‘Leave your coat a while longer,’ Robert Cecil says, fixing him with an uncompromising look. ‘I have something else to ask of you.’
Here it comes, Nicholas tells himself, his heart sinking. With Cecil, a summons is like the bark on a rotten tree: what is on the surface is not always what lies beneath. Peel away the layers and you’re likely to find black beetles crawling about underneath.
‘I want you to go on a journey for me.’
‘A journey, Sir Robert? What manner of journey?’
‘Quite a long one, as it happens. Are you familiar, by any chance, with the city of Marrakech?’
The courtier’s little bejewelled index finger traces a line on the globe’s lacquered surface, down the Narrow Sea towards Brittany, then across the Bay of Biscay, past Portugal, all the way to the African continent, almost to the point where knowledge ends. Here and there the fingertip ploughs through little flurries of waves, drawn simplistically as a child might draw the wings of a bird in flight. ‘Saltpetre, Dr Shelby,’ Cecil says as his finger runs southwards. ‘It is all about saltpetre.’
Nicholas looks at him blankly.
‘Let me explain. The Barbary Company was set up by Their Graces, Leicester and Warwick, to trade with the western nations of the Moor. We send Morocco fine English wool. In return, Sultan al-Mansur sends us spices and sugar.’ As his fingertip reaches the Barbary shore, Cecil’s eyes narrow. ‘But that is not the sole extent of our commerce, and I must have your word that you will not speak of what I am about to tell you beyond this room – on pain of severe penalty.’
Nicholas wonders if this is the point where he should stick his fingers in his ears – but he knows full well that not actually hearing one of Robert Cecil’s confidences is no protection at all. Reluctantly he nods his acceptance.
‘Until some fifteen years ago,’ Cecil continues, ‘Philip of Spain – and his Portuguese puppet Sebastian – were masters of Morocco. Then the Moors rose up and expelled them. Now we send Sultan al-Mansur new matchlock muskets, to defend his realm against their return.’
‘And in payment he sends us saltpetre,’ Nicholas guesses.
‘Which you, Dr Shelby, will know – from your service in the Low Countries – is a crucial component in the manufacture of gunpowder. Do you happen to know how many Spanish ships were sunk as a direct result of our gunfire, when Philip sent his Armada against us?’
‘Not off the top of my head, no.’
‘None,’ Cecil says archly. ‘Drake had to close with them at Gravelines before our cannon could do them proper harm. Moroccan saltpetre is amongst the finest there is. We need every ounce we can get, in order to ensure that if the Spanish snake comes against us again, we can out-charge his cannon.’
‘But that still doesn’t explain why you want me to go to the Barbary shore,’ Nicholas says.
‘I’m sure you will not be surprised to know that I maintain an agent in Marrakech, expressly to keep watch on our interests.’
It could scarcely surprise Nicholas less. The most isolated village in England knows the Cecils are the eyes and ears that ceaselessly protect England from her enemies. They have their people everywhere. Mothers warn their children that if they misbehave, the Cecils will see their faults almost as surely as God Himself.
‘The man I employ as my spy in Marrakech is a half-English, half-Portuguese trader named Adolfo Sykes,’ Cecil tells him. ‘He is the Barbary Company’s factor there. But in the past weeks three Barbary Company ships have returned to England without a single one of his customary dispatches. I fear some mischief has befallen him.’
‘But why send me? Yes, I know a little about wool – my father is a yeoman farmer – but I couldn’t tell saltpetre from pepper, if you put it on my mutton.’
Cecil gives him a condescending smile. ‘Because to send just another merchant would be as pointless as sending my pastry cook. I need an educated man, Dr Shelby – someone who can assume an envoy’s duties. If the Spanish have swayed the sultan against us, I want someone with the faculties to sway him back again.’
‘But I’m a physician, not a diplomat.’
‘Exactly. One of the sultan’s close advisors – a Moor named Sumayl al-Seddik – is benefactor to a hospital in the city. My father had dealings with him when he came here with the entourage of the sultan’s envoy some four years past. I’m sure you will recall the public tumult that accompanied the visit.’
‘Eleanor and I were in the crowd,’ Nicholas says, remembering. ‘That was before…’
A moment’s uncomfortable silence, until Cecil says, ‘Yes, well… you can tell Minister al-Seddik that you’ve come as an envoy to foster ties of learning between our two realms. That should pass well enough as a believable reason.’
‘An envoy who looks like a Thames waterman,’ Nicholas says, throwing Cecil’s earlier words back at him.
Sir Robert gives a diplomatic cough. ‘If that’s your only other objection, Dr Shelby, let me reassure you: I have more tailors than I do horses.’
Nicholas takes a steadying breath, so that his answer sounds appropriately resolute. Since the moment two years ago when he’d agreed to act as Cecil’s physician, in return for a stipend that would allow him to set up a charitable practice on Bankside, he has known this time would come. Hasn’t Bianca warned him enough times? Nicholas, sweet, Robert Cecil offers nothing without a reason. There is always a price to be paid in return.
He thinks of the last journey he undertook for the Lord Treasurer’s crook-backed son. It had ended with two slack-eyed killers dragging him towards the centre of London Bridge and the river waiting below, the pain of the beatings coursing through his limbs and howling in his ears. If it hadn’t been for Bianca’s courage that night, he wouldn’t be standing here now.
Yes, he thinks, a journey undertaken for Robert Cecil does not always end at the destination you are expecting.
3
In the shadow of the riverside church, St Saviour’s market is in full cry. Competition for a sale is fierce. Drapers loudly proclaim the quality of their ribbons; farmers in from the Surrey countryside boast you’ll find no better winter vegetables outside the queen’s own gardens; cutlers swear on their mother’s graves that their knives are newly forged and not pawned by destitute sailors laid off from the royal fleet. And weaving through the crowd, like pike in a shady pool, the cut-purses and coney-catchers hunt their prey.
Not that any of them would think for a moment of waylaying the comely young woman with the amber eyes who walks around the stalls with such an assured air, a wicker basket tucked under her arm, her waves of dark hair pinned beneath a simple linen coif. They’ve heard it said that if you try to slip your hand between bodice and kirtle to steal away her purse, you’ll wake up next morning with a raven’s claw instead of fingers. Bianca Merton is known to them. Bianca Merton is out of bounds.
And by association, so too is the curly-headed lad with dark eyes and skin the colour of orange-blossom honey who walks beside her.
Banksiders know Farzad Gul now, almost as well as they know his mistress. They greet him as if he were one of their own. After all, he is Bianca Merton’s Moor, and thus something of a curiosity. His colourful slanders of the Pope and the King of Spain, learned from the English mariners who rescued him from shipwreck, have made him as popular as any Southwark street entertainer.