‘Antwerp, you said,’ muses van der Molen as the last of the herring casks have been rolled onto the quay.
‘If you can; we’ll make it worth your while.’
‘Oh, the son of a Sea Beggar will be taking no coin from another enemy of Spain. Have no fear on that score.’
‘That’s very generous of you, Master van der Molen.’
‘But I’d steer clear of Antwerp, if I were you.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve come from there. The Archduke of Austria rode into the city a short while back, at the head of a body of Spanish troops. He’s making Antwerp and Brussels the twin centres of his authority in the Spanish Netherlands. His spies are everywhere, making sure the rebels don’t slip inside the city and take a potshot at him.’
Bianca has picked up the word Antwerp and seen the cautionary look on van der Molen’s face.
‘What’s wrong, Nicholas?’
‘He’s saying Antwerp is too dangerous for us. We’ll have to think of somewhere else to go ashore.’
‘Tell him to think of somewhere they have shops and dancing,’ she says. ‘I’ll follow you anywhere, Nicholas, as long as it’s not tedious. I draw the line at tedious.’
‘Can you land us somewhere else, Meneer?’ Nicholas says in Dutch. ‘Somewhere my wife won’t go mad with boredom.’
The master laughs. ‘I’ll take you to my home town. It’s just below the River Maas, around twenty leagues from Antwerp. It’s still occupied by the Spanish, but the garrison is small. Not so many spies.’
‘That sounds perfect,’ Nicholas says, thanking him. ‘I know the Low Countries a little. What is the name of this town?’
‘’s-Hertogenbosch,’ van der Molen says proudly. ‘But we call it Den Bosch.’
8
Southwark, London, 29th June 1594
Ned Monkton watches the labourers at work on the reconstruction of the Jackdaw and thinks himself the least gainfully employed man on Bankside. He is overjoyed to be back with Rose, but Mistress Bianca’s wish to have him here to help oversee the work seems something of an extravagance. There is not a soul who would dare short-change Bianca Merton. Most of the men at work here are former customers. More than a few have had need to visit Bianca’s apothecary shop or call upon Nicholas’s healing skills, if not for themselves, then for their families. They want to see the Jackdaw open again as much as anyone. Indeed, the brickwork is already climbing like a red creeper between the stout oak posts. The thatchers come by almost every other day to ask when they will be needed. Ned wishes only that he could let Nicholas and Bianca know how the project has become a source of pride throughout the lanes south of London Bridge.
Ned is not the wisest man on Bankside, though he is far from being the dullest. He does, however, possess a mind made brutally efficient through hardship. And he is determined to track down and expose the man who denounced Nicholas as an accomplice of the unfortunate Dr Roderigo Lopez. He has asked everyone he can think of if they have heard even the slightest rumour, from the wherrymen who ply their trade on the river to the cut-purses who send their customers back to the other shore with nothing but neat little tears in their cloaks as a memento of their visit. But they can tell him nothing. He has even pestered Jenny Solver, Bankside’s foremost peddler of gossip, until she has begun to avoid him in the street. But so far he’s been unable to pick up even the faintest of scents.
And he thinks he knows why.
Anyone who can write a letter to the Privy Council denouncing a physician is not the sort of person who moves in his sphere. It must therefore be someone of a higher station. And that, in all likelihood, means a world closed to a former mortuary porter, even one who has spent several months in the domestic household of Lord Lumley at Nonsuch Palace. If it is a gentleman – the word makes his tongue sour – then the Ned Monktons of this world are unlikely to get so much as a toe across his threshold. Rose was right: he’d probably end up in the Clink or the Marshalsea, accused of assault.
Ned tries hard not to let the realization sink his mood as he turns to walk away from the building site. He tells himself to dwell on the day when the Jackdaw opens its doors again. Absorbed in his thoughts, he notices the man watching the construction work from the side of the lane only in the instant before he sends him flying. The man stares at him in terror, which folk are often wont to do when about to collide with Ned Monkton.
‘Forgive me my carelessness, Master,’ Ned says, extending a great fist to clutch the man’s sleeve in an effort to stop him toppling. ‘I did not see you. I’m sorry.’
For a moment there is confusion in the man’s eyes, something else Ned is used to whenever he apologizes for being clumsy.
‘Too many thoughts, not enough head,’ he adds apologetically. Then he steps back and gets his first proper look at the fellow.
Ned can see now why he failed to notice him. He is a small man, and although small does not necessarily mean insignificant, in this case he is just that. His jerkin is patched and his hose made of the coarsest wool, his narrow head bald save for a few strands of grey hair that fall forward of his ears. He holds himself in tense expectation, as though chastisement is an hourly experience. A man accustomed to being shouted at, Ned thinks.
‘Is this the Jackdaw tavern?’ the fellow asks, mustering the fractured pieces of his courage.
‘Aye, it is,’ says Ned, letting go of his sleeve and stepping even further back so as not to intimidate any further. ‘But as you can see, if you’re after a quart of mad-dog, you’re a little premature.’
The man gives him a sickly smile, to show he can take a joke. ‘And the owner… er… Shelby – Dr Shelby… is he here?’
Something in the way the man speaks makes Ned think it is not his own question he’s asking, but another’s. He’s been coached.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘No one of any matter,’ the man says hurriedly. ‘I simply wondered if he was still on Bankside.’
‘He’s gone abroad.’
A sudden flicker of vicarious interest in the little eyes. ‘Might I ask where to?’
Ned remembers what Rose had told him on his return from Nonsuch when he’d asked the same thing: We’re not to know that, ’Usband – in case the Earl of Essex come here asking…
But Ned has seen more than a few Privy Council searchers in his time, and they tend not to look like small, hard-done-by domestic servants. ‘He didn’t see fit to tell me,’ he replies. ‘Are you in need of physic, by any chance?’
‘Physic?’ the man echoes.
‘If you’re one of his patients, there’s a barber-surgeon at St Tom’s who’s agreed to give service in his absence.’
‘Are you quite sure Dr Shelby is abroad, and not imprisoned?’ the man asks tentatively.
Ned raises one bushy red eyebrow. ‘Why would you think he might be in prison?’
‘No particular reason,’ the man says, again a little too quickly for Ned’s taste. Then, after a contemplative sucking of the teeth that seems staged, or is intended to give him thinking time, he adds, ‘St Thomas’s, you say – this barber-surgeon who’s seeing Dr Shelby’s patients?’
‘Aye,’ says Ned. ‘If you’re in need.’
‘Yes, he will do, if Dr Shelby is not here.’
Then, with mumbled thanks, the man turns away and hurries off down the lane, revealing as he goes two large damp patches on the back of his hose.