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‘Yes, Mr Secretary, I believe this to be true.’
    ‘Then we may proceed. For over a year now, I have been striving to gather the proof that will do for this Scots devil once and for all. Unlike other countries, unlike this Queen of Scots herself, we do not murder our enemies in their beds or in dark alleys, but bring them to trial and punish them when their guilt is proven. And so it will be with her.
    ‘We must do this because only her death will end her plotting. Only her death will protect us. Were she monarch, she would have every man in this room hanged, and she would bring back the Inquisition first introduced here by that other Mary – Mary Tudor – with its burnings and horror. So we must find evidence strong enough to bring the Queen of Scots to justice – evidence that will convince Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of her cousin’s guilt. Evidence that will satisfy every royal court in the known world.’
    Four men murmured their assent. Only Shakespeare was silent. Yes, he believed the Scots Queen guilty. And yet . . . and yet he wavered. There was a difference between catching a felon after a crime has been committed and using artifice to provoke a man or woman to commit such a felony. The word was entrapment . Could it ever be justified?
    Walsingham continued. ‘Everything we do in the coming days has but one objective: to bring down Mary Stuart. All other matters are to be subsumed to this one end: the Scots devil’s head on the block. Nothing less. There are other guilty players who will also lose their heads, but none of them must take precedence over her.’
    Again, the murmuring. The assent.
    ‘Good. Then all is understood. And so, gentlemen, I can now reveal to you that we have a way to secure the proof we need. Mr Thomas Phelippes is this very day at Chartley, organising what may soon lead to the final act of this tragical tale.’
    Every man in the room was aware that Mary Stuart had been moved to a new place of confinement, the moated manor house of Chartley in Staffordshire. She had been conveyed there from Tutbury on Christmas Eve and was now utterly cut off from all but her immediate courtiers and secretaries. The days of open correspondence with her supporters in England and abroad were gone. Now not a letter was allowed in or out.
    Her keeper, Amyas Paulet, was a Puritan who would not be moved by pleading or tears. When she complained to him, he turned his shoulder and walked away. She, in her turn, was said to be more defiant than ever, openly insisting that she would have back the crown of Scotland and would inherit the throne of England. But such words were a long way from implicating her in conspiracy. How could she conspire when she was held in such isolation?
    Walsingham explained. ‘Tom Phelippes has devised a secret method of delivering letters to Chartley – yet the Scots Queen has been led to believe it was devised by her friends at the French embassy and among the English exiles in Paris. At the heart of it is Gilbert Gifford, a man believed by Mary to be trustworthy. And so she has confidence in the method, as do her courtiers. She can now receive and send letters certain that they are not read by Mr Paulet or Tom Phelippes.’ He laughed, a hissing sound through the teeth.
    ‘This means,’ Walsingham added, ‘that she now has the means to incriminate herself . All she needs is to find a conspiracy and she will assuredly fix herself to it. This is her nature. And it is our good fortune to have discovered a band of conspirators for her; a group of young men who plan to instigate an invasion, an uprising and an assassination. With a little nudge, she will reveal her heart to them. She will condemn herself by her own hand.
    ‘So who are these conspirators? Some of the names will be familiar. They cluster around Anthony Babington in the taverns and inns of Fleet Street, Temple Bar and Holborn. They are known as the Pope’s White Sons, such is their devotion to papism. They spend