‘John Lumley is a patron of the College of Physicians,’ says Nicholas, ramming his fingernails into his palms to keep himself under control. ‘He likes discussing new ideas.’
‘Oh, I know who he is, Dr Shelby.’ Robert Cecil turns his face to the panelled ceiling as though this knowledge is just one more trial he must bear. ‘Let me suggest an alternative to you. It is this: Mistress Merton’s papist masters send their seditious instructions to her disguised in medical books. You then convey those instructions – in your letters – to the noble lord, their true destination. To an observer: merely two medical men having a learned discourse by post. To me: treason.’
‘As a diagnosis, that’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘Good enough for a jury and a hanging judge, Dr Shelby.’
‘I only wrote to him a couple of weeks ago. He barely knows me.’
‘Yet he has invited you to Nonsuch; opened the doors of his abominable trove of heresies to you. How very generous of him. Why would he do that?’
‘I wanted to seek his advice on a certain medical matter. And it’s just a library, that’s all.’
Robert Cecil studies Nicholas in silence for a while. Then he says with a reasonableness that takes Nicholas utterly off-guard, ‘And all I ask of you, Dr Shelby, is to enter it for me.’
‘Then why all this?’ Nicholas says angrily with a sweep of his arm. ‘Why not just ask me? I was going anyway.’
‘Because I want you to spy for me. I want an informer in John Lumley’s nest of heresy.’ He casts a glance towards Fulke Vaesy. ‘Sadly, my last one is not now as welcome as he once was.’
‘Why would I turn informer, just to please you?’
‘Have you so easily forgotten Mistress Merton – this woman to whom you owe such a debt?’
‘Bianca?’
Robert Cecil sweeps a hand across the books and the Petrine cross. ‘This is damning evidence, Dr Shelby. I can easily ensure Bianca Merton hangs for heresy and treason – if she’s lucky. Otherwise, she will burn.’
The sickening realization of just how easily Robert Cecil has played him leaves Nicholas speechless.
‘You can save her, if you desire. It’s really up to you.’
Nicholas stares at Robert Cecil, open-mouthed. ‘And if I agree?’
‘You have it on my word that Mistress Merton will be returned unharmed to Bankside, where she may continue to gull the impressionable, along with all the other charlatans and knaves practising there.’
‘And what exactly am I supposed to find at Nonsuch?’ Nicholas asks. ‘Being an informer wasn’t on the curriculum at Cambridge.’
Robert Cecil leans back in his chair with a smile of self-satisfied innocence. ‘You’re the physician, Dr Shelby. Surely you know what contagion looks like when you see it.’
Master Sprint is showing Betony how to pluck pigeons.
‘Take a few feathers at a time, but briskly – like this,’ he says gently. He knows she’s understood him, but like a man having a conversation with his dog, he does not actually expect a reply.
Since the day he discovered the inverted crosses scratched into the soot by the bread-ovens, Sprint has watched the girl they have named Betony closely. He’s watched for the slightest sign of malignity or devilry. He has seen none. Joanna, his assistant – beside whom Betony sleeps at night – reports that the girl appears diligent in her prayers, always kneeling with her hands clasped and her head bowed, though what she actually says to God remains a secret only they share. As to who Betony is, and where she’s come from, no one at Nonsuch is any the wiser.
Though Sprint does not know it, Elise has come close to breaking her own self-imposed silence several times in recent days. For a start, she wants everyone to know how wonderfully warm she is, warmer than she can ever remember being. The thick walls of the Nonsuch kitchens trap the heat, and the embers in the central hearth are high enough to take a martyr waist-deep. Her whole body seems aglow. If only little Ralphie were here, she would be content – almost.
As she works she watches the scullions scrubbing grease off the roasting spits. They look just like the lads she used to play with on the banks of Battle Abbey creek. She sneaks a brief upward glance at Sprint. He’s standing close to her, closer than she would have ever tolerated barely days ago. Even in his bloodstained apron, he is surely no Devil’s minion. He’s far too kind.
The men and women of the household treat her civilly now. That’s taken a deal of getting used to. And the womenfolk especially are beginning to grant her their minor secrets, secure in their belief she cannot reveal them.
And what of their master, Lord Lumley – the man she had once assumed was foremost amongst these servants of Satan? He is never less than kind to her. True, he seems to think of her as an object to be studied, her dimensions and character measured and catalogued. Yet he shows no displeasure at her refusal to speak. Never even raises his voice – unlike his friend, the great physician who had come from the queen to make her talk and is now apparently unwelcome at Nonsuch. She hasn’t seen him for days.
Yet despite the warmth and the kindness, Elise still can’t quite lay aside her fears. Like the hind supping from the stream, a part of her is still alert for the rustle in the trees that warns of the hunter’s approach.
A misty morning, the tide low and the stink of mud and carrion drifting up from the river. In mid-stream the barges drift towards the city under slack sails. Beyond them Nicholas can just discern the outline of Lambeth Palace. It appears to be settling into the marsh.
He makes his way towards the private river stairs where they landed the previous night. Bianca, flanked by two bored servants in Cecil livery, watches him approach. She’s wearing the same serge overgown and the brocade kirtle in which she was taken from the Jackdaw. Her hair looks as wild as Medusa’s. She puts her hands to the sides of her brow and runs the fingers back to untangle it. The familiar habit is like an accusation to him.
‘Marry, someone has turned the night to his profit!’ she observes with a raised eyebrow, taking in the smart doublet of London russet trimmed with black lace that Robert Cecil has given him to wear, because he doesn’t want one of his people walking around Cecil House looking like a vagabond.
‘You should have told me, Bianca. It would have meant nothing to me. I would have kept your secret.’
‘Told you what?’ she asks, looking him up and down. ‘Where to find a good tailor?’
‘That you practised the old faith.’
‘That’s my concern, not yours.’
‘Robert Cecil threatened to use your father’s books and his Petrine cross to hang you for sedition,’ he tells her, his anger burned out almost before the words have left his mouth. ‘I struck a deal. He’s changed his mind.’
‘A deal? What are we to Robert Cecil that he makes deals with us?’
‘It’s me, Bianca. I’m the one he wanted. You’re being sent back to Southwark, a free woman. You’re to say nothing other than that the charges were a false denunciation.’
She looks so small, standing between the two Cecil men. Yet she stands squarely on the jetty as though she means to stop an army passing. ‘Really? And how much of himself did Mister Nicholas Shelby have to sell to arrange that?’
There is no other way Nicholas can think of couching it, so he tells her, ‘There is a man he wants me to betray.’
She almost laughs. ‘You’re not the betraying kind, Nicholas. You’re too honest. Who is this man anyway?’
‘It’s John Lumley. The man I wrote to. The one I thought could help us.’
‘Am I permitted to know why?’
Nicholas hopes she cannot see the lie in his eyes. ‘It’s complicated.’