‘I owe Master Nicholas my life,’ Ned says. ‘The least I can do is find out who’s slandered him.’
Rose marvels that such a fearsome carapace can hold such a good heart. She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Master Nicholas needs you here, to help me make sure the labourers don’t rebuild the Jackdaw with the roof on upside-down. Besides, I know what you’re like. You’ll be no use to him if you’re arrested for affray.’
‘But I must do something.’
‘We’ll put our heads together after you’ve rested from your journey,’ Rose says. ‘You must be tired.’
‘Tired of being an ’usband without a wife,’ Ned says, scooping up Rose in his arms as easily as if she were filled with goose-down – which, on bad days, Bianca claims is nearer the truth than it should be, especially the head part. He carries her towards the stairs like a prize.
‘Been hungry while we’ve been apart, ’ave you, ’Usband?’ she asks coyly.
‘Ravenous,’ he replies, opening his mouth like a great fish. ‘Them Nonsuch servant maids are all bone and gristle.’
‘You’ll need something you can get your teeth into then, I suppose.’ She gives his beard a playful tug. ‘Serious, though – someone needs to find the wretch what denounced Master Nicholas, else your fine mane will be grey as winter before he and Mistress Bianca can return home.’
‘I shall give the matter my most careful attention,’ Ned promises as he starts to climb the stairs, ‘right after I’ve ’ad a good rummage through the larder.’
The two Spanish soldiers leaving the cathedral of St John the Evangelist in Den Bosch are clearly men of some mark. It shows in the quality of the corselets and padded breeches they wear, slashed to reveal stripes of crimson silk, and in the silver hilts of the swords of fine Toledo steel at their belts. It shows, too, in the haughty disdain with which they look down upon the burghers and their womenfolk. Provincial, they would call them contemptuously. Utterly lacking the vivacidad of the Spanish.
‘Take as an example that peasant girl there,’ says their leader, a somewhat portly Castilian of middle years whose burnished breastplate has been let out more than a little since he was first fitted for it at the Escorial in Madrid, ‘the one staring at the cathedral as though she’s never seen a house of God before. Comelier than most Netherlanders, I’ll grant, but just look at that scowl. To think that we shed fine Spanish blood trying to save the likes of her from the Lutheran heresy!’
‘I know her, Don Antonio,’ says his companion, the captain of the city’s Spanish garrison.
‘You’ve had her? I hope you washed her first.’
‘Mercy, no! The swineherd doesn’t lie with his pigs, does he?’ the captain of the garrison replies. ‘She preached here, in the square, until Father Vermeiren put a stop to it.’
‘Preached? She knows her Bible? Surely a vagrant such as she cannot read.’
‘She was railing at the likes of the Pole, Copernicus, shouting at the top of her voice that man has no business delving into our Lord’s plan for the cosmos.’
‘Well, at least the wretch knows heresy when she hears it,’ Don Antonio says with a hearty laugh.
‘She said it serves only to let Satan deceive us. The parts I heard sounded very shrill.’
The Castilian shakes his head in wonder at the manner of barbarian he has been set amongst, and then forgets the wild-eyed maid as though she had been a mere shadow and not a woman at all.
Don Antonio considers himself a man of no mean station. He is well educated, widely travelled and cultured, especially in matters of the arts. He has been sent to Den Bosch by Archduke Ernst of Austria, currently enjoying the pleasures of Antwerp in the aftermath of his triumphal entry at the head of a Spanish army into that city. And he has more important things to think about than a young woman in the threadbare gown of a Beguine staring like a mad thing at a cathedral.
‘Speaking of Satan, Don Antonio,’ says the captain of the garrison, jabbing a gloved finger back over his shoulder, ‘the fellow who painted that thing in there… what sort of man could possibly imagine such depravity? No Spanish church would tolerate a blasphemy like that for a moment. We’d burn it – and the painter along with it: palette, brushes, oils, pigments… the lot.’
‘Brabantian food and Brabantian weather,’ suggests Don Antonio. ‘They rot the mind. Quite why His Excellency the archduke wants it in his collection is beyond me. But that’s an Austrian for you.’
‘If it were hanging on my wall, it would give me nightmares,’ says the captain of the garrison. ‘The deepest mineshaft is where I’d put it, or in a weighted crate at the bottom of the sea.’
‘Ah, but you know little about fine art, my friend,’ says Don Antonio. ‘And what an archduke wants…’
The two men reach the place where the grooms are waiting with their horses – Andalusian stallions, each with a hindleg bent slightly and resting on a tilted hoof, for all the world like a pair of bored courtiers awaiting a royal audience.
‘I shall return in a few days, to make the appropriate arrangements with the Church authorities,’ the Castilian says, presenting the offered stirrup with a foot clad in the supplest Valencian leather. ‘But one thing is clear to me. Be it the food, the weather or the imaginings of a deranged mind, if Signor Hieronymus van Aken is correct in what he has depicted in that painting, we’d best start offering the Lord rather more Hail Marys than we do at present.’
7
Next morning in Yeoman Shelby’s farmhouse there is a sombre mood, at odds with the joyousness of the night before. Quiet farewells are said. Leave is taken, embraces exchanged. Tears are shed, visible and secret. A cart is prepared and harnessed to the placid old Suffolk punch that does the heavy lifting at Barnthorpe, ready to carry Nicholas and Bianca to Woodbridge. Nicholas knows, from his conversation with his father last night, that there is a Dutch herring boat moored there. But there is no safety to be had by announcing their entry into the town, so they will remain in the cart, hidden beneath a sheet of tarred flax until the last practical moment.
‘The horses we brought – you’d best cover up their brands,’ Nicholas tells his father. ‘It’s unlikely a Privy Council searcher would know the Tabard’s mark, but better not to take unnecessary chances.’
He gives the members of his family one last embrace and climbs aboard the cart. He settles down with Bianca on the hard wooden planks and pulls the sheet of flax over them. He hears Jack’s muffled voice urging the punch forward, feels the wheels turn and the cart lurch. He cannot bring himself to lift the sheet and look back.
‘It’s safe,’ Jack Shelby calls as he brings the old Suffolk punch to a halt in a narrow lane by the Bell tavern in Woodbridge. ‘There’s no one about.’
Throwing back the cover, Nicholas and Bianca climb down from the cart. Jack helps them unload the bags they’ve taken off the Tabard’s horses. ‘Don’t leave our parents to wonder what’s become of you, Brother,’ Jack warns. ‘Not like you did when–’ He stops, glancing at Bianca.
‘It’s all right, Jack. She knows all about Eleanor.’
Jack nods in understanding. ‘Aye, well, not as long as that, eh?’
‘I promise.’
‘What do you want me to do with the horses?’
‘Next time there’s a flock being driven down to London, have someone take them to the Tabard in Southwark. Put out the word they were found on Blackheath.’ He hands Jack a few half-angels. ‘Here, that’s to pay for the trouble. They might even get a reward from the landlord.’