They haven’t begun the torture! Bianca stifles a gasp of relief. There’s still a chance.
‘The auger, I think. More fitting to Dr Arcampora’s presence. Besides, the spy will talk sooner and die quicker. We don’t have much time.’
Florin unties the other end of the rope from its anchorage around a pillar. Nicholas immediately falls to his knees. Dunstan steps forwards, kneels and folds an arm around his lolling head to hold it steady. To Bianca’s horror, Florin stands over him and places the blade of the tool against Nicholas’s skull.
‘Tell me, heretic: who is your master?’ asks Tyrrell, squatting down beside him.
It’s all Bianca can do to remain motionless. She senses Ned, Cesare and Marcello losing the same struggle. If just one of them springs to Nicholas’s defence, the pretence is over. Her cry is directed to them as much as to Tyrrell.
‘Wait!’
Tyrrell rises to his feet. ‘I did attempt to warn you, Mistress Merton,’ he says, a smirk of vindication on his face. ‘If you would rather leave–’
But Bianca matches his sneer with a venomous smile. ‘Lord Tyrrell, if you’re going to spend all night asking questions to which we already know the answer, we’ll still be here when the Privy Council’s men arrive to arrest us all.’
Where the audacity comes from, she has no idea. But she airily waves Tyrrell aside and squats down in front of Nicholas.
At once she can see the confusion in him, the incomprehension at her sudden presence. Her heart is close to breaking for what they’ve already done to him. It takes all her will to stop herself reaching out to caress his bloodied face.
‘Can you hear me plainly, Master Shelby,’ she asks.
To her joy and relief, he nods.
‘Do you know who I am? Do you recognize me?’
He nods again. Mouths the word ‘yes’.
She prays his senses are not so battered that he cannot think straight – because if she can get him to say the words she needs Tyrrell to hear, if she can somehow coax him into following her lead, then there may just be a way out of this nightmare.
‘Look at you,’ she says haughtily. ‘You are no better than a dog. A heretical dog. Do you understand me?’ She places her face close to his. ‘A dog!’
Another swift prayer – that the single word has penetrated the fog of his pain.
‘You would do well to follow what I say closely, Master Shelby,’ she urges, still with her face close to his. ‘Because if you play the buffle-head with me, your end will be a torment beyond enduring.’ She stares deep into his eyes, hoping his senses aren’t so bruised that he can’t remember the present Ned brought back from Gloucestershire for Rose. ‘Do you understand me, buffle-head?’
Nicholas searches her face. For a moment she thinks he hasn’t understood her. That he doesn’t realize she’s trying to lead him. And then the faintest hint of a smile creases his mouth, followed by a wince of pain and a dribble of blood from one corner. But it’s the final slow nod he gives her that fills her heart with joy.
Bianca waits a moment, holding his gaze with hers, while her racing thoughts search out the path she must take to lead him out of this horror.
‘We already know who you work for, Master Shelby, she says. ‘Your master is Robert Cecil – am I correct? That’s true, isn’t it?’
A moment’s silence, during which Nicholas holds her gaze like a man clinging to the edge of a precipice. Then, very softly: ‘Yes. My master is Robert Cecil.’
‘And Robert Cecil sent you to the Jackdaw, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘For the purpose of worming your way into my confidence. That is so, isn’t it?’
He nods. Another bloody trickle from the corner of his mouth.
‘He sent you to spy on my cousin, Signor Barrani, didn’t he?’ Bianca continues, skipping ahead of herself in her mind, trying to steer the questions where she needs them to go.
‘Yes. It’s true.’
‘How much have you learned, heretic? Everything?’
Nicholas dips his head in acquiescence. ‘Everything.’
‘Do you know the true identity of Samuel Wylde? Do you know that he is the rightful King of England?’
‘Yes. I know it.’
She looks at Tyrrell as if to say, Do you see how easy it is, if you use brains in place of pain? Then, to Nicholas again: ‘A trap been laid for the Sirena di Venezia, has it not?’
‘It has.’
‘Where? Tell me – to the letter. To the very letter, mind.’
‘Off the North Foreland.’
‘Christ’s holy wounds!’ Tyrrell cries. ‘Did you know that?’
‘Of course we did,’ says Bianca calmly, casting the merest hint of a glance at Arcampora.
‘Then the prince must not sail tonight. Return him to us. I have friends – I can arrange for another vessel…’
‘You need have no fear for Samuel,’ Bianca says calmly. ‘Signor Luzzi, the sailing master, has plotted a course well to the north. When the English arrive, they will find nothing but empty sea.’ She returns to her play-acting with Nicholas. ‘And the arrests of those who remain: Lord Tyrrell, Dr Arcampora, Isabel Wylde? When will they occur?’
Nicholas looks at her blankly. Then he remembers what he’d written. ‘On St George’s Day.’
Munt is the first to break. From the darkness, Bianca hears him mutter, ‘God’s wounds, that’s only three days away!’
Tyrrell curses him to silence. ‘We can be across the Narrow Sea in two! Where’s your courage, man?’
‘Why do they delay?’ asks Arcampora.
‘Yes, why?’ says Tyrrell. ‘Why wait until the twenty-third?’
Now it’s Bianca’s turn to struggle for an answer. She doesn’t know. A surge of panic rises in her throat.
Nicholas’s voice is barely audible. But it rescues her. ‘They need time to get men in place. So that the arrests can be made simultaneously. No warnings passed. Everyone taken together.’
Bianca rises to her feet. She hopes Tyrrell won’t notice her legs are shaking.
‘Do you see, Lord Tyrrell, what a woman’s gentling can achieve? If I’d left it to your bold fellows here’ – a contemptuous glance at Dunstan and Florin – ‘you’d still be waiting for the heretic to regain his wits enough to confess his own name.’
Tyrrell stands with legs apart and hands on hips, appraising her. ‘I confess my admiration, Mistress Merton. Most neatly done.’ He turns to Florin and Dunstan. ‘We need tarry here no longer. Dr Arcampora and I will return to Holborn immediately to prepare for the journey. Join us there when you’ve done. You, too, Master Munt.’ He seizes a fistful of Nicholas’s hair, yanking his head back. ‘In the meantime you may send this meddling heretic to his rightly deserved hell!’
Dunstan steps forward and once again enfolds Nicholas’s head in one arm. He forces it downwards, so that the crown is offered to Florin’s auger. Florin’s face twists cruelly with the anticipation of driving the cutting blade deep into Nicholas’s skull.
This time it’s too much for Ned, Cesare and Marcello to bear. They almost sweep Bianca aside, stopping only when she raises her arms from her sides to restrain them. To her relief, everyone else is too busy watching Florin position the auger to notice.
‘No! Wait!’ she shouts, again directed as much to her companions as to Tyrrell.
‘Mistress Merton?’ he says, a look of surprise on his face as he turns to her.
Bianca wonders how long she can maintain this act before she collapses on the floor in a sobbing heap. It’s all she can do to keep her voice steady.