‘I wouldn’t wager on it, Hadir. Our queen’s navy has already seen off one attempt to land a Spanish army. And she’s not shy with the axe, either – she’s already had her cousin beheaded.’
Hadir seems unimpressed. ‘Was great victory. But next day al-Malik, he dies also. So then his brother – al-Abbas al-Mansur – becomes sharif. Then al-Seddik comes on his knees to al-Mansur and begs forgiveness. His Majesty shows mercy, and now al-Seddik loves him like a brother.’
‘Then he’s a most fortunate man, this al-Seddik.’
Hadir nods vigorously. ‘Most fortunate. Sometimes a new sultan will punish his enemies after a battle. Sometimes he will command that their skin shall be flayed from their living bodies.’
Nicholas wonders grimly if enemies include spies and old Jews.
‘How did the present sultan’s brother come to die?’ he asks. ‘Was he wounded in this great battle that he won?’
‘No, Sayidi. He died of sickness. This is why His Majesty looks with kindness upon al-Seddik – because of al-waqf. Al-Seddik gives much gold to the hospital in Marrakech. Also he brings the great Day-Lyal into the city. Day-Lyal is the only infidel physician permitted to attend the sultan.’
Hadir’s words strike Nicholas like a bad note played in a sweet tune. ‘Day-Lyal is a Christian?’
‘He is famous throughout our city – he speaks our language, which is most unusual. He is a Frank.’
By Frank, Nicholas presumes Hadir means French. In his mind, Day-Lyal becomes de Lisle. He wonders if Robert Cecil knows the Catholic French have put a man in such a sensitive position in the sultan’s court.
‘Does English queen permit infidels to attend her?’ Hadir asks with a little shudder of disgust.
‘She has no Moor physician, if that’s what you mean. She has a Jew, but he’s been forced to renounce his faith,’ Nicholas says, without adding, And if Robert Cecil is right, he’s living on borrowed time.
Hadir lets out a little bark of contempt. ‘The Spanish king must be very weak man to have English woman queen sink his ships and scatter his armies.’
You sound just like Farzad, thinks Nicholas fondly. He laughs. ‘We haven’t scattered his armies quite yet, Master Hadir. Though we did scatter his fleet when it came against us.’
Hadir poses another of his many questions on the mysterious place Nicholas has come from, and its even more unfathomable ruler.
‘Will your queen’s sons not turn her out of her palace when they become men?’ he asks.
‘She has no sons, Master Hadir. She is unwed.’
‘Then she is very ugly, yes?’
Nicholas fights back a grin. ‘Not at all, Hadir. We call her Gloriana. But she has chosen to remain unmarried.’
‘How can she choose this? Why does her father not find her a man?’
Nicholas shakes his head in amusement. ‘She’s the queen, that’s how. And anyway, her father is dead. She inherited the crown from her half-sister.’
‘Are all English men made like dogs, to cower under a mistress’s lash?’ asks Hadir, astounded.
‘We like to think not. But we suspect she has other ideas.’
‘Why do her ministers not find her a husband, or are they all women, too?’
‘Believe me, Hadir, they’ve tried.’
Hadir expels a grunt of bemusement. ‘England is a strange place,’ he says, a trace of pity in his voice. ‘No wonder my friend Sy-kess choose to live here, amongst men.’
And look where it got him, thinks Nicholas as the two men lapse into silence.
The track falls away from a ridgeline towards a sprawling riverbed. Rills of brown water meander between shale and scrub. A long, undulating cry from somewhere behind the caravan sends a heard of goats pelting across their path. Hadir brings his camel to a halt. Nicholas’s mount stops, too, though by its own volition rather than by any conscious effort of his. He looks out across the dried-up watercourse.
‘Welcome to Marrakech, Sayidi Nich-less,’ says Hadir, with the pride of a man returning to the place he loves. ‘In the language of the Berbers it is called “The City of God”.’
But Nicholas is too consumed by what he is seeing to reply. Cast across the horizon before him lies a pale-red curtain of city walls, shimmering in the heat, towered and turreted, the battlements standing like teeth about to bite the snowy white flesh of the distant Atlas Mountains beyond.
24
The pestilence has returned with a vengeance. The Savoy hospital has closed its doors to new patients, and posted guards on the water-stairs to deter visitors. The chapel’s death-bell tolls with increasing frequency. On 28th May, the very day Nicholas reaches Marrakech, the Privy Council – at the queen’s insistence – adjourns Trinity term for Parliament and the law courts. Elizabeth has already made it known she intends to retire to Windsor. The exodus foretold by Robert Cecil is in progress. Those who have homes in the country or relatives in distant towns are shutting their doors and departing, either taking their belongings or entrusting them to watchmen and retainers who, quite frankly, would rather be elsewhere. In Southwark, few have such luxury.
When Bianca visits the Jackdaw that afternoon – at about the time Nicholas stands before the walls of Marrakech – she is unequivocal.
‘You must go,’ she tells Ned and Rose sternly. ‘I think we’re surviving on borrowed time.’ She asks Ned if he still has Nicholas’s letter to Lord Lumley. When he says yes, she tells him, ‘Take Rose, Timothy and Farzad and go straightway to Nonsuch. You’ll be safe there.’
The answer she receives is not what she’s expecting. Heads drop. Feet shuffle. All four fidget like scolded children. Refusing a direct instruction from Bianca Merton is not something any of them have ever contemplated before.
Ned speaks for all. ‘No, Mistress. We shall not go away. We shall stay here – with you.’
The amber eyes flash a warning. ‘What do you mean, no?’
It is an odd confrontation: the slender young woman with the olive skin, her feet slightly apart and her chin tilted defiantly, staring down the auburn giant whose frown has been known to clear a tavern’s taproom in an instant. In other times, Ned would have the odds stacked overwhelmingly against him. But now he has Rose to make up for his shortcomings.
‘I’ve told my husband my mind, Mistress,’ she says boldly. ‘We’s spoken on the matter at length. If you’re staying, we’s staying.’
If the Earl of Essex had just told the queen he couldn’t be arsed to flatter her any more, the silence that follows could not be frostier.
‘And so are we,’ squeaks Timothy in an unheard-of display of defiance. ‘Aren’t we, Farzad?’
‘Pestilence is nothing to fear,’ Farzad says portentously. ‘I fear the Pope’s farts more.’
Bianca grimaces. She still cannot quite get used to Farzad’s casual blasphemies. She takes a deep breath. ‘If I’d been master of the ship that saved you, Farzad, I’d have taught you a little more piety. As it is, haven’t you and Timothy got a few more hours of unpaid labour to offer Rose, in exchange for all the food you smuggled?’
‘We’re not leaving you, Mistress,’ Ned says bluntly. ‘Cast a spell on us if you want. Curse us, in that Eye-tallien you speak. But we’ve made up our minds. We’re staying. Aren’t we, Wife?’
‘Yes, we is, Husband,’ says Rose with a defiant shake of her black curls.