Essex drinks the decoction grudgingly. ‘If this an attempt to poison me, the way you conspired with old Lopez to poison the queen,’ he tells Nicholas in a voice that chills him to the marrow, ‘you’ll be rotting in a noose alongside Harington’s cowards.’
Nicholas reminds Devereux that the charge was bogus. That he was exonerated. But that night the earl complains of stomach pains, and it is Nicholas who cannot sleep for worry. The following morning he bumps into Henry Norris again, who reveals the true cause of the earl’s discomfort. The post-pinnace from England has brought letters of stern rebuke from Her Majesty. She is not at all pleased with the army’s progress. In her opinion, the small triumphs Essex has so far achieved are mere trifles – unworthy prizes that any half-competent general might achieve, even if he had stayed abed. The earl himself is forbidden in no uncertain terms from returning to England until he has accomplished what Her Majesty sent him to Ireland to do. Nicholas’s relief is tempered by Norris’s revelation that the letter contained a footnote bearing the signature of Robert Cecil, adding his own prohibition as principal Secretary of State against the earl’s return. Another reason, Nicholas thinks, for Robert Devereux to take offence at my presence.
In the taverns of Dublin the earl’s supporters are drinking themselves into a morose fury. The enemy now is not only Tyrone and his rebels, but those back in London who have whispered their poisoned words into the queen’s ear. A few rash individuals, who think themselves protected by their distance from London, speak openly of begging Essex to take what is left of his army back to England, to purge the court of those they consider traitors. They believe they could compel the queen to honour their commander as they believe he should be honoured.
Nicholas duly notes all this in a cipher to Cecil and hands it to one of Mr Secretary’s trusted captains when he goes down to Wood Quay to collect a consignment of iron pestles for Bianca’s women to mix herbs in. He takes care to describe only a general mood of frustration, and he leaves out the names. His conscience is troubled enough, without having the deaths of a few weary, dispirited drunks weighing on it, and he’ll be damned if he’ll sink to the level of a common informer.
Essex is not the man to let such barbs from his sovereign stand. Whatever else Ireland has done to him, it hasn’t diminished his pride. In late July, with the crops standing unharvested in the fields, he rides out of Dublin at the head of a much-reduced force. His declared intention is to bring the clans of O’Connor and O’Moore, allies of Tyrone, into proper obedience to her sovereign majesty, before turning north into Ulster to finally lop off the gorgon’s head. Norris and Henshawe go with him.
This time Nicholas is commanded to ride with the earl’s headquarters. Whether this is because Essex thinks his constitution might be in need of physic, or because he doesn’t trust his physician far from his immediate grasp, Nicholas is uncertain. Devereux’s opinion of him appears to swing with the state of his health. When he’s well, Nicholas is a Cecil spy and the worst man on earth. When he sickens, it’s Call for Physician Shelby. He’s the only man on this isle, save me, who knows his business…
‘Stay in Dublin,’ Nicholas begs Bianca before they leave. ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’
‘Then I would have Bruno and you to worry about.’ She lays her hand against his cheek. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she says firmly.
He folds his arms behind his head, closing his eyes and bowing as if in deference to old memories. ‘When my first wife, Eleanor, died carrying our child,’ he says, ‘I realized that I couldn’t trust the physic I’d learned at Cambridge. I threw away my doctor’s gown into the Thames in disgust.’ He looks into her eyes again. ‘Tell me: what shall I throw away now, if I were to lose you? The stars in all their multitude would not be nearly enough.’
‘You won’t lose me, Nicholas,’ she laughs, kissing him on the forehead.
But in her mind – for a reason she cannot at that moment explain – Bianca is seeing Nicholas as the Merrow might see him: standing on the shore gazing out to sea in search of the love he cannot summon back. The image fills her with a deep sense of foreboding.
29
Nicholas reins in his horse on the edge of a great wood, much like the one where he and Bianca had encountered the Seanchaí. He pats the hot, slick hair of her neck in praise, smelling her sweat on the warm air. It is late afternoon, and for once it’s not raining. On the grassy slope below the treeline, several hundred men are sitting or lying in the sunshine, resting from the march. Some are sharpening or cleaning their weapons. Others have snatched the chance of sleep. They lie like men already dead. Bianca is half a mile back, along with the baggage train.
Sir Henry Norris walks over to greet him. His breastplate is unlaced and he carries his burgonet helmet under his arm. He, too, is sweating in the unusual heat. ‘When they arrive, you may set up your things over there, Dr Shelby. By that line of oaks,’ he says. ‘Though God willing, you won’t be much employed today.’
‘I thought His Grace intended to provoke the rebels into battle. Isn’t that why we’re here?’
‘They won’t dare sally out of Conna Castle, and that’s a day’s march further on, towards Lismore,’ Norris says, grinning. ‘They’ll shout at us from behind their walls, and we’ll march proudly by and thumb our noses at them. They’re not so foolish as to pick a fight with us in the open.’
Nicholas spots Oliver Henshawe’s banner flapping sullenly in the breeze. A thought occurs to him, and Norris seems just the man to answer it. ‘I’ve heard His Grace air the opinion that he thinks but little of the men recruited from the local population,’ he says casually, knowing he should tread carefully.
Norris gives a contemptuous laugh. ‘Where were you born, Dr Shelby?’
‘Suffolk, Sir Henry. Why?’
‘Well, imagine trying to raise a troop of Suffolk men to fight their neighbours in Norfolk, and then give them old weapons, little money and even less food. Call them cowards when they waver. Hang them when they break. It’s hardly a surprise if they then melt away into the forests and meres the moment your back is turned. We need more fellows who’ve served in the Low Countries and know the score. Better still, rogues who kill for money. We should have hired the Swiss.’
‘Sir Oliver Henshawe recruits from his lands in Surrey, does he not?’
‘Probably. Haven’t asked him.’
‘I only mention it because his company seems to be made up mostly of Irish conscripts.’
‘We take what we can get, Dr Shelby. If the muster masters in England send us weak boys with no fighting spirit, we must make the best of what we have here in Ireland.’
‘But Sir Oliver told me, before Christmas, that his men from England were stuck in Chester, awaiting transport. Where are they? Have they been somehow spirited away?’
‘What are you suggesting, Dr Shelby?’
‘I don’t know. But where are they? Surely Sir Oliver would want every man he can muster to be here, with the earl’s forces – especially given the rate of sickness amongst those who are.’
‘Knowing how efficient the Privy Council can be, they’re probably still in Chester,’ Norris replies with a gruff, self-satisfied laugh. ‘I wouldn’t fret, Dr Shelby. They’ve most likely been used to stiffen some of the outlying garrison. Or they’ve succumbed to bog fever. I wouldn’t concern yourself with such matters. Sir Oliver is twice the captain old Harington was. If anyone can put backbone into Irish levies, it will be him.’ He points to the line of oak trees he’d indicated earlier. ‘There, in the shade, should do nicely. But I think you’ll not have much in the way of trade today. Maybe a few blistered feet, but nothing that’s been valorously earned. Take the time to rest. I would – if I were you.’