Prophecy - Страница 29

By now several people are turning to look at the source of the disturbance while the singers’ fluting voices still rise to the rafters. Elizabeth herself has noticed and leans forward, hands resting on the arms of her throne, to see who dares interrupt the concert, with a look of irritation that quickly turns to concern as she sees her two senior statesmen huddled with the soldier. Walsingham holds up a hand to her, a gesture that says, Don’t worry, we have this under control. But his face is tight with anxiety and now he raises himself on tiptoe, searching the crowd again, as if he hoped to find someone in particular. Then he leans in to the soldier, whispers some hasty instructions, and the three of them — Burghley, Walsingham and the guard — leave the hall by a side door.

I try to concentrate on the music but the blood is hammering at my temples: the palace guard, his look of fearful urgency; Burghley and Walsingham and their strained expressions. Something terrible has happened, I am certain of it, and try as I might to rein in my worst imaginings, my mind returns again and again to the absence of Abigail among the queen’s maids and the suspicion that someone had been watching our exchange at the Holbein Gate. But I can hardly leave the concert and follow Walsingham; publicly I am no one here, only an insignificant guest of the French ambassador. It is not my place to ask questions. The choir continues its ethereal song; there is a movement, another disturbance, at the other end of the hall, opposite the dais, but when I crane my neck to look, I see that it is only servants bringing in candles, which they fit into wall sconces between the tapestries as the last of the daylight is dying. Then I notice that, behind the servants, armed men have unobtrusively slipped into place either side of the main doors, and still the singing continues. My palms are sweating; I wipe them on my breeches and fix my attention on the choir, but my mouth is dry. Another motet begins and fades to its bittersweet, plaintive close.

‘Giordano Bruno?’

His breath is hot on my cheek, his voice barely audible. In the corner of my vision, a bearded face appears so close to mine that I can’t focus.

‘Don’t turn or speak, sir. In a few minutes, find a moment to slip through the door behind you, as discreetly as you can. Master Secretary’s orders.’

He moves away as invisibly as he arrived, without my even having seen his face fully. I wait until I am sure that Castelnau, Marie and Courcelles have their eyes fixed on the choir and take a short step backwards, then another, until I am hidden by other guests. A side door is built into the panelling; as I approach, the guard there holds it open a fraction and I back through the narrow gap. On the other side, a tall young man, bearded and wearing a black suit, waits for me. He has the appearance of a clerk.

‘This way.’ He gestures to the corridor ahead.

‘Can you tell me what this is about?’

He shakes his head, his mouth set in a grim line, and motions for me to continue down the passageway that leads away from the Great Hall towards a warren of state apartments. When we need to turn a corner, he places a palm lightly on the small of my back to show me the way. At the end of another corridor he stops outside a door and knocks, before ushering me into a small, sparsely furnished office with tall windows. The Earl of Leicester leans against the wall by the window, looking out at the darkening sky as if deep in thought while shadows carve deep hollows around his eyes and the sharp bones of his face; Walsingham paces, one hand clasped across his mouth and chin; Burghley stands by the writing desk, watching the door, his skullcap awry and his white hair sticking up in tufts where he has run his hands through it. Beside him, to my immense surprise, stands the skinny boy who brought me the message from Abigail three days ago. He wipes his hands repeatedly on a streaked apron that suggests he works in the kitchens, and by the look of his face he has been crying. As the guard shuts the door softly behind me, the boy points at me and cries, accusing —

‘That’s him, sir! That’s the man!’

Chapter Eight

Palace of Whitehall, London

30th September, Year of Our Lord 1583, cont.

Lord Burghley’s face constricts in an expression of distress. I suspect it is mirrored on my own face, though I don’t yet know why. No one moves.

‘You’re quite sure? This is the man who gave you the message for Lady Abigail?’

Walsingham speaks sharply and the boy looks confused; his eyes flick wildly from me to Walsingham to Burghley and back, as if between us we are trying to trick him.

‘No! Not the message — that is to say — the message came from him, but it wa’n’t him who gave it to me.’

‘You are not making any sense, boy.’

‘He told me the message came from Master Bruno — the man who stopped me in the yard,’ the boy says, a note of panic rising in his voice. ‘I couldn’t rightly see him in the dark, but he had an English voice. This is Master Bruno,’ he adds, pointing again. ‘It wa’n’t his voice. He’s not English.’

‘We know that.’ For a moment Walsingham betrays his impatience, then he masters himself and his tone softens. ‘We need to understand what happened tonight. Jem, is it?’

The boy nods unhappily.

‘Good. Then, Jem — tell us again. A man you don’t know stopped you earlier in the yard by the kitchens and asked you to give a message to Abigail Morley from Master Bruno. Is that right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you didn’t see this man clearly?’

‘No, sir. The candles hadn’t been lit yet and it was shadowy. And he had a big hat, pulled down over his face, and his collar all up like this, sir.’ He tugs at the neck of his dirty tunic to demonstrate. There is a pause. ‘He might’ve had a beard,’ the boy offers, hopefully.

Walsingham rolls his eyes.

‘He might have had a beard. Well, at least we can rule out the women and children.’

‘Not all the women,’ Leicester says, under his breath, from the window. I catch his eye and he smiles, briefly; despite the tension in the room, I return it. It is almost a relief. Burghley sends him a reproachful stare.

‘And what was the message, exactly?’ Walsingham continues.

‘To tell her — to say that Master Bruno wanted to meet her in secret at the kitchen dock before the concert. He said it was urgent. Then he gived me a shilling.’ The boy glances around again nervously, as if afraid he might be asked to give up the coin.

Walsingham frowns.

‘And you delivered this message straight away? To Her Majesty’s private apartments? How did you manage that?’

‘I took up some sweetmeats, sir. Then the guards can’t stop you — you just say the queen’s asked for ‘em, they don’t know otherwise. The girls — Her Majesty’s maids, I mean — they often get messages in and out by us kitchen boys.’ He bites his lip then, looking guilty. ‘I got as far as I could and got one of them to fetch Abigail.’

‘And how did she seem when you gave her the message?’

‘Frightened, sir,’ the boy says, without hesitation. ‘She said she’d come directly, and not to tell anyone else about it.’

‘And this was before the concert began? How long before?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’ The boy looks at his frayed shoes. ‘I don’t know how to read the time. Not long, though — there weren’t many people left in the kitchens, I know that. They gived us the night off because she had her supper early, on account of the music. Her Majesty, I mean. And there was already people arriving.’

Walsingham gives me a frank look.

‘I never sent any such message tonight,’ I say, trying not to sound defensive. ‘Will someone tell me what has happened?’

‘They’ve killed her,’ the boy blurts, glaring at me with accusing eyes. ‘And if it wa’n’t you, then it was the other feller, and if it wa’n’t him, then it was the Devil himself!’

I find, when I hear the words spoken aloud, that I had expected this, or something like it; the sense of foreboding that had taken root when I first noticed Abigail’s absence in the queen’s train had been steadily growing in my imagination, but the bluntness of the boy’s outcry still shocks me. So the killer has found his way to Abigail, I think, as my mind fumbles blindly to make sense of the boy’s story, and though the message was not my doing, the circumstance is indisputably my fault.

Leicester stirs unhurriedly from his place by the window, stretching out his long limbs as if this were his cue. He nods to Walsingham and then gestures towards the door with the slightest movement of his head. Walsingham holds up a forefinger, signalling for him to wait.

‘You’ve been very helpful, Jem,’ Walsingham says gently to the boy. ‘I have one more question. Do you think this man waited for you especially to take his message?’

‘Well — yes, sir.’ The boy blinks rapidly, as if he fears another trick. ‘Because of me taking the message before, see? I suppose he must have known, somehow.’

‘What message before?’ Walsingham’s voice is sharp as a blade again.

‘From Lady Abigail to him.’ He points at me. ‘In Fleet Street, sir. I had to wait half a day in the stables with them French boys threatening to knock me down.’ He bares his teeth, as if the memory of it still stings.

‘Thank you. I’d like you to go with the sarjeant now, Jem. We may have some more questions for you. If you can remember any more details about the man with the hat — anything about his voice, his face, his figure, anything at all that might help us — I would be very grateful.’