by S. J. Parris
‘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 wit
h 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 s
itting 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.’