sweat.”
“That is good, good.”
She looked up and he saw that her startling blue eyes were still bright. In her hands she held a cup of fine Gascon wine, unsweetened. She put it down on his worktable, close to his right hand.
“Thank you, Catherine.”
She breathed deeply, composing herself. “Might I speak plain with you, Master Woode?”
“Why, yes, Catherine. My door is always open to you. Please, sit down. What do you wish to speak on?”
Suddenly she laughed. It was a laugh of release, not of humor. “You will think me a fishwife or a gossip, Master Woode. Coming to you with tittle-tattle.”
Thomas Woode was in his mid-thirties, his sandy hair graying around the temples. He felt himself ageing; his eyes and brow were lined. Yet he was still a well-formed, handsome man. He looked grave. He drank some reviving wine.
“I do not know how to say this without causing offense or showing myself cowardly and lacking in fortitude,” she continued. “I would say nothing for my own sake, but I fear the danger to Andrew and Grace.”
Woode rose and went to sit beside her. He held her hands and squeezed them gently. “Speak plain, Catherine. You are like a mother to my children. Nothing you say can seem out of place to me.”
She was silent a few moments. “It is Father Herrick,” she said at last. “I have… doubts. In plain speaking, I do not like him and I do not trust him, Master Woode. I fear he is not what he purports to be.”
Woode felt the prickles rise on his neck. The sudden thought that a traitor, a spy, was here in this house was simply too terrifying. “You think he is one of Walsingham’s men?”
Catherine shook her head. “That is not what I think. Not necessarily, though it is possible.” She wrung her hands together as though kneading dough for bread. “I think he may be something else.”
Thomas Woode smelled her warmth, the salt scent of her stirring him, something that had not been there with any girl or woman since the death of his wife three years ago. “You must speak openly Catherine. What you say will not go beyond these walls.”
How exactly could she explain her doubts about Herrick? It seemed to her that when the priest had first met her friend Blanche at the Bellamys’ house, Uxendon Manor, where they both worshipped, he had looked at her not as a man of chastity should do. Blanche had liked Herrick, that was clear. His feelings for her were less clear.
There were Herrick’s strange comings and goings, the calculating looks Catherine sometimes caught when he thought she wasn’t aware of him at a meal or during Mass. His eyes followed Blanche in an unseemly fashion; was he thinking of her carnally? She suspected that Father Cotton might share her doubts, although he had not said as much. Now she needed to convey these misgivings to Master Woode.
“I know it is sinful to speak ill of the reverend Father, but… let me start at the beginning. When Father Herrick came into our lives, we welcomed him as is meet and proper. You, Father Cotton, and I went out of our way to bring him to the attention of our fellow Catholics, and many welcomed him into their homes to say Mass, or visited him here. One of those he became close to was Lady Blanche, who had been brought to the true faith by Father Cotton and subsequently became my friend. It is the nature of that closeness that came to concern me. Father Herrick was very… familiar with her. I noted it more than once in the way that he touched her. You may think me too free with my opinions, and I will confess that is true. You may even think me lacking in Christian charity, but it seemed to me that Father Herrick’s great interest in Blanche coincided with his learning of her connections to Lord Howard of Effingham.”
“He was sent by the Society of Jesus, Catherine. There can surely be no doubt about their motives.”
Catherine smiled. “No, of course not. But hear me through. When I heard Blanche had died in this cruel manner, the face of Father Herrick came immediately to my mind, as in a dreadful dream. In my dream it seemed there was darkness in him, Master Woode. Now that must make me seem even more the village idiot and you may wish to send me to Bethlehem Hospital. I set no store by dreams myself. Yet this vision haunts me. Even in my waking moments, it is an image I cannot dismiss. Why does it haunt me so?”
“A dream, Catherine?” Thomas Woode raised a quizzical eyebrow. He stood and walked the room, slowly. These imaginings of Catherine disturbed and bewildered him. He was exhausted from his night without sleep and he could not think clearly. He needed to rest his head on the pillows and sink between the cool, clean sheets of his bed.
“Yes, master. But not just a dream.” She had not wanted to speak of it, as if somehow it were her shameful secret, but now it was necessary. She took a deep breath. “Last week, as you know, the children and I went to the menagerie at the Tower. Andrew began complaining of a stomach pain, so we came home. As we arrived back at Dowgate, he was asleep in my arms and Grace was quiet and subdued. I could hear noises from upstairs. I thought it was one of the maidservants, but then I recalled it was a Holy Day and they were all off work. As I opened the upper floor gallery, I saw two people, Herrick and a woman. I turned away quickly, trying to shield Grace’s eyes, but the child had already seen what I had seen. ‘What are they doing, Mistress Marvell?’ she asked me in her innocence. I didn’t know what to answer. They were both without clothes. Herrick was stretched out, facedown on the floor, and his back was red with weals. The woman’s right arm was raised. In her hand was a knotted scourge, about to come down on Father Herrick’s back. The woman turned and saw us, her hand hovering, not completing its stroke. She smiled at me. I pulled the children away and ran to my room with them. Later, Father Herrick came to me. ‘Mistress Marvell,’ he told me, ‘I had not expected you back so soon.’ I asked him what in God’s name he had been doing. He looked at me as if I were slow-witted. ‘ Pax vobiscum, child,’ he said. ‘I am sorry you have witnessed this. As I am sure you understand, I was exorcising my sins through the offices of that poor sinner.’ I fear I laughed. ‘Father Herrick,’ I said, ‘I am afraid I do not believe a word you say’ A darkness crossed his eyes and I worried that I had overstepped the mark. I thought for a moment he might kill me, so I went on, ‘Of course, I understand it is a private matter and none of my concern.’ Father Herrick hesitated, as if weighing up what he should do. In the end he bowed. ‘Thank you, Catherine. I see you are a woman of the world. I will trust you not to mention this to Master Woode. He may not understand the severity of our Jesuit ways.’ I did not argue then. I just wanted him to go away. I told him I would not mention it to anyone. But now I think you need to be told this.”
Thomas Woode spoke firmly. “I am shocked, Catherine. Shocked and deeply sorry that you have been exposed to such abomination under my roof. I will ask Father Herrick to depart this very day. There is a safe house for priests of which Father Cotton has knowledge. I will ask Father Cotton to take him there. As to Father Cotton himself, he will be leaving us in the next forty-eight hours. He has been offered sanctuary elsewhere. It will be more convenient for him, and safer for us. It has become too dangerous for either of them to stay here. I must confess, Catherine, it will be a great relief to me, too. I can scarce sleep for worry while they are here.”
Catherine rose from the settle. “Thank you, Master Woode.” She lifted the latch to let herself out of the room. But she did not feel completely reassured. It wasn’t enough for Herrick to be leaving. A dangerous man was dangerous anywhere.
Chapter 16
Four men sat around the long table in the library of Walsingham’s mansion house in Seething Lane. Mr. Secretary had at last recovered enough from his long, debilitating illness and was back in London from his country retreat of Barn Elms, where he had stayed these past weeks.
“I think it is the falling of the Queen of Scots’ head that has taken the weight off Mr. Secretary’s sh-sh- shoulders,” Arthur Gregory, an assistant secretary, whispered in John Shakespeare’s ear as they waited for Walsingham. “It was a very convenient illness…”
“Not so good for my Lord Burghley,” said Francis Mills, another of Walsingham’s secretaries, who heard the remark. “I am told the Queen has quite cut him dead. Burghley implores and begs and whimpers like a puppy to be allowed back into her presence, but she won’t see him. She won’t even read his letters. Burghley has never known its like.”
Shakespeare sat silent, as did the fourth man, Thomas Phelippes. All four of them had been summoned here urgently but had now been waiting an hour for Walsingham to appear. All were aware that the Queen was in a thunderstorm rage over the axing of her cousin Mary Stuart. She blamed everyone but herself for the death, as though it were not her own name scratched on the death warrant. William Davison, one of her two Secretaries of
