A Column of Fire (89 page)

Ned could have reached Sheffield at the end of his sixth day of travel. However, he did not want to arrive muddy-stockinged and road-weary, in case he needed to impose his authority. So he stopped at an inn two miles outside the town. Next day he got up early, put on a clean shirt, and arrived at the gate of Sheffield Castle at eight in the morning.

It was a formidable fortress, but he was irritated to see that security was careless. He crossed the bridge over the moat along with three other people: a girl with two lidded buckets that undoubtedly contained milk; a brawny builder’s lad carrying a long timber on his shoulder, presumably for some repair work; and a carter with a vertiginous load of hay. Three or four people were coming the other way. None of them was challenged by the two armed guards at the gate, who were eating mutton chops and throwing the bones into the moat.

Ned sat on his horse in the middle of the inner courtyard, looking around, getting his bearings. There was a turret house that he guessed would be Mary’s prison. The hay cart rumbled over to a building that was clearly the stable block. A third building, the least uncomfortable-looking, would be where the earl lived.

He walked his horse to the stable. Summoning his most arrogant voice, he shouted at a young groom: ‘Hey! You! Take my horse.’ He dismounted.

The startled boy took the bridle.

Pointing, Ned said: ‘I presume I’ll find the earl in that building?’

‘Yes, sir. May I ask the name?’

‘Sir Ned Willard, and you’d better remember it.’ With that Ned stalked off.

He pushed open the wooden door of the house and entered a small hall with a smoky fire. To one side an open door revealed a gloomy medieval great hall with no one in it.

The elderly porter was not as easy to bully as the groom. He stood barring the way and said: ‘Good day to you, master.’ He had good manners, but as a guard he was next to useless: Ned could have knocked him down with one hand.

‘I am Sir Ned Willard, with a message from Queen Elizabeth. Where is the earl of Shrewsbury?’

The porter took a moment to size Ned up. Someone with nothing but ‘sir’ in front of his name was below an earl on the social scale. On the other hand, it was not wise to offend a messenger from the queen. ‘It’s an honour to welcome you to the house, Sir Ned,’ said the porter tactfully. ‘I’ll go immediately to see whether the earl is ready to receive you.’

He opened a door off the hall, and Ned glimpsed a dining room.

The door closed, but Ned heard the porter say: ‘My lord, are you able to see Sir Ned Willard with a message from her majesty Queen Elizabeth?’

Ned did not wait. He opened the door and barged in, stepping past the startled porter. He found himself in a small room with a round table and a big fireplace – warmer and more comfortable than the great hall. Four people sat at breakfast, two of whom he knew. The extraordinarily tall fortyish woman with a double chin and a ginger wig was Mary Queen of Scots. He had last seen her fifteen years ago when he had gone to Carlisle Castle to tell her that Queen Elizabeth had made her a prisoner. The slightly older woman next to her was her companion Alison, Lady Ross, who had been with her at Carlisle and even earlier at St Dizier. Ned had not met the other two but he could guess who they were. The balding man in his fifties with a spade-shaped beard had to be the earl, and the formidable-looking woman of the same age was his wife, the countess, usually called Bess of Hardwick.

Ned’s anger doubled. The earl and his wife were negligent fools who put at risk everything Elizabeth had achieved.

The earl said: ‘What the devil . . .?’

Ned said: ‘I am a Jesuit spy sent by the king of France to kidnap Mary Stuart. Under my coat I have two pistols, one to murder the earl and one the countess. Outside are six of my men hiding in a cartload of hay, armed to the teeth.’

They did not know how seriously to take him. The earl said: ‘Is this some kind of jest?’

‘This is some kind of inspection,’ Ned said. ‘Her majesty Queen Elizabeth has asked me to find out how well you’re guarding Mary. What shall I tell her, my lord? That I was able to enter the presence of Mary without once being challenged or searched and that I could have brought six men with me?’

The earl looked foolish. ‘It would be better if you did not tell her that, I must admit.’

Mary spoke in a voice of queenly authority. ‘How dare you act like this in my presence?’

Ned continued to speak to the earl. ‘From now on she takes her meals in the turret house.’

Mary said: ‘Your insolence is intolerable.’

Ned ignored her. He owed no courtesy to the woman who wanted to murder his queen.

Mary stood up and walked to the door, and Alison hurried after her.

Ned spoke to the countess. ‘Go with them please, my lady. There are no Jesuit spies in the courtyard at the moment, but you won’t know when there are, and it’s as well to get into good habits.’

The countess was not used to being told what to do, but she knew she was in trouble, and she hesitated only a moment before obeying.

Ned pulled a chair up to the table. ‘Now, my lord,’ he said. ‘Let us talk about what you need to do before I can give Queen Elizabeth a satisfactory account.’

*

B
ACK IN
L
ONDON
, at Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane, Ned reported that Mary Stuart was now better guarded than she had been.

Walsingham went immediately to the heart of the matter. ‘Can you guarantee that she is not communicating with the outside world?’

‘No,’ Ned said with frustration. ‘Not unless we get rid of all her servants and keep her alone in a dungeon.’

‘How I wish we could,’ Walsingham said fervently. ‘But Queen Elizabeth won’t permit such harshness.’

‘Our queen is soft-hearted.’

Walsingham’s view of Elizabeth was more cynical. ‘She knows how she could be undermined by stories about how cruel she is to her royal relative.’

Ned was not going to argue. ‘Either way, we can do no more in Sheffield.’

Walsingham stroked his beard. ‘Then we must focus on this end of the pipeline,’ he said. ‘The French embassy must be involved. See what English Catholics are among the callers there. We have a list.’

‘I’ll get on with it right away.’

Ned went upstairs, to the locked room where Walsingham kept the precious records, and sat down for a session of study.

The longest list was that of well-born English Catholics. It had not been difficult to make. All families who had prospered under Mary Tudor and fallen from favour under Elizabeth were automatically suspected. They confirmed their tendencies in several ways, often openly. Many paid the fine for not going to church. They dressed gaudily, scorning the sombre black and grey of devout Protestants. There was never an English-language Bible in a Catholic house. These things were reported to Walsingham by bishops and by Lord Lieutenants of counties.

Both Earl Bart and Margery were on this list.

But the list was too long. Most of these people were innocent of treason. Ned sometimes felt he had too much information. It could be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. He turned to the alphabetical register of Catholics in London. In addition to those who lived here, Walsingham received daily reports of Catholics entering and leaving the city. Visiting Catholics usually stayed at the homes of resident Catholics, or lodged at inns frequented by other Catholics. Doubtless the list was incomplete. London was a city of a hundred thousand people, and it was impossible to have spies in every street. But Walsingham and Ned did have informants in all the Catholics’ regular haunts, and they were able to keep track of most comings and goings.

Ned leafed through the book. He knew hundreds of these names – lists were his life – but it was good to refresh his memory. Once again, Bart and Margery appeared, coming to stay at Shiring House in the Strand when Parliament sat.

Ned turned to the daily log of callers at the French embassy in Salisbury Square. The house was under surveillance day and night from the Salisbury Tavern across the road and had been ever since Walsingham had returned from Paris in 1573. Starting from yesterday and working backwards in time, Ned cross-checked every name with the alphabetical register.

Margery did not appear here. In fact, neither she nor Bart had ever been found to contact foreign ambassadors or other suspicious characters while in London. They socialized with other Catholics, of course, and their servants frequented a Catholic tavern near their house called The Irish Boy. But there was nothing to link them with subversive activities.

However, many callers at the French embassy could not be identified by name. Frustratingly, the log had too many entries of the form
Unknown man delivering coal
,
U
nidentified courier with letters
,
Woman not clearly seen in the dark.
Nevertheless, Ned persisted, hoping for some clue, anything.

Then he was struck by an entry two weeks ago:
Madame Aphrodite Housse, wife of the deputy ambassador
.

In Paris, Ned had known a Mademoiselle Aphrodite Beaulieu who appeared fond of a young courtier called Bernard Housse. This had to be the same person. And if it was, Ned had saved her from a gang of rapists during the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

He turned back to the alphabetical register and found that Monsieur Housse, the deputy French ambassador, had a house in the Strand.

He put on his coat and went out.

Two questions wracked him as he hurried west. Did Aphrodite know the name of the courier to Sheffield? And, if she did, would she feel sufficiently indebted to Ned to tell him the secret?

He was going to find out.

He left the walled city of London at Ludgate, crossed the stinking Fleet River, and found the Housse residence, a pleasant modest house on the less expensive north side of the Strand. He knocked at the door and gave his name to a maid. He waited a few minutes, considering the remote possibility that Bernard Housse had married a different Aphrodite. Then he was shown upstairs to a comfortable small parlour.

He remembered an eager, flirtatious girl of eighteen, but now he saw a gracious woman of twenty-nine, with a figure that suggested she had recently given birth and might still be breast-feeding. She greeted him warmly in French. ‘It
is
you,’ she said. ‘After so long!’

‘So you married Bernard,’ Ned said.

‘Yes,’ she answered with a contented smile.

‘Any children?’

‘Three – so far!’

They sat down. Ned was pessimistic. People who betrayed their countries were normally troubled, angry individuals with massive grudges, such as Alain de Guise and Jerónima Ruiz. Aphrodite was a happily married woman with children and a husband she seemed to like. The chances were slim that she would give away secrets. But Ned had to try.

He told her that he had married a French girl and brought her home, and Aphrodite wanted to meet her. She told him the names of her three children, and he memorized them because he was in the habit of memorizing names. After a few minutes of catching up, he steered the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. ‘I saved your life, once, in Paris,’ he said.

She became solemn. ‘I will be grateful to you for ever,’ she said. ‘But please – Bernard knows nothing of it.’

‘Now I’m trying to save the life of another woman.’

‘Really? Who?’

‘Queen Elizabeth.’

She looked embarrassed. ‘You and I shouldn’t discuss politics, Ned.’

He persisted. ‘The duke of Guise is planning to kill Elizabeth so that he can put his cousin Mary Stuart on the throne. You can’t possibly approve of murder.’

‘Of course not, but—’

‘There’s an Englishman who comes to your embassy, collects letters sent by Henri de Guise and takes them to Mary in Sheffield.’ Ned hated to reveal how much he knew, but this was his only chance of persuading her. ‘He then brings back Mary’s replies.’ Ned looked hard at Aphrodite as he spoke, studying her reaction, and thought he saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘You probably know the man,’ he said insistently.

‘Ned, this is not fair.’

‘I have to know his name,’ Ned said. He was dismayed to hear a note of desperation in his own voice.

‘How can you do this to me?’

‘I have to protect Queen Elizabeth from wicked men, as I once protected you.’

Aphrodite stood up. ‘I’m sorry you came here, if your purpose was to get information out of me.’

‘I’m asking you to save the life of a queen.’

‘You’re asking me to be a traitor to my husband and my country, and betray a man who has been a guest at my father’s house!’

‘You owe me!’

‘I owe you my life, not my soul.’

Ned knew he was defeated. He felt ashamed for even trying. He had attempted to corrupt a perfectly decent woman who liked him. Sometimes he detested his work.

He stood up. ‘I’ll leave you,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid I think you should.’

Something was nagging at the back of his mind. He felt she had said something important that he had overlooked in the heat of the argument. He wanted to prolong his visit and ask more questions until she said it again, but she was looking angrily at him, visibly impatient to see the back of him, and he knew that if he did not go, she would just walk out of the room.

He took his leave and dejectedly returned to the city. He climbed Ludgate Hill and passed the Gothic bulk of St Paul’s Cathedral, its grey stones turned black by the soot from thousands of London fireplaces. He came within sight of the Tower, where traitors were interrogated and tortured, then he turned down Seething Lane.

As he entered Walsingham’s house, he remembered what Aphrodite had said: ‘You’re asking me to be a traitor to my husband and my country, and betray a man who has been a guest at my father’s house!’

A man who has been a guest at my father’s house
.

The very first list Ned had made, when he arrived in Paris with Walsingham eleven years ago, had been a register of English Catholics who called at the home of the count of Beaulieu in the rue St Denis.