LITMIR.BIZ

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foot. I hurried after him, gripped by a sudden horror that he might have stumbled on the girl’s severed ear, tossed aside by the killer. But as I approached I saw what he had found; it was clear no rain had fallen in the past two days, and a wide rust-brown stain spread out between spikes of grass a few feet from the tree. When he lifted his head to look at me, I saw the effort it was costing him to maintain the appearance of detachment.

      ‘Blood, no?’

      I nodded. He bunched one hand slowly into a fist and wrapped it in the palm of the other.

      ‘They told me she’d been strangled. I thought – well, at least that’s quick, she wouldn’t have suffered too long. So where’s this much blood come from?’

      ‘She could have wounded her attacker trying to fight him off,’ I suggested, half-heartedly. I recalled how Walsingham had feared Poole’s reaction if he learned what had been done to his sister’s face; I had not anticipated being the one to tell him.

      He considered this; I waited for another sarcastic response, but this time he nodded. ‘That would mean she came in alive,’ he said, looking up at the wall.

      ‘I think you’re right. I can’t see anyone getting a dead body over that. It would take two men at least. But why would she be here at all?’

      ‘Well, there’s the question. She must have arranged to meet someone.’

      He strode away abruptly, tearing at the tall weeds that tangled at the foot of the wall. I watched the ferocity of his movements. So much for keeping his countenance. I reached up and broke a low branch from the tree, sturdy enough to bend back the undergrowth, and swiped back and forth without conviction; I was certain that a killer organised enough to plan such a grotesque display would not have left anything to incriminate himself in the place he wanted the girl found. I wondered again why he would have chosen this spot – neither busy enough to make a public spectacle of the death, nor obscure enough to suggest they wanted to cover it up. It only made sense if my theory about the mutilation was correct, and they were making an allusion to Clara Poole being a whore, and a betrayer. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, and the location was simply convenient, but I found that hard to believe; with a lot less effort her killer could have left her in the street outside. This was Southwark; a body in the gutter was barely cause to break stride for most passers-by.

      I pulled myself up into the lower branches of the tree to take a look over at the street, aware of Poole pausing to watch me. Smears of blood had stained the bricks at the top; it looked as if the killer had escaped this way after arranging the body. I was trying to calculate how long the whole business might have taken him, when I glanced down and saw an unmistakable glint of metal through the brambles beneath the tree.

      ‘Found something?’ Poole asked, straightening and wiping his hands on his breeches.

      ‘Wait there.’ I shinned down and plunged into the undergrowth to grab the object.

      He was almost breathing on my neck when I emerged, hands and arms shredded by thorns and clutching a gold locket, its chain snapped. I held it out to him.

      ‘Fuck me,’ he said, letting out a slow, shaky breath.

      ‘Is it hers?’

      He nodded, turning it over in his hands. The face was engraved with scrolled letters entwined in a pattern of flowers and leaves.

      ‘It was her mother’s. She passed it on to Clara when she was dying. Look, here.’ He pressed the catch and the locket sprang open to reveal a curled lock of red-gold hair tucked inside. ‘Clara never took it off. But she wore it under her clothes, in case anyone got close enough to read the inscription.’

      He clicked the face shut again and lifted it so that I could see more clearly. Around the edge, the engraved letters spelled out ‘Veritas Temporis Filia’. I raised my eyes and met his.

      ‘Truth is the daughter of time. But why should that be hidden?’

      He seemed pleased by my ignorance. ‘You really don’t know? It was the motto of Mary Tudor, the Queen’s sister, may she burn in Hell.’

      ‘Bloody Mary? But why did Clara have that?’

      ‘Ann – Clara’s mother – served in Queen Mary’s household as a young woman. Ann was twenty-five when Mary died, and Elizabeth took the throne. You didn’t go about telling people you’d worked for Bloody Mary after that – you kept your mouth shut and acted like a good Protestant if you didn’t want repercussions. My father forbade Ann ever to speak of it. But she used to tell her stories to Clara, as soon as she was old enough to hear.’

      ‘So Ann was Catholic too?’ I wondered what effect those old stories might have had on Clara. Could she have harboured secret sympathies for Babington and his friends, despite her debt to Walsingham?

      ‘Ann worshipped as the law demanded, my father was careful about that. He was taking enough risks with his own double life, he didn’t want his wife doing the same. But Clara said she never gave up her rosary. Nor this locket. Clara wouldn’t have been parted from this lightly.’ His jaw clenched. ‘See here where the chain is broken? Do you suppose he tore it off her if she was resisting him?’

      I rubbed the backs of my hands where the thorns had pricked them, glancing to either side with an uneasy sense of being watched. Something didn’t feel right here; I had known that feeling too often not to trust my instincts. It seemed to me that Clara’s locket had jumped too readily to my hand. If the girl’s shoes and sleeves had been stripped from her to sell before her body was handed over, surely a piece of gold jewellery would not have been left behind unless someone wanted it found? We were the only souls in the graveyard, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were playing on a stage, for the benefit of an unseen spectator. I pulled the kerchief up around my face again, just in case.

      ‘She could have lost it climbing the wall,’ I suggested, unconvinced.

      ‘Or – wait – she could have thrown it into the brambles herself,’ he countered, suddenly animated. ‘Suppose she realised what was happening, that her life was in danger? She might have ripped it off and tossed it away to stop him getting his hands on it.’

      ‘If she was intimate with Babington or one of his friends, they would have known she wore the locket,’ I suggested. ‘Wouldn’t they have searched for it?’

      Poole looked at me as if he pitied my stupidity. ‘Babington and his friends were all dining together the night she was killed,’ he said. ‘All save Ballard, who was in France – or so we believe. They didn’t necessarily murder her with their own hands. And if they paid someone to lure her here and get rid of her, he might not have known to look for a locket. Besides, there would have been nothing but moonlight to see by – he couldn’t have lit a lantern for fear of disturbing the old watchman. And if the killer was hurt, he must have wanted to get away as quick as he could. He wouldn’t have wasted time scrabbling through bushes.’

      I held my tongue; I could not contradict this thesis without revealing that Clara’s assailant had had the leisure to cut off her hair and ears, and that the blood was not his but hers. It was not for me to take from him the idea of his sister bravely resisting her attacker until her last breath. But the appearance of the locket so conveniently troubled me. Poole was staring at it, rapt, smoothing the pad of his thumb over the surface.

      ‘Should we keep searching?’

      ‘What?’ He jerked his head up. ‘Forgive me, I was …’ He indicated the locket with a diffident nod, as if embarrassed by his grief, before slipping it into the pouch at his belt. ‘I suppose we should see if there is anything else.’ But his earlier resolve seemed to have ebbed away; he looked around with the air of a man who has entered a room to find he has no memory of what he came in for. I picked up the broken branch I had discarded and pulled back the undergrowth where I had found the locket, hoping a cursory search would satisfy him so that we could make our way back across the river; there had been no mention of breaking our fast and my stomach was cramping with hunger. As I stepped closer to peer through the leaves, my foot

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