More mental crossing out, followed by further attempts at composition, all of which displease him.
Eventually Nicholas gives up. He covers his face with his hands and simply whispers I love you, multiple times, tears welling in the rims of his eyes.
When he hears the sound of the key turning in the lock, it is all he can do to stop himself screaming with a mix of fear and impotent rage.
Connell is the first man through the door. He’s dressed in the Moor fashion, in a cloth djellaba. It makes him look like a risen corpse in a winding sheet. Behind him come three young Europeans. Though they are not the apprentices from the Righteous, he guesses they have each paid the devshirme – the blood-tax.
‘God give you good morrow, Dr Shelby,’ Connell says with a cold smile. ‘Because after that, you’ll get fuck-all else from Him.’
One of the janissaries places a dish with a few scraps of bread on it beside Nicholas, who tries to eat it without betraying his hunger.
‘If I fail to return to England, Connell, Robert Cecil’s suspicions will only grow,’ he says, swallowing the last of the stale breadcrumbs. ‘He’ll send word to Sultan al-Mansur. Your conspiracy with the Falconer will fail. You already know how little mercy conspirators get shown here.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Connell says amiably. ‘But we’ve got plenty of time. When I return to London, I’ll be telling them how well you’re doing here – being an envoy and all. I’ll say you’ve found yourself a nice little Moor concubine. In fact you can tell them yourself, in your letter.’
‘What do you mean, my letter?’
‘The one you’re going to write to Robert Cecil, saying there’s naught amiss here – using the cipher that meddling bastard Sykes employed.’ He raises his brow in admiration. ‘That was clever of you, finding those papers. We thought they might already have reached England.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Don’t be a clod-pate, Shelby. Do you think I wouldn’t bring down hellfire and chastisement on the whole world, if it could gain me what I want? How long do you think that pretty maid of yours on Bankside would stand what we did to the Jew?’
‘So it was you who killed Solomon Mandel?’
Connell’s mouth gapes in a cold laugh, like a snake swallowing a mouse. ‘Not me personally. I was too busy enjoying the wedding feast. But I have friends in England, fellows who help me out every now and then, when little chores need doing.’
‘Bianca knows nothing about this. There’s no need to harm her,’ Nicholas says, his fear doubling.
‘Who’s speaking of need? I’m talking of entertainment.’
Nicholas is halfway to his feet, his hands lunging at Connell’s throat, before one the janissaries fells him with a kick to the stomach. He rolls over, clutching the pain in, as though it’s precious to him.
When he’s recovered his breath, Nicholas says miserably, ‘Why did you kill them all, out there in the garden. They were innocent. Two of them were children, for Jesu’s sake!’
‘They were untidy, that’s what they were. And you know how much I like an orderly ship.’ He turns to one of the janissaries. ‘Where have you put the bodies? We don’t want them stinking the street out. It’ll attract attention.’
‘They’re in the infidel’s chamber, Master,’ the janissary says. Nicholas recognizes the voice. It’s the voice of the kufiya, al-Annuri’s man, the one who warned him in this very storeroom to go home before it was too late. He nods in Nicholas’s direction. ‘What about this berraniyin?’
Connell squats down beside Nicholas. ‘To be plain, I’m not too sure what to do with you, Dr Shelby. I could put out the word you slew them all in a drunken rage. How do you fancy being flayed and hung from the city walls? That would answer any difficult questions from Robert Cecil, wouldn’t it?’
Nicholas stares back at him with undisguised loathing.
‘There again, you’re a valuable commodity. A slave who’s a qualified physician would be worth a deal of money in the market.’ He puts his face very close to Nicholas’s. When he grins, it’s like the flesh sliding off a rotting skull. ‘But I wouldn’t plan on siring any heirs, though. There are some masters around here who prefer their house-slaves gelded. Keeps the harem safer, or so I understand.’
He taps Nicholas on the shoulder in a gesture of friendly commiseration and makes to leave. By the door, he looks back at his prisoner, a sad smile on his face. ‘What a shame, eh, Dr Shelby? All that promise – and now some other fellow gets to take care of Mistress Merton.’
They come for him again shortly after the al-maghrib prayers, though this time Connell is not with them.
They put irons around his ankles and manacles on his wrists. The leg-irons are linked by half a yard of chain, so that he can move his feet independently. To the manacles they attach a second, longer length of chain. The kufiya tugs on the free end and Nicholas shuffles out of the storeroom like an old blind man finding his way to the jakes in the dark.
The garden is once again bathed in moonlight. From somewhere in the direction of the Badi Palace a dog howls a plaintive lament. The night is warm and the scent of death still lingers. Nicholas keeps his eyes closed. He knows, from what the kufiya said earlier, that the bodies have been removed, but whether or not Connell lets him live, Nicholas has no wish ever to look upon this place again.
They lead him out of the Street of the Weavers and into the darkened city. In London, a man being led about on a chain might raise an eyebrow or two, unless the one doing the leading was a bailiff or a man-at-arms. Here, no one gives Nicholas a second look. Clearly, to the few people he passes he is already a slave.
He thinks of the other transitions in his life: from boy to man; from virgin to lover; from husband to widower; from almost extinguished to a second chance, through the unexpected intervention of Bianca Merton. And he comes to the conclusion that the journey between being a me and being an it should be better marked. It is a death. And the dead should be mourned.
The kufiya is an impatient young man. When his prisoner stumbles, he curses in a language Nicholas thinks might be Slavic. He remembers what de Lisle had told him: young men from the Christian coastal villages around the Mediterranean… a simple choice: renounce their Christian faith… serve the Moors as warriors – or die…
To help assuage the kufiya’s anger, whenever he berates Nicholas’s clumsiness, one of the other janissaries takes a vicious kick at the object of his displeasure. By the time they reach the Bimaristan al-Mansur, Nicholas has learned not to stumble.
Connell is waiting for them in the darkness. Nicholas is not taken in through the entrance he remembers from his last visit; instead, he’s hustled towards a narrow doorway in the faceless mud-brick wall some fifty yards beyond. Like a drowning man gasping for air, he throws back his head to catch a last glimpse of the world he is leaving. The sky seems made of black parchment. It has a brittleness to it, as though the warm desert night has somehow dried it out and if he were to flick it with a finger, it would tear.
He remembers the night Dr Arcampora’s men delivered him, bound and bloodied, to a warehouse on Petty Wales. Then, Bianca had found the guile and the courage to save him. She had had to make herself complicit in murder to do so, but she hadn’t hesitated. But tonight she is a continent away. Tonight there is no one to save him but himself. And he has no strength left in him to try.