As the port searcher promised, they find the Tholsel with ease. Bianca is the first to spot the clock-face on the tower above a clamorous mob of about fifty people. For the beating heart of civic government, the building looks surprisingly down at heel. The glass has been removed from the windows and some of the lead has been stripped off the roof, presumably to be melted down for musket shot. It reminds Nicholas of a wool-exchange long after the trade has moved to another town. Jostling their way inside, they find themselves in a gloomy hall full of wood-panelled cubicles and benches, where the clerks to the Lord Justices and the Lieutenant-General’s staff toil under an avalanche of paperwork, doing their best to obey instructions that change almost as soon as they are given. The accents they can hear are from half the shires in England, the bureaucratic plainsong of the English administration. Here and there they can detect the softer, lilting speech of the Anglo-Irish, and even the mysterious music of native Gaeilge.
‘I had hoped we might keep our presence here quiet,’ Nicholas says as they attempt, by a process of elimination, to locate the clerk responsible for the strangers’ roll. ‘Now it’s going to be on record.’
‘Do we really have to register?’
He nods. ‘They’ll have people checking on any tavern that you and I would care to lie down in. New faces will raise questions. I wouldn’t rate our chances highly if someone takes it into their heads that we’re rebel spies.’
‘Name?’ says the register clerk, barely looking up.
‘Dr Nicholas Shelby,’ Nicholas says. He gives Bianca an apologetic glance. ‘And Goodwife Shelby.’ I’ve never called her that, he thinks. It sounds like someone I don’t know.
‘Would that be a doctor of medicine or a doctor of theology?’
‘Medicine.’
The clerk makes an entry on his roll, drawing the nib of his quill in slow, scratchy perambulation over the parchment. He looks up, his eyes bloodshot from his labouring in the gloom, and scratches his nose with an ink-stained finger. ‘You should make yourself known to the mayor’s clerks. Physicians are as scarce as cardinals in Dublin.’
‘I’m not here to practise physic. I’m here to carry out an official commission,’ Nicholas says, handing the clerk the letter he’d shown the port searcher. ‘You’ll see from this that I’m from the Stationers’ Company at St Paul’s, in London. I’ve come to speak to Master Edmund Spenser. Do you know where I may find him?’
‘That depends on which Master Spenser you want,’ the clerk says obtusely.
‘There’s more than one?’
‘Several.’ The clerk anoints the air with the tip of his quill, counting out the options. ‘There’s Mr Spenser the muster-master, in which case I would refer you to the Lieutenant-General’s office. There’s Mr Spenser the secretary – you’re best seeking out the Sheriff of Munster if you want to speak to him on council business. If it’s Mr Spenser the landowner, you’d be best seeing his bailiff at Kilcolman. If it’s the Mr Spenser they say will likely be the next Sheriff of Cork–’
‘It’s the poet I need to see. The Faerie Queen – that fellow.’
‘Yes, I know,’ says the clerk.
‘You mean, they’re all the same man?’
‘A very prominent citizen is Master Spenser,’ the clerk says proudly.
‘It’s so much easier on Bankside,’ Bianca whispers into his ear. ‘If you want to find a poet there, all you have to do is shout, “I’ll stand the next quart of knockdown.”’
Nicholas hushes her into silence.
Mercifully, before Nicholas can lean across and strangle the man, he hears a voice calling from the adjacent cubicle:
‘I believe I may be of assistance to you–’
His name is Piers Gardener. An honest fellow, loyal to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in all matters, including religion – from an Anglo-Irish family of modest but sound reputation. And any Gardener worth his salt, he assures them, knows his way around Ireland like a flea knows its way around a dog.
He has a young, guileless face, framed by gentle blond curls, and the trusting brown eyes of a milk-calf. Bianca would give him no more than twenty years. His beard is making its best effort to grow, though it’s still a long way from a good harvest. In the gloom, she could swear there are patches of flour on his jerkin and hose.
‘Fear not, Mistress,’ he says, catching the question in her eyes. ‘I’m not a ghost.’ He pats his breast. A tiny, pale cloud falls away from his fingers. ‘They call us the grey merchants. It’s the dust we pick up from always being out on the road.’ He smiles at her with endearing frankness. ‘You should see me when it’s hot and the sun is high. I look like a miller.’
‘And the nature of your merchandise?’ Bianca asks, wondering if this is merely the opening patter in what will prove to be nothing but a bald attempt to sell them something.
‘Sheepskin and hides, mostly,’ he tells her. ‘Munster… Leinster… Ulster… there’s few places in this isle where the name Piers Gardener is not known, nor his honesty held in high regard.’
‘I’m sure that’s true,’ says Nicholas, trying to keep the doubt from his voice. ‘But can you help us find Edmund Spenser?’
‘But of course,’ Gardener replies. ‘He is at Kilcolman. I was there only last week. I can take you to him, if you would like.’
‘For a price, I suppose?’ Bianca suggests.
Gardener looks hurt. ‘No more than the price of renting a horse to ride. I have to go that way on official business.’
‘Official?’ Nicholas says. ‘You’re a government man as well as a merchant?’
‘I have the honour to be engaged as scrivener to the Surveyor of Victuals.’
Gardener explains that it is the duty of the Surveyor to record the fullness, or more usually the depletion, of the barrels of stock-fish, oatmeal, butter, biscuit, cheese and sack to be found in the cellars of the many isolated garrisons of Her Majesty’s soldiers currently scattered throughout Ireland. Naturally, one would no more expect the Surveyor to count the victuals himself than expect the Lord Treasurer to count the coins in the Treasury. The menial work he leaves to someone better suited to it: someone who travels widely on his own account. At present, Gardener tells them, his position is unofficial. It will cease to be unofficial just as soon as the Surveyor of Victuals prises the requisite funds out of the Treasurer-at-War.
Here it comes, thinks Bianca: the appeal for money. Gardener’s patter is a slick as that of a Bankside street-trickster. ‘But at the moment, of course, you have no income…’ she suggests, inviting his pitch.
A look of horror clouds Piers Gardener’s innocent face. ‘Mercy, Mistress!’ he protests. ‘I am no swindler, if that is what you are thinking.’
For a moment the three of them are trapped in an uncomfortable silence. Bianca wonders if she’s been too harsh on Master Piers Gardener. Then the register clerk waves them aside with his quill, beckoning the next newcomer to Dublin to step forward.
‘We’ll let you know,’ Nicholas says. ‘We’ve only arrived within the hour. We haven’t eaten or rested, and decisions made in haste may not always be the wisest ones.’
‘I understand, Master,’ says Gardener in a carefree manner. ‘But I would loathe to see the two of you gulled. Dublin is full of bad fellows who will cheat a stranger as soon as wish him good morrow.’
Nicholas asks, ‘If we have need of you, Master Gardener, where may we find you?’
‘Either here or on St Bride’s Street at the sign of the Peacock,’ Gardener says. He gives a rueful smile, as though Nicholas has just shown a losing hand at primero. ‘But I do urge you to think carefully about my offer. Horses will be hard to find in the present circumstances, and you’ll discover it very costly to have armed men about you.’