Doctor Bruno. She was not cut out for living a double life, the way we learn to in Walsingham’s service. Women are too much led by their feelings to dissemble in that way.’ He fell silent again and a shudder rippled across his back as he exhaled. I could have told him then that I had met plenty of women as skilled in the arts of duplicity as any man, and every bit as determined – I thought again of Sophia Underhill – but it was not the moment.
‘You blame Walsingham, then?’
‘It would be meaningless to blame him,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘Clara volunteered for this work. She was tired of a life indoors, a poor widow marking time to become a governess. She sought adventure. Now see where that has led her – pushing her way into a man’s world.’ He seemed about to say more, but fell silent abruptly. I wondered how much detail Walsingham had told him about the manner of her death. Poole made it sound as though he partly blamed his sister for her own end.
‘Then it was her idea, to become close with the conspirators?’
His shoulders tightened. ‘She only thought of carrying letters or something in that line. She badgered Walsingham to give her a task – he said he had enough couriers. I think he had misgivings, rightly, about trusting a woman with sensitive correspondence. But if the fault for her death lies with anyone, I must own it.’
‘How so?’
He glanced to the side, wrinkling his nose as we approached Fish Wharf and the Fishmongers’ Hall on the north bank of the river and the smell assaulted us from all sides. He dropped his voice, so that I had to lean forward to hear.
‘Babington and his friends keep themselves close, as you’d expect. They do not lightly confide in outsiders – you’ll find this out for yourself soon enough, though Master Secretary seems to believe you will walk into their open arms without hindrance.’ His tone let me know what he thought of Walsingham’s faith, though I chose not to take it personally. ‘They found me useful because they believed I brought them information about Walsingham, but my connection with him also made them wary, even though I have been working to gain the trust of the Catholics in London for years now. I was brought to the conspirators by Jack Savage, who I met in prison when I was serving time for distributing illegal books. But they still didn’t invite me to their most private meetings. Walsingham grew frustrated with the lack of progress, though no more than I was with myself. Once I made the mistake of remarking to him that, with a man like Babington, a woman might have better luck drawing out his secrets. It never occurred to me that he would think to use my sister.’
‘Then it was Master Secretary’s idea to have her introduced to them?’
‘It could have been Clara’s. She would have thought it good sport.’ He sighed. ‘My sister was a beautiful girl, Bruno. I wish you could have seen her. Long, red curls down her back, and white skin – people said she looked like the Queen herself when she was a young princess. I don’t suppose she ever intended to do any more than flirt with them, see what they would confide. I didn’t like the idea, but Walsingham overruled me.’
‘You could not have known how it would end.’
‘I should have guessed, and put my foot down. I knew what those men were like, I’d seen what they were capable of. And Clara was soft-hearted. She married a man with no money because he won her with pretty words. She should never have gone near the like of Babington and his friends. Our father would spin in his grave. God knows when I shall even be permitted to bury her.’
‘You have not seen her?’
‘He won’t let me, yet. Says it’s vital her death does not become public knowledge too soon, the better to allow her killers to betray themselves.’ He shook his head and his voice took on a dark edge. ‘That’s what makes me think he is keeping something from me.’
He left an expectant pause but I said nothing, and we rode on in silence, passing through the north gatehouse of London Bridge. A young man hung limply by his wrists in the pillory, glazed eyes barely noting the passers-by, who were too caught up squeezing through the archway to pay him any heed. It was only as we drew level that I realised it was a girl dressed in men’s clothes, her hair cut short, her face grey with fatigue.
‘What’s her offence, do you think?’ I asked Poole, leaning forward.
He gave her the briefest glance. ‘She’ll be a whore from the Bankside stews,’ he said, as if this were an everyday sight. ‘Some of them dress as boys for the clients. It’s prohibited. If they’re caught, it’s a few hours in the pillory.’
The girl looked up at me from under her hooded lids, her expression neither pleading nor defiant, and I recalled the day Sophia Underhill had come looking for me disguised as a boy to escape a charge of murder. I wondered again where she might be, and whether her current identity as Mary Gifford was any more comfortable to her. If Gilbert Gifford insisted on playing games about how to find her, I was quite prepared to threaten it out of him.
Our progress slowed as we joined the flow of traffic making its way along the narrow conduit, barely twelve feet across, between the houses crammed each side of the bridge. Carts, wagons, horses and people on foot hoisting baskets or children on their shoulders were forced into a laborious shuffling procession, one lane in each direction, accompanied by cursing and shoving as those in a hurry tried to push ahead, only to be forced back, sometimes with blows, by people in front determined not to give way. The stink of horseshit rose as we inched forward; I took a deep breath through the kerchief and considered that, in my eagerness to return to London, I had forgotten how much I resented trying to get around the place.
‘Where are we going?’ I shouted at the back of Poole’s head, as the horse flicked its ears, impatient at the throng milling about its legs.
‘To search the place she was found.’
‘Has that not been done already? It was two days ago, I thought.’
He made a scornful noise through his teeth. ‘I wouldn’t trust the London constables to search their own breeches and find their cocks.’
‘And what are we looking for?’
‘We’ll know if we find it.’
I let this cryptic answer hang for a moment.
‘This will be a difficult task for you,’ I said, when he made no move to continue the conversation. The muscles across his back stiffened.
‘Who has suggested that?’
‘I mean only that you cannot be impartial.’
‘None of us is impartial, in this business.’ He allowed a pause. ‘Oh, I see. They have told you I will blunder in and mar the project, because I cannot contain my grief. Who said that, Phelippes?’
‘No one has said so.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. Even in quarter profile I could see his scorn. ‘How long have you been in the Service?’
‘For Walsingham? I met him in the spring of ’83, shortly after I arrived in England.’
‘Three years, then. Though you have been out of the country since last autumn, I understand.’ He sounded pleased, as if he had won an argument. ‘I have served him twelve, since he was first appointed to the Privy Council.’
‘What is it you do for him, exactly?’
