‘You could not have known how it would end.’
‘I should have guessed, and put my foot down. I knew what those men were like, I’d seen what they were capable of. And Clara was soft-hearted. She married a man with no money because he won her with pretty words. She should never have gone near the like of Babington and his friends. Our father would spin in his grave. God knows when I shall even be permitted to bury her.’
‘You have not seen her?’
‘He won’t let me, yet. Says it’s vital her death does not become public knowledge too soon, the better to allow her killers to betray themselves.’ He shook his head and his voice took on a dark edge. ‘That’s what makes me think he is keeping something from me.’
He left an expectant pause but I said nothing, and we rode on in silence, passing through the north gatehouse of London Bridge. A young man hung limply by his wrists in the pillory, glazed eyes barely noting the passers-by, who were too caught up squeezing through the archway to pay him any heed. It was only as we drew level that I realised it was a girl dressed in men’s clothes, her hair cut short, her face grey with fatigue.
‘What’s her offence, do you think?’ I asked Poole, leaning forward.
He gave her the briefest glance. ‘She’ll be a whore from the Bankside stews,’ he said, as if this were an everyday sight. ‘Some of them dress as boys for the clients. It’s prohibited. If they’re caught, it’s a few hours in the pillory.’
The girl looked up at me from under her hooded lids, her expression neither pleading nor defiant, and I recalled the day Sophia Underhill had come looking for me disguised as a boy to escape a charge of murder. I wondered again where she might be, and whether her current identity as Mary Gifford was any more comfortable to her. If Gilbert Gifford insisted on playing games about how to find her, I was quite prepared to threaten it out of him.
Our progress slowed as we joined the flow of traffic making its way along the narrow conduit, barely twelve feet across, between the houses crammed each side of the bridge. Carts, wagons, horses and people on foot hoisting baskets or children on their shoulders were forced into a laborious shuffling procession, one lane in each direction, accompanied by cursing and shoving as those in a hurry tried to push ahead, only to be forced back, sometimes with blows, by people in front determined not to give way. The stink of horseshit rose as we inched forward; I took a deep breath through the kerchief and considered that, in my eagerness to return to London, I had forgotten how much I resented trying to get around the place.
‘Where are we going?’ I shouted at the back of Poole’s head, as the horse flicked its ears, impatient at the throng milling about its legs.
‘To search the place she was found.’
‘Has that not been done already? It was two days ago, I thought.’
He made a scornful noise through his teeth. ‘I wouldn’t trust the London constables to search their own breeches and find their cocks.’
‘And what are we looking for?’
‘We’ll know if we find it.’
I let this cryptic answer hang for a moment.
‘This will be a difficult task for you,’ I said, when he made no move to continue the conversation. The muscles across his back stiffened.
‘Who has suggested that?’
‘I mean only that you cannot be impartial.’
‘None of us is impartial, in this business.’ He allowed a pause. ‘Oh, I see. They have told you I will blunder in and mar the project, because I cannot contain my grief. Who said that, Phelippes?’
‘No one has said so.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. Even in quarter profile I could see his scorn. ‘How long have you been in the Service?’
‘For Walsingham? I met him in the spring of ’83, shortly after I arrived in England.’
‘Three years, then. Though you have been out of the country since last autumn, I understand.’ He sounded pleased, as if he had won an argument. ‘I have served him twelve, since he was first appointed to the Privy Council.’
‘What is it you do for him, exactly?’
‘I talk to people.’ He set his eyes ahead so that I could not see his face, but I could tell from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Listen, I’ve been in prison three times for his sake, once for two months, and given no special treatment that would mark me out as his man. I took my beatings like the rest of the papist suspects, and my knee has never fully recovered.’ He slapped his right leg, hard, as if to punish it. ‘If I did not betray myself then, I will not now, any more than you will.’
‘I meant no offence,’ I said hastily. ‘Only that I have never lost a sister – I do not know that I could keep my countenance in your position.’
‘I think you are disingenuous, my friend.’ But he sounded mollified. ‘If he thought you could be ruled by your emotions or betray yourself so easily, he would not have chosen you. For myself, I must put grief to one side. I know how to do that well enough. Sister or no sister, she was a pawn in a chess game played for high stakes, and I intend to find out who took her.’
I felt his metaphor was flawed, though I resisted pointing this out. He appeared to have assumed a responsibility for investigating Clara Poole’s death that I suspected did not come from Walsingham, and again I wondered at Master Secretary’s motive in involving him.
‘Tell me of this Babington group, then,’ I said, to channel his anger. ‘What kind of men are they? Besides ruthless.’
He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Walsingham insists on giving the business Babington’s name, since Babington’s money is furnishing the plans and he wants the glory. They should more properly call it the Ballard plot. That priest is the dangerous one among them. Him, I would call ruthless. Next to him, Babington is a mere fop. A pretty, rich boy looking for adventure. He wanted a cause, and in Mary Stuart he has found one. And the others can’t proceed without his money, so he is flattered and made to feel important.’
‘You think Babington’s faith is not sincere?’
‘Oh, he believes absolutely in his own sincerity, and the idea of himself as the saviour of England. But I don’t think he gives two shits for the sufferings of ordinary English Catholics. His father left him a thousand pounds a year, what would he know of hardship?’
He did not trouble to disguise his anger. I had the sense that Robin Poole’s antipathy to Anthony Babington had put down roots long before the death of his sister.
‘And the others?’ I prompted.
‘Let’s see. Father John Ballard. Thirty-seven, ordained priest, goes about in the guise of a veteran soldier. Calls himself Captain Fortescue. His faith verges on fanatical. If he’d been born in your country, he’d have volunteered to join the Inquisition, and enjoyed it.’
‘I have met the type,’ I said, with feeling.
‘Ballard dreams of ushering in the reign of a second Bloody Mary, turning the skies over England dark with the smoke of burning Protestants. If anyone could kill a young girl in cold blood, it would be him. Or more likely his faithful dog Jack Savage, who is justly named – he used to be a professional fighter. Then there’s Chidiock Tichborne, Babington’s closest friend – another rich boy who only wants England’s return to Rome so he can get his father’s estate back. Same with Thomas Salisbury – he’s the one Ballard has riding about the country persuading Catholic nobles to let Spanish troops land on their coastline.’ He gave a sceptical laugh. ‘They really think Philip of Spain is going to send his Armada when they snap their fingers. They are all