by S. W. Perry
Not that her offers of help have been accepted unanimously. More than a few sidemen, vestrymen and wardens have made it clear they believe a woman cannot possibly understand the complex methods by which the pestilence spreads. Nevertheless, her little apothecary shop on Dice Lane has become the place where the banners of defiance still fly, the place on the battlefield where the survivors can regroup and rearm themselves, refusing to countenance defeat. As a consequence, her physic garden is becoming depleted. She often has to borrow Timothy from Rose and send him across the bridge to the merchants’ warehouses on Petty Wales near the Tower to buy dried replacements.
On a schedule that she has organized for the parish, squadrons of women sally forth at dawn and dusk to ensure the lanes and alleys are cleaned of waste and detritus. Even Jenny Solver plays her part, though Bianca suspects mostly to enjoy the opportunity to gossip. These parts of Southwark have never been so clean. Doorways are scrubbed with vinegar; those where the plague has visited with quicklime. The open drains are sluiced with river water twice daily. The Mutton Lane shambles is cleared of blood and scraps at noon and again after Evensong. Middens and dunghills are burned, the debris buried. Fires are lit to incinerate old floor-rushes and the corpses of stray dogs. Buffle is not allowed out and must confine herself to the Jackdaw’s yard, except when it is dark. And only then in Ned’s company.
Yes, Bianca thinks, things have changed a lot in the fortnight since the pestilence brushed against my cheek, looked into my eyes and then swept on. But one thing hasn’t changed. And that’s her fear: that everything Nicholas told her about why he was going to Morocco was a lie.
When the sermon is over, Bianca returns to her shop to prepare for the expected lunchtime rush. She checks the brimstone sack. It’s well over half-full. Unless there’s a sudden increase in demand – and pray to God that won’t happen – it should last another three days. She counts off the sprigs of dried borage and meadowsweet, and tops up the oxymel with vinegar and honey. She places the filled pots, vials and twists of cloth into their appropriate boxes, and she asks herself once again if there is something she has failed to think of, in the days since she stood before the secretary in the black half-cape and the gartered stockings at Cecil House.
At his invitation, she wrote a letter to the Lord Treasurer’s son, pleading with him to dispatch a fast pinnace to snatch Nicholas from Cathal Connell’s grasp. She now imagines the letter languishing in a vast mountain of unread correspondence, because she has yet to receive a reply, or even an acknowledgement it’s been safely delivered.
From Cecil House she went to Woodroffe Lane, close by Tower Hill. She had hoped Nicholas’s friend Lord Lumley might help her. But Lumley had already decamped to Nonsuch Palace.
The next day she struck upon the idea of taking a wherry to Greenwich or Windsor in search of Robert Cecil. She’d been forced to abandon that idea on the realization that the chances of the guards allowing her to set foot on a royal water-stairs were little better than zero.
In the end she decided the best she could do was let Reynard Gault know what sort of monster he’d employed as admiral-general. So, two days later, she walked across the bridge, up Cornhill and on into the Poultry, in the face of a mischievous breeze that had the hem of her kirtle snapping at her ankles, to the Grocers’ Company guildhall on Coneyhope Lane. As she feared, he wasn’t there, and the bored-looking doorman refused to tell her where he lived.
As a result, she has spent the days since torturing herself, imagining the very worst of fates for Nicholas. And she holds herself thoroughly to blame.
If I’d known he’d gone to the Barbary shore only to save my apothecary’s licence, I’d never have been so abrupt with him, Bianca has told herself on more occasions than she can be bothered to count. We could have come up with an alternative. We could have found a way. But in her heart, she knows that with Robert Cecil, there is no other way.
So it is hardly surprising that it takes all her efforts to remain composed when Reynard Gault, leading member of the Grocers’ Guild and the Barbary Company, walks into her shop with all the insouciance of a tourist from north of the bridge.
‘I am inclined to say “God give you good morrow”, Mistress Merton,’ he says, striking a pose that she suspects is designed to flatter his profile. ‘But in these present days perhaps a man shouldn’t tempt fate.’
‘I’m not at all sure how to take that, Sir Reynard,’ Bianca says. She runs a hand through her hair, thinking she must look like a scarecrow in a gale. ‘What brings you to Bankside? Are you still searching for charlatans?’
He smiles. A pleasing smile – much to her alarm. ‘I’ve been taking soundings, Mistress Merton. I hear you have become Bankside’s bastion against the pestilence. An effective bastion, apparently.’
‘I do what I can, sir. It is but little.’
Why is he regarding me with that surprised smile? Bianca wonders. It’s as though he’s just spotted a bright flower in a bed of weeds and can’t decide whether to leave it to flourish or cut it off at the stem and pin it to his expensive velvet doublet.
‘They say you had it – the plague.’
‘Who says so?’
‘People,’ he tells her coyly. ‘Apparently you worked some magic of physic. And then it was gone.’
They say you can change shape. They say you can drink poison and feel no ill. They say you had the plague and cured yourself. They say you’re the one witch nobody dares hang. She’s heard them all before.
‘I fear I must disappoint you, Master Gault. It was an ague. Nothing more.’
In an instant his handsome face goes from smiling to stern. ‘Then to pretend otherwise is a felony. You could lose your licence; even face imprisonment.’
‘I haven’t pretended anything. This is Bankside – tall tales bloom faster than chickweed here. I had an ague.’
‘So you claim,’ he says, relenting a little. She suspects he has difficulty in holding his certainties up to scrutiny. He seems to her the sort of man who cannot possibly come to any conclusion but the right one. ‘How is it that a woman as young as yourself knows so much about precautions against pestilence?’ he asks. ‘London has not seen it in any great measure for ten years.’
‘I was born in Padua, to a mother skilled in matters of natural physic. A great plague came when I was eight. They say we lost some twenty thousand souls across the Veneto. We learned quickly.’
An eyebrow lifts in estimation. ‘Then Bankside is indeed fortunate to have you.’
‘And here I shall stay, Master Gault. Unlike some of my betters, who seem to prefer flight to duty.’ She gives him a direct look. ‘Are you about to flee the city? I confess I thought you already had.’
‘I was in Bristol, Mistress Merton, on a matter of commerce. When I returned, I heard you had come to the Grocers’ guildhall asking for me. So, here I am.’
‘You ventured into Southwark merely to discover what it was that I wanted? Not to revoke my licence?’
‘Why should I wish to revoke your licence, Mistress Merton, when you appear to be bringing credit to the calling of apothecary?’ Gault gives her a glass smile that she can see clean through. ‘I came because I wanted to speak to you about your preventatives against the pestilence. I may have need of your skills.’
‘Have you no apothecaries in your own ward, Master Gault?’
‘In Farringdon Without the Wall? Barely a single one who knows a clyster from a compress. Certainly none so comely.’
‘You should see me after I’ve been ladling brimstone, Master Gault.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I am a little busy at present to traipse all over the city.’
‘Not so busy that you couldn’t find time to walk all the way to Coneyhope Lane to enquire after me at the guildhall. Perhaps we should reach an accommodation.’
‘I could consider it, I suppose,’ she says, admitting to herself that she’s always known Gault would give her nothing without expecting payment of some sort.
‘Good. I knew you’d see sense. Now, what was it that brought you in search of me?’
Bianca takes a deep breath. ‘Cathal Connell – how did he come to the Company’s attention?’
His head tilts as he tries to fathom her reason for asking. ‘Connell? I engaged him. Good shipmasters are hard to find.’
It’s not quite an answer. ‘Do you know of his past?’
‘Of course. I would not engage a man without knowing his reputation. Captain Connell spent some five years voyaging into the seas of Arabia and along the coast of Dalmatia.’
‘And his cargoes?’
‘All the worthy commodities: sugar… spice… salt…’
‘Did you know he also traded in God’s own creation?’ she asks, her eyes darkening.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean people, Master Gault. Human beings. Slaves.’
Gault makes a fussy little gesture that speaks of trifles and trivialities. ‘The Barbary Company does not trade in slaves, Mistress Merton. In the queen’s realm we do not take away another man’s freedom, unless her law demands it.’
‘I’m not speaking of England. This was during his voyages around Arabia.’
He laughs. ‘Are they right about your second sight? Does it let you see as far as Arabia?’
She’s known she would have to answer a question like this since she first thought of approaching him. To protect Farzad, she says, ‘You forget that I am the owner of the Jackdaw tavern, Master Gault. You can overhear a lot in a tavern. And Captain Connell’s crew did enjoy their ale.’
Gault answers with a pout that sours his otherwise pleasing features. ‘What Master Connell did, or did not do, when he was in heathen waters is of no concern to the Barbary Company, Mistress. It has no bearing upon his present engagement.’
‘A friend of mine has sailed with Connell. Given the captain’s past, I’m concerned for him.’
Gault gives her a blank look. ‘A friend?’
‘Dr Nicholas Shelby.’
‘Oh, the fellow Robert Cecil sought passage for.’ A glint of comprehension in his eyes. ‘I see it now – he was the fellow Sir Robert told me petitioned for the grant of your licence.’
‘Through Lord Lumley, yes. But now he’s gone to the Barbary shore to find out how the Moors practise their physic. He seems to think it will advance his position in the College of Physicians.’ The words come so easily to her that she can almost convince herself she believes them, if she wasn’t so sure there was another reason behind Nicholas’s departure.
‘And as a friend, you fear for his safety upon the wild ocean. That’s quite understandable.’
‘It’s not the ocean that worries me, Master Gault, it’s the man he’s gone with. I would not wish Nicholas in the hands of someone who traffics in human souls. And certainly not someone who might have committed murder.’
She watches those unwavering eyes for a flicker of reaction. None comes. Just a laconic ‘Murder? That’s some charge. Of whom, pray?’
‘Of Solomon Mandel. A Jew. He was killed near here, shortly before Connell sailed.’
A lazy shake of his head. A forelock falls teasingly over one eye. Gault brushes it aside. ‘I fear the name is unknown to me, Mistress. Is there evidence to back your charge?’
She picks up a sprig of hyssop and begins paring leaves into a mortar with a knife, so that she doesn’t have to answer. Seeing her hesitate, Gault says, ‘Then we must consider him an innocent man.’
‘But I’m worried about Nicholas. I had hoped you might somehow be able to… to—’ She stops and lets the knife fall to the table. ‘I don’t know what I thought,’ she says, her eyes fixed on the hyssop sprig.
For a moment she thinks he’s going to reach out and caress her cheek, as though she’s a child who needs comforting. She flinches in anticipation. But the touch does not come.
‘Be of good cheer, Mistress Merton,’ he says brightly. ‘I am able to set your mind at rest. Before the Righteous sailed, I charged Captain Connell to take all care in the preservation of Dr Shelby’s comfort. I told him I would be accountable to Sir Robert Cecil if he did not. Does that content your fear?’
And to some measure it does. But as Bianca watches Gault’s departing figure through the window of her shop, another fear arrives to take its place.
It is born of a recollection that has just this moment come to her – a recollection of something Nicholas had told her before he left. He’d been describing a conversation in a carriage after a rainstorm, a conversation with the queen’s physician, Dr Lopez.
‘I told him about the entry I’d seen in the subsidy roll at St Saviour’s: Solomon Mandel, Hebrew; worth assessed at 100 crowns… spice merchant…the Turk’s man,’ she can hear him saying now.
And she remembers clearly Nicholas’s recounting of Lopez’s reply: how the queen’s doctor had confirmed that Mandel had been both agent and translator for the Moroccan envoy who had come to London in ’89 to such public acclaim.
Which makes her question how it could possibly be that Reynard Gault, an upstanding member of the selfsame guild that had honoured the Moors with an escort of their leading merchants, could possibly pretend he’d never heard the name of Solomon Mandel.
22
It is the first night after leaving Safi, and they have reached a small mud-walled caravanserai set down in a cedar grove.
‘We rest here, because robbers haunt the road at night, Sayidi Nich-less,’ Hadir explains. ‘Very bad men. Will cut your throat and carry away your cargo.’ He nods in the direction of an ancient, stick-thin white-robed man of questionable vitality, whose face seems to have been constructed from random strips of very dark clay. The fellow had appeared that morning when the small caravan of six camels had set off from the quayside, bearing the first of the cargo. ‘This is why we have Izîl and his musket,’ Hadir says.
Izîl grins toothlessly at Nicholas, while brandishing a matchlock firing piece that looks as old as its owner.
‘Izîl take this musket in battle with famous Castilian knight,’ Hadir explains, ‘when we slaughtered the Portugals at Ksar el-Kébir. The Christians’ shot could not touch him. Was great miracle.’
Nicholas considers the chances being somewhat slim of Izîl being any more accurate with the matchlock than the Castilian he took it from. But he reckons some protection is better than none.
The camels are unloaded, fed and hobbled. Water is drawn from a well inside the caravanserai and a fire of cedar branches lit. While Nicholas watches the flames take hold, he hears the sound of what he takes to be foxes crying plaintively in the night.
Within minutes, showers of fiery sparks are leaping into the darkness, while shadows race across the inner walls of the compound as the cameleers dance gleefully to the beat of a small tambour. Great clouds of aromatic white smoke rise into the dusk, a signal to every robber and bandit within twenty miles. But the roasted goat’s meat is like ambrosia after almost three weeks of eating ship’s provisions.
Through Hadir, Nicholas swiftly establishes that the men of this caravan, carrying bolts of fine English cloth towards their sultan’s city, have not the slightest notion of where England is. One says it is on the other side of the world, past even distant Cathay. Another confidently asserts it is a land made entirely out of ships, and that the argosies moored in Safi bay are little fragments of it that broke off and went drifting around the world on the ocean currents. The greatest astonishment is saved for when Hadir tells them England is ruled by a queen.
‘It’s true,’ Nicholas says. ‘And before her, another queen. Before Elizabeth, Mary.’
At this, there is a deal of serious discussion that he cannot follow. But it seems grave. Every now and then a glance is cast in his direction.
‘They want to know if you’re a eunuch,’ Hadir explains. ‘Only eunuchs permit themselves to be ruled by women.’
‘Not when last I looked,’ Nicholas replies.
Hadir’s translation causes an outbreak of
joyous ribaldry.
‘Where did you learn your English, Hadir?’ Nicholas asks between mouthfuls. ‘It’s good.’
‘I learn from my friend Sayidi Sy-kess,’ Hadir says. ‘He teach me well, yes?’
‘Very well. Did he teach you so that you could become his apprentice?’
A flicker of guilt clouds Hadir’s eyes. He appears to have a sudden need to study the fingers of his right hand. Nicholas laughs in admiration, as the realization dawns. ‘You came to Safion your own, didn’t you? You came to see if you could make your own way as a merchant. That’s why you looked relieved when I said I was a physician and not the Barbary Company’s replacement factor.’
‘I am an honest man, Sayidi Nich-less,’ Hadir insists almost plaintively. ‘Very honest. I do not steal from anyone. Is against all teaching – even to steal from an infidel.’
‘It will be our secret. On one condition.’
Hadir spits a fragment of gristle onto the dark earth. ‘Name it, Master Nich-less?’
‘You tell me how Adolfo Sykes died.’
At first Hadir says nothing. He stares into the fire until Nicholas convinces himself he does not intend to answer. Then he begins to draw patterns in the dirt with the end of a lamb bone.
‘It was after al-’isha prayers, early in Jumada al-Thani – March. I go to his house on the Street of the Weavers as usual. But he is not there. I look everywhere for him. I do not find him.’ Hadir raises his hands in supplication to show how diligently he’d searched. In the firelight, Nicholas can see grief written plainly on his face. ‘Next morning I hear from a Jewish merchant that the body of Sayidi Sy-kess is found outside the city walls. I run to see. The guard at the Bab Doukkala tells me he must have fallen and smash his head.’
‘You saw Master Sykes’s body yourself, as it was brought in?’
The gentle face tautens as the mind remembers. ‘No man deserves to be food for beasts, Sayidi Nich-less. Not even an infidel.’