AND SO I TOOK A BOAT to Whitehall Palace. I had no more information to bring Lord Parr about what might have happened to the Queen’s book; and I realized that, with all Greening’s group gone, its fate might remain unknown.
On the way to Temple Stairs I called in at chambers to tell Barak I would be away that day, I did not know for how long. He was alone – Nicholas and Skelly had not yet come in – and I summoned him to my room.
‘Whitehall?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I found McKendrick last night.’ I told him what had happened at the hospital.
‘So the late Master Curdy was the spy.’
‘So it seems.’ I sighed. ‘I have reached a dead end.’
‘Then leave it to the politicians now,’ he said roughly. ‘You’ve done all you can.’
‘I cannot but feel I have failed the Queen.’
‘You’ve done all you can,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘Risked your life.’
‘I know. And yours, and Nicholas’s.’
‘Then have done with it. If Queen Catherine falls, it will be through her own foolishness.’
I ENTERED THE PALACE by the Common Stairs again, the wherry jostling for space at the pier along with boats carrying newly slaughtered swans for the royal table and bolts of fine silk. The pier ran a long way out into the water, so that unloading could take place even at low tide. The tide was almost full now, though, just starting to ebb. Dirty grey water washed round the lowest of the stone steps. I thought for a moment of poor Peter Cotterstoke, tumbling into the river on a cold autumn day. As I left the boat, gathering my robe around me and straightening my cap, I looked upriver to the Royal Stairs. There, a narrow, brightly painted building two storeys high jutted out of the long redbrick facade of the palace. It ended at a magnificent stone boathouse, built over the water. A barge was heading towards it, oarsmen pulling hard against the tide. A man in a dark robe and cap sat in the stern. I recognized the slab face and forked beard: Secretary Paget, master of spies, and one of those who knew whether an emissary of the Pope called Bertano was truly in London.
I went into the maze of buildings, tight-packed around their little inner courts. Some of the guards recognized me by sight now, though as always at strategic points my name had to be checked against a list. All the magnificence within had become familiar, almost routine. I was accustomed now to avoid looking at all the great works of art and statuary as I passed along, lest they delay me. I saw two stonemasons creating a new and elaborate cornice in a corridor, and remembered Leeman saying how every stone in the palace was built on common people’s sweat. I recalled that craftsmen were paid a lower rate for royal work, justified by the status that accrued from working for the King.
I was admitted again at the Queen’s Presence Chamber. A young man, one of the endless petitioners, stood arguing with a bored-looking guard in his black-and-gold livery. ‘But my father has sent to Lord Parr saying I was arriving from Cambridge today. I have a degree in canon law. I know there is a position on the Queen’s Learned Council come vacant.’
‘You are not on the list,’ the guard answered stolidly. I thought, who was leaving? Was it me, now my work was done?
In the bay window overlooking the river some of the Queen’s ladies sat as usual, needlework on their laps, watching a dance performed with surprising skill by Jane Fool. I saw Mary Odell sitting with the highborn ladies despite her lack of rank. The pretty young Duchess of Suffolk, her lapdog Gardiner on her knee, sat between her and the Queen’s sister Lady Anne Herbert, whom I had seen at Baynard’s Castle. A tall thin young man with a narrow, beaky face and wispy beard stood behind them, watching with a supercilious expression.
Jane came to a halt in front of the gentleman and bowed. ‘There, my Lord of Surrey,’ she said to the man. ‘Am I not fit to be your partner at the dancing at Hampton Court for the admiral?’ So this was Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk’s oldest son, but reportedly a reformer, said to be a skilled poet, who last winter had been in trouble for leading a drunken spree in the city.
He answered curtly, ‘I dance only with ladies of rank, Mistress Fool. And now you must excuse me. I have to meet my father.’
‘Do not be harsh with Jane,’ the Duchess of Suffolk said reprovingly; for the fool’s moon face had reddened. But then Jane saw me standing a little way off, and pointed at me. ‘There is the reason the Queen has gone to Lord Parr’s chamber! The lawyer has come again to bother her with business! See, he has a back as hunched as Will Somers’!’