A Seditious Affair(65)

“Millay’s is the last place he’d go after leading the hounds there once already,” Harry said. “I’ll try some of the old crowd—”

“No, you won’t,” Julius said. “No. You will not go visiting among the radicals, and that is all there is to it.”

Harry was a cheerful, feckless, pleasure-seeking young man, but as he turned on his lover then, he resembled Richard at his most autocratic. “If Silas needs me, I will go.” His tone brooked no contradiction.

“I’m afraid Julius is right,” Dominic said. “There’s trouble brewing, which—well, suffice to say, if you visit half a dozen radicals, there’s every chance you’ll be seen and noted doing it. Don’t.”

“And you can?” Harry demanded hotly. “Do you think they’ll talk to you?”

Dominic put both hands through his hair. “I’m quite sure they won’t, but he wouldn’t thank you for damning yourself on his account. If you think of anything—hear anything—”

Harry subsided. “Of course. And if we can help, let us know.”

—

Dominic went to Millay’s anyway, though it was far too early to raise a house that shrouded its deeds in tactful darkness. Mistress Zoë, a yawning doorman informed him, was still abed in her own home and wasn’t to be raised nohow. He wouldn’t give the address, even with the prospect of a guinea twinkling in Dominic’s hand.

“Very generous of you, sir, but a guinea won’t do me long if Mistress Zoë bites my leg off and beats me bloody with it. She doesn’t like to be woke,” he explained, and Dominic had perforce to accept that.

He went back to his rooms, because there was damn all to be done. He didn’t allow himself to hope there would be a message there, and, indeed, there was none.

Perhaps Silas was injured. Dominic placed no faith in the reports that he had “looked well enough, considering.” At some ungodly hour, with him blackened by smoke, who could be accurate? And how much did the people of Paternoster Row even care, those for whom he’d fought so long, for whom he’d gone hungry, yet who had let him disappear into London destitute. It was a perfect practical example of why the democratic idea was a utopian folly, and Dominic wished to heaven that it had been himself rather than Silas proved wrong.

Think, Frey.

If Silas was dead or dying in the gutters, or hidden away in some radical’s den, Dominic had no means of finding him. Therefore, Dominic had to concentrate on what he could tackle. Silas wasn’t with Harry; he might be with Mistress Zoë, and if that was the case, he would be safe. He might be with other friends, but he never mentioned other friends…

Jon. He’d mentioned a Jon, the man who had paired them on Cyprian’s orders. And Zoë, talking of that, had muttered, I’ve got something to say to that brother of mine. Her brother was Shakespeare, partner of the club keeper Quex, and it was notorious among the Ricardians that Cyprian was thick as thieves with them both.

Silas’s Jon was, had to be, Shakespeare from Quex’s.

Dominic propelled himself upright and reached for his boots.

It was not far to Quex’s. The house didn’t open until four o’clock, but he hammered on the door, and the footman who answered let him in. He was, after all, Dominic Frey.

“I want Mr. Shakespeare, please. At once, and in private.”

There was a certain amount of subdued panic in the footman’s response. Clearly this was more than he was paid for. The public rooms were still being swept out. The place reeked of stale smoke and sweat, and, Dominic could not but notice, it was a little shabby in the unforgiving daylight.

He was brought to a study piled with ledgers and account books, where he waited for a few impatient minutes until Shakespeare entered, impassive as ever, with Quex limping at his heels.

“Mr. Frey, sir. May I help you?”

“I hope so. Do you know where Silas Mason is?”

A fractional pause, then Quex said, in that rather high voice of his, “Who’s that, sir?”

“Silas Mason,” Dominic said. “I am aware you know him, Mr. Shakespeare. Your sister told me of a conversation between you and her regarding Mr. Mason and myself.”

A longer silence. Shakespeare said at last, with caution, “Is there a problem, sir?”

“Yes. I want to know where Mr. Mason is, and you have not yet told me.”

Quex’s smooth face tightened. In the sun that streamed through the window, his chin appeared impeccably shaved to a point of smoothness not even Cyprian could achieve, whereas Shakespeare had a day’s worth of bristle. Both the men looked different, in fact. Perhaps it was that they weren’t in livery, or the effect of daylight rather than the usual candlelight, but Dominic seemed to see them for the first time. Shakespeare’s powerful muscles, a big man who nevertheless had a touch of wariness in his eyes, as though he were used to attack. And—