He comes very close to her. She can smell the musty scent of old books on him. And something else: a desiccated smell – as if he’s anointed himself with the distillation of a lifetime’s resentment.
‘Very few have been permitted to enter our chapel of mysteries,’ he tells her, as though she should be grateful to him. ‘We do such great and blessed work here. And you will be part of it. You may well be the one who gives us what we’ve been searching for. But first we shall pray together.’
Bianca sways, feeling the bones and muscles in her legs beginning to liquefy. This time she’s not play-acting. The hallucinations are starting to bubble up from beneath the surface of her terror. Small at first – a bending of shape and form, a thinning-out of substance – soon they will grow. She cannot prevent it.
A sudden brightening of everything around her forewarns of an oncoming wave. She knows that when it breaks, the man with the pumice face will set to work with his abominable collection of instruments.
In a moment of extraordinarily banal reflection, she wonders how Rose and Timothy will fare under a new landlord; where the regulars of the Jackdaw will get their balms, salves and tinctures now; and if Nicholas will ever learn what happened to her, or even care.
She stares at the woman she now knows is Katherine Vaesy. The woman’s mouth is moving, but it’s her own voice that Bianca can hear coming out of it:
But you can’t claw like a Veneto maid when she’s faced with a rival… you’d have no idea which bit of them to kick first…
‘Come, Mistress, we must be about our task. Pray with me,’ says Quigley, moving closer to take her by the arm.
But the voice hasn’t done with her yet:
Bianca Merton, you didn’t come all the way from Padua to wash up like a gutted fish on the Mutton Lane stairs – did you?
She lets Quigley lead her towards the plinth. In his tight grip she feels as though she’s made of paper. One careless squeeze will crush her entirely. She tenses her body, as if trying to force a precious liquid out of a rag. And as the wave begins to swell, she acts.
Grabbing the nearest thing on the plinth, Bianca flails out at Quigley’s face.
She has no idea what she’s picked up. Her arm seems as light as a feather – no real force behind it. I’m too weak now to do any hurt upon him, she thinks. He’ll brush me aside as though I’m nothing more troubling than a moth.
In fact, she’s picked up a small saw. The teeth are cruel and sharp, like the teeth of a cornered rat. And the desperation in her is more powerful than she knows. The blade catches Quigley along the edge of his jaw, tearing away gobbets of flesh. He shrieks in pain, a piecing yowl that echoes around the crypt, up the stairway and out into the Lazar House. He staggers, falling back across the plinth and scattering the instruments onto the flagstones.
Katherine Vaesy’s mouth gapes wide in astonishment. Bianca slices at her, too. But now she can barely keep her legs from giving way. The strike does not land. Nevertheless, Kat reels back. She leaves the way to the stairs open. As the crypt begins to transform itself into a vast hall draped with brilliant tapestries in which the beasts themselves roar and prance, Bianca makes a desperate dash for the steps.
She takes the first few on pure spirit alone. Then she is flying upwards, a creature of the air, free to sail high above the world and all its maladies. She would fly for ever if she could. But like every good dream, its life is all too brief. She feels herself falling back to earth.
Her hands scratch at the stone to get purchase. The saw drops away, clattering noisily down behind her. She feels hands seizing her ankles, pulling her back, sucking her down in a maelstrom of noise and light, to where the Devil’s cross waits ready for her crucifixion.
And then she hears it: the sound of someone entering the chapel at the top of the steps.
A voice calling her name. A man’s voice.
A familiar voice.
As the hallucinations sweep over her, Bianca imagines it’s Nicholas, come to explain why he didn’t write.
50
Shrovetide, February 1591
On Tower Hill the apprentice boys are playing football in the crisp winter sunshine. It’s the Fishmongers’ Company against the Weavers’ Guild, and it’s rapidly turning into a no-quarter-given grudge-match. Since Nicholas Shelby left the Lumley town house on Woodroffe Lane, he’s patched up three split scalps and a fractured elbow. He’s also come perilously close to being thrown into a water-trough for tending a Fishmonger in a crowd of Weavers.
Along the city wall the food vendors are doing a roaring trade. Pies and pancakes are flying off the stalls. There’s much feasting and carousing to be done before Lent stalks in with his grim face of guilty self-denial.
‘Your Widow Welford was right, Nicholas,’ Lumley says as they break free of the crowd. ‘Nonsuch has never heard trilling like it – we can barely keep Elise silent for one minute at a time.’
‘That’s good to hear. But she’s suffered so much; it will be a long time before our pipit sits happy on her branch. Will she stay with your household?’
‘Lizzy and I would not have it otherwise. Sprint and Joanna are to wed – they have asked to adopt her. Elise seems to approve of the plan. My gift to them will be her education: I shall find her a tutor, someone gentle. Very gentle.’
‘Then at least some good has come out of this.’
‘And your Mistress Merton – how does she mend?’
‘Well, my lord. She mends well. Still a little weak, but each day sees improvement. One moment she wants to shower me with gratitude for saving her, the next she wants to finish what Quigley started’ – Nicholas touches the wound on the back of his scalp – ‘for putting her in danger in the first place!’
‘She had a lucky escape, I understand. Had it not been for your determination… well, it doesn’t bear dwelling upon, does it?’
Nicholas smiles. ‘She was the instrument of her own salvation, my lord. A lesser heart might have given up.’
‘I hear Captain Brabant’s men had to prevent Monkton from killing Gabriel with his bare hands – is that right?’
‘That might have been a better outcome. It would have been a kinder death than the one he faces now.’
‘You must put that out of your mind, Nicholas. As you rightly told me that morning we rode out of Nonsuch, Gabriel knew the path he was taking.’
‘Still, it’s a little too much of an eye for an eye for my liking, my lord.’
‘I still think of Kat,’ Lumley says sadly. ‘One cannot easily put so long a friendship out of mind. Tell me again, how did it happen?’
Nicholas shrugs. ‘It’s hard to say, my lord. It was dark. She was in the stern of the wherry. We were rowing back to Cecil House. One moment she was there, the next – gone. Somewhere off the Lambeth marshes, I’d guess.’
‘Was she bound?’
‘Brabant didn’t think it necessary: Quigley was in too much pain from the wounds Ned and Bianca had given him to cause any trouble. And Katherine Vaesy had been sitting quietly all the way from the Mutton Lane stairs.’
‘Did she drown? Or did she make it to the bank?’ asks Lumley, addressing his question to the sky. ‘Whatever the truth, wherever she is, I hope she’s at peace. At least she’s free of her husband.’ A thought occurs to him. ‘Speaking of Sir Fulke, did you know he’s been dismissed from the chair of anatomy, stripped of his fellowship of the College? It was the Privy Council’s doing. Nothing to do with malpractice – it was the scandal, and his connection to a Jesuit, that they couldn’t stomach.’