At the far end of the passage stands a reedy servant lad. He’s lounging in the way servants do when they think they’re not observed. As he spots Nicholas, he straightens up. He smooths his tunic with the three Lumley popinjays stitched onto the breast. But if he has work to do, he doesn’t seem inclined to set about it. He just stands there, looking a little sheepish. Almost as if he’s been set to guard something and has been caught napping.
‘Do me a service, lad,’ Nicholas says. ‘Tell me where I might find his lordship at this hour.’
‘Sir, I cannot.’
‘You mean you can’t or you won’t?’
The lad is unable to prevent the nervous entwining of his slender fingers. ‘Forgive me, sir,’ he pleads. ‘I cannot help you.’
Nicholas thinks, I don’t need to be Robert Cecil’s spy to know I’ve been lied to twice inside a minute. Why is John Lumley suddenly a secret in his own house?
Then the answer comes to him: there’s no secret. Lumley is merely taking his customary evening swim through the nurturing waters of learning. He’s in his privy reading room and he’s told his household he doesn’t want to be interrupted.
Well, my noble lord, thinks Nicholas, you’re about to learn something you couldn’t possibly have imagined.
Nicholas is familiar enough with Nonsuch now to know that to reach Lumley’s privy reading room he must first pass the chapel he’d noticed from the outside, barely an hour ago. When he turns into the corridor on the first floor he sees another liveried Nonsuch servant ahead of him, not exactly blocking the way but standing motionless as he gazes out of a window at the privy gardens, now in deep shadow.
Two servants in the space of fifty paces. Both apparently with nothing to do but idle away the time. Now he’s sure they’re keeping a watch. But over what?
He can hear a faint voice. There’s a strange rhythm to it. It seems to be coming from a door opposite where the servant stands so casually. By its place in the corridor, Nicholas reckons it must be the entrance to the upper gallery of the private chapel. Perhaps it’s the Lumleys at prayer. Again? It’s possible; he knows the devout pray often.
But although the voice is faint, it’s quite unlike Lumley’s northern burr. It’s a different sound entirely. And why, he wonders, didn’t Gabriel Quigley simply tell me Lord Lumley was at his devotions – come back later?
‘I’m sorry, sir, this corridor is denied to all but the family,’ the servant says, turning from the window as he senses Nicholas approach.
One last deceit, Robert Cecil, says Nicholas to himself. After this I’m done with you.
‘Master Quigley set you to guard here, is that correct?’ he asks, taking an inspired gamble.
‘Yes, sir, he did,’ says the man.
‘Well, he’s sent me with new orders. He wants you on the other side of the royal apartments. And hurry.’
The servant looks at him in confusion. ‘But that’s not possible, sir. I must be here.’
Don’t give him time to become bold, says a voice in Nicholas’s head. It sounds suspiciously like Bianca’s. ‘Do you defy Master Quigley?’ he asks in a tone as icy as he can make it. ‘He has sent me directly with the instruction.’
The servant’s eyes are moist with indecision. His jaw works as if he’s chewing on a nut.
‘Well, do you?’
The man looks over his shoulder towards the door. Then back to Nicholas. ‘No, sir, of course I do not,’ he sighs wretchedly and sets off at a lope in the direction of the royal apartments, leaving Nicholas struggling to calm a heart that’s beating a wild volta of relief and anticipation.
The door is emblazoned with the Lumley crest: the three popinjays, their wings about to open for flight. Above the lintel is Henry’s royal coat of arms.
The door is too thick for Nicholas to judge how many people are in the chapel. But there’s no lock.
No lock – and careless guards. A secret, then, barely worth protecting. Or has complacency caused its keeper to underestimate the threat? Easing the door open as gently as he can, Nicholas slips inside.
He already knows the layout of the chapel – he’s observed it through the ground-floor windows before he took that astonishing walk with Lizzy Lumley. But the gallery above is new to him. And it’s in almost complete darkness. The only illumination comes from the trembling glow of candles rising from the floor. It takes his sight a moment or two to adjust. And while it does, he’s captivated by a single voice. A strong male voice. High Latin, chanted sweetly. It sounds too beautiful to be so sinful.
Slowly, the detail of the gallery offers itself to him. He can tell that it runs the full width of the chapel, some seven or eight paces in length, a good ten feet above the floor. A finely carved screen rises before him to chest height. There’s a narrow stone stairway to his far right. He thinks, this is where guests must sit if they’re not important enough to be part of the congregation.
Edging to the wall opposite the stairwell, Nicholas moves silently to peer over the screen.
What he sees makes his mouth gape open in astonishment.
Go, now! Turn around and walk away. Pretend you’ve seen nothing. Leave Nonsuch immediately. When you get to Cecil House, tell them you were somewhere else when John Lumley and his wife were taking the papist Mass before a fully robed father-confessor of the Romish heresy.
36
Nicholas can’t drag his eyes away.
For a start, Francis Deniker – the one doing the chanting – appears to have undergone some form of magical transformation. His formal clerk’s tunic has somehow turned itself into vestments of silk and damask. They glint opulently in the candlelight. Tied around his waist is a braided girdle. In one hand he holds a silver chalice. On a low table before him is a small, grey flat square of stone: a miniature second altar. A papist altar. And beside the table stands an empty travelling chest, an innocent wooden box – home for it all. Robert Cecil’s words flood into Nicholas’s head like a breaking wave: You have no idea how cleverly these people disseminate their vile philosophy. Only last month we hanged and quartered a Jesuit priest who’d disguised himself as a peddler. He had the abominable devices of his ministry hidden in his box of ribbons!
And then Nicholas hears another voice, much closer this time, and not in Latin but in very angry English. He feels the sharp press of a knife-point against his back – not enough to stab, but enough to get his full attention.
‘I knew you were a spy from the moment you came here,’ says Gabriel Quigley in his ear like a spurned lover. ‘You’re not the physician, you’re the disease.’
‘I suppose you’d better come down, Dr Shelby – if you think your immortal soul can withstand the peril,’ Lumley says, his voice remarkably firm as he looks up at the gallery.
It can’t be easy, thinks Nicholas, for a man of advanced years to rise from his knees to a standing position in the same instant all his secrets are exposed, and still maintain some semblance of dignity. But John Lumley achieves it with some grace.
Lizzy Lumley is still kneeling. She stares up at Nicholas, a look of terror on her face. Francis Deniker, for all his priestly apparel, looks like a man caught in the act of purse-diving a judge of the Queen’s Bench.
‘Don’t blame yourself, Gabriel,’ Lumley calls out, trying to spot his secretary in the semi-darkness of the gallery. ‘Close the door. Stay outside until I call. And say nothing of this to anyone – understand?’