Spenser laughs. ‘Yes, nothing changes, Dr Shelby, does it?’
‘No, I suppose not. I was wondering if you knew where Sir Oliver Henshawe raised his company.’
‘I fear I cannot help you. I’ve taken no part in the recent musters. Why do you ask?’
‘No matter. Merely a passing interest.’
‘If it’s their quality that concerns you, I wouldn’t worry. My lord Essex will soon have affairs properly in hand.’
‘I’m sure he will,’ Nicholas says, hearing a diplomat’s practised insincerity in his own voice and wondering where it came from.
‘By the way, Dr Shelby, has Sir Robert decided what to do about Constanza Calva de Sagrada?’ Spenser asks, dropping his voice to a whisper.
‘I don’t think there’s much he can do,’ Nicholas says. ‘Perhaps he will ask you to send a message to Robert Persons in Valladolid, asking the peace faction to send another emissary. Mr Secretary Cecil doesn’t confide such matters to me, I’m afraid.’
‘If there’s nothing else you require of me, Dr Shelby, I’d best return to the revels,’ Spenser says. ‘I’d rather not be discovered holding secretive privy meetings with Mr Secretary’s physician – if it’s all the same to you.’
After Spenser has gone, Nicholas waits a few minutes before re-entering the hall. He soon spots Bianca fending off a group of ladies-in-waiting, all suddenly eager to make the acquaintance of the unknown woman who had danced with the Earl of Essex and caught the queen’s eye. They remind him of a gaggle of geese after the corn has been scattered.
‘You look flushed, Husband. Have you been engaging in an assignation outside while I was dancing with His Grace?’ Bianca says, touching his cold cheek with her fingers.
‘More to the point, did the noble earl sweep you off your feet?’ Nicholas asks as he draws her away.
‘What a strange man,’ she replies. ‘It was like conversing with a locked wardrobe: a polished front, sharp edges, and you come away wondering what’s hidden inside.’
‘I mean, was he a good dancer?’ Nicholas lies.
‘You wouldn’t expect otherwise, would you?’
‘When he asked to dance with you, he called me by my name. That’s a worry. It means he remembers me.’
‘Yes, in a manner of speaking. He asked me if you weren’t the physician who was accused with poor old Dr Lopez of trying to poison the queen.’
‘God’s nails! What did you tell him?’
‘I told him he should remember you. I reminded him that four years ago you spent several uncomfortable hours locked in a room at Essex House waiting to be arraigned for attempted regicide – before I persuaded Robert Cecil to get you out.’
‘And what was his reply?’
‘He said he wasn’t responsible for miscarriages of justice. He said, if you wanted an apology you should seek it from the Attorney-General.’
‘It’s just that I had hoped he might have forgotten.’
Bianca leans against him, her breath warm on his cheek. ‘Well, fret not, Husband. In truth, I think he’s rather impressed with you.’
‘Impressed? How? Other than the Lopez affair, Essex doesn’t know me.’
‘Apparently Oliver Henshawe has been singing your praises.’
‘Henshawe? Really?’
‘About what a fine physician you are.’
‘Oh.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased. I’ve been afraid you’d end up getting into a quarrel with Oliver – punching his pretty face. Or, worse, challenging him to a duel.’
‘I’m Nicholas,’ he says, laughing, ‘not the Earl of Southampton. Brawling and duelling are his diversions.’
‘And Nicholas can lay aside any jealousy he might feel for Oliver Henshawe, can’t he?’
‘He can, sweet,’ he says, kissing her briefly and caring not a jot about decorum. ‘Because now he has the Earl of Essex to snarl at.’
Bianca leans further into her husband, feeling the reassuring warmth of him, the sturdiness of a yeoman’s son still in him. ‘Look on the bright side,’ she says closely into his ear. ‘You might not be as fine a dancer as Robert Devereux, Husband, but nor do you have a reputation to lose in Ireland.’
Twelfth Night, and a sharp, sleety rain falls on Bankside. It advances and retreats along the narrow lanes in bitter little skirmishes, battering against the Jackdaw’s foggy windows like fingernails drumming on the stretched skin of a tambour. Inside, a goodly fire is raging in the hearth, keeping hot a great cauldron of steaming wassail. Timothy, the taproom lad, is tuning his lute for the evening’s festivities. Bianca is helping Rose to prepare mince pies in the kitchen. In the taproom Ned Monkton is polishing a pewter tankard on the sleeve of his jerkin. He holds it up to check his distorted monster’s reflection in the metal.
‘Wonder if ’e’ll be in tonight,’ he says out of nowhere.
‘Who?’ enquires Nicholas, laying aside his personal copy of Professor Fabrizio’s Pentateuchos chirurgicum, given to him by the author to mark his departure from the Palazzo Bo medical faculty at Padua.
‘That one-eyed muster ensign with the stringy grey ’air – Ensign Vyves,’ says Ned, giving Nicholas an alarming squint. ‘’E’s not been in since you an’ Mistress Bianca returned. I don’t often take against people on a whim, but there’s somethin’ about that rogue what troubles me. I’d be int’rested to know what you make of ’im.’
‘Come now, Ned,’ Nicholas says, laughing. ‘You must have heard about the great hero raising a grand army to win glory in Ireland? Essex can’t do all that by himself. Master Vyves will have been too busy combing the hamlets and villages for men to muster for Henshawe’s company.’
‘Well, wherever ’e is, the Devil’s luck to ’im,’ says Ned, setting the tankard on the shelf with all the others. ‘I’d sooner be hanged in London for stealing a chicken than slain in Ireland ’cause my belly was empty on account of the bad ’arvest.’
‘Be patient. If he’s going to come, it will be tonight.’
‘An’ ’ow does you fathom that, Master Nicholas? ’Ave you’ve drawn ’is stars – one of them ’oroscopes what physicians draw up when they make a ’nosis?’
Nicholas gives him a frown that might be considered censorious, were it not accompanied by the hint of a smile. ‘You know I don’t hold with that, Ned. I’m banking on the fact that the Jackdaw will be full tonight – plenty of customers who haven’t heard his line about losing an eye at Cádiz.’
‘You could be right,’ Ned says approvingly. ‘I don’t s’pose ’e’s got many other places to be on Twelfth Night. ’E don’t strike me as the sort to be spendin’ it in the bosom of a doting family.’
And with that, he picks up another pewter tankard to buff, leaving Nicholas to his book.
As darkness falls, the Jackdaw begins to fill. For the celebration of Epiphany, Bianca has splashed out on half a sugarloaf, grating it into hot ale with ginger, cloves and butter to tease customers away from the Good Husband and the Turk’s Head. It seems to be working. Children from the nearby lanes are playing Hoodman Blind, cannoning around the tables and getting under the adults’ feet, earning themselves cuffed ears and kicked shins for Twelfth Night presents.
When Barnabas Vyves walks in, shaking the rain from his lockram cloak, Ned glances across to where Nicholas and Bianca are sitting in conversation with the wherryman Jed Tubley and his family. Nicholas, too, has spotted him.