‘It’s called trepanning, Ned. It’s the drilling of a hole through the frontal or the parietal bones. And whether you believe me or not, it’s not intended to kill.’
Ned stares at him in astonishment, his eyes wide in his broad, fiery face. ‘Well, it can’t have been meant to cure a fucking headache, can it?’
Nicholas gets up from the bough and stands over the sundered corpse. He stares down at the skull. ‘I’ve seen a lot of damaged bone on the battlefield, Ned,’ he says reflectively. ‘I’ve treated skulls struck by lead ball, penetrated by pike-head, pierced by arrow and slashed by sword and axe. And just occasionally I’ve seen them heal. I can’t be sure with the skull in this state, but by the look of the scraps of flesh left around the hole and the granulation of the bone, Tanner Bell – if that’s who this really is – may have survived the drilling by a few days. What killed him came afterwards: someone has broken his neck.’
6
Since Ned Monkton left with Nicholas, there has been only Rose and Timothy to help Bianca at the Jackdaw. The tavern, the demand for her apothecary’s skills and her nursing of Bruno Barrani has left her weary. But then, on one particularly cold March morning, help arrives out of the blue.
The paid-off crew of an Indies trader enter the tavern, boisterously intent on spending some of their wages. With them is a boy of about Timothy’s age. He’s a wiry, olive-skinned lad with a shock of jet-black hair and eyes the colour of scorched butter. As Bianca helps Rose take the jugs of knock-down to their table, she notices him politely refuse his companions’ invitation to drink. She realizes the lad must be a Mohammedan. He’s not the first she’s seen on Bankside, but rare enough. And she notices that he has the habit of putting a hand to his forehead and wincing.
‘Is your young fellow in need of something for a headache?’ she asks.
‘Farzad’s from Persia,’ explains one of the sailors. ‘We rescued him from Barbary pirates off the Ethiope shore. Doesn’t take to the cold, though. It’s given him a cruel ache in the brains.’
‘I know the very thing,’ says Bianca.
Within moments she has mixed leaves of camomile, marjoram, sage and laurel with oil of pepper to make an inhalation.
‘What do you say to the kind lady, Farzad?’ the sailor asks, pushing the boy forward to take the bowl.
‘I say the Pope is the arse-end of a flea-bitten dog!’ announces Farzad with a wide grin that shows a set of gleaming white teeth quite unknown in Southwark.
‘He’s a good lad, for a Mussulman,’ the sailor says, before Bianca can put voice to her astonishment. ‘Knowledgeable, too. Specially about foreign countries. Tell the good mistress what you know about Spain, Farzad.’
‘The Spanish king has breath that stinks like bad goat-meat! He is womanly!’
‘And what about France?’
‘The French king has very small pizzle. Can only mate with a snail!’
Further investigation reveals that Farzad, an orphan, has learned all his English in the close confines of the barque Rachel, at the hands of her determinedly Protestant crew. He can roundly insult every nation yet discovered. The sailors consider him an honorary Englishman.
‘What will happen to him, now that the Rachel is paid off?’ Bianca asks, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘He’ll soon sign on with another ship. They’ll be glad of him. He’s a fine cook – for a heathen. Dances a jig mightily, too.’
And thus a new face joins the Jackdaw’s company – someone to help Rose with the pottage and the brawn, the baked sprats and the coney pie. Within three days there even appears the occasional strange and fiery dish that Farzad cooks as if he’s mixing some sort of secret elixir, and which Rose proclaims tastes like eating the Devil’s own flesh, but which several of the Jackdaw’s customers consume eagerly. Bianca, for her part, knowing what it is like to have your faith traduced, allows Farzad quiet moments in which to practise his solitary observances.
And waits for Bruno to wake. And for Nicholas to return.
At Cleevely, it is Dr Arcampora’s habit to confide in Samuel Wylde many of the great secrets of physic. This, he says, is in order that Samuel may be knowledgeable far above the level of ordinary men. Today, his subject is virgin birth.
‘It is the manner by which a man-child may be brought forth into life, without woman, without womb. By a miracle. You understand?’
‘Not really, sir,’ says Samuel, a frown of doubt clouding his unblemished face.
‘Inside the seed of the man – in the very tip – is a perfectly formed human infant,’ explains Arcampora. ‘Is called homunculus. Very tiny. Very small.’ He pinches together the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to illustrate. ‘God makes perfect this little man, inside the seed. Like in a bubble.’
That’s me and Cleevely, thinks Samueclass="underline" a tiny little human being encased in a bubble. But God hasn’t made me perfect – which is why my father has sent Dr Angelo Arcampora.
‘The ancients describe this. So too does the famous Paracelsus – a genius also from Switzerland.’
Samuel wonders how many geniuses Switzerland can hold.
‘Now, the secret,’ announces Arcampora grandly. ‘The seed must be left to putrefy for forty days, in venter equinus.’ He searches for the correct English. ‘Venter equinus – in the shit of the horse. In the dung: you follow?’
Samuel follows, if tentatively.
‘Then, when it shows movement’ – Arcampora wiggles his fingers – ‘it must be nourished for forty days in human blood. After that it must be boiled. The result is a perfect human boy infant – no womb necessary. This is a known miracle.’
‘Perhaps if I’d been grown in horse dung, I might have flowered better than I have,’ Samuel says. ‘Grandma Mercy puts it on the roses at Havington Manor and they grow very well.’
Arcampora’s raptorial face darkens. ‘I tell you before, Lady ’Avington, she is not your grandam. You must forget her. Mercy ’Avington was a heretic whore.’
‘That cannot be,’ protests Samuel. ‘Grandma Mercy is a goodly woman.’
‘You must learn the truth,’ Arcampora continues in a sort of extended spit. ‘When, by her intemperate lusts, this woman fell with child, the infant was taken from her. It was probably cast out to die. Your true mother was put in her place, to be raised in ignorance of her destiny.’
In a rare moment of defiance, Samuel almost shouts, ‘Then if Grandma Mercy wasn’t my true grandmother, who was?’
‘This you shall learn when you are stronger,’ says Arcampora. ‘For now, know only that she, too, was a miracle sent by God.’
Which, to Samuel, sounds as implausible as a tiny, perfectly formed man in the head of the seed he expends when the loneliness at Cleevely becomes too unbearable.
It is not yet dawn. In the lanes around the Jackdaw the silence is broken by a watchman’s dog barking at a shadow. Bianca stretches her limbs beneath the covers. On the truckle beside her bed, Rose burbles in contented oblivion. It is in these early hours, before the Jackdaw wakes, before the streets echo to the rumbling of carts and the shouts of the street vendors, that Bianca marshals her thoughts for the day to come. Like every day that’s passed since her discovery, today she wakes to thoughts of the little sheet of silk that has been calling to her like a banner on the eve of battle.