The Hooded Hawke Read Online Free PDF Page B

Despite sweat and road dust, he always looked neatly turned out, today even bedecked in new-looking riding gloves and leather doublet. The man’s chestnut hair was kept clipped unfashionably short, but his strong, square jaw and broad shoulders made him just the sort the queen wanted in her employ. Like her sire, she favored good-looking servants; Cecil tried to keep Keenan out of her way so she wouldn’t pirate the man.
    “I fear not even God can convince this queen to do what she will not, man,” Cecil muttered, and began to brush dust from his sleeves and breeches. He was certain he’d have little time to rest before he was drawn into the thick of things. It had been three years since the queen had taken it upon herself to solve a murder, but once committed she was always in tooth and nail.
    Cecil was only too glad to ride into the huge block of shade the big house threw across the sunny lawn. He had seen Sir William More’s county seat but once, years ago, before the queen had suggested More enlarge it to host royal visits—actually, of course, to keep him from spending his fortune supporting Catholic causes. It must have taken thousands of
pounds for More to haul in more of the mellow stone from the ruins of Waverley Abbey near Farnham.
    Cecil noted well the stone badge of the Mores carved grandly above the central entry: The strutting moor hen and moor cock symbolized the family name—and attitude. The only thing missing, Cecil groused to himself, was the Virgin Mary, or perhaps the unvirginal Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Cecil’s spies said Sir William secretly idolized.
    Keenan dismounted quickly to hold Cecil’s horse for him before his following scriveners or guards could do that service. “Any other task, then?” the man asked.
    “After you see to the horses, get a bite to eat, but wait about lest I have need of you.”
    Cecil gritted his teeth as he took a few steps on solid ground to try to loosen his muscles, for they ached as if he had the ague. House servants spilled through the arched entry to greet his party; one man offered him a quaff of cold wine, which he downed in almost one gulp.
    The last wine he’d had was yesterday, with Ambassador de Spes, and, however good it was for a Spanish claret, it had tasted like sand. As ever, de Spes had been sleekly attired with his hair slicked down with some sort of sweet-smelling pomade, the sly fox. Yes, a fox, one that should be sniffed out and hunted down.
    “You understand my dilemma, of course, Secretary Cecil,” de Spes had said in his heavily accented English. He always pronounced Cecil’s name Ses- seel. “On behalf of my liege lord, King Philip, I must insist that your queen and her sea captains honor our laws.”
    “This is old business, Ambassador,” Cecil had said, “and Her Majesty has responded clearly to your claims more than once.”
    “But by Spanish law, English ships have no right to ply the Gulf of Mexico or venture along the Spanish Main off the coast of the Americas. Spain has strongly stated, ‘No peace beyond the line.’”
    “To repeat our stance, Ambassador de Spes, your king may
declare all he wants of ‘Spanish law,’ but such is not compulsory for our countrymen, our queen, or our ships, which have every right to trade in and explore the New World. As Her Majesty herself has put it, no one country owns the open ocean. No one can declare some fictitious line in God’s great sea which others may not cross—not but for the boundaries near one’s own homeland.”
    “But Secretary Cecil, quite simply, we were there first. And if your countrymen continue to act like brigands and freebooters, then they shall be challenged and treated as such.”
    “If your countrymen dare to fire upon sovereign English ships again, it can only lead to war, de Spes!”
    In short, what Cecil had to report to the queen today was not good news. At least he had every reason to think he could offer her a motive for someone shooting an arrow