And then John Lumley’s voice says softly in his ear: God has not yet made a storm that does not eventually abate, Dr Shelby.
And Nicholas – to his astonishment – discovers he’s right. The tempest stops howling. The competing thoughts in his head stop spinning. The chamber becomes utterly still, not even the trembling of Henry’s great clock troubling the night air.
One of these swirling images has given Nicholas the answer he’s been searching for. Throwing back the covers, he dresses hurriedly and sets off to rouse the master of Nonsuch, quite uncaring of the hour.
45
An hour before sunrise. Rush torches flare in the inner courtyard. Sleepy-eyed grooms check saddles and girth-straps, preparing the four horses for the fast ride to Richmond. From there it will be onwards by river to the city. Two servants, armed against cut-purses, have been sent ahead to wake the watermen.
Nicholas settles himself into the saddle. He’s wrapped against the pre-dawn chill in one of Lumley’s fur-lined riding cloaks. He leans forward and runs a hand along the palfrey’s neck, wondering quite who he’s trying to comfort: the horse or himself.
Lizzy reaches up to take her husband’s hand. Lumley leans down from the saddle and kisses her fingers. When the intimacy is over, Lizzy turns to Nicholas. ‘I still say this is madness, Dr Shelby. You could be delivering my husband into the hands of his enemies. Carry this knowledge with you – I will take pains to destroy you, if you do.’
‘In which case, madam, I will deserve it,’ says Nicholas.
Lizzy shakes her head. ‘To be honest, sirrah, I know not whether to count you amongst the saints or the sinners. If the plague comes again in the summer, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has the name of Nicholas Shelby scratched into its scales.’
The little party rides out of Nonsuch as the pale arc of dawn turns the trees on the eastern edge of the park into a spidery weave of black branches. Nicholas has tested his plan against all manner of catastrophes. He tells himself there’s no more he can do, that it’s futile to keep weighing the morality of the idea that came to him just at the moment when his thoughts were at their darkest. He’s resolved now.
He can think of no other way to stop Gabriel Quigley and Kat Vaesy, no other means of bringing them to justice. Fulke Vaesy wouldn’t listen. The Queen’s Coroner wouldn’t listen. The parish authorities and the Church wouldn’t listen. It’s too late for pleading. Now there’s no more time left.
This is the only way to be sure, he tells himself. And he must thank Francis Deniker for revealing it to him – even if it is from beyond the grave. Even if it proves what Quigley said in the gallery of the Nonsuch chapel was the truth: that Nicholas Shelby is not the physician, he’s the disease.
Slowly, magnificent Nonsuch fades behind them, a place of myth, unable to endure long against the violence of the real world. Soon it’s vanished from sight. ‘I pray you’re right, Nicholas,’ says Lumley to a chorus of screeching rooks. ‘Not so much for myself, but to stop them from further devilry.’ Then, remembering the love he’d once borne for Gabriel and Kat, he adds, ‘No, not devils – but good souls led astray. I know they have sinned mightily, but the price they shall pay will be a heavy one indeed.’
But Nicholas doesn’t feel like soothing Lumley’s conscience for him.
‘They didn’t stray, my lord. They’re not leash-hounds who’ve caught a scent and gone deaf to the call; they chose this path of their own free will. They knew what they were about. They made a mockery of the eulogy on Mathew Quigley’s grave.’
As they splash cross the Pyl ford, Lumley calls back to one of the two servants riding close behind, ‘Careful, Adam – according to Dr Shelby, you’re bearing the means of my deliverance. I don’t want it dropped in the mud.’
In the taproom, Rose believes her mistress is labouring over the tavern’s accounts. Ned Monkton worries she might be crafting a spell. Some of the customers fear she’s drawing up their reckonings. In truth, Bianca is planning her letter to Nicholas. She thinks, if he won’t write, then I will – and, mercy, how my news will stop him in his tracks.
She taps one index finger on the paper to marshal her thoughts. Tap: Katherine Vaesy is harvesting victims for the killer. Tap: Maybe Katherine Vaesy is the killer. Tap: Fulke Vaesy – be he cousin, brother, husband or any other form of male irritant, is an eminent man of medicine. Tap: John Lumley is an eminent man of medicine. Tap: Nicholas is closer to the killer than he knows. Tap… tap… tap…
Where does this harvest of souls go when it leaves the Magdalene? she wonders. Because the Magdalene is not a prison. The old woman with the eye and the elbow has told her so. Even if the alternative is starvation, the Magdalenes are always at liberty to leave.
To the Lazar House, then? In which case, Nicholas is right. She can hear his familiar soft Suffolk burr: How could we have been so blind? He’s been doing it right under our noses!
The rhythm of her tapping falters. Rose looks over from where she’s been making moonbeam faces at Ned Monkton. ‘Anything the matter, Mistress?’
‘Nothing, Rose. It’s nothing.’
Ned and Rose are getting on like a house on fire, she thinks. They’re suited: Ned, who spends his day amongst the dead; Rose with her worrying interest in torture. Ghoulish, admittedly – but then what was it her mother used to say? There’s always someone for someone.
She remembers when the English merchants visiting her father’s house in Padua had started taking more than a passing interest in her. Her mother had warned her somewhat brutally, ‘Cardinal or carpenter, bare-chin or greybeard, all they really want is to tup you till you’ve given them an heir, then have you cook them fishcakes for the rest of your days. They’re all the same.’
‘But what about Papa?’ Bianca had protested.
‘Ah, your father – he’s different.’
‘How so?’
‘He doesn’t like fish.’
Bianca smiles at the memory. Even now she doesn’t know if her mother was joking. She turns her thoughts back to the letter. When it’s written, she’ll do what Nicholas did: have Timothy take it to Lord Lumley’s town house near Tower Hill. Hopefully it will find its way to Nonsuch. She wonders what he’ll make of Lady Katherine Vaesy then.
‘Mistress, Mistress!’
Bianca looks up to see Timothy standing over her, his face flushed.
‘Whatever’s the matter? You sound as though the Spanish have landed.’
‘There’s a fellow outside, from the Magdalene almshouse,’ Timothy tells her, carried away by the drama of the call. ‘Says he’s heard your physic is the best on Bankside.’
‘And so it is, Timothy. If I say so myself. What does he want?’
‘There’s a woman – sick almost to death. He says, will you come?’
‘It’s not the warder, is it: the one we threw out?’
‘No, Mistress. This one’s got a face full of pox scars.’
She wants to say, tell him to try the jumping-shop at the sign of the Blue Bear – that’s where the old woman who peels vegetables for her friends that the rest of the world has forgotten says he’s usually to be found. But then she recalls the sense of shame she’d felt when she’d realized she’d never once stopped by in person to help.
‘I’ll go with you,’ says Ned Monkton, laying down his ale. ‘Master Nicholas would wish it.’
She thinks about it. She really does think about it. But I’m a healthy, strong young woman, she tells herself. I don’t fit the pattern. What happened to Ralph Cullen and Jacob Monkton happened after they left the Magdalene. And I’m Veneto-born and bred; not some simpering, pasty, over-jewelled English buttercup. Besides, if Lady Katherine Vaesy is there, at least I’ll have a face to point out to the constable when the time comes. But what really makes up her mind is this: why should she accept a guard dog just because Nicholas Shelby, who can’t be bothered to write, wishes it?