He is standing in the street doorway, dressed in some strange garb that might once have been blue, save for the fact that it appears to have been trampled in the dust. His beard is unkempt, his face burned a rich honeyed brown. He looks like the prince of a band of brigands.
But he’s back. Her prayers have been answered.
She says nothing. She gives him no greeting. The need to take him in her arms makes the very thought of speech pointless. She hurls herself at him, as though she must pin him to the spot, lest a hurricano – magicked by some malevolent sorcerer – sweeps him away from her again. They cling together, swaying gently to the rhythm of their own relief.
Ned looks on, grinning like a loon. Timothy rushes to find his lute, determined to play the minstrel. Rose makes that strange noise – a cross between a foraging hog and a goose with indigestion – that comes over her whenever she gets over-emotional. Even Farzad comes out from the kitchen to see what the fuss is about, adding an extra chime to Nicholas’s happiness.
Bianca has imagined this moment every day since Ned first told her that Nicholas had not left her of his own free will. She has sensed his arms around her body, heard his voice, felt his closeness. At night when she hugs herself to sleep, it has been his fingers she has felt against her flesh. She has rehearsed endlessly what she would say to him on his return. And now he is here. She looks into his eyes, her mouth close to his.
‘You smell like a horse,’ she says.
His voice is husky. It could be passion. It could be the dust of the Dover road. ‘Take that up with Michael Sondes,’ he replies.
‘Who in the name of all Christendom is Michael Sondes?’
‘The High Sheriff of Kent. It’s his horse.’
They sit together in a taproom booth. Bianca is leaning against Nicholas as closely as she did on the day of Ned and Rose’s wedding feast, when Timothy came to tell her Farzad was missing. If he turns up now, swearing on his mother’s life that the queen has reached a rapprochement with the Pope, the pestilence has admitted defeat, and Cardinal Fiorzi has died and left her one hundred thousand ducats in his will, she has no intention of moving.
She has provided a jug of knock-down for Nicholas’s thirst and a cushion for his saddle-sores. The trimming of his beard will have to wait for later. He is home. He is fed and watered. The rest is understood.
The expression on his face breaks her heart. It is the look of a man who had been led to the scaffold, had the noose placed over his neck and then – just when he had abandoned all hope – heard the shout that heralds a reprieve. He seems unable to decide whether he should shout for joy or weep.
‘Tell me, Nicholas,’ she urges softly. ‘Why did you really go to the Barbary shore? No more lies. I need to know the truth.’
And so he gives it to her – at least a version of the truth, from which the butchery has been expunged. He sees no reason why he should inflict that upon her.
‘I already know all about Connell,’ she says when he’s finished. ‘Farzad told me. He ran away because I brought that monster into the Jackdaw.’
He gives her a questioning look. ‘How did Farzad know what manner of man Connell was?’
‘Farzad was taken as a slave, remember? It was Connell who took him.’
‘Well, he need fear Connell no longer. Connell is dead. And his master, Reynard Gault, cannot long evade justice. He will be next. I have sworn an oath upon it.’
‘I worked out for myself that Gault was the Rouge Croix Pursuivant,’ she says proudly.
‘How did you do that?’ he asks, his eyes widening in admiration.
‘He lied to me about knowing Solomon Mandel. I knew he was hiding something, so I persuaded Parson Moody to let me see the parish records for when the Moor envoy arrived in London. And there Gault was. It was he who killed Mandel.’
A look of concern clouds Nicholas’s face. ‘How do you know?’
‘He confessed.’
‘To you?’ His concern turns to horror. ‘Have you the slightest understanding of how dangerous Gault is?’
‘Are we arguing? You’ve only been back an hour.’
‘What in the name of Jesu have you contrived to get yourself into?’
‘It’s complicated,’ Bianca says, avoiding his gaze. ‘But I had to make a promise – to get Gault to admit it. It’s all something of a pottage really. I was trying to find out from him why Robert Cecil had really sent you to Morocco; he was trying to find out from me, because he thought you might have mentioned it…’
Nicholas takes her in his arms and pulls her head into the slope of his neck. ‘It’s alright, Gault’s days are numbered.’ He runs his fingers through the thick, dark waves of her hair. ‘I’ll finish this drink and then we’ll take a wherry down to Cecil House. The sooner this is over, the better. What exactly was it that you promised him?’
The reply is muffled by her closeness. He can feel the moistness of her mouth as it moves against his skin. He pushes her away – but only so that his hungry eyes may have a better feast.
‘What did you say?’
Bianca bites her lip, bracing herself for his reaction. ‘I said, “I had to promise him I would find a way to poison Robert Cecil.”’
For a moment Nicholas just stares at her. Then he buries his face in his hands and mutters, ‘Oh, by Christ’s holy wounds…’
‘It’s quite alright,’ Bianca says brightly, taking his hands tightly in hers, ‘I’m not actually going to do it.’
‘Oh, some good news!’
‘Now that you’re back, you can get Robert Cecil to have Gault arrested. But he’s not at Cecil House – he’s at Windsor, with the queen. It’s the pestilence, you see. It’s been awful.’
‘I’ll ride there first thing tomorrow,’ Nicholas says, easing the saddle-stiffness in his limbs and buttocks. ‘Right now, I’m heartily weary of anything with four legs. Horses, camels…’ He glances at Buffle, wagging her tail happily at the mouth of the booth. ‘Except for her, of course. In the meanwhile, how would it suit you to be a Suffolk yeoman’s daughter-in-law?’
Bianca – who has had proposals from the sons of Paduan gentlemen, couched in poetry as sticky as syrup – tries not to laugh, in case he takes it the wrong way. She gently draws his hands to her lips and kisses them.
And in the adjacent booth the apprentice Calum quietly sets down his jug of ale, tucks the copy of The Courtier into his jerkin and slips silently and unobserved out of the Jackdaw.
46
Nicholas hears the watch calling midnight in the lane, followed immediately by a ribald comment he can’t quite catch. Then laughter. The word, it seems, has surged through Bankside like a storm tide through the Deptford marshes: Dr Shelby and Mistress Merton are betrothed.
‘We can’t have a privy wedding,’ Bianca says sleepily as she traces the shape of his far shoulder with her fingers. ‘Bankside won’t let us. Besides, they could all do with some cheer. It’s become rather melancholy around here while you’ve been away – what with the pestilence.’
‘Why would we want a privy wedding?’ he says, tugging loose a strand of thread from the coverlet that has somehow got entangled in her hair. ‘I want all London to know about it.’