by S. W. Perry
In the taproom, Rose believes her mistress is labouring over the tavern’s accounts. Ned Monkton worries she might be crafting a spell. Some of the customers fear she’s drawing up their reckonings. In truth, Bianca is planning her letter to Nicholas. She thinks, if he won’t write, then I will – and, mercy, how my news will stop him in his tracks.
She taps one index finger on the paper to marshal her thoughts. Tap: Katherine Vaesy is harvesting victims for the killer. Tap: Maybe Katherine Vaesy is the killer. Tap: Fulke Vaesy – be he cousin, brother, husband or any other form of male irritant, is an eminent man of medicine. Tap: John Lumley is an eminent man of medicine. Tap: Nicholas is closer to the killer than he knows. Tap… tap… tap…
Where does this harvest of souls go when it leaves the Magdalene? she wonders. Because the Magdalene is not a prison. The old woman with the eye and the elbow has told her so. Even if the alternative is starvation, the Magdalenes are always at liberty to leave.
To the Lazar House, then? In which case, Nicholas is right. She can hear his familiar soft Suffolk burr: How could we have been so blind? He’s been doing it right under our noses!
The rhythm of her tapping falters. Rose looks over from where she’s been making moonbeam faces at Ned Monkton. ‘Anything the matter, Mistress?’
‘Nothing, Rose. It’s nothing.’
Ned and Rose are getting on like a house on fire, she thinks. They’re suited: Ned, who spends his day amongst the dead; Rose with her worrying interest in torture. Ghoulish, admittedly – but then what was it her mother used to say? There’s always someone for someone.
She remembers when the English merchants visiting her father’s house in Padua had started taking more than a passing interest in her. Her mother had warned her somewhat brutally, ‘Cardinal or carpenter, bare-chin or greybeard, all they really want is to tup you till you’ve given them an heir, then have you cook them fishcakes for the rest of your days. They’re all the same.’
‘But what about Papa?’ Bianca had protested.
‘Ah, your father – he’s different.’
‘How so?’
‘He doesn’t like fish.’
Bianca smiles at the memory. Even now she doesn’t know if her mother was joking. She turns her thoughts back to the letter. When it’s written, she’ll do what Nicholas did: have Timothy take it to Lord Lumley’s town house near Tower Hill. Hopefully it will find its way to Nonsuch. She wonders what he’ll make of Lady Katherine Vaesy then.
‘Mistress, Mistress!’
Bianca looks up to see Timothy standing over her, his face flushed.
‘Whatever’s the matter? You sound as though the Spanish have landed.’
‘There’s a fellow outside, from the Magdalene almshouse,’ Timothy tells her, carried away by the drama of the call. ‘Says he’s heard your physic is the best on Bankside.’
‘And so it is, Timothy. If I say so myself. What does he want?’
‘There’s a woman – sick almost to death. He says, will you come?’
‘It’s not the warder, is it: the one we threw out?’
‘No, Mistress. This one’s got a face full of pox scars.’
She wants to say, tell him to try the jumping-shop at the sign of the Blue Bear – that’s where the old woman who peels vegetables for her friends that the rest of the world has forgotten says he’s usually to be found. But then she recalls the sense of shame she’d felt when she’d realized she’d never once stopped by in person to help.
‘I’ll go with you,’ says Ned Monkton, laying down his ale. ‘Master Nicholas would wish it.’
She thinks about it. She really does think about it. But I’m a healthy, strong young woman, she tells herself. I don’t fit the pattern. What happened to Ralph Cullen and Jacob Monkton happened after they left the Magdalene. And I’m Veneto-born and bred; not some simpering, pasty, over-jewelled English buttercup. Besides, if Lady Katherine Vaesy is there, at least I’ll have a face to point out to the constable when the time comes. But what really makes up her mind is this: why should she accept a guard dog just because Nicholas Shelby, who can’t be bothered to write, wishes it?
She goes to the parlour for the bag of balms and ointments she keeps for emergencies. She slips in a small knife, just to be on the safe side.
‘Stay here, Ned,’ she says. ‘I’ll go on my own. You keep an eye on Mistress Moonbeam here.’
46
The wherry drops them at the Cecils’ private water-stairs. At the Covent Garden house they’re told Lord Burghley is at Whitehall. A brisk walk past Henry’s old tilting ground takes them beneath the Holbein gatehouse and into the vast jumble of grand houses, government offices, gardens and chapels that’s grown up around the spot where Edward the Confessor first raised his royal palace on the banks of the Tyburn. Somewhere inside this maze is the human incarnation of England’s majesty. Everywhere there are guards, to ensure she doesn’t end up like poor Prince William of Orange, shot by an assassin with a wheel-lock pistol in his own home. To carry a firing piece anywhere inside the palace boundary is now an act of treason. Nicholas and John Lumley find their way barred by two bearded halberdiers in full plate.
‘Please be so good as to have your servant open that box, my lord,’ says one of them.
Lumley signals for the servant Adam to open the pine chest he’s carrying. Nicholas’s heart starts rat-tat-tatting like a tambour in a parade.
‘Samples of chamber hangings, sirrah,’ says Lumley with an understanding smile that’s meant to show he appreciates the difficulties a guard must face, when so many men of note pass through his gate every day. ‘My lord Burghley much admired the ones in his room at Nonsuch when he came there last with our sovereign lady. I promised to bring him some samples from the weaver. Show the sergeant, Adam.’
The guard, who’s heard only the words ‘Burghley’ and ‘our sovereign lady’, takes a cursory look inside the chest and signals his mate to stand aside.
They track down Burghley and his entourage to a row of chambers next to the Court of Requests. Even then their quarry proves elusive. ‘His Grace is presently in discourse with members of the Privy Council, my lord,’ says an unforgiving face whose tone reminds Nicholas of an examination of competence before the College of Physicians: What ancient scholars have you studied?… Quote from them, in defence of your treatment for choler… What does Brasbridge have to say on the subject of serpiginous ulcers? He certainly has the same butterflies in his stomach.
‘I really do think my lord Burghley will wish to see me, no matter how pressing the discourse,’ says Lumley, with a courage Nicholas can only admire.
‘And why would that be, my lord?’ asks the unforgiving face.
‘Why don’t you tell him, Nicholas?’ says Lumley generously.
So, taking his cue from the surroundings, Nicholas does. He whispers his poison into the man’s ear, in the best tradition of a practised courtier.
Burghley is old and tired. The marrow in his bones aches at the slightest whiff of treason and sedition. How did it happen, he wonders – how did my lifelong service to my sovereign turn the birdsong outside my window into a never-ending warning?
These days he can’t sleep much beyond a couple of hours at a stretch. His mind brims with fear for the future. His greatest dread is that one simple act of inattention – perhaps the churchwarden in some remote village failing to notice that one of his flock has suddenly started avoiding sermon on a Sunday – may lead to an English traitor taking the road to London. It’s happened before. All it takes is a head full of the Pope’s edict that killing your queen is no crime, because she’s a declared heretic – and a pistol in the saddlebag.
So when four men – one of whom he recognizes as his son’s nemesis, John Lumley – are ushered into his presence, following the uttering of the dread word ‘treason’, Lord Treasurer Burghley fears the worst.
‘A Jesuit – in hiding at Nonsuch!’ he exclaims when Lumley has delivered the news. He could be speaking of s
ome particularly lethal species of serpent.
‘An agent of the Pope, Your Grace. A deceiver,’ Lumley says without the slightest trace of theatricality. ‘Though I’ve known him for many years, he was able to hide his infamy even from me. Had I even the slightest suspicion, I would have denounced him instantly.’ He turns to Nicholas. ‘Perhaps you know Dr Nicholas Shelby – I understand your son Robert employs him on matters of extreme sensitivity. Nicholas, show His Grace what we discovered.’
Like a street entertainer performing a trick, Nicholas slowly withdraws Francis Deniker’s vestments from the pine chest now lying open on Burghley’s desk. He lays them out carefully for the Lord Treasurer to inspect. The crosses of gold thread and the jewels sewn into the heavy damask gleam like beacons lit to warn of an approaching enemy. Next, he takes the altar stone from its cloth wrapping and sets it down. He pulls back the covering from the chalice and places the gleaming silver bowl on the altar stone. All that’s missing is the sound of a celestial choir singing the Benedictus. He glances at Lumley’s long face. There’s not a flicker of emotion on it, though what it’s costing him to see the symbols of his faith used in such a manner, he can’t begin to imagine.
Burghley stands up with surprising speed for such a stately old man. For one extraordinary moment, Nicholas fears the octogenarian Lord Treasurer is about to jump onto his chair like a parlour maid surprised by a mouse.
‘Merciful Jesu!’ he cries. ‘The whole heretical set!’
‘And hidden in the bosom of my household!’ agrees Lumley, allowing his Northumbrian burr free rein to show what a simple, straight-dealing fellow he really is. ‘I can only reproach myself for not having uncovered this heresy earlier.’
‘And you knew nought of this deception?’ Burghley asks, a last bubble of suspicion lingering on the surface of his revulsion.
‘Nothing at all, Your Grace,’ says Lumley sadly. ‘I freely admit I have always been a church Catholic – but, as the law demands, I observe all that is asked of me by the new faith. I pay my recusancy fines. The queen herself knows it. But a hider of Jesuits, never. I would defend her faith to the death.’
Nicholas has the urge to applaud. Lumley has performed his part almost exactly as he’s been coached.
‘Do you have the rogue under guard, my lord?’ asks Burghley.
‘Sadly, no.’
‘He’s at large?’
‘I fear so, Your Grace.’ Lumley constrains himself to merely the barest wince. ‘When Dr Shelby tried to take him, his violence knew no bounds. He killed my clerk, poor Master Deniker. Dr Shelby here was lucky to escape with his life. Show him, Nicholas—’
Nicholas turns his head to reveal the still-healing wound that he sustained in the Nonsuch mews.
‘He must be hunted down without delay, without mercy!’ says Burghley, calling for pen and paper so that he might draft the order. ‘Does this agent of the Antichrist have a name?’
For the first time since they arrived at Whitehall, Nicholas detects a tremor of doubt in Lumley’s voice, as if he’s only now begun to comprehend how this will end for the man he once held so close in his affections. ‘Indeed he does, Your Grace,’ Lumley says slowly, regretfully. ‘His name is Gabriel Quigley.’
Black Bull Alley is empty when Bianca reaches the Magdalene. But she feels no alarm. If Katherine Vaesy is here, she can know nothing of what Bianca has discovered. Nevertheless, she’s caught off-guard when the door is opened by a well-dressed but brittle-faced woman in her late thirties, wearing a smart winter gown of russell worsted. Can this be her: the woman who was all over Nicholas like a rash of the buboes?
‘Mistress Merton – from the Jackdaw?’ enquires the woman, peering past Bianca into the lane to see if she’s brought company.
‘Yes. And who are you?’
‘Mistress Warren. I was passing by when I found the poor woman lying close to death on the doorstep. I had no idea what manner of place this was, but they told me you were skilled in apothecary. Come in – quickly.’
Her mind set at ease, Bianca ducks below the sagging lintel.
She finds herself in a press of hot, unwashed bodies. Fingers prod her skin. Stroke her gown. Tug at her hair, as if she’s one of those exotic creatures that princes keep in their menageries. She recoils from the stench of sweat, rancid food and those human emanations that come with the flux. In the half-light from a small, high window all she can see is a moving huddle of rags and grey human limbs that look as though they belong to the already dead. And watching, while they mob her, is a man with a face like pitted slate.
‘Come to join us, Mistress Purity?’ calls one of the inmates in a voice harsh and throaty. ‘We’s all friends here!’
‘I know her – she was here asking questions a while ago,’ says the vegetable woman, the only remotely familiar face in the entire place.
‘Come to rob us, more like!’ shouts another voice.
‘Quick, Gondall, hit her with your piss-pot!’
‘I can’t – it’s been made away with,’ cries the woman Gondall.
‘The thief’s stolen Gondall’s piss-pot!’ shrieks someone else.
‘Mercy, it’s not a thief,’ says the first woman. ‘It’s the Virgin Mary come to wash away all our sins.’
‘It shocked me too, at first,’ says the woman who calls herself Mistress Warren, as she eases Bianca onto a small bench beneath a high casement that lets in minimal light. ‘We shouldn’t blame them. They’re as deserving of God’s love as the mightiest in the land.’
‘Here, have some of this. It’ll calm the nerves,’ says the man with the pumice face, offering Bianca a clay jug. His mouth is a little too close to her ear for comfort. ‘Not as fine as the Jackdaw’s, I’m sure. But it will serve.’
Bianca takes a mouthful. It tastes unusual, but not at all unpleasant. It’s sweet – refreshing. She takes another gulp. Then a few more, until her heart stops pounding.
‘That’s it – don’t stop. It’ll fortify you,’ the woman says, smiling.
‘No, really, I’m fine,’ says Bianca, not wanting to appear like a wilting flower in the presence of such suffering.
‘You’ll feel better for it, I promise you,’ says the woman kindly. ‘I was the same the first time I came here.’
It’s as though someone has slapped her. Bianca thrusts the jug at the woman. ‘The first time? But you said just now you’d no idea what manner of place—’
‘Drink,’ snaps the woman in an altogether harsher tone than Bianca feels is called for.
And then – somehow without her noticing – the man has pinioned her arms. Her bag of balms and ointments falls to the floor. It’s quickly snatched away by the woman called Gondall.
Mistress Warren pulls Bianca’s head back by the hair. She starts pouring the liquid directly into Bianca’s open, protesting mouth. Bianca slams her jaw shut. But the ale flows into her nostrils. She can’t breathe. She can’t stop her mouth from gaping open.
Her last clear sight, before her vision begins to blur, is of the inmate Gondall waving the balm bag to and fro – as if to say: who has your knife now, fool?
Burghley is the most influential man in the realm, yet it takes even his great engine of power a while to lurch into motion.
The other members of the Privy Council present at the interrupted conference must be summoned: Hunsdon, the queen’s chamberlain; Lord Howard of Effingham, her Lord High Admiral; Francis Knollys, the Puritan scourge of heretics everywhere, who appears sniffing like a deer-hound tracking a scent. Five minutes later the young Earl of Essex sweeps in on a tide of gloriously clad acolytes. They wear his tangerine ribbons on the tops of their boots and their beards are oiled and primped. They deliver the noble earl to Burghley’s table and sweep out again, like a wave casting up a pearl on a beach.
The last to arrive is Robert Cecil. He comes in wearing a black silk gown and his boots crackle against the flagstones, reminding Nicholas of a cockroach scuttling over a kitchen floor. He glares impotently at
John Lumley, like a schoolboy who’s had his nose tweaked by his teacher. He does not acknowledge Nicholas.
But Nicholas has his own thoughts to keep himself occupied, thoughts that have been troubling him throughout the journey here; thoughts such as: does a new lock on an old door mean anything at all? And did I – or did I not – mention Bianca Merton’s name when I told Gabriel Quigley I’d seen the bodies?
She’s in the open air. But where? And when?
The visions come to Bianca in waves: brilliant hallucinations at the crest, moments of near-lucidity in the troughs.
On one of the crests she’s in the garden of her parents’ house in Padua, bathed in eye-straining sunlight that makes everything around her twice as sharp as usual. She can hear the sounds of chickens pecking in the dirt. She can hear her mother telling her how to mix a draught to make your enemy do your bidding: This much of hellebore root… lide-lilly for a pleasant smell… This many seeds of black henbane… and if still they persecute you, hemlock… until it rids you of their troublesome presence entirely…
But she cannot be in Padua. Though there’s sunlight, the air here is too cold. And it cannot be her mother speaking. Her mother is buried in the plot beside the old church on the hill, the plot that Father Rossi tends so lovingly – though he must be ninety now, if he’s a day, and can barely lift the rake.
Once, aged nine, she’d dipped a finger in a concoction her mother had been mixing and lifted it to her lips. Her current fantasy had been that of a spurned lover determined upon death; she’d wanted to know what poison tastes like. Her mother had beaten her mercilessly – out of love, of course.
Now, in a brief interlude of clarity, she realizes what the man with the ruined face and the woman who seems to direct him have done to her. She knows what was in the liquid they forced her to drink. She knows also that she’s standing in the wilderness surrounding the Lazar House, staring up at its forbidding walls.