AND EVEN AS a threat it failed to close mouths or ears or doors, for the day after next, Cecil found Geoffrey Belloc in all his giant bulk sitting in wait in Cecil’s annex, asking a moment of the principal secretary’s time, and not terribly politely. “Before a royal child is born, sir,” Belloc said quietly, when Cecil tried to put him off, and so Cecil, feeling bullied, opened the door for the intruder, said he had a very few, very brief minutes.
Inside the inner cabinet, Cecil gestured with his nose for Belloc to sit on a low folding stool with a leather sling, the lowest point he could offer. Even then, with Cecil settling into his tall chair up on its platform, still Belloc looked down at the secretary. “What are you up to nowadays, Geoff? The Gentlemen Pensioners?”
“Queen’s Messengers, sir,” said Belloc. “More than ten years now. The generosity of Mr. Walsingham when he died.”
“You are from the very old days indeed. The old Earthworms.”
“Earthworms, my lord?”
Cecil laughed without making a sound. “What my father and Mr. Walsingham used to call you fellows, out in the mud of it all.”
“Your father and those other gentlemen were kind to recognize my small service.”
“Stories since I was a boy of fellows like you. Derring-do. Hiding under the Catholics’ beds, in the teeth of it. The sharp end. Saving us all from papal conspiracy, from the bad old days. You were catching Catholics starting when?”
“Since I was nineteen, sir, maybe a bit younger. Mr. Walsingham had me in France around then.”
“And today? Do you come asking for a favor?”
“No, my lord. I come as a messenger of sorts. On the very same question.”
“Catching Catholics?”
“Yes, sir. And I come on behalf of better men than I.”
“Ah.” Cecil leaned back and tilted his head.
“We understand that she isn’t eating, my lord.”
“You hear that in the Messengers’ office? Rumor.”
“As I said, sir, I’m sent today in a private way.”
“Very dramatical, Geoff. You’re still a bit of a player, aren’t you? Drama in all things.”
Belloc had volunteered for this task, had agreed over dinner to represent Mr. Beale’s and all the other gentlemen’s views to the principal secretary and to demand action; he would push on until Cecil listened. Crooked in heart as much as back, Geoff thought; if you met Cecil in an inn, you wouldn’t trust him with your luggage. “You’re still new to your position, sir, and perhaps certain matters haven’t yet risen to your attention. And in your father’s day, this might have seemed distant enough in the future to leave unanswered, but now, sir, the gentlemen have sent me to raise the matter’s urgency to you. Their question is now pressing, as she’s not eating. She wanders in her mind, as you know.”
“Who told you this? How dare you speak of—”
“Events threaten to gallop past any preparations, Sir Robert. If matters are to proceed peacefully, we require certainty. It’s no disgrace for us to discuss it here, behind doors.” Geoff pushed to the end: “King James may believe England is his for the taking, but not as matters stand.”
Cecil winced and rubbed his humped shoulder, to Geoff’s eye an amateur performance of having been stabbed in the back.
“As they stand? With whom? You dare a great deal—”
“There is worry.”
“There just is? Like rain?”
Belloc said nothing more. Size always helped in these matters when there was nothing to be gained by speaking. He learned that years ago, making money by helping to collect rich men’s debts, real or implied.
“So.” Robert Cecil spread his hands on his table, his legs in his chair, his back against the light from the window. “A clique of whispering men will be anonymous. And will send their giant messenger to question Her Majesty’s principal secretary and demand that we all ponder the illegal question of what the future holds. I don’t have a vote in the matter, you know. Inheritance just is.”
“They ask, my lord—as men who have seen the darkest and worst of Catholic crimes and have loyally protected Her Majesty from invasions and intrigues—whether the claimant to the throne can bring peace and be relied upon not to burn his subjects alive in the streets. It seems a small matter to be certain of this. They demand an answer, definitive: Is he Protestant or not?”
“Ah.” Cecil waved distractedly as if at a fly, and his body began already to lose the illusion of size he had strained to create. “Who has ever thought he wasn’t? He says he is. He goes to Protestant church every week. If that’s all that worries them—”
“If he is a Catholic, they won’t let him in. If they believe he’s a Catholic, my lord, it will be war or civil war, sooner or later. It will be slaughter again. The Catholics will rise up to greet him, and they will murder. I was in Paris with Mr. Walsingham during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.”
“I saw the play.”
“It was worse than the play.”
“That’s saying something.” But the topic seemed to exhaust Cecil. His pride and bluster were thin. He rubbed his shoulder again and poured himself some wine, offered none to his tormentor.
Belloc pressed on: “James has a Spanish boy who gives him counsel in bed.”
“Oh, James has always had favorites. They never last long.”
“They are always Catholic.”
“Do you still have webs of intelligencers in Scotland, Geoff?”
Instead of answering, Belloc opened the leather case he had held at his side throughout. “We have prepared something for you. An abstract.”
“This we again?” Cecil couldn’t long maintain an air of calm. “How many dare?”
Belloc unfolded the sheets and placed them on Cecil’s table. They were headed, in fine secretary hand, “Chronology of Certainties. Of His Acts.”
If Cecil was impressed or surprised by the dossier, Geoffrey Belloc couldn’t perceive it. Instead, when he saw Geoff wasn’t going to answer who had sent him, the smaller man grunted and condescended to lower his eyes to read. He asked questions without looking up. When had Belloc received this entry? And how much later until he had written it down? And whom else had he told of this or that? Did he keep similar abstracts for other questions of intelligence? Who was the pseudonymous Ursinus? And why, if Belloc—“sorry, if your anonymous gentlemen”—had all of this information, why were they still not able to settle this largest of all questions but rather came to pester Cecil about it: Was King James VI of Scotland, likely heir to the English throne, secretly Catholic or not?
The information was all ambiguous, almost intentionally teasing, as if the answer were always held in balance with its opposite. By way of example: A chandler in Edinburgh won a contract to supply Holyroodhouse Palace itself with a certain number of candles each week. This was a significant opportunity to place eyes and ears inside King James VI’s royal residence at last. But, after the chandler had increased his prices to what he thought the royal household would pay, he no longer cared about the small money he had been earning by selling information to London. The closer he crept to James’s world, the less interested he was in answering coded letters. What little he did write, though, tantalized: In his final report of 1590, he wrote that of those candles being ordered for the palace, a certain number were fit, by the chandler himself, into silver sticks with crucifixes on them, kept in a small chapel separate from the main chapel of the palace. “And when I was to fit them, sir, to these sticks, I was allowed to enter only the front-most alcove of this chapel, the rest of which was covered away from my eye by a long black curtain, through which I could not see a peep, nor dared to, as this was sure enforced by the guard. He did follow me throughout the palace as I made my delivery and set my wares, allowing me to enter this room but not that, this far but no farther, to turn away and face a wall whensoever someone was coming or when a horn or bell or voice was heard.”
London had pressed the chandler to recruit servants within the palace, but he replied with silence. Asked if the chandler had tried to converse with his guard about minor matters first and major matters later, the chandler returned again silence. By the time Belloc had planned to travel to Scotland to enforce his will upon the reluctant intelligencer, Belloc’s master, Walsingham, had died, and plotting had been reorganized. From that moment on, intelligence reports were to be handled by Mr. Cecil or the Earl of Essex only, and Belloc began his retirement from secret matters, entering his years on the stage, years as a Queen’s Messenger, years of worry, boredom.
Chronology of Certainties. Of His Acts.
1566—Born and baptized Catholic. HIS mother having been queen of enemy France.
Cecil looked up. “Shocking, Geoff. Whoever knew such fine secrets as this? Come now. James was raised up properly by the Calvinists. No one thought him Catholic as a boy.”
Belloc answered with the same words that he and the gentlemen who had sent him today had so many times used: “The pope excommunicates Elizabeth and tells her subjects to rise up and murder her, but he does no such thing to James, who equally claims to be a Protestant.”
Cecil shrugged and went back to reading.
1579—HE begins to welcome into HIS bed HIS French and Catholic cousin, Esmé d’Aubigny. Saith the spy Prideaux, they do count the rosary together in private.
“Yes, yes, and when he married, he married a Protestant princess.”
Came back Belloc: “Who, in ’93…”
1593—Queen Anna turns Catholic and is allowed to keep Romish priests in the palace for her use.
“And, my lord, some believe that marrying a Protestant might be done with the pope’s blessing to make us believe he is not an idolater.”
“Ah. So behaving like a Protestant is proof of his Catholicism?”
“In some cases, as you well know, my lord, yes.”
1587—The year HIS mother’s head rolls off the scaffold for her treachery against Elizabeth. In Glasgow, HE—
“Where were you in all that?” Cecil interrupted himself. “When Mary was held in Chartley?”
“I was there,” said Geoff.
“I thought I remembered that.” Cecil considered him.
“She spoke to me of him. Of James.”
“You were as close to Mary as that?”
“I was. She spoke of her son as a Catholic.”
“She spoke to you? Of him? You were there at the very end, too?”
“I was.”
“That must have been…Why, Geoff. I think you might be frightened. You hate the whole family. No wonder you want this clear. Do you hate him? It’s fine to say so now.” Cecil mused, “Though I wonder how you could ever believe him to be honest if you are inclined to think him a liar.”
1587—The year HIS mother’s head rolls off the scaffold for her treachery against Elizabeth. In Glasgow, HE is approached by a hermit. HE gives the man a coin and says thus: “Let this be our saving good work to you.” Good works for salvation, as Rome demands. This action is witnessed by Spottiswoode and recorded in that one’s daybook with the comment CONCERN. This is secretly read by Spottiswoode’s servant who is in our pay and placed in his letter sent via Glasgow group to Walsingham.
Cecil was envious of the secret work there—eyes set close enough to read the king’s Protestant minister’s daybook—but he didn’t pay Belloc the compliment of looking impressed.
1588—Escorial Palace, Madrid. Sorcerers in the employ of the Duke of Parma are instructed by him to prepare weather and storms, including hurricanoes, to destroy our fleet in harbor prior to the Spanish invasion. The sorcerers toil at dark hours in two tall scarlet towers within the gardens of the Escorial to cast spells upon the skies of England. They are able to determine and command the very source and direction of the winds and have received from the bellicose Spanish dukes the dates upon which the wind must perforce blow invariably toward the coasts of England. Yet the duke commands the sorcerers to leave Scotland untouched by storm but to lay a blanket of fog along the marches, “thick as a wall between England and Scotland.” Reported from our man Ursinus in the duke’s coterie.
“They didn’t do so well, the sorcerers,” said Cecil.
“Not, I think, the point, sir.”
1580s—Multiple incidents of Spanish agents discovered entering Scotland.
1594—Rome. Cardinal Mastricci dines with an English priest from the Catholic English seminary in Douai, France. The cardinal reveals to the priest that in the highest councils of Rome, the pope himself has declared that HE is not to be assassinated, excommunicated, or troubled in any way but rather to be cherished as “our wayward but well-loved son.” There will be practice to protect HIM and to make stumble any who would stop his progress to England. Later talk of the English Catholics in Douai was of hopes placed in HIM to be the Catholic savior of the realm, as HIS mother would have been. Reported through the baker Zephyr to me by letter.
1590—The bishop of Durham says he thinks HE is a Catholic, subtle and careful but unmistakably an “animal of Rome.” These words reported by member of household, delivered through the fishmonger’s.
1588—HE is informed of the Spanish Armada’s destruction and Elizabeth’s safety. HE does make upon HIMSELF the sign of the cross—this reported by a man in Berden’s employ. Berden told me directly.
Cecil breathed deeply, noisily, nodded wearily, the weight of all the evidence finally breaking his ability to find innocent explanation. “It’s annoying,” he admitted. “At the very least he certainly doesn’t go to any effort to make himself clear.” He twice began to speak again, then stopped himself, until, “It won’t do, obviously. I do know that,” he finally muttered. “But look here.” He tried one last time to advocate for the devil: “If James favors the Catholics, would not our friend Mr. Nicolson, in situ, have witnessed it? He tells us of weekly worship in proper manner, mentions no secret popish nonsense.”
“Sir, eleven years George Nicolson has been Her Majesty’s representative in James’s court. If, as we fear, James’s practice and faith are but for the world to see, then the world at the moment is no larger than George Nicolson, trusted to observe the comedy and report it to London. Mr. Cecil, allow me to say what it’s like when you’re in the teeth of a thing and far from home. Mr. Nicolson lives every day alongside the man everyone has come to assume will be…next. He knows that some men in Whitehall have accepted or are no longer asking questions like ours. If things proceed without alteration, there will never be another English embassy to the court in Edinburgh. And when it ends, Nicolson returns to London, alongside the new monarch. Maybe an ambassador starts serving only himself. Mr. Nicolson thinks, ‘I am here with the next one, not down there with the…older one.’ And that Scotsman thinks, ‘Why, here is Mr. Nicolson, my first and most loyal English subject, who will do as I say, who will report to his temporary masters in London as I tell him to, tell them I’m Protestant, even, so that when the day should come that—’ ”
Belloc watched the truth arrive irresistibly with Cecil and then pressed his advantage home: “Surely a man can perform on a stage as often as every Sunday if his audience profits by believing in his performance. How small a cost to him to play a Sunday Protestant, when all he needs do is go to damnable Roman confession when the play is finished, and all London is ready to give him the one favor he desires above all else.” Cecil looked as if he were having stomach trouble. “Mr. Secretary, it is late. Dangerously late. And we feel England must have a definitive answer.”
“Tell me at least—as I do see and agree, Geoff, I do—who is this we?” Cecil was openly irritable, taking it out on the messenger.
“Councillors to Her Majesty, members of Parliament, lords, commanders of men.”
“Are they? Perhaps you are only one man, understandably frightened of the Stuart family, since you practically walked the lady to her execution. How do I know men of import speak to you?”
“I know the question troubles you, too.”
Robert Cecil did not stand once in this conference, unwilling to show his height against Geoff Belloc’s, or his weakness in body. “You were Mr. Beale’s creature, I know, so I will take it he is one of the courageous nameless. He has a whole circle of similarly minded men, has he? More than I can keep track of?”
But Geoff held his tongue until Cecil nodded. In pain from trying to keep his body large and upright, he slid a small ways down his chair. And Geoff pushed to the conclusion: “If James is his mother’s son, and Rome’s, if he is Catholic in his heart and his intentions, the country cannot survive swallowing him. They will stop him before he crosses the Tweed. It will be bloody. Citizens will slaughter citizens. As in Paris. And if he is lying to us and fools us all the way until he is here? It will be much worse. For all of us. The streets will run with blood. And those of us who helped catch his mother? Yes, I should think we—I am not alone—would be happier in Amsterdam.”
“As my father’s son, you mean.”
“Your father would not allow—”
“Well, I’m not him. None sorrier about that than I, Geoff.” Cecil was finally surrendering; Geoff saw it; the repeated comparison to his great father did it, and Geoff was satisfied, with the intelligencer’s relief at having found the spring to a lock, while Cecil melted further: “Let us therefore speak it crudely. Perhaps James is performing a role, to hide a Roman tiger’s heart. I have heard them whisper that Mr. Walsingham’s ghost would groan for our lack of serviceable intelligence on the question. My fault as well, I suppose. You and Mr. Beale and your circle think I have been credulous in accepting James’s performance.”
“My lord, neither I nor any I know would ever doubt your care for the realm, but if left unconvinced, they may support other claimants. With strength.”
“There it is at last.” Cecil’s hair was black, but his beard was red, giving one the (false) impression that one or the other was tinted. “You know as well as I do that of the—what are they now?—twelve with passable claims, none is much more appealing than James. I don’t suppose you or your nameless friends want the Spanish princess or Antonio of Portugal any more than I do.” He poured himself more wine, still offering Belloc none. “And if your friends are wrong? If James is as Protestant as he says, but he can’t convince you of it, or you can’t convince them of it, and your friends fight him and kill him, what do you think will happen? Invasions again. Spanish, Portuguese. Another war. And this time the sorcerers might get the winds right.”
“We cannot put our faith in ignorance.”
“Fine, Mr. Belloc. If your group had the impression that matters were settled, why, that’s not how matters actually are. One has to be a little cautious at times, that’s all. So what do you suggest? If I’ve done such a poor job of protecting the kingdom from imminent disaster?” He was wheedling now, with momentary bursts of battered pride: “My father, it must be said, wouldn’t have put up with this sort of whispering and menace….”
“We must have a plat of inquiry, my lord. Crafted with your support. The results of which you will rely upon, as will we. One last conclusive effort to know James’s heart before it’s too late.”
“Yes, yes, very well, I understand. You save the realm, a secret hero from Walsingham’s boys. But do you think, if he is lying, that such a secret could be discovered without doubt?”
“With money and effort and careful plotting, yes, my lord, I do. That is my faith, I suppose.”
“And the answer, either way, is better than ignorance and hoping for the best. I accept.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Now, you tell me,” said Cecil, trying to tamp down his persistent irritation. “What would be sufficient proof of the invisible state of James Stuart’s soul to satisfy your friends? I’m not unsympathetic to their concerns, so go ahead and prove it to your liking. But how will you do it? He can lie to you as well as he can lie to anyone else. Your years of gathering reports have only left the matter cloudier.”
“Let me think on it a day or two more, now that we have your blessing. Something will occur to me.”
“I cannot see how you could produce any answer certain enough to satisfy you. But fine. Go. Get your damned answer, but please keep your mouths shut. All of you. You choose the man. You’ll trust his answer if I don’t interfere, but I would like to approve of your plat, please.”
“Certainly.”
Cecil closed his eyes, rubbed them, moved his jaw from side to side, which made it click. His voice changed, less aggravated. “I do feel that responsibility. We are in a difficult moment. I would have arrived at the same question as you, I suppose. I just…hadn’t yet.” The man suddenly seemed embarrassed, and Geoff let him stew in it. “I blame myself for not having been suspicious enough. Do you still have friends in the north? On the border? Or perhaps farther? Anyone in James’s court I am unaware of?”
“No, my lord. I’m sorry to say no. But might you send me to his court openly, to organize watchers from near at hand? Give me letters as your servant.”
Cecil smiled just enough at the ceiling to clarify unbridgeable social distances. “You’re not, I don’t think, exactly the diplomatist type, Geoff. Rather more a dagger in the tavern, no?” Cecil poured himself more wine and considered the man in Messengers’ livery, the sheer size of him in the small room. “And you are known in Catholic circles after all your success. It’s not played like you used to, not anymore. The prison cells. Not like how the old Earthworms did their work. You must think of other ways. To let us see clear beyond any question. That’s what we want. Complete Clarity, a transparency of James’s heart.”
“And if we learn the worst, my lord? If James is Catholic?”
Flinching a little at the bluntness of the question, Cecil concentrated on running his wine-wet finger round the gilded rim of his glass, and it began to sing. He raised his eyebrows at Geoff at the sound. “The Spanish tried to assassinate my father, Geoff. I’m not a fool. If James is a papist, we should have to think hard about how to protect ourselves. And how to prepare, quickly, for other futures.”