He ran a knife under the seal and unfolded the paper, then glanced up at me.
‘Take the boy to the kitchen, Jackson, and see that he has something to eat.’ He gave me a thin, absent-minded smile. ‘There may be an answer.’
I nodded and followed the servant out of the room.
It must have been an hour and a half before I was summoned back to Curll’s room.
‘Now, lad – what is your name?’
I was startled. I hadn’t thought to give myself a name. ‘It’s Simon, sir.’
‘Well, Simon, I want you to carry another message. Not back to your master, at least not yet, but to someone in Lichfield. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He held out a sealed letter to me. ‘This is to be taken to Sir Anthony Babington. He is staying at the White Hart in Lichfield. Can you do that?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
Did he think me an idiot? However, I put on an obliging smile and tucked the letter into my pouch.
‘Here’s a shilling for you.’ He put the coins into my hand, but I resisted the temptation to bite them to test their worth. Simon, the real Simon, would have chided me for overplaying my part.
I touched my woollen cap in a kind of salute, bowed, and allowed the same manservant to see me out. Before we reached the front door, I heard a cascade of pretty laughter from upstairs. Was that the Scottish queen? I had not seen so much as the whisk of her skirt.
Hector and I took our time returning to Lichfield. I was at a loss what to do. The letter I was carrying might be vital to Walsingham, but it must be delivered – sometime – to Babington. Without Anthony Gregory’s skills, I could not open it, copy it and reseal it. If I took it straight to London now, it would be nearly a week before it reached Babington back in Lichfield. Would that arouse their suspicions? Yet I knew I could not simply hand it over unexamined.
I decided to make discreet enquiries about Babington at the White Hart before I came to a decision about what to do with the letter. I stabled Hector at my own inn, the Swan, then took myself round to the stableyard of the White Hart, where I found an ostler forking dirty straw out of a recently emptied stall. The manure was still steaming.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ I asked, all eager boy. Perhaps I was looking for employment.
‘Gladly.’ He was a fat man and puffed over his work. With a comfortable sigh he settled himself on the mounting block and took an apple out of his pocket. He watched me work as he bit into it.
‘My master sent me to find out,’ I said, ‘whether there is a gentleman called Babington staying here. He needs to meet him. Quietly.’
It was a gamble, but I suspected that the servants of the inn would know not only the names of the guests but whether there was anything furtive about them.
‘Oh, aye, he was here. That’s his horse’s muck you’re shifting. He left about an hour ago. Said he was going back to London.’
To hide my delight at this news, I turned my back as I heaved the last of the straw on to the midden.
‘Oh, well,’ I said, shrugging by shoulders indifferently. ‘Can’t be helped. I’ll tell Master.’
I propped the pitchfork up against the trough.
‘Thanks for your help,’ he said. ‘Here’s a ha’penny for you.’
I thanked him and slipped away. Perhaps I should take up the profession of messenger boy. A shilling and a ha’penny!
It was too late to start back to London that day, but I asked to be called at dawn the next morning, and was on my way before the sun was fully up. We made good time and I decided to go further than Warwick. In the evening I found a wayside inn a few miles short of Banbury. By the following evening I was in Reading, and I reached Seething Lane on the third day while Phelippes was still at work.
When I gave him a brief account of my mission and produced the letter, his eyes gleamed and he nearly snatched it from me.
‘Arthur!’ he called, ‘we need you here.’
Arthur Gregory came through, pulling on his cap, clearly on his way home.
‘Kit has brought us gold,’ Phelippes said. ‘Lift this seal, will you, and wait while we transcribe the letter, then reseal it for us.’
Gregory took the letter from him and glanced at it briefly. ‘Curll’s seal. That is no problem.’ He carried it off to his cubbyhole.
‘Now,’ said Phelippes, rubbing his hands together. ‘Curll to Babington. We may take it that it is in fact Mary to Babington. We’ll simply copy it down in cipher then let Arthur seal it. We can decipher it tonight, so we will know the contents before you deliver it to him tomorrow. It will seem that you have come straight from Lichfield.’
‘I don’t know where he is,’ I said.
‘But we do. Back in Hernes Rents, one of his many boltholes.’
Gregory returned with the letter neatly opened and handed it to Phelippes.
‘Now, Kit, two heads to tackle the cipher, though I think it will be one of Curll’s usual ones. Babington will only know a few. I have not heard that he has a head for codes.’ He pulled a second chair up to his desk.
‘Master Phelippes,’ Gregory said hesitantly.
‘Yes, yes?’ He did not look up, busy laying out keys to Curll’s ciphers.
‘Master Alvarez has just ridden near a hundred and fifty miles from Chartley to bring you that letter and it is growing late. Do you not think he should be sent home to his bed?’
Phelippes looked up, surprised, and screwed up his eyes.
‘Perhaps you are right, Arthur. You are looking somewhat pale, Kit. Yes, go home to your bed, but be back here tomorrow morning in your messenger attire, so you can deliver this to Babington.’
I thanked him and left hastily, before he could change his mind and draw me in. I was indeed nearly fainting with weariness. In the last week, from London to Lichfield to Chartley and back, I had ridden almost three hundred miles. Tomorrow I must remember to tell Sir Francis’s head groom that Hector would need to see the farrier.
The following morning it was clear that Phelippes had neither slept nor been home, but he made up for it in his delight at the contents of the letter.
‘As you saw, it is quite short, but it comes from Mary herself to Babington. She assures him that he is her trusted friend, and clearly now he will send her details of how he means to effect her rescue. You must take the original letter to Babington at Hernes Rents this morning. Let it be known that you missed him in Lichfield, followed him to London, and then had to search him out.’
I nodded.
‘Now, if we are very lucky, Babington will write back to the Scottish woman and ask you to carry the message to her.’
Lucky!
‘Do you mean I would have to make that journey again? So soon?’ I was aghast.
‘I don’t suppose it will be immediately,’ he said. ‘It will take Babington some time to decipher the letter, compose his reply, then transcribe it into cipher. Several days at least, I expect. Let me see.’
He glanced down at the transcribed letter on his desk. ‘This was written on the twenty-eighth of June. Today is the first of July, is it not?’
‘The second.’
‘Aye, so it is. The second. I lost a day. I think we may assume it will take him two or three days. Well, if he does not employ you, he may send the letter through the French embassy in the usual way, or hire another messenger. If so, we will need to be sure it is one of our own men. If we had to intercept different messenger, it would alert them, but we must see Babington’s letter.’ He frowned. ‘Why can they not use the excellent courier service we have set up for them?’
I did not point out that it was he who had first by-passed the regular route, by sending me directly to Chartley.