Conspiracy

by Stephanie Merritt

  The Duke’s eyes grew cold. ‘Never use the word must to me, Bruno. Perhaps I can do something for your friends, when you’ve told me what’s in this message to Francis Walsingham.’ He nodded to the paper on the desk.

  ‘You see, we fear you may have said something disobliging about us,’ Paget added, in a pleasant tone, standing close behind me so that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

  ‘General observations only,’ I said, keeping my eyes fixed on Guise. ‘I mention the death at the Tuileries ball, the King’s present illness. I say that the city is restless since no one has been brought to justice for the priest’s murder. I ask him for money. That is all.’

  Paget laughed softly at my back. ‘I wish you luck with that last one. But it’s hard to see why any of that should require such an urgent dispatch as you have demanded. We’d be happier if you’d copy out the cipher and then translate this letter in full, word for word, so we have a more precise understanding.’

  ‘I do not have the cipher here. It’s extremely complex.’

  ‘No doubt,’ he murmured. ‘But you are an expert in the art of memory, so I’m sure you have committed it to the great map of your mind. You only wrote the thing two days ago, after all.’

  ‘What does it matter? You are holding the only copy in your hand. All you need do is destroy it, if you fear its contents.’

  ‘If only we could trust you in that regard, Bruno. But you are a slippery fish. You might have made a copy, or passed on the contents to some other messenger as a safeguard. That’s why we need to verify what you have said.’

  ‘I will give you some time to think it over,’ Guise cut in, gesturing towards the door. I turned to see Paget open it to admit two men-at-arms. ‘If I have a full and honest translation of that letter by dawn, your actor friends will come to no harm. Paget, accompany my guest to his quarters, would you? Reunite him with his old acquaintance.’ He made a short, barking sound that might have been laughter.

  I looked at him for some clue to his meaning, cold with fear at the suggestion that he had already brought in someone known to me, perhaps as another means of bargaining. Francesco, or one of the others? Sophia? Surely he would not dare detain anyone with connections, such as Jacopo or Gabrielle? But he had already returned his attention to his papers; he raised his head briefly to nod at the armed men, who closed in on either side and marched me swiftly back into the corridor. Paget followed, swirling a cloak over his shoulders.

  ‘I rather fear your luck has run out, Bruno,’ he murmured, in English, as we were led into a snow-shrouded courtyard lit by flickering torches. ‘You’d be wise to tell him what he wants to know voluntarily – he will have it from you one way or another. I don’t think I can help you this time.’

  ‘I would not expect you to,’ I said quietly, stumbling over a drift of snow as I was shoved forward. ‘I was never persuaded that we were on the same side, Paget.’

  ‘And yet, in a strange way we always were, despite our difference of religion,’ he mused, quickening his pace so that he walked alongside me as we approached a row of outbuildings where I could see two more armed men stamping their feet outside a door. ‘You are a spy, as I am. You should not take any of this personally—’ he motioned to the guards. ‘It’s one of the hazards of the enterprise. We court danger knowingly, you and I. But I will tell you this.’ He planted himself in front of me and pointed a finger in my face, bringing us to an abrupt halt; the guards exchanged glances, but decided to defer to his authority and waited. ‘I know how you regard me, Bruno,’ Paget said. ‘You think me a mere mercenary, with no higher motive than profit, and that allows you to believe yourself superior to me – you who grub about in the sewers of intelligence work out of a lofty sense of principle. Am I mistaken?’

  I said nothing, only returned his stare, impassive.

  ‘I know more about honour than a man like you could ever hope to understand,’ he continued, undeterred. ‘I am the son of a baron. My father was secretary to Henry the Eighth, and since childhood I have watched my family name torn to shreds and ground into the dirt under the heels of Protestant councillors who were not worthy to empty my father’s privy. If you think me a cynic in matters of religion, you could not be more mistaken. My faith is my honour. The two cannot be separated. I am an Englishman and a Catholic, and all the work I do here is so that one day I may stand on my native soil without being forced to choose between them.’

  ‘I would applaud that moving speech if my hands were free,’ I said. His expression hardened.

  ‘Monsieur, we have to take the prisoner in,’ one of the guards said apologetically. He, at least, had given up the pretence that I was being treated as a guest.

  ‘Take him away. I have nothing more to say to him.’ Paget gestured towards the low brick building where the guards stamped their feet and blew on their fingers outside the door. As we approached, I heard a low, wordless moaning from within, like the bellowing of a wounded bull. The men on the door pointedly did not look in the direction of this sound, save for the occasional darting glance, tinged with fear. I looked down and saw that the snow around the door was churned up and stained pink. Paget snapped his fingers towards the guards; the one who slid back the bolts recoiled as he did so.

  The noise swelled horribly as the door swung open and the reek of hot blood hit my nostrils through the clean, icy air. Inside, a lantern swung from a beam in the ceiling; though the candle inside had almost burned down, there was enough light to make out a series of shapes hanging from the rafters, swaying on their hooks as if with some slow rhythm of their own, lifeless limbs dangling like pendulums. My initial terror subsided as I saw that the room was a cold store, hung with the carcasses of deer for the winter. The channels cut into the floor showed that it was also a slaughterhouse, indeed had been used for that purpose very recently, as the drains ran scarlet with fresh blood. I clenched my teeth and prayed that it was an animal, but the sound had already led me to expect the worst.

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ I breathed, standing in the doorway, as my eyes adjusted enough for me to understand what I was looking at.

  Hanging from the central hook, between the carcasses, was a person, or what remained of one. On the floor beneath him a pool of blood had spread from the stumps of his limbs where his hands and feet had recently been cut off and bound with dirty tourniquets. His face was also covered with blood, though I could see he had lost an eye, and when he opened his mouth to howl again, I realised his tongue had been cut out, so that all he could utter were those gurgling, inhuman cries. He was suspended by a rope tied around his chest and strung under his arms.

  ‘You know this man, I believe,’ Paget said, but his voice was quiet and tight; even his flippancy withered in the face of such horror. My stomach heaved and the guard to my right had to catch me and hold me upright as my knees buckled and I slumped against him, though this was largely from relief. I did recognise this mutilated creature, but it was none of the people I had feared to see. The crust of blood over his features did not disguise the growth on his cheek. I was looking at the gaoler from the Conciergerie.

  ‘I fear this was meant as a cautionary tale,’ Paget murmured, still subdued. ‘Guise wants you to understand what happens to those who fail to do what he asks of them.’

  ‘Don’t put me in there.’ My throat had dried and my words came out in a thin croak. ‘Please, Paget. By all that is holy—’

  The gaoler convulsed with the effort of his cries. Paget shook his head as if absolving himself of responsibility.

  ‘This is Guise’s house, and you are here at his pleasure. These are not my methods, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s up to you now, Bruno. I advise you to tell him everything he wants to know while you still have your tongue, and you may yet save yourself. It’s too late for this one.’ He gestured towards the gaoler with the toe of his boot. ‘I told you there would come a day when you would wish you’d answered when I asked you nicely.’

  ‘Is Guise let
ting him bleed out like an animal? Is that the idea?’

  ‘He won’t be allowed to die,’ Paget said, without emotion. ‘That would be too merciful. He’ll be dumped before dawn at a leper chapel somewhere outside the city. Let the nuns take him in. Guise has left him one eye so he can see the disgust on people’s faces for the rest of his life as he tries to beg for alms. See the children scream and run away at his approach.’ He turned to me, his eyes unexpectedly candid. ‘Don’t be a fool any longer, Bruno. Guise could do the same to you without breaking a sweat, before the bells sound the next hour. He would make sure even your own mother wouldn’t recognise your corpse. This wretch is here to make sure you know it. Swallow your pride and throw yourself on his mercy. It’s all you can do.’

  ‘But he will kill me anyway,’ I said, my voice thinned almost to nothing.

  ‘That is between you and him now,’ Paget said. Then, to my amazement, he reached out and clasped my shoulders with both hands, a brief and thoroughly English attempt at an embrace, more expressive in its reserve than any full-bodied Italian bear-hug; that one gesture told me with absolute certainty that he expected me to die.

  Paget walked away towards the house without looking back, though I called after him; I was pushed, still protesting, into the storeroom with the mutilated gaoler and heard the bolt slide home behind me.

  The sound he made was interminable; a raw moan with no accent or syllable, a low, shapeless, animal howl of pain that poured from his ruined mouth along with the flow of blood. I walked the edge of the room over bloodstained straw, shouldering past the headless bodies of animals, until I found a row of straw bales against the far wall. I sat down and tried not to look at him but it was impossible to wrench my gaze away; the way he swung back and forth between the swaying carcasses, fixing me with his one remaining eye every time he moved into view, trying to lift one bloodied stump of a wrist towards me in a gesture of pleading. I huddled into Gabrielle’s cloak, breathing in its fragrance as a defence against the overpowering smell of blood and tried to gather my thoughts through the noise. I could tell Guise everything I knew about the murders, including my conclusions about Catherine and my belief that Joseph de Chartres’s killer was someone at court, even if I did not yet know who. Would that be enough to appease him? I doubted it; I had defied him too many times for him to let me live, for the sake of his honour. Royal protection was the only thing that might save me, if Catherine or Henri were prepared to bargain for my life; Jacopo might guess that I had gone to plead for the Gelosi when he woke and found me missing, but that would not be until the next morning, and the day would be well advanced before he could get word to the Louvre and track me down. Guise had given me until dawn. No one was coming for me. I would have to save myself.

  I cast my eyes around the walls in the dim light. There were no windows, though a fierce draught blew in through the rafters from the thatched roof overhead. The only door was the one through which we had entered, now bolted on the outside and guarded by two armed men. My wrists were still bound, but the cord was thin enough that I hoped it could be severed, if only I could find something sharp-edged. The candle in the lantern guttered behind smeared glass and I thought I caught a flicker of movement in the reflection. I whipped around and craned my neck to see a pale shape above me, hunched and watchful, sidestepping on the rafters, piercing eyes in white feathers. I flinched at its talons, but after a few minutes the owl evidently decided there was nothing to hold her attention here and vanished into a corner of the roof before I heard her screech rising into the air outside.

  I stood on a bale and peered up to see where she had disappeared. This was where the draught was coming from; there must be a hole in the thatch. My pulse quickened; if it was big enough for an owl, perhaps it could be worked on until it would fit a smallish man. I jumped down and kicked the bale until it was directly under an empty meat hook. When I climbed up again, I could just reach my arms high enough to catch the bonds on the point; it was slow work and painful – I tore my skin repeatedly – but eventually I had frayed the rope enough to pull one strand apart and loosen the others until my hands were free. I glanced at the door but it remained firmly closed. I could only hope that the ghastly sight of my fellow prisoner would be sufficient deterrent to keep the guards outside.

  Before I could lose my nerve, I began to drag all the bales of straw together as quietly as I could and pile them up in the corner directly under the gap where the owl had vanished. Through the forest of hanging animals the gaoler glimpsed what I was doing and took up his keening with renewed force. I could not tell if he was shouting encouragement or trying to alert the guards, but the end result would be the same. I hissed at him to be quiet, though I was not sure he even heard me. I heaved the last bale up and judged the stack high enough for me to attempt to reach the roof beams, just as his pitch and volume increased to a frenzy and was answered by a furious banging on the door. I froze, dreading that the guard would open the door and see my makeshift steps.

  ‘Shut that fucking noise or I’ll come in there and shut it for you,’ shouted a rough voice from outside.

  ‘How? They’ve already cut his tongue out,’ I called in response.

  ‘I’ll cut yours out as well if you don’t pack it in,’ the guard yelled back, through the door. It was an empty threat; he could do nothing without Guise, but it would not help me if he chose to relieve his boredom by coming in to remind me that he was in charge. I decided to do as I was told. I fought my way back through the carcasses to the grotesque body suspended from the central beam, forced myself to look up at his mutilated face and pressed a finger to my lips. But even in the fading light I could tell that he barely saw me; the stumps of his limbs were still bleeding profusely, despite the tourniquets that had been tied, I guessed, by men whose expertise was learned on the battlefield. Gradually his cries grew weaker and his spasms stilled as his head slumped on to his chest. I doubted he would last the night. Though I would not have wished his fate on any man, it was hard not to recall how the gaoler had used the same words to me when I was in the oubliette, nor the leering contempt in the way he had laughed at his prisoner’s distress, with his tiny shred of power. How slippery our grasp on our position in the world, I thought. But I intended to hang on to mine a little longer. As I stood watching him, the lone candle in the lantern flickered and died, plunging the room into blackness.

  I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust. The place seemed all the more sinister now, the dead deer solid black shapes against a deeper dark, their cold flesh thudding against me as I stumbled back to the far corner and scaled my stack of straw bales until I could almost reach the roof beam overhead. I could just distinguish it from the surrounding shadows; I would have to jump to catch hold, and if I fell, the guards would surely hear. I screwed up my courage and launched myself upwards, managing to hook my hands around the beam, though the pile of bales tumbled to the floor with the force of the movement and I swung there for a few moments, afraid to move in case the sound had alerted the men outside. But the door remained shut; I released my breath, tensed and swung my legs up to fasten my ankles around the beam. I was fortunate that it was solid oak, made strong enough to bear the weight of dead meat. I pulled myself up until I was sitting astride it and shunted along by inches, feeling my way to the corner where the wall met the sloping edge of the roof. Here I could breathe in ice-edged night air through a hole where the thatch had rotted, though when I reached up and groped around I found that the gap was far too small for anything much bigger than an owl to pass through. But the roof was in poor repair, and a handful came away in my fist when I grasped it. Leaning in and gripping the beam with my left hand, I began to tear away at the reeds, ignoring the pain as they sliced my palm and my numb fingers, terrified that someone would see what I was doing from outside or that one of the guards would open the door to check on us. After a few minutes, I had pulled away a hole large enough to poke my head through.

  Outside I could see nothing except
the ink-blue of the sky above me and the snow on the sloping roof of the building all around. There was no way of knowing if anyone would see me emerge, but I had no choice left; at least this way I would die trying to save myself. But I realised I could not fit through the gap still wearing Gabriel’s fur cloak; reluctantly I unfastened it and let it fall to the floor. I manoeuvred my legs so that my feet were braced against the beam and pushed hard against it, forcing one arm and shoulder through the hole as the wet reeds broke away. I had almost squeezed my torso through when I heard another shuddering groan from the gaoler below me, followed by the sound of cursing and the scrape of a bolt being driven back. I had only a few moments; I clawed frantically at the thatch around my chest, then pushed with the flat of my hand on the roof either side, using all my strength to lever myself through. I drew my legs up just as I heard the door open below me. It would take the guard a minute or two to realise in the darkness that one of his prisoners was missing – or so I hoped. I eased along the snow-laden roof towards the back of the building and saw that ten or twelve feet beyond it lay the boundary wall of the grounds. I dug my heels in, sliding to a precarious halt at the edge of the roof just as staccato shouts rang through the air below. I calculated; I would have to launch myself from the edge of the roof on to the wall and without the advantage of a running start I was not sure I could jump the distance – to say nothing of the difficulty of landing on a narrow wall that was visible only thanks to the pale line of snow along its crenellations. The shouting below grew louder; glancing down, I saw that one of the guards had appeared around the edge of the building and was calling to the other. Any minute now he would look up and see me. I took a deep breath, tensed every muscle into a crouch and sprang forward into the air, as a wild cry went up behind me. The snow on the wall glittered with extraordinary clarity as I hurtled towards it, legs flailing; in an instant, my fingers made contact with the stone and scrabbled for purchase, almost slipping as I clawed on to soft snow, but I clung on by my fingertips, bracing with my feet against the wall until I could pull myself up to the top and drop down on the other side.