from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Listen, I’ve been in prison three times for his sake, once for two months, and given no special treatment that would mark me out as his man. I took my beatings like the rest of the papist suspects, and my knee has never fully recovered.’ He slapped his right leg, hard, as if to punish it. ‘If I did not betray myself then, I will not now, any more than you will.’
‘I meant no offence,’ I said hastily. ‘Only that I have never lost a sister – I do not know that I could keep my countenance in your position.’
‘I think you are disingenuous, my friend.’ But he sounded mollified. ‘If he thought you could be ruled by your emotions or betray yourself so easily, he would not have chosen you. For myself, I must put grief to one side. I know how to do that well enough. Sister or no sister, she was a pawn in a chess game played for high stakes, and I intend to find out who took her.’
I felt his metaphor was flawed, though I resisted pointing this out. He appeared to have assumed a responsibility for investigating Clara Poole’s death that I suspected did not come from Walsingham, and again I wondered at Master Secretary’s motive in involving him.
‘Tell me of this Babington group, then,’ I said, to channel his anger. ‘What kind of men are they? Besides ruthless.’
He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Walsingham insists on giving the business Babington’s name, since Babington’s money is furnishing the plans and he wants the glory. They should more properly call it the Ballard plot. That priest is the dangerous one among them. Him, I would call ruthless. Next to him, Babington is a mere fop. A pretty, rich boy looking for adventure. He wanted a cause, and in Mary Stuart he has found one. And the others can’t proceed without his money, so he is flattered and made to feel important.’
‘You think Babington’s faith is not sincere?’
‘Oh, he believes absolutely in his own sincerity, and the idea of himself as the saviour of England. But I don’t think he gives two shits for the sufferings of ordinary English Catholics. His father left him a thousand pounds a year, what would he know of hardship?’
He did not trouble to disguise his anger. I had the sense that Robin Poole’s antipathy to Anthony Babington had put down roots long before the death of his sister.
‘And the others?’ I prompted.
‘Let’s see. Father John Ballard. Thirty-seven, ordained priest, goes about in the guise of a veteran soldier. Calls himself Captain Fortescue. His faith verges on fanatical. If he’d been born in your country, he’d have volunteered to join the Inquisition, and enjoyed it.’
‘I have met the type,’ I said, with feeling.
‘Ballard dreams of ushering in the reign of a second Bloody Mary, turning the skies over England dark with the smoke of burning Protestants. If anyone could kill a young girl in cold blood, it would be him. Or more likely his faithful dog Jack Savage, who is justly named – he used to be a professional fighter. Then there’s Chidiock Tichborne, Babington’s closest friend – another rich boy who only wants England’s return to Rome so he can get his father’s estate back. Same with Thomas Salisbury – he’s the one Ballard has riding about the country persuading Catholic nobles to let Spanish troops land on their coastline.’ He gave a sceptical laugh. ‘They really think Philip of Spain is going to send his Armada when they snap their fingers. They are all boys playing at holy war.’
‘But they trust you?’
‘I believe they do. I’m from a Catholic family, and Savage vouched for me to Ballard. They think I share their grievances.’
‘But I thought your father worked for Walsingham?’
‘He did.’ A brief pause. ‘He was an informer.’
‘I see. Did the Catholics know?’
‘Well. There’s the question.’ His voice grew tight. ‘My father drowned ten years ago. Fell from the riverbank on the way home one night, they said. Assumed he was drunk. But my father knew how to hold his drink, so …’ He lifted a shoulder, inviting me to draw my own conclusion. ‘I was twenty-two, Clara fourteen, both our mothers dead. Walsingham took her into his house, and paid for me to study the law, so I could monitor my fellow students for him. Now Clara’s gone too, for the same reasons. And I let it happen.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I said, hearing the emptiness of the words before they left my mouth.
‘Not really for you to say,’ he replied, though without rancour.
We crossed the rest of the way in silence as the crowd funnelled through the archway of the Great Stone Gate on the south bank. Poole raised his eyes as we emerged from the shadow and I followed his gaze to the sightless remains of heads on spikes high above. Crows perched on ledges nearby, shreds of matter in their beaks; I looked quickly away.
‘I will see Babington and his fellows up there, whatever the cost,’ he said through his teeth as the traffic eased and we turned right to follow the road along the Bank Side.
I remembered, in an instant, how the first thing that hit you about Southwark was the smell. To be more accurate, the collision of smells, all of them fierce enough to make your eyes water and your throat burn. The heavy scent of hops from the breweries fought with vile stinks from the tanneries and the dyers; these in turn mixed with the human odours of the gong-men’s carts, and the sharp, animal musk of the bull and bear rings as we passed the church of St Mary Overy and the walled gardens of Winchester House. Beyond the bull ring, the famous Bankside Stews lined the road facing the river, with their own ripe scents behind closed doors. According to ancient laws, most of these inns and licensed brothels were painted white, their colourful signs affixed above the doors with images that announced their names to those who could not read: The Boar’s Head, The Horseshoe, The Rose, The Barge, The Half Moon, The White Hart, The Olyphant, The Unicorn. Many were fine old houses with gates wide enough for coaches, and gardens with ponds and orchards stretching out to the rear. But they were separated by narrow alleys running with refuse and ordure, and when Poole turned the horse down one of these to follow it south, away from the river, I pulled the kerchief tighter around my mouth and nose and fought back the bile rising in my throat.
In the streets behind the bank, tenements crowded on one another as if they had been thrown together by drunks from whatever lay to hand: scrofulous plaster flaking from the walls, sheets of oilcloth nailed over windows in place of glass, roofs with missing tiles and greasy boards propping up lean-to shelters barely fit to keep a dog in. Despite the early hour, men in shirtsleeves stumbled along roads rutted by cartwheels, or pissed against the doorposts of alehouses under fading and splintered signs, regarding us with unfocused eyes that made me think of the girl in the stocks. It was impossible to tell if they were on their way home after a long night, or beginning again for a new day. Silent, dirty children with sores around their mouths crouched in the alleys, watching with wary, sunken eyes. Tired-looking women in low bodices and smudged face paint jutted their hips and pouted at us as we passed; one, a spotted scarf around her black hair, made a comical honking noise after us and asked, in a foreign accent, if we handsome gentlemen were hungry for a little gooseflesh this fine morning? When she stepped too close to the horse, causing it to rear its head back, Poole snapped at her to fuck herself. ‘Where would be the profit in that?’ she fired back, quick as blinking, with a merry laugh, and I found myself smiling. Poole muttered something about damned Winchester geese, and I recalled the nickname given to the women who worked
