‘The enemies of England are not resting.’
He pursed his lips, as if he approved this answer. ‘Then put on dry clothes, if you have them, and I will meet you outside in half an hour with everything you need.’
He clapped me on both shoulders and left. I stood and stretched my back, catching sight of myself in the darkened window. Thirty-eight, and looking haggard with it. Black hair, stiff with salt, curling past my collar; a four-day growth of beard; dark hollows under my eyes and below my cheekbones from lack of sleep, and lack of something else. Purpose? Peace of mind? These last few months in Paris had been melancholy. No wonder those two searchers at the port had suspected me of desperate measures; I looked like a vagrant – which was, I reflected, not so far from the truth. I had been living in exile for a decade now, one eye turned always over my shoulder, as a man with powerful enemies must. The Queen of England could put an end to that, if she chose, once I had proved my worth to her.
I undid my pack and pressed along the stitching of the secret compartment. I could feel the slight ridge of the leather wallet inside containing the documents. But the letter’s contents were committed word for word to my memory, and its cipher too. Let it be stolen; the paper would be useless to anyone without the knowledge I alone carried in my head. I would bring it to the door of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster and lay it at his feet, to remind him – and his sovereign – what service I had done England in the past.
‘Lady Sidney will see you now.’
The man who grudgingly addressed me wore a steward’s chain of office, a black doublet with a blanched muslin ruff and soft leather indoor shoes; he kept his distance, halfway up the path to the entrance of the red-brick mansion on Seething Lane. I jerked my head up at his voice; we had been waiting half an hour already and I had almost given up hope of a response. I was not exactly surprised; if I had looked like a desperate man when I landed in Rye, it was fortunate I could not see myself in a glass by the time we reached London, on the evening of 29th July, our second day on the road. I must have had the appearance of a lunatic assassin: mad-eyed, unslept, unwashed, unshaven. The guards had had their weapons in my face before I had even dismounted. It fell to my taciturn companion, Richard Daniel’s man, to step forward with his official messenger’s livery and prove that I had not come to murder Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State in his own home.
One of the guards held his halberd lowered towards me, the point a foot from my chest, while his colleague unlocked the tall iron gates and nodded me through.
‘Just you,’ the steward added. ‘He can go to the servants’ quarters.’ He motioned to Daniel’s rider, a sturdy Sussex man who had spoken little on the journey, except to mutter occasional resentment at having his progress slowed by an incompetent foreigner half-asleep in the saddle.
Golden evening sun caught the many diamond-paned windows of Walsingham’s town house. The light softened its mellow brick and glazed the tall twisted chimneys like sugar sculptures. It was a house that discreetly announced its owner’s wealth. The Queen had rewarded her spymaster handsomely for his tireless service, as well she might; most of his spare funds were diverted into paying his intelligencers, since Elizabeth’s Treasury was notoriously miserly with resources, preferring not to acknowledge the underground networks of information and interception that protected her realm just as surely as her warships and soldiers, with a great deal less expense.
‘You will find Lady Sidney in a sombre cast of mind,’ the steward informed me, with a pompous air, as the heavy oak door was drawn back by a young woman in a black dress and white coif. ‘I hope it is no bad news you bring, as she should not be troubled further. Perhaps it would be best if I relayed your message to her?’
‘My news is for Lady Sidney’s ears alone,’ I said. His moustache twitched with disapproval, but to my relief he did not press me further, only gestured for me to follow him along a panelled corridor hung with tapestries.
I had guessed Walsingham would not be here; he would likely be at court, at the Queen’s right hand, or at his country house upriver in Barn Elms, near Mortlake. I had gambled on the house at Seething Lane, where his daughter lived, as the quickest way to him, wherever he was currently to be found. I barely knew Frances Sidney, as she now was, and was not at all convinced that my name would mean anything to her; I had only dared hope she might receive me for the sake of her husband, Sir Philip, who had been my closest friend when I lived in England a year ago. Sidney was now away in the Low Countries, fighting with Elizabeth’s forces against the Spanish under the command of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, but I hoped there would be a vicarious pleasure in hearing news of him from his wife.
I was ushered through a door at the end of the corridor into a wide receiving-room, flooded with light from its west-facing windows. Lady Sidney rose from a chair by the fireplace and held out a hand in greeting. She was as slight as I remembered, in a gown of dark grey satin, though it was barely eight months since her child was born. Her pale face was still almost a girl’s, but as she approached I saw that her smile was brittle and shaky, her eyes puffy with traces of tears. The weight of my journey and lack of sleep seemed to land on me with one blow as I struggled with the import of her appearance. Why had the steward not warned me more clearly? Not Sidney, surely, it couldn’t be? There would have been news in Paris – he was well connected among the English diplomats there – I would have heard, would I not? My knees buckled; I stumbled back a pace as I stared at her, open-mouthed, forgetting all etiquette, unable to form the words I dreaded to speak.
Frances Sidney darted forward and drew a stool from the hearth to offer me.
‘Marston, fetch this man food and drink at once, can’t you see the journey he’s had?’ She spoke sternly to the steward, but she was so young, barely twenty, and her command sounded like a child playing at running a household. The man gave a curt bow, but his look was not one of deference.
‘With respect, madam – I am not sure I should leave you alone with this man. Your father—’
‘My father trusts this man with his life,’ she said hotly. ‘Now go and do as I ask before our guest faints from hunger.’ She turned to me, her hands outstretched. ‘Bruno.’ There was warmth in her smile, as well as sadness. ‘I did not think we would see you again. You left for Paris last autumn, I thought?’
‘I had good reason to return.’ I took her hands in mine and kissed them briefly. ‘But my lady, tell me …’ I stood back and searched her face. ‘I intrude on some private grief? I pray it is not …’ I hesitated again ‘… news from the front?’
She gave a little gasp and pressed a hand to her mouth, then let out a brief, panicked laugh. ‘Oh God, no – you thought …? No, Philip is well, I am sorry to have alarmed you. If anything had happened to him, you would have heard my lament all the way from London Bridge. The whole city would be in mourning. But you are right that you find us a house of sorrow. We have suffered—’ She broke off, pressing her lips together as if afraid of breaking a confidence. ‘That is a story for another time. Sit – you look exhausted. Tell me in truth, though – I will wager you have not travelled from Paris without rest just to visit me.’
‘I must see Sir Francis,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘As soon as possible.’ Lady Sidney’s waiting woman stood by the window, her hands folded neatly behind her back, not observing her mistress, but nevertheless I felt I should be discreet, even in this household where secrets were a native language.
Frances nodded, her face solemn again. ‘Plots?’
‘What else?’
She pulled a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and worried its edges between her fingers. ‘Father never sleeps now, you know – he says the Catholic plots are like the Hydra, you cut the head off one and a hundred more grow in its place. He is making himself ill with it, and still Her Majesty remains stubborn, she will not heed his advice nor pass the laws that would make her safer. She wills