I heard a soft rustle of cloth as someone settled the other side of the partition. The smell of the wood, the dust spiralling in the slats of light – all just as it was that day with Paul, the memory so sharp it almost hurt. While I was lost in thought, a piece of paper appeared under the gap in the partition.
‘From a mutual friend,’ said the Englishman, whose profile I could just make out through the wooden grille. I picked up the letter and turned it over. In the top right-hand corner someone had inked the astrological sign for Jupiter. The wax seal was intact, though that meant nothing. I tore it open and ran my eye over the streams of letters, meaningless to anyone but me. Though I had not admitted as much to Guise, he was right; I had committed Walsingham’s complex cipher to memory and I raced through the apparent gibberish in the note as quickly as if it were a foreign language:
Bruno
This is Nicholas Berden, the only man in Paris in whom you should confide. You can trust him with your life – or at the very least your correspondence. Anything you give him he will put directly into my hands. Send to me soon.
FW
PS. My dinner table wants for wit and liveliness with you and Sidney gone. We are a sad company without you. Pray God we may see you again.
I folded the letter in my lap with a stab of anger. If Walsingham wanted to see me that badly, why wait for God to intervene when he could perfectly well make arrangements himself?
‘All in order?’ Nicholas Berden whispered, from the other side of the partition.
‘Yes. Thank you for taking the trouble.’
‘I sail for London tomorrow,’ he continued, in his low, clipped voice. ‘I’m a cloth merchant, you see. Constantly back and forth. Rather useful. So I thought, if there is anything you’d like me to take…’ He let the suggestion hang in the air.
‘There is. But I don’t have it with me.’
‘No matter. Let’s meet for a drink tonight at the Swan and Cross.’
‘But people know me there.’
‘So much the better. Hide in plain sight. They know me too, so no one will remark on our presence.’
‘I have never seen you there.’
‘I’m easy to overlook.’
‘Because you’re hiding in plain sight?’
‘Exactly.’ He let out a merry laugh and I decided I liked him. ‘Seven o’clock, then.’
I was about to reply when I realised he had already left. I rested my head against the wood behind me and closed my eyes.
As I prepared to leave the house that evening there came a knock at the door of my rooms which I knew, by its force and briskness, announced Madame de la Fosse. I cast a quick glance around to make sure I had not left anything incriminating in the open. All my dangerous papers, together with the Hermes book, were safe in my hiding place in the rafters, the boards pulled tight so that it was impossible to see there might be a cavity behind them. Inside my doublet I carried two letters in cipher: a copy of the one to Walsingham about Gilbert Gifford that I had given Stafford, that he had handed instead to Paget, and a new document, setting out what I had learned about the ambassador’s gambling debts and the secrets he was selling to Guise. I suspected the information would not come as news to Walsingham. His original letter to me had expressed a lack of confidence in the ambassador’s judgement where Paget was concerned, and the fact that he wanted me to entrust my correspondence to Berden and not the embassy courier suggested that he had further doubts about Stafford’s loyalties. I wondered what he would do now that he had confirmation: recall Stafford and accuse him of treason, or a more subtle approach – leave him in place with threats of disgrace and use his intimacy with the League to England’s advantage, playing him against Paget? That would be the riskier strategy, but it might appeal to the old spymaster. For my part, I could not help a feeling of disappointment as I prepared to meet Berden; his appearance meant that I no longer had any pretence for returning to England. Perhaps that had been a foolish dream all along; there was nothing there for me to go back to.
The knocking came again, more impatient this time. ‘Monsieur Bruno!’
‘J’arrive, madame.’ I opened the door with a flourish, so that she almost fell over the threshold.
‘What did I tell you about having women in this house?’ she said, without preamble.
‘What?’ I stepped back from the doorway and swept my arm around the room to demonstrate its emptiness. ‘No women here, more’s the pity.’
‘There’s one downstairs asking for you. I don’t like the look of her.’ She wrinkled her nose.
‘Did she give a name?’ I felt a little stab of fear. Would Guise send a female assassin? It would be a clever move; a woman could more easily gain access, slip past a bodyguard. Then, a slim blade between the ribs… ‘Where is Simon?’
‘Having his supper. It’s not the same one as last time. This one says she’s an old friend. We all know what that means.’ She leaned in. ‘Foreign,’ she confided, in a stage whisper.
I stared at her for a moment, then bounded down the stairs two at a time to find Sophia standing on the doorstep, shivering despite the fur hat she wore pulled down over her ears. She looked at me warily, her eyes bright with cold.
‘I have something for you,’ she said, matter-of-factly.
‘Come in.’ I led her up the stairs, past
