‘It’s been empty for years. There’s hasn’t been a leper living there since the queen was a young maid.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain. You can’t fall sick merely by entering it.’
‘And the tide is against us,’ says Brabant with the pessimism of a mariner who’s spent too long at sea. ‘We’ve a handy enough crew, mind. Davey over there was in Ark Royal when the Dons’ Armada came sailing up the Channel in eighty-eight.’
Davey tips his cap to Nicholas.
‘And Nikko Shugborough – that’s him there, second oar on the leeward side – Nikko was in Henry Seymour’s squadron, weren’t you, Nikko?’
‘Gunner’s mate in the galleon Rainbow,’ says a man in a dirty leather jerkin. Nicholas stares at his arms – each bicep is the girth of a boar’s ham. ‘Held the gun-deck record on the six-pounder demi-culverin, sir.’
‘It’s just one man,’ says Nicholas, grateful that he’s in serious company for the task in hand. ‘Cannon might be somewhat of an excess.’
‘Where do we land?’ asks Brabant.
‘There’s a culvert between the place where Black Bull Alley reaches the river and the Mutton Lane stairs. You should be able to take us in under the lintel.’
The sky is beginning to darken. A wind that’s had a clear run from the west batters Nicholas’s face as the wherry lurches out into the river. The weight of having set this extraordinary play upon its stage is beginning to bear down upon his shoulders, sapping his confidence. As they head upriver towards the Lambeth marshes, he ponders his chances. He’s almost sure that he never spoke of the Lazar House in Quigley’s presence. He hopes he’s right, otherwise Quigley will stay well clear of Bankside. Not even Burghley will be able to muster enough men to watch every escape route out of England.
She’d hated getting sick when she was young. She’d loathed the indignity, the humbling of the will and the body, the feeling that some pitiless, angry beast had taken control of her and was forcing her insides to dance to its tune. Now she longs for it. When the first stab of cramp comes, Bianca almost weeps for joy. The asarabacca is working. Her own pain is a blow struck against the two people responsible for her terror. She crawls into a corner and vomits up the contents of her stomach, desperately trying to limit the noise of her retching.
When the spasms stop, she drags over one of the straw pallets to cover the mess. She doesn’t care about the telltale smell. This place stinks already. But she daren’t let them see what she’s achieved: the first small victory in her struggle to live.
Nicholas is suffering his own imprisonment. The river seems to have him bound in hoops of invisible iron. The swell pushes the little wherry backwards one yard for every two that Brabant’s men manage to claw forward.
His worry that Quigley knows of his suspicions about the Lazar House has given way to another fear – did he speak Bianca Merton’s name only in John Lumley’s hearing, or did he mention it when Quigley was taking down Elise’s testament? Try as he might, he can’t be sure. His only comfort, as Brabant and his crew battle against the river and the wind, is that Ned Monkton is standing his simple, honest – and hopefully sober – guard.
48
The woman enters, bearing an earthenware bowl. She kneels beside Bianca, smiles and says kindly, ‘You’ve been taken poorly, Mistress Merton. We’ve sent for a physician, but you need to get your strength back. You really must drink. Here–’
Bianca rolls her eyes and groans, in her best imitation of someone deranged. Then she takes the bowl. Better to feign compliance than have them force her.
Again: the scent of hellebore and henbane.
She allows some of the liquid to flow over her chin. But she must drink enough to satisfy the woman or they’ll realize what she’s doing.
When the woman leaves, Bianca waits for the sound of her footsteps to fade. Then she reaches into her kirtle and brings out the rest of the asarabacca. She makes a little pile of leaves on the mattress. It’s a worryingly small pile. She halves it and stuffs one portion into her mouth.
This, she realizes, is going to come down to a battle of wills.
‘I can’t take us in, sir, not even with the likes of Davey and Nikko on the oars,’ says Brabant from the wildly pitching prow of the wherry.
‘Shit!’ hisses Nicholas in a wholly uncharacteristic display of frustration.
It’s taken him a lifetime to strike a flint and get a lantern ablaze; the wind has defeated every attempt till now. By its meagre, agitated light he can see the tide is almost up to the level of the lintel in the Lazar House river-wall. A lethal foam of dark-brown water surges around the entrance to the culvert. The whole bank is beginning to lose its outline in the gathering dusk, river and land becoming one. The hull planks of the wherry heave beneath his feet, threatening to hurl him into the racing water. He braces himself and points to a low, dark smudge on the river – the jetty where Jacob Monkton’s eviscerated body washed ashore.
‘The Mutton Lane stairs then!’ he shouts against the wind. ‘And for mercy’s sake, hurry!’
On land, it’s less than a hundred paces away. But the river has taken against them. The tide is running. It might as well be on the far side of the Narrow Sea.
She remembers the day news reached the Veneto of the execution of Mary Stuart, the Scots queen. Father Rossi had given the Mass in the little church on the hill. He’d told the congregation the Pope would soon intercede with God to make the new martyr a saint. Then he assured them the Holy Father prayed daily for divine retribution upon the heretical English queen who had killed her.
Sitting beside her father, Bianca could have wept with pity for poor Mary. She imagined her alone in her cell, awaiting the dawn and the executioner; no one but her enemies to give her the Viaticum. But the tortured way in which Father Rossi had pronounced the English name of the castle where this dreadful crime against God had taken place – Fotheringhay – had caused her almost to giggle in the most solemn parts of the service. It had come out of his mouth sounding more like hot-herring-guay.
Now she knows that God had noticed that little sin of hers, just as He notices all sin. And now He’s punishing her by turning the tables: it is Bianca herself awaiting the executioner.
She hears the bolt rasp again. The door opens and she lifts herself a little from the stinking mattress.
Is it time?
Have you come to lead me to the block at hot-herring-guay?
No laughing matter now.
The woman kneels beside her – takes her hand. ‘Come, Mistress Merton–’
Bianca senses pumice-face close by. She feels him place one arm around her shoulders, feels the strength in him as he lifts her to her feet as though she were made of little more than air. There is no play-acting in the way she drags her heels and stumbles as they lead her through the door and out into darkness. True, the frightening visions have ceased for a while. She feels as though at least a small measure of her will has returned. But the pain in her belly, the raw burning in her throat, the ache of her ribs from the spasms, her exhaustion – all these are real.
When did I last take the asarabacca?
When was my last purge?
When will the hallucinations come again?
Bianca knows the wrong answer to any of these questions could kill her.
A tiny gleam of light dances in the shadows. They are leading her towards it, though to her mind it is she who is stationary and it is the light that’s approaching her.