Prophecy

Chapter Sixteen

Salisbury Court, London

3rd October, Year of Our Lord 1583

I set the boat adrift into the tide as I leap from it into the soft mud that silts the cobbles where Water Lane slopes down to the river. The moonlight and the pale edge of sky against the eastern horizon allowed me to see enough to recognise the Temple Gardens as I passed and to steer my way into the bank in time to disembark at home. Soaked, chilled, shivering uncontrollably and fighting a fierce headache behind my eyes, I drag myself the few yards up Water Lane to the garden gate of Salisbury Court and almost weep with relief when I find it unlocked. I do not expect to have the same luck with the house; I am wondering if any of the servants are awake yet and how much consternation or gossip my appearance will occasion, when I pass through the walled garden and notice a light burning in one of the ground-floor windows. Creeping closer, counting the windows, I realise that the glow comes from Castelnau’s study. Sleep still eludes the ambassador, it seems, poor man. How Courcelles must have relished giving him the account of why I had not returned with them last night! I owe him an explanation of that at least, and perhaps it is preferable to waking the servants. I set my jaw and, crouching low, tap gently against the window pane.

There is a cry of alarm from inside, and the sound of something falling. Then a shadow appears at the window, holding up an oil lamp.

‘My lord ambassador — it is I, Bruno.’ I can hardly force the words through my rattling teeth.

A pause, and the window opens a crack.

‘Bruno? Dear God, man, what on earth has happened to you? What are you doing out there?’

‘Can I come in first?’ I indicate the window; he pushes it wider and I hoist myself on to the sill before tumbling through and landing with a dull thud like wet laundry on the floor. Castelnau holds up the lamp and stares at me in wordless disbelief as I pick myself up. In the still air of his study I am aware of the fierce reek of Thames mud coming off me. The ambassador takes a step back. Eventually he shakes his head.

‘I knew philosophers in Paris. They were quiet men with dusty beards who confined themselves to their books. They did not fall through windows in the early hours covered in blood and shit. I feel there are whole realms of your life that I cannot begin to comprehend, Bruno. What is that all over your face? It looks like soot.’ He sounds not accusing but sorry. ‘I thought you stayed at Arundel House?’

‘I fell in the river on the way back,’ I gasp, wrapping my arms around my chest through a series of violent convulsions. ‘I can explain —‘

‘You will die of cold first — here, take those clothes off and put this on.’ He shrugs off the heavy woollen robe he wears around his own shoulders. Underneath he still wears shirt and breeches; it appears he has not even made a pretence of going to bed. ‘Get yourself by the fire.’

He holds out the robe, nodding to indicate I should hurry; with some embarrassment, I peel away my filthy wet clothes and drop them in a heap at my feet. My dagger clatters to the floor and I pick it up hastily and lay it on the edge of his desk. It is only as I lift my shirt over my head that I feel the sodden paper plastered against my skin. Castelnau watches with curiosity as I unstick it and hold it away from me, my heart dropping like a stone. The ink has smudged beyond recognition. I curse aloud in Italian and find myself fighting back tears of fury at my own failure; for the second time I have lost a piece of vital evidence that would have been beyond price to Walsingham.

‘Something valuable, I take it?’ Castelnau asks, as I flap the paper uselessly back and forth. When I do not reply, he ushers me gently towards the hearth, where the embers of a fire are quietly dying. He takes the paper from my hand and spreads it out over the flagstones in front of the fire, but I can already see that there is no chance of proving that it once showed an illegal genealogy in Henry Howard’s hand. All I had to offer Walsingham was the report that such a document had once existed; I would need to get this information to Fowler as soon as possible. Perhaps he was already preparing to take his report of last night to Walsingham at first light, to inform him of the invasion plans, the list of Catholic lords and safe havens, and tell him that I had contrived to stay the night, whetting his appetite for whatever further evidence I might bring. Again, I would let them down.

In the silence, the first birds strike up their chorus outside the window. The ambassador wraps his beautiful robe around my muddy, soot-streaked body and crosses to his desk to pour me the last dregs of wine from a decanter. I guess that he must have drunk the rest himself in the long sleepless hours. I clasp the glass between my hands, trying not to spill it as I shiver, while Castelnau comes to stand beside me in front of the glowing ashes. He gives another of those great sighs that suggest he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘There is bad news, Bruno.’ He speaks without looking at me, and before the words are out of his mouth, I know what he is about to tell me. ‘Leon is dead.’

I bite my lip. Part of me has expected this since Dumas failed to return yesterday, but I have tried to persuade myself that there could be some other explanation. If only Marie had not interrupted, if only I had been more forthright in prising out his story about the ring, if I had paid more attention to his fears instead of dismissing his nervous disposition. I take a sip of wine, feeling sick to the depths of my stomach, but find myself unable to swallow; I cannot avoid the certainty that Leon Dumas, like Abigail Morley, died because of me, and that I should have prevented it.

‘What happened?’ I ask eventually, after we have stared together into the hearth for a few minutes.

‘The aldermen came last night, after you had all left,’ he says, his voice flat. ‘Some boatmen found his body in the river down by Paul’s Wharf and reported it.’

‘Paul’s Wharf?’ I glance at him. ‘By Throckmorton’s house, then?’

‘Nearby. They think he was strangled by some cut-purse. It’s a dangerous part of town for that — all the foreign merchants coming off the boats. He had nothing on him but the clothes he was wearing when they pulled him out. He had been in the water some hours, they said.’

‘How did they know to come here?’

‘They asked the dockhands and boatmen at the wharf. Someone recognised him, knew he was French. Said he was a familiar face down there.’

So he would have been, from all the trips to Throckmorton, I think. So where was the young courier now? On his way to Mary Stuart in Sheffield? If Dumas was killed near Paul’s Wharf, did his killer follow him there, or lie in wait, knowing that he was a regular visitor to Throckmorton’s house? In fact, the one person who would have known to expect a visit from Dumas was Throckmorton himself. I glance across at the window and recall the day I found Throckmorton in this office unannounced, the way he could not keep his eyes off the ambassador’s desk. Dumas was killed because of the ring. Everything centres around the ring. Dumas stole the ring from Mary’s letter before it reached Howard, someone paid him for it, and the ring ended up with Cecily Ashe. I rub my eyes; my tired brain gropes for connections, but again I come back to Cecily’s mystery lover, the man who gave her the ring as a pledge of their pact, the same man who gave her a vial of poison for Elizabeth Tudor. Dumas had to die because he knew this man’s identity; it is the only explanation. But why now — unless this man had new reason to fear that Dumas was about to expose him? At this thought, my body convulses so violently that the wine in my glass lurches and spills a drop on the flagstones, and the word that springs instantly to my mind is on my lips before I can stop it.

‘Marie.’

‘What was that?’ Castelnau turns to look at me with redrimmed eyes.

‘I — nothing.’ I had not meant to speak her name aloud. ‘Marie — she came home safely last night?’

‘Yes, of course. And Courcelles. He was full of stories of how you disgraced yourself and the embassy. Of course, I realised that you must have been putting on a show.’ He inclines his head with a meaningful expression.

‘My lord?’ It is fortunate that I am shaking so violently that any show of anxiety is lost.

‘I did not say as much to Courcelles, but I guessed that you took to heart my fears that Henry Howard is shifting his loyalties towards the Spanish. I supposed you had decided to take the opportunity to find out what you could while you were under his roof, disarm them into revealing something by a show of drunkenness. Courcelles would not have the subtlety to understand such a strategy.’ He laughs weakly. ‘Besides, last night I had other matters on my mind. Come with me, Bruno. I want you to see him.’

‘They brought the body here?’

‘He has family in France, poor boy. They’ll want the body back to bury him there, but I don’t know if that can be arranged in time.’ He passes a hand across his brow. ‘I must write to them. In the midst of all this.’ He waves a hand imprecisely, but I understand: he means the invasion.

‘I would like to see him,’ I say. The ambassador nods as if his head is too heavy to hold up. I am seized by a sudden urge to confide in him, to tell him of the counter-plots eddying around him, of Henry Howard’s ambitions, of his wife’s machinations, of Dumas and the ring. In my exhaustion, I almost believe for one absurd, fleeting moment, the instant it takes to draw breath, that I might be relieved of this burden if I share it with him, if I tell this upright, fatherly man caught between so many conflicting factions that I am not what he thinks, that I have been deceiving him all this while but that, ultimately, we both desire the same outcome: to prevent a war. I cup my hand over my mouth and lower my eyes to the floor until this insanity has passed and floated away like smoke. I have chosen to live a double life, and I must remain faithful to that choice, even when the strain of it almost fells me.

‘You realise how little you know a man, though you sit beside him for the best part of every day,’ Castelnau muses, subdued, as he leads me along the passageway towards the rear door by the kitchen. ‘I never asked him about himself, you know. All I did was bark instructions at him from dawn to dusk. I don’t think he was happy in England, but he never complained.’

He takes a key from a chain at his belt, unlocks the door and leads me across the small courtyard to the collection of outbuildings and storerooms that surround it on two sides. My feet are bare and so cold that they hurt against the cobbles, but the ambassador seems not to have thought of this and with a great effort of will I force myself to ignore it. The sky is light enough now to do without candles, and when he pushes open the door to one outbuilding I see clearly the form of Leon Dumas laid out on a trestle, his head contorted to one side at an unnatural angle. Castelnau stands in the doorway as if keeping vigil, without looking at the corpse; I pull the robe tighter around myself and approach the table slowly.

Dumas’s large startled eyes have been closed, but his face is not peaceful. It is bruised and swollen, the lips puffy and parted. Gently, with one forefinger, I pull back the neck of his shirt to see the mark of a ligature around his throat. I picture him walking those streets by the dock, preoccupied with the guilt he had tried unsuccessfully to unburden on me, ambushed by the killer stepping out of the shadows with a cord or a twist of cloth.

‘He must have been set upon in broad daylight,’ I murmur. I reach out and lay my fingertips on his cold arm.

Castelnau shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

‘You know what it’s like down at the docks, Bruno, it’s a bad part of town. The boatmen always brawling, half of them drunk in the day. Thieves on the lookout for any opportunity. People turn a blind eye.’

‘But Leon did not go about looking as if he would be worth robbing on the off-chance,’ I say, glancing down at Dumas’s worn breeches, now filthy with river silt.

‘What are you saying?’

I hesitate; the ambassador has enough weighing on him at the present time, perhaps it would be kinder to let him persuade himself that Dumas was the victim of a random assault by an opportunistic robber.

‘You are wondering, I think, if he was not attacked by a street thief but by someone who knew of his business,’ he says, when I do not reply.

He glances at the door as he says this, chewing on the knuckle of his thumb, and for an awful moment I wonder if he is hiding something. I stare at him across Dumas’s corpse, until he meets my eye.

‘What I do not know, Bruno, is whether he got his letter to Throckmorton before he was attacked. The aldermen said they found nothing on him, but that does not mean it couldn’t have been taken. If he was known as a regular visitor, perhaps someone might have guessed …’ His voice trails into anxious silence.

‘That he was a courier to Mary?’

‘They say Francis Walsingham has eyes everywhere,’ he says, pulling at his beard. I turn my own eyes studiously back to the body on the table. ‘Suppose Throckmorton has been indiscreet? We may presume they watch Mary’s servants closely in Sheffield Castle — what if Throckmorton has been recognised up there as he comes and goes? I will confess, Bruno,’ he murmurs, lowering his voice, ‘I have been wondering about Leon’s loyalty since I learned of his death. He wrote out my private letters, as you know — he had access to the secret ciphers, all of it. I never thought to doubt him until tonight, but now I can think of nothing else. What do you make of it, Bruno? Might he have been so desperate for English coins that he would have sold me and the embassy?’

His eyes grow wide and behind the tiredness I see that he is genuinely eaten up with fear; immediately I see what I must do, though his words strike at my heart and my every instinct is to look away in shame. Instead, I shake my head.

‘You have begun to jump at shadows, my lord.’ I make my voice as reassuring as I can manage, remembering the tone my father would use when I was a boy and woke with night-terrors. ‘The burden you must carry would have broken a lesser man by now, and this terrible business has shaken us all.’ I lay a hand gently on Dumas’s frozen body. ‘But Leon was true to you and to France, I am sure of it. Let us not allow fear to distract us from our purpose now. As you said yourself, Paul’s Wharf is a dangerous enough place for a foreigner.’

He grimaces. ‘But I have been a fool. That letter I wrote to Mary assuring her of my loyalty in the face of Howard’s accusations — I wrote it in haste, to catch Throckmorton before he left, so I did not bother to use the cipher. It has the embassy seal — if it should have fallen into the wrong hands —‘

His eyes are fixed on me, asking for some reassurance. I would like to tell him that I think whoever killed Dumas would not have the slightest interest in his letter, but I can’t be certain of anything any more. My mind is a cat’s-cradle of connections and theories, but this habit of chasing one idea until I begin to believe it is truth has led me into trouble before and I must not repeat the same mistake I made over Henry Howard. Even so, I cannot help returning to my encounter that morning — Dumas’s almost-confession and Marie’s abrupt appearance — like a tongue probing a sore tooth. Marie. Her devotion to the Duke of Guise and his cause; her ruthlessness; her intimacy with Courcelles. If Marie had overheard Dumas in my room before she knocked, if she feared what he might confide — what could that mean? That she was behind the theft of the ring? Dumas had certainly looked stricken when she appeared, though I had assumed that was just the awkwardness of the situation. But Dumas, as I had learned last night, also paid a visit to Arundel House on the day he died, before his errand to Throckmorton; in his agitated state, what might he have said there, and to whom, that could have led someone to fear his loose tongue?

The thought of Arundel House recalls in an instant the events of the past night, momentarily forgotten in the shock of seeing Dumas dead. I pass my hand across my brow and my knees almost buckle under a sudden wash of exhaustion, so that I have to put out a hand to steady myself against the trestle.

‘Are you all right, Bruno?’ Castelnau takes a step forward, offers me his hand. ‘You should go inside. I’ll have the kitchen servants heat you some water to bathe.’

I rub at my face self-consciously as I begin to walk slowly around the trestle, peering at Dumas’s corpse as if intense scrutiny might yield some clue, as if his poor dead limbs might speak to me of who did this. I pause for a moment by his head and lightly touch his hair, matted and darkened from the river; perhaps out of tiredness, frustration, sorrow or guilt, my eyes are suddenly filled with tears and I have to turn aside to rub them brusquely away with the heel of my hand.

‘He was fond of you,’ Castelnau says gently. ‘He was an odd one, Leon — kept to himself. But he spoke highly of you. I think you were the nearest he had to a friend in this country.’

‘I should have been a better friend,’ I say, and it comes out as a croak.

‘We could all have served him better. The pity is that we never thought of it while he lived. So often the way. Come,’ Castelnau says, gesturing towards the door. I whisper a silent farewell and am about to step away when my eye is caught by a mark on the front of Dumas’s shirt. On the left side, over his heart, a crimson stain blossoms, barely visible under the grime left by the water. Cautiously I peel back his shirt to see the skin beneath cut and matted with blood, just in that one spot, about the size of a gold angel. I spit on my hand and rub it on the dried blood, using the mud-stiffened linen of his shirt to scrape away the scab.

‘What are you doing, Bruno?’ Castelnau moves closer, peering now as if his curiosity has overcome his aversion. I find I cannot speak.

On Dumas’s breast, cut with the point of a knife, is an astrological symbol. A circle with a cross beneath, a semicircle balanced on top, curving upwards. For a moment I can’t fathom it; this sign is out of keeping with the others, it has nothing to do with the apocalypse prophecies or the Great Conjunction. But as I stare at the mark deftly cut into my friend’s flesh, I understand: this is the sign of Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Whoever killed Dumas left this as a signature, a deliberate nod to his connection with the other deaths and surely a mocking reference to his role as courier. I clench my teeth; anger boils up and sticks in my throat. This murderer treats death as a game, carving signs into skin as a private joke — but meant for whom? Unlike the marks of Jupiter and Saturn on the bodies of Cecily and Abigail, this one is discreet, almost an afterthought. Dumas’s death was a matter of necessity, not intended as a public display, and yet this mark stands out as a taunt, a message from the killer to someone he — or she — knew would understand its meaning, just in case they should see it. Is that someone me, I wonder?

‘What is that?’ Castelnau points a finger at the raw-edged cut.

‘A knife wound, I think.’ I lift the dead man’s shirt back into place and press my palm for a moment over his still heart.

The ambassador gives me a long look. His eyes are tight and bloodshot, the skin beneath sagging, but he regards me as father might a wayward son.

‘You should clean yourself up, Bruno. Later, I want you to tell me your version of what passed last night at Arundel House. But first, I recommend you sleep.’

‘And you, my lord?’

‘Oh, sleep refuses to keep me company.’ He passes both hands over his face as if washing; it is a gesture of defeat. ‘I must go to see Mendoza this morning. The Spanish grow closer to Mary Stuart by the day and if we are not careful, they will squeeze out even the Duke of Guise once the invasion is underway. I will have Courcelles start the necessary arrangements for Leon’s burial while I am out. The aldermen have the sheriffs making enquiries in the borough, but I do not hold out much hope that we will find the villains who did this.’

‘There must always be hope, my lord,’ I say, touching him lightly on the arm as he opens the door for me. But in this instance I am not sure I believe it any longer.

Bathed and dressed in a fresh shirt and underhose, I lie on the bed of my attic room, staring at the ceiling, a whole choir of pains singing behind my eyes. I have slept fitfully past dinner time, though when I woke a jug of small beer and some bread had been left outside my room, a thoughtful gesture I guessed came from Castelnau. Washing away the layers of soot and Thames mud in a tub of hot water provided by one of the kitchen servants has revealed a colourful array of cuts and bruises, but my exhausted body cannot drag my mind with it into dreams. The shock of seeing Dumas murdered has made me forget temporarily the seriousness of my own predicament: Henry Howard wants me silenced.

‘Rumour travels with winged sandals, like Mercury,’ Howard had said to me at the Whitehall concert, on the night of Abigail’s murder. Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Was that part of his cryptic warning, or merely co incidence? Now our own messenger, Dumas, lies dead with the mark of Mercury cut into his chest. My only protection lies in Howard’s fear for his own reputation and public standing; now that I have deprived him of his chance to kill me in a perfect simulation of an accident, he will at least — I hope — be cautious about anything that would cause a scandal or link my death back to him. Inside Salisbury Court, I ought to be safe, but I have little doubt that as soon as I step into the streets of London it will only be a matter of time before I am the next to be dragged into a side street with a rope around my neck. I could tell Castelnau about the threat from Howard, but what could he do? The ambassador is already too anxious about making an enemy of Howard and pushing him into the arms of Mendoza. I should get a message to Fowler about the genealogy and through him I could alert Walsingham to Howard’s intentions, but here I am torn because I feel an instinctive desire to protect the secret of Howard’s chapel. If Arundel House were to be searched, his experimentation with magic would surely come to light and the Hermes book would be seized by the authorities, who might in their ignorance see fit to destroy it. At least while it is in Henry Howard’s hands I know it will remain protected, even if for the moment it is also out of my reach; though in his eyes we are mortal enemies, we are also curiously bound by this secret and our shared desire for it. I close my eyes and summon to mind the feel of its stiff pages and rough leather binding under my fingertips; the loss of it hits me again like a physical pang. Given time and opportunity, I have no doubt that Dee and I between us could break the Hermetic cipher. It is just a matter of retrieving the book somehow. But if Fowler has already reported the previous night’s meeting to Walsingham, as he surely must, perhaps Master Secretary is already drawing up plans for an official search of Arundel House. I can only trust that Henry Howard, who has taken considerable risks for that book and guarded it for fourteen years, will have the wit to keep it safe from the pursuivants.

Eventually I feel I must get up and do something. I pull on clean breeches, shake my damp hair into some sort of shape and take a look at my reflection in the glass by my bed. The wound on my temple is healing well, but my beard is unruly and to my bleary eyes the past few days seem to have aged me by years. There is still a stubborn rim of soot around my hairline. I pour some water from the pitcher I keep on a table by the window into a shallow bowl and rinse my teeth with salt and water. Well, I think, if Marie’s interest in me is genuine, she will not be deterred by the lingering scent of Thames mud. Now is the time to put her to the test. She is not the only one who can try to use her body to tease out information.

The house is silent as I cross the first-floor gallery, my footsteps echoing around the dark wood as I step through angled shafts of light. At any moment I expect to see one of the servants, or Courcelles, with his gift of appearing wherever I happen to be, wearing his most contemptuous face. But there is no one, and I reach the rear corridor of the first floor, where Marie and her daughter have their rooms, unimpeded. From behind a closed door opposite the back staircase I hear the high-pitched chatter of a little girl interrupted by a woman’s voice, more severe. It does not sound like Marie. The second door must be her chamber. If she is not there, so much the better; I can at least make a search of her room and if she should find me there, I have a ready excuse. With a deep breath, I knock softly at the door.

‘Entrez.’

She is seated at a small writing desk by the window, a pen in her hand. She looks up and an expression of confusion flits briefly across her face when she sees me in the doorway, as if I am out of context, an actor who has wandered on to the stage in the wrong scene, but she composes herself quickly and motions to me to close the door.

‘Bruno.’ She stands and smooths down her skirt; she wears a dress of pale gold silk, the bodice sewn with pearl buttons. Her hair is unbound and falls around her shoulders; the light catches the curve of her cheekbone as she moves towards me. I remind myself that I am doing this to catch a murderer, and that this woman may even be the architect of those murders.

‘You have heard the terrible news about the clerk, I suppose?’ She does not immediately approach me but stands a few feet away, her hands folded in front of her. She seems more than a little discomfited by my unexpected visit, which is probably to my advantage.

‘Dumas. Yes. I — I can hardly believe it.’ I pinch the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb and lower my eyes. Let her think I am overcome with emotion; women are always glad of an opportunity to comfort a man in distress, I have noticed.

‘One can so easily forget what a dangerous city this is.’ She gives a little shudder of distaste. ‘Especially if you are a Catholic. Poor — Dumas, was it? And how are you today? You must have quite a headache.’ She laughs, nervously, and glances at the door.

‘Yes. I wanted to apologise for my conduct last night —‘ I begin, touching my fingers to my temple.

‘Oh, please think nothing of it. It was amusing to see the Earl of Arundel so shocked. He really is the most unbearable prig.’ She pouts, and this time her laughter sounds more relaxed. ‘I did not take you for a drinker though, Bruno.’

‘No, I am not usually,’ I say, allowing my gaze to wander around the room in a way that I hope is not too obvious. Against the opposite wall stands a bed with white curtains drawn around and beside it a dresser with a looking-glass propped against the wall, strewn with pots of cosmetics, brushes and glass bottles. If someone wanted to fill a perfume bottle with poison, here would be an obvious place to find one. By the window is the small writing desk; several sheets of paper lie covered in neat script where she left off at my interruption. I turn my attention back to her face. ‘It was out of character. I have a lot on my mind. Forgive me.’

Finally she seems to soften; she comes closer, lays a hand on my arm.

‘Nothing to forgive. We are all carrying a great weight at the moment — there is so much at stake here. Not just our lives, if we should fail, but the future of Christendom. Let us not forget that this is what we fight for.’ She looks up at me, her eyes wide and full of meaning. ‘We must all try to stay strong. There are so few of us — we will not succeed divided.’

I nod with feeling as I glance again at her dressing table, and then I see it. Amid the pots and cloths and trailing strings of glass beads, a small green velvet casket, of the size that might hold a signet ring. Mary Stuart’s ring was sent in a green velvet casket, I recall. I cross to the dresser and make a pretence of studying myself in the mirror.

‘I must apologise too for my appearance,’ I say, bending as if to examine my own dishevelled face.

‘Your appearance is as charming as ever, Bruno,’ she says, still smiling, but there is uncertainty in her voice; she would like me to get to the point. I meet her eyes in the mirror as I pick up a necklace and allow its stones to trickle through my fingers.

‘You have some beautiful jewellery here,’ I murmur, trying to sound as if I am a connoisseur. ‘And this is pretty too.’ I pick up the green casket and hold it up to the light, turning it around in my hands.

‘Yes, my husband is very generous with his gifts.’

‘May I see?’ I open the casket; it is empty. ‘Is this from Paris? I have seen some similar —‘

‘I do not recall where it is from,’ she says, and this time her impatience is unmistakable. ‘Bruno — was there anything? Only, I am just writing some correspondence while Katherine is with her governess, and soon they will be finished, so if …’ She leaves the implication suspended.

I replace the box and turn to face her.

‘I am sorry. I have been confused by my feelings for you, Marie. I have been trying to fight something that cannot be fought.’

She seems taken aback by this; again I have the sense that I am reading the wrong lines. For a moment I fear she is going to tell me that it’s not a convenient time, that I have missed my chance. But she regards me with a kind of curiosity, then moves again towards me with a last glance over her shoulder at the door before laying a hand on my chest. I must get her talking about Dumas again while I have her attention.

‘I have been distressed by the death of my friend, too.’ I lower my head towards her. She cups a hand around the back of my neck and strokes my hair. A simple gesture of reassurance; I do not fool myself that she is sincere, and yet this touch reminds me how long it has been since I allowed anyone to show me affection.

‘Poor Bruno,’ she murmurs. ‘But there was nothing you could have done.’

‘Yet he seemed so anxious yesterday morning,’ I persist, curling my neck back like a cat as she caresses me. ‘I should have paid more attention.’

‘You were not to know,’ she whispers, soothing. ‘Did he seem anxious about something in particular, then? Did he tell you what was troubling him?’ Her fingers slide through my hair and down my nape inside my collar, but I am alert now; she wants information from me, just as I want it from her without yielding anything myself.

‘He didn’t get the chance.’

She tilts her head back sharply with a questioning look.

‘That poor man,’ she says lightly, resuming her stroking. ‘I barely paid him any heed, except to worry what he might say to my husband about my visiting your chamber. I suppose that is one less problem now.’ She smiles up as if expecting me to share the joke. By this time I should not be surprised at her callousness, but somehow it shocks afresh with each new display. But I smile in return. ‘Besides,’ she purrs, as she takes my arms, still hanging awkwardly at my sides, and places them purposefully around her small waist as she presses against me, ‘my husband is out at the Spanish embassy this afternoon. Perhaps it would do you good to forget your worries for a while, Bruno.’

And then her mouth is on mine and I simply let her; my conscience and my will seem to recede to a pinpoint at the back of my skull so that I stand there, almost inert with tiredness and resignation, while my body responds predictably. Among the detached thoughts circling my brain as her fingers slide along my collar bone and begin to unlace my shirt is the memory of the look that passed between her and Dumas the previous morning in my chamber. He was afraid of her. This woman, the one whose tongue is flickering over my lips and who is even now lifting my shirt over my head as her nails scrape lightly up my spine, might be the very person who decided at that moment to have him silenced.

She drops my shirt to the floor and runs a hand down my chest, then takes both my hands and leads me to the bed, where she draws back the curtain and pushes against me until I am lying across the sheet. She eases herself down beside me — a complex manoeuvre, given the volume of her skirts — and I close my eyes as her hair brushes my skin and I feel her lips on my chest, moving lower, as her hand massages expertly along the inside of my thigh, my skin fully alive but my thoughts still remote until a woman’s voice from somewhere beyond the room distinctly says.

‘Madame?’

Marie leaps up as if she has been stung, motioning for me to pull up my legs inside the bed.

‘What is it, Bernadette?’

There is a timid tap at the door.

‘May I speak to you, madame? About Katherine.’

‘Can’t it wait?’ she calls back, peevish.

‘I fear not, madame. She complains of a fever and a pain in her stomach.’

‘Well, I am not a physician. Tell her you will fetch the barber surgeon — that will soon put an end to these games.’

A pause from the other side of the door.

‘Madame, I do not think she pretends. She feels very hot.’ The governess’s voice is strained. ‘She is calling for her mother.’

‘Oh, very well. Give me a moment.’

Marie rolls her eyes, stands and brushes down her dress. ‘Stay there,’ she mouths, then draws the curtain around me. I lie motionless as I hear the door click shut, then with an almighty effort of will, I bring my thoughts back to the task in hand. Adjusting my breeches, I scuttle to the writing desk and scan the sheets of paper Marie has left there. ‘Mon cher Henry,’ the letter begins. At first I assume she is writing to Howard, but as I scan through the papers, I am startled to find a reference to taking the crown of England followed by the French throne. Is this King Henri of France, then? Convinced I must have misread it, I force myself to look again, more thoroughly, and I see that in the same paragraph she writes of ‘your Scottish cousin’ being easy to move aside in due course, and ‘the reign of our weak king’ facing its last days. I feel my face stretch in disbelief as I take it in. This is meant for Henry, Duke of Guise, and the letter is full of scattered intimacies; a mention of the pain of separation, the cruelty of distance, remembered embraces, a wish to be reunited as soon as God allows. At the end of the letter she has scribbled a postscript, in a hand that looks as if it was done in haste: ‘I do not know when you will receive this, as I cannot send by my usual means.’ Beside her signature she has drawn a picture of a rose.

I return the paper to the desk, slow and stupid with amazement. This invasion plan truly has become all things to all men; Marie may talk of unity but while Henry Howard contrives his own secret agenda, so too does she scheme to turn it to her own profit. So she is more intimate than I guessed with the Duke of Guise, who evidently regards the English throne as his rightful spoils once the small matter of replacing the monarch is dealt with. What is Marie’s ultimate ambition, I wonder — is she hoping her husband will be a casualty of the ‘weak’ French king’s demise, so that she can take her place by Guise’s side? I wander back to the dressing table and pick up the green velvet casket again, still shaking my head. Behind their talk of religious purity and their duty to Christendom and the eternal souls of the English people, each of them is scrambling for dynastic advantage. You can be certain that Mendoza and the Spanish king are not lending their resources out of piety either, I think, turning the box over and over between my hands; if this invasion should really happen, they would tear England apart between them like street dogs falling on a scrap of meat. Elizabeth Tudor will certainly be a casualty, but Mary Stuart could also find her jubilant restoration turns quickly to a worse fate if the wrong faction gains the upper hand, and those good, rational men of the Privy Council — Walsingham, Burghley, Leicester — would all be destroyed. This small island, with its strange ways and the few precious freedoms it offers to those who, like me, have made an enemy of Rome, will be thrown into a turmoil that will make all the end-of-days prophecies of the penny pamphlets look like children’s stories, and who will be left to restore order except the powers of France or Spain, funded by the pope?

The green casket tells me nothing. I am no expert in jewel-lery, so I have no way of knowing whether this little box could be Mary Stuart’s and have made its way to Marie via Dumas, or whether it is the commonest sort of container. But thinking of Dumas, I suddenly stop and remember in a new light Marie’s hasty postscript. She could not send by her usual means — could she have meant Dumas? If Guise is her lover, she could not send letters to him through the embassy’s diplomatic packet; she would have needed another messenger, a secret means of conveying letters to France. Guise has his own agents and envoys in England — he conducts himself as if he were an alternative king already — and Dumas, forever trotting back and forth to the city with letters for Throckmorton and the official embassy correspondence, could easily carry one more set of messages. As I knew only too well, he was more than willing to run additional errands if there was a chance to make money — a willingness that eventually cost him his life. Did Marie imagine that he had told me her secret? I recall the Duke of Guise from his appearances at the court of King Henri when I was living in Paris last year; a handsome man in his early thirties, with exuberantly curled hair and a sweeping air of entitlement. The French king always seemed cowed by him; it is easy to see how he might seem, by contrast, like the charismatic leader France lacks, especially to a woman like Marie. I regard my own naked torso in the glass and cannot avoid wondering whether she does to him what she had been about to do to me if the governess had not interrupted; I dislike myself for the pang of resentment this produces.

When the latch clicks I turn in anticipation, but instead of Marie, it is Courcelles who stands in the doorway with a piece of paper in his hand. He blinks rapidly, looks me up and down, glances to the bed and makes several attempts to speak before any words emerge.

‘What —? Where is she?’

‘Her daughter was taken ill.’

He glances at the door, then back to me as if struggling to accept the evidence of his eyes. Then he tucks the paper away by his side.

‘And you — she —?’ He waves a hand vaguely in the direct ion of the bed. I find myself battling an urge to laugh at his evident lack of composure; I wonder if Courcelles is also her lover, if she amuses herself with him while she writes her scheming billets-doux to Guise. Certainly his demeanour betrays a very personal sense of outrage. I merely shrug and raise an eyebrow; my state of undress and evident arousal make any justification redundant.

‘I might ask what brings you to her private chamber,’ I say instead, trying to sound casual as I bend to retrieve my shirt.

‘A messenger has just arrived for her from Lord Henry Howard.’ He brandishes his folded letter at me.

‘Is that your job now? Should you not be making the burial arrangements for poor Dumas?’

This seems to galvanise him; he strides across to me and jabs a finger in my face.

‘You think you can get away with anything, don’t you? You just talk your way into everyone’s confidence, you show no respect for birth or position, you think you can carve your own path with no consequences, all because you can make the king of France laugh.’

‘Oh, stop — you are making me blush.’

‘How do you think the ambassador will respond to this, Bruno?’ he hisses, poking my bare chest and leaning down so that his face is almost as near to mine as Marie’s was a moment ago. ‘After the faith he has placed in you. I should not be surprised if he decided to send you back to France. Let the king protect you from what’s coming there, if he can.’

‘And what is coming there, Claude?’ I say, determined to keep my voice light. ‘Something King Henri should know about? Or my lord ambassador? Some sort of coup, perhaps? As a loyal subject, I’m sure you would share whatever you knew to protect your sovereign. Or do your loyalties lie elsewhere now?’ I pull my shirt over my head and stare him down; to my satisfaction, he looks away first. I glance over his shoulder and see Marie standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest and her lips pressed into a white line.

‘If my husband hears a word about this, you will both be on the next boat to France with such a stain on your reputat ions that you will never find a position in the French court again,’ she says, pointing between us. ‘Understand?’

‘Marie — I have done nothing! I came to bring you this and found him here.’ Courcelles flaps his letter at her, aggrieved. She gives him a long, reproving look.

‘Don’t be disingenuous, Claude. We must all keep one another’s confidences in this house.’ She looks from him to me and I realise then that Courcelles is familiar with this room, this bed. I watch Marie with rising anger. She certainly knows how to keep herself busy. The worst of it is that I am most annoyed with myself for feeling even a passing stab of jealousy. Then I think of Castelnau keeping his lonely night vigil in his study and the anger is displaced by a wave of guilt.

‘How is Katherine?’ I ask.

‘She’ll be fine.’ Her tone is clipped now, businesslike, as she reaches for the letter and breaks the seal. It is clear that I am no longer required. ‘You had better go, Bruno. And lace your shirt. We don’t want the servants to gossip.’

Courcelles aims a look of pure hatred at me as I reach the door, but my attention is fixed on the letter in Marie’s hand. What can Howard have to tell her since last night, unless it is something about me?

‘Bruno,’ she says, holding out her hand, palm up. ‘The box?’

I realise I am still clutching the green velvet casket. I pass it over with a muttered apology; she narrows her eyes, then her face softens and she squeezes my hand briefly. ‘Perhaps we will pick up our discussion where we left off another time.’

Lifting her hand, I press it to my lips in a grand gesture, just to irritate Courcelles, who appears ready to explode with an excess of choler. I may not have achieved everything I came here for, but I have discovered Marie’s underlying motive. What part does Courcelles play then, I wonder, considering him as I stand in the doorway and he watches me with the face of a man who would gladly commit murder at this moment? Does he know about the Duke of Guise, or does he believe that he, Claude de Courcelles, is destined to replace the ambassador at Marie’s side when the glorious Catholic reconquest is complete? Either way, I sense that the two of them have closed ranks against me, standing shoulder to shoulder as they wait for me to leave so they can discuss this message from Howard, and again I am furious with myself for feeling that she has toyed with me; absurd, too, when it was I who went to her chamber with the intention of tricking her in the first place. I give them a last look, then leave them to their plotting. As I pass the door of the nursery, I catch the muffled sound of a child crying.