The Saracen's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘Only if you want to wait a day or two, Master. He’s away at Canterbury.’

  Nicholas finishes the rest of his meal in despondent silence.

  Once clear of the town, and with the London road ahead of him, he pauses only to load and prime Yaxley’s wheel-lock pistol. There are many more miles still to go, and some of them are across Black Heath. He has not come this far, he tells himself, to fall prey to cut-purses now.

  In the garden of his fine new house on Giltspur Street, Reynard Gault listens without interrupting as the lad Calum delivers his daily account of life at the Jackdaw tavern on Bankside. There is envy in his voice, but also a weary disappointment.

  ‘She’s had no contact with the Cecils that I could see, Master. Nor could I identify anyone who might have come to her from Cecil House.’

  ‘And you’ve overheard nothing?’

  ‘They keep their words short whenever they see me around. If she’s lying to you, Master, I’ve no proof of it.’

  Gault considers this for a while, studying his fine kidskin gloves. Then he says, ‘If we thought to search the place – or if she proved false – how might we gain entry unobserved?’

  ‘I can’t see how you could, Master. There’s always someone there. And it’s Bankside, remember. They keep the windows and the street door locked at night – against house-divers. Not that anyone would dare, of course. Not with her.’

  ‘It’s a tavern, young O’Neil, not a fortress. There must be a way.’

  The lad Calum ponders this awhile. Then his face brightens, like a fox that’s come across an unguarded coop. ‘There is the cellar.’

  Gault looks up. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You wouldn’t credit what she keeps down there: enough brimstone to keep hell warm for a week, an’ more potions than you’d need to cure or poison half the city. There’s a trapdoor in the ceiling, to the yard. The yard wall isn’t that high. Not if you’re fit. Not if you don’t mind being cursed.’

  45

  A day and a half after leaving Dover, Nicholas Shelby rides up Long Southwark towards the southern gatehouse of London Bridge, his sweating mount gleaming in the July sunshine as though it were carved from solid marble. Passing the Tabard Inn, he hears the St Saviour’s bell ring out the second hour of the afternoon. When its chimes have died away, he is struck by the uncustomary quiet. Bankside should be teeming with people. But today the twenty-sixth ward of the city – the liberty of Bridge Ward Without – appears almost deserted. A stark contrast, he thinks, to the last time a visitor from the Barbary shore came this way. Then, crowds of Banksiders had turned out to gawp, wide-eyed, at the splendour of the Moor delegation and to marvel at the finery of the Lord Mayor and the merchants of the Barbary Company, who’d come south across the bridge to welcome it. Today none of the few people he passes even notice the dust-stained, weary rider in a blue-cloth djellaba, Yaxley’s wheel-lock pistol tucked into the belt, who has appeared so suddenly amongst them – even though Nicholas thinks he must look like a supporting character in a performance of Master Marlowe’s Tamburlaine.

  He is filled with a sudden sense of foreboding. He thinks of the promise he made to Muhammed al-Annuri, to bring Gault to a reckoning. Connell is dead, but the second head of the snake still lives. Gault is just as responsible for the deaths of Adolfo Sykes, Solomon Mandel, Hadir, grandmother Tiziri, Gwata and his sister Lalla – even young Hortop – as Connell ever was. But to discharge that promise he must take another life, a course utterly at odds with another oath he has sworn: the oath to heal.

  What am I becoming? he wonders, remembering the total absence of remorse he’d felt when he killed the defenceless Connell.

  Thinking now of Tamburlaine, he recalls a line from the play, a line that chills him to the core: I mean to be a terror to the world…

  Bianca hears Rose scream, even in the depths of the cellar where she’s at work at her temporary apothecary’s table. It slices into her thoughts about Gault and the fatal dilemma he’s set her, like an axe through a sapling. She’s halfway up the stairs to the taproom – her head full of dreadful images – before she realizes the scream has given way to a tide of joyful but tearful jabbering. Then Buffle begins to bark rapturously.

  He is standing in the street doorway, dressed in some strange garb that might once have been blue, save for the fact that it appears to have been trampled in the dust. His beard is unkempt, his face burned a rich honeyed brown. He looks like the prince of a band of brigands.

  But he’s back. Her prayers have been answered.

  She says nothing. She gives him no greeting. The need to take him in her arms makes the very thought of speech pointless. She hurls herself at him, as though she must pin him to the spot, lest a hurricano – magicked by some malevolent sorcerer – sweeps him away from her again. They cling together, swaying gently to the rhythm of their own relief.

  Ned looks on, grinning like a loon. Timothy rushes to find his lute, determined to play the minstrel. Rose makes that strange noise – a cross between a foraging hog and a goose with indigestion – that comes over her whenever she gets over-emotional. Even Farzad comes out from the kitchen to see what the fuss is about, adding an extra chime to Nicholas’s happiness.

  Bianca has imagined this moment every day since Ned first told her that Nicholas had not left her of his own free will. She has sensed his arms around her body, heard his voice, felt his closeness. At night when she hugs herself to sleep, it has been his fingers she has felt against her flesh. She has rehearsed endlessly what she would say to him on his return. And now he is here. She looks into his eyes, her mouth close to his.

  ‘You smell like a horse,’ she says.

  His voice is husky. It could be passion. It could be the dust of the Dover road. ‘Take that up with Michael Sondes,’ he replies.

  ‘Who in the name of all Christendom is Michael Sondes?’

  ‘The High Sheriff of Kent. It’s his horse.’

  They sit together in a taproom booth. Bianca is leaning against Nicholas as closely as she did on the day of Ned and Rose’s wedding feast, when Timothy came to tell her Farzad was missing. If he turns up now, swearing on his mother’s life that the queen has reached a rapprochement with the Pope, the pestilence has admitted defeat, and Cardinal Fiorzi has died and left her one hundred thousand ducats in his will, she has no intention of moving.

  She has provided a jug of knock-down for Nicholas’s thirst and a cushion for his saddle-sores. The trimming of his beard will have to wait for later. He is home. He is fed and watered. The rest is understood.

  The expression on his face breaks her heart. It is the look of a man who had been led to the scaffold, had the noose placed over his neck and then – just when he had abandoned all hope – heard the shout that heralds a reprieve. He seems unable to decide whether he should shout for joy or weep.

  ‘Tell me, Nicholas,’ she urges softly. ‘Why did you really go to the Barbary shore? No more lies. I need to know the truth.’

  And so he gives it to her – at least a version of the truth, from which the butchery has been expunged. He sees no reason why he should inflict that upon her.

  ‘I already know all about Connell,’ she says when he’s finished. ‘Farzad told me. He ran away because I brought that monster into the Jackdaw.’

  He gives her a questioning look. ‘How did Farzad know what manner of man Connell was?’

  ‘Farzad was taken as a slave, remember? It was Connell who took him.’

  ‘Well, he need fear Connell no longer. Connell is dead. And his master, Reynard Gault, cannot long evade justice. He will be next. I have sworn an oath upon it.’

  ‘I worked out for myself that Gault was the Rouge Croix Pursuivant,’ she says proudly.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he asks, his eyes widening in admiration.

  ‘He lied to me about knowing Solomon Mandel. I knew he was hiding something, so I persuaded Parson Moody to let me see the parish records for when the Moor envoy arrived in London. And ther
e Gault was. It was he who killed Mandel.’

  A look of concern clouds Nicholas’s face. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He confessed.’

  ‘To you?’ His concern turns to horror. ‘Have you the slightest understanding of how dangerous Gault is?’

  ‘Are we arguing? You’ve only been back an hour.’

  ‘What in the name of Jesu have you contrived to get yourself into?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Bianca says, avoiding his gaze. ‘But I had to make a promise – to get Gault to admit it. It’s all something of a pottage really. I was trying to find out from him why Robert Cecil had really sent you to Morocco; he was trying to find out from me, because he thought you might have mentioned it…’

  Nicholas takes her in his arms and pulls her head into the slope of his neck. ‘It’s alright, Gault’s days are numbered.’ He runs his fingers through the thick, dark waves of her hair. ‘I’ll finish this drink and then we’ll take a wherry down to Cecil House. The sooner this is over, the better. What exactly was it that you promised him?’

  The reply is muffled by her closeness. He can feel the moistness of her mouth as it moves against his skin. He pushes her away – but only so that his hungry eyes may have a better feast.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Bianca bites her lip, bracing herself for his reaction. ‘I said, “I had to promise him I would find a way to poison Robert Cecil.”’

  For a moment Nicholas just stares at her. Then he buries his face in his hands and mutters, ‘Oh, by Christ’s holy wounds…’

  ‘It’s quite alright,’ Bianca says brightly, taking his hands tightly in hers, ‘I’m not actually going to do it.’

  ‘Oh, some good news!’

  ‘Now that you’re back, you can get Robert Cecil to have Gault arrested. But he’s not at Cecil House – he’s at Windsor, with the queen. It’s the pestilence, you see. It’s been awful.’

  ‘I’ll ride there first thing tomorrow,’ Nicholas says, easing the saddle-stiffness in his limbs and buttocks. ‘Right now, I’m heartily weary of anything with four legs. Horses, camels…’ He glances at Buffle, wagging her tail happily at the mouth of the booth. ‘Except for her, of course. In the meanwhile, how would it suit you to be a Suffolk yeoman’s daughter-in-law?’

  Bianca – who has had proposals from the sons of Paduan gentlemen, couched in poetry as sticky as syrup – tries not to laugh, in case he takes it the wrong way. She gently draws his hands to her lips and kisses them.

  And in the adjacent booth the apprentice Calum quietly sets down his jug of ale, tucks the copy of The Courtier into his jerkin and slips silently and unobserved out of the Jackdaw.

  46

  Nicholas hears the watch calling midnight in the lane, followed immediately by a ribald comment he can’t quite catch. Then laughter. The word, it seems, has surged through Bankside like a storm tide through the Deptford marshes: Dr Shelby and Mistress Merton are betrothed.

  ‘We can’t have a privy wedding,’ Bianca says sleepily as she traces the shape of his far shoulder with her fingers. ‘Bankside won’t let us. Besides, they could all do with some cheer. It’s become rather melancholy around here while you’ve been away – what with the pestilence.’

  ‘Why would we want a privy wedding?’ he says, tugging loose a strand of thread from the coverlet that has somehow got entangled in her hair. ‘I want all London to know about it.’

  ‘You’re not afeared of marrying a sorceress?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been putting a love-charm under my pillow all this time, and I never knew it.’

  ‘No, but I warn you: I shall weave magical chains, to stop you going anywhere that Robert Cecil commands.’

  ‘Can you delay the weaving until after I get back from Windsor – for Solomon Mandel’s sake?’

  She raises a cautionary eyebrow. ‘After that, no more obeying a summons from the Pigmy – other than to attend the queen’s bedside when she’s ill. Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Nicholas rolls the length of thread between his fingers until it become a little ball. He leans over her.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asks, as the weight of him pushes her into the yielding comfort of the bed.

  ‘It’s a kissing knot,’ he replies, letting it fall gently between her breasts. ‘Isn’t that how all this started?’

  It is a witch’s night, tendrils of cloud beating across the face of the moon. The river is pitch-black like the inside of a sealed tomb. A single lantern, masked for concealment, glows in the prow of the tilt-boat as it approaches the Mutton Lane stairs.

  The boy Owen is ashore first. Hauling on the boat’s painter, he pulls her against the jetty and makes the rope fast to a wooden pile festooned with sinking river weed. Calum and two other apprentices are next, showing a practised agility even in the darkness. Reynard Gault is last. He pulls his half-cloak about his shoulders and, with one hand on the hilt of his sword, orders Calum to lead the way into the lanes of Bankside.

  The sound of the call to prayer from the Koutoubia mosque brings Nicholas out of a deep and contented sleep. For a moment his senses are confounded. Then the hot thrill of memory infuses his body. Sleepily, he looks around. In the corner of the chamber a candle gutters in its sconce. Beyond the lozenges of glass in the single window the moonlight paints the houses across the lane with a lacquer of ghostly grey.

  Then he realizes Bianca is not beside him.

  The coverlet on her side of the bed is thrown back, revealing not the amber smoothness of her sleeping body, but a crumpled sheet. And then, to his bewilderment, the high-pitched cry follows him into full wakefulness. It takes him a moment to realize that, somewhere in the Jackdaw, Buffle the dog is howling.

  He waits to hear the sound of the street door being unlocked as Bianca lets her out into the lane. It does not come. Curious, Nicholas climbs out of her bed, pulls on his woollen trunk-hose and goes out onto the landing.

  He is halfway down the stairs before he smells it: a sulphurous stench that sticks in the nostrils and makes his eyes stream. Then he catches the throat-rasping taste of smoke. By the time he reaches the taproom floor, he can see wraiths of it drifting in the weak moonlight. He turns into the passage that leads to the parlour, the kitchen and the door to the cellar that Bianca has reclaimed for her apothecary store. The stench of brimstone is stronger here. And then he sees a figure ahead of him – a slender figure in a night-shift, leaning against the cellar door as though for support. He hears a woman coughing: deep, lung-tearing rasps.

  ‘Bianca!’ he calls, starting towards her.

  She turns as though to wave him back, her face contorted by the fumes.

  ‘The cellar… burning…’

  Another breath of the sulphurous air cuts her off. Even as Nicholas reaches out to pull her away, he sees her body fold as she chokes. And as she rises again – one hand at her throat, the other still grasping the door-latch – she stumbles forward, dragging the door open behind her.

  Nicholas feels a cool draught flow over him. The black doorway to the cellar suddenly turns a brilliant yellow. He hears a deep whooomph issue from its depths as the bundles of dried plants ignite, followed swiftly by the oils and the liquors, the pastes made of fat, the desiccated skins, all the flammable materials of the apothecary’s art. The night becomes as black as hell, as a dense cloud of smoke bursts up the stairway, bringing with it a heat that chokes his cry of alarm almost before it’s left his throat.

  He moves without thinking, an animalistic reaction that rebels against the body’s thirst for life and overwhelms it. He ducks down into breathable air and lunges forward into the passage. Before he’s even conscious of movement, he’s stumbling backwards, away from the heat, dragging Bianca after him even as she sinks to the floor.

  He pulls her into the taproom as though he were dragging a carpet, shouting between racking coughs, ‘Fire!… fire!… hurry – we are undone…’

  By the time Rose, Ned, Timothy and Fa
rzad join him, the passageway is ablaze, the flames ravishing the Jackdaw’s ancient timbers in a fiery consummation. The air in the taproom is caustic in the throat. Buffle barks in high, agitated yelps in a corner, until Timothy lifts her up and calms her.

  Nicholas kneels beside Bianca’s body. Cradling her against his chest, he runs his fingers through her hair. A short while ago it had smelled of rosewater. Now it has the sharp tang of burnt straw. Her eyes are open and she seems to comprehend the danger, gripping his wrist tightly as though she fears he’s going to leave her again.

  ‘Someone fetch the keys, or we’ll all burn here,’ Nicholas shouts.

  Timothy, whose task it is to lock the street door at night against house-divers, hands Buffle to Farzad and sprints up the taproom stairs to the attic. He returns with a ring of heavy iron keys. In the glare of the spreading flames, he quickly identifies the correct one and advances on the door. He’s about to slot the bit into the lock when he suddenly ducks to one side and peers out of the window. He turns back, confusion on his face.

  ‘There’s people in the lane.’

  ‘Of course there’s people in the lane,’ growls Ned impatiently. ‘The tavern’s afire, if you hadn’t noticed. Let’s hope they’ve come to help, not gawp.’

  ‘Not just people,’ says Timothy, oblivious to the harshness in Nicholas’s voice. ‘That Gault fellow’s there. They ’ave swords. Why ’ave they got swords? You can’t fight a fire with a sword. What do they want?’

  Nicholas knows exactly what they want. He’s seen the bloody proof in a pretty courtyard garden in Morocco.

  Bianca, too, understands what Gault’s presence means. Tears stream down her face, lacing her skin with a delta of soot. Her grip on Nicholas’s wrist tightens. To his alarm, he notices little specks of soot in the spittle around her lips.

  ‘Forgive me, Nick… My curiosity… Kit Marlowe was right: you can’t make a bargain with the Devil and expect to come off best.’