Was Samuel Wylde really the grandson of Mary Tudor? If he was, why had the Brothers of Antioch waited so long? How had the boy remained undetected all these years? If Samuel’s mother was the child that Mary had claimed to be carrying in the year of her death, why had not the birth of a royal daughter been loudly proclaimed throughout England?
It took several miles of river, unnumbered echoless strokes of the oars, before a resolution came to Nicholas, in the form of one of Tyrrell’s letters: I, Charles Pelham, physician… so attest that the infant born unto M on the third of March last is afflicted by the sacred disease. I have witnessed the several and diverse paroxysms…
A female claimant to the throne afflicted by the falling sickness, he reasoned as he watched the interminable passing of the riverbank, would be a banner to which few would dare to rally. Even if Mary herself had acknowledged the child, those around her would have known the risks of placing a sickly infant upon the throne.
Then he remembered another of Tyrrell’s letters: The child is safely delivered unto a place of protection against the malevolent designs of the ungodly…
In Mary Tudor’s mind, he reasoned, the ungodly could only have meant her half-sister, the Protestant Elizabeth. John Lumley had said Mary knew she was dying. Perhaps she and the Catholic zealots around her had feared that the child would be murdered the moment Mary was no longer alive to protect it. Had they carried the infant away to a place where she would be safe, somewhere far from London, remote, unremarkable – a pretty manor house in Gloucestershire, for instance?
And what of Lady Mercy Havington and her late husband? Have they been complicit all these years, harbouring a cuckoo and its chick in their nest? If so, Robert Cecil’s retribution will surely be particularly vengeful.
His thoughts were interrupted when the passengers shifted noisily to get a better glimpse of the palace of Greenwich looming out of the river’s glassy sheen, the towers and cupolas rising into the milky morning like ancient temples from a desert mist. It was here, Nicholas knew, that Elizabeth had been born. He imagined her now, looking out over the river and catching a glimpse of the passing barge, reaching imperiously into his secrets. The image only made him more convinced how dangerous it was even to have knowledge of such a threat to her crown as Samuel Wylde.
By then Nicholas had become resolved upon a course of action. He understood that it was all just a matter of time. That the sand was already flowing in the hourglass.
Somehow Samuel must be prised from the talons of the Brothers of Antioch before they could use him for their purpose. It would be far from easy, he knew that. But he knew that whatever hurt Samuel Wylde might suffer in the execution of his plan, it would be as nothing compared to what would befall him if the Brothers of Antioch were allowed to raise him up as Mary Tudor’s grandson.
It had been Porter Bell’s testimony that had made up Nicholas’s mind for him. He had seen many sights in the Low Countries that would live in the darker recesses of his mind for the rest of his life. But never had he witnessed something on the scale of Naarden, and though he had seen men used cruelly by their captors, he had never seen them used like living beasts tied down for an anatomy lesson. He was filled with a rage against Angelo Arcampora that felt like a burning coal lodged in his gut.
Between that pale dawn and their arrival at the Billingsgate stairs, Nicholas Shelby had what felt, to him, like an age of watery captivity during which to reflect on all this – and on his propensity to shoulder other people’s burdens. But without doubt, the strongest hand guiding his thoughts that morning was Eleanor’s. He had one last question to ask of her – before he let go of her. What would she expect of him?
When he felt Bianca stir beside him, woken by the cries of the bargemen as they approached the Billingsgate stairs, he waited until she had yawned, stretched and made her peace with the ache in her bones, and then quietly and carefully explained to her what she must do.
It is fortunate that Tanner Bell cannot look into a mirror glass and see his face. Fortunate that he wouldn’t recognize it, even if he could. More than fortunate. Tanner could only be luckier if he was dead.
His face is no longer smooth and puckish, the eyes brimming with good-natured rebellion. The mop of hair no longer slips down over his right eye. Instead, it is stained red and slick across his brow, as if Tanner Bell has been caught in a crimson rain shower. His face is that of a crazed, blood-smeared apparition.
Where once his limbs, always tending to plumpness, had strength in them, now they are as weak as those of a newborn infant. So weak, in fact, that Dunstan and Florin have tied him to the chair to stop him sliding out of his seat and onto the floor.
A short while ago he was conscious that Arcampora had brought him to the lodge in the beech wood alone, without Samuel. Now he comprehends little – except the pain. He cannot ask Dr Arcampora why he has done him this terrible hurt; Tanner no longer has the power of coherent speech. He sits in the chair, making agitated guttural shrieks, like a goose having its neck wrung. With each squawk a trickle of drool runs down over his chin. On the bench beside him lies a carpenter’s auger, the circular cutting blade at the end of the screw-shaft bloodied and wreathed in shreds of Tanner Bell’s scalp.
‘God’s nails! Can’t you put an end to this noise, Professor?’ asks Dunstan irritably. ‘The little sod is giving me the dreads.’
‘Is easy,’ says Arcampora dismissively. He opens Tanner’s blood-soaked shirt, tilts the boy’s head back and, with his knife, deftly cuts through the laryngeal nerves, taking care not to puncture the carotid arteries as he does so. He doesn’t want his patient bleeding to death. Tanner’s mouth keeps moving, but his shrieks of torment instantly fall silent.
‘That’s more to my liking,’ says Dunstan.
Arcampora leans over Tanner’s shaved head and inspects the watery pink mass visible beneath the circular hole in the boy’s skull.
Florin and Dunstan regard the hole blankly. They are a poor audience. Arcampora would rather have an admiring collection of physicians to address, but the pair are all he has, and so they will have to do. Besides, they are good men, he thinks. They have shown great devotion to his cause. When he had chosen them from amongst the English agents being trained at the Douai seminary in Spanish Flanders to run secret missions into Elizabeth’s heretical realm, he had chosen well. But they have scant understanding of physic.
‘It is not easy to know if all the foul airs are properly released through the aperture,’ he declares. ‘But without the expulsion of disturbed thoughts, there will be no space for the inflow of any animation from outside.’ He waves one hand airily to indicate what he means by ‘outside’.
‘How do you know they come out, if you can’t see them?’ asks Florin reasonably.
‘The ancients know this – since many years. Is well understood. But I, Arcampora, make a new discovery! It was believed the vital spirit – what is called in physic pneuma – was found here,’ he taps the back of Tanner’s head, ‘in vessels called in Latin the rete mirabile. In English, is called the net of wonders.’