‘That is quite some tale, Mistress,’ he says. ‘I can think of no woman in London who could match it.’
‘Given what we confessed to each other at our last meeting, you should be grateful.’ She sighs with mock sadness. ‘Poor Kit. Now he has no one to spy upon but Satan.’
Gault is staring at her with undisguised admiration, and not a little unvarnished desire.
‘Why have you told me this, Mistress Merton? What is it you want from me in return?’
The smile she gives him contains a galleon’s worth of Indies sugar.
‘You’re the clever merchant, Master Gault. I’ll leave you to decide the value of the merchandise. Don’t leave it too long – I’m only patient when it comes to revenge.’
Bianca heads down Giltspur Street towards the river, oblivious to passers-by. She wears a wide, triumphant grin that not even the sour stench of cow dung can shift.
Lured, hooked, dispatched and ready for the pot, she tells herself. The gulling of Reynard Gault is very nearly complete. All she has to wait for now is the summons.
What will it be, she wonders, when the confession comes? What conspiracy will he reveal to her, now that he thinks he’s found the perfect partner in crime?
As she approaches the Water Gate at Blackfriars she sees a vacant wherry waiting for a customer. She smiles with satisfaction. Sometimes, it seems, there are days when everything is determined to go your way.
Making herself comfortable on the stern-seat, she thinks: how easy it is to make a vain man – especially one who believes he has power over you – jump to your tune, like poor old Sackerson the bear. The sweeter the promised honey, the livelier his dance.
38
Nicholas has reached the limit of endurance. He will write whatever Connell wants him to write. He will tell Robert Cecil any lie; betray any oath he’s ever made; sell his soul to the Devil – do anything demanded of him, if only he’s allowed to leave this oven of a torture chamber where every breath feels like hot syrup in the lungs.
There is a grille set into the ceiling, barely a foot square. If he clambers onto the top crates and lies out on his back – a trial in itself, given that he still wears the ankle-irons and manacles – he can breathe fresher air. But he cannot do it for long. Lying beneath the iron lattice is like putting his face too close to a fire.
If he wastes energy shouting for help, the kufiya visits him. He brings with him another janissary who speaks in the same Irish lilt as Cathal Connell. They encourage Nicholas to silence by taking turns to lay about him with a cane.
The Irish boy has the face of an angry child, seared by too many hurts delivered too early in life. His companion retains the interrogator’s superiority Nicholas recalls from the storeroom in Adolfo Sykes’s house: Take my advice: go home at the earliest opportunity. You would not be the first man who has come here only to disappear into the slave market…
Nicholas judges it must be around noon when again he hears the sound of the key turning in the lock, though by now his sense of timekeeping is no better than Sultan al-Mansur’s. The fear that Connell has come for him turns the sweat on his skin into beads of ice.
But Connell has not come. His visitors are the two lads, though this time instead of beating him, they bring him fruit and water. The water is tepid, but the fruit is good.
‘Make the best of this,’ the kufiya tells him. ‘Captain Connell gave it to us, to keep you alive. Be grateful; only infidels may eat between sunrise and sunset. For the faithful, now is the holy month of fasting.’
‘Then you’d best tell Connell to bring me pen, ink and paper as well, because if he leaves me here much longer, he’ll not get his letter,’ Nicholas says, wiping the sweat from his eyes with the filthy sleeve of his shirt.
‘Why do you complain?’ asks the kufiya. ‘In the bagnios – where they keep the public slaves – they cram them in like fish in a barrel. They would kill their own kin to have a chamber to themselves.’
But then, to Nicholas’s surprise, they show him a little mercy. They lead him outside to relieve himself, playfully shaking the length of chain as though they were Bankside street entertainers and he the performing monkey. By the corner of the little building, the Irish lad pays out the chain so that Nicholas can pull his hose down around his knees. He doesn’t care about the lack of privacy – serving in the Low Countries soon knocked the bashfulness out of him.
Though it takes his eyes a while to adjust to the blinding sunlight, Nicholas gets his first opportunity to see his surroundings in daylight.
His place of torment is a hermit’s cell of mud-brick, set in the centre of a walled enclosure some thirty paces a side. The only exit is the single door they led him through last night. He wonders if this is where the Bimaristan confines those who suffer the worst trials of insanity. He thinks he might soon be listed amongst them, if he has to spend many more hours in that oppressive chamber.
‘Don’t go, stay a while. Tell me who you are,’ Nicholas pleads in desperation, when they prepare to return him to the oven of his captivity. ‘I’m not trying to trick you. Just tell me who you are – we’re all berraniyin here, aren’t we?’
The lad with the Irish accent laughs. ‘Outsiders? Not any more. When our master is sultan, I shall be a duke in his court.’ He adopts a stance of affected nobility, hands on hips, head thrown arrogantly back. ‘Why, I’m already the son of an English knight, Sir Thomas Winterbourne. A great man, by all accounts. I have the paper to prove it.’ He makes a little dancing mime of dispensing alms to grovelling peasants.
‘Proved by the Rouge Croix Pursuivant, no doubt,’ says Nicholas, hoping to pique his curiosity.
The lad stops his play-acting. He comes closer, peering at Nicholas as though he were an exhibit in a cabinet of curiosities. ‘Captain Connell was right, you do know more than you’re lettin’ on. Did my old master tell you that?’
‘That depends on which master you’re speaking of: Connell, or Reynard Gault. I’m guessing that you came here on a Barbary company ship, and that Gault gave you a false lineage.’
A sudden flicker of uncertainty in the lad’s eyes. ‘What do you know of Master Gault?’
‘More to the question, what do you know of Sir Thomas Winterbourne? Save for the fact that he probably doesn’t exist. Or any of his supposed ancestors.’
‘It doesn’t fuckin’ matter if he exists or not,’ the lad snaps. ‘I’m his son. I have the writing to prove it. That makes me of noble blood. And that means I shall be a duke when we throw down the sultan and–’
The kufiya gives the lad a savage push that almost topples him. ‘Stop blathering, you stupid llafazan. Can’t you see what he’s doing?’
The Irish boy drops Nicholas’s chain and rounds on his companion, using his chest as a ram. ‘What did you call me, y’heathen?’