The Locksmith's Daughter

by Karen Brooks

  ‘Are you well?’ he asked, gesturing for me to precede him down the narrow hall. Sounds of activity in other parts of the house carried. ‘You seem … different.’

  The second person to tell me that in almost a day. ‘Do I?’

  ‘You’re not as … contained as you usually appear. As if something’s happened and upset your equilibrium.’

  I shot him a look he didn’t return and chose not to respond. I suspected then he knew I’d attended the executions, a suspicion that was about to be confirmed.

  We entered the main room. It was empty of Sir Francis’s other employees; a couple of candles burned by Thomas’s desk, the hearth crackled. Paper covered every surface, and the cabinets and boxes lining the walls also overflowed.

  Thomas paused by his desk. ‘I think you know the way,’ he said.

  Sir Francis’s door was slightly ajar and as I approached I could see him through the gap. Unaware he was being observed, he sat behind his desk, a grimace of pain crossing his face as he reached for the cup beside him. He took a long drink and then refilled it. When he wasn’t controlling his features, they wore a permanently worried cast, as if bad news was imminent. His frown was profound, the lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth deep grooves. Resting his head in his hands briefly, he sat back and rubbed his eyes.

  I knocked gently.

  His head shot up. ‘Mallory, come in.’

  I shut the door behind me, and bobbed a small curtsey.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sir Francis, studying me as I took a seat. ‘It’s true then.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You attended the executions after I extracted a promise that you would not.’

  I met his gaze. ‘I did. I felt I had to, considering …’ I let what was unsaid hang in the air.

  ‘You mean the correction to Sledd’s dossier?’

  ‘Correction?’

  His eyes flickered.

  ‘Forgive my presumption, sir, but I would have thought “addition” more apt.’

  He rose and stared at me before exhaling a long sigh.

  ‘Why did you go to Tyburn?’

  ‘I … I … I went because I felt that as one of your agents, someone who helped bring Campion to justice, I should.’

  ‘As one of my agents, your first duty is to me.’ He struck the desk hard with his knuckles. I jumped. ‘Your first obedience is to me. Yet you flagrantly disobeyed my order and broke your promise.’

  I lowered my head. ‘I did break it. But —’ I said, raising my chin, fire in my belly, ‘I had to know. I had to understand why you altered the dossier, what punishment you guaranteed the priests by doing so.’

  ‘And?’

  I tried to speak, but the words would not come. My lower lip began to tremble. ‘And so I went and saw them meet their … their ends. I saw them hanged,’ I swallowed. ‘Drawn and then quartered.’ I shut my eyes as if to cancel the memories. ‘I hope never to see such a sight again.’

  With a gruff noise, Sir Francis resumed his seat. ‘This is why I expressly forbade you. It was not a sight I’d wish on anyone, least of all you.’

  I found it hard to look at him. ‘I do not understand why Campion had to die like that.’

  ‘As a lesson to those who would walk in his steps. If such a death is not a deterrent, then what is?’

  There was no arguing with that.

  ‘You were not there,’ I said after a while, accusing him.

  ‘No. I was not. I was with Her Majesty and, afterwards, Lord Nathaniel.’ At the mention of Lord Nathaniel, I started. ‘It was his lordship who revealed your presence at Tyburn.’

  ‘Lord Nathaniel?’

  ‘Aye. He was most displeased and saw fit to rebuke me that I would allow someone in my employ to witness such … such an event.’ He ran his fingers over some papers. ‘He said I needed to take better care of my servants, of my women.’ Offence radiated from Sir Francis. ‘My Lord Nathaniel was most direct on the subject.’

  I could only begin to imagine.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What could I say? I remained mute. In principle, his lordship was right. What he didn’t know was I saw no reason to doubt you. I believed you when you said you wouldn’t go. I do not take many at their word.’

  I studied my hands.

  ‘Mallory,’ he said softly. ‘Your promise is your bond to me. If you break it so easily, how can I trust you?’

  I stared at him. ‘If you alter documents, how can I trust you or what you ask me to do?’

  Sir Francis frowned. ‘Remember who you’re speaking to, child.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mister Secretary,’ I said quickly, lowering my head in a form of obeisance. My throat was dry.

  Sir Francis snorted.

  ‘Do you laugh at me, sir?’ I grew hot.

  ‘Aye and no,’ he said. ‘Truth be told, were you a man, I’d congratulate you and ask you to report what you heard and saw.’

  ‘Why do you not? Am I not your agent?’

  ‘Aye … But you are —’

  ‘A woman.’ I turned my head aside. I’d thought that, as a woman, I had qualities Sir Francis found useful and rare. Now he was just like other men, dismissing me.

  ‘I hadn’t finished,’ said Sir Francis quietly. I faced him again. ‘I was not going to say “woman”, I was going to say I would not ask that of … someone like you.’

  The air grew close. I found it hard to breathe. The way he looked at me … He stood and walked around the desk until there were only inches between us. Leaning against the desk, he placed a finger under my chin, lifted it, and stared deep into my eyes.

  Part of me wanted to run from the room and never come back, another part dared not move.

  ‘What do you mean, like me?’ I whispered.

  He hesitated. ‘I mean …’ he began, then he released me. ‘It matters not.’ Heaving himself off the desk, he went to the fire, picked up the poker and prodded the embers.

  I released the breath I’d been holding. It matters not? What did that mean? The man was under no obligation to me … But what about my parents? What did he owe them that he cared about my well-being? Cared whether I witnessed the deaths at Tyburn? Why had Papa sought his help? Why had he never mentioned this man?

  ‘Sir Francis,’ I began. ‘May I ask you something?’

  ‘It depends,’ he said slowly.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether or not I want to answer.’ He turned around, the poker in his hand like a weapon. Seeing my eyes widen, he rested it against the fireplace. ‘What do you wish to ask?’

  ‘I … I want to know how it is that until that night I met you in the workshop, Papa and Mamma had never made mention of you … Why you never visited us despite being an old friend of Papa’s.’

  His eyes took on a distant look, as if he were taking an inventory of the past and choosing which sections to share with me. He picked up his cup and swilled the contents a few times. His lips moved, the words so soft I barely caught them.

  ‘Perchance it’s time the truth was out.’ He raised his head and looked at me hard, as if seeing me for the first time. ‘You want the truth of my friendship with your Papa?’ There was a challenge in his voice.

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Even if it means learning it was built on the greatest of lies?’

  I inhaled sharply. What had I begun? I stared at him. I teetered over an abyss. If I took one more step, I would tumble into the void and there’d be no turning back.

  ‘Even so …’ I said faintly.

  With a sigh that came from the very depths of his being, Sir Francis put down his cup and, much to my astonishment, dropped on one knee before me, like a nobleman paying court to his lady. He took my hands in his own warm ones, stroking my fingers, rubbing my palms with his thumbs. The actions were so unexpected, so out of character, I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the cap perched on the back of his head, my breath coming quickly. The scent of cloves, lavender and a flat muskiness re
ached me. I wanted to pull my hands away, lift my skirts and run from the room, yet I did not dare.

  Just when I thought he would not speak, he lifted his chin. He was such a serious person, with his swarthy skin and dark grey eyes that saw everything. A man who never stopped thinking; who knew his mind and the minds of others, oft before they did. A man who’d risen from nowhere to become one of the most feared and powerful people in the country.

  ‘Your father and I were once the best of friends,’ he began. ‘So much so, when I left England during Bloody Mary’s reign, I followed him to Italy.’

  So, their acquaintance spanned years …

  ‘By the time I arrived, it was to discover that your father …’ He chuckled. ‘Well, let’s just say he’d met a fiery, beautiful Italian — a locksmith’s daughter no less.’ His fingers tightened on my hand. ‘Valentina.’

  I rarely thought about Mamma being a locksmith’s daughter as well. It was something she never wanted for me. The thought made me sad. She wanted no resemblance between us.

  ‘Valentina had a sister.’

  ‘Lucia,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, Lucia.’ Her name was a sigh upon his lips. ‘Lucia Zucchero — the sweetest of lights.’ He was no longer in the room, but back in Padua. ‘Upon meeting her, I fell in love.’

  I could not have been more startled had Sir Francis broken into song. ‘With my aunt?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Papa never said. Never. Mamma neither.’

  He lowered his head and raised it again. ‘I loved her with all my heart. My love; my light.’ A look of sadness crossed his face; he dropped my hands and stood.

  I wanted to offer solace, but was uncertain how. ‘Aunt Lucia … she died … ’ I gulped. ‘In childbirth.’

  ‘Aye. She did.’ He took a deep breath. ‘With my child.’

  Oh dear Lord. I had to resist the urge to throw my arms about him, comfort him. It would not be seemly. I knotted my fingers together in my lap.

  I glanced at the picture of his daughter Mary on his desk. She had been eight years old when she died. Sir Francis had lost not only Lucia, his love, and the baby they’d conceived together, but his first wife, two step-sons and Mary as well. Why, grief had visited this poor man over and over.

  Had Lucia lived, he would have been my uncle. Uncle Francis. A wild laugh began to build and I struggled hard to contain it. No wonder he cared what happened to me; no wonder Papa sought his help. They’d once been so close, loved sisters, been through so much pain and loss. Bonds would have been made, bonds that time would test but never break. Ensuring his daughter was not lost to him as well, Papa had sought Sir Francis’s help and confided in him, his old friend.

  But how was this a great lie that undid the truth? For certes, he loved, had a babe out of wedlock, but had he not paid for that sin in the most terrible of ways? Had not my aunt? Did Mamma and Papa blame him for Lucia’s death and no longer want him in their lives? Had they expunged him completely until Papa felt he had no choice?

  I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. His breathing, which had become ragged, steadied, as did my own. The fire spat and the two candles on the desk guttered.

  ‘Thank you for trusting me with this, Sir Francis,’ I said softly. ‘I am so, so sorry. I will pray for you and my aunt and your child.’ He didn’t move. Uncomfortable now, I searched for something to say. ‘I can assure you, your secret is safe.’

  He raised his head just as my eyes alighted on the miniature of Mary on his desk.

  Following the direction of my gaze, Sir Francis reached for the tiny portrait and closed his fingers around it. ‘Pray? For me and Lucia? Aye, you do that, Mallory. I thank you for that. As for our child, pray for her too. But you have nothing to be sorry about.’ He gave a bark of despair. His tone became odd, harsh. ‘You see, despite what you were told, Lucia’s child lived.’

  ‘Lived?’ What was this?

  I could no longer hear what Sir Francis was saying. A clamour began in my head, growing louder and louder. I drove my fingers into my temples, trying to ease the noise, prevent the intrusion of the inexplicable notion that battered the edge of my mind.

  His eyes fastened upon me. ‘Think, Mallory, think.’ His words penetrated the cacophony in my skull. ‘Remember your training. Watch, listen, report.’

  I frowned, trying to recall everything I’d been told about Lucia, the babe, about our life in Italy. ‘Mamma and Papa said the little girl died with her Mamma. That was the reason they came to England — Queen Mary was dead and Mamma could not bear the sadness of having lost her little sister and her niece. She wanted a new beginning, even if it meant abandoning her home and faith.’

  Not that she’d kept that part of her promise …

  ‘And …?’ urged Sir Francis. ‘What else? Remember, I said the child survived …’

  I thought of all the times Mamma would exclaim that what I did with locks wasn’t natural, ‘Nothing about her is.’ How she would call me his daughter, never her own. The distance she maintained between us, that Papa said existed only in my imagination, until the breech was so great not even he or Angela could deny it. How keen Mamma was to have me married and out from under her roof …

  I thought of Papa asking Sir Francis for help in finding me employment. You must, Francis, he’d said. If not you, then who? I’ve nowhere else to turn, no-one else to whom I trust her welfare. Only you. I’d been horrified he’d confided my secret, the truth of my behaviour and loss of face to this man. The stranger he addressed as an old friend.

  Then I remembered the boat ride to Deptford and how Master Francis Mylles’s wife had carelessly remarked on the resemblance between myself and Frances Walsingham, assuming we were sisters … Sisters …

  Oh dear sweet Jesus.

  My eyes flew to the picture in Sir Francis’s palm. His fingers had opened and I saw a pair of large eyes, dark hair and sallow skin.

  The room grew suddenly smaller. My fingers clutched at my throat. No. No. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible … Memories rushed into my head, a dissonance of sounds and images. All the while Sir Francis stared at me as if he would steal my thoughts.

  I gazed back into those dark orbs, looked more closely at the long nose, the swarthy skin and silver-streaked dark hair and saw only a mirror that, after all these years, reflected the truth back to me. A truth as implausible as it was extraordinary.

  He replaced the painting on the desk, turned to face me and waited.

  ‘It can’t be …’ I said. ‘How is it possible? Papa —?’

  ‘Is not your father.’ Sour little words that held a lifetime within them. ‘I am.’

  It was as if a huge wall of water slammed into me, sucking me down into the depths of an ocean, rolling me about in its wake. I could not find my feet, I could not see the surface. I rose to leave and staggered but Sir Francis Walsingham, Mister Secretary, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, caught me and with a slow deliberation I no longer wanted to resist, pulled me into his embrace.

  ‘You’re my daughter, Mallory Bright.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  SEETHING LANE, LONDON

  The 2nd of December, Anno Domini 1581

  In the 24th year of the reign of Elizabeth I

  The roaring in my ears, the spinning in my head as my world tipped upon its axis before righting itself again gradually diminished. I became aware of the press of velvet against my cheek, the beating of Sir Francis’s heart, as rapid as my own. His long arms felt strange around me. His fingers splayed against one shoulder and he held the back of my head. I wasn’t sure how to extricate myself without causing offence, but I needed more answers.

  Sensing my discomfort, Sir Francis withdrew and, with a fleeting smile, poured me a drink. His hand trembled slightly as he passed it over.

  ‘Here,’ he said, and then busied himself lighting more candles and tossing more wood on the fire. I watched him, sipping the claret gratefully. The warmth of the wine spread through my body but failed to soothe
my mind, which was galloping like a horse on the green.

  Sir Francis topped up his cup and mine before easing himself back into his chair.

  ‘So, what do you want to know, my daughter?’ he asked, his eyes crinkling. He appeared more at ease now, certainly more relaxed than I felt.

  He called me daughter. It was a foreign word to come from his tongue. And yet … this man, Mister Secretary Walsingham, was my father.

  Dear God.

  ‘Everything.’ I sat back and tried to pretend my shoulders weren’t tight, my neck held in a vice. I affected nonchalance — what else could I do? — and did it in such a way I would have made a courtier envious.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But not before I send Thomas with a note to your … to Gideon, explaining I’m keeping you late and will see you home safe.’

  Home … Verily, I no longer knew what that meant … Grateful for his consideration and the precious time it allowed us, it was a few minutes before we were alone again. Then Sir Francis sat forward.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will tell you everything.’

  Words poured from his mouth, words that told a story. His story. My story. Not the one I’d been raised with, which I had repeated as one does a favourite tale, each retelling cementing the details further. What I had been told was but a fanciful account woven over the years, repaired occasionally when it frayed, but false. Even so, I loved it in the way the familiar is loved and the unknown feared. Listening to Sir Francis, I was forced to staunch the terror stalking me and to be brave enough to plant this new identity and allow it to take root. He began in the years before my birth … in Italy.

  In 1553, along with many other Protestant exiles from Queen Mary’s England, Sir Francis left his homeland for the safety of Italy and enrolled at the University of Padua. He joined his friends from Cambridge, the brothers Gideon and Timothy Bright, who were also students there. By the time Sir Francis arrived, Gideon had already met and planned to marry Valentina Zucchero, the gorgeous daughter of the locksmith, after he finished his degree. When he was introduced to Valentina’s sister, Lucia, for the first time in his life Sir Francis fell in love.