But Robert Cecil barely remembers giving him the purse. ‘You’ve been put to severe discomfort on my family’s behalf, Dr Shelby. Keep it. Call it a bounty, to celebrate my own good fortune.’
‘That is generous of you, Sir Robert.’
Cecil gives him an admiring look; the sort he might give to some expensive trinket he was thinking of buying. ‘You know, you really ought to consider joining my household in a more formal capacity. What say you? We could soon burnish those rough yeoman’s edges.’
‘I’m not sure I’m cut out for the work of an intelligencer, Sir Robert.’
‘As a physician, Dr Shelby.’ Cecil studies the rim of his sack glass. ‘Though I confess, it would be a foolish man who disregards your other skills.’
‘Oh. I hadn’t expected–’
‘You might know that I have a son now: William. He’s three months old.’ Sir Robert places a hand on his own left shoulder in the merest acknowledgment of his deformity. ‘I would like him to have at least one competent doctor.’
It’s a tempting proposition. But Nicholas knows what’s likely to accompany it. ‘I am humbled by the offer, Sir Robert,’ he says. ‘And I will consider it most carefully. In the meantime, although this enterprise has not concluded the way either of us hoped, there is one small favour I would ask of you – if you think it not too impertinent.’
‘I’m listening, Dr Shelby,’ says Sir Robert Cecil, draining his glass of sack.
Cecil House has one final surprise in store for Nicholas. As he crosses the busy courtyard towards the street gate, he sees Kit Marlowe striding towards him.
‘Jesu, Dr Shelby, I had no notion we both served the same master,’ the playwright drawls. ‘I hope he’s rewarded you well. You look as though you’ve been wrestling the bear, old Sackerson.’
Nicholas smiles as the realization dawns. ‘Now I understand. You were hanging around the Jackdaw like the smell from the flux just so you could keep an eye on Signor Barrani for Robert Cecil, weren’t you?’
‘And profitless it was, too! Mistress Bianca wouldn’t let me get within sight of him. Pity. I rather like the fellow. Short, but devilish easy on the eye. How does he fare?’
‘Don’t you know? The Sirena sailed days ago.’
A sudden flash of panic on Marlowe’s face tells Nicholas all he needs to know.
‘Oh, I see – not paying attention. Still, I suppose one barque looks much like another when they’re all tied up at the same wharf. What got in the way of the work, Marlowe: selling your soul to feed your appetites?’
‘I only ’ave two legs, Shelby,’ Marlowe protests harshly, the Kentish shoemaker’s son and the fashionable London playwright suddenly, and without warning, staging a fight for his voice. The cobbler’s boy wins hands down. ‘Can’t be fuckin’ everywhere, can I? The Jackdaw… Galley Quay… back to the Jackdaw – Christ’s wounds, a fellow ’as to take some ease.’
Nicholas doesn’t laugh at the joy of besting a rival; he’s too busy stifling the appalling thought that Marlowe could have stumbled across what had occurred aboard the Sirena – if he hadn’t been soiling some unknown bed at the time. ‘Your secret is safe with me, Kit,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘As is the other one.’
‘Other one? What other one?’
‘The fact that you’ve been serving two masters these past weeks.’
‘Two? What do you mean?’
‘Walter Burridge.’
‘Burridge!’ spits Marlowe, as though he’s trying to eject a morsel of bad meat from his throat. ‘I don’t serve that rogue. He serves me.’
‘Walter Burridge is a papist agent – currently on the run. He duped you into spying on Bruno Barrani for his own ends. That’s another secret of yours I’ll keep, just as long as you stay away from the Jackdaw. Good luck with the play, by the way. Let’s hope the audience can stomach it for more than one performance – though judging by the riot at the Jackdaw, I somehow doubt it.’
Kit Marlowe’s mouth gapes like a distressed salmon’s.
‘It’s good sport, this intelligencing,’ says Nicholas casually over his shoulder as he departs. ‘I think I’m beginning to like it.’
Nicholas Shelby steps out of a late wherry and onto the Mutton Lane water-stairs on Bankside. The sun has almost sunk below the horizon, just a smudged orange arc lingering above the Lambeth marshes to the west. The evening air is cool. The cloying smell of the river hugs the shore, earthy, sulphurous, the smell of rotting fruit or long-forgotten graves. He looks back at the dark water, then across to the white foam in the arches beneath London Bridge. The tide is ebbing, the dark, indifferent water flowing out towards the Hope Reach and the sea. A good place, he thinks, in which to let secrets lie.
At the Jackdaw, the lights are burning. As he steps across the threshold, the sound of Timothy’s lute reaches him, a Venetian jig full of lively twists and turns. Full of joy. Full of life.
In the taproom doorway Ned Monkton is petting Buffle. The dog nestles in his huge arms, licking his great auburn beard deliriously. Rose is carrying trenchers to the tables, her dark curls gleaming like ebony in the candlelight. The smells emanating from the kitchen suggest Farzad has produced another of his strangely flavoured dishes – the fiery flesh of the Devil himself, according to Rose.
And there’s Bianca, in her emerald-green kirtle and her carnelian bodice, her face flushed from the measure she’s just been cajoled into dancing with old Walter Hyssop, who was born in the year the queen’s father married his Aragon queen, Catherine. She sees him. Waves him in.
‘How did you fare with the crab?’ she asks, brushing her hair from her temples with her slender fingers.
‘Well enough. I think he believed me. And he’s not a crab. Not really.’
‘Perhaps not. But he is a man prepared to use great violence to achieve his ambitions.’
‘To protect the things he holds dear. That’s how he would see it.’
Bianca blushes. Her lips tighten as she stares at the floor. ‘Yes… well… according to Santo Fiorzi, that’s a forgivable sin.’
She glances at the parcel he’s carrying, a parcel wrapped against the spray of the wherry journey.
‘You’ve brought me a present?’
Nicholas tries to stop the smile from spreading across his face. ‘Ever since Ned brought Buffle back from Cleevely for Rose, I’ve reproached myself for not bringing you a gift at the same time. This is to make amends.’
He hands her the parcel and watches as her expression slowly changes from curiosity to tearful astonishment.
Lying inside are her father’s books on physic, the ones she’d brought all the way from Padua, the ones Robert Cecil had once considered hereticaclass="underline" Work for me, he’d said to Nicholas on that occasion, or Bianca Merton hangs for a witch.
For a long while Bianca just stares at the thin, leather-bound volumes. Then, without thinking, Nicholas reaches out to brush away a single pearl of liquid that threatens to spill from the lip of her right eye. She makes no move to avoid him.
‘Do you remember what I said at Galley Quay?’ he says. ‘About Mercy Havington and Santo Fiorzi having the courage to seize a second chance at happiness?’
‘Yes, of course I do. I thought it prettily said – for a yeoman’s son.’