But it is the addendum to the entry, written on the right-hand margin in the petty collector’s precise hand, that brings Nicholas up short. After Solomon Mandel’s occupation – spice merchant – he has added: The Turk’s man.
8
‘The Turk’s man,’ says Bianca with a frown. ‘Solomon Mandel never struck me as anyone’s servant. Least of all, that of a Turk.’
It is a bright spring morning, and she and Nicholas are making another footsore trawl through Bankside for a sighting of Farzad. Yesterday was prisons day: first the Marshalsea, then the Compter, followed by the Clink and finally the White Lion. After peering into more stinking cells than is good for the health, they came to conclusion that if Farzad is incarcerated anywhere, it is not by order of the parish authorities.
Today it’s the lanes around Bermondsey Street. As always, they choose wisely who to question: day-labourers, travelling tinsmiths, ribbon-sellers, the sort of people who spend their time on the move in search of custom. They even stop known coney-catchers and purse-divers, who with less trade to prey upon, now that the contagion has put an end to public gatherings, seem pleased to pass a few moments in conversation. They’ve even visited the Flower de Luce, because the landlord there has twice tried to lure Farzad away from the Jackdaw with the promise of an extra thruppence a week on his wages.
‘Turk, Moor, Saracen… whoever Mandel’s master was, we can assume he’s a Mohammedan who’s converted to Christianity. He wouldn’t be living here otherwise.’
‘The queen has a few Blackamoor and Ethiopian servants in her household. I’ve seen them in processions. Perhaps royal servants have servants.’
‘Who are free to eat kubaneh bread in a Bankside tavern every morning?’ Nicholas says. His face darkens. ‘Or were.’
‘When was the subsidy roll drawn up?’
‘It’s dated January 1590.’
‘A year after the envoy of the Moroccan sultan arrived in the city.’
‘You think Solomon Mandel was a servant to someone in the entourage?’
‘Well, he turned up on Bankside around about that time.’
‘Then why did he not return with his master to Barbary?’
Bianca rolls her eyes and says crossly, ‘I don’t know. Stop trying to catch me out. You’re not a lawyer, and I’m not on trial.’
They walk on in silence for a while, following the riverbank. The tide is out, the air heavy with the stink of rotting waterweed.
At the mouth of Battle Creek, they stop to watch a brace of boys in threadbare hose grubbing through the shingle like sanderlings hunting for worms. The place holds an uncomfortable place in Nicholas’s memory. This is where – almost three years ago now – the third victim of the Bankside butcher was found, a discovery that allowed Nicholas his first insight into the mind of the killer. He closes his eyes. In his thoughts he sees the body rolling over the side of the little skiff into the dark water. He hears the splash, but when he opens his eyes again he sees only the two urchins, competing to see how far they can hurl flotsam into the current.
‘Perhaps I’ve got it wrong,’ he says. ‘Perhaps I’m seeking a connection where there is none.’
‘You mean between Solomon Mandel’s death and Farzad’s disappearance?’
‘Perhaps he just sickened for his home.’
‘Farzad doesn’t have a home, Nicholas – other than the Jackdaw. Besides, he’d need more than a second shirt and a knife for a journey to Persia. And he wouldn’t have left without speaking to me first.’
‘Then maybe he’s taken himself off in a fit of jealousy – over Rose marrying Ned. A heart of that age can be a fragile thing.’
‘Are you speaking from experience?’
He squirms at her directness. ‘It’s a passionate age, especially if the passion is unrequited.’
‘I’ll accept he adores Rose. We all do – when she’s not being Mistress Moonbeam with a head full of air. But I never once saw Farzad making mooncalf eyes at her.’
Nicholas senses a deep coldness flowing up through his veins. He wonders if it’s this place and the memories it holds. Or perhaps it’s just a sudden chill in the air, heralding a shower.
‘Who else knows that you let Farzad practise the orisons of his faith,’ he asks, ‘apart from me, Ned, Rose and Timothy?’
‘No one. I’m not a clod-pate, Nicholas. I do know how to keep a secret, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I’ve been doing so since the day I landed here.’
‘Perhaps Danby was right, and this is about religion. If someone discovered Solomon Mandel’s conversion was a deceit – that he was secretly practising his old faith – then maybe that same person found out that you were allowing Farzad to do the same.’
‘Then where is his body?’ Bianca says, more hotly than she’d intended.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, giving a shrug of defeat. ‘It is a long walk back. We’d best be on our way. It looks as though it’s coming on to rain.’
Mistress Muzzle gives a crabby little toss of her head as Nicholas pauses at the door to his consulting chamber. ‘You’re wet, Dr Shelby.’
‘We got caught in a shower.’
From crabbiness to joy in a heartbeat. ‘You and Mistress Merton – you’ve been walking together. Alone.’
‘The Puritans don’t have the city, Mistress Muzzle. Not yet.’
‘Have they found the lad who murdered the Jew – that young Moor who cooks at the Jackdaw?’
‘What have you heard?’
‘Jenny Solver told me he had committed a foul murder, out of his pagan spite. Jenny Solver says that, in God’s eyes, the Moors and the Jews are worse even than the papists. We shouldn’t tolerate them in our realm.’
‘And when did Mistress Solver tell you this?’
‘Yesterday, at church. We were attending Evensong.’
‘Then Mistress Solver is speaking through her arse. And you may take that as a physician’s professional opinion.’ He gives her a cold smile. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t charge her for it.’
Nicholas resists the desire to slam the door behind him. He only partially succeeds. Leaning against the wall, he throws his dripping hat on the floor and begins to unlace his boots. He thinks he might rest his feet awhile and then stop by the Jackdaw for some coney pie.
‘And by the way, Dr Shelby, a letter arrived for you,’ he hears Mistress Muzzle say from the hallway. ‘I’ve put it on your table.’
Mumbling his thanks, his eyes fall to the folded and sealed square of paper lying beside his potion box.
His heart sinks. A seal that large can only mean the letter is officiaclass="underline" another complaint from the College of Physicians about his errant behaviour, or Robert Cecil announcing that his stipend is cancelled because he’s refused to go to Marrakech. And indeed, on inspection, he sees the wax is impressed with the Cecil device. Snapping it open, he curses the Cecils and all their works, in a mumbled stream of invective. Shards of wax scatter across the desk.
To my right worthy and trusted friend, Nicholas Shelby, greetings…
It seems an oddly amiable way, he thinks as he reads, to begin a letter of dismissal. And then his eyes widen in surprise, even as a raindrop rolls down his temple and across the bridge of his nose.
‘You’re not actually going to attend, are you?’ Bianca asks half an hour later as Nicholas sits before a trencher of coney pie in the Jackdaw. ‘He’s not summoning you out of friendship. There’s bound to be another motive.’