The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Read Online Free Page A

before. My second husband, Matthew, had been a little like that. He, though, had had more tact than this man de Spes had, by the sound of it.
    The Genoese agents in London, who didn’t care who borrowed their money as long as they could rely on getting it back, said that Elizabeth’s credit was better than Philip’s and agreed to the deal. The result was that the indignant Spanish administration in the Low Countries closed Antwerp to English vessels and put several English merchants in the Netherlands under arrest. In England, a number of Spanish traders were locked up in retaliation. Relations between Spain and England were now strained, to put it mildly, and many formerly prosperous merchants were suffering lean times or had even gone bankrupt. Master Dean Senior had been among the victims.
    “If we do reach an agreement,” I said, “I’ll be firm about one thing. No marriage until this man is in a position to look after Meg properly.”
    We sent a messenger back ahead of us, accepting the invitation, and were on our way three days after that calamitous visit to Faldene.
     • • • 
    We spent a night on the way, dined next day at an inn just outside London, and then went on toward the City, passing Whitehall,where the court was in residence, and traveling along the Strand, with its fine mansions, where a number of ambassadors had their residences and where Cecil also lived.
    We were held up in the Strand by a minor procession, going toward Whitehall, which obliged us to move to the side of the road and wait for it to pass. For the most part, it consisted of gentlemen on foot, but in the center of it was a man on a gray horse.
    He passed close enough for us to see that his dark velvet cloak and cap had a thick trimming of fur, as though England’s spring sunshine hadn’t warmth enough for him, and for a moment, I saw his face clearly. It was pale, high in the cheekbone, so that his eyes seemed to look at the world over ramparts, and his mouth was folded into what looked like a permanent and contented smile. It was a curious face, a mixture of cold and warm, wary and self-assured. I didn’t like it.
    “Who in the world is that?” Hugh wondered aloud, popping his head out of his coach, but he was answered immediately as one of the gentlemen on foot, irritated by some passersby who hadn’t got out of the way fast enough, raised his voice in a shout of “Make way for the Spanish ambassador.”
    “I thought he was under house arrest,” said Hugh.
    “By the look of it, he’s been let out,” I said. “And very pleased about it he seems, too!”
    We reached the duke’s house, which was within the City proper, close to the busy thoroughfare of Bishopsgate, in the afternoon. The last stage of the journey was through crowded, noisy streets where our coachman, John Argent, in accordance with the law, dismounted from his box and led the horses, a wise precaution, for the shouts of the street vendors manning roadside stalls or pushing handcarts through the throng, declaring at the tops of their voices that theirs were the finest gloves, cheeses, hot meat pies, and mousetraps in the land, were an assault on one’s hearing. Our horses laid back indignant ears and Argent had to soothe them, in the intervals of exchanging ruderies with devil-may-care coachmen, who were breaking the law and were still driving their charges, clattering along to the peril of anyone who got in their way.
    Our animals snorted, too, at the stench from the drainage ditches that ran down the middles or sides of the streets, sidestepping away from them as daintily as the elegant ladies who walked along holding their skirts clear of the dirty cobbles and sniffing at scented pomanders. Argent had his hands full.
    The elegant ladies were very elegant indeed. I was realizing how long I had been away from the center of things. Clothes I had thought fashionable were far behind the times. The simple, round French hood had been replaced,