Prophecy. S. J. Parris
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meaningful nod.
The older man considers me for a moment, then a light of recognition steals over his face.
‘Ah. Your Italian, Francis? The renegade monk?’
I incline my head in acknowledgement; it is not a compliment, though it is a title I wear with some pride.
‘So the Roman Inquisition likes to call me.’
‘Doctor Bruno is a philosopher, William,’ Walsingham gently corrects.
The older man reaches out a hand to me.
‘William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Francis has spoken highly of your talents, Doctor Bruno. You served Her Majesty well in Oxford this spring, I understand.’
I feel my chest swell and my face flush at this; Walsingham is miserly with his praise to your face, which makes you strive for it all the more, yet he has talked about me favourably to Lord Burghley, the queen’s High Treasurer, one of her most influential advisors. You fool, I chide myself, smiling; you are thirty-five years of age, not a schoolboy praised for his penmanship, though this is exactly how I feel. I continue to beam to myself even as Burghley’s face turns sombre again.
‘This way, gentlemen. Let us not waste time.’
Inside the palace, the air seems stiff with fear. Faces, half-hidden, peer anxiously out of doorways as our footsteps echo along wood-panelled corridors lit by candles whose flames waver in the disturbance we make, sending our shadows looming and shrinking along the walls as Walsingham and I follow Burghley’s purposeful strides.
‘I almost forgot, Francis,’ he says, over his shoulder, ‘how was the wedding?’
‘Well enough, I thank you. I have left the party in full spate. Heaven only knows what will be left of my house when Sidney’s young bloods have finished their roistering.’
‘I am sorry, truly, to draw you away,’ Burghley replies, lowering his voice. ‘If the circumstances were not so very . . . well, you shall see. Her Majesty asked for you in person, Francis.’ He hesitates. ‘Well – to be honest, she called first for Leicester. But I thought the earl, after a day at his nephew’s wedding feast . . .’
Walsingham nods.
‘I thought you were the man to take charge, Francis. The queen is rightly afraid. This thing has happened within her own walls and its implications . . .’ The words die on his lips.
‘Understood. Show me this deed, William, then take me to the queen.’
He brings us up two flights of stairs where the panels are painted in scarlet, green and gold tracery, then along a more richly furnished and considerably warmer corridor, hung with tapestries and damask cloths; I guess we are nearing the site of the queen’s private apartments. On the way we pass three more armed men in royal livery. Burghley pauses outside a low wooden door where a stout man stands guard, a sword at his belt. The Lord Treasurer nods to him, and he steps back; Burghley rests his hand on the latch and his shoulders twitch.
‘Your discretion, gentlemen.’
The door swings open and I follow Walsingham through into a small chamber, well lit by good wax candles, where a body lies in repose on a bed whose curtains have been drawn back. At first I think it is a young man; the breeches and shirt are a man’s certainly, but as we step closer I see the long fair hair spread over the pillow, threads of gold glinting in the candlelight. Her motionless face is swollen and purple, with the popping eyes and bulging tongue that tell of strangulation. The white linen shirt she wears has been ripped down the front, though the two halves have been arranged to preserve her modesty, even in death. She looks young, no more than sixteen or seventeen; her slender neck is ringed with dark bruises and ugly welts and her breeches are torn, the silk stockings muddied and snagged. I glance from one to the other of my companions and understand with a jolt that I am flanked by the two highest officials of the queen’s Privy Council. This is no ordinary death.
Walsingham pauses for a moment, perhaps out of respect, then walks around the bed, examining the body dispassionately, as if he were her physician.
‘Who is she?’
‘Cecily Ashe,’ Burghley says. He has closed the door behind us and stands by it, twisting his hands together; perhaps he feels we are committing an impropriety, three men gathered to stare at the barely cold body of a young woman. ‘One of Her Majesty’s maids of honour, under the care of Lady Seaton. Her Majesty’s Lady of the Bedchamber,’ he adds, for my benefit.
‘Ah.’ Walsingham nods, and clasps his hand across his chin, obscuring his mouth. I have noticed that he does this when he does not wish to betray any emotion. ‘Ashe . . . Then she would be the elder daughter of Sir Christopher Ashe of Nottingham, would she not? Poor child – she has not been at court even a year. The same age as my Frances.’
We all stand silent for a moment, all our thoughts following Walsingham’s to his seventeen-year-old daughter, the new bride who, perhaps even now, is being led to the marital bed by Sir Philip Sidney, a man eleven years her senior and with notoriously vigorous appetites.
‘Almost the same age as my Elizabeth was when she died,’ Burghley adds softly. Walsingham glances at him; there is a moment of unspoken sympathy as their eyes meet and I sense that these two men share an understanding deeper than politics.
‘The clothes?’
‘Ah, yes.’ Burghley shakes his head. ‘The usual trouble, I suspect. Trying to steal out undetected to a tryst with someone she should not.’ He makes it sound as if this is a common problem.
‘Has she been violated?’
Walsingham’s tone is brisk again; Burghley gives a little cough.
‘She has not yet been officially examined by the physician, but the body was found with the breeches and underclothes torn, the shirt ripped apart likewise. There are bruises and bloody marks on her thighs. She was laid out in the form of a crucifix, with her arms outstretched. There is something else you should see.’ Taking a deep breath, he crosses to the body and, taking one corner of the torn material gingerly between his forefinger and thumb as if it might scald him, he folds down the left side of the shirt to expose the girl’s small, pale breast.
Walsingham and I both gasp simultaneously; there is a mark cut into the soft white flesh, over her still heart. The lines have been traced into the skin carefully and the blood blotted away, so that the mark stands out in jagged crimson lines, a shape that looks like a curved figure 2 with a vertical line bisecting its tail. This mark is unmistakably the astrological symbol for the planet Jupiter. He shoots me a questioning look, swift as blinking, but Burghley’s sharp eye notes it.
‘That is not all,’ says the Lord Treasurer, as he covers the girl again. ‘In each of her outstretched hands she held these objects.’ From the wooden dresser beside the bed he holds up a rosary of dark wood adorned with a gold Spanish cross, and with the other hand he presents Walsingham with a small wax effigy, about the size of a child’s doll.
‘Dear God,’ Walsingham breathes, holding up the figurine for me to see. It is crudely made, but unquestionably an imitation of Queen Elizabeth; red wool for hair, a cloak fashioned from a scrap of purple silk, a paper crown on its head, a sewing needle protruding from its breast, where it has been stabbed through the heart. We both look at Burghley, who nods, once. No ordinary murder indeed.
‘Who found her?’ I ask, breaking the silence.
‘The queen’s chaplain,’ Burghley replies, turning away from the corpse.
‘What was the chaplain doing in her chamber?’
‘Oh – she was not found here,’ he says, with a tight little laugh at the implication. ‘No – the body was outside. There is a ruined chapel behind the Privy Orchard – the last remains of the priory that used to stand on this site. It is separated from the palace compound by high walls and its garden grown somewhat derelict. Lately it has been said –’ Burghley frowns – ‘that it was becoming a popular place