S Parris - Prophecy

Palace of Whitehall, London

30th September, Year of Our Lord 1583, cont.

Lord Burghley’s face constricts in an expression of distress. I suspect it is mirrored on my own face, though I don’t yet know why. No one moves.

‘You’re quite sure? This is the man who gave you the message for Lady Abigail?’

Walsingham speaks sharply and the boy looks confused; his eyes flick wildly from me to Walsingham to Burghley and back, as if between us we are trying to trick him.

‘No! Not the message — that is to say — the message came from him, but it wa’n’t him who gave it to me.’

‘You are not making any sense, boy.’

‘He told me the message came from Master Bruno — the man who stopped me in the yard,’ the boy says, a note of panic rising in his voice. ‘I couldn’t rightly see him in the dark, but he had an English voice. This is Master Bruno,’ he adds, pointing again. ‘It wa’n’t his voice. He’s not English.’

‘We know that.’ For a moment Walsingham betrays his impatience, then he masters himself and his tone softens. ‘We need to understand what happened tonight. Jem, is it?’

The boy nods unhappily.

‘Good. Then, Jem — tell us again. A man you don’t know stopped you earlier in the yard by the kitchens and asked you to give a message to Abigail Morley from Master Bruno. Is that right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you didn’t see this man clearly?’

‘No, sir. The candles hadn’t been lit yet and it was shadowy. And he had a big hat, pulled down over his face, and his collar all up like this, sir.’ He tugs at the neck of his dirty tunic to demonstrate. There is a pause. ‘He might’ve had a beard,’ the boy offers, hopefully.

Walsingham rolls his eyes.

‘He might have had a beard. Well, at least we can rule out the women and children.’

‘Not all the women,’ Leicester says, under his breath, from the window. I catch his eye and he smiles, briefly; despite the tension in the room, I return it. It is almost a relief. Burghley sends him a reproachful stare.

‘And what was the message, exactly?’ Walsingham continues.

‘To tell her — to say that Master Bruno wanted to meet her in secret at the kitchen dock before the concert. He said it was urgent. Then he gived me a shilling.’ The boy glances around again nervously, as if afraid he might be asked to give up the coin.

Walsingham frowns.

‘And you delivered this message straight away? To Her Majesty’s private apartments? How did you manage that?’

‘I took up some sweetmeats, sir. Then the guards can’t stop you — you just say the queen’s asked for ‘em, they don’t know otherwise. The girls — Her Majesty’s maids, I mean — they often get messages in and out by us kitchen boys.’ He bites his lip then, looking guilty. ‘I got as far as I could and got one of them to fetch Abigail.’

‘And how did she seem when you gave her the message?’

‘Frightened, sir,’ the boy says, without hesitation. ‘She said she’d come directly, and not to tell anyone else about it.’

‘And this was before the concert began? How long before?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’ The boy looks at his frayed shoes. ‘I don’t know how to read the time. Not long, though — there weren’t many people left in the kitchens, I know that. They gived us the night off because she had her supper early, on account of the music. Her Majesty, I mean. And there was already people arriving.’

Walsingham gives me a frank look.

‘I never sent any such message tonight,’ I say, trying not to sound defensive. ‘Will someone tell me what has happened?’

‘They’ve killed her,’ the boy blurts, glaring at me with accusing eyes. ‘And if it wa’n’t you, then it was the other feller, and if it wa’n’t him, then it was the Devil himself!’

I find, when I hear the words spoken aloud, that I had expected this, or something like it; the sense of foreboding that had taken root when I first noticed Abigail’s absence in the queen’s train had been steadily growing in my imagination, but the bluntness of the boy’s outcry still shocks me. So the killer has found his way to Abigail, I think, as my mind fumbles blindly to make sense of the boy’s story, and though the message was not my doing, the circumstance is indisputably my fault.

Leicester stirs unhurriedly from his place by the window, stretching out his long limbs as if this were his cue. He nods to Walsingham and then gestures towards the door with the slightest movement of his head. Walsingham holds up a forefinger, signalling for him to wait.

‘You’ve been very helpful, Jem,’ Walsingham says gently to the boy. ‘I have one more question. Do you think this man waited for you especially to take his message?’

‘Well — yes, sir.’ The boy blinks rapidly, as if he fears another trick. ‘Because of me taking the message before, see? I suppose he must have known, somehow.’

‘What message before?’ Walsingham’s voice is sharp as a blade again.

‘From Lady Abigail to him.’ He points at me. ‘In Fleet Street, sir. I had to wait half a day in the stables with them French boys threatening to knock me down.’ He bares his teeth, as if the memory of it still stings.

‘Thank you. I’d like you to go with the sarjeant now, Jem. We may have some more questions for you. If you can remember any more details about the man with the hat — anything about his voice, his face, his figure, anything at all that might help us — I would be very grateful.’

‘It’s my fault, i’n’t it?’ The boy looks suddenly to Burghley, who has a grandfatherly air that makes him less severe than the others. ‘If I hadn’t taken that message, she wouldn’t ‘a died, would she? I’m to blame — for a shilling!’ He bunches his fist against his mouth and looks as if he might cry. ‘She was always kind, the lady Abigail. Not like some.’

Burghley lays a hand on his shoulder.

‘It’s no one’s fault except the wicked man who killed her. And with your help we shall find him, so he can’t hurt anyone else.’

The boy gives me a last look over his shoulder as the guard leads him away.

When the door is firmly closed, the three members of the Privy Council turn their eyes sternly upon me.

‘Message, Bruno?’ Walsingham folds his arms across his chest.

As succinctly as I can, I outline my dealings with Abigail Morley, from the kitchen boy’s visit to our meeting at the Holbein Gate, when she gave me the bag of Cecily Ashe’s treasures and I first suspected we were being watched, to the discovery Dee and I had made about the perfume and my most recent guess at the significance of the gold ring — which I take from inside my doublet and hand to Walsingham. He turns it over between his fingers, nodding gently, as I continue my story. When I come to the end, they regard me for a moment in silence; I can almost read the separate workings of their minds in their faces.

‘They’ll have to release Edward Bellamy from the Tower.’ Burghley speaks first, squeezing his plump fingers together anxiously.

Walsingham turns on his heel and paces the width of the room, his hands flexing and uncurling. I have never seen him so rattled and working so hard to contain it. Eventually he stops and turns on me with an expression so fierce it startles me.

‘You did not think to pass any of this on to me, Bruno? You appoint yourself this girl’s sole confidant, regardless of the fact that you already suspect the killer has an eye on her? Why did you not come to me immediately?’

‘Your honour, I —‘ I spread my hands out in apology, feeling once again like a schoolboy. ‘I did not want to cause unnecessary panic until I was sure about the perfume bottle. The engraving on the ring I only worked out this evening.’