‘If I tell you, Nicholas, I warn you now: you will not be able to unhear my words. They will stay with you for ever.’
‘I have to know. I have to find a way to bring Bianca back to me.’
Her eyes lift a little, staring out of the loggia as though seeking divine approval. ‘I told her that your baby will be stillborn. I told her that she will be barren thereafter. It is what I have seen. It is what Hannie has seen – my sister, my dead sister.’
Nicholas thinks the floor of the loggia has given way. He feels as though he is plunging to destruction, that he will go on plunging – through the earth itself – in a descent that will never stop. The sensation is suddenly all too familiar to him. It is not a loggia in Padua he is falling from, but the wet planks of a Thames river stairs. It is not a warm morning in Italy, but a chill night in London, some four years ago. And it is not someone else’s actions that have made him fall, but his own. He is falling towards icy water, waiting for its cold embrace to drown out the voice of his dead wife, Eleanor, as she whispers in his head. She is pleading with him to perform a miracle with his physic – a miracle that will save her and the child she is carrying. And though in reality he knows she never spoke a word when she slipped towards oblivion, in his head he is waiting for the river to cleanse him of her accusing voice, cleanse him of all the useless knowledge that failed them both.
And then he is no longer falling. He is lying in a sweat-stained bed in the attic of a Bankside tavern. His eyes are focusing on reality for the first time in days, trying to make out the features of a young woman who has just appeared in the doorway. She has strong, almost boyish features that narrow to a defiant chin. A face that could be stern, if it wasn’t for the generous mouth and the astonishingly brilliant amber eyes. Her hair is a rich ebony, burnished by a foreign sun. An exotic flower, he thinks, blooming in the wasteland that is his recent memory. ‘You’re awake,’ the young woman observes dispassionately in a faint accent he can’t quite place. ‘I imagine you must be hungry. Can you manage a little breakfast? There’s larded pullet. We have some baked sprats left over, too. I’ll have my maid Rose lay out a trencher…’
As the image fades, Nicholas knows his resurrection is complete. Nothing Hella can say to him – nothing she can say to Bianca – can unlock the door he has chosen to close behind him.
‘How much hurt must you have suffered to be so cruel?’ he says, as gently as he can. ‘If that is the future you think you saw, why in the name of all that is holy did you not just keep your thoughts to yourself?’
‘You were sent to me, Nicholas,’ Hella says, as though trying to reason with a distracted child. ‘You were sent as confirmation that I am right. I knew it from the moment I saw you step out of the shadows in that chamber in the cathedral. That could not have been mere chance. If you had not wanted the knowledge, you would have remained in hiding.’
He lets out a snort of derision. ‘It was chance. Nothing more. We shouldn’t even have been in Den Bosch. We were bound for Antwerp.’
‘But can’t you see the pattern, Nicholas? Every little piece falls into place when you look at the whole.’
Unable to control the sudden wave of disgust that sweeps over him, Nicholas says coldly, ‘Take back the curse, Hella. Take it back! Or by God, I’ll finish what that Dutch rebel failed to.’
But she doesn’t even blink. ‘No, you won’t, Nicholas,’ she says with frightening calmness. ‘You want to know if I’m right. You’re driven by the same appetite as I – to seek what lies behind the curtain. You’re not so much of a coward that you will turn away for fear of what you will find there. But I have looked already. I know I am already damned.’
He turns and walks away towards the stairs.
‘You will come to me eventually, Nicholas,’ he hears her call out, even as he raises his hands to his ears. ‘Why do you think I am here in Padua? It isn’t to help Galileo and that fool Matteo with their calculations; it’s to be where you can find me. You will come back to me – it is written. The signs are all there, like the signs that foretell what is coming: the rains, the storms, the comets, the war, the pestilences… They are all telling us that time is running out.’
He tries to shut out the sound of her voice as he goes. But her parting words are a cold breeze blowing in his ears.
‘Don’t delay, Nicholas. Don’t leave it too long. I cannot face what is coming alone. And there is very little time left.’
35
The Marshalsea Prison, Bankside,
2nd October 1594
In the sickly grey light filtering through the rain that streams down the leaded-glass window, Rose Monkton eases herself out of her husband’s embrace. She can feel his reluctance to let her go, as though his great fingers are already beginning to stiffen after the long drop from the gallows.
‘How is your memory, ’Usband?’ she asks, taking stock of how he seems a little diminished since last she saw him. His great auburn beard will require a good trimming, she thinks. And he’ll need a clean linen shirt. The ecclesiastical court will take a lot of convincing, but it will be down to Ned alone to save himself.
‘My memory?’
He seems confused by her question.
‘Yes, your memory. How is it?’
‘Have I forgotten something, Wife?’ he asks, perplexed. ‘I know it’s not our anniversary. An’ it’s not your birthday…’
‘No, ’Usband. You have forgotten nothing. It is a simple question. How good are you at remembering things?’
‘Why do you ask, Rose?’
‘I have been to see Lord Lumley. He says there is no hope for us – but one. He would have you plead Benefit of Clergy.’
‘He wants me to call a priest?’ Ned asks, misunderstanding her. ‘Does he think giving me papist absolution before I ’ang is going to help?’
Rose looks horrified. ‘No, ’Usband. If you plead the Book, sentencing will fall to the Church authorities, not a temporal court. A first offence will be punished only with a branding upon the thumb – an M, to show you’ve been judged guilty of slaying a man – so that you cannot plead mercy again, should you commit another felony. Not that you did commit a felony – you’re innocent… I know that… but it’s the only way.’
Ned lays a steadying hand upon Rose’s shoulder to stop her words running away with her. ‘Well, what’s a sore thumb, Wife, if it joins what has been torn asunder?’
The tears begin to flow again. ‘Oh, but dearest Ned, it is not that easy. You must sermonize from the Bible – Psalm fifty-one – like you was a parson. An’ there’s you without the readin’…’
Ned offers her a huge smile that stops the tears mid-flow.
‘So you want to know if my memory is up to learning what you will read out to me – is that it?’
Rose snorts a rapid volley of watery breaths. ‘I… I lie abed at night, unable to sleep for weeping. I know Mistress Bianca thinks I’m an addle-pate an’ can’t keep one thought in my head longer than an ’eartbeat, but I ’ave tried so hard to think of a way of saving you from the noose. An’ now Lord Lumley offers this chance, but you can’t read. So I must read to you, an’ you must remember it, Ned – perfectly. If you gets it wrong, all is lost. And I know how hard remembering is. I fear you will forget.’
Ned guides her to the mattress. He eases her down gently, her body folding compliantly to the pressure of his hands. He sits beside Rose, pulls her head into the cushion of his armpit.