Lumley shouts for a servant to bring an iron crow. Inside five minutes Nicholas is prizing the lock from the only secure hiding place in Quigley’s chamber – a wooden chest beside the bed. Lumley doesn’t attempt to stop him. The man once bold enough to politic with earls, to risk his very neck to strengthen a Catholic claim to the throne of England, now seems completely in thrall to a Suffolk yeoman’s son with a crowbar.
Nicholas scatters Quigley’s possessions across the floor, as though he means to cast away all trace of their owner. It’s a pitifully meagre hauclass="underline" a spare formal gown, some of Quigley’s books from his days at Oxford – amongst them, Nicholas notes, Breferton’s Treatise into the ungovernable diseases of the blood.
At the bottom of the chest Nicholas finds an almanac – is it for astrology, or to predict the tides at Bankside? – and a few sheets of parchment filled with incomprehensible notes laid into a diagonally drawn grid, all scribbled in a small, tight hand.
And then he lifts out a fragment of paper. It’s about the size of a primero card. It looks as though it’s been torn from a larger sheet. He holds it up to get a closer look. It’s covered with what at first glance are random symbols and words:
… 
3 qtr. moon… imperfect flow… 
» 
… dominant black bile… three onz.
one turn glass… 
new moon
mortem
three turns glass…
John Lumley leans over his shoulder. ‘What does it mean? It looks like an incantation. Is it a spell? Is it witchcraft?’
Nicholas reads again. And suddenly the meaning of the message takes on an awful clarity.
‘The symbols are astrological,’ he says.
‘A horoscope?’
‘Oh, it’s much more than that. Look: there’s Aries, and Libra… then the phase of the moon. That fixes the date on which the observations were recorded. The last line is the clearest. If I’m right, on the night of the new moon during the ascendancy of Taurus – sometime in late April, early May last year – it took three turns of the sandglass for one of Quigley’s victims to bleed to death. Little Ralph Cullen – God save his soul – wasn’t even the first.’
In Lumley’s privy chamber Lizzy sits as still as a statue, gripping her husband’s hand for support. She is wondering if King Henry built Nonsuch strong enough to withstand the shocks it has endured of late. Nicholas watches them both, detached, like a passer-by at a funeral.
‘It grieves me beyond sufferance, Mouse, but I cannot fault Dr Shelby’s reasoning. I have been harbouring a monster at Nonsuch.’
‘I always thought him a cold and secretive man, John. But this–’
‘He never got over Mathew’s death; I’ve always known that. But what terrible corruption in his soul made him take this course, only Satan himself knows.’
‘Something Joanna told me this morning – it makes sense now.’
‘Joanna?’
‘She said Gabriel came to her in the small hours. He told her that you’d called for Elise. He said he was to bring her to you.’
‘I never did such a thing, Mouse. We were together, you know it.’
‘She sent him packing – told him if you needed her so urgently at such an hour, you should come yourself.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Husband, have you quite forgotten the night’s commotions? Besides, at the time it meant nothing to me.’
‘But why would Quigley need to do her harm?’ Lumley asks. ‘He knows Elise can’t identify him. She didn’t see him. She said so in words he himself wrote down.’
‘Because she can identify his accomplice – the woman who imprisoned her and her poor brother. She can identify Quigley’s “angel”.’
‘So if Tom Parker hadn’t managed to raise a cry, she might have suffered the same fate as the one intended for Dr Shelby,’ Lumley says, appalled. ‘Thank Jesu I have such contrary servants.’
‘What will happen to Gabriel now, Husband?’
‘I don’t know, Mouse. I can’t imagine the Queen’s Bench will ever have tried such a case before.’
‘I know exactly what will happen,’ says Nicholas, remembering his footsore days trying to get the authorities to take an interest. ‘Absolutely nothing. He’ll use a lawyer’s defence: Prove it.’
‘But that fragment of parchment you found–?’
‘He could claim they’re observations of just about anything – the amount of water the shrubs in the privy garden need,’ Nicholas says cynically.
‘But I can bring the case to the ear of Sir John Popham, the Attorney General, if needs be.’
‘Do you remember, my lord, when Quigley advised you against placing Elise before a court? Well, he was right. With my history, I’m an unreliable witness. Bianca Merton has been accused of heresy and witchcraft. Elise Cullen is the bastard child of a Bankside bawd. Do I need to continue?’
‘You must ride to Tower Hill and confront him, John,’ Lizzy orders.
‘He hasn’t gone to Tower Hill, madam,’ says Nicholas. ‘He knows I’m alive. He’ll be wondering how long it will take for your husband to accept the truth of what I’ve told him. He’s probably already on his way to the coast. He’ll cross over the Narrow Sea and start again. They’ll find the next corpse in Bruges or Rotterdam.’
Silence, while the pale walls of Nonsuch wait patiently for the next assault.
‘Kat will be quite undone if she learns of this,’ Lizzy says. ‘It will destroy her. You know how much she loves him.’
‘Kat?’ echoes Nicholas. ‘Are you telling me Quigley had a wife?’
‘Jesu, no,’ says Lumley with a grim laugh. ‘Even I’m not so blind as to think Gabriel’s heart had space for such affections.’
‘Then who’s Kat?’
‘Katherine Warren,’ says Lumley, his grey eyes misting over with old memories. ‘Blessed with an angel’s beauty – that’s what we all used to say of Kat. She was a young maid sent to my late wife by her father, to learn a woman’s duties in a great household. She fell in love with Mathew – would have married him. Nothing would have pleased us more.’
‘Would have married? What happened?’
‘Her father forbade the match, because of Mathew’s sickness.’ Lumley pauses, a foolish look on his face as if he’s realized he’s telling a story Nicholas has heard before. ‘But of course you probably already know her, Dr Shelby. Kat Warren is now Lady Katherine Vaesy.’
44
At Vauxhall pale shafts of evening light cut through the mist rolling off the river. Kat Vaesy pulls her gown tighter against her body as she walks. Lost in thought, she barely notices the figure in a mud-stained riding cloak hurrying towards her from the house. When he calls to her harshly, she fears for a moment it’s Fulke. But this man is much leaner, there’s no bombast to his gait. And then she sees his face – and knows this is something far, far worse than any unannounced visit from her husband.
‘I had to see you, Kat,’ Gabriel Quigley says, seizing her arm.
‘Gabriel, let go, you’re hurting me!’ Kat demands, unnerved by the intensity in Quigley’s eyes. ‘Why have you come here? We agreed never to–’
‘The vagrant child you took up from the Effra ford last summer,’ he says, interrupting her, ‘the crippled boy–’