‘Because Dr Shelby is physician to Sir Robert’s son, William. And if Sir Robert learns how you have insulted the doctor’s intended bride’ – how easily that came to me, she thinks, as though observing herself from a distance – ‘then Bankside’s matters of grave import will be for ever denied to you, Master Gatekeeper. Because you won’t have the coin to pay for them. You’ll be dismissed. And penniless. It’s your choice.’
After that, her progress into the depths of Cecil House feels like being swept up by a tempest. A series of gentlemen, each more well hosed and cloaked than the last, pass her along so many panelled corridors that Bianca fears she has become lost in a forest of wainscoting, until at last she stands before a small man in a black half-cape and gartered stockings. He wears the resigned look of someone who is expecting to be asked to perform exactly the same task he’s attempted a hundred times already, with no pleasing result.
‘I am truly sorry, Mistress,’ he says with weary honesty. ‘I recall Dr Shelby well. It was I who conducted him to Lady Cecil, when Sir Robert feared their son was sick. Had you but been here yesterday, I would have ensured an audience.’
‘Yesterday?’ she repeats with a welling sense of disappointment. ‘Is he not here?’
‘Sir Robert has left the city to be with Her Majesty. A precaution, you understand, against the current pestilence. Perhaps you would care to put your petition in writing.’
20
‘In the language of the Moor it is called Rass Lafaa: the Head of the Snake.’
Cathal Connell points across the wide bay to a rocky outcrop rising above a tumultuous surf. Nicholas’s gaze follows as his outstretched hand then sweeps along the shore, a myriad tiny suns blazing in the wave crests, until it indicates a high stone wall set with round towers. ‘And there is the Kasar el Bahr, the Castle of the Sea. The Portingals built it when they had this place, before the Moors threw them out.’ The hand lifts again, drawing Nicholas’s eyes upwards over gently-rising scrub and olive groves to a line of imposing sandstone ramparts on the skyline. ‘And that is the Kechla, the citadel. Does it not appear grand to you, Dr Shelby?’
And Nicholas must admit that it does. From the towers of the citadel, intricately patterned Moorish banners ripple in the onshore wind. The afternoon sun paints the ramparts a pale cinnamon.
Suddenly his attention is pulled back to the waterfront and the Kasar el Bahr. A ragged line of white puffs blooms along its battlements. A moment later the deep, reverberating thunder of cannon fire echoes across the bay. For an instant Nicholas fears the Righteous is under bombardment. But no waterspouts erupt from the sea around her, no shot tears through the rigging. The smoke drifts away on the wind with the dying thunder.
‘That’s a grand welcome, an’ no mistake,’ says Connell appreciatively. He points to the fleet little Marion, already moored against the stone breakwater. ‘Mind, I did send word we had an emissary of the English queen aboard. Maybe the sultan’s sent that rogue al-Annuri down here to shake your hand.’
‘Al-Annuri?’
‘He’s one of the sultan’s ministers. A cold bugger. Eyes like a peregrine’s. Not the sort of Moor you’d care to cross. But I can’t see him coming all this way and wasting good powder on an infidel, mind.’
‘The man I’m to meet is named Sumayl al-Seddik,’ replies Nicholas, recalling Robert Cecil’s instructions. ‘He was with the sultan’s envoy who came to London some years back. I carry a letter to him from Lord Burghley. He’s going to tell me all about Moorish medicine.’
Connell throws back his head and laughs. ‘Oh, you’ll enjoy that, Dr Shelby. You’ll do more eating than learning. Likes his comforts, does al-Seddik.’
‘You know him?’
‘Of course. Everyone knows old gundigutts. If you pushed him over, he’d roll.’ Connell slaps his own lean belly in appreciation of his fine humour. ‘Still, whoever ordered that salute, you should feel honoured. They usually keep that sort of welcome for the corsairs when they come home with a bounty of slaves.’
And indeed Nicholas can see a galley beached on the strip of sand, looking for all the world like a trireme from ancient Athens. Her oar ports are empty, the oars themselves stacked nearby.
Noticing the direction of Nicholas’s gaze, Connell says, ‘You can’t traffic with the Moor and not come to appreciate his proficiency in the meat trade, Dr Shelby.’
‘The meat trade?’ echoes Nicholas, a pang of disgust taking away his breath. ‘You mean slaves?’
‘Aye, slaves, Dr Shelby. European slaves, Protestant and Catholic… Turk slaves… Saracens… fellow Moors of different tribes… Men as black as the finest ebony from the very heart of the desert, who worship gods you’ve never even heard of. Men, women, children… Slaves. The markets are full of them. Here in Safi, in Marrakech, in Algiers, in Tripoli – I’ve heard it reckoned there’s more than thirty thousand Europeans alone sold through those markets. Only the Devil knows the true number. Some are sold to row the sultan’s galleys; some to wait in service upon their masters, as we have it in Christian households; some they castrate and set to guard their harems, or to serve them as secretaries. It’s rich soil for any fellow with the courage to till it.’
Nicholas wonders if that includes Cathal Connell. He would not be the first, he thinks. He’s heard from the watermen who frequent the Jackdaw that Francis Drake and John Hawkins are not above trading in human souls.
‘When these fellows aren’t raiding Christian ships,’ Connell continues, ‘they’re either working their fields or driving camel caravans. This is where the spice road ends. Strike inland and one day – if you live long enough to pass through the High Atlas and more miles of desert than there are stars in the heavens – you’ll find yourself in China.’ He grins like a skull. ‘That’s if the giants with one eye in the middle of their foreheads who dwell in the kingdom of Kongo, or the scaly serpents with teeth the size of your fingers that swim in the Nile, don’t have you for breakfast first. Welcome to the Barbary shore, Dr Shelby. Aren’t you glad you came?’
On the waterfront around the Kasar el Bahr small mountains of merchandise cram the flagstones. Sacks of cinnamon, sheaves of sugar cane, slabs of salt the size of flagstones, chests of saltpetre wait to be loaded aboard the three English vessels, once their holds have been emptied.
The Righteous has been warped the last few yards of her journey by gangs of small, agile men who heave on dripping cables until she is moored safely against the great hemp fenders hanging from the quayside. Connell tells Nicholas they are Berber tribesmen from the mountains, earning more by labouring than they ever could herding goats in the foothills of the High Atlas. They grin and chatter as they toil, their glistening skin the shade of old leather soaked by rain.
Nicholas has been picturing this moment since before the Righteous sailed. The Low Countries he knows from first-hand observation – not so very different from England. But his understanding of the lands of the Moor has been mostly framed by watching Muly Molucco and Tamburlaine performed at the Rose, and from reading Pliny’s Natural History – in the original Latin during his studies at Cambridge, which damn near sent him running back to Barnthorpe and his father’s farm.