‘Circe was a goddess who could turn men into crawling beasts by a single look. You’ll probably have heard someone round here say that about me.’
A tight smile pulls the skin across the sides of his skull. ‘I did hear something along those lines, when I made my enquiries.’
‘You’ve made enquiries?’
‘I don’t care much for sailing into uncharted harbours, Mistress Merton. That’s how lives are lost.’
‘And what, pray, did you hear?’
‘That you can heal. That you have the second sight. That you’re the one witch nobody dares hang.’
She smiles as if he’s paid her a great compliment. ‘It’s a pity they haven’t found anything new to say about me.’
‘I was told you once were taken up by Robert Cecil for being a Catholic. And instead of the scaffold, somehow you came back in the queen’s own barge.’
‘They’re inventive, the people of Southwark.’
‘So it’s a lie?’
‘Part of it.’
‘Which part?’
‘The barge. It belonged to the Cecils, not the queen.’
She watches the uncertainty playing in his eyes and tries not to laugh. But there’s no doubt in her mind that he has the capacity for great violence. She supposes that if a man spends his life facing the worst that storm and ocean can hurl at him, then perhaps the violence one man may do to another is a small thing by comparison.
‘I have to admit I was surprised by the offer,’ he says. ‘Me and my crew don’t often get invited into taverns; we usually get invited to leave them.’
‘If your coin is good, and your men’s behaviour moderate, you’re welcome, Captain Connell. And if not, Master Ned over there eats rowdy boys the way a whale eats little fishes: in vast numbers.’
Connell glances to where Ned is clearing away a trencher from a recently vacated booth. ‘God’s nails, he’s a big bugger, ain’t he? Is he yours?’
‘Mine?’
‘Your man. That’s something else I heard about you: that you are betrothed.’ He runs a hand over the tight stubble on his scalp. The rasping sound makes Bianca think of someone scrubbing a bloodstain out of a winding sheet.
‘The only people betrothed here are Ned and Rose,’ she says. ‘That’s her over there, with the dark ringlets, serving your men their ale.’
‘When’s the wedding? My fellows like to see a wedding – gives them a proper sense of home to hang on to.’
‘The day after tomorrow. We’re holding the feast here, so if you want to take advantage of my offer, I’d ask you not to act like mariners ashore are sometimes inclined to act. I don’t want Rose to have to spend her wedding night bathing Ned’s knuckles.’
Connell makes another exaggerated bow. ‘I shall have my boys be on their best behaviour, Mistress Merton. The queen herself would not be discomforted by their manners.’
‘Then you’re welcome, Captain Connell.’
‘And this man of yours – will he be there?’
‘I told you, there isn’t “a man”.’
‘That is not quite what you said. Enquiries, remember? He must be some manner of fellow, to have snared such a one as you.’
‘I haven’t been snared, Captain Connell; I’m not a hare.’
‘Then a vixen, perhaps?’ He gives her a look of hungry appraisal. She tries not to shudder.
‘Best behaviour, please, Captain Connell. Or else Circe will have to consider employing her magic again. What shall it be? I think turning you into a boar might suit.’
Her jibe seems to please him. ‘Aye, I could see myself as a boar, Mistress Bianca – tenacious and unpredictable.’ He makes twin tusks out of his index fingers, thrusting them out from his chin.
‘To be honest with you, I was thinking more of flayed, salted and hung up for eating, after all the quality beef has gone.’
With a ban imposed on public entertainments, the lanes of Bankside are unusually quiet. The street tricksters have retired to the taverns, where they attempt to gull each other in the warm, partly to keep their sleight of hand sharp, partly to relieve the boredom. In the bear-baiting rings the bearward watches old Sackerson staring out through the bars of his cage and wonders if he’s enjoying the respite, though in the spirit of Christian compassion, Sackerson – being in the twilight of his life – is only baited now on special occasions. And a wedding isn’t one of them.
It is to be an Easter wedding. After a night of rain that has the earth yielding to the boot like damp mortar, Monday brings a bridal gift of clear skies.
Ned Monkton – and Nicholas, his appointed groomsman – arrive at the Jackdaw to the accompaniment of the musicians from the closed-up Rose theatre. With rowdy but joyous display, they search the tavern for the bride, to carry her away from her former estate. She and her maids – of whom Bianca is matron – resist just long enough to satisfy convention, filling the Jackdaw with joyous shrieks as they flee from one room to another.
The procession leaves promptly at ten, to the sound of the St Saviour’s bell tolling merrily. Bride and groom lead the way. Ned, being the largest fellow present by some measure, looks like Hamelin’s Pied Piper leading a flock of happy children. Nicholas has bought him a handsome woollen jerkin. It is the first new garment Ned has ever worn, and he carries himself as proudly as if it were pure cloth-of-gold. Passing the Clink prison, he waves regally to old friends temporarily confined there for disorder, who shout their encouragement from the tiny windows. Nicholas smiles vicariously. After all, it was not so very long ago that Ned spent his days as a mortuary attendant at St Thomas’s hospital for the poor, all but entombed amongst the recently deceased. He could claim to be only occupant of the crypt ever to have risen from the dead. At this moment he certainly looks like a man who’s been offered a second chance at life.
Bianca has contrived an almost-new kirtle for Rose, put together from leftover pieces by a clothier in Bermondsey who has donated the farthingale in settlement of his slate at the Jackdaw. The bride is the very picture of a bucolic angel, her black ringlets garlanded with posies, a bloom of contentment on her broad cheeks.
The bride’s father having long since passed to a gentler place, Bianca has provided the groom with a dowry: a full cask of the Jackdaw’s best hell-cat. In return, the groom’s father has provided plump capons for the feast, fresh from his poulterer’s shop on Scrope Alley.
At St Saviour’s, bride and groom make their vows. Ned stumbles over the words and turns an alarming crimson. In his embarrassment he fidgets with his jerkin, as if troubled by lice. But Nicholas has checked him over in preparation for his later exertions and can guarantee him louse-free.
The ring that Ned places on Rose’s finger is made from the handle of a broken tin spoon that someone left at the Jackdaw, re-forged in the smithy by St Mary’s dock and cleverly engraved with the words by no river parted on the outside and by this river joined on the inside – in reference to the Thames, upon which so much of their livelihood depends.
And the wedding feast! There has scarcely been a board like it in living memory. At least none that any common-or-garden Banksider is likely to be invited to. In addition to old man Monkton’s capons, there is a side of winter hog smoking and spitting in the Jackdaw’s hearth, paid for by a collection taken amongst the customers. Farzad has made a fiery sauce with capsicum, nutmeg and ginger. The sisters at St Thomas’s hospital have donated a basket overflowing with winter vegetables from their garden. Timothy – now almost a man and drawing the eye of any number of Southwark’s daughters – plays bright jigs on his lute, accompanied by the playhouse musicians. There may be plague across the river, and trade a little poor, but the general consensus is that when Philip of Spain came to England all those years ago to wed Mary Tudor, they should have done it on Bankside, not at Winchester. Yes, he’s an enemy now, but look at what he missed.