by S. J. Parris
Sweet Jesus. I pushed the chair back and perched on the edge of the bed beside him.
‘There’ll be no running anywhere tonight,’ I said, firmly, like a mother reprimanding a child with night-terrors. ‘That’s the drink making you fear the worst. One more day, and you will be taking Phelippes a letter for Mary setting out all their plans so clearly they may as well deliver themselves to the hangman. After that, it will be over.’
‘That’s why they must not name Bessie, don’t you see?’ He clutched at my sleeve. ‘If her name goes in that list along with the others, she’ll be arrested and questioned.’ His eyes flitted again to the door. ‘Do you think Robin will say anything to Phelippes?’
‘He said he would not. You know him better than I.’
‘Do you think I should warn her?’ He sat forward as if he were about to leave on the spot, his face so earnest I wanted to laugh.
‘Warn her of what? As you said yourself, if she is loyal to Elizabeth, she will want no part of the conspiracy. And if you think she might be swayed by Babington’s pretty smile—’
‘She has no love for Babington,’ he snapped, so fiercely my sleeve was flecked with spittle. ‘That is his vanity, to think all women want him. Bessie’s affections are not so shallow. She may have liked him once, but she was little more than a child.’
‘You have an understanding with her, then?’ I asked, taking care not to look him in the eye; I did not want him to think it was an interrogation.
‘She knows my heart,’ he said, too indignant to be on his guard.
‘And do you know hers? Has she declared that she loves you?’
His grip tightened on my sleeve. ‘Not as such. She is too modest to state her affection so boldly. But she knows the extent of my devotion, I have proved it, and she will look kindly on me, she has promised, when I am in a position to offer her—’ He broke off, and his eyes narrowed.
‘Offer her what?’ I said, encouraging. ‘Marriage?’
His face closed up, as if a shutter had come down. ‘I don’t know why I am telling you any of this,’ he muttered, pulling himself unsteadily to his feet.
‘Because you have no one else to talk to, Gilbert,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Your fear of Ballard will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if you keep drinking like you did tonight – you’ll have no hope of keeping up your pretence. So take my advice – confide in me and I may be able to help you. If you’re hiding something about Bessie, it’s best that—’
‘Oh, fuck off, Bruno,’ he said, with surprisingly precise enunciation, and launched himself off the wall towards his own room. ‘You are not my master. I’m going to bed.’
I stood and blocked his path, snatching up his shirt-front in my fist. ‘Prado. My name is Prado. Remember that. I hear you call me anything else and it won’t be Savage you have to worry about.’ I released him with a little push. He swayed on the spot, opened his mouth as if to consider arguing, then decided against it.
‘Give you good night.’ I returned to my writing, smiling to myself. In the next room I heard him pissing into the pot, followed by the thud of a stool as he knocked it over, a deal of rustling and shuffling, and within ten minutes he was determinedly snoring. I pushed the chair back as silently as I could and crept in. His doublet lay on the floor by his bed; a quick feel of the lining confirmed that Bessie’s note was still concealed there. So it had not been meant for any of the conspirators and, by Gifford’s own admission, the letter could not be for him. He must be intending to carry it to Staffordshire with him, and there was only one obvious correspondent there; it was Mary Stuart’s cipher, after all. What was Bessie promising Mary for love? Could it be that she and the conspirators had the same aims? If so, she would surely welcome Babington’s approach, and Walsingham would need to get her away from Queen Elizabeth as quickly as possible. I wondered how much Gifford knew about the content of the letters he was carrying for his beloved, and whether he posed a greater danger than Walsingham and Phelippes realised.
FIFTEEN
I slept three hours at most, and not well, waking at every creak of the floorboards overhead and every grunt from Gifford’s room. As soon as the first slants of dawn light poked through the cracks in the shutters I was up and dressed, folding inside my doublet the sealed report I had spent half the night writing and encrypting for Phelippes. I hesitated at the threshold, wondering if I should wake Gifford and let him know where I was going. His wild words about fleeing London had alarmed me, but now, in daylight, I doubted he would act on them; he would not want to leave Bessie Pierrepont to the conspirators, and his fear of Phelippes and Walsingham was equal to his terror of Ballard. Besides, I could not make myself his nursemaid if I was to continue with my own investigation. I decided to leave him sleeping it off and take my letter to the Saracen’s Head for Ben to deliver. If the tap-room was open, I could break my fast while I waited for him to bring me news from Southwark. When Ballard mentioned at supper that a boy had seen Clara’s body in the Cross Bones, my thoughts had jumped straight to the dark-haired child who had silently watched Poole and me from the wall before stealing the horse; I was willing to bet all the Spanish gold in Prado’s chest that he was the one. He could have taken Clara’s sleeves and shoes, if he was so light-fingered; there was a chance he might have seen someone leaving the graveyard, or even witnessed what happened. A thief would not talk willingly, but the child was young, and might be persuaded by the prospect of a reward, if I could find a way to question him.
The sky over Holborn was grey and heavy as wet wool. A fine rain drifted like mist and I pulled my cloak tight to keep it out; the street smelled of damp leaves and horseshit, and the air felt more like March than August. God, this island! I skirted puddles in the ruts left by cartwheels, wondering why I had been so eager to return here. The idea of freedom, I supposed. It had been easier to publish my books in England than in any Catholic country, where few printers wanted the risk of being associated with my name, but that freedom was only an idea, after all. In practice, Elizabeth’s kingdom was as barbaric to those who wanted to think or believe freely as anywhere still under the authority of Rome, for all she promised not to make windows into men’s souls. But you could not be truly free anywhere in Europe; every country I had lived in was busy tearing itself apart over the meaning of a piece of bread and a sip of wine, or whether God insisted on speaking only in Latin. If you dared to raise your head and measure the heavens, as the Pole Copernicus had done, and I had tried to do after him, and suggest that we were not the centre of Creation but one world among many, they would threaten to burn you. I thought of the dying woman in Shoe Lane the night before. She had not cared how much ink had been spilled by theologians over the matter of transubstantiation, nor how many had gone to their deaths defending it one way or the other. In her fear and pain she wanted, from a priest’s hand, a piece of bread she believed was her Saviour, and it had brought some small relief in her last hours. For that, if we had been caught by the pursuivants, her family would have been imprisoned and I would have been racked and likely disembowelled, at least if I were a real priest. I was so weary of it, all that bloodshed, over so little; I felt it pressing down on my neck that morning like a lead cloak. All it would take – so I believed – was one ruler willing to allow people of different faiths to live alongside one another without persecution, and surely they would begin to recognise that their common humanity superseded the divisions they had been taught to fear? This was the philosophy I had attempted to propose in my books. But King Henri had tried it in France, to a degree, and the extremists of the Catholic League threatened to depose him for it. Tolerance did not win public support as easily as telling the unlettered that half the country was their enemy, especially when the harvest was bad and the price of bread raised, and it was easy to cry that God was punishing the land for allowing heresy to flourish—
I whipped around, snapped out of my gloomy musing by a movement at my back; I had thought I caught th
e flick of a cloak at the edge of my vision, but when I turned the street was empty. I rubbed my hands over my face and breathed in. Since my fight with Savage the night before, I had been edgy, leaping at shadows, waiting for a strike to come out of nowhere, and Gifford had begun to infect me with his fears of Ballard seeing through us. I had to relax or I would give myself away. But despite the empty street, the feeling of being watched did not leave me as I approached the Saracen’s Head.
The yard was already milling with people, though it was not much past seven; all the activity settled any worries about how I was to leave my letter without being noticed. Boys led horses from the stables and saddled them for travellers making an early start; broad-shouldered men hefted barrels from a cart, shouting to one another, while others rolled them across to an outbuilding; a youth shovelled stained straw from corners into a barrow while a girl tipped pails of water over the stones beneath, washing away the stale piss of last night’s drinkers. Amid all the bustle I wandered casually across to the dovecote and slipped the rolled-up linen into the hole on the lower left side. To my surprise, there was already a paper inside; I tucked it into my doublet and made my way to the tap-room.
The Saracen’s Head was a comfortable old inn, cleanly kept, smelling of beer and woodsmoke, its bricks and beams soot-blackened. Small leaded windows of warped glass allowed little light; in the dimness of the main room, men were breaking their fasts with grunted early-morning conversation, thoughts turned inward to the business of the day ahead. Two at a bench near the serving-hatch raised their heads and gave me a look that was not friendly; they exchanged a couple of words, watching me. I looked away. I had grown used to those looks in England, with my appearance, and learned to ignore them, but in my present state of heightened alertness, anxiety flickered under my breastbone. I would have felt better protected in my own clothes; my black wool doublets and breeches and leather jacket made me less noticeable. Now, in the gaudy amber silks and pearl buttons of Father Prado’s wardrobe, I looked like a reveller from the Venice carnival washed up in a London tavern of working men in brown and grey patched worsted, asking to be robbed.
I pulled up a stool at a table under the window and ordered hot milk, bread and cheese from a serving girl, making sure not to catch the eye of the two men who I sensed were still staring at me. I was desperate to read the note from the dovecote, but knew better than to take it out while I had attracted unwelcome attention. It didn’t take them long.
‘Fuck the Pope.’ One leaned across, his hands flat on the table before me. I flinched at the reek of his breath even from a couple of feet away and kept my eyes down.
‘Did you not hear me?’ He slapped the table. I glanced up to see a broad red face, a mouth twisted in fury, teeth missing. ‘I said, fuck the Pope.’
‘In his arsehole,’ his short friend added, for clarification.
‘Yes, good,’ I said pleasantly. ‘You may fuck him wherever you like, he is no concern of mine.’
They exchanged a glance, wrong-footed. ‘We broke from Rome to keep people like you out,’ said the first one, falling back on the favourite old refrain.
‘Gentlemen, I do not look for trouble. I wish to eat my breakfast and go about my business, as I’m sure you do.’
‘People like you have no business in England.’ He reached across the table and pinched my sleeve between his finger and thumb. ‘Nice. Worth a bit, eh? You might want to take it off before I beat the shit out of you. My mate here will look after it.’
The second man grinned. ‘Wipe my arse on it, more like.’
‘You have a great interest in arses, my stunted friend. What is that about?’
I should have left it, but I couldn’t help myself. The man’s face darkened.
‘Come outside, you Spanish cunt. I’ll kick your Papist arse back to…’ he struggled to think of a location.
‘Madrid? Vigo? Sevilla? Or have you not heard of a world beyond Dover?’ I flexed my fists, resigned; I hardly had the energy to fight again, but it seemed to go along with being Father Prado. I met the stare of the one leaning over the table and knew before I stood up that they would have the better of me; there were two of them, I was exhausted, and the manic light in his eyes told me that his blood was up, that despite the early hour he would find nothing more stimulating than beating a foreigner to a pulp. But I could not let them take the letter in my doublet, so I had no choice. He knew he had already won, and his mouth curved into a sarcastic smile. Suddenly, he jerked backwards with a cry of surprise and lost his footing, landing on his back in the sawdust.
‘Get out. Chrissakes! And you. Yapping at my customers like a couple of street dogs.’
I looked up to see a solid man in a canvas apron, with greying cropped hair and a face so familiar it was like rushing through time to see young Ben in thirty years. I couldn’t place his accent, but it was not London.
‘Ah, come on, Dan.’ The fuck-the-pope man struggled to his feet, brushing himself down, his bravado somewhat dented. ‘You don’t want the likes of him in here. Stinking the place up, dressed like a fucking sodomite.’
‘He smells a sight better than you.’ This Dan set down a bowl of hot milk and a trencher of fresh wheat bread in front of me. ‘On the house, son. Sorry for the disturbance.’ He turned back to my new acquaintances. ‘Thought I told you to go?’
‘We haven’t finished eating,’ the man with the missing teeth protested.
‘You have now. And if you don’t fuck off out of it, you won’t be eating here again.’ He tilted his head towards the door and glared until they deflated and began to slink away.
‘Your kind always stick together,’ the smaller one threw out over his shoulder, as they left. Dan made as if to take a step towards them; the door banged shut as they left in a hurry.
‘Our kind?’ I asked. He was still watching the door, his lips pressed tight.
‘Outsiders, he means.’ He turned back to me with a grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘Don’t take it personally. Little men.’
‘Oh, I don’t. They’re not the first. You’re not English, then?’
‘I’m Cornish, son. Londoners don’t like us any better than they like you. Daniel Hammett.’ I opened my mouth, wondering how I should introduce myself, but he held up a hand to stop me. ‘I know who you are. We’ll be seeing a lot more of you here, no doubt. Well, you’re welcome. Let me know if you get any more grief from them, or any like them.’
I thanked him, though I couldn’t help bristling at the suggestion that I needed him to watch out for me. But then his son was already doing so; perhaps I had become a ward of the family. I glanced around the tap-room.
‘Is Ben…?’
‘He’s gone out. Don’t look for him, he’ll find you if he needs to. He has a knack for that. I’ll bring you cheese and honey. Do you want more bread?’
‘Thank you, this is fine. Don’t you worry about him?’ I asked. He laughed, as if I had purposely made a joke; there was a warmth in his face I liked instinctively.
‘If I let myself stop to worry, I’d never sleep,’ he said. ‘Can’t afford to fuss over him. I’m only glad the boy has honest work – he knows how to look after himself. Oh – he said you might want to borrow a horse. Ask the stable lad out the back – tell him I sent you.’ He turned to leave, then paused to cast a glance over my clothes. ‘Like I said, you’re welcome here any time. But you might want to wear something a bit less – you know. Girly.’
I acknowledged the wisdom of this, wondering how I should revise Father Prado’s dress to avoid looking like either myself, or the kind of foreign dandy who is asking for patriotic Londoners to kick his head in. When I could be sure no one else was paying me any attention, I fished out the note from the dovecote and smoothed it flat on the table with one hand while I drank the milk.
I had assumed it would be a word from Phelippes, in response to whatever Poole had reported back from the night before; instead I found a few lines written laboriously in a c
hild’s hand, with a good deal of crossing out and inkblots, but clearly legible:
His name is Joe. Works in the stables at the Unicorn in the day. Also theef. For a shiling I’ll tell you another secret about him when I see you.
I balled the paper in my fist and lobbed it into the fire, smiling. Daniel Hammett was right that his son knew how to look after himself. Honest work. I presumed that Phelippes was paying Ben for running back and forth with messages, but the boy had found a way to make extra profit. I didn’t begrudge him – I had not expected an answer so soon, he must have been abroad half the night – but decided I would hold on to my money until I had found this Joe and sounded him out on the matter of Clara Poole’s body; he would no doubt exact a price for any information too.
Church bells rang the hour of eight as I crossed the river. Most of the traffic was heading north over London Bridge into the city this early, so that the journey to Southwark was much quicker than the last time I had made it with Poole. Hammett’s stable hand had loaned me a piebald mare, not young but serviceable; I was determined not to let her out of my sight in Southwark, especially if I managed to find the boy Joe.
South of the river, the streets were littered with the last dregs of a Southwark night: men and women sprawled in the gutters, puddles of vomit and empty bottles beside them; others stumbled grey-faced through the streets as if they had just now risen from their graves. Between them, the bustle of a borough coming to life for the working day: men with dray carts and hand barrows delivering provisions to the inns; boatmen mending their oars along the river-front by the stairs, or calling out for customers; the endless syncopated hammering of building work; drovers herding their flocks towards the bridge for butchering at Smithfield; women in the drab smocks of servants hoisting baskets, exchanging greetings, and others in the gaudy of Winchester geese, looking bedraggled as the sheep.