‘May I speak with Porter Bell, madam?’
‘Not unless you search him out. And that may take quite some doing.’
‘He’s no longer at Havington Manor?’
‘Sadly, not.’ Mercy Havington’s mouth gives a little twist of regret. ‘We had to let him go. Those drunken rages… the violence… After Dorney’s death they got steadily worse. Eventually it became impossible to keep him in the household, if only to protect Tanner. My brother-in-law was all for casting him into a cell at the Gloucester assizes.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘Gravesend, I hope.’
‘Why there, of all places?’ asks Nicholas, puzzled.
‘It’s where Porter was born. He spoke of the river often. My husband gave him enough money to set himself up as a waterman. It was his father’s trade. I just hope Porter hasn’t drunk it all away. Or worse.’ She shakes her head despondently. ‘And now Tanner has gone, too. No more Bells at Havington Manor. William would be so sad.’
‘Your son-in-law told me Tanner was serving as a companion to Samuel,’ says Nicholas, remembering his conversation with Joshua Wylde in his Woodbridge house. ‘Why would he suddenly leave – for London?’
‘I don’t understand that, either, Dr Shelby. Tanner was raised in our household. He defended Samuel from the cruelty of the village boys – sometimes with his fists. He would never willingly have abandoned him. And even if he had, he would have returned to Havington Manor. He knew he always had a place there.’
‘Perhaps he thought your brother-in-law would refuse to take him in, now that Sir William is no longer master.’
Mercy Havington answers with a dismissive snort. ‘You mean because of Tanner not having four legs and being clad in wool?’
Nicholas smiles at her spirited dismissal of her brother-in-law. ‘It’s a reason, madam.’
‘Nonsense! I would have insisted. I still have some standing in the Havington household.’
‘Then perhaps Tanner has gone to find his father, in Gravesend.’
‘I doubt that very much. The boy had become greatly afeared of his father’s unpredictable violence. No, Dr Shelby, Tanner would never have gone to Gravesend.’
‘Does he have any friends in London? Any cousins? Any reason at all to go there, apart from to accompany this Finney?’
‘That’s what troubles me, Dr Shelby,’ says Mercy Havington. ‘To my certain knowledge, Tanner Bell hasn’t been within fifty miles of London in his life.’
3
When Bianca and Rose return from fetching the evening’s water from the public well on Scrope Alley, Kit Marlowe is waiting in the lane, leaning against the wall of the Jackdaw as nonchalantly as a court poet. His full, honeyed locks are pushed back over his ears, and his left leg is bent at an acute angle, the heel of his boot pushed flat against the plaster. He’s wearing a grey damask doublet pinked with crimson and looks almost worn down by his own beauty. Bianca has learned from Nicholas of his humble parentage, but today he looks and sounds the very essence of the latest success to hit the London playhouses. Beside him, the plump, malmsey-mottled figure of Walter Burridge toys with the bright ribbons of the Lord Tyrrell’s Men stitched into his coat.
‘How now, Mistress Bianca?’ Marlowe oozes as she stops beneath the twin signs and puts down her pail. Something about the way the two men are standing there so boldly makes her stiffen, though she can’t explain why. Customers are customers, after all. Marlowe’s money is as good as anyone’s. And there is something dangerously appealing about him. Perhaps it’s the contradiction, she thinks: the cultured wordsmith inhabiting the same body as the Canterbury street-fighter. Behind her, she can sense Rose brushing her kirtle self-consciously.
‘Does Master Henslowe at the Rose still have the carpenters in, Master Kit?’ Bianca asks with a tight-lipped smile. ‘Have you come to my tavern to practise a full rendering of the Day of Judgement, perhaps? One riot not enough for you?’
Marlowe places a hand over his mortally wounded heart. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Master Kit,’ Bianca replies loftily.
‘Just a verse I composed – in praise of beauty.’
‘I’m flattered,’ Bianca says. ‘But you’ll have to do better than that. I was raised in Padua, remember. I’ve been paid court to by experts.’ She hoists her pail again. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse, I really do have labours to attend to.’
Rose follows her with a flounce, brushing her curls from her eyes with her free hands. ‘You can burn my topless towers if you like, Master Marlowe,’ she says coquettishly, earning herself a hissed ‘Rose!’ from Bianca.
‘How is your little Venetian gamecock today?’ Marlowe asks, following them inside.
‘He still languishes, Master Kit,’ Bianca says, without altering her expression.
Marlowe has asked the same question in one form or another every day since Nicholas left. Surely, she thinks, he can’t be suffering pangs of guilt. Then she remembers Nicholas’s warning: They say he went abroad for the Privy Council… Spying on Catholics…
‘A most terrible violence,’ says Burridge sadly. ‘And to think we are partly to blame. I pray for him, honestly I do – even if he is a foreigner.’
‘The only blame lies with those superstitious Puritan fools who came here looking for trouble,’ Bianca says curtly.
The taproom is beginning to fill with evening customers. Timothy is flitting from table to table like a worried swallow. Bianca goes to the parlour, lays down her pail next to Rose’s. ‘When you take Master Kit and Master Burridge their ale, give them a pack of primero cards,’ she tells her maid. ‘I want them occupied, not upsetting the other customers with their wild nonsense. I’ve had to do enough, bobbing and curtseying to the constable over that riot, as it is.’
‘You could just ban them, Mistress.’
‘Yes, I could, Rose.’
‘But Venetians and Master Kit together – well, they do rather pretty the place up a bit, don’t they?’
‘Rose, dear – customers!’
It is four days since Nicholas left for Gloucestershire. On each one of them Bianca has carried out his instructions to the letter. Every evening at about this time, no matter how busy the taproom, she has slipped away and climbed the stairs to Bruno’s chamber, carrying freshly washed linen, a jug of hot water and a fresh cataplasm – made of lavender, garlic, camomile and clematis, crushed in a mortar and mixed with oil – for his wound. Today, with both Rose and Timothy occupied, she will have to attend to her cousin alone. But it won’t take her more than ten minutes, if she’s quick about it. She gathers up what she needs and sets off for Bruno’s chamber. As she approaches the stairs, she almost collides with Graziano, coming down.
‘How now, Master Graziano?’ she says, falling automatically into the language they share. ‘Have you been keeping my cousin company awhile?’
‘I’ve been regaling him with tales of the Veneto, Mistress Bianca,’ Graziano says in that deep, cultured voice that somehow doesn’t fit a grizzled mariner. ‘I like to believe he can hear them. Also, I pray for him. I ask our Lord to make him well again.’
‘As do we all, Master Graziano. And I hope He is paying attention,’ she says, allowing him to pass.
He makes a formal bow and joins Luzzi, the sailing master, and a few others of the Sirena’s crew at their trappola, a card game she herself plays, but which her English customers have found incomprehensible.