Did he mean to give the warning added impetus, she wonders. Or is there another reason? She holds the letter closer to the lantern and reads on:
The Sirena di Venezia will make sail with all haste. But you must eschew this means of escape, for her interception off the North Foreland has already been planned. All aboard her will be taken. There are, however, still those loyal to our great cause…
In the next sentence she sees an unexpected name written. It jumps out at her, throwing her off-balance. She reads the line again. Then a third time, just to be sure the flickering lantern light and the state of her fevered imagination haven’t made her see something that isn’t there.
And then she begins to smile.
16
Like many weak men, Walter Burridge finds the brutality of others a spur to violence that he would never dare commit alone. As Dunstan and Florin bind Nicholas’s hands and feet, he takes the opportunity to slap him across the face. Matched against the new blows Arcampora’s two companions have landed on Nicholas’s already bruised body, the strike is ineffectual. But it still hurts.
‘Heretic!’ he hisses, almost jumping up and down with a mixture of rage and excitement. The malmsey veins stand out on his jowly face like skeins of blood. ‘You are nothing but piss, to be washed off the marble floors of God’s hallowed heaven. We should let Dr Arcampora do his work upon you. Even a heretic may be useful!’
A sickening comprehension forms in Nicholas’s mind: it’s the seemingly avuncular Walter Burridge who’s been recruiting young lads to Tyrrell’s company of players, picking those who won’t be missed for Arcampora’s murderous physic. And an unsuspecting Joshua Wylde has been paying for it, thinking he’s soothing his conscience by sending companions to his son. It’s Porter Bell’s Dutch cell transported to Bankside: Today I choose to pass you by… tomorrow I shall return, and maybe then it will be you…
‘I’m not to be held in such disregard now, am I, Shelby?’ Burridge sneers an inch from Nicholas’s face. ‘I have served Lord Tyrrell and the true faith all my life. I have seen my religion trampled in the dust. But I have been as much a soldier as any man.’
Tyrrell inspects the cords that bind Nicholas. He declares himself satisfied. Arcampora looks on, a malevolent anticipation in his eyes that turns Nicholas’s stomach.
‘I think we’re done with you, Dr Shelby,’ Tyrrell announces. Then he turns to Dunstan and Florin and says, as if he were ordering them to take out the night-soil, ‘Get him out of my sight. Dr Arcampora and I have pressing business to attend to. When we’re done, we’ll find out whose man he really is – then you may gladly kill the heretic.’
Bianca hears a noise on the deck behind her. She folds Nicholas’s letter and returns it to the hiding place in her kirtle. Turning, she sees Santo Fiorzi approaching. Bruno is with him, one arm thrown over the cardinal’s shoulder for support. Her cousin has attired himself in his fine black satin doublet, the one he’d been wearing that day she’d first seen him on the quayside.
‘I have just received word from the man I sent to keep watch on Tyrrell’s house,’ Fiorzi tells her. ‘Tyrrell and the physician are on their way. Samuel is with them.’
‘You were wrong, Eminence – about Nicholas,’ Bianca says confidently. ‘He hasn’t betrayed us.’
A momentary flicker of irritation in the cardinal’s eyes. ‘You harbour an attachment to him. It is clouding your judgement.’
‘It’s not clouding anything. I know Nicholas. He wouldn’t sell us all to Robert Cecil. He just wants Arcampora to believe that he has.’
‘His Eminence is right, Cousin,’ says Bruno regretfully. ‘His letter was unequivocal. Besides, if he hasn’t betrayed us, then where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bianca snaps. ‘Perhaps Tyrrell has him.’
‘If you’re right, he’s dead anyway,’ Fiorzi says. ‘But my man saw no one else leave the house but Tyrrell, Arcampora and Samuel – save for two servants and a carter with his waggon.’
‘I’m truly sorry that he deceived you, Cousin,’ Bruno says. ‘But we must sail on this tide. If Tyrrell does have him and the English discover it, they will not wait for St George’s Day to move against us.’
‘The English plan was set down plainly in his letter, child,’ says Fiorzi. ‘They intend to intercept the Sirena off the North Foreland, on our way out to the Narrow Sea. Needless to say, that is not the course we shall steer.’
‘But that’s exactly what Nicholas wants Arcampora to believe!’
‘For what possible reason?’ asks Bruno.
Bianca is only too aware of what her cousin might think of her if she tells him what she believes Nicolas intends. She gives Fiorzi a pleading look. ‘Eminence, you have to let me give Arcampora Nicholas’s letter. If you don’t, you will have allowed a monster to escape all retribution for his crimes. By all means, tell Tyrrell that the Brothers of Antioch have been discovered. Give him warning if you must. But please, let me give Arcampora Nicholas’s letter.’
As she waits for his response, Bianca prays that if God is inclined to forgive any of her many sins, He forgives her this one.
17
The cart rolls through the empty lanes beneath a cloudless sky frosted with stars. Nicholas lies in the darkness beneath a pile of hemp sacks, gagged so tightly he is close to suffocating. He can feel every rut and cobble of the journey. He can hear the faint murmur of voices: Dunstan and Florin chatting happily as they ride close by, like two old friends anticipating a pleasant day hunting wildfowl in the marshes around Barnthorpe.
He has no idea where they are taking him. Perhaps to the silent emptiness of Moorfields, or Finsbury Park, or Spittlefields. All he knows is that wherever it is, he will meet his death there. He imagines the dawn rising, an unknown washerwoman approaching a hedge intending to lay out her laundry to dry, finding his body beneath it – just another victim of a violent London quarrel.
Or perhaps he will not be found. Perhaps they mean to dispose of him in the river. That would be ironic, he thinks. The river let him go once before. It has never occurred to him that it was only a temporary reprieve.
They are heading deeper into the city now, he’s sure of it. By the number of turns the cart is making, Nicholas reckons they must be avoiding the main streets. He wonders how long he will be able to resist Florin and Dunstan when they go to work on him. The thought of what they might do, before they kill him, turns his stomach to ice. But what is even worse is the prospect of his utter humiliation in the face of unendurable pain, and the enjoyment Dunstan and Florin will take from inflicting it. When they have killed him, they will go on their way without the smallest sliver of remorse. They will laugh about it, as he can hear them doing now. In their hard, uncaring eyes, the love he had for Eleanor, his growing feelings for Bianca, his desire to heal – all the things that make him better than a beast – will be worthy of nothing but their derision.
The cart stops. Nicholas hears footsteps. The weight of the hemp sacks is lifted from him. What he sees is beyond all expectation. If he were able, he would open his mouth in wonder.