Prophecy (2011) (36 page)

I replace the box and turn to face her.

‘I am sorry. I have been confused by my feelings for you, Marie. I have been trying to fight something that cannot be fought.’

She seems taken aback by this; again I have the sense that I am reading the wrong lines. For a moment I fear she is going to tell me that it’s not a convenient time, that I have missed my chance. But she regards me with a kind of curiosity, then moves again towards me with a last glance over her shoulder at the door before laying a hand on my chest. I must get her talking about Dumas again while I have her attention.

‘I have been distressed by the death of my friend, too.’ I lower my head towards her. She cups a hand around the back of my neck and strokes my hair. A simple gesture of reassurance; I do not fool myself that she is sincere, and yet this touch reminds me how long it has been since I allowed anyone to show me affection.

‘Poor Bruno,’ she murmurs. ‘But there was nothing you could have done.’

‘Yet he seemed so anxious yesterday morning,’ I persist, curling my neck back like a cat as she caresses me. ‘I should have paid more attention.’

‘You were not to know,’ she whispers, soothing. ‘Did he seem anxious about something in particular, then? Did he tell you what was troubling him?’ Her fingers slide through my hair and down my nape inside my collar, but I am alert now; she wants information from me, just as I want it from her without yielding anything myself.

‘He didn’t get the chance.’

She tilts her head back sharply with a questioning look.

‘That poor man,’ she says lightly, resuming her stroking. ‘I barely paid him any heed, except to worry what he might say to my husband about my visiting your chamber. I suppose that is one less problem now.’ She smiles up as if expecting me to share the joke. By this time I should not be surprised at her callousness, but somehow it shocks afresh with each new display. But I smile in return. ‘Besides,’ she purrs, as she takes my arms, still hanging awkwardly at my sides, and places them purposefully around her small waist as she presses against me, ‘my husband is out at the Spanish embassy this afternoon. Perhaps it would do you good to forget your worries for a while, Bruno.’

And then her mouth is on mine and I simply let her; my conscience and my will seem to recede to a pinpoint at the back of my skull so that I stand there, almost inert with tiredness and resignation, while my body responds predictably. Among the detached thoughts circling my brain as her fingers slide along my collar bone and begin to unlace my shirt is the memory of the look that passed between her and Dumas the previous morning in my chamber. He was afraid of her. This woman, the one whose tongue is flickering over my lips and who is even now lifting my shirt over my head as her nails scrape lightly up my spine, might be the very person who decided at that moment to have him silenced.

She drops my shirt to the floor and runs a hand down my chest, then takes both my hands and leads me to the bed, where she draws back the curtain and pushes against me until I am lying across the sheet. She eases herself down beside me - a complex manoeuvre, given the volume of her skirts - and I close my eyes as her hair brushes my skin and I feel her lips on my chest, moving lower, as her hand massages expertly along the inside of my thigh, my skin fully alive but my thoughts still remote until a woman’s voice from somewhere beyond the room distinctly says.

‘Madame?’

Marie leaps up as if she has been stung, motioning for me to pull up my legs inside the bed.

‘What is it, Bernadette?’

There is a timid tap at the door.

‘May I speak to you, madame? About Katherine.’

‘Can’t it wait?’ she calls back, peevish.

‘I fear not, madame. She complains of a fever and a pain in her stomach.’

‘Well, I am not a physician. Tell her you will fetch the barber surgeon - that will soon put an end to these games.’

A pause from the other side of the door.

‘Madame, I do not think she pretends. She feels very hot.’ The governess’s voice is strained. ‘She is calling for her mother.’

‘Oh, very well. Give me a moment.’

Marie rolls her eyes, stands and brushes down her dress. ‘Stay there,’ she mouths, then draws the curtain around me. I lie motionless as I hear the door click shut, then with an almighty effort of will, I bring my thoughts back to the task in hand. Adjusting my breeches, I scuttle to the writing desk and scan the sheets of paper Marie has left there. ‘
Mon cher Henry
,’ the letter begins. At first I assume she is writing to Howard, but as I scan through the papers, I am startled to find a reference to taking the crown of England followed by the French throne. Is this King Henri of France, then? Convinced I must have misread it, I force myself to look again, more thoroughly, and I see that in the same paragraph she writes of ‘your Scottish cousin’ being easy to move aside in due course, and ‘the reign of our weak king’ facing its last days. I feel my face stretch in disbelief as I take it in. This is meant for Henry, Duke of Guise, and the letter is full of scattered intimacies; a mention of the pain of separation, the cruelty of distance, remembered embraces, a wish to be reunited as soon as God allows. At the end of the letter she has scribbled a postscript, in a hand that looks as if it was done in haste: ‘I do not know when you will receive this, as I cannot send by my usual means.’ Beside her signature she has drawn a picture of a rose.

I return the paper to the desk, slow and stupid with amazement. This invasion plan truly has become all things to all men; Marie may talk of unity but while Henry Howard contrives his own secret agenda, so too does she scheme to turn it to her own profit. So she is more intimate than I guessed with the Duke of Guise, who evidently regards the English throne as his rightful spoils once the small matter of replacing the monarch is dealt with. What is Marie’s ultimate ambition, I wonder - is she hoping her husband will be a casualty of the ‘weak’ French king’s demise, so that she can take her place by Guise’s side? I wander back to the dressing table and pick up the green velvet casket again, still shaking my head. Behind their talk of religious purity and their duty to Christendom and the eternal souls of the English people, each of them is scrambling for dynastic advantage. You can be certain that Mendoza and the Spanish king are not lending their resources out of piety either, I think, turning the box over and over between my hands; if this invasion should really happen, they would tear England apart between them like street dogs falling on a scrap of meat. Elizabeth Tudor will certainly be a casualty, but Mary Stuart could also find her jubilant restoration turns quickly to a worse fate if the wrong faction gains the upper hand, and those good, rational men of the Privy Council - Walsingham, Burghley, Leicester - would all be destroyed. This small island, with its strange ways and the few precious freedoms it offers to those who, like me, have made an enemy of Rome, will be thrown into a turmoil that will make all the end-of-days prophecies of the penny pamphlets look like children’s stories, and who will be left to restore order except the powers of France or Spain, funded by the pope?

The green casket tells me nothing. I am no expert in jewel-lery, so I have no way of knowing whether this little box could be Mary Stuart’s and have made its way to Marie via Dumas, or whether it is the commonest sort of container. But thinking of Dumas, I suddenly stop and remember in a new light Marie’s hasty postscript. She could not send by her usual means - could she have meant Dumas? If Guise is her lover, she could not send letters to him through the embassy’s diplomatic packet; she would have needed another messenger, a secret means of conveying letters to France. Guise has his own agents and envoys in England - he conducts himself as if he were an alternative king already - and Dumas, forever trotting back and forth to the city with letters for Throckmorton and the official embassy correspondence, could easily carry one more set of messages. As I knew only too well, he was more than willing to run additional errands if there was a chance to make money - a willingness that eventually cost him his life. Did Marie imagine that he had told me her secret? I recall the Duke of Guise from his appearances at the court of King Henri when I was living in Paris last year; a handsome man in his early thirties, with exuberantly curled hair and a sweeping air of entitlement. The French king always seemed cowed by him; it is easy to see how he might seem, by contrast, like the charismatic leader France lacks, especially to a woman like Marie. I regard my own naked torso in the glass and cannot avoid wondering whether she does to him what she had been about to do to me if the governess had not interrupted; I dislike myself for the pang of resentment this produces.

When the latch clicks I turn in anticipation, but instead of Marie, it is Courcelles who stands in the doorway with a piece of paper in his hand. He blinks rapidly, looks me up and down, glances to the bed and makes several attempts to speak before any words emerge.

‘What -? Where is she?’

‘Her daughter was taken ill.’

He glances at the door, then back to me as if struggling to accept the evidence of his eyes. Then he tucks the paper away by his side.

‘And you - she -?’ He waves a hand vaguely in the direct ion of the bed. I find myself battling an urge to laugh at his evident lack of composure; I wonder if Courcelles is also her lover, if she amuses herself with him while she writes her scheming billets-doux to Guise. Certainly his demeanour betrays a very personal sense of outrage. I merely shrug and raise an eyebrow; my state of undress and evident arousal make any justification redundant.

‘I might ask what brings you to her private chamber,’ I say instead, trying to sound casual as I bend to retrieve my shirt.

‘A messenger has just arrived for her from Lord Henry Howard.’ He brandishes his folded letter at me.

‘Is that your job now? Should you not be making the burial arrangements for poor Dumas?’

This seems to galvanise him; he strides across to me and jabs a finger in my face.

‘You think you can get away with anything, don’t you? You just talk your way into everyone’s confidence, you show no respect for birth or position, you think you can carve your own path with no consequences, all because you can make the king of France laugh.’

‘Oh, stop - you are making me blush.’

‘How do you think the ambassador will respond to
this
, Bruno?’ he hisses, poking my bare chest and leaning down so that his face is almost as near to mine as Marie’s was a moment ago. ‘After the faith he has placed in you. I should not be surprised if he decided to send you back to France. Let the king protect you from what’s coming there, if he can.’

‘And what
is
coming there, Claude?’ I say, determined to keep my voice light. ‘Something King Henri should know about? Or my lord ambassador? Some sort of coup, perhaps? As a loyal subject, I’m sure you would share whatever you knew to protect your sovereign. Or do your loyalties lie elsewhere now?’ I pull my shirt over my head and stare him down; to my satisfaction, he looks away first. I glance over his shoulder and see Marie standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest and her lips pressed into a white line.

‘If my husband hears a word about this, you will both be on the next boat to France with such a stain on your reputat ions that you will never find a position in the French court again,’ she says, pointing between us. ‘Understand?’

‘Marie -
I
have done nothing! I came to bring you this and found him here.’ Courcelles flaps his letter at her, aggrieved. She gives him a long, reproving look.

‘Don’t be disingenuous, Claude. We must all keep one another’s confidences in this house.’ She looks from him to me and I realise then that Courcelles is familiar with this room, this bed. I watch Marie with rising anger. She certainly knows how to keep herself busy. The worst of it is that I am most annoyed with myself for feeling even a passing stab of jealousy. Then I think of Castelnau keeping his lonely night vigil in his study and the anger is displaced by a wave of guilt.

‘How is Katherine?’ I ask.

‘She’ll be fine.’ Her tone is clipped now, businesslike, as she reaches for the letter and breaks the seal. It is clear that I am no longer required. ‘You had better go, Bruno. And lace your shirt. We don’t want the servants to gossip.’

Courcelles aims a look of pure hatred at me as I reach the door, but my attention is fixed on the letter in Marie’s hand. What can Howard have to tell her since last night, unless it is something about me?

‘Bruno,’ she says, holding out her hand, palm up. ‘The box?’

I realise I am still clutching the green velvet casket. I pass it over with a muttered apology; she narrows her eyes, then her face softens and she squeezes my hand briefly. ‘Perhaps we will pick up our discussion where we left off another time.’

Lifting her hand, I press it to my lips in a grand gesture, just to irritate Courcelles, who appears ready to explode with an excess of choler. I may not have achieved everything I came here for, but I have discovered Marie’s underlying motive. What part does Courcelles play then, I wonder, considering him as I stand in the doorway and he watches me with the face of a man who would gladly commit murder at this moment? Does he know about the Duke of Guise, or does he believe that he, Claude de Courcelles, is destined to replace the ambassador at Marie’s side when the glorious Catholic reconquest is complete? Either way, I sense that the two of them have closed ranks against me, standing shoulder to shoulder as they wait for me to leave so they can discuss this message from Howard, and again I am furious with myself for feeling that she has toyed with me; absurd, too, when it was I who went to her chamber with the intention of tricking her in the first place. I give them a last look, then leave them to their plotting. As I pass the door of the nursery, I catch the muffled sound of a child crying.

City of London
3rd October, Year of Our Lord 1583

Back in my own room, my shirt laced, I grow increasingly troubled by the thought of that letter from Henry Howard, which Courcelles and Marie are reading even now. He will not have told them anything like the truth, but if I were to second guess him, I would expect him to have concocted some story about having discovered my betrayal of them all, some reason why they should keep me within their sight until he finds another chance to remove the threat that he fears I pose for him.

I would give almost anything at this moment for the chance to see Sidney, to have him make light of my predicament by punching me in my painful shoulder, then draw his sword in my defence. But Sidney is miles away in Barn Elms, and with Howard’s men on the lookout for me, I would not wager much on my chances of reaching Walsingham’s house in one piece. Wind buffets the window frames, making them rattle like teeth, and through the panes I can see only churning grey clouds. At this moment my heart feels constricted and I cannot escape the thought that England has been a mistake. I thought it would bring me freedom from persecution, but since I landed on this friendless island it seems I have done nothing but put myself on the wrong side of Catholics who want to kill me. I could have stayed in Naples for that, I think, gloomily, though I know the fault is my own; no one forced me to accept Walsingham’s offer of a place in his network of informers. I chose it because I found him to be a man I respected, and because, as I had told Fowler, I believed that the freedoms Queen Elizabeth had established here were worth defending against the tyranny of Rome. And - let me not fool myself - because I knew that to serve Elizabeth and her Principal Secretary in this way was likely to bring me reward and patronage of a kind no writer can advance without. Now, as I pace the confines of my room, I fear my life will be in danger if I leave the embassy or if I stay here.

But I am not altogether friendless in London; in the absence of Sidney, there is one person a little nearer with whom I can share a confidence. If I can get as far as St Andrew’s Hill and reach Fowler without being attacked, I could at least stick close to him; I would be less vulnerable in company. I picture again poor Dumas grabbed as he passes the mouth of an alleyway down at the wharf, the cord pulled tight around his throat before he can draw breath to scream, his frantic struggle for life unseen even as his limbs give their last few spasms and fall to stillness, before his body is dumped like a sack of refuse in the river. If I can avoid that fate for long enough to find Fowler, I can solicit his opinion on my unfinished theory, formed in my restless half-sleep this morning: that Marie, prompted by the Duke of Guise, was behind the plot to poison Elizabeth on Accession Day. She paid Dumas to steal the ring, while Courcelles, with his winning face, was drafted in to seduce Cecily and provide her with the means to kill; for whatever reason, Cecily lost her nerve and had to be silenced. Perhaps the graphic display pointing to a Catholic threat was meant to turn the court’s attention to the known English Catholic sympathisers in its ranks. Either way, the one element missing from this equation is who actually carried out the murders. I don’t doubt that Marie could be ruthless enough to take a life, but she would lack the physical strength; besides, she would regard butchery as servants’ work. Courcelles has always struck me as the sort of man who would pass out if he cut his finger on his dinner knife, but perhaps he is a better performer than I have given him credit for. Even if that were true, both Marie and Courcelles were standing beside me at the concert when Abigail Morley was murdered, so who was their accomplice, their third man?

I snatch up my doublet in a moment of decisiveness; I will not stay here pacing this room waiting for Howard’s thugs to come and find me. I pull on a cloak over my doublet and then remember that I have left my leather riding boots at Arundel House; I will have to wear the shoes I keep for finer weather, though the recent rain will have left the streets in a mire. Before I leave, I prise up the loose floorboard beneath my bed where I keep the chest with the money I receive from Walsingham. It is not a fortune - not compared with the risks I run for him - but it does at least allow me a standard of living in London that King Henri’s sporadic stipend would not provide. I will need to have new boots made - no one can survive a London winter without them, I have been told. Perhaps I can persuade Fowler to accompany me. In any case, I will retrieve my dagger from Castelnau’s study on my way out and take my chances in the city streets; that at least is better than cowering in my room with endless theories multiplying in my head and no solid evidence to prove or disprove them.

Only the ambassador’s butler sees me slip out through the front door, my cloak pulled up around my head. He can tell Marie and Courcelles that I have left if he pleases; I have decided that if I keep to the main thoroughfares and stay among crowds there is less chance of meeting the same end as Dumas. On the other hand, it is easier to stick a knife in a man’s ribs and disappear in a crowd. I keep the bone-handled knife at my belt, one hand on its hilt, my eyes raking the street to either side.

At the Fleet Bridge, I hear footsteps at my back and whip around so fast that my pursuer will not have time either to hide or to pounce, but the only person I see is a skinny boy who freezes, gaping at me nervously. His eyes flicker to the hand beneath my cloak, and I recognise him as the kitchen boy Jem from Whitehall Palace, the one who had brought the fateful message to Abigail Morley that lured her to her death. I let go of the dagger and step towards him, trying to make my expression less forbidding. He draws a paper out from his jerkin.

‘Jem? How long have you been following me?’

‘From Salisbury Court, please you, sir. She told me to wait outside and catch you whenever you came out. She said I was not to be seen.’

‘Who did?’

‘I am to give you this, sir,’ he says, holding out the paper.

I glance at the seal, but it means nothing. Quickly I tear the paper open and find, to my surprise, a summons from Lady Seaton, the queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber. She is visiting friends at Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate Street and has something to impart to me; I am to find her there by knocking at the trade entrance and asking for her manservant. In any other circumstances, the imperious tone of this note would tempt me to ball it in my fist and throw it aside, but I suspected when I spoke to Lady Seaton that night at Richmond Palace, after the murder of Cecily Ashe, that she knew more than she was willing to say. Why she has suddenly decided to speak to me now, I do not know; neither do I discount the possibility that it might be a trap. The boy hovers uncertainly, unsure as to whether his duty is dispatched.

‘Thank you, Jem. When were you sent with this?’

‘Only this morning, sir. After breakfast.’

‘I wonder you have the stomach to carry any more messages.’

He looks at me with a pained expression.

‘I must eat, sir.’

‘Yes, of course.’

I squint up at the sky; in this thin light it is impossible to guess at the position of the sun, but the hour must be already past three. She will be awaiting me now, if the note is really from her. I wonder briefly about giving the boy a shilling to accompany me through the city but decide against it; anyone who wants to attack me would not think twice about getting the boy out of the way, and I cannot risk any further violence to anyone on my account. I reach into the purse inside my doublet and find a groat; he pockets it gratefully and runs back westwards along Fleet Street, slipping easily among the people and carts. I scan the street uneasily after he has dis appeared, but the Londoners walking towards the Lud Gate press on, heads down, wrapped in cloaks against the wind, passing me by without remark. No one is watching, yet I feel the city’s eyes on me, from doorways and side streets and blank windows, as exposed as surely as if I were walking through the streets naked.

With Lady Seaton’s letter in my hand, I turn and continue towards the gatehouse ahead, its turrets jutting above the high city wall, but my nerves are wound as tight as Dumas’s were on our last journey together; I start like a hare at the slightest movement at the edge of sight. I cast my mind back to the night of the concert at Whitehall, to the hushed conference in Burghley’s room when the boy Jem told his story. He did not seem to me bright enough to be anything other than honest, but there is an outside chance that he knowingly delivered a false message to Abigail to trap her, and that he might now have been used by the same person to draw me. The man in the hat - who was he? Marie and Courcelles’s unknown third man? But if Jem was lying, the man in the hat may not even exist; he might have been given his errand by someone he knew from the court and would not name.

My thoughts preoccupied in this way, I pass under the Lud Gate, squeezing my way through a flock of sorry-looking sheep and trying not to glance up at the rotten hunk of human meat spiked over the central arch, a reminder to the citizens of the price of treason. Instead of heading down to St Andrew’s Hill, I make my way along Cheapside, the wide stone-paved thoroughfare that bisects the City east to west. Here I grow certain that I am being followed, though each time I turn I fear I am just too slow to catch him, and I have seen nothing to give flesh to my fears, except glimpses of a cloak whisked into a doorway which might have been imagined. It is more that I sense him, his movements shadowing mine, his eyes on my back as I walk. Between the ornate fronts of the goldsmiths’ workshops, their colourful signs creaking and swaying like banners overhead, the alleyways offer ample opportunity to hide, but if I keep to the centre of the road, avoiding those on horseback and the pedlars’ carts, I hope to give myself time and space to react if anyone draws too close.

At the eastern end of Cheapside, where the Stocks Market and the Great Conduit stand, I turn north along Three Needle Street, past the grand facade of the Royal Exchange, the Flemish-designed building that looks as if it has been lifted straight from the Low Countries and dropped in the middle of London. Immediately you see that this is the part of the City where wealth gathers; merchants in expensive furs and feathered caps hurry up and down the steps of the Royal Exchange and the large houses set back from the road behind their walls are either newly built with lavish windows or converted from grand monastic buildings refurbished after the queen’s father had them closed down. Even so, where money gathers so does desperation; beggars with only the merest covering of rags between them and the October damp hover near about the steps, plaintively calling for alms from well-fed, fur-swaddled traders. At least here, with more wealth visible, people also seem to be more vigilant; outside the Exchange are liveried guards with pikestaffs, and some of the well-dressed citizens go about flanked by menservants. If whoever is pursuing me has come this far - and some instinct tells me he is near at hand - he will need to move cautiously.

I find Crosby Hall at the southern end of Bishopsgate Street, a fine new house with a gabled front of red brick and pale stone trim. A narrow alley runs alongside the garden wall and I guess that the trade entrance is to be found here; as I turn the corner, a wave of cold fear washes over me and I draw my dagger, expecting that if the assault is to come, it will be now, away from passers-by. A door clicks; I brace myself ready to lunge, the knife held before me as a young woman with a covered basket emerges from a small gate in the wall and screams with as much vigour as if I had actually stabbed her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, sheathing the knife as I scramble to help her pick up her fallen laundry, but she backs up against the wall and continues shrieking as if all the legions of hell were at her heels. I conclude that my accent is not helping. A large balding man in a smeared kitchen apron sticks his head out of the gate, his fists clenched.

‘What’s all this?’

‘Forgive me - misunderstanding - I am here to see Lady Seaton? My name is Giordano Bruno.’

‘I don’t give two shits for your foreign name, ain’t no Lady Seaton lives here. Now get away before I kick you out on your dirty Spanish arse.’

‘He’s got a knife,’ the girl says, pointing, as she tucks herself behind his meaty shoulder.

I hold my hands up.

‘Lady Seaton is a guest of your master today, I believe. I am told she has an urgent message for me. If you would be so kind as to enquire? I can wait here.’

‘You will wait here and all. You’re not coming in with a knife. Get back in there, Meg, till we sort this one out.’ He holds the gate for the girl and she scuttles back inside. The man gives me a last glare.

‘Say your name again. Slow, like.’

‘Bruno. Tell her, Bruno.’

He nods, and the gate shuts behind him. The alley remains silent. I lean against the wall, swivelling my head from one side to the other, convinced now that I have been tricked, that I am standing in this mud-churned lane quite probably awaiting my execution. Well, I think - I have looked death in the face more than once and I have learned a bit about putting up a fight from my years as a fugitive in Italy. If I have been summoned here to die, I will not make it easy for them.

Time drips past, so that I have given up trying to count the minutes. A gust of wind drives flurries of dead leaves up the length of the alley; some cling to my legs before whirling onward. When the gate opens again I leap against the far wall, hand to my belt. A grey-haired man in a smart black doublet and starched ruff appears in the entrance and looks me up and down.

‘You are Bruno? Lady Seaton’s messenger?’

‘Er - I am.’ I allow my breath to slide out slowly; he does not seem about to run me through. Was the letter genuine after all?

‘Step inside. I am steward to Sir John Spencer.’ He ushers me through the gate into a small courtyard at the rear of the house. Several chickens scratch around the yard, perhaps looking for grain spilled from the sacks waiting to be loaded into storehouses. ‘Wait here. But I’m afraid I must ask you to hand over your weapon while you are inside our walls.’ He reaches out apologetically.