L
Emanation
Found Cowdray in the dimness of the panelled room, replacing burned-out stubs with new candles.
‘Where’s Monger?’
‘Gone with Master Roberts. To Butleigh. I thought you knew.’
‘Of course I did.’ Sinking into a chair, head in my hands. ‘ Shit. ’
Cowdray put down the candles.
‘Let me get you some meat, Dr John.’
‘No… no time. But some small beer…?’
‘Look, I should say…’ Cowdray brushed at his apron. ‘I didn’t realise there were things you hadn’t been told… by Carew and your friend. I’m not a man who… That is, I must needs keep these walls from falling down, you know?’
‘Cowdray, I’m not blaming you for my friend’s deceit. The money you’d make for accommodating Carew’s men, that was hardly to be turned down. It’s just… there’s something wrong here. Something very wrong.’
Wanting to tell him what Stephen Fyche had done to Lythgoe. Wanting to cry it in the streets.
‘Dr John…’
Cowdray’s gaze was in the gloom behind me. I turned quickly.
The woman sitting in the most shadowed corner, to the left of the window, had long, silver hair, uncoifed, unbound. I’d never seen her before. In front of her on the board were pen and ink and paper.
‘Mistress Cadwaladr,’ Cowdray said. ‘A speaker of Welsh.’
I inclined my head to her. Yet cautious.
‘My brother was a monk at the abbey of Strata Florida,’ Mistress Cadwaladr said. ‘I came here with him some years ago, and stayed. I was a cook at the abbey.’
‘After which,’ Cowdray said, ‘she worked with Cate Borrow in her herb garden. If that helps.’
If ever a man spends his days looking over his shoulder, it’s you. You must know how you are.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘Thank you, Cowdray.’
My dear John
I am writing in our own tongue in case this letter should be intercepted, which I fear it might. I am aware that you do not speak the Cymraeg, but I think you might be able to read it.
I believe the prophecies to have been conveyed to our sister through the good offices of her correspondent in France. The source would seem to be the French family’s own consultant. I know not the circumstances of this, except that they appear to have been secretly obtained.
Here is the latest prophecy in full. The translation from French to English to Welsh will not, I hope, present too much fuddle in the meaning of it.
Our sister is no better.
I looked up.
‘I’m sorry all’s not well with your family,’ Mistress Cadwaladr said. ‘But what I’ve read, I shall forget.’
‘Thank you.’
I stared at the translation.
Two names had at once presented themselves.
Her correspondent in France: Sir Nicholas Thockmorton, the Queen’s ambassador. I’d met him once, only briefly, but knew he’d been close to the Dudley family. That he came from an old Catholic family, yet was now unquestionably Protestant. Knew also that he was considered a trusted adviser to the Queen and would keep her well informed about plans by the power-hungry Guise family to ensure that the daughter of Mary of Guise, the Queen of Scots, now Queen of France, would also one day be Queen of England.
As for the French family’s own consultant, this could only be Nostradamus. Christ above, I could scarce believe it.
Michele de Nostradame. This man had thrown a long and faintly sinister shadow over my career from the start. Some twenty-five years older than I, beloved by the French court and held in reverence over half Europe… for doing what I would not do. I’d never met him, nor sought to. If pressed, I’d say I was suspicious of his prophecies, so pretentiously laid out in four lines of verse… whilst wondering privately if the bastard possessed some faculty with which I’d not been endowed.
He was known to be an astrologer but, if these prophecies were drawn from the heavens, then oft-times he and I saw different stars.
I read the verse, as neatly transcribed by Mistress Cadwaladr.
In the land of the great religious divide
The dead witch shall haunt her daughter
Till she shall kiss the bones of the King of all Britons
And have them entombed again in glory
Explicit. The dead witch, not Morgan le Fay.
What was the sequence here? When had the forecast been received? Had the Queen believed herself haunted before or after its receipt? Either way, Nostradamus, if it was he, would know precisely what he was doing, the alleged bond of witchcraft between the Queen and her late mother having long been common gossip in France.
Was it, then, an invented prophecy designed to unbalance the Queen in her mind? How much of this was going on? Think… the waxen effigy, all talk of which Walsingham had suppressed before it could reach court… the pamphlet prediction of the Queen’s death which had somehow found its way through the security. How organised was it, this mixture of sorcery and Machiavellian mind-play?
And why had the Queen not been advised of what appeared to be a subtle, many-pronged assault on her senses, the higher mind and the lower mind, in wakefulness and sleep?
Unless she was given false advice, whether knowingly or in ignorance.
Did the answer to this lie in the line, they appear to have been secretly obtained?
Obviously, we had spies in France at all levels of society. Had one of them got his hands on unpublished Nostradamus quatrains relating to the Queen of England? If this verse, for example, had been received as intelligence, then its credibility would obviously be enhanced.
The Queen was superstitious, and there was no denying the eminence of Nostradamus, the respect afforded to him in France. I’d heard him credited many times with that terrifying prophecy of the killing of King Henri in the jousting, even though it came out of Italy. If Nostradamus said there was a bad air, people in France stayed indoors, farmers delayed the harvest. Our own archbishop, Parker, was once said – though he’d denied it – to have been deterred from accepting the Canterbury post by a prophecy of Nostradamus.
And the man’s published predictions relating to the Queen had been so full of spleen as to be considered French Catholic filth. Never in the kingdom has arrived one so bad, he’d written when her path to the throne had been clear. Making reference also to her poor parentage. Anne.
Intelligence from France would be passed to the Queen in person by Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Did Cecil know of this?
‘You look perturbed, Dr John,’ Mistress Cadwaladr said. ‘And, if I may say so, very tired.’
Cowdray had left us alone, with a jug of small beer.
‘I’m well,’ I said.
No use in further conjecture. This should be discussed with Dudley, who knew Throckmorton far better than I did.
‘Master Cowdray,’ Mistress Cadwaladr said, ‘in asking for my help… told me you’d become quite intimate with Eleanor.’
I looked up, startled. This was, it must be said, a woman of mature beauty, and the level of translation had said much for her intellect.
‘We’d known one another only days,’ I said. ‘But there was… much we had in common. I was intent on becoming her advocate at the assize. Distressed when she wouldn’t see me.’
