Shadow of a Queen

Paris, 24 August 1572. Newly graduated Robert Poley helps Francis Walsingham and his household escape the Catholic violence of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The experience draws him into Walsingham’s intelligence service despite Poley’s own Catholic upbringing. He begins infiltrating conspiracies intended to overthrow Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots.

As the plots become better financed and more closely connected to the Guise family, Walsingham decides that passive observation is no longer sufficient. Poley is instructed to enter Mary’s circle and create the conditions in which her own correspondence can be used against her. Published fifth but chronologically first, the novel explains how Poley became an intelligencer and how Mary’s claim came to dominate his work.