Yes, Bianca thinks, things have changed a lot in the fortnight since the pestilence brushed against my cheek, looked into my eyes and then swept on. But one thing hasn’t changed. And that’s her fear: that everything Nicholas told her about why he was going to Morocco was a lie.
When the sermon is over, Bianca returns to her shop to prepare for the expected lunchtime rush. She checks the brimstone sack. It’s well over half-full. Unless there’s a sudden increase in demand – and pray to God that won’t happen – it should last another three days. She counts off the sprigs of dried borage and meadowsweet, and tops up the oxymel with vinegar and honey. She places the filled pots, vials and twists of cloth into their appropriate boxes, and she asks herself once again if there is something she has failed to think of, in the days since she stood before the secretary in the black half-cape and the gartered stockings at Cecil House.
At his invitation, she wrote a letter to the Lord Treasurer’s son, pleading with him to dispatch a fast pinnace to snatch Nicholas from Cathal Connell’s grasp. She now imagines the letter languishing in a vast mountain of unread correspondence, because she has yet to receive a reply, or even an acknowledgement it’s been safely delivered.
From Cecil House she went to Woodroffe Lane, close by Tower Hill. She had hoped Nicholas’s friend Lord Lumley might help her. But Lumley had already decamped to Nonsuch Palace.
The next day she struck upon the idea of taking a wherry to Greenwich or Windsor in search of Robert Cecil. She’d been forced to abandon that idea on the realization that the chances of the guards allowing her to set foot on a royal water-stairs were little better than zero.
In the end she decided the best she could do was let Reynard Gault know what sort of monster he’d employed as admiral-general. So, two days later, she walked across the bridge, up Cornhill and on into the Poultry, in the face of a mischievous breeze that had the hem of her kirtle snapping at her ankles, to the Grocers’ Company guildhall on Coneyhope Lane. As she feared, he wasn’t there, and the bored-looking doorman refused to tell her where he lived.
As a result, she has spent the days since torturing herself, imagining the very worst of fates for Nicholas. And she holds herself thoroughly to blame.
If I’d known he’d gone to the Barbary shore only to save my apothecary’s licence, I’d never have been so abrupt with him, Bianca has told herself on more occasions than she can be bothered to count. We could have come up with an alternative. We could have found a way. But in her heart, she knows that with Robert Cecil, there is no other way.
So it is hardly surprising that it takes all her efforts to remain composed when Reynard Gault, leading member of the Grocers’ Guild and the Barbary Company, walks into her shop with all the insouciance of a tourist from north of the bridge.
‘I am inclined to say “God give you good morrow”, Mistress Merton,’ he says, striking a pose that she suspects is designed to flatter his profile. ‘But in these present days perhaps a man shouldn’t tempt fate.’
‘I’m not at all sure how to take that, Sir Reynard,’ Bianca says. She runs a hand through her hair, thinking she must look like a scarecrow in a gale. ‘What brings you to Bankside? Are you still searching for charlatans?’
He smiles. A pleasing smile – much to her alarm. ‘I’ve been taking soundings, Mistress Merton. I hear you have become Bankside’s bastion against the pestilence. An effective bastion, apparently.’
‘I do what I can, sir. It is but little.’
Why is he regarding me with that surprised smile? Bianca wonders. It’s as though he’s just spotted a bright flower in a bed of weeds and can’t decide whether to leave it to flourish or cut it off at the stem and pin it to his expensive velvet doublet.
‘They say you had it – the plague.’
‘Who says so?’
‘People,’ he tells her coyly. ‘Apparently you worked some magic of physic. And then it was gone.’
They say you can change shape. They say you can drink poison and feel no ill. They say you had the plague and cured yourself. They say you’re the one witch nobody dares hang. She’s heard them all before.
‘I fear I must disappoint you, Master Gault. It was an ague. Nothing more.’
In an instant his handsome face goes from smiling to stern. ‘Then to pretend otherwise is a felony. You could lose your licence; even face imprisonment.’
‘I haven’t pretended anything. This is Bankside – tall tales bloom faster than chickweed here. I had an ague.’
‘So you claim,’ he says, relenting a little. She suspects he has difficulty in holding his certainties up to scrutiny. He seems to her the sort of man who cannot possibly come to any conclusion but the right one. ‘How is it that a woman as young as yourself knows so much about precautions against pestilence?’ he asks. ‘London has not seen it in any great measure for ten years.’
‘I was born in Padua, to a mother skilled in matters of natural physic. A great plague came when I was eight. They say we lost some twenty thousand souls across the Veneto. We learned quickly.’
An eyebrow lifts in estimation. ‘Then Bankside is indeed fortunate to have you.’
‘And here I shall stay, Master Gault. Unlike some of my betters, who seem to prefer flight to duty.’ She gives him a direct look. ‘Are you about to flee the city? I confess I thought you already had.’
‘I was in Bristol, Mistress Merton, on a matter of commerce. When I returned, I heard you had come to the Grocers’ guildhall asking for me. So, here I am.’
‘You ventured into Southwark merely to discover what it was that I wanted? Not to revoke my licence?’
‘Why should I wish to revoke your licence, Mistress Merton, when you appear to be bringing credit to the calling of apothecary?’ Gault gives her a glass smile that she can see clean through. ‘I came because I wanted to speak to you about your preventatives against the pestilence. I may have need of your skills.’
‘Have you no apothecaries in your own ward, Master Gault?’
‘In Farringdon Without the Wall? Barely a single one who knows a clyster from a compress. Certainly none so comely.’
‘You should see me after I’ve been ladling brimstone, Master Gault.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I am a little busy at present to traipse all over the city.’
‘Not so busy that you couldn’t find time to walk all the way to Coneyhope Lane to enquire after me at the guildhall. Perhaps we should reach an accommodation.’
‘I could consider it, I suppose,’ she says, admitting to herself that she’s always known Gault would give her nothing without expecting payment of some sort.
‘Good. I knew you’d see sense. Now, what was it that brought you in search of me?’
Bianca takes a deep breath. ‘Cathal Connell – how did he come to the Company’s attention?’
His head tilts as he tries to fathom her reason for asking. ‘Connell? I engaged him. Good shipmasters are hard to find.’
It’s not quite an answer. ‘Do you know of his past?’
‘Of course. I would not engage a man without knowing his reputation. Captain Connell spent some five years voyaging into the seas of Arabia and along the coast of Dalmatia.’