"Nonsense." Walsingham's voice was crisp. "You aren't returning home.
You haven't been here in eight years, and you don't belong here now.
You are a soldier of fortune, a man who has no real country anymore."
"No, I "
"A modern man, a man above parochial strife. Who are you loyal to,
Gilbert? The Catholic Church? Your family? I think not. I think you
are loyal to only one thing: to Gilbert Gifford. Am I right?" He
continued staring with those level eyes.
"Yes, of course I am loyal to myself, but not only to myself! To
greater things as well!"
"Like the Queen of Scots?"
"I have no particular loyalty to her. I was only helping in a lowly
way to reconnect her to the outside world," said Gilbert.
"Would it surprise you to know that I, too, am anxious to reconnect her
to the outside world?" said Walsingham.
"Yes!" said Gilbert, with a laugh. "For you of all people want her
gagged so she cannot foment any more plots. And it is by your orders
that she is
"Yes, but now I find she is too effectively gagged. Do you understand
me, Gilbert?"
"Yes .. . yes, I do."
"Now, you know what the penalty is for carrying letters such as you
had, do you not? Death. Alas." Walsingham opened his hands in a
gesture of helplessness. "Do you wish to die for that lady imprisoned
at Tutbury? For you will."
"Unless?"
Walsingham gave his first smile of the interview. "So you would
entertain an 'unless'?"
"Indeed, yes."
Just then someone knocked on the door and entered, bearing some fig
cakes and candied fruit. "A Christmas gift, sir," he said, putting
down the silver tray.
Walsingham fingered the sweets. "I love the Christmas foods, although
I abhor the excesses of that pagan celebration," he said. He popped a
piece of crystallized ginger in his mouth. "Here." He extended the
tray to Gilbert.
Gilbert forced himself to take one and rolled it around in his dry
mouth.
"Now, Gilbert, I wish you to join my ranks," said Walsingham. "Work
with me. My agents are the finest. You could do work you would be
proud of. I believe you have the capability. But your task would be
simple: continue doing exactly what you were sent here to do. Deliver
your letters. Make your contacts. Receive the messages. Only report
it all to me. That's all. That's the only difference. Do you think
you could agree to it?"
"Oh, yes!"
As if there were a choice between hanging and spying!
"And, Gilbert if you attempt to deceive me, I shall know," he said.
"And you will be deeply sorry, and wish you had taken your original
punishment instead. A double traitor who attempts to betray on yet
another level is a creature who will find no mercy from any quarter."
"Yes, sir."
"Stay within my call," said Walsingham. "Soon I will need you."
That night, Walsingham and Phelippes met after supper in the guarded
inner room of Walsingham's house. Three doors in a row were locked
after them. Then Walsingham wound up a contraption that consisted of
wheels and cogs and gongs and sticks. When it was going, it made such
a clamour of metal and dull thuds that any eavesdroppers would have had
trouble discerning the low voices speaking in the background.
Phelippes had been restless with inactivity, and was eager for the
meeting. He hoped this meant that some new venture was to be
launched.
"We have a new agent, Phelippes," said his master. "I had the pleasure
of welcoming him into our august company this afternoon. He is exactly
what we have been searching for: someone whose credentials are
impeccable and absolutely acceptable to the other side. He needs no
made-up story to explain himself, because his own story is perfect: a
man from a well-known local Catholic family, active in Catholic circles
overseas, recommended by Thomas Morgan himself! And yet his Catholics
are in opposition to the Jesuits here, giving him a perfect excuse to
have dealings with our office."
"And his name?" asked Phelippes. He narrowed his already slit like
eyes as if he would sit in judgement.
"Gilbert Gifford." Walsingham paused to see if Phelippes would
recognize the name. "Now the rest of the plan can be realized. It is
time to reopen the post office of the Queen of Scots. She is being
transferred from Tutbury to Chartley, and this will prove a change for
the better as far as her mail is concerned. We will be able to peep
into her letters, by arranging for there to be a falsely secure
transfer of them. As I said, Phelippes, she loves this 'secret
message' business. So let us indulge her! Let her letters pass
through ... oh, let me see! What would be dramatic? A beer keg! Yes,
let her put her secret messages in a waterproof package in a beer
barrel. Chartley has no brewery of its own, so it will be necessary
for a barrel to go back and forth from the nearest town."
"One letter at a time?" said Phelippes.
"Naturally. We do not want a flood, and the beer barrel will not
permit a very large package to be hidden in it."
"But the brewer! What if he does not cooperate?"
"Phelippes! That is your job, to make sure he does!" Walsingham was
looking sternly at him. "I find, generally, that between the threat of
government displeasure, the promise of money, and the thrill engendered
by this sort of thing, they never say no."
By New Year's Day, Phelippes was able to report that the brewer, who
wished to go by the code name "the honest man," was with them.
"He looks like his own beer barrel," said Phelippes. "And you would
hardly believe this, but his name is Bruno! As they say, 'a great big
bear of a man." He also has a bear's appetite for payment; he demanded
more than you mentioned."
"And?" asked Walsingham.
"I paid it, of course. I had no choice."
Walsingham winced. Yes, he was right, of course, but bother! all this
was so expensive, and he would never recoup his expenditure from the
Queen. "Indeed, yes. Now that that is taken care of by the way, did
he take to the idea?"
Phelippes laughed a braying sort of laugh and nodded. "He is like most
folk, longing to feel wicked in a safe sort of way. I gave him to
understand that he, and he alone, was the only 'corrupt' man in the
whole chain. The Queen of Scots' secretary, that Frenchman Nau, will
give him the packets."
"And he will give them directly to Paulet, who will then give them to
you. You will translate them, then return them to Paulet, who will
then give them back to the brewer. Then, the brewer, Mr. Honest, will
give them to the man he believes is the simple messenger to take them
directly to the French embassy. However, that man will be our friend
and new colleague, Gilbert Gifford. Gifford will once again give them
to Paulet, who will give them to you."
"Why a second time? This will be time-consuming, and perhaps the delay
will cause suspicions " Phelippes was scowling, and all the pits on his
pockmarked face shifted and elongated.
"To check on the brewer, to make sure he hasn't added anything or held
anything back from Paulet. To make sure he isn't playing a double
game. And the same thing in reverse when the letters come back, to
check on Gilbert. One must always have a check on one's own corrupt
agents to make sure their corruption has not run amok or been utilized
by others."
Phelippes now relaxed his face. "That is why you are the master," he
admitted. "No one can equal you in this game."
Walsingham permitted himself a momentary warm feeling. If only
Elizabeth would show her approval thus! "I thank you. I do it all for
Her Majesty. No knowledge is ever too dear. Now, later today I would
like you to meet our Gilbert Gifford." He paused and got up to rewind
the noise machine, which had run down. Turning back to Phelippes, he
said, "He has been busy about London, ingratiating himself with the
French at the embassy. The ambassador's secretary, Sieur de Cherelles,
is a trusting soul, and Gilbert is convincing him of his ardent
devotion to the Queen of Scots. He is giving Cherelles time to check
on his references. Soon he will break the news to Cherelles about the
secret post office, and offer to carry the letters that have been
piling up at the French embassy for a year now. Cherelles will accept,
and voiW. our links are complete. The road will open the road down
which the Scottish Queen, we hope, will gallop to her destruction."
TWENTY
We are getting a Christmas present," Mary told her household, as they
huddled around the fireplace in the main hall of the lodge at
Tutbury.
"A book of annotated Scriptures from Sir Paulet?" said Jane Kennedy,
with a giggle.
"No, under drawers with embroidered admonitions on them," said Marie
Courcelles, the high-spirited Frenchwoman who tried to fill Seton's
place in Mary's heart.
"A privy stool with Queen Elizabeth's face on the bottom," said Willie
Douglas.
"Willie!" cried Mary. "That is not funny!" But everyone was
screaming with laughter.
"We are going to be moved," she said, over the laughter. At once
everyone cheered. "To Chartley Manor, an almost-new manor house not
far away, belonging to the Earl of Essex."
"New!" Marie exclaimed. "New!"
"To what do we owe this?" asked Willie, ever suspicious.
"Perhaps to God's love and concern for us," said Mary. "Or perhaps
just to pure luck. No one ever has all bad luck, you know. Even our
luck has to change sometime."
"Chartley Manor will have down mattresses," said Marie, looking at the
old stained mattress of foul, flattened, mildewed feathers on her
mistress's bed.
"Chartley Manor will have huge glass windows to let in the sunlight,"
said Jane.
"Chartley Manor will be made of rose-red bricks that soak in the warmth
and hold it long after the sun goes down," said Barbara Curie, a new
attendant who had come and quickly fallen in love with, and married,
Mary's Scottish secretary Curie. There had been a threadbare wedding
in the drafty hall at Tutbury only two months earlier.
"Chartley Manor will have espaliered pear trees against those warm
bricks," said Elizabeth Curie, sister to the secretary. "And a bower
to sit and read in, where we can just lean back and lazily pick one of
the pears."
"Chartley Manor seems to have inspired your imaginations," said Mary
affectionately. "I can no longer even picture such luxuries." She
glanced at the ugly, dark room with its one guttering, smoky candle.
"But dreams are free."
Geddon came trotting over to her and stood, his ears pricked up as high
as they would go.
"Did you hear me, Geddon?" she said. "We are going to a new home. A
better place for your old bones. If a year in a dog's life equals
seven of a human's, then you are .. . seventy-seven. Almost as old as
old Madame Rallay, God rest her." Mary looked around at the bird cages
all covered now for the night. Not that it mattered, the days being
almost as dark as the nights. So few of the birds had survived
Tutbury; the drafts had killed them. And the Cardinal, who had sent
them to her, gone now as well. No one was left in France who cared
about the little things for her. Only the exiles and their eternal
plotting.