by S. W. Perry
During the night, sleeping only briefly, he entertained wild notions of escape. Somehow he would reach the Badi Palace and shout al-Seddik’s name to the guards until they saw sense and fetched the minister. But there is no way out of the storeroom, let alone out of the house. Even if he managed to reach the roof terrace, it is a thirty-foot drop to the hard dirt surface of the street.
He wonders if Connell might let him have Adolfo Sykes’s writing box, so that he can pen a last letter to Bianca. He doubts it. If there had ever been compassion flowing in that man’s veins, it long ago turned to bile. So instead he composes the letter in his mind: I am a farmer’s son. I cannot make words like Kit Marlowe, or Philip Sidney. I do not have the graces for it. I cannot make a pretty phrase or write a gallant’s verse…
Shamed by the clumsiness of the words, he strikes an imaginary line through them and starts again: I had not imagined I should never see you again. The thought of it grieves me past all description. Though I am not of your faith, and confession is not permitted me by the new religion, I would there was a priest here – not to shrive me, but to hear me admit before God the fault of my dereliction: I should not have left you.
More mental crossing out, followed by further attempts at composition, all of which displease him.
Eventually Nicholas gives up. He covers his face with his hands and simply whispers I love you, multiple times, tears welling in the rims of his eyes.
When he hears the sound of the key turning in the lock, it is all he can do to stop himself screaming with a mix of fear and impotent rage.
Connell is the first man through the door. He’s dressed in the Moor fashion, in a cloth djellaba. It makes him look like a risen corpse in a winding sheet. Behind him come three young Europeans. Though they are not the apprentices from the Righteous, he guesses they have each paid the devshirme – the blood-tax.
‘God give you good morrow, Dr Shelby,’ Connell says with a cold smile. ‘Because after that, you’ll get fuck-all else from Him.’
One of the janissaries places a dish with a few scraps of bread on it beside Nicholas, who tries to eat it without betraying his hunger.
‘If I fail to return to England, Connell, Robert Cecil’s suspicions will only grow,’ he says, swallowing the last of the stale breadcrumbs. ‘He’ll send word to Sultan al-Mansur. Your conspiracy with the Falconer will fail. You already know how little mercy conspirators get shown here.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Connell says amiably. ‘But we’ve got plenty of time. When I return to London, I’ll be telling them how well you’re doing here – being an envoy and all. I’ll say you’ve found yourself a nice little Moor concubine. In fact you can tell them yourself, in your letter.’
‘What do you mean, my letter?’
‘The one you’re going to write to Robert Cecil, saying there’s naught amiss here – using the cipher that meddling bastard Sykes employed.’ He raises his brow in admiration. ‘That was clever of you, finding those papers. We thought they might already have reached England.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Don’t be a clod-pate, Shelby. Do you think I wouldn’t bring down hellfire and chastisement on the whole world, if it could gain me what I want? How long do you think that pretty maid of yours on Bankside would stand what we did to the Jew?’
‘So it was you who killed Solomon Mandel?’
Connell’s mouth gapes in a cold laugh, like a snake swallowing a mouse. ‘Not me personally. I was too busy enjoying the wedding feast. But I have friends in England, fellows who help me out every now and then, when little chores need doing.’
‘Bianca knows nothing about this. There’s no need to harm her,’ Nicholas says, his fear doubling.
‘Who’s speaking of need? I’m talking of entertainment.’
Nicholas is halfway to his feet, his hands lunging at Connell’s throat, before one the janissaries fells him with a kick to the stomach. He rolls over, clutching the pain in, as though it’s precious to him.
When he’s recovered his breath, Nicholas says miserably, ‘Why did you kill them all, out there in the garden. They were innocent. Two of them were children, for Jesu’s sake!’
‘They were untidy, that’s what they were. And you know how much I like an orderly ship.’ He turns to one of the janissaries. ‘Where have you put the bodies? We don’t want them stinking the street out. It’ll attract attention.’
‘They’re in the infidel’s chamber, Master,’ the janissary says. Nicholas recognizes the voice. It’s the voice of the kufiya, al-Annuri’s man, the one who warned him in this very storeroom to go home before it was too late. He nods in Nicholas’s direction. ‘What about this berraniyin?’
Connell squats down beside Nicholas. ‘To be plain, I’m not too sure what to do with you, Dr Shelby. I could put out the word you slew them all in a drunken rage. How do you fancy being flayed and hung from the city walls? That would answer any difficult questions from Robert Cecil, wouldn’t it?’
Nicholas stares back at him with undisguised loathing.
‘There again, you’re a valuable commodity. A slave who’s a qualified physician would be worth a deal of money in the market.’ He puts his face very close to Nicholas’s. When he grins, it’s like the flesh sliding off a rotting skull. ‘But I wouldn’t plan on siring any heirs, though. There are some masters around here who prefer their house-slaves gelded. Keeps the harem safer, or so I understand.’
He taps Nicholas on the shoulder in a gesture of friendly commiseration and makes to leave. By the door, he looks back at his prisoner, a sad smile on his face. ‘What a shame, eh, Dr Shelby? All that promise – and now some other fellow gets to take care of Mistress Merton.’
They come for him again shortly after the al-maghrib prayers, though this time Connell is not with them.
They put irons around his ankles and manacles on his wrists. The leg-irons are linked by half a yard of chain, so that he can move his feet independently. To the manacles they attach a second, longer length of chain. The kufiya tugs on the free end and Nicholas shuffles out of the storeroom like an old blind man finding his way to the jakes in the dark.
The garden is once again bathed in moonlight. From somewhere in the direction of the Badi Palace a dog howls a plaintive lament. The night is warm and the scent of death still lingers. Nicholas keeps his eyes closed. He knows, from what the kufiya said earlier, that the bodies have been removed, but whether or not Connell lets him live, Nicholas has no wish ever to look upon this place again.
They lead him out of the Street of the Weavers and into the darkened city. In London, a man being led about on a chain might raise an eyebrow or two, unless the one doing the leading was a bailiff or a man-at-arms. Here, no one gives Nicholas a second look. Clearly, to the few people he passes he is already a slave.
He thinks of the other transitions in his life: from boy to man; from virgin to lover; from husband to widower; from almost extinguished to a second chance, through the unexpected intervention of Bianca Merton. And he comes to the conclusion that the journey between being a me and being an it should be better marked. It is a death. And the dead should be mourned.
The kufiya is an impatient young man. When his prisoner stumbles, he curses in a language Nicholas thinks might be Slavic. He remembers what de Lisle had told him: young men from the Christian coastal villages around the Mediterranean… a simple choice: renounce their Christian faith… serve the Moors as warriors – or die…
To help assuage the kufiya’s anger, whenever he berates Nicholas’s clumsiness, one of the other janissaries takes a vicious kick at the object of his displeasure. By the time they reach the Bimaristan al-Mansur, Nicholas has learned not to stumble.
Connell is waiting for them in the darkness. Nicholas is not taken in through the entrance he remembers from his last visit; instead, he’s hustled towards a narrow doorway in the faceless mud-brick wall some fifty yards beyond. Like a drowning man gasping for air, he throws back his head to c
atch a last glimpse of the world he is leaving. The sky seems made of black parchment. It has a brittleness to it, as though the warm desert night has somehow dried it out and if he were to flick it with a finger, it would tear.
He remembers the night Dr Arcampora’s men delivered him, bound and bloodied, to a warehouse on Petty Wales. Then, Bianca had found the guile and the courage to save him. She had had to make herself complicit in murder to do so, but she hadn’t hesitated. But tonight she is a continent away. Tonight there is no one to save him but himself. And he has no strength left in him to try.
The inside of the Bimaristan al-Mansur is cool and shadowed. From within intricately patterned casings, lamps throw scatterings of golden light against the gleaming white vaults through which Nicholas passes, pale antechambers of some imagined Elysium, whose inhabitants slumber on low divans while nurses in long Moorish gowns move amongst them, moistening lips with water sponged from clay bowls. The air smells of cedar and frankincense, not the fetid odour of sickness and poverty he remembers from St Thomas’s on Bankside. He hears the occasional cough and groan of patients in pain or unable to find sleep, but the loudest noise is the sound of his own ankle-chain clanking on the marble floor.
Connell picks up a lamp and beckons the little group to follow him. Nicholas is drawn on into the Bimaristan like a man going to the scaffold. The nurses show little interest in him. He recalls what Sumayl al-Seddik said: Man; woman; sultan or pilgrim; even slaves are treated here… Only one nurse looks up from her work. The kufiya says something in Arabic and makes a mime of delirium. The nurse nods.
He’s told her I’m a poor, deranged madman, Nicholas thinks. They’re going to put me in their equivalent of Bedlam.
But they do not. Instead, they bring him to a small chamber with six slender pillars holding up an arched ceiling. It is darker than the others, with only eight beds, four of them occupied. At the far end is a low door.
The kufiya gives a short command and the janissary who’d made so free with his kicks walks forward and places a heavy iron key in the lock. As he turns it, a movement behind one of the pillars catches Nicholas’s eye. Two women are standing there. They appear to be attending to a patient on a nearby divan – a male patient whose throat is wrapped in cloth bandages. Even in the meagre light from the single oil lamp, Nicholas can see the thin section of reed poking out of the bindings: it’s the patient who’d undergone the laryngotomy. And one of the women is Surgeon Wadoud.
Nicholas takes his chance. He turns towards her, yanking the chain out of the kufiya’s hands. ‘For mercy’s sake, help me!’ he shouts, his voice echoing into the dark corners of the little chamber. ‘These men intend me great harm! I want to speak to Minister al-Seddik. Do you understand? Find al-Seddik. Please, help me!’
He has only enough time to register the blank, uncomprehending look on Surgeon Wadoud’s face, before the kufiya’s fist smashes into his cheek, sending him sprawling onto the marble floor.
As he’s dragged to his feet, Nicholas hears the two women speaking. Though he cannot understand the words, their tone is clear: Surgeon Wadoud is troubled more by the disturbance to her patient than by what might be happening to the manacled infidel who has behaved so uncivilly in her presence.
Through the ringing in his ears, he hears Connell snarl to Surgeon Wadoud, ‘What are you gawping at, ya miserable heathen bitch. Get back to your nursing. This is men’s work we’re about here.’
Laughing, the kufiya translates. Nicholas’s last image of Surgeon Wadoud is of the young woman dipping her head in shame and tugging at her companion’s robe, in an effort to drag her away.
Beyond the door is an open space that stinks of urine and fermenting fruit. The night feels cold against the bruised flesh of his cheek, even though the air has lost little of the day’s heat. The dancing light of Connell’s lamp leads them to a low, squat building that Nicholas fears might be a mortuary chamber for the hospital. He can smell the same faint stench of putrefaction here that troubled him so much in the garden of Adolfo Sykes’s house.
To his relief, when they unlock the door, Nicholas catches fractured glimpses not of corpses, but of a small ziggurat of crates stacked against the far wall. As the lamplight briefly slices across them, he sees the double-sickle wool-mark painted on one of the crates.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Dr Shelby,’ says Connell from the doorway as the kufiya pushes him inside. ‘If you’re considering ripping out your fingernails in an effort to get at one of those matchlock muskets, you’re wasting your time. We keep the powder elsewhere. We wouldn’t want someone getting careless and blowing up the sultan’s prized hospital, would we now? Think of all the innocent people who might get hurt.’
And with that, Nicholas is left alone in the darkness – the only person in the Bimaristan al-Mansur without even the faintest hope of recovery.
37
A herdsman drives his cows up Giltspur Street to pasture on Smithfield in the early June sunshine. Bianca steps cautiously in their wake towards Gault’s fine new house, one hand gripping the hemp sack slung over her left shoulder, the other battling to stop the hem of her kirtle dragging in the cow dung. As she rams the knocker against the heavy oak door, she hears the bell at St Sepulchre ringing the ninth hour. Like the ominous tolling of a funeral bell, it sends a shiver through her body.
A servant girl shows her into the main hall. When she hears Gault’s footsteps, Bianca embarks on the gambit she’s been rehearsing all the way from Bankside.
First, flatter his vanity…
She affects a study of his portrait hanging over the hearth, feigning an approximation of a nun adoring a picture of a saint.
‘Have you come to tell me you’ve seen reason, Mistress Merton?’ she hears him say to her back.
She turns and lowers the sack to the floor. ‘Oh, Master Gault! I didn’t hear your approach. Forgive me, I was admiring the brushwork. I’ve brought some more preventatives. If you can smell cow dung, it’s not them – it’s the cow turds in the lane.’
Gault makes a bow to her that is only a little less elaborate than the saffron silk doublet with black lace trimmings he wears. He smiles. ‘I smell only the perfume of roses. Is it Italian?’
‘I make it myself, from oil, rosewater and mace,’ she says, pleased that the care she’s taken to make the best of herself has not been wasted.
She’s wearing her sea-green gown and the carnelian bodice she knows flatters the darkness of her hair. If you’re dealing with a canny merchant like Gault, she told herself as Rose helped her prepare, it’s wise to ensure the box contains your best wares.
She unties the sack and peers in. ‘It’s all here: pomanders of rose leaves, tragacanth gum and camphor to hang about the neck… powder of tormentil, clove and lemon to mix in a posset… Also a tincture of bezoar and sorrel. Mix that in water or small beer every morning.’
‘I applaud your efforts, Mistress. Would that all apothecaries in this city were as diligent.’
Then make him trust you…
‘I can recommend each of these personally,’ she says confidently. It’s a tenuous claim, but her plan hinges on Gault’s determination to believe in his own infallibility. ‘At least, they worked for me.’
He remains silent for a moment, observing her as though her very existence is a vindication of his own certainties.
‘So it was true – you did cure yourself of the pestilence.’
She lets that go with a knowing smile; no point in overdoing it.
‘I should never have let Robert Cecil sow seeds of doubt in my mind,’ he says.
‘How are your young apprentices this morning? All healthy, I trust.’
‘Come and see them for yourself. Having a comely young woman observing their efforts should put an edge to their riversas, their imbroccatas and their stoccatas.’
He leads her to out into the courtyard, where the same lads she had seen on her last visit are practising their swordplay. They are stripped down to hose and gar
ters, their young limbs gleaming with exertion.
‘They look very fierce,’ she says admiringly. ‘But I thought they were destined to become merchants. Are they expecting their customers to put up a fight?’
‘Commerce is a martial game, Mistress. Why else would we speak of contracts being won?’ He smiles at his own wit. ‘Now, tell me the true reason you’ve returned.’
A little foolish fluttering, to make him think he already has the better of you…
She clasps her hands to her cheeks. ‘You’ve seen through my silly womanly wiles, Master Gault. I should have expected nothing less.’
And he should be yours for the taking…
‘When last I saw you, you were uncommonly free with your confidences,’ she continues. ‘You confessed to me you were a Catholic. You suggested we should be allies.’
‘I thought it wise to be open with each other.’
‘And I thought you were trying to lure me into giving away things I would prefer to keep to myself.’
‘Clearly, I failed.’
‘Not necessarily.’ It is said with just enough flirtation to entice.
‘I’m intrigued, Mistress Merton. Please, continue.’
‘I believe you wanted to know what confidences might have passed between me, Nicholas Shelby and Sir Robert Cecil.’ A bright smile of fake mystification. ‘I cannot possibly imagine why a Catholic would want to know what was in the mind of a minister of the Protestant queen of England. Perhaps you could enlighten me.’
She can see by the almost imperceptible way his jaw tilts that she has him.
‘I’m listening, Mistress Merton. You may speak freely here. You’re amongst friends.’
Now that he’s hooked, all you have to do is pull him in…
‘You know that I have a somewhat colourful reputation on Bankside.’
‘It has not escaped my attention, Mistress. “The one witch nobody dares hang” was how Connell described you.’