I had not climbed a tree since my last summer at my grandfather’s solar and I probably could not have done so now, had I not been driven by fear. One of the oaks had a branch low enough if I jumped. On the second attempt I managed to grab hold of it and pull myself up until I had my stomach across it. For a moment I floundered there like a fish in a net, then I was astride it and reaching up to the next branch, which was within easy reach. Once I had climbed up to this one, I was able to wedge my back into an angle between two branches and draw up my legs out of sight. Just in time, for now I could see the horseman approaching.

I realised he was being cautious, as though he too did not want to be seen. He stopped under my oak tree, whose broad trunk gave him some cover, and I found myself sweating with fear that he might look up. Had the tree not been in full summer leaf he would certainly have seen me. From where I was, I could see the back of the manor house. Mounted on his horse the man would be able to see it too. I caught my breath. This must be one of the other conspirators, sent on by Babington from Lichfield, to spy out the ground.

The man seemed to wait there for hours, though I know it can only have been minutes. Then he turned his horse back the way he had come, not from the village but cross-country from the south. I went cold as I caught a glimpse of his face as he turned. It was Poley.

Back at the inn, I felt this was an occasion when I ought to contact Phelippes. When I told him I had seen Poley stealthily scouting out a route to the manor, he looked worried for a moment.

‘Poley is close in Babington’s confidence, and that is what we want.’ His voice sounded unsure. ‘However, we do not want Babington to make a move before Mary replies to his letter and we have our evidence. I may need to warn Sir Amias to double the guard.’

Sir Amias Paulet, of course, who was in charge of the manor and the Scottish queen. Phelippes would be able to send a message to him. Even so, I felt threatened. To me there always seemed to be the smell of danger about Poley.

Whether or not Phelippes warned Sir Amias, I do not know, for two days later, everything changed. Gifford arrived with a packet retrieved from the beer barrel leaving the manor. It still smelled of beer. Phelippes unwrapped it from its waterproof covering with trembling hands.

‘Curll has encoded it,’ he said, ‘but it is from the Scottish queen to Babington.’

It was what he had been waiting for.

The bird-catcher’s net was closing around Babington and the gentlemen conspirators, as well as the men like Ballard who had been smuggled in from France. The two parts of the plot were coming together – assassination and invasion – but this letter might draw the net closed.

Another of Walsingham’s agents had arrived at Stowe-by-Chartley a few days before, one William Waad. In a rare moment of frankness, Phelippes warned me that Waad was a dangerous man, given to using violent means to extract confessions.

‘Best avoid him, Kit,’ he said, with a look of disgust. Skill, not violence, was Phelippes’s stock in trade.

Now that the Scottish queen’s letter had been brought by Gifford, Phelippes sent Waad back to London, telling him that his services would not be required. I could see that Waad did not like taking orders from Phelippes, but he left anyway, with an ill grace. I wondered what services he might have provided, for he was no part of the deciphering service, nor a courier, nor an informant. If he was used to extract confessions, why was he here? Phelippes did not volunteer the information and I did not ask, but I was glad to see Waad leave.

Although I had been fretting over my idleness and my neglected work at St Bartholomew’s, I could not help catching some of the fever of the chase. when the letter came into Phelippes’s hands for which he had laboured so diligently. He was not a man who showed his feelings readily, but he shone with triumph that morning.

It did not take us long to decipher it, for Curll had used the same simple code, I presume so as not to tax Babington too greatly. The letter was quite short and in one aspect it disappointed Phelippes.

‘Why has the woman not asked for the names of the six noble gentlemen who will carry out the assassination!’ he cried. ‘Surely she will want to know that, and it is what we need. All she says is: “By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed?” Is that proof enough?’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘She also speaks of Mendoza. That is useful.’

He turned to me. ‘Kit, you have perfected Curll’s hand. I want you to make an exact copy of this.’

I took pen and ink and did as I was bid, including Mary’s instruction to Babington: ‘fail not to burn this present quickly’. She was taking no chances.

Phelippes looked over my shoulder when it was done.

‘Good. Now make a copy of our transcription.’

When I had finished, he folded both together with a letter he had written quickly to Sir Francis.

‘You may take this copy to Sir Francis yourself, Kit, together with the transcription and this letter from me. I will keep the original and follow you in a few days if we find that Babington has returned to London. He has not been seen in Lichfield lately. Our work here is finished. It is now merely a matter of arresting those young men when the moment is right. They will not hold out long, I fancy, under Topcliffe’s persuasions, and their sworn confessions will serve to strengthen the evidence here in the Scottish whore’s letter.’

I shuddered, suddenly ashamed at being so engrossed in Phelippes’s intellectual puzzles that I had forgotten the reality which lay behind them. Topcliffe, I knew, was the chief torturer at the Tower. It seemed there was some hypocrisy in Phelippes’s dislike of Waad’s violence. With horror I thought of Anthony Babington, that merry young man, with his zest for life and his unquestioning devotion to the Scots queen, crushed by the torturer Topcliffe. It was a measure, I suppose, of Phelippes’s relief at the success of the projection that he used such foul language of Mary, which I had never heard from his lips before. I glanced down at the copy of the letter Phelippes had returned to me. In his exuberance he had drawn a sketch of a gallows on the back.

Chapter Fourteen

The road to London was dusty with midsummer heat and the air was still full of the scent of the mown hay drying sweetly in the fields. Hector and I made good time to London now that the road had become so familiar to us, reaching the city halfway through the third day. I went first to Seething Lane, where I saw Hector settled in his stable and spoke briefly to the head groom.

‘He’ll be thinking he belongs to you,’ the groom said, running a hand affectionately down the horse’s neck.

‘I wish he did.’ I smiled. ‘His intelligence and his speed give the lie to his appearance.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘There’s many a horse like that. The handsomest an’t always the smartest.’

‘You could say the same of men,’ I said.

In Walsingham’s study I found Francis Mylles, one of his private secretaries, sorting despatches and tying up files of papers with red ribbon.

‘I fear Sir Francis is not here, Kit,’ he said. ‘He has been summoned to attend the Queen at Greenwich. You will find him there.’

I walked to the river and took a wherry down to Greenwich, finding some relief from the summer heat on the water. There was a feeling of thunder in the air. The wherryman grumbled a good deal about the heat and the hard life led by his kind. I made sympathetic noises whenever he paused for breath, but paid him scant attention. He seemed to have plenty of breath for complaint as well as for rowing. I knew he was simply hoping for an extra penny from me and I did not disappoint him, feeling rich with the remainder of Sir Anthony’s coin in my purse.