She looks up at him pleadingly, while Constable Hobbes fidgets uncomfortably in the drizzle. ‘Did you not think of this child of ours that I carry in my belly?’
‘At every moment on the journey there; through every word of insult that Vaesy threw at me while he wrote down his admission of guilt.’
‘And then the old Ned came back to claim you?’
He smiles, his great ruddy face infused with more gentleness than she has ever seen in him. ‘When I ’ad the letter from ’im exonerating Master Nicholas, I went to turn my back to leave. He drew a blade. I took it off ’im – pushed ’im away. He went down, struck his head upon the desk.’ Ned slaps the back of one huge hand into the palm of the other, causing Constable Hobbes to wince. ‘If I am guilty of anything,’ Ned continues, ‘it’s that for a moment, hearin’ ’e’s dead, I was glad.’
Rose turns to the dripping constable. ‘There, Master Hobbes – you see. My ’usband is an innocent man.’
‘But he must still come with us to the Marshalsea, Mistress Rose, to answer for the death,’ Hobbes says regretfully.
And so Rose Monkton stands in the doorway and watches her husband go, unresisting, a giant figure flanked by the two watchmen and led by Hobbes. She has the image in her mind of a tired old bear being led to a baiting. As the grey drizzle takes him from her, he turns and calls out, ‘Do not fret for me, Wife. The servant, Ditworth, will confirm what I say. He was there. He saw it with ’is own eyes. You ’ave no need to fear for me. No need whatever.’
PART 3
The Mathematician
25
Padua, 29th August 1594
The last two days of their long journey have taken them over the vine-clad Berici hills. Sheltering from the sun in the shade of the willows that line the path along the edge of Lake Fimon, they have watched pike and eel slumber in the torpid water. In sight of the hazy, towering Monte Venda, they have marvelled at the fine villas of wealthy Paduans nestling amongst stands of poplars and groves of olive trees, and passed vineyards so bountiful that the gnarled old vines seemed almost too weak to stop the grapes from flying off like plump purple fledglings. Long before she reaches the walls of Padua, Bianca Merton has all but discarded the years she has been away. She leaves the memory of them lying in her footsteps like sloughed-off snakeskin.
She stops beside a little roadside shrine, barely a hundred paces from a moat filled with brackish brown water. On the other side of a stone bridge, the path runs on beneath an imposing square gateway set into the modern brick ramparts. She kisses her fingertips, then touches them to the feet of the crude plaster effigy of the saint, giving thanks for having arrived safely. Today, she recalls, is the Feast of the martyrdom of St John the Baptist. It is sixty-seven days since they left Bankside.
Nicholas leaves her to sit alone by the roadside in contemplation. Sometimes, he notices, she rests her head on her knees, deep in thought. At other times she watches the traffic passing through the Porta Liviana. She does so wistfully, as though she is still an exile viewing the scene only in her imagination. Once or twice she draws the back of one wrist across her eyes, mumbling something about the sun being too bright. At last, when the emotions have quietened in her, Bianca climbs to her feet, goes over to where Nicholas is guarding their bags and says, almost inaudibly, ‘Come, it is time.’
Nicholas has lost count of the city walls he has passed through since leaving London, but these are amongst the strongest he has yet seen: modern sloping defences designed by clever military architects to provide enfilade fire from matchlock and crossbow, and to withstand bombardment by stone and iron shot. He is glad of a brief moment of shade as they enter the city through the Porta Liviana. The archway smells of manure and human sweat. It echoes to the sound of haggling, bargaining, complaining and petulant denial, as the traffic passing in and out collides with the two soldiers trying – and failing miserably – to keep an orderly flow.
Once inside the walls, Bianca leads him through pleasant open gardens where smart houses with tiled roofs stand, and to another moat and an older set of high walls encircling the heart of the city. Only when he is through this last barrier does Bianca’s birthplace truly show itself to him. At its core, it is little different from the denser parts of London: narrow lanes that seem to lead nowhere, revealing only at the last moment an escape to left or right; cut-throughs and angles that rob him of any sense of progress; dark colonnades with benches piled high with fruit and meat, which attract more flies than customers in the heat; piles of decaying vegetables and cow dung; open sewers that are the last resting places of drowned cats. If it were not for the heat and the din of voices calling out in Italian, Nicholas thinks he could be back on Bankside.
And then they emerge into a wide sunlit square that is anything but Bankside. Beneath the elegant façades, and in shady colonnades, brightly dressed citizens shop at well-stocked stalls and young men in vibrant hose and vivid capes play thrust and parry with their eyes, with maids in full-sleeved gowns. The glances they exchange are as sharp as any of the rapiers carried at such jaunty angles from the belts of the gallants, or the hairpins keeping dark tresses in place. Nicholas is captivated. He understands now where Bianca imbibed her spirit.
Stopping at a pastel-washed corner house of three storeys pierced by narrow shuttered windows, Bianca puts down her bags and bangs twice with her fist on the double door. A moment later there is the rasp of a bolt being slid back, and a thin, dark face peers through the gap in the cautiously opened doors. It takes in the couple standing expectantly in the lane and disappears again.
‘If I know Bruno, he’s sent his servant to make sure I’m not a creditor,’ Bianca says with a laugh.
And as if to prove her right, the twin doors fly open and there he is: all five feet three of him, clad in a fine black jerkin and red-and-white striped hose, his dark curls almost as full and as long as Rose Monkton’s: her little cockerel of a cousin, Bruno Barrani.
Nicholas observes the explosion of delight with a smile. First Bruno seizes Bianca by the waist and dances a violent volta with her, round and round, lifting her off her feet so that his eyes are at a level with the bottom of her laced blouse. She towers over his head, squealing with happiness, like a little girl being tossed over a father’s shoulders. People in the lane stop and smile.
‘My cousin!’ he tells them. ‘Safely returned to us from the clutches of the heretic English!’
Setting her on her feet once more, he grasps Nicholas’s arms and reverts to English. ‘My new brother!’ he exclaims. ‘If only I had enough to give you a proper dowry.’
‘A dowry?’ Nicholas replies.
‘I am cousin Bianca’s only living male relative. It is up to me to provide a dowry for her new husband.’
‘That really won’t be necessary.’
Bruno looks relieved. ‘But one day – soon – Barrani will make you a grand dowry. Enough to buy you a nice house in South-walk.’ He steps back and bends his head, showing Nicholas the crown. He parts his curls to reveal a line of scalp. ‘You see? Very good heal. Fortunately there are no bald Barranis. Not even the women.’ He is showing the scar of the wound that – three years ago, on Bankside – almost killed him. ‘If it was not for your English physic, there would be no Bruno Barrani any more, and the doge in Venice would be a man of no repute.’