S Parris - Prophecy

‘It is my responsibility to judge whether panic is necessary or not. Those objects should have been brought straight to me,’ Walsingham says again, his voice tight.

‘I thought that until I was certain, the fewer people knew of this, the better.’

‘Including me, evidently.’

‘Peace, Francis.’ Burghley extends a hand towards him. ‘The girl said nothing even to Lady Seaton and she would have been too intimidated to approach the Privy Council. She confided more readily in Bruno, and he was sensible to test his theory before coming to us.’ He turns to the rest of us. ‘This serves at least to prove that the killer is familiar with the court and its ways.’ He shakes his head, and his face seems paler. ‘No matter how many extra guards we place around Her Majesty, he knows how to slip right under their noses. Kitchen boys, indeed.’

‘What happened to her? Abigail?’ I hear my own voice falter and there comes a sudden memory of the warmth of Abigail’s breath on my cheek as she whispered the secrets I persuaded her to part with. She had thought I was the one person she could trust; someone knew that, and used the knowledge to kill her.

Walsingham glances at Burghley, then crosses to me and places the flat of his hand between my shoulder blades. ‘Come, Bruno. I want you to see this. We will need every last grain of intuition we possess between us. My lord of Leicester — you had better return to the hall and reassure Her Majesty. She saw the guard enter and she will be anxious enough already, but I think it best the recital is allowed to play out without interruption.’

Leicester gives a terse nod, his handsome face creased in a frown. He turns to me.

‘Your theory, Doctor Bruno, if I have understood correctly,’ he says, his eyes searching my face, ‘is that the first murdered girl, Cecily Ashe, was being set up by her lover as part of a plot to poison the queen, and that this plot is somehow connected to the Guise plans of invasion being cooked up at Salisbury Court?’

‘That is how I read it, my lord.’

‘So she was killed because those who were directing her feared she would betray them?’

‘I believe so.’

‘And Abigail Morley possibly knew enough to identify the lover, or so he thought, therefore he killed her as well?’

Again I nod.

‘Then we have all the suspects right here, within these walls,’ he says, looking around at the two statesmen. ‘Everyone we know is party to this plot of a French and Spanish attack is at court this evening for the concert. The guests were gathered at least three-quarters of an hour before the queen made her entrance — any of them could have had time to slip out unnoticed in the crowd. At this very moment, there could be a man in that hall who quite literally has blood on his hands.’

Walsingham looks uneasy; Burghley tuts.

‘What would you have me do, Robert — publicly arrest Henry Howard and the Earl of Arundel, not to mention the French and Spanish ambassadors, before the whole court on suspicion of murder, with barely a shred of evidence?’ Burghley shakes his head. ‘In any case, it is hardly to be supposed that any of them are committing murder with their own hands, even if there is a connection. They’ll have been safely mingling in the hall in full view of three hundred people while some accomplice dispatched that poor girl, you can be sure of it.’

‘It would be expedient if we could get the guests from the hall to their boats and horses without alerting them to any of this,’ Walsingham says, brisk now. ‘I will instruct the guards to move people swiftly along once the recital is finished.’

‘She will want to see Dee,’ Leicester says, looking at Walsingham with an expression I cannot read.

Walsingham closes his eyes for a moment, as if testing the weight of this further complication.

‘So she will.’

‘She has been greatly agitated since his visit yesterday, as we all know. And now, with this —‘ Leicester breaks off, gesturing vaguely towards the door. ‘Well, it seems more than coincidence. Though she will no doubt take it as prophecy.’

‘Good God. Dee’s vision. I had not thought of it until this moment.’ Burghley presses his hands together as if in prayer, his forefingers touching his lips. ‘I suggest John Dee be questioned immediately. And not necessarily by one of his friends,’ he adds with a warning glance at Leicester. In response to my quizzical look, he turns to Walsingham. ‘We should take Bruno now. Time runs at our heels.’

Walsingham nods.

‘Quite so. Even Master Byrd’s motets cannot go on all night.’

Along a series of corridors, past tapestries and torches flaming in wall brackets, he leads me at a trot, with Burghley following, carrying a light. At every corner the guards appear even more numerous than when I arrived, and there is a tension on their faces that adds to the atmosphere of dread that seems to have infected the palace. We pass into a part of the complex that is clearly the domain of servants and tradesmen, the people behind the scenes whose tireless work allows the glorious pageant of state to run smoothly. Here, too, guards are stationed; as they hear our footsteps their hands move immediately to their pikestaffs, but they step back, respectfully lowering their eyes when they see who it is striding so purposefully and stony-faced towards them.

I follow Walsingham across a dimly lit yard, where barrels are stacked in one corner and timber in another; two men are moving a pile of sacks into one of the outbuildings by the light of a small lantern. Still Walsingham has not said a word; I desperately want to ask him about Dee, but the Principal Secretary’s expression is so forbidding I hold my tongue. On the right-hand side of the yard runs a long, two-storey building of red brick with a series of tall chimneys. Here Walsingham slows his pace and pauses by a semi-circular grille built into the wall at ground level, rising to the height of a man’s waist. Through the iron bars that close it off from the yard, I hear the gentle lapping of water below.

‘The palace kitchens,’ Walsingham says, gesturing to the building, his voice low. Bending slightly, I see that this grille is the end of an arched tunnel that runs through the middle of the kitchen building, its other end opening on to the river itself. The daylight has almost seeped from the sky entirely, and the tunnel yields only blackness. This, I suppose, is the kitchen dock. At a respectful distance, a huddle of servants whispers urgently between themselves, keenly watching our arrival. From among them I hear the stifled sound of a woman’s sob. Another guard, leaning against the wall by a small door to the left of this grille, pulls himself quickly to attention as he sees Walsingham approach, then at a nod opens the door for us. Walsingham gestures for Burghley to come forward with the torch. The door opens on to a stone-flagged passageway in the kitchen building, where a faint smell of cooked meat and herbs lingers as if ingrained in the brick walls. Almost immediately there is another door on the right, which Walsingham opens slowly and then turns to me.

‘This is not pleasant, Bruno, particularly as you knew the girl. But I want to know what you make of this murder. I am sorry to ask this of you,’ he adds, in a gentler voice. I nod silently and he reaches out for the torch from Burghley.

We step into what looks like a storeroom, perhaps twelve feet across and twenty feet long, empty except for a stack of wooden crates against the wall and an unmoving figure laid out upon the stone floor, ghostly in a white dress. Walsingham moves forward and crouches beside the body, holding up the torch so that its wavering flames illuminate the pitiful end of Abigail Morley.

The bodice of her dress has been roughly torn down the middle and ripped apart to expose her torso. From her left breast a dagger protrudes, plunged into her flesh almost down to its handle. Straight into her heart, I think; I have a disturbing sensation that I have been here before, that I have already seen this image, as if I had lived through it once in the recent past. As I draw closer and kneel on the floor, I realise that the body and the flagstones around it are soaking wet, matted strands of her red hair spread around her head. Walsingham brings the torch nearer and motions silently for me to look again at her breast. On the right side, opposite the dagger, a mark has been crudely carved into her pale skin: an upright cross with a tail curving to the right, like a lower case ‘h’: the astrological symbol for Saturn. I breathe out carefully, trying to slow the hammering in my chest. In an awful moment of clarity, I understand why the Earl of Leicester spoke of Doctor Dee and something more than coincidence. I have not seen this image before, but I have heard it described, before the event. Abigail has been killed almost exactly according to Dee’s description of Ned Kelley’s latest vision in the stone.