved past them, scanning the room for the earl’s man. I pondered how to contend with this complication. Courtenay had sent his man after me on the bridge; I didn’t expect him to be exactly welcoming.

I spotted him seated at a table near a narrow staircase, hunched alone with a tallow wick floating in an oil dish and a tankard before him, his hood pulled over his head. Did the mask rule apply to him? I surmised the cloak and weapon policy did not.

He reared up his head as he sensed my approach, throwing his hood backward. I bit back a gasp. His left eye was a welted hole. It explained why he’d failed to see me in the gallery, huddled in the window alcove. The rest of him didn’t look much better; his face was a mass of scar tissue that twisted his features from brow to jaw, the skin so puckered and knotted it no longer resembled flesh. There was damage visible even under his gray-flecked beard, as if someone had taken a mallet to him, followed by a cauterizing torch and crude sutures.