The Spymaster's Daughter (15 page)

Frances drew in a deep breath, gaining courage. “May I see it, Master Phelippes?”

“Well…ah…” He shrugged and looked about him, smiling, his eyebrows lifting in feigned helplessness. “I can see no harm in it. You are Dr. Dee's pupil; is that not so?”

She had not thought of herself in that way, but it was true, at least in part.

Phelippes spread his hand on the message. “We are flattered by your interest, my lady.”

She nodded, though she knew the words were flattery without meaning.

A chair was brought to the table and a candelabra, which brightened the space and drew other cipher clerks to gather near this interesting break in their dawn-to-moonrise workday. She smiled a greeting at them and sat down, eager to see the cipher. Phelippes had neatly recopied the original on fresh vellum and begun to mark repeated combinations.

Frances quickly saw other repetitions. “These numbers could be nulls,” she said, belatedly realizing that she had spoken her thought aloud. She hoped the man did not think her a know-all. “What language do you think, Master Phelippes?”

“Probably French, but it could be English. It's from the Catholic queen to the French ambassador, addressed to his secretary.”

“Mary, queen of Scots,” Frances whispered, amazed that she held a cipher recently from the hand of that woman…whore, murderess, and traitor, but once queen of both France and Scotland.

“Aye, she will never be done with her plots,” Phelippes said, his
lips drawn tight across his teeth, “but this time she may go too far, and even Her Majesty will no longer ignore her treason.” There was grim determination in Phelippes's raised voice, as if he were tutoring her, and the secretaries moved in closer. “If not, we will—” He stopped abruptly, and Frances knew he had said more than he wished.

“The original will be resealed and sent on,” he explained in a lighter tone. “It is an obvious advantage to your father that he has full understanding of the Catholic queen's plans, and that the traitors who plot with her do not know that we do.”

“Why don't you arrest them before they can do actual harm?” Frances wondered aloud, although she suspected the answer.

“My lady, if the trap is sprung too soon, many will escape to plot again,” Phelippes said. “That mistake was made with the Duke of Norfolk. The queen's leniency did not stop him, and he lost his head within a few years for plotting to rescue Queen Mary from the Earl of Shewsbury, who was guarding her. The duke then planned to lead an uprising to take England's throne. He put himself forward one time too often.”

“Yes, of course.” Frances thought she knew the answer to her next question, but she had to ask. “What will happen to these plotters?”

“Lady Frances, you know what happens to traitors who plan to kill our Protestant queen and put Catholic Mary on England's throne. They will die after we wring from them everything they know, especially who pays them for regicide and the betrayal of their country to Spain.” His voice had risen and become determined, harder, pitiless.

Frances held her body tight to suppress a shiver of dread. She knew what a traitor's death meant: a racking so absolute that the man's broken body had to be dragged to Tyburn, after which he was carried to the scaffold to be hung, but cut down living and butchered like an animal while still alive, his entrails and manhood
cut out and tossed on a brazier before his fading eyes. She had no desire for such entertainment, although she knew the road to Tyburn's tree was crowded with jeering Londoners seeking such bloody diversion.

“Do such thoughts trouble you, my lady?” he asked, squinting at her.

She shrugged, not trusting her voice, although hoping to reassure him. “I know the law and will follow it.” An intelligencer could not be cowardly or shrink from duty.

Still, troubling questions raced through her mind. Did her own dear father and the English people have a cruel nature, brutal beyond even the Romans with their gladiators and crucifixions? Or had modern life in London formed them, where dogs baited bears in the pits and tore them to pieces while crowds cheered and chewed on hazelnuts? Death was everywhere in life. People succumbed to plague in the streets; country folk starved after bad harvest years. Half of the children born died before their fifth year. Had the English made the world, or had the world made them what they were?

And what would living the life of a spy do to Frances Walsingham?

She had been protected from such brutal truth, being a country lady. Would the knowledge gained from ciphers harden her, too? If so, she would welcome some hardening. Never to regret, never to care about what had been lost would be a blessing. Yes, that was what she wanted.

She was brought back to the present by the somewhat perplexed expression on Phelippes's face. She smiled to reassure him that she did not shrink from him or the law.

Now some of her father's overheard conversations made more sense to her. He was trying to entrap Queen Mary in a plot to kill the queen of England, and Phelippes would help him. Plotting the queen of England's death was the one thing that Elizabeth could
never forgive her cousin. Proof of Mary's intent to supplant her was Walsingham's quest…and now his daughter's.

Frances pushed aside any further questions that might bring a fearful answer.

Phelippes lowered his voice and stared at his hands. “My lady, there is every indication that this present conspiracy is well financed with Spanish gold, and that some of the traitors have access to the court and possibly”—his voice grew even more confidential as he met her gaze—“even Queen Elizabeth's own person.”

Frances felt her mouth open at that news. Traitors in Whitehall, perhaps someone she knew and saw every day? A picture of Aunt Jennet in the Chapel Royal came unbidden to her mind. She must talk with her aunt, warn her to take greater care. If she were seen by a Catholic plotter, they might try to recruit her, or at least report her to turn away suspicion from themselves. She dared not go further and think her very proper aunt could be a Catholic plotter herself! Tomorrow would not be too early to warn Jennet.

She returned once again to the ciphered message. “These must be common words,” she said, looking more closely at the letter combinations, “and that would mean that these same letters could expose other common words.”

“And thus break down the cipher entire,” Phelippes agreed, apparently delighted with her quick understanding. “Yet, my lady, I urge you to caution. If they have made it easy for us to break, it could hide something we don't see. And remember, some symbols stand for whole words, and a few messages are doubly encrypted, though the same methods break them…if you are patient.”

“I am patient,” she said, although she was not certain whether that was as true as she wanted him to believe.

“And now, my lady,” Phelippes said, leaning his chin on his hand in a familiar gesture that those who had suffered the pox used to hide their scars, “I beg pardon, but I must decipher this message and get to others even more important.”

Frances leaned closer and spoke in a low, friendly voice. “Master Phelippes, I admire your skills above most men's. You need not hide the brave scars that marked you. I see them as proud symbols of your fight to survive to serve Her Majesty well, as you do.”

Phelippes seemed startled, though he dropped his hand and his face relaxed its tension. “You are correct, my lady. It is not a becoming habit.”

Pauley, who had been leaning against the shadowed wall, stepped forward and spoke in a low voice. “Perhaps, Master Phelippes, you could allow Lady Sidney to try her hand with this less important cipher. She is the most eager apprentice for this work that I have ever seen.”

Phelippes's pale eyebrows rose in surprise, but then settled in agreement. “It looks to be one of the Scots queen's constant demands for cosmetics to hide her aging beauty,” he replied, a little unkindly. He raised one shoulder briefly. “You may take it to your chambers, Lady Sidney,” he said, “but you must allow no one to see it.” He did not say,
especially Mr. Secretary
, but he looked behind him toward her father's empty writing table and his caution was clear.

“Of course, Master Intelligencer, I will guard it with my life.”

“I doubt you need go to such lengths,” he said, smiling at her.

Robert escorted her to her chambers and, without being asked, brought new candles for her candelabra. “My lady, I know you will wish to begin work immediately.”

She looked up at him, the candlelight outlining his strong features, which she decided were handsomer than Essex's or even her husband's. “How do you know that?”

“It is your way.”

His words pleased her. Though he had spent only a few short months in her service, he knew her better than most…she suspected better even than Jennet, certainly better than Philip.

Satisfied with that answer for now, Frances bent to the cipher.

F
rances stared into the three-branched candelabra on her writing table, captivated by its flickering flames. Why did lines from one of Philip's sonnets to Stella fill her mind whenever Robert softly played and hummed his music? Even when he was not present in the outer chamber, his voice sang through her mind along with Philip's words.

“Why are you frowning so, Frances?” Jennet, coming up beside her, spoke a little above a whisper so as not to startle.

“Just deep in thought, Aunt.”

“You are thinking of Philip.”

“Yes,” Frances answered half truthfully.

“Write to him about the lady Stanley before the court gossip reaches him, as it surely will. There will be some who cannot wait to bring him such news under the guise of friendship.”

“I have done so, Aunt.” She did not add that she had not received Philip's reply, nor very much looked forward to one, which would probably place some blame on her for making such an unseemly spectacle of herself. And she did not tell Jennet how difficult it was to write to Philip at any time, even letters of court gossip and her work in the presence chamber. She had so little sense of him, sometimes even forgetting his features, requiring his miniature to remember his face. She would tell no one of this trick her mind played. She did not understand what so completely blocked memory of her own husband. The forgetting was no deliberate move on her part. It had just happened gradually over the last months, until now she had to think hard to remember his kindness…his guilty consideration.

“Please let us go and talk by the warm fire.” Frances shivered involuntarily, aware of the bone-chilling cold of her chamber as she stood and took Jennet's hand. They walked to the upholstered chairs placed comfortably just far enough from the hearth to disperse the acrid odor of burning sea coal and save their slippers from flying sparks.

Frances motioned her maid to move a brazier closer behind them before dismissing her. This would be no conversation for a servant.

Pouring sweet Madeira into two glasses from an unstoppered green bottle, Frances offered the drink to Jennet and they both settled into their chairs. With a quick breath, Frances began: “There is something most urgent that I must warn you about.”

“Warn me?” Aunt Jennet laughed, but shifted uneasily on her chair.

“I should have spoken earlier, but…”

“What is it, girl?” Jennet said, her voice testier than she probably meant, because she immediately smiled and shrugged.

“I saw you praying in the Chapel Royal.”

Jennet, puzzled, started to interrupt.

“No, Aunt, hear me.” She lowered her voice to little more than a whisper. “I saw your fingers moving against your breast as if…as if you were saying…rosary beads. Do you yet cling to the old faith in your heart and in Her Majesty's own palace…the queen who is governor of the Church of England? If so, do you not know the peril you invite?” Frances stopped for breath and for the look of anger on Jennet's white face.