8
The second day of November, All Souls’ Day. The day to remember the deceased. The perfect day on which to return from the dead.
He is lying on a straw mattress, half-wrapped in a crumpled sweat-stained sheet, wearing someone else’s patched nightshirt. A splash of grey light slants across his chest. When he searches for its source, he sees a small leaded window set into the wall. And he sees it clearly.
Pressing his face to the glass, Nicholas imagines he’s weeping. Then he realizes he’s staring at raindrops pattering on the outside.
The window opens easily. He breathes in the chill air. Raindrops strike his face, run down his cheek. He is too exhausted to know whether to give thanks for his salvation or let the torment return. So he remains in a state of undecided numbness.
He’s looking out over the low rooftops towards the Thames. For an age he stares at the great grey watery beast that stalks across his field of vision, the tide tugging at the anchor chains of the little ships moored upriver of the bridge, the Long Ferry heading east towards Gravesend, carrying outbound passengers to the traders moored in the Hope Reach.
He can hear the bellowing of cattle. He looks to his left and down. Is that the entrance to Mutton Lane? If it is, then the sound must be coming from the slaughtermen at work in the Mutton Lane shambles. Close by, a church bell rings eight. If he’s right about the shambles, then it’s the bell at St Mary Overie. He can’t be more than a few hundred yards from where he went into the river.
But when was that? How much time has passed since then? He has no idea.
And then the door opens.
For a while he just stares at the young woman standing in the frame, not knowing what to say. He wants so desperately for her to be Eleanor.
But, of course, she isn’t.
She is, though, a comely young woman, Nicholas notes in a detached way, as if he were registering the beauty of a flower or a sunset. How else is he to regard feminine attractions now, after Eleanor?
She’s not conventionally beautiful in the English style perhaps. You couldn’t lose her amongst a throng of rosy cheeks, flaxen curls and freckles. Rather, her skin has the smooth olive sheen of a Spaniard or an Italian. She has a strong, gamine face that narrows to a defiant chin. It could be stern, if it wasn’t for the generous mouth and the astonishingly brilliant amber eyes. Her hair is a rich ebony, burnished by a foreign sun. It flows back in unruly waves from a high forehead. And though his interest may be merely academic, his senses cannot be completely indifferent to the way the green brocade kirtle she wears flatters those straight shoulders and that slender waist. He notes, too, the narrow wrists and slender fingers – not at all like the village girls from Barnthorpe. The word that springs into his mind is ‘exotic’. An exotic flower, blooming in the wasteland that is his recent memory.
‘You’re awake,’ she observes dispassionately in a faint accent he can’t quite place. ‘I image you must be hungry. Can you manage a little breakfast? There’s larded pullet. We have some baked sprats left over, too. I’ll have my maid Rose lay out a trencher downstairs.’
‘How long have I been’ – he looks down, casting an uncomprehending eye over the unfamiliar nightshirt – ‘like this?’
‘Two weeks. At first we really thought we’d lost you. I’m glad we didn’t.’
When he doesn’t answer, she turns to leave.
‘Forgive me, I don’t even know who you are,’ he calls after her, feeling suddenly very foolish and only too conscious of the unkempt state he’s in.
She looks back and bestows a bright smile on him. ‘I’m Mistress Merton. Seeing as how I’ve been nursing you like a sickly babe, you may as well call me Bianca.’
He chooses the baked sprats. Then the larded pullet. Then some manchet bread, hot from the oven. His long fight against the river has left him ravenous.
He’s sitting in the taproom of the Jackdaw tavern. He knows it’s the Jackdaw because through the rain-streaked window he can see the painted sign hanging over the lane. A tail of water cascades from one corner, splashing onto the churned-up mud and horse-dung below. He observes his distorted reflection in the little lozenges of glass. It is not a good sight. He looks like a man who’s survived the pestilence – just.
A tankard of small-beer sits before him on the table, set down a moment ago with a smile by Rose, a full-bodied lass with a head of unruly curls. Not so long ago he would have emptied it in a moment, cursed the world, its maker and everyone in it and angrily demanded another. Now he just turns the tankard slowly, inspecting it. On his face flickers a sad half-smile that hints at remorse, or perhaps self-loathing.
He remembers something that happened to him when he was a boy. He’d been walking down a Suffolk lane, leading his grandfather’s old gelding punch, Hotspur. The horse was the largest and strongest on the farm, but as passive and biddable as a blind old hearth-dog. Nicholas had been leading him by the halter when, foolishly, he’d managed to put his right foot directly under one of Hotspur’s descending hooves. The pain had been beyond anything he’d known. ‘Hotspur, whoa! Whoa!’ he’d yelled. True to his nature, the horse had obeyed. Stationary, Hotspur’s entire weight began to bear down on Nicholas’s pinned boot. ‘Whoa!’ he’d yelled again, the tears springing into his eyes. ‘Whoa!’
And just when he’d thought every bone in his foot was about to be ground into dust, his grandfather had said softly, ‘When you’ve ’ad enough, my lad, just you tell old ’Spur to giddy-up.’
Sometimes, he thinks, we can be the agent of our own pain.
He pushes the tankard away.
At Nonsuch, Kat Vaesy has come to celebrate All Souls’ with John and Lizzy. She’s come alone, save for a single groom, contemptuous of the cut-purses who sometimes prey upon travellers on the London road. When she arrived yesterday afternoon, her cheeks flushed from the ride from Vauxhall, John and Lizzy had met her at the outer gatehouse. Taking John’s hand, she’d dismounted and greeted him with a respectful ‘my lord’. Protocol satisfied, she’d hugged him, kissed his cheek and cried, ‘Oh, John, it does my heart good to see you again! And you, Lizzy! And little Nug!’
The spaniel had raced around the courtyard, yelping ecstatically, until Gabriel Quigley, John’s secretary, had been forced to scoop it up and return it to Lizzy’s waiting arms.
This morning the two women stand together in the empty royal apartments and peer through the windows at the Italian gardens, waiting for the rain to lift so they can walk up to the pretty grove of Diana the huntress and let Nug chase pheasants.
They are much alike, Kat Vaesy and Lizzy Lumley: of a similar age, married to men a good deal older, both unable to bear children… and yet so utterly different.
Lizzy had once considered Kat a rival. When she’d wed John Lumley, the friendship between her new husband and the anatomist’s banished wife had been so close she’d felt shut out. She’d even wondered if Kat wasn’t John’s mistress. It had taken some time for him to convince her that the unbreakable bond they shared was one of grief. For Kat Vaesy and John’s first wife – Jane FitzAlan – had been the closest of friends, sisters almost. Even so, the knowledge hadn’t done much to blunt the other thorn on the bloom: the knowledge that Jane FitzAlan’s ghost would always be a constant reminder to Lizzy of her own limitations.
Raised by her father, the Earl of Arundel, on the extraordinary premise that a woman’s intellect is in every respect the equal of a man’s, Jane FitzAlan had won renown as a scholar in her own right. She’d even translated books by Euripides into English. No wonder John had loved her so, thinks Lizzy. She often imagines Jane standing by the Nonsuch library shelves, understanding effortlessly the contents of whatever volume she plucks from the shelves. Jane would never have had to ask Gabriel Quigley what they mean – as Lizzy sometimes does. Jane would never have feared appearing foolish in John’s eyes. Late wives, she thinks, can cast such dreadfully long shadows.