27
‘This is… an improvement,’ Rose says tentatively when Ned has released her from his embrace. ‘Are they treating you well?’
She looks around the grim little chamber that has cost her five shillings in bribes to the prison warden. She takes in the dirty straw mattress, the stained privy bowl, the little table without a chair and the floor-to-ceiling wainscoting carved with names and messages of despair. It is indeed, she thinks, an improvement over the communal, stinking, low-ceilinged cellar that was Ned’s previous tribulation. The stench, the flesh rubbed raw by ankle-irons, the whisper of rats wandering with disgusting disdain amongst the straw, and the overwhelming miasma of piss, sweat and misery that is the Marshalsea prison’s common durance is going to take some time to cleanse itself from her mind. But at this moment nothing can dilute the joy she feels at seeing her husband again.
‘I’ve paid the warden to bring you food and ale,’ she continues. ‘Has he been true to his word or has the rogue kept them for ’imself?’
‘He’s fair enough, Wife. Master Nicholas cured his brother of the flux a while back, so he’s matey enough with me. I’ve good news for you.’
Hope swells in Rose’s heart like a wave. ‘They’re letting you go?’
‘No. The Trinity term for the assizes is running late. I’m to go before a judge inside the week.’
‘That’s good news?’
‘If it had been held at the right time, I’d ’ave missed it,’ he tells her. ‘I’d be ’ere until the next circuit. That’d be after Michaelmas. If you haven’t noticed, Wife, there’s no hearth. I’d freeze.’
‘I’ve written to Lord Lumley, ’Usband. I’ve begged him to find us a lawyer.’
‘We ’ave no coin to pay some splitter-of-causes who tells you it’s coming on to rain and then charges an ’alf-angel for giving you his opinion.’
‘But we need someone of learnin’ to speak for you.’
‘I’m an honest man, Goodwife Monkton,’ Ned says proudly. ‘The jury will see that clear enough. In his own land an Englishman can be sure of a fair trial and a fair judgement. An’ that Ditworth witnessed everything that happened – from Vaesy drawing a blade on me, to when his ’ead hit the desk. He’ll confirm my account of what ’appened.’
And with that, he sinks to his knees and places the right side of his huge bearded head against her stomach, the better to sense the presence of the child growing inside her.
It is a sultry September afternoon. In the courtyard of the house in the Borgo dei Argentieri, Nicholas and Bruno Barrani are playing dice in the shade of a mulberry tree to the accompaniment of a chorus of cicadas. The game is close enough to the hazard so beloved of the Jackdaw’s customers for Nicholas to play with confidence. Indeed, he is winning. It is his turn to throw.
‘Go on – kiss the die and let it fall, Nicholas,’ Bruno says, his black ringlets speckled with sunlight filtering through the branches. ‘Despite the way your luck’s been running, I have the feeling it will be… what do you call the two?’
‘We call it deuce,’ says Nicholas with a smile. Even in defeat, nothing can dent Bruno’s natural tendency to believe his luck is on the cusp of changing. He throws. It’s a sink – a five.
‘Pah,’ Bruno exclaims. ‘Why do heretics have all the luck?’
‘Bankside gives a man as useful an education as any he’ll get from Cambridge or Oxford, and you don’t even have to know Latin.’
Bruno raises a cautionary finger to his nose. ‘You and my cousin should have been more honest with me from the start.’
‘Honest? We have not lied to you, Bruno – I promise it.’
‘Honest about the real reason you had to flee England. Honest about why you came to Padua. And honest about the fellow you chased into the church, before you almost got yourself skewered.’
‘I’m sorry. We didn’t want to cause you concern. We thought it best if we just said Bianca had grown tired of England. And until I saw him at the lantern stall, I couldn’t be sure it truly was me he was following.’
‘And now you’re worried that he might not be alone?’
‘If the Privy Council has put a purse on my head, he may have others with him. I don’t want to put you in danger too, Bruno.’
Bruno spits on his die and rolls it. It tumbles for a moment, and then – with a snide little quiver – settles with the deuce uppermost. Even this can’t dent his good humour. ‘Don’t fret, Nicholas,’ he says with a grin. ‘This is Padua, remember? Think of Bankside with better fashion sense, but less restraining manners. If you need protection, I can drum up any number of squint-eyed, broken-nosed omicidi who’d make that kid you barged into look like a castrato. They’ll deter anyone who thinks he can make a few ducats by causing you and my cousin trouble, never fear.’
‘Then I’ll only feel worse about beating you at dice,’ Nicholas says.
Bruno takes up his die and kisses it for luck. He looks Nicholas straight in the eye. ‘She’s looking very comely, for all that walking you’ve done and the worry you’ve put her through.’
For a moment, Nicholas is taken off-guard. ‘Bianca?’
‘Of course. Who else do you think I’m speaking of – Caterina de’ Medici?’
‘Is she?’ Nicholas asks, wondering if this is some strategy of Bruno’s to take his mind off the game.
‘Trust an Englishman not to notice that his wife is blooming.’
‘Blooming? I hadn’t thought of her as blooming.’
Bruno gives him a sly look. ‘If the child is born in Padua, I demand you call him Bruno.’
And then he throws a sise, and puts himself squarely back in the game.
‘Blooming?’
‘That’s what he said – “blooming”.’
They are walking back from the Basilica of St Giustina. Bianca had wanted to show him Veronese’s depiction of the saint’s martyrdom, and it has taken Nicholas a while to regain the capacity of speech. He has never in his life seen such extraordinary colours and images. For a moment he thought he had been transported to the very moment when the cruel Moor pierced her white flesh with the tip of his knife. He can think of nothing like it in any church in England. The knowledge that Robert Cecil would consider it a dangerous papist icon only added to the thrill. Now they are stepping carefully around a gang of plasterers splashing stucco on the wall of a house fifty yards from Bruno’s. Bianca hoists the hem of her gown to avoid the pools of sticky pale soup.
‘And do you think I’m blooming, Nicholas?’
He squirms. Comes out with a hurried excuse. Knows it’s lame even as he delivers it.
‘I’m sorry if you think I haven’t noticed. It’s just that whenever I look at you, it’s still as though I’m seeing you for the very first time.’
Her expression changes from disbelief to icy. He thinks: she’s hurt that her cousin can see she’s with child, but her husband – her stolid English husband – is not blessed with such arcane skills.
‘Well, is he right? Are you–?’ he asks clumsily. ‘It is what we hoped for…’
Bianca shakes her head to dispel the awful feeling that somehow Hella is still with them, still working her sick artifice. But it will not leave her. She recalls the awful sense of helplessness and dread she’d experienced when she’d wondered if the maid could somehow influence the workings of her body. If Bruno is right, then what kind of creature could be growing inside her – if it was somehow under the influence of another person’s will?