In this dangerous delusion, Devereux is encouraged by Southampton, Henshawe and his closest captains. Ormonde and the others, including Nicholas, are of a very different mind. They have not so easily forgotten Her Majesty’s express command to her Lord Lieutenant not to enter into any unworthy treaty, and not to show his face in her presence until all the fires of rebellion have been smothered. For Nicholas, these great affairs are little more than a secondary discomfort when set against the far greater pain of retreating to Drogheda without further word of Bianca.
He has just finished treating one of Southampton’s cavalrymen. The man presented a short while ago with a corrupted blister on the inner thigh. Once Nicholas had expelled the pus, he’d been forced to rely only on plantain and lentils to make the cataplasm, because his supply of arnoglossum is almost exhausted. There’s little chance of getting more from England because the main source of the plant is in the Spanish territories in the Americas. The merchants in France and Italy charge an arm and a leg, and even if he could send word that he needed a fresh supply, the chances of it arriving before his patient dies of old age are slim. So much for a victorious army, he thinks. Horsemen with boils, a general with dysenteria and the pox, and an enemy that rides away with the better deal. Could anyone have a finer metaphor for Her Majesty’s present enterprise in Ireland?
Exhausted, he leans back against the wall of his tent. If the past is anything to go by, Essex will call for the camp to be struck even before first light. The army will be on its way to Drogheda by sunrise. Away from Bianca – wherever she is.
‘Master Physician… Master Physician…’
Someone is calling to him in a low voice made all the more urgent by its Irish lilt. Probably one of the locally raised levies, he decides, come to seek treatment for the flux, or the bog fever, or the tertian ague, or any of the other debilitating maladies this isle seems to harbour specifically for English armies. My first task, he thinks, will be to convince the poor fellow that he’s not going to hang for seeking help.
‘Yes, I’m Dr Shelby. Come in. How may I help?’ He looks up.
Holy Jesu, there’s three of them. They’re falling sick in batches now. At this rate, Essex will be going to Drogheda all by himself.
With the tent lit only by a single lantern to work by, the three figures are mere shadows against the night beyond. Even the campfires lend them nothing but fragments of outline where the firelight touches. Then one ducks down and enters.
It’s a phantasm, Nicholas thinks, rubbing his sore eyes. It’s brought on by exhaustion. Because how else could Bianca herself appear before my eyes, her usually unruly hair plastered around her face, dripping water as though she’s swum across an ocean and smelling faintly of river mud?
‘Good morrow, Husband,’ the phantasm says, a strand of river weed in her hair and a grin barely under control. ‘Have you missed me? I’ve brought you not just one Merrow, but two.’
The moment for rapturous reunion must wait. Nicholas is nothing if not a practical man. The night is not overly warm, and both Bianca and the woman she has brought with her – almost as much a shock to him as seeing his wife again – are shivering from the swim. He enlists the help of the two lads who found them: lancers in Captain Bellingham’s company of native Leinster men, who had been patrolling the riverbank when Bianca and her companion clambered out of the water. Together, they build a fire behind the tent. It takes a little juggling, some back-turning and a makeshift screen of gaberdines, sleeping pelts and sacking, but soon Bianca and Cachorra are warming themselves beside the flames, with pelts around their naked shoulders. A change of kirtles is begged from the women camp-followers who, learning that Bianca has returned, must be restrained from rushing to her side like maids of honour at a wedding. With the dry clothes, they provide two bowls of weak but hot pottage, a generous gift given the paucity of their rations.
True to her name, Cachorra observes this industry with the wariness of a hungry cat. There is resignation in her eyes, as though to swap one estate for another is something that simply has to be borne. But there is hope and anticipation there, too. Bianca admires her ability to make the best of the world in which she finds herself. Perhaps she has learned it as an antidote to her former mistress’s endless dissatisfaction with her own world.
‘I have the suspicion you’ll fit into Bankside as easily as a hand into a fine, doeskin glove,’ she tells her, while the firelight plays on Cachorra’s skin.
A hasty rearranging of the pots, hemp bags, boxes and jars that contain his physic, and Nicholas contrives two extra sleeping places in the already cramped tent, adding the scrounged sleeping pelts for comfort. Like the survivor of a catastrophe, Cachorra is soon fast asleep, though what dreams she may have are beyond even Bianca’s comprehension. What does a prisoner dream of on her first night of freedom, if she can barely remember anything but imprisonment?
‘Who is she? Where did you find her?’ Nicholas asks Bianca as they stand outside the tent, watching the campfires burn down. Neither is ready for sleep, despite the exertions of the day and the fact that the army will move at dawn.
‘Her speech – I can’t quite place it. Her English is spoken with an accent that sounds almost… almost–’
Bianca tries not to laugh as she watches Nicholas’s thoughts play out on his face. She’s always believed his yeoman’s honesty the one major obstacle to his work for Robert Cecil.
‘Spanish?’ she says teasingly.
‘No! She can’t possibly be–’
Even though he’s become accustomed to Bianca’s ability to confound him, he struggles to get the words out.
‘No, Nicholas, she isn’t,’ Bianca says, trying not to laugh at his obvious confusion. ‘But she is – or rather she was – Constanza Calva de Sagrada’s personal maid.’
She relays to him the story Cachorra has told her of how she and her mistress survived the shipwreck. She recounts how they were passed from hiding place to hiding place because Tyrone believed that Don Rodriquez had been an emissary from Spain, come to offer assistance in his rebellion against the English. She explains how she herself proved the saving of Constanza, though she diplomatically omits Cachorra’s inadvertent role in her mistress’s illness.
‘Where is Constanza now?’
‘On her way to Scotland, I hope. Then to Antwerp – to what her husband probably anticipates will be a life of wifely duty and devotion. I really do hope he’s a patient man. Failing that, that he has a palace with a lot of rooms.’
He stares at her, all pretence at comprehension abandoned. ‘Then has Constanza given you the list of names?’
‘No. But Cachorra has it.’
‘Wrapped in sailcloth,’ he ventures, recalling the small package Cachorra had been carrying when she arrived, and which now lies beside his rearranged stock of physic.
‘Oh no. That’s Cachorra’s dowry, for her future.’
‘Then where is it?’
‘Where we women keep all our most priceless attractions,’ she says sweetly, kissing him chastely on the cheek. ‘In her head.’
The sultry drizzle has passed. Dawn brings a clear early-autumn sky, laced with wisps of cloud the colour of poached Lagan salmon. The Lord Lieutenant gives the order to depart the valley, convinced that a great victory has been won. Only the less servile of his captains eschew the congratulatory mood. They know the dangers to which Robert Devereux has made himself a hostage.
And what of the latest addition to the train of camp-followers? How to pass off this tall, imposing-looking young woman whose appearance is, to say the least, uncommon?