Prophecy (2011) (26 page)

Salisbury Court, London
2nd October, Year of Our Lord 1583

At first I can’t make sense of the sound; an insistent hammering that chips through the cocoon of sleep. I wake to a new burst of pain behind my eyes, though when I reach tentatively to my temple I can feel that the swelling has begun to subside. Fragments of last night drift across the surface of my mind, assembling themselves into a vague memory of Walsingham’s boat dropping me at the end of Water Lane and one of his servants accompanying me as far as the garden door of Salisbury Court. I had hoped to drag myself up the stairs unnoticed, but Courcelles was coming down at the same time; I was almost gratified by how appalled he looked at the state of me. Despite my protests, he led me straight to Castelnau’s office. The ambassador accepted my story of a bar fight with English thugs without question (all we foreigners have suffered some degree of abuse from the Londoners), and could not have been kinder, though I waved aside his fuming threats to involve the law or take it up with the Lord Mayor; all I wanted by then was to collapse into my own bed and close my eyes.

Now I have been woken prematurely - there is barely a glimmer of light through the shutters - by this increasingly urgent knocking. For a moment it falls silent, and I think whoever is there has gone away. ‘Bruno! Let me in, will you?’ comes a whisper, before the tapping begins again, more frantic than before. Cursing under my breath, I struggle out of the bedclothes and unlatch the door to see Leon Dumas shivering in his nightshirt, his eyes bulging like an anxious fish.

‘Quick,’ he says, glancing over his shoulder as he slips inside, though the passageway is empty. ‘God’s blood, what happened to your head?’

‘I was set upon in a tavern. Some London boys didn’t like my accent.’

‘Really?’ He looks even more frightened. ‘I have been spat upon for being French, but this is vicious. Were they drunk?’

‘Very. It got out of hand. I should have ignored them, but I let them get under my skin. It was my own fault.’

‘What were you doing in such a place, Bruno? Were you alone?’ He looks so concerned that I almost want to laugh and reassure him.

‘Yes. I stopped for something to eat on my way back from the library at Mortlake. You know, where I go to work on my book.’

‘It looks terrible.’ He continues to wring his hands, frowning like a helpless mother. ‘Have you seen a physician? I think you ought.’

I shake my head and immediately regret it.

‘It will mend. Was there something you wanted?’

‘Oh. That. Well, it’s -‘ He squeezes his hands together several times, then walks to the window, turns to me with an agonised expression, bites the knuckle of his thumb and walks back. ‘I need your help.’

‘Of course. What’s the matter?’ I ask, striving to sound more patient than I feel.

‘There is something -‘ He rubs the back of his neck and looks away. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but I must. It weighs too hard on my conscience.’ He stops again and fixes those enormous eyes on me as if imploring me to extract his confession without his having to speak it aloud. My heart freezes for a moment; he is going to tell me that he has buckled under the strain of his false front and given us up, told someone at the embassy about Walsingham and the letters. Our betrayal is known - it must be. With my head in such poor shape, I can barely think ahead to the consequences for the invasion plot, and for me.

‘I was sworn to secrecy but I’m afraid I will be found out soon, and then it will go worse for me. But I said to myself - Bruno will know what to do.’

‘What has happened, Leon?’ I ask, trying to sound reassuring, though I fear I already know the answer. He appears so tense that I wonder if he might burst into tears.

‘It’s the ring,’ he blurts, finally. ‘The missing one, that Mary Stuart sent to Henry Howard.’

For a moment, I am nonplussed.

‘What about it?’

‘I know where it is.’

To the best of my knowledge, Mary Stuart’s ring is currently in Walsingham’s care. Dumas cannot possibly know this. I stare at him as he chews his knuckles again.

‘It was greed on my part, Bruno, I confess it. But not for myself - all the money I sent home to my parents. They are poor.’ His voice rises in his own defence.

‘What money? What are you talking about?’

But at that moment a floorboard creaks outside the room; I hold up my hand and Dumas stiffens, fist to his mouth.

A soft tap at the door; another dawn visitor. I have never been so popular at Salisbury Court. I motion to Dumas to keep silent in the hope that this newcomer will think I am still asleep, but this response is apparently understood as an invitation; the door eases open and through the crack slips Marie de Castelnau, her hair unbound, dressed in a loose gown that drapes suggestively over the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips. Her feet are bare. She widens her eyes at me and presses a finger to her smiling lips, as if we are mischievous children complicit in a game; she has not yet seen Dumas. With an implausible smile, I direct her with my eyes to where he stands, looking no less amazed than if he had witnessed the second coming. For the moment that it takes them to register the shock of one another’s presence, I am seized by the urge to laugh, but it dries in my throat at the sight of Marie’s face; she seems throttled with fury and the look of hatred she trains on Dumas threatens to burn right through him and set fire to the floorboards. Dumas, for his part, wears the expression of a man who has heated irons held inches from his privy parts. Even if my head were in better shape, I am not sure I could think of any words that would undo the implications of this moment.

Fortunately, it is Marie who gathers her thoughts first.

‘You,’ she says, folding her arms across her chest and mustering some remnants of her usual poise. ‘Shouldn’t you be on your way to help my husband? I’m sure he has plenty for you to do.’

Dumas continues to stare at her, slack-mouthed, as if she were Lucifer himself.

‘Well, go on, then,’ she says, jerking her head towards the door. ‘I’m writing a letter to a friend in Italy,’ she adds, airily, as Dumas manages to unstick his feet from the floor. ‘I wanted Bruno’s help with the translation. And it must be sent early today, because the messenger leaves this morning. You see?’ Her clipped tone aims to tidy away any potential misunderstanding. Dumas just goes on staring, stupefied, reaching the door as if in a daze. He flings me a last panicked look and backs out tentatively, as if he is unsure whether I will be safe alone with Marie. I jerk my head at him to go; better I catch up with him later.

She watches the door click shut with a small impatient shake of her head, and places her hands on her hips.

‘Why was he here at this time?’

‘Dumas? He gets homesick,’ I say, wishing my brain felt sharper. Dumas had been on the edge of a momentous confession, and Marie’s appearance had robbed me of it; now it would be impossible for me to fix my thoughts on anything until I had shaken the rest from his stammering lips. ‘Sometimes he just wants someone to talk to.’ Effortfully, I tear my gaze from the door and back to her face. Her sharp eyes assess mine for a moment, then stray to the wound on my head.

‘At this hour?’

‘Well -
you
are here at this hour.’

Her face softens into a sideways smile.

‘Perhaps I get homesick too. And lonely. Don’t you, Bruno?’ She seems to glide towards me, feet silent. ‘In any case, I should think my reasons are not the same as that clerk’s. What’s his name?’

‘Leon Dumas.’ Perhaps it should not surprise me that she doesn’t know the names of her husband’s staff, but it seems to confirm something about her, a lack of interest in anyone not immediately useful to her. ‘But you have a husband,’ I add, trying to keep my voice level. She stands now barely inches from me and raises a hand to my brow, her face concentrated in concern. I flinch even before she touches me, and she laughs.

‘Don’t worry, Bruno, I am not going to hurt you. Yes, I have a husband, and I can see you have never been married, if you think it a cure for loneliness.’

I clench my jaw tight as she runs a finger lightly through my hair just above the wound.

‘Courcelles said you had been attacked - I was worried about you,’ she whispers. I wonder briefly when Courcelles found the opportunity to speak to her between my late arrival and this dawn ambush, but my thoughts are scattered by the touch of her left hand on my breastbone, as her right forefinger continues to trace a line along my temple and down my face. Again, I concentrate on keeping very still, though my nerves are burning and my throat has constricted. Her gown has slipped a little and the naked slope of her shoulder is visible. ‘Bruno -‘ she begins, not quite looking me in the eye - ‘what happened yesterday -‘

‘Please - forget it happened,’ I hear myself say, in a new strangled voice. ‘There is no need to say any more about it.’

‘But this is just the problem, Bruno,’ she whispers, her breath warm on my chin. ‘I can’t forget. I can think of nothing else. I don’t know how you have done this to me.’ Her body snakes closer to me in a fluid, instinctive movement, fitting herself to the angle of my hip. Enough. My head clears as if doused by cold water; I step back and grasp her gently by the shoulders.

‘Please, Marie, I have done nothing knowingly, and you should not be here.’

‘That you have not done it knowingly makes it all the sweeter,’ she murmurs, and through her small shoulders I can feel the pent force as she strains to press herself against me, and the heat of her body. Again, I am wracked by confusion; her desire seems real enough, but I cannot shake off the suspicion that this is a performance, a trap she means to spring. Even if it is not intentionally a trap, I think, it would soon become one. I must get her out of my room before I have any cause to reproach myself.

‘Marie,’ I say gently, and she lifts her head to look me in the eye, her expression hesitant, her lips parted and breathless.
Dio mio
. It takes every atom of self-control I possess not to simply lean in and kiss that hot mouth. ‘This cannot be. In your heart you know it. It would only cause pain - not just to your husband, but to you and to me. Please, I implore you - try not to think of me like this, as I try not to think of you.’

She shakes her head, but at least she does take a token step back.

‘More pain than I feel already, Bruno? To see you every day, to live in the same house and eat at the same table and know that you do not want me as I want you? If there is a greater pain than this, I do not know of it.’

Because you have never known what it is to want something and not immediately have it in your possession, I think, looking at her. For her the attraction lies solely in my continuing refusal; I am not so vain as to imagine otherwise.

‘In any case,’ she goes on, averting her eyes, ‘I do not know how to live with this any longer. I begin to think that if you will not love me, then we cannot go on existing under the same roof. One of us must return to Paris.’

I run a hand through my hair and take a deep breath, trying to muster a diplomatic answer. Now she speaks of love; if she truly means this, it is nothing more than an illusion she has created in her own mind. She has persuaded herself that she loves me, because I have refused her. But then, perhaps what we call love is only ever self-delusion. And if she is acting a role, is this all part of a larger ruse to get me out of the way? If she decides one of us must return to Paris, she can only mean me, and as far as I can see, there is nothing for me in Paris except the gathering strength of the Duke of Guise and his Catholic faction, waiting to welcome the Inquisition as soon as they have the chance. I wonder who might have put her up to it; whoever has the most to gain from removing me just as the invasion plot gathers momentum. Henry Howard? The Duke of Guise himself? Whoever it is, they must not succeed.

‘I would never willingly cause you pain,’ I begin. My head is aching. ‘But neither do I wish to insult your husband. I don’t know what my choice is, Marie - you want me to become your lover, here, under his roof? Do you think that could ever be managed without the entire household knowing that he was being cuckolded by his house guest? Already, we have Leon Dumas speculating on why you would be coming to my chamber in the dawn, so -‘ I gesture to her flimsy gown, feeling myself blush - ‘so informally attired. There are other servants who would be less discreet. It would be an impossible situation.’

Immediately I know I have said the wrong thing; her face darkens, her eyes flare and she darts a furious glance towards the door, as if Dumas might be standing outside taking notes.

‘You think he would say something to my husband? Or to the other servants? What could he say? I gave him a good reason for my visit, what cause could he have for idle gossip?’ Her voice is tight with anger. I rub my brow. Does she really believe that the household staff would not find it worth commenting on, that the mistress of the house should visit the lodger under cover of darkness, barely dressed, while her ageing husband snores in his bed?

‘Dumas will not say a word, he is a good man and would not want to spread rumours,’ I say, squeezing her arm re assuringly. ‘But you see how it would go for us if there were a story for the servants to tell? You would not want to dishonour your husband in his own house, I’m sure, whatever else you may feel about him.’

She sighs. ‘Michel is a good man. And he adores me, so he is often persuaded to go against his own judgement for my sake. We need him if this invasion is to succeed. You are right, Bruno, I cannot afford to lose his support now.’

This is not exactly the point I have made, but I say nothing.

‘But he is sixty years old, Bruno. He cannot be a husband to me in the way I need. You understand me.’ Her voice grows silky; again, I feel the sharp heat in my groin, the dry throat. ‘I want only to know that you feel the same,’ she adds, her voice barely audible, her eyes reeling me in.

‘I - you must know that I do,’ I say, thinking that this is the only politic answer. If I reject her outright, she will see that I am sent back to Paris; she has as good as said so. ‘But you are right. I do not want to see the invasion plans fail because we could not set aside our own selfish desires for a short while. Your husband’s support is essential and he must not be distracted at this stage. It would let everyone down.’