by S. W. Perry
But it is the familiar little figure beside him, reduced even further by his neighbour’s magnificence, his crooked stance a blemish on this otherwise-pristine canvas, that truly draws Nicholas’s attention. It is Sir Robert Cecil.
Nicholas’s heart sinks. He has always known that friendship and loyalty would mean nothing to Lord Burghley’s crook-backed son if he thought the realm’s safety was at stake. Look how he had turned his back on old Lopez.
And then, to his astonishment, he hears a woman’s voice. It comes from his left, in a pool of shadows the candlelight has not penetrated. And it is even more familiar to him than Cecil’s broken outline.
‘Mercy, Husband!’ Bianca Merton says. ‘I let you out of my sight for one moment and you wander off like a brainless goat in an olive grove.’
Robert Cecil’s men have brought a spare horse for Nicholas to ride the short distance from Essex House to the Strand. He wonders grimly if that’s because Cecil and Bianca had expected to find him beaten and unable to walk unaided.
A footman leads the way with a horn lantern. The queen’s secretary, Nicholas and Bianca ride together, almost stirrup to stirrup, their mounts picking their way carefully through the night. Three grooms make up the rearguard a short way behind. The sky is clear, an intense black velvet broken only by a quarter-moon and a scattering of attendant stars. Along the broad earthen path, grand houses loom like abandoned temples in an ancient landscape. Owls call like lost souls from the fields of Covent Garden.
The Lord Treasurer’s son rides with an ease that makes the twisted curve of his shoulders seem a natural facet of his horse’s movement. For once, he appears supple. To Nicholas, he looks like a creature who belongs to the night. He seems strangely good-tempered for a busy man called out when he should be abed.
‘I have not bested the handsome Earl of Essex for a while,’ Cecil says as they emerge from Ivy Lane onto the Strand. ‘We can expect tantrums at court, of course. Strange how such a well-made shell can hold so petulant a yolk.’
‘I cannot thank you enough, Sir Robert,’ Nicholas says, for what must be the fourth time since leaving Essex House. He turns towards Bianca. ‘I despaired of seeing my wife again.’
‘I thank God all heretics are not so determined, else I might begin to fear for our realm’s safe continuance.’ It is said with humour. But Nicholas knows there had been a time when Robert Cecil would have spoken those words in all seriousness. ‘Your wife is not a woman to be dismissed easily, Dr Shelby,’ Cecil continues. ‘She insulted my gatekeeper, put one of my grooms in fear of his soul with her threats of witchcraft, refused to let my secretaries have a moment’s peace until they fetched me… What is it like, being married to a shrew?’
‘That is not strictly true, Sir Robert,’ Bianca interjects. ‘I confess that I did imply to your gatekeeper that he was a pustule, and I might have told that groom I have a distillation that makes the privy member shrink, and that I would put some in his ale if he didn’t fetch me someone with a little authority. But your secretary punished me for it, by having me sit in an empty chamber for two hours until I could stand it no more and went in search of you myself.’
‘Do you know who denounced me, Sir Robert?’ Nicholas asks.
‘Not yet. It appears Devereux’s secretaries acted impetuously. I suppose I should commend their enthusiasm.’
‘I’m surprised he let me go so willingly.’
‘In the correct order of things, I should have deferred to him – Devereux being an earl. But I am the queen’s privy councillor and secretary, and my father carries the queen’s favour more securely than he does. I interrupted our noble young friend at a late supper with the Earl of Salisbury.’ He laughs. ‘A main course of poetry, followed by an unexpected dish of indigestion. To my mind, all very satisfactory.’
At Cecil House the servants are used to visitors in the small hours, expected or not. There are returning ambassadors, envoys, intelligencers, agents of influence and a host of others who need to rest after delivering their secrets to the Cecils. A guest chamber in the south-eastern corner tower is swiftly made ready. It is small, but finely furnished with a carved tester bed and Flanders hangings. Cold brawn and hippocras arrive, as if from nowhere, to quell the hunger and slake the thirst.
‘You do know it to be a lie: that I conspired with poor Lopez to poison the queen?’ Nicholas tells Robert Cecil as he bids them good rest.
‘Of course. I never doubted it. Why would I turn out in the dead of night to haul you away from Robert Devereux, if I had?’
‘Slanders can be hard to erase, these days.’
‘We shall speak tomorrow. Perhaps by then one of my clever fellows will have learned more about the identity of your accuser.’
When Cecil has departed, Nicholas stretches out, laying his head back on the bolster. It’s a blessed comfort after the confines of the narrow cot at Essex House.
Bianca crawls around him on all fours, drawing the tester’s curtains – enclosed; confined. ‘You have Rose to thank, not me,’ she says, her face cut by a thin line of candlelight penetrating through a gap in the fabric.
‘She must have recognized Essex’s livery.’
‘For once she was paying attention to something other than the fancies in that head of hers. I shall have to stop calling her Mistress Moonbeam.’ Bianca sits beside him on her haunches, though in the darkness he can barely see her outline. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘I didn’t what?’
‘Seek to poison the queen?’
‘No!’
For a moment he thinks she might doubt his innocence. Then she adds, ‘You do realize there can be but one poisoner in our union, Nicholas? You’re the healer, I’m the poisoner, remember? My mother, God save her soul, would turn in her grave in Padua if she thought I’d broken the family chain.’
He laughs. ‘You’ve never really poisoned anyone, have you?’
‘Of course not.’
He can’t see if she’s smiling, or if she has that steely glint in her amber eyes that comes whenever she’s decided to keep something to herself.
‘Well, not a fatal poison. But there’s always a first time for everything, Nicholas.’
‘Sir Robert will summon us in a few hours,’ he murmurs. ‘We should sleep, or else—’ He breaks off to yawn. In the darkness within the tester he feels Bianca’s weight as she places herself astride him.
Then he hears her say, ‘I think I choose the “else”.’
4
The view from Robert Cecil’s study windows on the fourth storey of the north-western tower affords a fine panorama of Covent Garden fields. Beyond the stands of ash, oak and elm, Nicholas can make out Longacre and the hamlet of St Giles, greyed by a mid-morning shower. On Cecil’s desk is the squat golden box of a clock, just like the one Bianca had seen during her wait the previous evening. It has a dome for a bell on top. The single hand – counting off the hours – is an elongated, stylized ray of sunlight radiating from a central Helios with a human face. With a little mechanical cough, the sunbeam slips above the Roman numerals XI etched around its circumference. From within comes a whirring of coiled springs and the biting of ratchet teeth, followed by the tinny tolling from the bell. Cecil looks up from his papers and catches Bianca looking at the apparatus.
‘A fine horologe, is it not, madam?’
‘La misura del tempo,’ Bianca reads from an inscription below the face. ‘The measure of time.’
‘Of course, you read Italian. I had almost forgotten you were a foreigner to our realm. Padua, was it not?’
‘Yes. That is where I was born. But we could not afford a machine to tell us the hour, Sir Robert. We had to rely on the church bell. We managed, I seem to recall.’
‘It is a brother to one I presented to the queen,’ Cecil says proudly. ‘The mechanism was made by the late Master Urseau, Her Grace’s clockmaker. But I imported the cases from Florence. She prefers things Italian to French. She still thinks Master Urseau came from Turi
n. She will hear nothing to the contrary.’
‘Do we really have need of such devices?’ Bianca asks. ‘Should we not rely on nature to tell us when to get up or go to bed, when to sow our crops and when to harvest them? I’m content with the church bell and the rising and setting of the sun. It seems more in tune with how things should be.’
‘My wife has better intuition than many,’ Nicholas says. ‘Perhaps that is because her senses are sharper.’
Cecil gets up from his desk. He points to the Molyneux globe in the corner of the study, a model earth made of wood and lacquer set on its axis in an elaborately carved frame. It is the one on which he described the journey Nicholas was to undertake to Morocco the previous year. ‘Senses are all to the good,’ he says. ‘They are given to us by God, so that we may see His world in all its majesty. But if my cousin, young Master Francis Bacon, is right, we are entering a world in which the new learning – measurement, precision, discovery – will give us answers to phenomena that are, at present, mysteries to us. I happen to think he is right. Why, there are now clever artisans who can make a clock so small that a man may carry it in his purse. My father has one. Soon we may be able to measure accurately not just the passing of the hours, but minutes – even the theoretical second.’
Nicholas thinks: you’ve come a long way from the day, almost four years ago, when you thought that because one of my medical books was printed in Italy, the knowledge in it must be heretical.
‘Why would we want to do that?’ Bianca asks. ‘Do our lives not speed by far too quickly as it is?’
Nicholas winces. The Cecils are not accustomed to being questioned by their inferiors, least of all by a female recusant. But Sir Robert has developed a grudging respect for Bianca Merton and gives her nothing more reproachful than an indulgent smile.
‘It is all about measurement, Mistress Merton,’ he explains. ‘As an example, measurement might help us learn if Master Copernicus was right when he claimed the earth is not still, and that instead of being fixed at the centre of the cosmos, it moves about the sun in a great orbit.’ He shrugs. ‘Though why we don’t all fly off as it travels, he failed to tell us.’ Glancing at Nicholas, perhaps for respite, he adds, ‘Given your wild views on some matters of physic, Nicholas, I presume you favour the Polack’s claims.’
‘I believe they merit further consideration, Sir Robert.’
‘Don’t tell the bishops that, or there are bound to be more anonymous accusations made against you.’
Nicholas stiffens. ‘You have news?’
Cecil gives him a look of regret. ‘Not much, though I fear what I have been able to determine is not good.’
‘Please be frank with me, Sir Robert.’
‘There was more than one letter sent. But they are all in the same hand.’
Nicholas closes his eyes. ‘Sent to whom?’
‘Sir John Popham, Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench.’
Nicholas winces. ‘Oh, Jesu!’
‘And the Attorney General, Sir Edward Coke. There could be others.’
Bianca grips her husband’s arm. She leans into him, telling him without words that he does not face this new danger alone.
‘What can I do?’ he asks.
‘I can keep Essex at bay a little longer,’ Cecil tells him, returning to his desk. ‘But with Popham and Coke demanding further investigation, I fear I may be outfought.’
‘Then I am still in danger of arraignment?’
Cecil looks pained. ‘I will do my utmost for you, Nicholas. I promise it. I do not wish the only physician I trust – not to mention a particularly useful intelligencer – to fall because of malicious tittle-tattle.’ A sigh, followed by an opening of the palms to show that even a privy councillor has limits to what he may achieve. ‘But if they succeed in convincing Her Grace not to heed my defence…’
‘What do you suggest I do, Sir Robert?’ Nicholas asks, unable to keep a trace of desperation from his voice.
‘Until I get to the bottom of this slander, I think it would be wise for you disappear for a while.’
Bianca turns her head away from her husband. She doesn’t want him to see the shadow of fear that has clouded her eyes. Since the day he came to her – a living corpse covered in river mud, a man who had sought to destroy himself because his physic could not save his first wife and the child she had been carrying – Nicholas has left her only twice. On both occasions he brought violence and death clinging to his shadow when he returned.
‘I could go back to Suffolk,’ he says. ‘I’m not much of a farmer, but my father will put on a brave face and tell me he’s grateful for the extra pair of hands.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of Suffolk,’ Cecil tells him.
‘Then where?’
Cecil nods in the direction of the Molyneux globe. ‘Somewhere that Essex, Coke and Popham will consider it too much of an expense to bother you. Somewhere across the Narrow Sea. I think it’s time you left the realm awhile.’
His minor victory over the Earl of Essex seems to have inspired an unusual, jovial generosity in Robert Cecil. Before it has a chance to fade, Nicholas accepts the offer of his private wherry for the journey back to Bankside. At the end of the jetty he and Bianca see two oarsmen rigging a canvas awning against the threatening showers. Beyond, the river slides reluctantly towards the east, glassy under the noon sun.
They remain silent for most of the journey. They sit slightly apart in the stern, each lost in their own thoughts. There is a purpose to their silence: great men place spies in the households of their competitors. For all Robert Cecil’s diligence, who is to say that one of these boatmen has not been placed in his service by an Essex, or a Coke, or a Popham? So when they do speak, Nicholas and Bianca confine themselves to inconsequential talk: the rebuilding of the Jackdaw and how the head carpenter prefers chattering to chiselling; how the Lord Chamberlain players have amalgamated with the Lord Admiral’s men to perform at Newington Butts, and whether it will affect business at the Rose theatre on Bankside; whether Master Shakespeare will write something a little less stomach-turning than Titus Andronicus, because frankly Bianca is getting a little weary of having to turn out to treat people whose constitution can’t handle all that stage-blood, yet are happy to turn up to watch a performance of a more realistic nature at Tyburn or upon Tower Hill.
From the Falcon stairs, they go directly to their lodgings by the Paris Garden. Catching sight of their approach, Rose almost topples her pail of water as she rises too abruptly from scrubbing the flagstones.
‘Mercy, I thought you’d both been taken by the fairy folk!’
‘You did well, Rose,’ Nicholas tells her. ‘I’d still be at Essex House if you hadn’t recognized that livery.’
Rose scowls. ‘Robert Devereux may be the ’andsomest man in all England, an’ an earl an’ everything, but that don’t give ’im no right to ’ave his bully-boys manhandle Master Nicholas. A right pair of rufflers they looked. Whatever was they about?’
‘Someone wrote some lies about me, Rose, that’s all. He sent them to Essex and others.’
‘Does this saucy rogue ’ave a name?’
‘Anonymous, I’m afraid.’
Rose’s black ringlets swirl with a defiant will of their own. Her plump cheeks colour with anger. ‘Well, you tell me where this Master Nonny-mouse lives, an’ I’ll call my Ned back from Nonsuch to ’ave one of his friendly words.’
Nicholas smiles, glad she’s on his side. ‘I’m home now, Rose. That’s all that matters.’
‘For a little while,’ says Bianca with a cautionary tone. ‘Sir Robert Cecil says that Master Nicholas should leave the city, as a precaution. And for the very first time I find myself in agreement with him.’
Rose seems suddenly short of breath. ‘But he can’t!’
‘Why not?’ Bianca asks.
Rose looks close to tears. ‘When he went swanning off to the Barbary shore last year, you almost died, Mistress.’ She turns to Nicholas, her chest heavin
g beneath her gown, her eyes wide with anxiety. ‘And when you went off to Gloucestershire that time, you almost died, too.’ She thrusts her open hands out towards them, as though offering a precious gift. ‘Can’t you see – going away ain’t good for either of you!’
‘Don’t be silly, Rose,’ Bianca says. ‘No one is going to come to any harm. It’s only for a while.’
‘How much of a while?’ Rose demands to know, withdrawing her hands and balling them against her hips.
‘Just until Sir Robert has managed to find out who’s making these unfounded accusations against Nicholas.’
‘Ned and I shall come with you,’ Rose announces. ‘To keep you safe.’
Bianca is touched by her fervour, but adamant. ‘I will need you and Ned here, to watch over the work on the Jackdaw.’
‘You’re going with ’im?’ Rose squeaks as the realization strikes her.
‘Of course I’m going with him,’ Bianca says, taking hold of Nicholas’s arm. ‘He’s my husband.’
It is evening, and far away from Bankside – across the Narrow Sea in fact, in a small city to the north-east of Antwerp. A young woman dressed in a threadbare brown kirtle stands gazing up at the façade of a cathedral, steeling herself to enter. The city is called ’s-Hertogenbosch, known more simply to Brabantians as Den Bosch, and the maid’s name is Hella Maas.
In years she is closer to Rose Monkton than to Nicholas Shelby or Bianca Merton. But there the similarity ends. Where Rose is the very picture of pastoral pulchritude, this young woman has a severe, broken beauty. It is a beauty forged in grief. Her eyes are deep and dark, bulbous, as though too many bad dreams are pushing against them from the inside.
From the great tower that soars above her, the cathedral’s bell begins to ring out its sonorous invitation. The deep, bass voice makes the warm evening air quiver, as though it has a pulse, as though it is alive. Hella knows that in the narrow channels of the Binnendieze, running through the city the way veins and arteries run through her own body, the water will be rippling in concert. It will make the shadows dance beneath the little bridges that seem to spring between cliffs of mossy brickwork.