Once inside, Sykes saw by the meagre light of an oil lamp an old watchman sitting in an alcove. His furrowed skin was as dark as argan bark, his beard white, like a crescent moon on a starless night. He left his seat, turned away and dropped to his knees, taking up the posture of a Moor at prayer. Sykes understood at once: this was not religious devotion, this was done so that he could later claim never to have witnessed the furtive, nocturnal arrival of a bound and gagged European.
For the place of execution they had chosen a room seemingly at the very heart of the Bimaristan, a chamber tiled from floor to ceiling with intricate mosaics, each tiny square of stone as polished as a mirror glass. He heard the one with the Irish accent engage in a brief but tense conversation in Arabic with his companions. He could understand only intermittent words, but he knew they were fortifying their own courage – boys on the verge of manhood, steeling themselves for a harsh rite of passage. He heard the prayer begin. ‘All hu akbar…’
In a way, he was glad it was to be here, in this little bejewelled chamber. Because cut into the flat ceiling was an opening in the shape of a six-pointed star, a window onto the limitless night, and once more he could catch the scent of oranges on the air. Paradise. Waiting for him. And all he had to do now was steel himself for the journey.
2
The south bank of the Thames river, London. One month later
In the small hours of a deathly-still April morning two miles downriver from Westminster, three men climb silently from a private wherry. Caped against the bitter cold in heavy gabardines, they strike east from the Mutton Lane river stairs. They are heading for Long Southwark, guided through the empty lanes by the twisting flames of a single torch. Bankside is deserted. The unseasonably cold night is too raw even for thieves and house-divers. The timbers of the close-set houses rear out of the mist like the ribs of a fleet of galleys wrecked in the surf.
At the gatehouse on the southern end of London Bridge they come across the night-watch, warming their tired bones around a brazier that burns like a beacon warning of invasion. The three men pause, but only to confirm the address they have been given. There is a practised hardness in their faces that hints that they might be bearing steel beneath their cloaks. The watch lets them pass without question. They know government men when they see them. Arrests are always best made at times like this, when the subject is too sleep-befuddled to put up a fight.
Entering a lane close to the sign of the Tabard Inn, the three men count off the houses until they reach a modest two-storey property of lathe and plaster, close to a row of trees that marks the western boundary of St Thomas’s hospital for the poor. With no show of pleasure at having reached their goal after such an uncomfortable journey their leader begins to hammer violently on the front door, as though its planks and hinges are personally responsible for the night’s discomforts.
Nicholas Shelby wakes with a start. He feels the rhythmic blows through the floorboards, through the frame of his bed, through the straw in the mattress, even in his bones. It is the sort of hammering that constables employ when arresting traitors – or calling physicians from their warm beds to tell them that the plague has finally crossed the river into Southwark.
He has been awaiting a call like this since the first cases of the new pestilence came to light last year. So far, the outbreak has stayed confined to the poorer lanes on the other side of London Bridge. But that hasn’t stopped the Courts of Chancery, Wards, Liveries and Requests taking themselves off to Hertford to consider their business in healthier surroundings. So far, the liberty of Southwark has escaped. In the Bankside taverns, more than one wag has made the connection between the decrease in lawyers and the absence of plague south of the river where the bawdy-houses lie.
But Southwark has not escaped entirely. The Lord Mayor has ordered the closing of the playhouses and the bear-pits. As a consequence, an unwelcome lethargy has descended on the southern shore of the Thames. The purse-divers and coney-catchers have lost half of their trade at a stroke. In the stews, there are whores who have had only themselves for company since Candlemas, and the kindlier church wardens have stopped asking them their trade, when assessing the need for charity. Cynics say there are only two types of public places the authorities dare not shut, for fear of riot: churches and taverns. It all seems to Nicholas a grim prelude for what would otherwise be a time of joy and festivity – an impending wedding.
Fully awake now, he opens his eyes to the semi-darkness of his rented room. On the clothes chest a single candle stands close to guttering, as squat and fat as a lump of yellow clay thrown on a potter’s wheel. It fills the room with the smoky smell of mutton grease. A film of moisture on the inside of the window, and the absence of anything other than watery blackness beyond, tells him dawn must still be some hours off. It is that hollowed-out time of the night when it is better not to wake, when thoughts unchain themselves, when spirits walk and old men die.
‘The Devil take you and your godless knocking!’
The voice of his landlady, Mistress Muzzle, penetrates the floorboards, caustic enough to strip limewash off a wall. Nicholas hears a wheezing snort of indignation, followed by, ‘I hope this is not one of your patients, Dr Shelby! If it is, I’d be indebted if you would ask them to fall sick at a godlier hour.’
Nicholas knows it will take his landlady a while to reach the front door. She is a woman ill-designed for velocity. Struggling into his hose and shirt, he wonders if he can beat her to it. As he steps out onto the landing, he sees the flicker of an oil lamp moving ponderously through the darkness and hears her voice again, full of injured propriety: ‘Anon! Anon! Do you expect me to open the door in naught but my shift? What manner of place do you think I keep – a bawdy-house?’
Even on Bankside, no one would confuse the upright Mistress Muzzle’s dwelling with a bawd’s premises, thinks Nicholas as he stumbles down the stairs. It is, however, the perfect place on Bankside in which to start a medical practice: one room at street level for seeing patients, accommodation above, and the landlady – the fearsome Mistress Muzzle – safely in her own domain at the rear of the house. The only part they are forced to share is the front door.
In the light from the lamp, her pouchy face has the discomforted look of someone suffering a mild bout of colic. With an indignant explosion of breath and a theatrical jangling of her keys, she opens the door. Over her expansive shoulders, Nicholas can just make out three heads silhouetted against the misty night; a night turned a wet, muddy ochre by the light of a single flickering torch. A disembodied voice reaches him. No apology, just a bald statement: ‘These are the lodgings of Dr Nicholas Shelby. Correct?’
‘I am Dr Shelby,’ Nicholas says, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
‘You are to come with us – at once.’
‘By whose command?’
‘By Sir Robert Cecil’s command.’
So not the pestilence, then – but a close-enough second.
Mistress Muzzle turns back from the door. Nicholas sees her little eyes flicker over him, full of sudden mistrust. He knows what she’s thinking: a member of the queen’s Privy Council has sent for her tenant in the middle of the night. Therefore, at the very least, he must have poisoned someone. Has he been distributing papist pamphlets instead of medicine? Is he no doctor at all, but a charlatan prescriber of fake elixirs? And more importantly, by taking his rent, is she guilty by association?