Текст книги "The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez"

Автор книги: Ann Swinfen

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

When I told him of Babington’s departure, Phelippes frowned at first, and then shrugged.

‘It cannot be helped. Arthur and I intend to follow you tomorrow anyway. There is a small inn in the village, Stowe-by-Chartley. We’ll take rooms there. Once you have collected the letter in Lichfield come to us in Stowe.’

He rubbed his eyes, as he often did when thinking.

‘That horse you ride is very conspicuous. Someone from the manor might notice it. You’d better conceal him somewhere outside the village and come to the inn on foot. Then when we have the letter resealed for you, you can ride up to the manor house as though you have just arrived.’

I nodded. It was a wise precaution. Hector was unmistakable.

My second journey to Lichfield was much like the first, save that I now knew the way, so that it seemed to pass more quickly. The weather was, if anything, even hotter. In the fields that we passed the cut hay lay drying and the wheat and barley stood tall and golden, but there had been little rain in recent weeks to plump the grain. After several wet summers, the farmers might be glad of the heat to dry the hay, but I found it worrying. This was the kind of weather that bred the plague. I should be in the hospital, not careering about the country.

A long ride along a known route leaves much time for thinking and I gave a good deal of thought to how I might extricate myself from Walsingham’s service. His further description of what had happened in Paris had frightened me badly, awakening memories of Portugal that I had managed to bury for the last four years. I knew I must complete this mission, which he deemed so crucial for the safety and security of both Queen and country, but when it was ended – and surely it would soon be ended? – I would tell him that I no longer wished to work for him.

Poley! How could I forget Poley? I understood by now that he had brought me into Walsingham’s service as part of his efforts to show himself an agent faithful to England’s cause. Phelippes had needed another code-breaker and Poley had found him one, young and biddable, easy to manipulate. Congratulations to Master Poley. But if I tried to break away, would Poley betray me? If it suited his purposes, he would not hesitate. But where did Poley stand in the present projection? Sir Francis had placed Poley in Babington’s household as a spy, but what if Poley was already a part of that group of conspirators, and was passing information about Sir Francis’s network to them? I had seen him in Babington’s company long before it was said he had been placed there. And if all the conspirators were rounded up and sent to trial, as Walsingham hoped? Did that include Poley?

These thoughts went round and round in my head as I rode north. And when I could shake myself free of them, thoughts of Simon rushed in. I had not seen him since before my first trip to Lichfield and I found I was longing for him. And with the longing, certain forbidden ideas came into my head. What if I were to reveal my true identity to him? He might reject me in horror, as a monster, a man-woman, the repulsive thing against which the church thundered and the law shook its horrified finger. A woman who did not keep to her inferior position but dared to ape the finer species, her superior in every way.

Man.

No. I did not think Simon would be horrified, but certainly he could no longer be the easy companion he had been. He might not even like me. A man does not look for the same qualities in a woman as he values in a man. I would lose his friendship and it might not be replaced in him with the feeling that now knotted itself in my stomach and turned my legs to water. I had never known anything like this before. I was beginning to accept with my mind that I was in love with Simon, but I was unprepared for these physical signs of weakness over which I seemed to have no control. Even in his absence I could not suppress them.

How I wished I had not lost my mother and sister. I wanted another woman to talk to, but in my male world there was only Sara Lopez, and I did not feel I could talk to her of this, although I was not quite sure why. Certainly I could not talk to my father. Much as I loved him, I did not think he would understand my feelings. Besides, he would fear the danger I would place myself in if I should reveal myself as a woman. And he did not like Simon, merely because he was an actor. He would not regard an English mountebank as even worth considering as the suitor of a Portuguese professor’s daughter. My father’s pride had been humbled since we had come as refugees to England, but certain moral standards he would not relax, and that was one of them.

I was still lost in the maze of these thoughts when I reached Lichfield and found myself a room again at the Swan. Once I had seen to Hector, I walked round to the White Hart, where I asked for Sir Anthony.

‘Come in, lad, come in!’ he said, waving me to a chair. ‘Edward, see whether the landlord can find some food for the boy. He looks hungry to me.’ He beamed at me, clearly in high spirits.

As the servant went out in search of food, which I would not refuse, he said, ‘I’ve forgotten your name, lad.’

‘It is Simon, sir.’

‘Well, Simon, the letter is not quite ready, but it would be too late to take it tonight anyway. Can you read?’

‘Certainly, sir,’ I said stiffly.

‘I’ll wager you’ve never read anything like this!’ He beckoned me over and held out to me the top sheet from a pile of papers.

It was covered with the symbols of one of Curll’s simplest ciphers. I could read it straight off, even without a key. It was a long paragraph listing possible ports where ships from France could land men.

‘Clever, isn’t?’ he said. ‘Takes me the devil of a time to work out, though.’

‘Is it a secret language, sir?’ I asked innocently.

‘Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Secret, certainly. It’s what they call a “cipher” or a “code”. Ah, here’s Edward with a tray.’

I ate the excellent game pie and gooseberry fool with relish. It would save me paying for a meal at my inn. When I had finished, I stood, turning my dreadful cap in my hands.

‘Shall I come back tomorrow morning, sir?’

Babington ran his hands through his hair and flipped through his papers.

‘To be quite honest with you, Simon, I do not think this will be finished until the evening. Come about dusk and I’ll have it ready for you. Then you can start for Chartley first thing the next morning.’

‘Should I wait for an answer, sir?’

‘See what Curll says. It may take some time. Perhaps you should stay up there for a day or two, if Curll thinks best.’

I bowed my way out. Despite a bad start, it seemed things were falling into place now.

Having the next day to myself, I strolled about the little town, visiting the marketplace and buying a new cap with some of the money from the purse I had been given. It was still a cap suitable for a messenger boy, but at least it was clean and not as hot. When I passed the great pond near the cathedral, I threw the old cap in and waited for it to sink. A couple of mallards swam over to investigate, thinking it some curious form of vegetable life, but they soon scorned it and it sank at last.

During the afternoon I spent some time on my knees in the cathedral. I love the cool bare spaces of these English cathedrals. The churches I had known in Portugal had been a riot of colour, so full of statues and draperies and candles and side altars and crucifixes that my mind was always distracted. The space here was like a quiet grove of great trees, ancient beeches, perhaps, with their trunks soaring high above me and meeting overhead in a glorious intertwining of the branches in the roof of the nave. Yet at the same time the patterning of the ribbed vaulting was like the physical manifestation of a mathematical problem, elegant and pure, a problem which had been solved by those long-ago stone masons in a breathtaking union of tree and stone, art and reason, nature and mathematics.

It set me to thinking about symmetry in nature, the beautiful symmetry of the most humble leaf, or the complex spiral at the centre of a daisy. Yet mankind is not symmetrical. Yes, we seem symmetrical, our bodies’ symmetry mapped from one side to the other down the central line from nose to crotch. Yet we are not. Even our faces give us away with their tiny asymmetries. The real secret of man’s deviation lies within, however. I was not a surgeon, but my father had instructed me in the anatomy of the human body that I might be a better physician, and I had read his Vesalius, one of the few books he had managed to bring with him from his considerable library.

Is it the asymmetry of our internal organs that makes us restless, never quite at ease in the world? The Bible says Eve ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge and thus mankind was cast out from Eden. But what if that asymmetry, that sense of being slightly askew from nature was the real root of the trouble?

I stayed in the cathedral until it was time to go back to the White Hart, letting its peace wash over me. I prayed that what I was doing was right, that God would give me some sign if I should abandon this task now. But He gave no sign. I emerged from the cathedral blinking in the setting sun. I felt quiet. Not at peace exactly, but as though I must simply move through the next hours not thinking, but simply doing.

Phelippes and Gregory should be near now. If they had left the day after me, they should reach Lichfield this afternoon or evening, but they would ride on to Stowe-by-Chartley without stopping. It would have been a hard ride for Phelippes. I hoped they would be there when I reached the village tomorrow, otherwise I would have to wait about, and that might cause comment.

The letter was ready. Sir Anthony handed me a fat packet, firmly sealed and stamped with his coat of arms, which I recognised from one of those seals regularly in use on Gregory’s desk. It was no wonder it had taken him so long to encode. What I held in my hand was more the size and weight of a government report than a letter.

‘I’ll be on my way first thing tomorrow, Sir Anthony. Then wait near Chartley in case there is an answer to bring back.’

He wished me God speed and slipped another sovereign into my hand. At this rate I would soon be the richest messenger boy in England.

The next morning I was not in a great hurry to leave. Having heard and seen nothing of Phelippes and Gregory, I did not want to reach Stowe too soon. After a leisurely breakfast at the Swan, I set Hector ambling peacefully along the road to Rugeley. It took us considerably longer than it had done the previous time, but at last I rode up to the outskirts of the village. Remembering Phelippes’s advice to arrive on foot, I found a copse of birch and elm where I tethered Hector, removing his bridle so that he could graze more easily, and hanging it on a branch. Then I made my way the last few hundred yards on foot into the village with its single inn. I need not have worried. Phelippes was sitting on a bench outside, apparently enjoying the sun. He seemed to be smiling to himself over some private joke.

‘Ah, there you are, Kit. Do you have what we came for?’

‘It is here.’ I tapped the satchel at my side. ‘It’s very fat. It will take a long time to copy.’

‘Then we’d best make a start.’

He grinned again and I wondered what had amused him. I did not need to ask, for he was keen to tell me.

‘You will never guess who has just passed by.’

‘Curll?’ I ventured.

‘No. Her Scottish Majesty herself! She drove past in a carriage. I suppose they must let her out occasionally for some air.’

‘The queen! Did she see you?’

‘She did. She smiled at me and waved. I bowed very courteously back. I suspect she thinks me one of her faithful followers, come to spring her from prison.’

No wonder he was smiling. How extraordinary!

We withdrew into a small parlour which Phelippes had hired and set about copying the pages after Gregory had unsealed the packet, a tricky operation owing to the thickness of the contents. We each took two pages, unfolded them and copied them faithfully, just as they were, in cipher. Then Gregory resealed the letter, using his Babington seal, while Phelippes and I set about transcribing it.

‘I should prefer to complete this before you deliver the original, Kit.’

‘Do you think we can do it quickly enough?’

‘It’s not long past midday. If Arthur helps, we can finish before evening.’

‘I do not want to arrive too late. If Curll speaks to Sir Anthony, he will wonder how it could have taken all day to ride from Lichfield.’

‘Perhaps your horse was lame?’

‘Perhaps.’

Again we took two pages each. Although it was a lengthy missive, much too lengthy for discretion, it was written in that easy cipher, with an invented symbol for each letter of the alphabet – no displacement and no grid. Arthur Gregory sometimes helped with deciphering when there was a great deal of work, but he was slow. When I had finished my two pages, I took over his second page, which he had barely started, while he sought out the innkeeper to bring food for us. We had worked without stopping to eat and the afternoon was drawing on.

When Gregory returned with the potboy and supper, Phelippes sorted the pages into order and sat back with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Well, our gentleman is hardly coy about his plans. Everything is here. Almost everything. Listen to this:

For the dispatch of the usurper [He means Queen Elizabeth], from the obedience of whom we are by excommunication of her made free [A bow to the cursed bishop of Rome, the lickspittle], there be six noble gentlemen [Ha! Noble indeed!] all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your Majesty’s service will undertake that tragical execution.

‘Unfortunately, he does not give us the names of the six noble gentlemen who are going to commit murder, which would have made our task easier.’

Gregory muttered something under his breath. I was silent, shocked by what Babington had written. I could not believe that charming man, with his welcoming manner and warm smile, could write so heartlessly about murder. I shivered.

‘Well, Kit, you had best be off to the manor house with Sir Anthony’s letter.’

‘Aye.’ I stood up and flexed my cramped fingers. ‘First I will hire myself an attic room here in Stowe. Sir Anthony wants me to stay in the neighbourhood, but it will be best if I am not seen in your company. And a messenger boy would hire nothing grander than an attic.’

‘That’s well thought on. We will try to avoid meeting publicly, but I have taken this parlour for as long as we are in Stowe, so you will be able to find me here.’

The room was quickly hired and I retraced my steps to where I had left Hector, worried that I had be obliged to leave him so long. However, he was unharmed, though clearly glad to see me, and we cantered up to the manor through the evening light as though we had indeed just come from Lichfield. The same curt servant showed me to Curll’s study, where I handed over the packet.

‘Sir Anthony instructed me to stay in the village in case you wished to make use of my services again,’ I said, ‘so I have taken a room at the inn.’

‘Very well.’ Curll was paying me little attention, weighing the packet in his hand and clearly anxious to start deciphering it. ‘I will send for you if I need you.’

Once again he gave me a shilling and I pulled my cap, my new cap, in a salute to him. On my way back to where I had hitched Hector, I noticed a carriage being washed down to rid it of dust. That must be the carriage Phelippes had seen. How fortunate it was that his face was not known to the Scottish queen, or everything might have unravelled at once.

The next week or so proved to be the most tedious time of my life. No word came from Chartley manor. I had brought no book with me to read. I could not even sit with Phelippes and Gregory for most of the time. One day Gifford arrived with a bundle of letters and then I was occupied for several hours, but it was nothing of great import. The rest of the time I spent either sitting in my cramped attic with its low beams, on which I cracked my head whenever I forgot, which was often, or else taking long walks about the countryside.

It occurred to me on one of these walks that I was exploring the very ground over which Babington and his comrades-in-arms would attempt their rescue of Mary from Chartley. His letter had been vague about this and I could not imagine how they could hope to storm so well-guarded a house. On this latest visit I had paid more attention and realised that there were armed men everywhere. They looked to me like experienced men, well able to withstand a group of noble gentlemen, who might be skilled in amateur fencing, but were unlikely to be able to match professional soldiers.

These thoughts should have alerted me. If I was exploring the area, others might also be doing so. I came so close to blundering again that the very thought of it turns me dizzy. I was tramping along through a small wood which lay between the village and the manor, enjoying the fresh air after my hot, close attic room. The wood must have been part of the estate, for it was clearly maintained. The undergrowth was cut down, dead wood cleared away, trees thinned so that they should not become too crowded.

Then I heard the crunch of a horse’s hooves on the leaf litter of the woodland floor. If it was someone from the manor, it would be better that I was not caught here. For all I knew it was private land. And probably they would not like anyone prowling near the place where Mary was held. I had, after all, been seen bringing packets to her secretary. I looked around hastily. The wood was too open, too well cared for. My drab clothes would not shout my presence, but I could not stay in full view. The horse was coming nearer.

I had not climbed a tree since my last summer at my grandfather’s solar and I probably could not have done so now, had I not been driven by fear. One of the oaks had a branch low enough if I jumped. On the second attempt I managed to grab hold of it and pull myself up until I had my stomach across it. For a moment I floundered there like a fish in a net, then I was astride it and reaching up to the next branch, which was within easy reach. Once I had climbed up to this one, I was able to wedge my back into an angle between two branches and draw up my legs out of sight. Just in time, for now I could see the horseman approaching.

I realised he was being cautious, as though he too did not want to be seen. He stopped under my oak tree, whose broad trunk gave him some cover, and I found myself sweating with fear that he might look up. Had the tree not been in full summer leaf he would certainly have seen me. From where I was, I could see the back of the manor house. Mounted on his horse the man would be able to see it too. I caught my breath. This must be one of the other conspirators, sent on by Babington from Lichfield, to spy out the ground.

The man seemed to wait there for hours, though I know it can only have been minutes. Then he turned his horse back the way he had come, not from the village but cross-country from the south. I went cold as I caught a glimpse of his face as he turned. It was Poley.

Back at the inn, I felt this was an occasion when I ought to contact Phelippes. When I told him I had seen Poley stealthily scouting out a route to the manor, he looked worried for a moment.

‘Poley is close in Babington’s confidence, and that is what we want.’ His voice sounded unsure. ‘However, we do not want Babington to make a move before Mary replies to his letter and we have our evidence. I may need to warn Sir Amias to double the guard.’

Sir Amias Paulet, of course, who was in charge of the manor and the Scottish queen. Phelippes would be able to send a message to him. Even so, I felt threatened. To me there always seemed to be the smell of danger about Poley.

Whether or not Phelippes warned Sir Amias, I do not know, for two days later, everything changed. Gifford arrived with a packet retrieved from the beer barrel leaving the manor. It still smelled of beer. Phelippes unwrapped it from its waterproof covering with trembling hands.

‘Curll has encoded it,’ he said, ‘but it is from the Scottish queen to Babington.’

It was what he had been waiting for.

The bird-catcher’s net was closing around Babington and the gentlemen conspirators, as well as the men like Ballard who had been smuggled in from France. The two parts of the plot were coming together – assassination and invasion – but this letter might draw the net closed.

Another of Walsingham’s agents had arrived at Stowe-by-Chartley a few days before, one William Waad. In a rare moment of frankness, Phelippes warned me that Waad was a dangerous man, given to using violent means to extract confessions.

‘Best avoid him, Kit,’ he said, with a look of disgust. Skill, not violence, was Phelippes’s stock in trade.

Now that the Scottish queen’s letter had been brought by Gifford, Phelippes sent Waad back to London, telling him that his services would not be required. I could see that Waad did not like taking orders from Phelippes, but he left anyway, with an ill grace. I wondered what services he might have provided, for he was no part of the deciphering service, nor a courier, nor an informant. If he was used to extract confessions, why was he here? Phelippes did not volunteer the information and I did not ask, but I was glad to see Waad leave.

Although I had been fretting over my idleness and my neglected work at St Bartholomew’s, I could not help catching some of the fever of the chase. when the letter came into Phelippes’s hands for which he had laboured so diligently. He was not a man who showed his feelings readily, but he shone with triumph that morning.

It did not take us long to decipher it, for Curll had used the same simple code, I presume so as not to tax Babington too greatly. The letter was quite short and in one aspect it disappointed Phelippes.

‘Why has the woman not asked for the names of the six noble gentlemen who will carry out the assassination!’ he cried. ‘Surely she will want to know that, and it is what we need. All she says is: “By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed?” Is that proof enough?’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘She also speaks of Mendoza. That is useful.’

He turned to me. ‘Kit, you have perfected Curll’s hand. I want you to make an exact copy of this.’

I took pen and ink and did as I was bid, including Mary’s instruction to Babington: ‘fail not to burn this present quickly’. She was taking no chances.

Phelippes looked over my shoulder when it was done.

‘Good. Now make a copy of our transcription.’

When I had finished, he folded both together with a letter he had written quickly to Sir Francis.

‘You may take this copy to Sir Francis yourself, Kit, together with the transcription and this letter from me. I will keep the original and follow you in a few days if we find that Babington has returned to London. He has not been seen in Lichfield lately. Our work here is finished. It is now merely a matter of arresting those young men when the moment is right. They will not hold out long, I fancy, under Topcliffe’s persuasions, and their sworn confessions will serve to strengthen the evidence here in the Scottish whore’s letter.’

I shuddered, suddenly ashamed at being so engrossed in Phelippes’s intellectual puzzles that I had forgotten the reality which lay behind them. Topcliffe, I knew, was the chief torturer at the Tower. It seemed there was some hypocrisy in Phelippes’s dislike of Waad’s violence. With horror I thought of Anthony Babington, that merry young man, with his zest for life and his unquestioning devotion to the Scots queen, crushed by the torturer Topcliffe. It was a measure, I suppose, of Phelippes’s relief at the success of the projection that he used such foul language of Mary, which I had never heard from his lips before. I glanced down at the copy of the letter Phelippes had returned to me. In his exuberance he had drawn a sketch of a gallows on the back.