Until this morning.
Now they beckon her towards catastrophe. This, she thinks, is how Anne Boleyn, Jane Grey and Mary Stuart went to their deaths: a procession of brave but hopeless steps on the slow walk to the block. Ordained. Inevitable.
The procession to her own nemesis had begun early this morning, shortly after Nicholas had left for his hearing before the Censors. Edward, the hop merchant’s boy, had made his weekly delivery. Young Edward: barely seventeen, possessed of a handsome face punctured with the carmine eruptions of youth and – for as long as she’s known him – brimming with puppyish devotion directed solely at her. But today he had stayed silent. Painfully distant, his eyes brimming with the hurt of the unrequited.
Next had been Aggie Wyatt herself.
‘’S’appened then, has it?’ Aggie had sniffled.
‘Happened? What’s happened?’
‘You and your physician.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Aggie.’
‘You deserve it, my dove. Don’t worry, the secret’s safe with me.’
But this is Bankside – where there’s no such thing as a secret.
Now I’ve arrived at the steps to the scaffold, Bianca thinks. Face-to-face with my executioner. The block awaits. Time only for a brief valedictory word before I lower my neck to the inevitable judgement. She takes a deep, resigned breath and continues the walk to her destiny.
‘Can I be a maid of honour, Mistress?’ Rose asks chirpily as she enters the taproom. ‘I do so love a wedding!’
Nicholas returns to the Jackdaw as the bell at St Saviour’s rings for Evensong. The taproom is almost empty. A quartet of tired watermen are taking their ease at one table; at another, Graziano and two sailors from the Sirena are enjoying a meal before returning with news of their master – the exact same news they carried yesterday and the day before: our master still lingers close to death.
Bianca is with them, deep in conversation. Nicholas watches her from the doorway, as if seeing her for the first time. Her fluent Italian and her animated gestures seem to belong to a stranger. She has never looked more beautiful to him. He again recalls the vision he had of them together, strolling in John Lumley’s little orchard. And again – to his surprise – he feels no guilt, hears no reproach from Eleanor.
Turning her head as she laughs at something Graziano has said, Bianca catches sight of him. She jumps up and leads him into the little passage between the taproom and the parlour. It’s a squeeze for two people. They are almost as close to each other as they were when the watch found them.
‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ he begins.
‘I know.’
‘You know?’ he says, caught by surprise. How can she know what has been in his mind all the way back from Knightrider Street? How can she possibly know what he’s decided to do?
‘Yes, I’ve heard it. I’ve had to suffer it all day!’
‘I don’t think we’re talking about–’
‘Everyone knows! From Edward, the hop merchant’s lad, to Aggie Wyatt, the waterman’s wife. Dingle and Boley must have been shouting the news from the bridge gatehouse. It’s all over Southwark! Worse still, Rose wants to be a bridesmaid.’
Nicholas lets his head fall back against the plaster and laughs with relief. ‘Oh, that.’
Bianca rams her fists into her hips. Her amber eyes blaze. ‘It’s not funny, Nicholas!’
‘Is it so very terrible? Am I such a poor catch that I should be thrown back as displeasing?’
‘Of course not. That’s not the issue.’
Is he really the most obtuse rogue on Bankside? she wonders. Do all the sons of Suffolk yeomen have turnip-mash between their ears?
‘Then ignore the gossip.’
‘It’s alright for you, Nicholas,’ she says, almost snarling. ‘You won’t have to answer for it. No one is going ask you in an irritating sing-song, “Nicholas, when are banns to be read?” … “Nicholas, shall it be rosemary or daisies for your bride-lace?” It’s a calamity!’
‘I’ll tell them it was a mistake. A foolish error. I’ll say I’d drunk too much mad-dog.’
She glares at him. ‘What are you implying – that a man must be drunk before he’ll consider embracing me?’
‘That’s not what I said!’
Rose pushes past, her arms full of dirty trenchers. She contrives the merest hint of a bob. ‘Mistress. Master Nicholas. Time enough for disputes when you’re wed.’ She disappears into the kitchen with a happy flounce.
‘Do you see what I mean?’
Nicholas allows Bianca a moment to calm herself. Then he says, ‘Perhaps this might not be the best moment to ask, but I’ve been thinking about what to do next, all the way back from the College.’
‘And?’
‘How would you care to come to Gravesend with me tomorrow? To see Porter Bell?’
In the courtyard of Cleevely House the servants have set the rush-lights burning in the dusk. Professor Arcampora has announced to Samuel that it’s time to return to the lodge in the beech wood. And this time Tanner Bell is being allowed to accompany him.
As they ride out into the approaching night, Samuel tells Tanner of the fantastical things he will see. Things that only a man with more wisdom and knowledge in his soul than all the ancients put together could summon out of the air. ‘There will be wondrous alchemy, Tanner. What you or I might take to be nothing but rock and dirt will transform itself into brilliantly coloured clouds of smoke and sparks that almost blind you, if you look at them too long. And if you breathe upon their exotic vapours you will have astonishing dreams, even though you’re really still awake. You must not be afraid, Tanner,’ he says, understanding now how much of Arcampora’s physic might seem frightening to those with less enlightened minds. ‘No harm can come to us. God will protect us – the Professor has made sure of it.’
‘I wish my brother Dorney was here,’ says Tanner Bell, by no means convinced. ‘Somehow he always managed to give me courage.’
‘It will be alright, I promise. Besides, I wouldn’t want to share this with anyone else.’
‘But what if you have one of your falling spells out here tonight?’
Even in the light from Florin’s burning torch, Samuel’s face is as pale as an owl’s wing in the darkness.
‘It won’t matter,’ he says, grasping Tanner’s arm to encourage him. ‘Soon my sickness will be gone. I shall be like you. I shall be cured.’ He raises his eyes to the night sky at the wonder of it. ‘I shall be cured, Tanner. And then my father will kneel down at my feet. He will have to love me then, won’t he?’
14
Billingsgate quayside is thronged with people in the breezy April sunshine, barely twenty of them actual passengers. The rest are friends, servants, street-vendors, message-carriers and more than a few whose greedy, inquisitive eyes mark them as purse-divers and tricksters. The ferry master cries, ‘Eastward ho!’ to announce the imminent departure of the Long Ferry on the afternoon tide. His voice is almost drowned by the shrieks of the gulls wheeling overhead.
Nicholas and Bianca make their way around a gang of stevedores unloading salted fish from a Dutch turbot boat, descend the slimy, weed-festooned steps and climb aboard the pitching barge. Nicholas finds space on the bench nearest the prow, away from the other passengers and the six live goats being manhandled into the stern. He fishes in his purse for coins. The tide is in their favour, he notices – the fare is always cheaper if the oarsmen don’t have to row against it. Bianca steadies herself as the small vessel lifts and falls alarmingly.