Conspiracy

by Stephanie Merritt

  ‘Guise will not accept that.’

  ‘I think he will, in the end. My mother intends to negotiate with him. She proposes to offer the League a number of concessions that will encourage him to forget about the priest and the friar. I have agreed and given her authority to do so.’

  ‘What about Balthasar?’

  ‘Banished from my household and my wife’s. I have been firm about that. He was spying on me anyway. There was always something shifty about him.’ Henri stretched out his legs and contemplated the buckles of his shoes.

  ‘I mean to say – will he not be punished for the two murders?’

  He let out a long sigh and shifted in his seat to look at me from beneath lowered brows. ‘If you mean in the sense of tried and executed, then no. That would be impossible, for the reasons I have already explained. And because I have made a treaty with my mother. His freedom for yours.’

  ‘Mine?’ I blinked at him. ‘I haven’t murdered anyone.’

  ‘You should know Catherine well enough to realise that is neither here nor there. You have seriously inconvenienced her. People who do that tend not to last long, as we have seen.’ He sat forward and beckoned me to the chair beside him. ‘I have told her that if any harm should come to you, I will strike her immediately from my royal council. That would be worse than banishment to Catherine, to be denied her say in the running of the kingdom. She knows I am deadly serious.’

  You are deadly serious now, I thought, taking my seat. But she also knows well that you are a man of mercurial temper, and the righteous anger you feel today will soon be forgotten. You will not defy her to defend me for ever. Instead, I said:

  ‘That is a relief. Now I need only worry about the Duke of Guise trying to kill me.’

  ‘I’ve asked her to speak to Guise about you.’ He pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. ‘Tell him you are under royal protection. Don’t worry – you will be part of her negotiations.’

  I did not find this greatly reassuring; Catherine was entirely capable of striking a private bargain with Guise to get rid of me in some way which would not implicate her, regardless of Henri’s instructions. She might consider that an ideal solution. Even if, by some miracle, Guise agreed to leave me alone, that still did not solve the problem of Paget and Stafford and the fact that they suspected me of uncovering their dealings.

  ‘Thank you, Your Majesty,’ I said, without much conviction.

  ‘I will lend you one of my bodyguards for the time being,’ he added, as if he guessed at the tenor of my thoughts. ‘And, Bruno—’ he leaned across and rested a hand on my wrist. ‘I know what you have risked for my sake, to do this thing I asked of you. Neither of us could have foreseen where it would lead. Some men would have chosen to make their own lives easier by keeping the information to themselves.’

  ‘I have never perfected the art of making my life easier.’

  He looked at me with a sad smile. ‘That is because you are cursed with integrity. But I know you also did it in the hope of reward. You are neither a fool nor a saint.’

  ‘Your Majesty, I—’

  ‘No need to deny it. You want patronage. Of course you do. And I will keep my word. When I am well, I will think on what I may do for you. For now—’

  ‘That book,’ I blurted, before he could change the subject. ‘The one she bought from the English girl. She said she wanted me to decipher it, but that was before. But I would still do it, without payment, if you could tell her—’

  He nodded. ‘I will see what I can do.’

  ‘One more thing—’

  A crease appeared between his brows; he did not like bargaining. I pressed on, quickly.

  ‘The Gelosi. The Duchess of Montpensier is holding them in her house, as punishment for my breaking in – though I did not steal anything from her, as she believes. They are supposed to travel to Lyon today, but I fear she will not release them without a royal command.’

  ‘Christ’s wounds, that woman.’ He grasped the carved armrests and heaved himself to his feet. ‘She is another who has ambitions to rule France. Her brother should rein her in. Believe me, I know about wilful sisters,’ he added darkly. ‘I will send soldiers for the players right away – she needs to learn that she cannot make her own laws in my kingdom. God save us from women with dreams of power, eh, Bruno?’

  I bowed my head in assent so he could not see me smiling.

  ‘On that note,’ he said, pulling his robe around him, ‘I am going to visit my wife. There is one who has been nothing but obedient and kind to me.’ A brief look of remorse passed over his face. ‘I may not have been much of a husband to her, but by God, I will protect her from my mother’s schemes while I still breathe. That much at least I can do.’ He stepped down from the edge of the dais and paused, his eyes on the floor. ‘Do you think, Bruno, if I had been more attentive to my wife, those three people would not now be dead?’

  ‘You cannot blame yourself, sire,’ I said, though it seemed unusually perceptive of him to say so. ‘It does no good to speculate.’

  ‘No. Look ahead, my mother always says. Still,’ he said, brightening, ‘there is always Ruggieri’s prophecy. Perhaps, when my strength is recovered and the Queen is well again, it may yet come true.’ He looked at me as if seeking confirmation.

  ‘First time for everything,’ I said.

  He smiled briefly, though it didn’t touch his eyes, and his expression darkened. ‘I cannot help but wish it had been allowed to live, Bruno. The child. I know they say it was probably not mine, but it might have been, you see. That’s the point. There was a chance.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘I suppose when it comes to the heir to the throne, a chance is not good enough. Besides, could you have lived with that – always wondering? Thinking every time you looked at it, that it might be Guise’s?’

  ‘Perhaps I am ignorant, but I always imagined a man would somehow just know. You would feel some … instinct. Don’t you think?’

  I closed my eyes briefly and tried to picture a two-year-old girl called Béatrice, running through a garden in Ligny. Would I just know, if I saw her? I could not imagine her as any more than a blur of colour; I hardly knew what two-year-olds did. ‘I have no idea, Your Majesty.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t suppose you do,’ he said, walking away, his mind already elsewhere.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘He died in his sleep, about two o’clock this morning.’ Jacopo poured another glass of wine and pushed a bowl of hot chestnuts towards me. ‘I was with him. It was a blessed release. I know that is usually said to make everyone feel better, but in this case it was the truth.’

  I pressed a fist against my mouth. Two days since my ill-judged confrontation at the palace and I had heard nothing from the King, until a messenger had arrived from Jacopo on the morning of the 12th, asking me to call on him. I had meant to go sooner and see the Count – I was feeling guilty that I had not thought of him with the events of the past few days – but I had not expected to arrive too late.

  ‘I should have acted as soon as I knew about him. I should not have left him there. Perhaps he would have had a better chance.’ Tears burned at the back of my eyes, unbidden, though they were as much for myself as for him.

  ‘Always so hard on yourself, Bruno,’ Jacopo said gently. ‘He was near to the end. A few days more would not have saved him. You gave him a great gift at the end of his life.’

  ‘He never did get to feel the sun on his face.’ I looked away, swiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

  ‘Because of you, he died in a warm bed, with as little pain as possible and a friend to hold his hand, instead of in that pit among the rats. It was nothing short of a miracle. He said as much. He said God would reward you.’

  ‘I think God will probably take it as a downpayment against my considerable deficit.’

  Jacopo laughed. ‘Well, let’s consider a more quantifiable reward.’ He stood and rummaged in a dim corner of his study, returning with a small wooden chest tha
t rang with the pleasing metallic slide of coins as he moved. ‘The King sent this for you. In recompense for your troubles.’ He shook the box for effect and placed it in my lap. ‘There should be enough there to cover your debts and keep you comfortable for a while.’

  I set it on his desk. ‘Take from it what you need to pay the physician and funeral expenses for the Count.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Bruno. I am more than happy to cover the doctor’s bill. As for the burial – Catherine has that in hand. She wants him interred quietly. His family think he died years ago – there seems little sense in disabusing them.’

  I took a chestnut and began to peel it. ‘She doesn’t want to have to explain how he came to be in a royal prison at Guise’s expense for thirteen years without anyone noticing.’

  ‘In truth, it would raise awkward questions.’ He sat down at his desk and unlocked a drawer. ‘The King gave me something else for you. Here.’ He passed over a slim rectangular object wrapped in crimson velvet.

  My pulse leapt in my throat. I unfolded the cloth to reveal the dull and shabby leather bindings of the lost book of Hermes Trismegistus. I smoothed a hand over the cover as lovingly as if it were the head of a baby and looked up at Jacopo, a question in my eyes.

  ‘He bought it back from Catherine. I don’t know how he persuaded her – that is between them. But it is his gift to you. Because he cannot give you what he knows you really want.’

  ‘No royal appointment, then.’ I tried not to betray my disappointment.

  ‘He says it would be politic for you to stay away from the court for a while. But he has secured you a teaching position at the Collège de Cambrai, if you want it. Lecturing in philosophy and theology.’ He hesitated. ‘I know it’s not what you hoped for, but you would be paid well and I don’t suppose the hours would be too exacting. It would give you a reason to stay in Paris, if that is still what you want.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I covered the book again and laid both hands flat over it in my lap. ‘I had thought of going back to England. There is business I must attend to there.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ His great eyebrows knitted together with concern. ‘Would you be safe there?’

  ‘Probably safer than in Paris.’

  ‘Really? Even with Simon?’

  I gave him a tired smile. ‘I can’t have Simon following me around for the rest of my life.’

  Simon was the bodyguard Henri had detailed to look after me, one of his own forty-five strong men and true; an affable six-footer from the Languedoc, of few words but reassuringly huge fists, who now accompanied me everywhere with his broadsword hanging ostentatiously at his side. He made me feel oddly claustrophobic, though he had charmed away the resistance of Madame de la Fosse, who had set up a temporary bed for him in the downstairs hallway so he could watch the door at night, and had taken to feeding him elaborate baked goods in return for odd jobs around the house. It amused me to see him jump up, looking boyishly guilty, whenever I came in and found him on a stool by the kitchen fire with his face full of cake.

  ‘Well, give it some thought,’ Jacopo said, draining his glass. ‘Don’t do anything hasty. And come for Christmas, won’t you? I will be needed at the Tuileries on Christmas Eve, but I want to keep my Christmas Day feast here, with friends. I have invited the Gelosi.’

  ‘Then I had better stay away. Francesco will want to give me a bloody nose for Christmas.’

  ‘Well, he might take a swing at you to keep up appearances,’ he said with a grin, ‘but you know Francesco – he doesn’t hold a grudge. Besides, he will have been dining out on the story all the way to Lyon and back. Though I suspect in his version, he will be the one who escaped out of a window and stole a duke’s horse.’

  I flicked the chestnut shell into the fire and fell silent for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry for my words before,’ I said, after a while. ‘When I accused you of conniving at murder. I should not have said that.’

  ‘I did not understand what she was planning until it was too late.’ He spoke quietly. ‘But you were right, in a sense – even once I realised, I could not have stopped her. I have tried, over the years, to be the voice of her conscience, but she is a Medici.’ He held his hands out, palms upward, to indicate helplessness in the face of such a legacy. ‘Sometimes I have no choice but to turn a blind eye. That does not make me proud of myself, but I am not a brave man, Bruno. Not like you.’

  I stood, brushing chestnut shell from my clothes as I clutched the book to my chest in the crook of my right arm. ‘Some would say there is a very fine line between brave and foolhardy.’

  Jacopo came around the desk and laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘And I would say the difference is obvious. Bravery is doing something foolhardy for the sake of others.’

  I smiled and he crushed me in a paternal embrace.

  ‘Tomorrow is Saint Lucy’s day, Bruno. The darkest point of the year. After that, the days will grow brighter.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I said. I wished I could share his optimism.

  ‘I will see you for Christmas, then,’ he said, at the door, handing me my cloak that Henri had sent back from the palace, freshly laundered. ‘You can bring Simon.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, as my large companion lumbered amiably into view from the kitchen. ‘We’re inseparable.’

  We crossed the Pont de Notre-Dame under an iron sky. Occasional flakes of snow floated down half-heartedly; a crust of ice had formed over the mud-churned drifts in the streets. The church of Saint-Séverin loomed up ahead. I told Simon that I wanted to go inside, but that he could wait for me by the door.

  I stepped alone into a reverent silence. The air smelled of cold stone and incense, just as it had on the day I came here to find Paul Lefèvre. I could almost believe that nothing had changed, that I might still find him there inside the confessional in the chancel, on the bench worn smooth by generations of penitents. How different the last few weeks would have been – for me, at least – if I had not decided to seek him out that day. I approached the confessional with slow steps and a heavy heart; even though I knew now that Paul had not been murdered because he was seen talking to me, still I could not escape the sense that my visit that day had set in motion everything that followed.

  I reached out and touched the wood of the confessional with my fingertips. I closed my eyes, recalling his snide tone, his pompous certainty. Then I thought of that charred scrap of the letter he had written to save a life, and felt a wave of sadness. He had not deserved his death. None of them had.

  ‘Are you making your confession today, Doctor Bruno?’

  I spun round, startled out of my thoughts by a clipped English voice, impeccably polite. A small man with a reddish beard was standing a few feet away with his eyes closed, apparently praying to a statue of the Virgin in a wall niche. He was no one I recognised; my first thought was that Paget had sent him.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘I think it would be a good idea,’ he murmured, still without looking at me. ‘The confessional is empty, after all.’

  I glanced back up the nave to the door and jerked my head for Simon to come closer, holding my hand up to stop him when I thought he was near enough to respond if the man tried anything. Cautiously curious, I took a seat in the penitents’ side of the confessional and drew the curtain across to close myself in.

  I heard a soft rustle of cloth as someone settled the other side of the partition. The smell of the wood, the dust spiralling in the slats of light – all just as it was that day with Paul, the memory so sharp it almost hurt. While I was lost in thought, a piece of paper appeared under the gap in the partition.

  ‘From a mutual friend,’ said the Englishman, whose profile I could just make out through the wooden grille. I picked up the letter and turned it over. In the top right-hand corner someone had inked the astrological sign for Jupiter. The wax seal was intact, though that meant nothing. I tore it open and ran my eye over the streams of letters, meaningless to anyone
but me. Though I had not admitted as much to Guise, he was right; I had committed Walsingham’s complex cipher to memory and I raced through the apparent gibberish in the note as quickly as if it were a foreign language:

  Bruno

  This is Nicholas Berden, the only man in Paris in whom you should confide. You can trust him with your life – or at the very least your correspondence. Anything you give him he will put directly into my hands. Send to me soon.

  FW

  PS. My dinner table wants for wit and liveliness with you and Sidney gone. We are a sad company without you. Pray God we may see you again.

  I folded the letter in my lap with a stab of anger. If Walsingham wanted to see me that badly, why wait for God to intervene when he could perfectly well make arrangements himself?

  ‘All in order?’ Nicholas Berden whispered, from the other side of the partition.

  ‘Yes. Thank you for taking the trouble.’

  ‘I sail for London tomorrow,’ he continued, in his low, clipped voice. ‘I’m a cloth merchant, you see. Constantly back and forth. Rather useful. So I thought, if there is anything you’d like me to take …’ He let the suggestion hang in the air.

  ‘There is. But I don’t have it with me.’

  ‘No matter. Let’s meet for a drink tonight at the Swan and Cross.’

  ‘But people know me there.’

  ‘So much the better. Hide in plain sight. They know me too, so no one will remark on our presence.’

  ‘I have never seen you there.’

  ‘I’m easy to overlook.’

  ‘Because you’re hiding in plain sight?’

  ‘Exactly.’ He let out a merry laugh and I decided I liked him. ‘Seven o’clock, then.’