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‘No. But it was plain he hated me.’
‘Hated you and desired you.’
‘Isn’t that often the case with men and women?’ She lifted her chin and fixed me with a twisted smile.
I was on the point of arguing when I recalled a woman I had known last year, and this memory gave me pause. I did not answer one way or the other.
‘What about the key?’ I asked.
‘What key?’
‘The one to his secret cellar, that you said he wore at his belt. If this canon gave you the valuables he took from the body, was the key not among them?’
She stared at me, her lips parted.
‘No! By God, with everything that happened after, I never once thought of that key. You mean the killer could have taken it?’
‘I don’t know. Only it seems that, if he was found with a gold ring and a sword still on him, the killer was not interested in robbery. Perhaps the key was not given to you because the person who found him didn’t regard it as valuable, that is all.’
‘Or because they knew precisely what it was and kept it.’ She frowned. ‘You think someone wanted to find out what was in that cellar?’
‘I don’t know. But surely any sane person would force the lock rather than hack a man to death for the key? I was only thinking aloud. So – then you came to London?’ I said.
‘As you see,’ she replied. ‘It took over a week.’
I shook my head, half in disbelief, half in admiration.
‘You are fortunate you were not robbed or killed on the road, or both. Did you travel alone?’
She smiled, and there was a hint of pride in it.
‘No. Some of the Huguenot weavers were coming to London, bringing samples of cloth to trade. It was safe enough to travel with them. Especially like this.’ She indicated her boy’s clothes. ‘These are Olivier’s. It was his idea to dress as a boy. Oh, I hated the thought of cutting off all my hair at first, but then his mother sensibly pointed out that they would cut it off for me on the gallows anyway.’ She gave a bitter laugh, but it didn’t mask the fear in her eyes. Although I couldn’t quite ignore my childish resentment of this Olivier for being the first man to her aid, I had to admit my admiration for this practical French family who had taken a considerable risk to help Sophia to safety. My eyes strayed inadvertently to her chest under the rough shirt as I wondered how she had managed to strap herself up. She noticed the direction of my gaze and smiled.
‘To tell the truth, Bruno, there was not much left of them after I had the child and then grew so thin. I wear a linen binding, but I had hardly anything to bind in the first place.’
I felt my face grow hot, which only seemed to amuse her further.
‘You are too easy to embarrass, Bruno. I suppose that comes of being a monk for so long.’ Then her expression became serious. ‘I thought if I could just get to London and find you,’ she continued, turning those wide, golden-brown eyes on me once more, ‘then everything would be all right. All those miles with the weavers’ cart, it was my only thought.’
I wanted to speak, but the words wedged in my throat. Instead I reached out and laid my hand over hers. She did not snatch it away, and for a moment we stayed like that, in silence, looking at one another with everything still unspoken as the dust danced in the thick sunlight, until she nodded to her right with a mischievous grin, and I glanced across to see two men at the next table watching this display of affection with expressions of disgust.
‘They will take me for your catamite,’ Sophia whispered, giggling.
I withdrew my hand quickly. ‘Careful, then. They hang you for that here as well.’
We left the tavern and walked back in the shimmering heat along Gifford Street and on down Old Bailey, Sophia contained in her silence, as if all her words were spent. I glanced sidelong at her as we walked, but she appeared deep in concentration, biting at the knuckle of her thumb, her dirty cap pulled down low over her brow, eyes fixed straight ahead. I decided it was best not to press her any further for now. At the bottom of the lane I paused; my way lay to the right, up Fleet Hill, but I had no more idea of where she intended to go in London than I did of where she had sprung from.
‘I have taken a room at the sign of the Hanging Sword, off Fleet Street,’ she said, pointing ahead, as if she had read my thoughts. I laughed.
‘But that is almost opposite Salisbury Court, where I have my lodgings.’
She seemed pleased by my expression of incredulity and grinned from under the peak of her cap. The food and the ale had heartened her, or perhaps it was the relief of having unburdened herself, and not having been turned away.
‘Of course. Why do you think I took the room?’
‘So how long have you been spying on me?’
‘It’s five days since I arrived. But I lost my nerve a little once I saw what a grand house you lived in – I knew I couldn’t just bang on the door. So I thought I would watch you, see if I could judge from your routine when might be the best time to approach you, if at all.’
‘My routine has little of interest to offer at the moment, I’m afraid,’ I said, spreading my arms apologetically, though the idea that I could have been watched for five days from the tavern across the street made me uneasy. Sophia wished me no harm, but there were those who did, and if she could follow me around London so easily, then so might they. I must not imagine for a moment that I was safe anywhere, I silently reprimanded myself, and resolved to keep my wits sharper in future. ‘As for the embassy, its grandeur is sadly faded, I think, but it is comfortable enough. I am fortunate to have such a residence.’
We fell into step in the direction of the Fleet Bridge, silent again as I turned over in my mind what assistance I might be able to offer Sophia. Money I could just about manage, and perhaps in the longer term I might be able to use some of my contacts to help her into work, but for that she would have to remain in her boy’s disguise, and it seemed impractical to think of keeping that up. It was easy enough to hide in London, with its rabbit warren of old streets and the thousands of people coming and going daily in search of work or trade, but the world was always a smaller place than you imagined, as I had learned to my cost when I was living as a fugitive in my own country. For as long as Kate Kingsley was wanted for the murder of her husband, Sophia Underhill, or whoever she chose to become next, would never be able to live freely in England.
‘Listen, Sophia – Kit,’ I corrected myself hastily before she could. ‘You know I will give you whatever help I can while you are in London, and if you need money, well, my stipend from King Henri of France is sufficiently generous to allow me to support you for a while.’ This was untrue; my living allowance from the French King, in recognition of the fact that I had been his personal philosophy tutor, was barely enough to live on, and unreliable in its arrival. Such income as I had to allow me a reasonable standard of living in London came not from King Henri but from my work for the English government, though naturally no one at the French embassy knew this.
‘The Hanging Sword is expensive,’ I continued, ‘but I could help you look for cheaper lodgings elsewhere while you give some thought to what you are going to do. You might find it difficult to remain as a boy indefinitely, but perhaps …’
I stopped when I saw the look on her face. She had halted abruptly in the middle of the street and was staring at me, her brow knotted in confusion.
‘Bruno – have you not understood any of my story? Why do you think I came all this way to seek you out?’
‘Because …’ I faltered. Had I misunderstood? She was looking at me as a governess might look at a child who has failed to absorb anything of his lesson, despite hours at the same exercise. ‘I presumed because you had few people left whose friendship you could rely on, in the circumstances,’ I said, a little stiffly.
‘Well, that is true,’ she said, impatient. ‘But I remembered how you unravelled those murders in Oxford, when no one else seemed to have the slightest idea who was behind them. That’s why I wanted your help. I need you to find out who murdered my husband and clear my name. I don’t want to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when they will come for me.’
‘No, you don’t,’ I said, with feeling, though I could not believe she was seriously asking this of me. She clutched at my sleeve then, and made me look her in the eye, her face close to mine. I could hear the urgency in her voice.
‘If you don’t help me, Bruno, I shall live as a wanted murderess all my life, and if they find me I’ll be straight for the pyre. You know that’s the punishment for women who murder their husbands? Because the man is master of his wife, it’s regarded as an act of treason. So instead of hanging, they burn you.’
‘Like a heretic,’ I said, softly.
‘Like a heretic.’ She fixed me with a meaningful look.
I stepped back, rubbing my hand across the growth of stubble on my chin and shaking my head.
‘You want me to go to Canterbury and find the killer?’
‘If you could do it in Oxford, why not in Canterbury?’ She sounded petulant, and I was reminded, despite her weight of experience, how young she still was.
‘It’s not quite as simple as that. I can’t just take off across the country – I would need permission …’ But as I considered the possibility, I felt my blood quicken with the prospect of it: a change of scene, a new challenge, and the ultimate prize of freeing Sophia from a sentence of death.
‘Permission?’ She looked scornful.
‘From the Ambassador. As a member of his household, out of courtesy I must consult with him before I go anywhere. And with the diplomatic situation so fraught at the moment, he may be reluctant to let me leave.’ But it was not the Ambassador’s permission I was concerned about. I sincerely doubted whether my real employer would want me away from the embassy at such a time.
‘You are not the Ambassador’s ward, Bruno. You are a grown man, or so I thought. Well, it doesn’t matter, then.’ She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest and started walking briskly away towards the narrow bridge; I watched her for a moment, before hurrying to catch her up.
‘Wait!’ I had to work hard to match her determined stride, but on the bridge I caught her by the sleeve. ‘I have said I will help you, and I meant it. I will see if this can be arranged. But it will be difficult – I would have no authority to undertake an investigation of any kind in Canterbury, and you said yourself how they are suspicious of foreigners there.’
‘You could pretend to be a visiting scholar,’ she said brightly. ‘They have a fine library in the cathedral precincts, I am told. Please, Bruno? You are all the hope I have now.’ Her eyes widened, and the pleading in them was in earnest. ‘If you don’t help me, no one will.’
She looked down at her boots, shamed by her own helplessness; Sophia, whose independent spirit chafed at being beholden to a man, any man. She kicked at a small stone, her arms wrapped again around her chest, as if to protect herself from further hurt. It was a gesture that clutched at my heart, and I knew that, whatever the obstacles, I must find a way to help her. If nothing else, it would assuage the lingering sense of guilt that still needled me over my actions in Oxford, and the fear that I had somehow been the indirect cause of everything that had happened to her since. I owed her a debt, I believed, and she had counted on my conscience.
‘Very well then. Santa Maria!’ I grabbed at my hair with both hands in a gesture of mock exasperation that made her laugh. ‘You would wear down a stone, Sophia. But what will you do, if I get myself to Canterbury?’
‘I will come with you, of course.’ She looked nonplussed.
‘What? And how are you going to do that? You are wanted for murder.’
‘I wouldn’t venture into the city, obviously. I will stay as a boy, and you can say I am your apprentice.’
‘Travelling scholars don’t have apprentices.’
‘Your scribe, then. Or servant, it doesn’t matter. But you will need me there, Bruno, to point you in the right direction – I know the city and I can direct you to Sir Edward’s associates. We could find lodgings somewhere on the edge of town. I could keep out of sight.’
Her face was animated now, her eyes bright and eager. We could find lodgings? Was she proposing that we share rooms together? I looked at her doubtfully, but I could find no trace of teasing in her eyes, only earnest hope. Perhaps she believed her disguise was good enough to convince both of us that she really was a boy. Was that the kind of friendship she envisaged between us, despite the fact that in Oxford I had once been so bold as to kiss her, and she had responded? I wished I had a better sense of how she regarded me.
It would be an enormous risk for her, returning to the city where, even with her cropped hair and dirty clothes, there was every chance of being recognised as the murdered magistrate’s wife. On the other hand, she was right: I would fare better with someone to guide me around the city of Canterbury, and what would she do otherwise in London, alone and friendless as her money rapidly ran out? At least if she came with me I could do my best to take care of her – and the thought of spending days in her company, reviving the conversations we had enjoyed in Oxford, was more than I had dared to hope for, even if, for now, she saw me only as a trusted friend. Until that morning, I had thought she was dead to me, and I knew that I could not abandon her to circumstance again.
‘Let me see if I can make arrangements,’ I said.
‘Good. But we must leave soon. Because of the assizes.’
‘The assizes?’
‘Yes. Once a quarter a judge comes from London to try all the criminals taken since the last session, the cases too serious for the local Justice. The next one is due in early August. If you were to find the real killer by then, he could be tried at the assizes and I would be free.’
‘You don’t ask much, do you?’
Outside the Hanging Sword, we parted company, I assuring her that I would secure permission from the Ambassador as soon as possible, and warning her in the meantime to keep her money close about her person and not to walk around the streets of London after dark.
‘But I have this,’ she said, pulling aside the front of her jerkin to reveal a small knife buckled to her belt.
‘That will come in very handy if you should need to peel an apple. But I don’t suggest you try your hand at any tavern brawls with it,’ I said.
She smiled, and her face seemed more relaxed.
‘I’d prefer not to.’
We stood awkwardly for a moment, uncertain of how to say goodbye. Sophia seemed less stooped, less diminished, as if a weight had lifted from her. ‘Thank you, Bruno,’ she said, checking in both directions to see that the street was empty before leaning in and giving me an impulsive hug. ‘You are a true friend. One day I will find a way to repay you.’
I could only blink and smile stupidly as she stepped back and turned away towards the tavern. I moved to cross the street towards Salisbury Court, wondering what on earth I had undertaken.
‘Ciao, Kit,’ I called, glancing over my shoulder to see her pause at the tavern door. She lifted a hand in farewell, then executed a mock bow.
She moves too much like a woman, I thought, watching the way she snaked her narrow hips to one side to avoid a man coming out as she slipped through the doorway. This Kit will need some lessons on being a man, if we’re not to be arrested. Before that, though, I needed to find a way to make this madcap plan palatable to the two men whose authority I must respect while I live in London: Michel de Castelnau, the French Ambassador, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary. Both were certain to be opposed. I sighed. Sophia might imagine that a man enjoys the freedoms she lacks, but we are all beholden to somebody, in the great chain of patronage and favour that stretches right the way up to the Queen herself; and even she is not truly free, as long as she lives in fear of the assassin on the stairs, like the poor Prince of Orange.
THREE (#ulink_4c92de37-bfc9-52c8-b6f0-98e67c29627e)
‘Canterbury?’ Sir Francis Walsingham fairly spat the word across the room. ‘What on earth for?’
‘To travel,’ I said, lamely. ‘I was thinking that I have been in England over a year now and I have seen so little of the country …’ Walsingham gave me a long look and the words dried up. Since I had agreed to work secretly for Queen Elizabeth’s master of intelligence the previous spring I had become skilled at dissembling to everyone around me, but there was no point in lying to Walsingham. Those calm, steady eyes gave you the impression they could penetrate lead. Many a suspected conspirator against the Queen had cracked and confessed under that gaze before they were even shown the inside of the Tower of London, with its ingenious array of instruments to assist confession.
‘Pilgrimage, is it? Following the example of your patron?’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow and tapped the rolled-up letter I had brought from the French Ambassador Castelnau on the edge of his desk for emphasis.
Leaning against the mantelpiece, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and avoided his eye.
‘It’ll be a book,’ Sir Philip Sidney observed from his perch on the window seat, where he sat with one of his long legs bent up on the cushions, the other stretched out before him. He had barely aged since I first met him in Padua, I thought; especially when clean-shaven, as he was today, he could pass for nineteen, ten years younger than his true age, with his fair hair that always stuck up in a tuft at the front, no matter how he tried to tame it, and the bright blue eyes that lit up his handsome face whenever he sensed adventure. He was wearing only a lace-edged shirt with his breeches instead of the usual starched ruff that was the fashion among the young men at court, and without his stiff brocaded clothes he seemed less self-conscious. ‘Bruno wouldn’t rouse himself unless it was in pursuit of a book.’ He waited until I glanced up and gave me a broad wink.
‘Or a woman?’ Walsingham looked back to me and I could almost fancy a hint of amusement in the twitch of his mouth.
‘I understand the cathedral is very fine,’ I said.
‘The oldest in England,’ Sidney said. ‘But I don’t believe you’ve developed a sudden fascination for architecture, Bruno. Come on – what’s really tempting you to Canterbury?’
I hesitated; Walsingham grew impatient.
‘Never mind the cathedral – what are we going to do about this?’ He brandished the letter again, a shadow of irritation flitting across his face.
We were gathered in the Principal Secretary’s private office at his country home in Barn Elms, some miles along the Thames to the west of the city of London. Since Sidney had married Walsingham’s daughter the previous autumn, the young couple had lived at Barn Elms, Sidney’s finances being too precarious to support a household of his own at present. From my point of view, the situation was ideal – I could visit my friend and arrange meetings with Walsingham at the same time without arousing the French Ambassador’s suspicions unduly, though I know it chafed at Sidney to be living in such close quarters with his in-laws.
Behind the wide oak desk, Walsingham sat back and folded his hands together, his gaze focused on the empty fireplace as if deep in thought. Despite the warmth of the day, he wore his customary suit of plain black wool and the small black skullcap that always made him look a little severe. His was a strong face, with wisdom and sadness written into its lines and the pouches beneath his eyes; there were moments when those eyes seemed to contain the weight of all the kingdom’s strife. This was not far from the truth. Walsingham and the intelligence he gathered from his network of informers all over Europe were the Queen’s last defence against the myriad plots on her life and the security of England. At fifty-two, Walsingham’s hair and beard were almost entirely grey now; only his black eyebrows served as a reminder of how he must have looked in his youth. Over the past year I had grown to respect this rational, sober man above any other, though I also feared him a little.
The letter that had so infuriated him contained a grovelling apology from Castelnau on behalf of King Henri of France, who said he could not receive Sidney as a guest in Paris as he was unfortunately about to go on a pilgrimage to Lyon.
‘Her Majesty will be livid,’ Sidney remarked. ‘I’m quite piqued about it myself – I fancied a trip to Paris.’ He leaned back into the patch of sun that spilled through the diamond-paned glass and clasped his hands behind his head.
Walsingham frowned.
‘Henri of France is weak, though this is not news to us. He knew Her Majesty was not sending Sidney on a social call, but to persuade him to commit French troops to a joint intervention in the Netherlands. I suppose Castelnau thought we would be less likely to shout at you, Bruno?’
‘I believe that was his reasoning, your honour.’
‘Well, he can explain himself to the Queen face to face in due course. France cannot dither on the fence for much longer.’ He shook his head. ‘This war against the Spanish in the Netherlands has been a bloody mess for the last twenty years, but the Queen is now seriously considering an offer of troops to help the Protestant rebels. If Henri had any conscience he would do the same. Especially since it was his idiot brother who made the situation a hundred times worse,’ he added, regarding me darkly from under his brows as if I were somehow implicated.
‘My uncle the Earl of Leicester has long argued for an English military intervention to aid the Dutch rebels,’ Sidney said, sitting forward with sudden vigour and clenching his fists. ‘And I would go with him in an instant. Teach those Spanish curs a lesson they won’t forget.’
Walsingham looked up sharply. ‘Don’t be too hasty, Philip. That war could easily rumble on for another twenty years, with thousands more deaths on each side. In my opinion, it can’t be won, except with a concerted effort by united Protestant forces from all across Europe, and I see little prospect of that.’
Sidney sat back, chastened, and I wondered if Walsingham had interpreted his eagerness for a military adventure as a personal slight, a desire to escape his domestic life here at Barn Elms. Moments passed in silence, the only sound a persistent fly buzzing against the window. I watched the sunlight cast patterns on the wooden boards, broken by flickering shadows from the leaves of the trees outside, and waited for someone to speak.
‘God’s death!’ Walsingham cried suddenly, slamming his fist down on the desk so that his tortoiseshell inkwell rattled and Sidney and I started out of our private thoughts. ‘The Prince of Orange has just been shot on his own stairs as he left his dinner table. Can you imagine how this news has shaken Her Majesty? You will not see her show it in public, but she no longer sleeps. She knows Philip of Spain means her to be next.’ He took a deep breath and passed a hand over his head as if smoothing his thoughts, looking from me to Sidney like a schoolmaster. ‘The Catholic forces in Europe are gaining strength. If Spain regains control of the Netherlands, the Protestants there will be massacred. And then Spain will turn his attention to England. Who will France support when that day comes? King Henri must talk to us, he cannot hide his head in his rosary beads for ever.’ He pounded his fist on the table again and glared at me, as if he held me responsible for the French King’s havering. ‘Sidney and I saw Saint Bartholomew’s Day in Paris with our own eyes, you know,’ he added, more quietly. ‘Little children and their grandmothers cut down with swords in their own homes. A thousand lifetimes would not be enough to forget such sights.’ He closed his eyes, and his features seemed weighed down by sorrow.
Sidney and I glanced at one another; it was rare to see Walsingham ruffled by foreign affairs. Part of his incomparable value to Elizabeth was his faultless composure in any situation. Walsingham is frightened, I thought, and the realisation made me feel for a moment as if the ground had shifted beneath my feet, just as I felt as a child when I first saw my soldier father afraid. The murder of the Prince of Orange had struck at the English government in its tenderest spot. This thought brought me back to the other murder that had preoccupied my thoughts for most of the night.
‘I could meet him in Lyon, when his pilgrimage is finished,’ Sidney offered, resting his feet on the window seat and pulling his knees to his chest, the way a child would sit. ‘It would be no great trouble to journey to Lyon instead.’
Walsingham looked at him again with a sceptical frown. I was certain that he heard, as I did, the note of longing in Sidney’s voice. My friend itched for the life of travel and adventure he had known in his youth; the longer he stayed cooped up at Barn Elms and the court, the quicker he would be to volunteer for any mission that offered different horizons, even if it meant going to war.
