by S. J. Parris
‘So?’
‘He went down this alley to hide, right? And I followed because I didn’t know that’s what he was going to do, I wanted to see where he went. And he pulled down his breeches, so I thought he was going to take a shit, I almost left, didn’t need to see that, but…’ He paused for effect, his eyes wide.
‘Yes?’ I put enough impatience in my voice to let him know his groat was in jeopardy.
‘He didn’t. He has to piss squatting because he hasn’t got a prick.’
‘What?’ I had not expected that.
‘Yeah. I reckon he’s one of them, you know – like the Turk has, to look after all his wives. They have their balls cut off so they can’t do it. My dad told me about them.’
‘A eunuch?’
‘That’s the one.’ He examined his nails, a man of the world. Suddenly I saw it: Joe’s slightness, his quick, delicate hands, Leila’s angry remarks about the dangers of men.
‘Right. Although the more likely explanation, Ben, is that Joe is a girl.’
He stared at me, as though something so mundane had not crossed his mind. ‘Oh yeah. Don’t blame her, in that case. I wouldn’t want to be a girl, if I could choose. You just die having babies, like my ma.’
‘Southwark,’ I said wearily. ‘His mother takes care of the women in the stews. They put girls to work there at eleven or younger – about the age Joe would be. No wonder she wanted to keep a daughter hidden.’
‘She won’t be able to do that forever,’ he said, with a knowing nod. ‘Not once…’ he made a gesture with both hands to indicate a generous pair of breasts.
‘True. But don’t you say anything. It’s not your secret to sell. Except to me.’
The hand shot out. ‘Give me sixpence and I’ll consider the information sold to you in its entirety, no longer in my possession to profit from. I’ll forget I ever knew it.’
I sighed and drew out another groat. ‘I’m serious, Ben. This isn’t a game, it’s a child’s safety at stake.’
He bit the coin ostentatiously to show me that we were two businessmen doing a deal, with no room for sentiment. ‘She’ll have to learn to look to her own safety, sooner or later,’ he said as he left. ‘Everyone else does in London.’
* * *
While I waited for Gifford to return, I borrowed a candle from Dan, found a spot around the back of the stable block on an upturned crate, away from prying eyes, heated the paper with the flame and read the new message from Phelippes. I had memorised the cipher by now, and though I could not read the encryption as quickly as Phelippes would have done, I was able to do it without needing to write the characters down. The cryptographer was no less curt in writing than in person:
To answer your questions in order, we have learned from XP:
1) He was instructed to send dispatches to Mendoza through the French embassy. They are expecting him, but will probably not make contact first. Even if they come looking for you, they have not met him before so you should be able to keep your cover.
2) William Weston is the superior of the Jesuits in England. He and Prado studied together for a time at the seminary in Seville. This is a problem we did not foresee. As far as we know, Weston is not involved in the conspiracy and considers the order above such actions; but if he sees you, he may feel obliged to warn the conspirators that you are an imposter. In fact, it could work in our favour. We have been trying to catch Weston for two years, so you may be the lure to draw him out. If you learn his whereabouts, convey them immediately. Nota bene: He sees demons everywhere.
3) It may interest you to know that the remains of the wine in the bottle you found at the Cross Bones, from the Unicorn, contained a strong quantity of opium. Whether that was used to subdue CP prior to death cannot be established, but it would be reasonable to speculate. Do not mention this detail to RP – let him continue in his belief that the blood came from CP fighting off her attacker.
4) Information regarding Bess P very useful. We have someone watching her. We await further details.
5) No success yet with locket note. W wants your thoughts. Characters copied below.
I tore off the part of the paper where Phelippes had copied the four symbols from Clara’s message, and held the candle flame to the rest of the letter until it caught, and his neat, cramped characters blackened and curled to a handful of ash in the air. Opium. There would be plenty of people who sold it in London, of course, but only one with such an obvious connection to the Unicorn. My mind jolted back to my conversation with Joe on our walk earlier: when the child had asked if someone would go to Hell for a deed they did not intend to cause harm, had he meant something connected to Clara Poole’s death? Joe had told me they knew how to keep secrets in his family; I understood better now what he meant. I made myself go on thinking of Joe as ‘he’ to avoid slipping up. I wondered if he could have stolen or sold his mother’s opium to make a few pennies, not knowing it would lead to a murder. If that was his meaning, then he must know for certain that Clara had been drugged, which meant he must know her killer. I recalled his reaction that morning when he saw Ballard. Joe was scared of the priest, that much was clear, but did it have anything to do with the child’s fear of going to Hell for this unnamed deed?
I rubbed my hands across my face. My head was swimming with too many questions, and lack of sleep to consider them with any clarity. For answers, I would have to return to Southwark. Leila would not willingly tell me if she or Joe were selling opium, but at least now I had some leverage I could use on her; I knew the truth about Joe, though I would not endear myself to her by using it as a threat. I needed to ask Phelippes where they had imprisoned her father-in-law, Goodchild, the old watchman; I sensed that favours would work better than pressure with a woman like Leila. She would laugh at any attempt to coerce her, and then aim her crossbow at my balls. I found I was intrigued by the prospect of seeing her again, though I could picture the scorn in her dark eyes if I tried to persuade her to say anything that would put her or her child in danger. It was my curse, I thought, to be interested only in fierce, difficult women, and Leila had a fire in her belly that I guessed was kindled from struggle, like my Sophia.
Ridiculous: she was not mine. I wondered where she was at that moment, how she was bearing the tedium of Lady Grace Cavendish’s company, and a thought struck me. Phelippes’s note said they had someone watching Bessie Pierrepont – could he have meant Sophia? Had Walsingham recruited her already? There was no way for me to find out; I doubted Phelippes would tell me anything if I enquired, and it would be difficult to arrange a meeting in my guise as Father Prado. But thinking of her consumed me with a longing to see her that I felt sharp as a cramp in my gut, and I decided I would ask Ben to take a message to her. He would barter with me, but I thought he could be trusted. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall, allowing the sun to warm my face, recalling the way she had looked at me during that encounter in the street outside the playhouse, and how quickly she had retreated when she thought I was brushing her off.
I must have dozed; in what seemed like only a heartbeat I found myself shaken by the shoulder and opened my eyes to see Robin Poole looming over me.
‘Nice that someone has time for dreaming,’ he said.
‘I was thinking. How did you know I was here?’
‘Gilbert said you’d be skulking around the Saracen’s somewhere. I’ve just come from your rooms – Weston’s gone for now, but he’s left you a note. I thought you and I should catch up. Will you walk with me?’
We strolled back westwards over the Holborn bridge, away from the City, towards the Inns of Court. The clouds had almost dispersed and a volley of birdsong burst from the trees; the usual surliness and head-down jostling I had come to expect of Londoners in the street appeared temporarily replaced by a common goodwill, people bidding one another good day as they passed, a number of them actually smiling.
‘So my sister’s death is now public,’ Poole said, looking straight ahead, his voic
e expressionless. ‘The official story given out is that she was distributing alms to the poor women of Southwark when she was set upon and robbed. If anyone asks, they will say they are holding a man in custody on suspicion of killing her.’
‘Which man?’
‘That watchman who found her. Walsingham can kill two birds with one stone that way – stop the old man spreading gossip about what he saw, and keep the public quiet with news of an arrest.’
‘But they know he didn’t do it. Surely Walsingham wouldn’t let him go to the gallows?’
‘They reason that if they hold him until the next assizes, they’ll have Babington’s lot rounded up by then and the rest of London will have forgotten about Clara. It’s not like she was anyone important,’ he added with venom. ‘There’ll be a dozen more dead girls in Southwark for people to talk about by the time he’s due for trial.’
‘At least now you’ll be able to bury her,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring.
‘Oh, he’s already dealt with that.’ His voice shook with quiet anger. ‘Put her in a nice little plot way out of the city, in Canonbury. He’ll pay for a handsome memorial, he says, once this is all over, as if that will be recompense.’ He broke off and shook his head, mastering himself. I pitied him again for having to hide his sorrow.
‘Do you know where the old watchman is being held?’ I asked.
‘In the Tower. I suppose they want to stop him talking to anyone. Why?’
‘He has a family who are worrying about him. Remember that boy who stole your horse?’
‘Ballard’s horse.’ He made a face. ‘I still haven’t told him she was stolen. I’d like to get my hands on that little fucker. What about him?’
‘He’s the watchman’s grandson. And listen – I think he might know something about the murder. He was in the Cross Bones that night.’
‘Really?’ He stopped walking and turned to me, his face more animated than I had seen him. ‘You think he saw who she was meeting? Where can I find him?’
I held up a hand in restraint. ‘Let me see if I can get him to tell me. He’s scared, obviously. It needs to be handled delicately.’
‘I wasn’t planning to beat it out of him.’
‘No, but you’re…’ Desperate, I wanted to say. There was a blaze in his eyes; for all his skilled dissembling, I feared his suppressed grief and rage was close to the surface. ‘I think I have a means to persuade him.’
‘Huh. Persuade him to give that fucking horse back while you’re there. And whatever else he stole from my sister’s body.’
‘What will you do if we find out which of them killed her?’ I asked, curious.
He looked away. ‘Nothing I can do for the moment,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘The operation comes first, you know that. I must bide my time. Can you begin to imagine what it’s been like for me, to sit around a table with them, catching the eye of each one in turn, wondering which of them could have—’ He broke off and we continued walking in silence. ‘When I know who it was,’ he said with quiet determination, as we approached the junction with Chancery Lane, ‘I don’t want to kill him. He’ll die the cruellest death anyway, once the Privy Council’s finished with him, they all will, and I won’t even go and watch. It wouldn’t bring her back. All I want is for him to understand what he’s taken from me.’
It struck me as a brave sentiment. I wanted to make some gesture of sympathy – a squeeze of the shoulder, a touch of his arm – but I didn’t know him well enough and I sensed that pity wouldn’t be welcome.
‘And you definitely don’t think it could have been Ballard?’ I said, instead.
He gave me a sharp look. ‘Why – do you have reason to think otherwise?’
‘I’ve found out that he was in London the night she died, and he’s lied to the rest of you about it. And the boy from the Cross Bones evidently knows him, and is afraid of him.’
‘The boy told you that?’
‘I witnessed it for myself. This morning he came face to face with Ballard and turned tail as if he’d seen the Devil.’
‘I don’t blame him. Ballard makes me want to turn and run most of the time. What – you think the boy might have seen him in the graveyard that night, and fear Ballard knows it?’
‘I can’t work it out. Ballard knew the boy had been in the Cross Bones and seen her body. But if Ballard killed Clara and feared there was a witness, I don’t think that boy would be walking around freely. There’s clearly some connection between them, though, and not a happy one.’
‘What were you doing in Southwark this morning, anyway?’ he asked.
‘Just nosing around.’
‘So Walsingham has asked you to look into her death.’ His mouth pressed into a grim line. When I didn’t answer, he merely nodded. ‘Good of him to tell me. I wonder what he thinks you could bring that I could not.’
‘Distance, I suppose.’
‘Huh.’ He glanced away, as if to restrain himself from any unguarded comment. ‘You’ll tell me, won’t you, if you discover anything? I can’t shake this feeling that he’s keeping something from me. Him and Phelippes.’
‘I’ll let you know anything that might be useful.’
He gave a thin smile. ‘But you still get to decide what would be useful for me to know about my own sister’s death.’ I saw him bite back a further comment. ‘Well – I will be in your debt for any information. But forgive me if I continue to pursue it in my own way.’
I could say nothing to that; it was not for me to tell him I was in charge of finding his sister’s murderer. It surprised me that the gossip of the Southwark stews about what had been done to her had not reached him; perhaps, now that she was buried, it could be dismissed as gruesome speculation. I would continue to deny any knowledge of the details if he ever asked.
‘We could look around together later,’ he suggested. ‘Babington sent word to say we are meeting tonight at the bear garden, at seven. It seems Ballard has some new plan in mind.’
‘I suppose this could all be over soon,’ I said. ‘Our job is to learn the means and the time when they intend to assassinate the Queen, so she can be forewarned, and have it set in writing to bring in evidence against them. If Ballard decides that tonight and Babington puts it explicitly in a letter to Mary, surely Walsingham can move to arrest them as soon as Gilbert hands it to him?’ The thought that I might only have to play Prado for another day or so filled me with relief, and at the same time a melancholy sense of anticlimax; if it was all over so quickly, would my contribution be significant enough to have earned the reward of the Queen’s patronage?
‘I don’t know.’ Poole shrugged. ‘Walsingham may want to wait until there is an unequivocal reply in Mary’s hand giving the new plan her blessing. That could take another couple of weeks, for Gifford to ride to Staffordshire and back.’
‘Ballard will not wait two weeks,’ I said. ‘He’s champing at the bit – the fear of arrest has made him abandon caution. He reasons if he is to be caught, he will take the Queen down with him.’
‘You may be right. Well, we shall learn more tonight. One thing is certain,’ he added, as he turned towards Chancery Lane, ‘it will never be over for me. I didn’t even get to see her.’
As I watched him walk briskly away, I couldn’t help thinking how wise Walsingham had been to keep him away from Clara’s body; I doubted his restraint would have survived if he had seen that face. I made my way back to Herne’s Rents turning over in my mind what her killer had done, and why; I felt sure there must be something I was not seeing. I considered again that it would have taken an unusual degree of emotion, or its absence, to stave in a woman’s face so thoroughly, even if she were already dead or sedated. Either way, it would have taken time to butcher her like that; if the man knew the Cross Bones well enough to have chosen it for murder, he would likely have known that the old watchman would be about, and perhaps Joe too, and yet he had risked being caught by staying to cut off the girl’s hair, as well as mutilate her fac
e. This was not a killing of necessity; it was a statement, or an act of vengeance, or love warped into hatred. And what of the parts he had severed? Easy enough to throw gristle to a street dog. But the hair: I thought of Madam Rosa and her terrible wig. Robin had told me Clara had long, auburn curls – exactly the kind of hair most valuable to wig-makers wanting to imitate the Queen’s look. I could try enquiring at wig shops to see if a man had brought in that kind of hair to sell in the past couple of days, but that could take weeks, and the killer might have had the sense to wait until any fuss about the dead girl had died down before approaching buyers.
One thing was certain: I needed to visit Leila and Joe again to ask about the opium. Perhaps I could slip away from the conspirators after the bear-baiting, before I was pressed into visiting the sick for another night. I wondered if I could persuade Ben to come; not that I was afraid of walking the streets of Southwark alone, but it might be useful to have someone looking out for me, even if it was only a boy with a fruit knife.
EIGHTEEN
The sky was clear as we approached the arena from Falcon Stairs, while the bells of nearby St Mary Overy rang the hour of seven. Evening light softened the curved whitewashed wall of the bear pit at Paris Garden. This was not my first visit; three years ago I had ended up here during my involvement with what had become known at the English court as the Throckmorton Plot, after the last young Catholic gentleman who believed he and his friends could replace Elizabeth Tudor with Mary Stuart and bring England back to Rome. On that occasion, I had found myself hunting someone through the bear pit late at night, the stands dark and empty and the animals all locked away. Now, despite the chattering crowds and the exuberance of a summer evening, the sharp stink of blood and animal excrement brought that memory rushing back – the stumbling pursuit in the dark, the heart-racing fear for my life. My skin prickled and I worked to suppress a shudder, hoping Babington and Gifford would not notice. One sideways glance at Gifford as we approached the gates told me that was the least of my concerns; the boy was in no state to worry about anyone else’s behaviour. This was partly my fault. I had returned to Herne’s Rents intending to write again to Phelippes; though I only meant to close my eyes for a few moments, sleep had landed on me like a hammer blow and I had lost two hours, during which Gifford had taken himself to a tavern. Furious with him – but more with myself – I had made him eat some bread and cold beef before we met Babington to head south, but the boy was still shaky and the boatman had almost refused to take us across the river, seeing his green face. Now I would have to make sure I watched him all evening, and as far as possible keep him from being alone with Ballard in his present state, or we were both sunk.