Prophecy

Chapter Eleven

Mortlake, south-west London

1st October, Year of Our Lord 1583

Out on the river, I find a moment of calm to unravel my tangled thoughts for the first time in what seems like days. The rain clouds have hastened the dusk, and I sit in the prow of the little wherry wrapped in my cloak and a curtain of thin drizzle, lulled by the rhythm of the oars, looking out at the lights winking from windows of the riverside buildings. I have been fortunate in finding one of the few boatmen who doesn’t feel the need to fill the journey with idle chatter; his lantern sways on its hook as he pulls against the tide and in the absence of voices, my thoughts return again to Marie’s behaviour this morning. My refusing her, with the best of intentions, has left me at her mercy, should she decide to make trouble for me. Perhaps it would have been easier to offer her some encouragement, allow her some small measure of what she wanted. In that moment of closeness, when she had leaned in to kiss me, my body had remembered what it was to be touched. It was some months since I had kissed a woman, and that had not ended well. What I had told Marie was true — my years in the Dominican order had at least taught me to master desire, to subdue the stubborn cravings of the body. But no amount of self-discipline can blot out loneliness from the heart. The life I have chosen — or had forced upon me, I am never sure which — offers little opportunity for intimacy of any kind. A writer, especially a writer in exile, must learn to be self-contained, to be content within his own mind, and for the most part I am so. But there is always, somewhere inside, however muted, the dull ache of a longing that I sometimes fear will be a lifelong companion. If I were a different man, I might have had no qualms about Marie; a man like Douglas, I imagine, would not think twice about taking any woman who offered herself. But apart from my loyalty to Castelnau, there is a coldness in Marie that instinctively repels me, even while her obvious attractions draw me in. Inevitably, my thoughts drift back to Sophia Underhill, the last woman I had held in my arms, the one whose mind and beauty had pierced my careful defences only a few months ago. I wonder where she is now and whether she has found some happiness.

Usually when my thoughts tend along this path, I can rein them back by setting my mind to work through the ordered paces of my memory wheel. This evening the images all meta-morphose into a picture of Marie’s lips; as a remedy, it is not especially effective.

As a result, I arrive in Mortlake as soaked in melancholy as in drizzle. Dusk has fallen and along the river bank the shapes of dwellings and trees grow indistinct, blurred by rain against a grey sky. I shiver, and feel suddenly very far from home. I must take hold of myself, I say sternly; my one firm purpose here is to find a killer, and self-pity is a distraction for weak minds.

At first there is no answer from Dee’s house; I stand at the door for some minutes as the rain grows steadily harder, and a cold anxiety creeps up to my throat. Perhaps the whole household has been taken for questioning; perhaps Ned Kelley has returned and is keeping the door barred. I shade my brow with my hand and try to peer through one of the small casements to the side of the front door, but there is no light within. Just as I am contemplating looking for a window I can force or break to climb in, there is a creak and the door opens a crack to show the flame of a candle.

‘Mistress Dee, it is I, Giordano Bruno, come to hear if there is news from court.’ I rush back to the porch, relieved. The face of a woman scowls at me from the darkness within. It is not Dee’s wife. ‘I beg your pardon. Is your mistress at home?’

She turns away; I hear footsteps, voices in hushed conference, then the door is opened wider but no more graciously. Behind the sullen servant I catch sight of Jane Dee, who steps forward into the light as the door is closed behind me, the toddler Arthur hanging on to her skirts, his small oval face tilted warily up to me.

‘Doctor Bruno.’ She smiles, but the strain shows around her eyes. The baby on her hip rubs its eyes with a small fist, knocking its linen cap awry; Jane expertly rights it with one hand, her expression tightening back to anxiety. She is about thirty years of age, not beautiful but with a kind, open face; Dee depends on her utterly and has joked that I must never think of marrying unless I can find another woman like Jane. I have the greatest respect for her; there are not many wives who would tolerate a house filled with the smell of boiling horse dung and the best of the household income going on manuscripts and astronomical instruments. Her hair is bound up untidily, with strands coming loose where the infant clutches at them, and she looks pale, older than her years. She raises her face to me and attempts another smile.

‘Do you bring news about my husband?’

‘No.’ I hold out my hands, a show of emptiness. ‘I came because I hoped you might have heard some.’

She glances briefly at the maid, who still hovers by the door, something irritatingly furtive in her posture. Jane gestures to me with her head, shifts the baby to her other hip, and I follow her and Arthur along a passageway and into a chilly parlour, where a fire is dying in the hearth. Jane pokes it and a feeble shower of sparks issues up the chimney; for a brief moment the logs gamely struggle back into life. She looks at me apologetically.

‘Take off your wet cloak, Doctor Bruno, and stand here by our sad apology for a fire, if you will. They came for him late last night.’ She brushes her hair from her face and bounces the infant gently to soothe it. Arthur sits down cross-legged, close to his mother’s feet, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘Five men in royal colours, said it was urgent. They bundled him out into a boat, hardly gave him a chance to fetch his cloak.’ Her mouth presses into a white line.

‘Were they rough?’ I lower my voice, glancing at the boy. Jane shakes her head tightly.

‘No. But they were armed, if you can believe it. Why would she send armed men for my husband, Doctor Bruno, who has never done anyone a stroke of harm in his life?’

I hesitate.

‘There was another murder at court. Earlier in the evening. You had not heard?’

Her eyes widen.

‘I have not been out. I have had enough to do with the comings and goings here.’ Her face darkens. ‘A murder? But surely —? What has that to do with us?’

‘When Doctor Dee went to see the queen the night before the murder,’ I begin, in the same low voice, ‘he described to her a vision of a red-haired woman violently killed. What he described was almost exactly what happened the following night to one of the queen’s maids, who had red hair. Not surprisingly, your husband’s apparent foreknowledge is a matter of interest to the Privy Council. These murders are regarded as a threat to the queen herself.’ I pause again, unsure how much I should divulge. Jane nods slowly, her lips still pressed tight. The baby grizzles; without looking, Jane inserts the knuckle of her little finger into its mouth, and it gnaws gratefully.

‘So they believe he prophesied it by some devilry?’ Her scorn is somehow reassuring.

‘I think they are more interested in whether he could have learned of it by more ordinary means.’

She frowns.

‘But of course it wasn’t his vision,’ she says, and the bitterness is unmistakable.

‘No. The vision was told to him by the cunning-man Kelley.’

‘Who has not been seen these past four days,’ she finishes. ‘But naturally my husband won’t tell the queen that. Won’t want her to think he doesn’t have the gift. Poor John.’ She laughs sadly. ‘He doesn’t have it and he never will. It’s not something you can get from books, however much time and money you spend fretting over them. My own grandmother had it, so I should know — she could divine with the sieve and the shears, and tell dreams. But if you ask me, that Ned Kelley has no such gift either. Kelley is many things — and it wouldn’t surprise me if a murderer was one of them — but he doesn’t see the future nor speak with any spirits.’ She nods a full stop and shifts the baby to her other hip.

‘We are agreed on that,’ I say, with feeling. ‘But I would like to know where Ned Kelley had his prophecy from. It cannot be coincidence. And I fear your husband’s loyalty to him is more than he deserves. If John knows anything, he will not divulge it to the queen’s advisors, and I fear that will be to his own cost.’

Jane sucks in her cheeks and glances down at the boy, who has nudged himself a few inches nearer to my feet.

‘You never spoke truer there, Doctor Bruno. It has been a sore enough subject between us these past months. God in heaven only knows how John has allowed himself to be duped by that man, I cannot account for it. Sleeping under our roof, taking the bread from our table, from the mouths of my babes —‘ She breaks off, realising how her voice has risen; there is a sudden colour in her cheeks. Little Arthur cranes his head up with interest.

‘Who took the bread from the table?’

‘Hush, my dove.’ Jane stops, motions to me to be silent. We all stand still for a moment, straining to hear, then she tiptoes across the room and flings open the parlour door. The scrabble of hurried footsteps can be heard retreating up the passage. Jane jerks her head towards the sound and casts me a meaningful look, as if to say, You see what I have to put up with?

‘You said there had been comings and goings here,’ I say, as she closes the door again. ‘What did you mean?’

‘John’s library. You know how he welcomes all comers, says his collection should be for any scholar who knows how to read them with due care? All except his magic books, naturally,’ she adds, dropping her voice. ‘Well, this very morning, while John is still detained at court, a man turned up on the doorstep, well before nine, saying he had travelled a long road to consult a particular manuscript, and that he had letters from my husband granting him permission.’ The baby grizzles and she offers it her knuckle again. It seems less willing to be fobbed off this time, and turns its face away, its cheeks an angry red. ‘I didn’t like to let a stranger in with John away and me here on my own with the babies, but neither did I like to turn the fellow away, for John never did, though you can imagine the sorts that fetch up at our door.’

I think of Kelley, and nod. ‘So you let him in?’

‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ She looks up, pained.

‘Did he show you these letters?’

‘He showed me some papers — you have to understand I don’t read well myself, Doctor Bruno, but I know my own husband’s signature. So I let him into the outer library, but I told him I wouldn’t know where to begin with this book he wanted. I said he’d have to look it out for himself, if he could, but as you know, John keeps no rhyme nor reason to his bookshelves.’

‘Did he tell you the title of this book?’

She frowns.

‘I’m sure he must have, but I don’t know if I recall. It was Latin.’ She shakes her head. ‘In any case, it seems he didn’t find it, because I kept an eye on him. Dropped in every few minutes, you know. I’m not a fool — some of those books are worth a year’s wages and I wouldn’t put it past anyone to try and steal them, no matter how much of a fine gentleman they dress. John has noticed a few missing, though I put that down to our house guest.’ Her lips draw tight with dislike.

‘He was a gentleman, then, this visitor?’ I ask, suspicion pricking. ‘Well dressed? What did he look like?’

‘Oh, tall. He wore a hat with a great feather which he didn’t take off even indoors — I thought that ill-mannered, I remember. Just shows you can have all the fine cloth you like and it won’t improve your manners. He had a pointed beard, dark, cut like this in a triangle.’ She indicates with her free hand, taking it from the baby’s mouth; it complains loudly.

‘A young man, was he?’

She considers.

‘Younger than John. Older than you, I’d guess. Forties, maybe.’

My heart seems to contract; it sounds unmistakably like Henry Howard. No doubt there are other men who would fit such a description, but who else would take the opportunity to rifle through Dee’s library, knowing he was detained? And if it had been Howard, what was he hoping to find?

‘So you observed him in the library?’ I make sure my voice betrays no alarm; the poor woman has enough to be anxious about. ‘Did you see what he read? Did he try to take anything?’

‘I don’t think so. But it was strange. He combed those shelves like the hounds of hell were at his heels, almost in a frenzy. And when he thought I wasn’t looking I saw him trying the door to John’s inner rooms, you know, where he keeps his secret books. Thank God John had locked it up and taken the key with him. Tapping on the panelling, too, this fellow was, as if he were looking for some secret hiding place. He even stuck his hand up the chimney breast — I didn’t see him do it, but when he came to leave he had soot on his sleeve.’ She half laughs at the man’s audacity.

I happen to know, as she must, that Dee keeps certain papers in a box hidden in a recess inside the chimney breast in his own office. Whoever this man was, he clearly had a good idea of what he hoped to find, and it must have been something he suspected Dee would keep away from prying eyes.

‘How long did he stay? Did he give the impression that he found what he wanted?’

‘So many questions, Doctor Bruno!’ Jane tries to make her voice light, but I catch the fear in it as she jiggles the baby more urgently on her hip. ‘He stayed until it was past dinner time, though he didn’t seem to notice. He took down one or two books and glanced inside them, I didn’t see what, but that was more for show. I started to think maybe he’d come on purpose, knowing John was away, thinking he’d have free run of the place. But who could have known about that, except the queen and her people?’ Her voice has risen; she looks at me as if for reassurance. ‘Do you know who he was? You suspect something, I can tell by your face.’

‘I think you should not allow any stranger in while your husband is detained,’ I say. ‘Especially not this man, if he shows up again. And I will see if someone can be sent to keep an eye on you while John is at court — it is not right that you should be left alone with the children.’

‘Oh, I am not alone,’ she says drily. ‘Not while I have that slattern for company.’

I glance around, guessing she means the sullen maid who opened the door. I wonder that she doesn’t get a different servant, since she appears to resent this one so much. Perhaps this one is all they can afford, which might explain the resentment.

‘Might I look in Ned Kelley’s room?’ I ask. ‘There may be something there that will offer us a clue as to how he invents his visions, and that might be enough to clear John of any suspicion.’

‘Of course.’ She shows me to the door, hands me a candle and points up the main staircase. ‘The room over the stairs. Go on in and root around all you will, with my blessing. And don’t mind her,’ she adds, darkly.

Dee’s house is old and crooked, the wood of the stairs and banisters dark and smoothed to a sheen by generations of hands and feet. The treads groan like living things weary with age as I climb, and from the corner of my eye I glimpse shadows at my back as the watery pool of light moves with me. Though I know there is no one in the house except Jane and her children, save for the maid, still I find I am tensed against any sudden surprises, half-expecting someone to leap at me from a passage or doorway, as if Kelley might have been squirrelled away in some spidery corner all this time.

The door at the top of the stairs is not locked. It opens on to a generously proportioned room with two casement windows that must overlook the front of the house, towards the river path. Now, against the black sky, they offer only a distorted reflection of my outline with the flickering candle flame. As I turn with it slowly, the room reveals itself as a jumble of objects in the frail light: a wooden truckle-bed, the sheets twisted and thrown back, as if Kelley had only moments ago leapt out of them; two chests, one locked, one spilling with clothes or linen; a table with a few stumps of candle; beside them, a pair of dice and a locket. Their shadows climb up and down the walls as the candle passes them.

I push the door to behind me and fit my candle to one of the holders from the table; setting it on the floor beside me, I kneel by the closed trunk. Its lock is old and crusted with rust, and when I insert the tip of my little bone-handled knife, it takes only a few moments of easing and jiggling before the mechanism clicks open and I can prise up the lid. My pulse jumps as my fingers brush against paper; sheaves of letters, perhaps, and, further down, the calfskin cover of a book. I bring out a bundle of manuscript pages and examine them in the thin circle of light; what I see makes me gasp.

Here are pages of notes and drawings in a rough hand: astrological and alchemical symbols and Cabbalistic codes; lists of names in a curious unknown language; geometrical designs that match the table of practice Dee uses in his seances, whose components he said were told to him by spirits via Kelley; there are star charts, and sketches of the images of the decans according to the descriptions given in the writings of Hermes; scraps of magic lore culled from books forbidden throughout Europe, and three recent illegally printed pamphlets, the kind from Paul’s churchyard, decrying the murder of Cecily Ashe as a sign of the end of days, complete with gruesome illustrations. Most disturbing of all, at the bottom I find a series of hand-drawn images, more explicit than those in the pamphlets. They depict a young woman with flowing hair, her arms flung wide and holding in one hand a book, in the other a key, her bodice torn and her breasts thrust out, with a dagger plunged into her heart, some showing the sign of Saturn marked on her chest, others the sign of Jupiter. These pictures vary in their particulars — in one, she is standing in what appears to be a raging river, in another, she is laid out naked on something that looks like an altar, but the ravaged expression on her face remains the same. I find my insides knotted by a peculiar nausea; there is an unmissable relish in these drawings, the expression of a young man’s violent fantasy. You sense that the artist has taken pleasure in illustrating not only the woman’s naked body but her suffering — and Kelley, though his writing is uncultured, is not without talent when it comes to drawing; the pictures are vivid. Assuming that these are his own work, the drafts that would enable him to pronounce his visions to Dee in convincing detail.

Slowly, I fold away the drawings of the young woman and tuck them inside my doublet. These look like nothing so much as preparatory sketches for the murder of Abigail Morley, and if they can be proved to be by Kelley’s hand, they may be enough to convict him, or certainly to bring him to trial. Even contemplating the possibility that Kelley could have acted out his lascivious fantasies on Abigail makes a fist of anger bunch beneath my ribs and my breath quicken; I close my eyes for a moment, forcing myself to remain calm, to act in the light of reason. But Kelley, if he was a killer, would not have the means to get near the queen’s maids, unless he were the hired hand for someone better connected.

Reaching back into the chest, I lift out the two books hidden beneath the papers. The first is a bound edition of The Book of Soyga, copied by hand, a book of names and invocations believed to contain the original language spoken between God and Adam, a language of great power uncorrupted by man’s fall. I had seen a manuscript of this book in Paris and was sceptical about its authenticity, though I knew Dee owned one and still kept faith that it contained some hidden power. When I had asked to see his copy some while ago, he had told me that it was missing. Apparently his household scryer was light-fingered as well as treacherous.

The second book takes me by surprise, for it is my own: On the Shadows of Ideas, the book I published in Paris last year. Turning its leaves slowly, I find Kelley has underscored the passages in which I describe the images of the decans. What Dee has taken as the scryer’s divine revelations from the Egyptian gods of time is nothing more than the ability to parrot back the words he has read — words of mine, no less. When Dee is returned, I will show him this copy with its folded back pages and notes as proof that Kelley has no more of a seer’s gift than the housemaid. Perhaps this will finally persuade him that he has been deceived.

I tuck the book inside my doublet with the papers, as furious with myself as with Dee this time; I should have guessed at this the moment I first heard Kelley describing his ‘vision’ of the decan of Aries in the showing-stone. Kelley knows nothing of the writings of Hermes, any more than he speaks with spirits; his revelations are pure invention, cobbled together from scraps he has pilfered from Dee’s own library.

‘Those are my husband’s books.’

I start, almost knocking over the candle; lost in these thoughts, among the shadows, I have not heard her footsteps and her sharp voice out of the darkness sends my heart almost leaping into my throat. I turn and the Dees’ housemaid is standing in the doorway, holding a small candle.

‘Christ, woman, you scared the life out of me.’ So startled am I that it takes me a moment to register what she has said. ‘Your husband?’

‘You have no right to look in those papers. Those books are nothing to do with you.’

‘You are wrong there, madam — this one has my name on the title page.’ I hold it up for her.

She only narrows her eyes and continues to glare at me, as if this might eventually wear me down.

‘So Ned Kelley is your husband. Where is he, then?’

She shrugs. In the candlelight I see that she is older than I first thought, perhaps nearer forty than thirty, with the last vestiges of something that is not quite beauty but a bolder appeal.

‘Away. But he will be back, and then you will be sorry.’

‘Will I? Tell me, when he returns, does he plan to continue cozening the man who feeds and houses him? What does he get out of this charade? Has someone put him up to it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says, looking away. ‘I don’t pry into my husband’s business.’

‘Just as well, since his business is murdering young girls.’

I have her there; she turns to me, mouth open, eyes wide just for a moment, though she pulls herself together quickly enough.

‘My husband never harmed anyone, you wicked slanderer — he has his gifts from God. But who would expect anything else from a filthy foreigner. Your eyes are black as a Moor’s,’ she adds, for good measure.

‘Perhaps my great-grandmother had herself a Moor, who knows?’ I say, picking up the candle and rising to my feet. These English have so little imagination. I notice her looking at the book tucked under my arm.

‘Where is your husband?’ I ask again. ‘I know some people who are very keen to talk to him about his gifts.’ I bring the candle up close to her face, but she is a tall woman, as tall as me, and sturdy; she will not be cowed. She merely looks me in the eye, insolent as a Southwark whore.

‘You can’t walk away with that book, you have no right —‘ she begins again. My patience breaks.

‘Don’t talk to me about rights, mistress,’ I say, grasping her by the upper arm and pushing her back against the door frame, ‘when you and your husband feed off the generosity of a good-hearted man and his wife for your own profit. Tell me where he is.’ I shake her brusquely and she bares her teeth at me. I am gratified to see that she looks at least a little scared before the brazen face returns.

‘Generosity, you call it? Credulity, I say. I don’t know where Ned is, but I’ll wager somewhere a sorcerer like you nor a fool like John Dee won’t find him.’

‘Lucky, then, that the queen’s men are better trained for searching. Especially when a man is wanted for murder.’

This punctures her bluster somewhat; she tries to wrest her arm away from me but as we are both holding candles her movements are limited.

‘Ned hasn’t murdered anyone. That was never —‘

‘Never what?’ I rattle her arm harder. ‘Never part of the deal? Maybe your husband and his paymaster have changed the deal. Well, no doubt they will get that out of him one way or another.’

‘Why are you hurting Johanna?’ says a small voice from somewhere around my knees. I glance down and there at the top of the stairs is Arthur Dee, his earnest eyes upturned and swivelling from me to Kelley’s wife. Reluctantly, I let go of her arm. She flashes me a look of triumph and makes a great fuss of smoothing down her skirts, rubbing the flesh of her arm ostentatiously as if she has been ravished. She should be so lucky, I think, with a last glance of disgust.

‘Is everything all right up there, Doctor Bruno?’ Jane Dee calls from the foot of the stairs.

‘All is well.’ I bend down to the boy. ‘No one is hurt, Arthur. Shall we go down to your mother?’

He nods and reaches his little hand up to mine; we leave Johanna Kelley, if that is her name, replacing the items in her husband’s chest with a face like storm clouds.

‘I don’t like her,’ Arthur confides as we descend, in a whisper guaranteed to carry through the house. ‘She struck me once and my mama called her a witch.’ I try to stifle a laugh.

‘I imagine the slattern was not best pleased to find you going through her husband’s things,’ Jane says, when I rejoin her in the parlour. She looks as if the thought pleases her. ‘If husband he is.’

‘She is short on civility, that much is certain.’

Jane nods. ‘You wouldn’t think she was once in service to one of the noble families. I’ll bet she minded her manners a lot better then. Or maybe she didn’t,’ she adds, signific antly.

I stop, midway through pulling on my cloak.

‘Really? Which family?’

‘She used to be a maid in the Earl of Arundel’s household, up at Arundel House on the Strand. Won’t say why she left, but it’s my guess she was thrown out in disgrace. There’s a child, you know, a little daughter no more than Arthur’s age, she leaves it with some widow out Hammersmith way. And it’s not by Kelley,’ she says, with a nod full of meaning. ‘She only took up with him a year ago, from what I gather. It’s my bet they’re not even properly married.’

‘You think she got the child at Arundel House?’ I stare at her, disbelieving. Another Howard connection. Could it be — I am still gaping at Jane as this new idea forms — that Kelley is working for Henry Howard or his nephew, perhaps introduced to them by his wife? My mind rushes back to my curious conversation with Howard after the concert and his oblique threat; he had specifically mentioned Dee conjuring spirits in a showing-stone. Was that a lucky hit, or did he have such a detail from a first-hand report?

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. But she must have money from somewhere to keep it. Her clothes are good cloth too — better quality than you’d expect of her sort. Anyway, since my husband in his folly gives lodging to her so-called husband, I insisted she give us some labour in return. Don’t know why I bothered. This babe’d be more use with the housework.’ She bounces the baby gently on her shoulder and it hiccups. ‘And she is stealing food from my kitchen, I’m sure of it.’

I raise an eyebrow at this; perhaps, then, Ned Kelley has not run so far away after all. I do not say so to Jane; she would hardly sleep easier in Dee’s absence to think of the scryer hiding in the garden.

‘Do not open the door to anyone until your husband returns,’ I tell her at the door, patting my chest where I have hidden away Kelley’s papers. ‘I have matter here that will vindicate John the moment it is seen by the right people, and make Ned Kelley a wanted man.’

Jane snorts. ‘As if he wasn’t that already. Don’t worry about us, Doctor Bruno, we shall manage fine as we always do. It was a kindness of you to visit,’ she adds, with an effortful smile, pushing her hair back from her face. I catch the tiredness in her voice again. ‘It’s dreadfully wet out there still — are you sure you must leave? You are welcome to stay if you’d rather.’

I sense that she would be glad of the company, or at least the reassurance of a man’s presence, but now that I have Kelley’s papers, I feel I must get them to Walsingham as quickly as possible.

‘I had better go. But if Kelley shows his face, or if she —‘ I nod towards the stairs — ‘gives any sign she knows where he is, send word to Walsingham at Barn Elms immediately. In the meantime, I will see if he can spare a man to keep an eye on the house until John returns.’

‘Thank you, Bruno. Here, you cannot go into the night without a lantern. Johanna!’ she calls into the darkness of the stairwell. ‘Fetch a lantern for our guest!’

There is no response. Tutting heavily, Jane stomps away with the baby towards the back of the house. Arthur and I are left looking solemnly at one another in the hallway.

‘You be sure and take good care of your mother until your father comes home,’ I say, bending to ruffle his soft hair. He has his mother’s looks, but Dee’s penetrating eyes.

The boy nods. Jane returns and hands me a lantern with a new candle.

‘Return it when you can,’ she says. ‘Now go with God.’

My cloak is no less damp than when I arrived, in spite of its stint by the fire, and the evening air when I step outside whips through it with a chill that pierces straight to my bones, though the rain has eased for the moment. I shiver, but make a cheerful farewell to Jane. Little Arthur remains on the doorstep waving until I am at their gate. I glance at the upper storey and am almost sure I see a figure standing at the window, silently watching, wrapped in shadow.

It is less than a mile across the spur of land that juts out, making the river loop around Barnes and Mortlake; clouds scud across the face of the moon, driven by the wind, but there is only one main road, little more than a track, that runs along by the water then cuts across. Even in the dark, it would be hard to lose my way between here and Barn Elms. Despite Walsingham’s instructions to send my intelligence through Fowler, the papers I have pressing against my chest are so urgent that it would be folly to delay; I can deliver them into his hands or Sidney’s and be on my way without anyone knowing I was there. The lantern held before me, its light fractured in the standing water collected in ruts on the path, I pull the cloak tighter and close the gate behind me.

I feel rather than hear him, almost the moment I step out on to the muddy lane that will lead me to the river path. He — or perhaps she — is no more than a movement out beyond the edge of sight, a stirring of the air, the soft plash of water disturbed in a puddle. I turn, slowly at first, widening the circle of the lantern’s poor light as I hold my arm out, but whoever he is remains hidden. Yet I know I am not alone, and part of me curses my own recklessness as I quicken my step. What was I thinking, coming so far from the city at night, and especially since there can be no doubt that someone has been following me? But with every step I feel Kelley’s papers scratch against my chest and try to ignore the rush of fear in my blood; we are one step away from discovering who killed Cecily Ashe and Abigail Morley, and I am now convinced that Ned Kelley is the evidence that ties the Howards to the murder plot. I am all but running now, fired by the thought that this might soon be resolved, but he keeps pace with me in the dark, whoever he is; I catch echoes of my own footfalls in the mud but I no longer turn. Instead I keep my eyes to my course, one hand on my knife, the lantern held in front with the other, telling myself that every step brings me nearer to Barn Elms and Walsingham. Once my pursuer sees where I am headed, surely he will drop back out of sight. Walsingham keeps armed guards at his gate; he is obliged to, given how many Catholics would like to send him early to his judgement day.

The damp breath of the night; the solid outlines of the wet trees to either side; the presence that I sense without seeing, who becomes a kind of companion in the silence. I almost begin to believe that he does not mean me harm, that he is only keeping an eye on me, tracing my path. An owl’s shrill cry rips the air overhead and I gasp aloud, startled, my foot briefly stumbling in a rut; from somewhere behind or to the side I think I hear a matching intake of breath. I have run perhaps half a mile when there is a distinct human sound; not quite a word, more of a grunt, the noise of some physical effort. I wheel around, holding up the light, drawing the knife from my belt with my right hand, and as I do, I hear his movement, there comes a faint whistling in the air and some blind instinct tells me to duck; the hand with the knife flies up to my face, just before the blow catches me and knocks me to the ground.

Through the blurring shadows I can just make out the form of him as he looms over me, before the world turns to black.