Free Prophecy (2011) by S. J. Parris Page B

creeping around the edge of the shutters; only bad news brings callers this early. I bundle myself into a pair of under-hose and a shirt to unlatch the door for my impatient visitor, steeling myself, but it is only Leon Dumas, the ambassador’s clerk, who hurtles into the room so quickly in his haste not to be seen that he almost knocks me backwards and cracks his head against the sloping ceiling. Here on the second floor of the house, under the eaves, the rooms are designed for people of my height, not his.
    Dumas rubs his forehead and sits heavily on my bed. He is an earnest young man of twenty-seven, tall and skinny with thinning hair and slightly bulging eyes that give him a permanent expression of alarm - though I cannot help feeling that this has intensified since I persuaded him to share with me the ambassador’s correspondence. Now he looks up at me with those big eyes and a pained frown, as if the knock on the head was my doing as well. He is fully dressed.
    ‘Leon. You are up with the lark - is something the matter?’
    He shakes his head.
    ‘I only wanted to warn you - my lord ambassador has already gone down to his private office to make a start on the day’s correspondence. He was up half the night reading the letters from Mary Stuart that Monsieur Throckmorton brought from Sheffield, and now he sets about writing his replies. He wants them delivered to Throckmorton’s house at Paul’s Wharf before nightfall today - apparently Throckmorton rides for Sheffield again tomorrow at first light.’
    ‘Good. So Throckmorton expects you some time this afternoon?’
    ‘I believe so. Castelnau will spend the morning writing his letters and ciphering them and I must be there to assist him. Then he will leave me to write out the fair copies while he and the rest of the household are dining, and when he has eaten he will approve and seal them and I will be dispatched.’
    ‘So …’ I run over the timing in my mind. ‘We will need to work quickly. Have you seen the letters from Queen Mary?’
    He shakes his head, a nervous, twitching motion.
    ‘No. But the packet is in his writing desk.’
    ‘Read them while he is out. If you do not have time to make a copy, at least get the sense so that you can relay it. But it may be that she has sent him a new cipher - they change it often for fear of interception. That we must copy, if it is there.’
    Dumas swallows hard and nods, sitting on his hands.
    ‘If I don’t have time to make two copies of his reply before he wants it sealed …?’
    I pace the room for a moment, considering.
    ‘Then we will have to pay a visit to our friend Thomas Phelippes on the way to Master Throckmorton. Don’t look so alarmed, Leon - Phelippes is so gifted in the art of interception, I suspect he may be a wizard. No one will see anything amiss.’
    Dumas looks miserable and jiggles on his hands more vigorously.
    ‘But if we should be caught, Bruno?’
    ‘Then we will be thrown out into the street,’ I reply solemnly. ‘We will be forced to join a troupe of travelling players. We can offer ourselves to play the ass for Christ’s entry to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.’
    ‘Bruno -‘
    ‘Ah - I know what you are going to say. Very well - you can be the front legs.’
    ‘Must you turn everything to a joke?’
    Despite himself, he smiles, while I remember Howard’s sharp insult from last night. A glorified jester . Was that really how they spoke of me in Paris? Queen Elizabeth keeps an Italian fool at court, who goes by the name of Monarcho; am I to be compared with him? It stung because I recognised the truth of it: with no money, land or title to my name, I must make myself indispensable to men of wealth if I hope to thrive, and I have learned the hard way that most men of wealth would rather be entertained than enlightened. But might I not hope to do both? That, at least, was the intention of the book I was now writing, which would set forth my new ideas about the universe in a style