by S. J. Parris
He shakes his head, his lips pressed into a white line.
‘They have barely started with poor Throckmorton. I dread to think what they are doing to him, and what more may come out. If King Henri should be brought into this, Bruno – can you imagine the consequences?’
I can well imagine the consequences of the French king discovering from the Queen of England that his ambassador has been involved in a Guise plot to topple her. But then King Henri will be fully occupied with the Duke of Guise’s designs on his own throne, I reflect. I pat Castelnau’s shoulder and murmur reassurance.
‘All because I cannot say no to my wife,’ he says bitterly. I could tell him he is far from being alone in this failing, but I doubt it would be much comfort. ‘She thought it was you, you know,’ he adds, turning to me.
‘Thought what was me?’
‘The traitor in our midst – she and Courcelles were adamant you were the one who betrayed us. But you know what I pointed out to them?’
‘What?’ I aim to keep my face as neutral as possible.
‘Where is Archibald Douglas? Eh?’ He nudges me, pleased with his own powers of deduction. ‘No one has seen or heard from him since the arrests. There’s your answer, right there. And he’s just the sort whose loyalty could be bought for a shilling. Don’t you think?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘No, I never trusted him. Mind you, there is William Fowler arrested on suspicion of the murders of those girls at court, though I cannot imagine how they came to that conclusion. I always thought him such a mild man. And who knows what he might tell them on the rack.’ He sucks in his cheeks. ‘I shall not feel safe from accusation in England, Bruno, not for a long time. That, I suppose, is the price of a guilty conscience. But I tell you this – I shall never again involve myself or His Majesty’s embassy in secret dealings of this nature, no matter who tries to persuade me.’ He sighs. ‘Sometimes I doubt whether it is ever possible to know the truth of another man’s mind behind the face he shows.’
I murmur in agreement, turning my own face aside so that I do not have to look him in the eye.
As we near the end of the Tiltyard, there is a jostling among the crowd; people fuss and complain as someone attempts to shove his way through towards the gate. When he draws level with us, he turns and I realise it is Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, with a face like granite behind his black beard. He jabs one hairy forefinger almost into Castelnau’s face.
‘My sovereign is furious,’ he spits, through his teeth.
Castelnau draws himself up with dignity.
‘When is he not?’
‘I am summoned –’ Mendoza lowers his voice further, the effort of suppressing his fury turning his face puce – ‘I, Don Bernadino de Mendoza, am summoned to stand before a committee of Privy Councillors to account for myself like a schoolboy! Are you?’
‘Not yet,’ Castelnau says evenly, as we funnel through the gate and into the street, where official stewards and more armed guards usher us into orderly lines to pass under the Holbein Gate to a place behind the barriers.
‘The queen accuses King Philip of conspiring against her,’ Mendoza continues. ‘You realise I could be expelled over this?’
‘As could I.’
‘But I do not see you being questioned. And yet it was someone at Salisbury Court who betrayed our plans to Walsingham.’
‘Walsingham arrested Throckmorton. They searched his house. As I understand it, he was carrying as many letters between you and Mary as he was from me. Perhaps your letters were less cautious.’ Castelnau remains admirably calm. Mendoza bristles and turns his glare on me.
‘I am not the one who keeps a known enemy of the Catholic Church under my roof. I have said this before, Michel – you are being played for a fool. If I am banished from England, my sovereign will make sure you and your king pay a high price for it.’
I am about to defend myself, when I glance across the street to the crowd on the other side and my heart misses a beat; among the massed faces, I am certain that I saw him: the briefest instant, a flash of recognition, that mocking grin under the peak of an old cap, the laconic wink, and then he is gone, slipped away in the tide of people. I blink, try to find him again, but there is no sign, so that I wonder if I conjured his face out of my night-terrors. But I cannot take the risk; I duck behind Castelnau, pushing my way through irritated spectators to the fringe of the human stream, until I can grab at the sleeve of the nearest guard.
‘Find Walsingham,’ I gasp, shaking him.
‘Eh? Who are you? Get your hands off me.’ He moves to lower his pikestaff; I hold my hands up.
‘Please – you must get to Sir Francis Walsingham. Tell him Douglas is here. Tell him the queen must not pass through the streets – you must find him urgently. Her life is in danger. Tell him the Italian says so.’
He looks at me in confusion for a long moment as he weighs up how seriously to take this; I nod frantically, urging him to act. Eventually, he raises his pike and calls out, ‘Make way, there! Make way, quickly now!’
By the time I am assured he means to convey my message, I have lost Castelnau and Mendoza in the crowds. I slip into the press of people unnoticed, my eyes darting from face to face, my hand, as ever, resting on the handle of my knife under my cloak.
Later, in the Great Court at Whitehall Palace, I stand in the shadows with my neck craned back, breathing frosty air as fireworks scatter orange-and-gold sparks against the ink-blue curtain of the sky, plumes of coloured fire that flare briefly and dissolve into smoke as the guests coo and squeal like children. This display is almost the finale of the day’s celebrations; once it is over, we will retire to the Great Hall to watch a series of pageants, variations on the theme of Elizabeth’s greatness and likeness to various mythical heroines. I wanted to go home, but Castelnau would not hear of it; what is required, I am told, is a show of faultless devotion to the queen for as long as the ambassador is obliged to try and win back a place in her favour. But Elizabeth is still alive, and that is worth celebrating; her procession, though delayed through my intervention, went ahead at her insistence, but passed without incident, and from the sounds of riotous street parties from beyond the walls and the incessant clamour of church bells across the city, her subjects are united in noisy celebration of their devotion. Perhaps Douglas was never there today; perhaps this is how I will live now, imagining his face in every crowd, skittish as poor Léon Dumas, and look how much good that did him.
I raise my eyes beyond the glitter of the fireworks to the infinite sky beyond. The night is clear and the stars so bright they seem to pulse. What would I need to calculate their distance, I wonder?
‘How many new worlds have you discovered, Bruno?’
I start from my reverie and wheel around to see Sidney leaning against a wall, a glass of wine in his hand. Guiltily, I glance about me to see if Castelnau is nearby, but there is no sign of him.
‘Infinite numbers,’ I say, feeling my shoulders relax.
‘Where is God to be found, then, if there is no sphere of fixed stars?’ He speaks in a whisper. ‘Beyond where the universe ends?’
‘An infinite universe by definition does not end, you dullard,’ I point out with a grin.
‘Then where? Beyond the stars?’
‘Or in them, perhaps. In the stars and the planets and the rain and these stones under our feet, and in us. Or perhaps nowhere.’
‘Well, you had better keep ideas like that out of your book,’ he says, ‘because Her Majesty is anxious to read it.’
‘What?’
He laughs. ‘That is your reward, my friend. Walsingham told her you were writing a book about the heavens. She asks that you have a copy bound and present it to her in person at court when it is finished.’ He slaps me on the shoulder and offers me his glass. ‘Her Majesty is a woman of prodigious intellect, it is well known, but I wish her luck trying to grapple with your theories.’ He looks up again to the tracery of milky vapour overhead. ‘If
I try for one minute to imagine a universe that never ends, I fear that my brain will overheat and explode.’
‘Then don’t risk it.’ I take a drink and hand the glass back to him. ‘Please pass on my thanks. I am honoured.’
‘You should be. A royal endorsement will make this book the talk of every academy. Just try not to write anything too inflammatory.’
‘You know me, Philip.’
‘Yes, I do. Hence the warning. She won’t give her patronage to any writer who implies there is no God, no matter how many times you save her life.’
I acknowledge this with a nod, and for a long while we stand there, looking up at the vast unknown reaches above us.
‘I was sorry to hear of Dee’s departure,’ he remarks, eventually. ‘I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. I shall miss the old conjuror.’
‘And I,’ I say, with feeling. ‘It seems hard, since he had done nothing wrong except be taken for a fool. The scryer Kelley had no connection with the murders, in the end. I read into that what I wanted to be true. Some things are just coincidence, though.’
‘But people gripped by fears of planets and prophecies will not believe that. Dee was too inflammatory a figure to be tolerated at court, even before this dreadful business.’ Sidney sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. ‘His hunger for hidden matters will be his undoing, I fear. As it will yours, amico mio.’
He turns to me and squeezes my shoulder briefly. For a moment we regard the sky again in silence.
‘Wouldn’t you give anything to rise up through the spheres, Philip, to travel beyond the reaches of the heavens and understand what is out there?’
‘Anything except my soul,’ he says, emphatically. ‘You have not given up, then. You still believe this book of Howard’s will teach you the means to do that?’
‘Howard believes it will make him immortal.’
‘It may be too late for him to test that, if he’s charged with treason. Where is the book now?’
‘I don’t know. Only Howard can tell us that. Or perhaps his nephew.’
He turns to look at me. The fireworks are almost ended now, and only the torches in brackets around the courtyard give any light. His face is patched with shifting shadows.
‘You already have it in your head to search for it, don’t you?’ When I do not reply, he claps a hand to his forehead and steps back. ‘Christ’s blood, Bruno – let it go, will you? You have the queen and her senior ministers in your debt, you have an income and the leisure to write a book that will send waves through Europe, like Copernicus before you. This is everything you wanted, isn’t it?’
I acknowledge the truth of it with a dip of my head.
‘Well, then! Don’t throw it away chasing will o’ the wisps. Howard’s already tried to kill you and Dee for that book, and I can’t keep watch over you all the time.’
‘You’re right, I know.’
‘Promise me you will let the Hermes book go? Henry Howard cannot touch it where he is, and the Earl of Arundel is too pious and cowardly to look into it himself, if he has it. It is out of harm’s way. So leave it alone.’
I hesitate. Sidney points a finger in my face, assuming the expression of a schoolmaster.
‘Very well then.’
‘Good man. Now I suppose I had better find my wife. Still no sign of an heir, you know,’ he adds, as if he can’t understand why someone doesn’t sort this out. ‘Not for want of trying, neither. Here, you finish this, I’ve had enough.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say, as he hands me the glass. ‘Still, you’ve only been married two months.’
‘Huh. That ought to be plenty of time for the Sidney seed to do its work.’
I grimace, and he laughs, clapping me soundly on the arm again, then walks backwards a few steps. ‘Don’t forget what I told you,’ he calls. ‘I have your solemn oath.’
In the emptying courtyard I stand very still and look up again, my head as far back as I can stretch so that I am almost bent backwards, and I imagine the whole of the heavens spinning around as if on a wheel with me as the fulcrum. I have promised nothing, and as I watch a shooting star fire its trail across a constellation and wink into blackness, I recall the sensation of that leather binding, the stiff ancient pages, the coded truths in a hidden book that might one day show me what lies beyond the visible world, out there, among the mysteries of infinity. As I stare upwards, a final burst of fireworks pierces the dark with crimson light, scattering sparks like a shower of bright rain so that, for an instant, the sky is illuminated, stained the colour of blood.
About the Author
S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of Stephanie Merritt. Since graduating from Cambridge she has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. She currently writes for the Observer and the Guardian, and is the author of fi ve books and one son.
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Also by S. J. Parris
Heresy
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Stephanie Merritt 2011
Stephanie Merritt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-00-731771-4
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007317752
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