‘You would not be able to read my notes, sir, they are so ill writ.’

‘Do you think you could imitate another’s hand?’

Startled, I stared at him. ‘I’ve never tried.’

‘This, now.’ He winged a document across the room at me and I caught before it fell off my desk.

‘Curll’s hand?’ Curll was one of the Scottish queen’s secretaries, along with another called Nau.

‘Try it,’ he said. ‘Give me that key you have worked out for the new code and I’ll decipher the other document.’

I studied the letter. It was one of those we had intercepted on its way out of Chartley, where the Scottish queen was still held prisoner. The route via the beer barrels contrived by Walsingham and the agent Gifford continued to work smoothly. Mary and her supporters still believed it was their own secret means of communication and that Gifford was a Catholic ally.

Gifford was a more trustworthy agent than Poley. He brought the letters retrieved from the beer barrels first to us, where they were unsealed by Arthur Gregory and deciphered by Phelippes or by me. Gregory would then reseal them so skilfully with his forged seals that the most careful inspection would reveal nothing. Gregory was an artist, in his way. Once resealed, the letters were delivered to the French embassy. It was essential that there should be as little delay as possible, lest suspicion be aroused, hence Phelippes’s need for my assistance when there were many documents to decipher in a hurry. The letter in my hand was one I had deciphered earlier in the evening and placed in the pile for Gregory to seal in the morning. It would then be carried by Gifford to the embassy before noon, to be sent on its way with the others destined for the conspirators in Paris and Rheims.

I took a fresh sheet of paper and began to copy the letter, noting carefully the direction of the strokes and any unusual turns or flourishes to the characters. When I was finished, I carried it across to Phelippes. He took off his spectacles (for very close work he saw better without them, since he was short-sighted) and tilted my effort toward the candle-flame.

‘Hmph.’ He nodded at last and put the paper down. ‘That might deceive someone who did not know the hand. Do it again.’

‘But the deciphering . . . ‘

‘I can finish it.’

He made me copy that letter a dozen times before he was satisfied, and I was growing angry at the mindless task. When I flexed my tired fingers and sat back, kneading my aching temples, he laid another letter in front of me.

‘Now try Mendoza.’

It was well past dawn before he let me go, and as I was setting my cap upon my head, I ventured to ask him – and I did not usually dare to do such a thing – why he had made me copy the writing.

‘Sometimes, Kit, it is helpful to add a line or two to a letter, to speed matters along their path. To . . . stir the pot, let us say. Therefore it will be useful if you learn to forge the hands of Curll and Nau and Mendoza. And of course Morgan and Babington. You know that the man Ballard, the Catholic priest who passes himself off as Captain Fortescue, is due back soon in the country again, conspiring with that group of headstrong young men?’

I nodded. Ballard – who was, like Thomas Morgan, a long-standing enemy of the Queen – was now known to be raising an army of Catholics on the Continent, aided by Morgan and financed by the Duke of Guise. This much had become clear from the letters we had intercepted lately. It was no longer a matter of vague hope amongst the exiles. This time the threat was real. Sir Anthony Babington, to whom two of the letters from Hartwell Hall had been addressed, we now knew had gathered around him a group of young English Catholics – Tycheborne, Salisbury and others. Their role was to secure certain ports for the landing of the invasion and to create an army of like-minded rebels to join the foreign forces once they had set foot on English soil. Together they would overthrow the government. We were following every step of the conspiracy through the intercepted correspondence and through Barnard Maude, another of  Walsingham’s agents, who was posing as Ballard’s companion. A few weeks ago Phelippes had provided the two of them, Ballard and Maude, with forged passports so that they could travel to France, to contact Morgan and the Duke and make further arrangements for the invading army of French and Spanish troops. Easing their departure was a little more of this stirring of the pot.

‘Why forged passports?’ I had asked, because Phelippes, as Walsingham’s chief man, had the authority to issue genuine ones, sealed by Sir Francis himself.

‘Perfectly genuine passports would arouse Ballard’s suspicions of Maude,’ Phelippes explained patiently, as if to a child, ‘so I forge my own passports – very good forgeries, but not quite perfect. The customs officers at the ports know to let them pass.’

‘If Ballard is coming back,’ I said now, ‘does that mean they will act soon?’

‘Soon, perhaps, but not too soon. Babington’s young men are full of talk and wild dreams, but they are not the men of action Ballard would like. So we need to encourage them.’

‘Encourage them to invade England!’ I was horrified. ‘And kill the Queen! Has not the man Savage made a solemn vow, witnessed in church, to kill the Queen?’

‘Aye, but he drags his heels. I think he is terrified, now that the time has come to take action. Another man who is all talk. Gifford is busy reminding him that he must not fail in his vow. No need to worry, Kit. We watch Savage night and day. No harm will come to the Queen. But we need to spur the young men to more action. Babington is our man, I think. An idealist, easily fired up, but weak and vacillating. As you know, I recently sent Robert Poley to befriend him. Poley was in the ear of Morgan last year in Paris, so Babington will believe him to be a loyal supporter of the Scots queen. I am awaiting a report from Poley later today.’

I swallowed hard, and whatever the politics of Anthony Babington I felt pity for him at that moment. If Walsingham said that my help in deciphering documents would protect the Queen and the country, I would do my part willingly. But I did not like this tampering with letters, forging additions to them, provoking assassins and half-hearted conspirators to act. This counter-conspiracy of Walsingham and Phelippes – what they called a ‘projection’ – seemed to me less directed to protecting our Queen than to bringing about the final destruction of her cousin, the Scots queen. It had about it the rank smell of evil.

The evening of that same day when I had left Seething Lane at dawn, my father and I were to dine with the Lopez family, although I was reluctant to go, after working all night with Phelippes and all day at the hospital. However, I knew that it meant much to my father that the more distinguished members of our Marrano community in London sometimes invited him to their houses, so I donned my best clothes and hoped I would not fall asleep with my head in the soup. Although he could not return their hospitality, my father could not refuse a courteous and pressing invitation.

As we set out, a fierce summer storm broke out overhead, so that by the time we arrived my shoes and hose were soaked. Sara bustled me away to borrow dry hose and shoes, and as I changed she told me that Hector and Beatriz Nuñez were to join us, as well as Diego, a cousin of her husband, and her own daughter Anne, who was near my age.

‘These will be dry by the time you leave, Kit,’ Sara said, spreading my hose out by the fire in her private parlour and setting my shoes in the hearth. ‘Are you well, my dear?’

It was only when we were alone that she would address me thus, for apart from my father – and now the despicable Poley – she was the only one who knew my secret. She put her arms around me and embraced me against her soft breast. I felt tears rising, and wished I could lay my head on her shoulder and tell her everything about my work with Phelippes and how I hated the world of lies in which I was trapped. She had discovered my sex when I had first come as a frightened child to London, but had been sworn to secrecy and had told no one, not even her husband.