‘Why have you come back to us?’ she asks. ‘Why have you not returned to my husband, as you told us? Have you lied to us, Master Shelby?’
Arcampora has sent you to soften me up, before the real business begins, Nicholas thinks, shaking his wrists to get the blood moving. He doesn’t answer.
‘Silence will not aid you,’ she says, studying his bloodied features dispassionately in the torchlight. ‘Dr Arcampora is possessed of a volatile impatience.’
Her eyes, he notices, are just as mirthless as he remembers, her piety still as polished as a communion chalice. But now he knows her for what she really is: a woman prepared to marry a man she does not care for, to turn her eyes from murder and mutilation, all in the service of her faith. Heartless expediency in the name of doctrine. He wonders how much she knows about what goes on in the lodge in the beech wood. Probably a lot, by the way her servants remain so untroubled by the presence of a bloodied prisoner inside their mistress’s house.
She sighs, to let him know how much he disappoints her. ‘Let me tell you what I believe, Master Shelby. I believe you do not serve my husband at all. You’re not interested in Samuel’s welfare. You’re an enemy, come to steal him away from us.’
‘So that he may be “delivered unto a place of protection against the malevolent designs of the ungodly”,’ Nicholas says, quoting the line from one of Tyrrell’s papers.
In her eyes, he sees the martyr’s conviction waver for an instant.
‘What’s your maiden name, Lady Wylde?’ he asks, wondering what the point is of defiance, but choosing it anyway. ‘It’s Lowell, isn’t it? You’re John Lowell’s daughter. Is that his crucifix you wear – to remind you of him while you’re apart? To remind you of the Brothers of Antioch?’
Her intake of breath sounds like a draught in a crypt.
‘What else do I know about you, Isabel Lowell? How about the fact that you sought out Sir Joshua Wylde in Holland and seduced him, solely to get close to his son? How much of a zealot does one have to be to consider such a course of action? Did you decide upon it? Was it your father? Or was it Arcampora?’
‘The Bible tells us a prophet is often mocked in his own land, Master Shelby,’ she replies, her eyes blazing with a troubling fervour. ‘But I can tell you this. Professor Arcampora is gifted beyond ordinary measure. He is God’s instrument. You would do well to remember that.’
You’ve bought the whole rotten edifice, Nicholas thinks. Like a country green-beard on your first visit to Bankside, you’ve swallowed every gull, dive and trick of it. Arcampora could have told you Samuel was Christ returned and you would have believed him. You would still have wed a man you had not the slightest feeling for, still stolen Charles Pelham’s memories from him, still surrendered your stepson to Arcampora’s insane experiments.
‘I’ve heard enough from you,’ she says tightly, as though she’s had to listen to a blasphemous litany. ‘Rest. Rest well. Very soon you will need all your strength and fortitude. God’s wrath is going to scourge you, Master Shelby. Prepare for it.’
And then she leaves him to the darkness. And to the terrors that hide within it.
‘I shall be staying aboard the Sirena for a while, to look after Cousin Bruno,’ Bianca tells Rose and Ned at breakfast as she entrusts the Jackdaw to their care. ‘It won’t be for long. Don’t let Buffle eat all the scraps, or she’ll be the size of a horse when I get back. And no credit allowed while I’m gone.’
Rose, who has an unerring ability to know when her mistress is keeping something from her, says, ‘Where’s Master Nicholas? Why aren’t I taking clean linen to Poynes Alley?’ Her cheery eyes widen. ‘I know what’s going on. You’re planning to elope! It was all a play!’
The few lodgers look up from their trenchers as the resulting thunderclap echoes around the tavern. No one can remember when they last saw Mistress Merton lose her temper so spectacularly. And on Easter Sunday to boot. Rose is left almost in tears. Timothy and Farzad hurriedly make themselves scarce, and Buffle can only be coaxed from beneath a table with a particularly succulent piece of brawn.
Not wanting to risk another storm, Ned Monkton stays silent as he carries a basket of bedding and clean clothes across the bridge towards Galley Quay, Bianca at his side. Halfway over, his fears get the better of him.
‘You’d tell us, wouldn’t you, Mistress Bianca – if you was planning to sail back to Italy, I mean.’
She’s never before seen those great fiery brows, that vast neck, the huge arms, the beard like a great handful of tangled saffron seem so diminished – vulnerable even. She smiles appreciatively. ‘Of course I’m not leaving, Ned. Why would I even think of such a thing?’
‘But where is Master Nicholas?’ he asks, summoning all his courage. ‘His lodging on Poynes Alley is all locked up. No one’s seen hide nor hair of him for days.’
She can’t tell him the truth, though it would be good to confide in him. So a white lie seems the only alternative. ‘He’s returned to Suffolk – to see his family again,’ she tells him. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
He seems relieved, though whether from the news or the fact she hasn’t bitten his head off, she can’t be sure.
At the quayside, one of Bruno’s men takes the basket from Ned. As he turns to go, Bianca calls out to his broad, departing back, ‘And tell Rose I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at her like that. She may give Buffle a bowl of taproom scraps, if she likes. Just the one, mind – and small.’
It is the old nightmare of his childhood: the monster waiting behind the closed door. He imagines the slow lifting of the latch, the pounding of the heart as the door opens. Only now the nightmare is real. And it lives somewhere in the darkness of the cellar, waiting for Nicholas’s eyes to fall upon it.
He has lost all sense of time passing. Place, too, has come adrift. Sometimes he’s chained up beside Tanner Bell, awaiting the sound of a key turning in the lock that will herald the beginning of some necromantic ritual Nicholas can only pretend to imagine. Sometimes he’s with Porter Bell in his Haarlem prison, while Arcampora decides which of them will be the subject of his saw and scalpel today. Sometimes he’s attending one of his physic lectures at Cambridge, only instead of old Professor Lorkin warbling on about the balance of the humours, it’s Arcampora explaining in the most reasonable manner that if Kit Marlowe can make us see demons in a Bankside tavern, why should we think the world’s greatest physician can’t decant Mary Tudor’s zeal for burning Protestants into the mind of a sickly sixteen-year-old boy?
In one of his more lucid moments, Nicholas wonders how long Porter Bell managed to survive before the terror broke him.
Thump-thump… thump-thump… like a heart beating: the slow, deliberate tread of two men descending the steps. When the door to the cellar finally opens again, Nicholas has to bite his tongue to stop himself screaming. He curls himself into a ball, in preparation for the blows to begin again.
‘Not yet, old fellow,’ says Dunstan, giggling with amusement as he hauls Nicholas to his feet. ‘Plenty enough time for sport of that nature when the master has done with you.’ As they drag him up the stairs, Florin sings a childish air to the rhythm of Nicholas’s ankles cracking against each step.
He wonders if he should pray. But although he’s made his peace with Eleanor’s memory, he has something else to hold against his Maker: His creation of a monster like Angelo Arcampora. So instead he thinks of Bianca. Of her amber eyes. Of that dark, unruly mane and the way she runs her hands through it around the hairline, as if preparing herself for action. Of her sudden explosive distempers, which have not a shred of malice in them. And, more practically, of her hurrying to Petty Wales to deliver his first letter.