The brothers. The words echo in her head like a peal of bells.
Who does he mean, she wonders: siblings? Or is Munt referring to a fraternity of some sort, a religious order perhaps. If by ‘token’ he means Bruno’s medallion, then the answer is clear: The Brothers of St Margaret of Antioch.
You’ve just offered me the first of your secrets, Bianca thinks. You’ve made me a gift of it, without even realizing. A sense of dangerous elation surges through her.
‘Your cousin, Mistress Merton – he is a learned man, is he not?’ says Tyrrell, studying her intently. ‘Merchant venturing is not his only passion, I assume.’
How is she supposed to answer? What other passions of Bruno’s can he be talking about? Dice? The cock-fight? Dancing a volta with a pretty maid? She feels the way she felt when Father Rossi or Cardinal Fiorzi called her out to recite some religious litany she had forgotten to learn.
And then a flash of inspiration. A moment of revelation – as though Bruno has just woken up, raised himself effortlessly on his elegant elbows, told her he’s never felt better and handed her the book of poetry that now contains his secret cipher.
‘Poetry,’ she says as casually as she can manage. ‘His particular love is Sannazaro. He’ll read Boccaccio, but when he’s in a reflective mood it’s Sannazaro every time. Especially the 1545 edition, printed by Pietro Bembo for His Holiness, Paul IV.’
Less than five minutes later Bianca is striding down Petty Wales, oblivious to the last efforts of the dying storm to soak her. Her heart pounds with relief, and more than a little terror at what the small parcel wrapped in sailcloth that she’s tucked inside her gown might contain. For Tyrrell has not seen fit to tell her.
Have you perchance brought anything else with you, Signor Munt? she can hear Bruno asking. And Munt’s reply: I shall need a little more time… favourable winds… We weren’t expecting you so soon.
As Bianca approaches the shelter of the bridge, something – some hint of the wise-woman buried deep inside her – makes her look back over her shoulder.
The scene is no different from any other she might expect to see in this city: urchins and vagabonds on the lookout for an unguarded purse, citizens of every shade and humour going about their business, lawful or otherwise. Everything as she would expect to see it.
Save for one man in a weather-worn cloak who seems taken by an unaccountable desire to turn his face from her and inspect the finer points of an utterly random doorway.
9
When the Jackdaw closes its doors for the night and Rose, Timothy and Farzad are asleep, Bianca steals into Bruno’s chamber. By candlelight she unwraps Tyrrell’s parcel. Inside is a slim wooden box, banded with straps of metal, one lengthways, one across. She turns it over, searching for the catch. Where the bands meet, she discovers a small keyhole. She shakes the sailcloth, expecting a key to fall out. Nothing does.
She shakes it again. Still no key.
‘Where is it, Cousin?’ she asks the unconscious Bruno. ‘If Tyrrell hasn’t placed one in the parcel, then you must have a key of your own.’
The slow rise and fall of his chest keeps the same steady rhythm.
Fetching the sack with Bruno’s possessions in it from the chest, Bianca spreads the contents out beside his mattress. For a while she just stares at them.
She’s sure it’s not in his purse – she’d emptied that when she’d retrieved the medallion of St Margaret to take to Petty Wales. She can discount, too, the Sannazaro. She’s well acquainted with that now, and there’s definitely no key secreted in the cover or between the pages.
She checks the gloves, working them vigorously between her fingers. No more secrets hidden there, either. The astrolabe she can also discard – there’s nowhere amongst its thin metal rings to hide a key.
‘You must have it somewhere, Cousin,’ she tells Bruno in a whisper. ‘I can hardly ask Lord Tyrrell – I’m supposed to be your accomplice. I’m supposed to know everything.’
The slow rise and fall of his chest keeps the same steady rhythm.
A terrible thought strikes her. Perhaps he keeps the key aboard the Sirena. If that’s the case, it is lost to her.
Only the compass remains now. Thumbing the brass catch, Bianca opens the lid. The lodestone gives a quiver of excitement, swinging wildly in the compass rose, before settling to the north. The blade of the sundial clicks up into place, standing proud like a little brass fin. Bianca peers at it more closely.
At the apex of the blade she sees a small decorative finial, a flat curlicue of metal about half the size of the nail on her little finger, a miniature dash of exuberance by the craftsman to show off his skill.
Bianca takes Tyrrell’s box in her other hand and matches the keyhole with the finial. The little brass ornament is a perfect fit. She turns it. A satisfying click and the metal bands release. With her heart beating wildly, Bianca opens the box.
Inside are several sheets of parchment, neatly folded. She takes them out and spreads them on the floor. On each one is a meaningless collection of apparently random letters, laid out in neat lines of secretary hand. She knows at once that all she needs, in order to reveal their contents, is the transposition code revealed to her by the little silk banner.
With her heart pounding, Bianca puts the documents back in the box and goes to her apothecary’s room in the cellar as quietly as the Jackdaw’s ancient timbers will allow.
She’s already taken the precaution of writing the code into the book she uses to record her patients and the treatments she’s prescribed, set down in a way that would be meaningless to a casual observer. She sets the candle close to her chair, takes up paper and pen and – fighting the instinct to hurry – goes methodically to work. The letter a replaced by an s…; c replaced by u…; e by d…
Bianca gets through only three lines on the first sheet before she lays it aside. She tries again on the second sheet. This time it takes only one line before she abandons it and moves on to the third piece of parchment. Only two words before she moves on to the fourth. Then she gives up. Not one group of letters has yielded its meaning. The words are all in Latin.
A wave of frustration breaks over her. Her disappointment, the tension of her visit to Petty Wales, her cousin’s injuries, all bring Bianca close to tears.
She remembers what Bruno had said to her the day Munt came aboard the Sirena: … it is a privy matter. He needs someone he can trust in this den of disbelievers…
The thought that her cousin is a conduit for secret messages passing between Cardinal Fiorzi and an English lord who is somehow connected to a secret cabal calling itself the Brothers of Antioch can mean only one thing: treason.
She’s almost glad she can’t read the letters. Whatever these conspirators are saying to each other will have to wait for the return of the one person she would dare to trust with their translation: Nicholas Shelby.
And God alone knows where he is at this moment.
‘Rose, dear, I’m going for a walk, down to the river,’ Bianca says the following morning after breakfast. The guest’s trenchers have been cleared away and Rose is upstairs, hanging the bed sheets out of the windows to air. Farzad is eagerly assisting her, as though it’s all he was created for. ‘Can you manage without me?’