Page 255 of A Column of Fire

‘There’s an Englishman who comes to your embassy, collects letters sent by Henri de Guise and takes them to Mary in Sheffield.’ Ned hated to reveal how much he knew, but this was his only chance of persuading her. ‘He then brings back Mary’s replies.’ Ned looked hard at Aphrodite as he spoke, studying her reaction, and thought he saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘You probably know the man,’ he said insistently.

‘Ned, this is not fair.’

‘I have to know his name,’ Ned said. He was dismayed to hear a note of desperation in his own voice.

‘How can you do this to me?’

‘I have to protect Queen Elizabeth from wicked men, as I once protected you.’

Aphrodite stood up. ‘I’m sorry you came here, if your purpose was to get information out of me.’

‘I’m asking you to save the life of a queen.’

‘You’re asking me to be a traitor to my husband and my country, and betray a man who has been a guest at my father’s house!’

‘You owe me!’

‘I owe you my life, not my soul.’

Ned knew he was defeated. He felt ashamed for even trying. He had attempted to corrupt a perfectly decent woman who liked him. Sometimes he detested his work.

He stood up. ‘I’ll leave you,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid I think you should.’

Something was nagging at the back of his mind. He felt she had said something important that he had overlooked in the heat of the argument. He wanted to prolong his visit and ask more questions until she said it again, but she was looking angrily at him, visibly impatient to see the back of him, and he knew that if he did not go, she would just walk out of the room.

He took his leave and dejectedly returned to the city. He climbed Ludgate Hill and passed the Gothic bulk of St Paul’s Cathedral, its grey stones turned black by the soot from thousands of London fireplaces. He came within sight of the Tower, where traitors were interrogated and tortured, then he turned down Seething Lane.

As he entered Walsingham’s house, he remembered what Aphrodite had said: ‘You’re asking me to be a traitor to my husband and my country, and betray a man who has been a guest at my father’s house!’

A man who has been a guest at my father’s house.

The very first list Ned had made, when he arrived in Paris with Walsingham eleven years ago, had been a register of English Catholics who called at the home of the count of Beaulieu in the rue St Denis.

Walsingham never threw anything away.

Ned ran up the stairs to the locked room. The book containing the Paris list was at the bottom of a chest. He pulled it out and blew off the dust.

She must have been referring to her father’s Paris house, must she not? The count had a country house in France but, as far as Ned knew, that had never been a rendezvous for English exiles. And Beaulieu had never appeared in the register of Catholics living in London.

Nothing was certain.

He opened the book eagerly and began to read carefully through the names, recorded in his own handwriting a decade ago. He forced himself to go slowly, recalling the faces of those angry young Englishmen who had gone to France because they felt out of place in their own country. As he did so he was assailed by memories of Paris: the glitter of the shops, the fabulous clothes, the stink of the streets, the extravagance of the royal entertainments, the savagery of the massacre.

One name struck him like a blow. Ned had never met the man, but he knew the name.

His heart seemed to stop. He went back to the alphabetical list of Catholics in London. Yes, one man who had visited Count Beaulieu’s house in Paris was now in London.

His name was Sir Francis Throckmorton.

‘Got you, you devil,’ said Ned.

*

WALSINGHAM SAID: ‘Whatever you do, don’t arrest him.’

Ned was taken aback. ‘I thought that was the point.’