‘I see,’ I said again, and this time I did see. So this was what Walsingham and Phelippes were working for, what all this web of intrigue and observation was intended to entrap. By watching every move, but waiting and not showing their hand, they hoped that Mary would drop her guard.
‘Are there any letters to decipher today, Master Phelippes? Because if not . . .’
‘No, Sir Francis wants to see you. He should be back from Whitehall Palace by now. Come with me and we will see whether he is in his office.’
Sir Francis must just have arrived, for he was standing and sorting through the papers on his desk.
‘Ah, come in, Thomas, Kit. Have you explained to him yet, Thomas?’
‘No, Sir Francis. I thought you wished to do so yourself.’
‘Very well. Sit down, both of you.’ He settled himself behind his desk.
‘Kit, we have both been very pleased with the work you have done here. You also managed the business at Hartwell Hall admirably. As far as we can tell, your sudden departure aroused no suspicions and you enabled us to take control of another courier route.’
I inclined my head. I was not sure where this was leading, but I dreaded that it might be a preliminary to sending me on another mission like the one to the Fitzgeralds. I had managed the deception once, for just a week. I did not think I could do it again.
‘As I am sure you must have become aware, Thomas and I have to work with some very disreputable and unreliable people – liars, traitors, double agents. You have convinced us of your decency and honesty. Moreover, you have your own thoroughly respectable profession of medicine, unlike the many layabouts we are forced to employ.’
He fixed me with a shrewd gaze.
‘I can see you are looking apprehensive. Please do not think that I am going to ask you to give up being a physician and become an informant! What I would like to do is to use you from time to time, when an impeccably honest face will serve the Queen and the country better than half a dozen slippery men. Like Poley.’
He smiled. Clearly he knew my aversion to the man.
‘Thomas will be riding down to Sussex in two days’ time,’ he said, ‘to the port of Rye. We have received information that an attempt will be made to smuggle two more so-called priests into the country through Sussex sometime next week. Probably not through Rye itself – it is too well guarded by our customs men and searchers. It is more likely that they will choose some small port nearby, one of the fishing villages that lie along the coast there. It is an easy matter for a fishing boat to slip across the Channel to Dieppe or Calais, then sail innocently back into its home port with unwelcome visitors hidden amongst the barrels of fish.’
A sudden flash of memory seized me. I too had once hidden in the bottom of a fishing boat.
‘Once we have picked up the trail,’ Phelippes said, ‘we will either follow them or arrest them, as seems best at the time.’
‘I want you to go with Thomas,’ Sir Francis said. ‘It is time you learned more of our work and this will give you the opportunity.’
I opened my mouth to protest that I was not an agent in Sir Francis’s service. That it had never been my intention even to be a code-breaker. That I did not want to become more embroiled in this murky world than I was already.
Then I closed my mouth again. A sudden and unexpected surge of excitement set my heart beating faster. I smiled at Sir Francis. ‘In two days, did you say?’
Chapter Eleven
Our progress down to Sussex was neither secret nor unobtrusive. Phelippes knew very well how much he was hated by those bent on treason and although he was confident that he had certain knowledge of most of the traitors in the country, even he could not know them all. Moreover, they were a slippery lot. Even Walsingham’s own agents, like Gifford, had a habit of disappearing, sometimes for weeks at a time.
‘A few weeks ago,’ Phelippes said to me as we rode south together, ‘we needed to send Gilbert Gifford on a mission to France, to reassure the conspirators there, especially Thomas Morgan, that he was still acting for them. While he was away, we were obliged to employ another man as courier in his place, without telling him that he was, in fact, acting for Sir Francis. This meant using a very roundabout and difficult way of intercepting the letters and passing them on, to prevent his realising this. Gifford recommended a cousin of his, Thomas Barnes, a known Catholic who would be accepted by Mary’s party.’
I had heard mention of Barnes, but I had paid little attention, as it did not seem to concern me.
‘Barnes has disappeared,’ Phelippes said. ‘Gifford could not find him. We could not find him. For all we know, he may be dead, or he may reappear tomorrow. Of course, our greatest fear has been that Barnes discovered the truth about the secret route via the beer barrels and revealed to the Scottish queen that her correspondence was being watched by us. So far, that does not seem to have happened. But the danger is always there. And any one of our agents could be turned by the enemy at any time and the first person they would want to eliminate, after Sir Francis, is me. So you are taking quite a gamble, young Kit, riding in company with me.’
He gave me a bleak smile. However, I glanced around at the escort of twenty armed men who surrounded us. Any assassin who made an attempt on Phelippes’s life would pay for it with his own. We were even more heavily protected than Sir Francis had been, returning to London from Barn Elms. It was true that this was a longer journey and would pass through parts of the country from which Babington hoped to draw some of his army. Sussex and particularly Kent had been mentioned in the conspirators’ plans, either from the number of Catholic families living here or from the counties’ proximity to France.
Moreover, the area around Rye, our destination, was a favourite landing place for the priests whom William Allen had been smuggling into England for many years. Both the fishing ports and the bleak area known as Romney Marsh had provided hiding places for traitors in the past.
So I rode south in a very different frame of mind from when I had travelled to Hartwell Hall. Then I had been apprehensive about my journey’s end, but the journey itself under the soft skies of spring had been pleasant. Now I was alert to danger even during the journey itself, despite our armed guard. It was early summer now. The meadows were full of luscious green grass, sprinkled over with meadow flowers like an image of Paradise in a Flemish tapestry – red campion, ox-eye daisies, viper’s bugloss, meadowsweet, cow parsley. Once, on the verge of the road, just escaping the hooves of our passing horses, I saw a clump of the rare and delicate lady’s slipper orchid.
I had nerved myself to ask if I might ride Hector again, and my request had been granted by Sir Francis himself. The horse knew me at once, whickering in greeting. I hoped it was partly for myself and not merely for my pocket full of June-fall apples. We were at ease with each other, which could not be said of Phelippes, who sat on his horse like a marionette whose strings have been cut, slumped over as if he was still pouring over the documents on his desk. Perhaps I have inherited some affinity for horses from my grandfather, for to be mounted again always lifts my spirits. Phelippes merely endured, like the patient man he was, but he decreed that we would ride no further than Sevenoaks that first day. This was a journey of about thirty miles and by the end of it I could see that Phelippes could have ridden no further.