‘Let me tell you something, Mistress Bianca,’ he says calmly. ‘My grandfather, whom I loved deeply, went to the flames as one of Mary Tudor’s victims. My father only escaped a bonfire by fleeing abroad. Would you see those monstrous times returned to England, to Ireland? Those Spaniards you concern yourself with would have everyone in these isles in thrall to the Antichrist. What I and my men did on that beach – what we do in Ireland – is protect the immortal souls of every man, woman and child of the one true faith. If that requires the occasional cruelty, then I will answer to it before God. And I know how He will judge me.’ He lays the weapon aside and leans back in his chair, swinging his elegantly hosed legs over the corner of the table. ‘Now, what have I done to deserve the presence of so much beauty in such an ugly place?’
‘You were once so courtly, Oliver,’ she says, alarmed to find herself slightly chastened. ‘This fight for my immortal soul seems to have coarsened you somewhat. Am I to remain standing in your presence?’
To her surprise, he blushes. ‘Forgive me,’ he says. He gets up and pulls another chair over to the table. Then, expectantly, he resumes his former languid pose.
To lift the mood, she says with a girlish laugh, ‘I’ve come to accept your proposal of marriage. I’ve tired of my lumpen oaf of a husband – the one who drew himself up from a humble farmer’s son to become the queen’s physician. I thought I’d be better off with an empty vessel prettily painted.’
‘So, you’ve come here only to tease?’
‘You were always easy to tease, Oliver. You took yourself so seriously.’
‘A third son doesn’t have the expectations of the first,’ he tells her, as though it’s a secret he has never imparted to anyone before her. ‘He has to work hard. He has to take risks, like tying his banner to that of the Earl of Essex and nearly getting his head carried away by a cannonball at Cádiz. Your husband is not the only one to have had to make his own way in the world.’ He studies her, his eyes glinting with unasked questions, and no little regret for what he imagines might have been. ‘You didn’t tell me until now that he was the queen’s physician.’
‘You didn’t ask, Oliver.’
‘So he’s not a quack or a charlatan, like most of the others? Like the ones who let my lads die because they believe a spell can heal a sword thrust?’
‘Quite the opposite, Oliver. Nicholas has served as an army physician in the Low Countries. He doesn’t believe in spells and drawing up a horoscope to make a diagnosis. But he does know how to mend broken bodies, if they can be saved. I assume there are plenty of those in this isle. He can be of some goodly use to the Earl of Ormonde.’
‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘He doesn’t look like a queen’s physician.’
‘Have you ever been to Greenwich Palace, Oliver?’
‘Once or twice, in the company of the Earl of Essex.’
‘Nicholas and I attended a performance of The Faerie Queen there only a few weeks ago. I can describe it to you, if you’d like: the Flemish hangings… the design on the doors… anything you care to ask – on the assumption, that is, that you really have been inside.’
Henshawe regards her with new-found respect. He smiles at Bianca as winningly as he ever did. Then he takes his feet off the table.
‘Tell me, how may I be of assistance?’
The Lieutenant-General has his temporary headquarters in the chapel of a friary, thrown down by the queen’s father and turned over to a storehouse. The faded paintings of the saints still adorn the walls, though the air smells not of incense but of salted herring awaiting export to Chester.
‘Do you see how deep the papist heresy runs on this island, Dr Shelby?’ Ormonde asks abstractedly, when a halberdier in full plate escorts Nicholas into his presence. He is pointing to the upper torso of the Virgin Mary and the head of the infant Jesus peering out from behind a row of barrels. ‘We prised this land out of the Pope’s clutches years ago, and still no one has bothered to whitewash over its idolatry.’
Nicholas throws together a few consolatory words, forgotten the moment they have left his mouth.
‘Sir Oliver tells me you are a physician much in favour with Her Grace, the queen,’ Ormonde continues.
‘Sir Oliver exaggerates, my lord. I have had the honour of being summoned by her on a few occasions. Mostly I am physician to Sir Robert Cecil.’
‘Really? Are you one of those physicians who quotes Latin over his patient while the poor fellow’s malady carries him off?’ Ormonde asks in a blunt, soldiery manner. ‘Or perhaps an expert in the various shades of piss and pus?’
Nicholas smiles. ‘You paint the College of Physicians as accurately as Master Hilliard paints his portraits, sir.’
Ormonde looks him up and down as though making a military assessment of an enemy’s dispositions.
‘I had expected a queen’s physician to be a grey-haired old sorcerer with a tome full of enchantments and a fat purse,’ he says. ‘Yet that is not what I see before me.’
‘I learned practical physic on campaign in the Low Countries, with Sir Joshua Wylde’s company of pistoleers. It was a while ago now, but very instructional.’
‘Are you a follower of the Frenchman, Paré?’
‘Very much so. We had Protestant Italian and Swiss physicians in the army who used his techniques. I learned much from them. And I’ve studied anatomy under Professor Fabricius, in Padua.’
‘And are you a hot-iron man or a silk weaver?’
Nicholas smiles, knowing he’s being tested. ‘A silk weaver, my lord. Silken thread will tie off a severed blood vessel with far better results than brutal cauterizing with hot iron.’
Ormonde seems impressed. He nods in approval. ‘And now here you are, in the midst of a rebellion. If you’ve come to Ireland to settle a plantation, Dr Shelby, you’ve picked a choice time in which to do it.’
‘No, I am here on private business. It is that which brings me to you.’
‘How may I be of assistance?’
Nicholas tells him of the brick wall he’d come up against at the Watergate.
Ormonde asks, ‘And the reason you desire this passport?’
‘I wish to escort Master Edmund Spenser to England.’
Ormonde laughs, like an order barked out on a parade ground. ‘Spenser? The poet fellow?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Ormonde looks puzzled. ‘Why does Spenser want to go to England?’
It would be so easy, thinks Nicholas, to tell Ormonde that he has been sent by Mr Secretary Cecil to learn what Spenser is so eager to reveal, and that Spenser now demands to speak to Cecil face-to-face. But in his mind he can hear Cecil’s words as clearly as if Sir Robert were standing here in this old friary. There are certain people I would prefer didn’t learn that I have a new man in Ireland…
‘Her Majesty the Queen has expressed a desire to hear more of Master Spenser’s art,’ he says. ‘She thinks very highly of him.’
Ormonde seems unconvinced. ‘Highly enough to send her physician to fetch him?’
Nicholas has prepared for just such a question. He adopts the air of the hard-done-by. ‘Her Majesty’s whims often come without warning, my lord. She does not always instruct the most appropriate person, only the nearest. She decides, and then she commands.’
The Lieutenant-General’s response is not what he expects. Ormonde slaps his hands on his breeches, throws back his head and laughs. ‘Well, I pity you, Dr Shelby. Christ’s nails! Have you ever sat through a rendering of Spenser’s verse? It’s the most rambling bilge I’ve ever heard.’