Bianca shoots Nicholas a look that says, You didn’t mention anything about us requiring armed protection.
‘I thought Munster was quiet at present,’ he says, echoing her thoughts.
‘You’ll have been travelling; you may not have heard the news,’ says Gardener. ‘The rebels are at Limerick. They’ve burned some of the settler plantations roundabouts. But I know the safe roads and pathways, and I know the people. I can vouch for you, as well as guide you. If you’re thinking of leaving today, I would advise you to take up my offer. Remember: the watch will shut the city gates at dusk.’
Gardener gives a courteous bow, reminds them where they might find him, and heads for the door.
The instant before he reaches it, it flies open, almost hitting him in the face. A man rushes in, shouting triumphantly, ‘They’re bringing rebels in! Three of the papist swine. Come and see!’
Swept up in the rush, before Nicholas and Bianca know it, they are standing outside the Tholsel amid a small crowd, their ears assaulted by a noise similar to the one the audience at the Rose makes when the villainous Turk or the Pope walks on-stage – a throaty mix of derision and loathing.
A low cart rumbles into the square, drawn by a tired and dejected-looking pony, its hocks caked in mud, its huge dark eyes placid and unconcerned. Leading the beast are two men in buff jerkins and knee-high boots, their mouths grinning with vicarious triumph.
‘Well, at least we shall see what manner of fellows have thrown the Privy Council into such a terror,’ Nicholas whispers.
Bianca looks at the passing cart, expecting to see a trio of bearded, painted warriors in plaid – huge mountain men with deep, glaring eyes and snarling mouths. Instead she sees nothing but sheaves of straw, piled up to the rim of the cart. Otherwise, the cart appears to be empty. It trundles slowly past, the axles grinding discordantly in their collars, a dancing crowd of jeering onlookers following in its wake. Perplexed, she lets her eyes follow.
As the cart moves away, Bianca gets a sight of its open tailboard – and three human heads, propped upright on the planks against the straw, staring at her with their sightless young eyes.
She turns to Nicholas, her hands flying to cover her open mouth, too shocked to ask the question: What manner of hellish place have you let Robert Cecil bring us to?
6
The Brazen Head, the port searcher had said. Prophetic advice, Bianca thinks. Staring down at her, from a board hanging out over the lane, is a garish, disembodied face, painted in brilliant red with yellow flames for hair.
Her hands are still trembling from the macabre sight she’d witnessed only a few minutes before. She wonders why it has so affected her. A whole coronet of severed heads sits atop the southern gatehouse of London Bridge. She cannot cross the top of Long Southwark, or go over the Thames into the city, without passing beneath them. But those are the heads of traitors, condemned by judicial process. What must have befallen the three boys whose heads she has just seen lying on the floor of the cart seems to her more like vengeful murder. Not one of them had been older than dear Timothy, her taproom lad at the Jackdaw. She had heard that Ireland was a barbarous place, but she had never expected this.
‘A glass of sack might settle you,’ Nicholas says as they enter. ‘I think I need one, myself.’
‘They looked so young,’ Bianca says sadly, shaking her head to cast off the image that seems painted on the inside of her eyelids.
‘They were rebels. Rebellion against the Crown is no trivial matter. The punishment cannot be trivial, either.’
‘You condone that?’ she asks, staring at her husband. ‘You, a man who’s made healing the sick his guidepost?’
‘No, of course not,’ Nicholas says defensively. ‘But insurrection cannot be treated with a gentle hand, or else all semblance of order might be overthrown.’
‘You sound like Robert Cecil.’
‘I accept such punishment is harsh, but there is purpose to it.’
‘Purpose?’ she exclaims.
‘If you burn your finger on a candle’s flame, you are unlikely to thrust your hand into a fire. For your whole body, that burnt finger was a mercy.’
‘I would never have taken you for a tyrant, Nicholas,’ she says, surprised by his response.
‘I didn’t say I agreed with it. But those rebels raised their swords against the queen’s lawful rule. Robert Cecil would say that’s tantamount to raising them against God.’
‘But you’ve rebelled against God, Nicholas,’ Bianca says gently. ‘You told me so yourself. When your first wife died carrying your child, you railed against Him. You denied Him.’
‘Yes, I did.’
How easy it is now, he thinks, to revisit memories that had once almost driven him to the sin of self-destruction. Bianca has given him the strength to do that. And she has given him more: she has given him little Bruno.
‘Then should you not be severely punished,’ she asks, her voice softening further, ‘for seeking to overthrow His order?’
He tilts his head back and stares at the sky, as though appealing for help from above.
‘I have been punished,’ he says. ‘God has sent me a wife who is so clever she can take my thoughts and tangle them into a knot, which she can then magically unravel, and – lo – I discover they were not my thoughts at all, but belonged to some other fellow, and now I cannot fathom what I believe!’
She smiles at the way the Suffolk burr strengthens in his voice when his heart is at its most open. ‘Would you prefer a wife who did nothing but sit at home, sewing and reading her psalter?’
‘Do you mean at this precise moment–’
She jabs him with her elbow. ‘You’re right about one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That glass of sack. After today’s shock, I might need more than one.’
Their luck is in. Not only does the sack hit the mark, but there is also a room about to be vacated. They order their glasses refilled while the bedding is refreshed. A trencher of stringy mutton and a hunk of manchet bread is all the kitchen can provide. The meat has globules of yellow fat on it and the bread is stale. But the sack is sweet, and it washes away the awful images in Bianca’s mind. While she drinks she casts a professional eye around the Brazen Head.
The first thing she notices is the number of soldiers. At least she assumes they’re soldiers, by the swords and poniards they wear at their belts, and by the lusty songs they keep belting out about killing papists or rolling maidens in the hay. There is little consistency in the uniforms they wear, nothing as colourful or as disciplined as the troops she’s seen in Padua or Venice.
‘Are these the fellows the queen is relying upon to save Ireland?’ she asks Nicholas.
‘Apparently. No wonder the Earl of Tyrone’s rebels have had the better of them. Let us pray Robert Cecil is wrong about the Spanish coming to their aid. If they do, Ireland will be theirs inside one month. Were that to happen, they could be in England within two.’
The wine and the thought of a comfortable bed that does not lurch to the movement of the waves, like a drunkard dancing a volta, makes Bianca tired. She promises herself to stay awake long enough to write a letter to Bruno that Rose can read to him. She has steeled herself not only to his absence, but to Nicholas’s desire for him to enter Robert Cecil’s household when he is older. Much as the thought pains her, she knows it will only be to Bruno’s harm if she stands in the way.