‘By Carolus Stephanus. Published in Paris less than one man’s lifetime ago,’ says Lumley proudly.
‘It’s extraordinary,’ Nicholas whispers, bending forward to inspect the illustration. ‘Look at the detail, the way he depicts the veins–’
‘Yet it’s already out of date, I fear. And, worse, inaccurate.’
‘Inaccurate? It looks perfect.’
‘Aye, it’s a fine piece of work, I’ll grant you. But when Stephanus published it, he did not know that in just a few years he would discover these very veins have valves in them. Now he’s bickering with Fabricius and the others over who discovered them first. Sir Fulke Vaesy tells me that when he went to Padua to learn from the masters, he found it worse than trying to separate two women squabbling over ribbons at a market stall.’
Nicholas shakes his head in wonder. ‘When I was in Holland, one of our German doctors had studied under Stephanus,’ he says, remembering a jovial Lutheran from Saxony named Gunther. ‘He said these valves were like sluices in a river, managing the tide of the blood around the body. We all thought he was in error.’
‘And why, if I may ask?’
‘Well, if these valves are truly like sluices, when a man is wounded why do they not simply shut? Such a mechanism would prevent him bleeding to death?’
One of Lumley’s wintery eyebrows lifts a little. ‘A young physician barely out of Cambridge disputing with the great Stephanus?’
‘No dispute, my lord. Merely a question.’
Lumley returns the book to its place on the shelf. ‘There’s nothing shameful about questions, Dr Shelby,’ he says, ‘particularly in an age that demands certainty. Certainty of faith, certainty of allegiance. Equivocation is to be stamped out wherever it is found. Is that not so?’
‘So the bishops would tell us, my lord.’
‘Yet in these volumes are contained a thousand different opinions, all vehemently disagreeing with one another. This library could not exist if it were not for questions. The times have made natural philosophers of us all, have they not?’
‘I’m not a philosopher, my lord,’ Nicholas says, looking at his feet and feeling again that John Lumley is somehow testing him. ‘I’m just a humble physician.’
Lumley looks at him like a man inspecting a gem for a hidden flaw. ‘So humble, in fact, that Dr Baronsdale has never spoken of you before, though now he sends me a fulsome recommendation. How is that?’
‘I c-cannot say, my lord,’ Nicholas replies, his voice faltering. Has Lumley seen through him so easily? Is he so singularly unsuited to the role of spy and informer that his inner thoughts are as easy to read as a playbill? He’s even more certain now that Baronsdale’s letter is one of Robert Cecil’s clever forgeries.
‘A coincidence then?’
‘A very generous coincidence, my lord.’
Lumley studies him a while. Then he shrugs, his suspicions apparently forgotten. ‘Well, a fortunate one, to be sure – for both of us, I hope. Had Baronsdale been even slightly unsure of your qualities, I cannot imagine he would have recommended you. So I will trust to his judgement. And you seem like an honest man. Are you honest, Dr Shelby?’
‘In my heart I believe so, my lord,’ says Nicholas, sickened by the prospect of being the agent of this man’s destruction. He has the sudden, overwhelming urge to confess to Lumley why he’s been sent, to beg his forgiveness, to leave Nonsuch as quickly as he can, before he brings yet more grief to this beautiful but ill-starred place.
Next day, under a pale sky streaked with fine white mare’s tails, Lady Elizabeth returns to Nonsuch. She has come from the Lumley town house in London, sending a rider galloping ahead with news of her progress. He’s spotted miles off by a servant John Lumley has posted high in one of the two great minaret-like towers that flank the southern face of Nonsuch. The news sends a wave of anticipation surging through the palace. Even Francis Deniker’s priestly face seems to lighten a little.
The household gathers in the inner court. The grooms and servants line up on one side of the gatehouse, the maids and scullions are assembled on the other. Nicholas joins Quigley and Deniker by the fountain while they wait for the little party to ride in. John Lumley has put on a fine bottle-green velvet doublet trimmed with gems for the occasion. He looks every inch the senior courtier. His wintry face glows with anticipation. All eyes are on the archway at the foot of the clock tower and its six golden horoscopes.
‘His lordship always makes a goodly greeting when Lady Elizabeth has been away,’ says Francis Deniker in Nicholas’s ear as the party rides in. ‘He scarcely welcomes the queen with greater show. Look at her, she is a returning angel, a veritable angel.’
If she is, thinks Nicholas, it is only her eyes that show it. They are grey, but warm and generous, fine lines spreading out from the corners where the wind has tightened her skin. The rest of her is swaddled in a warm riding cloak with a genet-trimmed hood. As she pulls it free of her face, Nicholas sees a comely woman in her middle thirties, her fair hair gathered up beneath a linen coif, her jaw resolute, yet by no means given to seriousness. With a ready smile and easy manner, she seems the perfect counterbalance to John Lumley’s stern Northumbrian gloom. Nicholas takes to her immediately.
‘I trust my husband has put you somewhere warm, sir,’ she says with a mischievous gleam in her eye. ‘He is notorious for being parsimonious with firewood.’ She turns to John Lumley and kisses his cheek. ‘A little more warmth around the place might soothe away some of those furrows on your brow, Husband.’
‘These, madam, come from trying to govern an unruly household,’ Lumley replies with a theatrical wag of one forefinger.
They are an oddly mismatched couple, Nicholas thinks. There must be a full twenty years between them. On the surface they seem complete opposites. Yet they clearly adore each other. Nicholas’s heart sinks – Robert Cecil had not warned him that the man he is to destroy is a doting husband to an adoring wife.
As he watches Lady Lumley greeting the rest of the assembled household, Nicholas’s attention is caught by one of the servants. Standing beside the man he now knows to be Sprint, the head cook, is a girl of perhaps thirteen or so. She keeps looking around uncertainly from within the wide wings of a bonnet. It’s clearly not her own – it’s an adult’s bonnet and far too big for her. She looks like a fox cub that’s woken from a deep sleep to find itself in an unfamiliar place.
And he can’t help but notice that while everyone else is chattering, exchanging pleasantries, rejoicing at Lady Elizabeth’s safe return, the child remains silent. She doesn’t even join in when the chamber-maids begin to sing a pretty hosanna to welcome their mistress home. Is this the mute servant John Lumley had mentioned at that first supper? For a reason Nicholas can’t explain, he’d assumed Lumley was talking about an adult. He studies the girl more closely.
Her silence has an almost physical strength to it. It’s far more than shyness, it’s as though something inside her has been fashioned not from flesh, but stone. She seems clearly part of the household, yet as distant from it as he is from Eleanor. He cannot take his eyes off her. For an instant he even harbours the wild notion she might be Elise Cullen. But there are several girls of her age amongst the Lumley staff, so he quickly rejects the idea as his own wishful thinking.