‘I named you on the spot,’ Don Rodriquez had told her later – much later – when she could speak his language and had put out of her mind every memory of her life prior to that day on the beach. ‘Cachorra de Leopardo. Leopard cub.’
And in all the years since Cachorra had entered his household to serve as companion, and then maid, to his daughter, Don Rodriquez had never once behaved towards her in any way other than as a man of honour. When his wife had died, five years ago, he had not – as far as she could tell – considered for a moment taking her to his bed in consolation, as some men would happily have done. If he had, she thinks ruefully now, she would have agreed in an instant. A strong friendship had grown between them, as far as there could be between master and servant. He was relatively young, barely forty, still striking, and the age difference between them would not have made even a formal union unusual. Every widower in his circle had married a younger woman. After all, a man must produce heirs or else have his name erased from history.
Eventually, on the eve of their departure aboard the San Juan de Berrocal, in one of the companionable private moments they shared when Constanza was at her vihuela practice or at chapel, she had found the courage to ask him why he had resisted a longing that she knew he harboured. In reply, Don Rodriquez had taken her hands in his and smiled. ‘What has always stood between us,’ he explained sadly, ‘what has always made marriage impossible, is knowing that there is a part of your soul that still dwells somewhere in the steaming jungles of Hispaniola. I would only ever have half of you. Besides, I know what the wives of my fellow courtiers would say behind your back: Look at the Carib servant – the naboría – who bedded a grieving fool for his gold. And I would never have you suffer that insult.’
How she wishes now that she had persuaded Don Rodriquez Calva de Sagrada otherwise. How she wishes she had stayed with him in that black, spinning terror of the storm, and that the sea had taken them both together. For Cachorra is sure now that he is dead. She has asked more than once if any but she and Constanza survived the wreck. The only answer she has been given is a silent one, framed in sad, regretful smiles.
But fate has decreed that she is to live, just as it decreed that – in Hispaniola twenty years ago – Don Rodriquez would happen upon that beach, on that day, at that moment.
And Cachorra thinks she understands why she has been spared. It is to finish what he began. To repay him for saving her that day on the beach.
That is why, she realizes now, Don Rodriquez insisted she should be in attendance when he was battling to hammer into his daughter’s recalcitrant brain a list of names. Twelve names, in fact. And each one as grand a name as was ever committed to memory – for fear of what might befall its owner if it were ever to be written down.
24
Dawn is still an hour away. In the Green Yard of Whitehall, Nicholas is walking through a graveyard where the risen ghosts all wear clerks’ robes and black bonnets. He catches glimpses of them in the puddles of meagre light cast by the torches on the precinct wall, emerging from their tombs in the side of the great hall, bent from sleep not yet fully cast off, scurrying away through the sharp morning air to labour behind the few dimly lit windows that seem to float like watching eyes in the darkness.
‘You are to return to Ireland,’ Cecil told him barely a minute ago, though from the heavy silence while he waits for a reply, in Nicholas’s mind it could well have been an hour.
Cecil had spoken so casually that at first Nicholas was sure he had misheard him. But now, after he has had time to digest the curt instruction, he senses that – from the moment the hammering on the door of the Paris Garden lodgings woke him – he has always known it would come.
Cecil’s prompting breaks the silence. ‘Well? Have you nothing to say to me?’
‘If you’re prepared to wager on me finding Constanza Calva de Sagrada, then I highly recommend you never go anywhere near Bankside, Sir Robert. You’d be destitute inside a week. Other than the mantilla that Bianca found, and a wild rumour about the Virgin Mary that seems to have been confused with folk law, there’s no real evidence she survived the wreck.’
They walk on along the path that runs back beside the ancient, flinty walls of the great hall to the wing occupied by the officers of the Exchequer. No one challenges them; Mr Secretary Cecil’s silhouette is immediately identifiable in the torchlight.
‘That is not the sole purpose of your return, Nicholas,’ he says without looking up. ‘But I confess it would be a welcome benefit.’
‘Then why do you want me to go back?’
‘The order does not come from me. It comes from the queen.’
‘The queen?’ Nicholas repeats, astonished. ‘Why does Her Majesty desire me to go back to Ireland?’
‘She is concerned for the proper care of the army that the Earl of Essex will command. You have been a military surgeon. You’re not one of the old charlatans who customarily advise her on matters of physic. It makes perfect sense. Of course, from my perspective, it would be a great boon if, while you were there, you were also able to discover the whereabouts of the daughter of Don Rodriquez.’
‘Is this commission a request or a command?’
‘Whatever Her Grace requests is a command, Nicholas,’ Cecil says, looking up at him with an empty smile. ‘You will receive formal note of it, under her seal, before you leave.’
‘Does she know she’s written it?’ Nicholas asks caustically, remembering the letter from the president of the Stationers’ Company that Cecil had provided him with when he left for Dublin.
‘I was there when she made her wishes known,’ Cecil assures him. ‘You should be honoured.’
‘Do I have any choice in the matter?’
‘None of us have a choice in whether or not to serve our gracious sovereign lady, Nicholas. You may as well ask if you have the choice of obeying the Almighty or not.’
Nicholas is about to say, ‘I have, often’, but decides it’s wiser to let the words die on his tongue.
‘When am I ordered to depart?’
‘Not for a while. Probably not until the spring. It will take some time for Ireland’s new Lord Lieutenant to assemble his great army. But I suspect you will be summoned by Devereux at some point. I understand he has heard great things of you.’
Henshawe, thinks Nicholas. I’ve been recommended to the Earl of Essex by a murderer. He wonders if Henshawe’s arrival in the city has anything to do with Spenser’s death. He dismisses the thought. Essex would have had better ways of dealing with Spenser’s contact with the Spanish peace faction than sending a clumsy butcher like Henshawe.
‘Bianca will throw a bate worse than a falcon that’s had its prey snatched away,’ he says, as if that might change the queen’s mind.
‘I’ve already considered that. She can go as your apothecary. After all, a woman could be of use, if you were to find this Constanza.’
‘You’ve thought this through, haven’t you?’
There is a modesty in the smile Cecil gives him that is quite out of character. ‘I am Her Majesty’s humble principal secretary. It’s my job to think things through.’
Only when Nicholas is sitting in the stern of the wherry taking him back to Bankside does the truth hit him: Cecil has convinced the queen to send him to Ireland to spy on Robert Devereux.