‘And his cargoes?’
‘All the worthy commodities: sugar… spice… salt…’
‘Did you know he also traded in God’s own creation?’ she asks, her eyes darkening.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean people, Master Gault. Human beings. Slaves.’
Gault makes a fussy little gesture that speaks of trifles and trivialities. ‘The Barbary Company does not trade in slaves, Mistress Merton. In the queen’s realm we do not take away another man’s freedom, unless her law demands it.’
‘I’m not speaking of England. This was during his voyages around Arabia.’
He laughs. ‘Are they right about your second sight? Does it let you see as far as Arabia?’
She’s known she would have to answer a question like this since she first thought of approaching him. To protect Farzad, she says, ‘You forget that I am the owner of the Jackdaw tavern, Master Gault. You can overhear a lot in a tavern. And Captain Connell’s crew did enjoy their ale.’
Gault answers with a pout that sours his otherwise pleasing features. ‘What Master Connell did, or did not do, when he was in heathen waters is of no concern to the Barbary Company, Mistress. It has no bearing upon his present engagement.’
‘A friend of mine has sailed with Connell. Given the captain’s past, I’m concerned for him.’
Gault gives her a blank look. ‘A friend?’
‘Dr Nicholas Shelby.’
‘Oh, the fellow Robert Cecil sought passage for.’ A glint of comprehension in his eyes. ‘I see it now – he was the fellow Sir Robert told me petitioned for the grant of your licence.’
‘Through Lord Lumley, yes. But now he’s gone to the Barbary shore to find out how the Moors practise their physic. He seems to think it will advance his position in the College of Physicians.’ The words come so easily to her that she can almost convince herself she believes them, if she wasn’t so sure there was another reason behind Nicholas’s departure.
‘And as a friend, you fear for his safety upon the wild ocean. That’s quite understandable.’
‘It’s not the ocean that worries me, Master Gault, it’s the man he’s gone with. I would not wish Nicholas in the hands of someone who traffics in human souls. And certainly not someone who might have committed murder.’
She watches those unwavering eyes for a flicker of reaction. None comes. Just a laconic ‘Murder? That’s some charge. Of whom, pray?’
‘Of Solomon Mandel. A Jew. He was killed near here, shortly before Connell sailed.’
A lazy shake of his head. A forelock falls teasingly over one eye. Gault brushes it aside. ‘I fear the name is unknown to me, Mistress. Is there evidence to back your charge?’
She picks up a sprig of hyssop and begins paring leaves into a mortar with a knife, so that she doesn’t have to answer. Seeing her hesitate, Gault says, ‘Then we must consider him an innocent man.’
‘But I’m worried about Nicholas. I had hoped you might somehow be able to… to–’ She stops and lets the knife fall to the table. ‘I don’t know what I thought,’ she says, her eyes fixed on the hyssop sprig.
For a moment she thinks he’s going to reach out and caress her cheek, as though she’s a child who needs comforting. She flinches in anticipation. But the touch does not come.
‘Be of good cheer, Mistress Merton,’ he says brightly. ‘I am able to set your mind at rest. Before the Righteous sailed, I charged Captain Connell to take all care in the preservation of Dr Shelby’s comfort. I told him I would be accountable to Sir Robert Cecil if he did not. Does that content your fear?’
And to some measure it does. But as Bianca watches Gault’s departing figure through the window of her shop, another fear arrives to take its place.
It is born of a recollection that has just this moment come to her – a recollection of something Nicholas had told her before he left. He’d been describing a conversation in a carriage after a rainstorm, a conversation with the queen’s physician, Dr Lopez.
‘I told him about the entry I’d seen in the subsidy roll at St Saviour’s: Solomon Mandel, Hebrew; worth assessed at 100 crowns… spice merchant…the Turk’s man,’ she can hear him saying now.
And she remembers clearly Nicholas’s recounting of Lopez’s reply: how the queen’s doctor had confirmed that Mandel had been both agent and translator for the Moroccan envoy who had come to London in ’89 to such public acclaim.
Which makes her question how it could possibly be that Reynard Gault, an upstanding member of the selfsame guild that had honoured the Moors with an escort of their leading merchants, could possibly pretend he’d never heard the name of Solomon Mandel.
22
It is the first night after leaving Safi, and they have reached a small mud-walled caravanserai set down in a cedar grove.
‘We rest here, because robbers haunt the road at night, Sayidi Nich-less,’ Hadir explains. ‘Very bad men. Will cut your throat and carry away your cargo.’ He nods in the direction of an ancient, stick-thin white-robed man of questionable vitality, whose face seems to have been constructed from random strips of very dark clay. The fellow had appeared that morning when the small caravan of six camels had set off from the quayside, bearing the first of the cargo. ‘This is why we have Izîl and his musket,’ Hadir says.
Izîl grins toothlessly at Nicholas, while brandishing a matchlock firing piece that looks as old as its owner.
‘Izîl take this musket in battle with famous Castilian knight,’ Hadir explains, ‘when we slaughtered the Portugals at Ksar el-Kébir. The Christians’ shot could not touch him. Was great miracle.’
Nicholas considers the chances being somewhat slim of Izîl being any more accurate with the matchlock than the Castilian he took it from. But he reckons some protection is better than none.
The camels are unloaded, fed and hobbled. Water is drawn from a well inside the caravanserai and a fire of cedar branches lit. While Nicholas watches the flames take hold, he hears the sound of what he takes to be foxes crying plaintively in the night.
Within minutes, showers of fiery sparks are leaping into the darkness, while shadows race across the inner walls of the compound as the cameleers dance gleefully to the beat of a small tambour. Great clouds of aromatic white smoke rise into the dusk, a signal to every robber and bandit within twenty miles. But the roasted goat’s meat is like ambrosia after almost three weeks of eating ship’s provisions.
Through Hadir, Nicholas swiftly establishes that the men of this caravan, carrying bolts of fine English cloth towards their sultan’s city, have not the slightest notion of where England is. One says it is on the other side of the world, past even distant Cathay. Another confidently asserts it is a land made entirely out of ships, and that the argosies moored in Safi bay are little fragments of it that broke off and went drifting around the world on the ocean currents. The greatest astonishment is saved for when Hadir tells them England is ruled by a queen.
‘It’s true,’ Nicholas says. ‘And before her, another queen. Before Elizabeth, Mary.’
At this, there is a deal of serious discussion that he cannot follow. But it seems grave. Every now and then a glance is cast in his direction.
‘They want to know if you’re a eunuch,’ Hadir explains. ‘Only eunuchs permit themselves to be ruled by women.’
‘Not when last I looked,’ Nicholas replies.
Hadir’s translation causes an outbreak of joyous ribaldry.