‘So I should consider myself in your debt?’ He tilted his chin and fixed me with a challenging look.
‘You should not consider me the architect of your misfortune, at any rate,’ I said, stretching out the ache in my back. ‘What was your life in Paris? Moping about bemoaning the loss of your family’s estate and waiting for a scrap of attention from Paget, who cared more about the letters you carried than he ever did about your safety. Now you are writing yourself into history. Think on that.’
He squinted as he attempted to work out if I was serious. ‘Not the way I wanted,’ he said, more soberly. ‘All I do is ride back and forth to Staffordshire on filthy roads, for a deception I am ashamed to—’ He broke off, casting a glance at our host and evidently thinking better of his words.
‘If you must keep talking, you will have to go next door,’ Phelippes said. ‘I have work to do.’
‘It’s the middle of the night, man,’ I said. ‘Are you not half-mad with tiredness? I know I am.’ It seemed weeks since I had set out from Rye, though it was only first light the day before.
Phelippes raised his head, surprised. ‘No. If you want to sleep, take my bed.’
‘Where will you sleep?’
‘He never sleeps,’ Gifford said, with a touch of bitterness. I guessed that part of the reason for his accommodation here was so that Phelippes could report back on his movements. I wondered if I would be subject to the same scrutiny. I believed Walsingham had faith in me, but perhaps he never fully trusted anyone. I would not either, in his position.
Gifford and I moved through to the bedchamber, where he flopped on the pallet without undressing, hands folded across his stomach, staring at the ceiling.
‘I suppose you were in love with her too,’ he said, after a while, as I took off my doublet and laid it at the foot of Phelippes’s bed. ‘Mary Gifford, I mean. If that was even her real name.’
I sat down to pull off my boots. ‘No, I was not in love with her.’ This was a lie, but there was no need for him to know that. Her real name was Sophia Underhill, but that was not his concern either.
‘I thought I was,’ Gifford said, with unexpected candour. ‘Now I know it was not love – only a mere shadow of the real thing.’ A dreamy smile played at the corners of his mouth. I set my boots down and leaned forward to look at him.
‘You have found the real thing, then?’ I asked, keeping my voice casual.
His eyes darted sideways at me and his expression hardened. ‘If I had, I would not speak of it to you – you would run straight to tell Walsingham for the chink of a couple of groats in your purse.’
‘Why, is it something Walsingham should know of?’
A deep colour spread instantly over the boy’s face, displacing even the flush of drink. ‘No. I mean to say – I have nothing to hide from him. But some things I may keep private. He is not master of my affections, though he may have bought my service.’
‘Well, whoever has command of your heart now must be a rare beauty, if she has displaced the lovely Mary Gifford in your eyes.’ I leaned back on the bed, not looking at him, hoping an offhand manner would invite further confidences.
He met this with a pointed silence, continuing to stare at the ceiling. I turned my back to him and began to unlace my shirt, feigning a lack of interest.
‘Her beauty is not so cheap as shows only in a glass,’ he burst out, eventually. ‘It also shines in her nobility of birth and character. Though, I confess, she has been blessed by nature too.’
I smiled to myself; in my experience, a young man will always find a way to boast of his conquests, even when he knows better.
‘She is a lady, then?’
‘The granddaughter of an earl, and serves the Queen herself in her bedchamber. Mary Gifford is nothing but a governess. I am not convinced we are even related. My father never heard of any branch of the family from Somerset.’
‘How did you meet this noble beauty?’ I asked, to prevent any further speculation on Mary Gifford’s identity. ‘The Queen keeps her women close, I thought?’
He seemed on the point of answering, but somewhere behind the haze of drink and infatuation, a note of caution sounded; I saw his eyes sharpen. ‘I will think twice before I tell you anything, Giordano Bruno. Paget warned me about you. I know you for a heretic.’
‘Well, my soul is no business of yours, Gifford, but we serve the same earthly master now, so we will have to get along a little better. Give you good night.’ I leaned over and blew out the candle. If I were to agree to Walsingham’s absurd scheme – and I had not yet given any undertaking, though he seemed to have assumed my willingness – there would be time enough to win Gifford over. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and allowed the exhaustion of the past two days to fall on me. The creak of boards carried from the adjoining room as Phelippes moved around, about his secret work of symbols and ciphers, saving the realm. I was about to tumble over the edge of sleep when Gifford shifted on his pallet and yawned.
‘She came back to London, you know. Mary Gifford, I mean.’
I pushed myself upright instantly. ‘What? When?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘What is it to you? I thought you were not in love with her.’
I ignored this. ‘She spoke to me of returning to London, but in a year or so, she said. Do you know different?’
He stretched out his limbs, enjoying this small power. ‘Perhaps she grew impatient. Before I left at Christmas, she had asked Paget to write her a letter of recommendation to a family he knew in London, to serve as a lady’s companion.’
‘And did he? What was the family’s name?’
‘I will have to see if I can recall. Give you good night, Bruno. Sleep well.’
I could hear the smile in his voice as he turned over. I called him a son of a whore under my breath in Italian and flung myself back on the bed, all thoughts of sleep banished. Moonlight slanted through the narrow casement; I stared at the patterns it cast on the wall while I considered that Sophia Underhill, the woman who had troubled my dreams in all her various names since I first encountered her in Oxford three years ago, might be out there somewhere in the same city, perhaps only streets away. I turned on to my side, and heard a furtive rustling from Gifford’s pallet, a sound I knew all too well from years confined as a Dominican friar; the boy was furiously frotting himself, no doubt thinking of his new love’s noble character. Madonna porca. I was too old to be sharing a bedchamber with worked-up boys. I rolled on my back and recalled my last meeting with Sophia in Paris, when she still called herself Mary Gifford. She had fled to France to escape the law in England, but she had always meant to return; she had left behind a child, taken from her at birth because she was unmarried, but she had not given up her dream of finding him again. If she had hastened her return to London, it could only mean she had received news that gave her reason to hope. If I could see her, perhaps I could be of use to her in her quest. Then I remembered that, if I stayed in London, it would be as a Spanish Jesuit and my time would be taken up conspiring to regicide; it would be all but impossible for me to see anything of Sophia in that guise. Even so – if Gifford was telling the truth, her presence here was another reason to consider staying.
The boy made a noise like a strangled fox as he finished and was snoring within minutes. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if any of the possible rewards of this business would be worth the price.
The next day I woke early, blinking into a chilly light, aches deep in my shoulders and thighs from two days in the saddle. Gifford lay sprawled on his pallet, twitching in dreams like a dog, but I could hear low voices from the adjoining room, so I splashed water over my face and quietly pulled on my clothes, thinking Walsingham must have come for my answer. Instead