The Queen's Man (5 page)

I
n the morning, hungry and ill-rested, he took breakfast at the tavern, and then strode along Seething Lane, avoiding the piles of horse-dung and human waste that clogged the way. The stench did not help his mood. Why in God’s name had the gong farmers not cleared this path overnight? A kite wheeled overhead, searching for its dinner. Another perched on the roof of St Olave’s, pecking the juicy muscle meat from some rodent. London, once a lion among cities, was becoming more and more like a sick tomcat.

Arriving at Walsingham’s mansion, he sought out the senior intelligencers. This house, close by the Thames and the Tower, was one of Sir Francis’s two residences. On Walsingham’s advice, Shakespeare had deliberately found a house close by for his own dwelling. ‘If you wish to work for me, I expect nothing more than your body and soul, John. That means you either live with me, or near me. I cannot be doing with sending messengers to fetch you.’

Near to him
seemed the better option.

He found Thomas Phelippes in a back office. The room was stacked high with books and documents and smelt of sweat. Phelippes was peering down hard through his small round spectacle-glasses, examining a scrap of paper, his lank yellow hair falling about his pox-ridden face.

‘Mr Phelippes.’

‘Wait.’

Shakespeare pulled the paper from the table. ‘No, Mr Phelippes, this will not wait.’

Phelippes tried in vain to snatch back the paper. ‘So the fledgling crow thinks it has talons?’

He ignored the barb. ‘I have come from Mr Secretary at Oatlands. A Frenchman named François Leloup has landed covertly and is at large in England. It may be that he has gone to Sheffield. I am to ride there this day. You, meanwhile, along with Mr Gregory, are to raise a search for him in London and the south.’

‘Do you think to command me?’

Shakespeare had had to put up with Phelippes’s goading ever since he joined Walsingham’s service and it was becoming tiresome. Phelippes knew very well that the order had come from Walsingham. ‘I will tell you about Leloup.’

The codebreaker laughed. ‘I know all about the good Dr Leloup. I know more about him than does his own mother.’

‘Then you will know under which stone to look.’ Shakespeare replaced the paper on the table. ‘Good day to you, Mr Phelippes. You know what is required of you.’

Shakespeare turned to walk from the room, but he felt the clasp of Thomas Phelippes’s hand on his sleeve.

‘Wait, Shakespeare. Let us talk more of this Frenchman.’

Shakespeare paused, shaking off Phelippes’s hand. ‘Very well. What I know is what Mr Secretary has told me, that he is about fifty, elegant, assured, dark-haired when last he saw him, with a prominent nose and only one arm. He will not find it easy to hide.’

Phelippes nodded. ‘His arm was carried away by a cannonball at Jarnac, where he was helping the wounded. In France they know him as
Le Museau du Loup
.’

‘The Wolf’s Snout. Mr Secretary mentioned that.’

‘Guise will have ordered him to prepare the way for his invasion fleet. He wants the bosom serpent free and our own sovereign lady murdered. These are all parts of the whole.’ Phelippes leant forward excitedly, all signs of hostility gone. ‘I have come from Bruges this week. I learnt there that Guise and the English exiles have sent priests to England who have been told that their mortal souls are safe however many they kill, so long as their victims are Protestants. It accords with everything that Mr Secretary’s man Lawrence Tomson discovered from the papal agent in Bologna.’

‘Did your Bruges contact name the priests?’

‘He named one. Benedict Angel, originally of Warwickshire. Find him and we may find Leloup too.’

F
ather Benedict Angel made the sign of the cross and bowed low. Then he turned, away from the crucifix, the missal, the chalice and paten on the little table that served as an altar. His heart was a flood of raging fire, fanned by the glory of the mass. At times, he could not breathe, so overwhelming was the passion and joy of Christ within him. Every sinew told him to shout it loud amid the heavenly choir of trumpets and voices, the fury of bliss in the storm. Yet his voice was as quiet as his manner; no one would ever see the torrent and turmoil within.

Once the mass was said, the sacred objects must be hidden without delay. He quickly removed his robes – the exquisitely embroidered chasuble, the cincture and the white alb. Who knew when the door would be hammered down with a ram? The aroma of incense could not be hidden so easily. ‘Florence, if you would pack away the mass things.’ His sister bowed to him and set about her chore, wrapping the precious artefacts in a woollen cloth. With her golden hair tied back and concealed beneath a coif, it seemed to him that she looked very much like the nuns at Louvain. But the life of quiet contemplation would never be her lot; she must fight like him, a soldier of God.

‘I have here a letter,’ he said, holding aloft a folded paper, the seal broken.

He stood small and neat by the fire. He kept his hair and beard short. Now that his robes were removed, he wore a dun-coloured doublet and hose. He thought they made him look like a gentleman of Calvinist persuasion, which was the guise he adopted while travelling through England. Here in Warwickshire, however, he could not walk abroad, for he was too well known. He had come to this house by night and had stayed hidden away by day. He had been here all summer long and had reconciled many souls to the true faith. There was but one more task to be undertaken, and then his mission would be complete.

He looked around him at the faces of his companions and it seemed to him that they glowed with ardour in the glimmer of a dozen candles. Here in this well-appointed room, light and shadow flickered on the walls. The windows were shuttered against the moonlight and against prying eyes.

Apart from Benedict Angel and his sister, Florence, there were five others present: three men and two women. They would do Christ’s holy work. The forces of repression, of Walsingham, Burghley and the pseudo-Church, would call them conspirators; he called them God’s agents.

They watched him expectantly, their eyes on the letter he held, awaiting word of what they should do next.

‘This letter is a precious treasure,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It is written in the hand of our most gracious sovereign lady, Mary. The true Queen of England, Ireland and Scotland. Look –’ he unfurled the paper and pointed his finger at the bottom of the page – ‘this is her name, in her own hand.
Marie R
.’

His eyes were caught by a movement. The young man named Somerville had pulled out his pistol. He was dangerously excited. ‘Put away the pistol, Mr Somerville.’

But Somerville was not listening. He waved the weapon around, pointing at imaginary targets. One moment, his eyes were on Father Benedict Angel, the next on some object such as a book or cup. He pretended to pull the trigger and made a little popping noise with his pursed lips. ‘There she is. Look, I shoot the usurper dead.’ He stared at Angel, looking for approbation.

‘I know you have come here this evening in the hope of final orders,’ Angel said, ‘but in the name of Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother, I beg you to have patience.’ He looked at the other faces. ‘All of you. Trust in this letter.’

‘What does it say?’ Somerville demanded urgently. He had lowered his pistol. ‘What does it say?’

‘It is encoded in a cipher no man can break, not even Walsingham and his demons. But –’ Angel waved aloft a second piece of paper – ‘I have here a concise version of her words, written for me by one of those closest to her who helped her write it and who knows the code.’

One of those closest to her. Buchan Ord, the man who had devised this at the English seminary in Douai. When would he come here? Soon, God willing. Soon
.

‘What does it say? What does it say?’

‘Be calm, Mr Somerville. I entreat you.’ As an ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict Angel was used to making himself heard without shouting. Leave the shouting to the pseudo-priests who now infected so much of this benighted land. And yet he worried that he had been a little sharp, had betrayed his irritation. ‘What I can tell you is that she calls on us to be strong and to do what we are bidden to do by those who come to us in her name. It says the plan is advanced and that we will be required to hazard our lives very soon. She knows we will do all that is asked of us. By the grace of God the father, God the son and God the holy ghost, Marie Stuart. Our true monarch.’ He scrunched up the second paper in his fist and threw it into the hearth where it blazed up, then died down, reduced to blackened ash. The other letter, the encrypted one, he re-folded with care and handed to his sister. She took it with reverential awe, kissed it and bowed to her brother.

Somerville was still agitated and had begun waving his pistol around again. ‘We must act now, before it is too late,’ he said. He grasped the stock of his gun in both hands and pointed it at Angel. ‘If we do not do this now . . . no, I say again, we
must
act now.’

‘I beg you, put up your pistol, Mr Somerville,’ Angel said calmly. ‘It is better that we
pray
for guidance than brandish guns. They have a tendency to go off when least expected or desired. I can be of no service to God or our sovereign if you kill me.’

‘You are too cautious, Father. The slow fox wins no hens. My pistol burns with holy intent. Has the Holy Father not ruled it lawful—’

Angel raised his right hand, palm open, to stop Somerville’s flow. ‘In good time. We will wait until all is confirmed. We
must
wait. There is another who will come and bring word of what is expected of us. He will come soon. I pledge this to you. If we are over-hasty, if we move from here, we will likely die and nothing will have been achieved. I have no fear of death, but God would not thank us for shedding our blood without first fulfilling His holy mission.’

For a few moments they were all silent. Angel bent his head and began to intone a prayer in Latin.

There was a sudden gasp. His sister jerked back her head as if seized by ecstasy. Her back arched, her generous red mouth opened and exhaled a guttural rush of air, and her body began to jerk violently. She fell on her knees on the wooden floor and shook like an ash leaf in a stiff breeze.

The mass things tipped from the unfurling cloth and clattered to the floor. She fell backwards, convulsed once more, then became rigid and remained still.

‘It is the letter,’ Somerville said. ‘It is holy. It has burnt her.’

Benedict Angel clutched his hands to his thin chest. The seraphim sang in his burning heart. The maid had come to Florence again. He was
sure
it was the maid. He knelt at her side and put an arm around her quivering shoulders. ‘What is it, Florence? What do you hear?’

Florence Angel’s breathing was fast and shallow. Her eyes were wide open and fixed at some point directly above her. Her lips seemed to be quivering, as though she were trying to say something.

Her brother put his ear close to her mouth. ‘Is it her, Florence? What does she tell you?’

Her voice – if it
was
her voice – was the quietest of whispers. Was it the whispering of the wind outside the window or was she speaking? It was so hushed that none in the room save Benedict Angel could hear it. He clutched her quivering hand and nodded soothingly, as though he understood, as though Florence were a vessel pouring forth words like holy water into the cup of his ear alone.

The conspirators watched in dread fascination. They believed they heard sounds, but still could make out no words. Finally she shook again, her body arched once more as though her spine would break, and then went utterly limp, like a rag. Father Benedict signalled to one of the other women in the room and together they helped Florence up and on to a settle and made her comfortable among some cushions.

Angel stroked her brow. ‘Fetch her some water, Margaret. This will pass in a short while. The holy spirit has come to her.’

‘What did she say, what did you hear?’ Somerville demanded.

‘It was the maid . . .’

‘The Maid of Orleans? Joan of Arc?’

‘I heard her so clearly . . . she was burning, burning. She spoke through Florence, as she has spoken before. Her young body was bound to the stake and the flames devoured her. I could hear the crackle of blazing wood, the sough of the rushing wind and the cries of her passion. She was in the throes of death and yet she spoke to Florence. I heard her voice. I heard it all, as clear as I can hear you.’

‘What? What did she say?’

‘She said that God would give us a sign when it was time. She said there would be an omen and no one would be in any doubt. She begged us to stand strong, as she stood strong, to trust in Mary, and then she breathed her last and gave up her saintly spirit to the Lord.’

O
N THE WAY
north, Shakespeare and Boltfoot rested just one night at an inn, ate, slept and then rode on by day and night, coming at last out of Sherwood Forest into the hills surrounding the prosperous market town of Sheffield. They trotted into the main square, close to the castle, half an hour before dawn on the second day, tired and hungry. In front of them, dark and asleep, stood a coaching inn. In the pre-dawn gloom, they made out a sign that revealed the inn’s name as the Cutler’s Rest.

‘Wake someone, Boltfoot.’

Boltfoot dismounted and limped to the locked door and hammered at it with his fist. Shakespeare heard soft footfalls from inside, then the drawing back of an iron bolt. The door opened and a young woman appeared on the threshold, lit by the candle she held in her left hand.

‘Good morrow, gentlemen.’

For a moment neither Shakespeare nor Boltfoot said a word. This was the last place or time of day that they had expected to find such beauty. She wore a plain linen smock and apron. Her hair was long and fair and tousled as though she had just risen from her pillow, her eyes blue and a little bleary. But it was the exquisite imperfection, the gap between the otherwise perfect teeth, that caught the eye and set her apart.