The muster ensign takes off his cloak, draping it over one arm. He’s wearing a quilted red military sleeveless jerkin, patched and stitched, over his civilian shirt, and a belt with a leather powder flask and a metal bullet-mould hanging from the strap. He could scarcely have advertised himself better if he had walked in wearing a full suit of plate armour.
Nicholas is in no hurry. He lets Vyves settle himself into a window seat, noticing how the man scans the faces in the tavern. Nicholas can tell he’s not assessing their suitability for the muster; his eyes linger on too many men well past fighting age.
It doesn’t take long for someone to notice Vyves’s empty eye socket. Nicholas watches as the ensign opens the flap of his powder flask, then upends it over one waiting palm to reveal not a cascade of black powder, but a single farthing – half what he requires to purchase a jug of ale. He points to his empty orbit and adopts a expression of stoic but noble suffering. Though Nicholas cannot hear the words above the general hubbub, he identifies a mouthed ‘Cádiz’ and an ‘Essex’.
The stranger orders a tankard from the counter and joins Vyves at his bench. While they drink, Nicholas contrives to take surreptitious glances at the pair without Bianca or the Tubleys noticing. The two men could be players acting their parts, he thinks: Vyves the wounded old campaigner with hair-raising tales to tell, the other the wide-eyed neophyte basking in reflected glory, nodding now and then in sympathy or admiration.
When the listener has finished his ale, and presumably heard enough to satisfy his curiosity, he returns to his companions. Nicholas excuses himself with a throwaway line about needing to speak to a patient and walks over to Vyves’s table.
‘You must be wishing you could make the Dons pay for such a grievous hurt,’ he says, opening the conversation.
Vyves looks up, a venal gleam in his single eye at the arrival of such an easy prospect.
‘Oh, fear not, good sir. Barnabas Vyves gave as good as he got.’ Then he adds, as an afterthought, ‘Do I know you? You look familiar.’
Nicholas gives a casual laugh of good-fellowship. ‘Spend any time on Bankside and soon everyone looks familiar. Can I stand you an ale? It’s the least I can do for a veteran of Her Majesty’s wars.’
‘I’ll drink with any man what hates the Dons.’
Nicholas waves at one of the taproom servants and makes a sign for two jugs of knockdown. ‘Where was it – the Low Countries?’ he asks Vyves, looking uncompromisingly at the empty eye socket.
‘Nay, at Cádiz, with the Earl of Essex.’
‘The very man to settle the queen’s quarrel with the Earl of Tyrone – our English Caesar.’
‘There’s none better she could send,’ agrees Vyves enthusiastically.
The ale arrives. Nicholas raises his tankard in a salute.
‘You’re a patriot and a grand fellow,’ says Vyves, returning the compliment. The single eye peers over the rim of his pot. ‘Are you sure we haven’t met before?’
Nicholas heads him off with a question of his own. ‘I expect you’re looking forward to standing in the ranks behind His Grace.’
Vyves lets out a throaty laugh. ‘I’ve served my time in the breach, thanks all the same. Besides, I have work to do here in England. Important work. I’m in charge of the muster for Sir Oliver Henshawe’s company.’
Nicholas does his best to look suitably impressed. ‘That’s still dangerous work, Master Vyves. I heard one of his men was murdered here, before Christmas.’
‘Aye, young Godwinson. A terrible thing, an’ no mistake.’
‘A brawl, perhaps?’
‘A purse-cutting. Silly sod tried to resist.’
‘You were there?’ Nicholas asks, as casually as he can manage.
‘Gracious, no! That night I was drinking in the Turk’s Head, with Gideon Strollot. He can vouch for me – he’s an alderman’s clerk.’
‘Vouch?’ repeats Nicholas. ‘Marry, Master Vyves! I wasn’t asking you to defend yourself.’
Vyves leans across the table, a thin cyclops with a dirty grey mane. ‘I’ve seen you before, I knows I have.’
Nicholas ignores the statement. ‘Whose company did you say you were mustering for?’
‘Sir Oliver Henshawe’s. A great warrior and a fine gentleman.’
‘Is he in Ireland at present?’
‘No, he’s here in London – advising the Earl of Essex. What do you want to know for?’
‘And his company, is that in Ireland?’
‘Bringing the queen’s mercy to the rebels,’ Vyves assures Nicholas. Then, with a deep, cruel laugh, ‘If you gets my meaning.’
Nicholas says in a mild, observational tone, ‘I’ve encountered some of Sir Oliver’s fellows – in Ireland.’
‘You’ve been in Ireland?’ Vyves asks, a note of suspicion in his voice.
‘They were all locally mustered Irish, or English settlers. Not a recruit from Surrey amongst them, or not that I could tell.’
Vyves shakes his head. The lank grey locks swirl around his thin shoulders like the rain falling outside. ‘You must have been mistaken,’ he says. ‘I’m told the mists of that isle can sometimes rob a man of his faculties.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it was another captain’s company I was thinking of,’ says Nicholas, feigning a look of embarrassed confusion.
And in response Vyves’s face lights up with what Nicholas could swear is relief. ‘When was it you spoke to these fellows?’ he asks.
Nicholas pretends to search his memory. ‘I think it would have been sometime in November. Why?’
‘Well, that explains it,’ Vyves announces, as though he’s solved a puzzle that would have defeated Archimedes. ‘The muster we sent to Ireland got held up in Bristol, for lack of ships to carry it.’
‘I’m sure that was it,’ says Nicholas pleasantly, even as he hears Henshawe’s answer when he’d asked the same question in Cork:
You know how disorganized the Privy Council is… My brave fellows are still languishing at Chester, for want of a ship…
Disorganized the Privy Council may well be, thinks Nicholas. But not so disorganized as to send one part of the same muster to Bristol, an eight days’ march west, and the other to Chester, at least thirteen days from Southwark and in a quite different direction.
Nicholas is about to call Vyves out on the error when Ned Monkton walks past carrying a jug of stitch-back to an adjacent table. The muster ensign looks up at him. And then at Nicholas.
‘That’s it!’ he says, almost shouting. ‘You’re the one who was with Master Monkton at the Southwark Fair’ – a jab of one dirty thumb into the empty eye socket – ‘the saucy rogue who tried to gainsay my Cádiz medal.’
Cursing his ill luck, Nicholas tries to forestall disaster. ‘I’m sure you mistook my words for insult, Master Vyves. I meant no–’
But it’s too late. Looking around the taproom as though fearing an ambush, Vyves has now spotted Bianca.
‘An’ that’s the comely maid you were with that day! I’d remember her if I recalled naught else.’ His single eye glares malevolently at Nicholas. ‘You’re baiting me, whoever you are. You’re playing a match with a poor fellow wounded in Her Majesty’s service. I’ll have none of it!’
Kicking back his stool, Vyves waves his folded lockram cloak at Nicholas as though trying to ward off some great evil. He is on his feet and halfway to the door almost before Nicholas has left the table.
As Vyves barges out, he collides with someone attempting to enter. For a moment they meet in an unseemly and confused embrace. Then Vyves disappears into the night, leaving Nicholas to stare at the young man trying to compose himself after being unceremoniously pushed against the jamb. A young man in possession of a set of fine golden locks, if the Christmas rain hadn’t plastered them to the pale cheeks of his gentle face.