He remembers Cecil’s promise that Bruno could one day enter his household. He allows himself a glimpse into an imagined future. He sees his boy at twenty, no longer heir to a Suffolk yeoman’s son but to privilege and position, just another glory-hungry gallant with no conscience, like the ones who buzz around Robert Devereux the way flies buzz around the earl’s pewter pots of stinking flux.
You’ve done the rebels’ work for them, sirrah, he can hear Essex shouting, the day Henry Norris died of his wounds. You’re a traitor!
Perhaps I am, Nicholas thinks. And perhaps there are worse things to be in life than a traitor to a tainted cause.
When Tyrone had told her that he was taking his army to meet the English on the Lagan, Bianca had known she would likely have to cross the river. The rebels would no doubt choose a ford for the meeting. But she had decided from the start that it would be far too risky to attempt to cross anywhere within view of their flank scouts. That would mean the distinct possibility of having to swim across. And a heavy woollen gown, once waterlogged, would take her to the bottom as efficiently as an iron anchor.
‘Now I understand why you bring this,’ Cachorra says with a smile as Bianca blows as many breaths into the empty wineskin as her bursting lungs can manage. Red-faced, she screws the wooden stopper down tightly into the neck.
‘Everything off, down to our under-smocks,’ she gasps as she stoops to unlace her boots.
When they have assembled their clothes in a pile, Bianca stuffs everything into her own kirtle. Only Constanza’s gold crucifix remains.
‘I should not have taken it; is stealing,’ says Cachorra regretfully, staring down at the dull gold, robbed of its lustre by the twilight.
‘Not really,’ Bianca tells her. ‘You’ve earned it through forbearance. If I’d had to live in your shoes, I would have belted her over the head with it.’ She bends down, retrieves the wedding gift and pushes it deep inside the clothes. She binds the bundle to the inflated wineskin, tying the sleeves tightly around its leather carrying-strap. Then she hoists the improvised float over one shoulder. ‘Leave the boots,’ she says. ‘They’ll only fill up with water and impede us. The English must have some to spare that haven’t fallen to pieces.’
Leaving the shelter of the birch wood, they make their way down towards the river. In the aftermath of the drizzle, the grassy slope is as slippery underfoot as the Thames when it freezes over.
A sudden crack, like an angry slap across a cheek. Bianca turns her head sharply. Her heart tries to hurl itself from her breast. Close behind her, Cachorra gives a guilty grin and lifts a palm away from her left wrist. ‘Mosquitoes,’ she whispers. Bianca shushes her to silence. They move on at a crouch.
At the water’s edge the bank has slipped away. It takes some stumbling about in the gloom to find an easy way down. With a brief hug for good luck, the two women slip down into the dark river. Two simultaneous gasps of shock, quickly stifled. Then, with no more sound than a pair of wading herons might make stalking a plump fish, they strike out in a measured breaststroke, making as little disturbance in the water as they can.
The Lagan is not particularly wide at Bellaclinthe. Nor is the current overpowering, certainly not for two young women with more than enough reason and determination to reach the far side. But the light has almost gone. The rising ground ahead is rapidly dissolving, the land mixing with the water to make a blackness that Bianca fears is stealing away her hopes of safety, of finding Nicholas. She has an alarming impression that she is swimming not to a nearby riverbank, but out into a boundless ocean.
The first stabs of panic make themselves felt in the tips of her fingers as they explore the cold liquid. The measured stroke of her arms takes on a faster, desperate action. Her feet fail. She forgets the need for silence. Now she has lost her bearings. She glances ahead, searching for the bank. Surely it must be almost within reach. It has to be. She thinks she has been swimming for an age. But when she lifts her head, she sees nothing but darkness.
Where is Cachorra?
Frantically Bianca twists in the water. There! Barely a yard behind her. She would have missed her completely, a gleam of breaking water the only sign she hasn’t drowned. She treads water, offering the float to her companion. But Cachorra has no need of it. She looks as though she could swim all the way back to Hispaniola if she chose.
Then another fear strikes Bianca: what if she has lost her bearings? What if her makeshift float, looped around one arm, has caused her to swim in an arc, taking poor faithful Cachorra back to the rebel bank? She hadn’t thought of that.
Bianca lets her legs sink a little, thinking she might touch bottom. Nothing. She pushes out again, gaining strength from the fear growing inside her. She feels something scrape across her belly. Convinced that a great fish with needle-sharp teeth has just passed beneath her, she opens her mouth to scream. Water rushes in and suddenly there is no air in her lungs. I’m going to drown, she thinks. I’m going to die almost within sight of Nicholas. Her arms begin to flail as if they had a will of their own.
But instead of beating against the river, she is hammering at a shelving bed of mud and gravel. Her fingers and knees scrape themselves raw, though she will not even notice the damage until long after she and Cachorra have clambered up the grassy incline, laughing and splashing water from their soaking clothes over each other like children playing in a rockpool.
‘We’ve done it! We’re safe,’ she gasps, wiping the grit from her mouth with the hem of a wet sleeve.
‘No más idiota Constanza,’ says Cachorra in wonderment, looking around as if she cannot quite believe it. ‘No más quejas! Aleluya!’
It is only then that Bianca sees a pair of horsemen a little further up the slope, reined in by a clump of trees. In the twilight she cannot determine their expressions. But they look like stone monuments in an abandoned temple, hinting at an ancient power once held over the vanished congregation. One of them calls out – in a tone familiar to any spy who has just been caught in the act of stealing across the lines. And not in English, but in native Irish.
38
The valley of the Lagan is in darkness. On either side of the river the campfires of the opposing armies glow like stars in a looking glass held towards the night sky. In the English camp a sense of weary acceptance reigns. The day that has passed cannot be called a victory. But neither can it be called a defeat; not while His Grace the Earl of Essex is in such an ebullient mood.
He has single-handedly brought the rebellion to an end. He has done what no general, past or present, could do. He has tamed Tyrone. The queen will restore him to the boundless generosity of her favour, along with all who had faith in him. As for the doubters, to the Devil with them. Tomorrow he will retire the army to Drogheda, thence to England to claim his real prize: the overthrow of his enemies.