‘Simon Merton,’ he says, struggling to keep his voice empty.
‘Again?’
‘It’s written by Simon Merton.’
‘And are you familiar with this Simon Merton?’
‘Not personally. I assume you’re going to tell me he’s related to Bianca Merton.’
‘You’re ahead of me already, Dr Shelby,’ says Cecil, clapping his small, be-ringed hands. ‘Well done. So, Mistress Merton has told you about this father of hers.’
‘Her father? Yes, a little.’
‘What do know of him?’
‘He was an English merchant, an apothecary. He lived in Padua. He died on their voyage to England. That’s all I know.’
‘In fact, Dr Shelby, he died in a cell, accused of heresy and witchcraft. His heretical theories – which were apparently even too much for the papists to stomach – are contained in these books. We found them in the possession of his daughter.’
Nicholas flicks through the pages of the two volumes Robert Cecil threw at him. It doesn’t take him long. ‘You’ve read them, have you – these books? You understand them?’
‘Sir Fulke has made a preliminary investigation. He will confirm everything I have just said.’
‘Master Robert is indeed correct,’ says Vaesy, nodding eagerly. ‘Simon Merton was a charlatan, and in no small measure a medical heretic. So much so that the Romish authorities saw fit to arrest and imprison him.’
Robert Cecil makes a play of bewilderment. ‘Mercy, to what level of sinfulness must a man sink before even the papist legionaries of the Antichrist find him too hot to the touch?’
Though he has no idea what Simon Merton looked like, Nicholas can imagine him brimming with Bianca’s spirit, as he damns everyone from the Chancellor of Padua University to the Pope in Rome for not allowing him the chance to practise his physic openly.
‘Do these titles suggest anything to you, Dr Shelby?’ Robert Cecil asks.
‘Of course they do. They’re medical textbooks.’
‘I was thinking more of the environment in which they were written and printed.’
‘Italy?’
‘The land wherein dwells the Bishop of Rome, in his foul pit of ungodliness. These are papist tracts, are they not?’
Nicholas tries desperately not to laugh at the preposterous notion that healing can have a religious dimension, let alone a political one. ‘Medicine is not religious faith,’ he protests, ‘it’s just medicine.’
‘Just medicine?’
‘Have you read Galen, sir?’
‘I have attended dissertations at Cambridge and the Sorbonne. Of course I’ve read Galen.’
‘Then you’ll know he was a Roman – a pagan. Hippocrates was a Greek. Also a pagan. But we still believe everything they wrote. If I cross the Narrow Sea to France, fall over and break my leg, does that make the fracture Catholic?’
Cecil regards him with icy suspicion. ‘Thought, Dr Shelby. That’s what’s in these books. Foreign thought. And even if what you say is true, might not a papist physician – or even an apothecary – carry the message of the Antichrist hidden amongst words of learning?’
‘That’s preposterous.’
‘Is it? You have no idea how cleverly these people disseminate their vile philosophy. Only last month we hanged and quartered a Jesuit priest who’d disguised himself as a peddler. He had the abominable devices of his ministry hidden in his box of ribbons!’
‘These are just medical books!’
Robert Cecil leans back in his chair. He watches Nicholas with practised detachment. Then he reaches down and lifts an object from amongst the papers. Flashes of reflected firelight dart into the shadows from its gleaming silver limbs.
‘Has Mistress Merton ever shown you this before?’ he asks, holding up a silver crucifix barely the length of his hand.
Nicholas stares at the little figure pinioned to the cross, its arms outstretched, its head tilted towards one shoulder. The way the letters PP have been stamped into the metal show clearly the way the crucifix is meant to be displayed: inverted.
Everything holy turned on its head.
31
‘You appear a little lost for words, Dr Shelby. Here – take it,’ Robert Cecil says, holding out the crucifix. ‘If your soul is pure, it should not trouble your eternal sleep – much.’
‘What is this?’ whispers Nicholas as he turns the cold silver in his fingers.
‘It’s a Petrine cross, or so I am informed by those who understand the meaning of papist symbols. The letters PP are the Latin cipher for Peter the Fisherman.’ Robert Cecil thrusts a finger in the direction of the crucifix. ‘That’s him, hanging upside-down like a common street acrobat. He desired to be martyred in that manner because he thought himself unworthy to die in the same way as Our Lord. We found it amongst your Mistress Merton’s possessions. Did you know she was a papist, a disciple of the Antichrist, Dr Shelby?’
Nicholas hesitates, not because he thinks the silver crucifix will endanger his soul, but because it’s Bianca’s secret and he feels like an intruder. ‘Oh, Bianca, why didn’t you tell me? It wouldn’t have mattered,’ he whispers. Then, to Robert Ceciclass="underline" ‘I will swear on the Bible that I never witnessed Bianca Merton engage in any rite or practice contrary to the new faith.’
‘That will not help her in the slightest,’ says Robert Cecil, taking back the crucifix and laying it down like a winning card in a game of primero.
‘I’ll pay the recusancy fine. Whatever it is.’ Beneath the bluster, Nicholas loathes his own inadequacy.
‘With what? I understand you’re barely more prosperous than the patients who come to see you at St Thomas’s. I’d guess you’ll have to swim back to Bankside, for lack of the wherry fare.’
‘There’s a bridge. I’ll walk.’
Robert Cecil shakes his head in faux-admiration. ‘What exactly is this woman to you? Are you in love with her?’
Nicholas colours. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘Then tell me, what is it like? I’m eager to know.’
‘She gave me a second chance – when I’d lost everything.’
‘And consequently you feel you owe her a debt? Is that it?’
‘Yes, I do. A debt – that’s exactly what I owe her.’
Burghley’s crook-backed son draws his gown around his shoulders, settles in his chair and smiles. ‘You were right, Sir Fulke. Over-sentimentality. It’s a grievous fault in the young. If ever Spain comes against us again, our young gallants will be too busy writing tearful sonnets to stop them.’
Nicholas has the urgent need to lean across Robert Cecil’s desk and ram his fist into that manipulative face, to strike the entire head off those crooked shoulders.
‘We also found this in your own chamber at the Jackdaw, Dr Shelby. Do you recognize it?’
Nicholas takes the expensive sheet of parchment Robert Cecil has lifted from his desk. As he reads the lines of neat script, his eyes moisten with tears of anger and frustration:
To Master Nicholas Shelby, right worthy gentleman of physic, greetings… Send to me a more detailed account of your spheres of interest… and should you seek the aid of far greater minds than mine own poor one, you are most heartily welcome at Nonsuch to avail yourself of the wisdom to be found in my humble library there…
‘Revelation upon revelation,’ says Robert Cecil in disbelief. ‘Imagine it: the noble Lord Lumley in correspondence with a lapsed physician who’s spent the last few months drunk under a hedge in the Pike Garden! Has God rearranged the social order while I was asleep?’