‘You must miss him,’ I said, through gritted teeth, wondering how tight I was supposed to hold the squirming bundle.
A shadow passed over Frances’s face. ‘None of this would have happened if he had been at home,’ she said, a dark undertone to her voice. ‘He would not have countenanced it.’
‘None of what?’ I asked, as I sensed I was supposed to.
‘My lady,’ Alice said, with a note of warning. The baby fixed her wide blue eyes on me, her expression uncertain, before opening her mouth and letting forth a furnace of furious noise. I jiggled her fruitlessly, sent a sidelong pleading glance to her mother, who watched me with that wry amusement women save for the spectacle of male incompetence; finally, in the absence of any other solution, I swung the child above my head and held her there. The sudden movement shocked her into silence; I made a face at her, in the air, and after a moment of suspicion she chuckled and squeaked in a manner that seemed to signify approval.
‘You are a natural, Bruno,’ Frances said, as if I had passed a test. ‘Now when you next write to Philip, you can tell him you have held his daughter in your arms. Which is more than he has ever done. But’ – her eyes lit up – ‘next month, God willing, she and I sail for Flushing to join him. The Earl of Leicester himself is making the arrangements.’
‘Your father will let you?’ I lowered the infant, who shrieked immediately to repeat the game, confirming my theory that all children are tyrants, and tyrants merely children who have never been refused.
Frances’s face darkened. ‘He will not dare oppose Sir Philip and the Earl together. Besides, my husband is my master, not my father.’
I nodded quickly. In the ordinary course of events, this would be true. A woman’s duty passed to her husband on her marriage, but theirs was not an ordinary situation; Walsingham had quietly dispatched thousands of pounds of Sidney’s debts on the joining of the two families, and given the young couple this fine house to live in, since Sidney’s youthful extravagance meant he could not afford to provide a home for his wife and daughter. I had always supposed there was little question about who was master in this household. Sidney’s desire to go to war had been partly prompted by the need to escape the weight of being beholden to his father-in-law.
‘But if this business with Clara is not resolved,’ Frances continued, biting at the edge of her thumb, ‘my father may fear further danger and hesitate to let me travel alone.’ She gave me a long look, until she was certain I understood what was at stake, and the part she wanted me to play. This, I supposed, was my cue to ask why the death of her companion should prevent her from travelling to the Low Countries – I guessed it must be to do with the ‘complications’ she had hinted at surrounding the girl’s murder – but before I could form the question, the steward Marston burst through the door carrying a silver jug and a linen towel, his face flushed with his news.
‘My lady, Sir Francis has arrived early, with Thomas Phelippes.’ He glanced at me, exaggerating his surprise at seeing me holding the baby aloft. ‘Should I show this man out while you greet your father? He has the dust of the road on him still.’
‘Certainly not. My father is not squeamish about a bit of sweat, Marston. He will be almost as delighted to see Bruno as he is to see Lizzie.’ She turned to me. ‘He dotes on that child. If the Queen of Scots ever saw the doe-eyed grandfather inventing rhymes, singing nursery ditties, braying like a donkey and I don’t know what other nonsense, she would never fear him again.’
‘You had better watch that the Catholics don’t recruit the baby to wheedle her way past his defences,’ I said, smiling.
Marston cut me a disapproving look. I could not picture Master Secretary’s dour, terse expression softening to impersonate animals, though I had glimpsed Walsingham’s more human side now and again when I was last in his service. It was not an aspect of his character he showed often; he wished to be perceived as unbending in his devotion to the security of the realm. Perhaps he needed to believe it himself. Above me, the baby gurgled and released a spool of spittle on to my forehead.
‘Where is my little kitten?’ called that familiar dry voice from the corridor, to the beat of quick footsteps, and here he was, striding across the chamber, dressed head to foot in black as always, his hair greyer under the close-fitting skullcap, his beard too, and his face thinner than when I had last seen him, nearly a year ago. He stopped in his tracks halfway across the room and a broad smile creased his long face.
‘Good God in Heaven. Two people I never thought to see in an embrace.’ He gave his daughter a perfunctory pat on the shoulder on his way past, but his attention was all for the baby, who shrieked in delighted recognition and strained out of my arms towards him. ‘Well, well. Giordano Bruno. So you have come hotfoot all this way from Paris to see the newest shoot of the Walsingham tree, eh?’
‘She’s a Sidney,’ Frances said, her voice tight. I noticed how she hung back; her father managed to command all the space in the room, though he was not a tall or broad man. He laughed and held out his arms for the child; I passed her over gladly.
‘What say you, Bruno?’ He pinched the baby’s cheek while she tugged at his beard and burbled. ‘She has the Walsingham shrewd eye, does she not, and witness the firm set of her jaw? None of your aristocratic foppishness in this little chin, is there, my dove?’
I stood, straightened my clothes, and effected a bow, though he was so absorbed in his granddaughter, he would not have noticed if I had pulled down my breeches.
‘She combines the perfection of all the virtues of her illustrious forebears on both sides, Your Honour.’
‘I see you have been perfecting the empty flattery that passes for diplomacy at the French court,’ he said, giving me a sidelong glance at last. ‘For a more honest answer I shall have to seek the opinion of Master Phelippes. Thomas, what say you – is my granddaughter a Walsingham through and through?’
The man standing patiently in the doorway now stepped forward. Thomas Phelippes, Walsingham’s most trusted assistant and master cryptographer, was unremarkable in appearance – early thirties, thinning sandy hair, long face, his cheeks pitted with smallpox scars – but his looks belied a singular disposition. Phelippes boasted a phenomenal memory, a source of great fascination and envy to me, since it appeared to be the result of a natural gift rather than determined study – he had merely to glance over a cipher once and could not only commit it to mind but analyse and unpick it in the same instant. But he also had a way of not meeting your eye, and an almost comical resistance to the finer points of tact and social niceties. If Phelippes thought you were an idiot or your breath smelled, he would tell you outright, though without malice, finding no need for a polite falsehood. I found his honesty refreshing, if occasionally disconcerting, and liked him, though I sensed that being liked by me or anyone else made no difference to him either way. He put his head on one side and considered the baby.
‘She has enough semblance of the Sidney family to allow for a reasonable degree of certainty about her paternity,’ he said, matter-of-factly. Lady Sidney made a little noise of indignation. ‘Theories of generation differ as to whether the female can imprint characteristics on the growing infant, or is merely a receptacle for the male seed, and as yet there is no conclusive evidence either way. This one is so young it is presently impossible to gauge the quality of her mind. Being female one would naturally expect it to be weaker, so if you are asking whether you can expect to see echoes of your own traits in her, Your Honour, you will probably be disappointed. But this is not really my field of expertise,’ he added, with a shrug.
Walsingham chuckled, largely at his daughter’s bunched fists and tight expression. ‘Well, Frances, there you have it. You will want to occupy yourself with the child and supper, I expect,’ he said, handing the baby back to her. ‘I will speak with Bruno in my study. Call us when the food is ready.’
Lady Sidney watched us to the door, eyes dark with mute rebellion. I guessed she was biding