Wringing the water from his cleaning rag, Ned is about to plunge it back into his pail when he feels something brush against his legs. He turns and sees a black-muzzled sheep studying him with narrow, uncomprehending eyes.
The lane is full of them. And standing on the perimeter of this woolly throng is a wiry, weather-beaten man of some sixty years or more. He too is staring at Ned, but with a great deal more acuity.
‘I know you, I’m sure I do,’ the man says in the slow drawl of someone for whom cities are strange and alien places. ‘But you’re not from Camberwell, I know that much.’
‘Ned Monkton,’ replies Ned helpfully. ‘Most on Bankside knows me. But I ain’t been to Camberwell, never.’
The shepherd’s face lights up with a sad recognition. ‘It’s come to me! You’re the fellow who was at the coroner’s inquest into the death of my son, Lemuel. You stood up to them jurors like you was their equal.’
Ned lets his rag drop into the pail. ‘You’re Lemuel Godwinson’s father?’
‘Aye, up from Camberwell, with this flock. I’s taking them to the Mutton Lane shambles. City prices are always better than country ones.’
‘Stop by, when you’ve handed them off,’ Ned says, smiling broadly because he knows his size and appearance can often alarm. ‘I’ll stand you a jug; set you up proper for the walk back.’
‘I’d like that,’ says the shepherd.
The smile he gives in return makes Ned think the man has been a stranger to mirth for some considerable time.
‘I never wanted Lemuel to volunteer for the muster,’ Aaron Godwinson says later, as he sits with Ned in the taproom, looking out on the lane through the now-gleaming glass. ‘An’ his mother was set against it with all her heart. Ireland is no place for a Camberwell man. I blame myself for letting him make his mark on the roll.’
‘Some thinks there’s glory to be ’ad in takin’ up arms. More fool them, I say,’ Ned replies gravely. ‘These days the ’edgerows ’ave more maimed veterans of the wars sleepin’ under ’em than they ’ave ’edge’ogs.’
‘But that’s it, you see, Ned. Lemuel told his mother an’ me that he didn’t ’ave to go.’
‘To Ireland?’
‘Aye. But he’d still get paid a bounty for mustering.’ Godwinson shakes his head at the lack of application in the young. ‘I told him, “A fellow don’t get money from the queen just ’cause she’s feeling generous.” Well, not unless it’s alms on Maundy Thursday. But to tell the truth, we needed the money to help us through till spring. Times is hard in Camberwell at present.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Ned says, laying down his tankard and leaning across the table. ‘Your Lemuel thought he could join a company mustered for Ireland, but not ’ave to actually go there to do the fightin’?’
‘Aye. Half a month’s pay, up front – ten shillings. That’s twice what he earned as my apprentice.’
‘For doing nothin’?’
‘Apart from spending a day learning his pike, and then marching around at the Southwark Fair for a bit, yes. Nothing but taking his ease. Lemuel said he’d be back in a week. He was. With the money.’ Aaron Godwinson looks down at the table board as though he cannot bear to remember what happened next. When he looks up again, there are tears welling in his eyes. ‘If only he’d stayed in Camberwell with me and his mother, he’d have been fine.’
Ned sees in his mind once again the tall, angular Lemuel huddled in the corner of the taproom with Vyves and Strollot… the coin changing hands.
‘Who told ’im all this?’ Ned asks gently.
‘The muster ensign,’ says Aaron, brushing the tears away with the back of a gnarled hand. ‘That fellow with the one eye who was on the coroner’s jury. Had a funny name. Stuck in my mind, when Lemuel told me. Vyves, I think Lemuel said. That’s it: Barnabas Vyves.’
That evening Ned seeks out a regular customer at the Jackdaw, a pouch-maker from Long Lane who has served in the Low Countries. He asks him how the muster is organized, to get clear in his mind the picture that is beginning to form there.
‘The queen says to the Privy Counciclass="underline" sirrahs, fetch me one thousand fine men to fight the papist rebels, right?’ the pouch-maker tells him.
‘Right,’ agrees Ned. ‘What then?’
‘The Privy Council bow and scrape and scuttle away to draw up the plans for the muster. So many men from Surrey… so many men of Kent… so many lads from Sussex… and so on. With me so far, Master Ned?’
Ned says he is.
‘When the levies have been raised, each company parades before a magistrate or an alderman. The muster roll is signed by the captain or one of his officers, to confirm the troop has been properly assembled and equipped. Then the magistrate, or the alderman, or some other high person, hands over the money for pay and supply, enough to maintain the mustered men until they can be resupplied. That’s several months, usually. Our captain paid for his drink and his whores out of our funds, I recall,’ the pouch-maker says, pulling a sour face. ‘We never did get our promised pay in full.’
‘But you did go to the Low Countries?’
The man looks at Ned as if he’s the dullest-brained fellow on earth. ‘Of course we went to the Low Countries. We’d have been hanged, otherwise.’ Seeing Ned’s brow furrow in thought, he shakes his head and laughs. ‘What? You think Her Majesty would pay good minted coin just to have her soldiery taking their ease at home in the taverns? Now that would be a muster worth signing on for.’
Ireland is devouring Robert Devereux as efficiently as it devoured his father. In the process, it is turning him into a monster. True to his word, on the army’s return to Dublin he imprisons the hapless Sir Henry Harington, cashiers his officers and, despite pleas from Ormonde, Henry Norris, Oliver Henshawe and even Nicholas himself, hangs one in every ten of Sir Henry’s surviving soldiers.
Nicholas observes his wild swings of mood with alarm. They career from euphoric optimism to petulant despair. One moment he is all for taking his forces north into Ulster and defeating Tyrone in open battle… the next, he must run back to England and prostrate himself before his queen, because the court – by which he means Robert Cecil – has turned Elizabeth against him.
‘There must be something you can prescribe for His Grace, to bring him out of this ill humour,’ Henry Norris says to Nicholas the following day, while the corpses still swing gently in the wind, a reminder to all of the price cowardice carries.
Physic has not yet come up with a cure for hubris, Nicholas considers telling him. But he keeps his counsel. Is it Ireland? Or is the cause of the earl’s distemper the malady no one dares mention? He considers offering the Lord Lieutenant mercury. But that would involve revealing his suspicions. Your Grace – try taking this, it might soothe your temper, and it’s considered most efficacious for those suffering from the pox.
As an alternative, he prescribes a draught of sow-fennel and euphorbium boiled in vinegar, in an attempt to bring the earl’s lethargy and frenzy into more of a balance. ‘Perhaps this might ease your present discomfort a little and help you sleep,’ he says, offering the cup.