Execution

by S. J. Parris

  Madame Rosa tilted her head and sized me up as if she could take a man’s measurements by sight alone. ‘I can find something. Will you want those laundered, my love?’

  I looked down at my clothes. ‘I fear they are beyond salvation.’

  She let out a cheerful giggle. ‘Aren’t we all, south of the river? You leave them with me, we’ve got a marvellous girl who works here, woman really, she makes up a mixture can get stains out of anything.’

  ‘I imagine that would be very useful in this business,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not wrong. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen. She’s a Moor, but she’s very skilled.’ She whispered this in confidence. ‘All right, my darling – I’ll get them to heat you a tub and sort out clothes for you.’ Her look sharpened as it flitted from me to Ballard. ‘Will he want a room tonight? I’m not sure I have any vacant, I’d have to check the ledger—’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ Ballard said. ‘A bath will suffice, and my friend will be on his way to his own lodgings.’

  ‘Who’s paying?’ she asked.

  I reached into my doublet, but Ballard waved the gesture aside.

  ‘Put it on my account. May I say, Rosa, your hair is looking magnificent today,’ he added, with exaggerated gallantry.

  ‘Do you think? I should bloody hope so, it cost me a fortune.’ She reached up and patted the monstrosity on her head, simpering. ‘But a girl’s got to keep up appearances, eh, Captain? Look.’ With both hands, she lifted the entire construction on its supporting frame away from her head. Without it, she looked like an old man; her own pale scalp was almost bald, sprouted with tufts of grey, and sore-looking blisters where the wire chafed the skin. ‘Do you think it makes me look like Her Maj?’

  ‘The very likeness,’ Ballard said. ‘Only more regal.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a charmer. Don’t think you’re getting a discount.’ She spluttered out another laugh and swiped at him flirtatiously with the back of her hand, settled the wig into place – a little lopsided – and hurried off to make arrangements.

  ‘Dear Lord, one tries to be charitable, but did you ever see such a sight?’ Ballard turned to me with amusement. ‘Whichever poor desperate girl sold her hair won’t have seen a fraction of what our Madame Rosa laid out for that awful thing.’

  ‘Women sell their hair?’

  He frowned. ‘You Jesuits do live a rarefied life, don’t you? The poor will sell anything they own to buy bread, and often all they have are their bodies. They sell those whole or piecemeal – hair, teeth, anything the rich will pay for. I dare say if they could take out their healthy offal there’s some would sell it. Girls can get a good price for hair these days, now that the Tudor has made wigs so fashionable, though it’s the wig-makers seeing the profit.’ He leaned across and whispered close to my ear. ‘What a different world it will be, when the true Queen takes her throne and England is restored to the Church again. The poor will not suffer as they do now.’

  If I had been speaking as myself, I might have replied that I had lived in Catholic countries and they were not noticeably models of egalitarian Christian commonwealth, where no one had to sell themselves or beg for bread; he would know that if he had ever set foot in the Papal states. But Ballard clearly believed his own fantasy that the ascent of Mary Stuart would bring about God’s kingdom on Earth, and as Father Prado it seemed best to avoid further argument, so I merely murmured, ‘God be praised.’

  ‘May I ask you something, Prado, in confidence?’ When I nodded, he leaned closer. ‘What do you make of young Gifford?’

  ‘Gifford?’ I tried to keep my face pleasant, open; behind it, my thoughts were racing. ‘A nervous disposition, but perhaps to be expected. He is inexperienced. From the little I know, I find him sincere.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘Why – you do not?’ I could feel sweat prickling between my shoulder blades; if Ballard suspected Gifford, we were both sunk. In his present state of nerves, Gilbert would not last five minutes with the priest without bleating everything.

  ‘Something bothers me about this new letter from Mary,’ he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘Perhaps I should not burden you with my misgivings, but I do not want to say anything to Babington yet, and as you are rooming with Gilbert… How did that come about, by the way?’

  ‘I was told to make contact with him when I arrived,’ I said blandly. ‘Mendoza said only that Paget used him as a courier, and that he was reliable.’

  ‘I hope he is right. And you haven’t noticed anything suspicious about his behaviour?’

  I shook my head. ‘He strikes me as a devout young man. What is wrong with the letter?’

  Ballard sucked in his cheeks. ‘This postscript, where she asks the names of the gentlemen who will carry out the deed, and the means. It’s most unlike Mary – she understands the dangers of committing too much detail to paper, in a way that Babington does not. And I think – though I can’t be entirely sure – that it has been added after.’

  ‘That is the nature of a postscript, is it not? Perhaps she thought of it at the last minute.’

  ‘I meant, after the original letter was written. I think the ink is different.’

  ‘That does not necessarily mean anything. If it was added some time after she finished the letter, she might have mixed new ink. The paper was sealed when it came to Babington?’

  ‘True, but…’ He pulled at his beard. ‘Gifford was picked up by the authorities when he first arrived in England. Babington doesn’t know, but I have my sources at the ports. They released him without charge, yet…’ He pursed his lips.

  ‘Then they must have had no reason to suspect him. It’s not unusual for them to question young men coming out of France, I understand? I was certainly given a hard time by the searchers.’

  ‘You’re right. The unusual part is that his father was released from prison two days later. He’d been there a year for recusancy. Does that not seem a coincidence?’

  ‘What does Gilbert say about it?’

  ‘He says that his father’s friends managed to raise the money to pay his fines. I don’t know, Prado – perhaps I am seeing treachery everywhere. I had thought everything was unfolding beautifully, in God’s ordained time, but that girl’s death has thrown it all into disarray. If Gifford has been turned, then all our letters…’ He stroked the plume of his hat between his fingers, his eyes to the floor, and for one absurd moment I genuinely wanted to reassure him.

  ‘Forgive me for speaking bluntly, but from a limited acquaintance, I do not think young Gifford has the mettle to carry out such double-dealing. He would be too intimidated to lie to you.’

  Ballard looked gratified. ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. Thank you, brother. Listen – I have business to be getting on with – you don’t mind if I leave you in the care of these women? You can get back across the river without any more trouble?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. And please forgive my foolishness – I can repay you—’

  He waved this away again. ‘Nonsense. And do not think I don’t admire your dedication to God’s work. But we must bend our minds to our true purpose now, and it will help no one if you draw attention to yourself. We will meet again tonight – I have a surprise for everyone.’ He gave a broad wink and left me, less assured than I had been; in my present situation, surprises were not something to be relished.

  * * *

  I bathed and put on a clean shirt and a doublet and breeches of more modest grey wool that had been left for me by the maid. They had provided me with a tub of hot water in a chamber on the ground floor; when I emerged into the corridor, it was empty, though I caught the murmur of voices from behind closed doors. I found my way back to the main entrance and was about to leave when an idea struck me. As I was considering how best to put it into action, the maid appeared from the opposite passageway, carrying a bundle of linen.

  ‘You done?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes – thank you.’
r />   ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I only wondered where I might find your Madam Rosa, to express my gratitude?’

  She nodded back the way she had come. ‘In her parlour, usually. But she’s upstairs at the minute. You can wait outside if you want.’

  I thanked her, and followed the direction of her gesture into another corridor, to find a door on my right with a rose painted on it. I tried the door and was surprised to find it opened easily into a small room with a desk, wooden chairs around a fireplace and a surfeit of embroidered cushions. A large, leather-bound book lay open on the desk and I made a discreet fist of victory; this was what I had hoped for. If Madam Rosa kept a ledger of when her rooms were occupied, it might provide the answer to one of the questions that had been niggling at me as I tried to imagine who could have lured Clara Poole to the Cross Bones in the first place. Ballard had seemed defensive the previous night when I asked him if he had landed in England that same day. There was only his word that he had not come back sooner, and though Walsingham had his watchers at the ports, it was all too easy for someone to slip ashore unobserved – an inlet or a creek on private land, a remote beach unseen by the boats that patrolled the coast.

  Madam Rosa, for all her theatrical manner, was clearly a shrewd businesswoman: the ledger was set out neatly and clearly, with every transaction recorded, down to the last ha’penny of a tip. I flipped back through the pages, my eyes scanning rows of names – all of them false, I was sure – with the corresponding room numbers and precisely what services they had purchased. If I had had longer I might have stopped to marvel at activities I had not even considered people doing for pleasure, but time was pressing. I skipped back to the night of July 27th, and found what I was looking for: Cap. Fort., Rm 9. The only charges to his room were for supper – a guinea fowl, almond tart, cheese – and a pitcher of wine. It seemed he had at least told the truth about his vow of chastity. But not about his arrival in England; he must have caught the boat directly after his meeting with Paget and Mendoza in Paris. He had not only lied to his friends about his return, he had been in London – specifically in Southwark – the night Clara was killed.

  I slammed the book shut and ducked out from behind the desk just as Madam Rosa sailed into the room and stopped short at the sight of me. Her eyes narrowed, but she quickly assumed her usual manner.

  ‘Look at you, handsome, all lovely and clean – I bet you smell delicious.’ She leaned into my neck and inhaled as if checking whether a joint of meat was done. ‘Ooh, dear, I’ll get myself in a lather. Did you want something?’

  ‘My knife,’ I said, ‘and to offer you my thanks.’ I bowed low and slipped a shilling into her hand as I raised it to my lips.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, simpering, though she tucked away the shilling and told me as she returned my knife that I was welcome back there any time, with my lovely manners. But her sharp eyes stayed on me to the door.

  SEVENTEEN

  The stable boy at the Saracen’s Head told me when I returned the horse that there was someone to see me inside. Among all the possibilities my mind had run through on the few yards to the tap-room, I had not expected Gifford; he sat at a table alone nursing a quart of small beer, his hands twined together and his eyes stricken.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked, sliding on the bench opposite.

  ‘You can’t go back to Herne’s Rents. There’s a man waiting for you.’

  A vision of Douglas flashed across my mind’s eye, and my chest squeezed tight, even though I knew it was impossible he could have known I was in London. ‘Who?’

  ‘Not you. Prado, I mean. He’s English, but he says you studied together at the seminary in Seville.’

  I cursed softly in Italian, and then realised I must get into the habit of doing so in Spanish. ‘Is he called Weston?’

  Gifford’s almost-invisible eyebrows shot up. ‘Yes, that’s it. William Weston. Do you know him?’

  ‘No, obviously. But Prado does. Mierda.’ I banged my fist against the table, not hard, but it made Gifford jump back and spill his beer. ‘You didn’t leave him in the room?’ I thought with a jolt of panic about the instruments of my secret writing hidden in my bag.

  ‘Of course not. I told him I had to go out. But he said he would wait outside the building for you. He seemed very excited about it. Can’t wait to catch up, he says.’

  ‘This is a complication we could have done without.’

  ‘It’s not the only one,’ he said, trying to mop his shirt front with his sleeve. ‘Babington came by earlier with a message from Ballard. We are all to meet tonight at the bear garden to discuss what happens next. He told me I should prepare to be on the road tomorrow with a letter to Mary. But he also said Ballard wants a word with me tonight. Why would he want that?’ His voice rose to an unhappy squeak. ‘He suspects me, I am sure of it.’

  After my conversation with Ballard, I did not feel confident in contradicting him.

  ‘Phelippes may have gone too far this time with his damned postscript,’ I said. I pushed my hands through my hair, only to find most of it gone; I was still not used to this cropped appearance. ‘He could have slipped that past Babington, but not Ballard. God, I hate the bear-baiting.’

  ‘Me too. But it’s a good place to hide in plain sight. Crowds of men, no one listening. There are always fights after, when people have lost money.’ He exhaled hard through his nose and laid his hands flat on the table. ‘We are going to be killed, Bruno, I know it. He has seen through us. We’ll be knifed in the back and left in an alley, and everyone will think it was a brawl over a bet.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ I kicked him hard under the bench. ‘Speak my name again in public and I’ll knife you myself. If he has suspicions about that postscript, that’s all they are. He has no evidence. Stay calm, and stick to your story. Get through tonight without doing anything stupid, and you’ll be on your way to Staffordshire, out of his reach. You can leave the rest to me.’

  Relief and anxiety struggled for mastery of his expression. ‘What about this Weston?’

  ‘Can’t you tell him I’ll call on him later?’

  ‘I tried that, but he wouldn’t say where he was lodging. Stands to reason, if he’s a priest.’

  ‘Then tell him to try again in a few days. Jesus, Gilbert – start thinking on your feet once in a while. I can’t write your whole script for you.’

  Gifford was about to protest when Dan Hammett passed our table and set down a pot of beer in front of me.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he said, nodding to my clothes. ‘You should get some air when you’ve finished that,’ he added casually, on his way to the kitchen, jerking a thumb in the direction of the yard. I guessed there must be a new message to collect.

  ‘What happened to your fancy suit?’ Gifford asked, only now noticing my appearance.

  ‘I left them at the Unicorn.’

  He blinked, taking this in. ‘Why were you—?’

  ‘Long story. Did you know, they’ve acquired a chest full of men’s clothes there because sometimes customers behave with so little courtesy they get thrown out in the street before they’ve had a chance to get dressed, and they don’t have the nerve to ask for their breeches back? Imagine.’ I sat back and drained my cup. ‘Now please get rid of this Weston, I have letters to write and I want to lie down on my bed. It’s been a long day already and it’s not even noon.’

  Outside, the sun had broken through the lingering clouds and the yard was almost warm; beneath the dovecote on the far wall, a tabby cat stretched itself in a patch of light as if determined to make the most of England’s feeble efforts at summer. Ben passed me, whistling, barely visible behind a saddle that was twice his width.

  ‘Back in a tick,’ he said, lumbering with his burden towards the stables. I strolled to the dovecote as if casually taking the air, bent to fuss over the cat, retrieved the paper hidden in the hole, and leaned against the wall to wait for Ben.

  ‘You find that boy all
right?’ he asked, when he returned. ‘Did you make him talk?’

  ‘You make me sound like the Inquisition.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Never mind. I got some answers out of him, thank you.’

  ‘That’s got to be worth something?’ He cocked his head to one side and grinned.

  ‘God’s blood, boy. I’ve already paid you for finding him.’

  ‘But I found more than that.’ When I didn’t respond, he gave a theatrical shrug and made a show of walking away. ‘Guess you don’t want to know the secret, then.’

  I called his bluff and left it until he had almost reached the corner of the building, waited for his expectant look, and beckoned him back. ‘All right. Go on.’

  He held out his grubby palm. ‘A shilling.’

  I laughed. ‘Ben – even if you told me that boy is the bastard son of the Queen herself, it wouldn’t be worth a shilling.’

  ‘Sixpence, then. It’s a good one, promise.’ He kept his hand out, offering an impish smile. He didn’t care about the price; the game was all in the bargaining. I fished in my doublet.

  ‘You can have a groat.’ I flicked it in the air and he dived forward and caught it with one deft hand, making it vanish somewhere in his clothes. ‘This had better be worth it.’

  He drew himself up as if about to make an important speech. ‘That boy Joe, yeah? I asked around. Then I followed him.’

  ‘You must have been up at the crack of dawn.’

  ‘So was he. He runs errands for his mother. He takes herbs round the poor houses in all them streets round the back of the stews. She’s a witch,’ he added with relish.

  ‘No she isn’t. Was that the secret? I’ll have my groat back if it was.’

  He took a step back in case I was serious. ‘No. That’s common knowledge. She makes potions for the whores to get rid of a baby, and another for the men to make their cock-stand last all night and if that’s not witchery, you tell me what is.’ He waited, defiant, for a contradiction. ‘The secret is that while I was following that Joe, he stopped for a piss.’