by S. W. Perry
Besides, now is probably not the time to start shouting about murder. It’s not uncommon for a witness to end up in the Counter while the judiciary takes its time deciding if they know more than they’re saying. Some can languish there for months before a magistrate decides they’re innocent. And despite the best efforts of Bianca and Rose, Nicholas still doesn’t look entirely reputable.
Nevertheless, he offers to accompany the body to the mortuary at St Thomas’s, speak to the coroner to confirm the constable’s conclusion, if needs be. At least that will buy him time. The constable looks him up and down, declines his offer and tells him to be on his way.
Nicholas has seen enough anyway. Enough to tell him the wound on the lad’s leg is just like the one on the dead infant at Vaesy’s lecture, only larger. As for the evisceration, it looks as though someone has torn away the poor soul’s innards in a hurried search for swallowed treasure.
He’s also noted – with a professional interest he can’t shake off – the raw wheals on wrist and ankle. The killer must have strapped the poor lad down before he went to work. A dark image enters his mind unbidden: a struggling, arching young body writhing in terror as the knife begins to cut – slowly, deliberately, as carefully as an obvious lack of skill allows.
Nicholas turns and walks back up Mutton Lane. There’s almost a spring in his step – the joy that comes from knowing at last that while the rest of the world thought you a raving madman, you were in fact right.
He can hear Fulke Vaesy’s very words in his head – only now there’s a sweetness to them that brings a grim smile to his lips:
So you’ve decided the alternative is murder, have you? Are all your diagnoses made so swiftly?
And now he has a name to work with: Jacob Monkton, the poulterer’s son from Scrope Alley.
A boy with addled wits.
An infant with withered legs.
And a killer with a hungry knife.
12
Astiff wind tears at the crests of the jagged little waves, sending icy spume into the faces of the oarsmen. As the barge approaches the Whitehall stairs, Sir Fulke Vaesy readies himself for the jump onto the jetty. He is a large man, not given to agility. When he hesitates, alarmed by the pitching deck beneath his feet, someone gives him an insulting shove in the rear and he almost tumbles onto the slippery timbers.
Vaesy has no idea why he’d been summoned to Cecil House. The barge-master – who wears Lord Burghley’s ermine lionemblem on his jerkin – has spoken not a word to him throughout the journey. He has a nagging fear that Lady Katherine has found some way to cause trouble for him; she’s loosely connected to the Cecils on her mother’s side and he wouldn’t put it past either of them.
Burghley’s London home is a showy offshoot of Whitehall Palace, set between the Strand and Covent Garden. The weak sunlight gleams in the high windows of the great hall, the yard busy with hurrying secretaries and clerks. This is as much a place of government as a family residence.
‘How gracious of you to come, Sir Fulke,’ the crook-backed young Robert says as Vaesy is ushered into his audience chamber. ‘And on such an inclement tide.’
For a moment Vaesy finds the protocol confusing. Robert Cecil – who has yet to wear the ermine – should by rights make courtesy to a knight. But he merely observes Sir Fulke from behind his desk; doesn’t even attempt to stand. And he is the Lord Treasurer’s son. So Vaesy make the smallest bend of the knee that he can stomach and hopes it will do. It seems to suffice.
Cecil motions the great anatomist to a fine, high-backed oak chair. The arras cushions bear the Cecil crest picked out in golden thread.
Silence – ominous and lingering.
Vaesy wonders if he is expected to say something: engage in some ritual none of the liveried servants have thought to mention to him. He consoles himself with the knowledge that if Katherine had wanted to cause him real trouble, he’d be facing Burghley himself and not the son. When the question comes, it’s as unexpected as a pistol shot.
‘You were physician to John Lumley once, were you not?’
It takes Vaesy a moment to compose his answer.
‘Indeed I was, Master Robert – fresh from Oxford. Eager as a lamb in springtime.’
‘You were lucky. With his entrée at court, Lumley could have had his pick of medical men.’
‘Lord Lumley is ever generous,’ says Vaesy, stung by the thinly veiled insult.
‘And you have remained close ever since?’
‘I count myself fortunate in holding Lord Lumley’s trust, yes.’
‘You were his physician when his children died – is that not so?’
‘I was.’
‘All three of them?’
Vaesy tries hard not to bristle at the charge implicit in Robert Cecil’s words. ‘The daughters were lost to the sweating sickness, the boy to the small-pox,’ he says. ‘We men of medicine treat the symptoms of a malady as diligently as we can. It is up to God to determine whether the body recovers or fails. I did my utmost.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Sir Fulke. Not for a moment.’ Robert Cecil turns his attention back to the parchment in front of him. He dips the nib of his pen into a fine horn inkwell and puts his signature to the document. He adds, softly, ‘Speaking for myself, had I been your client, I should have hoped for better odds.’
Vaesy swallows the insult. He can do little else.
After what seems like an age, Robert Cecil says casually, ‘Forty pounds – a useful sum for a physician, I expect.’
‘Sir—?’
‘Lord Lumley’s endowment to the College of Physicians – forty pounds per annum for a reader in anatomy.’
‘Ah, yes, of course. Very useful, Master Robert.’
‘For which he sometimes requires you to travel across the Narrow Sea, I understand – into Europe.’
‘There is much new work being undertaken there. England should not fall behind. I’m sure Lord Burghley would agree.’
Robert Cecil gives Vaesy a cold smile. ‘I rather think my father considers physicians in much the same way he considers cutpurses: he thinks both should hang. The last such visit was to Italy, was it not?’
‘Yes, to Padua, Master Robert,’ replies Vaesy, determined not to let Robert Cecil stick yet another pin in him. ‘To the university there.’
‘And for what purpose?’
‘To learn of the latest advances made by the Italian masters of physic in the subject of human defor—’ Vaesy break off as Robert Cecil looks up from his desk, hunching his crooked shoulders as though challenging the anatomist to continue. But what he actually says takes Vaesy by surprise.
‘Surely, Sir Fulke, as a physician you comprehend the danger of contagion?’
‘Contagion? There was no plague in Padua, Master Robert. I should not have gone otherwise.’
‘I refer to contagion of the soul, Sir Fulke.’
‘The soul?’
‘I assume the Pope’s writ still runs in Padua, does it not?’
So that’s why I’ve been summonsed, thinks the great anatomist. This isn’t a casual chat about anatomy, this is an interrogation. A cold stone of fear suddenly hardens in his stomach. He can name men who have come to Cecil House and left their liberty at the door. There are cells – probably directly below where he’s sitting now – for those Lord Burghley considers enemies of the realm. The power of the Cecils is almost unlimited. And Robert Cecil thinks he’s a traitor because he’s been to Padua.
‘Master Robert,’ he says, suddenly full of humility, ‘I can assure you that physic was my only motive for going.’
‘And did you carry any letters between the noble lord and Padua, Sir Fulke? Any sealed letters?’
‘Only an introduction to the university chancellor. It was quite innocent, I promise you. I showed it to our president, William Baronsdale. He said it was the very model of such intercourse.’
‘Did it not occur to you it might have been encrypted?’
‘Encrypted? Why?’
‘To serve as secret communication between heretics!’
‘No!’
Vaesy feels the floor beneath his feet begin to crumble. He thinks he’s about to plummet conveniently into one of Burghley’s cells, where the manacles will be awaiting him. ‘Lord Lumley’s loyalty to the Crown is unimpeachable,’ he insists, somewhat croakily. ‘As is mine, Master Robert. Ask anyone!’
Burghley’s son draws himself up as though about to present a prosecution – a capital prosecution.
‘Your friend John Lumley has flown far too close to the wrong sun for his own good,’ he says. ‘By rights, he should have met a traitor’s end years ago!’
‘If Lord Lumley has ever been in error, Master Robert—’
Robert raises a hand to stop him. ‘John Lumley’s error – no, let us call it what it truly was: his treason – was to plot with his father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel, to marry the Scots whore, Mary Stuart, to the Duke of Norfolk. How easily some people forget. But not me, Sir Fulke. Not me.’
Vaesy fidgets uncomfortably. All this was years ago; Robert Cecil would have been barely out of his cot. But guilt by association, he knows, has been the undoing of many an innocent man. ‘That was all in the past, Master Robert,’ he says. ‘Norfolk paid with his life. Lord Lumley with his liberty. At the time I was merely Lord Lumley’s doctor.’
‘Even so, that marriage, Sir Fulke, would have established a Catholic claim to the throne. One lucky shot – one assassin’s ball fired though Elizabeth’s heart – and the Pope would have had England presented to him like a New Year’s Day present.’
‘I was never part of the faction, I swear it. I only ever saw the duke from a distance. We never exchanged but a word. And I would point out the queen was pleased to forgive Lord Lumley his… his… error.’
Robert Cecil laughs, though to Fulke Vaesy it sounds more like a bark.
‘My father’s hair is white and his constitution much troubled by Her Grace’s habit of forgiveness!’ He tests the tip of his quill. A small blob of ink blooms on his fingertip. It suggests to Vaesy the prick of a poisoned thorn. ‘You are oftentimes in Lord Lumley’s presence, in his house at Tower Hill, and at Nonsuch Palace. Is that not so?’
‘I am, Master Robert. But I would desist if you thought it best—’
‘He is open in your company?’
‘As any man is to his doctor.’
‘Exactly.’
So that’s it, thinks Vaesy. That’s why Robert Cecil has summoned me. He wants me to be his informer. He wants to make me his paid snoop, like the rogues he and his father employ to hang around in taverns listening out for careless drunken sedition. I’m to spy on John Lumley.
And if I refuse?
But Vaesy already knows the answer to that question: he will have made certain enemies of the two most powerful men in England.
Halfway up Black Bull Alley, Nicholas hears someone call his name.
‘Master Shelby!
He stops, turns around.
‘It is Nicholas Shelby, the physician? I fancied I might bump into you soon enough!’
It takes a while for Nicholas to place the barrel chest, the ginger beard streaked with white, the wide forehead beneath the woollen cap. Faces seen during his fall have an uncertain claim on his memory. This one is no different.
‘It’s Isaac Bredwell, sir – the bookseller. Surely you must remember—’
And then Nicholas has him fixed: Isaac Bredwell is the man with the sign of Hermes hanging above his shop. He’s the bookseller who bought Nicholas’s collection of medical volumes, the man who has the last tangible pieces of the old Dr Shelby.
‘How do you know my name, Master Bookseller?’ he asks.
‘It was written in your volumes, sir. And fine volumes they were, too. Forgive me for saying so, but I did wonder later if they’d been stolen. You didn’t look much like a doctor when you entered my humble shop.’
Nicholas has only hazy memories of that day, but Isaac Bredwell’s strange little shop stands out more clearly than the rest.
He’d been surprised to find the bookshop there at all, wondering how the owner could possibly make a living in a place where barely one man or woman in five had the skill to read. The tiny place had smelled of linen pulp and of ink. Next to the piles of penny-ballads Nicholas had noticed a heavy wooden cudgel. Bredwell had told him it was to ward off the Puritan evangelicals, but Nicholas had reckoned he needed the weapon because either he was selling imported Italian erotica or papist tracts and he wanted a chance to fight his way clear of the government searchers, if they came calling.
‘If you’re in need of physic, Master Bredwell, I’m sorry, but I no longer practise,’ Nicholas says, as pleasantly as he can. ‘And if you want me to buy those books back, I fear I haven’t the coin.’
‘Not at all, sir,’ says the bookseller with a merchant’s smile as he falls in beside Nicholas. ‘I sold them on for a goodly profit, thank you all the same.’
‘Then I fail to see how I can be of service to you.’
‘It’s more a question of how I can be of service to you, sir,’
Bredwell says, apparently steeling himself to broach a difficult subject. ‘I hear you’re now in the service of Mistress Merton, at the sign of the Jackdaw.’
‘What of it?’
‘It occurred to me, sir, when you came into my shop, that you were a man in what I shall call extremis—’
‘It was raining. I was cold.’
‘Of course, sir. But let me put it this way: you won’t be the first man to enter Bankside as one fellow and leave as another.’
‘I fear you have me at a loss, Master Bredwell. Can you please speak plainly; I have business—’
‘Sir, if any man wants to practise the art of reinvention – which by the look of you now, I assume you do – there’s nowhere better in all London than here. We get all types, Master Shelby: purveyors of smuggled papist tracts, felons on the run from justice, foreign intelligencers off the barques moored in the river. And because of them, we get the Bishop of London’s men. Privy Council spies, too – all searching for the seditious and the heretical. It’s a simple case of filth attracting rats.’
‘Is that so? Thank you for the warning.’
‘Sometimes the innocent find themselves taken up in error, if you follow my meaning.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ says Nicholas. ‘But what does any of this have to do with Mistress Merton?’
Bredwell’s next questions stops Nicholas in his tracks.
‘How much do you really know about her?’
‘Bianca?’
‘Ah, so now it’s Bianca—’
‘If you have something to tell me, Master Bredwell, I charge you: be open or take your leave.’
Bredwell looks around theatrically. ‘They say she has the healing touch of St Brigid. She can make a talisman to ward off almost every known medical trial, short of rigor mortis. It’s even rumoured she took baptism as a cloak, and in secret venerates the old gods, practises magical cures learned in ancient times.’
‘Is that so?’ asks Nicholas, who happens to know the going rate for denouncing your neighbour as a secret Catholic or a witch. As a physician, he’d received more than one letter that began ‘In the discharge of my Duty to our Sovereign Majesty, I must draw your attention to Diverse Faults in the conduct of the said mistress…’ Usually they were from spurned suitors or jealous neighbours.
‘Someone at the Tabard told me he’d seen her – with his own eyes, mind – in the dead of night, sailing in the sky in the shape of a bat with a woman’s face!’
Nicholas tries not to laugh, but fails. ‘I’m sorry, Master Bredwell, I don’t wish to offend, but I suggest you ask the quarter sessions to investigate what the Tabard is putting in its ale.’
‘You may mock me, Mister Shelby,’ Bredwell says in a hurt voice, ‘but no heretic can escape the bonfire for long, nor any witch for that matter. Just remember this: they burned a woman in the S
pital fields last Pentecost, for casting a charm that poisoned her master’s Rhenish wine.’
‘Blame bad wine on the vintner, Master Bredwell; not on some poor woman who can scarcely afford small-beer,’ says Nicholas, trying to keep the anger from his voice and not entirely succeeding.
But Bredwell isn’t to be deflected. He leans a little too close for Nicholas’s comfort and warns, ‘Take my advice, Physician: when that bonfire is lit, make sure you’re not standing too close to the flames.’
When the vintner from across the river walks into the Jackdaw – alone – Bianca confines her anger to a secret jab with her heel against the foot of the bench. Her sideways glance at Rose says, ‘We should have expected as much – Nicholas has run off with my penny!’
She knows her temper is somewhat volatile. In Padua, her mother used to call her Signora Zanzara, after the biting insects that plagued their summers. Trying to be rational, she asks herself if Nicholas would really make a run for it with just one penny of her hard-earned coin in his pocket. Frettoloso – hasty. Something else her mother used to say of her.
As the vintner extols the quality of his malmsey, Bianca finds herself blushing. She fans her face with one hand; resolves to have Timothy damp down the fire. But underneath she’s cursing. It’s dawned on her that she hasn’t put on her white Haarlem blouse and the cornelian bodice for the vintner’s benefit at all. Rose was right, damn her to perdition. I must be going soft in the head, she tells herself.
In Padua there had been any number of fellows seeking her father’s permission to pay suit to her. But God had given her eyes, hadn’t He? She’d seen how Italian men were, once all the over-elaborate corteggiamento was done with – interested in nothing but their guilds, their societies and their reputations.
When she’d left Italy, she’d been interested to see the mettle of her father’s own race. The only ones she’d had any contact with before that were the merchants who passed through her father’s house, bringing their spices, plants and curiosities from foreign lands. They were all serious-minded men of business, full of charters, bonds, conditions and parcels vendible. Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull.