The plan is for Nicholas and Lady Havington to appear at Cleevely House unannounced. Ned is to remain in nearby Cleevely village and glean whatever he can about the foreign physician.
‘How do we explain your presence, Dr Shelby?’ Lady Havington asks. ‘Will Arcampora not suspect that I have brought you on a pretence?’
‘You can tell him I’ve been sent by Sir Joshua to report at first hand how his son is faring.’
‘Do we admit to him that you’re a physician?’
Nicholas gives her a self-deprecating smile. ‘Perhaps it’s better we don’t. Besides, Robert Cecil likes to remind me I don’t look like one anyway. For my part, I like to think that’s a compliment.’
It is less than an hour’s ride to Cleevely. They take a narrow track that follows the folds of a little valley, past well-hedged fields and apple orchards. Lady Havington leads, elegantly riding side-saddle. In the spring sunshine it seems to Nicholas the easiest way he can imagine to earn more than a year’s income in so short a time. He’s even become oblivious to Ned’s murmured oaths of discomfort.
‘What will you do if I determine Arcampora’s a charlatan, madam?’
‘I shall write to Sir Joshua – tell him the truth.’
‘You do understand that, even if he’s not a fraud, there is no known cure for the falling sickness?’
‘Then it will be all the better for Samuel not to have his hopes raised. He is not a strong lad, Dr Shelby, either in mind or in body. I’ve seen how easily he can be influenced.’
They reach a wood where the first of the early bluebells lie amongst the undergrowth like lapis pebbles cast from a careless hand. The soft earth steals away the sound of horseshoe and harness. The trees deaden their voices.
‘I take it you have little time for Samuel’s stepmother,’ Nicholas says cautiously, remembering a sow named Isabel.
‘How perceptive of you, Dr Shelby,’ says Lady Havington, trying to hide a guilty smile. ‘You must understand: I do not hold it against Sir Joshua for marrying again. It’s just that Isabel does appear to have stolen his affections rather swiftly.’
‘Yesterday, Lady Havington, you told me you were free from the falling sickness. Does it occur in any other member of your family?’
‘No, Dr Shelby. It does not.’
‘Or in Sir William’s? His brother, perhaps?’
‘Gilbert? Dr Shelby, a paroxysm in that man would be a welcome sign of animation. I cannot tell you how tedious I find my days, now that I must reside in his household. I’d leave – but at the moment I can’t bring myself to abandon William’s spirit. He loved Havington Manor so very much, you see.’
Nicholas recalls the boots still standing in the hallway. ‘I understand, madam. So your daughter was the first to feel its affliction?’
‘As I told you when you arrived, Dr Shelby, God has reserved his punishment only for Alice and her son.’
‘His punishment for what, exactly?’
A tight smile, grudgingly offered. ‘I spoke in general terms, Dr Shelby. We are all sinners, are we not? We must all bow our heads to God’s judgement.’
It’s as clear an invitation to change the subject as Nicholas has ever heard.
‘Whyever did you not send word, madam? I would have warned the cooks!’
Isabel Wylde speaks with a smile, though to Nicholas the words sound like a reprimand. She’s younger than he’d expected: about thirty, tall and narrow-boned. The round, even face is whitened with ceruse and has the sad, brittle beauty of a Madonna, like the ones he’s seen painted on looted Romish altars in the Low Countries.
‘Forgive the inconvenience, Lady Isabel, but Master Shelby here must soon return to his place with Sir Joshua’s company,’ Lady Havington explains apologetically. ‘We didn’t want to waste time, and my son-in-law is eager for a goodly report of his boy.’
‘He did not write to me on the matter,’ says Isabel sternly.
‘Sir Joshua was much exercised in preparing his recruits for the voyage to Holland, madam,’ Nicholas explains. ‘I’m sure it simply slipped his mind.’ He takes in the expensive gown of cherry-red taffeta with French sleeves, worn beneath a bodice pinked with green silk, the auburn hair parted severely down the centre and pinned beneath a white linen coif. There’s a crucifix on a gold chain at her throat, and she has the habit of pressing it against her skin with the fingertips of her right hand. Nicholas can’t quite determine if she’s devout or a little discomforted by their sudden arrival. He can imagine her walking a dangerous line between devotion and temptation. He remembers what Sir Joshua told him, in the house at Woodbridge: She’d heard of my reputation! Swore she would have no husband other than a Christian knight who knew his duty to the new religion…
He looks around at the expensive Flemish hangings; at the polished plate armour; at the portraits of the Wylde lineage, every one of them male. Half a dozen generations of warriors, each with eyes that blaze with martial zeal and beards that you could hide a whole company of archers in. He suspects there is no current plan for a portrait of Samuel.
‘I must confess, Master Shelby, in Holland I met most of Joshua’s officers. Yet I do not recall seeing you amongst them. How is that?’
‘I have been back in England a while, madam. I happened to encounter Sir Joshua in Suffolk, before he departed. He asked me to do him this small favour.’
‘Suffolk? That’s a long way to travel for a small favour.’
You’d make a good interrogator, thinks Nicholas. Perhaps, when this is over, I should recommend you to Robert Cecil.
Mercy Havington comes to his rescue. ‘Master Shelby was also acquainted with my late husband. William took the liberty of asking him if he might bring some Haarlem linen on his next visit. He’s been kind enough to oblige. Two birds with one stone, if you like.’
Nicholas thinks he ought to nod, for extra veracity. ‘Sir Joshua is most eager for first-hand news of his son, madam. I should not like to disappoint him.’
‘I shall have to ask Dr Arcampora if such an audience is possible.’
An audience? Does Isabel Wylde think her stepson so full of grace that he gives audiences? Nicholas casts a glance at Lady Havington. She replies with a look that says I told you so.
‘Sir Joshua will be most vexed if I return with nothing to tell him,’ he persists as firmly as he dares.
Isabel Wylde’s shoulders give the merest hint of a shrug. ‘Very well,’ she says. ‘You have come a long way. It would be un-wifely of me to deny my husband news of his son. Follow me.’
She leads them down a long panelled gallery that is as well presented and ordered as its chatelaine. No untidy homeliness here. Not a chair or a cushion out of place. On a sideboard the pewter is stacked neatly by size, as though no one dares use it. A servant vanishes like a wraith the moment his mistress strides into view. The fireplaces are empty, not a made-up hearth to be seen. Over one of them hangs a fine woven arras. It depicts a woman bathed in rays of heavenly light, while in the background a serpent coils itself around a tree. Nicholas assumes the woman is a Christian martyr and the scene is meant to depict some improving allegory, though for the life of him he can’t recall which one. He wonders if Isabel Wylde’s aloof and icy piety wouldn’t be better suited to some cloistered foreign nunnery. What must it have been like for Samuel Wylde to be uprooted so summarily from his grandparents’ home and set down in such an austere place?