by S. J. Parris
‘What a curious race you are, you Englishmen,’ I mused, my dagger level at his neck. ‘I never met a people who complained so bitterly about their country and at the same time believed themselves the superiors of every other nation in Europe, just because God saw fit to surround you by sea.’
‘It’s well known Italians are all sodomites,’ he said, though quietly. I laughed again; I almost admired his defiance.
‘Is that right? You must be nervous, then, the two of us alone here.’ He took a step back, struggling to control his expression. I matched his movement. ‘Careful you don’t back yourself into a corner – who knows what I might do? And tell me – what of the Spanish?’
‘Don’t even get me started on the Spanish.’ His squint intensified as his eyes grew animated. ‘They want to invade us and rape our women, make us slaves to kiss the Pope’s hole. You’re all the bloody same.’
‘It’s a wonder you can tell us apart,’ I said. ‘You must enjoy your work here.’ My hand was shaking with cold; I had to concentrate hard on keeping the knife steady so that I didn’t cut him by mistake. I had no intention of causing more trouble than necessary.
He puffed himself up, despite the blade. ‘My work is keeping England safe from the likes of you. And I am proud of that, yeah. Means I can look my son square in the eye when I go home, tell him he’ll grow up a free Englishman.’
‘Good for you. It must be quite a feat for you to look anyone square in the eye.’
I gave him a sympathetic smile, seeing how much he wanted to hit me. I was half-tempted to tell him of my own work, let him appreciate the irony, but I restrained myself; the truth about my journey was for Richard Daniel only. Squint subsided into silence, shooting me furious glances from the side of his good eye. I considered soliciting his view of the French, but I was too tired and the game had lost its amusement.
At length, the door opened and Adam’s Apple returned in the company of a tall, broad man with black hair and beard who appeared to have dressed hastily, his doublet laced awry. He carried only a lantern, but I could see Adam’s Apple had picked up a hefty stick on his way.
The newcomer held up the light and peered at me through the gloom.
‘So this is the troublemaker. My man here thinks you may be a secret priest, or a spy. Do you have papers?’
‘Richard Daniel?’
He nodded, impatient.
I lowered the knife, sheathed it again in my boot, and showed him my empty hands, before reaching slowly inside my doublet, where I had a pocket sewn inside the lining. I drew out a silver ring and held it out to him. He lifted it to the light, examined the emblem engraved on it, and nodded again.
‘Come with me. I will take you somewhere we can talk. You look as if you need food and dry clothes.’
‘What I need is a fast horse,’ I said, my legs weak with relief. I couldn’t help feeling a small triumph at the disappointment on the searchers’ faces.
‘We’ll discuss it. For now you look barely able to sit upright on a chair. Your face is green. Come and eat.’
I realised the floor was swaying beneath me like the deck of the boat; I let my head hang slack and followed him, to the sound of muttered insults from the two men we left behind.
He led me uphill, along a narrow, curving street of pretty cottages, lime-washed fronts pearly in the moonlight, to a timber-framed building where the sign of The Mermaid creaked over the entrance. I followed him into an oak panelled tap-room, empty now and silent, where stubs of candles burnt low in sconces and the embers of a fire glowed in the wide hearth. He ushered me to a stool by the fireplace and disappeared through a side door. I took off my wet cloak and huddled towards the fading warmth in the grate, catching a low exchange of voices from the passage outside. At length Daniel returned, yawning as he drew up a chair alongside me.
‘The maid will bring warm food and wine in a moment.’
‘Is it your tavern?’
He shook his head. ‘I have the use of a room when I’m on duty. Even the Queen’s searchers must catch a few hours’ sleep now and then.’
‘I’m sorry to draw you from your bed,’ I said, rubbing my hands over my face.
He waved the apology aside. ‘It’s what I’m here for. So you carry Nicholas Berden’s signet ring. Why did he not come himself?’
I caught the edge of suspicion in his voice, and did not blame him for it. Berden was Sir Francis Walsingham’s most trusted agent in Paris; his mark guaranteed the integrity of any document or person who carried it. But the traffic of secret letters between England and France was so fraught now, every network fearful of infiltration by double-dealers, that it was not beyond belief that I might be a Catholic conspirator who had killed Berden and stolen his ring to use as a passport.
‘Berden intercepted a letter, two days ago. He wants it in the right hands without delay. He is well entrenched with the English Catholics in Paris now, they take him for one of their own – he could not leave for England in haste without arousing suspicion, and he did not want to pass it through the English embassy, because he fears it is not secure. So he asked me to deliver it myself.’
He gave me a long look, sizing me up. ‘Why you?’
‘There is no reason my name should mean anything to you,’ I said, meeting his gaze straight on. ‘But we serve the same master. You understand my meaning. I must leave for London as soon as possible.’
‘This letter you carry speaks of some imminent threat, then?’ He watched me carefully, doubt lingering in his eyes.
‘That is for greater men than me to determine,’ I said, with equal care. ‘My instructions are only to put it into their hands. But Berden believes it cannot wait, and I trust his judgement.’
‘He did not tell you what it contains?’
‘No.’ This was a lie, and I suspected he guessed it. We continued to watch one another, until we were interrupted by the arrival of a young girl, cap aslant, eyes blurry with sleep, carrying a jug of wine and a bowl of pottage. Daniel sat back in silence, arms folded, while I attempted to swallow some, my hollow stomach cramping at each mouthful until I began to relax and felt the warmth spread through my numb limbs.
‘So you will give me a horse?’ I asked, when I could speak again.
He pressed his lips together. ‘We have post-horses ready to courier urgent messages to London. But if I may say so again, you do not look fit for the road. If your letter is so important, I should feel safer entrusting it to an experienced fast rider.’ He passed a hand over his beard. ‘Besides, as you have seen, your appearance attracts hostility from some Englishmen. You will have to stop for food and water along the way, and those you encounter will not give two shits for Nicholas Berden’s ring. What then, if your message should be lost, and you the only one in possession of its content?’
‘I know how to fight.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But you are only one man. And you are – forgive me, what age are you?’ He frowned.
‘Thirty-eight. Not quite in my dotage yet, sir.’ I guessed him to be thirty at most, though likely less; sea-winds could age a man beyond his years. I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. ‘I will see this letter delivered into Walsingham’s hands myself, and no one will prevent me, I swear to it.’ I spoke through my teeth, with more confidence than I felt; I knew that everything he said made good sense, better sense than my plan, but this letter was my passport back to Walsingham’s favour and I had not come this far to entrust it to some messenger and lose the opportunity I hoped to gain by it.
Richard Daniel looked at me for a long while, weighing up my words, and finally nodded, a half-smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.
‘I see you are a stubborn fellow,’ he said. ‘Well, then. I shall find you a horse while you change your clothes. But I must insist you take one of my men with you, for protection. He can carry food and water for your journey too.’
I hesitated, but saw this was the best deal I was likely to strike, and I had seventy miles t
o cover across the Sussex Weald and the Surrey hills; I would not reach London without Daniel’s assistance. I nodded, drained the last of the wine and stood. ‘Let us not lose any more time.’
‘You do not wish to rest?’
‘The enemies of England are not resting.’
He pursed his lips, as if he approved this answer. ‘Then put on dry clothes, if you have them, and I will meet you outside in half an hour with everything you need.’
He clapped me on both shoulders and left. I stood and stretched my back, catching sight of myself in the darkened window. Thirty-eight, and looking haggard with it. Black hair, stiff with salt, curling past my collar; a four-day growth of beard; dark hollows under my eyes and below my cheekbones from lack of sleep, and lack of something else. Purpose? Peace of mind? These last few months in Paris had been melancholy. No wonder those two searchers at the port had suspected me of desperate measures; I looked like a vagrant – which was, I reflected, not so far from the truth. I had been living in exile for a decade now, one eye turned always over my shoulder, as a man with powerful enemies must. The Queen of England could put an end to that, if she chose, once I had proved my worth to her.
I undid my pack and pressed along the stitching of the secret compartment. I could feel the slight ridge of the leather wallet inside containing the documents. But the letter’s contents were committed word for word to my memory, and its cipher too. Let it be stolen; the paper would be useless to anyone without the knowledge I alone carried in my head. I would bring it to the door of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster and lay it at his feet, to remind him – and his sovereign – what service I had done England in the past.
TWO
‘Lady Sidney will see you now.’
The man who grudgingly addressed me wore a steward’s chain of office, a black doublet with a blanched muslin ruff and soft leather indoor shoes; he kept his distance, halfway up the path to the entrance of the red-brick mansion on Seething Lane. I jerked my head up at his voice; we had been waiting half an hour already and I had almost given up hope of a response. I was not exactly surprised; if I had looked like a desperate man when I landed in Rye, it was fortunate I could not see myself in a glass by the time we reached London, on the evening of 29th July, our second day on the road. I must have had the appearance of a lunatic assassin: mad-eyed, unslept, unwashed, unshaven. The guards had had their weapons in my face before I had even dismounted. It fell to my taciturn companion, Richard Daniel’s man, to step forward with his official messenger’s livery and prove that I had not come to murder Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State in his own home.
One of the guards held his halberd lowered towards me, the point a foot from my chest, while his colleague unlocked the tall iron gates and nodded me through.
‘Just you,’ the steward added. ‘He can go to the servants’ quarters.’ He motioned to Daniel’s rider, a sturdy Sussex man who had spoken little on the journey, except to mutter occasional resentment at having his progress slowed by an incompetent foreigner half-asleep in the saddle.
Golden evening sun caught the many diamond-paned windows of Walsingham’s town house. The light softened its mellow brick and glazed the tall twisted chimneys like sugar sculptures. It was a house that discreetly announced its owner’s wealth. The Queen had rewarded her spymaster handsomely for his tireless service, as well she might; most of his spare funds were diverted into paying his intelligencers, since Elizabeth’s Treasury was notoriously miserly with resources, preferring not to acknowledge the underground networks of information and interception that protected her realm just as surely as her warships and soldiers, with a great deal less expense.
‘You will find Lady Sidney in a sombre cast of mind,’ the steward informed me, with a pompous air, as the heavy oak door was drawn back by a young woman in a black dress and white coif. ‘I hope it is no bad news you bring, as she should not be troubled further. Perhaps it would be best if I relayed your message to her?’
‘My news is for Lady Sidney’s ears alone,’ I said. His moustache twitched with disapproval, but to my relief he did not press me further, only gestured for me to follow him along a panelled corridor hung with tapestries.
I had guessed Walsingham would not be here; he would likely be at court, at the Queen’s right hand, or at his country house upriver in Barn Elms, near Mortlake. I had gambled on the house at Seething Lane, where his daughter lived, as the quickest way to him, wherever he was currently to be found. I barely knew Frances Sidney, as she now was, and was not at all convinced that my name would mean anything to her; I had only dared hope she might receive me for the sake of her husband, Sir Philip, who had been my closest friend when I lived in England a year ago. Sidney was now away in the Low Countries, fighting with Elizabeth’s forces against the Spanish under the command of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, but I hoped there would be a vicarious pleasure in hearing news of him from his wife.
I was ushered through a door at the end of the corridor into a wide receiving-room, flooded with light from its west-facing windows. Lady Sidney rose from a chair by the fireplace and held out a hand in greeting. She was as slight as I remembered, in a gown of dark grey satin, though it was barely eight months since her child was born. Her pale face was still almost a girl’s, but as she approached I saw that her smile was brittle and shaky, her eyes puffy with traces of tears. The weight of my journey and lack of sleep seemed to land on me with one blow as I struggled with the import of her appearance. Why had the steward not warned me more clearly? Not Sidney, surely, it couldn’t be? There would have been news in Paris – he was well connected among the English diplomats there – I would have heard, would I not? My knees buckled; I stumbled back a pace as I stared at her, open-mouthed, forgetting all etiquette, unable to form the words I dreaded to speak.
Frances Sidney darted forward and drew a stool from the hearth to offer me.
‘Marston, fetch this man food and drink at once, can’t you see the journey he’s had?’ She spoke sternly to the steward, but she was so young, barely twenty, and her command sounded like a child playing at running a household. The man gave a curt bow, but his look was not one of deference.
‘With respect, madam – I am not sure I should leave you alone with this man. Your father—’
‘My father trusts this man with his life,’ she said hotly. ‘Now go and do as I ask before our guest faints from hunger.’ She turned to me, her hands outstretched. ‘Bruno.’ There was warmth in her smile, as well as sadness. ‘I did not think we would see you again. You left for Paris last autumn, I thought?’
‘I had good reason to return.’ I took her hands in mine and kissed them briefly. ‘But my lady, tell me…’ I stood back and searched her face. ‘I intrude on some private grief? I pray it is not…’ I hesitated again ‘…news from the front?’
She gave a little gasp and pressed a hand to her mouth, then let out a brief, panicked laugh. ‘Oh God, no – you thought…? No, Philip is well, I am sorry to have alarmed you. If anything had happened to him, you would have heard my lament all the way from London Bridge. The whole city would be in mourning. But you are right that you find us a house of sorrow. We have suffered—’ She broke off, pressing her lips together as if afraid of breaking a confidence. ‘That is a story for another time. Sit – you look exhausted. Tell me in truth, though – I will wager you have not travelled from Paris without rest just to visit me.’
‘I must see Sir Francis,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘As soon as possible.’ Lady Sidney’s waiting woman stood by the window, her hands folded neatly behind her back, not observing her mistress, but nevertheless I felt I should be discreet, even in this household where secrets were a native language.
Frances nodded, her face solemn again. ‘Plots?’
‘What else?’
She pulled a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and worried its edges between her fingers. ‘Father never sleeps now, you know – he says the Catholic plots are like the Hydra, you cut the head off o
ne and a hundred more grow in its place. He is making himself ill with it, and still Her Majesty remains stubborn, she will not heed his advice nor pass the laws that would make her safer. She wills herself to believe that her subjects love her, and her cousin Scotch Mary would never scheme against her, despite all evidence. But you are in luck – he dines here tonight, or so he has promised. I expect he will be late, as always.’ I caught a peevish edge to her voice; the frustration of a girl sidelined by the men in her life for matters of state. ‘Why cannot the damned Catholics see reason?’ she burst out, so suddenly I flinched, as she brandished the kerchief in her fist towards me as if I were responsible. ‘Can it be so hard for them, to worship as the Queen commands? Then they would keep their lands and titles, they would not be thrown in prison, they could cease their plotting to put that fat Scottish bitch on the throne, and innocent people wouldn’t have to die for their schemes.’
I blinked, unsure how to respond; it was an unexpectedly vehement outburst, turning her face red and blotchy, her eyes bright with tears. I presumed she must be thinking of her husband, dug in with the garrison at Flushing.
‘They would tell you, my lady,’ I said gently, when it seemed the question was not merely rhetorical, ‘that they fear the sin of heresy more than England’s laws. They would say they had rather keep their immortal souls than their titles.’
‘Oh, but they don’t mind staining their souls with the sin of murder, which they say is no sin if it suits their purpose.’ Her eyes blazed at me and for an instant I saw the image of her father, his anger and ruthlessness. ‘Could they not just leave off their relics and rosaries and do as the law commands? It is the same God underneath it all, is it not?’
‘My lady—’ The maid by the window turned and stepped forward, her hands held out as if to break up a fight.
Lady Sidney sighed and seemed to subside. ‘Don’t worry, Alice – I will mind my speech. Besides, Doctor Bruno here is the last person in the world who would report me for heretical words, for he is a famous heretic himself. Is it not so?’
