Prophecy (2011) Read Online Free PDF

Christopher Ashe of Nottingham, would she not? Poor child - she has not been at court even a year. The same age as my Frances.’
    We all stand silent for a moment, all our thoughts following Walsingham’s to his seventeen-year-old daughter, the new bride who, perhaps even now, is being led to the marital bed by Sir Philip Sidney, a man eleven years her senior and with notoriously vigorous appetites.
    ‘Almost the same age as my Elizabeth was when she died,’ Burghley adds softly. Walsingham glances at him; there is a moment of unspoken sympathy as their eyes meet and I sense that these two men share an understanding deeper than politics.
    ‘The clothes?’
    ‘Ah, yes.’ Burghley shakes his head. ‘The usual trouble, I suspect. Trying to steal out undetected to a tryst with someone she should not.’ He makes it sound as if this is a common problem.
    ‘Has she been violated?’
    Walsingham’s tone is brisk again; Burghley gives a little cough.
    ‘She has not yet been officially examined by the physician, but the body was found with the breeches and underclothes torn, the shirt ripped apart likewise. There are bruises and bloody marks on her thighs. She was laid out in the form of a crucifix, with her arms outstretched. There is something else you should see.’ Taking a deep breath, he crosses to the body and, taking one corner of the torn material gingerly between his forefinger and thumb as if it might scald him, he folds down the left side of the shirt to expose the girl’s small, pale breast.
    Walsingham and I both gasp simultaneously; there is a mark cut into the soft white flesh, over her still heart. The lines have been traced into the skin carefully and the blood blotted away, so that the mark stands out in jagged crimson lines, a shape that looks like a curved figure 2 with a vertical line bisecting its tail. This mark is unmistakably the astrological symbol for the planet Jupiter. He shoots me a questioning look, swift as blinking, but Burghley’s sharp eye notes it.
    ‘That is not all,’ says the Lord Treasurer, as he covers the girl again. ‘In each of her outstretched hands she held these objects.’ From the wooden dresser beside the bed he holds up a rosary of dark wood adorned with a gold Spanish cross, and with the other hand he presents Walsingham with a small wax effigy, about the size of a child’s doll.
    ‘Dear God,’ Walsingham breathes, holding up the figurine for me to see. It is crudely made, but unquestionably an imitation of Queen Elizabeth; red wool for hair, a cloak fashioned from a scrap of purple silk, a paper crown on its head, a sewing needle protruding from its breast, where it has been stabbed through the heart. We both look at Burghley, who nods, once. No ordinary murder indeed.
    ‘Who found her?’ I ask, breaking the silence.
    ‘The queen’s chaplain,’ Burghley replies, turning away from the corpse.
    ‘What was the chaplain doing in her chamber?’
    ‘Oh - she was not found here,’ he says, with a tight little laugh at the implication. ‘No - the body was outside. There is a ruined chapel behind the Privy Orchard - the last remains of the priory that used to stand on this site. It is separated from the palace compound by high walls and its garden grown somewhat derelict. Lately it has been said -‘ Burghley frowns - ‘that it was becoming a popular place for meetings between the queen’s ladies and the court gentlemen, because it is out of the way and not properly patrolled. This sort of thing is strictly forbidden by Her Majesty, you understand. Being a man of stern propriety, the chaplain thought he would check the area as dusk fell. And he found her laid out there as I have described.’
    ‘He saw no one fleeing as he approached?’ I ask.
    ‘No one, he says, though there is an open entrance to the abandoned garden from the river. The killer could have slipped away and hidden on the bank, perhaps even had a boat tied up further downstream. The only other