by Ann Swinfen
‘The queen! Did she see you?’
‘She did. She smiled at me and waved. I bowed very courteously back. I suspect she thinks me one of her faithful followers, come to spring her from prison.’
No wonder he was smiling. How extraordinary!
We withdrew into a small parlour which Phelippes had hired and set about copying the pages after Gregory had unsealed the packet, a tricky operation owing to the thickness of the contents. We each took two pages, unfolded them and copied them faithfully, just as they were, in cipher. Then Gregory resealed the letter, using his Babington seal, while Phelippes and I set about transcribing it.
‘I should prefer to complete this before you deliver the original, Kit.’
‘Do you think we can do it quickly enough?’
‘It’s not long past midday. If Arthur helps, we can finish before evening.’
‘I do not want to arrive too late. If Curll speaks to Sir Anthony, he will wonder how it could have taken all day to ride from Lichfield.’
‘Perhaps your horse was lame?’
‘Perhaps.’
Again we took two pages each. Although it was a lengthy missive, much too lengthy for discretion, it was written in that easy cipher, with an invented symbol for each letter of the alphabet – no displacement and no grid. Arthur Gregory sometimes helped with deciphering when there was a great deal of work, but he was slow. When I had finished my two pages, I took over his second page, which he had barely started, while he sought out the innkeeper to bring food for us. We had worked without stopping to eat and the afternoon was drawing on.
When Gregory returned with the potboy and supper, Phelippes sorted the pages into order and sat back with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Well, our gentleman is hardly coy about his plans. Everything is here. Almost everything. Listen to this:
For the dispatch of the usurper [He means Queen Elizabeth], from the obedience of whom we are by excommunication of her made free [A bow to the cursed bishop of Rome, the lickspittle], there be six noble gentlemen [Ha! Noble indeed!] all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your Majesty’s service will undertake that tragical execution.
‘Unfortunately, he does not give us the names of the six noble gentlemen who are going to commit murder, which would have made our task easier.’
Gregory muttered something under his breath. I was silent, shocked by what Babington had written. I could not believe that charming man, with his welcoming manner and warm smile, could write so heartlessly about murder. I shivered.
‘Well, Kit, you had best be off to the manor house with Sir Anthony’s letter.’
‘Aye.’ I stood up and flexed my cramped fingers. ‘First I will hire myself an attic room here in Stowe. Sir Anthony wants me to stay in the neighbourhood, but it will be best if I am not seen in your company. And a messenger boy would hire nothing grander than an attic.’
‘That’s well thought on. We will try to avoid meeting publicly, but I have taken this parlour for as long as we are in Stowe, so you will be able to find me here.’
The room was quickly hired and I retraced my steps to where I had left Hector, worried that I had be obliged to leave him so long. However, he was unharmed, though clearly glad to see me, and we cantered up to the manor through the evening light as though we had indeed just come from Lichfield. The same curt servant showed me to Curll’s study, where I handed over the packet.
‘Sir Anthony instructed me to stay in the village in case you wished to make use of my services again,’ I said, ‘so I have taken a room at the inn.’
‘Very well.’ Curll was paying me little attention, weighing the packet in his hand and clearly anxious to start deciphering it. ‘I will send for you if I need you.’
Once again he gave me a shilling and I pulled my cap, my new cap, in a salute to him. On my way back to where I had hitched Hector, I noticed a carriage being washed down to rid it of dust. That must be the carriage Phelippes had seen. How fortunate it was that his face was not known to the Scottish queen, or everything might have unravelled at once.
The next week or so proved to be the most tedious time of my life. No word came from Chartley manor. I had brought no book with me to read. I could not even sit with Phelippes and Gregory for most of the time. One day Gifford arrived with a bundle of letters and then I was occupied for several hours, but it was nothing of great import. The rest of the time I spent either sitting in my cramped attic with its low beams, on which I cracked my head whenever I forgot, which was often, or else taking long walks about the countryside.
It occurred to me on one of these walks that I was exploring the very ground over which Babington and his comrades-in-arms would attempt their rescue of Mary from Chartley. His letter had been vague about this and I could not imagine how they could hope to storm so well-guarded a house. On this latest visit I had paid more attention and realised that there were armed men everywhere. They looked to me like experienced men, well able to withstand a group of noble gentlemen, who might be skilled in amateur fencing, but were unlikely to be able to match professional soldiers.
These thoughts should have alerted me. If I was exploring the area, others might also be doing so. I came so close to blundering again that the very thought of it turns me dizzy. I was tramping along through a small wood which lay between the village and the manor, enjoying the fresh air after my hot, close attic room. The wood must have been part of the estate, for it was clearly maintained. The undergrowth was cut down, dead wood cleared away, trees thinned so that they should not become too crowded.
Then I heard the crunch of a horse’s hooves on the leaf litter of the woodland floor. If it was someone from the manor, it would be better that I was not caught here. For all I knew it was private land. And probably they would not like anyone prowling near the place where Mary was held. I had, after all, been seen bringing packets to her secretary. I looked around hastily. The wood was too open, too well cared for. My drab clothes would not shout my presence, but I could not stay in full view. The horse was coming nearer.
I had not climbed a tree since my last summer at my grandfather’s solar and I probably could not have done so now, had I not been driven by fear. One of the oaks had a branch low enough if I jumped. On the second attempt I managed to grab hold of it and pull myself up until I had my stomach across it. For a moment I floundered there like a fish in a net, then I was astride it and reaching up to the next branch, which was within easy reach. Once I had climbed up to this one, I was able to wedge my back into an angle between two branches and draw up my legs out of sight. Just in time, for now I could see the horseman approaching.
I realised he was being cautious, as though he too did not want to be seen. He stopped under my oak tree, whose broad trunk gave him some cover, and I found myself sweating with fear that he might look up. Had the tree not been in full summer leaf he would certainly have seen me. From where I was, I could see the back of the manor house. Mounted on his horse the man would be able to see it too. I caught my breath. This must be one of the other conspirators, sent on by Babington from Lichfield, to spy out the ground.
The man seemed to wait there for hours, though I know it can only have been minutes. Then he turned his horse back the way he had come, not from the village but cross-country from the south. I went cold as I caught a glimpse of his face as he turned. It was Poley.
Back at the inn, I felt this was an occasion when I ought to contact Phelippes. When I told him I had seen Poley stealthily scouting out a route to the manor, he looked worried for a moment.
‘Poley is close in Babington’s confidence, and that is what we want.’ His voice sounded unsure. ‘However, we do not want Babington to make a move before Mary replies to his letter and we have our evidence. I may need to warn Sir Amias to double the guard.’
Sir Amias Paulet, of course, who was in charge of the manor and the Scottish queen. Phelippes would be able to send a message to him. Even so, I felt threatened. To me there always se
emed to be the smell of danger about Poley.
Whether or not Phelippes warned Sir Amias, I do not know, for two days later, everything changed. Gifford arrived with a packet retrieved from the beer barrel leaving the manor. It still smelled of beer. Phelippes unwrapped it from its waterproof covering with trembling hands.
‘Curll has encoded it,’ he said, ‘but it is from the Scottish queen to Babington.’
It was what he had been waiting for.
The bird-catcher’s net was closing around Babington and the gentlemen conspirators, as well as the men like Ballard who had been smuggled in from France. The two parts of the plot were coming together – assassination and invasion – but this letter might draw the net closed.
Another of Walsingham’s agents had arrived at Stowe-by-Chartley a few days before, one William Waad. In a rare moment of frankness, Phelippes warned me that Waad was a dangerous man, given to using violent means to extract confessions.
‘Best avoid him, Kit,’ he said, with a look of disgust. Skill, not violence, was Phelippes’s stock in trade.
Now that the Scottish queen’s letter had been brought by Gifford, Phelippes sent Waad back to London, telling him that his services would not be required. I could see that Waad did not like taking orders from Phelippes, but he left anyway, with an ill grace. I wondered what services he might have provided, for he was no part of the deciphering service, nor a courier, nor an informant. If he was used to extract confessions, why was he here? Phelippes did not volunteer the information and I did not ask, but I was glad to see Waad leave.
Although I had been fretting over my idleness and my neglected work at St Bartholomew’s, I could not help catching some of the fever of the chase. when the letter came into Phelippes’s hands for which he had laboured so diligently. He was not a man who showed his feelings readily, but he shone with triumph that morning.
It did not take us long to decipher it, for Curll had used the same simple code, I presume so as not to tax Babington too greatly. The letter was quite short and in one aspect it disappointed Phelippes.
‘Why has the woman not asked for the names of the six noble gentlemen who will carry out the assassination!’ he cried. ‘Surely she will want to know that, and it is what we need. All she says is: “By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed?” Is that proof enough?’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘She also speaks of Mendoza. That is useful.’
He turned to me. ‘Kit, you have perfected Curll’s hand. I want you to make an exact copy of this.’
I took pen and ink and did as I was bid, including Mary’s instruction to Babington: ‘fail not to burn this present quickly’. She was taking no chances.
Phelippes looked over my shoulder when it was done.
‘Good. Now make a copy of our transcription.’
When I had finished, he folded both together with a letter he had written quickly to Sir Francis.
‘You may take this copy to Sir Francis yourself, Kit, together with the transcription and this letter from me. I will keep the original and follow you in a few days if we find that Babington has returned to London. He has not been seen in Lichfield lately. Our work here is finished. It is now merely a matter of arresting those young men when the moment is right. They will not hold out long, I fancy, under Topcliffe’s persuasions, and their sworn confessions will serve to strengthen the evidence here in the Scottish whore’s letter.’
I shuddered, suddenly ashamed at being so engrossed in Phelippes’s intellectual puzzles that I had forgotten the reality which lay behind them. Topcliffe, I knew, was the chief torturer at the Tower. It seemed there was some hypocrisy in Phelippes’s dislike of Waad’s violence. With horror I thought of Anthony Babington, that merry young man, with his zest for life and his unquestioning devotion to the Scots queen, crushed by the torturer Topcliffe. It was a measure, I suppose, of Phelippes’s relief at the success of the projection that he used such foul language of Mary, which I had never heard from his lips before. I glanced down at the copy of the letter Phelippes had returned to me. In his exuberance he had drawn a sketch of a gallows on the back.
Chapter Fourteen
The road to London was dusty with midsummer heat and the air was still full of the scent of the mown hay drying sweetly in the fields. Hector and I made good time to London now that the road had become so familiar to us, reaching the city halfway through the third day. I went first to Seething Lane, where I saw Hector settled in his stable and spoke briefly to the head groom.
‘He’ll be thinking he belongs to you,’ the groom said, running a hand affectionately down the horse’s neck.
‘I wish he did.’ I smiled. ‘His intelligence and his speed give the lie to his appearance.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘There’s many a horse like that. The handsomest an’t always the smartest.’
‘You could say the same of men,’ I said.
In Walsingham’s study I found Francis Mylles, one of his private secretaries, sorting despatches and tying up files of papers with red ribbon.
‘I fear Sir Francis is not here, Kit,’ he said. ‘He has been summoned to attend the Queen at Greenwich. You will find him there.’
I walked to the river and took a wherry down to Greenwich, finding some relief from the summer heat on the water. There was a feeling of thunder in the air. The wherryman grumbled a good deal about the heat and the hard life led by his kind. I made sympathetic noises whenever he paused for breath, but paid him scant attention. He seemed to have plenty of breath for complaint as well as for rowing. I knew he was simply hoping for an extra penny from me and I did not disappoint him, feeling rich with the remainder of Sir Anthony’s coin in my purse.
My mind was not on the wherryman’s grumbles, however, but on the documents I carried in my satchel. I kept touching it, as if to reassure myself that they were still there. What, I wondered, would Sir Francis say about the Scottish queen’s reply to Babington? I knew that Phelippes thought it might not be quite enough to condemn her, though if you put it together with Babington’s letter, it was clear that she was privy to the plan to assassinate the Queen. Under the terms of the Act of Surety, if a person knew of such a plan and did not report it, then they were guilty of treason.
I found Sir Francis in a small office near the Queen’s private quarters, surrounded as usual by neat stacks of paper. I gave him Phelippes’s letter, the transcription of Mary’s letter, and the copy of the letter in cipher which Phelippes had had me forge in Curll’s hand. I heard Sir Francis cluck his tongue in annoyance when he caught sight of Phelippes’s gallows sketch.
‘Foolish,’ he said, ‘foolish.’
He turned to me. ‘Now, Kit, you must put a lock on your tongue. Not a syllable to anyone, not even your father, about what you have heard and seen these last few months.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘Wait here. I need to apprise Her Majesty of the contents of this letter and of everything that has been taking place at Chartley. Phelippes asks me to discover whether Babington is in London. I shall send out Thomas Cassie and Nicholas Berden to hunt for him. The man is as slippery as a Thames eel.’
With that he hurried off to the Queen. I knew Phelippes’s servant Cassie quite well. Berden I had met only once. He was one of Sir Francis’s most active and successful spies, who worked mainly in Paris, though he was back in London now. I wished them the joy of finding a man who seemed to change his lodgings as often as he changed his shirt.
Sir Francis was soon back.
‘I shall send a letter to Thomas by royal messenger,’ he said. ‘He can use post horses and be in Chartley in less than two days. I want to be sure that Thomas does not arrest Babington yet, should he still be in the area. Not until we are sure about our evidence. If we track him down in London, we will keep him under constant surveillance. We’ll give him the space to commit himself a little further.’
He sat down at his desk to write.
‘Now here are two letters, Kit, which I wan
t you to take back to Seething Lane and give to Mylles. The first is to be sent on to Thomas immediately by fast messenger. The other is my instructions to Mylles as to how he is to deploy Berden and Cassie. I want you to stay with Mylles and help in any way he sees fit.’
I nodded. ‘Am I to stay in these clothes, sir? And continue to play the part of a messenger boy?’
I was very conscious of how grubby I was. The clothes Phelippes had given me had been somewhat unsavoury from the start. By now they were grimed with sweat and the dust of my journeys to and from Chartley.
Sir Francis looked at me properly for the first time since I had arrived in Greenwich and laughed.
‘No, I think you may discard those . . . garments. After you have seen Mylles, go home and tell your father that you are back in London. Then you may wash and don the clothes you normally wear when you work with us. Not a physician’s gown, please!’
I smiled at his mild attempt at a joke and took the letters he handed me. It would be a relief to be clean again.
By the time I had seen Mylles and reached Duck Lane, my father had returned from the hospital. He embraced me, then held me at arm’s length.
‘You are not looking at your best, Kit.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I am given leave to come home to wash and change into clean clothes. Then I must go back again.’
He shook his head at this, but did not argue. He had accepted that Walsingham ruled my life now.
‘I think it will all be over soon, Father. Then we can take up our lives as before.’
‘I am glad to hear it. While you are changing, I will tell Joan to make you a meal. You look as if you have not been eating.’
‘I have been travelling a good deal,’ I said, ‘and there has not been much time for regular meals. I would be glad of Joan’s cooking, plain as it is.’
As I started up the stairs, he called after me, ‘That actor fellow has been round here, asking for you. I told him I did not know where you were.’