Smith is purple with rage. The Queen quiets him so that others may be heard.
“Explain, please, Master Walsingham,” she demands. “Leave nothing out.”
Walsingham takes a deep breath. He knows he is treading the very fine line between success and having his head removed by an ax.
“The document,” he begins, “which was two pages removed from Admiral DaSilva’s logbook, came to me in Paris from a source in the court in Lisbon, just this last week.”
“How did it come to you?” the Queen asks.
Francis Walsingham has eyes that some men have called hooded, and he uses them now to great effect, turning his gaze to the Queen. He need say nothing of the labyrinthine pathways that link Whitehall to the court of King Sebastião in Lisbon, and the Queen understands. She nods.
“Never mind,” she says. “Go on.”
“The recent tumult meant I had no leisure to study it, or make a copy, and so, believing our embassy to be in danger, I entrusted the document to Oliver Fellowes—may God rest his soul—to bring it back to London to place in the hands of Lord Burghley here.”
Burghley looks mildly surprised.
“Unfortunately,” Walsingham continues, “Oliver Fellowes was murdered before he left France, and the document was stolen.”
There is a mumble of respect for the soul of the dead man before business resumes.
“You did not look at it at all?” Leicester asks.
“I did, my lord, but had no time to decrypt it before the tumult overtook us.”
“It was encrypted?” This is from Burghley. He has removed his hat and is pulling his beard.
Walsingham nods. They all sit back and they all exhale. They know what that means: the Portuguese admiral Baltazar DaSilva is known first and foremost as a navigator, and an encrypted logbook can only mean one thing. He has been sailing in uncharted waters and has found something he does not wish to share with the world.
“And what do we believe he found?” the Queen asks for them all.
Walsingham must say it: “The Straits of Anian. Or so I believe.”
“The Straits of Anian? The Straits of Anian? Dear God! You had information as to the Straits of Anian?”
A babble of voices. Ten, twenty questions. How could this happen? How could he allow it? The Queen’s voice cuts through it.
“The Northwest Passage? He has found the Northwest Passage?”
For the last fifty years, every navigator in Christendom has sought the Northwest Passage to Cathay. It is the route to untold wealth, and the only way to break the power of Spain; the only way to ensure England’s safety, her freedom.
“So I am led to believe,” Walsingham tells them.
“Well,” Smith says, a sneer on his face. “We’ll only know for sure when we see Spanish convoys coming through, won’t we?”
Now the Queen’s eyes are very piercing.
“The Spanish?” she demands. “The Spanish have DaSilva’s pages?”
“I do not know who has them now,” Walsingham admits.
“Then who took them, Walsingham? Tell us that.”
This is Smith, of course.
“A woman named Isobel Cochet,” Walsingham answers.
“Cochet? She sounds like a Frenchy,” Leicester says.
“She was married to one,” Walsingham agrees.
“So it is the French who now know the location of the Northwest Passage? Not the Spanish?”
“I am sorry, Your Majesty, I do not know on whose behalf Mistress Cochet now works.”
“And why is that?” Smith wonders aloud. “Is that because she is—or was!—one of your most valued espials, Walsingham? Is that it?”
Walsingham says nothing. He loathes Smith.
“But she turned her coat, didn’t she?” Smith continues. “And now she acts for—pffft! Who knows? Not for Master Walsingham at any rate. Not for England. Not you, Your Majesty.”
The Queen raises her hand.
“So let me see, Master Walsingham, let me see if I have this straight,” she starts, her voice steely as a blade. “With our treasury empty of any coin for war; and with a Spanish fleet under Admiral Quesada sailing from Cádiz in order to land here, burn our country, suppress our religion, and replace me here on this throne with our cousin Mary of Scotland; and now with all hope of assistance gone from France, you have let slip through your fingers the one thing—the very thing!—the only thing!—that could conceivably have saved us from invasion? From the Inquisition? The one thing that would have allowed us to buy the ships and pay the men to furnish our defense? The one thing that would allow us to build up castles strong enough to repel a fleet of Spanish galleons? That would allow us to keep England free? And you have gifted it to Spain?
“Is that so?”
He holds the Queen’s gaze, but thinks of Smith. He must allow him a glimpse of his panic. Just a glimpse.
“Your Majesty—” he starts, relying on being cut off. Smith duly obliges, performing for the Queen as a juggler, or a clown. If only he were so innocent.
“And you have given it away with one of your silly games of cloak-and-dagger!” he shouts. “Pissing about across the Narrow Sea, with your ciphers, and your codes, and… and whatever else it is you people do.”
The Earl of Leicester looks calculating, but Lord Burghley does at least come to Walsingham’s partial defense.
“Master Walsingham’s ‘activities’ did at least yield the document in the first instance,” he points out.
“The first instance matters not one whit!” Smith jeers. “What matters is how the thing plays out. And in this instance it has played out very badly. Very badly indeed. You’re a bloody fool, Walsingham! An incompetent bloody fool!”
“Enough!” the Queen snaps.
Silence. She stares at Walsingham. He can taste his heart in his mouth. He knows his fate hangs in the balance. He might have misjudged this. The Queen might now call for those halberdiers outside. They’ll happily take him under the arms and drag him to the Tower with the sort of pleasure of which they might later tell their wives over bread and ale.
She looks at him for a long time, sitting in judgment, waiting for him to justify her faith in him, and in that moment, he changes his mind: she is beautiful, in moments such as these, beautiful enough to stop a heart.
And finally she says: “If what you say is done, Master Walsingham, then for the sake of all England, it must be undone. You must make this right, or, God help you, I will find someone who can.”
He breathes again. His lease of life is extended. But for how much longer? He backs out of the room, trembling, but bows extravagantly as he goes, and finds Nicholas Gethyn, Thomas Smith’s private secretary, hastily retreating from his post listening at the door.
“Francis,” he says, “may God grant you good day.”
Walsingham smiles. Gethyn is an oddity at court: tall and shy, there against his inclination, and of the sort to believe every man can see his darkest secrets. As it happens, Walsingham can: Gethyn has against his better judgment allowed himself to be bullied into investing much of his wife’s money in Sir Thomas Smith’s Ireland colony, to the probable ruination of his family.
“Gethyn,” he says. “How are you? How is your wife? All those children of yours?”