‘Jesu, what’s going to happen to us, Nicholas?’ whispers Bianca, grabbing his arm.
‘I don’t know. I suppose it depends on what they think we’re guilty of,’ Nicholas tells her, his throat dry, his fists clenched. And before he can stop himself, he adds, ‘Are we guilty, Bianca? Is there something you haven’t thought to tell me – something in that travelling chest of yours they took from the Jackdaw?’
Outside, the night has grown even colder. Nicholas hurries along one side of a wide courtyard, flanked by the sergeant-at-arms. The man has one hand cupped over the guard of his sword, just to let his prisoner know how easy it would be to run him through, should the thought of escape ever enter his mind.
Through leaded windows he catches glimpses of gowned clerks hard at work by candlelight. A chapel bell strikes ten. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast and now hunger has attached itself to the litany of his miseries. If Eleanor were alive, he thinks, at least there’d be the hope of a return to cling to, the promise of comfort and solace. That at least would give me the strength to face whatever lies ahead.
An imposing façade of brickwork and mullioned glass. Tall chimneys that disappear before they ever reach the sky. Everything robbed of form by the night and the dark, suffocating clouds… These are the impressions reeling in his head as the sergeant shoves Nicholas through a side-door. Though he’s relieved to be out of the night, he has no time to get his bearings. A steward in livery stands at the foot of a narrow spiral stairway. ‘Follow me,’ he commands, as if he were an executioner and the steps the way to the scaffold.
It is a fine oak-panelled room hung with expensive Flanders tapestries. At one end is a tall window glittering with the reflected light of the fire blazing in the hearth. In front of the window is a desk piled high with documents. It is a government desk. A Privy Councillor’s desk. Beyond the window: nothing but the night.
A slight man of about Nicholas’s age stands behind the desk. His shoulders stoop like a falcon mantling over its prey. He has a pale, intense face that narrows from a broad forehead to a sharp, dagger-point of a beard. He appraises Nicholas through coldly intelligent eyes.
‘Welcome to Cecil House, Dr Shelby. I am Robert Cecil.’
Nicholas is almost speechless. From the moment in the street when the sergeant-at-arms had called out ‘Robert Cecil’s men!’, he’s known that the Lord Treasurer’s son is the instigator of tonight’s events. But he has not once imagined he would stand before the courtier in the flesh. Stunned, he remains motionless for a few seconds, until the weight of the sergeant’s hand on his shoulder and a savage jab to the back of his right leg forces him to bend his knee in an ungainly stagger.
‘What have you done to him, Harris?’ Cecil asks of the sergeant, who steps back a pace as Nicholas regains his balance. ‘He looks as though he’s already spent a week at the mercies of the Lieutenant of the Tower. I told you not to harm him.’
‘I swear upon the holy cross, sir, we have handled him with restraint, as you commanded. He was in this condition when we took him from the Marshalsea.’
It dawns on Nicholas that, after six days in a cell, he must look again like the derelict he once was.
Robert Cecil regards him with amused interest. He seems to be sizing him up, measuring what he sees against an image he already has in his head. Then he turns his unsettling gaze towards the fire, where a second man sits in silence, his face hidden by the shadows.
‘I trust he’s not in his cups,’ Cecil says, addressing the dark figure in the chair. ‘You assured me he hasn’t been seen cut with ale since before Christmas. He’ll be no use to me otherwise.’
‘I have it on good authority from the warden of St Thomas’s hospital that he has been sober throughout his employment,’ comes the reply in a loud, familiar boom. The man in the chair leans forward, his bearded, heavyset face emerging into the firelight. ‘“Wine is a lecherous thing, and drunkenness is full of noise; whoever delighteth in these shall not be wise”,’ quotes Sir Fulke Vaesy portentously. ‘Is that not what the Bible tells us, Dr Shelby?’
30
Robert Cecil toys with the embossed face of a huge gold ring that he wears on his left middle finger. He raises one cloaked arm, giving Nicholas the impression he’s preparing to flap those crooked shoulders and take flight. He snaps his fingers at the steward and says, ‘Bring Dr Shelby some ease. He looks as though he’s about to fall over.’
The steward fetches a chair from the far side of the study and Nicholas sinks into it without being aware of having moved.
‘I take it this truly is Dr Shelby, Sir Fulke?’ Robert Cecil says amiably. ‘Harris hasn’t snatched some cut-purse off the streets of Southwark by mischance?’
Vaesy leaves his chair and comes close to Nicholas, wrinkling his nose as though Nicholas was a cadaver at one of his dissections. ‘It’s him,’ he says at length. ‘Reduced somewhat from the last time I saw him. Lost a little around the face. But, without question, the same man.’
‘Good. Then tonight we may hope for some satisfactory answers.’
‘Answers? I have nothing to answer for,’ Nicholas protests. ‘And while we’re speaking of answers, perhaps you could provide me with some of my own: like why I have been brought here? Why has Bianca Merton been brought here?’
Burghley’s crook-backed son does not answer. He makes a show of spreading out the books on his desk, opening each one in turn and briefly studying the frontispiece. He looks like a lawyer assembling evidence. Then, without warning, he picks up one of the books and throws it towards Nicholas. Caught off-guard, Nicholas almost fumbles the catch. The pages of the book flutter like the wings of a startled bird.
‘How is your Latin, Dr Shelby?’ Cecil asks.
‘There’s not much call for it in Southwark,’ Nicholas answers warily.
‘I should imagine not. But you surely can’t have forgotten it in only a matter of months. Please translate the title of that book for me. I want to hear it from your own mouth.’
‘What is this about?’
‘Just read, please, Dr Shelby.’
The book is about six inches by three, a little over two inches thick. The paper is crisp, the dense black type slightly tilted on the page, through either the carelessness or the hurry of the printer. On the frontispiece is a small illustration of Hippocrates treating his patients on the steps of a Greek temple. Nicholas translates: ‘A miraculous insight into diverse and wondrous systems of physic.’
‘Printed where?’
‘Padua,’ Nicholas says, reading the line at the foot of the page, ‘in the year of Our Lord 1586.’
‘Indeed – Padua.’
‘It’s in Italy.’
‘I know where Padua is, Dr Shelby. I’m more interested in the author.’
Nicholas looks for the name and finds it written across the base of the temple. ‘Simon–’ He falls silent as his eyes focus upon the second word.
‘You were about to say?’
‘Merton. The author is Simon Merton.’
Robert Cecil smiles and stretches his ‘thank you’ almost to breaking point. He throws Nicholas a second volume, a little larger than the first. This time Nicholas catches it easily. He opens the cover and reads: ‘A treatise on the efficacy of several ancient decoctions of flora, as practised in ancient times upon the Veneto.’
‘Not a title that reads trippingly, I’ll grant you,’ says Robert Cecil. ‘But it will suffice. The author again, Dr Shelby, if you please…’
Nicholas inspects the title page.