S. Parris - Execution

Again, in that half-light, I saw how drawn he looked, before he turned abruptly for the steps as Phelippes pulled the sheet over the body. Upstairs Walsingham exchanged private words with the curate – I saw him slip the man a purse from his cloak – and, to my great relief, we emerged from the chapel into clean night air. I stretched up to look at the stars and breathed deep.

‘Gifford will be at Thomas’s lodgings when you arrive,’ Walsingham said, as the carriage lurched back over the rutted road towards the city. ‘Say nothing to him of our plan – I will be the one to brief him. But keep your ears open for anything Gifford has to say to you. He may be less guarded than he is with Thomas.’

‘You mentioned that you had a man inside the group whose loyalty was uncertain. I presume you meant Gifford?’

Walsingham turned his face to the blacked-out window. ‘Gilbert is not a steadfast young man. He will do whatever is expedient at the time, but I must work with what I have. That he was already established as courier to Mary was a gift I could not turn down – I will not find a man better placed. But his loyalty is only bought, and he is especially vulnerable to having his head turned by a pretty young woman.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘No,’ Phelippes said, sounding puzzled. ‘He should do his job.’

Walsingham caught my eye and, for the first time since we had left Seething Lane, I saw the flicker of a genuine smile. ‘Not everyone has your single-minded devotion to duty, Thomas,’ he said, laying a hand on his assistant’s arm. I noted how Phelippes flinched away from it, frowning as if he realised there was a joke somewhere but could not identify it. ‘The lady in question,’ Walsingham continued, ‘is Bessie Pierrepont. I fear Gilbert has conceived a fancy for her, and that is worrying.’

‘Why? Who is Bessie Pierrepont?’

‘A lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth. More significantly, she is the granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick.’

I shook my head. In the upper reaches of English society, everyone seemed to be related to everyone else, and it was assumed you knew them all. ‘You will have to explain the significance.’

‘Of course. No reason these names should mean anything to you. Tell him, Thomas.’ He leaned back against the seat.

‘Bess of Hardwick is wife to the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was Mary Stuart’s keeper when she was first imprisoned,’ Phelippes explained, obligingly. ‘She and Mary became close. Sewing together, and other women’s pastimes. She was supposed to relate back to Master Secretary and my lord Burghley the confidences she gleaned. Instead her loyalties transferred to Mary – Bess and her husband treated her like a house guest rather than a prisoner, and Mary’s correspondence with her supporters in France went unchecked. After the last plot to free her came so near to success, Master Secretary was obliged to remove her from the Earl’s care and confine her under sterner conditions.’

‘In the absence of her own child, Mary conceived a great affection for Lady Shrewsbury’s granddaughter, Bessie Pierrepont, who was often at the house. She would even take the girl to sleep in her bed when she was four or five years of age.’ Walsingham twisted his mouth. ‘Young Bessie is now nineteen and in Queen Elizabeth’s service. She will utter, by rote, every profession of loyalty that she knows we expect of her, but I have lingering doubts. Childhood devotion dies hard, and Mary has sent her valuable gifts over the years. Gifford has sought an introduction to her lately, and I would like to know what that is about.’

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘More interesting, I think, to see where the association tends if he thinks I know nothing of it. He has taken trouble to keep his interest in her from me and Thomas, and that in itself is reason to watch him. The boy is foolish enough to confide his secrets if he believes himself in love, and Bessie also knows Babington. I don’t want our plans coming to nothing because Gifford feels the need to show off for a girl. Not something we need worry about with you, eh, Bruno?’ He fixed me with a mischievous look. ‘Would all my espials had the training in resisting female wiles that comes from a spell in the religious orders.’

‘That does not necessarily follow, Your Honour,’ I said, dipping my head. He knew well that I was as capable as anyone of recklessness for the sake of a woman – or had been, for one woman at least.

‘True. By the time the religious houses were dissolved here, there was barely a monk left who knew the meaning of chastity.’ He sniffed. ‘See what you can find out from Gifford. I will put you in lodgings together – he may open up to you.’

I doubted this; when Gifford realised that I was behind his arrest at Rye and his forced cooperation with Walsingham, he was likely to throw the nearest heavy object at my head. They left me alone with my thoughts for the remainder of the journey. Master Secretary stared at the blacked-out window as if reading invisible secrets there. Phelippes leaned forward, rocking slightly, his gaze concentrated on the floor, muttering fervently under his breath. At first I thought he was praying, but when I listened closer, I realised he was reciting mathematical formulae. I sat back and smiled; it struck me as oddly endearing, and I caught myself thinking that, despite the absurdity of what I was being asked to do, I was back where I belonged.

‘You!’ Gilbert Gifford glared at me across the cramped space of Phelippes’ living quarters, one trembling finger pointing as if he thought he might be seeing an apparition. From the glassy look in his eye I guessed he had spent the evening in a tavern. Besides the flush in his cheeks, he looked much as he had when I last saw him, before Christmas; skinny and mousy-haired, with pale eyelashes and darting grey-blue eyes, though the hunched, nervy posture I associated with him was gone, displaced perhaps by drink.

‘Living quarters’ was a generous description: Walsingham’s right-hand man inhabited two large rooms with narrow leaded windows on the first floor of a house off Leadenhall Market. One was a study, the only furniture a broad desk with a chair, walls of shelves crammed floor-to-ceiling with files, parchments and boxes of papers, all neatly arranged, and a ware-bench bearing the tools of his forger’s trade: inks, waxes, brass seals and an array of quills and fine-pointed knives. The other room was for sleeping, and contained only a narrow wooden bed, a wash-stand, a chest for clothes and a pallet on the floor, where I supposed Gifford stayed when he was in town. I had left my bags in the passageway; no one had yet made any mention of where I was expected to sleep.

‘What a small world it is,’ I said, smiling. Gifford’s face darkened.

‘I never trusted you. I was picked up the minute I set foot ashore in Rye. I suppose it was you sent warning ahead of me?’

I laughed. ‘Master Gifford – you confided your most secret plans to a woman in order to impress her. That is always a mistake.’

He nodded, understanding. ‘Of course. Mary Gifford. My so-called relative in Paris. I suppose she was spying for him too?’ He jerked his head towards Phelippes, who continued to sort his papers into piles on the desk.