A walk, down to the river. It’s not exactly a lie. It’s just not the whole truth.
From the Jackdaw, it’s less than five minutes to the river bank. Bianca strides through the lanes towards the Thames. At the narrow foot of Black Bull Alley the great watery-brown serpent slides endlessly across her vision. She can smell fecund river mud, rotten fish and the stink of wet hide and fresh blood from the Mutton Lane shambles.
To her right, about fifty yards from the river, is a patch of open ground between two houses. It’s a small wasteland of weeds, burnt timbers and shattered masonry, where a tenement once stood. At the back is an ancient wall of flint and brick about ten feet high, pierced by a door. Hoisting the hem of her kirtle, Bianca steps carefully across the rubble. She takes a key from her girdle and slips it into the lock. The door swings open easily on greased hinges. She steps through into her secret world.
She purchased this little plot from the parish, using what was left of her father’s money, after she’d taken the Jackdaw. It’s a rectangle of ground between the still-standing garden wall of the long-demolished tenement and perimeter wall of the Southwark Lazar House. No one had wanted to buy it, because of the grim shadow cast by the derelict leper hospital, even though there’s not been a case of the malady reported since Elizabeth ascended the throne. Old stories, old fears have deep roots on Bankside.
But now it’s no longer a wasteland. Hidden away between two high brick walls and the gable ends of the adjoining houses are her herb beds, neatly ordered, the climbers trained fastidiously, the shrubs trimmed to within an inch of their lives. She stands for a while, eyes closed, just taking in the scents of horehound and anagallis, of pennyroyal, and wood-sorrel, all her flowery familiars working their magic on her senses. A contented smile spreads across her face. As far as she knows, this is the only physic garden in the city. Possibly in all England.
When she arrived in London, it had taken her a while to realize that she could not treat this patch of waste ground in the same manner as she’d tended her mother’s physic garden in Padua. English soil and Protestant weather were enemies she hadn’t expected. She smiles as she recalls how she tried to deal with the caterpillars by the old method that her mother had always espoused: walking barefoot through the patch when she was in her menses time. It was about the only spell of her mother’s that hadn’t worked.
But she persevered with more practical methods of cultivation. Now she often comes here just to revel in the scents, to walk between the beds and rub the leaves between her fingers, releasing their fragrant charms. And when she does, she thinks not just of the healing balms and infusions she will prepare, but also of her Italian mother and her English father, sleeping their everlasting sleep in the sunny graveyard a mile beyond the city walls of Padua.
I am the daughter of magicians, she thinks: a sire who believed he could uncover the secrets of the natural world by study, and a mother who’d been using those same secrets all her life to concoct her potions – some to heal, others to poison. When she looks at it plainly, she’s the child of a heretic and a witch. No wonder dear Ned Monkton once thought her capable of flying down Long Southwark in the dead of night in the shape of a bat. No wonder the customers of the Jackdaw still feel a little less than bold when they run up a tally. They’re still not quite sure that she can’t curdle their pottage on a whim, or bring their children out in shingles.
Bianca walks carefully along the back wall until she finds the spot she is searching for, a distinctively twisted root of holly. Beside it lies a large lump of old plaster, mossy-green with age. She rolls it away from the wall, revealing a deep cavity. She buries the sailcloth parcel containing Tyrrell’s box of documents and heaves the masonry back into place. Then she gathers up a selection of leaves for Bruno’s cataplasm, so that on her return Rose won’t badger her about where she’s been.
Oh, Bruno, whatever are you up to? she says to the sleeping ranks of lavender just before she leaves. Have you forgotten what these people do to their enemies if they catch them – how merciless they can be?
She’s almost reached the top of Black Bull Alley when something makes her turn her head and look back over her shoulder: a sensation, a feeling, nothing more. Or perhaps that intangible sense of something being not quite right.
A shadow – there – flitting beneath the overhang of a house.
Her heart begins to race. She stares intently down the lane.
It’s nothing. Just a shadow. A window being closed, perhaps. Certainly not a man in a dark winter cloak, like the figure she thought she glimpsed when she left Munt’s warehouse. A nothing shadow.
You’re losing your wits, she tells herself. You’re turning into a scared mouse. She curses her foolishness and continues on her way, satisfied that Tyrrell’s parcel is safely hidden where no one can possibly find it.
When Bianca returns to the taproom, she finds Kit Marlowe sprawled at a table, one booted foot on the bench, the other draped over the corner of the board, as though he owns the place. Walter Burridge sits beside him, like an undergroom who’s been drinking too much of his master’s malmsey.
Until Lord Tyrrell had stepped through that door at Munt’s warehouse, she’d thought Kit Marlowe an innocent party in the riot that had left Bruno close to death. She’d put the blame squarely on the shoulders of sideman Perrot and his Puritan friends. Kit, the gifted playwright, would inevitably provoke people with small minds. But now she wonders if he might not frequent the Jackdaw for a different reason. After all, he hasn’t actually done any rehearsing for days now. He lodges somewhere across the river, she’s learned; so why does he come here almost every day? Is he Tyrrell’s man? Or – as Nicholas had warned her – is he the Privy Council’s? Where, she wonders, do Kit Marlowe’s true loyalties lie?
But she cannot deny there is something about his dangerous disregard for convention that she finds appealing. And as Rose is only to eager to point out, as a male, Kit really is exceptionally enticing – if perhaps just a little too beautiful for her own tastes. (She distrusts such polished edges, especially ones so clearly borrowed.) Maybe if he could rediscover a little more of the Kentish brawler in him… She knows it’s there – she’s seen it peep round those oh-so-smooth corners more than once. That’s what I like so much about Nicholas, she thinks. No pretence. No playing the gallant. After all, how can you trust a man who so easily deceives even himself?
‘Why, Mistress Bianca,’ Marlowe cries theatrically as he spots her, ‘bright Phoebus himself could not grace Bankside with half so divine a crown of light! The darkness is extinguished by your return!’
Before she can stop herself, Bianca realizes she’s running her fingers through her hair to subdue any waywardness. ‘I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about, Master Kit,’ she says, cursing the weakness of her resolve.
‘Rejected!’ guffaws Burridge in delight. ‘Careful, Mistress Bianca, you have the gift of my friend’s contentment in your hands. Be gentle, I implore you.’
‘The only thing I have for Master Kit is his reckoning,’ she says, regaining her composure. ‘He owes me a week’s worth of ale and sustenance. And that doesn’t cover the damage done in the riot that harmed my cousin. Any time will be fine.’
Burridge bangs his ale-pot heartily on the table to show how much he appreciates her spirit.
‘If you find yourself a little short, Master Kit,’ she says, raising her chin, ‘I’m sure Lord Tyrrell would help you out.’