As Ned is led away, Rose calls out across the chapel, ‘Be brave, sweet!’ Then, as a practical afterthought, ‘If the hurt proves too much, I still have some of the balm we used for burns when the Jackdaw burned down.’
‘’Tis little but a trifle, Wife,’ Ned calls back with a grin. ‘A bee sting is worse.’
As Rose and Lumley make to leave the benches, the chaplain comes over to speak with them.
‘A satisfactory outcome, I trust, my lord?’
‘We sought only justice, most reverend sir.’
‘The slate of our obligations to each other is wiped clean, I trust.’
‘Spotless.’
The chaplain gives Lumley a wry smile. ‘I wouldn’t have taken him for such an educated man, my lord.’
‘It’s a common mistake.’
‘Well, from now on I shall presume that Ovid and Virgil are common fare amongst the reprobates on Bankside.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, reverend sir,’ says Lumley.
The chaplain gives him the briefest hint of a knowing look. Then he says, ‘For such a fellow to read the fifty-first psalm so cogently is one thing, my lord. But to give a faultless translation in English of a text that was printed on the page in Latin – now, that truly is remarkable.’
John Lumley waits until he and Rose are safely outside. A blustery wind tugs at the hem of his gown. There are goosebumps on Rose’s arms, but she’s too ecstatic to notice.
‘My dearest Rose, can you ever forgive me?’ Lumley says as he steers her through the St Paul’s churchyard towards Paternoster Row. ‘I almost undid everything.’
‘Why say you that, my lord?’
‘I thought I had it all in hand. I checked the width of his manacles before he was led before the court. I even put a little dab of gum arabic on the appropriate page of my Bible, so that he might find it, should the book be closed. But it had never occurred to me that you would school him in English, while my Bible is printed in Latin.’
‘No harm was done by it, m’lord,’ Rose says. ‘My Ned is returned to me, and for that I thank you from the depths of my soul. I just ’ope your conscience isn’t troubled by ’aving to lie to the court.’
Lumley smiles, something Rose has hardly ever seen him do before.
‘It was a very small deceit, Rose.’
‘But a deceit in God’s own house, nonetheless.’
Lumley takes her arm in his. ‘Fear not, Goodwife Monkton. The court is adjoined to the Protestant Church, whereas I am a Catholic. Therefore what I say in it doesn’t count.’ He raises his eyes heavenwards. ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘I think the Almighty would approve of a very small deceit, if it was made in order to save the life of a good man.’
Madonna Antonella has agreed the Beguines may attend the horse race planned for tomorrow, the feast day of the Holy Rosary. ‘To give charity and counsel to the poor amongst the crowd, mind – not to gamble,’ she says sternly. ‘Or… Sister Agnes’ – and here she sends a cautionary glance in the direction of the oldest member of the order of Beguines – ‘to lust over the handsome riders.’ This causes much amused twittering, most of all from Sister Agnes herself, a sweet-faced biddy of eighty who, even on tiptoes, stands less than five feet tall.
Madonna Antonella dismisses the Sisters to their duties, reminding them not to let their excitement make them late for Vespers. As they scatter into the cloisters, Hella pulls little Carlotta into the cover of the doorway to the refectory. It is time to put the last pieces of her plan into motion.
‘Do you have the two messages I gave you?’ she whispers. ‘Have you kept them safe?’
‘As safe as if they were my own honour,’ says Carlotta, laying her hand just below the neckline of her plain cloth gown to show where she has hidden them.
‘You haven’t read them?’
‘Of course not! You made me swear an oath not to.’
‘If you have, I promise you this: at a moment of my choosing, your eyes will begin to burn, and they will go on burning until they are as black and shrivelled as raisins. Now, repeat the instructions I gave you.’
Half-thrilled, half-terrified, Carlotta does as her friend commands her. She finishes with a gabbled, ‘Shall we go to the race together? Please… Hella… say yes.’
‘No, sweet Carlotta, we shall not.’
Carlotta’s happy expression crumbles. Hella tries not to laugh.
‘But… but… it is not safe to go on your own.’ Carlotta’s protest has more to do with her own disappointment than her concerns for her friend’s welfare. ‘It’s a horse race. There will be men there – common men, the sort who have no respect for the honour of a pious maid.’
‘You are right,’ says Hella, relenting. She lays a consolatory hand on the other’s shoulder. ‘I hadn’t considered that.’
‘Then I may accompany you?’
But the young Beguine’s sudden surge of relived joy is only fleeting.
‘No, Carlotta, you may not accompany me,’ Hella says. ‘But you may fetch me a sharp knife from the kitchen.’
‘A knife? What need do you have of a knife?’
‘To set your mind at rest, of course. So that, if accosted, I shall be able to defend myself. What else would I need a knife for?’
39
Padua, 7th October 1594,
the Feast of the Holy Rosary
Bianca wakes to the sound of raised voices. They pull her from a troubled dream in which she saw herself as an ugly demon in the painting at Den Bosch, forcing a draught of fatal cantarella down the throat of a sinner on Judgement Day.
As she looks around the chamber in the dawn light she cannot help but feel a sense of power. In the dream she felt guiltless. Pouring the clear liquid into the gaping mouth – prised open by the fiery fingers of her demonic accomplices – she experienced nothing but cold triumph. She whispers, or perhaps just imagines that she does, Never seek to curse a Caporetti, or those they love. And especially not their unborn children. Yes, she thinks, without question I am my mother’s daughter.
Noticing the space beside her is empty, she curls herself up on the part of the rumpled sheet that Nicholas has vacated. She can smell the scent of him, feel the heat of him still trapped in the linen.
He has not spoken to her about his visit to Hella Maas, and she has not prompted him. But she can trace – to the very moment – when the strength returned to her, the strength to shake off the strange servitude the maid had imposed upon her mind; to defy the curse. It had occurred the day before yesterday when Nicholas had taken her in his arms, after she had agreed to his meeting with the maid on the condition they would then put her out of their minds for ever. As if she had never existed, he had told her. And then the thunder had rolled down from the mountains – like one of the omens that Hella was forever going on about. That had convinced Bianca. It was indeed a sign. Not a sign that Hella had power over her, but rather confirmation that if the curse was to be lifted, it would be down to her to do it; down to a Caporetti.
She sat at breakfast yesterday wrestling with her new-found determination. Whatever the outcome of Nicholas’s meeting with the maid, she has decided to give Hella a warning of her own. She will tell her that danger does not come in the form of a stranger in a grey coat, but in the form of the woman with whose mind she has so recklessly toyed. Withdraw the curse, leave our lives – or I will bring about your own personal Judgement Day. And this one will not be made of paint: it will be made of poison.