by Jeane Westin
Not totally convinced, Sir Anthony raised his pistola once more. “I would not have taken you for having Catholic sympathies, Pauley…for being one of us.”
“We must all hide our true allegiance.”
“Aye, by Protestant law we must,” the man agreed, finally placing the pistola in his belt, though his stance was not completely relaxed. “Indeed, your wound proclaims your allegiance.”
Robert, perfectly at ease in appearance, thrust out his hand in welcome.
Yet Frances, moving aside, saw he was wound as tight as a crossbow, the pulse in his neck pounding.
He stepped forward. “Catholic, Puritan…I have no quarrel with either, Sir Babington. I have another, more personal reason to champion the Scots queen.”
Babington pulled his pistola from his breeches and pointed it at Robert once more.
“Now you get to the truth.”
Robert waved a placating hand. “Have a care, Sir Anthony. Truly, I hear Queen Mary is most generous to those who serve her well, not as the Tudor bastard, who never opens her purse. I would not stay in this station doing an ungrateful woman’s bidding for all my life.”
Babington smiled broadly, finally and fully understanding the persuasion of greed for advancement, and was convinced. He walked to the door and signaled.
The first man to enter was the Jesuit priest John Ballard in disguise, and it was a good one. A tall, dark man, Ballard was dressed as a swashbuckling soldier, in a fine cape edged in gold and a satin doublet with silver buttons. He bowed in a mocking way to Frances and she curtsied, keeping her mouth slack and her gaze dull. Three other men followed close, their hands on their swords.
“Sit, sirs; Pauley is just from the Tower and now known to me as a friend to Queen Mary’s cause, having paid a price to that fiend Topcliffe.”
Ballard went to the sleeping Garnet and lifted his eyelids. Satisfied, he made the sign of the cross on his forehead. The disguised priest then went to the long table, calling for drink.
The men sat to hear Robert’s story, which he repeated, careful not to add new details, knowing he could be too clever only to be confounded later. Less was better in many things.
Far into the night, Frances served wine and ale from the cellars while they plotted how best to assassinate Elizabeth.
As they began to draw lots, Ballard, his dark eyes glassy, struck his sword and his crucifix on the table. “I demand the right to gut the petticoat bastard in the garden of her own court. Pope Sixtus sent me forth to rid England of this usurping queen, and I will do so or die.”
He looked to Babington, who nodded his assent.
The priest’s hands were clasped in a pious manner, which chilled Frances, all the more because there was no hatred in his face, only devout right. Her hands shaking, she was just able to fill the ale cups before happily escaping to the kitchen when the men called for food. To her amazement, she was able to start a fire under the kitchen spit and heat the cold pease pottage. There was bread, no longer fresh but not yet gone to mold, the same of a little cheese, just enough for so many men who favored their ale over food. They gloated over the opportunity to plan treason freely with a man so closely associated with the hated Sir Francis Walsingham. Her father had been right: They could not resist the idea of a double agent. Finally, they called only for drink.
As she served more and more ale, Frances saw the men ask, one by one, for Ballard’s blessing. Then they all raised their cups. “To the death of the usurper!”
Babington added, “And so to hell with her!” and downed his ale.
Murdering traitors, everyone! Frances dared not appear too interested, making a quick exit to the kitchen, yawning.
“To your bed, girl,” Robert called after her, his tone a warning.
“Can she be trusted?” Babington asked, as Ballard looked after her.
“A dull-witted girl,” Robert answered, “she cannot remember a thing from one minute to the next.”
Frances grinned as she hurried to the kitchen. Dull-witted, was she? Then he was twice a dullard for loving her.
Frances found a dirty pallet in the corner of the kitchen, but dared not lie on it for fear of fleas. She was fair to exhausted by the evil she had witnessed. She longed for Robert, but knew he would not come until he could.
Atop the scarred kitchen table, her head cradled on her arms, she slept until at last Robert woke her, a hand upon her mouth.
“Quiet,” he said. “They are drunk or sleeping, gathering strength for tomorrow. Quickly,” he said, reaching for her, “you must to Whitehall and tell your father to warn Her Majesty.”
Her eyes opened wide and her hand flew to her breast, all thought of sleep gone. “Robert, how can I tell my father where I have been…what we have done here?”
“You must. Her Majesty’s life is at stake! Ballard’s blood is up and he can wait no longer.”
She straightened her bodice, shaking her head to clear it. “Then I will do what I must, although it will mean Barn Elms for me…far from you.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Barn Elms, the New World, the desert of Araby…sweetest, know you not that I will come to you where’er you lie?”
She nestled her head against his shoulder for a moment only, but it was a complete rest.
“Get your cloak. I will tell you their plans along our way…and we must leave with all haste.”
“The priests?”
“Ballard prepares himself with prayer to kill a queen, and Garnet sleeps on from the draft you gave him. He is blessed to escape pain. He may wake only to sleep again.” Robert’s hand went to his face. The salted onion had fallen away, exposing a deep, reddening wound.
His voice faltered. “Do you find my face prevents you from—”
She ran her fingers lightly along his jaw. “Yours is the dearest face in all my world…always.”
He grinned. “But, little maid, your world is the ashes on the hearth.”
“Ssssh,” she said, not for jesting. “My world is complete with you in it.”
For a brief moment, his eyes shut against the reality that Frances fought so hard to ignore, though he knew she could push truth away for only a little longer, until Sir Sidney returned. “Come,” he said, “we must away.”
“What if Babington wakes and finds you gone?”
“If they wake, they wake. I will not have you in London’s night streets alone again. Luck does not last forever. Get your cloak.” His tone, even in little above a whisper, was commanding.
There was no denying him, as Frances knew, and truth be told, she wanted the comfort and safety of the palace. She loved acting as an intelligencer, but must she always be uncomfortable, dirty, and hungry while doing so?
Frances and Robert went quickly through the garden and into the alley, moving always west toward Whitehall.
It was misting again, early chimney smoke hanging low over the three-story houses and shops leaning one against another. He took her hand, kissed it, and pulled her along faster still.
They moved swiftly down Eastcheap and around St. Paul’s, where early book stalls were being put in place by sleepy-eyed apprentices. They soon arrived at a place where the city wall was down for repair and thence beyond the Ludgate, always guarded.
Frances closed her eyes and shivered at sight of the quarter of a headless body hanging above the gate as a warning to traitors.
Gathering Frances closer, his gaze never ceasing to sweep the way ahead, Robert spoke in her ear. “The city gate guards would surely question our purpose to be abroad at this hour, but now we are without the walls and their protection. I will go first, and you hang to my cloak.”
“I am not afraid.”
“Aye, but I have this.” He pulled aside his cloak to show a sword.
Frances pulled aside her cloak to reveal the small cleaver from the Seething Lane kitchen.
He threw back his head and laughed without sound. “You will always amaze me, my lady.”
On to Fleet Street and
past the Middle Temple they went, clinging to each other and the shadows, though even those often held menace. The night lanterns on each house mandated by the lord mayor had burned low or gone out, and Robert and Frances were engulfed in rain and darkness.
“We will soon come to King Street, where we’ll have a clear path to Whitehall,” Robert whispered, making a cautious way forward.
Yet from the next corner, several shadows moved, and shivering men in rags blocked their path, one menacing them with a sword.
Without thinking to be brave, only of escape, Frances pulled the cleaver from inside her cloak, ready to stand against them, but Robert stepped forward in front of her, sword at the attack. She was shivering, but from cold, she swore, not fear.
First light was just beginning to show in the fields beyond Barnard’s Inn to the north when Robert sought the eyes of his opponent to see their every shift before the attack began. The thief seemed to have little sword skill, counting on the weapon itself to intimidate any so rash as to be on the dark streets outside the city gate.
The thief growled. “Throw yer purse, man, and spare yersel’ and the maid.”
Robert laughed. “We will be spared by your ill swordsmanship.” He probed through one of the man’s many weaknesses and drew blood from his hand.
One of the others hobbled around and ran at Frances, who held the cleaver at a menacing angle.
The men backed away, and the swordsman who was sucking on his wound whined, “So cruel ye be, sir. Can ye not spare a groat for a poor man’s bread?”
Robert laughed, mostly in relief. “Poor thief is more like it. Perhaps if you had asked without such ill and threatening manners…”
Frances threw some coins in the gutter, and the men quickly left all thought of battle behind them to scramble for the money. “They need go to the thieves’ school in Southwark to better learn their trade,” she said, relieved to be beyond the rogues, who were now beginning to menace one another for the groats and pennies.
Holding hands, they hurried on down King’s Road, which divided Whitehall into two parts. They soon came to a dark, unguarded doorway and quickly stepped inside.
“I must leave you, sweetest,” Robert whispered against her cheek. “Go to your father and tell him what we’ve learned. The queen must be warned.”
She looked up into his dear face. “You ask a hard thing, Robert, and you would do a hard thing.” Her hands tightened on his doublet. “I beg you, do not go back to Seething Lane.”
“I must. They would cancel everything, and Ballard would be afoot in London to preach and plot treason again. One of them now has the courage to try to murder Elizabeth to bring on an uprising. The queen must be guarded. She is too brave and takes chances.” He smiled slightly, as a son for a mother who had grown cranky in her dotage. “You know her. She would want to take that rusty old sword of her father’s and fight them herself.”
Frances laughed. “You have the right of it, and I would save the queen, but—”
“No more, Frances. If you know the right, then you must follow it.”
She clung to him. “Yet I need you. There is so little time before Philip—”
Robert held her close, and despite his own warnings, the possibility of a passing guard or early stable boy, he crushed her to him.
Frances gulped tears and the choking fear welling inside her. “I feel you slipping away from me already. Love me, before we are parted, before others have your love.”
He took her chin and tipped her head back, reading as much as he could in the dim light. “Remember only this, dearest. It will be the memory of you in them that I love.”
Her face burning with desire, her body trembling, Frances backed to the stone wall behind her and held out her arms for him to step into. “Dearest Robert, love me now, while we can, before I am sent away. I burn for you…burn…”
For the next few minutes, dawn crept slowly into the courtyard, as if the dark curtain of the sky had been lifted. She clung to him as he lifted her, held her closer than ever before, her legs wrapped about his hips, his lips bruising hers. She had never felt such need for a man’s love, nor felt any man so reach to her deepest place, finding a new raging fire that he fully quenched again as he had in the inn.
Frances pressed back her head, her maid’s mobcap dropping unnoticed to the ground, and then screamed without sound into his mouth.
“My love, my love.” He choked out the words. “No matter how many leagues we are parted, this moment will stay forever in my heart…and memory…as the happiest of my life.”
He cradled her next to his chest, and though her hair brushed his face and wound, he could not push her away.
Clinging to him fiercely enough to last all her life, Frances knew she had broken her marriage vows again, and yet being with Robert did not feel false, but like new virtue, the greatest truth she had ever known. And to think she could have never felt such womanly pleasure in her life without Robert. She had more than one reason to bless him.
Before she could speak of it, he set her upon the first step. “I must haste back to Seething Lane with wine.” He was out the door, but turned back once. “Remember always, dearest: Love cannot be conquered.”
Frances scrambled up the steps, a few times using her hands to hoist herself upward. She was tired to the depths of her soul, though her heart sang its song: Robert loves me, only me.
At the top of the stairs she realized that the spymaster’s office was around the next corner. Panic rose along with her gorge, and she thought for an instant that she would not take the assassins’ plans to her father.
What if he sent her this day to Barn Elms? What if she never saw Robert again? Was she choosing her queen over her love? Could she?
Taking a deep breath, she knew that if she did not go at once to her father, she could nevermore call herself an intelligencer, or even a true Englishwoman. Robert would despise her. And she could not even take the time to change from Meg’s third-best gown!
She begged silently for God’s help and announced herself to the astonished guards, who allowed her into her father’s office, by this time well aware that she was more than Walsingham’s daughter. Frances walked directly past the secretaries, who stood hesitantly at sight of her face and gown, their mouths slack with shock.
Sir Francis Walsingham sat at his writing table at the end of the long room, watching her approach, his face growing darker with each step she took toward him.
His voice was almost choked. “Daughter, what is the meaning of this…these clothes…your hair…and you here at dawn?”
“Father,” she said, bowing her head, “give me your blessing, for I am in need of it.”
When no blessing was forthcoming, Frances looked up at her father’s candlelit face, his beard twitching as his mouth worked to form angry words. She did not wait.
“I have been with Robert Pauley at Seething Lane. He is much hurt from the Tower, but he has gained the trust of Babington, his men, and John Ballard, the murdering priest who is disguising himself as the soldier Captain Fortescue….” She breathed deeply before more truth could be spoken. “And I helped Robert as a maid of the house.” She hurried on while her father worked to form outrage into words, a problem he rarely had.
“Robert heard Ballard and Babington’s men plot to murder the queen in her garden this very morn.”
“Tell me all of what you know.”
“They did not trust Robert completely with plans already made, but he heard that when the queen walks in her garden this morning—”
“How many men will come against her?”
“One. The priest Ballard claims the pope gave him the right to kill Her Majesty. Robert will hold the rest at Seething Lane until you send men to take them.” Without taking breath, she dropped to her knees. “Do not send me back to Barn Elms, Father. You see an intelligencer before you. Though you may not want it, this is what I am become.” She lifted her head with pride and was astonished to see a hint of admiratio
n in her father’s face, the first she remembered since her wedding night to a noted poet of great family.
He lifted her up, his hands light on her arms, and searched her face. “Indeed, for now I must think you have the right of it, daughter.”
Though the words were sincere, Frances knew they were grudging and could easily be reclaimed.
Walsingham coughed. “But we will talk more of this later. At this time, I must call out the guard.”
“Then the priest Ballard will be warned and escape to try again, or another assassin will come.”
Walsingham closed his eyes and nodded without acknowledging the rightness of her advice. “My men will be hidden, lest they warn this Ballard by their presence.” He tapped his quill on the letter he was writing. “My lord Essex is the man who would save Her Majesty and secure himself in her favor….” He smiled slightly, pleased. “And perhaps earn your esteem at last.”
“Aye,” Frances agreed, “he delights in playing the hero.”
Her father frowned. “Why have you so taken against this lord? He is your husband’s friend, close to the queen…and speaks often of your beauty.”
She could not help but think her father saw only Essex’s youth, daring, and easy manner, not the man who had once sought to conquer his friend’s wife.
Walsingham paused, his eyes sweeping her costume, his mouth pursed. “Though Essex has not seen you arrayed thus.”
Her father stepped behind his writing table and bent to his papers. “Go, daughter, and prepare yourself to accompany the queen on her morning walk in her gardens. I will go to Essex myself before Raleigh gets news of this, as he always seems to, and rushes to throw his cloak at the murderer.” Her father laughed…actually laughed.
“Haste, daughter.” He fastened his starched neck ruff, which had been loosened for comfort.
“Will we talk again later?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“You may be assured of it. Now off with you.”
Frances made her way to her apartment from shadow to shadow, as she seemed to do more frequently lately.
