***
The poisoning of the ale-seller – and poisoning it was roundly declared to be, as preferable to plague – roused the countess and her people. A greater number had gathered around her in the days that followed, seemingly coming from all corners of Europe. Many had fat purses and promised to carry messages to the duke of Alba, the Spanish king, the Pope. Plans were made for the countess’s safety; as soon as enough money could be raised, she would be moved to a house under the Spanish king’s protection. Of the mysterious diamond leaguer who had poisoned the vendor’s ale and bid him bring the tainted batch to the countess’s house, nothing could be found. Cottam, she was certain, had been encouraging the countess to believe she had done it – that she was somehow still in the employ of Queen Elizabeth and plotting the murder of her Catholic enemies. Thankfully, few paid him heed, instead speculating on the number of these so-called diamond men. It was, Amy thought, lucky that it had been a day hot enough that the fellow would drink of his own wares before he could do as he was bid. That meant it was a sudden rather than a planned attempt. She kept these thoughts to herself, as she kept the treachery of her writing to Walsingham to herself.
It was the second week after her arrival in Bruges when the merchant returned and she found cause to visit him and ascertain that her letter had got to Paris, albeit not directly into Elizabeth’s man’s hands. There had been nothing in return, and certainly Jack had not found her. Early one morning, she judged that her new mistress would be up but not yet disturbed by her many suitors, knocked on the chamber door and stepped into the reek of unemptied chamber pots and baby vomit.
‘Begging your pardon, my lady, but I would speak with you.’
‘Then speak, girl.’ The countess was standing in a patch of light as Kat fixed sleeves to her dress. In the preceding days, the influx of cash had got her out of her worn clothes and back into fashion.
‘I …’ her nerve threatened to flee her, and she nipped at her forearm. ‘I can no longer stay in your service.’
‘Is that so? That is fine, girl, leave me,’ she added to Kat, waving her sleeved arm.
‘It’s just … I think that if my husband looks for me, he’ll go to Paris. Where we lived awhile.’
‘You do love Paris, bless you.’ She knew, thought Amy. She knew, and she knew Amy knew too. ‘Well, I am not your gaoler. But tell me, do you think to travel alone, to live alone there?’ Amy said nothing. ‘Did you know that Mr Walsingham is likely to become Elizabeth’s man in Paris? No, you do not hear all the news that men carry to me. Yes, indeed – some time in the new year, perhaps. It may be that he has news of your husband.’
‘My lady, I–’
‘Hopes to make a name for himself, does Walsingham. Ambition, the curse of all who hang on Elizabeth’s petticoats. And greed.’ She let silence fall between them as Kat fixed a pearl necklace on her. ‘I shall be honest with you, Mrs Cole. I would not take you to … to where I go next. Not,’ she added, falsity colouring her words, ‘when I know you have such pressing troubles on your shoulders. Yet I have a proposition.’ Amy waited, her head bowed. ‘You recall these fellows who attempted to poison me?’
‘The diamond men?’
‘Yes. I heard in Scotland that they had a man about the French queen. And one in England. Hot Protestants, is my guess. Puritanical. Yet I have as yet had no means to make good acquaintance with the French.’
Amy kept her head down, but her mind worked. It was true. Men had visited from Spain and Italy, but none from France. She should know; she had been watching out for them especially. ‘No, my lady.’
‘And now I find you wish to go to France. You know the place well enough by your own account.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘More, you spent time with Queen Mary. Last year, you told me. The French shall wish to know of her conditions, her imprisonment. How she is kept.’ At this, Amy looked up. ‘Queen Mary might be a captive, but she was once that country’s queen. In dishonouring her, England dishonours France as well as Scotland and the world. So, you see, you have much intelligence in your head. That has value. The kind of value that will keep your husband alive more than news of who comes and goes to this house.’
‘Alive?’ gasped Amy, grasping at the word. ‘You know what’s happened to him?’
‘No. Yet I have a mind. It is clear to me that England has taken him. Why they left you … well, that is not difficult to understand. So I cannot have you near me, not when I find I have guests coming and going who should like their names kept hidden from prying eyes. And yet you know a great deal, as I say. My proposition.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘You will go to Paris as my emissary and kinswoman.’ Her head tilted to one side. ‘A distant kinswoman. Very distant. My companion. There you shall carry news that a Puritan works evil in the French court, and you might share your knowledge of the Scottish queen’s captivity.’
Amy’s mouth fell open. ‘I can’t go to a court! My lady …’
‘You have lived in service to great men and women. A great queen, no less. You have observed, I’ve no doubt, how to speak. It only takes some dresses, and those I now have.’
‘But I … my French is not so good.’
‘Good. The French think all English girls are ill-educated. You will confirm their prejudice. Make them more likely to believe you are what you say you are if you do. I assume you can ride well?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Hunt?’
‘No.’
‘Then you shall learn before you go. Do you have any knowledge of music? Dancing?’
‘Only to hear it and see it.’
‘Then that too I shall instruct you in.’
‘But madam, I can’t be a lady – I’m … don’t wish to.’
‘What you wish to do is of no consequence, I’m afraid.’
Amy put a hand to her forehead. The thought of playing the part of one of the overblown creatures she had seen in great houses irked her beyond measure - the posing, preening types who would put their hands to their foreheads and say ‘oh fie upon’ everything. Her own hand dropped as the thought occurred. Besides, she had always had some vague idea that apeing one’s betters was ungodly, though she knew of no religious arguments as to why.
The countess was still talking. ‘We have some weeks, I think, before I have money enough to move from here. And I have some other matters to attend to beforehand. None of which concern you. A few weeks, then, and you shall be a passable distant kinswoman to a lady. Kat shall go with you – you shall need a serving woman.’ Kat, who was fussing over the sleeping baby, looked up in alarm, but said nothing. ‘Do not distress yourself, girl. Think on it – you shan’t have to risk tasting my food any longer.’ Amy and Kat both gaped. ‘Don’t give me such a look. I fear no poison. I have lived through too much already to let some desperate men get the better of me.’ Was that brave, wondered Amy, or merely foolish? The countess continued. ‘King Charles is to be married soon. You will take my letters of introduction to the queen dowager. Queen Catherine. She is the most powerful woman in Europe as long as her son remains … young. Attach yourself to her. I regret I cannot go myself, but … well, it might bring blushes to the cheeks of the French to have an enemy of the English queen turn up on their doorstep. A minor kinswoman, however, seeking peace...’
‘But–’
‘But me no more buts, Mrs Cole.’
‘But why,’ pressed Amy, ‘are you doing this for me?’
‘I am getting rid of you, bless you. If you fail, I shall deny you. Now, I suggest you set to work. And work it shall be, I warn you. I have seen you eat, girl – with all the manners of a slavering idiot attacking a bowl of pottage. If you are to pass as a young English lady, you must learn to stop walking like an ape in a periwig.’
3
Autumn had painted the courtyard of the house called The Papey orange and gold, and left it carpeted in brown sludge. When the horses arrived, laden with goods and people, their hooves threw up the stra
ngely fresh scent of musky woodland. Jack had been resident for over a month, sleeping above the stables and having little to do. No one spoke to him, even when he joined the other small band of resident servants to eat meals out of doors. If he was not a prisoner, word had clearly gotten around that he was far from a friend of the absent master.
Living under Walsingham’s pretty, tiled roof, the same dream had come to him each night. He was in a cell, a trencher of food before him, staring up into the secretary’s face. ‘What are their names?’ the man asked, as he had asked it when Jack had last been his guest. ‘What are their names?’ It had gone on and on, and so it went on in the dream. Never violent, never overtly threatening – but somehow terrible in its measured, almost mindless regularity. When he had finally spoken, beaten down with time and repetition, Walsingham’s eyes had changed. Small and dark, they had glimmered like polished marbles. In the dream, the man had the look of a thin cat. Soft at first, inviting you to stroke its belly. And then, when it had you where it wanted you, the eyes sharpened. It sprang.
The dream did little to settle his nerves as the days passed and the black cat crept closer.
When Walsingham returned, Polmear was riding behind him, dressed in grey and now sporting a finely-trimmed beard. The harassed-looking secretary shot down a sour look before turning to Polmear and murmuring something. When Jack moved forward to help him dismount, he grasped his hand and winced his way down, but did not acknowledge him.
‘No more stay of execution?’ Jack asked as he helped Polmear. They both turned to Walsingham’s departing back, swathed in black fur.
‘He wants to speak with you,’ was all the other man offered. ‘Soon as he’s settled.’ Then, absurdly, Polmear clapped him on the back. ‘He might even have news to please you.’
When the horses were stabled, Jack waited for his summons. When Polmear arrived with it, his jocularity had gone. ‘He wants you now.’ Jack nodded, and followed him out of the stables, and through a doorway in the corner of the yard. It led to a winding staircase, which Polmear took three at a time, pausing at the door at the top. ‘Wait here.’
Jack waited. It was a day he had been expecting for weeks now, and yet he was curiously unmoved by it. In truth, he had had no clear idea of what to expect, and so had opted instead to expect nothing. Had he been in for punishment, he would have been clapped in jail – Newgate or the Fleet, perhaps. Had he been in for reward, there would have been no need to steal him away from his wife. ‘Enter,’ rumbled from within. It was Walsingham’s voice, and before he touched the door handle, Jack remembered it, low and lugubrious. It was richer than it had sounded in his nightmares.
The room was an office. Shelves lined the walls, forming dockets, reminding Jack of a room he had once seen in the late earl of Moray’s house. It was strange, how things seemed to remind you of other things: as Polmear had said, life was like an unpleasant wheel. The shutters had been thrown open, allowing indifferent October sunshine to filter in. Somewhere outside church bells rang out the hour, and immediately the sound of a crowd singing their way down the street joined them. Walsingham sat back in a chair behind a denuded desk. Polmear stood against one wall, his hands behind his back and his head bowed as though in prayer.
‘Jack Cole,’ said the secretary at length. He leant forward and steepled his fingers. ‘Turned traitor, I hear?’ Jack did not respond, which seemed to unease the older man. ‘Do not stand there grinning like an idiot at me, boy. Have you nothing to say?’
‘I thank you for your kind treatment, sir. It’s better than I deserve, far better.’ The show of humility seemed to please and then unsettle his patron. ‘I let the countess flee Scotland. I couldn’t do otherwise. Morton’s men … they were rough.’
‘They are friends to England and her Majesty. And to our faith. Or is it our faith?’ asked Walsingham. ‘If I recall, you were too friendly with the papists.’
‘You know my faith, sir.’ Jack hoped dignity coloured his words. He suspected that Walsingham’s faith in the English style of religion was deep, deeper than Jack’s drunken father’s had ever been; but the secretary’s desire to succeed and impress his betters was as strong or stronger. Faith and ambition seemed to be the twin rowers on the black-sailed galley that was Mr Francis Walsingham.
Again, Walsingham leant back. ‘We do. Which is why you were supposed to be useful to us. And yet you let that treacherous woman take ship to her filthy rabble. Where she plans, as I understand, to build a centre of Catholic intrigue and spiery. To spread their poison across Europe, into every royal court.’ Silence fell out again. For the first time, Jack noticed that the bare desk had one piece of ornament – a single sheet of paper. Walsingham began pushing it around with his finger. It slid easily, the surface of the desk polished to such a sheen that Jack could see himself reflected in it.
‘What is that, sir?’
‘Do not ask me questions, Cole.’ He sighed. ‘It is a letter from your wife. From Bruges. Brought me by a cut-throat in Paris.’
‘Amy? She is well? You’re not harming her?’ At this, Walsingham turned to Polmear, a quizzical look on his lined face.
‘Mr Cole thinks it is we who are cut-throats! No, Mr Cole, your wife is quite well. And has more sense in her head than you.’
‘Do as you will with me,’ said Jack, looking up and flicking his fringe from his eyes. ‘As long as she is left alone.’
‘What do you imagine I wish to do with you? The Tower, Mr Polmear says.’ Something like a smirk passed his dark features and was gone. ‘No, Mr Cole. Nor the Newgate either. I do not wish the faces and names of men I have use for known.’ A little hope entered Jack’s breast. ‘So, you obeyed the orders Norris gave you in Paris and joined the Scotch Protestants?’
‘I did, sir.’
‘Did you find them true friends to England?’
Jack swallowed. ‘To themselves, sir.’ Then a memory stirred. ‘And I heard there was talk of a group of plotters. Called the diamond league. Lady North– the lady asked about them. Said they were hot Protestants who’d made entreaties to the Scotch.’ Walsingham turned to Polmear, his eyebrows raised in question.
‘Never heard of them.’
‘Did you speak with these men when you rode with Morton’s men?’
‘No, sir. But the lady and … Lord Seton, sir, who went with her – they said that these folks had men about the queen of France and one in England.’
‘Polmear, find out if any of your friends have knowledge of them. If they are Protestant intriguers, we would know about it. No sense in being as split amongst ourselves as the papists.’ Then something seemed to dawn on his face, and he lowered his voice. ‘Discover if these men exist – if they had any hand in that business with the papist priests in the north. If they have plans that harm her Majesty, you know what to do.’ Walsingham returned his attention to Jack and raised his voice. ‘Seton. I understand the lady went also with a clerk called Cottam. We know of him. A filthy Catholic raised in Calais. I must say, Mr Cole, you seem unashamed to stand before me having let this treacherous countess seek fresh pastures.’ Jack bowed his head. ‘You let her go,’ he added, squeezing every last bitter drop from the words. ‘Good. Exactly as we knew you would.’
Jack looked up, unsure if he had heard correctly. Walsingham was staring into his eyes. ‘Oh yes, exactly as we had hoped.’
‘I … I don’t understand, sir.’
‘Do you take us for fools?’
‘Who, sir?’
‘Silence. We had Sir Henry send you precisely because we knew you would let the woman go. We wish her at liberty in Europe. From there we shall know all of her doings. She shall reveal to us every last plot, every cursed den of plotters she can court. You did just as we hoped you would. Regard.’ Walsingham tapped the paper on his desk with a bony finger. ‘Word from your wife that the traitor entertains a false conjuror lately expelled from England. He has had traffic with another creature called Storey, who lately has encouraged the Spanish duk
e of Alba to invade. He will now go to the gallows. Yet this Prestall creature we now know plans to procure the liberty of the Scotch queen, whether Storey dies or not. We see all that passes in that foolish woman’s house. Her very heart is open to us. So, you see, you did the right thing. Though I mislike and distrust of your reasons.’
Jack squinted down, unable to contain the dismay on his face. Oh no, he thought – what have they made you do, Amy? The thought of her entangling herself with men like Walsingham and Polmear was crushing, especially if she thought to help him by doing it. The older man drew back in his chair and nodded to his colleague, still stationed against the wall.
‘You cannot win against Mr Walsingham, Cole. He knows a man’s actions before he’s done them.’ Walsingham tilted his head back against the carved headrest of his chair, satisfied.
‘And we have further use for you. Your wife too.’
‘Threats against Amy–’
‘I do not make threats, Cole. Mr Polmear?’
‘Mr Walsingham would have you return to the north. There you will gain the trust of the papists. They flock there. Seminary priests out of Douai, Rome, wherever else exiles and would-be martyrs breed. So drunk from the well of Rome they forget they are Englishmen born. They meet in York – England’s festering, papist-infected boil. Thereafter they spread throughout the country. Just lately they’ve had a good Protestant minister killed. Brutally killed. Worked up the locals to murder, best as we can fathom. You will find them. Gain their trust. Give us their names. And then they will die.’
‘If I can’t? If I won’t?’
‘Then you will die. And your wife will be left to starve. It’ll go hard for her, fighter or not. There it is, Jack.’ Polmear held up his hands. ‘Blood or secrets. You can’t help but spill one or the other.’
Divided Loyalties: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller Page 7