Nicholas allows himself a tight grin of satisfaction as the realization hits him: You didn’t send the letter, did you? They thought you did, but it’s still here. You’ve hidden it somewhere else, because in the end you didn’t even trust the talisman to protect it. The only question is: did you keep your secret when they began to carve the skin off your chest?
Nicholas climbs to his feet and walks back towards the hand-shaped talisman, trying to force order upon his racing thoughts. Hadir watches in bemusement, as though the new occupant of the house on the Street of the Weavers is engaged in some unfathomable ritual that only infidels of questionable sanity might practise.
As he steps onto the tiled floor of the cloister Nicholas feels something give way beneath his feet. He looks down. Just enough light remains for him to see that where he has placed his foot, a tile has cracked neatly in two.
But he’s sure it didn’t break when he stepped on it. There had been no sound. The tile hadn’t snapped, it had yielded. It must already have been broken.
He retreats a pace, kneels and lifts the two halves of the tile, hoping to uncover a second hiding place. He finds nothing beneath but compacted earth.
Only when he returns the two pieces of tile, rises and looks again at the talisman on the wall does Nicholas see that they are in perfect alignment. The fracture is aimed directly at the downward-pointing middle finger of the stone hand.
Coincidence? Or something else – a sign?
Nicholas steps back onto the tiled surface of the cloister. He turns his back to the stone hand, and in his imagination extends the line of the fracture out into the courtyard.
He sees nothing out of place. There is no second talisman set into the opposite wall, no matching broken tile. But he cannot shake off the conviction that the ghost of Adolfo Sykes is standing beside him in the fragrant dusk, encouraging him, willing him not to stumble off the path he has laid for him.
What have I missed, Master Adolfo? Nicholas asks himself, his mouth mutely forming the words. He is quite unaware of Hadir staring at him, or of grandmother Tiziri in the kitchen doorway watching with bemusement the strangeness of the berraniyin.
He lets his gaze lift to the upper floor.
Running along the rough plaster wall, just below the line of little windows, is a fine wooden frieze, carved and painted with intricate arabesque symbols. Made of individual pieces a couple of yards long, it extends right around the courtyard.
Nicholas stands directly over the broken tile. He raises the index finger of his right hand and holds it out before his eyes, as though it were an arrow he was about to loose from a bow. Squinting down the imaginary shaft, he sees that it’s aimed directly at a spot where two sections of frieze join, about a foot and a half to one side of his chamber window.
And as he stares into the gathering dusk, a single swift emerges from behind the carved decoration. It tilts its head in his direction, as though seeking his approval, and sails out into the approaching night.
33
On Bankside, in the same dusk, Bianca Merton reflects upon a day that brought news of two departures from the city, both – in their own way – troubling.
The queen has moved her court from Whitehall to the relative safety of Windsor. Mere coincidence, says the official line; nothing unusual. Elizabeth has simply decided to commence her summer progress through her realm a little early.
But ordinary folk know better. A summer progress does not require a guard set on the Windsor road, turning back all who have recently dwelt in pestilential London.
On Bankside, where hurried departures – prompted by the anticipated arrival of bailiffs, creditors or vengeful husbands – are commonplace, the news has been greeted with little more than passing comment. Today, the talk has been mostly about that golden roaring-boy Kit Marlowe: slain two days ago in a brawl in Deptford.
It was an argument over lewd and forbidden love between men.
He was killed because he was a secret papist.
He was stabbed because he was a spy… because he was a heretic… because he hadn’t paid his share of the reckoning at Widow Bull’s lodging house… because he’d got into an argument with an aficionado of the playhouse who said he ought to stop writing such leaden prose and make way for that new fellow, Shakespeare…
After paying a Bankside ragamuffin thruppence to carry the message to Raymond Gault that his preventatives are ready, Bianca stops by the Jackdaw to help Ned and Rose deal with a delivery of imported malmsey from the Vintry across the river. She receives the news of Marlowe’s death with more than passing interest. It does not come as a surprise.
She remembers how – two years ago – he had turned up at the Jackdaw unannounced. The carpenters were in at the Rose theatre making repairs, and he needed somewhere to rehearse his play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus.
She smiles at the memory of how Marlowe’s arrival brought out the first real signs in Nicholas that he harboured feelings towards her that were more than just brotherly.
Marlowe had seemed such a larger-than-life character – an achievement in itself on Bankside, where edgy flamboyance is common currency. His presence had sent Nicholas almost mad with jealousy. But in the end, Nick – good, dependable, courageous Nick; Nick who could always save himself from perfection by a joke, or an act that had everyone wondering if perhaps there wasn’t a small whiff of sulphur lurking behind the solid yeoman’s decency – had been right: Kit Marlowe had brought in his wake nothing but tribulation for both of them. She wonders now how he would take the news.
She also wonders in a candid moment, as she helps Rose clear away the trenchers, if she might ever have lain with Kit, if he hadn’t been more interested in dice, boys and tobacco. Perhaps she might have. But it could never have been more than a brief taste of exotic but dangerous fruit. Nicholas would have won on every throw of the dice.
Thinking of Nicholas now, she imagines he would be astounded to know what she has discovered about Reynard Gault. She is intensely proud of herself for having identified him as the Rouge Croix Pursuivant. But she is still no closer to understanding why Gault lied to her about knowing Solomon Mandel.
In charitable moments, she thinks it’s because he and the Jew were partners in some conspiracy or other that led to Mandel’s murder – that he died trying to protect Gault’s identity. But when she’s in a more suspicious mood – which is becoming increasingly frequent – she wonders if it might be the other way round: that Gault was involved in the torture and murder of an innocent old man, and that those two scraps of paper might in fact be bloody fingers of accusation. Whatever the truth, she is sure now that Gault invited her to his house for a reason other than the protection of his investments.
Her musings are interrupted as Parson Moody walks in from the dusk, his face troubled. Surely he hasn’t come to hear the gossip about Kit Marlowe, unless it’s to gloat about the inevitable downfall of sinners.
‘Mistress Merton,’ he says, like a man bringing news of a massacre. ‘It’s on the march again. There’s been a house closed up on Tar Ally. The parish has put wardens on either end. I am in need of a jug of knock-down before I administer another funeral. I truly think God is testing my resolve.’
Tar Alley. Bianca knows it well – a narrow cut running south from the riverbank where the horses delivering to the grain mills in Bermondsey get led to water. No more than half a dozen tenements, mostly the homes of Dutch refugees from the wars in the Low Countries.
And just two streets away from her shop on Dice Lane.