‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘And Farzad…’
‘Yes, Mistress?’
‘Promise to come and speak with me if you feel homesick.’
‘I will, Mistress.’
‘Good. Now you may tell Rose I’m going across the bridge – to see a new merchant on Petty Wales. Apparently he deals in rice. If it’s any good, I might bring back some for your pot.’
A malevolent bank of leaden cloud hangs low over New Fish Street as Bianca emerges from the north end of London Bridge a little before noon. The fluttering moths are still having their sport with her stomach. In fact she thinks they’ve been joined by a family of dragonflies.
Munt’s warehouse is all but identical to the others in the lane. The bottom storey is a solid ragstone barn with a pair of heavy wooden doors large enough to admit a loaded waggon. Shut and bolted, they are sturdy enough to keep a small army at bay. The peeling sign – three barrels in the shape of a pyramid – overhangs the street, the rusting hinges screeching a faint chorus of protest in the wind. A hundred yards to the east, the brooding Bulwark Gate of the Tower casts its corrosive shadow.
Bianca looks up, hoping to find an open window, perhaps even Munt himself leaning out in expectation of Bruno’s arrival. But the windows, opaque with accumulated grime, look as though they haven’t been opened for years.
She hammers on the right-hand door three times in quick succession. The old timbers soak up the sound and bury it. Her hand begins to throb. The first shots in a barrage of sleet begin to land noisily in the street.
She toys with the idea of making a run for the Bulwark Gate. Maybe the guards will let her shelter there. But the guards at the Tower must see traitors’ faces every day. Surely they can tell, just by looking into your eyes, that you have secrets to hide – even if you don’t actually know what those secrets are.
And then she sees it: a gap barely wide enough for the span of a pair of shoulders, between the end of Munt’s warehouse and the lime-store next door. She slips into the little passageway just as the heavens open.
The narrow space smells of cat’s piss and damp hemp sacks. At the far end is a flight of rickety wooden stairs leading to a landing and a door. Halfway up, painted on the ragstone wall, she can just make out three casks painted on the wall. Munt’s invitation to do business. To sell. To trade. To conspire. She begins to climb.
Reaching the top, Bianca takes a steadying breath and raps on the door with a determined rhythm that says: I’m here – ignore me at your cost.
Silence – save for the sound of her own breathing.
I misheard. I got the day wrong. I misunderstood the whole exchange. My cousin sells nothing but rice, and you don’t buy secrets. I’m here on a fool’s errand. And I’m the fool.
But then if there’s no conspiracy, how do I explain the silk cipher?
She hears a heavy latch being raised. The door opens inwards. To her relief, there are no armed men waiting beyond the sill to arrest her for crimes she doesn’t know she’s committed. There’s only Tobias Munt, merchant of this parish, standing before her in the same day-labourer’s shirt and woollen hose he was wearing that day aboard the Sirena.
‘God’s grace! Do you think I’m dead and need resurrecting?’ he demands to know. ‘I can hear you.’
Bianca stands before him, the melted sleet sheening her brow. The parish-church bells begin to strike noon. Now that they’re face-to-face, she doesn’t know what to say.
He’s a big man, with a roll of fat that lies around the base of his neck like a noose. His eyes range over her with an interest she does not care for, as he tries to make out her features in the gloom. Then he recognizes her.
‘Well, how now, Mistress? If it isn’t the maid with the sharp tongue – from the Sirena.’ He looks over her shoulder into the shadows of the landing, presumably expecting to see Bruno. At the bottom step the hailstones ricochet in from the street, like water spilt on hot fat.
‘I’ve come in my cousin’s place, Master Munt.’
‘Come for what?’
‘It is the agreed time and place, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mistress.’
Bianca fears he’s going to slam the door in her face. She thinks of putting one foot over the sill to stop him, but the combined impact of Munt and the door would crush it easily.
‘I was there, Master Munt – in the cabin on the Sirena. Remember?’
She holds up the medallion of St Margaret that she found in Bruno’s purse. Munt eyes it like a dog waiting for a titbit. ‘Signor Barrani is indisposed. He sent me in his stead.’
‘I’d heard he’s had what we might call “a tumble”. Mending, is he?’
How does he know? Bianca wonders. Who told him? ‘Bruno is a good man, Master Munt. God will look to his recovery,’ she says, with more confidence than she feels.
‘Well, if I were asked who I’d prefer as an emissary, I could think of no one comelier,’ he says, looking deep into her eyes with an intensity that makes her skin crawl. ‘You’d best enter, hadn’t you?’
She doesn’t need the brooding presence of the nearby Tower to help her imagine how someone may pass through a doorway, never to be heard from again. But she’s come too far to turn back now. As she steps inside, she hears Munt turn the key behind her, even above the drumming of the hail and the pounding of her own heart.
‘I’ve just come from Master Samuel’s chamber. I could not raise him, and the door was locked. Is there aught ill with him, my lady?’ Tanner Bell says to Isabel Wylde when he comes across her in the privy garden at Cleevely. His usual puckish good-heartedness is today dulled by worry, a worry not at all soothed by Lady Wylde’s coldly dismissive response.
‘Do not trouble yourself over Samuel. He is not to be disturbed. He is resting.’
‘But if he’s had one of his paroxysms, I should be there to comfort him.’
‘Samuel is merely sleeping, Tanner. Nothing more.’
‘But it’s gone noon.’
Lady Wylde looks around the privy garden, as though searching for a servant to remove something unpleasant that she’s stumbled upon during her otherwise untroubled walk. Finding no aid amongst the bushes, she sighs, clasps the crucifix that hangs at her throat and resigns herself to dealing alone with distasteful necessities. ‘Dr Arcampora has begun a new regime for Master Samuel – to strengthen his body. It requires from him much physical exertion. That is why he is resting. Now, if you–’
Tanner’s concern for his friend gives him the courage to persist, even in the presence of a woman he thinks of as being a terrifying amalgam of the Holy Madonna and a hanging judge. ‘But he was outside in the middle of the night: out beyond the house…’
‘You followed them?’
‘I wasn’t spying, honestly. I was just looking out of my window and saw them heading in the direction of the beech wood. It was a cold evening. I would have lent Samuel my coat for warmth, if that thieving rogue Finney hadn’t stolen it. It’s not good for Samuel to risk a chill.’
In Tanner’s mind, Lady Wylde’s eyes seem to narrow in the pale ceruse globe of her face. Her long body stiffens. She’s like a beautiful white owl sitting atop a post, he thinks, watching an unsuspecting mouse wander past below; and I’m the poor mouse.
‘Who are you to question a physician such as Dr Arcampora, sirrah?’
‘I wasn’t questioning, madam, I swear it.’