by S. J. Parris
I thought I caught a note of scepticism, but perhaps that was my imagination. I gave a brisk nod.
‘Is there anything to eat?’
Phelippes sniffed. ‘This is not an inn, Doctor Bruno. Ask Master Poole if you wish to break your fast on the way, he claims to have your needs in hand. I hope you are not being dragged on a fool’s errand. We have little time to lose as it is – the girl’s death has disrupted everything.’
Poole held the door for me, raising his eyebrows again to make clear his feelings about Phelippes. When I joined him on the stairs with a hat pulled down over my ears and a kerchief tied around the lower half of my face, he gave me a cursory glance of approval and signalled for me to follow him. I noticed that he walked with a slight limp in his right leg. He didn’t speak until we were outside, where a boy with scabs on his lip held an old but solid-looking grey mare by a rope halter.
‘You’ll have to ride behind me.’ Poole pulled himself into the saddle with an easy, practised movement that almost disguised the way he nudged his right leg over subtly with his hand. I climbed up behind him, wincing at my aching muscles. He slipped the boy a coin and we turned out of Leadenhall down Gracechurch Street towards London Bridge.
‘There is something wrong with that man,’ he said, after a while, as if challenging me to disagree.
‘Phelippes? He is unusual, I grant. But I have studied the art of memory for nearly twenty years and only ever met one other with natural faculties like his.’
Poole grunted. ‘I still say he is touched. The man behaves as if he has never known a human feeling. Mark how he spoke of my sister, as if her death is no more than an inconvenience. And he believes Master Secretary can’t scratch his arse without he, Thomas, weighs up the cost and stamps five papers to approve it.’
I laughed, though I was not sure if it was intended as a joke, but I felt him relax. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said, as we passed down New Fish Street with the great gatehouse arch of the bridge in sight. The streets were already busy with traders’ carts, and goodwives on their way to market, baskets jutting from their hips. Gulls wheeled overhead, loosing lonely cries. The air was cold, carrying the dirt smell of the river on a sharp breeze.
‘She should never have been caught up in this,’ he replied, after a long pause. ‘Clara was an innocent, Doctor Bruno. She was not cut out for living a double life, the way we learn to in Walsingham’s service. Women are too much led by their feelings to dissemble in that way.’ He fell silent again and a shudder rippled across his back as he exhaled. I could have told him then that I had met plenty of women as skilled in the arts of duplicity as any man, and every bit as determined – I thought again of Sophia Underhill – but it was not the moment.
‘You blame Walsingham, then?’
‘It would be meaningless to blame him,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘Clara volunteered for this work. She was tired of a life indoors, a poor widow marking time to become a governess. She sought adventure. Now see where that has led her – pushing her way into a man’s world.’ He seemed about to say more, but fell silent abruptly. I wondered how much detail Walsingham had told him about the manner of her death. Poole made it sound as though he partly blamed his sister for her own end.
‘Then it was her idea, to become close with the conspirators?’
His shoulders tightened. ‘She only thought of carrying letters or something in that line. She badgered Walsingham to give her a task – he said he had enough couriers. I think he had misgivings, rightly, about trusting a woman with sensitive correspondence. But if the fault for her death lies with anyone, I must own it.’
‘How so?’
He glanced to the side, wrinkling his nose as we approached Fish Wharf and the Fishmongers’ Hall on the north bank of the river and the smell assaulted us from all sides. He dropped his voice, so that I had to lean forward to hear.
‘Babington and his friends keep themselves close, as you’d expect. They do not lightly confide in outsiders – you’ll find this out for yourself soon enough, though Master Secretary seems to believe you will walk into their open arms without hindrance.’ His tone let me know what he thought of Walsingham’s faith, though I chose not to take it personally. ‘They found me useful because they believed I brought them information about Walsingham, but my connection with him also made them wary, even though I have been working to gain the trust of the Catholics in London for years now. I was brought to the conspirators by Jack Savage, who I met in prison when I was serving time for distributing illegal books. But they still didn’t invite me to their most private meetings. Walsingham grew frustrated with the lack of progress, though no more than I was with myself. Once I made the mistake of remarking to him that, with a man like Babington, a woman might have better luck drawing out his secrets. It never occurred to me that he would think to use my sister.’
‘Then it was Master Secretary’s idea to have her introduced to them?’
‘It could have been Clara’s. She would have thought it good sport.’ He sighed. ‘My sister was a beautiful girl, Bruno. I wish you could have seen her. Long, red curls down her back, and white skin – people said she looked like the Queen herself when she was a young princess. I don’t suppose she ever intended to do any more than flirt with them, see what they would confide. I didn’t like the idea, but Walsingham overruled me.’
‘You could not have known how it would end.’
‘I should have guessed, and put my foot down. I knew what those men were like, I’d seen what they were capable of. And Clara was soft-hearted. She married a man with no money because he won her with pretty words. She should never have gone near the like of Babington and his friends. Our father would spin in his grave. God knows when I shall even be permitted to bury her.’
‘You have not seen her?’
‘He won’t let me, yet. Says it’s vital her death does not become public knowledge too soon, the better to allow her killers to betray themselves.’ He shook his head and his voice took on a dark edge. ‘That’s what makes me think he is keeping something from me.’
He left an expectant pause but I said nothing, and we rode on in silence, passing through the north gatehouse of London Bridge. A young man hung limply by his wrists in the pillory, glazed eyes barely noting the passers-by, who were too caught up squeezing through the archway to pay him any heed. It was only as we drew level that I realised it was a girl dressed in men’s clothes, her hair cut short, her face grey with fatigue.
‘What’s her offence, do you think?’ I asked Poole, leaning forward.
He gave her the briefest glance. ‘She’ll be a whore from the Bankside stews,’ he said, as if this were an everyday sight. ‘Some of them dress as boys for the clients. It’s prohibited. If they’re caught, it’s a few hours in the pillory.’
The girl looked up at me from under her hooded lids, her expression neither pleading nor defiant, and I recalled the day Sophia Underhill had come looking for me disguised as a boy to escape a charge of murder. I wondered again where she might be, and whether her current identity as Mary Gifford was any more comfortable to her. If Gilbert Gifford insisted on playing games about how to find her, I was quite prepared to threaten it out of him.
Our progress slowed as we joined the flow of traffic making its way along the narrow conduit, barely twelve feet across, between the houses crammed each side of the bridge. Carts, wagons, horses and people on foot hoisting baskets or children on their shoulders were forced into a laborious shuffling procession, one lane in each direction, accompanied by cursing and shoving as those in a hurry tried to push ahead, only to be forced back, sometimes with blows, by people in front determined not to give way. The stink of horseshit rose as we inched forward; I took a deep breath through the kerchief and considered that, in my eagerness to return to London, I had forgotten how much I resented trying to get around the place.
‘Where are we going?’ I shouted at the back of Poole’s head, as the horse flicked its ears, impatient
at the throng milling about its legs.
‘To search the place she was found.’
‘Has that not been done already? It was two days ago, I thought.’
He made a scornful noise through his teeth. ‘I wouldn’t trust the London constables to search their own breeches and find their cocks.’
‘And what are we looking for?’
‘We’ll know if we find it.’
I let this cryptic answer hang for a moment.
‘This will be a difficult task for you,’ I said, when he made no move to continue the conversation. The muscles across his back stiffened.
‘Who has suggested that?’
‘I mean only that you cannot be impartial.’
‘None of us is impartial, in this business.’ He allowed a pause. ‘Oh, I see. They have told you I will blunder in and mar the project, because I cannot contain my grief. Who said that, Phelippes?’
‘No one has said so.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. Even in quarter profile I could see his scorn. ‘How long have you been in the Service?’
‘For Walsingham? I met him in the spring of ’83, shortly after I arrived in England.’
‘Three years, then. Though you have been out of the country since last autumn, I understand.’ He sounded pleased, as if he had won an argument. ‘I have served him twelve, since he was first appointed to the Privy Council.’
‘What is it you do for him, exactly?’
‘I talk to people.’ He set his eyes ahead so that I could not see his face, but I could tell from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Listen, I’ve been in prison three times for his sake, once for two months, and given no special treatment that would mark me out as his man. I took my beatings like the rest of the papist suspects, and my knee has never fully recovered.’ He slapped his right leg, hard, as if to punish it. ‘If I did not betray myself then, I will not now, any more than you will.’
‘I meant no offence,’ I said hastily. ‘Only that I have never lost a sister – I do not know that I could keep my countenance in your position.’
‘I think you are disingenuous, my friend.’ But he sounded mollified. ‘If he thought you could be ruled by your emotions or betray yourself so easily, he would not have chosen you. For myself, I must put grief to one side. I know how to do that well enough. Sister or no sister, she was a pawn in a chess game played for high stakes, and I intend to find out who took her.’
I felt his metaphor was flawed, though I resisted pointing this out. He appeared to have assumed a responsibility for investigating Clara Poole’s death that I suspected did not come from Walsingham, and again I wondered at Master Secretary’s motive in involving him.
‘Tell me of this Babington group, then,’ I said, to channel his anger. ‘What kind of men are they? Besides ruthless.’
He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Walsingham insists on giving the business Babington’s name, since Babington’s money is furnishing the plans and he wants the glory. They should more properly call it the Ballard plot. That priest is the dangerous one among them. Him, I would call ruthless. Next to him, Babington is a mere fop. A pretty, rich boy looking for adventure. He wanted a cause, and in Mary Stuart he has found one. And the others can’t proceed without his money, so he is flattered and made to feel important.’
‘You think Babington’s faith is not sincere?’
‘Oh, he believes absolutely in his own sincerity, and the idea of himself as the saviour of England. But I don’t think he gives two shits for the sufferings of ordinary English Catholics. His father left him a thousand pounds a year, what would he know of hardship?’
He did not trouble to disguise his anger. I had the sense that Robin Poole’s antipathy to Anthony Babington had put down roots long before the death of his sister.
‘And the others?’ I prompted.
‘Let’s see. Father John Ballard. Thirty-seven, ordained priest, goes about in the guise of a veteran soldier. Calls himself Captain Fortescue. His faith verges on fanatical. If he’d been born in your country, he’d have volunteered to join the Inquisition, and enjoyed it.’
‘I have met the type,’ I said, with feeling.
‘Ballard dreams of ushering in the reign of a second Bloody Mary, turning the skies over England dark with the smoke of burning Protestants. If anyone could kill a young girl in cold blood, it would be him. Or more likely his faithful dog Jack Savage, who is justly named – he used to be a professional fighter. Then there’s Chidiock Tichborne, Babington’s closest friend – another rich boy who only wants England’s return to Rome so he can get his father’s estate back. Same with Thomas Salisbury – he’s the one Ballard has riding about the country persuading Catholic nobles to let Spanish troops land on their coastline.’ He gave a sceptical laugh. ‘They really think Philip of Spain is going to send his Armada when they snap their fingers. They are all boys playing at holy war.’
‘But they trust you?’
‘I believe they do. I’m from a Catholic family, and Savage vouched for me to Ballard. They think I share their grievances.’
‘But I thought your father worked for Walsingham?’
‘He did.’ A brief pause. ‘He was an informer.’
‘I see. Did the Catholics know?’
‘Well. There’s the question.’ His voice grew tight. ‘My father drowned ten years ago. Fell from the riverbank on the way home one night, they said. Assumed he was drunk. But my father knew how to hold his drink, so…’ He lifted a shoulder, inviting me to draw my own conclusion. ‘I was twenty-two, Clara fourteen, both our mothers dead. Walsingham took her into his house, and paid for me to study the law, so I could monitor my fellow students for him. Now Clara’s gone too, for the same reasons. And I let it happen.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I said, hearing the emptiness of the words before they left my mouth.
‘Not really for you to say,’ he replied, though without rancour.
We crossed the rest of the way in silence as the crowd funnelled through the archway of the Great Stone Gate on the south bank. Poole raised his eyes as we emerged from the shadow and I followed his gaze to the sightless remains of heads on spikes high above. Crows perched on ledges nearby, shreds of matter in their beaks; I looked quickly away.
‘I will see Babington and his fellows up there, whatever the cost,’ he said through his teeth as the traffic eased and we turned right to follow the road along the Bank Side.
SEVEN
I remembered, in an instant, how the first thing that hit you about Southwark was the smell. To be more accurate, the collision of smells, all of them fierce enough to make your eyes water and your throat burn. The heavy scent of hops from the breweries fought with vile stinks from the tanneries and the dyers; these in turn mixed with the human odours of the gong-men’s carts, and the sharp, animal musk of the bull and bear rings as we passed the church of St Mary Overy and the walled gardens of Winchester House. Beyond the bull ring, the famous Bankside Stews lined the road facing the river, with their own ripe scents behind closed doors. According to ancient laws, most of these inns and licensed brothels were painted white, their colourful signs affixed above the doors with images that announced their names to those who could not read: The Boar’s Head, The Horseshoe, The Rose, The Barge, The Half Moon, The White Hart, The Olyphant, The Unicorn. Many were fine old houses with gates wide enough for coaches, and gardens with ponds and orchards stretching out to the rear. But they were separated by narrow alleys running with refuse and ordure, and when Poole turned the horse down one of these to follow it south, away from the river, I pulled the kerchief tighter around my mouth and nose and fought back the bile rising in my throat.
In the streets behind the bank, tenements crowded on one another as if they had been thrown together by drunks from whatever lay to hand: scrofulous plaster flaking from the walls, sheets of oilcloth nailed over windows in place of glass, roofs with missing tiles and greasy boards propping up lean-to shelters barely fit to keep a dog i
n. Despite the early hour, men in shirtsleeves stumbled along roads rutted by cartwheels, or pissed against the doorposts of alehouses under fading and splintered signs, regarding us with unfocused eyes that made me think of the girl in the stocks. It was impossible to tell if they were on their way home after a long night, or beginning again for a new day. Silent, dirty children with sores around their mouths crouched in the alleys, watching with wary, sunken eyes. Tired-looking women in low bodices and smudged face paint jutted their hips and pouted at us as we passed; one, a spotted scarf around her black hair, made a comical honking noise after us and asked, in a foreign accent, if we handsome gentlemen were hungry for a little gooseflesh this fine morning? When she stepped too close to the horse, causing it to rear its head back, Poole snapped at her to fuck herself. ‘Where would be the profit in that?’ she fired back, quick as blinking, with a merry laugh, and I found myself smiling. Poole muttered something about damned Winchester geese, and I recalled the nickname given to the women who worked in this lawless borough, where any pleasure or entertainment might be acquired, at a price.
Poole turned east and south again, through streets lined with half-derelict buildings, until the tenements gave way to open fields and we followed a mossy wall of crumbling brick on our left. When we reached an unmarked gate, he brought the horse to a halt and sprang down; I followed, and he handed me the reins.
‘This is the place.’ He slapped his palm against the slats. The gate looked as if it could be torn away with one hand, though the lock held fast as the wood juddered. ‘The Cross Bones. They took this from the old keeper.’ He held up a key and fitted it to the lock. ‘Bring the horse in with you, or he’ll be gone in two minutes round here. Nothing but thieves and whores, this whole stinking borough. Let’s see where she was found.’
I followed him through the gap into an uneven patch of waste ground. There were few upright stones; those that remained listed at angles, edges worn away by time and weather, their inscriptions erased to a smooth blank. Here and there rotting wooden posts stood over other mounds, but for the most part you would hardly know the place was given over to the dead, save for its air of neglect and the crows perching with watchful eyes in the trees.
