‘I must have misunderstood,’ Nicholas says, confused. ‘I thought you were with Sir Oliver Henshawe’s regiment.’
‘Oh, I am, sir. And as proud as Hector to be so – or I was, until I saw what manner of fellows he keeps.’
‘But I thought Sir Oliver’s regiment recruited in Surrey. I’ve seen their muster ensign at work at the Southwark Fair – a thin fellow with one eye. I can’t recall his name at present – Voles, or Vibes, something like that.’
‘Don’t know no Voles, Master. All the fellows I served with were mustered in Leinster.’
‘Is there no one from England in your company?’ Nicholas asks, confused.
‘Save for the officers, not to my knowledge, sir.’
As Nicholas goes about his business attending to the other patients, he puzzles over what the young lad has told him. The memory of that day at the Southwark Fair sharpens. He can hear the muster ensign clearly as he tried to recruit Ned Monkton:
We could use a doughty fellow like you in the ranks of Sir Oliver Henshawe’s company… Sixpence a day all found. Glory by the cartload…
Now he can even remember the man’s name: Vyves. So where, he wonders, are Oliver Henshawe’s English recruits?
Solely out of curiosity, he mentions it in passing to Henshawe himself.
‘You know how disorganized the Privy Council is,’ Sir Oliver says with a dismissive smile. ‘We should thank God they’ve sent us a single reinforcement. My brave fellows are still languishing at Chester, for want of a ship. I’ll be lucky to get them before Christmas.’
‘So you have to raise amongst the local Irish?’
‘Aye. And poor fellows they are too, by and large. Most of them slink off to join the rebels the moment their officers look the other way.’ He looks up at the wintry sky and curses. ‘You can’t trust anything in this island. You can’t trust the sky not to rain, the land not to swallow you, and the people not to stab you from behind the moment you turn your back. By the way, have you heard the news?’
‘What news?’ Nicholas says.
‘Philip of Spain is dead. That’s one more bastard on his way to the eternal fires of damnation. Now we have his son to play the match against. They don’t give up, these Dons. Cut down one, and another springs up to take his place – like sown dragon’s teeth. Unless we kill them all, I’m beginning to think we’ll never be free of their papist scheming.’
With the arrival of November’s gales, Munster seems to be slowly sinking into the sea. Black water wells out of the ground like bad blood, filling each new footstep as the Earl of Ormonde’s forces struggle across the county. While his tenacity and vigour have prevented immediate catastrophe, the earl cannot win a decisive victory. Tyrone stays safe in the wilds of Ulster, sending small parties of rebels out to lure the English forces into the marshes and the bogs, the dark forests and the narrow passes between the mountains. But Ormonde is too old and too canny to fall for such tricks. As a consequence, the flow of wounded returning to Cork dwindles to a trickle.
The reinforcement of Ormonde’s locally mustered companies is gathering pace. More ships than ever are braving the winter seas, making their landfall at harbours along Ireland’s eastern coast – Dublin, Waterford, Youghal, Cork. They come from further afield, too: from Padstow, Plymouth and even Southampton and the Solent. Their decks are crammed with Englishmen newly mustered by the queen’s Privy Counciclass="underline" two thousand raised in the west from farms, towns and hamlets throughout Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Gloucestershire; another thousand from Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Not all of them are as disciplined as Her Majesty might wish: the band of four hundred that so bravely marches out of London mutinies on the road to Chester, making off with the regimental funds.
But no matter, because although these bands gathering to the colours like flowers blooming in a meadow in summer are mostly masterless vagrants, callow farmhands or released indentured labourers, a letter has been sent to Sir Francis Vere, commander of the English forces in the Low Countries. He is ordered to dispatch two thousand of his own battle-hardened troops to Ireland. And the rumours are growing apace that the army will indeed have a new marshaclass="underline" none other than Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
With Ormonde’s campaign stalled, most of the patients in Nicholas’s makeshift hospital down by the Watergate are civilians, suffering the effects of the weather and malnourishment. Ormonde sends word he is lifting his prohibition on men of importance leaving Cork. The Council of Munster appoints Edmund Spenser – still awaiting his confirmation as sheriff of Cork – to carry official dispatches to the Privy Council in London. The poet welcomes the news like a man reprieved from the block.
On the ninth day of December 1598, with a harassing wind driving tangles of black cloud over Loch Machan, Nicholas, Bianca and Edmund Spenser are rowed out to the Calliope, a compact little barque bound for Holyhead.
Nicholas watches the Calliope’s mainsail begin to unfurl the moment their oarsman comes within hailing distance. He is glad his commission for Robert Cecil will soon be over.
For her part, Bianca is hard pressed to stop herself grinning insanely at the prospect of holding little Bruno in her arms again. Calliope, she reminds herself, was the Greek muse of poetry. A fitting vessel, then, to carry England’s greatest poet. A good omen – surely?
17
Under a cold mid-December sky three riders – two men and a woman – cross the open fields to the west of Charing Cross. It is late afternoon, the sun little more than the fading light in a dying eye. The ride from last night’s resting place – a Windsor tavern that Bianca said had no right to call itself by the name – has been a trial of chilled extremities and stiff limbs. But they have made the journey from Cork in just under eight days. Bianca fights back the tears. They are tears not of discomfort – though she would have cause enough – but of joy at the prospect of seeing her son again.
Turning down King’s Street towards the Court Gate at Whitehall, they leave their mounts at the official post stables, signing their hire – and the cost of a postboy to return them to Bristol – to the account of Mr Secretary Cecil.
As Spenser prepares to leave for the Privy Council offices at Whitehall, where he will deliver the dispatches he has carried from Ireland, he says something that rocks Nicholas on his heels.
‘I cannot go to Cecil House. It is out of the question.’
Nicholas stares at him blankly. ‘But you said you would speak to no one but Sir Robert,’ he protests, struggling to master his growing anger.
‘And so I must. But not at Cecil House. It is too public.’
‘What are you so afraid of?’
‘I cannot risk His Grace the Earl of Essex knowing that I have held a privy meeting with Mr Secretary Cecil.’
‘Have you any idea how hard it is to get an audience with him?’ Nicholas asks petulantly. ‘It’s easier to find an honest bawd in a Bankside stew.’
But Spenser is adamant. ‘It must be somewhere discreet.’
Nicholas promises to do what he can. ‘Where are you going to stay?’ he asks.
Bianca glances at him, fearful her husband is going to offer Spenser a room in their lodgings at the Paris Garden.
‘When I am in London, His Grace the earl allows me to lodge in a property he owns on King’s Street,’ Spenser says. ‘Once I have delivered the dispatches, I shall go directly to Essex House to seek the keys.’