Turning his back on the empty gibbet, he hurries on into the city.
John Lumley’s London town house stands at the northern end of Woodroffe Lane where it meets Hart Street, close to the city wall. It is a handsome, timber-framed mansion sitting in its own small orchard. As Nicholas approaches, he sees that the path to the house is lined with chests and bundles wrapped in canvas. An empty four-wheeled cart stands nearby. Lumley himself, dressed in black velvet breeches and an unlaced doublet, is instructing four male servants on the technicalities of safe and efficient loading. His long, melancholy face brightens as he sees Nicholas at the gate.
‘Your chosen hour is fortunate, Nicholas,’ he says in his gentle Northumbrian burr. He rubs his spade-cut grey beard with the back of one hand. ‘I had planned to leave for Nonsuch within the hour.’
Remembering Robert Cecil’s warning, Nicholas asks, ‘Is it the contagion, my lord? Are you abandoning the city? I saw no sign of it on my walk here.’
‘Mercy, no, Nicholas. The queen has made it plain she intends to come to Nonsuch during her summer progress. I must needs be ready for her.’ A rare smile lightens his brow. ‘I can’t complain. After all, Nonsuch is hers now.’
To Nicholas’s eye, the patron of the Lumleian chair of anatomy at the College of Physicians looks a far less troubled man than when last they met.
‘That must be a goodly weight lifted from your shoulders,’ he says.
‘When I inherited it from my late father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel, it came along with all the debts he owed to the Crown. Now it is returned to the queen, those debts are forgiven. And she graciously allows me to remain there until my span on earth is ended. So it is more than the lifting of a weight, Nicholas. It is the raising of a veritable mountain range.’
‘And your library? It will remain intact?’
‘All part of the legal agreement. Now I have only my recusancy to keep me awake at nights. And Her Grace seems inclined to allow me even that, so long as I keep it to myself and don’t upset her Privy Council with dangerous popish utterances.’
‘Then you are that rarest of things, my lord – a man who has outwitted the Cecils,’ Nicholas says with a smile, remembering how Robert Cecil had sent him to Nonsuch to spy upon this gentle academic. To expose his Catholicism. To bring him down. Of all the failures in his life, Nicholas is proudest of that one.
‘How may be I be of service on this fine morning, Nicholas?’ Lumley asks, brushing a strand of grey hair from his high temple.
‘I am in need of wise counsel, my lord,’ he says humbly.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve upset the College again,’ Lumley says, almost smiling as he leads Nicholas into the privacy of the orchard.
‘Not yet. But I might soon be offered the opportunity to upset them beyond their wildest imagining.’
He tells Lumley of Cecil’s offer. Lumley is not a physician, but he knows the College better than most. If anyone can give him an honest assessment of the lure the Lord Treasurer’s son has waved before him, it is John Lumley.
‘It all comes down to whether you trust a Cecil,’ Lumley says, in much the same tone he’d use when asking if you might trust a cornered beast in the bear-ring.
‘I know that in the past he has intended you harm, my lord. But I have never yet known him to break his word.’
Lumley considers this for a moment. Then he nods. ‘He does have a point, Nicholas. The College could certainly prosper with some young blood in its veins.’
‘That is what I believe, my lord.’
‘And I have heard the rumours about Dr Lopez. He is a man whose time is most surely constrained. It’s a shame – I quite like him.’
‘I wouldn’t wish harm to come to him, my lord – not on my account. Not for this.’
‘I don’t think you need worry, Nicholas. Going to the land of the Moor for Robert Cecil won’t change Dr Lopez’s fate one jot. He’s like me: a heretic relying upon the queen’s favour for his continuing safety. And all the while the wolves of the Privy Council circle us, their beady little eyes watching for a moment of weakness. Waiting for us to stumble. But you – you could do fine work if you were allowed the opportunity. An expedition to the lands of the Moor to bring home knowledge: that could make your name.’
‘I remember when I first came to Nonsuch,’ Nicholas says. ‘You showed me works by their physicians Avicenna and Albucasis. I recall a particularly fine copy of the Canon Medicinae.’
‘It is amongst the books I treasure most, Nicholas. The Moors’ understanding of physic seems similar to ours, much influenced by the ancients. To go there and see for oneself would be a grand instruction, would it not?’
‘That’s what I thought. Sadly, Mistress Merton doesn’t agree.’
Lumley gives one of his long, wintery sighs. ‘I had a feeling there was something holding you back.’ He grasps Nicholas by the shoulder. ‘You must do what you believe to be right. I’ve said it before: your talents will surely be wasted if they are confined to Bankside. Perhaps it is time for you to re-enter the outside world.’
Nicholas thinks of asking Lumley to intervene with the Grocers’ Company, to lift the threat hanging over Bianca’s apothecary shop. But the Cecils’ influence is far greater than Lumley’s. It would only serve to set Robert Cecil against his old enemy once more. And Nicholas will not risk that.
‘My lord, if the pestilence spreads while I am out of the realm, might Mistress Bianca seek refuge at Nonsuch?’
‘Of course.’
‘She has but a few mouths dependent upon her,’ he adds, thinking of Ned, Rose and Timothy – Farzad, too, should he ever reappear. ‘They would work for their board, of course. They’re all young.’
Lumley laughs. ‘Nicholas, when the queen and her household descend on Nonsuch, we need more bodies to fetch and carry than Pharaoh needed slaves to build his pyramids. They will be welcome.’
‘Then I may go with a clear conscience. Thank you, my lord.’
Lumley lifts a cautionary hand. ‘If it comes to it, tell them not to delay. Should the plague increase greatly, no one from this city will be permitted to approach any place wherein Her Grace dwells.’
They walk on through the orchard. Nicholas asks after Ralph Cullen’s sister Elise, now safe with the household at Nonsuch. The news is good. She is diligent in her studies, Lumley tells him. When not at her hornbook, she is trilling like a pipit. She is even beginning to turn the heads of the male servants. For Nicholas, hearing of Elise’s progress, from the terrified mute child he first encountered, is like opening a door and discovering a warm summer’s morning outside, when all you had expected was snow.
When they part, Nicholas takes a different route to the bridge, down Seething Lane to Thames Street. He avoids the scaffold on Tower Hill entirely. I’ve done all that I can, he thinks. I’ve had enough of lingering in dark places.
Timothy has been brawling.
By habit a placid lad, more at home with his hands around his lute than around someone’s neck, he has responded with unusual violence to an injudicious insult thrown at him in the street.
‘You should have found the fortitude to ignore it,’ Bianca tells him, when she arrives at the Jackdaw to give herself a break from her duties on Dice Lane.