Execution

by S. J. Parris

  Walsingham nodded. ‘Thomas.’

  He tossed the locket to Phelippes, who snapped it open, removed the lock of hair, then inserted a fine, thin tool into the hinge. Soundlessly, the inner casing flipped up to reveal a hidden compartment. With a pair of tweezers, Phelippes removed a thin strip of paper and unfolded it, while Poole stared in amazement.

  ‘Ingenious, no?’ Walsingham allowed a brief smile. ‘Bloody Mary gave these as gifts to her trusted women. Useful way to carry secret messages around unseen.’

  ‘I have seen something similar,’ I said, thinking of a woman I had known long ago, in Naples.

  ‘Clara never showed me this,’ Poole said, with a hint of indignation, his eyes wide. ‘Is that how she hid messages from the conspirators?’

  ‘One of the ways.’ Walsingham pressed his lips together with a grim satisfaction. ‘Get to work, Thomas. What have you there, Bruno?’

  ‘I found this in the same place,’ I said, handing him the pitcher. ‘It’s recent, there’s a little wine left in the bottom. I don’t know if it’s useful. There was nothing else there that I could see.’

  Poole frowned. ‘Except a quantity of blood. I would speak with you alone, Your Honour. It’s time I was allowed to see my sister, and bury her.’

  ‘Long past time,’ Walsingham agreed. ‘But for now I need you close to Babington. Ballard is expected back in London any day and I must have Bruno prepared for his return.’

  I opened my mouth to interject but he spoke to Poole over me: ‘Find out what you can. Mark what they ask you about your sister, and who among them seems ill at ease. Continue to tell them you have not heard from her.’

  Poole appeared to consider arguing, but subsided under the force of Walsingham’s stare. In the doorway he paused, one hand on the post.

  ‘That locket belongs to me,’ he said, with a hint of warning. ‘It’s all I have of her.’

  ‘And you shall have it, as soon as Thomas has finished his work,’ Walsingham said, in the same reasonable tone. ‘Bring your news to Seething Lane after supper and we’ll speak further. I know how hard this must be, Robin. Your loyalty and obedience will be remembered, when this is done.’

  Poole gave a curt nod and disappeared. Walsingham waited until his footsteps had died on the stairs before closing the door to Phelippes’s chamber.

  ‘She’ll be in the ground by then. That curate you met at the leper chapel – he’s burying one of his elderly parishioners this afternoon. Clara will go in the churchyard at the same time, no one will be any the wiser and with luck, Robin will never have to see the body. Especially after my physician opened her this morning, at your suggestion. No sign that she was with child.’

  I felt obscurely disappointed; I had wanted to be right about that.

  ‘Then we can rule out that theory, at least. I suppose there is no doubt that her death is connected to the conspiracy.’

  ‘But why, Bruno? What did they suspect – did they know they’d been infiltrated? That is what I need to know. What did you make of your trip to Southwark?’

  ‘I don’t understand why I was there.’ I jerked my thumb towards the door. ‘Why did you send him to search the place?’

  ‘Robin was determined to go, with my permission or without.’ Walsingham walked to the window and peered out over the street. ‘He came to me demanding I give him one of my men to help. Seemed convinced there must be something there to discover that would help him pin the blame. I thought it better to let him feel he was being useful, and I thought of you because you’ll have to get to know each other – you’ll be looking out for one another among the conspirators. And with a stranger his guard might have been down. One must always watch the watchers, eh, Bruno?’

  I looked at his back as his meaning became clear. ‘You don’t suspect Poole? Of murdering his own sister?’

  Walsingham turned, with a sombre smile. ‘Let us rather say, I hold no one above suspicion in anything. Every man has a price. Even Thomas. Isn’t that right, Thomas?’

  ‘I would have dispatched her more efficiently,’ Phelippes said, without looking up. There appeared to be no trace of irony in his words. ‘Not with that absurd spectacle. Besides, I was with you at Seething Lane that night.’

  Walsingham winked at me, but I could only think of Frances Sidney’s remark that Phelippes had no more human feeling than a clockwork machine. There was something chilling about the man; I had no doubt that he could kill in the Queen’s service if the proposal made logical sense, and that he would plan it to the last detail with a total absence of conscience.

  ‘But you’re right, it would be a stretch to suspect Poole,’ Walsingham said. He looked even more exhausted than he had the day before. ‘How did he seem to you?’

  ‘Like a man fighting to remain master of his feelings,’ I said.

  ‘Which feelings, precisely?’

  ‘Guilt. Anger. Grief, obviously. I was praying he wouldn’t stumble on a severed ear – it was bad enough trying to reason away the bloodstains he found. He knows you have not told him the whole truth. You can’t seriously think he would have done anything so vicious? He clearly loved her.’

  ‘Oh, Robin loved Clara a great deal, no question,’ Walsingham said, wandering over to Phelippes’s desk. He let the statement hang, ripe with ambiguity. ‘And this?’ He picked up the locket, dangling it from the broken chain.

  ‘It was there for the finding. I’d be surprised if that was coincidence.’

  ‘Interesting. Who planted it, I wonder? Clara? Or her killer? And why?’ He pulled at his beard. ‘Is it a cipher, Thomas?’

  Phelippes glanced up from the paper. He wore a pair of magnifying lenses fixed with a silver hinge over his nose; they made his eyes disturbingly fish-like. ‘It’s a series of symbols, very precisely drawn. But it doesn’t fit with any code I recognise from the Babington group. I will need to give it more study.’

  ‘Quick as you can. If it was meant to be found, someone wants us to read it. Perhaps the victim herself. And have the wine in that bottle tested, see if there is anything to be learned. As for you, Bruno,’ he clapped me on the shoulder, ‘I’m expecting news any day of our Spanish Jesuit’s arrival. Time for you to stop dancing around me like a coy maiden, who may or may not. Will you return to your squabbling undergraduates and a French knife in your back, or will you lend your considerable talents to protecting Queen Elizabeth and the freedom of England?’

  He spoke as if he had never doubted my decision.

  ‘Poole says Ballard and Savage are dangerous fanatics.’

  ‘You knew that. They wish to assassinate the Queen. You saw what was done to Clara.’

  ‘They will cut my throat in a heartbeat if they suspect me. That would be no use to you. Or to me.’

  ‘But we shall make sure they won’t.’ He smiled. ‘Come, Bruno. You lived for two years at the French embassy, trusted associate of the ambassador, protégé of King Henri, all the while working for me and never suspected. You know how to play a part quite as if you were born to it.’

  ‘But I was at least playing a version of myself. And there were those who suspected my loyalty even then – they just couldn’t prove it. You want me to become someone else entirely – I have no experience of that. What if I should slip up, or be recognised?’

  ‘No experience?’ The smile grew wider, but there was warmth in it. ‘Philip Sidney told me you spent two years travelling through Italy under a false name after you abandoned the Dominican order without permission, with the Inquisition at your heels. You can become someone else when it suits you.’

  ‘That was ten years ago. I had a greater appetite for adventure then, and no choice about it.’

  ‘I don’t believe your craving for adventure has diminished since. Else you would not have caught a midnight boat from France to bring me Berden’s letter. As for choice…’ He laid a hand on my shoulder and the smile vanished. ‘Don’t you see, Bruno – you are the only one who can do this for us. The arrival of the Jesuit ma
kes it the perfect opportunity. No one else has the ability to get inside Babington’s circle and make sure this conspiracy plays out as we need it to.’

  ‘I feel as if we are reliving history,’ I said, suddenly weary. ‘All this happened three years ago with Throckmorton and his plot.’

  ‘How do you think I feel?’ He threw his hands up with a mirthless laugh. ‘These plots repeat year after year, and they will keep coming, for as long as Mary Stuart lives to shout her claim to anyone who blames the government for his misfortune. The difference this time is that we have a real chance to cut off the source of them for good.’ He drew the edge of his hand across his throat. It was this, more than anything he said, that betrayed his desperation; Walsingham was not given to dramatic gestures.

  I hesitated. That was my mistake. His eyes hardened; I had made him doubt my commitment, and he despised above all a man who wavered.

  ‘There is another consideration,’ he said. ‘Your friend Sophia Underhill.’

  ‘What of her?’ The immediacy of my response, and its defensiveness, were enough to show him that he had hit the mark.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘In the spring. I don’t remember. February or March, perhaps.’

  March 17th; it was etched in my memory. She had told me she thought it best we did not meet any more. She worried about my reputation in Paris, and hers among the English Catholics there if she should be seen with me. She feared I hoped for too much from her. It was then that I had decided to go to Wittenberg.

  ‘Did you know she planned to return to England?’

  ‘She mentioned the possibility, though only as a plan for the distant future.’

  ‘She arrived in London in – when was it, Thomas?’

  ‘Third of May,’ Phelippes said, not troubling to look up.

  ‘May.’ Walsingham fixed me with a stern look. ‘Charles Paget wrote and told me. He continues to try and curry favour with me, and thought the information might come in useful. He had set her up with a position, as a companion to Lady Grace Cavendish. Wife of Sir Henry Cavendish, an old gaming associate of Paget’s.’

  The names meant nothing to me. I held his gaze, waiting for him to reveal his purpose. Wherever he was tending, it would not be good.

  ‘Henry Cavendish is the eldest son of Bess of Hardwick, from her first marriage. A libertine, gambler, drunk and an idiot, up to his neck in debt. He was disinherited years ago in favour of his brother. Eight bastard children and not a one with his wife. You can see why she would need a companion, poor creature.’

  ‘Is Sophia in danger?’ The thought of her living under the same roof as a man like that made the hairs stand up on my arms. Walsingham allowed a wolfish smile; my reaction seemed to have pleased him.

  ‘Oh, I think your Sophia knows how to take care of entitled men, does she not?’ He left a significant pause. ‘She’s still going by the name of Mary Gifford, by the way. But she had another name once – besides the one she was baptised with, I mean. She was known in Canterbury as Mrs Kate Kingsley. You remember, I’m sure.’

  A chill flooded through me and I felt my throat constrict. I understood him now, and did not trust myself to speak.

  ‘In fact,’ he continued, his voice smooth, ‘she was wanted for murder under that name, do you recall?’

  ‘The case was closed. She was never convicted.’

  ‘More accurate to say she was never brought to trial,’ he said. ‘Paget doesn’t know about that business. He took an interest in her because he found her intelligent and he is practised enough to know when someone is hiding their past. And, of course, because he knew she was of interest to you. But it was bold of her to come back to England so soon. There’s every chance of her being recognised, and even a man like Henry Cavendish wouldn’t want a cold-blooded murderess playing chess with his wife.’

  ‘She’s not a murderess.’ I fought to keep my voice level.

  ‘I’m sure she is not.’ His tone had grown placatory, which was always the most dangerous. ‘From what you have told me, she is a most resourceful and sharp-witted girl. She must be, to have outwitted you.’

  I wondered how he knew of that, and supposed Sidney must have told him the whole story: how I had acted to clear Sophia’s name in Canterbury, believing she returned my feelings, only for her to flee to France after stealing a valuable book from me, as if I meant nothing to her. The betrayal still stung. I said nothing.

  ‘I should like to make use of her talents,’ Walsingham continued, as if he were merely thinking aloud.

  This made me straighten. ‘How?’

  ‘Henry Cavendish is uncle to the lovely Bessie Pierrepont, who has caught our young friend Gifford’s imagination, as I told you. Bessie is a frequent visitor to her aunt Lady Grace, and shares confidences. Another pair of eyes and ears in that household would be extremely useful.’

  ‘What makes you think Sophia would work for you?’ The thought of her pressed into Walsingham’s service made my head ache; she would leap at the chance of a role beyond those available to her as a woman of no means, the excitement of it. Just like Clara Poole.

  ‘Because I could have her arrested for the murder of her husband and sent to stand trial in Canterbury any time I chose,’ he said, with a trace of impatience. ‘But if she helps me, I will help her. She wants to find her son, does she not? The one she was forced to give up three years ago.’

  I stared at him. ‘You know where he is? How?’

  He arched an eyebrow. ‘Really, Bruno. There’s not much goes on in this realm that I can’t find out.’

  ‘Does Sophia know?’ Even the discovery that her son was alive would mean the world to her. But perhaps a glimmer of possibility would be worse than ignorance; as far as I was aware, the boy had been sold by Sophia’s aunt to a wealthy childless couple and there was little chance that his mother, as an unmarried woman, could hope to get him back, especially if she could not reveal her true identity. Knowing Sophia, that would not stop her trying.

  ‘I have not yet found an opportunity to speak with her. That rather depends on you.’ He let the implication hang there between us.

  ‘You mean that if I don’t agree to this Babington business, you won’t tell her about her son?’

  ‘I mean, Bruno, that you risked a great deal to save her from a murder charge once before, so I have no doubt you would do so again.’

  We watched one another like dogs at the start of a fight; his eyes were implacable. I wondered how long he had been keeping this ultimatum up his sleeve. If I did not agree to his proposal, he would see Sophia arrested for murder. If I did what he wanted, his generosity would extend to her as well as me. I realised, with a quickening flush of shame, how foolish I had been to think of Walsingham as a benign father figure to his agents; looking at him now, the hard line of his compressed lips, I saw the man who could turn the rack on a young priest without flinching, who would put his daughter’s closest friend in an unmarked grave to save his mission, and I understood that nothing would come between him and his duty to England and the Queen.

  ‘Her Majesty’s Service is not a hobby, Bruno,’ he said with quiet finality. ‘It’s not for you to pick and choose the parts that strike you as an amusing pastime. England needs your skills now. That is all there is to it. Do we have an agreement?’

  My fists drew tight at my sides as I tried to outstare him; I felt the strain in my jaw as I fought to batten down the rising tide of anger, just as I had seen Poole doing earlier. At length, I bowed my head. There was nothing left to say.

  ‘Good. I am needed at Whitehall. You will do as Thomas tells you until I return, I hope that’s clear.’ He paused on his way past me to the door, and laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘God be with you.’

  I almost responded, but I was furious with him and determined that he should know it. I turned my face away. He waited a moment, and withdrew. I stood, fixed to the spot, shaking with rage. Phelippes’s quill scratched on rhythmically in the empty air.
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br />   ‘Do you think he’d have done it?’ I asked, turning to him. ‘Sent her for trial to punish me? After everything we have been through?’

  The cryptographer unexpectedly looked up, took off his eyeglasses and blinked at me. ‘You don’t really need to ask that. He will do whatever is necessary for the good of the state.’

  ‘Of course.’ I placed my hands on the edge of his desk and leaned over him, hearing the bitterness in my voice. ‘The good of the state. Why should he have a conscience over sending one girl to the gallows, when he has none over sending a queen to the block?’

  ‘The stake,’ Phelippes corrected, angling himself away from me to avoid being spat on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your woman is accused of killing her husband. In English law that is petty treason. Her punishment would be burning at the stake.’

  I pictured Sophia’s face engulfed by flames and closed my eyes briefly.

  ‘You know, I once believed he had some affection for me.’

  ‘He respects your talents.’

  ‘But we are all pawns to him in the end. Poole was right. Even you.’ When he didn’t reply, I moved closer until my face was an inch from his. I wanted to provoke a reaction, but he merely blinked again.

  ‘Truer to say we are troops in a war. A general cannot shed a tear over every soldier who falls.’

  ‘But a good general stands by his men.’

  When he did not reply, I slapped my palm on the desk, hard.

  ‘Doesn’t that make you angry, Thomas? You’ve devoted your whole life to him. Or do you imagine you are different?’

  He returned his attention to the paper before him. ‘I have never given it much thought,’ he said. I realised that, unusually, Thomas Phelippes was lying.

  NINE

  The next day passed without incident, while we all awaited further news from Walsingham. My orders from Phelippes were to stay indoors, on the grounds that I should not be seen around London before I was ready to encounter the Babington group as the Spanish Jesuit. Gifford, too, was confined to our lodgings; he could not risk running into any of the conspirators until Phelippes had finished copying and deciphering the latest batch of letters he had brought from Mary in Staffordshire and Gifford was free to hand over the originals. I slept fitfully, since there was nothing else for me to do, though I felt no better for it; I was wound so tight that the moment I began to drift into blissful oblivion, the slightest sound snapped me back to wakefulness, where I lay on the bed considering all the ways this plan might fatally misfire. In the afternoon, Gifford and I played cards, but since I would not play for money, and he saw no point in playing without, the game soon petered out, leaving us both pacing and irritable.