The hourglass is fixed beside the ship’s bell. In calm waters, it behaves itself. But today the sea has spewed up one of its sudden spring gales and the Righteous is rolling in a manner that Nicholas finds frankly terrifying. With every sideways plunge, the leeward rail breaches the wave crests, dashing icy water onto the deck. Keeping his eyes on the flowing grains of sand in the glass bulb merely adds to the nausea he feels. But at last it is empty. The mate – a gnarled creature who looks as though he’s been hewn from the same forest that the ship’s timbers came from – nods. Nicholas rings the bell vigorously eight times. It is noon, as best as anyone can fathom.
In clearer weather the apprentices would check the sun’s inclination above the horizon with an astrolabe. But today the sky is a bruised, sullen grey. Sheets of rain drive across the reeling deck, making the planks dark and treacherously slick. And although everyone is clad in oilskin slops and leather jerkins, no one has been truly dry for two days.
Nicholas watches the apprentices throw the knotted log-line astern to calculate the ship’s speed. As it runs off the spindle and disappears over the side, they time how many knots have passed, using a smaller, half-minute sandglass. Then the helmsman checks his course against the compass iron. When the mate is satisfied no errors have been made, he reports the measurements to Connell, who plots their position against the course drawn on his goatskin chart. He seems satisfied they are not lost. But for all Nicholas can tell, they could be sailing off the edge of the world.
‘You look a little whey-faced, Dr Shelby,’ Connell says with a cold grin as Nicholas braces himself against another lurch of the deck. ‘If you’re going to retch you’d best be facing leeward or else you’ll be wasting good vomit.’
Refusing to give Connell the petty victory he desires, Nicholas swallows hard. ‘How long do you think this will last, Captain Connell?’
‘Not long now. She’s mostly blown herself out.’
‘Are we making progress?’
‘We’re not drowned, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Is that so? I wasn’t sure.’
Connell gives him a smile Nicholas has seen before: a smirk of contempt for the outsider. ‘In two days we’ll be off Cape Finisterre. We can run into Vigo for fresh victuals and water.’
‘But Vigo is under Spanish rule,’ Nicholas says doubtfully. ‘Won’t we be in danger of seizure?’
Connell laughs. ‘Mercy, Dr Shelby, do you think trade stops just because our queen and the Don king get a little fractious from time to time?’
‘But I’m carrying letters from Sir Robert Cecil. If I’m taken–’
‘They’ll say you’re the English queen’s spy and hang you,’ Connell says helpfully. ‘Then that handsome Mistress Bianca will have to turn to a rougher fellow to warm her sheets for her.’ He laughs and claps Nicholas on the shoulder. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll send the Marion close inshore to take a look. She’s proper handy. If there’s a Don galleon at anchor, we can be away before the Spanish can hoist their breeches. Besides, even this far north we’re as likely to encounter Barbary corsairs as we are the Spanish.’
‘Barbary corsairs?’ Nicholas says, adding the thought to his rapidly growing list of seafaring perils. ‘They range to these latitudes?’
‘Aye, they raid the Portuguese and Spanish coastal villages for slaves. Sometimes they’ll take a bite at the French coast, too. And not just the Barbary Moors. Even the Levantine pirates will stick their heads out into the Atlantic if they’re hungry enough. But we’re safe enough at the moment. In these seas a galley can’t row for shit, and they’re lubbers with a sail, so they are.’
‘But you said the storm was almost blown out. What happens when the seas calm?’
‘Then you’d best hope my gunners know their business.’
‘But surely the letters I’m carrying to the sultan’s court will guarantee us free passage?’
Connell gives a dismissive laugh. ‘Number one, there’s not one Moor in a thousand as can read English. Number two, a Moor is not just a Moor. They have their own heretics, like we do. Then there’s the tribes: a Wattasi wants the blood of a Saadi, who abhors a Turk, who holds an Alevi to be little better than a dog… I could go on, but you’ll take my drift. And they all hate a Christian. Unless, of course, they have need of him.’ Connell propels a contemptuous gobbet of spit over the side of the Righteous. ‘But don’t fret, Dr Shelby. The Moors know me, by reputation if not by sight. Aye, they know the Conn-ell well enough.’
It’s said so enigmatically that Nicholas decides to ask Connell what he means. But even as he opens his mouth to speak, he hears a sound as concussive as every demi-culverin and falconet aboard the Righteous firing as one. He turns – and sees a huge wave slam against the forecastle.
For a moment he thinks the vessel has run into a cliff of dark-green bloodstone crystal. The Righteous seems to stop dead in the water. Nicholas feels his knees give way. Then the wave breaks, roaring across the main-deck and shattering into a foaming mist that momentarily blinds him.
Wiping his eyes free of stinging salt-spume, he looks down from his place on the sterncastle. To his surprise, the Righteous is still in one piece. The crew are laughing wildly. Their lucky escape has carried them past terror into a sort of jubilant delirium.
All, that is, except for one of the apprentices, whose body – hurled by the wave against one of the demi-culverins – lies drenched and motionless on the deck like something the sea has spewed up in its passing.
As she walks back from St Olave’s Lane, Bianca can still smell Goodwife Willders’s broth in her nostrils. It reminds her she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Her stomach yearns noisily for one of Farzad’s specialities. But before she can eat, she has an apothecary’s work to do. How is parish gossip to spread freely if Jenny Solver doesn’t have a basilicon of white pepper, oil of dill, serpillum and euphorbium to keep her migraine in check? How can Walter Pemmel’s grumbling be kept bearable if he has no nettle salve to rub on his pustule? How is Parson Moody to read his Bible in comfort if he has no electuary of liquorice juice and eyebright to strengthen his vision? There are trials enough to be endured on Bankside, without Bianca Merton neglecting her duties. So she elects to return to Dice Lane. Eating can wait.
Two hours later, she has almost finished. The hunger has disappeared. But in its place has come an unaccountable weariness.
At first she tries to make light of it. I have a sound constitution, she tells herself. I am not made of meadow-grass. I don’t blow over at the first hint of a breeze. It’s just tiredness.
She embarks on a half-hearted stocktaking. She checks the pots and the boxes, the drawers and the jars, sprigs, roots, dried leaves, parings… She is interrupted on several occasions by customers, though when they linger to chat, she feels unusually disinclined to indulge them. Her bones are beginning to ache abominably. If I feel like this tomorrow, she thinks, the journey to Cecil House will have to wait. I feel as though I’ve fought three rounds with old Sackerson the bear.
Reluctantly she closes the shop. She makes herself a general fortification of fleawort and quince, then retires to her sleeping chamber above. She closes the shutters, takes off her gown, bathes herself with a wet cloth soaked in a distillation of coltsfoot to ease the aches and, when she’s dry, crawls into bed.