Execution

by S. J. Parris

  ‘Ah, we will acquaint you before too long. Southwark is a lawless place, Prado, full of black-hearted rogues, and the Unicorn the most lawless of all. A den of gamesters, conmen and whores, patronised by some of the best men in the city, even a few in government—’

  ‘—the worst conmen of all,’ Savage cut in, looking around the table for a laugh. I noticed a strangeness about his eyes as he looked at me; they were different colours, one blue and one brown. I had never seen such a thing before; it made his regard disconcerting.

  ‘Quite so,’ Ballard continued, smiling, ‘though they pay a good price to pass incognito. Babylon and Sodom would blush to see the goings-on at the Unicorn, believe me. There’s not a sin you’ve heard in confession that isn’t for sale there, and plenty no one would ever confess to. Nothing happens in all of London they don’t know about, which is why I take my lodgings there when I’m in London.’

  I produced an expression of distaste. ‘Is it usual for priests in England to frequent brothels?’

  Ballard’s expression clouded.

  ‘It is usual for priests in England to end up with their haunches nailed to a church door in four different wards and their heads on London Bridge, unless they are careful to conceal their identity. There are watchers everywhere, Prado, primed to sniff out the likes of you and me. So we must be cunning as serpents, as Our Lord Himself commanded. And did He not spend His ministry among fallen women and tax collectors? Who would think to look for a priest in a whorehouse?’

  ‘I see you have not spent much time in Paris,’ I said. ‘That’s the first place I would look there.’

  Ballard seemed pleased with this; he laughed heartily, slapping his hand on his leg, and the others joined in, as if relieved to have permission. I had observed before that if you want to win the approval of an Englishman, all you have to do is insult the French.

  ‘Muy bien. You are not wrong. In any case, I see you understand. My virtue remains unblemished, I assure you, but it’s the sort of place my alias Captain Fortescue feels quite at home, and it diverts attention, should anyone be watching me. Fortescue has friends at the Unicorn, who keep him abreast of the latest news.’

  ‘Abreast,’ Babington said, making squeezing motions with his hands, casting around for approval. He quickly subsided under Ballard’s withering glare.

  ‘And what I learned this evening,’ the priest continued, ‘is that a body was found in the Cross Bones four days ago, and spirited away north of the river at first light, before anyone could claim it.’

  ‘And what has that to do with us?’ Babington asked, at the same time as Titch jerked his head up and said,

  ‘A body?’

  ‘A woman’s body. A gentlewoman. Robin’ – Ballard turned to Poole – ‘craving your pardon, I must ask – when did you last hear from your sister?’

  Poole stiffened, and the colour drained from his face. ‘What? Anthony asked me the same before you arrived. Why would you think—? Not these past few days, but – what are you trying to say?’ He clutched his glass; his hands had begun shaking. ‘It’s not possible.’

  Ballard cast his eyes down at his clasped hands and sat a moment in silence. Eventually he looked up and fixed Poole with his most solemn, priestly expression. ‘I know nothing for certain, I only fear – could she have been in Southwark five nights ago? The twenty-seventh, it would have been?’

  ‘I don’t know, I am not her keeper.’ Poole’s voice had grown taut. ‘For God’s sake, man – say what you mean. You think Clara could be—’

  He was good, Poole; again I had to admire him. Everything about his reaction seemed entirely authentic. From the tail of my eye, I watched to see how the others would respond. If Clara’s murder was truly news to them, it would surely be written in their faces; likewise their guilt. These were young men – boys, almost – not trained, like Ballard or Poole, in the art of deception.

  ‘Certain items…’ Ballard hesitated, and cleared his throat. ‘You know how it is, when a body is found by people desperate for money, especially one that is well-dressed. Certain items can disappear before the watch is ever alerted. Some of these tend to pass through the hands of the Unicorn people, who know how to find a ready trade. They showed me one such trinket that had been taken from the body in the Cross Bones. I paid them for it – I thought you should see it, Robin.’

  Poole’s face was rigid and white as a death mask. Ballard reached into his layers of silk and brought out a handkerchief, trimmed with lace, which he smoothed on the tabletop. Washing had not erased the rust-brown blotches of bloodstains. A coat of arms was embroidered in one corner; I recognised it immediately.

  ‘I saw this,’ Ballard said, ‘and knew it for the Sidney crest. Am I right?’

  Poole pulled the scrap of cloth towards him and ran his fingers over the raised thread. Then he buckled at the waist as if he had caught a blow to the gut; Gifford, to his right, laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. Poole shook it off, still doubled over, making incoherent noises.

  ‘I do not say this gives us anything certain,’ Ballard said, sitting back with an expression of mild concern. ‘It is possible that some servant of the Sidney household, or a distant relative, could have come by such a handkerchief, or it might have been stolen. But the body was a young woman. I think it behoves you, Robin, to take yourself to Seething Lane and enquire after your sister. I urge calm, in case I have jumped to a hasty conclusion – we do not want to alert the Sidney household unduly. Ask after her as if you are merely paying a visit – it may be that you arrive to find Clara peacefully at her needlework, wondering why you have turned up in such a lather. I pray it may be so. Gilbert, perhaps you should go with him.’

  Gifford looked taken aback. ‘What, now?’

  ‘You can be there and back in under an hour.’

  Poole pushed out his chair with a vicious scrape. ‘You are wrong. I cannot think of any reason why Clara…’ He paused, gathered himself. ‘Did they say, your friends at the Unicorn, what happened to her? The woman in the graveyard?’

  I found I was gripping the sides of my chair, trying to keep the tension from my face; don’t let Ballard mention the mutilation, I prayed silently.

  ‘No one saw first-hand,’ the priest said smoothly. ‘Only the old watchman, Goodchild, and he has been taken up for questioning. You know how rumour runs riot – I should not like to speculate on what’s true until you have confirmed whether it affects us – affects you, I should say.’ He smiled, and I was grateful for his tact; perhaps, despite his reputation, there was some kindness in him.

  Poole swept up his cap and hurried out of the room; Gifford threw me a last look of desperation – he was out of his depth, playing extempore – before following him.

  ‘Oh, and, Gilbert…’ Ballard called him back just as the door was closing, and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Make sure Robin enquires at the servants’ door, and gives nothing away if they say she has not been seen, let him not give them cause to think he fears for her. Bring him back here immediately – don’t let him do anything hasty.’

  ‘I’m not sure I could stop him—’ Gifford began, but Ballard cut him off with a soothing smile.

  ‘We are all relying on you. And on your way out, tell the serving boy we are ready for our first course now. They will keep yours and Robin’s warm until you return.’

  A difficult silence stretched between us after the latch clicked. I let my gaze travel as unobtrusively as possible around the rest of the company. Jack Savage leaned back in his chair, mismatched eyes fixed on Ballard as if awaiting instruction, his expression alert but unruffled. Babington and Titch were a different story; both were pale as death and looked as if they might vomit. Babington’s gaze was wild and staring, his eyes shiny with tears; he lifted his glass and drained what was left in one swallow. Titch had grown very still, and continued to stare at the table as if answers might be written in the grain of the wood.

  ‘It can’t be true, can it?’ Babington stared at Balla
rd, his voice wound tight. ‘Clara, dead?’

  Ballard reached for the wine jug, by now almost empty. ‘I must say I fear the worst.’

  ‘But why should you?’

  ‘I could not mention this in front of Robin, so none of you repeat it.’ He pointed a finger around the table; we all nodded mutely. ‘The woman that was found – she had clearly been tortured.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ I asked. He snapped his head to me so sharply I wished I had kept silent.

  ‘The body was seen, before it was taken away, by a servant boy from the Unicorn. Face smashed to pieces, he said, and the ears cut off. Now, ask yourself – who would torture a woman, kill her, and make the body disappear?’

  ‘You are asking me?’ I shook my head. ‘You told me this Southwark is a lawless place. Everywhere there are men who like to hurt women for pleasure.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ballard acknowledged this sad truth with a dip of his head. ‘But. There are also, in this city, men who inflict pain to get information. Some of them hold the highest offices in government. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so. By your reasoning, if the dead girl is this Clara, then you believe she has been tortured and killed by, what? The agents of Elizabeth the heretic?’

  ‘Precisely. Clara Poole was a sort of companion to the daughter of Master Secretary Walsingham – you will know of him, I suppose, from Mendoza?’

  I allowed a thin smile. ‘There is no love lost there. It was Walsingham who had Ambassador Mendoza thrown out of England for Spain’s part in the last plot to free Queen Mary.’

  ‘Quite. Clara had promised to find out and deliver to us certain details concerning a Progress Elizabeth intended to make next month around Surrey and Kent – details that would have allowed us the chance to get close to her person in a way that is almost impossible in London, now she is so carefully guarded.’

  ‘So…’ I spoke slowly ‘…you think Clara was caught stealing this information from Walsingham’s house?’

  ‘If the body is hers, I do not see another explanation. Which means we may all be compromised – if she was suspected of being part of a plot, they will have tortured her to find out details. From what was done to this girl, so I hear, she would have shouted any name under the sun to make it stop.’ He pressed his fingertips together and shuddered.

  ‘You think even this government would treat a woman so?’

  Ballard’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t be naïve, Prado. Many good Catholic women have died horribly in England for their faith, these past years. Pressed, hanged, starved in prison. The heretic Elizabeth shows no tenderness for her own sex.’

  ‘I believe you. But this is grave indeed – you mean, she may have betrayed us all already?’

  ‘It can’t be her,’ Titch said, sitting up suddenly. He flexed his fingers together and his knuckles cracked loudly in the silence. Everyone turned to look at him.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Ballard leaned in closer, hands clasped prayerfully.

  ‘It makes no sense. Why would she be in the Cross Bones?’

  ‘Whore’s graveyard,’ Savage remarked, to no one in particular. ‘Where better to dump a body than Southwark? I’m amazed the constables came at all. Usually a corpse would be kicked into a ditch or the river once the thieves had stripped it, and no one saw nor heard anything.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why it doesn’t make sense,’ Titch persisted. His expression was strained, as if he were trying to persuade himself. ‘It’s said that Master Secretary Walsingham has torture chambers under his own house so he can bypass the law when he catches a priest. If he’d wanted rid of Clara, there’s no chance he’d be so careless as to leave the body lying about to be seen and picked up by the watch, in Southwark or anywhere else. She’d have vanished one night and ended up in a hole in the ground far from London, no one any the wiser.’

  ‘He has a point,’ Savage conceded.

  ‘You don’t think he disposes of corpses with his own hands?’ Ballard shot him a scathing look. ‘My guess is the men he paid were lazy, dropped her the nearest place they could think of. Perhaps they hoped people would take her for a dead whore. But the minute there was speculation about the body, Walsingham sent his people down there right away to make the evidence disappear.’ He turned back to Babington. ‘I am disappointed in you, Anthony.’

  Babington’s tearful eyes widened in dismay. ‘Me? How is this my fault?’

  ‘I have been riding about France securing allies for our endeavours.’ He gestured to me. ‘You were supposed to keep things running smoothly here. Yet none of you even knew about this body until I came home, though it seems Bankside’s been talking of nothing else for four days. God’s blood, must I take charge of everything? I feel I am dealing with children.’

  ‘Children whose money you’re happy to spend,’ Babington muttered.

  ‘Must we concern ourselves with every whore that washes up south of the river when your back is turned?’ Titch sat forward, fists bunched, his body rigid with anger. I noted that he seemed willing to confront Ballard in a way that Babington was not; that struck me as curious, given the difference in degree. Among the conspirators, only Babington, Titch and Gifford were gentlemen, of established families; it would have been more usual for them to assert their status, yet Ballard seemed to have some hold over Babington, for all his money. I wondered if it was Ballard’s natural leadership qualities, or if, perhaps, he was the boy’s confessor. Once you have told a man your secrets, he holds you in the palm of his hand, even if he is a priest.

  ‘You should concern yourselves with every scrap of news in London at this point,’ Ballard said with cold authority. ‘You do not know what it may signify. Holy Mother – do you understand the magnitude of what we are trying to do here?’ He stared the younger men down until they both averted their eyes. ‘At the very least one of you should have been keeping a closer watch on Clara Poole.’

  ‘How should we have done that, without drawing undue attention?’ Babington’s cheeks flushed but he kept his temper. ‘Hang about in Seething Lane peering in the windows, for Master Secretary himself to spot us? Clara knew how to look after herself, I saw no need to worry.’

  ‘Well, we shall find out in the next hour whether that is true,’ Ballard said, still calm, as Babington’s colour rose along with his voice.

  ‘It’s not my responsibility if something has happened to her, John, you can’t blame me. Shouldn’t her brother have been looking out for her? She was not my wife.’

  ‘No, that’s true.’ Ballard looked placidly down at his hands. ‘How does your wife, Anthony, by the way?’ he added pleasantly. ‘And your – what is it, a daughter you have?’

  Babington glared at him for a long, unreadable moment, then shoved his chair back and stormed out.

  ‘Go after him, Titch,’ Ballard said.

  ‘I’m going for a piss, leave me alone,’ came Babington’s voice from the stairs, before the door slammed behind him.

  Ballard gestured sharply with his head; after a brief hesitation, Titch obeyed. ‘And give the serving boy a nod while you’re down there, in case Gilbert forgot. Jack’s bloody starving, aren’t you, old friend? He hasn’t had meat for at least two hours.’

  ‘I’ll eat the serving boy if he leaves it much longer.’ Savage grinned, draining his glass. I noticed he was drinking only water.

  ‘I had not expected quite so much spectacle,’ I said drily, when the younger men had gone. ‘Your boys appear somewhat emotional, Father Ballard.’

  It had not escaped my notice that Babington had talked of Clara in the past tense, even as Titch seemed determined to deny that the body could possibly be hers. Ballard I could not read at all. Everything in his words and demeanour suggested that this was the first he had heard about the body in the Cross Bones, and that he was angered by the discovery, but it was entirely possible that this was an act to rattle the younger men, or a double bluff to cover his own tracks. This latter seemed the least plausible explanation; on my
brief acquaintance with Ballard, I suspected that if he had seen the need to silence Clara Poole, he would have it done it quickly and unobtrusively, just as Titch had suggested of Walsingham, to cause the least disruption to the plan. What would he have to gain by drawing attention to the murder with a grisly display? He also seemed to have assumed that the mutilations had been an act of torture, rather than being carried out after death, as I believed from seeing the body. One thing I could report back to Phelippes with certainty: the murder of Clara Poole had not been a collective decision. If one of the conspirators were guilty – and how could it be anyone else? – he was keeping it a secret from his comrades, and that meant there were fault-lines in the group that I could try to force, once I was closer with them.

  ‘They are young men, with strong feelings,’ Ballard said, though I caught the exasperation in his tone. ‘Do not be alarmed – and, I pray you, do not report this yet to your master, until we understand the circumstances better. If the girl is dead, that is not necessarily bad news for our cause.’

  ‘I do not see how it could be good news. Tell me – was this Poole girl a friend to the whole group for love of the Catholic Church, or did she have a more particular incentive for spying on her employers?’

  ‘God, I wish you Jesuits could speak plain. You’re asking if she was fucking one of us?’

  I affected shock. ‘I was asking how her affections tended, yes.’

  ‘Well, if she was, it wasn’t me, and I doubt it was Jack here.’

  ‘Not me, more’s the pity,’ Savage said. I looked pointedly to the door where Babington and Titch had disappeared, an eyebrow raised expectantly. ‘No idea,’ he said, taking my meaning. ‘Always assumed Titch was still a virgin, from the look of him, and Babington – well. I mean, he’s married, although…’ He let the rest of the thought fall away, unspoken.

  ‘Enough, Jack.’ Ballard turned back to me with an easy smile. ‘I can see why you would feel you had to ask, but her affections are not the issue. Clara was a modest girl, from the little I saw of her – she offered her help for love of her brother, Robin, and of Mary the Queen. Robin is a decent man – his family history is good cause to trust him. And if he vouches for his sister’s integrity, I believe him.’