‘Eleanor?’
‘His dead wife. She’s his lodestone. His guiding star. He’d never ally himself to a man like Arcampora – she wouldn’t approve.’
And then the prince of the Church reasserts itself.
‘I don’t have time to debate Dr Shelby’s code of morality with you. The tide will not wait. I will not wait. If what he has written is true, we are all in great peril.’
On the main deck the crew are moving purposely in the misty twilight. The Sirena di Venezia is preparing to sail.
‘Hurry, child,’ Fiorzi says insistently. ‘You must deliver Bruno’s summons to Tyrrell at once. It will take some time for him to bring Samuel here.’
Even now Bianca hesitates.
‘Go! Everything now depends upon you. We are in your hands.’
Folding Nicholas’s letter, she slips it away in her gown. From habit, she makes a deferential bob before the cardinal. Then she descends the stern-castle ladder with the last of the composure Fiorzi has left her, crosses the main deck and goes down the gangplank onto Galley Quay.
Dark hills of unloaded cargo line the wharf. She imagines them as living sentinels waiting to pounce upon her – to steal away everything good she has come to believe in, since Nicholas Shelby entered her life. With a growing sense of desolation, Bianca hurries past them, skirts the silent mausoleum of the Customs House and sets off towards Petty Wales.
14
‘Sit down, Shelby,’ says Tyrrell, gesturing to the brick floor. ‘And if you don’t want Dunstan here to cut out your tongue, I suggest you deal plainly with me.’ For emphasis, Dunstan sticks out his own tongue and waves his dagger in front of it. Nicholas does as he’s told.
No nice, airy room with a view over Gray’s Inn this time. Instead an unoccupied part of the stables, the air heavy with the acidic smell of soiled hay.
It suggests Tyrrell is having second thoughts about him.
Arcampora watches Nicholas intently. He seems unwilling to accept that his judgement has played him false.
‘How do you know this man Shelby, Master Burridge?’ Tyrrell asks.
‘He is Mistress Merton’s fellow, at the Jackdaw. I understand he was once some sort of physician.’
‘But is he trustworthy? And is he, as he claims, Cardinal Fiorzi’s man?’
‘He tended Signor Barrani, after he was assaulted,’ says Burridge, clearly uncertain what to make of Nicholas’s presence. ‘I know that much. But I didn’t know he was in Barrani’s service. He gave no sign of it.’
So that’s why Burridge chose the Jackdaw for Marlowe’s play-practice, Nicholas thinks – so that he could keep watch on Bruno for Thomas Tyrrell. And when Bruno was confined to his chamber, insensible after the brawl, he enlisted Marlowe, hoping he could entice Bianca into indiscretion.
Keep your nerve, he tells himself. All is not yet lost.
‘Mistress Merton and I are both servants of His Eminence,’ he tells Tyrrell, trying to sound affronted. ‘Why should I have confided in Master Burridge here? I had no idea he was in your service. But I do know he has the loudest voice in London. Who knows what he might have let slip after a jug or two?’ He looks at Burridge with disdain. ‘Besides, if he’s had his ears open recently, he’ll know Mistress Merton and I are lovers. It’s common knowledge all over Bankside.’
Lovers.
Despite the tension, despite the imminent threat to his life, Nicholas actually smiles. We’ve made such a pretence at denying it, he thinks, yet when I proclaim it now to Tyrrell, it doesn’t seem like a pretence at all. In fact it seems utterly reasonable.
‘It is true,’ says Burridge cautiously. ‘I have heard the very same.’
And then Dunstan speaks. Dunstan, who likes breaking necks.
‘There is an easy enough way to discover if his heart is false or not.’ He squats down beside Nicholas. He slowly circles the tip of his dagger’s blade in the air just in front of Nicholas’s face. Nicholas can almost smell the heat of his desire to hurt.
‘And pray, what is that, Master Dunstan?’ Tyrrell asks.
‘If you want to know where his loyalties lie – if you truly want to know whether he’s lying – ask him to recite a line or two from the Holy Mass.’
15
The Sirena’s deck is bathed in moonlight when Bianca returns. The masts and cordage strike angular shadows across the pale planks. Lanterns burn at prow and stern-castle. As she watches the crew going quietly about their preparations, she notices most of them are armed, with wicked-looking blades at their belts. She wonders if Santo Fiorzi is expecting resistance.
Bianca knows little about ships, other than that they are cramped, uncomfortable and insanitary, though thanks to Bruno, she understands something of the Sirena’s imminent departure. The correct papers have been lodged at the Customs House listing Bruno as master, an AL for Alienigena – alien – neatly annotated beside his name. The Comptroller of Customs has received the warrant from the searchers to show the Sirena carries no contraband or, more importantly, no traitors fleeing from justice. The letter of safe-passage has been received to protect the vessel from the attention of English privateers, who are in the provocative but highly lucrative trade of preying on foreign merchantmen. More immediately, watermen have been hired for the morrow. At dawn they will row the Sirena’s kedge-anchor out into the river and drop it overboard, allowing the ship’s crew to haul on the cable and swing her away from the wharf and out into the current.
Now there is only the waiting left.
Bianca stands at the furthest end of the high stern-castle, looking out over the river. Ships’ lanterns glitter like sprites dancing in a dark forest. To her left is the menacing silhouette of the Tower. To her right, across the river, she can just make out the dark bulk of the grain mills beyond Bermondsey House.
Where are you, Nicholas? Why have you not returned? Is it because you’ve betrayed us all? Have you sold us all to Robert Cecil?
She takes his second letter from her kirtle. She had barely managed to get halfway through it before Santo Fiorzi hurried her to deliver the summons to Munt. Now, by the lantern light, she starts to read again:
To my well-regarded and worthy friend in physic, Angelo Arcampora, greetings. If you value your life, read this and heed its warning. By means of a traitor to your cause, the queen’s ministers have learned of your past deeds in the service of the Duke of Alba. They are now privy to your actions at Naarden, and most crucially to your present dealings with the Brothers of Antioch. Plans are already afoot to take under arrest you and the emissary to His Eminence, Cardinal Santo Fiorzi, along with all others involved in the matter of her late majesty’s grandson. Unless you desire to meet a cruel fate upon the scaffold, you must with all haste flee out of this realm. These arrests will begin upon St George’s Day…
It’s the starkest betrayal she can imagine. Nicholas has delivered them all to Robert Cecil. The only person he intends to spare is a fellow physician – the man to whom the letter is addressed.
How could he do this? she wonders. When did the man she was beginning to love decide to become Arcampora’s creature? She remembers how insistent Nicholas had been, the day Bruno had returned to the Sirena; how he’d given her precise instructions on delivering this very letter to Munt: Make all alarm… Hammer on the door, appear breathless – frightened even…