‘They stay with me,’ I said firmly. He inclined his head, knowing better than to insist. But he watched me closely while I undressed, marking every item of clothing as I dropped it into his sack; I guessed he had been instructed to make sure I was not hiding anything. I was at last left alone to wash myself in the scullery, the maid leaving fresh pails of hot water outside the door. I plunged my head into the bucket, rubbing hard at my hair; as I raised it, water coursing down my face, I heard a sharp exchange of voices from the yard outside, followed by the clatter of a horse’s hooves. It could have been Paget leaving, though I remembered that unmarked horse with the scar tethered outside. Perhaps Stafford’s nocturnal visitor had preferred not to be seen and slipped away through another door.
I dreamed that night of the Count. His cadaver’s face looming, eyeless sockets staring, rotting breath gusting in my face as he hissed the word ‘Circe’ over and over. I woke with a cry into a chilly light, covered with a sheen of sweat though I was wearing only an undershirt beneath the blankets. It took me several minutes to recover my bearings; enclosed in the blue canopy and curtains of my bed, I had the sense of being underwater. I sat up, running through a tally of my injuries and their severity as I attempted to move. My wrists were bandaged with clean strips of linen; Geoffrey had applied a salve and wrapped them himself the night before with a sure touch, polite but inscrutable. He had bathed the wound on my head and made a poultice that had done much to reduce the swelling, I realised as I reached up to check. Drawing back the bed curtain and swinging my legs gingerly to the floor, I was pleased to find that, though I was well decorated with cuts and bruises and every part of me ached, none of it was severe enough to keep me from walking. I was fortunate that those soldiers at the abbey had not been more energetic in my detention.
I crossed the room and opened the shutters with a loud creak. My window overlooked the river, busy with boats. Yesterday’s mist had lifted and patches of blue showed through a high gauze of cloud; I guessed the morning was already well advanced. I needed to be on my way. Shivering, I pulled on the robe I had been given the night before and wondered what I was supposed to do about clothes. All I had were my boots. I glanced around the room and realised immediately that they were not where I had left them, by the door. I crouched to look under the bed; perhaps I had misremembered. But a brief search confirmed that the boots were no longer in the room. Someone had been in while I was asleep and taken them – and with them, the draft pamphlets and the love letter I had taken from Frère Joseph’s cell. I stood by the window, weighing up what to do. Not only were those papers proof of a link between Joseph and Paul Lefèvre, they could be a danger to me; to print and distribute treasonous words against the King was a capital offence, and protesting that I was not the author would be a flimsy defence if I was caught with them. I wondered if anyone here could have taken them to use against me. I did not trust Paget to do anything without ulterior motive, including the bail, and Stafford’s furtive manner was hardly more reassuring.
There came a brisk knock on the door, as if someone had been waiting outside for the first sign of movement. I called ‘Entrez,’ then remembered I was in an English household. ‘Yes?’
The door opened to reveal Geoffrey, wearing his impeccable smile, a suit of clothes over one arm and an earthenware bowl in his hand.
‘Good morning, sir. I trust you are rested. I’ve brought you some warm milk with honey, and some spare clothes of the ambassador’s clerk to try on. You are of a similar size, I think. Sir Edward awaits you in his study when you are ready.’ He laid the clothes on the bed – a plain but serviceable grey doublet and breeches, with good woollen hose and a linen shirt – and backed away towards the door with a neat bow.
‘I cannot seem to find my boots,’ I said, giving him a pointed look.
‘Ah, yes. We have done you the service of cleaning them, sir,’ he said, in that same deferential tone that gave nothing away. ‘You will find them in the kitchen, warming by the fire. If that is all?’
I could not object to his taking the boots without revealing that I had something to hide, so I shook my head and muttered my thanks.
‘I will tell the ambassador to expect you shortly, then,’ he said, and closed the door.
The clothes fitted well; not bothering to lace the doublet, I raced down the stairs in my stockinged feet to find my boots, cleaner than they had been in months, waiting as he had said in the hearth. They were, as I had feared, empty. I turned to ask Geoffrey what he had done with the papers, but he had conveniently disappeared. A kitchen girl pointed me to Sir Edward’s study. I knocked on the polished wood and entered.
The ambassador sat behind a wide desk piled high with bundles of documents tied up in different-coloured ribbons. His casement overlooked a tidy garden at the rear of the house, the other side from the river. It was a companionable room; shelves of books lined the walls and a large globe in a mahogany stand dominated one corner beside a smaller desk where a pale young man sat copying letters. Stafford pushed his glasses up his nose
