The man re-laces his hose and continues his journey into the beech wood. Nicholas clings to the earth for what seems an age, until certain he is out of hearing. Then he hurriedly completes his macabre task and carries the sack containing Tanner Bell’s remains back to where the palfrey is tethered. He ties the sack to the saddlebag, hoists himself into the saddle and rides down to re-join the track out of the beech wood.
He can smell rain in the air now. The wind has picked up, dragging the black clouds closer to the treetops. He brings the mare to a halt, twists in the saddle to pull his riding gaberdine from his pack and struggles into it.
As he rounds the next bend, a horseman blocks the way ahead.
It’s the second of Arcampora’s companions. And on his face is a grim smile of recognition.
A hunter’s smile.
3
Bianca stands with her back to the physic garden wall. On either side the gable ends of the two adjacent houses confine her like guards waiting at the steps of a scaffold. The only way out is ahead of her, through the door that leads to the derelict plot of mud and rubble and the alleyway beyond. And to reach that, she must pass the man in the cloak.
She knows he hasn’t wandered in by chance; she’d closed the door behind her on entering. Besides, in his right hand is the sailcloth parcel containing Tyrrell’s papers and Nicholas’s two letters.
Is he one of Tyrrell’s men, come to kill her for meddling? Or is he one of Robert Cecil’s, come to arrest her for treason? Her mouth has suddenly become as dry as ash. Deep in her stomach, a large spider seems to be scuttling around. Cornered, Bianca looks for something to use as a weapon. Her garden hoe is propped against the wall to her right. With its iron blade it would make a handy pike. But it’s too far away to reach. Her garden tools – including a sharp pruning knife – are neatly set away in a box a yard further on.
Use your nails, she thinks. Use your feet, knees, elbows; fight him the way a maid born in Padua would fight: like a wildcat.
But what would be the point? He already has the letters and Tyrrell’s papers. Besides, the lethargy of utter defeat has robbed her limbs of their strength. All Bianca can do is stand and wait for the coup de grâce.
And then, with his free hand, the stranger pulls aside the hood of his cloak. Bianca is staring like a deranged woman at the grizzled face of Graziano, the Sirena’s mascot, her cousin’s lucky charm, his portafortuna.
Suddenly she remembers the day she met him coming down the stairs from Bruno’s chamber, the day she noticed the lock on her cousin’s clothes chest had survived an attempt to prise it open.
‘What are you about, Graziano?’ she demands, no longer afraid, but angrier than she can ever remember. ‘This is my private sanctuary. How dare you follow me here, giving me the fright of my life!’
But he has one shock left in store for her. And it’s greater by far than any that has preceded it in the last few moments.
In their shared Italian of the Veneto, and in the voice that she has so often thought was somehow familiar, he says, ‘Do not fear me, Passerotto – show me you are God’s obedient child.’
And with that, he holds out his right hand for her to kiss, despite the fact he’s not wearing his cardinal’s ring, or his cardinal’s scarlet cassock, and looks less like the Santo Fiorzi she remembers of old than she could ever have imagined possible.
4
Nicholas brings the mare to a halt barely two paces from where the rider blocks his way.
‘We’ve all been wondering if you’d come back,’ the man says, his voice hard and accusing. ‘The Professor told us you might.’
Nicholas assesses his chances of talking his way out of the situation. If the rider finds Tanner Bell’s bones in the sack tied to his saddle, those chances are non-existent. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says, his words sounding lame and unconvincing. ‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. Please, stand aside and let me be on my way.’
The rider sets his jaw like a man squaring up for a fight. ‘Dr Arcampora said you weren’t who you claimed to be. “Dunstan,” he said to me, “that rogue was too clever by half to be a soldier of the heretics.” Looks like he was right.’
Nicholas hears the sound of hooves approaching on the track behind him. He glances over his shoulder. A second rider is coming up at a fast trot. It’s the man in the leather tabard.
‘Look what we’ve caught ourselves, Florin,’ the first rider calls out.
‘It can’t be him, Dunstan,’ the second replies with a sneer. ‘That fellow told our master he was going straight back to Flanders.’ He gives Nicholas a hard look. ‘What happened – miss the tide, did you?’
No way forward. No way back. Only the darkness of the wood on either side. Nicholas takes his right hand from the reins and tries to ease it under the gaberdine to find the hilt of his poniard. He’s never been in a knife fight before. He doesn’t think much of his chances. Not against these two.
‘That will do, fellow,’ Dunstan warns, drawing an inch or two of steel from the sheath of his own weapon. ‘No call to be hasty, now.’
Florin brings his horse closer. ‘And what do we have here, then?’ he asks, glancing at the sack tied to Nicholas’s pack. ‘Been hunting coney, have we?’ He sniffs the air. ‘Smells too ripe for coney.’ He leans forward to take a closer look, balancing himself on one stirrup, his body half out of the saddle.
At that moment the black clouds break overhead. A sudden torrent of rain crashes into the beech wood. In an instant, a cold vapour has washed the colour from the trees, turning everything a misty white.
The sudden squall brings Florin’s horse close to panic. Nicholas seizes his moment. He grabs Florin by his tabard and slams him down with all his strength onto his own saddle pommel, leaving a long, thin smear of blood on the leather. Florin rolls off the mare’s shoulder and onto the path, stunned. At the same time Nicholas rams his spurs into the mare’s sides. She rears wildly, her forelegs flailing. Dunstan wheels his horse out of reach.
Nicholas wrenches his mount’s head to the right, again sinking his heels deep into her ribs. She turns faultlessly on her hindquarters. Then she plunges into the shelter of the trees, giving Nicholas barely an instant to thank the nameless horse-master who schooled her.
Now the beech wood closes around him, as much enemy as friend. A leafy serpent coiling itself around its prey. Squeezing. Smothering.
Green scales tumble before Nicholas’s eyes as the smaller branches shatter to his plunging flight. Dunstan’s curses fall away behind. Soon there is only the sound of his own breathing and the wild song of the mare’s flight. It sounds to him much like the roaring of the dark river, when he went into it to drown out Eleanor’s voice. But the voice urging him on is clearly Bianca’s.
He has no idea where he’s going. All he can do is give the mare her head, trust to her fleetness. And she, in return, seems to know the danger they are in. She flies through the undergrowth, leaping fallen boughs, turning so abruptly that Nicholas is sure they’ll both be pitched into the stout trunks and dashed all to pieces.
Then, as suddenly as it had swallowed him, the beech wood expels him into a small glade. He brings the mare to a halt. Her flanks heave; clouds of vaporous exertion billow from her tossing head.
At the centre of the clearing, derelict amongst the scrub and meadow grass, stands an abandoned lodge. The walls are covered in moss and ivy.