Another prisoner must lie within, Bianca thinks. She racks her memory, but she can think of no figure of importance that Nicholas has ever mentioned falling into rebel hands.
At Tyrone’s command, the guard raps twice on the door. Not pejorative hammerings that would suggest an enemy imprisoned on the other side, but almost respectful, as though to give warning. She hears a woman answer in English, heavily accented.
A brief exchange follows, to determine if all is proper and decent within. Then the guard lifts the latch and opens the door. No rattle of chains, or keys turning in unbreachable locks. If there is a prisoner within, thinks Bianca, they have a remarkable degree of freedom. She follows Tyrone into the neat little chamber.
Poking out from a sheet of fine linen edged with Alençon lace is a plump, rather grey face, redeemed by a set of rosebud lips. The heavy black eyebrows guard a pair of closed lids. The linen rises and falls over the swell of the breasts in faltering steps, like an old man climbing steep stairs. A slow, whining whistle accompanies each exhalation.
But it is not the woman on the bed who seizes Bianca’s attention. It is the one standing beside it. A tall, strongly built young woman with a wise face, a face as dark as any foreign merchant to be seen in Padua or Venice. She is dressed plainly in a cloth gown, her black hair roped back over her brow. Even to Bianca – no stranger to the whole palate of human colours, thanks to a childhood spent in close proximity to Venice – the presence of such a woman in this damp, wild place is startling. But what truly rocks her on her heels is her belated identification of the woman’s accent.
Spanish.
‘This is the young woman I need you to heal,’ says Tyrone, indicating the figure whose face pokes out of the coverlet. ‘Her name is Constanza. You need know nothing more of her than that.’
Oh, I know far more than you think, Bianca replies silently in her head as she struggles to impose some small control over her reeling mind. For instance, I know the likelihood of there being more than one Constanza of Spanish stock presently to be found in Ireland. I would consider it as likely as discovering that you were keeping a live cockatrice in your castle and feeding it on nectar.
But Tyrone has one last shock in store for her.
Bianca is too astounded by the realization that she has managed to achieve the one thing that both she and Nicholas, not to mention Robert Cecil and Edmund Spenser, had thought impossible – even if it was without her own active agency – that she doesn’t hear the footsteps of someone else entering the chamber. And she only half-registers Tyrone saying, ‘You’re just in time. Is this the physician’s wife? Has Fitzthomas hooked us a fine fresh salmon, or nothing but a wee pollan?’
But she hears the reply alright. She hears it because the voice is familiar.
‘Oh yes, my lord,’ says Piers Gardener. ‘That’s Mistress Bianca. I’d recognize that head of hair anywhere, even from behind.’
33
When two separate shocks of such magnitude strike at the same time, the only way to keep standing – or so Bianca thinks, as her head turns from Constanza to Piers Gardener, back to Constanza and then again to the scrivener, like a coney’s swivelling as it searches for foxes – is to start with something you can handle. Force order upon the storm, even if it’s only a temporary order. Break it down into fragments. Deal with each one in turn. Hope that in the meantime you don’t drown in a flood of disbelief. Start with what you know. Start with Piers Gardener.
She sees at once how easy it must have been for him to pass between the two sides, constantly on the move, alone, under no one’s supervision. What was it he had called himself when they’d met in the Tholsel at Dublin when she and Nicholas first arrived in Dublin: grey merchants… It’s the dust we pick up from always being out on the road…
She knows she should despise him as a traitor, but looking at that child’s face with its mooncalf eyes and its golden curls of hair, she wonders how Gardener found the courage. She can think of a score of questions to ask him, from: How long have you been spying for the rebels? to: Did you murder Edmund Spenser because he found out? But they have to form a mannerly queue in her mind, because at the front is the one question that bursts from her mouth without even the preamble of acknowledging his sudden appearance in the chamber.
‘Please God, Master Piers, tell me if my husband is safe?’
He looks genuinely concerned to put her mind at rest. He opens his palms as though she were holding him responsible for any harm that might have befallen Nicholas. ‘He was, when I left Dublin, Mistress. I have not been much in his company of late, but I have heard no ill report of him.’
‘You must tell him you have seen me. He will be losing his mind with worry.’
Before he can answer, Tyrone puts a stop to the exchange. ‘Madam, if you want to see your husband again, the fastest way is to bring this woman out of her malady. The sooner you begin, the sooner we can decide how it may be contrived – without jeopardizing Master Gardener’s position.’ He extends his hand in invitation towards the bed. ‘Will you attend her – please?’
Bianca steps forward, her heart racing. A blizzard of possibilities, blind alleys, opportunities, missteps, potential triumphs and certain disasters swirls in her head. Gardener is the means of saving Nicholas from grief… but now that she knows Gardener is a rebel spy, Tyrone will never let her leave. If she cannot heal Constanza Calva de Sagrada, Tyrone will have no use for her. If she can heal Constanza, how will she contrive an escape? What if the woman on the bed isn’t Constanza Calva de Sagrada at all, but some other stray Spaniard with a similarly given name?
Start with something you can handle… force order upon the storm, even if it’s only a temporary order…
Taking a deep breath, Bianca looks the Earl of Tyrone squarely in the eye. ‘There are too many men in this chamber for decency,’ she says firmly, as though it were her castle, not his. ‘We need privacy. Please, leave us.’
Tyrone shoos away his attendants. ‘You, too, Master Gardener,’ he adds. ‘We may consider what is to be done later.’ Then, from the doorway, he adds, ‘Please work swiftly, Mistress. This woman is of great importance to me. I need her well again.’
When the door closes, Bianca hears a key turn in the lock. From the bed, Constanza lets out a low moan. The woman who stands beside her stares at Bianca with deep suspicion in her dark, distrusting eyes.
Bianca thinks back to the meeting with Robert Cecil in the Paris Garden lodgings. In her head, she hears again a fragment of the exchange between Cecil and Edmund Spenser: Where was this meeting to happen, Master Spenser?
At Kilcolman… the perfect place.
Addressing the woman she assumes is Constanza’s servant – the woman she reasons must have been the one who spoke English, because the other is near enough unconscious – Bianca says, as though it were nothing more than a trivial observation, ‘Mercy! This is a wild and desolate place in which to fall sick. I haven’t seen the like since I was at Kilcolman Castle, with Master Edmund Spenser. Tell me – what ails your mistress?’
And there it is: the sudden gleam that enters the eyes of the extraordinary figure standing beside the sickbed of Constanza Calva de Sagrada. The suspicion has fled, replaced by a gleam of understanding. Of empathy. The budding of new-found hope. As if both women have found each other after a long and arduous trek across whole continents of obstacles.