I’ve been tried, condemned and executed, he thinks. They just haven’t got round to telling me yet. But I don’t really care. Because two days ago someone tried it for real – and I’m still here. So do your worst. Throw me out of the College. I’ll go and get a licence from the Worshipful Company of Barber-Surgeons. I’ll suture wounds, mend broken bones, pull teeth, if necessary. I’ll do what I know works: practical physic. Meat-work. I’ll leave you fine physicians to study your beakers of piss, consult the lie of the heavens, feast yourselves into a torpor, quote at length in Latin from your musty old books and draw up your bills.
‘Mercy, whatever has befallen you, Mr Shelby?’ Beston asks, staring at Nicholas’s bruises. ‘Please do not tell us you’ve been quarrelling again.’
‘No, sir. I was attacked – by cut-purses.’
It’s the easiest explanation, Nicholas thinks. And Beston probably wouldn’t believe the truth even if I dared tell it.
‘Still not wearing your gown, I see?’ observes Frowicke.
‘As I informed you last time I was here, sir, I got rid of it.’
‘How long have you been practising?’ Beston asks. ‘Three years?’
‘A little longer.’
‘And in that short time you have lost a practice, run riot, fallen into vagrancy and apparently decided you know more than any of us. That’s quite a start to a medical career, Mr Shelby.’
Nicholas has no answer. And his bruises are throbbing.
Beston shakes his head despairingly. ‘We have tried very hard to look sympathetically upon your case. It was clear from the answers you gave us that your knowledge was more than sound – even if you do hold that knowledge to be all but worthless. And from what we have learned, your work at St Thomas’s amongst the poor last year was exemplary.’
Here it comes, thinks Nicholas.
‘So it is not your level of ability for which we punish you,’ Beston intones gravely, as though he’s coming to a judgement in a treason trial in the Star Chamber, ‘but rather for your youthful contempt for this great and noble calling. The verdict is unanimous. It is the decision of this College that you be banned from practising physic within the bounds of the City of London.’ He pauses, drawing himself to his full height for greater gravitas. ‘Banned for a period to last the length of one single day – starting upon this hour. Do you wish to appeal?’
In the circumstances, Nicholas finds dropping his jaw somewhat painful.
Beston engages him with a smile of deep compassion. ‘You are a fine physician, young man. But this board of Censors suggests you use the time during which you are disbarred to consider the restorative properties of humility – Dr Shelby.’
That evening, in a quiet moment at the Jackdaw, Nicholas sits down to write a letter to Sir Joshua Wylde. He stares at the pristine sheet of paper, wondering what to tell him. Then he remembers what Mercy Havington had said aboard the Sirena: I’d rather everyone thought Samuel and I had simply disappeared. Make them believe we’re dead, if you must. It will be better for everyone…
Nicholas suspects that for all Wylde’s rejection of his sickly son, Sir Joshua is not a complete stranger to grief. So he invents a story in which Isabel Lowell, Arcampora and Tyrrell have contrived Samuel’s murder, in revenge for Wylde taking up arms against their faith. It’s better, Nicholas thinks, than Wylde knowing that his son has chosen to live amongst his enemies. He closes the letter with a sentiment that he hopes will allow Joshua Wylde to think better of his Samuel: Samuel gave his life most bravely, resisting the papist plot…
Who knows? One day there might even be a portrait to hang beside the others at Cleevely.
The next morning, Nicholas goes to the Mutton Lane stairs and boards a wherry to Cecil House. The waterman takes one look at his bruised face and laughs loudly, ‘Another green-head takes a tumble on his first visit to Southwark, eh? When will you fellows ever learn?’
As the slow rise and fall of the river lulls him almost into sleep, Nicholas rehearses the tale he’s going to tell Robert Cecil.
The moment he arrives, he senses something has changed. A mood of quiet satisfaction pervades Cecil House. The lawyers, the clerks, the scurrying blank-faced factotums – all seem to have a more assured stride. The secretary who escorts him to the presence chamber explains.
‘He is Sir Robert now. A seat on the Privy Council is sure to follow. We serve a gentleman who is bound for greatness in this state.’
To Nicholas’s surprise, Burghley’s son makes no objection to the suggestion that they speak alone. When the clerks and secretaries have gone, he listens to Nicholas’s story without interrupting, staring out of the high window at the fields of Covent Garden. He looks like a child actor fixated on something at the back of the stage, framed as he is by the window and flanked by the panelled walls. It’s a struggle to stop his eyes settling on that malformed body beneath the expensive damask doublet; yet to do so, Nicholas thinks, would be an unkind intrusion.
Why do I suddenly feel compassion for this driven man? he wonders. Is it that we share a certain solitude of the heart? Is that the price those of us prepared to inflict pain in defence of what we love most dearly – in my case, Eleanor and Bianca; in his, the very realm itself – must pay?
‘They should have a proper Christian burial – Mercy and Samuel,’ Cecil says when Nicholas has finished. ‘They are not carrion. They are my wife’s kin.’
Not expecting such open humanity, Nicholas almost stumbles over his next lie. ‘Finding the… the bodies… in that beech wood at Cleevely will not be easy, Sir Robert. It may take weeks. Even if the search is successful, it will probably be impossible to determine which set of remains is Mercy Havington’s and which is Samuel Wylde’s. I fear you must accept they are lost.’ He offers up a short prayer of atonement to the souls of Tanner Bell and Finney.
‘Sir Joshua must be informed, before he hears by rumour.’
‘I have already written a letter,’ Nicholas says, drawing the paper from inside the laces of his white canvas doublet. ‘I wondered if one of your couriers to Holland…’
‘Of course.’ Robert Cecil turns back to face Nicholas. There is anger in that pale, sensitive face. The inner man has broken through. ‘What kind of Christians are these Brothers of Antioch? Murdering a woman and a sickly young boy. They think themselves pious, yet in truth they are the very minions of the Antichrist!’
Nicholas has only a few more lies to tell. ‘I can only imagine that somehow Lady Havington learned of their intent,’ he says. ‘She must have gone to Cleevely to warn Samuel; paid the price for it. She is a brave woman.’ He quickly corrects himself. ‘She was a brave woman.’
‘I’m sorry you were so ill used by those monsters.’
‘I mend well enough, Sir Robert.’
‘Had you been able to bring me word earlier, it might have been possible to apprehend them. Still, it may not be too late. I’ll send word to the ports to be on the lookout for them. We shall have them yet.’ He offers Nicholas a glass of sack, pouring it from a silver ewer on his desk. ‘Tell me, how did you manage to escape?’
‘They were taking me to Lord Tyrrell’s house at Holborn, for further examination. I was able to overpower the man they set to guard me,’ Nicholas says. He tries his best to look contrite. ‘I suppose you’ll want your money back. After all, you told me this was a match you expected to win.’