Execution

by S. J. Parris

  I shook my head, not in denial but in bewilderment. ‘It was the one thing I couldn’t understand – why she would have gone there in the first place, so late at night. I thought Ballard might have persuaded her to go – I was sure it was him.’

  ‘She was so proud of working for my father, she took her responsibilities very seriously. She’d have gone anywhere if Phelippes had ordered her and said it was for the Queen and the good of England.’

  I thought of Sophia and my gut twisted. ‘But it makes no sense. Sir Francis made Clara his ward. She grew up with you. Why should he want her dead?’

  Frances took a deep breath. ‘Perhaps he suspected her loyalties.’

  ‘Ah. Because of her father?’

  She frowned at that. ‘What about him?’

  I leaned forward. ‘I heard a story from one of the Babington group that George Poole was loyal to the Catholics all along, and was giving your father misinformation. They believe Sir Francis had him killed as punishment.’

  She nodded, understanding. ‘Clara told me she’d heard that too. But she didn’t believe it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Clara loved my father. She wouldn’t hear a bad word about him, she said, after everything he had done for her and Robin.’ She paused; her voice had cracked a little and I looked away discreetly while she took a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She spread her hands. ‘I know my father better than Clara did. He’s not a vindictive man, but he is entirely capable of having someone pushed in a river if he thinks the security of the state depends on it. I honestly don’t know what happened to George Poole, and I don’t much care. I’m sure Father had Clara killed, though. You need to find this man with the white feather.’

  ‘Wait, go back – what did you mean about Sir Francis suspecting her loyalties, if you were not talking about avenging her father?’

  ‘Well, because—’ she broke off and glanced up at me from beneath her lashes, and for the first time in the conversation she looked embarrassed. ‘Because she was pregnant.’

  I shook my head and smiled. ‘There at least I can confidently put you right. She wasn’t. I suggested the possibility, but they had the body opened by a physician, and there was no sign of a child.’

  Now it was Frances’s turn to look perplexed. ‘Oh. Then she must have gone to the woman in Southwark after all. Though I thought I would have known…’

  ‘What woman in Southwark?’ I asked, a little too sharply.

  ‘She wouldn’t talk to me about it. I guessed early on – it’s not long since I was with child myself, I recognised the signs. Clara denied it vehemently to me for a good three weeks, until one night she had a slight bleed and I found her crying, terrified she was losing it – though it was fine, I had the same.’ She glanced up and met my eye. ‘You don’t mind me speaking of such things? Philip would have started talking loudly about hunting and found an excuse to leave the table by now.’ She smiled, a little sadly. I motioned for her to continue. ‘Clara wouldn’t say who the father was. But she told me she had heard about a woman in Southwark who could give you a potion to flush the child out from the womb. She knew she ought really to go there, but she thought it sounded a wicked thing to do. I could tell how much she wanted to keep the child, despite the circumstances. I saw it in her face. Her useless dead husband never gave her a baby.’

  ‘You think it was by one of the conspirators?’

  ‘Who else would it be? She never left Seething Lane except to see them. I tried to talk to her about it, but she clammed up again. She said it was better for me not to know – which hurt me, but I tried to respect her wishes. I thought she would tell me in her own time. So I never asked whether she did go to the Southwark woman, because less than a week later, she was dead. I suppose she must have done, if what you say is true.’

  ‘So – your hypothesis is that somehow your father learned she was pregnant by one of the conspirators, believed that would swing her loyalties to them, and therefore he had Phelippes send her to the Cross Bones on the twenty-seventh of July, where she was killed by a hired assassin with a white feather in his hat, on your father’s orders?’

  ‘That’s it exactly.’ She took in my expression and huffed impatiently. ‘Look, I know it sounds far-fetched, but you have no idea – my father has come up with more complex scenarios than this to protect his operations, I assure you.’

  ‘I can believe that,’ I said. ‘Did Clara say anything to make you think she had transferred her loyalty to the plotters now that she was expecting a child with one of them? Did she speak of being in love?’ I asked. Frances was right; her theory, outlandish though it was, made sense according to the logic by which Walsingham and Phelippes operated: if Clara had fallen in love with her child’s father, how could she willingly cooperate in a plan to bring him to a traitor’s death? They would have feared she was much more likely to warn him. One way or another, Walsingham would have had to get her away from the Babington group, and keep her quiet. All the same, I found it hard to believe that he would have condoned such a grotesque display of the body, when she could have been made to disappear discreetly.

  ‘Not directly,’ Frances said, picking off a corner of bread and rolling it into a ball between her thumb and forefinger. ‘But there was a look that came across her face when she admitted the truth to me about the baby, and a note in her voice – dreamy and girlish. I recognised it – it’s how I sound when I talk of Philip. I could tell how distressed she was, thinking about whether to go to the Southwark woman. I always knew when Clara was upset, because she had this habit – it used to drive me mad.’ She paused, and let out a little trembling laugh. ‘She would bite her nails down so far she would make her fingers bleed and even then she’d carry on, ripping at them with her teeth, I winced to see it. That’s why I bought her the gloves’ – she indicated the pair on the table between us. ‘But it never stopped her. And she was biting her nails all the time, those last few days, before she went to the Cross Bones. Robin has the habit too, isn’t that strange? I wonder if Clara copied it from him as a child – what is it?’

  She had seen the change in my expression as the extent of my blindness dawned on me. I pushed the table away and stood up as if in a daze.

  ‘It’s not her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dio merda,’ I breathed, staring at her, unfocused, forgetting I was supposed to be Spanish. ‘It’s not her. I’m an idiot. Absolute idiot.’ The poor dead girl in the leper chapel; I remembered noting how carefully she had kept her nails. Walsingham should have let his daughter identify the body; Frances would have spotted that detail in an instant. I turned and almost crashed into Dan, who stepped expertly back with his plates before I sent them crashing to the floor.

  ‘It’s all right, mate, we’ve had worse idiots in here,’ he said. I grabbed him by the shoulder.

  ‘Where’s Ben?’

  ‘Out the back, with the horses.’

  ‘Can you spare him?’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Long as he’s earning.’

  ‘Wait!’ Frances clutched at my sleeve. ‘At least have something to eat and tell me what’s going on. What do you mean, it’s not her?’

  I paused, snatched a mouthful of bread and honey and gestured to her to follow me.

  ‘The body in the Cross Bones. It wasn’t Clara,’ I said, my mouth full, as we emerged into the yard. ‘That business with disfiguring the face – I thought it must be some kind of symbolism. All the time it was to conceal her identity. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. But your father said he was sure – oh. Of course. The henna.’

  ‘You are making no sense at all. If it wasn’t her, then – where is Clara? Is she still alive?’ she asked, in a whisper, as if she hardly dared hope.

  ‘I would guess so. Why else would anyone fake her death, except to let her run? Do you have any idea where she would go? Does she have family somew
here?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know – I think a cousin of her father’s lives in Essex, somewhere that way – you really think she is alive?’

  I nodded, and the expression of stunned relief on her face hardened to one of anger. ‘I’ll bloody kill her myself, putting us through all that. Why would she do it?’

  ‘She must have thought she was in danger, for exactly the reasons you suggested. Perhaps she worried that letter from Phelippes was a trap.’

  ‘Then you think she’s in hiding from my father?’ Her grip tightened around my arm. ‘Don’t tell him. At least let’s try and find out where she is before he learns she’s still alive. Will you do that?’

  I hesitated. ‘I won’t tell anyone yet – and don’t you. Whoever murdered that girl in the Cross Bones to pass her off as Clara may yet kill someone else to protect his secret – and it wouldn’t be wise for you to let on that you know it.’

  ‘Who was she?’ Frances asked quietly, letting go of my sleeve.

  ‘I think I know. But I must go straight to Southwark now, to make enquiries.’

  I found Ben lounging on an upturned barrel by the stables, polishing a harness, the cat curled around his feet. I nodded at the dovecote. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I need you to come to Southwark with me,’ I said. He dropped the harness and considered.

  ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘The only sure thing in this uncertain world, Ben, is that any help you ever give will cost money.’ I turned to Frances. ‘I’ll send you word at Seething Lane the moment I hear anything about where she might be. Ben will bring a message. But don’t tell anyone about Clara. Not even Alice.’

  She nodded and squeezed my hand briefly. As she turned to leave, I saw the shine of tears in her eyes, and I remembered how young she was.

  ‘Don’t be sad, my lady. Surely this is better news than you had hoped for?’

  ‘She didn’t confide in me,’ Frances said softly, looking down. ‘I thought she was my dearest friend, but she would rather let me think her dead than trust me. What kind of friendship is that?’

  I was not sure if she expected an answer, but she swiped at her eyes savagely with the edge of her hand and disappeared back inside the inn.

  ‘Are we looking for that boy again?’ Ben said, cheerfully, ‘the one who’s a girl?’

  ‘Yes, we’re definitely looking for him. And another girl. But listen – it might be dangerous.’ His face lit up. ‘No, Ben – it’s not a game. You must promise me that if I tell you to run, you do as I say. No heroics with your little knife. Agreed?’ He puffed himself up, offended, but I waited until he gave a sulky nod.

  ‘You’ll be glad of my knife one of these days.’

  ‘I’m sure I will. Let’s walk down and get a boat across from Water Lane, it’ll be quicker. But you’ll have to be quiet on the way – I need to think.’

  ‘You sound like my old man,’ he said, rolling his eyes and starting up a loud whistling as we turned out of the yard and headed down Fleet Lane towards the river.

  * * *

  So one question at least was answered: the matter of why the body had been left where it would so obviously be found. This had made little sense to me when I was trying to work out who might have wanted to kill Clara Poole, but made perfect sense if the killer’s aim was to make people believe Clara had been killed; leaving a dead woman dressed as her in a public place was essential to the charade. I could not believe I had been so stupid. But I had not been the only one – and I thought I understood now why the killer needed to keep Joe silent. Men like Walsingham and Phelippes might not have noticed the detail of a woman’s nails, but even they were aware that Clara had a birthmark on her neck, and would have checked the corpse. If you wanted to fake such a mark, in a way that would not wash off, what better to use than the reddish-brown stain of Leila’s henna paste? She thought that Joe had stolen the henna; clearly someone had asked the child to do that, for the express purpose of disguising another young woman as Clara. If Joe knew why it was wanted, and who wanted it, he knew the real identity of the killer and the victim. In Joe’s absence, the only other person who might have the answers was Leila’s friend Anneke.

  A stiff breeze blew across the river, whipping the water into yellow-crested peaks. Ben leaned over the side of the wherry to watch the fish jumping, while I thought further about the murder. Every theory I had was turned upside down; I needed to stop thinking in terms of Clara’s killer and reverse the picture. Whoever had killed the girl in the Cross Bones had done it not because Clara was a threat, but because she needed protecting. I could think of only three people who would feel strongly enough about her to commit murder for her sake: her lover, her brother, or Sir Francis Walsingham. And if one of them had been prepared to go to such lengths, he must have believed that her life was in danger – but from whom? I surmised that her pregnancy had changed things, but that only raised more questions. It did not take great genius to work out – by process of elimination – that Titch must be the father of Clara’s baby, but it did not necessarily follow that he was the murderer. On my first night with the conspirators at The Castle, he had been the one loudly denying the possibility that the body in the Cross Bones could have been her; if he had perpetrated the deception, surely he would have been falling over himself to agree with Ballard’s conclusion? A double bluff, perhaps. Titch had undeniably been with a woman last night – was it a secret meeting with Clara? If I could decipher those damned pictograms, perhaps they would give me a clue – though that was further complicated by the new note in Clara’s glove, similar but different.

  It was possible, too, that Walsingham could have learned of Clara’s pregnancy and spirited her out of London if he felt it put her in danger from the conspirators, faking her death as a means of preventing them looking for her. But there was too much that did not add up with that theory; I could not see that he would have gone to the trouble of drawing me into the deception, showing me the corpse and asking me to find the killer, nor that he was ruthless enough – whatever his daughter thought – to drug a street girl with opium before killing her as a substitute, or kidnap a child to keep him quiet. That left Robin Poole. If Robin believed that his father had been murdered on Walsingham’s orders, for his secret loyalty to the Catholics, did he fear that his sister might meet the same fate, now that she was pregnant by one of the conspirators? Robin was so inscrutable, so evidently skilled at feigning emotion, that he could easily have dissembled well enough to convince even Walsingham that he was contorted with rage and grief for his dead sister. The obvious solution there was to question him – after all, I now had the leverage of knowing a secret that he did not want Walsingham to find out, and might demand answers in return. But it seemed best to eliminate the other possibilities first, and to make certain of my evidence; if he was not behind the murder, it would be quite a shock to Robin to discover that his sister was alive after all, and it was always possible that he was the danger she was trying to escape.

  ‘We’re here,’ Ben said, elbowing me in the side as the boat pulled in to Paris Garden Stairs; he had jumped out and skipped nimbly up to the quay before the boatman had tied up. The bells had not yet rung nine and it was quiet on Bankside, the usual few stragglers making their way home past the carts coming in with the new day’s deliveries for the taverns and brothels along the riverfront. A couple of girls stumbled past us from the pleasure gardens, their make-up smeared as if they had not slept; they gave me the eye as they drew level.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I called, as an afterthought, ‘I’m looking for a Dutch girl—’

  ‘I’ll be a Dutch girl for you, darling,’ said one, in a flat London accent. The offer sounded half-hearted.

  ‘Anneke, she wears a spotted scarf, dark hair—’

  ‘I’ll do your son half price,’ said the other, cackling, as they walked on.

  ‘I wouldn’t do you if it was free,’ Ben shot back. ‘And he’s not my pa.’<
br />
  ‘Ben,’ I said, reprovingly. ‘That’s not a nice way to talk to ladies.’

  ‘She’s not a lady, she’s a poxy goose.’

  ‘You think she does that work by choice?’

  I waited for the flippant response, but he considered this and fell silent.

  ‘Where we going?’ he asked after a while, as we walked towards the row of white-fronted taverns facing the river.

  ‘I need to find this Dutch girl and talk to her. You can come with me, keep your eyes peeled for anyone following us. Then we’re going to the Unicorn, to see what else we can learn. That’s where I’ll need your help.’

  ‘Who am I looking out for, following us?’ He spun round in a circle and trotted along backwards for a few paces, as if daring anyone to approach from behind.

  ‘I don’t know. Just tell me if you notice anyone acting strangely.’

  He sighed. ‘That’s everyone in Southwark.’

  ‘Then you’re going to be busy, aren’t you?’

  I had fixed particular landmarks in my memory during my walk with Anneke the night before, so that I did at least remember the way to Leila’s house this time without getting too far lost. Her shutters were drawn; I knocked on the front door but there was no reply. I wondered if she was out working or looking for Joe. Anneke had said they were neighbours; I tried the house next door, and an older woman answered, responding suspiciously to my enquiries about Anneke by asking who had sent me. I recalled Leila telling Joe that people in Southwark regarded any kind of curiosity about their business as a potential threat. I explained that I knew Leila, that I had met Anneke the night before and wanted to see her again; I offered a penny as an incentive. The woman sniffed, and folded her arms across the shelf of her bosom, glancing up and down the street before deciding to answer.

  ‘She does live upstairs, but she didn’t come back last night.’

  ‘Is that usual?’ Already I felt a flicker of alarm.

  The woman lifted a shoulder, indifferent. ‘They come and go all hours. I usually hear them come in though, never occurs to them that some of us might be sleeping. Haven’t seen the other one for a few days either, mind. Her next door might know, they’re friendly.’ She nodded towards Leila’s house.