by S. W. Perry
‘And you know I was taken to Cecil House to be questioned by Sir Robert on charges of recusancy, and that I returned to Bankside in his very own gilded barge.’
‘I seem to recall you told me the story in this very house, only a few days ago.’
‘Have you perhaps asked yourself why Sir Robert Cecil was stricken by an outbreak of such uncharacteristic mercy, when he could have had me hanged on both charges?’
‘The question had crossed my mind. What exactly does Robert Cecil get, in return for not indicting you for heresy?’
‘Oh, that’s easy to answer,’ Bianca says, contriving her most enticing smile. ‘He gets information – on my fellow Catholics. You see, I am Robert Cecil’s spy.’
For a moment Gault says nothing. The only sound Bianca can hear is the rasping of steel as the swordsmen lunge and parry. But there’s now a hardness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. It hints at a well of violence hidden beneath the gallant’s polish. She wonders if he’s mulling over the practicality of a tragic accident: a spectator run through whilst watching swordplay.
Then he turns sharply towards the fencers. ‘Away with you!’ he shouts. ‘I can’t hear myself think.’
The boys obediently move further down the garden. Gault moves closer to her. Uncomfortably closer.
‘I’ve told you before: if you’re planning to denounce me to Robert Cecil unless I pay through the nose, you’ve picked the wrong victim for a Southwark gulling, Mistress. I shall say you came here seeking to blackmail me. My lads here will confirm it. Who do you think the magistrate is going to believe: a distinguished city merchant or a mere tavern-wench from Bankside?’ A triumphant sneer to put Bianca in her place. ‘Then we’ll see how clever you are at avoiding the hangman’s rope.’
Bianca lets the echo of his bluster fade. Then she says, as softly as a lover’s whisper, ‘Have you quite finished, Master Gault?’
‘Finished? There’s one of us who’s finished, Mistress Merton. And it’s not me.’
In a voice that contains just a hint of disappointment, she says, ‘Well, in that case I’ll be on my way. God give you good morrow. You may keep the preventatives.’ She makes a feint of leaving – then appears to remember something she’d almost forgotten. ‘Purely as a matter of interest, Master Gault, in the world of commerce what would you pay to know what was in the mind of a competitor?’
Gault scowls. ‘Why? What new dissembling is this?’
‘I merely wondered – being no more than a mere tavern-wench from Bankside. What would such knowledge be worth?’
‘It would be invaluable.’
She purses her lips. ‘And if that competitor was – shall we say – Sir Robert Cecil?’
‘What are you implying?’
Bianca tosses her head, as though it’s such an irritation to have to explain simple things to a clod-pate.
‘I would have thought that was obvious – to a clever merchant venturer like you. Have you never put one of your own people into a competitor’s enterprise to learn his secrets? Maybe you’re not quite as clever as your portrait suggests.’
‘Are you telling me you’re spying on Robert Cecil, not for him?’
‘At last,’ she says with a theatrical exhalation. ‘I thought we were never going to get there.’
‘And who exactly is the recipient of this intelligence?’ he asks, a sliver of doubt still lodged in his resolve.
‘Cardinal Santo Fiorzi, in Rome,’ she says effortlessly, remembering the grizzled face of the man she and her cousin Bruno had served in Padua; the man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the images that still trouble her when she wakes – the image of two bodies falling through the night into the racing waters below London Bridge. ‘It was he who sent me into England, to worm my way into the Pigmy’s confidence. Surely you don’t think I run a Southwark tavern because I enjoy the company of heretic drunks?’
Gault seems like a man caught in a hurricane. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
And having pulled in your fish, all that remains is to dispatch him with a blow to the back of his gleaming scaly head…
‘You’ve heard about Christopher Marlowe, I take it?’
He stares at her. ‘Of course. I can’t say I’m surprised. Stabbed, wasn’t he?’
‘And you know what they’re saying about him: that the Privy Council paid him to spy on Catholics, to worm his way into their trust and then betray them.’
He nods.
Bianca thinks, if I were skilled in swordplay, this is how it would feel to deliver the killing thrust.
‘Well, it was I who lured Kit Marlowe to his death.’
His jaw sags, spoiling the pleasing symmetry of his face. ‘You?’
‘He was once a frequent visitor to my tavern. If you were thorough when you asked about me on Bankside, you might have heard the rumour we were lovers.’
Is that a look of intrigue, or envy, she sees in his eyes?
‘Well, it’s true,’ she continues. ‘When we lay together, I could not draw a confession from him. He would not admit he was Robert Cecil’s informer. And I really did try.’ She makes a languorous tilt of her head. ‘In the end I had to wait until Cecil let it slip that the Privy Council had paid the cheating rogue for his treachery. All I had to do then was pass the information on to some people I know, who believe our faith must be defended by all means possible, and its enemies punished. I would have waited – until we both had grey hair, if it had proved necessary. I’m a very patient woman, you see.’
‘That is quite some tale, Mistress,’ he says. ‘I can think of no woman in London who could match it.’
‘Given what we confessed to each other at our last meeting, you should be grateful.’ She sighs with mock sadness. ‘Poor Kit. Now he has no one to spy upon but Satan.’
Gault is staring at her with undisguised admiration, and not a little unvarnished desire.
‘Why have you told me this, Mistress Merton? What is it you want from me in return?’
The smile she gives him contains a galleon’s worth of Indies sugar.
‘You’re the clever merchant, Master Gault. I’ll leave you to decide the value of the merchandise. Don’t leave it too long – I’m only patient when it comes to revenge.’
Bianca heads down Giltspur Street towards the river, oblivious to passers-by. She wears a wide, triumphant grin that not even the sour stench of cow dung can shift.
Lured, hooked, dispatched and ready for the pot, she tells herself. The gulling of Reynard Gault is very nearly complete. All she has to wait for now is the summons.
What will it be, she wonders, when the confession comes? What conspiracy will he reveal to her, now that he thinks he’s found the perfect partner in crime?
As she approaches the Water Gate at Blackfriars she sees a vacant wherry waiting for a customer. She smiles with satisfaction. Sometimes, it seems, there are days when everything is determined to go your way.
Making herself comfortable on the stern-seat, she thinks: how easy it is to make a vain man – especially one who believes he has power over you – jump to your tune, like poor old Sackerson the bear. The sweeter the promised honey, the livelier his dance.
38
Nicholas has reached the limit of endurance. He will write whatever Connell wants him to write. He will tell Robert Cecil any lie; betray any oath he’s ever made; sell his soul to the Devil – do anything demanded of him, if only he’s allowed to leave this oven of a torture chamber where every breath feels like hot syrup in the lungs.
There is a grille set into the ceiling, barely a foot square. If he clambers onto the top crates and lies out on his back – a trial in itself, given that he still wears the ankle-irons and manacles – he can breathe fresher air. But he cannot do it for long. Lying beneath the iron lattice is like putting his face too close to a fire.
If he wastes energy shouting for help, the kufiya visits him. He brings with him another janissary who speaks in the same Irish lilt as Cathal Co
nnell. They encourage Nicholas to silence by taking turns to lay about him with a cane.
The Irish boy has the face of an angry child, seared by too many hurts delivered too early in life. His companion retains the interrogator’s superiority Nicholas recalls from the storeroom in Adolfo Sykes’s house: Take my advice: go home at the earliest opportunity. You would not be the first man who has come here only to disappear into the slave market…
Nicholas judges it must be around noon when again he hears the sound of the key turning in the lock, though by now his sense of timekeeping is no better than Sultan al-Mansur’s. The fear that Connell has come for him turns the sweat on his skin into beads of ice.
But Connell has not come. His visitors are the two lads, though this time instead of beating him, they bring him fruit and water. The water is tepid, but the fruit is good.
‘Make the best of this,’ the kufiya tells him. ‘Captain Connell gave it to us, to keep you alive. Be grateful; only infidels may eat between sunrise and sunset. For the faithful, now is the holy month of fasting.’
‘Then you’d best tell Connell to bring me pen, ink and paper as well, because if he leaves me here much longer, he’ll not get his letter,’ Nicholas says, wiping the sweat from his eyes with the filthy sleeve of his shirt.
‘Why do you complain?’ asks the kufiya. ‘In the bagnios – where they keep the public slaves – they cram them in like fish in a barrel. They would kill their own kin to have a chamber to themselves.’
But then, to Nicholas’s surprise, they show him a little mercy. They lead him outside to relieve himself, playfully shaking the length of chain as though they were Bankside street entertainers and he the performing monkey. By the corner of the little building, the Irish lad pays out the chain so that Nicholas can pull his hose down around his knees. He doesn’t care about the lack of privacy – serving in the Low Countries soon knocked the bashfulness out of him.
Though it takes his eyes a while to adjust to the blinding sunlight, Nicholas gets his first opportunity to see his surroundings in daylight.
His place of torment is a hermit’s cell of mud-brick, set in the centre of a walled enclosure some thirty paces a side. The only exit is the single door they led him through last night. He wonders if this is where the Bimaristan confines those who suffer the worst trials of insanity. He thinks he might soon be listed amongst them, if he has to spend many more hours in that oppressive chamber.
‘Don’t go, stay a while. Tell me who you are,’ Nicholas pleads in desperation, when they prepare to return him to the oven of his captivity. ‘I’m not trying to trick you. Just tell me who you are – we’re all berraniyin here, aren’t we?’
The lad with the Irish accent laughs. ‘Outsiders? Not any more. When our master is sultan, I shall be a duke in his court.’ He adopts a stance of affected nobility, hands on hips, head thrown arrogantly back. ‘Why, I’m already the son of an English knight, Sir Thomas Winterbourne. A great man, by all accounts. I have the paper to prove it.’ He makes a little dancing mime of dispensing alms to grovelling peasants.
‘Proved by the Rouge Croix Pursuivant, no doubt,’ says Nicholas, hoping to pique his curiosity.
The lad stops his play-acting. He comes closer, peering at Nicholas as though he were an exhibit in a cabinet of curiosities. ‘Captain Connell was right, you do know more than you’re lettin’ on. Did my old master tell you that?’
‘That depends on which master you’re speaking of: Connell, or Reynard Gault. I’m guessing that you came here on a Barbary company ship, and that Gault gave you a false lineage.’
A sudden flicker of uncertainty in the lad’s eyes. ‘What do you know of Master Gault?’
‘More to the question, what do you know of Sir Thomas Winterbourne? Save for the fact that he probably doesn’t exist. Or any of his supposed ancestors.’
‘It doesn’t fuckin’ matter if he exists or not,’ the lad snaps. ‘I’m his son. I have the writing to prove it. That makes me of noble blood. And that means I shall be a duke when we throw down the sultan and—’
The kufiya gives the lad a savage push that almost topples him. ‘Stop blathering, you stupid llafazan. Can’t you see what he’s doing?’
The Irish boy drops Nicholas’s chain and rounds on his companion, using his chest as a ram. ‘What did you call me, y’heathen?’
The kufiya stands his ground. ‘I called you llafazan. In my language it means a rattle-trap, a blathermouth. And I’m not a heathen, I’m from Albania.’
The Irish boy fires a gobbet of spit at the other lad’s feet. ‘Where the fuck is that?’ he demands to know, giving his companion another shove. ‘You can be fuckin’ Duke of Albania, for all I care, but only if you’ve got a pedigree from the College of Heralds to prove it. If not, you’ll have to play the churl to those of us who have. What’s the word for servant in Albania?’
The two janissaries stare each other down, their tempers raw through having spent so many tedious hours guarding the door into the Bimaristan.
Nicholas takes his chance. Moving as fast as his enervated limbs will allow, he seizes the lead-chain in both hands. He swings the loop towards the Albanian’s head, with the wild idea of getting it around his throat and choking him until the Irish boy gives up his keys.
Like most acts of desperation, it’s been given almost no thought. And it has about the same chances of success. The chain lands ineffectually across the back of the kufiya’s neck. Before Nicholas can try again, both lads are upon him, flailing fists pounding at his body. Tripped by his ankle-chains, he goes down hard, the grit rasping the side of his face as he lands.
The first boot takes him just above his right hip. The pain makes his mouth gape, swallowing dirt from the floor of the compound. The next blow lands slantwise below his shoulderblade. The third is a jab to his right buttock, bringing bile into the back of his throat and rolling him onto his side, so that he’s staring at a pair of horizontal boots, and in the hazy background a wall and a door lying on their sides. After that, counting gives way to trying not to vomit.
The Irish lad’s voice reaches Nicholas the way the muffled roaring of a wave reaches the man it drowns.
‘Don’t kill him, Brother. The master will want to hear what he has to say. He’s a contrary little bugger, but the knife will make him talkative. It always does.’
Lying curled up in the dirt, Nicholas stares at the tilted world through blooms of sweat that pool in the corners of his eyes and run across his scoured nose and cheek.
And as he does so, he sees the door in the compound wall open. Three figures emerge, floating towards him like spectres in a dream. The boots of his two assailants move away and he hears the Albanian mutter something that sounds very much like a prayer for mercy. From the Irish lad comes a muffled ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God!’
Forcing his eyes to focus, Nicholas recognizes the lean, balding figure of Arnoult de Lisle, and beside him Surgeon Wadoud.
But it is the third figure that sears into his vision even more than the stinging grit and sweat. Standing over him, garbed in white, his eyes observing Nicholas with the detached appraisal of a falcon, is Muhammed al-Annuri.
39
Bianca has spent the day returning the Jackdaw’s cellar into her apothecary’s chamber. Ned and Timothy have done the heavy lifting, passing the bags and boxes down through the open hatchway that gives access from the yard, while Rose has assisted with the bundles of plants and herbs.
Her mind has not been wholly on the job. What was I thinking of ? she’s asked herself a hundred times if she’s asked it once. What temporary insanity made me do it? I went into the lion’s den, and for some reason that only my mother could explain – if she were alive, and it’s a good thing she’s not, because she’d be having apoplexy – thrust my head into the lion’s mouth. Who else but a woman bereft of all reason would make a confession like that to a man of Gault’s character and believe it could end well?
She is convinced now that there is a conne
ction between Solomon Mandel’s murder and Gault’s conviction that Nicholas revealed to her a second reason why Cecil sent him to the Barbary shore. But if there is a second reason – and it led to the Jew’s death – that simply compounds her anxiety, because it cannot possibly be a good one. If she needs proof of that, Bianca thinks, she has only to recall what Gault said to her that time they walked together along the river: The Catholic cause in England could make good use of your talents. That was an invitation to sedition if ever she’d heard one.
Why hadn’t Nicholas been open with her? Was it to protect her? If so, it has served only to make things worse. She stamps her foot, raising a little cloud of spilt yellow brimstone. ‘Why couldn’t you have just told me?’
‘What’s that, Mistress?’ says Rose.
Appalled that her thoughts have taken on a life outside her head, Bianca says, ‘Nothing, Rose. I was just thinking.’
The faint sound of St Saviour’s bell ringing for Evensong reaches her through the open trapdoor. She sets down her burden of yellow gilliflower that she uses to treat ulcers, laying it beside the bags of brimstone Ned has assembled.
‘That’s the last of the brimstone,’ says Ned, peering down through the opening at the two women below. ‘There’s still a small chest in your chamber left to bring.’
Bianca remembers the box in which she keeps her father’s books, the ones she brought from Padua, and his silver Petrine cross. Bringing them back to the Jackdaw would seem now like an admission of failure. Better, she thinks, to leave them on Dice Lane, as a call to her to return when the pestilence has been defeated.
‘Leave it there, Ned,’ she calls up. ‘You’ve worked hard enough today.’
Ned sits on the edge of the trapdoor, eases himself down on his arms and – with surprising agility for such a big man – drops easily to the cellar floor. He scoops up his new bride by her waist and sits her down on top of the row of sacks, the better to admire her.