S. Parris - Execution

We caught a wherry back across the river from Goat Stairs and walked back up through the city to Leadenhall. I bought a pie from a street vendor on the way, though Poole ate nothing; his fit of hilarity had passed in the boat and a morose mood had overtaken him. I wondered if he was brooding on his sister or the loss of the horse.

Back at Phelippes’s rooms, we found Walsingham prowling the large study like one of the Queen’s caged beasts, while his cryptographer sat in his usual place at the desk, head bowed, quill scratching.

‘You took your time,’ Walsingham said, not quite hiding his irritation. ‘I began to think you’d gone back to France.’ This last was directed at me.

‘The journey took a while,’ I said, not looking at Poole.

‘Huh. Was it worth the trouble? Anything useful?’

‘Bruno found this, Your Honour,’ Poole said, holding out the locket. ‘It’s my sister’s all right.’

Walsingham turned it over in his palm and raised an eyebrow at me. ‘That’s worth a bit. I’m surprised it wasn’t spotted by greedy eyes. Where did you find it?’

‘In the undergrowth,’ I said.

‘We think she might have thrown it there when she realised her life was in danger,’ Poole added. Walsingham continued to look at me, a question in his eyes. I could have voiced my reservations about Poole’s theory but I was not about to make him look foolish in front of his superiors.

Walsingham nodded. ‘Thomas.’

He tossed the locket to Phelippes, who snapped it open, removed the lock of hair, then inserted a fine, thin tool into the hinge. Soundlessly, the inner casing flipped up to reveal a hidden compartment. With a pair of tweezers, Phelippes removed a thin strip of paper and unfolded it, while Poole stared in amazement.

‘Ingenious, no?’ Walsingham allowed a brief smile. ‘Bloody Mary gave these as gifts to her trusted women. Useful way to carry secret messages around unseen.’

‘I have seen something similar,’ I said, thinking of a woman I had known long ago, in Naples.

‘Clara never showed me this,’ Poole said, with a hint of indignation, his eyes wide. ‘Is that how she hid messages from the conspirators?’

‘One of the ways.’ Walsingham pressed his lips together with a grim satisfaction. ‘Get to work, Thomas. What have you there, Bruno?’

‘I found this in the same place,’ I said, handing him the pitcher. ‘It’s recent, there’s a little wine left in the bottom. I don’t know if it’s useful. There was nothing else there that I could see.’

Poole frowned. ‘Except a quantity of blood. I would speak with you alone, Your Honour. It’s time I was allowed to see my sister, and bury her.’

‘Long past time,’ Walsingham agreed. ‘But for now I need you close to Babington. Ballard is expected back in London any day and I must have Bruno prepared for his return.’

I opened my mouth to interject but he spoke to Poole over me: ‘Find out what you can. Mark what they ask you about your sister, and who among them seems ill at ease. Continue to tell them you have not heard from her.’

Poole appeared to consider arguing, but subsided under the force of Walsingham’s stare. In the doorway he paused, one hand on the post.

‘That locket belongs to me,’ he said, with a hint of warning. ‘It’s all I have of her.’

‘And you shall have it, as soon as Thomas has finished his work,’ Walsingham said, in the same reasonable tone. ‘Bring your news to Seething Lane after supper and we’ll speak further. I know how hard this must be, Robin. Your loyalty and obedience will be remembered, when this is done.’

Poole gave a curt nod and disappeared. Walsingham waited until his footsteps had died on the stairs before closing the door to Phelippes’s chamber.

‘She’ll be in the ground by then. That curate you met at the leper chapel – he’s burying one of his elderly parishioners this afternoon. Clara will go in the churchyard at the same time, no one will be any the wiser and with luck, Robin will never have to see the body. Especially after my physician opened her this morning, at your suggestion. No sign that she was with child.’

I felt obscurely disappointed; I had wanted to be right about that.

‘Then we can rule out that theory, at least. I suppose there is no doubt that her death is connected to the conspiracy.’

‘But why , Bruno? What did they suspect – did they know they’d been infiltrated? That is what I need to know. What did you make of your trip to Southwark?’

‘I don’t understand why I was there.’ I jerked my thumb towards the door. ‘Why did you send him to search the place?’

‘Robin was determined to go, with my permission or without.’ Walsingham walked to the window and peered out over the street. ‘He came to me demanding I give him one of my men to help. Seemed convinced there must be something there to discover that would help him pin the blame. I thought it better to let him feel he was being useful, and I thought of you because you’ll have to get to know each other – you’ll be looking out for one another among the conspirators. And with a stranger his guard might have been down. One must always watch the watchers, eh, Bruno?’

I looked at his back as his meaning became clear. ‘You don’t suspect Poole ? Of murdering his own sister?’

Walsingham turned, with a sombre smile. ‘Let us rather say, I hold no one above suspicion in anything. Every man has a price. Even Thomas. Isn’t that right, Thomas?’

‘I would have dispatched her more efficiently,’ Phelippes said, without looking up. There appeared to be no trace of irony in his words. ‘Not with that absurd spectacle. Besides, I was with you at Seething Lane that night.’

Walsingham winked at me, but I could only think of Frances Sidney’s remark that Phelippes had no more human feeling than a clockwork machine. There was something chilling about the man; I had no doubt that he could kill in the Queen’s service if the proposal made logical sense, and that he would plan it to the last detail with a total absence of conscience.

‘But you’re right, it would be a stretch to suspect Poole,’ Walsingham said. He looked even more exhausted than he had the day before. ‘How did he seem to you?’

‘Like a man fighting to remain master of his feelings,’ I said.

‘Which feelings, precisely?’

‘Guilt. Anger. Grief, obviously. I was praying he wouldn’t stumble on a severed ear – it was bad enough trying to reason away the bloodstains he found. He knows you have not told him the whole truth. You can’t seriously think he would have done anything so vicious? He clearly loved her.’

‘Oh, Robin loved Clara a great deal, no question,’ Walsingham said, wandering over to Phelippes’s desk. He let the statement hang, ripe with ambiguity. ‘And this?’ He picked up the locket, dangling it from the broken chain.

‘It was there for the finding. I’d be surprised if that was coincidence.’

‘Interesting. Who planted it, I wonder? Clara? Or her killer? And why?’ He pulled at his beard. ‘Is it a cipher, Thomas?’

Phelippes glanced up from the paper. He wore a pair of magnifying lenses fixed with a silver hinge over his nose; they made his eyes disturbingly fish-like. ‘It’s a series of symbols, very precisely drawn. But it doesn’t fit with any code I recognise from the Babington group. I will need to give it more study.’