by S. J. Parris
‘Oh, Bruno - I almost forgot,’ Castelnau says, turning back as he reaches the end of the corridor. ‘Tomorrow there is to be a grand concert at the Palace of Whitehall, with new music by Master Byrd sung by the choir of the Chapel Royal. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth has graciously invited all the ambassadors of the countries of Catholic Europe, perhaps in order to demonstrate that while she retains such a prominent Catholic as her court Master of Music, she cannot be regarded as an enemy of the faith.’
He smiles; Howard grunts his disdain.
‘In any case,’ Castelnau continues, flapping a hand to show he is in a hurry, ‘Marie and I would be glad if you would accompany us. I have been remiss in not presenting you at court sooner.’
I open my mouth to thank him, but he is already sweeping on his way to Throckmorton. I lean against the wall. To be officially introduced to the court of Elizabeth, perhaps even to the queen herself - what might this mean for me? In the end, I reflect, I am no different from any of the young courtiers Fowler described, hanging about vainly hoping for that source of all patronage and benefit to shine the beams of her favour in my direction. But there is also the possibility that I could make contact with Abigail, warn her of what Dee found in the vial of perfume, press her again for anything more she might remember. The key to this mystery lies at the heart of Elizabeth’s court, in its most intimate chambers, and now I have the chance to take at least one step closer to that inner sanctum.
Chapter Seven
Palace of Whitehall, London
30th September, Year of Our Lord 1583
Lamps are lit on either side of the stairs, though it is not yet dusk, the sun hanging low over the city to the west, scattering amber light over the water. Marie steps lightly down to the boat, a short cloak of white fur wrapped around her shoulders over her evening gown of peacock green silk, her hand resting lightly on her husband’s arm as she skips from the last step into the craft; her clear laugh rings out as she almost loses her balance and clutches at the hand of one of the oarsmen to steady herself. She seems giddy tonight, bubbling with high spirits, flushed with the prospect of an evening at court. Hardly surprising, I think; she is a beautiful woman, with the blush of youth still on her skin, who loves more than anything to be admired, and there is little enough opportunity for that around Salisbury Court. No wonder she feels the need to exercise her charms on me and Courcelles. The ambassador’s secretary steps down to stand beside me now, watching Castelnau and his wife as they settle themselves into the embassy barge for the trip upriver to Whitehall. He is dressed in some fussy suit of dark red; an evening breeze with just a catch of autumn chill lifts his fine blond hair away from his face, and I notice again how exceptionally handsome he is, though I find something too feminine about his full mouth, his almost beardless chin, his laconic pout. He glances sideways at me and back to the river.
‘Nice to see you made an effort to dress for the occasion, Bruno,’ he murmurs. I am wearing a neatly cut doublet and breeches of fine black wool, just as I wear every other evening.
‘In my experience, it is politic not to compete with the ladies on occasions like this,’ I reply pleasantly, folding my hands behind my back and surveying the traffic on the water. ‘They don’t appreciate it.’
Gulls cry and wheel, arcing gracefully over the river to the far bank as the waves lap gently at the foot of the landing stairs. Courcelles looks down at his own clothes, suddenly doubtful.
‘Bruno, Courcelles - get in the boat, for goodness’ sake!’ Castelnau calls, clapping his hands. ‘It will not do to arrive late!’
I settle myself opposite Marie, who smiles and leans forward; as she does so, my eye is caught again by the jewelled brooch pinned to her bodice. Its shape seems oddly familiar, and as I focus on its outline instead of the shifting glitter of the diamonds, I notice that it is a bird with a curved beak, rising up from its nest with wings outspread. It takes a moment before I realise where I have seen this bird before, and I almost cry out; it is identical in design to the emblem carved into the gold signet ring given to Cecily Ashe by her mysterious lover. Instinctively my hand moves to my breast, where I carry the ring in a pocket inside my doublet, in case my room should be searched again.
‘See something to interest you, Bruno?’ Marie says sweetly. I glance up to meet her arch expression and become aware that I have been shamelessly staring at the brooch, which she has attached to the side of her bodice, where the smooth white hemispheres of her breasts swell unmissably over the low neck of her corset. She gives me a look of mock reproach, as if I were a naughty schoolboy; I feel the hot rush of blood to my cheeks. A quick glance at the ambassador reassures me that he has caught none of this; he is busy outlining the arrangements for our return journey in minute detail to Courcelles, whose darting glance tells me that he, at least, has half an ear on our conversation.
‘Your brooch,’ I say hastily, pointing, which only makes me feel clumsier.
‘Ah. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she says, in the same silky voice. ‘It is very special to me. It was a gift from the Duc de Guise when I left Paris.’ She touches it lightly and allows her fingers to drift, almost absently, across her decolletage. I allow my eyes to follow her hand and rest with it on that pale expanse of skin, the fine line of her collarbone and the crescent of shadow that dips between her breasts. At length I wrench my eyes upwards and find hers fixed intently on me.
‘Really? Forgive me -‘ I hear a slight tremor in my voice, and curse it - ‘only I thought I recognised the design.’
‘The phoenix?’ She tilts the brooch slightly, bending her head down towards it. ‘You may well have seen it in France - it is the emblem of Marie de Guise, the duke’s aunt. The brooch passed to him when she died.’
‘The duke’s aunt? So - the mother of Mary Stuart?’
‘Of course. The phoenix was her particular symbol. Because she herself had risen from the ashes so often, you see. Hard fortune could not crush her. Mary Stuart has adopted it too, I hear, to symbolise her own forthcoming return from prisoner to queen. Soon to be effected, if God wills it.’
She smiles, deliberately provocative, showing her neat white teeth; I murmur my assent, but my mind is racing. There is no doubt that the bird is identical to the symbol on the ring. A phoenix - what I had taken for the branches of the bird’s nest, I now saw were flames tapering around it as it lifted its broad wings in triumph. As the boat’s oars settle into a steady rhythm, and the wind across the river grows chilly the further we move into midstream, I turn away from Marie and fix my eyes unseeing on the south bank, while in my mind I conjure a picture of the letters around the phoenix emblem on the signet ring. Sa Virtu M’Atire. I have no difficulty with this - my memory system is built on techniques of visualisation - and as I picture the letters, it is all I can do to keep myself from crying out and striking myself for my own stupidity, for suddenly what was obscure seems as blindingly clear as the gold disc of the sun, suspended before us in the violet sky. Not a code, but an anagram. The letters swirl and rearrange themselves in my mind’s eye so smoothly I believe a child could have solved it: Sa Virtu M’Atire becomes, almost perfectly, Marie Stuart.
I bite down on my knuckles and hunch forward over my knees, lest I give away my agitation with my body, for with this realisation comes another, more chilling: the ring given to Cecily Ashe was more than a lover’s trinket. It must have been a pledge, acknowledgement of an explicit connection with Mary, Queen of Scots, or with her supporters. So was the poison in the perfume bottle also given in Mary’s name? Then the implication can only be that Cecily was in some way involved with the plots against Elizabeth on behalf of Mary Stuart, and as far as I know, those plots all revolve around the French embassy and those who gather in its chapel and dining room. I turn my face out of the wind and back to Marie, as if seeing her properly for the first time.
‘Something wrong, Bruno?’ she asks, moving to lay a hand softly on my arm. ‘You look distressed. Was it something I said?’
‘That must be inconvenient for you, given all your long journeys by river,’ Courcelles observes drily. I snap my head around.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head briskly, as if he should not have spoken. ‘Only that you are so often out of the house these days. And you seem to go everywhere by boat, that is all - I wonder your purse can bear the cost.’
‘I have letters of introduction to book collectors in London so that I may continue with my own work,’ I say, with a shrug. ‘The river is the quickest way around, after all, and I prefer to travel at my own expense, without the need to borrow your master’s horses. For that, I try to overcome my poor sea legs. Does this trouble you?’
He gives another tight shake of the head and clams up then, so I do not press him. But the little barb he could not resist has given him away. How does he know, and why should he care, where I travel and how? Was he the man in the boat? Could he have been set to follow me to Mortlake by those in the embassy who doubt my loyalty? But that is clearly impossible - he was at Mass with the family yesterday when I arrived back from Dee’s house after being followed by the stranger who landed at Putney. Even so, Courcelles is clearly taking an interest in where I travel. I slide a glance at him and experience a little shiver of distaste. I must not be so complacent as to think that any of my movements go un observed here.
Castelnau distracts us with a commentary on the fine houses whose gardens run down to the river behind high walls as we pass, with details of their occupants: those roofs belong to Somerset House, where the queen had lived as a princess before her accession, now a lodging for foreign diplomats; here you may see the great gatehouse tower of the Savoy Hospital, which the queen’s grandfather founded for the care of the poor, and beyond it, the landing stairs leading to the magnificent grounds of York Place, once the residence of the great Cardinal Wolsey, but commandeered by the queen’s father as a gift to his - here Castelnau checks himself, remembering his professional obligation, and omits the word mistress - to his second wife, he continues, the queen’s mother, Anne Boleyn.
Courcelles appears visibly bored by the guided tour, but to Marie and me, who have not been in London so long as to have learned the stories written in its stones, the ambassador’s archive of details is fascinating. The mossy brick walls and thickets of chimneys seem to gather colour and life as he speaks of the histories played out in the halls and galleries within. Marie seems especially taken by the fate of Anne Boleyn.
‘To think,’ she says, to no one in particular, gesturing at the walls of York Place as the efforts of the oarsmen carry us around the curve in the river and the house recedes from view, ‘so many years the king loved her, and fought to make her queen, and she waited for him, looking out of those very windows. And everyone was opposed to the marriage, but they could not deny the force of their love. He undid his kingdom for that woman. It’s so romantic. Don’t you think?’
She turns and addresses this question to me, all innocent wide eyes and softly parted lips. I notice how this appears to annoy Courcelles. This is part of her game, I suppose, to play us off one against the other, to inspire us to rivalry. Presumably she does the same with Throckmorton, when he is present, and other men too, no doubt. She does not seem to realise that I have not agreed to take part.
‘And as soon as he had her, he started engineering ways to have her head cut off,’ I say, smiling. ‘Desire attained very quickly sours.’
‘That is rather a cynical view of love, Bruno,’ she chides.
‘It is based on observation. Like all my hypotheses.’
‘Look, here is the palace,’ Courcelles chips in, and we turn to watch the low, red-brick walls of some outbuildings at the water’s edge give way to higher fortifications of pale stone and, just ahead, a structure jutting out into the water with lanterns hung all around it.
Castelnau raises a hand for silence and allows his gaze to travel slowly over us, so that we all have opportunity to note his grave expression.
‘We will have no conversation tonight with Henry Howard and his party beyond a civil greeting,’ he warns, lowering his voice. ‘The English court, and especially Her Majesty, must have no reason to suspect that we have any special dealings with him. Are we clear about this?’ Though he says ‘we’, he appears to be addressing this directly to his wife. We nod dutifully.
‘Pull in at the Privy Bridge,’ Castelnau commands the oarsmen, and Marie begins smoothing her skirts and arranging her cloak anxiously.
The Privy Bridge is not so much a bridge as a kind of pier or jetty, elevated on wooden stilts and built up with a covered walkway that looks like a small house, so that the royal party can avoid the elements on their way to the barge. Tonight the walls of this building are hung with scarlet-and-gold banners embroidered with the queen’s arms, the lion and dragon rampant rippling as the breeze catches them. At the end of the bridge, a flight of steps lead down to a landing stage, and here two men in the queen’s livery are waiting to help visitors disembark. Castelnau hands Marie out of the boat and follows; Courcelles and I fall into step behind them, and I pause for a minute on the stairs, looking up at the palace wall ahead. This is to be my first introduction to the English court, perhaps even to Elizabeth herself, and I am gripped by a strange apprehension.
We are led along a passage and across a broad paved courtyard, surrounded on four sides by grand ranges in red brick, with crenellated balustrades at the roofs and tall mullioned windows edged in pearl-white stone. At the entrance to every doorway and in the cloistered shadows you cannot fail to notice the number of tall young men, armed and wearing tabards bearing the royal standard.
‘Elizabeth grows fearful,’ Courcelles observes quietly, nodding towards one of the granite-faced men. ‘There are not usually so many of the palace guard on display.’
‘Perhaps she has reason,’ I say. He responds with a grim laugh.
From the high open doorway of the Great Hall spills a babble of music and talk, together with the drifting perfume of some scented oil burning to sweeten the air. On the threshold, Castelnau turns and points a finger into my face, so suddenly that I almost trip over him.
‘And no trouble, Bruno.’ He smiles, but the warning is meant.
I understand him. I am here by his invitation and this is no small thing; I have a reputation in Europe for courting controversy, but this evening I am representing the French embassy and, by extension, King Henri himself. I would be expected to conduct myself meekly at the best of times, but in the present circumstances, it is vital that Queen Elizabeth continues to think well of Henri of France and his ambassador. As Castelnau sees it, their relationship may be all that stands between England and war. Courcelles smirks, but I merely nod obediently. Castelnau, satisfied, turns, adjusts his doublet and prepares to make his entrance. As he does so, Marie turns back to me and winks.
But the splendour of the spectacle before us drives all other thoughts from my mind. The hall arches overhead, the upper portion of its walls all light from the high pointed windows of stained glass, drawing the eye upward to the dark wood spans of the great hammer-beam roof, with its elaborately carved tracery and gilded spandrels. From each of the wall braces hangs a coloured banner embroidered with some royal insignia in golds, crimsons, azures. The lower parts of its long walls, where I can glimpse them through the crush of people, are decorated with exquisitely detailed Flemish tapestries depicting scenes from the Old Testament, bordered with gold damask. Courtiers in silks and velvets of all hues gather in groups or mingle around the room, glancing at one another and parading their finery; the men wear puffed knee-breeches with white silk stockings to show off their calves, doublets with sleeves slashed to reveal the jewel-coloured lining, and wide starched lace ruffs
that give them the air of birds fanning out their feathers in a mating display, with cuffs to match. Over one shoulder they drape short capes of velvet fastened with gold or jade brooches, and as they lean in to converse, the long peacock feathers on their caps nod and sway, and sometimes become tangled up with one another. Some of them carry silver pomanders at their belts, and the air is thick with spiced perfume; they all, without exception, carry ornamental swords, swinging by their thighs in elaborately embellished scabbards. I am surprised that a queen who lives under perman ent threat of assassination should tolerate her courtiers coming armed into her presence, but perhaps even she dare not part a gentleman from his weapon. Sidney once told me that she had forbidden duelling among the gentlemen of the court, with a penalty of losing one’s right hand. The awkwardness of their costumes obliges these courtiers to walk with their legs slightly parted, in an exaggerated swagger; there is something comical about their strutting and their anxious glances to one side and the other to make sure they are being noticed. I can only imagine what they would be like if there were more women present.
A group of musicians play subtle string compositions in a vaulted alcove set before one great window that stretches from floor to ceiling. The effect is magnificent as the setting sun slants low through the patterned panes, illuminating the musicians’ heads and shoulders before painting its coloured geometry over the rush-strewn floor.