“A bit of shit’ll be the least of it,” Gregory says. They have both seen men hanged, drawn, and quartered. Bellies sliced open and guts wound out and held up to the crowd like a master butcher showing a string of prized sausages. That is to see a man bathe in blood.
Ordinarily Master Walsingham would not spare a glance let alone a word for this boy, but here he is, plying him with the Dolphin Inn’s best ale and telling him tales of Lincoln’s Inn, and jurisprudence, in the hope he will soon be fast asleep and relinquish his grip on the bag at his side. John tells Walsingham he is an apprentice cutler, on his way to Sheffield. It’s a good lie, because it is close to the truth. He has a funny view of what travel in Scotland is like, for, he says, this is the third night friendly men have bought him his ale, and so far he has not been robbed, as he feared, “or worse.”
He tells Walsingham of the salt merchant, and of the two journeymen hog gelders he met, and how they seemed very decent fellows.
“Noble professions,” Walsingham falsely avers.
He pours him another mug from the jug.
Soon the boy’s eyes flag, and a little after that the dogs are put out, the mattresses are unrolled, and the fire covered. That is it for the night.
“You have chosen a good spot for it,” Walsingham tells the boy, stretching out next to him.
“You are not taking a chamber, master?”
“I have stayed in it before,” Walsingham confides. “The mattress is rife with fleas, and there are rats, too.”
He offers to show him a bite.
The boy is already asleep.
Walsingham eases the bag from under the boy’s head during the short hours. There doesn’t seem to be much within: some of his linens, a single shoe, a heft of long-stale bread, a spoon, nicely carved, and a hook for carving more of them. There is no message written as before, and the only oddity seems to be the parcel that must have come from the silversmith. It is heavy, about half a cubit long and tightly wrapped in waxed linen. In the gleam of his covertly lit lamp Walsingham can make neither head nor tail of it. He puts it back and slides it next to the boy’s head.
James Hamilton can shoot an arquebus more accurately than any man alive. He can hit a scallop shell at fifty paces, a pumpkin at a hundred, but this new gun is another matter.
“It kicks like a donkey,” he tells his host.
Lord Kerr suggests he aim lower to allow for the kick.
Several moments later he tries again.
The ball smashes the shell to pieces.
“Ha.”
“The Queen is dead,” Lord Kerr smiles. “Long live the Queen.”
Queen Mary has been in a good mood for two days now. She seems almost excited by the possibilities of life and has been hard at her needlework with the Countess of Shrewsbury, Bess. Every now and then you can even hear her laugh.
“But it must be hard,” Mary Seton tells Margaret Formby.
“What?”
“Being constrained so.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“Still,” Mary goes on, “it will be over soon after Michaelmas.”
Margaret is startled. “Michaelmas?”
But Mary Seton will say no more.
In the end, they arrest the boy in Pontefract.
“It is convenient for the castle,” Walsingham admits, “and I could not stand a moment longer not knowing what it is.”
When the boy recognizes his captors he glares at them with hot eyes and swears feebly as he is taken away. Robert Beale feels a stab of guilt at his betrayal, for he had actually liked the boy.
“It’s a bad business,” Walsingham agrees, “but who knows? Perhaps we have saved the Queen’s life. Now let’s see what this damned thing is.”
They are in the guardroom at Pontefract Castle, waiting now for Gregory and Wilkins to bring the Scottish silversmith.
Walsingham slices through the stitches of the linen and parts the various other wrappings to leave a fine silk drawstring bag. He raises and lowers his eyebrows.
“No expense spared,” he says. He loosens the ties and lets the contents land with a meaty thump on the table.
It is the candlestick melted down and recast into a six-inch shaft of dimpled silver about the girth of a baby’s arm, knotted along its length with irregular bumps and welts. At one end is a loop through which is loosely tied a length of red silk cord.
Walsingham prods it.
“What is it?”
He has no idea.
“Does it open?”
It feels solid. He raps it against the tabletop. It sounds solid. He gives it a twist between his two fists. Nothing.
“Bring the boy up.”
The boy is dragged up by two guards. He has obviously cursed them, too, for his lip is split and one eye is swollen shut.
“Fell down the stairs,” they tell Walsingham.
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again, will you?” Beale asks.
The boy knows nothing about the object.
“Do you know nothing, or admit nothing?”
“I know nothing,” the boy promises.
Walsingham looks at him a long time. The boy stares back.
“I have a feeling,” Walsingham says, “that you are telling the truth, but you are not telling all the truth. All that you know.”
The boy holds out his hands, palms up, as if to say: I can’t tell you everything I know, for where would I end?
“What do you do for Queen Mary?”
“I light the fires in the morning. Bring down the pots. Clean the shoes and boots. Take the laundry to the maids. Help the cook and then the other women in any way they wish. I run any errands she wants.”
“You are a useful man to have about,” Beale supposes.
“Aye,” the boy agrees, but he has forgiven none of them their pretenses on the road to Edinburgh.
Walsingham gives a rare, reassuring smile: John is such a simple, honest hapless youth that they agree, when he is taken away, that it would be wrong to put him to
