On the morning of the ninth day Yaxley calls Nicholas to the larboard rail of the sterncastle and points to a faint smudge on the horizon.
‘Falmouth, Dr Shelby. Not long now until we sight good Christian land.’
‘Are you suggesting Cornwall is a pagan place, Captain Yaxley?’ Nicholas asks, playing along.
‘Have you never been to Cornwall, Dr Shelby?’
Yaxley’s laugh of self-appreciation dies in his throat as the rattle of flapping canvas reaches the deck. The pennants streaming from the mastheads, formerly pointing the way home, begin to droop. Seeing Yaxley look up, Nicholas asks, ‘What’s amiss?’
‘The wind, it’s backing. We should be thankful to have had the best of it.’
By the time they encounter the Brixham fishing fleet beneath a cloudscape of gulls, Yaxley’s speedy little command is beating long diagonal tacks on either side of the wind in order to fill her sails. Taking a meal of stockfish and biscuit in the cramped confines of Yaxley’s cabin, Nicholas’s frustration is hard to disguise.
‘If it keeps up like this, how much longer before landfall?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On God. He’s the one who sends the weather.’ Yaxley cracks a wedge of rusk and dips it into his glass of arak to soften. ‘If the wind is out of the east from now on, then maybe another four days to London. Five, if it strengthens.’
‘And if it gets truly bad?’
‘We may have to seek shelter in the Solent or at Chesil Cove.’
‘At the present rate, how long till a landfall at Dover?’
‘A little under three.’ Yaxley smiles at Nicholas’s persistence. ‘I’m guessing this is only your second voyage, Dr Shelby.’
‘My fourth, actually. The first was to the Low Countries, then back again. Not nearly so far. I was seasick most of the time. But the Marion seems to have cured me.’
‘Then I can forgive the impatience, Dr Shelby.’
‘It is a fault in me, I know.’
‘It’s something you have to learn to put aside. Impatience in a mariner is a greater failing than seasickness.’
Chastened, Nicholas takes a bite of cold stockfish, wishing Yaxley hadn’t had to order the ship’s oven doused, when the sea began to get up. ‘You’re right, of course. But you know why I’m in such haste.’
Yaxley studies him carefully. ‘I think I do. Privy Council business; the queen’s business, even.’ A knowing look comes into his eyes. ‘But you said the plot against old al-Mansur was put down before we left Safi. So maybe there’s another reason you’re in such a pelt. Would it be a maid, perhaps?’
Feeling like a child caught out in a lie, Nicholas senses the heat flow into his cheeks. ‘Am I that plain to see through, Captain Yaxley?’ he asks.
‘Transparent, Dr Shelby – as a fairy’s wing.’
The Marion pitches violently as a wave crashes into her bow. Nicholas hears the sound of the sea rushing down her sides, feels the little vessel shake herself free. ‘I suppose you can’t face danger with your fellow man, or spend a life in such close proximity to him, without learning to see what’s in his thoughts. It was the same in the Low Countries, when I was a physician with Sir Joshua Wylde’s company, fighting against the Spanish.’
‘Who is she, Dr Shelby? Describe her to me.’
Nicholas looks like a man asked to explain the countless spheres of heaven in a single sentence. He shakes his head in defeat. ‘I do not have that rogue Marlowe’s faculty with words, Captain Yaxley. All I can tell you is that if, tonight, the moon and all the stars above were snuffed out, where she is there would still be light.’
For a moment Nicholas thinks Yaxley is going to laugh at him. But he just drops his gaze, his body moving in time to the swaying of the little ship as though her deck is the only ground he’s ever known.
‘I knew one like that,’ he says contemplatively. ‘But I hesitated. And so I was lost to the sea.’
‘Is that why this barque is named the Marion?’ Nicholas asks in a flash of inspiration.
Yaxley nods. Then he lifts his eyes again and fixes Nicholas with an uncompromising stare. ‘Does this light of yours know the fellow coming home to her has taken another man’s life without a second thought?’
‘You mean Connell?’
‘Aye. I saw the look on your face, just after you discharged the rabinet.’
‘I’m not a murderer, if that’s what you mean. At least, I don’t think so. You didn’t see what he did to my friends in Marrakech.’
‘Oh, I’m not judging you, Dr Shelby. I’ve heard tales of Cathal Connell’s time in the Arabian seas that would make such a quick end seem like a mercy. But I presume you swore an oath to heal. And they do say that a man who kills once will find it easier the next time. So I think you should ask yourself: does this light of yours deserve a life wed to a fellow who has strayed off the path of mercy?’
It is a brutal question, but Nicholas does not blame Yaxley for asking it. He considers it in silence, remembering the promise he made to Muhammed al-Annuri: You will bring pestilence and death upon them, even unto the seventh generation. You will erase their names so that Allāh will forget he ever made them…
He recalls, too, that night on London Bridge, when Dr Arcampora’s men had been preparing to hurl him to his death in the black waters of the Thames. And he hears again the voice of the woman who saved him, sees her now, sees her standing before him in her physic garden beside the river on the day he told her he was leaving for Morocco: let us face the truth, Nicholas: we are both murderers now…
Gault has given Bianca a week to devise a plan to poison Robert Cecil. To keep her mind on the task, he assigns another of his apprentices as her shadow, a sour-looking boy named Calum. Whenever he visits the Jackdaw, he sits alone in one of the booths, reading a cheap copy of Hoby’s translation of The Book of the Courtier. Whether he’s learning anything from it is questionable, because it takes all Ned’s diplomacy – a substance as rare as powdered unicorn horn – to keep Calum from starting brawls with the watermen, whom he seems to consider himself above.
‘Who is he?’ asks Rose on the fourth day. ‘Why is he here?’
‘He’s one of Master Gault’s apprentices,’ Bianca explains.
‘Well, I don’t much care for him. He behaves as if he owns the place. This morning I found him poking his nose about down in the cellar, amongst your apothecary stuff. Said it reminded him of a sorcerer’s den.’
Bianca fights back the sudden anger. It’s one thing, she thinks, to accept there’s a spy in the household, quite another when he makes such a contemptuous display of it.
‘Perhaps he wanted to see where I make the preventatives,’ she says lamely. ‘Indulge him a little longer, for my sake.’
When Rose seeks further explanation, Bianca – uncharacteristically – loses her temper. After that, Calum is not mentioned in her presence again.
Bianca has barely slept since her meeting with Gault on the river. The dread that haunts her mind has become mountainous. Whatever Gault is plotting, she understands now that Nicholas has been sent to Morocco to thwart it somehow. Which means he is in great danger. And if what Gault told her about Solomon Mandel was true, none of them are safe. She has begun to curse herself for taking such an insane risk. What was she thinking, when she embarked on unmasking a man she now knows – by his own admission – to be a heartless killer?
At night, when she does finally manage an hour or two of sleep, she dreams of Nicholas being flayed alive like Solomon Mandel. Then she wakes in a drenching sweat, her mouth dry and her fingers clawing at the sheets.