The Saracen's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  She imagines it now: his body beginning to relax and that reluctant smile of enjoyment fighting its way onto his face. She can feel his hands clasping her waist a little more tightly, his body pressing somewhat closer than is strictly necessary for those with Puritan sensibilities.

  And then she imagines Robert Cecil scuttling up and demanding Nicholas’s presence elsewhere.

  She wonders where Nicholas is now: basking in some sun-drenched kasbah, more than likely – stretched out on silk cushions, listening to exotic tales of Arabia whispered to him by some kohl-eyed beauty, while a eunuch in a silk kaftan plucks the strings of a lyre and makes that strange discordant music she’d sometimes heard on the Ruga dei Spezieri in Venice, where the Ottoman traders had their shops.

  An apprentice boy shatters her musings as he pushes rudely past. Bianca unleashes a stream of Italian invective at him. Surprised, he glances over his shoulder and shouts, ‘Fuck off back to Spain, you papist trull!’

  She wills him to fall flat on his face in the nearest pile of horse dung. But for some unaccountable reason, today her ability to cast charms appears not to be working.

  Reynard Gault’s house stands alone in a patch of open ground beside the complex of bakehouses that provide ships’ biscuits for the royal fleet. It is newly built. The oak beams are as pale as the moment they emerged, ridged and tufted, from the sawmill, the plaster pristine.

  In the spacious hall, a maid takes Bianca’s overgown and bids her wait. Looking around, she notes the flagstones are so spotless they could have been quarried yesterday. She can smell linseed on the new half-panelling, and fresh paint on the strap-work below the plastered ceiling. The house is like a gift he’s bought himself on a whim.

  Above the wide hearth hangs a portrait: a younger Gault looking out on the world with unshakeable confidence – even a little avarice – and dressed in a breastplate and sash, his left hand resting fetchingly upon a bejewelled sword hilt. At his back, verdant acres roll towards misty mountains.

  ‘It’s by Master Hilliard,’ the real Gault says from behind her shoulder. ‘Cost me a duke’s ransom. I had him change the background, to remind me of Ireland.’

  ‘You fought there?’ Bianca asks causally, trying to not to show how much he’s startled her.

  ‘Gracious, no! I’m no warrior,’ he says with over-egged humility. ‘I’m a humble merchant. I was born there. In Leinster.’

  ‘But the sword—’

  ‘You know what these court painters are like. They flatter to ensure they get paid.’

  But you didn’t object to the pretence, did you? she thinks. Perhaps convenient omission is in your blood. Perhaps that’s why you pretended not to have heard of Solomon Mandel. ‘I had not realized you were Irish,’ she says pleasantly.

  ‘My family has a little land in Dundalk. Sheep, for the most part. We export the bulk of our yarn to England. The rest we sell to the Moors. Hence my position in the Barbary Company.’

  Bianca turns away from the painting. ‘That is all very fine, Master Gault, but I really do not believe you summonsed me here to discuss sheep. What is it that you want from me?’

  He appraises her, like an abbot trying to decide if he’s been sold a fake holy relic. Then, apparently satisfied, he says, ‘Mistress, come with me.’

  Gault leads her to a neat chamber, bare except for new wainscoting and six French fruitwood chairs with needlework upholstery that look as though they’ve only just been delivered. Through a leaded window she sees a courtyard garden and newly planted honeysuckle that hugs its canes like neatly ordered columns in a ledger. At the centre of the garden is a square of gravel. Two lads of about Farzad’s age, dressed in uniform grey kersey jerkins, are at sword practice. Three others sit around watching them and shouting encouragement, their voices almost mute beyond the glass.

  ‘Your sons?’ Bianca asks, even as she knows they cannot be, given their similarity in age.

  ‘Mercy, no. Our Lord has not yet bestowed such blessings upon me. They are good lads from my lands in Ireland.’

  ‘You teach your servants how to kill with the sword? I had not realized Ireland was such a lawless place.’

  He laughs at her misunderstanding. ‘It is, Mistress. Very lawless. But these lads are not learning how to kill; they are learning how to live.’

  ‘You’re turning them into gallant little English gentlemen?’ she suggests with a hint of sarcasm. In her experience, English gallants are no less reluctant to brawl with the sword than those who had paid court to her in Padua. At the Jackdaw she’s had Ned and Nicholas eject more than a few.

  ‘After a fashion, yes,’ he admits. ‘I have apprenticed them to the Barbary Company. I take the brightest from my Leinster estate in Ireland and offer them a better life than breaking their backs on the land.’

  ‘How generous of you, Sir Reynard. I’m sure they’re very grateful.’

  ‘These fellows are almost ready to begin the next chapter in their studies,’ he says.

  ‘And what will that be – fist-fighting and vomiting in tavern doorways? Insulting young maids? Knocking the hats off foreigners?’

  He looks hurt. ‘You do them a disservice, Mistress. When Captain Connell returns, these fellows will go aboard his argosies to learn navigation and seamanship.’ He gazes proudly at the lads in the courtyard, as though he’s admiring a bank of fine flowers he’s watched grow from seeds. ‘These young fellows are the next generation of English merchant venturers. Would you have them go out into a dangerous world without the means to defend themselves?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ she says, recalling the hard, sunburnt men she’d seen preparing to set sail from the Venice Arsenale on their voyages of discovery and plunder.

  ‘The Dutch are already in the Indies. The Spanish and the Portuguese have Hispaniola and the Americas. Trading with the world against such competition will require men of resolve and courage.’

  ‘And you don’t want them dying of the plague before they start,’ she says.

  A leaden seriousness comes over his face. ‘I have put a great deal of time and effort into these lads. They are not the first. There will be many more to come. They are the future of this realm. I would be remiss if I did not do all in my power to protect their well-being.’

  More likely your investment, Bianca thinks. ‘May I be blunt with you?’ she asks.

  ‘I would expect naught else.’

  Given the painting, she suspects he’s not the type to receive mockery with a self-deprecating smile and a shrug. So she chooses her words carefully.

  ‘You have to understand, Sir Reynard, that Bankside is a place where you’ll hear ten rumours to one truth. There’s less fiction heard on the stage of the Rose theatre than on the streets. The stories of my escape from the pestilence are just that – fiction. I didn’t have the plague. Yes, I can make you any number of preventatives, but none are certain. Your best course is to keep your house clean, free of rats, and to pray. Or you could send the boys to the country.’

  ‘That is not possible,’ he says, studying her as though he’s trying to gauge what counter-offer to make.

  ‘I didn’t have it,’ she insists. ‘It was the ague. Nothing more. I think I must have been working too hard.’

  ‘You may deny it all you want, Mistress,’ he says with the conviction of a man who cannot bring himself to deny his own certainties. ‘But there are queues at your shop door. The parish authorities heed your advice. And the pestilence is more contained in Southwark than here. Will you help? I will make it very worthwhile.’

  I could do with the money, she thinks, given the decline in trade at the Jackdaw. It can’t hurt to provide a few more distillations and a bag or two of brimstone, can it? And if I am to find out why this man has lied to me about Solomon Mandel, what better way to begin than to make him dependent upon me.

  ‘Very well, Master Gault. I will do what I can.’

  ‘I will send one of my lads to Dice Lane. Will tomorrow suit?’

  Bia
nca laughs. ‘You may purchase my preventatives, Master Gault, but you may not purchase me. You will have to wait your turn – at least a week. It could be more; I give priority to those without the means to buy their way to the head of the queue.’

  He seems to take this as an opening gambit. ‘Come now, is my coin not good currency on Bankside?’

  ‘As long as it’s not clipped, it’s as good as any.’

  ‘Three days, then.’

  ‘I’ve told you: you will have to wait your turn. I will send you word when I am done. And you must understand, I cannot promise to cure anyone of the plague.’

  He shrugs, giving her the sort of smile she imagines he reserves for the celebration of a profitable agreement. ‘Very well. That wasn’t so irksome, was it?’

  And then, to her shock, he seizes her by the arm and pulls her to him. For a moment she thinks he’s going to kiss her, perhaps even force himself on her. She grabs a fistful of satin doublet, partly to stop herself stumbling, partly to hold him at bay.

  ‘There is more I desire of you than just medicine, Mistress Merton,’ he says huskily.

  She remembers her mother’s frequent exhortation: when someone is about to threaten you, go on the offensive. Stand up straight. Look them directly in the face. Then – when they’re transfixed by your God-given amber eyes – one sharp knee in the coglioni should make them see reason. For the moment she takes the advice only as far as looking Gault in the eye.

  ‘This, sir, is ungallant,’ she spits.

  His eyes are all over her, but it is uncertainty rather than lust that drives them. He releases his grip a little. ‘Do not bait me, Mistress. Tell me the real reason why Robert Cecil wanted your friend Dr Shelby aboard the Righteous.’

  Bianca stares at him. ‘Nicholas?’

  Gault releases her arm. ‘If that is the name he received at the font, then yes.’

  Bianca steps back, kneading the place where his fingers have pressed skin against bone. ‘Is there a real reason? I was rather hoping you might tell me,’ she says.

  Gault stares at her. ‘Don’t play a saucy match with me, Mistress. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘I know that to persuade Nicholas to go to Morocco, Robert Cecil offered him some pretty comfits, which I have to say, with all sadness, the silly addle-pate fell for. Then, as a precaution, he enlisted your help to have me shut down, if Nicholas saw sense and changed his mind. Why would Cecil go to such lengths – all for a scholarly wish to learn how the Moors practise physic? You tell me, Master Gault?’

  She thinks she sees a glint of admiration in his eyes. ‘How did you discover this – guesswork? Second sight?’

  To protect the pact Nicholas made with Ned, she says, ‘“Deduced” might be a better word. I know Sir Robert of old.’ She senses an errant strand of hair threatening to slip over one eye. She pushes it firmly back beneath her coif. The movement forces her chin to tilt upwards and her throat to curve towards him. It gives her a sudden sense of vulnerability.

  ‘Well, Mistress, you may deduce all you like. I deny it, of course.’

  ‘I think Robert Cecil offered you some incentive, some boon, if you agreed to have my licence revoked. Is that how it went? What was it – gold?’

  Gault stares at the ornate ceiling, a wry smile on his lips. ‘Pepper, actually.’

  ‘Pepper? You agreed to take away my livelihood for pepper?’

  ‘A very great deal of pepper.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Sir Robert didn’t see fit to make free with his motives, Mistress.’

  ‘But you think there was another reason why he wanted Nicholas to go, or else you wouldn’t have been so saucy with me just now.’

  ‘Did Dr Shelby not confide in you?’

  ‘Only that Cecil was sending him to learn about physic in the land of the Moor, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No. Nothing. We’re not married.’

  His smile is like the one her uncle Salvatore used to give her when she turned fourteen, before her mother banned him from the house – half-cruel, half-covetous.

  ‘But why choose him? Why not one of the senior fellows at the College of Physicians? Or old Lopez, who serves the queen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says crossly. ‘Perhaps Sir Robert thought they were too old to attempt the journey. I assume it was because Cecil trusts him. Nicholas – Dr Shelby – is physician to his son.’

  Gault crosses to a sideboard and pours two glasses of wine from a silver jug. He offers her a glass. At first Bianca is inclined to refuse it and leave as quickly as she can. Gault sober is unpredictable enough for her tastes. But that would be to admit defeat. Besides, a glass of sack might steady her nerves. When she tastes it, the tavern-mistress in her calculates you couldn’t buy a bottle from the Vintry for less than five shillings.

  ‘May I be plain with you, Mistress Merton?’ Gault asks, raising his glass.

  Here it comes, she thinks. There is another reason Nicholas has gone to the Barbary shore, and I’m the only sap who doesn’t know it. Gault has been playing me. And now he’s going to reveal the truth – on the condition that I agree to lie with him. He thinks I can be bought for five shillings a bottle.

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘You are a recusant, are you not? A Catholic. In Robert Cecil’s eyes, a heretic.’

  The bald statement isn’t at all what she’s expecting. ‘I suppose you heard that when you were asking about me on Bankside.’

  ‘It was mentioned.’

  ‘By who – Jenny Solver? If you’re going to threaten to tell Sir Robert Cecil, don’t bother. He already knows. We have an understanding.’

  Gault doesn’t even attempt to disguise his surprise. ‘An understanding – you and Cecil?’

  ‘If you heard rumours that I was a recusant, no doubt you will also have heard how I was taken to Cecil House to be examined – and returned in Robert Cecil’s private barge.’

  ‘I do recall such stories.’

  ‘Well, they’re true, Master Gault. Robert Cecil and I have reached an accommodation.’

  ‘An accommodation?’

  What hurt can it do, she wonders, to embellish rumour with a little fantasy? The more exotic she is to him, the more carefree he may be with his secrets. ‘Yes, Master Gault – an accommodation. I don’t cast a spell to dry out his seed; he leaves my name off the recusancy rolls.’

  To her joy, Gault actually shudders. ‘That is witchcraft,’ he whispers.

  ‘Well, it would be – if I’d done it. But I’m pleased to say that Lady Elizabeth gave birth to a healthy young son.’ She gives a little what-might-have-been shrug. ‘Let us all give thanks that I don’t have to pay a recusant’s fine, and the Cecil heir wasn’t born a walnut stone.’

  Gault watches her as though he can’t quite fathom what manner of creature she might be. There is admiration in his eyes, and more than a little caution. He seems to be struggling to decide how far he can trust her.

  ‘So you see, Master Gault,’ she continues, taking advantage of his indecision, ‘if you’re thinking of threatening to denounce me as a heretic, you’re wasting your time. It won’t make me any the more compliant. I am the one witch no one dares to hang. And if my Nicholas should fall to any ill at the hands of that monster Cathal Connell – the man you entrusted him to – then dry seed will be the very least of your problems.’

  28

  It seems a poor place to die. Barely a ditch. Little more than a scraping in the burning dust where lizards run and scorpions arch their stings. But then, thinks Nicholas, Adolfo Sykes probably didn’t die here. The Doukkala gate is barely fifty yards away; the sentries would have heard the screams.

  He has a picture in his mind of a dark night and a waggon leaving the city; a contrived stop for the driver to relieve himself in the ditch, while his companions roll the body out from under its coverings. He pictures it landing in a twisted heap, the sound barely audible above the whistling of the waggoner. N
o more enciphered dispatches for Robert Cecil.

  He glances back at the Bab Doukkala, shading his eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun reflecting off its tessellated arches. He’s glad Hadir has provided him with a Berber’s blue headscarf. As well as protecting him from the sun, it also has the benefit of shading his European features from passers-by, who might otherwise question what an infidel is doing inspecting a patch of ground just outside their city walls.

  Why take the risk of dropping the body so near? he wonders. Why not somewhere further along the Safiroad, well out of sight? Did they not care about the guards?

  Nicholas can see one of them now, lounging against the battlements in bored contemplation of the road. How much harder would it be to stay vigilant at night, whiling away the long hours on guard duty? He can well imagine a sentry succumbing to the tedium and finding some other means of passing the time than watching a cart disappear into the darkness.

  ‘Are you certain this is where you saw the body?’

  ‘No, Sayidi. Bachir sees it.’

  Nicholas’s hopes sink. A friend saw it. A friend of a friend. A friend told me that someone he knows saw it… ‘Bachir? But I thought you said you’d seen the body.’

  ‘Was my friend Bachir,’ says Hadir, nodding vigorously. ‘The guard you saw me greet, when we arrived from Safi. Was market day. He said when the sun comes up, he sees Sayidi Sy-kess by that bush there, the one that looks like a camello taking a shit.’ He nods towards an acacia shrub barely five paces from where Nicholas is standing. ‘Bachir tells the guard commander. The guard commander say he don’t want no dead infidel spoiling market-day business.’

  ‘But you told me you saw his wounds – the ones you thought had been made by a wild beast.’

  ‘I was inside the gate when Sayidi Sy-kess was brought in on the cart of Ibn Daoud. I know Ibn Daoud, also. “Hey, Hadir, come see the heathen Englishman,” he calls to me. So I go and see. It is very bad for me. I liked Sayidi Sy-kess very much.’