by S. J. Parris
‘No.’
The small vertical crease above his nose appeared, as it always did when he had to confront a difficult person instead of a difficult cipher.
‘That’s an order from Master Secretary.’
‘Then you can pass my reply back to him. Look, Thomas’ – I leaned in – ‘the killer has taken a child, to keep him from telling what he knows about the murder. And he’s done that because I’ve come around asking questions. I don’t know if that child is still alive, but I promised his mother I would find him, and I can’t walk away until I do.’
‘That’s not my problem. If you continue to associate with the conspirators, your life is in danger. That is Master Secretary’s second priority, after the integrity of the operation. You know more than enough, if they decide to torture you, to compromise other people and possibly the end goal.’
‘I’m touched that you don’t want me getting hurt. But I’m not giving up. I’m this close, Thomas.’ I held my thumb and forefinger a pinch apart to demonstrate.
‘You know who the killer is?’
‘I think so. But I need to make certain.’ I did not want to accuse Robin Poole to people who had known him far longer than I had, without compelling evidence. If I could track Clara down and make her confess the whole story, that would be enough.
‘Here is the difficulty,’ Phelippes said, touching his fingertips together and not looking at me. Even with his expressionless demeanour, I could tell he was angry. ‘At this stage, we don’t really care who killed Clara. What we want most urgently is the latest letter from Babington to Mary Stuart, setting out the new plan for the assassination in detail – Master Secretary does not want to move against the conspirators without that. But if they learn there’s a spy in their midst before we get our hands on that letter, we may not have evidence to convict all of them.’
‘Wait – you don’t have the letter?’ I was briefly confused, before I remembered that Gifford had fled before Babington had written it. ‘Did you catch up with Gifford?’
Now it was Phelippes’s turn to look puzzled. ‘Gifford? What do you mean?’
‘Last night – did you find him? I don’t think he took a horse from the Cavendish stable, he must have had one ready elsewhere, unless he’s lying low somewhere in London.’
‘What are you talking about – Gifford has taken a horse where? Not to Staffordshire – he can’t have done, he hasn’t brought us the letter yet—’
I looked at him, trying to work out why he was being so slow, and then it dawned.
‘Robin didn’t come to you last night?’
‘No. Should he have done?’
‘Merda.’ I thumped my fist on the table. ‘Gifford has packed up and run. Robin said he would go straight to you with a message, so you could set out after him. You’re telling me he didn’t? You were definitely at Leadenhall Street last night, sometime around midnight?’
‘I was there all night. No sign of Robin. You mean to say he’s playing us false? And Gifford too?’
We exchanged a glance.
‘It looks that way.’
Phelippes nodded. ‘I wondered. Robin’s father did the same. These Catholics – the guilt sucks them back, in the end.’
‘Not all of us,’ I said, affronted.
‘No. You have other weaknesses. We’re well aware of them.’ He stood, pushing the table back. ‘I must take this news to Master Secretary immediately and set about finding Gifford and Poole, as well as Prado. You should go to Leadenhall Street and wait there, out of harm’s way. I’ll give you a key.’
‘I’ve said I’m not going.’ There was no chance I was planning to spend the day skulking in Phelippes’s rooms while Joe was missing. ‘Look, I have an idea. Don’t go after Robin for now. I don’t think he’s guessed anyone suspects him yet, so he has no reason to run. I might be able to make him talk.’ The scene I had walked in on last night in Babington’s room, and the fact that Clara was alive: I guessed Robin would go to some lengths to stop Walsingham – or Ballard – finding out those little secrets. ‘Let me have one more day,’ I said. ‘The Queen is safe enough for now, as long as Bessie Pierrepont is kept out of her private chambers. Robin is the only one who can get Babington’s letter for us, with Gilbert gone. I promise if I haven’t found the child by tomorrow morning, you can go after Robin.’
‘You can leave Bessie Pierrepont to us. But we may not have another day. If Prado gets to Ballard before we get to Prado, the conspirators will scatter, and they might come for you on the way. We have spent months setting this up to get the words we need from Mary – we can’t let you mar it now.’
‘It won’t be me who mars it. You’re the one who’s missed two double agents under your nose.’
He flinched; criticism of his professional competence seemed to be the only thing that really stung him. ‘My orders are to send you to Leadenhall Street.’
I stood up, set my shoulders back and clenched my fists. ‘What are you going to do, Thomas, arrest me?’
He took a deep breath and looked me up and down as if he were seriously weighing up whether he could bundle me on to a horse. ‘Not personally, no. But if you refuse to stand down from the operation, I will report you to Master Secretary and he may well decide to send armed men for you. There is too much at stake.’
‘One more day, Thomas. I promise I can look after myself. Haven’t I always, in the past?’
‘As I recall, you have usually relied on Philip Sidney to get you out of trouble, and he is not here.’ Touché; he was right, and I was the one looking down in shame. He sucked in his cheeks. ‘Master Secretary won’t like it.’
‘Then don’t tell him.’
He lifted his eyebrows, as if such a breach of protocol was beyond the reach of his imagination. ‘Let’s say until the end of today. Report to me at midnight at Leadenhall Street. Regardless of what you have found out by then, if Robin Poole is not loyal to Her Majesty, then he is an immediate danger and must be contained. Or you will be.’
I hesitated, before nodding a curt agreement; it was the best I was likely to get. Ben put his head around the door of the tap-room to say the horse was ready; his eyes widened when he saw Phelippes.
‘Ah, Ben. Good. I need you to take some messages for me,’ the cryptographer said.
The boy’s gaze flitted anxiously to me. ‘But I have to go with him – he promised a shilling if I’m right—’
‘You’ll get your shilling, Ben,’ I said quickly, before Phelippes could ask what he was right about. ‘I’ll see you when I get back,’ I said in a low voice as I passed him. ‘Don’t tell him about the puzzle, or no shilling.’
He shot me a scornful look. ‘As if,’ he said. I smiled to myself on my way out to the yard; if there was anyone unlikely to be intimidated by Phelippes, it was Ben. I found myself unexpectedly disappointed not to have his company on the ride.
* * *
I took the road out through the Bishopsgate and past the Bedlam, as I had the other night when I followed Gifford to the theatre. Overhead the sky was a high blue chequered with small, scudding clouds, though there was a snippy wind that kept people in their jackets and hats, as if England couldn’t offer summer without a grudge. Before I reached The Curtain, I saw the sign I was looking for on the right-hand side and nudged the horse into the yard through the coach gates. The Half Moon was a run-down place, in need of a good coat of paint; the sort of inn you often saw on the outskirts of London, used by travellers who couldn’t afford to stay closer to the centre. I tied the horse to a hitching post, threw a coin to a stable boy and headed inside.
Though the tap-room was shabby, it was full, and a savoury smell of home cooking drifted through from the kitchen; to judge by its popularity, the food must be better than the décor would suggest. I found a table in a corner with upturned casks for seats, and looked around. A cheap copy of Queen Elizabeth’s portrait hung above the fireplace. It occurred to me as I sat there, with my Mediterranean face and my foppish Parisian c
lothes all screaming for the wrong kind of attention, that this was a spectacular waste of time. Ben’s say-what-you-see approach to solving a cipher was a child’s game, and while I chased after it like a fool, Joe was still missing, and Prado, Ballard and Walsingham’s armed guards might be, even now, tracking me down with the aim of spoiling my afternoon. I almost stood and left before anyone realised my folly – I would give Ben his shilling anyway, it was Walsingham’s money after all – but I reasoned that since I was here, and had missed my breakfast, I would at least stay for something to eat.
A broad-hipped woman with floury hands and a grubby apron wove her way with surprising agility between tables, plates balanced up her forearms. ‘Rose!’ she yelled, over her shoulder, at a volume that threatened to crack the plaster on the walls, as she set the food down in front of four men in work clothes nearby. ‘Go and wipe them tables out the back when you’ve brought these gentlemen their ale.’ I tried to follow the direction of her shout, but the room was too busy. I wished I could have seen Ben’s told-you-so expression. Turning to me, the tavern keeper smoothed her apron and moderated her tone. ‘What can I get you, love?’
I ordered bread and cold beef with a mug of small beer, and sat back to watch and wait.
When a serving girl brought the food to me, I kept my eyes on the table. As she set the plate down, I noted how the fingernails on both her hands were bitten down to the quick, to the point of drawing blood.
‘Anything else?’ she asked, forcing a note of brightness into a weary voice.
I reached out and closed a hand firmly but gently around her slim wrist.
‘No, thank you, Clara.’
The noise she made was as sharp and sudden as if she had stood on a splinter of glass; she snatched her arm away and I raised my head to look at her. For a brief moment she met my eye, and I saw a strikingly pretty face, pale with delicate bones and bow-shaped lips, and light greenish-brown eyes wild with fear. Perhaps Lotte had looked something like that, before her face was smashed. Clara’s famous auburn hair was all bound up and tucked under a white linen cap, and her figure was neat and trim under the shapeless grey dress and apron, no sign of a swelling belly yet. She wore a white linen scarf around her neck, presumably to hide the birthmark. It took her only a moment to master her shock, before she turned on her heel.
‘I’m a friend of Titch,’ I hissed, and she whipped back to me, eyes even wider. She pressed a finger to her lips and motioned to the yard with her head, holding up a hand with the fingers splayed to indicate five minutes. I left it two; I thought there was a good chance she might run.
But she hovered by a gate in the side wall that led out to a lane. I followed her and she pulled the gate to behind us. Her face was rigid with fear; either she didn’t believe me, or she thought I could only have come to bring bad news. She would have been right on both counts.
‘He told you I was here?’ Her voice was soft and educated, and I could hear the fear fighting with anger; I guessed he had sworn to keep it secret.
‘No. I worked it out all by myself, from your notes. I’m afraid I didn’t tell the truth, back there – I’m actually a friend of Frances Sidney.’
She breathed hard for a moment, then tried to slip past me; I caught her wrist again and held it harder this time.
‘I’ll scream,’ she said, glancing at the gate, her face bone white.
‘You do that. Bring your employer out here, she seems like a woman who keeps a respectable house and loves the Queen. Does she know Rose is the pregnant slut of a Catholic who plans to kill Her Majesty?’
She lifted her free hand to slap me; I grabbed her other wrist and she struggled, before the fight went out of her and tears sprung to her eyes.
‘Do you work for him?’ she asked, slumping against the wall when I let her go.
‘Who?’ I affected innocence.
‘You know who. Frances’s father.’
‘Yes. But it’s true that I am also her friend. And she has been going out of her mind with grief over your cruel murder. Did you not think how your little stunt would leave her?’
I could see that she was fighting to keep the tears under control. ‘I was going to write to her and explain. When everything was sorted out…’ she let the sentence fall away.
I could barely contain my incredulity. ‘Sorted out? Sweet infant Jesus, Clara – how exactly did you think this story was going to end? You bide your time here wiping tables until your lover sweeps you off to a lovely Catholic wedding before the baby starts to show, and then you get front row seats as man and wife at Mary Stuart’s coronation? Is that how you think it plays out? Where would Walsingham’s daughter be in that scenario?’
‘No.’ She pressed her knuckles into her eyes. ‘It was nothing to do with Mary Stuart – I knew that would never succeed. But he is going to marry me.’
‘He’s already betrothed to someone, as I understand. An heiress.’
‘He’s going to break it off with her, he’s writing to his parents—’
‘More pressingly, he’s on the cusp of being arrested for treason and carted off to Tyburn, so he won’t be marrying either of you. You’ll both be blowing kisses to his head on London Bridge.’
‘You know nothing about it.’ Though thick with tears, her voice was low and determined; I could have admired her resolve, if two people hadn’t already died for it.
‘Then why don’t you put me in the picture? Before anyone else is killed.’
‘Because I don’t know who you are, or whose side you’re on.’
I laughed. ‘No one in any of this mess knows whose side anyone else is on. Put it this way – at the moment, I’m one of a very few people who are aware that you’re not dead. If you want to keep it that way, you need to explain to me who the others are, and how exactly you thought this would play out when you decided to have another girl murdered so you could live happily ever after with Titch.’
She flinched as if I had struck her, and swallowed a sob. ‘I never agreed to that. I didn’t know that was the plan, I swear – I would never have wanted – but Robin said—’ She shook her head and dissolved into incoherent sobs; I was in danger of losing her, just as I was drawing close to the prize.
‘I need you to pull yourself together for me, Clara,’ I said, with a stern note in my voice. ‘What did Robin say?’
She looked up at me and I saw again that spark of terror in her eyes. ‘Does he know I’m here?’
I stared back, wrong-footed. ‘I don’t know – does he?’
‘I mean, did you tell him I was in Shoreditch? Did he see the notes too?’
I remembered Robin’s face when Phelippes had opened the secret compartment of the locket; I would have wagered that he had no idea the note was there, nor how to read it, but it would be a mistake to underestimate his capacity for deception. ‘Where does Robin think you are, if he doesn’t know you’re here?’ I asked, avoiding the question.
‘He thinks I’m on the road to my father’s cousin in Essex,’ she said. ‘He paid a wool merchant to take me on his cart. I paid the man double to let me out in Shoreditch and keep quiet about it – I couldn’t leave Titch. If Robin finds out I’m still in London, he’ll kill me. I mean—’ Her hand flew to her mouth as she realised what she had said.
‘No – he’d just kill someone else and pretend it was you,’ I said pointedly. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’
‘Goodwife Bailey will come looking for me in a moment, wondering why I’m shirking,’ she said, with an eye on the gate. ‘It’s the busiest time of day.’
‘Then you’ll have to talk fast,’ I said, barring her way.
She sighed. ‘I told Robin about the baby. God forgive me, I never should have said a word, but he was so vexed with me about Titch. He only brought me into the group in the first place so that—’ she stopped and bit her lip, careful of her brother’s secret.
‘So you could pretend to have a dalliance with Babington, to make sure Ballard and Walsingham d
idn’t realise it was actually Robin bedding him,’ I said bluntly. Her eyebrows nearly reached her hairline, but she nodded.
‘I see you know a lot. That shouldn’t surprise me, if you work for Sir Francis. That was the idea and I said I would do it to protect Robin, but I hadn’t counted on meeting Titch.’ Her eyes glazed over and I remembered what Frances had said about her dreamy expression. The boy must possess some subtle charm that had passed me by.
‘You fell in love with him?’
‘Completely. It was so unexpected, and it changed everything. Before, I’d have sworn I would do anything for Sir Francis – he’s been so good to me and Robin, he became my father when our father died, and Frances has been like a sister to me. I told him I would be proud to do my bit by bringing him information about the conspirators, but I was so naïve. I thought it would be a question of copying a few letters, reporting conversations. I don’t think I had really understood what it meant to be an informer.’
‘To become friends with people, earn their trust and their affection, trick them into confiding in you, so that you can betray them to the cruellest possible death?’ Walsingham had reminded me of the same reality. It had not been necessary; I remembered it all too well.
She gave one miserable nod. ‘I see you understand. Once I met Titch, I realised I couldn’t do it. I wanted to get out – but I wanted Titch out of it, too. He was never as fanatical for Mary Stuart’s cause as the others, he only went along with them at the beginning for Anthony’s sake. I thought with enough time I could persuade him it was a bad idea, without giving away that I’d been spying for Sir Francis.’ Her voice wound tighter and higher with distress. ‘But we didn’t have time – Robin said as soon as Sir Francis got the letter he needed from Mary, the whole group would be arrested. I wanted to warn Titch, but I knew he would tell Anthony, who would tell Ballard, and then I would be in danger, and Robin too. When I found out about the baby, I thought that might be reason enough for Titch to give up the conspiracy.’