Prophecy - S. J. Parris Giordano Bruno

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lack of warmth.

      ‘Speaking of natural allies – you know we must talk to Spain if this is to proceed,’ he hisses in the ambassador’s ear as he leans in. ‘Sooner rather than later.’

      Castelnau sighs.

      ‘So you say.’

      ‘Throckmorton carries letters from Mary to Spain’s embassy as well. Oh – you didn’t know?’

      Castelnau looks wounded at the news, as if he had just learned that his wife was unfaithful. He is still clasping Howard by the arm.

      ‘She involves Mendoza? But the man is so …’

      ‘Forthright?’

      ‘I was going to say uncouth. For an ambassador.’

      ‘Mendoza is a man of action,’ Howard says emphatically, then bows curtly and leaves, the implicit criticism still hanging in the air.

      Outside in the passageway, once we are out of earshot, Howard rounds on me, pointing a finger heavy with gold into my face.

      ‘You may have duped the French king and his ambassador, Bruno, but you should know that I do not like the look of you at all.’

      ‘I can only apologise, my lord. These are the looks God gave me.’

      He narrows his eyes and leans back to give me a long hard appraisal, like a man who suspects he is being sold an unreliable horse.

      ‘I hear what is said of you in Paris.’

      ‘And what is that, my lord?’

      ‘Don’t toy with me, Bruno. That you practise forbidden magic.’

      ‘Ah, that.’

      ‘And it is said you converse with devils.’

      ‘Oh, all the time. They often ask after your lordship. They say they are keeping a place warm for you.’

      Howard steps even closer. He is taller than me but I do not step back. His breath is hot in my face.

      ‘Joke all you like, Bruno. You are nothing but a glorified jester, just as you were at the French court, and a licensed fool may say anything. But when King Henri no longer has the power to protect you, who will be laughing then?’

      ‘Can a sovereign lose his power just like that, my lord?’

      He laughs then, low and knowing.

      ‘Watch and wait, Bruno. Watch and wait. Meanwhile, I shall have my eye on you.’

      There are footsteps on the boards behind us; Howard breaks off, gives me a last blast of his disapproving glare, then hastens away, calling for a servant to bring his cloak. I turn to see William Fowler with Courcelles beside him.

      ‘Goodnight, Doctor Bruno,’ Fowler says, his smooth face inscrutable in the candlelight. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you.’

      Likewise, I assure him, my own expression as neutral as his. He reaches out to shake my hand and there is a paper folded into his palm; I tuck it into my own with a finger and bid him a safe journey as I turn towards the staircase, wishing that I could walk with him now so that we might talk openly and together make some sense of what we had heard that night.

       FOUR

       Salisbury Court, London

       27th September, Year of Our Lord 1583

      It feels as if I have barely closed my eyes when there comes a soft, insistent knocking at the door of my chamber. Dawn is just creeping around the edge of the shutters; only bad news brings callers this early. I bundle myself into a pair of underhose and a shirt to unlatch the door for my impatient visitor, steeling myself, but it is only Léon Dumas, the ambassador’s clerk, who hurtles into the room so quickly in his haste not to be seen that he almost knocks me backwards and cracks his head against the sloping ceiling. Here on the second floor of the house, under the eaves, the rooms are designed for people of my height, not his.

      Dumas rubs his forehead and sits heavily on my bed. He is an earnest young man of twenty-seven, tall and skinny with thinning hair and slightly bulging eyes that give him a permanent expression of alarm – though I cannot help feeling that this has intensified since I persuaded him to share with me the ambassador’s correspondence. Now he looks up at me with those big eyes and a pained frown, as if the knock on the head was my doing as well. He is fully dressed.

      ‘Léon. You are up with the lark – is something the matter?’

      He shakes his head.

      ‘I only wanted to warn you – my lord ambassador has already gone down to his private office to make a start on the day’s correspondence. He was up half the night reading the letters from Mary Stuart that Monsieur Throckmorton brought from Sheffield, and now he sets about writing his replies. He wants them delivered to Throckmorton’s house at Paul’s Wharf before nightfall today – apparently Throckmorton rides for Sheffield again tomorrow at first light.’

      ‘Good. So Throckmorton expects you some time this afternoon?’

      ‘I believe so. Castelnau will spend the morning writing his letters and ciphering them and I must be there to assist him. Then he will leave me to write out the fair copies while he and the rest of the household are dining, and when he has eaten he will approve and seal them and I will be dispatched.’

      ‘So …’ I run over the timing in my mind. ‘We will need to work quickly. Have you seen the letters from Queen Mary?’

      He shakes his head, a nervous, twitching motion.

      ‘No. But the packet is in his writing desk.’

      ‘Read them while he is out. If you do not have time to make a copy, at least get the sense so that you can relay it. But it may be that she has sent him a new cipher – they change it often for fear of interception. That we must copy, if it is there.’

      Dumas swallows hard and nods, sitting on his hands.

      ‘If I don’t have time to make two copies of his reply before he wants it sealed …?’

      I pace the room for a moment, considering.

      ‘Then we will have to pay a visit to our friend Thomas Phelippes on the way to Master Throckmorton. Don’t look so alarmed, Léon – Phelippes is so gifted in the art of interception, I suspect he may be a wizard. No one will see anything amiss.’

      Dumas looks miserable and jiggles on his hands more vigorously.

      ‘But if we should be caught, Bruno?’

      ‘Then we will be thrown out into the street,’ I reply solemnly. ‘We will be forced to join a troupe of travelling players. We can offer ourselves to play the ass for Christ’s entry to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.’

      ‘Bruno –’

      ‘Ah – I know what you are going to say. Very well – you can be the front legs.’

      ‘Must you turn everything to a joke?’

      Despite himself, he smiles, while I remember Howard’s sharp insult from last night. A glorified jester. Was that really how they spoke of me in Paris? Queen Elizabeth keeps an Italian fool at court, who goes by the name of Monarcho; am I to be compared with him? It stung because I recognised the truth of it: with no money, land or title to my name, I must make myself indispensable to men of wealth if I hope to thrive, and I have learned the hard way that most men of wealth would rather be entertained than enlightened. But might I not hope to do both? That, at least, was the intention of the book I was now writing, which would set forth my new ideas about the universe in a style that could be read outside the universities, by ordinary men and women, in their own language.

      I sit beside Dumas on the bed and put my

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