Conspiracy

by SJ Parris

  Stafford nodded, more relaxed now that we were back on less fraught ground. I did not envy him his position here, trying to juggle all the competing factions in Paris and second-guess which of them might rise to power so that he could move to his sovereign’s best advantage. Or indeed his own. No wonder he was willing to take a man with Paget’s rich connections without probing too closely. No wonder either that he looked older than his years.

  ‘And these?’ he asked, pushing a crumpled sheet of paper across the desk. I saw that it was one of the draft pamphlets I had taken from Joseph’s room and hidden in my boot. There seemed little point in protesting about him looking through my belongings while I was asleep.

  ‘I searched the friar’s cell after he fled. If he wrote these polemics it suggests he was actively involved with the League. The Abbé interrupted me before I could find anything more conclusive. He didn’t appreciate my intrusion. Hence the Conciergerie.’

  He nodded. ‘Abbé Renaud of Saint-Victor is ultra-conservative in religion and politics, that is well known. He would not want one of his friars accused of murder, especially if he could be linked to Guise. You were lucky to escape with your life.’

  I agreed. A thought occurred. ‘Do you know anyone called Brinkley? It is an English name, I think?’

  He looked startled. ‘Yes indeed – Stephen Brinkley, a printer, originally from Oxfordshire. He spent time in the Tower for printing Jesuit books in ’81, fled here when he was released. He has a small shop by the Palais de Justice. We keep an eye on him – he’s been smuggling Papist works and we suspect he’s a link in that filthy trade in martyr’s relics coming out of England. Why, do you think he has something to do with this business?’

  ‘A printer. Would he print propaganda for the League?’

  ‘This, you mean?’ He tapped the pamphlet with a forefinger. ‘Yes, I would not be surprised. The English Catholics here are a tight community, and most of them look to Guise and Mary Stuart as their best chance of restoring their fortunes. They often use the printers’ shops as meeting places with their League contacts.’ He curled his lip. ‘Look into it, by all means, if you can be discreet. And, ah – there was also this.’

  He slid another paper towards me. I saw that it was the love letter I had found in Joseph’s mattress.

  ‘Something else I am investigating. It may or may not be important.’

  He gave me a long look. ‘I wondered if it might be your personal property.’

  ‘I should be so fortunate.’ I held his stare, but could not help a roguish tilt of one eyebrow, just to keep him guessing.

  ‘Hm. Well, then.’ He gave the letter a little shove with his finger and gestured for me to take it. ‘I am more interested in the news you might bring us from the Louvre. My audiences with King Henri are infrequent these days, and unhelpful when they do occur.’ He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead again. His appearance suggested he had not slept much. ‘I think Catherine de Medici dislikes me.’

  ‘Don’t take that to heart. She dislikes most people, including her own family. Apart from Henri.’

  ‘True. In any case, you are better placed to know the King’s mind than I, and that is information that would be of great value to Walsingham.’ He patted the chest from which he had taken the coins. ‘We will work out an arrangement. In the meantime, if you want to speak to me, you can always send a message or call in here. Preferably not at three in the morning.’

  ‘No – I see you entertain other visitors at that hour.’ I had meant it as a light-hearted aside, but Stafford’s head snapped up and his eyes burned into me.

  ‘You overstep the mark.’ He pointed his quill at me. ‘You should understand that some embassy business needs to be conducted away from public view.’ He dipped the nib in the ink and with a show of ceremony turned his attention to the pile of papers before him. It appeared that my audience was at an end. ‘Geoffrey will see you out. You can return my clerk’s clothes in due course.’

  ‘You said you had letters for me, from England,’ I reminded him. He gave a small, impatient exhalation and reached into another drawer, from which he withdrew two folded papers, both sealed with plain wax. One bore my name on the outside in Sidney’s exuberant hand; the other was blank, save for a small symbol inked in the bottom left corner: the astrological sign for the planet Jupiter. The sign I always used to validate my correspondence with Walsingham. I reached for the letters, feeling that old kick in the gut, the anticipation of the chase. A quiet life: I had tried so hard, these past two months, to convince myself that I could be satisfied with that. Avoiding risk, keeping my head down, invisible among my books; I was a philosopher, after all, and the business of putting my ideas into print was dangerous enough. But the fierce, pure thrill that surged through me at the sight of that symbol made me realise I could not go on pretending. Walsingham had asked for me. That exhilaration that came with intelligence work; the giddy sense of walking a knife-edge with every step – it was hard to give up, once you had tasted it. Only now could I acknowledge how adrift I had felt without that sense of purpose. I ran my thumb over the smooth wax seal. It looked suspiciously pristine.

  ‘Have you read them?’

  ‘One is in cipher,’ Stafford replied, without looking up.

  ‘So you have read them.’

  He raised his head this time, and had at least the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I don’t possess the code. I presume you do, or it will remain forever a mystery.’ He scrawled a flourish and scattered a pinch of sand across the lines he had written. ‘Philip Sidney’s had a daughter, though,’ he remarked, blowing the excess away.

  The throwaway delivery angered me; I would have liked to hear that news direct from Sidney’s pen. But I kept my face straight and thanked him as I tucked all the papers inside the borrowed doublet and fastened it tight.

  ‘One piece of advice, Bruno,’ he said, as I reached the door. ‘The Duke of Guise is still looking for you. You would be wise to make a friend of Paget.’ He held up a hand before I could protest. ‘I can see you do not trust him, but his intervention saved you last night, which should be proof enough that he is true to England’s cause. He has Guise’s ear, and he could be useful to you, if he chose.’

  I murmured a vague agreement and took my leave. I could not argue with Stafford’s assertion that, without Paget, I would likely still be in the Conciergerie, or facing questions from the Duke of Guise, quite possibly at the end of a hot poker. It appeared that Paget had already chosen to be useful to me, whom he had every reason to hate, and the question was – why?

  SEVEN

  Gaston seemed more effusive than usual when I arrived at the Swan shortly after midday.

  ‘Jesus, boy, what’s happened to your face?’

  I touched a finger to my swollen lip. I had not seen myself in a mirror yet. ‘I was involved in an altercation.’

  ‘That right?’ He seemed impressed. ‘One of your philosophical debates, was it?’

  I grinned, and winced at the pain. ‘My opponent put forward a robust defence of Aristotle.’

  He clapped me hard on the shoulder.

  ‘What can I get you, then? How about a dish of the beef, now that we have a clean slate, so to speak?’

  ‘Clean slate?’

  ‘I don’t know how you do it, Bruno. You could charm your way out of Purgatory, I always say. Not that it was a problem—’ he held up a hand – ‘you know I’ve never chased you for it, but I take my hat off to you all the same, I really do, you’ve the luck of the Devil.’ He shook his head, indulgent. ‘Will I bring you some wine with it?’

  ‘Gaston – what are you talking about?’ I never ordered beef at the Swan; he knew my purse did not stretch that far.

  Now it was his turn to look puzzled. ‘Your debt, my friend. Feller come in this morning and paid off the lot. Said he owed you a favour.’ He looked stricken. ‘Maybe I wasn’t meant to tell you.’

  I sighed. ‘An Englishman?’

  ‘That�
�s right.’ He brightened. ‘Friend from London, he said. Very generous of him, I thought. I mean, I don’t want to remind you how much it’d crept up to, but—’

  ‘Then don’t.’ I preferred not to think about actual figures. I had no doubt that my benefactor would make clear the extent of my debt in due course. ‘He is generous, no question.’

  ‘Well, don’t look too happy about it. Some of us’d be glad to have a friend like that.’

  ‘Make it the beef, then. But leave the wine.’ All I could think of was the old adage that with friends like Charles Paget, one has no need of enemies.

  While Gaston disappeared to bellow my order through to the kitchen, I closed my eyes and mulled over the letter from Walsingham that had just taken me the best part of an hour to transcribe, before committing it to memory and burning it.

  My skill at deciphering had grown rusty and the cipher Walsingham had given me before I left England was devilishly complex, disguised as four unique alphabets of letters, numbers and symbols and hidden in separate books so that no one, happening upon only one of the papers, would hold the complete cipher in his hand. The exact combination of the four keys to unlock any text was not set down anywhere in writing, but existed only in my memory. But with patience, Walsingham’s brisk, direct voice had emerged from the impenetrable jumble of signs on the page. He must have been confident that the cipher was beyond Stafford’s capabilities, since much of the letter concerned the ambassador and his new protégé:

  It has come to my attention that Charles Paget has once again offered his services to England in the hope of buying a pardon for his past treasons – an offer he has made to me several times and which I have repeatedly refused But I fear Stafford is taken in by him, for he has a most plausible manner and was born to double-dealing. Be assured – Charles Paget is a most dangerous instrument, and I wish for England’s sake he had never been born. While Stafford congratulates himself, you may be sure that Paget is steering their alliance to his own advantage. Do not be fooled. Paget takes money from many hands, but he serves only himself.

  Stafford believed he was engaging my services, at Walsingham’s instruction, to bring him intelligence from the royal court as to where the King intended to make alliances, either with the Huguenots or the Catholic League. But that was only half the story. The old spymaster’s real intention, he explained, was to give me a reason to visit the embassy on a regular basis so that I could keep an eye on Stafford, and particularly his dealings with Paget. All secret correspondence concerning them was to be sent via a trusted messenger, an agent of Walsingham’s in Paris who would make himself known to me in due course, and would place my letters directly into Walsingham’s hands, so that Stafford would not suspect I was watching him.

  Fresh reports from Rome said that Pope Sixtus had issued a new bull, the lead still soft on its seal, confirming and reinforcing the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth and denouncing her as a bastard, a heretic and a schismatic – justification enough for a patriotic Catholic to feel he was doing a service to God and England by dispatching her. This bull, Walsingham feared, might be the spark that lit the fuse under the powder keg. Mary Stuart’s supporters in Paris had recovered from their defeat two years ago and he had reason to believe that another substantial plot was brewing, making Paget’s overtures to Stafford all the more suspicious for, as Walsingham said, no conspiracy worth the name would unfold in Paris without Paget at the heart of it. Meanwhile it appeared that Paget had also been watching me, for reasons as yet known only to him, but which were unlikely to be to my advantage.

  I let my head drop into my hands as a wave of giddiness washed over me, blurring the edges of my vision; the bench seemed to tilt beneath my weight, as if the reed-strewn floor of the Swan were the deck of a ship. I blinked hard and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until the sensation passed. Perhaps the blow to the head had affected me more than I realised. I had wanted this, I reminded myself: to be taken back into Walsingham’s service. The strain of leading a double life was the price of admission.

  ‘Doctor Bruno?’

  I jerked my head up and focused on the eyes of a young man across the table, peering into my face as if he feared I might need a physician. I took in his appearance, tensing at the realisation that he wore the Augustinian habit. I had not seen Frère Joseph’s face last night, and this man appeared to know me. Slowly, I slipped one hand under the table to feel for my knife. I saw from the flicker of his eyes that he had noticed.

  ‘You look unwell,’ he observed, with an uncertain smile.

  ‘Just a few scratches,’ I said, hoping the waves of dizziness would hold off if I had to fight.

  He looked at my face, then shrugged. ‘Frère Guillaume sent me, though he wasn’t certain you’d be here, after last night. He said you had something to return to him. He was unable to come himself.’

  I peered more closely, squinting to focus my blurred vision on him, and realised why he seemed familiar; he was the one who had first come to find me in the library when Paul had asked for me at Saint-Victor. I let my shoulders relax, and unhooked Cotin’s keys from my belt.

  ‘Is Frère Guillaume all right?’

  The young friar looked pensive. ‘He’s been confined to his cell for a few days while the Abbé considers how to discipline him. He asked me to tell you not to worry about him, and that Denis was safe and well, if you needed him. He said you would know what that meant.’ He hesitated, his eyes expectant. When I only nodded, he continued: ‘He also said you’d be interested to hear about Frère Joseph.’

  ‘What about him?’ I kept my face neutral.

  ‘He’s missing. No one has seen him since last night. The Abbé is worried. He has people out scouring the city for him, the brothers are saying.’

  ‘Really? What else are they saying?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘The talk is that it has something to do with you.’ He hunched forward with an air of complicity. ‘Some of the brothers said you were arrested last night stealing money from his cell.’

  ‘There was a misunderstanding. As you see, I am not in custody.’ I held up my wrists to prove the point. The young friar looked dubiously at the bandages and back to the cut on my lip.

  ‘Were you spying on him?’ He seemed intrigued by the idea. ‘The rumour in the abbey is that Joseph is the Abbé’s go-between. That he carries secret letters.’

  ‘To whom?’

  He shrugged. ‘No one knows. It is all speculation. Some say the Duke of Guise, some say the Queen Mother, others say Navarre.’

  ‘Well, that covers most possibilities. So the Abbé is concerned that Joseph might have disappeared with letters in his possession?’

  ‘I suppose. Where do you think he is?’

  I eyed him, weighing up how much to say. This boy could not be much more than twenty, and he had the same harried air that had struck me when he came to summon me to the infirmary. Perhaps that was his habitual manner. I noticed his fingernails were bitten down raw to the quick. Cotin evidently trusted the boy enough to send him; still, I needed to be careful.

  ‘No idea. What are the guesses at Saint-Victor?’

  He considered. ‘Joseph comes from a noble family – he is related to the Duke of Montpensier. I suppose the Abbé is trying all those connections. Also—’ he glanced up to make sure he had my attention, and a faint colour stained his cheeks – ‘there were rumours he had a mistress.’

  I sat up at this. ‘What, a courtesan?’

  ‘No one knew for certain. Some said a married noblewoman.’ He lowered his eyes, abashed. ‘I don’t know if there is truth in it. But friars like to run with that kind of gossip.’

  I thought of the love letter I had found in Joseph’s mattress, with its suggestion of forbidden desires. Doubly illicit, if his lover were married, though abbey rumours were hardly a reliable source of information.

  ‘Oh, I know how friars love the smell of scandal. The way crows love carrion.’

  He gave me a shy smil
e. ‘Frère Guillaume said you were once a friar too. Though you abandoned your order.’ I saw the shine of admiration in his eyes. ‘I envy you your liberty,’ he added, lowering his voice.

  ‘You should not envy me anything, Frère…’

  ‘Benoît.’

  ‘What may appear liberty to you—’ I broke off, seeing the way he twisted his features and turned his gaze to the window. I remembered all too well being his age, staring down the years into a lifetime of cloistered confinement, picturing your youth and vigour withering, unused; what right had I to tell him how to feel? ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Frère Joseph?’ I asked, to change the subject.

  He shook his head and returned his attention to the table. ‘But if I hear anything, I can bring you word. We are not a closed order, as you know. I come into the city to study theology with one of the doctors at the Sorbonne. We could meet. I should like to talk further with you…’ He looked up with a hopeful expression; his boyish eagerness made me sit back, as if he had encroached too close. I hardly felt worthy to be anyone’s advisor at present.

  ‘I would be glad if you could bring me any word of how it goes with Cotin,’ I said, a little formally. ‘Gaston here usually knows where to find me. Tell Cotin I hope he is soon restored to his liberty.’

  ‘Liberty,’ Benoît said, in a voice loaded with scorn. At that moment a serving girl arrived with a steaming plate of beef stew and a roll of fresh bread; the smell rising from it made my stomach lurch and I tore into the food with my fingers, barely raising my head to mumble farewell to Benoît as he took his leave.

  * * *

  The bells were striking three as I finished my meal. I left some coins on the table for Gaston, guilt sitting uncomfortably heavy in my stomach along with the stew. I had been able to eat well today thanks to Paget, I had my freedom thanks to his purse, and I could not shake the feeling that I was already compromised by taking his money. Not that he had given me any choice in the matter, but I needed to extricate myself from that debt as soon as possible, before he demanded something in return, and my only hope of doing so was to find this Frère Joseph de Chartres and hand him over to the King. With Stafford’s information about Brinkley, it seemed most likely that a rendezvous was scheduled at the printer’s shop for four o’clock this afternoon, and there was a chance that Joseph might turn up, or that I might catch a glimpse of whoever he was intending to meet. It was worth a try, at least; I had no other paths to follow.