by S. W. Perry
‘Husband, ’ave a care!’ Rose squeals. ‘I don’t want brimstone all over my behind. It’ll leave a yellow patch on my arse.’
Ned’s bushy red beard splits into a grin. ‘You don’t need no brimstone to set your fundamentals aflame, Goodwife Monkton!’
‘This is not a bawdy-house, you two,’ Bianca says, rolling her eyes. ‘If it were, I’d have Parson Moody serving in the taproom.’
Ned jabs one big thumb in the direction of the cellar stairs. ‘I’ve just heard Alderman Spivey say there’s a rumour the queen has ordered the ban on gatherings to include Bartholomew Fair. That’s not been cancelled this side of the Flood. Oh, an’ the city Companies are to stop all parades and feasts.’ He shakes his great head despondently. ‘I’ll tell you this, Mistress, when Master Nick comes home, he’ll find London a sorry place.’
‘Look on the bright side,’ says Bianca. ‘We’re still open. And we can put on a revel here to beat the best of them.’
Rose gives her an alarming wink. ‘When ’e does come home, will you be needin’ that kissing knot again? Or do you think you’ll be able to manage on your owns?’
Bianca glares at her, until the laughter breaks through and she chivvies Ned and Rose up the cellar stairs. ‘That’s enough idle nonsense for one day, thank you,’ she says. ‘I think a jug of knock-down is in order, to get the dust out of our throats.’
But as she follows them up to the taproom, Bianca wonders how long she must wait for Reynard Gault to make contact with her again. The satisfaction she’d felt when she left his house on Giltspur Street has vanished. Now she almost dreads the summons. Because whatever he might reveal to her next – whatever it is he’s involved in – her own confession to him about being a Catholic spy, fantasy though it may be, is more than adequate to get her hanged.
40
The blows have left Nicholas the sole occupant of a world in which the only sound is a high-pitched whistling in his ears; the only taste, the iron seasoning of his own blood; the only landscape, a vista of pain that has no horizon.
He stares up from the dirt, dazzled by the glare of the sun. Then, as his eyes focus, he makes out al-Annuri’s white-robed body looming over him, a curved, bejewelled dagger at his belt. The hooded eyes regard him with satisfied amusement, as though he’s prey that it has taken some skill to bring down.
Then the whistling inside his head gives way to muffled voices penetrating from reality: de Lisle speaking Arabic; al-Annuri issuing what sounds like a fusillade of orders; the sound of running feet, sandal-leather slapping against the dirt. Strong arms lift him effortlessly to his feet as though he were weightless – soldiers, he thinks, given the metallic whisper of chainmail against leather. Upright once more, he sways like a creature hooked and dragged from one world to another, unsure if he can breathe its air or stand upright on its surface.
After a few moments, during which they give him water to drink, his senses begin to right themselves, though it is only when he looks around and sees the kufiya and the Irish lad roped together on their knees – under the watchful eyes of two large bearded men in striped linen tunics and mail hoods, loaded crossbows in their hands – that he realizes this isn’t the start of some new torture, but a rescue.
‘His Excellency says you are most fortunate,’ de Lisle tells Nicholas once they’ve led him back into the Bimaristan, to the little iwan where he had pleaded for Surgeon Wadoud’s help the previous night. ‘If Surgeon Wadoud had gone to al-Seddik and not to me when you called for help, you would be well on your way to becoming a dead man.’
Looking around, Nicholas sees the ward has been cleared of patients, even the man recovering from the laryngotomy. Through the open door leading to the rest of the hospital he can see more armed men. How they can wear mail in this climate – even in the relative cool of the Bimaristan – is beyond him. But he’s glad they’re there.
Under Surgeon Wadoud’s guidance, an assistant washes his grazes with honey and water, plucking little pieces of grit from his cheek with the point of a small but very sharp knife. Bruised and debilitated, he sits passively on a divan while de Lisle reveals the measure of his good fortune.
‘Apparently, Surgeon Wadoud does not like al-Seddik very much,’ de Lisle continues. ‘She says he treats the hospital as his own personal fiefdom. Everyone here is terrified of him, except her, of course. She knew you were the English envoy, so she thought it proper that the sultan’s personal physician should hear of what she had witnessed, not a man who makes a habit of treating the hospital’s best surgeon more as a washer of sick bodies than as a healer of them.’
‘Are you telling me al-Seddik is behind this? Is he the Falconer?’
De Lisle looks puzzled. ‘I do not know what you mean. But yes, Minister al-Seddik has been plotting to overthrow His Majesty. He has confessed.’ A look of distaste, and he adds, ‘After the confession, I was summoned to keep him alive. They were harsh in their questioning.’
‘I believe I owe you an apology, Professor de Lisle,’ Nicholas says. ‘When I saw you with Fra Cyprien at the hammam, I jumped to the conclusion that if there was any threat to the sultan, it was from a French physician and a Jesuit priest. I was hasty. I should have been less inclined towards misjudgement.’
De Lisle’s laugh contains just a hint of reproach. ‘A subject of the English heretic Elizabeth jumps to an easy conclusion about a Frenchman! Who would ever have anticipated such a thing.’
‘Yes, well, as I said, I’m sorry.’
‘I suppose I must be grateful to you,’ de Lisle says, relenting. ‘Had His Majesty fallen, I suspect that his physician’s life would not long have outspanned his own.’ He nods towards Surgeon Wadoud. ‘But if gratitude is due, the rightful recipient stands there.’
Nicholas thinks so, too. He thinks it in shovelfuls. Climbing stiffly off the divan, he approaches the surgeon and makes a polite bow. The stab of pain from his right buttock as he bends his knee brings a sharp intake of breath, but he still manages a heartfelt ‘You have my enduring gratitude, Surgeon Wadoud.’ Then, with a glance at de Lisle for his help, he goes on, ‘Were it not for your intervention, I would have no hope of returning to the woman I love. I owe you my life. Whatever happiness God sees fit to bestow upon me now, I pray He bestows it upon you twice over.’ Another glance at de Lisle. ‘Will you say that? Tell her my precise words.’
When the Frenchman has finished translating, Surgeon Wadoud’s previously impassive brown eyes become the locus for one of the most beautiful smiles he’s ever seen. She makes a brief reply. De Lisle translates.
‘Surgeon Wadoud says you have the hands of a good man. And a good surgeon, too. She says: return home and tell them what you saw here in the Bimaristan al-Mansur. Tell them we are not all heathens.’
Muhammed al-Annuri’s house is a palatial spread of airy rooms set around a garden five times the size of the one on the Street of the Weavers. Nicholas is installed in a pleasant chamber overlooking a fountain flanked by purple bougainvillea. A servant brings him a clean gown of Berber cloth, dyed the colour of a hot summer sky. Nicholas is ravenously hungry. He makes a motion of putting food in his mouth. The servant looks horrified. Then Nicholas remembers it is the holy month of Ramadan. There will be no sustenance taken from dawn until sunset – in this household, or so it seems, not even for an infidel. He decides a few hours of hunger is a fate preferable to the one that has probably already befallen the two lads who came to him in the compound. He understands now: when the kufiya and the others had interrogated him at Adolfo Sykes’s house, they had not been al-Annuri’s men, as they’d claimed, but al-Seddik’s. He had sent them to Nicholas to find out how much, if anything, he had learned of the Falconer’s conspiracy.
De Lisle and al-Annuri come to him a few minutes later. The minister regards Nicholas with dark, astute eyes. Yet there is a hint of amusement in them, as though he’s been pleasantly disabused of a poor opinion. He delivers a fast burst of Arabic for de Lisle to translate.
‘In order to save time, His Excellency wishes you to confess that you are an English spy. Denial will not serve you well.’
A reprieve then, not an escape, thinks Nicholas as a fresh wave of fear courses through his body.
‘I’m not a spy, I’m just a physician. I was sent here to study physic,’ he says, knowing as he speaks how lame his denial sounds.
‘A physician who happens to be able to decipher coded dispatches,’ says de Lisle, even managing to capture some of al-Annuri’s scepticism. ‘Please don’t waste His Excellency’s time denying it, Dr Shelby. In your chamber at Sykes’s house, His Excellency’s men found a paper with certain letters written upon it. He believes it was used to unlock Sykes’s code. When he arrested al-Seddik at his dwelling late last night, he recovered Sykes’s full dispatch, with a copy of it made in plain English. He presumes that copy was deciphered by you. I read it myself. There were some errors, it is true, though far less than if al-Seddik had been responsible. In English, his hand is not as accomplished as his tongue; though before much longer he will have little need of either.’ A twinge of distaste puckers the Frenchman’s cheek. ‘What His Excellency would very much like to know is how you discovered the original, when the people of the traitor al-Seddik could not.’
Denial is pointless, Nicholas realizes. He looks frankly at al-Annuri as he answers. ‘It was luck, really. And the fact that both Sykes and his friend in London put their faith in the same talisman. Otherwise I might never have worked out where Sykes had hidden his letter. How did His Excellency know al-Seddik was plotting against the sultan, before he took possession of Sykes’s last dispatch?’
‘His Excellency has been suspicious of al-Seddik for a long time. But until now he had no evidence,’ the Frenchman says. ‘He, too, fought at the battle against the Portuguese and Spanish when His Majesty al-Mansur became sultan, and he has never trusted al-Seddik’s protestations of loyalty. Your actions have proved him right.’
Nicholas recalls with anguish Hadir’s words on the ride from Safi: 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…
He looks directly at al-Annuri and says, ‘Then His Excellency is a wise man. In England, Lord Burghley – our queen’s most trusted advisor – believed al-Seddik to be a friend. He even wrote a letter of fond remembrance. I handed it to al-Seddik myself.’
‘His Excellency regrets he was unable to protect you from such harsh handling, but once al-Seddik had chased away his watchers, it became more difficult. There are only so many times a man can walk down a street and observe a house before his presence is noticed. Otherwise we might have saved the lives of your household.’
The awful image of the scene in the garden on the Street of the Weavers tears into Nicholas’s mind. ‘If you have al-Seddik, I hope you have that murdering bastard Connell, too. Treat him as harshly as you care to – it will be no more than he deserves.’
De Lisle delivers his message. The reply is not what Nicholas cares to hear.
‘Connell was returning to al-Seddik’s mansion when he saw His Excellency’s men arrive—’
‘He escaped?’
‘He cannot long evade capture.’
‘What about al-Seddik’s janissaries? What will happen to them?’
‘Sultan al-Mansur’s men fell upon them this morning, at al-Seddik’s kasbah at Tahannout, in the mountains. Whether they took them all – well, the answer to that will have to wait upon some hard questioning.’
‘There are Englishmen amongst them, apprentices that Gault and Connell brought here,’ Nicholas says. ‘They must be freed; sent home.’
A quick stream of Arabic from al-Annuri. De Lisle translates.
‘His Excellency regrets that cannot be. They chose to become mercenaries in a rebellious cause. They will have to face the consequences of their actions.’
‘They were given little choice,’ Nicholas protests. He thinks of Hortop, the Kentish shepherd’s son. ‘They’re just ordinary lads from poor families. They were promised riches, a new life of plenty, an escape. They didn’t know what they were buying. To send them home would show my queen that her ally in the fight against Spain is a merciful man.’
‘His Excellency will consider it,’ says de Lisle when al-Annuri has digested what Nicholas has told him. ‘But he would like to hear from you how Minister Cecil learned of al-Seddik’s treachery.’
‘He didn’t. He simply became concerned when Adolfo Sykes stopped sending his dispatches. So he sent me here to find out what had happened to him. If that’s spying – given that it was Sir Robert’s only desire to protect both our realms – then yes, I’m a spy.’
Al-Annuri listens to de Lisle’s rendition of Nicholas’s words with a thoughtful frown. When he replies, Nicholas thinks he hears the name Solomon Mandel.
‘His Excellency wishes to know if you have word of his man in London,’ says de Lisle. ‘A Jew named Solomon Mandel.’
Nicholas raises his eyes to the ceiling, letting out his breath in a long, sad flow. ‘So you’re the Turk. Solomon Mandel was your man.’
This time al-Annuri has no need of a translator to understand the meaning of Nicholas’s words. The hawk’s gaze softens, even as the eyes dart from Nicholas to de Lisle and back again. The neatly trimmed black beard tightens against the jaw with self-recrimination.
‘He was murdered,’ Nicholas says brutally. ‘The conspirators in England thought that Sykes’s last dispatch had been sent to him, not to Robert Cecil. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.’
‘You knew him?’ asks al-Annuri.
‘I found him.’
Al-Annuri goes to the open window and stares out at the fountain, a contemplative frown on his angular face. He whispers something in the direction of the bougainvillea. To Nicholas, it sounds as though he’s making a pledge to a dead man. When he turns back into the room, the faint gleam of amusement in the Moor’s eyes has gone, replaced by a frightening intensity. His voice is as sharp as the jewelled dagger he carries. De Lisle catches the measure of it as he translates.
‘I know from my friend Solomon that I can trust Captain Yaxley of the Marion. He is still at Safi. You will return to England aboard his ship, Dr Shelby. And when you get there, you will do me a small service, in return for saving your life.’
‘Of course. Anything.’
‘You will find whoever killed my friend Solomon Mandel and erase their presence from this world. You will poison their wells and slaughter the livestock that feeds them. You will burn the sky above them. You will bring pestilence and death upon them, even unto the seventh generation. You will erase their names so that Allāh will forget he ever made them. Will you do that for me?’
Nicholas meet’s the Moor’s gaze without flinching. ‘Yes,’ he says, thinking of Solomon Mandel, of Hadir and his dreams of success, of grandmother Tiziri, of Gwata and his wide-eyed sister Lalla, who ran away when he smiled at her. ‘I will do it. No matter what it takes, I will deliver them justice. Inshā Allāh.’
41
Safi is a town that has fallen to an enemy it never knew it had, caught up in a war it had no idea was being waged. Everyone they pass prostrates themselves before Minister al-Annuri and offers what Nicholas takes to be heartfelt protestations of loyalty to Sultan al-Mansur.
The detachment of Moorish cavalry under al-Annuri’s command has made the journey from Marrakech in record time. For Nicholas, the ride – on a rangy Andalusian mare – has been tiring but exhilarating.
In the Kechla, the old Portuguese citadel on the hill above the harbour, the governor grovels on his expensively tiled floor and swears by Allāh that he never knew what was going on down in the port. He has never met the infidel Connell. He has never taken so much as a single Christian ducat to look the other way. As proof of his innocence, he produces the customs official Nicholas met when the Righteous docked, Muly Hassan. Brought into the daylight from some stinking pit, Hassan is bound as though he possesses a He
rculean ability to tear off all but the stoutest chains. From the crimson mess on his face, Nicholas wonders for a moment if he’s been gorging himself on the barberry preserve he recalls Connell giving him. But the blank stare in the man’s eyes, and the tooth still embedded in his lower lip, suggest otherwise.
Down on the quayside, Nicholas scours the Kasar el Bahr fort and the surrounding warehouses for news of Connell. De Lisle acts as his translator, four of al-Annuri’s men as bodyguards.
No one they question admits to having seen so much as a glimpse of the Irishman.
Nicholas climbs the stone steps to the ramparts. He walks along the line of eight massive royale cannon to get a better look at the waterfront. All three English ships – the Righteous, the Marion and the Luke of Bristol – are still moored to the breakwater. Now fully laden, all that prevents their departure is a detachment of the sultan’s marines, scowling men in striped tunics worn over mail coats, crossbows drawn, who have come aboard at Minister al-Annuri’s command for just that purpose.
But one vessel is missing from the Safi anchorage, Nicholas notices. On the strip of beach where – on his previous arrival – he had seen the Moor corsair laid up, now there is nothing but furrowed sand. He wonders if Connell has made an escape aboard her. His fears are confirmed when he climbs over the side of the Marion.
Captain Yaxley is a compact, wiry little Devon sea-terrier with a yap for a voice and ocean-grey eyes. The sword he wears is almost too long for his legs. He exudes an air of quiet competence.
‘The town has been in uproar since noon yesterday, Dr Shelby,’ he says, casting a doubtful eye over Nicholas’s blue Berber gown. ‘What in the name of Jesu is going on? I can’t get any sense at all out of these heathens.’
‘A conspiracy, Captain Yaxley. A plot to overthrow Sultan al-Mansur and hand Morocco to the Dons. Connell was part of it. Have you seen him?’
‘Aye, he arrived yesterday. Wouldn’t speak to a soul, except Stawley, his sailing master.’