Prophecy - Страница 68

‘He plays that part well, the laconic mercenary. But Douglas is shrewder than anyone when it comes to his own advancement. It’s how he’s survived so long.’

‘But did you ever suspect him?’

‘No,’ he says flatly. ‘I suppose he crossed my mind because of his history, but I didn’t consider him seriously because I couldn’t see what motive he could have had. He must have been sizing up the different factions among the plotters all along, deciding which had the better chance of power after the invasion.’

‘Why do you and he hate each other so much?’ I ask, when I have drained my glass.

Fowler’s mild expression hardens.

‘He is a man utterly without principle. He curries favour among the Scottish lords that surround the young King James and plays them off against one another. He thinks nothing of taking a life. But most especially —‘ here a shadow crosses his face and his voice drops to barely more than a whisper — ‘he took from me my closest friend.’

‘Douglas murdered him?’

He lowers his eyes.

‘No. Though he may as well have done — he is dead to me now. Patrick, Master of Gray. We were friends from childhood, but Douglas has turned him away from me and drawn him into his own influence to further his cause with James.’

There is such quiet bitterness in his tone, this young man who rarely betrays any emotion, that I find myself wondering at the nature of this friendship. Fowler seems to feel its loss deeply. Watching him, I am struck by an unexpected affection for this man who has become, by necessity, my confidant. How little we know of another’s inner life; perhaps the self-effacing Fowler carries a hidden weight of pain beneath his outward composure.

‘I must take all this to Walsingham without delay,’ I say. ‘Only he can protect me from Howard’s thugs. But I fear tonight has shown beyond doubt that I cannot travel alone. Will you come with me upriver?’

He hesitates. I wonder if he is afraid; he does not look like much of a fighter.

‘We should not be seen too often in one another’s company —‘ Then he appears to relent, and stands to straighten his clothes. ‘But you are right, Bruno — who else would you take? Come — I will fetch us lanterns and cloaks. Do you have money for the boatman?’

I nod. He disappears, leaving me to try and soak up the last warmth from the fire before I am obliged to step out again into that seeping London fog that works its way inside your bone marrow and chills you from the inside out.

Fowler has strapped on a sword belt under his cloak, I notice. We walk in silence down the incline towards Puddle Wharf, holding our lanterns aloft, though they make little difference in the smoky air. The moonlight is almost obscured by clouds and the city feels muted and otherworldly, as if under a shroud.

‘We have no evidence against Douglas except this scrap of gossip from Lady Seaton,’ I remark as we reach the empty landing stage. ‘He will argue that anyone could have picked a defunct title out of the lists.’

Fowler leans out, scans the river and calls, ‘Oars, ho!’ He turns to me while we wait to see if this has any effect. ‘At this stage, I do not think we have any choice. Douglas is notorious for slipping through the net in Scotland, but Scottish justice can be bought and sold. He has never yet come up against the determination of Walsingham. If anyone can extract a confession, it is he.’

I say nothing; we both know only too well some of the Principal Secretary’s methods for extracting confessions. Walsingham always maintains that God allows him to keep a clear conscience in this matter; that he would rather put one innocent man to the rack than risk the lives of many more by allowing a potential plot to go unchecked. He knows I disagree with him here, and that I question the value of any information wrested from a man whose limbs are being pulled from their sockets; coming from a country ruled by the lash of the Holy Office, I know only too well how easily a man threatened with pain will say whatever he thinks will please the one who can command it to stop. But Walsingham has made the case to his own conscience and found it satisfactory.

Fowler calls again; after some moments, the soft plash of oars comes through the night, followed by the blurry light of a boatman’s lantern. As the wherry nears us, Fowler turns suddenly and grips my arm.

‘I have a better idea — what if we were to take Douglas himself straight to Whitehall? Only — I know him of old. He has a knack of scenting trouble on the wind and making himself scarce — by the time we reach Walsingham and he decides to send armed men to find him, Douglas will have disappeared into the cracks, I could almost guarantee it.’

‘How would we persuade him, though? It would be sure to make him suspicious.’

Fowler considers for a moment.

‘I will tell him Mendoza wants to speak with him — that ought to prick his curiosity. He knows Mendoza’s influence over Mary is growing — unlike poor Castelnau’s. And Mendoza is always around the court.’

‘I don’t know.’ I am doubtful of this new plan; it strikes me that Fowler is over-sensitive when it comes to Douglas, though he is right that the journey to Walsingham and back will take hours.

‘Think how much better it would look for us if we were to deliver the man himself direct to Burghley,’ he hisses.

‘Where to, gents? Here, take this.’ The boatman throws a rope out from the bow; it falls with a wet slap on the jetty, where I pick it up and haul it in tight.

‘Across the river,’ Fowler says, before I have a chance to speak, as he climbs in and arranges his coat. ‘Drop us at St Mary Overy’s dock.’

‘Oh, aye? Trip to Southwark is it, gents?’ The lamplight exaggerates his lascivious wink. I follow Fowler precariously into the boat. The cushions seem to have soaked up all the damp and cold in the air and transferred them to my breeches. ‘You’ll come back a few shillings the poorer, I’ll warrant! Make sure you don’t get bitten by a Winchester goose, eh.’ He winks again and cackles as he pushes off with an oar.

‘A goose?’ I frown at Fowler, bemused. He breaks into a thin smile.

‘It’s an expression for catching the pox. A Winchester goose is a bawd — named because the ward is nominally under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, who licences the whorehouses.’

I squint across to where the south bank of the Thames is obscured by mist. Southwark, the borough outside the city walls and its laws, where a demi-monde of brothels, gambling dens and taverns offering illegal fights — animal and human — has spread like a fungus along the river bank. Those who trade in contraband goods and illegal books off the boats do so in the inns of Southwark; pirates, brigands, whores, travelling players and undercover priests rub shoulders with aldermen, lawyers and courtiers disguised to taste the borough’s forbidden fruit. Castelnau warned me to stay away from Southwark almost as soon as I arrived in England; streets where they’d cut a foreigner’s throat for entertainment, he said, especially a man who looked like me. I saw enough of streets like that when I was a fugitive in Italy, so I had largely heeded his advice. Little surprise that Fowler expects to find Douglas here. As the boatman turns the wherry and pulls on the oars to direct us back downstream, I experience a deep sense of foreboding. If I can be attacked in a main street in the city before darkness has even fallen, where there is still the chance of being discovered by the watch, surely it is outright folly to head for the most lawless part of the city under cover of night. I glance at Fowler’s profile; he looks out over the water, determined and intense, his gaze concentrated on the far bank, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword. At least I will have someone to watch my back this time, I think, and wonder again who might have fired the bolt that saved me earlier.

The landing stairs at St Mary Overy’s dock are slimy and narrow; I pay the boatman his shilling and follow Fowler upwards as he negotiates with one hand against the dank wall of the quay, his lantern held out in the other. One mis-step and we could be plunged into the black water lapping beneath. We emerge at the top on to a muddy, open area where two narrow streets branch away southwards, each lined with two— and three-storey houses crowded together and canted forward so that their gables threaten to meet in the middle, like the foreheads of two people conversing. A number of these houses are distinctively whitewashed to mark them out as brothels. Fowler motions to the right; I follow him, keeping so close that I am in danger of tripping him in the fog. Despite the cold, plenty of people are abroad; rowdy groups of young men, arms slung around one another’s necks and roaring sea-shanties or their own filthy versions of war ballads; women in garish colours, usually in pairs and pitifully underdressed against the cold, and more sinister figures, those who stand in doorways with their cloaks pulled up around their faces, watching and waiting. Where there are whores and gambling, there will always be great demand for meat and drink, and this street boasts an abundance of taverns, each spilling out its scent of roasting meat and warm beer every time its door is opened. If I did not feel in such immediate fear for my life, I would enjoy the atmosphere of Southwark, I think; there is a kind of frisson to the night, as if those of us who slink through the fog are tacit comrades in our pursuit of illicit pleasures.

Halfway along this street, Fowler ducks under an archway between two buildings and down a narrow alley that opens into a small courtyard with houses on three sides. By the entrance to the building on the left, a girl with her bodice half-unlaced lolls against the door frame, winding a strand of hair around one finger. She regards us with mild interest through eyes cloudy with drink as we pass, looking us both up and down, but Fowler ignores her and pushes open the door. It gives on to the tap-room of a tavern with a low ceiling and blackened beams, ill-lit and thick with the smells of tobacco smoke and unwashed bodies.