Prophecy (2011)

by S. J. Parris

  ‘Yes, Philip,’ says a soft, girlish voice from above me. So Sidney’s wife is my nurse. When she lifts the cloth away to rinse it, I catch a glimpse from the corner of my eye; the water she wrings out is bright crimson.

  ‘You’d probably have died otherwise, I’d wager,’ Sidney says, with his usual matter-of-factness. ‘Did you see him? He hit you with something heavy, but it looks worse than it is, I think. Did he rob you?’

  ‘Merda!’ I struggle to sit up, pushing the sheet back and almost sending the bowl of water flying; white light splinters behind my eyes but I grip the bedpost until it passes. I have been undressed while I was blacked out, and I am wearing only my shirt and underhose. ‘The papers! Where are they?’

  ‘What papers? Steady on, you’ll start the bleeding up again.’

  ‘Who took my doublet off me?’ I force myself unsteadily to my feet, but the room tips and blurs again.

  ‘I did, you bloody fool,’ Sidney says. ‘I’ve been sitting with you since they brought you in. Walsingham was here a good part of the time too. We thought you might not make it.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘Still,’ he says, his voice brusque again, lest I think him sentimental, ‘should have known it takes more than a bash on the head to do for you. But you had nothing with you. No papers, no purse. Not a thing. And your doublet and shirt were undone.’

  I sink back on to the bed, pressing my palm gingerly to my temple.

  ‘I was bringing them to Walsingham. He must have taken them.’

  ‘Who?’

  I glance at Frances and shake my head minutely and then wince. Even this movement makes it feel as if my brains have come loose in my skull.

  ‘My dear, go and fetch your father, if he’s free, would you? Tell him Bruno’s speaking again. Most obliged.’ He points imperiously to the door. His wife bobs meekly and leaves with her bowl of bloodied water. The door swings softly shut behind her. ‘She’s terribly obedient, you know,’ Sidney observes with mild interest, as if we were discussing a horse.

  The room is furnished with a large comfortable bed hung with white linen curtains, now bespattered with my blood. A tapestry of a hunt scene sways softly on one wall and candles have been lit in sconces on every side to bathe the walls in a cheerful glow, but to my bruised eyes the light appears to swim, like sun through water, and the objects around me sway and waver. I reach up to touch my swollen brow and my legs begin to tremble as I realise, as if taking a second blow, the full weight of what happened. That my pursuer left me alive may have been an oversight on his part; perhaps he thought he had killed me, but it now seems beyond doubt that he is willing to do so.

  I have barely begun recounting the events at Dee’s to Sidney when the door crashes to the wall and Walsingham strides into the room, with such a degree of urgency that for a moment I think he means to sweep me into his arms. He stops just short of this, but I can focus enough to see the concern etched in his face, and feel flattered.

  ‘Make no mistake, Bruno, I shall find the man who did this to you,’ he says, showing me his balled fist before enclosing it softly in his left hand.

  ‘Or woman,’ I say, and my tongue feels thick in my mouth. Walsingham raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Really? Explain.’ He nods to Sidney to shut the chamber door.

  So I tell him about Jane Dee’s mysterious visitor; about Ned Kelley’s chest, the books and the drawings; I explain about Johanna Kelley’s connection to the Howard family, and how my assailant must have known that I had taken something incriminating from Dee’s house. Walsingham frowns and bites his lip when I tell him the papers have been taken; when I have finished, he draws a hand down the length of his face and nods.

  ‘If this wife of Kelley’s is stealing food for him, he can’t be far from the place,’ says Sidney, folding his arms. ‘Either he was watching the house or she followed you herself, knowing what you’d found, is my guess.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen those pictures,’ Walsingham says, with a grimace. ‘First this business with Mary’s ring, then Kelley and this Johanna woman - is Henry Howard really at the heart of all this?’

  ‘Can’t we find some pretext to arrest him?’ Sidney demands. ‘Perhaps he will be willing to answer questions if he is afraid.’

  ‘And what pretext do you suggest?’ Walsingham turns on him; it is rare to hear the Principal Secretary raise his voice, and I curse myself again for having lost the papers that might have helped him bring this to a close. ‘We have nothing to charge him with - nothing! And if the queen moves against the Howards without sound evidence, the rest of the Catholic nobles will close ranks against her, which is the last thing we want if there are envoys trying to stir them to armed rebellion. God’s blood!’ He pounds his left palm with his fist, pacing the room like a bear on a chain while Sidney and I watch, tense. ‘I cannot go on protecting John Dee from his own folly!’ he bursts out eventually, as if to himself. ‘Conjuring spirits! He lays himself open to being abused. And if it turns out he has been harbouring a murderer in his house -‘ He rubs his beard, takes a deep breath and turns back to me, attempting to impose his customary self-control. ‘Bruno, what do you make of this so far?’

  My head still feels as if it is stuffed with wool; his voice seems to come from somewhere distant, but I gather my ragged thoughts as best I can.

  ‘Find Ned Kelley,’ is the best I can manage. ‘Henry Howard, Philip Howard, the dead girls - somehow they are all connected, but only Kelley can link them.’

  Walsingham looks at me expectantly, but my vision blurs again and I have to lean back against the bedpost.

  ‘I will send men after Kelley,’ he says, eyeing me carefully. ‘And someone to watch over Jane Dee, make sure she receives no more unwelcome visitors. John has said little, except to swear neither he nor Kelley has any connection with the murders. Now I understand why he doesn’t want to talk about the nature of his relationship with Kelley - but I must question him again about these drawings. And I’ll have this Johanna taken in and questioned while we are about it. Meanwhile you, Bruno, have had a lucky escape, and I blame myself for allowing you to pursue this alone. You need to rest.’

  ‘I need to get back to the embassy,’ I say, alarmed and standing up too fast. ‘I am under enough suspicion there already - I can’t disappear for a night. What time is it?’

  ‘Nine,’ Sidney says. ‘You’d better stay here, old friend - you’ll frighten the life out of the ambassador looking like that.’

  ‘Bruno’s right,’ Walsingham says, stepping closer to examine my wound in the candlelight. ‘His position at Salisbury Court is crucial to us now. I’ll have someone take you back by river. Tell them you were set upon for being foreign.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’ I touch my eye again. My head feels enormous. With some effort, I stand and wait for the seasickness to pass.

  ‘Bruno.’ Walsingham places his hand on my shoulder, fatherly. ‘You acted with your customary blend of courage and recklessness tonight. Those papers would have been like gold, and I am as distressed as you over their loss. But I would have been more distressed if we had lost you for their sake. From now on, I want you to confine your investigations to Salisbury Court. Keep yourself armed, and if you must make longer journeys or deliver messages, go accompanied. Make use of Fowler - you are there to work together. No gadding about the countryside in the dark trying to do it all alone - capisce?’

  I nod, painfully.

  ‘Good.’ He smiles, but it only lasts an instant. ‘I will arrange a boat, and come with you as far as Whitehall. See if I can persuade Dee to tell me any more.’ He strides to the door, purposeful again, then turns back to me. ‘Do you think there is any truth in it, Bruno? This pursuit of commerce with spirits? It was said in Paris that you knew something of these arts.’

  Squinting, I try to focus until I can see his features sharply. His expression is neutral, curious. ‘It is forbidden by every statute of the church,’ I say, eventually. ‘Theirs and yours.’

  �
��I know it is forbidden, Bruno - I write the laws,’ he says, impatient. ‘This is why no one will admit to it, while the country crawls with these so-called scryers and cunning-men, duping the poor and ignorant. And sometimes the educated,’ he adds, with a wry curl of the lip. ‘But do you believe some men could truly have this gift, to speak with spirits - angels or demons, or whatever you want to call them? Have you ever known such a thing, or are such beliefs only remnants from our benighted past?’ He searches my face, his hand still resting on the door. I can feel Sidney’s eyes on me too, expectant; I know he was drawn to such knowledge when he was a student of Dee’s, but since he assumed his position at court he has kept a politic distance. My poor bruised brain feels ill-equipped for the subtleties such an answer requires.

  ‘If, as I believe,’ I say, weighing my words, ‘this universe is infinite, then it follows that it must contain more than we can have so far managed to comprehend or write down. The sacred scriptures, not just of our own religion but of others besides, all speak of beings who stand between us and the divinity. Through the ages, right across the world, men have claimed to speak with them, and so to know the future. I can’t judge the truth of their claims, but I am certain of this - if there are men who have such a gift, Ned Kelley is not one of them. And neither is John Dee.’

  ‘Are you?’ Walsingham asks.

  I hear Sidney suck in a breath through his teeth.

  ‘Not I, your honour.’ I do not add the word ‘yet’, though it echoes in my head.

  Walsingham considers me for a moment, then nods brusquely, and sweeps through the door, gesturing for us to follow. Sidney lays a hand on my arm.

  ‘Careful, Bruno.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Whatever the truth about this Kelley and the murders, Dee will not come out of this business well. What he has been doing is as good as witchcraft, you know that. People burn for less. The queen won’t let that happen, but she will have to distance herself from him, and you could be tainted by association.’

  ‘Then Howard will have achieved his aim,’ I say, gripping his sleeve. ‘Dee will be disgraced and cast out. We must find some evidence that will tie Howard to this beyond any doubt, or Dee will be destroyed.’

  ‘You are convinced Howard is behind the murders, then?’

  ‘I just don’t know. So much points to him, and yet there is so much that doesn’t make sense.’ I pause, remembering Fowler’s warning. ‘But I must guard against persuading myself that it’s Howard just because I want it to be him.’ I raise my hand again to the wound at my temple. ‘God, I am a fool. If I hadn’t lost those papers -‘

  ‘If this fellow had had a better aim, you’d be dead,’ Sidney reprimands. ‘Forget the papers. Get closer to Howard if you can. At some point he must show his hand.’

  ‘Or kill me first,’ I say, looking at the smear of blood on my fingertips.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Salisbury Court, London

  2nd October, Year of Our Lord 1583

  At first I can’t make sense of the sound; an insistent hammering that chips through the cocoon of sleep. I wake to a new burst of pain behind my eyes, though when I reach tentatively to my temple I can feel that the swelling has begun to subside. Fragments of last night drift across the surface of my mind, assembling themselves into a vague memory of Walsingham’s boat dropping me at the end of Water Lane and one of his servants accompanying me as far as the garden door of Salisbury Court. I had hoped to drag myself up the stairs unnoticed, but Courcelles was coming down at the same time; I was almost gratified by how appalled he looked at the state of me. Despite my protests, he led me straight to Castelnau’s office. The ambassador accepted my story of a bar fight with English thugs without question (all we foreigners have suffered some degree of abuse from the Londoners), and could not have been kinder, though I waved aside his fuming threats to involve the law or take it up with the Lord Mayor; all I wanted by then was to collapse into my own bed and close my eyes.

  Now I have been woken prematurely - there is barely a glimmer of light through the shutters - by this increasingly urgent knocking. For a moment it falls silent, and I think whoever is there has gone away. ‘Bruno! Let me in, will you?’ comes a whisper, before the tapping begins again, more frantic than before. Cursing under my breath, I struggle out of the bedclothes and unlatch the door to see Leon Dumas shivering in his nightshirt, his eyes bulging like an anxious fish.

  ‘Quick,’ he says, glancing over his shoulder as he slips inside, though the passageway is empty. ‘God’s blood, what happened to your head?’

  ‘I was set upon in a tavern. Some London boys didn’t like my accent.’

  ‘Really?’ He looks even more frightened. ‘I have been spat upon for being French, but this is vicious. Were they drunk?’

  ‘Very. It got out of hand. I should have ignored them, but I let them get under my skin. It was my own fault.’

  ‘What were you doing in such a place, Bruno? Were you alone?’ He looks so concerned that I almost want to laugh and reassure him.

  ‘Yes. I stopped for something to eat on my way back from the library at Mortlake. You know, where I go to work on my book.’

  ‘It looks terrible.’ He continues to wring his hands, frowning like a helpless mother. ‘Have you seen a physician? I think you ought.’

  I shake my head and immediately regret it.

  ‘It will mend. Was there something you wanted?’

  ‘Oh. That. Well, it’s -‘ He squeezes his hands together several times, then walks to the window, turns to me with an agonised expression, bites the knuckle of his thumb and walks back. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Of course. What’s the matter?’ I ask, striving to sound more patient than I feel.

  ‘There is something -‘ He rubs the back of his neck and looks away. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but I must. It weighs too hard on my conscience.’ He stops again and fixes those enormous eyes on me as if imploring me to extract his confession without his having to speak it aloud. My heart freezes for a moment; he is going to tell me that he has buckled under the strain of his false front and given us up, told someone at the embassy about Walsingham and the letters. Our betrayal is known - it must be. With my head in such poor shape, I can barely think ahead to the consequences for the invasion plot, and for me.

  ‘I was sworn to secrecy but I’m afraid I will be found out soon, and then it will go worse for me. But I said to myself - Bruno will know what to do.’

  ‘What has happened, Leon?’ I ask, trying to sound reassuring, though I fear I already know the answer. He appears so tense that I wonder if he might burst into tears.

  ‘It’s the ring,’ he blurts, finally. ‘The missing one, that Mary Stuart sent to Henry Howard.’

  For a moment, I am nonplussed.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  To the best of my knowledge, Mary Stuart’s ring is currently in Walsingham’s care. Dumas cannot possibly know this. I stare at him as he chews his knuckles again.

  ‘It was greed on my part, Bruno, I confess it. But not for myself - all the money I sent home to my parents. They are poor.’ His voice rises in his own defence.

  ‘What money? What are you talking about?’

  But at that moment a floorboard creaks outside the room; I hold up my hand and Dumas stiffens, fist to his mouth.

  A soft tap at the door; another dawn visitor. I have never been so popular at Salisbury Court. I motion to Dumas to keep silent in the hope that this newcomer will think I am still asleep, but this response is apparently understood as an invitation; the door eases open and through the crack slips Marie de Castelnau, her hair unbound, dressed in a loose gown that drapes suggestively over the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips. Her feet are bare. She widens her eyes at me and presses a finger to her smiling lips, as if we are mischievous children complicit in a game; she has not yet seen Dumas. With an implausible smile, I direct her with my eyes to where he stands, looking no les
s amazed than if he had witnessed the second coming. For the moment that it takes them to register the shock of one another’s presence, I am seized by the urge to laugh, but it dries in my throat at the sight of Marie’s face; she seems throttled with fury and the look of hatred she trains on Dumas threatens to burn right through him and set fire to the floorboards. Dumas, for his part, wears the expression of a man who has heated irons held inches from his privy parts. Even if my head were in better shape, I am not sure I could think of any words that would undo the implications of this moment.

  Fortunately, it is Marie who gathers her thoughts first.

  ‘You,’ she says, folding her arms across her chest and mustering some remnants of her usual poise. ‘Shouldn’t you be on your way to help my husband? I’m sure he has plenty for you to do.’

  Dumas continues to stare at her, slack-mouthed, as if she were Lucifer himself.

  ‘Well, go on, then,’ she says, jerking her head towards the door. ‘I’m writing a letter to a friend in Italy,’ she adds, airily, as Dumas manages to unstick his feet from the floor. ‘I wanted Bruno’s help with the translation. And it must be sent early today, because the messenger leaves this morning. You see?’ Her clipped tone aims to tidy away any potential misunderstanding. Dumas just goes on staring, stupefied, reaching the door as if in a daze. He flings me a last panicked look and backs out tentatively, as if he is unsure whether I will be safe alone with Marie. I jerk my head at him to go; better I catch up with him later.

  She watches the door click shut with a small impatient shake of her head, and places her hands on her hips.

  ‘Why was he here at this time?’

  ‘Dumas? He gets homesick,’ I say, wishing my brain felt sharper. Dumas had been on the edge of a momentous confession, and Marie’s appearance had robbed me of it; now it would be impossible for me to fix my thoughts on anything until I had shaken the rest from his stammering lips. ‘Sometimes he just wants someone to talk to.’ Effortfully, I tear my gaze from the door and back to her face. Her sharp eyes assess mine for a moment, then stray to the wound on my head.