By Paul Carrier
But this time, plots against the queen take on added urgency, moving into the royal household, and thus very close to Elizabeth herself.
Fresh from his investigation in Heresy of rumors that Oxford University's Catholics were scheming against the Protestant monarch, Bruno now finds himself probing the murder of Cecily Ashe, one of the queen’s ladies.
Ashe is found dead at court while dressed in a man’s clothing, clutching a Catholic rosary in one hand and an effigy of the queen in the other, complete with a pin stuck into the doll’s heart.
Rumors abound that Ashe was killed, not by an intruder, but by someone within the queen’s circle, raising fears that the queen herself is in danger if the killer, presumed to be part of a Catholic conspiracy, strikes again.
Clues seem to link Ashe’s death to a dark prophecy tied to a rare alignment of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, which is widely interpreted throughout the land as a sign that Elizabeth will be deposed - or even murdered - and Catholicism restored in the realm.
The subsequent murder of a second maid to the queen sends her top advisers into a frenzy, placing added pressure on Bruno to solve the crimes while maintaining his increasingly awkward cover as a visiting scholar living with the French ambassador and his family in London, as a guest of the king of France.
Bruno’s status becomes increasingly tenuous as talk of a joint French-Spanish invasion of England intensifies. France’s King Henri III, whom Bruno befriended while living in Paris, does not seem to support an invasion, but some powerful French nobles do. So do the scheming wife of the French ambassador and influential English Catholic noblemen who view Elizabeth as a heretic and a usurper.
Even as Bruno rubs elbows with the conspirators at the French embassy, he secretly maintains his newfound allegiance to the Virgin Queen, whom he views as being more tolerant than the repressive regimes of Catholic Europe.
Coupling his investigation of the murders with his work as an English spy in the French embassy, Bruno tries to ferret out details of the ties between Elizabeth’s French and Spanish foes and Mary, Queen of Scots, whom at least some of the conspirators want to place on the English throne.
But even in this world of hidden alliances and treasonous activities, all is not as it seems, and readers share Bruno’s confusion as he tries to finger the right suspect in the murders. He - and we - stumble down one blind alley after another, all while Bruno fends off would-be assassins in the foggy streets, elaborate mansions and tawdry taverns of London.
Prophecy is a taut, well-paced historical thriller that captures the glory, the danger, the superstitions and the xenophobia of Elizabethan England, where the ever-suspicious locals view visitors, Bruno included, as potential spies who may well be in thrall to England’s enemies.
“They regard all foreigners - especially those of us with dark eyes and beards - as Spanish papists come to murder them in their beds,” Bruno says. Little do they know that this excommunicated renegade intellectual may well hold the key to saving the life of their beloved queen.
