Conspiracy

by Stephanie Merritt

  ‘I have no wish to inconvenience you, sir,’ I said, darting a glance at Paget. ‘I will gladly be on my way, if—’ I did not manage to finish the sentence; tiredness, or perhaps hunger or the effects of the blow to my head brought on a wave of dizziness that caused my legs to buckle, so that I stumbled back and almost lost my footing. Paget dived forward and thrust a stool under me.

  ‘I think Doctor Bruno needs food and rest, Ambassador,’ Paget said smoothly, as if he were accustomed to taking charge.

  ‘Of course,’ the ambassador said, with a hint of impatience. ‘No inconvenience at all. Geoffrey!’ He turned to the servant standing discreetly in the doorway. ‘Light a fire in the blue chamber. Warm some wine and stew for our guest and have the girl heat some water. Doctor Bruno—’ he stepped forward and held out a hand, then thought better of touching me, withdrew it and offered an awkward smile instead. ‘I am Sir Edward Stafford. It has long been my hope that I would one day welcome you to Her Majesty’s embassy as my guest, though I confess I had pictured more orthodox circumstances. I am truly sorry you should have been subjected to such an ordeal tonight. But – well, these are unruly times. I pray you take your ease for now and when you are rested we will speak further. Do not hesitate to ask my steward, Geoffrey, if you have need of anything. I bid you good night.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I mean no offence, but I would prefer if you did not come any further into the house until you have washed and removed your clothes. They may carry some pestilence from the gaol. Geoffrey – fetch Doctor Bruno a robe and take his things outside.’

  ‘I can dispose of them on my way out,’ Paget offered, ever helpful. I wrapped my arms tighter around my chest and felt the crackle of the papers inside my doublet. Was that why everyone was so solicitous to relieve me of my clothes – so that they could search me?

  ‘I think I can manage to undress myself. I thank you, gentlemen,’ I added, to soften the reproach.

  Paget exchanged a glance with Stafford. ‘As you wish. You will have the opportunity to thank me tomorrow, Bruno. Give you good night.’ He gave a cursory bow to the room in general and turned as if to leave.

  ‘Paget. A word, before you go.’ Stafford nodded towards the door into the house. ‘Wait in my study, would you?’

  I noticed Paget’s face twitch at this peremptory tone, but he merely inclined his head and did as he was asked, closing the door behind him. Stafford rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. He seemed relieved that Paget had gone. I had heard a little about the English ambassador from Walsingham, but he was younger than I had expected, no more than mid-thirties, though his worn expression and fussy mannerisms lent him the look of a middle-aged academic. He peered at me now as if I were yet another problem to be solved.

  ‘I have letters for you,’ he said, lowering his voice.

  My heart leapt. ‘From London?’

  He answered with a curt nod. ‘They will keep until tomorrow. We will discuss it all then. Give you good night, Doctor Bruno.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. For everything.’ I was so tired now I could barely raise my head, but I knew I could not afford to let my guard slip. ‘And do not fear – I will reimburse you as soon as I can.’

  He frowned. ‘For what?’

  ‘What you paid in bail.’

  He shook his head. ‘That was none of my doing. If money was paid out, you must take that up with Paget.’

  Now it was my turn to look confused. ‘But why would—’

  He held up a hand to stop me. ‘All I know is that a fortnight ago, when these letters arrived, I asked him to find you and deliver the instruction to call on me, at Walsingham’s behest. I did not ask him to bring you to my house in the middle of the night smelling like a plague pit.’

  ‘I apologise for that. It would not have been my choice to arrive like this either.’

  Stafford looked uncertain; he seemed about to speak further, when he glanced at the door and his jaw tightened. ‘If you will excuse me.’

  I knew I had only a moment alone before the steward returned and demanded my clothes. I reached inside my doublet, drew out the pages I had taken from Frère Joseph’s cell and smoothed them flat on the floor as best I could. They were badly creased, and damp with sweat in places, but still legible. I pulled off my boots, rolled the papers together and stuffed them inside. I had just placed the boots by the hearth when the steward, Geoffrey, entered with a dark red woollen robe draped over his arm; in one hand he carried a large sack and in the other a silver tankard, steam rising from its surface. A young maidservant followed carrying a pail of water, her face drooping with fatigue. Geoffrey handed me the drink; I breathed in the scent of spiced wine, took a sip and felt its welcome warmth spread through me.

  ‘You may bathe in the scullery when the water is heated,’ he said, his tone civil but detached. ‘If you would put your clothes in the sack, I can take them out to the yard.’

  ‘They are good wool, made by English tailors,’ I said, unbuttoning my doublet one-handed. ‘Take them outside if you must, but do not destroy them. I will take them away with me tomorrow and have them laundered.’

  ‘I fear, sir, you will not be rid of that smell easily.’

  ‘Well, it is worth a try. And my boots I will keep with me.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘I fear they may have absorbed some contagion. At least allow me to clean them.’

  ‘They stay with me,’ I said firmly. He inclined his head, knowing better than to insist. But he watched me closely while I undressed, marking every item of clothing as I dropped it into his sack; I guessed he had been instructed to make sure I was not hiding anything. I was at last left alone to wash myself in the scullery, the maid leaving fresh pails of hot water outside the door. I plunged my head into the bucket, rubbing hard at my hair; as I raised it, water coursing down my face, I heard a sharp exchange of voices from the yard outside, followed by the clatter of a horse’s hooves. It could have been Paget leaving, though I remembered that unmarked horse with the scar tethered outside. Perhaps Stafford’s nocturnal visitor had preferred not to be seen and slipped away through another door.

  I dreamed that night of the Count. His cadaver’s face looming, eyeless sockets staring, rotting breath gusting in my face as he hissed the word ‘Circe’ over and over. I woke with a cry into a chilly light, covered with a sheen of sweat though I was wearing only an undershirt beneath the blankets. It took me several minutes to recover my bearings; enclosed in the blue canopy and curtains of my bed, I had the sense of being underwater. I sat up, running through a tally of my injuries and their severity as I attempted to move. My wrists were bandaged with clean strips of linen; Geoffrey had applied a salve and wrapped them himself the night before with a sure touch, polite but inscrutable. He had bathed the wound on my head and made a poultice that had done much to reduce the swelling, I realised as I reached up to check. Drawing back the bed curtain and swinging my legs gingerly to the floor, I was pleased to find that, though I was well decorated with cuts and bruises and every part of me ached, none of it was severe enough to keep me from walking. I was fortunate that those soldiers at the abbey had not been more energetic in my detention.

  I crossed the room and opened the shutters with a loud creak. My window overlooked the river, busy with boats. Yesterday’s mist had lifted and patches of blue showed through a high gauze of cloud; I guessed the morning was already well advanced. I needed to be on my way. Shivering, I pulled on the robe I had been given the night before and wondered what I was supposed to do about clothes. All I had were my boots. I glanced around the room and realised immediately that they were not where I had left them, by the door. I crouched to look under the bed; perhaps I had misremembered. But a brief search confirmed that the boots were no longer in the room. Someone had been in while I was asleep and taken them – and with them, the draft pamphlets and the love letter I had taken from Frère Joseph’s cell. I stood by the window, weighing up what to do. Not only were those papers proof of a link between Joseph a
nd Paul Lefèvre, they could be a danger to me; to print and distribute treasonous words against the King was a capital offence, and protesting that I was not the author would be a flimsy defence if I was caught with them. I wondered if anyone here could have taken them to use against me. I did not trust Paget to do anything without ulterior motive, including the bail, and Stafford’s furtive manner was hardly more reassuring.

  There came a brisk knock on the door, as if someone had been waiting outside for the first sign of movement. I called ‘Entrez,’ then remembered I was in an English household. ‘Yes?’

  The door opened to reveal Geoffrey, wearing his impeccable smile, a suit of clothes over one arm and an earthenware bowl in his hand.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I trust you are rested. I’ve brought you some warm milk with honey, and some spare clothes of the ambassador’s clerk to try on. You are of a similar size, I think. Sir Edward awaits you in his study when you are ready.’ He laid the clothes on the bed – a plain but serviceable grey doublet and breeches, with good woollen hose and a linen shirt – and backed away towards the door with a neat bow.

  ‘I cannot seem to find my boots,’ I said, giving him a pointed look.

  ‘Ah, yes. We have done you the service of cleaning them, sir,’ he said, in that same deferential tone that gave nothing away. ‘You will find them in the kitchen, warming by the fire. If that is all?’

  I could not object to his taking the boots without revealing that I had something to hide, so I shook my head and muttered my thanks.

  ‘I will tell the ambassador to expect you shortly, then,’ he said, and closed the door.

  The clothes fitted well; not bothering to lace the doublet, I raced down the stairs in my stockinged feet to find my boots, cleaner than they had been in months, waiting as he had said in the hearth. They were, as I had feared, empty. I turned to ask Geoffrey what he had done with the papers, but he had conveniently disappeared. A kitchen girl pointed me to Sir Edward’s study. I knocked on the polished wood and entered.

  The ambassador sat behind a wide desk piled high with bundles of documents tied up in different-coloured ribbons. His casement overlooked a tidy garden at the rear of the house, the other side from the river. It was a companionable room; shelves of books lined the walls and a large globe in a mahogany stand dominated one corner beside a smaller desk where a pale young man sat copying letters. Stafford pushed his glasses up his nose and snapped his fingers for his clerk to leave the room as I entered. ‘And see that I am not disturbed,’ he added, as the young man gathered up his papers. ‘Bring one of those stools for my guest on your way out.’ The boy moved a stack of books from a stool by the fireplace and carried it over to Stafford’s desk, before bowing and closing the door behind him. Stafford gestured for me to take a seat opposite. The stool was lower than his own chair; I could see he was pleased with the advantage.

  ‘Well, you smell better than you did last night, at any rate. You have slept well?’

  I inclined my head. ‘I must apologise again for intruding in such a state, and at that hour. It was not my idea.’

  He waved this away. Replacing his quill carefully in its stand, he folded his hands together and gave me a long look over his glasses.

  ‘Let us deal frankly with one another, Doctor Bruno. I have had a communication from Master Secretary Walsingham urging me to make use of your talents now that you are here in Paris. He says that for courage, loyalty and cunning I will not find your equal.’

  ‘That is generous of him.’ I could barely hide my surprise; Walsingham was famously grudging with his praise. I had been of use to him while I was in England and resident in the French embassy, with access to their communications, but I had felt this past summer that, if he had truly valued my abilities, he would have done more to enable me to stay in London. He had assured me, when it seemed inevitable that I must return to France, that he would recommend me to Stafford, but as I had heard nothing, I had come to believe he meant it only as a courtesy. I should have had more faith in the old spymaster.

  ‘I know that you were instrumental in preventing the success of that conspiracy two years past, now known among the Queen’s councillors as the Throckmorton Plot, and that you rendered further services to Her Majesty during your time in London. I am only sorry I have not acted sooner, but things have been rather fraught of late. Now listen.’ Stafford leaned forward and fixed me with a serious expression. ‘We have good intelligence that the Duke of Guise and his supporters are planning a coup against King Henri.’

  I laughed, assuming this to be some kind of straight-faced English humour. ‘Every tavern-keeper and laundress in Paris has that intelligence. People talk of little else.’ I stopped when I saw his expression.

  ‘You think it is a laughing matter?’ He pushed his eyeglasses up his nose again, indignant. ‘France in the hands of the Catholic League would be calamitous for England. There would be nothing then to stop France and Spain joining forces to invade us. We could not repel such an attack, especially if those Catholics remaining in England were to support them and take up arms – it would be death for Queen Elizabeth and the English Church. The murder of this priest could be the spark that starts the whole conflagration.’

  ‘If people think King Henri is responsible, you mean?’

  ‘Guise intends to denounce a man publicly as an assassin hired by the King. The people will be incensed.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘I don’t know – that hardly matters. Some wretch who will have been tortured and threatened until he says whatever Guise needs him to say.’ He picked up the quill again and turned it between his fingers. ‘There was a riot yesterday outside the priest’s church of Saint-Séverin. It was only put down when the King sent a company of archers to disperse the crowd. At least one person severely injured, which has made matters worse. With a sufficient mob at his back and popular feeling in his favour, Guise would have the strength to march on the Louvre. If he succeeds in toppling Henri, he will not rest until the Protestant Church in France is torn up by the roots and cast into the fire. It would make the Saint Bartholomew’s massacre look like a children’s game.’ He pressed his lips together until they disappeared in a white line.

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  He shot me a look over his glasses, as if to say I should know better than to ask his sources. But before the question was even out of my mouth, I had answered it myself: Charles Paget. I recalled his comment about serving two masters; was he now selling Guise’s secrets to the English? And what did he stand to gain by it?

  ‘You were friends with this priest, I understand?’ Stafford continued.

  ‘I would not say that, exactly. I knew him a little from the university, some years ago.’

  ‘You had a secret meeting with him shortly before his last sermon. And you were there at his deathbed.’ He rearranged some papers on his desk as he said this, not looking at me, his tone matter-of-fact.

  ‘Only by chance. And the time before I was making my confession.’ Paget had been keeping a keen eye on me, it seemed.

  Stafford clicked his tongue, impatient. ‘You are excommunicate, Doctor Bruno, you are not permitted the sacrament of confession. So you must have had other business with him. In any case, the Duke of Guise is under the impression that the priest told you some secret with his dying breath. He will no doubt be concerned lest that information undermine the version he wants people to believe. Lefèvre belonged to the League. It is my view that he must have been killed because he knew more than he ought, or because his loyalty was suspect. Guise clearly fears that he confided something to you. So I am asking you plainly what you know of the matter.’

  I took a deep breath, considering how much to lay before him. While I could not deny I was excited by the prospect of working for Walsingham again, especially if there was a stipend involved, I was not at all sure how far to trust Stafford.

  ‘Am I to consider myself in your employ, then, Sir Edward?’

  He
tutted, as if the commercial side were beneath him, but after a short pause while we looked expectantly at one another, he reached down and unlocked a drawer in his desk. From it he withdrew a small chest and took out a purse, which he laid on the table in front of me.

  ‘If I consider your intelligence worthwhile, it will be rewarded.’

  I smiled. ‘You are a shrewd negotiator, sir. But it would be no fault of mine if you judge what I tell you to be worthless, when it may have value to others. I would like nothing better than to help preserve England’s freedoms, but a man must eat.’

  His mouth twitched again, but after a moment he nodded and shook out two gold écus on to the papers. ‘Walsingham said you were a sharp man. Very well. If you are agreeable, I will pay you a small amount for the gathering of information, and more if what you bring is valuable to England.’ He pushed the coins towards me. ‘Would such an arrangement be satisfactory to you?’

  ‘Paul Lefèvre hinted that he had knowledge of an imminent plot against the King,’ I said, picking up the coins and ignoring his sarcasm. ‘When I pressed him on it, he said he spoke in general terms only. But I believe he may have had second thoughts about his complicity. He may even have considered warning Henri.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Hints he gave.’ I decided not to mention the burned letter until I had a clearer idea of whether or not the King had received a copy. ‘In any case, my guess is that the League had come to feel he could not be relied upon to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘As I thought. So they shut it for him.’ Stafford nodded. ‘Especially if they knew he had been talking to you. You are still a confidant of the King, I understand?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not as I once was.’

  ‘But he sent for you the night before last.’

  ‘Sir Edward …’ I paused, chinking the coins in my palm. ‘How long has Charles Paget been watching me?’

  He blinked. ‘I asked him to find you a fortnight since. Beyond that, I cannot account for his movements.’