‘Where is this Dr Shelby now?’ the magistrate demands to know. ‘Is he in the court?’
The clerks look around expectantly. When no answer comes, the magistrate returns his bespectacled gaze to Ned. ‘Accused, where is this Shelby now?’
‘He has gone abroad, Your Worship.’
‘Where?’
‘He did not care to tell us, Your Worship.’
Rose is silently screaming at her husband not to say another word. But Ned is still suffering from the deluded belief that telling the truth will save him.
The magistrate leans slowly forward from his chair, the deep trailing cuffs of his gown pooling around his hands as he spreads his fingers on the counter to balance himself. ‘So that the jury may be spared any confusion, answer truthfully to the following.’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘Sir Fulke Vaesy wrote a letter to members of the Privy Council denouncing the physician Shelby for being involved in a plot to poison the queen. True or false?’
‘True, Your Honour.’
‘The physician Shelby then flees abroad, omitting to tell you, his servant, where he has gone. True or false?’
‘I’m not his servant, Your Honour. I’m his friend.’
‘The friend of a man who seeks to murder his queen,’ the prosecuting sergeant slips in.
‘But he didn’t–’ Ned tries to protest.
‘TRUE or FALSE?’ shouts the magistrate.
‘Well, Your Honour, it is true he went out of the realm without saying where he was bound, but–’
The magistrate cuts him off. ‘And following this secretive departure, you go in a hot temper to Sir Fulke Vaesy’s house on St Andrew’s Hill and there beat from him a retraction, before killing him in an unprovoked fury. Do you see why I might distrust your plea of not guilty?’
When put to him like that, the colour drains from Ned’s ruddy face. He raises his hands slightly, as if to add weight to the denial he is about to make. The chains on his wrist-irons jangle loudly around the still chamber.
‘It weren’t like that, Your Honour. That’s not ’ow it was.’
A flick of one hand from the magistrates, and the two guards, who until now have been standing a little way either side of Ned, move even closer.
‘I have heard all I need to hear in this particular matter,’ the magistrate says. Then to the jury, ‘You may begin your deliberations. You will bear in mind that the servant, Ditworth, is not present to lend any credence to the accused’s claims that he acted in self-defence. More importantly, the denunciation of a suspected regicide – in these present times of danger – is a duty that lies upon every Englishman. If that duty can be hindered by the threat of violence, Her Grace the queen must live every day in peril. The fact that the subject of the denunciation in question has fled abroad speaks for itself. The accused is clearly guilty of the felony with which he is charged.’
It takes all of two minutes for the jury to act upon the justice’s direction, two minutes during which Rose has to be restrained by the court clerks. Ned stands there silently, manacled like old Sackerson the bear waiting for the mastiffs to be released for another baiting. Ned Monkton, taverner, resident in the parish of St Saviour’s, Bridge Ward Without: guilty of manslaughter as charged.
‘I have a number of sentences at my disposal,’ the magistrate says in a tone that leaves no doubt he intends to discard all but the severest. ‘You should prepare your soul and your conscience for a higher judgement than I can make upon you, Ned Monkton, but execution is inevitable–’
Rose’s screaming drowns out much of what follows. Ned doesn’t hear it, either, because he’s too occupied trying to drag himself towards his wife while the guards and several of the clerks hang onto his chains to prevent him. Thus the magistrate finds himself speaking to a court that isn’t listening to him.
‘I will, however, postpone formal sentencing,’ he continues, ‘until the Privy Council has been afforded the opportunity to question the guilty man under hard press. It is true he may have acted out of misguided loyalty to his friend the physician by forcing Sir Fulke to retract his accusations. But he may also have killed him for something more troubling: sympathy for the intended crime for which this Dr Shelby was denounced. In which case they may choose to further arraign the felon for treason. Remove the condemned man to the Marshalsea!’
29
A man and his wife cannot live on air, certainly not in a city like Padua where a fine coat of silk and damask in broad red-and-black stripes is the very least you need to be taken seriously. Bruno has purchased one on the back of the doge’s commission, and Nicholas feels even more of a poor relation, clad in the same worn white canvas doublet he has owned for years. He has noticed, too, how Bianca becomes a little truculent whenever they go out in public, judging herself against the standard set by Paduan women. Bruno steadfastly refuses all offers of payment for food and lodging, but with his purse close to depletion, Nicholas is in need of coinage. Bruno accompanies him to the local house of the Baldesi, a banking family based in Venice. A bill of exchange is drawn up with Robert Cecil’s letter of credit as security, to be redeemed one year hence in either London or Padua at an agreed rate. ‘You’re lucky I’m here with you,’ Bruno tells him. ‘The Baldesi like to stiff every foreigner in the city if they think they can get away with it.’ Nicholas withdraws just enough for their needs and a decent new gown for Bianca.
Walking back to the house on the Borgo dei Argentieri, he keeps a wary eye open. It is not only the possibility of being robbed that concerns him. Somewhere in the city an agent of the English Privy Council might well be prowling, for he can think of no other reason why Grey-coat – as he now calls him – is here.
Bianca has returned to the church, to ask the priest if he knows the man who came in halfway through the Mass and either hid himself amongst the other worshippers or slipped out again through another door. He doesn’t. When he is giving the Eucharist he is communing with God, not looking out for people taking inappropriate refuge from a quarrel that is none of his business.
For Nicholas, it is hard not to imagine Grey-coat lurking in the shady lanes, watching him from the shadows. Will it be kidnap? Or a knife in the ribs? To a bounty-hunter sent by the likes of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the latter would be easier work – less effort. Bruno has laughed away his friend’s fears. But he’s hired three cousins of the Corios – the brothers who are casting the sphere’s cogs and gears in their foundry on the Borgo Socco – as temporary bodyguards. Just as a precaution.
With enough coin in his purse to provide a modest but comfortable existence for himself and Bianca, Nicholas considers a return to the life of a student of medicine. He thinks: if I am to be an exile for a while, I would be a fool not to avail myself of the opportunities afforded by one of Europe’s foremost medical faculties. Over a jug of wine, he asks Signor Galileo to honour his promise to introduce him to Professor Fabrici at the Palazzo Bo. Bruno asks if might be allowed to accompany them – as leader of the Arte dei Astronomi. ‘When I am Master of the Spheres to His Serene Highness,’ he tells them in all seriousness, ‘they’ll have my statue there. I should take the opportunity to assess the best place for it. I don’t intend to spend eternity on a plinth behind the privy.’
The university is a handsome building in the classical style, with Roman pillars and an airy, colonnaded central courtyard open to the vivid blue sky. Arriving early, they are directed towards an open entrance through which echoes the sound of sawing and hammering. Nicholas wonders if perhaps the august professor of anatomy likes to take his ease repairing the university’s tables and pews, or building furniture for the rector. But as he passes through the doorway he is brought up with a jolt of astonishment.