‘I need the money, Bianca,’ he says, almost with embarrassment, ‘so that I can ensure my father doesn’t lose Barnthorpe.’
For a moment she says nothing. Then, still holding his hands in hers, ‘I had no notion it was that troublesome.’
‘He mortgaged the land so that I could study medicine. I won’t stand idly and let him and the family face penury.’
She leans forward and kisses the black curling of his hairline. ‘I understand.’
‘There’s something else.’
Stepping back, she says, ‘Should I be worried?’
‘Not at all. Before I left Cecil House, Sir Robert made me – us – a proposition.’
Despite his assurance, the news goes through her like a needle. Her hands tighten on his. ‘A proposition? What manner of proposition? Does he want us to sell him our souls, too?’
‘Little Bruno is to join Sir Robert’s own children in the Cecil household.’
For a moment Bianca can do nothing but stare at him.
‘The Crab is going to steal away our son?’
‘No! Not steal – advance.’ Nicholas’s face brightens with enthusiasm. ‘Think of it: our son schooled by the Cecil tutors, raised by the ladies of the queen’s principal Secretary of State. Imagine what a future that will open up for him.’
‘But he’s my son. He’s only three!’
‘Yes, at the moment. But he won’t be three for ever. He will go when he’s ten.’
‘Into a stranger’s household?’
‘Robert Cecil isn’t a stranger, he’s Lord Burghley’s heir and successor. He’s the queen’s principal minister.’
‘He’s a scheming dissembler, that’s what Robert Cecil is.’
Nicholas stares at her in puzzlement. ‘Why are you so resistant to the notion?’
‘Because Bruno is our son, Nicholas. Is that so hard to understand?’
‘But it’s what happens to all children, if they have the opportunity – which precious few on Bankside will ever have. It will give him more than I ever could, even as a successful physician. When Bruno goes to Cambridge, he won’t be a sizar – little better than a servant to the gentlemen students. He’ll go as their equal. He won’t have to get his fists bloodied trying to prove he’s their match. He’ll be one of them.’
‘Judging by some of the English gentlemen I’ve encountered, I’m not sure I want that. Better that he grows up with people like Rose and Ned about him – people who can teach him what true loyalty is.’
But in Nicholas’s imagination, the scenes in Bruno’s life are already flashing by, bright and clear.
‘As a companion to the Cecil heir, he’ll be welcome at court… There will be a good marriage, to a bride from a great family, the prospect of a knighthood…’
The shine in her husband’s eyes puts a check on Bianca’s anger. She will not chide him for wanting the best for their son. She says, as evenly as she can manage, ‘I’d rather our son be his own man, like the cousin we named him after.’
She gets nothing but a harsh laugh for her efforts.
‘That cousin spent his life always one step ahead of his creditors, ever on the search for the next wild enterprise. Is that what you want for our boy – a precarious existence, buffeted by the fickle winds of fortune?’
‘Of course not,’ Bianca says, pulling her hands from his rather more sharply than she had intended. ‘But I’d take that over the alternative: every man or woman he meets valued solely by how much they may assist his advance.’
‘But Bruno isn’t like that.’
‘Nicholas, Cecil House will make him like that.’
To break free from the argument before it gets out of hand, Bianca plucks at the flowers on a row of marjoram, picking those she thinks will make a good solution for the ringing in the ears that so troubles Henry Coxon, the farrier from the Tabard’s stables. From out on the river comes raucous laughter, revellers in a tilt-boat heading towards the Paris Garden.
She is comfortable on Bankside, though she misses the colour and the heat of a Paduan summer. She has made a life here, though God knows the place has its dark side: the stews and the dice-houses, the bear-pits and the haunts of purse-divers. And heaven forbid that Bruno should grow up and desire to become a player at the Rose, like the ones who drink in the Jackdaw, strutting about like an earl while he borrows a ha’penny for another quart of knockdown and gets into a brawl over whose portrayal of mad Titus Andronicus is the most affecting.
But she cannot escape the truth in what Nicholas has said. Preferment by the Cecils will give Bruno vastly more opportunity in life than a Bankside tavern-mistress could ever hope for her son. Yet if she has learned one thing in all the while she has known Robert Cecil, it is that he gives nothing away for free. Nothing is forgotten. Every little favour goes down in the ledger. So what can be so important to him that he would offer Nicholas this bright future for her son?
‘I’m coming with you,’ she calls out, turning away from the marjoram.
‘Take your ease,’ he calls back, misunderstanding her. ‘We’ve plenty of time.’
‘No, I mean to Ireland.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘There’s a rebellion–’
‘There’ll be a worse one here on Bankside if you object.’
‘What about Bruno?’
‘Oh, now you want him to be with his mother!’
‘But–’
‘Bruno will be fine with Rose and Ned. I’m coming with you.’
‘Will there be a rage if I say no?’
Bianca’s hands fly above her head, then apart, imitating the sudden breaking of a thundercloud. ‘More than a rage, Husband – a tempest. A storm that will bring down spires and scatter ships onto the rocks.’
Nicholas sighs in defeat. ‘Very well, for the sake of tranquillity… It’s only three weeks or so, I suppose. After all, all I have to do is fetch a message from Edmund Spenser.’
Bianca runs over and kisses his cheek in reconciliation. ‘Three weeks,’ she says soothingly. ‘Though if Master Spenser’s company is as exciting as his poetry, it will probably feel like three years.’
5
Noon on a blustery day in late September, and beneath Dublin’s city walls the Liffey has almost reached its flood, dashing the occasional surge of spray over the capstones along Wood Quay.
‘Ten days, if the weather holds and the wind is in your favour,’ Robert Cecil had told them. ‘Take ship at Bristol, rather than Chester. Bristol is quieter. Fewer curious eyes.’
He hadn’t bothered to explain why the number of eyes was important.
And he had been wrong on both counts. The Vale of Evesham had been much flooded by the sharp storm that had swept over London in the days before the Southwark Fair. Nicholas and Bianca had found the road west still inundated in several places. At Bristol every ship was crammed with troops bound for Waterford, most of them with little to do but stare in boredom at their surroundings and gamble away the pay they hadn’t yet earned. And for every three soldiers, or so it seemed, there was at least one camp-follower – altogether, more eyes than you’d find gazing from the packed benches at the Rose theatre. In the end, they had made the journey from Bankside in twelve days.
‘State your business, Master, if you please,’ says the port searcher in the quilted surcoat and crested morion helmet, a broadsword at his belt long enough to hang washing from.