‘But why?’
‘Sir Robert didn’t see fit to make free with his motives, Mistress.’
‘But you think there was another reason why he wanted Nicholas to go, or else you wouldn’t have been so saucy with me just now.’
‘Did Dr Shelby not confide in you?’
‘Only that Cecil was sending him to learn about physic in the land of the Moor, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No. Nothing. We’re not married.’
His smile is like the one her uncle Salvatore used to give her when she turned fourteen, before her mother banned him from the house – half-cruel, half-covetous.
‘But why choose him? Why not one of the senior fellows at the College of Physicians? Or old Lopez, who serves the queen?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says crossly. ‘Perhaps Sir Robert thought they were too old to attempt the journey. I assume it was because Cecil trusts him. Nicholas – Dr Shelby – is physician to his son.’
Gault crosses to a sideboard and pours two glasses of wine from a silver jug. He offers her a glass. At first Bianca is inclined to refuse it and leave as quickly as she can. Gault sober is unpredictable enough for her tastes. But that would be to admit defeat. Besides, a glass of sack might steady her nerves. When she tastes it, the tavern-mistress in her calculates you couldn’t buy a bottle from the Vintry for less than five shillings.
‘May I be plain with you, Mistress Merton?’ Gault asks, raising his glass.
Here it comes, she thinks. There is another reason Nicholas has gone to the Barbary shore, and I’m the only sap who doesn’t know it. Gault has been playing me. And now he’s going to reveal the truth – on the condition that I agree to lie with him. He thinks I can be bought for five shillings a bottle.
‘If you must.’
‘You are a recusant, are you not? A Catholic. In Robert Cecil’s eyes, a heretic.’
The bald statement isn’t at all what she’s expecting. ‘I suppose you heard that when you were asking about me on Bankside.’
‘It was mentioned.’
‘By who – Jenny Solver? If you’re going to threaten to tell Sir Robert Cecil, don’t bother. He already knows. We have an understanding.’
Gault doesn’t even attempt to disguise his surprise. ‘An understanding – you and Cecil?’
‘If you heard rumours that I was a recusant, no doubt you will also have heard how I was taken to Cecil House to be examined – and returned in Robert Cecil’s private barge.’
‘I do recall such stories.’
‘Well, they’re true, Master Gault. Robert Cecil and I have reached an accommodation.’
‘An accommodation?’
What hurt can it do, she wonders, to embellish rumour with a little fantasy? The more exotic she is to him, the more carefree he may be with his secrets. ‘Yes, Master Gault – an accommodation. I don’t cast a spell to dry out his seed; he leaves my name off the recusancy rolls.’
To her joy, Gault actually shudders. ‘That is witchcraft,’ he whispers.
‘Well, it would be – if I’d done it. But I’m pleased to say that Lady Elizabeth gave birth to a healthy young son.’ She gives a little what-might-have-been shrug. ‘Let us all give thanks that I don’t have to pay a recusant’s fine, and the Cecil heir wasn’t born a walnut stone.’
Gault watches her as though he can’t quite fathom what manner of creature she might be. There is admiration in his eyes, and more than a little caution. He seems to be struggling to decide how far he can trust her.
‘So you see, Master Gault,’ she continues, taking advantage of his indecision, ‘if you’re thinking of threatening to denounce me as a heretic, you’re wasting your time. It won’t make me any the more compliant. I am the one witch no one dares to hang. And if my Nicholas should fall to any ill at the hands of that monster Cathal Connell – the man you entrusted him to – then dry seed will be the very least of your problems.’
28
It seems a poor place to die. Barely a ditch. Little more than a scraping in the burning dust where lizards run and scorpions arch their stings. But then, thinks Nicholas, Adolfo Sykes probably didn’t die here. The Doukkala gate is barely fifty yards away; the sentries would have heard the screams.
He has a picture in his mind of a dark night and a waggon leaving the city; a contrived stop for the driver to relieve himself in the ditch, while his companions roll the body out from under its coverings. He pictures it landing in a twisted heap, the sound barely audible above the whistling of the waggoner. No more enciphered dispatches for Robert Cecil.
He glances back at the Bab Doukkala, shading his eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun reflecting off its tessellated arches. He’s glad Hadir has provided him with a Berber’s blue headscarf. As well as protecting him from the sun, it also has the benefit of shading his European features from passers-by, who might otherwise question what an infidel is doing inspecting a patch of ground just outside their city walls.
Why take the risk of dropping the body so near? he wonders. Why not somewhere further along the Safiroad, well out of sight? Did they not care about the guards?
Nicholas can see one of them now, lounging against the battlements in bored contemplation of the road. How much harder would it be to stay vigilant at night, whiling away the long hours on guard duty? He can well imagine a sentry succumbing to the tedium and finding some other means of passing the time than watching a cart disappear into the darkness.
‘Are you certain this is where you saw the body?’
‘No, Sayidi. Bachir sees it.’
Nicholas’s hopes sink. A friend saw it. A friend of a friend. A friend told me that someone he knows saw it… ‘Bachir? But I thought you said you’d seen the body.’
‘Was my friend Bachir,’ says Hadir, nodding vigorously. ‘The guard you saw me greet, when we arrived from Safi. Was market day. He said when the sun comes up, he sees Sayidi Sy-kess by that bush there, the one that looks like a camello taking a shit.’ He nods towards an acacia shrub barely five paces from where Nicholas is standing. ‘Bachir tells the guard commander. The guard commander say he don’t want no dead infidel spoiling market-day business.’
‘But you told me you saw his wounds – the ones you thought had been made by a wild beast.’
‘I was inside the gate when Sayidi Sy-kess was brought in on the cart of Ibn Daoud. I know Ibn Daoud, also. “Hey, Hadir, come see the heathen Englishman,” he calls to me. So I go and see. It is very bad for me. I liked Sayidi Sy-kess very much.’
‘I know this is hard for you, Hadir, but can you recall if there was much blood? Did the wounds look freshly made?’
Hadir winces. His face is not made for dark thoughts. ‘Was little blood, most only here.’ He splays his fingers down the sides of his ribcage. ‘Maybe the beast who killed Sayidi Sy-kess drink it all.’
‘You knew Master Sykes well, Hadir. I presume you knew his routine. What reason would he have to be outside the city walls at night?’
The boy might be an astute trader, but where his friend Adolfo Sykes is concerned, he hasn’t yet learned to dissemble. ‘I do not let myself ask this question,’ he says, his composure crumbling.
‘Why not?’ Nicholas asks, though he suspects he knows the answer.
‘Because it means it was not an accident. It means my friend was kill-ed – but not by wild beasts.’
‘Did Adolfo Sykes have enemies?’ Nicholas asks as gently as he can.