Nicholas hands over Burghley’s letter, which al-Seddik tucks away in his satin robe. ‘I also carry a letter of greeting from Her Grace, Queen Elizabeth, to Sultan al-Mansur,’ he says. ‘When may I hope to present it?’
‘I will arrange an audience,’ al-Seddik tells him. ‘It may take a while; the sharif is much concerned with the work taking place on the el-Badi Palace. In the meantime, my tent shall be your tent. You will feast with me tomorrow afternoon, after the al-zuhr prayers. I shall send Dr de Lisle to fetch you. Does that please?’
Nicholas confirms that it pleases greatly. He follows al-Seddik and de Lisle down the dark stairway and out onto the Street of the Weavers. When his eyes recover from the transition from light to darkness and back to light again, he sees al-Annuri’s guards have not dared to return to their place beneath the date palm. The street is empty, save for a child leading an old blind man, stick-thin and hollow-cheeked, towards the Berber encampment.
‘This house, sir…’ Nicholas begins tentatively.
‘It does not satisfy?’
‘On the contrary, it’s perfect.’
The faintest lift of one white eyebrow. ‘So, then?’
‘I understand the previous tenant was the factor of the Barbary Company here in Marrakech.’
‘Adolfo Sykes, yes.’ A sudden look of remorse as al-Seddik comprehends. ‘Of course! Forgive me, Dr Shelby. An unforgiveable error. You should never have been lodged here, not after Master Sykes’s sad demise.’
‘It’s not that. It is a very agreeable house,’ says Nicholas, aware the ground beneath his feet suddenly feels as though it’s made of eggshells. ‘I merely wondered why it had been chosen. It is not in the Christian quarter.’
‘Does that offend you?’
‘Not at all. It’s simply that I understood the Aduana district was where visitors from Christian lands were quartered.’
‘There was nowhere vacant in the Aduana that was as comfortable,’ al-Seddik assures him, beaming with goodwill. ‘Besides, this is a large city. We like to know where to find our most honoured guests.’
And as Nicholas watches him go, a jovial little puffball wrapped in silk, Arnoult de Lisle’s angular frame loping along beside him like a servant trying to anticipate his master’s whim, it occurs to him that there are subtler ways of keeping watch on someone than sitting outside their door in the shade of a date palm.
27
The lanes leading to Smithfield are emptier than when last Bianca came this way, the taverns quieter even than those on Bankside. At this rate, Whitsunday will be the quietest she’s known since coming to the city. In happier times the maypoles would be festooned with ribbons fluttering on the breeze. The Summer Kings and Queens would parade in their makeshift finery. Courting couples would slip away to hide beneath the washing laid out on the hedges to dry in the early-summer air. But now the maypoles stand forlornly naked. Even where public gatherings are not forbidden, people have lost their appetite for a crowd.
Whitsuntide. She still can’t get used to the term. She prefers to call it by its Catholic name – Pentecost – but only when she’s amongst those she trusts. Use it elsewhere and she knows she’s likely to mark herself as, at best, a recusant. At worst, a heretic.
As she walks towards Giltspur Street, Bianca imagines how she would spend this coming Whitsunday, if Nicholas was here. She might persuade him to dance a measure or two with her in the Pike Garden on Bankside, even though he has said more than once that dancing occupies much the same place in his mind as tooth-pulling. But she would have found a way, she thinks.
She imagines it now: his body beginning to relax and that reluctant smile of enjoyment fighting its way onto his face. She can feel his hands clasping her waist a little more tightly, his body pressing somewhat closer than is strictly necessary for those with Puritan sensibilities.
And then she imagines Robert Cecil scuttling up and demanding Nicholas’s presence elsewhere.
She wonders where Nicholas is now: basking in some sun-drenched kasbah, more than likely – stretched out on silk cushions, listening to exotic tales of Arabia whispered to him by some kohl-eyed beauty, while a eunuch in a silk kaftan plucks the strings of a lyre and makes that strange discordant music she’d sometimes heard on the Ruga dei Spezieri in Venice, where the Ottoman traders had their shops.
An apprentice boy shatters her musings as he pushes rudely past. Bianca unleashes a stream of Italian invective at him. Surprised, he glances over his shoulder and shouts, ‘Fuck off back to Spain, you papist trull!’
She wills him to fall flat on his face in the nearest pile of horse dung. But for some unaccountable reason, today her ability to cast charms appears not to be working.
Reynard Gault’s house stands alone in a patch of open ground beside the complex of bakehouses that provide ships’ biscuits for the royal fleet. It is newly built. The oak beams are as pale as the moment they emerged, ridged and tufted, from the sawmill, the plaster pristine.
In the spacious hall, a maid takes Bianca’s overgown and bids her wait. Looking around, she notes the flagstones are so spotless they could have been quarried yesterday. She can smell linseed on the new half-panelling, and fresh paint on the strap-work below the plastered ceiling. The house is like a gift he’s bought himself on a whim.
Above the wide hearth hangs a portrait: a younger Gault looking out on the world with unshakeable confidence – even a little avarice – and dressed in a breastplate and sash, his left hand resting fetchingly upon a bejewelled sword hilt. At his back, verdant acres roll towards misty mountains.
‘It’s by Master Hilliard,’ the real Gault says from behind her shoulder. ‘Cost me a duke’s ransom. I had him change the background, to remind me of Ireland.’
‘You fought there?’ Bianca asks causally, trying to not to show how much he’s startled her.
‘Gracious, no! I’m no warrior,’ he says with over-egged humility. ‘I’m a humble merchant. I was born there. In Leinster.’
‘But the sword–’
‘You know what these court painters are like. They flatter to ensure they get paid.’
But you didn’t object to the pretence, did you? she thinks. Perhaps convenient omission is in your blood. Perhaps that’s why you pretended not to have heard of Solomon Mandel. ‘I had not realized you were Irish,’ she says pleasantly.
‘My family has a little land in Dundalk. Sheep, for the most part. We export the bulk of our yarn to England. The rest we sell to the Moors. Hence my position in the Barbary Company.’
Bianca turns away from the painting. ‘That is all very fine, Master Gault, but I really do not believe you summonsed me here to discuss sheep. What is it that you want from me?’
He appraises her, like an abbot trying to decide if he’s been sold a fake holy relic. Then, apparently satisfied, he says, ‘Mistress, come with me.’
Gault leads her to a neat chamber, bare except for new wainscoting and six French fruitwood chairs with needlework upholstery that look as though they’ve only just been delivered. Through a leaded window she sees a courtyard garden and newly planted honeysuckle that hugs its canes like neatly ordered columns in a ledger. At the centre of the garden is a square of gravel. Two lads of about Farzad’s age, dressed in uniform grey kersey jerkins, are at sword practice. Three others sit around watching them and shouting encouragement, their voices almost mute beyond the glass.
‘Your sons?’ Bianca asks, even as she knows they cannot be, given their similarity in age.