by S. W. Perry
When the devil had gone, I bandaged the fellow’s wounds, borrowed the cart of my friend Ibn Daoud and took him to the Bimaristan al-Mansur to have his grievous injuries treated. It shames me that the Moors will treat him better than the supposed Christian who owned him.
Once I had handed the poor fellow to the physicians, I tarried a while. I hoped I might discover the secret place where they hide the oranges, for I am sure now this is the location. The crates are marked with the symbol , two sickles. When you receive this letter, go to Lyon Quay and watch for cargo marked in the same manner being taken aboard a Company ship. We will know then that the source of the oranges is as I suspected.
I do not yet know when they will strike. In the autumn there is to be a great gathering of Moor chieftains at the sultan’s new palace. It seems likely that this will be when they intend their perfidy. Urge the Pigmy to alert his watchers in Lisbon and Cadiz for signs the Spanish are preparing galleys and mustering soldiers. God willing, we will draw this sting before its venom can flow.
That is all for the present, my old friend. Tonight is `Ushar. The moon will be bright. I intend to go once more to the Bimaristan. God willing, I will discover where they are hiding the oranges.
Say your heathen prayers for me, Hebrew. They will comfort me if the night is cold. I am, in all faith and honour, your loving friend: AS
Twice Nicholas reads the letter aloud, so that Hadir can grasp the finer points. In the meagre light, the Moor’s face takes on a harshness Nicholas has not seen before.
‘Why did my friend die for oranges, Sayidi Nich-less? If he wanted them, he could pick them from the trees.’
‘They’re not oranges, Hadir. They’re new English matchlock muskets. Our queen sends them to your sultan for the defence of his realm. In return, Sultan al-Mansur sends her his best saltpetre to make black powder to charge our fleet’s cannon against the Spanish. They may not share the same faith, but they share the same enemy.’
Nicholas has the heart of it now, this conspiracy that has two heads: one in Morocco and one in England. The weapons the Privy Council is sending to Sultan al-Mansur are not reaching him – at least not more than enough to convince him all is well. The bulk gets diverted to his enemy, the ‘Falconer’.
‘The crates come aboard at Lyon Quay in London,’ Nicholas continues. ‘They bear a double-sickle wool-mark. If there are papist spies watching, they’ll believe the crates contain nothing more dangerous than bolts of English cloth. When the cargo comes ashore at Safi, Connell marks the loading bill in front of Muly Hassan, the customs clerk. He told me it was to identify the sultan’s tithe. It wasn’t – it was to show which crates contained the matchlocks. Muly Hassan must be part of the conspiracy.’
‘Who is this Pigmy my friend Sy-kess speaks of ?’
‘It’s the nickname the queen has given to the man who sent me, Sir Robert Cecil. Master Sykes is telling Cecil to keep his watchers in Lisbon and Cadiz alert for signs that an invasion fleet is being prepared.’
‘Are the Portugals and the Spanish infidels coming to make war against us again?’ Hadir asks, a splinter of fear in his voice.
‘That is what they plan,’ Nicholas says. ‘This “Falconer”, whoever he may be, intends to overthrow Sultan al-Mansur and open your city gates to a Spanish army. And to do it, he’s arming his own janissaries with stolen English matchlock muskets.’
‘My friend Sy-kess speaks of the Falconer wanting his hawks well bred. What does this mean?’
‘I think he wants his janissaries to be men of better quality than poor village boys from the Balkans. He wants men of good blood about him. When he overthrows your sultan and returns Morocco as a gift to Spain, he wants it wrapped in a cloak of nobility. A squalid coup doesn’t fit his sense of importance.’
‘But you said this family line was false,’ Hadir says, picking up the pedigree.
‘It is. The College of Heralds in London is responsible for compiling and authenticating the pedigrees of English gentlemen and nobles. One of their heralds – the Rouge Croix Pursuivant – is constructing false identities to make these lads appear to be of noble descent. I wonder how much the Falconer is paying for them: in coin and slaves?’
‘If they kill my friend Sy-kess for this, then you also are in very great danger, Sayidi Nich-less,’ Hadir whispers.
Nicholas gets up and leans out over the windowsill. He lets the night air cool the sweat on his brow. He thinks of how easily Cathal Connell could have contrived his death aboard the Righteous, and how al-Annuri’s men could have killed him in the storeroom, but chose not to.
‘I think they want me alive,’ he says to the night, as much as to Hadir. ‘If I fail to return, Robert Cecil’s suspicions will only strengthen. No, they’d rather I found nothing here, believed the story about Sykes’s accident and went home to tell Cecil all is well between Morocco and England. I’m safe for as long as they believe I’ve not seen Sykes’s letter.’ He turns back into the chamber. In the light from the lamp, Hadir has only half a face. ‘Tell me, do you know of anyone in Marrakech who styles himself “The Falconer”?’
‘He will be a rich man, Sayidi Nich-less. Rich men have their hawks as surely as poor men have their cares.’
‘Or a clever one – a very clever French Catholic, perhaps.’
‘Professor Day-Lyal?’
‘The French and Spanish are my queen’s enemies, Hadir. They could be making common cause. And there are Jesuits here, too. De Lisle told me they come to arrange ransoms for Catholic slaves. But I know they also send agents into England to plot against us. When we catch them, we execute them. Robert Cecil considers them more dangerous than the pestilence.’
With a bravado that makes Nicholas smile, Hadir announces, ‘We shall go to the sultan together and tell him. I shall translate for you. His Majesty will give Sayidi Nich-less more gold than he can count, and Hadir shall be appointed his vizier. We shall be rich men! Very rich – inshā Allāh.’
I’ll settle for alive, thinks Nicholas. He hears again the soft voice of the kufiya telling him to go home before it’s too late; sees in his mind the butchered flesh of the slave Marcu; the severed heads in the city square. And he hears Reynard Gault as he hands Cathal Connell the package that contained Hortop’s false pedigree. These are the young gentlemen’s… Keep them safe. A goodly profit depends upon them…
‘I believe the apprentice boys aboard the Righteous were new recruits for the Falconer’s janissaries,’ Nicholas tells the wash of moonlight on the table, as though by not addressing Hadir directly he may somehow protect him. ‘Whether they know it yet is another matter. Follow them, and they’ll lead us to the Falconer.’
35
It has taken Bianca most of the day to contrive her escape from the advancing pestilence. Moving the contents of her shop on Dice Lane back to the Jackdaw has not been easy, not with the endless stream of customers demanding her preventatives. Sometimes she has wanted to scream at them: I can’t save you! Don’t place this weight of guilt upon my shoulders.
She wonders why they still come. If what she was giving them had the efficacy they believed, the plague would not be spreading. Parson Moody would be relaxing in the bawdy-house at the Falcon stairs, not conducting funerals. But they have such trust in their eyes. She cannot turn her back.
Ned, Timothy and Farzad have been ministering angels. She’s lost count of the boxes, jars, sacks, pots and bottles they’ve carried without complaint. If she’d hired day-labourers, the route between the shop and the Jackdaw would be strewn with trampled bunches of herbs, shattered pots and yellow brimstone. They’ve even carried her jars of live leeches, though Timothy had to do it at arm’s length.
The boys depart with their last load as the sun begins to set over the Lambeth marshes. Bianca turns the key in the lock, and her back upon the shop. It’s not a defeat, she tells herself, just a sensible precaution. I will return.
‘Not at Evensong then, Mistress Merton?’
The voice shock
s her out of her thoughts. Approaching her is Reynard Gault, his stride confident, arrogant almost. He’s wearing a brown velvet doublet and knee-boots of soft leather. The goose feather in his foxskin hat looks freshly plucked. And – much to her amusement, as she remembers the painting – he’s wearing a sword at his belt.
‘If you didn’t dress the gallant so much, you wouldn’t need that,’ she says with a superior smile as she glances at the finely-wrought guard protruding from the engraved leather scabbard. ‘On Bankside the cut-purses tend to leave the ordinary folk alone. But my, they do love a peacock. And they’re fast enough to cut away your coin without you even noticing, so thirty inches of fine Italian steel really is rather wasted.’
Gault gives a little nod of acquiescence. ‘You may mock me, Mistress, but I am the one with the fine house on Giltspur Street and gold angels in his purse, while you pursue a precarious living amongst rogues, vagabonds and actors.’
‘Yes, well, we’re all living a little precariously now, aren’t we? I presume that’s why you’re here – to collect the preventatives. I’d rather imagined you were going to send one of your bright young boys. I suppose I should be honoured.’
‘I came here myself because I wanted the chance to speak privily, Mistress Merton.’
‘Oh, do you have spies then, in your fine new house?’ She looks into his eyes for a telltale flicker of suspicion, an indication that he has secrets he wants to hide, lies he wants to present as truths. She sees nothing but an impenetrable rampart of self-confidence.
‘My lads are loyal, and so is my household,’ he says. ‘Why would I fear to be overheard?’
‘I’m jesting.’
‘Ah, Bankside wit. I hear it leads to quarrels.’ He taps the guard of his sword with a doeskin-gloved hand.
‘The preventatives are at the Jackdaw. I’m moving back there because there’s pestilence on Tar Alley. We can walk along the riverbank if you wish. Will that be privy enough for you?’
The lanterns are being lit in the houses on the bridge, the masts and yards of the ships moored on the river turning slowly into a winter’s forest of leafless branches. An evening breeze is blowing off the water.
‘We should not be enemies, you and I,’ Gault says as they walk.
‘I did not suppose we were.’
‘We have more in common that you may think,’ he says, raising an enigmatic eyebrow.
Like the fact that we both know you were acquainted with Solomon Mandel, even though you denied it.
Bianca lets the voice in her head fade before she answers. ‘Is that so, Master Gault? I cannot imagine what that might be.’
‘What would you say if I told you that I, too, was a child of the one true faith – a Catholic?’
She doesn’t reply immediately. He wouldn’t be the first man in this city to claim such a thing, only to betray the subsequently shared confession. There are cells in the Bridewell and the Compter, the Clink and even the Tower playing host at this very moment to those who have been foolish enough to fall for such a trick.
‘Does the Grocers’ Guild or the Barbary Company know?’
A guilty little huh from deep within his chest. ‘Would I hold my position if they did?’
‘Then what is to stop me denouncing you?’
His boyish grin contains a jagged reef of malice just beneath the surface. ‘I’d find myself a purchasable magistrate and tell him a Bankside tavern-mistress had threatened to make a false accusation against me, if I didn’t pay her twenty pounds. Then we’d see if you’re still the one witch nobody dares hang.’
‘I can see you’ve given this confession some thought, Master Gault. Why then are you making so free with your conscience?’
‘Because we are allies, are we not?’
‘Allies? I’m an apothecary. You’re a customer. I’d hardly call that an alliance.’
‘But we share a common goal: the re-establishment of God’s true Church in England.’
Bianca turns her head away, refusing to acknowledge his words. She looks out over the river and the darkening shoreline to the north. ‘Let me make it clear: I have no desire to overthrow the queen, or her religion. I survive here by keeping my faith to myself. Please, may we speak of safer things – like the pestilence, for instance.’
When she looks at Gault again, his face wears the hurt expression of an innocent little boy slapped for a sibling’s transgression. ‘You misunderstand me, Mistress Merton. I did not confess because I wish to embroil you in sedition. I did it because I want you to trust me.’
‘Why, in the name of all the saints, should I trust you? The Grocers’ Company has done nothing but stand in my way since I came here. Your friends would rather I went back to Padua and stopped interfering in men’s business. And not so very long ago, you were threatening to shut me down for a charlatan. Now, all of a sudden, you’re desperate for my trust. I wonder why? What do I have that you desire so much?’
He wrings his gloved hands like a penitent renouncing his sins. ‘I admit it. Robert Cecil led me to believe I would find you a deceiver, a dealer in fraud and fakery. Instead, I found a comely young woman who – were she a man – might even give us merchant venturers a run for our money. As to what I want of you, that is easily answered: the Catholic cause in England could make good use of your talents.’
Is this contrition real, or a pretence? Either way, Bianca wonders how proficient Gault really is with the sword. Might it not be possible to take it from him and stab him in his patronizing arse?
‘I’ve already told you,’ she says firmly. ‘There is no alliance we could make that would be of the slightest use to you, Master Gault. Whatever talents you think I possess, I have no interest in sedition. I keep my faith to myself. And if you thought somehow to flatter me, you haven’t. Now, let us speak of less contentious matters.’
And yet his words are still buzzing in her mind as they approach the Jackdaw.
Why has he confessed such a dangerous secret to her? she wonders – if not to persuade her to reveal whether Nicholas has confided to her the real reason Robert Cecil sent him to Morocco. Why is Gault so determined to know? And why has he lied to her about knowing Solomon Mandel?
There is only one way to find out, she thinks. Earlier, Gault had spoken of alliances. Perhaps it’s time to do a little forging.
In the dawn light, the window is a pale square against the dark wall of his chamber. Nicholas calculates that he can’t have slept much beyond three hours.
He puts on his shirt and trunk-hose and goes down into the garden to sit under the old pomegranate tree. There he ponders Robert Cecil’s simplistic instructions on what to do if he should discover the alliance between England and Morocco broken: we are all relying upon your ingenuity to mend it.
It would be easier, he thinks, to perform a successful laryngotomy, or say the right thing to Bianca three times in a row.
The young Berber girl, Lalla, who does his infidel washing, comes to him with a plate of dates. Her gift is all the more touching for the knowledge that she herself is forbidden to take food until sunset. She stands at a discreet distance, watching in utter fascination while he eats, her face serious, her eyes growing wider by the moment. He smiles at her. When she smiles back, he thinks her expression might beat the sun for brilliance.
‘Hadir?’ he says, exaggerating the movements of his mouth.
Lalla points in the direction of the Koutoubia mosque, to indicate that Hadir is at his devotions. Then, her courage exhausted, she runs back into the house and the safety of grandmother Tiziri.
When Hadir returns, he has news. By some animal ability to sense the currents of the city, he has learned that Captain Connell has arrived with the rest of the cargo.
‘Are the apprentices with him?’
‘Captain Con-nell and four Christians – this is what my friend, the guard at the Bab Doukkala, tells me.’
‘Where are they now? Do you know?’
‘Resting in the garden where you and I me
t Minister al-Annuri. They will not stay long. Con-nell has lodgings in the Aduana.’
Nicholas opens his mouth to instruct Hadir to go there and see where Connell takes the apprentices, but a sudden hammering on the street door silences him. He imagines the white-robed, imperious al-Annuri has come to complete the job the kufiya left unfinished. Hadir looks at him, unable to hide the fear in his eyes. He is clearly thinking the same thing.
Moments later, grandmother Tiziri ushers Sumayl al-Seddik into the garden. He rolls as he walks, like a plumped bejewelled cushion blown on a stiff breeze. He seems in a mighty good humour. The tall, balding de Lisle trails him, observing Nicholas in mild surprise, as if he was making his morning rounds and hadn’t expected his patient to survive the night. A small coterie of al-Seddik’s attendants make up the rearguard.
‘We have been summoned,’ the minister says happily, making it sound as though he’s received a divine invitation. ‘His Majesty the sharif has granted you an audience.’
‘Today?’
‘Within the hour.’ A little wince of qualification. ‘Though His Majesty’s hours are not necessarily the same as a common man’s.’ He casts a disapproving eye over Nicholas’s plain attire. ‘Do you perchance have finer apparel than this?’
You sound like Robert Cecil, Nicholas thinks. Next you’ll be telling me I look like a Thames waterman. ‘I fear this is all I have, sir.’
In a minister’s world, apparently, such shortcomings are swiftly remedied. One of his attendants produces a robe of spun silk and an embroidered jerkin that are clearly not al-Seddik’s because – by pure coincidence – they fit Nicholas perfectly, almost as though they’d been prepared for the eventuality. As he puts them on, Hadir watches with a proud smile on his face.