‘How could I, Mistress? They called me Farzad’s catamite. They said he was a heathen, and that he’d murdered poor Master Mandel.’
‘You know that’s not what anyone in possession of their wits believes. Next time, take pity on them for being a goose-cap.’
‘Yes, Mistress,’ says Timothy unconvincingly.
He’s had a lucky escape, Bianca thinks, sending him off to his duties in the taproom while she settles down in the kitchen to tend the only visible wound to his honour: a rent in his jerkin. She cannot blame him. She’s sure she would have done likewise, with some added cursing thrown in for good measure. And not simply because of the insult and her concern for Farzad. Nicholas’s impending desertion has made her own patience – never exactly steady at the best of times – even more brittle. Indeed, as she darns the woollen jerkin on her lap, she pricks her thumb three times in quick succession.
‘Rose, I’m hungry,’ she calls out in an irritated voice as she catches sight of her former maid passing the door. ‘Have we any manchet bread? A little mutton, too, perhaps?’
‘There’s mutton in the pantry, Mistress. The bread’s there, on the shelf.’
Sucking the bloom of blood from her fingertip, Bianca lays aside her work. ‘No, there’s no bread here,’ she observes, inspecting the bread basket.
‘That’s odd,’ says Rose, coming in to check for herself. ‘I’m sure there was some here this morning.’ She scratches at her black ringlets in mystification.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bianca says wearily. ‘Forget that I asked. I’ll take a little pottage later.’
‘It most certainly does matter, Mistress,’ Rose protests in an unusually strident tone. ‘It’s not the first time things have gone missing around here recently. I could swear by all the saints that someone has been at the pottage pot, too. There’s twenty-four measures in it, and several times now I’ve sold twenty and found it empty. I think we have a thief in the Jackdaw.’
Bianca sighs. ‘This is Bankside, dear. I’d be surprised if we didn’t. Just try to keep them out of the kitchen, if you don’t mind.’
‘Perhaps young Timothy has had it without asking,’ Rose says. ‘He’s turning into a right saucy little roister.’ And before Bianca can stop her, she shouts, ‘Timothy! Haul your lazy carcass in here this minute.’
When he appears, Rose demands to know, ‘Where’s that piece of manchet bread I left here?’
‘Why. Ask. Me?’ Timothy says jauntily, playing three descending notes on his lute. ‘It’s your bread.’
‘Strictly speaking, sirrah, it’s Mistress Bianca’s bread.’
‘Perhaps your husband had it,’ Timothy says with dangerous abandon, ‘to keep his strength up for all that correction he has to give you.’
For a moment a deep and terrible silence falls upon the kitchen, broken only by the bubbling of the pottage pot on the coals. Then Rose reaches for the nearest knife. She tugs at one earlobe, as if to suggest an ear-trimming.
But Timothy has already fled back to the relative safety of the taproom.
‘Is she here, Ned?’ Nicholas asks three hours later as he takes despondent sips from his tankard of ale. ‘If I ask Rose, she merely looks embarrassed, or starts weeping.’
‘She went back to Dice Lane an hour ago,’ Ned Monkton answers. ‘You should go to her there.’
‘I’ve tried. She won’t answer my knock.’
He takes another slow swallow of ale, resisting the urge to down it in one draught because the old dangerous desire is tingling in his fingertips. Once, drink had been his refuge from grief. He knows he dare not hide there again, whatever pain he feels at Bianca’s refusal to see him.
‘Have courage, Master Nick. You two ’ave seen enough trouble an’ come through it not to make amends,’ Ned says, his giant frame leaning forward over the bench until the tip of his auburn beard is inches from Nicholas’s face. His voice is low. Conspiratorial. ‘She’ll come around, Master Nick. Look how she cursed me when you and I had that quarrel, before we knew one another.’
‘You called her a witch, Ned. A papist witch. That was unkind.’
‘And you caught me that lucky one – the punch what took me clean off m’ feet.’ He grins alarmingly. ‘Only fellow on Bankside who’s ever done that. Knocked down by a little fellow who’s been learned at Cambridge! You’ve no idea how long it took me to regain my reputation after that.’
‘The way she cursed you, when I got laid out afterwards, I was half-inclined to believe you, Ned,’ Nicholas says with a laugh.
‘And now here I am, looking after her tavern for her. It’s a long way from the mortuary crypt at St Tom’s, spending my days amongst the dead. So there’s hope for you, ain’t there?’
‘I suppose there is.’
‘And now I have Rose. Me, a married lad. Who’d ’ave thought it? It’s easy enough for a gentleman, spoutin’ a sonnet to his mistress – a maid goes all milky at that sort of thing. But you try doin’ it when you spend your day in a mortuary crypt and you stink of dead folk.’
The fiery-bearded mountain that is Ned Monkton reciting poetry to his beloved is something Nicholas has severe trouble imagining. But the thought makes him smile. And – as he’s sure Ned intended – it gives him hope. ‘Ned, I want you to make me two promises,’ he says.
‘Name them.’
Nicholas pulls a folded parchment from his doublet. ‘This is a letter I’ve written to Lord Lumley at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey. If the plague should come across the river, I need to know that you, Rose, Bianca, Timothy – and Farzad, if you can find him – will leave Bankside and seek shelter there.’
Ned gives him a doubtful look. ‘The likes of me don’t get admitted to places like Nonsuch.’
‘John Lumley has given me his word that he’ll take you all in. It will be a haven for you, until the pestilence ends.’ He repeats John Lumley’s warning not to tarry. ‘I’m relying on you, Ned.’
‘Then you should give this to Mistress Bianca, Master Nick. Perhaps it might mend what’s amiss between you.’
‘I’ve told you: she won’t see me,’ Nicholas says with a defeated shake of his head. ‘Besides, you know how she can be stubborn sometimes. More than sometimes. She’ll probably tear it up, just to make a point. So I’m relying on you to get her to take the sensible course.’
Ned takes the offered paper as though it’s made of gold leaf. ‘You ’ave my word, Master Nick. What’s the second promise?’
‘This voyage I’m taking – it’s not a whim, Ned, whatever Mistress Bianca thinks. If I don’t go, Sir Robert Cecil will take her apothecary shop from her. He’ll have the Grocers’ Company rescind her licence. She doesn’t know that. Promise me you won’t tell her.’
‘I knew there was more to it than meets the eye,’ Ned says with a scowl. ‘You wouldn’t have left her otherwise. What’s that crook-backed bastard making you do?’
‘I can’t tell you, Ned. But this is between you and me. No one else. Swear it?’
‘On my life. She’ll not hear it from Ned Monkton.’ He gives Nicholas a quizzical look. ‘So the Barbary shore, then – that’s a lot further than the journey you and I made to fix that Arcampora fellow, right?’
Nicholas bites his tongue to stop himself laughing. Ned Monkton doesn’t deserve to be mocked. ‘Oh yes,’ he says, peering into his ale. ‘It’s a lot further than Gloucestershire.’
To his untrained eye, the letter is impressive. It is written in elegant court-hand on expensive vellum, in English, Latin and Spanish: