Execution

by S. J. Parris

  I nodded, but my brain was racing to catch up with the implication of his words. ‘So – when was the last night of that revenge play? The night they fell off the stage?’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘That would have been four nights ago.’

  ‘The twenty-seventh?’

  ‘If you say so. It was a Friday, I know that much.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Certain. What are you, the fucking magistrate?’ He caught my expression and cuffed me on the arm, almost making me drop the other pie. ‘Only kidding. I know because it was the day I got paid. I came here after I knocked off work. Had a sore head and aching balls to show for it the next morning, and not much left of my wages.’ He looked briefly rueful. ‘Still, a man’s got to enjoy himself sometimes, eh? Otherwise, what’s it all for?’

  ‘You’re a philosopher, sir,’ I said, peering round him to check on Gifford. The boy had told Walsingham he returned from his most recent trip to Staffordshire on the 29th, the same day I arrived in London. But if he had been present at the last night of the revenge play, it meant he had been in town at least two days before he reported to Phelippes’s lodgings, and had lied to them about it. Walsingham was not wrong to suspect that Gifford was double-dealing with him, it seemed. It also meant that Gifford had been in London on the 27th of July, the night Clara Poole was murdered. That was absurd, though; I could not see Gifford, with his mercurial, fearful, self-interested temperament, killing a woman even if his own life depended on it, let alone mustering the cruelty necessary to mutilate and break her face, nor could I see what motive he would have – unless he were acting on behalf of one of the others, so that they could keep their alibi. The more I considered the brutality of her death, the more it seemed the work of a madman who took some perverse pleasure from savagery, or else the exact opposite – a cold man who could act with complete detachment. A professional soldier, perhaps – not a failed student priest like Gifford, who could talk up his desire for revolution in a tavern with a few pots of ale inside him, but buckled the moment he faced the prospect of punishment. I studied Gifford’s profile over the red-headed man’s shoulder. Apparently he was not afraid of defying Walsingham when it suited him, though, so maybe I had underestimated his mettle.

  An expectant ripple travelled through the crowd as an actor stepped on to the stage; some in the audience even broke off their conversations and turned to the front. He bowed low and began intoning a Prologue in lumpen verse, raising his voice to compete with the jeers and catcalls from the spectators. But his words washed over me, because at that moment I saw Gifford’s face light up; he was not looking at the stage, but at one of the boxes alongside it, where the gentry paid sixpence a seat to be seen. I followed the direction of his gaze and had to fight to keep my mouth from hanging open.

  In the box, three young women had arrived and begun taking their seats with a great deal of fuss, as if determined to distract attention from the performance. The one on the right wore a dark red gown with a lace shawl fastened modestly across her breast and had tied her mousy hair back in a net under a fashionable hood. Though her clothes and rings suggested money, her face was pale and pinched as if she did not eat enough, and she glanced about at the crowd with a nervous air that suggested she was uncomfortable up there on public display. The girl to her left could hardly have been more different in her manner. Her black hair hung in loose ringlets over her shoulders under her hood, a sign that she was unmarried, and she leaned forward over the wooden balustrade to give anyone who cared to look a fine view down her bodice. She was pretty, in an obvious way; her face heart-shaped with small, neat features and clear skin. Her sharp eyes scanned the spectators as she toyed with an elaborate fan, peacock-blue to match the expensive silk of her dress, and adjusted her posture to one side and then the other, well aware of the admiring glances she drew. But the third woman in the box was the most arresting, at least to me: it was Sophia Underhill.

  Though it had been only a matter of months since I had last seen her, she had the same effect on me as she did every time. I always thought of Dante’s description of his first sight of the divine Beatrice, in the Vita Nuova: ‘the vital spirit, which dwells in the inmost depths of the heart, began to tremble so violently that I felt the vibration in all my pulses’. I had mentioned this to Sidney once; he had laughed, and said he knew exactly where I was feeling my vital spirits pulsing. I could curse Sophia for this power she had over me – quite without intention on her part, since she had never been a coquettish kind of girl, and almost seemed to resent the attention she attracted from men. I had risked my life for her more than once, and she had rewarded me with deception, but I had forgiven her because I understood her reasons; somehow I never managed to let go of the hope that, in different circumstances, she might come to see that she would not find another man who would respect her independent spirit the way I did. The problem with Sophia was that she was not looking to find a man at all; she had long ago lost her faith in men and God.

  She leaned on the ledge of the box, chin resting in her hand, her eyes fixed on the actor with an expression of detached amusement. The last of the evening sun, almost vanished behind the roof of the theatre, caught the edge of her cheekbone, making her skin glow gold. She did not wear the pale face-paint fashionable among the ladies of the court, and kept her dark lashes and full brows as nature had made them, instead of plucking and painting them back in a thin line; her chestnut hair hung long down her back under a small white hood, though I could have vouched for the fact that she was no longer a virgin. Even before the only time she came to my bed – I still dreamed about it – she was already a mother, though of course no one among her new companions would know of that. They would take her at face value as Mary Gifford, a pious, modest maid, just as she had seemed in Paris. I guessed that the nervous woman with the pinched face must be her new employer, Lady Grace Cavendish, and judging by the way Gifford was gazing like a stunned bullock at the flirtatious girl in the centre with the dark hair, this could only be Bessie Pierrepont, showing off her noble virtues.

  I moved a couple of feet from the shelter of my new friend the philosopher, to keep the women in my sights. The dark-haired girl leaned across and whispered something to Sophia from behind her fan, nodding towards Gifford with a mischievous smile; Sophia looked down and her gaze fell on me. I saw her tense, her eyes widen in shock. I shook my head and pressed a finger to my lips; Bessie frowned, and must have asked Sophia a question; Gifford noticed the women conferring and turned to see the focus of their attention; in the same instant the Prologue finished his laborious introduction and the crowd broke into applause and a volley of shouts – not necessarily of appreciation. I took advantage of the distraction to duck below the line of the stage and slip around to the other side, where I could keep Gifford and the women in my sights without being seen.

  Sophia had recognised me, I knew. But I also knew that she was clever and discreet enough not to say anything, if I warned her against it. After all, she too was here in London under false pretences and needed me to keep her secrets as much as I depended on her to keep mine. I wondered how I might find a chance to speak with her alone during the evening. A manservant in livery stood impassive behind the three women, guarding the door to the box, and I could see that he was armed; it seemed unlikely that any of the ladies would venture into the pit by themselves. Nonetheless, I determined to take any opportunity that came. I must also make sure I did not leave Gifford unattended; it was possible that he came here merely to gaze on his beloved, but if there was more to their meeting, Walsingham would want to hear of it.

  The show lived down to expectations. A heavy-handed moral allegory, where actors performed characters named after virtues and vices as in the old religious plays, in verse so painfully lacking in grace or wit that I could only assume the author must be the owner of the theatre, or related to him; there was no other explanation for anyone believing the public needed to hear this. Perhaps I took against it more th
an most, since all the villainous characters were either foreign or Jewish, and the worst of all was an Italian merchant, who drew lusty jeers and boos from the audience whenever he appeared with his exaggerated accent, sounding like no Italian I had ever heard. No wonder the English threw stones and insults at foreigners, if this was how they were encouraged to view anyone who looked or sounded different. On the strength of the first two acts, I concluded that English theatre in the age of Queen Elizabeth did not have much of a future.

  The final bow came as a mighty relief, though I was obliged to keep my wits about me as the crowd swarmed for the gate, either to use the jakes or stock up on food and beer. I saw Gifford glance up to the box, where the dark-haired girl I assumed to be Bessie had already risen from her seat; the manservant made as if to accompany her, but she held up a hand and disappeared through the door. I followed Gifford, keeping enough people between us to remain unseen. He slipped through the entrance and made his way around the side of the building, away from the stalls where the rest of the crowd were shoving one another in their haste to be served. I pressed myself close to the wall, my hat pulled down. Rounding the corner, I glimpsed Gifford’s green cloak. A row of men had lined up to piss against the outer wall of the theatre; I joined them so as not to look conspicuous, and to keep my back to Gifford’s tryst. Over my shoulder, I could see him loitering, trying to look casual; after a few moments I caught the blue shimmer of the girl’s dress. She had pulled her shawl up around her face. Neither was looking in my direction. Gifford bobbed a brief bow; I saw her touch him lightly on the arm, her head tilted back in bright laughter that looked to me as artificial as the performers on stage, though Gifford blushed fiercely and planted his feet apart, squaring his shoulders and attempting to carry off a swagger. They conversed for a few minutes more; she must have bid him farewell because he bowed low, this time to kiss her hand, and as I watched I saw the pale flash of paper slip between her fingers and his. As he straightened, his hand slipped inside his doublet; the exchange was effected with professional dexterity in the blink of an eye, invisible to anyone not observing them as closely as I was. The girl disappeared around the side of the theatre the way she had come; Gifford joined the line of men facing the wall at the other end from me and began unlacing his breeches. I quickly finished my business and fastened my own, hoping I could lose myself in the crowd before Gifford made his way back.

  As I was about to retrace my steps to the yard, I glanced up and caught sight of a figure rounding the corner, whose appearance was so unexpected that I found myself rooted to the spot with instant dread, blinking hard to convince myself that I was not conjuring him out of my worst dreams. I ducked my head down and turned away, pulse hammering in my throat, my hat pulled closer around my face, not daring to move until he had passed. He advanced slowly, taking in the scene as if he were looking for someone, but with no particular urgency; I kept my eyes turned to the ground, pretending to take my time lacing my breeches as he walked so close behind me he could have reached out and tapped me on the shoulder. When he was a few paces away, his back to me, I risked a quick glance; he stood observing the row of men against the wall, though with no more than a passing curiosity. His eyes alighted for the briefest instant on Gifford before he continued on his way, around the side of the building where Bessie Pierrepont had disappeared.

  Relief sluiced through me, returning me to my senses; I had to put out a hand and lean against the wall while I caught my breath. He had not been looking for me, of that much I could be reasonably certain. There was no way he could have known that I was even in the country. But his appearance at the playhouse, at that precise moment, could not be mere chance. Who was he watching – Gifford? Bessie? It seemed so, but why? His presence so close to people I was supposed to be observing lodged a hard knot of fear in my gut; if he was interested in them, sooner or later he would find me, and when he did, he would almost certainly kill me.

  He looked no different from the last time I had seen him, almost three years earlier. Medium height, not stocky, but solidly packed with muscle under his shirt, and the confident, easy gait of a man who feels at home wherever he finds himself. If you passed him in the street, you would not guess he was born into the Scottish nobility; he cultivated a kind of rough charm that allowed him to blend unnoticed in the lowest taverns, among soldiers and working men. When I had known him, during the time I lived at the French embassy, he had been a frequent dinner guest of the ambassador, though he usually looked like an itinerant hauled off the streets. He could not have been above his mid-forties, but his hair was greying and he wore it long and dishevelled, together with several days’ growth of unkempt silver beard. Drink and hard weather had etched lines in his face, but his jaw and cheekbones were fine as a carved saint’s and his blue eyes glittered like a wolfhound’s; women apparently found him fascinating. His name was Archibald Douglas, and he had vowed revenge on me for my part in disabling the Throckmorton plot against Queen Elizabeth in 1583. I had assumed then that he worked for the cause of Mary Stuart, but I had not known the whole story. I wondered who was paying him now. He remained a wanted man and had slunk back to Scotland to avoid the Tower; it could hardly be coincidence that he had resurfaced in London just as another plot to put the Scottish queen on England’s throne was gaining pace.

  I decided it was time for me to leave; if Douglas was sniffing around the playhouse, for whatever reason, we would run into one another before the evening was out, and that would be the end of Walsingham’s plan to insinuate me among the conspirators. The thought gave me a guilty flush of relief; the Father Prado identity relied on there being no one in London who would remember me from the French embassy days, and now here was a man who would unmask me the instant he set eyes on me. All I had to do was tell Phelippes that Douglas was in town, and they would never risk using me. It was quite possible, given his connections, that he was even involved with Babington and his companions; here was my chance to have them call off the whole operation, with no shame on my part.

  But as I walked briskly back along Bishopsgate Street towards the city walls, I grew less certain. If I didn’t become Father Prado, would I be on the next boat back to Paris, to the drudgery of a teaching job I had grown tired of months ago, and the constant fear of footsteps at my back? Was that really what I wanted? I had waited so long to be called back to Walsingham’s service, and despite my initial resistance to his lunatic idea of joining the conspirators, now that I had an easy way out, I felt a sudden perverse sense of loss at the thought of returning to Paris without proving myself.

  * * *

  Though the play had felt as if it lasted several days, the bells had not yet struck ten and the sky held the last of the light, striped with orange and pink cloud above the rooftops. The dusk chill in the air suggested summer was over before it had begun. Dust hung in drifts above the road. I picked up my pace, wanting to arrive at Phelippes’s lodging before night settled in; London was not safe after dark, especially for someone with my looks, even without Archibald Douglas on the prowl. I had not walked for more than five minutes when I heard a woman calling.

  I turned to see Sophia hurrying down the street towards me at a half-run, picking up her skirts to keep them out of the dirt, hair flying behind her. I stopped and found myself smiling, no doubt with the same stupid expression I had seen on Gifford’s face earlier. As she caught up with me – breathless, pushing a stray lock of hair out of her face – I realised she was not equally pleased to see me. She planted herself in my path and squared her fists on her hips.

  ‘You shit.’

  I dipped a small bow. ‘A good evening to you, too.’

  ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m going home,’ I said, mildly, gesturing in the direction of the City.

  ‘You know what I mean. How dare you follow me!’ Her eyes blazed. ‘My God, your arrogance is breathtaking.’

  ‘So I’ve been told. But to an onlooker, madam, it would ra
ther seem as if it is you who has followed me.’

  ‘Don’t be clever, Bruno. And be glad I did not call your name out in the street – I was not sure you would be using it.’

  ‘That was thoughtful. You would know all about false names. Are you Mary here, or have you acquired another?’

  ‘It’s none of your damned business. I told you we should not see each other – did I not make that clear enough? Who do you think you are, to pursue me here from France? What is it you hope to gain?’ The colour had risen in her cheeks. She blew her hair out of her face. She always looked more beautiful when she was fired up with anger; fortunate, since it seemed impossible for us to have a conversation without it becoming an argument.

  ‘Pursue you? Seriously?’ I laughed. ‘And you talk of my arrogance.’

  For the first time, her indignation faltered.

  ‘What am I supposed to think? Two months after I come back to London, here you are, in the same playhouse, staring up at me like a, like a…’ She appeared to be searching for a suitable image, but left it hanging.

  ‘A faithful dog?’ I offered. ‘A lovesick youth? Go on, say what you think. So, you presume I have dropped everything in Paris and run after you, since I have nothing else in my life.’ I turned away and continued walking towards Bishopsgate. Sophia was as tall as me, which always made me feel obscurely at a disadvantage. She hesitated a moment, then fell into step beside me.

  ‘What else would you be doing here?’ Her chin jutting up, defying me to contradict her.

  ‘I arrived in England four days ago,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even. ‘I had work to undertake. I had no idea you had even left Paris. I don’t concern myself with your movements any more.’

  ‘You just decided to come to that play by yourself?’ Her voice dripped with scorn.