Kitabı oku: «Execution», sayfa 5
‘So you think the act of stealing this list gave her away? I suppose it was not found on her?’
‘We don’t know that she even had the list yet. But she could have expressed too great an interest in it, and aroused suspicion that way. Or let slip any number of ways that she was spying.’ Walsingham shook his head. ‘You heard my daughter – she thinks I feel no remorse for this death. She could not be more mistaken. Clara and Robin’s father died in my service, I took them into my household when they had no other prospects, and they have both served me willingly. This should never have happened. But Frances cannot see that private griefs must give precedence to matters of state.’
‘She is young,’ I said gently.
‘So was this one.’ He reached out and rested his fingertips briefly on the cold flesh of the girl’s hand. ‘She should have made a better marriage, become a mother. I should have looked to that, instead of— No matter now.’ He raised his head and his eyes gleamed black in the lantern light. ‘I must find out what is happening inside this Babington conspiracy, Bruno. What her death means for its progress. If they fear betrayal and decide to hold off, we may never bring the Scottish pretender to justice.’
‘How long had Clara been intimate with the Babington group?’ I asked, as his words had prompted an idea.
‘Robin first introduced her in March,’ he said, narrowing his eyes at me. ‘Why?’
‘Three months. Have you checked to see if she was with child?’
‘The body has not been examined by a physician. What makes you suppose that?’
‘Only that, in my experience, it can be a pressing reason for a man to rid himself of an inconvenient mistress. It might be worth a look. The motive may be nothing to do with your conspiracy.’
Walsingham looked down at the girl, considering, a hand on the hilt of his knife; I half-feared he might perform the examination himself right there. ‘In your experience?’ he said, after a while, with an eyebrow cocked.
‘My experience of murder.’
He nodded. ‘Very well. Thomas, send for the physician to do what is required at dawn. She can’t stay here more than a day longer. That’s another confrontation I must have with her brother, who wants to take her all the way to Essex to have her buried with their father.’ He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘We should go to our beds now, sleep a few hours while we can. There is much work to do.’
Again, in that half-light, I saw how drawn he looked, before he turned abruptly for the steps as Phelippes pulled the sheet over the body. Upstairs Walsingham exchanged private words with the curate – I saw him slip the man a purse from his cloak – and, to my great relief, we emerged from the chapel into clean night air. I stretched up to look at the stars and breathed deep.
‘Gifford will be at Thomas’s lodgings when you arrive,’ Walsingham said, as the carriage lurched back over the rutted road towards the city. ‘Say nothing to him of our plan – I will be the one to brief him. But keep your ears open for anything Gifford has to say to you. He may be less guarded than he is with Thomas.’
‘You mentioned that you had a man inside the group whose loyalty was uncertain. I presume you meant Gifford?’
Walsingham turned his face to the blacked-out window. ‘Gilbert is not a steadfast young man. He will do whatever is expedient at the time, but I must work with what I have. That he was already established as courier to Mary was a gift I could not turn down – I will not find a man better placed. But his loyalty is only bought, and he is especially vulnerable to having his head turned by a pretty young woman.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘No,’ Phelippes said, sounding puzzled. ‘He should do his job.’
Walsingham caught my eye and, for the first time since we had left Seething Lane, I saw the flicker of a genuine smile. ‘Not everyone has your single-minded devotion to duty, Thomas,’ he said, laying a hand on his assistant’s arm. I noted how Phelippes flinched away from it, frowning as if he realised there was a joke somewhere but could not identify it. ‘The lady in question,’ Walsingham continued, ‘is Bessie Pierrepont. I fear Gilbert has conceived a fancy for her, and that is worrying.’
‘Why? Who is Bessie Pierrepont?’
‘A lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth. More significantly, she is the granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick.’
I shook my head. In the upper reaches of English society, everyone seemed to be related to everyone else, and it was assumed you knew them all. ‘You will have to explain the significance.’
‘Of course. No reason these names should mean anything to you. Tell him, Thomas.’ He leaned back against the seat.
‘Bess of Hardwick is wife to the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was Mary Stuart’s keeper when she was first imprisoned,’ Phelippes explained, obligingly. ‘She and Mary became close. Sewing together, and other women’s pastimes. She was supposed to relate back to Master Secretary and my lord Burghley the confidences she gleaned. Instead her loyalties transferred to Mary – Bess and her husband treated her like a house guest rather than a prisoner, and Mary’s correspondence with her supporters in France went unchecked. After the last plot to free her came so near to success, Master Secretary was obliged to remove her from the Earl’s care and confine her under sterner conditions.’
‘In the absence of her own child, Mary conceived a great affection for Lady Shrewsbury’s granddaughter, Bessie Pierrepont, who was often at the house. She would even take the girl to sleep in her bed when she was four or five years of age.’ Walsingham twisted his mouth. ‘Young Bessie is now nineteen and in Queen Elizabeth’s service. She will utter, by rote, every profession of loyalty that she knows we expect of her, but I have lingering doubts. Childhood devotion dies hard, and Mary has sent her valuable gifts over the years. Gifford has sought an introduction to her lately, and I would like to know what that is about.’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘More interesting, I think, to see where the association tends if he thinks I know nothing of it. He has taken trouble to keep his interest in her from me and Thomas, and that in itself is reason to watch him. The boy is foolish enough to confide his secrets if he believes himself in love, and Bessie also knows Babington. I don’t want our plans coming to nothing because Gifford feels the need to show off for a girl. Not something we need worry about with you, eh, Bruno?’ He fixed me with a mischievous look. ‘Would all my espials had the training in resisting female wiles that comes from a spell in the religious orders.’
‘That does not necessarily follow, Your Honour,’ I said, dipping my head. He knew well that I was as capable as anyone of recklessness for the sake of a woman – or had been, for one woman at least.
‘True. By the time the religious houses were dissolved here, there was barely a monk left who knew the meaning of chastity.’ He sniffed. ‘See what you can find out from Gifford. I will put you in lodgings together – he may open up to you.’
I doubted this; when Gifford realised that I was behind his arrest at Rye and his forced cooperation with Walsingham, he was likely to throw the nearest heavy object at my head. They left me alone with my thoughts for the remainder of the journey. Master Secretary stared at the blacked-out window as if reading invisible secrets there. Phelippes leaned forward, rocking slightly, his gaze concentrated on the floor, muttering fervently under his breath. At first I thought he was praying, but when I listened closer, I realised he was reciting mathematical formulae. I sat back and smiled; it struck me as oddly endearing, and I caught myself thinking that, despite the absurdity of what I was being asked to do, I was back where I belonged.
SIX
‘You!’ Gilbert Gifford glared at me across the cramped space of Phelippes’ living quarters, one trembling finger pointing as if he thought he might be seeing an apparition. From the glassy look in his eye I guessed he had spent the evening in a tavern. Besides the flush in his cheeks, he looked much as he had when I last saw him, before Christmas; skinny and mousy-haired, with pale eyelashes and darting grey-blue eyes, though the hunched, nervy posture I associated with him was gone, displaced perhaps by drink.
‘Living quarters’ was a generous description: Walsingham’s right-hand man inhabited two large rooms with narrow leaded windows on the first floor of a house off Leadenhall Market. One was a study, the only furniture a broad desk with a chair, walls of shelves crammed floor-to-ceiling with files, parchments and boxes of papers, all neatly arranged, and a ware-bench bearing the tools of his forger’s trade: inks, waxes, brass seals and an array of quills and fine-pointed knives. The other room was for sleeping, and contained only a narrow wooden bed, a wash-stand, a chest for clothes and a pallet on the floor, where I supposed Gifford stayed when he was in town. I had left my bags in the passageway; no one had yet made any mention of where I was expected to sleep.
‘What a small world it is,’ I said, smiling. Gifford’s face darkened.
‘I never trusted you. I was picked up the minute I set foot ashore in Rye. I suppose it was you sent warning ahead of me?’
I laughed. ‘Master Gifford – you confided your most secret plans to a woman in order to impress her. That is always a mistake.’
He nodded, understanding. ‘Of course. Mary Gifford. My so-called relative in Paris. I suppose she was spying for him too?’ He jerked his head towards Phelippes, who continued to sort his papers into piles on the desk.
‘In fact, the girl was not in our employ, though I wish she had been,’ he remarked, without looking up. ‘She delivered better intelligence than half the men we have in Paris.’
I glanced at him; I wanted to steer Phelippes away from the subject of Mary Gifford, the young woman who had worked as a governess in the English household where Gilbert had lodged in Paris, lest he take too much interest in her abilities, and her history.
‘You should be grateful to her, Gilbert,’ I said. ‘From what I hear, your cargo was not well concealed. If your arrival had not been expected you would have been caught anyway, and you would have joined your father in prison. As it is, you both enjoy your liberty, and now you have useful employment.’
‘So I should consider myself in your debt?’ He tilted his chin and fixed me with a challenging look.
‘You should not consider me the architect of your misfortune, at any rate,’ I said, stretching out the ache in my back. ‘What was your life in Paris? Moping about bemoaning the loss of your family’s estate and waiting for a scrap of attention from Paget, who cared more about the letters you carried than he ever did about your safety. Now you are writing yourself into history. Think on that.’
He squinted as he attempted to work out if I was serious. ‘Not the way I wanted,’ he said, more soberly. ‘All I do is ride back and forth to Staffordshire on filthy roads, for a deception I am ashamed to—’ He broke off, casting a glance at our host and evidently thinking better of his words.
‘If you must keep talking, you will have to go next door,’ Phelippes said. ‘I have work to do.’
‘It’s the middle of the night, man,’ I said. ‘Are you not half-mad with tiredness? I know I am.’ It seemed weeks since I had set out from Rye, though it was only first light the day before.
Phelippes raised his head, surprised. ‘No. If you want to sleep, take my bed.’
‘Where will you sleep?’
‘He never sleeps,’ Gifford said, with a touch of bitterness. I guessed that part of the reason for his accommodation here was so that Phelippes could report back on his movements. I wondered if I would be subject to the same scrutiny. I believed Walsingham had faith in me, but perhaps he never fully trusted anyone. I would not either, in his position.
Gifford and I moved through to the bedchamber, where he flopped on the pallet without undressing, hands folded across his stomach, staring at the ceiling.
‘I suppose you were in love with her too,’ he said, after a while, as I took off my doublet and laid it at the foot of Phelippes’s bed. ‘Mary Gifford, I mean. If that was even her real name.’
I sat down to pull off my boots. ‘No, I was not in love with her.’ This was a lie, but there was no need for him to know that. Her real name was Sophia Underhill, but that was not his concern either.
‘I thought I was,’ Gifford said, with unexpected candour. ‘Now I know it was not love – only a mere shadow of the real thing.’ A dreamy smile played at the corners of his mouth. I set my boots down and leaned forward to look at him.
‘You have found the real thing, then?’ I asked, keeping my voice casual.
His eyes darted sideways at me and his expression hardened. ‘If I had, I would not speak of it to you – you would run straight to tell Walsingham for the chink of a couple of groats in your purse.’
‘Why, is it something Walsingham should know of?’
A deep colour spread instantly over the boy’s face, displacing even the flush of drink. ‘No. I mean to say – I have nothing to hide from him. But some things I may keep private. He is not master of my affections, though he may have bought my service.’
‘Well, whoever has command of your heart now must be a rare beauty, if she has displaced the lovely Mary Gifford in your eyes.’ I leaned back on the bed, not looking at him, hoping an offhand manner would invite further confidences.
He met this with a pointed silence, continuing to stare at the ceiling. I turned my back to him and began to unlace my shirt, feigning a lack of interest.
‘Her beauty is not so cheap as shows only in a glass,’ he burst out, eventually. ‘It also shines in her nobility of birth and character. Though, I confess, she has been blessed by nature too.’
I smiled to myself; in my experience, a young man will always find a way to boast of his conquests, even when he knows better.
‘She is a lady, then?’
‘The granddaughter of an earl, and serves the Queen herself in her bedchamber. Mary Gifford is nothing but a governess. I am not convinced we are even related. My father never heard of any branch of the family from Somerset.’
‘How did you meet this noble beauty?’ I asked, to prevent any further speculation on Mary Gifford’s identity. ‘The Queen keeps her women close, I thought?’
He seemed on the point of answering, but somewhere behind the haze of drink and infatuation, a note of caution sounded; I saw his eyes sharpen. ‘I will think twice before I tell you anything, Giordano Bruno. Paget warned me about you. I know you for a heretic.’
‘Well, my soul is no business of yours, Gifford, but we serve the same earthly master now, so we will have to get along a little better. Give you good night.’ I leaned over and blew out the candle. If I were to agree to Walsingham’s absurd scheme – and I had not yet given any undertaking, though he seemed to have assumed my willingness – there would be time enough to win Gifford over. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and allowed the exhaustion of the past two days to fall on me. The creak of boards carried from the adjoining room as Phelippes moved around, about his secret work of symbols and ciphers, saving the realm. I was about to tumble over the edge of sleep when Gifford shifted on his pallet and yawned.
‘She came back to London, you know. Mary Gifford, I mean.’
I pushed myself upright instantly. ‘What? When?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘What is it to you? I thought you were not in love with her.’
I ignored this. ‘She spoke to me of returning to London, but in a year or so, she said. Do you know different?’
He stretched out his limbs, enjoying this small power. ‘Perhaps she grew impatient. Before I left at Christmas, she had asked Paget to write her a letter of recommendation to a family he knew in London, to serve as a lady’s companion.’
‘And did he? What was the family’s name?’
‘I will have to see if I can recall. Give you good night, Bruno. Sleep well.’
I could hear the smile in his voice as he turned over. I called him a son of a whore under my breath in Italian and flung myself back on the bed, all thoughts of sleep banished. Moonlight slanted through the narrow casement; I stared at the patterns it cast on the wall while I considered that Sophia Underhill, the woman who had troubled my dreams in all her various names since I first encountered her in Oxford three years ago, might be out there somewhere in the same city, perhaps only streets away. I turned on to my side, and heard a furtive rustling from Gifford’s pallet, a sound I knew all too well from years confined as a Dominican friar; the boy was furiously frotting himself, no doubt thinking of his new love’s noble character. Madonna porca. I was too old to be sharing a bedchamber with worked-up boys. I rolled on my back and recalled my last meeting with Sophia in Paris, when she still called herself Mary Gifford. She had fled to France to escape the law in England, but she had always meant to return; she had left behind a child, taken from her at birth because she was unmarried, but she had not given up her dream of finding him again. If she had hastened her return to London, it could only mean she had received news that gave her reason to hope. If I could see her, perhaps I could be of use to her in her quest. Then I remembered that, if I stayed in London, it would be as a Spanish Jesuit and my time would be taken up conspiring to regicide; it would be all but impossible for me to see anything of Sophia in that guise. Even so – if Gifford was telling the truth, her presence here was another reason to consider staying.
The boy made a noise like a strangled fox as he finished and was snoring within minutes. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if any of the possible rewards of this business would be worth the price.
The next day I woke early, blinking into a chilly light, aches deep in my shoulders and thighs from two days in the saddle. Gifford lay sprawled on his pallet, twitching in dreams like a dog, but I could hear low voices from the adjoining room, so I splashed water over my face and quietly pulled on my clothes, thinking Walsingham must have come for my answer. Instead I approached the half-open door to hear Phelippes in hushed conversation with a tall man who had his back to me. I could see only that he was dark-haired and wore a rust-brown leather jerkin patched on the shoulders.
‘Master Secretary mentioned nothing about this last night,’ Phelippes was saying, his voice impatient.
‘I have just now come from Seething Lane,’ the stranger said, in an accent that sounded to my ears like that of the London boatmen. ‘The Italian is to come with me to Southwark.’
‘This makes no sense. Why would Master Secretary send him poking about the scene of the death in broad daylight, when the killers may be watching the place to see precisely who comes asking questions? And you, Master Poole – I would have thought you were the last person—’
‘Perhaps you don’t know his every thought, Thomas.’ The newcomer’s voice was tight. ‘Master Secretary wants the Italian’s view on the business. Don’t ask me why – I didn’t question it. But he did say for him to cover his head with a hat and his face with a kerchief. And tell him not to shave.’
‘Does he decide the length of my beard now?’ I said, pushing the door open. Phelippes glanced up without surprise; he was still sitting behind his desk making notes on his papers as I had left him, and it was impossible to tell from his face whether he had been there all night. The tall man turned and I saw that he was in his early thirties, good-looking in a dishevelled way, with a strong jaw and thick eyebrows that met in a V above his nose. It seemed from a soreness around his eyes that he had cried recently, or perhaps it was only the dust of the streets.
Phelippes waved a hand at him. ‘Doctor Bruno, this is Master Robin Poole, supposedly come from Seething Lane to conduct you to Southwark, though I am not persuaded this is a good use of your time.’
Robin Poole met my look and rolled his eyes in what I took as a complicit comment on Phelippes and his blunt ways. So this was the brother of the dead girl, the one who wanted to run her alleged killers through without waiting for evidence. Though his face appeared open, I could not help but concede that Phelippes might be right; it seemed unlikely that Walsingham would send this man to investigate the murder of his own sister. Master Secretary distrusted anyone who could not keep a tight rein on their emotions, especially when engaged on his business, and a man in the throes of grief was not the best judge of his own actions. I inclined my head and waited. He thrust his hand out and I shook it in the English fashion.
‘Giordano Bruno.’
‘I know. You are to come with me, but cover your face. I have a horse outside.’
I glanced at Phelippes. ‘On what business?’
Impatience flashed across Poole’s eyes, but he kept his countenance. ‘I will brief you on the way. Master Secretary wants your view of things.’
‘What things?’ If Walsingham had given these orders, he must have a purpose. Perhaps he had considered it wise to let Poole feel he was playing some active part in the investigation, but wanted me there to ensure he didn’t blunder.
‘You ask a lot of questions. This murder.’ Muscles tensed along his jaw, but his voice remained steady. ‘He says you have a trained eye.’
I thought I caught a note of scepticism, but perhaps that was my imagination. I gave a brisk nod.
‘Is there anything to eat?’
Phelippes sniffed. ‘This is not an inn, Doctor Bruno. Ask Master Poole if you wish to break your fast on the way, he claims to have your needs in hand. I hope you are not being dragged on a fool’s errand. We have little time to lose as it is – the girl’s death has disrupted everything.’
Poole held the door for me, raising his eyebrows again to make clear his feelings about Phelippes. When I joined him on the stairs with a hat pulled down over my ears and a kerchief tied around the lower half of my face, he gave me a cursory glance of approval and signalled for me to follow him. I noticed that he walked with a slight limp in his right leg. He didn’t speak until we were outside, where a boy with scabs on his lip held an old but solid-looking grey mare by a rope halter.
‘You’ll have to ride behind me.’ Poole pulled himself into the saddle with an easy, practised movement that almost disguised the way he nudged his right leg over subtly with his hand. I climbed up behind him, wincing at my aching muscles. He slipped the boy a coin and we turned out of Leadenhall down Gracechurch Street towards London Bridge.
‘There is something wrong with that man,’ he said, after a while, as if challenging me to disagree.
‘Phelippes? He is unusual, I grant. But I have studied the art of memory for nearly twenty years and only ever met one other with natural faculties like his.’
Poole grunted. ‘I still say he is touched. The man behaves as if he has never known a human feeling. Mark how he spoke of my sister, as if her death is no more than an inconvenience. And he believes Master Secretary can’t scratch his arse without he, Thomas, weighs up the cost and stamps five papers to approve it.’
I laughed, though I was not sure if it was intended as a joke, but I felt him relax. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said, as we passed down New Fish Street with the great gatehouse arch of the bridge in sight. The streets were already busy with traders’ carts, and goodwives on their way to market, baskets jutting from their hips. Gulls wheeled overhead, loosing lonely cries. The air was cold, carrying the dirt smell of the river on a sharp breeze.
‘She should never have been caught up in this,’ he replied, after a long pause. ‘Clara was an innocent, Doctor Bruno. She was not cut out for living a double life, the way we learn to in Walsingham’s service. Women are too much led by their feelings to dissemble in that way.’ He fell silent again and a shudder rippled across his back as he exhaled. I could have told him then that I had met plenty of women as skilled in the arts of duplicity as any man, and every bit as determined – I thought again of Sophia Underhill – but it was not the moment.
‘You blame Walsingham, then?’
‘It would be meaningless to blame him,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘Clara volunteered for this work. She was tired of a life indoors, a poor widow marking time to become a governess. She sought adventure. Now see where that has led her – pushing her way into a man’s world.’ He seemed about to say more, but fell silent abruptly. I wondered how much detail Walsingham had told him about the manner of her death. Poole made it sound as though he partly blamed his sister for her own end.
‘Then it was her idea, to become close with the conspirators?’
His shoulders tightened. ‘She only thought of carrying letters or something in that line. She badgered Walsingham to give her a task – he said he had enough couriers. I think he had misgivings, rightly, about trusting a woman with sensitive correspondence. But if the fault for her death lies with anyone, I must own it.’
‘How so?’
He glanced to the side, wrinkling his nose as we approached Fish Wharf and the Fishmongers’ Hall on the north bank of the river and the smell assaulted us from all sides. He dropped his voice, so that I had to lean forward to hear.
‘Babington and his friends keep themselves close, as you’d expect. They do not lightly confide in outsiders – you’ll find this out for yourself soon enough, though Master Secretary seems to believe you will walk into their open arms without hindrance.’ His tone let me know what he thought of Walsingham’s faith, though I chose not to take it personally. ‘They found me useful because they believed I brought them information about Walsingham, but my connection with him also made them wary, even though I have been working to gain the trust of the Catholics in London for years now. I was brought to the conspirators by Jack Savage, who I met in prison when I was serving time for distributing illegal books. But they still didn’t invite me to their most private meetings. Walsingham grew frustrated with the lack of progress, though no more than I was with myself. Once I made the mistake of remarking to him that, with a man like Babington, a woman might have better luck drawing out his secrets. It never occurred to me that he would think to use my sister.’
‘Then it was Master Secretary’s idea to have her introduced to them?’
‘It could have been Clara’s. She would have thought it good sport.’ He sighed. ‘My sister was a beautiful girl, Bruno. I wish you could have seen her. Long, red curls down her back, and white skin – people said she looked like the Queen herself when she was a young princess. I don’t suppose she ever intended to do any more than flirt with them, see what they would confide. I didn’t like the idea, but Walsingham overruled me.’
‘You could not have known how it would end.’
‘I should have guessed, and put my foot down. I knew what those men were like, I’d seen what they were capable of. And Clara was soft-hearted. She married a man with no money because he won her with pretty words. She should never have gone near the like of Babington and his friends. Our father would spin in his grave. God knows when I shall even be permitted to bury her.’
‘You have not seen her?’
‘He won’t let me, yet. Says it’s vital her death does not become public knowledge too soon, the better to allow her killers to betray themselves.’ He shook his head and his voice took on a dark edge. ‘That’s what makes me think he is keeping something from me.’
He left an expectant pause but I said nothing, and we rode on in silence, passing through the north gatehouse of London Bridge. A young man hung limply by his wrists in the pillory, glazed eyes barely noting the passers-by, who were too caught up squeezing through the archway to pay him any heed. It was only as we drew level that I realised it was a girl dressed in men’s clothes, her hair cut short, her face grey with fatigue.
‘What’s her offence, do you think?’ I asked Poole, leaning forward.
He gave her the briefest glance. ‘She’ll be a whore from the Bankside stews,’ he said, as if this were an everyday sight. ‘Some of them dress as boys for the clients. It’s prohibited. If they’re caught, it’s a few hours in the pillory.’
The girl looked up at me from under her hooded lids, her expression neither pleading nor defiant, and I recalled the day Sophia Underhill had come looking for me disguised as a boy to escape a charge of murder. I wondered again where she might be, and whether her current identity as Mary Gifford was any more comfortable to her. If Gilbert Gifford insisted on playing games about how to find her, I was quite prepared to threaten it out of him.
Our progress slowed as we joined the flow of traffic making its way along the narrow conduit, barely twelve feet across, between the houses crammed each side of the bridge. Carts, wagons, horses and people on foot hoisting baskets or children on their shoulders were forced into a laborious shuffling procession, one lane in each direction, accompanied by cursing and shoving as those in a hurry tried to push ahead, only to be forced back, sometimes with blows, by people in front determined not to give way. The stink of horseshit rose as we inched forward; I took a deep breath through the kerchief and considered that, in my eagerness to return to London, I had forgotten how much I resented trying to get around the place.
