Fulke Vaesy, on the other hand, has no doubts whatsoever about the maid’s continuing silence.
‘Devilry! That is the sole reason for her silence. The Devil is hanging on tight to her tongue. You should turn her over to the Church at the first opportunity. If you need a second opinion, ask your secretary, Master Quigley. He’ll agree with me, mark my words.’
‘Gabriel is in London on business of mine. But I think you’d find him as interested in the mute as I am,’ says Lumley as the wind buffets the windows of the privy chamber, swirling the snowflakes around the statue of the leaping horse in the inner courtyard. The servants have set a fire in the hearth, a talisman to ward off the worsening weather. ‘What do you make of her, Francis?’ Lumley ask of his clerk, Francis Deniker.
‘Sir Fulke may be right, my lord. A young maid of her age is highly susceptible to demonic possession,’ says Deniker uncomfortably. ‘I confess that in such cases I would have expected bodily spasms and utterings of the wildest sort, rather than silence. But if demons have stolen her powers of speech, then an exorcism may be in order.’
‘Exorcism is mere papist trickery,’ says Vaesy indignantly. ‘A good Protestant scourging will suffice to free the child.’ He studies his fingernails for a moment. ‘Of course there may be a simpler reason a cat has got her tongue.’
‘Which is?’ Lumley asks his friend.
‘Guilt – plain and simple. The child is a vagrant. I’d warrant she was skulking around the church to see what she could steal.’
‘Fulke, she’s a half-starved child!’
‘The canting sort teach their brats to steal almost before they’re out of swaddling wraps!’ Vaesy says in a tone that suggests he’s a man of the world and understands such things. ‘The parents feed them on scraps to keep them lean. The smaller they are, the easier they slip through your window.’
Lizzy Lumley, who has been sitting quietly by the fire with needle and silk, looks up from her work. ‘Come now, Sir Fulke, if those of us who are blessed with God’s good fortune turn our backs on those who have nothing, His love will not abide long in our hearts. Is that not what the Bible says?’
Lumley’s eyebrows narrow in triumph. ‘Lizzy is right. Where is your sense of charity, Fulke?’
‘Locked up safe, where brats like that can’t steal it from me.’
‘“He that hath mercy on a poor man honours his Maker” – Proverbs fourteen,’ quotes Deniker.
But Vaesy can match anyone in a biblical tennis match. ‘“And if thy right hand offends, cut it away. It serves thee better that one of thy limbs perish than all thy body go into hell” – Mathew, chapter five.’ He favours Lumley with a self-satisfied smile. ‘Give her to the parish, my lord. They’ll know what to do with a vagabond.’
‘Oh, they will, Fulke. They’ll flog her, perhaps even brand her on the hand or face. Then they’ll throw her back into the wilderness,’ says Lumley. ‘She’ll starve before spring.’
‘It looks as though someone has already branded her about the face,’ says Lizzy sadly. ‘Poor child.’
‘There we are, then,’ says Vaesy. ‘Surely you don’t intend to keep her?’
‘Master Sprint can always use another pair of hands in the kitchens,’ says John Lumley.
‘There will be thievery in her blood, mark my words,’ Vaesy warns.
‘Mercy now, Sir Fulke,’ says Lizzy, laying down her needlework, ‘surely you don’t begrudge the poor child a little shelter, at least until the weather improves. Have we forgotten the message of Christmas so quickly?’
Vaesy sighs and raises his hands in defeat. ‘I concede the field. Don’t say I didn’t attempt to warn you.’
John Lumley pours his friend a peace offering and hands him the glass. ‘There is nothing to warn us against, Fulke. The child has been sent to me by God, as a test.’
‘A test?’ says Vaesy doubtfully as he sips the Rhenish. ‘What kind of test?’
‘To discover whether a little of His love still abides in my heart. I said so last night, at prayers. Didn’t I, Lizzy?’
‘You did, Husband,’ says Lizzy, though neither man can tell by her voice what she thinks of her husband’s revelation.
‘Yesterday was the nineteenth day of January – St Wulfstan’s Day. The child came to us at Cheam church, of all places. A most providential conjunction, wouldn’t you say?’
Only the mention of Cheam church saves Fulke Vaesy from the unforgivable blunder of enquiring what St Wulfstan’s Day has to do with anything. ‘Ah, of course!’ he says expansively, ‘the anniversary of little Mary’s death. My mind was quite elsewhere. I’m sorry–’
‘So you will understand why I cannot possibly abandon a lost soul who came to me on that very day, and at the very place where her mortal remains now repose in God’s blessed rest.’
Vaesy tilts his great head slightly and savours the wine as it flows into the back of this throat. He swallows noisily and says with a breathtaking lack of tact, ‘Well, I only hope Master Deniker here is up-to-date with his inventory. You may need to consult it soon – to see what’s missing.’
As Nicholas and Bianca approach the Jackdaw on their return from the Lazar House they see a small crowd has gathered outside. Profitable trade, Bianca thinks, happily noticing no similar gathering outside the Turk’s Head. A few more shillings she can put aside for the day the pestilence returns and the Privy Council shuts the taverns and the playhouses.
And then she notices the two watchmen holding back their hounds on chain leashes. Nicholas casts her an uneasy glance.
The tavern door gapes open, almost off its hinges. And blocking the entrance – or perhaps to prevent escape – stand two men in crested militia helmets and steel breastplates, swords at their belts. Inside, another six are turning over the tavern from attic to cellar. One even carries a wheel-lock musket, as if the Jackdaw and its customers were a greater threat to England’s safety than King Philip and all his Spaniards. They have descended upon the tavern with the brutal surprise they always employ when flushing Jesuit priests out of hiding, or traitors plotting in cellars. Inside, Rose is wailing like Mary at the foot of the Cross.
The man who appears to be conducting this unholy assault emerges, wearing a face like an unwritten page. Bianca knows the type at once: an official nobody prepared to do harm because someone much higher up has given him a commission; a man wielding someone else’s power and consequently over-generous with it. Behind him comes a man-at-arms bearing Bianca’s travelling chest like a trophy won in battle. Nicholas senses Bianca stiffen as she watches the officer hold aloft a warrant from which hangs a heavy wax seal. He addresses the crowd in a voice laden with arrogance.
‘The herein named Mistress Merton is taken up by order of our sovereign majesty’s Privy Council, for diverse infringements and omissions. She is arraigned for the crimes of heresy and witchcraft. Also sought is her accomplice, one Nicholas Shelby of the county of Suffolk, a former physician, currently present in this parish. God save the Queen!’
Someone cries out, ‘Shame! Let the Privy Council find their own apothecary!’ But even as the assenting murmurs swell, another voice calls out: ‘There! There they are! There’s the witch. And there’s the one who calls himself a physician.’
For Bianca, a terrible recollection of Padua and the Holy Office of the Faith arriving to arrest her father; for Nicholas, a blinding flash of comprehension. He looks around for a glimpse of the watchers – the two men Bianca laughingly styled Leicester and Walsingham – but their work is done and they are nowhere to be seen. Instead Nicholas’s searching eyes fall upon a florid, vengeful face laughing triumphantly in the crowd. The face of the man who has just denounced them. The face of the spurned bookseller Isaac Bredwell.