‘That’s how much Piers Gardener is worth to me.’
‘Then I ask but one thing.’
‘Ask it.’
‘Make sure my husband, Dr Nicholas Shelby, learns I am safe. You did promise to.’
‘I’ve been a little busy.’
‘I had not thought you so ungallant.’
Tyrone relents. ‘I have one of Devereux’s officers, captured at the Conna fight. My men wanted to cut his head off and send it to Essex as a salutation. But I’m going to exchange him, to show what a reasonable fellow I am at heart. I’ll tell them you’re with me. I won’t say where, but I’ll say you’re in good health. It’s the best I can do.’
‘Then I suppose I must be grateful to you, my lord.’
‘A toast,’ he says, pushing a cup of wine across the table. ‘To peace.’
From Tyrone’s captains comes a muted, knowing laughter.
‘To peace,’ she responds, lifting the cup to her lips. But neither she nor her captors specify precisely whose.
An hour later, Bianca is walking beside the river with Cachorra. Their guards, she notices, while still bored, now carry loaded crossbows. Pretending to search for herbs, she tells Cachorra about the plan to send her mistress on the final stage of her journey.
‘Then we must escape before they come for her,’ Cachorra says, her wide eyes brimming with alarm. She casts a glance at the guards. ‘But how?’
Bianca raises a finger to her lips. ‘I think it’s time your mistress suffered a small relapse. Only on this occasion, I’ll do the mixing.’
With an army less than a quarter of the size he began with, Essex orders a march to Navan, where the waters of the Boyne and the Blackwater meet. He is determined to meet Tyrone face-to-face. His Grace seems distracted, and Nicholas knows why. It is not the fear of defeat that unsettles him. He is suffering from the flux. In addition to all his other ills, England’s new Caesar is soiling his toga.
‘You’re needed,’ says Ormonde despondently when he thrusts his grizzled head through the tent flap one evening while the army is encamped. They walk together towards the Earl Marshal’s pavilion, past campfires where men washed clean of colour by wood-smoke and the evening twilight play dice, grumble, argue and contemplate. ‘His reason is quite out of balance,’ Ormonde tells him. ‘One moment he wants to throw our force boldly against the enemy, despite their strength; at another, he wants to speak with Tyrone like a brother, call him back to the family bosom. Last night at supper he said he would challenge O’Neill to single combat. What odds would you put on a fellow of thirty-three years with the shits against a fifty-year-old who’s campaigned as cannily as Hugh O’Neill? I know which side my coin would fall.’
When Nicholas enters, Essex breaks off from his conference with Southampton and his other captains. He is clad in the padded arming doublet he wears beneath his plate, though he looks more like a man who hasn’t slept for a week than England’s champion. His eyes are hollowed and bloodshot. His height no longer serves to impress, merely to accentuate the weight he’s lost.
‘Dr Shelby, is there any possibility you may prevent the rest of my army sickening away before the end of the month?’ he asks with a breathtaking lack of self-knowledge. ‘My army seems made of men with weak constitutions. The first hint of rain or fog and they wilt like grandmothers at a bear-baiting. Am I to have none but camp-followers to array in the field when I meet Tyrone?’
Camp-followers.
Is it said to inflame the hurt that has haunted me every moment since Bianca was taken? Nicholas wonders. Has the earl fallen from nobility into petty spite?
‘It is not I who cause your men to sicken,’ he answers, struggling to remain calm. ‘Their conditions, their food, the demands made upon them, and the Irish climate – that’s what ails them. They have enough to bear, even without the attentions of the enemy.’
‘I need every man fit to march. Work your physic, Doctor,’ Essex says, as if he’s not heard a word Nicholas has spoken. ‘If you think they’re feigning, tell Henshawe. He’ll hang a few. That should cure the rest, even if you can’t.’
The assembled commanders show no sign that their general is jesting. Only Ormonde gives an almost imperceptible roll of his eyes. Nicholas gives an assurance that he will do what he can, given the limited resources.
‘I believe there was something else you wanted to see me for, Your Grace,’ he says.
Essex gives a small reluctant nod, as though admitting a minor indiscretion. He dismisses his officers and leads Nicholas into the private part of his pavilion, separated from the rest by an embroidered cloth hanging. ‘This is what you asked for,’ he says, lifting an object wrapped in a cloth from beside his pallet. A nauseatingly sulphurous odour clings to it. Nicholas takes it from him, bows and promises to return before the earl makes his evening prayers.
Outside the pavilion, Ormonde is waiting for him. ‘That’s it, is it?’
‘I fear it is.’
‘Well, I don’t envy you. Rather face a six-foot rebel who was cup-shot on potcheen, myself.’
Nicholas nods acknowledgement of his misfortune. ‘Just part of a physician’s lot, I’m afraid. One gets used to it eventually.’
Alone in his tent, Nicholas spends a few uncomfortable moments examining the contents of the pewter bowl in which His Grace has thoughtfully provided a sample of the offending extrusions. Bearing the stench as bravely as he can, he makes a determination based on the colour and consistency of the matter and the blood contained within. Is Essex suffering from lienteria, tenesmus or dysenteria?
Nicholas diagnoses the last. To help him, he has not only the earl’s evidence to go by, but numerous similar cases steadily depleting his army. Hanging won’t cure the outbreak, whatever Essex might think. So, taking the remedy from his knowledge of Galenic medicine – and knowing from experience that it’s likely to be as efficacious as telling his patient to dance naked through the nearest wood at midnight wearing his chamber pot for a helmet – Nicholas prescribes a decoction of sorrel, dried rind of pomegranate and briar root. And rest. A lot of rest.
But His Grace cannot rest. Pricked by yet more letters from the queen deriding his performance at the head of her army, the next day Essex gives the order to strike camp. He will march into Louth, towards Ardee. News has reached him that Tyrone seeks a meeting there. The final reckoning – flux or no flux – is close at hand.
36
Tyrone slams his wine cup down. ‘A relapse?’ he says irritably. ‘How bad?’
On the table, spilled red malmsey forms stigmata on the exquisite gold crucifix Bianca has been admiring. It is to be a wedding gift for the Lady Constanza. As slender as a dagger, and fashioned from the finest gold ever panned from an Irish river – or so Tyrone has just informed her – she suspects it’s more of a down-payment on Spanish aid than a gift to the happy bride and groom.
‘Oh, not nearly as bad as before, my lord,’ she assures him as she contrives an expression of self-recrimination. ‘But I was a little premature when I said she was cured.’
Tyrone lifts up the crucifix and points the shaft at her, almost as if he’s thinking of plunging the point into her breast. ‘I had intended to give her this, before she departs. I cannot delay my departure.’ His eyes reveal a faint hint of smugness. ‘I have an appointment to keep, with His Grace the Earl of Essex.’
‘In my opinion, my lord, it will be a few days before Constanza will be well enough to travel. But when she is, I believe I should go with her – lest she sicken again on the journey.’