by S. J. Parris
‘As heralded by the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn,’ I muse.
‘I recall Her Majesty pointing out this girl to me once when her ladies were gathered in the Presence Chamber,’ Burghley offers from the doorway. ‘She asked me if I did not think the girl the very likeness of herself in her youth. The comparison amused her. And indeed, when you looked closely, it seemed there was a distinct resemblance, though it was just the red hair, I suppose. Poor child.’
‘And yet …’ I shake my head as I shift my position by the body; my knees are growing numb from the wet stone. As I continue to stare at Abigail’s marble face, I realise that my attention has grown analytical, my reasoning mind has taken over from the emotion I felt at her death a moment earlier. ‘Something is not right here.’
‘You certainly have a gift for understatement, Doctor Bruno,’ Burghley says drily.
‘I mean to say — my theory must be wrong. Now that I look closely, the facts do not support it.’
Walsingham gives an unexpected bark of mirthless laughter. ‘It is a rare man who can admit that, Bruno. Most of my acquaintance strain always to bend the facts to their theories. Explain yourself.’
‘It doesn’t make sense. I had believed that Cecily Ashe was killed because she had been part of a conspiracy to murder the queen and she had perhaps changed her mind, or somehow become a threat to that plot and the other people involved. And now Abigail, who was suspected of knowing her friend’s secrets, and who may well have been seen talking to me, is also dead. But then, why, in both cases, leave the bodies where they will be found, within the court, and displayed so as to point explicitly to the queen’s death at the hands of Catholic assassins? If the very purpose of killing these girls was to silence them, to protect the conspirators …’
‘Perhaps the purpose was to punish them publicly,’ Walsingham says sagely. ‘If the killer knew or suspected it was too late to keep them silent, he may have chosen to make an example of them instead, for their betrayal.’
‘And jeopardise his own plot in doing so?’
‘Perhaps there is more than one plot,’ Burghley suggests.
‘God’s blood, William, there are a hundred plots, perhaps a thousand!’ Walsingham exclaims, pressing the palm of his hand to his forehead and beginning to pace again in the confined space between the open loading bay and Abigail’s body. ‘Most of them at the level of that sorry fellow picked up on the road from York, waving his pistols and ranting. But when we have a bottle of poison almost in the queen’s own bedchamber, brought there by a girl who owns a ring bearing the impresa of Mary Stuart, and Howards lurking about the French embassy talking of an invasion force, I think we may safely assume we are dealing with one extremely serious conspiracy to regicide and war.’
‘Then I ask again — why call attention to a plot to kill the queen if these deaths are to safeguard one?’
‘I don’t know, Bruno — to sow fear and confusion? To lead us in one direction while they attack from another? In any case, I thought you had made it your business to solve this without anyone’s help.’ The quiet anger in his voice is unmistakable. He makes a gesture of exasperation with both hands, waving the flaming torch alarmingly; its guttering light briefly illuminates a glint of something at Abigail’s neck. I reach forward to touch it and instinctively my outstretched fingers shrink from the chill of her skin; again I recall how close she stood to me under the Holbein Gate, the warmth and solidity of her flesh that time I clutched at her arm when we first spoke in the queen’s privy apartments at Richmond. All that eager life, pinched out as easily as a candle. I set my face firm and reach out a second time, willing myself not to recoil; from her cold flesh my fingers hook out a sturdy gold chain fastened at her throat. Its pendant has slipped round behind her head and become tangled in her hair; impatiently I fumble to free it, a few strands of red-gold hair coming away in my hand with the chain. Attached to it is a lozenge-shaped locket, also carved in gold.
‘Look at this.’ I hold it out to Walsingham, as if to make amends.
He turns it over in his fingers, looking at me expectantly.
‘I never saw her wear this before,’ I add.
‘She may have saved her best jewels for court occasions. You open it.’ Walsingham holds the light steady; even Burghley draws closer to see. The catch is delicate and my fingers clumsy; Burghley starts to hop from foot to foot, puffing through pursed lips.
‘We should not stay too much longer — the concert will be almost over.’
Walsingham ignores him and bends closer, so that the heat from the torch almost scorches my face. I work my fingernails into the clasp and at last it springs open. The right half of the locket reveals an enamelled painting, seemingly undamaged by its recent immersion. It shows a red phoenix, its head turned to the left and its wings outstretched, in a nest of flames. Inside the left half, two initials are finely engraved, a capital M entwined with a snaking S. I pass it to Walsingham; even with the play of shadows on his face, I see him blanch.
‘What is it, Francis?’ There is a new note of anxiety in Burghley’s voice.
Walsingham clenches the locket in his fist.
‘Mary Stuart. Always Mary Stuart. So this girl was also part of the plot. By Christ, have they recruited the whole of the queen’s household?’
‘The locket was not Abigail’s,’ I say, hearing my knees click as I finally stand, shaking out the stiffness in my legs.
‘How do you know?’
I tell them about Abigail’s oddly furtive manner at the Holbein Gate. ‘She mentioned a locket when she first told me about Cecily’s secret suitor and his gifts, but there was no locket in the bag of love-tokens she passed to me. My guess is that she decided at the last moment to keep it for herself. That’s why she seemed guilty.’
Walsingham considers this for a moment.
‘Perhaps she was foolish enough to wear it about court before today,’ he says. ‘If our killer — or at least, the one who hires the killer — is indeed a courtier, he may have seen it around her neck and recognised it as the locket he gave to Cecily.’
‘In any case, my lord Burghley is right,’ I say, glancing at the Lord Treasurer. ‘There is more than one man behind these murders. Whoever stopped the boy Jem in the yard could not have got back out to the river and rowed up the kitchen channel in time to meet Abigail. I’d bet he delivered the false message from me, then walked calmly back to the hall while someone else waited out on the river with a boat. And I’d wager anything that at the moment she was killed, the man in the shadows was applauding the choir in full view of the queen and the whole court.’
Walsingham sighs as he pulls the door of the loading bay shut and secures it with the bolt. The smell of the river recedes a little.
‘I need proof, Bruno. Suspicions are no good when they touch people as powerful as those we have in mind here. A ring, a locket — Her Majesty will not move against her cousin for such trinkets, and in any case, Mary Stuart will only say they were stolen by those who wish her harm. It seems certain that whoever is directing these murders is a familiar face at court. And he is clever. He may still be plotting to attack the queen by another means. Who was Cecily Ashe’s lover?’ He grips my shoulder and gives it a little shake, his face close to mine.
Burghley coughs discreetly.
‘I think we really must return. The concert will be almost over, and the French ambassador’s party will be wondering at Doctor Bruno’s absence. Francis — you return with Bruno to the hall. I will endeavour to see that those servants and guards who know of this terrible business are kept at a distance until the guests have all departed. Let the rumourmongers wait until tomorrow, at least, before their tongues run riot.’ He sucks in his cheeks, and motions for us to leave first.
Walsingham and I pass through the kitchen yard, now almost entirely blanketed in darkness, and back to the passageway by which we had come.
‘He is following you, Bruno, this killer,’ he says in a low voice, over h
is shoulder. ‘He knew that kitchen boy had been to Salisbury Court.’
‘Unless he was at Salisbury Court already.’
‘That nest of vipers. That is where the proof is to be found, I have no doubt of it. Keep your eyes sharp as a falcon’s, Bruno — only you can lay your hands on the evidence that will condemn one or all of them for treachery. But be careful. He must know you are hunting him. And if you come across anything else — however trivial it may seem — bring it straight to me, by any means you can. Understood?’
‘Yes, your honour.’ I lower my head, chastened.
He stops walking, turning to face me so abruptly that I bump into him. ‘There is something else I must ask you, Bruno.’ He glances around and lowers his voice yet further. ‘Have you ever heard John Dee speak of visions? Glimpses of the future granted him by angels, that sort of thing?’
I hesitate, possible answers caught in my throat. Against my advice, Dee must have recounted Kelley’s vision of the red-haired woman in the white dress to the queen when she summoned him the previous evening. The old fool, I think; too proud, too eager to impress. I would bet, too, that he did not mention Ned Kelley, but took credit for the vision himself; he would have wanted the queen to believe he alone had the gift of speaking with angels, though he would have presented the image as some kind of metaphor, no doubt, a sign that the heavenly guardians had care of her royal person. And now, only one day later, the vision is fulfilled horribly, almost to the letter. Did Dee not say Kelley described the red-haired woman being swept away by a great torrent, and Abigail’s body found floating in the water? This must have been what Leicester meant when he spoke of more than coincidence. In a flash of understanding, I see that he is right: Ned Kelley knew. There can be no other explanation: he described the murder of Abigail Morley before it happened, and it was no angel or demon who imparted the knowledge. No wonder the cunning-man has run away.
‘Bruno?’ Walsingham bends closer to look into my face, a warning in his eyes.
‘He has mentioned something of the kind,’ I mutter, not wanting to seem that I am withholding more secrets from him. ‘He has a showing-stone which he believes to yield images, if the circumstances are apt.’
‘Speak plainly — you mean he is conducting seances to contact spirits. It’s all right, Bruno — you are not betraying him. You and I are of the same mind — we both want to protect Dee. But he has invited a deal of trouble for himself.’ He sighs and checks again to make sure we are not overheard. ‘Yesterday evening, Doctor Dee shared with the queen a vision he had lately seen, of a red-haired woman with the mark of Saturn on her naked breast, pierced through the heart and carried away by a great river. He told her it was a vision of the desires of her enemies, vouchsafed by her guardian angels so that she might be on her guard. Or some such nonsense. This morning Her Majesty saw fit to relate that vision to the Privy Council. She did so out of mischief, I believe, to irk Henry Howard. She has always made it her business to mock publicly all threats of danger to her person, whether based on real intelligence or fantasies like this one of Dee’s, to show the world that she is unafraid. She could not have known — well, you see the difficulty, Bruno.’
I nod. I see it very well. John Dee unknowingly predicted the murder of Abigail Morley and the queen’s most senior advisers know it; the obvious conclusion will be that this foreknowledge in some way implicates him. Why could he not have listened to my advice?
‘He told me as well,’ I whisper, leaning closer. ‘But he did not tell you the whole truth. The vision was not his, though he would have wanted the queen to believe that he has that gift. He keeps a scryer in his house.’
I tell him, as briefly as I can, about Ned Kelley, his clipped ears, his portentous visions of spirits in the crystal, the way he has insinuated himself into Dee’s household, his disappearance after prophesying something very like the death of Abigail Morley. When I have finished my account, Walsingham presses his lips together and shakes his head.
‘Poor Dee,’ he says, eventually, with a note of compassion. ‘So passionately seeking after the unknown, he misses what is right under his nose. He had ever the fault of trusting those who should not be trusted.’
‘If it were not for the detail of the water, I would have said Kelley got his prophecy from some penny gossip sheet,’ I say. ‘But he told Dee he saw the woman swept away by a torrent of water, and then Abigail’s body was found in the channel by the dock. A needless delay on the killer’s part, to tie her to the mooring-ring, unless there was something symbolic about it.’
‘We must find this fellow Kelley, by whatever means. He will tell us where he gets his foreknowledge, willingly or otherwise. It is not from any spirit in a stone, that much is certain.’
‘Your honour does not believe that the world contains more than our eyes alone reveal?’ I ask, with a half smile. His face remains grave.
‘Not in the sense that Dee or the queen believe it, nor even you, Bruno. I have seen enough of life to believe that God gave us reason to use it, and that evil is conceived solely in the hearts of men. But this Kelley must be questioned. I will send forces to smoke him out.’
I shake my head.
‘He will go to ground if you pursue him with force. It must be done subtly — he will only give up his secrets by coaxing or trickery. Let me try with him. He dislikes me, but he might at least be persuaded that I am on his side.’
Walsingham nods, and lays a hand on my shoulder.
‘Very well, Bruno. But find him quickly. Burghley will have sent for Dee tonight. The Privy Council will have to question him, and it will not look good for him once the details of this murder are known.’
We proceed along the painted corridors until the strains of the music can be heard once more, the fluting voices seeming more ethereal than ever by contrast with the scene we have just witnessed. As we turn a corner, a young man in the livery of the Palace Guard comes hurtling towards us with urgent steps, shouldering his way past me and mumbling an apology without looking back; as I recover my balance, the stumble causes a memory to jolt back.
‘Philip Howard!’ I whisper, stopping short.
‘What?’ Walsingham turns, his eyes narrowed.
‘Philip Howard was at the Holbein Gate the day I met Abigail.’ I lower my voice until it is barely audible. ‘He and his friend pushed past us, but he might well have been watching before that. He fits the description of Cecily Ashe’s lover too — he’s handsome and titled, just the sort of man a young girl couldn’t resist showing off to her friends about. And he has a connection to Mary Stuart through his uncle and the embassy.’
Walsingham presses his lips together.
‘The Earl of Arundel is another one we cannot possibly accuse without iron proof. I will have him watched. Now, Bruno, you must return to your party. The ambassador will be curious about your absence. I leave you to find something plausible to tell him.’ He pats me on the shoulder once, then directs me to a side door back to the hall, where two guards with pikestaffs now keep silent watch.
I slip in as quietly as I can through the back of the crowd, most of whom have their attention politely fixed in the direction of the choir, and find myself on the opposite side of the hall from which I left. A few heads turn at the sound of the door, but their curious glances last only a moment. On the dais, I notice that the chair to the right of the queen’s, where one of her ladies had been seated, is now occupied by Leicester, who leans in towards her, his expression solicitous. Elizabeth’s own face, beneath its mask of ceruse and rouge, is impossible to read, but her eyes do not flicker from the singers; in her unwavering attention, she seems to set an example to her subjects. Through the heads of the audience, I catch a glimpse of the vigorously waving arms of Master Byrd. Only now, as I fold my arms across my chest and stare hard at the floor, breathing deeply, do I realise how I am shaking.
‘Doctor Bruno. You look as if you have seen a ghost.’
The clipped voice at my shoulder, instantly recog
nisable; I turn to see Lord Henry Howard standing at a distance from his party and regarding me with interest. I drag my hand across my face as if this will pull my expression into some semblance of normality, and attempt a cordial acknowledgement. Howard has had his beard trimmed for the occasion; it makes his looks spikier than ever. His black hair is neatly combed back, and in his hands he holds a velvet hat trimmed with garnets and an iridescent peacock feather.
‘Or perhaps I should say a spirit?’ he adds, with the same feigned politeness, turning the hat slowly between his fingers.
I am still in shock, and though I can barely feel my legs, it occurs to me that the knees of my underhose are wet from kneeling beside the body. It is unlikely that Howard will look closely enough to notice, but it does not help me to feel any more at ease in his presence. In fact, I am so conscious of my soaking knees that it takes me a moment to register what he has said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You are spending a great deal of time in Mortlake, I understand, in the library of our friend Doctor Dee?’ he goes on. ‘So the ambassador mentioned.’
‘I sometimes use his library for research,’ I say slowly, hardly able to bend my mind to caution at this time. Howard arches one of his elegantly pointed eyebrows and gives me a long look, as if to tell me not to be disingenuous.
‘So he’s conjuring spirits now, is he?’
‘I don’t know where your lordship has that idea,’ I say, but I hear the waver in my own voice; all I want is for him to stop this needling and leave me in peace so that I might gather my thoughts before I rejoin Castelnau.
‘He has been sharing his prophetic visions with Her Majesty,’ Howard says, his eyes roving over the heads of the crowd to where the queen sits on her dais with Leicester. ‘For her part, she chooses to ridicule them by sharing them with the Privy Council. You may imagine how we all laughed.’ He turns abruptly to look at me. ‘But of course, if Dee is attempting to speak with spirits, he could be arrested for witchcraft. I doubt she could save him then.’