Ned, Timothy and Farzad have been ministering angels. She’s lost count of the boxes, jars, sacks, pots and bottles they’ve carried without complaint. If she’d hired day-labourers, the route between the shop and the Jackdaw would be strewn with trampled bunches of herbs, shattered pots and yellow brimstone. They’ve even carried her jars of live leeches, though Timothy had to do it at arm’s length.
The boys depart with their last load as the sun begins to set over the Lambeth marshes. Bianca turns the key in the lock, and her back upon the shop. It’s not a defeat, she tells herself, just a sensible precaution. I will return.
‘Not at Evensong then, Mistress Merton?’
The voice shocks her out of her thoughts. Approaching her is Reynard Gault, his stride confident, arrogant almost. He’s wearing a brown velvet doublet and knee-boots of soft leather. The goose feather in his foxskin hat looks freshly plucked. And – much to her amusement, as she remembers the painting – he’s wearing a sword at his belt.
‘If you didn’t dress the gallant so much, you wouldn’t need that,’ she says with a superior smile as she glances at the finely-wrought guard protruding from the engraved leather scabbard. ‘On Bankside the cut-purses tend to leave the ordinary folk alone. But my, they do love a peacock. And they’re fast enough to cut away your coin without you even noticing, so thirty inches of fine Italian steel really is rather wasted.’
Gault gives a little nod of acquiescence. ‘You may mock me, Mistress, but I am the one with the fine house on Giltspur Street and gold angels in his purse, while you pursue a precarious living amongst rogues, vagabonds and actors.’
‘Yes, well, we’re all living a little precariously now, aren’t we? I presume that’s why you’re here – to collect the preventatives. I’d rather imagined you were going to send one of your bright young boys. I suppose I should be honoured.’
‘I came here myself because I wanted the chance to speak privily, Mistress Merton.’
‘Oh, do you have spies then, in your fine new house?’ She looks into his eyes for a telltale flicker of suspicion, an indication that he has secrets he wants to hide, lies he wants to present as truths. She sees nothing but an impenetrable rampart of self-confidence.
‘My lads are loyal, and so is my household,’ he says. ‘Why would I fear to be overheard?’
‘I’m jesting.’
‘Ah, Bankside wit. I hear it leads to quarrels.’ He taps the guard of his sword with a doeskin-gloved hand.
‘The preventatives are at the Jackdaw. I’m moving back there because there’s pestilence on Tar Alley. We can walk along the riverbank if you wish. Will that be privy enough for you?’
The lanterns are being lit in the houses on the bridge, the masts and yards of the ships moored on the river turning slowly into a winter’s forest of leafless branches. An evening breeze is blowing off the water.
‘We should not be enemies, you and I,’ Gault says as they walk.
‘I did not suppose we were.’
‘We have more in common that you may think,’ he says, raising an enigmatic eyebrow.
Like the fact that we both know you were acquainted with Solomon Mandel, even though you denied it.
Bianca lets the voice in her head fade before she answers. ‘Is that so, Master Gault? I cannot imagine what that might be.’
‘What would you say if I told you that I, too, was a child of the one true faith – a Catholic?’
She doesn’t reply immediately. He wouldn’t be the first man in this city to claim such a thing, only to betray the subsequently shared confession. There are cells in the Bridewell and the Compter, the Clink and even the Tower playing host at this very moment to those who have been foolish enough to fall for such a trick.
‘Does the Grocers’ Guild or the Barbary Company know?’
A guilty little huh from deep within his chest. ‘Would I hold my position if they did?’
‘Then what is to stop me denouncing you?’
His boyish grin contains a jagged reef of malice just beneath the surface. ‘I’d find myself a purchasable magistrate and tell him a Bankside tavern-mistress had threatened to make a false accusation against me, if I didn’t pay her twenty pounds. Then we’d see if you’re still the one witch nobody dares hang.’
‘I can see you’ve given this confession some thought, Master Gault. Why then are you making so free with your conscience?’
‘Because we are allies, are we not?’
‘Allies? I’m an apothecary. You’re a customer. I’d hardly call that an alliance.’
‘But we share a common goaclass="underline" the re-establishment of God’s true Church in England.’
Bianca turns her head away, refusing to acknowledge his words. She looks out over the river and the darkening shoreline to the north. ‘Let me make it clear: I have no desire to overthrow the queen, or her religion. I survive here by keeping my faith to myself. Please, may we speak of safer things – like the pestilence, for instance.’
When she looks at Gault again, his face wears the hurt expression of an innocent little boy slapped for a sibling’s transgression. ‘You misunderstand me, Mistress Merton. I did not confess because I wish to embroil you in sedition. I did it because I want you to trust me.’
‘Why, in the name of all the saints, should I trust you? The Grocers’ Company has done nothing but stand in my way since I came here. Your friends would rather I went back to Padua and stopped interfering in men’s business. And not so very long ago, you were threatening to shut me down for a charlatan. Now, all of a sudden, you’re desperate for my trust. I wonder why? What do I have that you desire so much?’
He wrings his gloved hands like a penitent renouncing his sins. ‘I admit it. Robert Cecil led me to believe I would find you a deceiver, a dealer in fraud and fakery. Instead, I found a comely young woman who – were she a man – might even give us merchant venturers a run for our money. As to what I want of you, that is easily answered: the Catholic cause in England could make good use of your talents.’
Is this contrition real, or a pretence? Either way, Bianca wonders how proficient Gault really is with the sword. Might it not be possible to take it from him and stab him in his patronizing arse?
‘I’ve already told you,’ she says firmly. ‘There is no alliance we could make that would be of the slightest use to you, Master Gault. Whatever talents you think I possess, I have no interest in sedition. I keep my faith to myself. And if you thought somehow to flatter me, you haven’t. Now, let us speak of less contentious matters.’
And yet his words are still buzzing in her mind as they approach the Jackdaw.
Why has he confessed such a dangerous secret to her? she wonders – if not to persuade her to reveal whether Nicholas has confided to her the real reason Robert Cecil sent him to Morocco. Why is Gault so determined to know? And why has he lied to her about knowing Solomon Mandel?
There is only one way to find out, she thinks. Earlier, Gault had spoken of alliances. Perhaps it’s time to do a little forging.
In the dawn light, the window is a pale square against the dark wall of his chamber. Nicholas calculates that he can’t have slept much beyond three hours.
He puts on his shirt and trunk-hose and goes down into the garden to sit under the old pomegranate tree. There he ponders Robert Cecil’s simplistic instructions on what to do if he should discover the alliance between England and Morocco broken: we are all relying upon your ingenuity to mend it.