‘What have I done now, Robert?’ Mercy Havington asks, as – formalities done – he raises his head to bestow a welcoming kiss on her cheek.
‘The sleeves, madam. You do it to tease me. I know you do – and I shall not be provoked.’
Lady Havington glances at her sleeves. They are slashed in the fashionable Spanish style. ‘Just because we’re at war with the Don,’ she says, ‘that is no reason for a woman to dress like a milking maid, Robert.’
Cecil shakes his head in good-natured capitulation. ‘Then I shall prepare myself to find my own dear wife dressed up like a Castilian duchess when I am done here. And yours will be the fault, madam.’
Having scored her point, Mercy Havington returns his kiss. She has come up from Gloucestershire for the christening of Robert’s first son. She is related to his wife, Elizabeth. Indeed, were she not kin, she’d still be waiting in the entrance hall along with all the other petitioners.
‘It is a joy to see your young boy so bonny, Robert. I confess my heart has needed a little lifting recently.’
Robert Cecil is not given to obvious displays of emotion. Nevertheless, he makes his best attempt at a show of sadness. ‘You must be feeling the loss of your husband severely, madam. I know Lord Burghley was much affected by the news of Sir William’s death. He held him in high esteem.’
‘I count myself fortunate to have had thirty-three years of mostly happy marriage, Robert. Few enough can call themselves so lucky.’
‘Indeed.’
A slight hesitation while he waits for her to come to the point of her visit.
‘I know how busy the queen keeps you, Robert, but I wanted a moment of your time – in private. It’s about our grandson, Samuel.’
Robert Cecil remembers a thin lad with fair hair and troubled, expectant eyes. ‘Has his falling sickness worsened?’ he asks.
‘No. It is more the care of it that troubles me.’
‘If it’s a physician you’re after, I fear I can recommend none,’ Cecil says, fixing Lady Havington with a gaze that seems to dare her to notice the warped fall of his gown where it hangs on his shoulders. ‘I’d hang them all, if I were allowed.’
‘Oh, he already has a physician, Robert. And that is where my concern lies.’
‘Then how may I help?’
‘When his mother – our daughter – died some years ago, it fell to Sir William and me to look after the boy. We have done so diligently, and love him dearly. But Samuel’s father, Sir Joshua Wylde, has recently remarried – unexpectedly.’ She pauses, as though considering carefully how to continue. ‘He has passed Samuel’s care to his new wife, the Lady Isabel.’
‘Surely it is good for a son to be with his father,’ says Cecil, who has learned things from Lord Burghley that a man could live three full lifetimes and never acquire.
‘My son-in-law has returned to serve in Holland, Robert. Even marriage cannot keep him from his duty, fighting the Spanish tyrant. It is the physician Isabel has persuaded him to appoint who worries me.’
‘You fear he may be a charlatan, but you don’t want to cause a family rift?’
‘I knew you would understand, Robert. You were always such a perceptive boy.’
‘Does this physician have a name?’
‘He’s Swiss, apparently. Dr Angelo Arcampora.’
‘Ah, the genius!’
‘You know of him?’
Robert Cecil smiles a secret smile, as if to say: no one comes into England without my knowing it. ‘I met him at Lord Tyrrell’s house, at a dinner, when he came into the country. I assumed he was one of Tyrrell’s actors, straight from the playhouse – a preposterous braggart.’
Lady Havington sighs with vindication. ‘Unfortunately, Isabel Wylde holds him in high regard.’
‘I could have him arrested, if you want. A night or two in one of my cells and he might decide Switzerland isn’t so bad after all.’
‘But what if Arcampora really can effect a cure for Samuel?’ Mercy Havington says. ‘Lady Wylde is mightily convinced by him.’
‘Then I am at a loss as to how I may be of help, madam.’
‘It’s really very simple, Robert.’ She pats the Lord Treasurer’s son lightly on one shoulder, like an indulgent aunt. ‘Do what all England thinks it is that you do.’
‘And what, pray, might that be?’ Cecil says archly.
‘Why, have one of your clever fellows spy on him, of course.’
5
Having come so far, having risked high seas and marauding pirates, Bruno Barrani wants to see if London lives up to its reputation. It would be good, Bianca thinks, to show him her city, now that she’s managed to wrestle her own little corner of it from the guilds and the aldermen, the parish busybodies and the disapproving Puritans. The day dawns encouragingly bright, the skyline of steeples bathed in the spring light. Bianca musters Nicholas, Ned and Rose in the parlour and makes her dispositions as though she’s a captain of pike preparing her band to receive a charge: brew-house floor to be scrubbed – thoroughly, mind; no rats’ carcasses left behind the casks; and most important of alclass="underline" no further credit extended to alderman Miller until he apologizes for calling the Jackdaw’s mistress a brazen sorceress.
‘I never expected the heretics to have so many churches,’ Bruno says as they walk along Bankside.
She offers to show him St Saviour’s. At first he refuses to go in, on the grounds that only a madman would step inside a lion’s den. But he relents when she convinces him that heresy is not adhesive.
‘Cannot the Antichrist afford some gold paint and plaster?’ he asks, astounded by the simple plainness of the church.
By the time they reach Whitehall, the sun has vanished and the drizzle has set in. Bianca blames the Puritans. Bruno is inclined to believe her.
She takes him to the public parts of the sprawling site, walks him through the great gate and past the tilt-yard. They turn heads: the slender young woman with the flash of the Veneto sun in her amber eyes, and the black-clad sprite strutting at her side. Bruno doesn’t notice. He’s too busy trying to catch a glimpse of England’s queen – a creature he regards as falling somewhere between a tyrannical sultan from Araby and Mephistopheles. He’s disappointed when Bianca explains that Elizabeth is not in the habit of strolling amongst commoners, certainly not since the Prince of Orange was shot by an assassin brandishing a wheel-lock pistol.
At the Royal Exchange she shows him the merchants and financiers haggling. In a shop on Cornhill he insists on buying her a set of white Antwerp stockings. ‘I cannot have my sweet cousin dressing herself like a peasant girl from Puglia,’ he explains. In return she pays the fare for a tilt-boat. From the river, they view the great houses along the Strand and play a game in which they imagine the impossibly wealthy men who live in them. She doesn’t tell him that one of them is Robert Cecil, whose infamy is known even in Padua.
The tilt-boat drops them off at Galley Quay. Bruno wants to tell the Sirena’s sailing master Luzzi, and the two crewmen who have drawn straws to remain aboard as watchmen, that they will be relieved later in the day and can then join their shipmates at the Jackdaw, where the first jug will be on the house. While Bruno makes his rounds of the ship with Luzzi, Bianca seeks refuge from the drizzle in his cabin on the stern-castle.