He is looking at a series of interconnected boxes containing elegantly written court-hand. And around the edge of the vellum, a border of what appears to be heraldic coats of arms. He reads the contents of the first box:
Sir Clovis de Bassen, warrior of God,
Slain at Acre in the Holy Land, 1190
…
Nicholas frowns, wondering what a shepherd’s son from the Weald of Kent might be doing in possession of such a document. And then his eyes fall to a line at the foot of the page.
It is written in a different hand from the text in the boxes. A single sentence. Spelled out in capital letters:
PROVEN BY DUE AUTHORITY OF THE ROUGE CROIX PURSUIVANT, COLLEGE OF HERALDS
Instantly Nicholas is back in Solomon Mandel’s wrecked lodgings, staring at the two fragments of bloodstained parchment that he lifted from the torture bed. On one is written ROUGE CROIX. On the other, the indecipherable SUIVAN.
Could be suivant – following… he can hear himself saying to Bianca. A follower of the red cross… And her reply: I’m not sure that translates… But if it does, a follower of the red cross would be an English crusader…
Now Nicholas knows they were both in error. He has lived in London long enough to witness her taste for pageantry. He has watched from the crowd as earls and dukes ride past in grand display, their horses caparisoned in silk and cloth-of-gold. He has seen the queen herself, though admittedly from the riverbank, as she was rowed down to Greenwich in a barge that would make Robert Cecil’s look like the cockboat of the Righteous.
But in his mind now he is observing a procession by one of the city’s many grand livery companies. Whether it’s the goldsmiths, the brewers, the haberdashers or even the grocers matters not. His eye is fixed upon the fellow leading the vanguard, imperiously commanding the ordinary folk to clear the way. A fellow resplendent in a gilded tabard. A ceremonial appointee, an officer of the College of Arms. One down from a herald in the order of magnificence.
He is a Pursuivant.
Suddenly Nicholas hears footsteps on deck approaching the hatchway, and the gruff banter of sailors. He steps away from the sunlight and, with all the calmness he can muster, slips the document back into the folds of Hortop’s gabardine.
And even as he does so, he tells Bianca: we were wrong. Solomon Mandel wasn’t murdered because a Christian zealot found his religion abominable. He was killed for another reason entirely. A reason that has something to do with Cathal Connell, Reynard Gault and the Righteous. And a young lad named Edmund Hortop, whose resting place is now the boundless ocean.
19
There is something unusual about the morning.
Bianca had gone to bed expecting one of two things to happen. Either she would wake to the racket of next-door’s cockerel heralding the dawn or she would die in the night.
Clearly I am not dead, she thinks as she wakes. But nor can I hear the cockerel, and already daylight is blooming around the shutters. She wonders if her neighbours have abandoned their lodgings, taken the bird and fled. Or perhaps they’re all dead. Perhaps she’s the only one left alive on a street of plague houses.
She sits up against the bolster and looks around the chamber, trying to determine what it is that’s out of place.
For a start, the Good Samaritan painted on the wall is behaving himself this morning. Today he did not tumble in the moment before she woke. There he is – fixed in paint for as long as the wall lasts, his pious smile unaltered, his robes draped decorously across the feet of the poor beaten traveller lying on the road.
As Bianca leans forward, it hits her: her joints don’t ache. She feels fine. Well rested. And the one thing she can be certain of about the pestilence is that – if it’s going to take you – it doesn’t permit you a morning off in the process.
She wriggles her shoulders. She throws out her arms and flexes her wrists. She kicks off the coverlet and thrashes her legs about, the way Buffle does when you tickle her belly. Nothing aches. She feels fine. She checks under her armpits and around her crotch for buboes. Not so much as a pimple.
Within a minute, Bianca is weeping copiously with relief.
When she regains her composure, she dresses in her work kirtle, goes downstairs, intending to step out into the almost-fresh Southwark air – air that, admittedly, is always a little ripe with animal dung and emptied piss-pots, but fresh enough when you’d doubted you’d ever take a breath of it again in your life.
Jubilantly throwing open the door, she almost knocks a sallow-looking fellow in a leather apron and a labourer’s cap clean across the lane. Somehow he manages to keep upright, hugging to himself a pot of red paint, which splashes over his apron as though he’s taken a sword-thrust through the chest. He waves the brush in her direction, as though to keep her at arm’s length.
‘God’s nails, Mistress Merton, take not one step forward!’ he cries, as though he’s come face-to-face with a wild beast.
‘Whyever not, Master Coslin?’ she asks amiably, recognizing him as a regular at the Jackdaw.
‘Why? You ask me why?’
‘That’s what I thought I said.’
He gives her an anguished look. ‘Because the parish have sent me to mark these premises as plagued. The lodgings on either hand have been cleared, and I am to paint a cross upon this door.’ The anguish turns to guilty regret. ‘And you are to remain confined within. Forgive me, Mistress. I’m sorry. You was always charitable to me. I shall pray for you. You ’ave my word on it.’
Bianca treats him to a sweet smile. ‘That won’t be necessary, Master Coslin – the paint or the prayers.’
‘Not necessary?’
‘No. There’s nothing ill with me. It was just an ague. I’m fine. I really am. Never felt better.’
When she’s sure he believes her, Bianca goes back inside, takes up the letter she wrote to Nicholas when she thought she was about to die, kneels before the hearth and feeds it to the still-sulphurous embers.
Rose puts a hand to her mouth, forgetting the stack of dirty breakfast trenchers she’s carrying. They land with a clatter on the taproom floor. She stares in astonishment at the figure in the doorway, while Buffle – woken from her slumber by the hearth – gulps down the unexpected bounty of scraps.
Ned spills the tankard of ale he is serving to Walter Pemmel – who jumps back from his seat to avoid getting soaked. Timothy stops in mid-verse of ‘Thy Heart’s Sweet Allure’ with a discordant twang from the strings of his lute. Farzad says something incomprehensible in Persian.
‘Are you not pleased to see me?’ Bianca asks, unable to suppress a grin.
And then Rose hurls herself bodily into Bianca’s arms. ‘Mistress, it’s a miracle! God has answered our prayers. You’re cured!’
At least that’s what Bianca thinks she’s says, because Rose’s face is buried in her neck. ‘It’s not a miracle, Rose, dear,’ she says, her chin forced upwards by the embrace so that she has a clear view of ceiling beams browned by wood-smoke. ‘It was just an ague, that’s all.’
Rose draws back, her black ringlets all awry. Her eyes are glistening like a novice who’s just seen Christ’s face in a cloud bank. ‘What charm did you use, Mistress?’