It’s at times like this, Nicholas thinks, as he tries not to grin, that I really do want to take you in my arms and kiss you – whatever Eleanor might have to say about it.
Taking a sudden deep interest in the blade of the key, Willders unlocks the door and leads Nicholas and Bianca inside.
Save for the body, nothing has been moved. The room is still a ruin of upturned furniture and ripped-open spice sacks, the contents cast around like a minor sand dune. The air is heavy and dust-laden. Bianca can smell cinnamon and mace, pepper and nutmeg – and the flat metallic tang of spilt blood. She can see it, too, spread liberally around the now-empty bed, as though someone has smashed a wine bottle over it.
‘You’ve taken him to the mortuary crypt at St Thomas’s, I presume,’ Nicholas says.
‘Aye, and we’ve sent word to coroner Danby at Whitehall. He’s coming across the bridge tomorrow to arrange the inquiry. I suppose you’ll want to speak to him.’
‘If I must.’
Willders give him a curious look. ‘He’ll want to hear the nature of the Jew’s injuries from your own mouth, Dr Shelby. I would not be qualified to report on such matters.’
‘If I know Danby, he’s already reached a verdict without lifting his arse off his chair.’
‘Do you require further sight of the body, Dr Shelby? Only the parish would like it interred as soon as is decent. With contagion across the river, they want to keep Bankside as clean and tidy as they can.’
‘No, I’ve committed what I saw to paper.’
Bianca says, ‘He may not wish to be buried with Christian rites, Constable Willders. Has the parish thought of that?’
Willders seems confused. ‘Why would anyone wish for other than a Christian burial, Mistress Merton – unless he had a hankering to wander for eternity in the fires of hell?’
‘Because Solomon Mandel was a Jew,’ Bianca says. ‘Perhaps he would wish to go to God with the appropriate orisons of his own faith.’
‘Solomon Mandel was a Christian man, Mistress Merton – whatever else his ancestors may have been,’ Willders says with unshakeable conviction. ‘He would not be suffered to remain in this realm otherwise.’
‘How do you know what was in his heart?’ Bianca says, trying not to step into the dunes of intermingled spices. ‘In Padua, his people lived in their own quarter, practised their religion in their own temples, were buried with their own ceremonies.’
By the look on his face, Constable Willders seems unable to comprehend such a place. ‘Padua lies in the lands of the Pope, does it not, Mistress Merton?’ he says solemnly. ‘We do things differently here in England. There is no place here for a heretic, be he Catholic or Hebrew. Master Mandel will be buried according to God’s laws, as revealed by the one true, reformed faith – the queen’s faith. If he lied at prayer, he will have to answer for it in the hereafter.’
Bianca invokes a subversive prayer that the summer will be a hot one, and Constable Willders’ apostemes will return with a vengeance.
‘Would you allow Mistress Merton and I some time here alone, Constable Willders?’ Nicholas asks. ‘I need to refresh my memory, for coroner Danby.’
‘I’ll be in the Tabard, Dr Shelby,’ Willders says, seemingly grateful to have the responsibility taken off his shoulders. ‘Send Mistress Merton with the key when you’re done.’
When he’s gone, Nicholas retraces his steps around the room. Once again he takes stock of the devastation: the upended clothes chest with its contents strewn in a trail of ripped and tattered fabric, like the banners of a conquered army; the private documents, some written boldly in Hebrew, others in a weaker, English hand; the plain wooden cupboard with its doors hanging off their lower hinges; the humble collection of pewter bowls and plates lying about like grey boulders washed up on a beach. The only thing that seems not to have been scattered like so much chaff in a cruel wind is a Bible lying on a wooden stool by the bed, a battered leather strap holding down a page of the Book of Matthew: the parable of Jesus feeding the multitude with just five loaves and two fishes.
‘I wonder if the killer found what he was searching for,’ Bianca says, struggling to keep dark images from flooding her imagination.
‘Whether he found it or not, he wasn’t alone.’
‘How can you be certain?
‘One man alone could never have inflicted the wounds I saw on Solomon Mandel’s body. There must have been at least three of them: two men to hold him down, one to do the cutting.’
‘The cutting?’ Bianca’s voice cannot mask the horror she is seeing in her mind.
‘Strips of skin from his chest. They flayed him.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m sorry to be so brutal. There isn’t another way to say it.’
A glint of metal amongst the debris catches Bianca’s eye. She kneels, lifting an object out of the debris, a candle-holder with three curving branches either side of a central pillar. She shakes it, and a cloud of ochre cinnamon-dust hangs for a moment in the air before drifting to the floor.
‘Just like the talisman by the door, I’ve seen these before, too,’ she says. ‘It’s a menorah. They light candles in them during their holy observances.’
She hands it to Nicholas, who turns it over slowly, inspecting the finely crafted metalwork. The cinnamon-dust darkens the engravings like skeins of blood. ‘A Bible and a menorah,’ he says. ‘Was Solomon Mandel really a convert to Christianity, or was he practising his true faith in secret?’
‘It’s more common on Bankside than you might think,’ Bianca replies, a weary admission in her voice. Every waking day since her arrival in London she has whispered her own Catholic orisons to God, but only when there’s no one around who might betray her.
Knowing the coroner’s jury will very likely wish to view the scene of the murder, Nicholas says, ‘I think we should preserve this from coroner Danby’s eyes. What use would it be – other than to condemn the old man as a heretic?’
With a hint of gentle mockery in her voice, Bianca says, ‘For an Englishman, you really are developing a very dangerous habit: tolerance. Does Robert Cecil know?’
He gives her a brittle laugh in reply and looks around for something in which to wrap the menorah. His gaze lands on a length of hemp weave that’s been torn from one of the spice sacks. He has the vague notion of keeping the artefact in his chamber at Mistress Muzzle’s lodgings, until he can decide what to do with it.
‘It seems they set fire to some of his papers,’ Bianca says, crossing to the bed. ‘They must have done it while they were… while they were doing those unspeakable things to him.’
The coverlet is blighted with a whole delta of dried blood. In one of the pools, she can make out a little cluster of ashes and burnt fragments. They look like dark leaves scattered in a puddle after a storm. Some are no larger than a fingernail. Others are curled and blackened. Only two have survived incineration.
‘I noticed them, when I was inspecting the body,’ Nicholas says, joining her. ‘Perhaps they were burning something before his eyes – tormenting him in some manner.’
Tentatively he begins to work away at the surviving fragments, gentling them free of the pooled blood and ash. It takes him a while, but at last he holds them up for inspection; they have lost little but some charring on the edges.
On one, he sees penned the words ROUGE CROIX. The other contains just six letters – S-U-I–V-A-N – huddled meaninglessly between the charred edges.
‘Rouge Croix – red cross,’ he says to no one in particular. ‘Why would Solomon Mandel have a letter written in French?’