Prophecy - Страница 63

‘Can’t it wait?’ she calls back, peevish.

‘I fear not, madame. She complains of a fever and a pain in her stomach.’

‘Well, I am not a physician. Tell her you will fetch the barber surgeon — that will soon put an end to these games.’

A pause from the other side of the door.

‘Madame, I do not think she pretends. She feels very hot.’ The governess’s voice is strained. ‘She is calling for her mother.’

‘Oh, very well. Give me a moment.’

Marie rolls her eyes, stands and brushes down her dress. ‘Stay there,’ she mouths, then draws the curtain around me. I lie motionless as I hear the door click shut, then with an almighty effort of will, I bring my thoughts back to the task in hand. Adjusting my breeches, I scuttle to the writing desk and scan the sheets of paper Marie has left there. ‘Mon cher Henry,’ the letter begins. At first I assume she is writing to Howard, but as I scan through the papers, I am startled to find a reference to taking the crown of England followed by the French throne. Is this King Henri of France, then? Convinced I must have misread it, I force myself to look again, more thoroughly, and I see that in the same paragraph she writes of ‘your Scottish cousin’ being easy to move aside in due course, and ‘the reign of our weak king’ facing its last days. I feel my face stretch in disbelief as I take it in. This is meant for Henry, Duke of Guise, and the letter is full of scattered intimacies; a mention of the pain of separation, the cruelty of distance, remembered embraces, a wish to be reunited as soon as God allows. At the end of the letter she has scribbled a postscript, in a hand that looks as if it was done in haste: ‘I do not know when you will receive this, as I cannot send by my usual means.’ Beside her signature she has drawn a picture of a rose.

I return the paper to the desk, slow and stupid with amazement. This invasion plan truly has become all things to all men; Marie may talk of unity but while Henry Howard contrives his own secret agenda, so too does she scheme to turn it to her own profit. So she is more intimate than I guessed with the Duke of Guise, who evidently regards the English throne as his rightful spoils once the small matter of replacing the monarch is dealt with. What is Marie’s ultimate ambition, I wonder — is she hoping her husband will be a casualty of the ‘weak’ French king’s demise, so that she can take her place by Guise’s side? I wander back to the dressing table and pick up the green velvet casket again, still shaking my head. Behind their talk of religious purity and their duty to Christendom and the eternal souls of the English people, each of them is scrambling for dynastic advantage. You can be certain that Mendoza and the Spanish king are not lending their resources out of piety either, I think, turning the box over and over between my hands; if this invasion should really happen, they would tear England apart between them like street dogs falling on a scrap of meat. Elizabeth Tudor will certainly be a casualty, but Mary Stuart could also find her jubilant restoration turns quickly to a worse fate if the wrong faction gains the upper hand, and those good, rational men of the Privy Council — Walsingham, Burghley, Leicester — would all be destroyed. This small island, with its strange ways and the few precious freedoms it offers to those who, like me, have made an enemy of Rome, will be thrown into a turmoil that will make all the end-of-days prophecies of the penny pamphlets look like children’s stories, and who will be left to restore order except the powers of France or Spain, funded by the pope?

The green casket tells me nothing. I am no expert in jewel-lery, so I have no way of knowing whether this little box could be Mary Stuart’s and have made its way to Marie via Dumas, or whether it is the commonest sort of container. But thinking of Dumas, I suddenly stop and remember in a new light Marie’s hasty postscript. She could not send by her usual means — could she have meant Dumas? If Guise is her lover, she could not send letters to him through the embassy’s diplomatic packet; she would have needed another messenger, a secret means of conveying letters to France. Guise has his own agents and envoys in England — he conducts himself as if he were an alternative king already — and Dumas, forever trotting back and forth to the city with letters for Throckmorton and the official embassy correspondence, could easily carry one more set of messages. As I knew only too well, he was more than willing to run additional errands if there was a chance to make money — a willingness that eventually cost him his life. Did Marie imagine that he had told me her secret? I recall the Duke of Guise from his appearances at the court of King Henri when I was living in Paris last year; a handsome man in his early thirties, with exuberantly curled hair and a sweeping air of entitlement. The French king always seemed cowed by him; it is easy to see how he might seem, by contrast, like the charismatic leader France lacks, especially to a woman like Marie. I regard my own naked torso in the glass and cannot avoid wondering whether she does to him what she had been about to do to me if the governess had not interrupted; I dislike myself for the pang of resentment this produces.

When the latch clicks I turn in anticipation, but instead of Marie, it is Courcelles who stands in the doorway with a piece of paper in his hand. He blinks rapidly, looks me up and down, glances to the bed and makes several attempts to speak before any words emerge.

‘What —? Where is she?’

‘Her daughter was taken ill.’

He glances at the door, then back to me as if struggling to accept the evidence of his eyes. Then he tucks the paper away by his side.

‘And you — she —?’ He waves a hand vaguely in the direct ion of the bed. I find myself battling an urge to laugh at his evident lack of composure; I wonder if Courcelles is also her lover, if she amuses herself with him while she writes her scheming billets-doux to Guise. Certainly his demeanour betrays a very personal sense of outrage. I merely shrug and raise an eyebrow; my state of undress and evident arousal make any justification redundant.

‘I might ask what brings you to her private chamber,’ I say instead, trying to sound casual as I bend to retrieve my shirt.

‘A messenger has just arrived for her from Lord Henry Howard.’ He brandishes his folded letter at me.

‘Is that your job now? Should you not be making the burial arrangements for poor Dumas?’

This seems to galvanise him; he strides across to me and jabs a finger in my face.

‘You think you can get away with anything, don’t you? You just talk your way into everyone’s confidence, you show no respect for birth or position, you think you can carve your own path with no consequences, all because you can make the king of France laugh.’

‘Oh, stop — you are making me blush.’

‘How do you think the ambassador will respond to this, Bruno?’ he hisses, poking my bare chest and leaning down so that his face is almost as near to mine as Marie’s was a moment ago. ‘After the faith he has placed in you. I should not be surprised if he decided to send you back to France. Let the king protect you from what’s coming there, if he can.’

‘And what is coming there, Claude?’ I say, determined to keep my voice light. ‘Something King Henri should know about? Or my lord ambassador? Some sort of coup, perhaps? As a loyal subject, I’m sure you would share whatever you knew to protect your sovereign. Or do your loyalties lie elsewhere now?’ I pull my shirt over my head and stare him down; to my satisfaction, he looks away first. I glance over his shoulder and see Marie standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest and her lips pressed into a white line.

‘If my husband hears a word about this, you will both be on the next boat to France with such a stain on your reputat ions that you will never find a position in the French court again,’ she says, pointing between us. ‘Understand?’

‘Marie — I have done nothing! I came to bring you this and found him here.’ Courcelles flaps his letter at her, aggrieved. She gives him a long, reproving look.

‘Don’t be disingenuous, Claude. We must all keep one another’s confidences in this house.’ She looks from him to me and I realise then that Courcelles is familiar with this room, this bed. I watch Marie with rising anger. She certainly knows how to keep herself busy. The worst of it is that I am most annoyed with myself for feeling even a passing stab of jealousy. Then I think of Castelnau keeping his lonely night vigil in his study and the anger is displaced by a wave of guilt.

‘How is Katherine?’ I ask.

‘She’ll be fine.’ Her tone is clipped now, businesslike, as she reaches for the letter and breaks the seal. It is clear that I am no longer required. ‘You had better go, Bruno. And lace your shirt. We don’t want the servants to gossip.’

Courcelles aims a look of pure hatred at me as I reach the door, but my attention is fixed on the letter in Marie’s hand. What can Howard have to tell her since last night, unless it is something about me?

‘Bruno,’ she says, holding out her hand, palm up. ‘The box?’

I realise I am still clutching the green velvet casket. I pass it over with a muttered apology; she narrows her eyes, then her face softens and she squeezes my hand briefly. ‘Perhaps we will pick up our discussion where we left off another time.’

Lifting her hand, I press it to my lips in a grand gesture, just to irritate Courcelles, who appears ready to explode with an excess of choler. I may not have achieved everything I came here for, but I have discovered Marie’s underlying motive. What part does Courcelles play then, I wonder, considering him as I stand in the doorway and he watches me with the face of a man who would gladly commit murder at this moment? Does he know about the Duke of Guise, or does he believe that he, Claude de Courcelles, is destined to replace the ambassador at Marie’s side when the glorious Catholic reconquest is complete? Either way, I sense that the two of them have closed ranks against me, standing shoulder to shoulder as they wait for me to leave so they can discuss this message from Howard, and again I am furious with myself for feeling that she has toyed with me; absurd, too, when it was I who went to her chamber with the intention of tricking her in the first place. I give them a last look, then leave them to their plotting. As I pass the door of the nursery, I catch the muffled sound of a child crying.