‘Are you sure you’re well enough for so taxing an enterprise, my lord?’ Nicholas asks quietly. It’s as near as he dares come to telling Essex he’s an impetuous, deluded fool.
‘Well? Of course I’m well, Dr Shelby. Why would I not be? I have the best physician in all the realm to attend me.’
God help us all, Nicholas thinks, as he meets Henshawe’s stare and sees his expression turn from petulant resentment to outright loathing. We’re on thin ice now.
Take Cachorra and sail for England, Nicholas tells Bianca while he snatches a few precious moments at their cramped Dublin lodgings. We’ll meet again at the Jackdaw.
When she asks how she is supposed to achieve this feat, he has an answer already to hand. The master of a pinnace, the Joan Bonaventure, currently under contract to the royal post, is one of Cecil’s trusted men. Indeed, Amos Errington has carried enciphered letters from Nicholas to Mr Secretary Cecil in the past – before Oliver Henshawe imposed himself as Essex’s censor. ‘You’ll be safe enough with Errington,’ he says, handing her a sheet of paper. ‘Here – I’ve written a note of passage, saying you’re on Privy Council business. That way, when you land at Bristol, you can demand a post-horse to get you to London.’ He glances at Cachorra, who – though she has caught only a little of their rapid exchange – understands that a crisis is at hand. ‘Can you ride a horse?’
‘Of course Cachorra rides. What woman who lives beside a Spanish nobleman’s daughter since she was six years old cannot ride a horse?’
‘This is madness, Nicholas,’ Bianca says, close to losing her temper, yet terrified of what Nicholas is getting himself into. ‘Can’t you refuse him?’
‘How can I? He’s commander of the queen’s army. I am the queen’s subject. I have no choice.’
‘But what if your fears that Essex is planning some rash act against Her Majesty are real? If you’re at his side, that makes you a traitor. You could go to the scaffold with him!’
‘Or I could be the one to talk him out of it.’
As she helps him gather up a few necessities for the journey, she says, ‘I hope, when this is over, you’ll present him with a proper physician’s reckoning.’
‘What would be the point?’ Nicholas replies dejectedly. ‘He’s an earl. He’ll expect credit. I’d have to wait until he was dead before trying to prise payment from his executors.’
Bianca hands him his saddle pack. Giving him a look of weary resignation, she says, ‘You might not be waiting as long as you think, Husband. If what you’ve told me is true, Her Majesty’s temper is even shorter than a Caporetti’s.’
39
In the two days since the Earl of Essex sailed so precipitously for England, Sir Oliver Henshawe has found a pleasurable consolation. Indeed, he now considers himself fortunate not to have been included in the earl’s party. Who would want to spend two days at sea and another two in the saddle when there is such sport to be had here in Ireland?
Word has reached him from the hamlets within the Pale to the north of Dublin that a band of some half-dozen rebels have taken advantage of the current truce to sneak into the country around St Mary’s Abbey, on the north side of the River Liffey. From their hiding place they can watch English shipping entering and leaving Dublin Bay.
Strictly speaking, it is against the terms of the present agreement to hunt them down. But spying is a deceitful, dishonourable occupation. Sir Oliver is sure His Grace would approve.
Hunting rebels, Sir Oliver believes, is best achieved by traditional methods. In his opinion, your rebel is a cunning quarry. He possesses none of the nobility of the red deer, like those to be found on the Henshawe lands at Walworth in the fair county of Surrey. Rather, he exhibits the bestial instincts of the fox. He is lower in God’s order even than a Spaniard – and that’s saying something. To soothe his disappointment at being forced to stay behind, Henshawe now embarks upon the destruction of this nest of inquisitive traitors. He organizes their destruction much as he would a hunt at Walworth.
On the afternoon of the earl’s departure, still smarting from his exclusion, Sir Oliver has his company practise its drills on the land below the abbey. Make a show, he instructs his officers. Give the seditious vermin something to look at. Keep their eyes fixed firmly to the south. Make no sign that we are aware of their presence. And on no account make a move northwards. We’ve signed an accord, after all.
Two days later he changes his orders. Start moving, he commands. Not aggressively, just enough to force the rebels to pull back towards Navan. Act the spaniel. Flush the game.
His plan is simple. He will drive the quarry onto the waiting line of light horse that he has slipped around the western side of the abbey the previous night under cover of darkness. He will cut off the rebel line of retreat. Two can play the game of ambush.
The Joan Bonaventure is a small, speedy little craft. But the only shelter for her passengers is a cramped space below the main deck where Bianca must stoop if she is to walk at all, and Cachorra must bend almost double. Neither is relishing the voyage to Bristol. As a consequence they are on deck as she clears Blind Quay, with the mudflats of Hoggen Green lying ahead to starboard like the grey, glistening backs of basking sea monsters.
As they stand beside the port rail, watching the seagulls rise and dive over the water, a ragged volley of musketry drifts on the wind from the direction of St Mary’s Abbey on the rising ground across the estuary.
‘What’s that?’ Cachorra asks, turning towards the sound. ‘Has the fighting started again? Has the truce collapsed?’
‘Probably some of His Grace’s fine gallants shooting woodcock,’ Bianca says, her thoughts firmly on the journey to London. ‘There’ll be little else for them to do, now that a truce has been agreed. They’re still living off the Essex coin, so they probably consider it their duty to slaughter at least something while he’s gone.’
By nightfall, the sole survivor of the rebel party is brought, bound and bloodied, to a cold, damp, windowless chamber beneath Dublin Castle. Oliver Henshawe takes charge of the inquisition. He enjoys putting a man to the hard press as much as he enjoys hunting the red deer. Killing is in Henshawe’s blood. And tonight his blood is hot.
By chance, he has caught himself the son of a minor O’Connor chieftain.
At first the rebel is proud and uncooperative, taunting his captors with contemptuous silence. But unlike the rebel captive that Robert Cecil had asked Nicholas to treat in the cellars at Cecil House, this man has no river to hurl himself into.
To induce a willingness to cooperate, Henshawe chooses the strappado. With the prisoner’s arms chained behind his back, a rope is attached to the manacles and passed over a hook set into the ceiling. His arms are then hoisted up and back until his body is suspended, its entire weight taken by the shoulder joints. Muscles and tendon cannot bear the strain. The shoulders dislocate.
Oliver Henshawe is a man who believes in putting the proper amount of effort into a task. He takes up a long ribbon of chain-mail, the end of which is set with fish hooks, and which he has fashioned especially for occasions such as this. He begins vigorously to apply it to his subject’s already ruined shoulders, as though he were the high priest of some stern religious order of flagellants. Or perhaps he is simply expunging his anger at being left behind in Dublin.