31
Rose Monkton hurries up Woodroffe Lane on a windy morning in late September. The trees in the gardens of the fine houses north of Tower Hill are starting to lose their summer bloom. Soon the leaves will begin to fall, to die.
Death has been much on Rose’s mind of late. She has come across London Bridge today determined that if he is to take anyone in the coming days, it will not be her husband Ned.
She has visited him every day since he was returned in chains to the Marshalsea from the Queen’s Bench, a condemned man with a very temporary stay of execution. In her presence Ned has been unconvincingly jovial, almost unconcerned. But she knows from the gaoler that he spends some of the money she provides, to keep him free of manacles and in a private room, on jugs of fiery bingo to numb the fear. Sometimes she can smell the spirit on his breath. Once she noticed an empty pitcher in his room. He told her he used it as a piss-pot. It is the only time, she is sure, that he has ever lied to her.
The past few days have not been easy for her. The work on the Jackdaw, though progressing well, cannot be left entirely unattended, and Mistress Bianca would not want her weeping into her sleeve all day. Rose has tried hard to be ordered and restrained, but it is not in her nature. After all, she knows Mistress Bianca is wont to refer to her as my Mistress Moonbeam and – when irritated – likens her brain to a cauldron of pottage: full of scraps and constantly bubbling. But since the day the magistrate set down his awful sentence, Rose has shown a determination that would astound Bianca – wherever she is.
Rose has decided that Lord Lumley is her only hope. Until last summer she had never been in close proximity to a lord, let alone served one his roast mutton pie and discussed the state of the beans and lettuces in his kitchen garden. But a year ago, when the plague was still rife in London and Mistress Bianca was recovering from the injuries she had sustained in the destruction of the Jackdaw, Lord Lumley had generously agreed to Master Nicholas’s plea that they all decamp to the relative safety of his magnificent palace in the Surrey countryside. And thus Rose had discovered – though she was sure the example was not universal – that Baron Lumley of Lumley Castle in Northumberland was a thoroughly decent man with a generous and kindly heart, even if he did have the long, grey outward appearance of a rainy week in January.
To her immense relief, when she reaches Lumley’s town house – a fine oak-timbered place barely a stone’s throw from the old city walls below Aldgate – she finds him in the orchard garden.
‘Why, God give you good morrow, young Mistress Monkton,’ Lumley says with a smile, turning from his pruning at the sound of her discreet cough. ‘I have informed the lawyer I asked to make young Ned’s defence that he will have no more instructions from me. Apparently, on the day, he thought it beneath him to defend a common man. I trust the judge ordered an acquittal?’
Several minutes later Rose has regained a measure of composure. A small mound of sodden kerchiefs lies on the ground beside Lumley’s pruning knife. She takes a noisy gulp from the glass of warm hippocras he has ordered brought to her. He can barely bring himself to look into her eyes. The agony there is too much for him to bear.
‘When is he to hang, Rose?’ Lumley asks. ‘I assume we have very little time.’
‘The magistrate said something about sending the case to the Privy Council, to put Ned to the hard press. I fear they mean to rack him before they ’ang him.’ The tears begin to well in her eyes again. ‘There must be something you can do, m’lord. I ’ave no hope in the world but you.’
‘I will do what I can, of course. But I don’t want to give you false cause for hope. It will require a considerable amount of luck. It is a shame there was no immediate family to offer a financial settlement, in return for a plea to the magistrate for clemency. I would have paid that for you in an instant. And I will make an immediate appeal to Chief Justice Popham and Attorney General Coke to overturn the judgement.’
Lumley tries to sound positive, but his great fear is that Coke and Popham, knowing of his Catholic faith, will disregard his plea out of spite. He cannot bring himself to tell Rose that. He raises his hands to his bearded face, almost as though he would shut out the look of grief in her eyes. He is a thoughtful man, prone to melancholy, and her presence at Nonsuch brought a welcome brightness to the days he spends amongst the books in his formidable library. He wishes now that he had found a more practical knowledge there, something that might bring comfort to this frightened young woman.
‘You Caporetti women have always been rumoured to be notorious poisoners, Cousin Bianca,’ Bruno Barrani says with only half a smile, laying aside his book of Boccaccio poetry and looking up from the divan that Luca and Alonso have set in a shady corner of the courtyard for their master’s relaxation. ‘I have no intention of putting it to the test. I accede to your wish.’
It is the first time Bianca has heard her mother’s maiden name spoken since she was a child. But she has always been aware of the rumours: that it was a Caporetti who mixed the poison Agrippina used to murder Claudius, and that the women of the line have been skilled in lethal distillations ever since. She smiles wanly at her cousin’s little joke.
‘I’m not asking much, Bruno – only that you deny Hella a welcome in this house, at least while Nicholas and I are here.’
Bruno shrugs in acquiescence. ‘Very well, Cousin. As you wish. But I cannot prevent her from visiting Signor Galileo and Matteo Fedele. Young Matteo seems greatly enamoured by her. And her quickness in mathematics is clear. The Arte dei Astronomi has need of her. Signor Galileo is too much in demand at the Palazzo Bo, and too easily distracted when he’s at home.’
‘Then let her trouble them with her gloomy talk. I ask only that she is kept from my sight, and away from my husband.’
‘If it pleases you, Cousin,’ Bruno says, admitting defeat with a spreading of his palms. He goes back to his book of Boccaccio.
Am I being honest? Bianca wonders as she walks away. Is it Nicholas’s tranquillity I am concerned for, or my own?
Her menses are now well overdue. If she is with child it is a prospect that should, by rights, fill her with unbounded joy. And it would do so, had Hella Maas not uttered those cruel words in Reims and on the road below Mouthier-Haut-Pierre. They alone should qualify Hella as a beneficiary of the Caporettis’ art. And it would not be so very hard to do, Bianca thinks. It would be an easy thing to purchase a little hemlock or wolfsbane, masking the taste with something sweet. Her mother might be in her grave, but there are still apothecaries in Padua who would help. Some might even remember her. She recalls now what she had said to Nicholas on Bankside when he told her about the denunciation. In jest – and before the true danger of the slander had dawned on her – she replied: There can be but one poisoner in our union, Nicholas. You’re the healer, I’m the poisoner, remember?
Yes, she thinks, for Bruno’s sake I will forbear. But if that woman dares to show she has any further designs upon my husband, then it might well be time to consider taking up the old trade once more. After all, what can be more honourable than maintaining a family tradition?
The next morning Matteo Fedele leads Hella Maas across the stone bridge by the Ponte Portello. A rain shower has left the white stone busts of Padua’s nobility gleaming like polished marble, and the brickwork of the storehouses along the grassy riverbank the colour of overcooked mutton. Proudly brandishing a heavy iron key, he does battle with the lock on the side-door of the storehouse.