‘This I know,’ Cachorra whispers, bowing her head as though in confession. Through Cachorra’s fingers, Bianca can almost feel the struggle going on inside her. After a while she raises her eyes again. There are tears gleaming on the dark skin of her cheeks. ‘Is not possible,’ she says, as though she is to blame. ‘I cannot write these names. Is too dangerous.’
But Bianca senses the struggle is not quite lost. She tightens her grasp on Cachorra’s hand. ‘My husband and Robert Cecil write in code to each other. Nicholas could ensure the list reaches Cecil safely,’ she says, almost pleadingly.
Cachorra’s face crumples in despair. ‘But you cannot ensure. And I make solemn promise to Don Rodriquez.’
‘Then to keep that promise – to finish the brave task Don Rodriquez began – you must give those names directly to Robert Cecil himself,’ Bianca says in a moment of inspiration.
Cachorra withdraws her hand and wipes the tears away. ‘How is this possible?’ she asks.
‘We shall escape together.’
Cachorra stares at her as though she has just suggested they fly to the moon on winged horses.
‘Listen to me, Cachorra,’ Bianca says urgently. ‘Don Rodriquez gave his life because he wanted the war between England and Spain to end. He wanted the death, the destruction, the suffering to end. That is a noble ambition. We cannot let his courage die with him.’
Cachorra climbs to her feet. Bianca watches as she walks to the riverbank, not proudly and erect, but like a small child weighed down by grown-up fears. She sits quietly in deep contemplation, staring at the river. Watching her, Bianca wonders what it must be like to believe you have no more control over your fate than a solitary leaf drifting on the current. After a while she walks over and sits down beside her.
‘And when I give to Cecil this información? What then?’ Cachorra asks. ‘Where do I go?’
‘Home,’ suggests Bianca. The word is no sooner out of her mouth than she understands how foolish she must sound.
Cachorra gives her a guilty smile, as if the fault is her own. ‘I do not even know where in the world is my home. Don Rodriquez shows me once, on a globe. But still I could not imagine where it was. So, I cannot go back. Even if I find it, how do I speak? My poor tongue – she remembers more English than the language I say when I am a child. I do not hear my Carib name spoken for so many years, I almost forget it.’ She thinks for a moment, then says slowly and very carefully, ‘Yaquilalco.’
She repeats the name as if it belongs to someone else, someone she met long ago. Then she smiles. ‘But I am Cachorra now. Cachorra de Leopardo – the leopard cub. This is the name Don Rodriquez gives me. I like it.’
On the understanding that, in the absence of a priest, confession should not be a one-sided affair, Bianca says, ‘I know a little of what it is like to arrive in a strange land. That is how I felt when I fled from Padua to England, when the Inquisition imprisoned my father. But I was lucky; he had told me many things about England. It would be a greater shock for you than it was for me.’ A grin of encouragement to show that a woman can overcome any obstacle, if she is brave enough. ‘But Bankside is a fine place – once you understand it. We have a certain disregard for authority there. At least you would be free.’
‘In England?’ Cachorra says, to be sure of what Bianca is suggesting.
‘Yes.’
‘But how do I live? What do I do – sell myself to men so I can eat?’
‘I have an apothecary shop and a tavern. I can find work for you. Of course you’d have to learn the difference between hemlock and parsley.’
Cachorra returns to staring at the river. Bianca can only imagine the turmoil her thoughts must be in. What right, she wonders, do I have to ask this woman to take even one step onto this rickety bridge that I am trying to throw across so deep a ravine?
‘Is it Constanza who holds you back?’ she asks. ‘Is it loyalty to your mistress?’
For a while Cachorra’s head does not move. Then her shoulders give a little lurch and a small cough of laughter escapes into the drowsy air.
‘I was a child when Don Rodriquez bring me from Hispaniola,’ she says in a far-away voice. ‘He save me from bad men: Ciguayo raiders. They want to sell me to Conquistadores. But Don Rodriquez, he pay gold for me, to make me compañera to his daughter.’
‘He bought you as a toy, for his daughter?’
‘I do not think that is how he saw it. He was a good man, I know this.’ A louder laugh, wistful yet resigned. ‘So many years I have to listen to this lloriqueo, this whining. All the time.’ She adopts an irritating sing-song voice. “Cachorra, why you no comb my hair properly? Cachorra, why you no clap when I play viola da gamba?” – badly, I may say. “Cachorra, why you not bring me my book of Herrera poems open at the proper page?” Madre de Dios! For more years than I count – always something wrong. Sometimes I think Don Rodriquez should have left me on that beach. Sometimes I think I should have given Constanza the cicuta–’ A glance at Bianca for the right English.
‘Hemlock.’
‘Yes, I should have given her the hemlock years ago. But I do not do this, because of Don Rodriquez. I owe him my life.’
And then, suddenly, Cachorra stands up and throws back her broad shoulders. She claps her hands together as though she were dusting flour from her palms.
‘Is decided,’ she says resolutely, without looking down at Bianca. ‘I go to Robert Say-sill. I escape with you.’
Bianca jumps up and puts her hands on Cachorra’s shoulders, as though to stop her toppling, which – looking back – she will say there was never the slightest chance of, not with a woman of Cachorra’s strength. ‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘It will not be easy. It will be dangerous. I could just try to learn the names.’
But the resolve on Cachorra’s face is unshakeable.
‘What is future for me now?’ she demands, apparently to the army encamped around Tyrone’s castle. ‘My mistress will have a husband. He will give her new maids. Spanish maids. Cachorra will be made slave, like when you and I were carrying bucket of her mierda all hours of night. Is enough. I go.’
35
Since the death of Sir Henry Norris, Nicholas has ridden the see-saw of Robert Devereux’s favour as best he can. It swings wildly between accusation and grudging tolerance. One moment Nicholas is undermining the army’s health. He is Cecil’s spy and should be sent back to England – were it not for the inconvenient fact that the queen herself has appointed him. The next, Nicholas is the only man who can relieve Devereux of his pains and discomforts.
Nicholas has watched this deterioration with alarm. His money is still on the French pox, though he is sensible enough to keep his opinions to himself. And while the noble earl’s symptoms might be eased by the aqua vitae that Nicholas prescribes, they are inflamed by the never-ending stream of letters from the queen – letters in which Her Majesty makes clear her deep and growing disapproval of her former champion’s conduct of her war.
They come written in neat secretary-hand and bearing the royal seal. But each one is a fanfare of imperious command. Strike at once, she tells him from the comfort of Whitehall, or Richmond, or Greenwich, or wherever else she is fulminating. Make no treaty with the rebellious Tyrone. Do not dare to set foot in England again until you have triumphed.