‘Are you really?’ he asks, as though she’d told him she was a mermaid. ‘Oh yes – Italy. I remember Mistress Solver telling me you had an Italian mother and an English father.’ He looks at her with unshakeable conviction. ‘So, really, you are one of us. Barely foreign at all.’
She wonders what that smile might look like if she told him she was also a Catholic. But perhaps he already knows. Perhaps Jenny Solver told him that, too.
‘How long have you been here at St Saviour’s?’
‘Fifteen years.’ From his voice, it could be a gaol sentence.
‘A long while.’
‘I could consider it a failure. Bankside is no godlier today than when first I arrived. The playhouse and the bear-pit are still dens of vice. There’s barely one man in three practising an honest profession. And as for the lasciviousness of the women – not including yourself, of course…’
‘Of course,’ she echoes, stifling a grin as she thinks of the bawdy-house near the Falcon stairs she knows he likes to visit.
‘Fifteen years battling Satan from the depths of such a moral cess-pit might have broken a man with less faith in his heart.’ He glances reproachfully towards heaven. ‘Now, Mistress, what was it you wished to ask of me?’
‘Can you recall the occasion of the visit to London by the envoy of the Sultan of Morocco? It was in ’89 – January, I think.’
‘I would be a poor fellow if I could not. A most impressive sight. All those faces burned by the desert sun. How those Moors must have marvelled to see civilization up close.’
‘Do you recall who was here to greet them?’
‘The Lord Mayor… most of the Corporation of the City… Lord Burghley… I cannot be exact, but certainly many notable men, for sure.’
‘Do you happen to know if the parish records contain any report of the event?’
‘Oh yes, I drew it up myself – for the aldermen,’ Parson Moody says proudly.
‘Might I see it?’
A look of unbearable sadness clouds his face. ‘I am so sorry, Mistress Merton, but that will not be possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘They are confidential records. And you are a woman. I am sure you understand.’
‘But you let Dr Shelby see them.’
‘That’s different. His request was on behalf of Coroner Danby.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘I wish I could be more helpful. I really do.’
‘No, you’ve been most generous with your time, Parson Moody. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
‘Is there aught else I may do for you, Mistress Merton?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Then thank you again – for the ointment.’
Bianca raises her voice just enough to get a good echo back off the church walls.
‘Twice a day,’ she says sweetly.
Parson Moody seems puzzled. ‘Forgive me – you have me disadvantaged…’
Bianca dabs at the corners of her eyes. ‘I recommend you apply it twice a day. A small amount should do the trick.’
‘Ah, of course.’
‘Then you’ll be able to see your way to the Falcon stairs without difficulty. After Evensong, isn’t it? Every Wednesday. Or is it Thursday? I forget which. I’ll have to ask the bawd – Mistress Jennings. I’m sure I’ve seen her in your congregation.’
Five minutes later Bianca is alone in the vestry, a pile of parchment rolls and leather-bound books on the table before her. Through the open door she can see Parson Moody prostrate before the altar, deep in prayer.
It takes her some time to find it, but when she does, her heart begins to race. It is a description of the event recorded for posterity and the aggrandisement of the parish – how the sultan’s envoy was met on Long Southwark by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of London.
And amongst all the dignitaries, one humble translator, Master Solomon Mandel, a trader in spices between England and Morocco, with skills in the language of the Moor.
And forty leading lights of the Worshipful Barbary Company of London. Including one Reynard Gault, merchant venturer.
At which point the strength in her legs seems abruptly to desert her. She has to reach out a hand to the table in order to steady herself. She stares at the neatly inked script, unable to believe what she has seen.
She reads the line again, just to be sure:
Reynard Gault. Merchant venturer.
Who is attending not merely in his commercial capacity, but in a more formal role – as representative of the English College of Heralds, in which august body he is proud to hold the purely honorary position of Rouge Croix Pursuivant.
PART 3
Blood-Tax
31
‘Why have you come here?’
The heavily accented voice has asked the same question since Nicholas’s consciousness first began to emerge from the dark cave to which near-suffocation had dispatched it.
He is sitting against a rough wall of pitted grey masonry, in a plain narrow storeroom in the house on the Street of the Weavers. The early-evening light spills through a small grille set into the ceiling, casting an irregular shape at the foot of the far wall. He cannot move his arms. In his befuddled state he thinks he’s still aboard the Righteous, and the figure standing over him is Cathal Connell, come to pitch him into the ocean before he regains the use of his limbs. Then he realizes his hands are bound behind his back.
‘Why have you come here?’
The voice is clearer now, though still slightly muffled. Nicholas realizes it is not the man standing guard over him who is speaking, but a figure sitting cross-legged just out of striking distance. His face is covered by a cloth kufiya, save for the eyes, which fix Nicholas like a hawk’s. At his back Nicholas can make out three other men, standing in silent watchfulness. The kufiya speaks again.
‘Dr Shelby, if you wish this place not to be a charnel house for your bones, tell us why you have come to our city – the true reason.’
A young voice. Someone in their early twenties. The English is not that of a native speaker, nor does it have the accent of a Hadir or an al-Seddik. Somewhere to the east of Italy is all Nicholas can manage. He remembers something de Lisle told him earlier at the hammam: The blood-tax… a simple choice: serve the Moors as warriors – or die…
Is that who these people are, Nicholas wonders: janissaries?
‘I am an envoy from the queen of England,’ he says, in his best imitation of an outraged diplomat. ‘I carry a letter from the queen to the sultan. It is your duty to let me go. And if you’ve harmed anyone in my house, you will pay for it dearly.’
The reply has a note of disappointed familiarity to it. ‘How many times has my master heard those words let me go? In the slave markets, in the galleys, in the prisons, always it is: please let me go. But a man who begs in such a manner is not a true man at all. He is no more of a man than one who is ruled by a woman. Wouldn’t you agree – infidel?’
‘Who are you? Why have you abused the envoy of a friendly nation in such a manner?’
‘I am at the service of His Excellency Muhammed al-Annuri,’ says the kufiya, clasping his hands together as though about to pray. Young fingers to go with a young voice, Nicholas observes. ‘It is a name you should learn to fear.’