Although we had finished that first mountain of letters, several times in the weeks following the outbreak of measles Phelippes sent a servant to fetch me when he wanted help in deciphering. He had the key to some of the codes, but fresh ones were always turning up and it can be a time-consuming business, breaking a new code. And it was due to the volume of documents that must be deciphered swiftly that he needed my assistance. Another large bundle of them, letters to the Scots queen, had been intercepted on the way to her from the French embassy by the courier Gifford. From what I read, Mary’s chief agent in Paris, one Thomas Morgan, was busy organising treason even from within his prison cell at the Bastille, where he had been held, at the request of the English government, since the discovery of the Parry conspiracy. England had asked France to hand him over for trial, but the most the French would do was to confine him to the Bastille, where he appeared to have considerable freedom, receiving other agents and controlling the Scottish queen’s correspondence in its two stages, from France smuggled into England and then from the French embassy carried on to Mary. Or at least he thought he controlled it. Little did he guess that much of it ended up on my desk.

Phelippes and I worked together quietly in his small back office with Arthur Gregory in the adjoining room. Here I still had my own table and copy of the codes. I climbed up there by the back stairs and only rarely saw Walsingham himself. It could be dull work, merely a matter of transcribing from code and then (since most of these latest documents were in French) translating them into English. When a new code appeared I pounced on it eagerly, as relief from the boredom, much to Phelippes’s amusement.

I had not seen Poley for some while, to my relief. Thomas Phelippes was a different breed of man from Poley, whom I sensed he did not altogether trust. Phelippes was heart and soul Walsingham’s man.

‘Sir Francis uses Poley to pose as a Catholic and infiltrate the network of Catholic exiles and citizens who plot the Queen’s downfall,’ Phelippes explained to me, after I had noticed Poley twice more about the house soon after I began to work there.

There was something in his voice which made me wonder whether Poley’s allegiance was sometimes open to doubt.

‘Poley is on good terms with the French embassy, carries papers for the French and Spanish, visits the Scots queen under the guise of a sympathiser. And all the while he passes information and copied papers to us.’

But could he be trusted? From the little I had seen of the man, I suspected he changed his loyalties as easily as he changed his doublet. I tried to sound out Phelippes tentatively on this point, for I felt the more information I possessed about Poley, the better I might be able to arm myself against him.

‘You say he passes information to us,’ I said, ‘but can you be sure he does not also pass information from us to the Scottish queen and her circle?’ I was now so much a part of Phelippes’s work that I regarded myself as included in ‘us’.

Phelippes looked at me over his spectacles and seemed to ponder how much he should say to me.

‘It is a difficult business, this, Kit. Sir Francis’s secret service. Some of our agents have been turned from traitors to informers loyal to the Queen. I know you have seen Gifford. He is one such.’

I gave him a startled look. I had not realised that Gifford was a former traitor.

‘Oh, yes,’ he went on, ‘Gilbert Gifford comes of an old Staffordshire Catholic family. That is why he is so readily trusted by the Scottish queen. And his knowledge of the county is useful. Chartley lies in Staffordshire, not far from Lichfield.’

‘But can you be sure of his loyalty?’

‘Yes. With Gifford I think we can. He is loyal to the Queen and opposed to the invasion of England by foreign armies. There are many English Catholics like him. They would rather a settled England under our Queen than the dangerous prospect of invasion by France or Spain. That is why the Queen is prepared to turn a blind eye to their faith as long as their loyalty to the state and the throne remains firm.’

‘But Poley – is he a Catholic?’

Phelippes gave a mirthless smile. ‘Not to my knowledge. I do not believe he has any strong religious faith, though he is an accomplished play-actor and can pass for Catholic or Protestant as the situation demands.’

I had already been told that – when I met him first – Poley had been covertly placed in the Marshalsea as a supposed Catholic sympathiser, while all the time his purpose was to glean information about plots from those incarcerated there, and to learn the names of secret Catholics. No wonder that he had supposed himself poisoned, if one of his fellow prisoners had found him out.

After this conversation, I became more than ever convinced that both Phelippes and Walsingham were uncertain of him. My own judgement was simpler. Robert Poley, I was sure, would pursue the interests of Robert Poley and no one else.

‘At this particular time he is a member of Sidney’s household,’ said Phelippes, ‘which is known for its religious tolerance. To the Catholic plotters, Poley seems safely placed, working for them near the heart of our network, since Sidney’s wife is Frances Walsingham, Sir Francis’s only child.’

I nodded. ‘So that means Poley has the trust of the Queen’s enemies, but can reveal all to you and Sir Francis?’

‘Exactly.’ There was a note of reserve in his tone.

To this day I do not know for sure whether Poley did honestly reveal all to Walsingham and Phelippes at that time, or whether he had half a foot in the Catholic camp. I did not know. And I do not know. But I do know what I believe.

Poley was a traitor.

Chapter Five

It had been a bitter, unforgiving winter, but at last there were signs of spring, even here in London. We had no garden with our miserable hospital lodging, and I had no reason to be invited into the fine gardens of the wealthy, though my father sometimes attended his few private patients in their great houses. Yet for anyone with eyes to see and a longing for the lost beauties of the countryside, there are unexpected corners and pockets of wild loveliness even in London.

There are the churchyards, for one thing. Although some are grazed by sheep to keep down the grass, there are others – small neglected patches beside tottering ancient churches – where wild flowers, which some would call weeds, can flourish undisturbed by human foot or ovine teeth. Daisies, poppies, eye-bright, St John’s wort, forget-me-not riot amongst the long grass. Honeysuckle clambers over crumbling walls, not in flower yet, but that will come, and those spiked arms clutching the stones will break out into sweet eglantine in the summer. There are useful herbs here too: peppermint and sweet Cecily, borage and feverfew, fennel and wild garlic.

Not only the churchyards had now begun to don their spring dress. In muddy corners of filthy, overcrowded, unpaved London lanes, violets put forth their shy blooms, and primroses opened their faces to the hesitant sun. I saw a swathe, a scarf, a river of golden cowslips running down the side of a midden behind a livery stable, their clustered bells as delicate as any I had gathered with Isabel on the edge of our grandfather’s meadow. Surely they were early? But the steaming warmth of the midden must have tricked them into believing the year was further advanced than it was.

My days had been too full, and my fingers too cold and stiff with chilblains, during those bitter winter months, to think of my lute, which lay beside my clothes coffer in my chamber. Now, however, when the first balmy air of spring could be felt, I carried it down to our small parlour. In winter we lived almost entirely in the kitchen, for the benefit of the fire, not being able to afford a second fire in the parlour. Now the unbearable winter chill of the room was gone and my father and I had taken to sitting there in the evening, reading. That day our work at the hospital had been undemanding and no summons from Seething Lane had come for me. After seeing the golden abundance of the cowslips on my way to the hospital soon after dawn, I was in the mood for music.