When I had done bathing her, I wrapped her in a light sheet and cradled her in my arms. She was stiff with pain and fever.
‘Hush now, my pet,’ I whispered. ‘Listen.’
We had placed her cot behind a screen, but there were other patients sleeping in the long ward, so I kept my voice low as I sang softly the lullabies our nurse had comforted us with when we were small. Gradually her body relaxed into mine and her head rested against my shoulder. She was a frail little thing, with shoulder blades trying to break through her skin, thin and sharp as incipient wings. But her spirit was strong and fought to hold on to life.
On the third day she fell into a deep natural sleep, and on the fourth she woke and cried for food. The wound was still far from healing, but it was clean and sweet and the skin had begun to draw together. She would have a scar for the rest of her life, but it would be well hidden by her skirts.
‘Good work,’ said Peter, when he came with me to hand the child back to her parents a week later. ‘I did not think she would live.’
Alys – for that was her name – clung to my hand as we walked towards the gate. I grinned at Peter. Since the day when we had cared for Sir Jonathan Langley, I had worked with him more often. He would make a fine apothecary when his apprenticeship was finished.
Alys’s parents were waiting just inside the gate. From the fine white dust ingrained in his skin and the small scars peppering his hands, I took it that her father was a stonemason. Her mother was small and thin, a little wisp of a woman, but I could see that she could barely contain herself from running forward.
‘Mama!’ Alys cried, slipping from my hand and rushing into her mother’s arms.
‘We’re that grateful to you, doctor,’ the man said, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘She’s our only one that lived.’
I mumbled something in reply, aware of an ache as I watched Alys clinging to her mother. Then, as they turned away, she suddenly ran back and clutched me about the knees.
‘God be with you, Dr Kit,’ she whispered.
I knelt down on the paving stones and hugged her.
‘And with you, Alys. And stay away from the street dogs!’
‘You did well with the child,’ my father said, as we sat together in our small parlour that evening.
I smiled at him.
‘That is why we are given our skill, isn’t it, Father? To heal the sick and restore them to life?’
I noticed then – I had been too preoccupied with the child to notice before – that he was looking tired. More than that, he seemed exhausted. My absence working for Phelippes, particularly the long hours of late, had thrown a much greater burden on him. I think that was the first time I fully realised that my father was growing old. He had been past forty when I was born, so now he was nearing sixty, and what he had endured at the hands of the Inquisition had surely shortened his life.
In the days that followed I tried to take over more and more of his work, to spare him, and I urged upon Joan the necessity of feeding him well. Between us we contrived to ensure that he ate two good meals of meat a day, and he began to look a little less worn.
However much I would have liked to spend more time relieving my father of some of his burden of work, Phelippes still needed me. When Dr Stevens returned to the hospital he required a cane to lean upon, but at least he was able to resume the care of most of his patients. Once again I was working at St Bartholomew’s in the mornings and spending the afternoons at Seething Lane. Phelippes was troubled by the fact that the conspiracy headed in England by Sir Anthony Babington was not progressing in the way he expected. Sir Anthony, it seemed, was developing cold feet. Despite the fact that he was a married man with a young child, he was expressing a wish to travel abroad.
‘In order to widened his education, he says!’ Phelippes was contemptuous. ‘He is four and twenty. If he had wanted to travel in Europe and see the sights of ancient Rome, he should have gone five or six years ago, at the age when most young gentlemen travel. Rome! I know where he will be headed in Rome. Straight to that hotbed of treason, the college for English priests. And he has the effrontery to ask Sir Francis for a licence to travel abroad for three years!’
‘It does seem strange,’ I said cautiously. ‘Not long married, and with a baby. He would leave his wife and child in England?’
‘Of course. He could hardly pursue his education with a woman and child tagging at his heels.’ Phelippes’s voice was sour with sarcasm.
‘But,’ I said, not quite sure why Phelippes was so heated, ‘will this not mean the Queen will be safe and the threat of an invasion will be over?’
He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Have you learned nothing, Kit? We want this conspiracy to go forward. For once we have all the threads in our hands. We know the principal players and their strengths and weaknesses. We know where the money is coming from. We know which ports they will attempt to use during an invasion and have installed covert forces there to withstand them. We are intercepting every letter in and out of Chartley, every communication with the Scottish queen, as you very well know. Up to now she has been very careful with what she, or her secretaries, put on paper, but with every week that passes, they become a little more confident, a little more careless. It is unlikely that we will ever again be in a position to have everything under our control as we have now. Of course we want the conspiracy to go forward!’
Under this blast of reasoning, I bowed my head. I had never seen the quiet and prudent Thomas Phelippes so passionate, but I understood that if all his work of the last months were to fall apart, he had some reason for passion.
He had been prowling about the room as he lectured me, but now he sat down abruptly at his desk.
‘And I will tell you something even more ironic, Kit. For a short time Sir Francis even believed he could turn Babington, persuade him to work for us. I managed to put a stop to that idea.’
‘A double agent?’ I said weakly. I was having difficulty keeping up with all this, for I had not been aware of some of the details of the conspiracy Phelippes had been listing.
‘Aye, if you like. A double agent. But it would have been much too risky. Babington is genuinely a devout Catholic, not like Gifford, who comes from an old Catholic family but does not have a scrap of religious faith in his bones. Moreover, Babington has a puppy-like devotion to the Scots queen. He was a page in Shrewsbury’s household when Shrewsbury was her guardian, and he saw her as a maiden in distress, like some damsel locked away in a tower in a tale of chivalry and knightly prowess! The truth is, she is a scheming harpy with her eye on the English throne, now that the French and the Scots have thrown her out. And her enormous household has been eating up the Queen’s substance for years. Maiden in distress!’ He snorted in contempt.
‘So what is to be done?’ I asked hesitantly. I was not sure whether Phelippes was using me merely to work off his fury, or whether there was some other purpose behind all this.
‘In the first place, we have told Poley to lead him by the nose for the moment. Keep him corresponding with the Scottish woman, but also keep the door to Walsingham open a crack. The latest plan is for Babington’s band of heroes to attack Chartley and free Mary, while a group of assassins, including Savage, attack and murder the Queen. At the same time the invaders will land and march on London, unimpeded by any English army, because, of course, we know nothing about all this. If a nervous Babington thinks he can always back out at the last minute and reveal all to Walsingham, then he is more likely to carry on with his hare-brained schemes.’
‘I see. And Sir Francis’s purpose in all this is?’
‘The purpose is to trap Mary when she admits she is a party to this. She has been a party to other conspiracies, but she has been clever enough to conceal the evidence. This time, she is on the brink of revealing herself. Then, under the Instrument of Association, which she has signed, and the Act for the Queen’s Surety, she is guilty of treason.’