‘Who?’
‘Ibn Sina. He was a Persian physician. We know him as Avicenna.’
She comes out from behind the table, the hem of her gown swirling around her ankles like a willow in a summer squall. ‘Well, I know that Robert Cecil is a snake. You have denied him – haven’t you?’
‘I told you, yes.’
She fixes him with a stern gaze and turns away before responding. ‘Good, because for a moment I was sure you’d invented the whole story simply in order to disappear for a while – to avoid the wedding.’
The Jackdaw has seldom looked so resplendent. Fresh paint gleams on the lintel. The ivy around the little latticed windows is neatly trimmed. The irregular timbers appear to be merely resting, rather than sagging under the three hundred years of travail they’ve endured, holding up the ancient brickwork. As Nicholas follows Bianca through the doorway, he catches the mingled tang of hops, wood-smoke and fresh rushes. From her place by the hearth, the Jackdaw’s dog, Buffle, looks up at their arrival, wags her tail once and promptly goes back to sleep.
It has not been easy for Bianca to stay away, now that she’s left the daily management of the tavern to Rose, her former maid, and to Ned Monkton. She suspects that if her apothecary shop was not doing such brisk business, she’d be poking her head over the threshold every other hour.
Almost immediately she spots Ned. He’s standing in the centre of the taproom, casting an appraising eye at the scattering of breakfasters like a fiery-bearded Celtic chieftain after a good battle. Seeing her, he smooths his apron over his great frame and attempts a gallant bending of the knee.
‘Mistress Bianca! ’Pon my troth, ’tis wondrous good to see you,’ he says. ‘Rose has the accounts ready, if you’ve come to see them. Just squiggles to me, but she assures me they’re in order.’
‘I’m sure they are, Ned,’ Bianca says, with more confidence than she feels. Trusting Rose to keep anything in order – especially from a distance – has not come easily to her.
At the sound of Bianca’s voice, Rose comes hurrying from the kitchen like a plump partridge flushed by a spaniel. Running a hand quickly through her black curls, she bobs in obeisance. ‘Mistress, I wasn’t expecting–’
Bianca smiles. ‘Rose, dear, you don’t have to courtesy. I’ve cancelled your indenture, remember? You’re no longer my servant. You’re not beholden to me in any way.’ The faintest lift of a fine Paduan eyebrow. ‘Unless, of course, your accounting is deficient.’
An abbess accused of running a jumping-shop couldn’t look half as horrified at the suggestion as Rose does. ‘Mercy, Mistress! I’ve been diligent,’ she protests, her cheeks blushing. ‘Like you instructed: Walter Pemmel to have no credit beyond ninepence; Parson Moody to settle his slate promptly every Sunday, an’ a penny on his ale each time he starts singing those songs of his – the one with the nuns in them…’
Nicholas listens with a sad smile of remembrance on his face, and wonders if it might be practical to rent just the downstairs room at Mistress Muzzle’s.
‘I’m sure you’re doing everything to the letter, Rose,’ Bianca says, giving her a belated kiss of greeting. ‘To be honest, I’m more concerned about trade.’
‘It has been quiet, Mistress,’ admits Ned. ‘But then all Bankside is quiet, given what’s happening across the river. Strangers aren’t exactly welcome these days. You don’t know what they might be bringing with them.’
‘Well, here is the man who can tells us first-hand,’ Bianca says, fixing Nicholas with a challenging stare. ‘You were chewing the cud with a member of the Privy Council this morning, Nicholas. What does your friend the Lord Treasurer’s son say?’
‘Apparently the pestilence is confined around the Fleet ditch and Holborn. But if the queen decides to postpone her new parliament and retire to Greenwich or Windsor, many in the city will take it as a signal to leave.’
‘Those who have the luxury,’ Bianca says fiercely.
‘Yes. That’s what I told Robert Cecil.’
She jams her fists into her waist and defiantly thrusts out her elbows. ‘Well, we’ll keep the place scrubbed clean, and burn rosemary and angelica in all the candle sconces. Fresh rushes every day, and if we have lodgers, then boil the bed sheets on Mondays and Thursdays. Use the pottage cauldron if you must, Rose, but for heaven’s sake make sure it’s clean before you do. I don’t want the bed linen dyed brown and smelling of turnips.’ She looks at Nicholas. ‘Any other suggestions, Dr Shelby?’
‘None that would be any more effective, Mistress Merton.’
‘We could all run away to Marrakech, of course,’ she says teasingly.
‘Marry who?’ Rose demands with a scowl.
‘Marrakech. It’s place, dear. A long way away. Nicholas knows where it is, don’t you, Nicholas?’
For a moment Rose looks about to cry. ‘But the marriage is to be here, on Bankside! It’s all arranged. We’ve even hung up the kissing knots.’ She points to the little woven balls of greenery hanging from the ceiling beams. ‘There’s a special one by the window, for you and Master Nicholas. Go on, we’ve all been waiting.’
‘Rose!’
But Rose gives an impertinent toss of her head that has her black curls rippling across her brow. ‘You can’t be cross, Mistress – you said I wasn’t indentured any more.’
Ned Monkton grins. ‘You’ll have to try it out, Mistress – see if it works. We all spent hours putting them up. Rose insisted.’ He turns to the nearest booth, where an elderly man with a long threadbare white beard and a tight-fitting black cap on his head is taking his breakfast. ‘Isn’t that so, Master Mandel?’
Solomon Mandel, a Jew who lives in the lane beyond the public well, licks his fingers clean. ‘Rose had me perched on a stool to put that thing up there,’ he says crossly. ‘Imagine it – me, at my age!’
‘If I recall rightly, Master Solomon, you insisted on helping,’ says Rose. ‘And I vaguely recall you dancing a little measure while you were doing it.’
The image of the usually reserved Solomon Mandel dancing on a chair while he ties a kissing knot to the rafters is a startling one for Nicholas. Mandel is a reserved fellow who lives alone and goes about his trade – importing foreign spices – without fanfare. He has been a regular at the Jackdaw since shortly after Farzad’s arrival became common knowledge on Bankside. He’d enquired, in a strange tongue, if the young Persian could cook a certain bread that neither Rose nor Bianca had ever heard of. When Farzad said yes, Mandel almost wept with joy. From that day on, he’s arrived promptly at daybreak for his breakfast of kubaneh.
‘You are a tyrant, Mistress Rose, a veritable tyrant, do you hear?’ Mandel says, wagging a cautionary finger in her direction. ‘Making an old man stand on a chair just so you can crow to all Southwark that you’ve witnessed Master Nicholas and Mistress Bianca exchanging a kusch.’ He looks in their direction, his moist old eyes set far back in their caves. ‘If it’s going to happen, could you two please get on with it, so I can finish Farzad’s excellent kubaneh?’
Seeing the trap that’s been laid for them, Bianca begins to protest. ‘Oh no, no, no…’
‘We have to go,’ says Nicholas, coming to her aid. ‘I’m bound to have patients to see–’
But the ambush has been too well set. The quarry is surrounded.
Farzad arrives from the kitchen, grinning all over his round face, while Timothy the taproom lad appears as if from nowhere and begins hopping from table to table, leading the customers in a rising tattoo of table-thumping. Ned and Rose all but march the couple to where the kissing knot hangs like a waiting noose.