Bianca lets out a gasp of exasperation. ‘I’ll rack you myself, if you don’t hurry up with your needlework. Jesu, girl – you’re a monstrous trial to me!’
Rose sets to work viciously with her bodkin, making little hissing noises as she jams the end against the linen, as if it were an instrument of hot torture and the fabric human skin.
Yes, life at the Jackdaw is almost back to normal.
Nicholas has barely crossed the spacious lawn – complete with neatly trimmed box hedges and its own bowling green – before he’s entranced. He lets his eyes wander in disbelief over the gleaming white towers, the soaring minarets, the high walls topped by stone gods and heroes of antiquity. Christ’s wounds, he thinks, whatever they say about King Henry, the old monster knew what he was doing when he built mystical, soul-lifting Nonsuch.
He rides beneath the arch of the gatehouse and enters a wide courtyard. The sides are two storeys high. They’re set with herringbone brick under a blue slate roof, the windows framed with exquisite carvings of fantastical beasts. Glancing back, he sees a great bronze sundial emblazoned with the signs of the zodiac set above the arch. It’s supported by three brightly painted stucco lions, quartered with fleurs-de-lys and flanked by a greyhound and a dragon – the coat of arms of Henry Tudor. A servant approaches and takes the bridle of his horse while he dismounts. A lanky man with a shaven head and pockmarked face bustles towards him, dressed in a formal gown. Nicholas recognizes him at once.
‘I give you good day, Master Shelby,’ says Gabriel Quigley, without extending a hand in greeting. ‘Follow me, please. We expected you some time ago.’ Silently Quigley leads Nicholas through a second gatehouse opposite the first.
They emerge into the heart of Nonsuch.
For a moment Nicholas thinks he’s standing in some magnificent Italian palazzo. The inner face of the second gatehouse is a high clock tower set with six golden horoscopes, while ahead of him is a great fountain capped by a rearing marble horse. Beyond it gleam the painted plaster walls of the royal chambers. Two stucco Roman emperors gaze imperiously past him into eternity, one a mature man with a beard, the other much younger. Nicholas assumes they are meant to depict Henry and his shortlived son, Edward.
‘Hurry, Master Physician,’ Quigley says, turning at the top of the entrance steps to see Nicholas staring around like a country green-head newly arrived in the city. ‘Lord Lumley is waiting.’
John Lumley is sitting in a high-backed chair that is very nearly a throne. His private study is a fine panelled chamber off the empty royal apartments, draped with expensive Flemish tapestries. It seems to be the only room with a lit fire. Lumley’s hose-clad feet are stretched out towards the hearth. He sports a long spade-cut beard and a pearl-studded cap on his head. The dark folds of a scholar’s gown flow out below a neatly starched ruff.
‘Mr Shelby! It is a pleasure to wish you God’s good day. Welcome! Come in, please do come in,’ he says without rising. His voice has a distinct Northumbrian burr to it.
Nicholas makes an extravagant bend of the knee. He might be invited, but his host is still a lord.
‘Master Baronsdale is most fulsome in your praise,’ Lumley says, lifting a parchment from a small table beside the chair. ‘He sent this letter of recommendation.’
Nicholas is forced to admire Robert Cecil’s preparation. He guesses the President of the College of Physicians has no idea he’s written any such letter – men like the Cecils employ clever servants skilled in forgery. ‘I’m sure it’s quite unwarranted, my lord,’ he says uncomfortably.
‘Nevertheless, it is always good to have the opportunity to converse with the younger fellows in the profession,’ says Lumley, one lugubrious eye coming close to a wink. ‘If the only people I listened to were the likes of Baronsdale and Vaesy, my understanding of science would like as not go backwards rather than forwards.’ He rises from his chair and shakes Nicholas by the hand. ‘Forgive me if your welcome is not as warm as might be thought proper, only Lady Elizabeth is in London. She keeps on at me to light a fire in almost every room. I don’t think she has the slightest idea of how many rooms we actually have, or how many men we need to gather the firewood.’ He laughs affectionately. ‘She’s a D’Arcy – from the county of Essex. You’d think she’d be used to a draught or two.’
‘Your invitation alone is worth a thousand warm welcomes, my lord. It is far more than I expected.’
Lumley turns to Gabriel Quigley. ‘Dr Shelby has had a long ride, Gabriel. We should fetch him some hippocras.’
‘I don’t take spirits, my lord,’ says Nicholas, trying to keep the consternation out of his voice, and fearing he just sounds rude as a consequence.
‘A young physician who doesn’t sup? Whatever next? Don’t tell me you’re a Puritan, Dr Shelby.’
‘No, of course not. It’s just that–’
‘Fear not, the inebriation is quite boiled out of it,’ Lumley says. ‘It won’t bring you harm.’
He knows, thinks Nicholas. Vaesy, or someone else, has told him about what happened to me after Eleanor. The understanding does not bode well. What kind of informer will he be, if the man he’s been sent to spy on can see through him so easily?
Supper that evening is taken in Lumley’s privy apartments. It proves something of a mixed pottage. Quigley remains taciturn, barely engaging in the scientific discourse, even when Lumley asks for his opinion. In the candlelight his pockmarked skin looks like the surface of one of Rose’s puddings. Why is Quigley so sullen? Nicholas wonders. Has he already guessed why I’m really here? Or is Lumley’s secretary guarding his master’s library a little too jealously? An abominable trove of heresies, that’s what Robert Cecil thinks it is. Could he be right?
Lumley’s clerk, Francis Deniker, proves to be little better company. A gentle-looking man in his fifties with little wings of grey hair curling behind his ears, his gaze seems directed permanently downwards. He looks like a priest or a schoolmaster. And he seems evasive, unwilling to talk much about himself. Nicholas gets the distinct impression that Deniker’s reserved conversation is a coverlet designed to obscure what lies beneath. He’s like a physician who doesn’t want to give you bad news.
Only John Lumley seems completely at ease. He speaks with great knowledge on subjects that, on occasion, enter the realm of the positively dangerous: like who should reign when the queen is no longer alive, and whether science – rather than religion – might one day prove if there really is a place called Purgatory or not. At this, Deniker suffers an explosive fit of coughing.
Is John Lumley testing him? Nicholas wonders. Is he watching to see how his guest reacts to controversy? Whatever his motives, by the time the dessert arrives – a miraculous apple-and-cinnamon tart – it seems Nicholas has passed the examination.
‘Stay as long as you like, Dr Shelby,’ Lumley says. ‘It pleases me to imagine what wondrous discoveries in physic are yet to be made, and it is good to have a receptive ear. You don’t cluck like old Lopez, or try to tell me there’s no new knowledge to be found, like Fulke Vaesy does.’
‘No new knowledge, my lord? How can that be?’
‘Fulke says we’re only rediscovering what man used to know already – knowledge that was lost after the first sin.’
‘That explains a lot.’
‘Tomorrow I’ll show you the library. I think you’ll find it instructive.’
‘I’m sure I will, my lord.’