Sir Francis was soon back.
‘I shall send a letter to Thomas by royal messenger,’ he said. ‘He can use post horses and be in Chartley in less than two days. I want to be sure that Thomas does not arrest Babington yet, should he still be in the area. Not until we are sure about our evidence. If we track him down in London, we will keep him under constant surveillance. We’ll give him the space to commit himself a little further.’
He sat down at his desk to write.
‘Now here are two letters, Kit, which I want you to take back to Seething Lane and give to Mylles. The first is to be sent on to Thomas immediately by fast messenger. The other is my instructions to Mylles as to how he is to deploy Berden and Cassie. I want you to stay with Mylles and help in any way he sees fit.’
I nodded. ‘Am I to stay in these clothes, sir? And continue to play the part of a messenger boy?’
I was very conscious of how grubby I was. The clothes Phelippes had given me had been somewhat unsavoury from the start. By now they were grimed with sweat and the dust of my journeys to and from Chartley.
Sir Francis looked at me properly for the first time since I had arrived in Greenwich and laughed.
‘No, I think you may discard those . . . garments. After you have seen Mylles, go home and tell your father that you are back in London. Then you may wash and don the clothes you normally wear when you work with us. Not a physician’s gown, please!’
I smiled at his mild attempt at a joke and took the letters he handed me. It would be a relief to be clean again.
By the time I had seen Mylles and reached Duck Lane, my father had returned from the hospital. He embraced me, then held me at arm’s length.
‘You are not looking at your best, Kit.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I am given leave to come home to wash and change into clean clothes. Then I must go back again.’
He shook his head at this, but did not argue. He had accepted that Walsingham ruled my life now.
‘I think it will all be over soon, Father. Then we can take up our lives as before.’
‘I am glad to hear it. While you are changing, I will tell Joan to make you a meal. You look as if you have not been eating.’
‘I have been travelling a good deal,’ I said, ‘and there has not been much time for regular meals. I would be glad of Joan’s cooking, plain as it is.’
As I started up the stairs, he called after me, ‘That actor fellow has been round here, asking for you. I told him I did not know where you were.’
I nodded, without turning round, but my heart gave a skip.
The next few days were busy but frustrating. Although I was allowed to go home at night, I spent my entire time with Francis Mylles, either at Seething Lane or at his house on Tower Hill. The unbearable heat broke at last in a series of thunderstorms, just when the farmers would have been preparing to harvest the grain crops. Word came in from the country that, despite the good weather earlier in the summer, the harvest was largely ruined. It would mean another year of shortages and rising prices, perhaps even famine amongst the poor.
Berden and Cassie combed London for Babington, but found no sign of him. Gifford too seemed to have disappeared. Mylles had arranged to meet him late in the evening of the twenty-second of July and waited until one o’clock the following morning, but Gifford never appeared. Reporting in later that day, Cassie said he had not seen Gifford for several days, but had heard that he had ridden out into the country with Ballard. As Gifford was our main means of keeping a watch on Ballard, his disappearance also meant we lost track of Ballard, one of the key conspirators and one of the most dangerous.
That was on the Saturday. By Sunday, Mylles was becoming seriously concerned. For all we knew, Ballard had discovered Gifford was Walsingham’s agent and left him lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Ballard was a man who would not hesitate to use his knife if he saw need of it. The burden of all this responsibility was beginning to tell on Mylles, who would normally have been able to turn either to Phelippes or to Sir Francis himself for guidance, but Phelippes had still not returned from Chartley and Sir Francis was attending the Queen, who – so we gathered – was in a state of anxiety over the whole business that left her sharp tongued and short tempered.
Mylles knew he was not to arrest Babington yet, but he feared that if Ballard was not arrested he would slip away again to France, probably from the very fishing village where I had seen him land. Yet if he were arrested, it might scare the other conspirators into hiding.
‘It is impossible to know what to do, Kit,’ he said to me that Sunday evening. ‘If I send Berden or Gifford (could we find him) to arrest Ballard, they will be known immediately for Sir Francis’s men. I dare not use the city pursuivants, for you know what they are like. They will make so much hullaballoo that half London will be alerted. We must keep our activities secret even from the city authorities. I wish Thomas Phelippes were here.’
Soon after this, however, Berden discovered Babington in London.
‘I have spoken to one of his servants,’ he said, when he arrived at Mylles’s house to report. ‘Sir Anthony is to give a great celebration dinner for his friends at the Castle tavern in Cornhill on Thursday. All is to be of the most lavish. It seems they are celebrating the success of their plans.’
‘Too soon,’ I said, ‘too soon.’
‘They are a gaggle of arrogant young coxcombs,’ Berden said crossly, but he had reason. He had hardly slept in the last week. ‘We will need several men to watch the inn. There are doors leading into various streets. One of them provides a way through an alley to Threadneedle Street and the Royal Exchange. It is so busy round there it would be easy for any of them to slip away and be lost in the crowd. And I think we should book a room next to theirs on Thursday and place a man there to keep watch.’
He sat down and blew out his breath.
‘I cannot stay there for long myself, as I am supposed to dine the same night at my lodgings with a friend who has promised to bring Ballard with him. This may be our chance to arrest Ballard, so I must be there, even if I need to pose as another victim of justice. You may have to arrest me as well.’
Mylles was relieved to have definite news of Babington and the fact that many of the conspirators would be gathered together at the Castle Inn on Thursday meant that it might be possible to arrest them there. But Ballard must also be secured. He sat down to write a swift report to Sir Francis.
‘Kit, will you call Cassie? I need him to take this to Sir Francis at once.’
With this letter on its way, Mylles relaxed a little. At least Sir Francis would now be able to advise on what action to take.
By Thursday the twenty-eighth, we knew that Phelippes was on his way back to London and would be with Walsingham the following day to discuss what should be done next. We were all now in a state of sleepless anxiety. Babington’s dinner would go ahead that evening, and Mylles had instructed me to accompany Berden and Cassie and several others to keep watch on the inn. No one was sure whether Ballard would come to the Castle Inn, or would be brought to Berden’s lodgings by his friend, or whether he had already fled the country. For the moment, Sir Francis had told us to make no arrests but to keep the conspirators under surveillance, so that they should not slip through our fingers and succeed in carrying out their plans at the last minute.
Six of the men at that dinner would be those pledged to assassinate the Queen. If we failed, the Queen herself might die.
In the early evening, Berden, Cassie and I found ourselves a table in the window of a small ale-house in Cornhill opposite the main door to the Castle. Berden had already stationed one of his men in a room next to the one Babington had hired for his dinner. There he would sit in the dark with the door ajar and take note who arrived for the meal, since we could not be sure that everyone would enter the inn from the door we were watching. As we sat sipping our watered ale and picking at some dry and mouldy cheese not fit for a mousetrap, we watched provisions for a lavish banquet being carried in across the road.