Nick was frowning to himself as his companion fell silent. He would have liked to confide in Matthew, for he was a good man and true to his principles, but in knowledge lay danger and Nick would not involve his sister’s husband in this.
There were but few men he would trust with the problem that was taxing his mind. The court was alive with intrigue, and one could never be sure where others stood. This business of Norfolk had seemed settled after the failure of the Northern Earls in their uprising of November 1569. The Queen, reluctant to punish her cousin, had allowed him at least partial freedom—but there was treachery afoot, and if it were not for the vigilance of men like Francis Walsingham and Sir William Cecil England might even now be at war with a foreign invader.
Nicholas’s business in London was important but not urgent. There was time enough for him to speak to the man he trusted most outside his family. Oliver Woodville was his late brother’s closest friend, and the man who had brought them the news of Harry’s death. He had broken the news first through a letter and then had come in person on his return to England.
Oliver had been very distressed by Harry’s death, but though he assured the family that it had been caused by a common fever, which affected many travellers, Nicholas had always retained a faint suspicion that Oliver himself was not convinced. Or perhaps it was merely Nicholas who refused to be convinced, because his grief was too terrible to bear, his sense of loss too deep for a younger brother to accept. However, his reason for seeking Oliver out was only partially to do with his brother’s death all those years ago; he had other concerns that nibbled at his mind, troubling him with a half-forgotten memory. More pressing perhaps was his secret work for Walsingham.
The Italian banker Ridolfi had most certainly been behind this latest plot, but was there also another hand involved? Walsingham was uncertain, though he suspected something…something hidden beneath the layers of intrigue and deceit.
‘Ridolfi would seem the prime mover in this plot, for it is certain Norfolk hath not the stomach for it,’ Walsingham had told Nick privately in Paris at their last meeting. ‘Had he grasped the nettle in ’sixty-nine he might have raised the country and swept Elizabeth from the throne. There is much love for Norfolk, amongst commoners and nobles alike. Even Cecil likes the man, though they be on opposite sides in this matter, but he would not see him dead, and Her Majesty protects him. I believe him dangerous but not the prime mover in these plots.’
‘But once his true perfidy is proven? Surely Her Majesty will see he is a traitor and must be dealt with as such?’
‘As yet the final pieces have still to be found,’ Walsingham had told him. ‘We know much, but Her Majesty is no weakling to be directed against her will in this. She asks for absolute proof of his guilt and will not return Norfolk to the Tower until we have it.’
Nick nodded, looking thoughtful. He knew well that Elizabeth was made of stubborn material, and given now and then to sudden rages like her father. Despite gossip and the harm done by malicious tongues that had slandered Anne Boleyn, there was no doubt in those closest to Her Majesty that King Henry VIII had fathered the courageous, determined lady many called Gloriana.
But this was not the problem that Walsingham was currently trying to grasp. Nick looked at him for a moment, trying to fathom the working of this clever mind. ‘And you think there is still another traitor involved in this plot—someone we do not yet know?’
‘I sense him…smell him,’ Walsingham declared. ‘There is the stench of evil about him, Nick, but I cannot name him. Nor can I say for sure that he exists outside my imagination.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I have my suspicions of John Dee, but he is Her Majesty’s astrologer and trusted by her. I do not like the man and think him a bad influence on the Queen, but without proof my hands are tied.’
‘You think Her Majesty’s astrologer may be involved in some plot against her? Surely not?’
‘Some writings came to my hand, from Dee to a man who had sought his advice on workings of the occult. There was nothing of treachery in them, but something…’ He shook his head. ‘I do not trust the man nor any that treat with him.’
‘But you have no proof,’ Nick asked and Walsingham shook his head. ‘Nay, I need not ask, for you would have moved against him had the evidence been in your hands.’
‘In my business I glean crumbs from time to time and in this way my bread is baked. If the man be in league with the Devil I shall find him out one day.’
Absolute proof was hard to find and must be sought thread by thread until the tapestry was complete. And that would be all the harder if, as Nick suspected, he himself had been followed to and from his last meeting with Walsingham. Could their conversation have been overheard—and who was the man he had caught a glimpse of in the shadows?
He could not be certain. Indeed, he had seen the man in the shadows only briefly as they walked together in the gardens of Walsingham’s house at dusk. That brief sighting had touched a chord in his memory when he recalled it later, taking him back to a time when he had been much younger. Yet was it possible? It seemed unlikely. He was most probably mistaken; it had more likely been a trick of the light or a face long forgotten remembered wrongly, but it would do no harm to ask Oliver for a name.
The remainder of Catherine and Lady Stamford’s journey to town was uneventful, though they had to accomplish it without the baggage coach, which having somehow missed them on the road had continued on to London and awaited them at Lady Stamford’s town house.
The house, situated just off St James’s and convenient for the Palace of Whitehall, which was the Queen’s main residence in London, although she had many other palaces within a short distance, was a tall, narrow building with overhanging windows and a timbered frame.
Catherine was surprised at the closeness of the houses through which they passed on their way to Lady Stamford’s home. The streets were filthy and the smell that came from the rubbish-strewn gutters indescribably foul. She had expected her aunt’s house to be larger, but Lady Stamford explained that as she came to town only occasionally she did not need anything grand.
‘We shall be out most of the time, and I do not entertain lavishly in town, merely a supper or two if I feel inclined to invite close friends. Indeed, if it were not for Willis I might be tempted to sell it altogether. My second husband, who had ambitions at court, bought the house as a gift for me. Unfortunately, he caught the pox and died before he had a chance to make his name. And then of course I married again, and when the young king was taken from us my husband felt it prudent to retire to the country. We did not come to town again for a long time.’
Many Protestant ladies and gentlemen had done as much during the reign of the Queen some named Bloody Mary. It had been safer and more prudent so.
The London house had been reopened after Elizabeth came to the throne amongst scenes of rejoicing by the common folk, Lady Stamford having attended the Coronation and been present in the Abbey. Her third husband had unfortunately died soon after of a putrid fever, and once again she had retired to her house in Berkshire. Now she had returned to London for Catherine’s benefit.
Inside, the furnishings were good solid oak, some of it worn to a mellow softness by time and wear. The unwarranted use of English oak for anything but shipbuilding was frowned on these days, because it had been over-used, and imported woods were beginning to take its place, walnut being a favourite for good furniture. However, there were rich hangings on the walls and a set of six beautifully carved elbow chairs with padded backs covered in a bright tapestry. The stuffed backs made them more comfortable than any Catherine had ever used before and she remarked on it to her aunt.
‘They were a special present to me from my third husband for our wedding,’ she told Catherine. ‘He asked me what would please me most and I told him of chairs I had seen in Her Majesty’s bedchamber so he commissioned these for me. I liked them better than any jewel, and they have given me ease on many a weary night. There