by S. W. Perry
‘What do you mean, “food for beasts”?’
‘Leopards and jackals, Sayidi Nich-less. They don’t come close to the walls these days. But perhaps they knew my friend was an infidel, so then they come. I pray to Allāh, the most merciful, the most compassionate, that my friend was already dead when this happen.’
‘When what happened, Hadir?’ Nicholas asks, though somehow he already knows what the young lad is going to tell him.
Hadir seems unable, or perhaps unwilling, to find the English for what he wants to say. But the awful picture is clear in Nicholas’s mind as the Moor’s fingers make a clawing motion against his own body, like a predator raking a carcass. Or perhaps, as in the case of Solomon Mandel, someone cutting the flesh from a man’s chest, in case the secret he was carrying was somehow buried under the skin.
Later in the night, when the others have fallen asleep, Nicholas stares up at the great cascade of stars above his head and recites his thoughts like a man reading a book written in a language not his own, cautiously testing them to avoid mistranslation.
A Jew in Christian London who keeps his faith a secret.
A Christian who keeps a secret watch over Marrakech.
And nothing to bind them together in death, save the apparent similarity of their wounds.
And an Irish sea-venturer named Cathal Connell who thinks nothing of pitching a still-living soul into the depths of the ocean.
And Robert Cecil, who would not rest until Nicholas had agreed to come here.
23
There is a sense of quiet expectation amongst the little caravan now. Yesterday, after the pre-dawn prayers, there had been only the promise of more tedious miles to cover. More discomfort. Another night on the hard floor of a caravanserai. But now, in the sharp light of early morning three days after leaving Safi, Nicholas can detect a renewed purpose. The most taciturn of faces have begun to smile. Even old Izîl, his ancient matchlock musket slung across his back, has found a new animation. He keeps grinning at Nicholas through the toothless cavern of his mouth. Today, inshā Allāh – a phrase Nicholas has heard frequently since leaving Safi, and without which it appears nothing may be imagined or hoped for – they will reach Marrakech.
The road is little more than a narrow track scoured into the dust. It winds through orchards of citrus trees, crosses rivers that died of thirst long ago, loops around ragged hills with crests like shattered flint. It rises over gritty dunes and plunges down wind-swept inclines beneath the bluest sky Nicholas has ever seen. Hadir has given him a cloth turban to wind about his head to keep the sun at bay and the dust out of his mouth.
Several times during the journey Nicholas has feared that the caravan has wandered off the track. But Berber guides don’t lose their way, Hadir has assured him; they have been travelling the road from Safi to Marrakech for a thousand years. Nicholas wonders if any of them ever managed to get comfortable on a camel.
He has often caught himself glancing down at the travelling chest slung from the saddle of his camel, as though the letters Robert Cecil has entrusted to him might be conspiring to burst out and fly away on the warm wind, a wind that now carries the scent of oranges on it. He can hear Robert Cecil preparing his reluctant agent for the journey: One of the sultan’s close advisors is benefactor to a hospital in the city…
As they ride together, Nicholas asks Hadir if he’s heard of Sumayl al-Seddik, the man he has come so far to meet. Hadir glances across from his swaying saddle as though he suspects Nicholas of performing magic. ‘Sumayl al-Seddik is famous in England, too?’
‘No, not famous. But he came to England with your sultan’s envoy a few years ago. I bear a letter to him, from our queen’s Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley. It is Burghley’s son who sent me here.’
Nicholas can see the calculation in Hadir’s eyes. It is not greed. It is not even particularly mercenary. It is simply the look of a young man who’s trying to make his way in a hostile world and has just found his companion to be particularly well connected.
‘Sumayl al-Seddik is most famous,’ he announces proudly. ‘He makes much al-waqf. You have al-waqf in England?’
‘You’ll have to tell me what it is, before I can answer that.’
‘It is how a rich man may be judged mercifully when he stands before Allāh. He must give a part of his treasure to fund hospitals, schools, rest-houses for pilgrims, even sabils – our public fountains. When I am a rich merchant, I shall give much al-waqf.’
‘He sounds to me like a good man. Apparently Lord Burghley thought so.’
‘Everyone knows of Sumayl al-Seddik. He was at the Battle of Ksar el-Kébir – where Izîl won his firing-piece from the Castilians – fighting against His Majesty’s brother, Abd al-Malik, may Allāh rest his soul in heaven.’
‘Against? You mean al-Seddik was an enemy of the present sultan and his brother?’
‘Was fifteen years ago, when Abd al-Malik was our caliph. He had overthrown the caliph who came before him – the dog Muly Mohammed. But the dog made a pact with the infidel Portugals. Together they raised a great army to make a gift of Morocco to the Spanish infidel king.’ Hadir glances up into the bright-blue vault of the sky. ‘But Allāh willed that the plotters should be cast down. He gave al-Malik a great victory, and Izîl his musket.’
‘So the present sultan’s brother won.’
‘In a great slaughter, Sayidi Nich-less. The Portugal king… the deposed dog Muly Mohammed… all their warriors – all dead.’ He gives Nicholas a superior look. ‘No woman queen of England could make such a victory, yes?’
‘I wouldn’t wager on it, Hadir. Our queen’s navy has already seen off one attempt to land a Spanish army. And she’s not shy with the axe, either – she’s already had her cousin beheaded.’
Hadir seems unimpressed. ‘Was great victory. But next day al-Malik, he dies also. So then his brother – al-Abbas al-Mansur – becomes sharif. Then al-Seddik comes on his knees to al-Mansur and begs forgiveness. His Majesty shows mercy, and now al-Seddik loves him like a brother.’
‘Then he’s a most fortunate man, this al-Seddik.’
Hadir nods vigorously. ‘Most fortunate. Sometimes a new sultan will punish his enemies after a battle. Sometimes he will command that their skin shall be flayed from their living bodies.’
Nicholas wonders grimly if enemies include spies and old Jews.
‘How did the present sultan’s brother come to die?’ he asks. ‘Was he wounded in this great battle that he won?’
‘No, Sayidi. He died of sickness. This is why His Majesty looks with kindness upon al-Seddik – because of al-waqf. Al-Seddik gives much gold to the hospital in Marrakech. Also he brings the great Day-Lyal into the city. Day-Lyal is the only infidel physician permitted to attend the sultan.’
Hadir’s words strike Nicholas like a bad note played in a sweet tune. ‘Day-Lyal is a Christian?’
‘He is famous throughout our city – he speaks our language, which is most unusual. He is a Frank.’
By Frank, Nicholas presumes Hadir means French. In his mind, Day-Lyal becomes de Lisle. He wonders if Robert Cecil knows the Catholic French have put a man in such a sensitive position in the sultan’s court.
‘Does English queen permit infidels to attend her?’ Hadir asks with a little shudder of disgust.
‘She has no Moor physician, if that’s what you mean. She has a Jew, but he’s been forced to renounce his faith,’ Nicholas says, without adding, And if Robert Cecil is right, he’s living on borrowed time.
Hadir lets out a little bark of contempt. ‘The Spanish king must be very weak man to have English woman queen sink his ships and scatter his armies.’
You sound just like Farzad, thinks Nicholas fondly. He laughs. ‘We haven’t scattered his armies quite yet, Master Hadir. Though we did scatter his fleet when it came against us.’
Hadir poses another of his many questions on the mysterious place Nicholas has come from, and its even more unfathomable ruler.
‘Will
your queen’s sons not turn her out of her palace when they become men?’ he asks.
‘She has no sons, Master Hadir. She is unwed.’
‘Then she is very ugly, yes?’
Nicholas fights back a grin. ‘Not at all, Hadir. We call her Gloriana. But she has chosen to remain unmarried.’
‘How can she choose this? Why does her father not find her a man?’
Nicholas shakes his head in amusement. ‘She’s the queen, that’s how. And anyway, her father is dead. She inherited the crown from her half-sister.’
‘Are all English men made like dogs, to cower under a mistress’s lash?’ asks Hadir, astounded.
‘We like to think not. But we suspect she has other ideas.’
‘Why do her ministers not find her a husband, or are they all women, too?’
‘Believe me, Hadir, they’ve tried.’
Hadir expels a grunt of bemusement. ‘England is a strange place,’ he says, a trace of pity in his voice. ‘No wonder my friend Sy-kess choose to live here, amongst men.’
And look where it got him, thinks Nicholas as the two men lapse into silence.
The track falls away from a ridgeline towards a sprawling riverbed. Rills of brown water meander between shale and scrub. A long, undulating cry from somewhere behind the caravan sends a heard of goats pelting across their path. Hadir brings his camel to a halt. Nicholas’s mount stops, too, though by its own volition rather than by any conscious effort of his. He looks out across the dried-up watercourse.
‘Welcome to Marrakech, Sayidi Nich-less,’ says Hadir, with the pride of a man returning to the place he loves. ‘In the language of the Berbers it is called “The City of God”.’
But Nicholas is too consumed by what he is seeing to reply. Cast across the horizon before him lies a pale-red curtain of city walls, shimmering in the heat, towered and turreted, the battlements standing like teeth about to bite the snowy white flesh of the distant Atlas Mountains beyond.
24
The pestilence has returned with a vengeance. The Savoy hospital has closed its doors to new patients, and posted guards on the water-stairs to deter visitors. The chapel’s death-bell tolls with increasing frequency. On 28th May, the very day Nicholas reaches Marrakech, the Privy Council – at the queen’s insistence – adjourns Trinity term for Parliament and the law courts. Elizabeth has already made it known she intends to retire to Windsor. The exodus foretold by Robert Cecil is in progress. Those who have homes in the country or relatives in distant towns are shutting their doors and departing, either taking their belongings or entrusting them to watchmen and retainers who, quite frankly, would rather be elsewhere. In Southwark, few have such luxury.
When Bianca visits the Jackdaw that afternoon – at about the time Nicholas stands before the walls of Marrakech – she is unequivocal.
‘You must go,’ she tells Ned and Rose sternly. ‘I think we’re surviving on borrowed time.’ She asks Ned if he still has Nicholas’s letter to Lord Lumley. When he says yes, she tells him, ‘Take Rose, Timothy and Farzad and go straightway to Nonsuch. You’ll be safe there.’
The answer she receives is not what she’s expecting. Heads drop. Feet shuffle. All four fidget like scolded children. Refusing a direct instruction from Bianca Merton is not something any of them have ever contemplated before.
Ned speaks for all. ‘No, Mistress. We shall not go away. We shall stay here – with you.’
The amber eyes flash a warning. ‘What do you mean, no?’
It is an odd confrontation: the slender young woman with the olive skin, her feet slightly apart and her chin tilted defiantly, staring down the auburn giant whose frown has been known to clear a tavern’s taproom in an instant. In other times, Ned would have the odds stacked overwhelmingly against him. But now he has Rose to make up for his shortcomings.
‘I’ve told my husband my mind, Mistress,’ she says boldly. ‘We’s spoken on the matter at length. If you’re staying, we’s staying.’
If the Earl of Essex had just told the queen he couldn’t be arsed to flatter her any more, the silence that follows could not be frostier.
‘And so are we,’ squeaks Timothy in an unheard-of display of defiance. ‘Aren’t we, Farzad?’
‘Pestilence is nothing to fear,’ Farzad says portentously. ‘I fear the Pope’s farts more.’
Bianca grimaces. She still cannot quite get used to Farzad’s casual blasphemies. She takes a deep breath. ‘If I’d been master of the ship that saved you, Farzad, I’d have taught you a little more piety. As it is, haven’t you and Timothy got a few more hours of unpaid labour to offer Rose, in exchange for all the food you smuggled?’
‘We’re not leaving you, Mistress,’ Ned says bluntly. ‘Cast a spell on us if you want. Curse us, in that Eye-tallien you speak. But we’ve made up our minds. We’re staying. Aren’t we, Wife?’
‘Yes, we is, Husband,’ says Rose with a defiant shake of her black curls.
And with that, Ned produces Nicholas’s letter to John Lumley from his jerkin – where he’s stowed it in expectation of this very moment – and tears it into quarters. ‘There, Mistress,’ he says. ‘Have we settled the matter?’
Bianca’s face remains constrained until she has left the Jackdaw. When she knows no one can see her from the tavern windows, she allows the tears that have been welling in her eyes to trickle down her cheeks. No one she passes takes any notice. Tears are commonplace on Bankside now.
As she walks back to Dice Lane, she wonders how long the pestilence can be kept at bay. Yes, the open drains are free from human soil and smelling more tolerable than they have been since she arrived; middens and cess-pits no longer foul the air; and only the vaguest scent of butchered meat hangs over the Mutton Lane shambles. But how long can the defences hold? She wonders why the city across the river has not been as diligent. Then she remembers what Nicholas had told her about physicians: how you could put ten of them around a patient’s bed and come up with twelve different diagnoses, and the patient would probably be dead by the time they stopped arguing. Thinking of him now turns her mind to the letter she wrote to him when she believed she was infected and dying. Never in her life before had she committed such intimate thoughts to paper, made them real, given them a weight that her fingertips still remember.
She tries to imagine where he is now, but whenever she pictures him, it is always in the shadow of the cruellest man in the world. All she has to comfort her is Gault’s promise that he’d warned Connell to take good care of his passenger. But now she knows Gault has lied to her about Solomon Mandel, she doesn’t trust him much more than she trusts that Aži Dahāka in human form.
And there are plenty of other fears to torment her – fears that have sprouted like weeds from the fertile soil of her childhood imagination, from the moment Nicholas told her he was leaving.
In Padua she had often seen merchants and sailors from Araby, dark-skinned, saturnine men who wore clothes unlike any Italian and seemed to have been forged out of the very sand and rocks of their distant, arid deserts. When she was young they had frightened her. She had ducked behind her mother’s skirts whenever they’d looked at her. This was because she’d heard the tales of how the Turk corsairs raided coastal villages in Sicily and around the Ionian Sea, carrying off men, women – even children like her – to a life of slavery in their galleys or their harems. It had taken all her father’s efforts to assure her they wouldn’t bother to march all the way inland to Padua. Even then, she’d refused to go to bed unless she could take a small kitchen knife to place beside her pillow, next to her favourite cloth doll, Caterina. If a Turk should unexpectedly burst in, she had decided to sell both the doll and herself dearly. No amount of persuasion by her mother could encourage her to leave the blade in the kitchen. It was only on her ninth birthday that she relented, when news arrived of the smashing of the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto by galleys of the Italian and Spanish Holy League. Then, with the solemnity of a general bringing home a sacred trophy that had cos
t much brave blood, she’d returned it to the kitchen, cutting a finger in the process and earning a weary rebuke from her mother: ‘Now do you see where the greater danger lay?’
The greater danger.
That must have been how Nicholas had seen the choice Robert Cecil offered him, she thinks: face God-only-knows what dangers in the land of the Moor or see the Grocers’ Guild revoke a certain person’s apothecary licence. So, to protect her, he had chosen to put himself in the care of the cruellest man on earth and set off for a land where – or so she imagines – sleeping with a knife beside your pillow is probably the very least of the precautions you ought to be taking.
Her mood swings violently between loving Nicholas for the way he wanted to save her from hurt, and hot anger that he’d allowed himself to become a pawn in Robert Cecil’s machinations. And on each swing, the pendulum bumps against her guilt at sending him on his way with a cold face and an unforgiving heart.
When she arrives in Dice Lane, she sees a small crowd waiting outside her shop. Even Jenny Solver is there, beaming all over each of her two faces, pretending that only days ago she hadn’t fled in such haste that anyone would think she’d discovered the Devil serving behind the counter. Bianca wonders how she’ll get all the balms, tinctures and distillations finished before nightfall, because they’ll all want to gossip.
She reminds herself she’s almost out of brimstone. She’ll have to go across the river to Petty Wales soon, to an Italian Lutheran merchant she knows there, who imports it from Sicily via her cousin Bruno in Padua. In return for Bianca paying a good price, the merchant sends her letters to Bruno along with his orders. Thus she receives news of old friends, like Cardinal Fiorzi – currently enjoying a serene retirement with Mercy Havington. She knows, for instance, that Samuel – Mercy’s grandson – has made a name for himself as a gardener in the cardinal’s estate, that his falling sickness has abated and that he is to marry a sweet maid named Alessandra.