Heresy (5 page)

He raised an eyebrow. “A greater truth than the Christian faith?”

“An ancient truth, of which the Christian faith is one later interpretation. A truth which, if it could be properly understood in our clouded age, might enlighten men instead of perpetuating these bloody divisions.”

A pregnant silence fell. The sun was low in the sky now, and in the shade of the trees the air was growing cool. Birdsong became more insistent with the gathering dusk, and Walsingham continued to pace through the grass, the shoulders of his black doublet flecked with white petals of blossom that fluttered from the branches overhead.

“Faith and politics are now one and the same,” he went on. “Perhaps it was always so, but it seems to have reached new extremes in our troubled century, do you not think? A man’s religion tells me where his political loyalties lie, far more than his place of birth or his language. There are many stout Englishmen in this realm with a greater love for Rome than you have, Bruno, or than they have for their own queen. Yet, in the end, faith is not merely politics. Above all else it is a matter of a man’s private conscience, and how he stands before God. I have done things in God’s name that I must justify before Him at the Last Judgment.” He turned and fixed me with an expression of sorrow then. When he spoke again his voice was quiet and expressionless. “I have stood by and watched a man’s beating heart ripped from his living body at my command. I have coldly questioned men as their limbs were pulled from their sockets on the rack, and the very noise of that is enough to bring your stomach into your mouth. I have even turned the wheels myself, when the secrets that might spill from a man’s lips as he stretched were too sensitive for the ears of professional torturers. I have seen the human body, made in the likeness of God, forced to the very
limits of pain. And I have visited all these horrors and more on my fellow creatures because I believed that by doing so I was preventing greater bloodshed.”

He passed a hand across his forehead then, and resumed walking. “Our nation is young in the new religion, and there are many in France and Spain who, with the backing of Rome, seek to kill Her Majesty and replace her with that Devil’s bitch, Mary of Scotland.” He shook his head. “I am not a cruel man, Bruno. It gives me no pleasure to inflict suffering, unlike some among my executioners.” He shuddered, and I believed him. “Nor am I the Inquisition—I do not imagine myself responsible for men’s immortal souls. That I leave to those ordained to the task. I do what I do purely to ensure the safety of this realm and the queen’s person. Better to have one priest gutted before the crowds at Tyburn than he should go free to convert twenty, who might in time join others and rise up against her.”

I inclined my head in acknowledgement; he did not seem to expect debate. Beneath the largest and oldest tree in the orchard a circular bench had been constructed to fit around its trunk. Here Walsingham motioned for me to sit beside him.

“You are a man who knows firsthand the persecutions Rome visits on her enemies. The streets of England would run with blood if Mary of Scotland found her way to the throne. Do you understand me, Bruno? But these conspiracies to put her there are like the heads of the Hydra—we cut off one and ten more grow in its place. We executed that seditious Jesuit Edmund Campion in ’81 and now the missionary priests are sailing for England by their dozens, inspired by his example of martyrdom.” He shook his head.

“Your Honour’s task is not one I envy.”

“It is the task God has given me, and I must look for those who will help me in it,” he said simply. “Tell me, Bruno, does the French king provide for you, other than your lodgings at the embassy?”

“He supports me rather with his good opinion than with his purse,” I said. “I had hoped to supplement my small stipend with some teaching. To
that end I planned to visit the famous University of Oxford, to see if they might have some use for me there.”

“Oxford? Indeed?” he said, a spark of interest catching in his eyes. “Now there is a place mired in the mud of popery. The university authorities make a show of rooting out those who still practice the old faith, but in truth half the senior men there are secret papists. The Earl of Leicester, who is its chancellor, makes endless visitations and orders enquiries, but they scurry away like spiders under stones as soon as he shines a light on them. Then, once our backs are turned, they go on filling the heads of England’s young men with their idolatry—the very young men who will go on to the law and the Church, and into public life. Our future government and clergy, no less, being turned secretly to Rome under our very noses. Her Majesty is furious and I have told Leicester it must be addressed with more vigour.” He pressed his lips together, as if to suggest things would not be so lax if he were in charge. “The place is become a sanctuary for those who trade in seditious books, and most of these missionary priests coming out of the French seminaries are Oxford men, you know.” Then he thought for a moment, and moderated his tone. “Yes, you should go to Oxford. In fact, I shall be glad to recommend you if you wish to visit. There is much you might see of interest.”

He paused as if contemplating some idea, then his thoughts appeared to land briskly elsewhere. “When you told me you wished to serve Her Majesty in any way she saw fit to use you—was this offer sincere?”

“I would not make such an offer in jest, Your Honour.”

“Her Majesty has money in her treasury for those willing to be employed under my authority, to aid in protecting her person and her realm from her enemies. And she would show her gratitude by other means as well—I know how important patronage and preferment can be to you writers. This would be the greatest service you could perform for her, Bruno. Living at the French embassy, you will be privy to a great many clandestine
conversations, and anything you hear touching plots against Her Majesty or her government, anything that concerns the Scottish queen and her French conspirators”—he spread his arms wide—“letters you may glimpse, anything that you think may be of interest, no matter how small, would be of great value to us.”

He looked at me then, eyebrows raised in a question.

I hesitated. “I am flattered that Your Honour shows such faith in me—”

“You have scruples, of course,” he cut in, impatiently. “And I would think the less of any man who did not. I am asking you to present a false face to your hosts, and an honest man
should
pause before taking on such a role. But remember, Bruno, whenever you feel the wrench between conscience and duty, your care should always be for the greater good. The innocent among them will have nothing to fear.”

“It is not quite that, Your Honour.”

“Then what?” He looked puzzled. “Philip Sidney told me you were so much an enemy of Rome that you would gladly join the fight against those who would bring the Inquisition to these shores.”

“I am an enemy of Rome, Your Honour, as I am opposed to all who would tell men what to believe and then execute them when they dare to question the smallest part of it.”

I was silent for a moment while he regarded me through narrowed eyes.

“We do not punish men for their beliefs here, Bruno. Her Majesty once eloquently declared that she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls, and nor do I. In this country, it is not what a man believes that will lead him to the scaffold but what he may do in the name of those beliefs.”

“What he
may
do, or what he can be proved to have done?” I asked pointedly.

“Intent is treason, Bruno,” he replied, impatiently. “Propaganda is treason. In these times, even distributing forbidden books is treason, because anyone who does so, does it with the intent of converting those into whose
hands they place them. And converting the queen’s subjects means seducing their loyalties away from her to the pope, so that if a Catholic force invaded, they would side with the aggressors.”

We sat in silence for a moment, then he placed a hand on my arm. “Here in England, a man of progressive ideas such as yours, Bruno, may live and write freely, without fear of punishment. That, I presume, is why you came here. Would you have the Inquisition return to threaten those freedoms?”

“No, Your Honour, I would not.”

“Then you will consent to serve Her Majesty in this way?”

I paused, and wondered how my answer would change my fortunes.

“I will serve her to the best of my ability,” I replied.

Walsingham smiled broadly then—I caught the glint of his teeth in the dusk—and clasped my hand between both of his, the skin dry and papery.

“I am exceedingly glad, Bruno. Her Majesty will reward your loyalty, when it has been proved.” His eyes shone. Around us the garden was almost in darkness, though a few streaks of gold light still edged the violet banks of cloud behind the trees and the air had grown chill, the plants releasing sweet scents into the evening breeze. “Come, let us go inside. What a poor host I am—you have not even had a drink.”

He rose, with an evident stiffness in his back and hips, and began making his way over the grass.

A servant had lit a series of small lanterns along each side of the path through the knot garden, so that as we approached the house our way was illuminated by two rows of flickering candles; the effect was charming, and as I took a deep breath of the evening air, I felt again an intimation of new possibilities, a future that I could grasp. The long days of travelling through the mountains of northern Italy, staying in filthy roadside inns infested with rats, where I would force myself to keep awake all night with one hand on my dagger for fear of being murdered for the few coins I carried, seemed very far distant; I was entering the intelligence service of the queen of England.
Another of my life’s unexpected turns, but part of the great map of my strange journey through the world, I thought.

Walsingham halted just before the lanterns and leaned toward me.

“I will arrange for you to meet with my assistant, Thomas Phelippes,” he said. “He organises the logistics—devises ciphers, delivery points for correspondence, that side of business. He is the most skilled man in England for breaking codes. I hardly need to say that you should not breathe a word of our meeting to anyone except Sidney,” he added, in a low voice.

“Your Honour, I was once a priest—I can lie as well as any man.”

He smiled.

“I rely upon it. You could not have outwitted the Inquisition for this long without some talent for dissembling.”

So it was that I became part of what I later learned was a vast and complex network of informers that stretched from the colonies of the New World in the west to the land of the Turks in the east, all of us coming home to Walsingham, holding out our little offerings of secret knowledge, as the dove had returned to Noah bearing her olive branch.

A
SUDDEN CRACK
of thunder jolted me out of memory, back to the room where I sat pressed up against the rain-slick window of a royal palace, watching a courtyard illuminated by sheets of light. In England I had hoped to live peacefully and write the books that I believed would shake Europe to its foundations, but I was ambitious and that was my curse. To be ambitious when you have neither means nor status leaves you dependent on the patronage of greater men—or, in this case, women. Tomorrow I would see the great university city of Oxford, where I must ferret out two nuggets of gold: the secrets Walsingham wanted from the Oxford Catholics, and the book I now believed to be buried in one of its libraries.

W
e left for Oxford at first light the following morning on horses that Sidney had managed to procure from the steward at Windsor, fine mounts with elaborate harnesses of crimson-and-gold velvet, studded with brass fittings that jingled merrily as we rode, but we were undoubtedly a more solemn party than had set out the day before on the river amid music and gaily coloured pennants. The storm had broken but the rain had set in determinedly, the warmth had evaporated from the air, and the sky seemed to sag over us, grey and sullen; it would have been impossible to travel by river without being half drowned. The palatine was much quieter over breakfast and sat with his fingers pressed to his temples, occasionally emitting a little moan—Sidney whispered to me that this was the penance for a late night and prodigious quantities of port wine—and my mood was much improved accordingly. Sidney was cheerful, as his winnings from the night’s card games had grown steadily in direct proportion to the palatine’s drinking,
but the weather had dampened our bright mood and we spent the first part of the journey in silence, broken now and again by Sidney’s observations of the road conditions or the palatine’s unapologetic belches.