‘Name it.’
‘That you find a Catholic priest to give him the Viaticum.’
Cecil stares at him. ‘What wild fancy is this?’
‘I’m guessing you must have at least one priest incarcerated somewhere, some Jesuit you’ve caught sneaking into the realm – if they’ve not all been sent to the scaffold already.’
‘Do you think a traitorous rebel from the bogs of Ireland – a rogue who cannot even bring himself to speak English – is going to understand Latin?’
‘He may not understand it, but he will know he’s dying in a state of grace.’
‘Why do you care whether he dies in God’s grace or not? He’s a heretic, a rebel. He has set his face against God’s order.’
‘He’s a man. He has a soul.’
Robert Cecil shakes his head. ‘Have I called home a different Dr Shelby?’ He sets off back towards the house at his usual brisk scuttle. Nicholas hurries to catch up, unsure whether he’s been dismissed. ‘And the priest?’
Cecil waves his arms over his head in defeat. The flapping sleeves of his gown make him look like an angry raven about to launch itself into the sky. ‘Yes, yes, your rebel can have his priest. But I warn you, in this fight with the Antichrist a man must sometimes set aside his finer feelings. You should remember that, if you’re going to be of any use to Her Majesty – or me, for that matter.’
‘Yes, Sir Robert,’ Nicholas says obediently.
‘There is one other thing I need from you.’
I thought there might be, thinks Nicholas. There usually is.
‘I desire you to speak to Master Edmund Spenser for me.’
‘Spenser – the poet?’
‘I know of no other Edmund Spenser. Do you?’
It seems a paltry commission, better suited to a clerk or a secretary. Nicholas wonders why Cecil has chosen him for the task.
‘Am I to pass on Her Majesty’s opinion of The Faery Queene?’ he asks. ‘Surely someone from the Office of the Revels can do that for you.’
‘Spenser has written to me, insisting that we speak. He says it’s urgent. I invited him to come and see me, but he declined.’
‘You’re the queen’s Secretary of State – summon him.’
‘He cites his present circumstances as preventing his travelling. He will, however, agree to talk to someone in whom I have complete confidence. He was most particular about that. “Complete and unshakeable confidence” – his very words. I’d tell him to go hang, but he happens to be Her Majesty’s favourite English poet.’
As they regain the terrace it begins to rain – spiteful drops, like little balls of molten mercury spraying from an alchemist’s furnace. Cecil hurries inside. Nicholas follows.
‘When do you wish me to go?’ he asks.
‘As soon as you may find it convenient,’ Cecil says, pausing at the top of the steps that lead down to the chamber Nicholas would rather not revisit. ‘When you are ready, see one of my secretaries and have him send to the stables for a palfrey.’
‘A horse? Is Master Spenser not then in London?’
A sudden gust of cold wind drives a spray of rain into the hallway. ‘Mercy, no,’ says Robert Cecil. ‘Whatever gave you that impression?’
‘I thought, with the Stationers’ Office and the playhouses being in London–’
‘No, Master Spenser does not dwell here in London,’ Cecil says impatiently. ‘He owns Kilcolman Castle – in the shire of Munster. He’s in Ireland.’
4
On Bankside the storm has been merciful. A few open drains still overflow with filth, a few ankles still ache from stumbling into submerged potholes, a course of damaged thatch hangs forlornly askew on the occasional roof. But the only vessel to be wrecked on this shore is a public tilt-boat broken free from its mooring at the Mutton Lane water-stairs because the waterman spent too long drinking in the nearby Jackdaw tavern.
By the time the Lord Mayor crosses London Bridge at the head of his procession – all on horseback and wearing their plumed hats and aldermanic capes – the sky is once again clear and almost summery.
The mayor, accompanied by his aldermen and sheriffs, has come across the river to parade through the liberty of Southwark, as far as the painted stones that mark its ancient limits. Every year on this day – the seventh of September – the grand mayoral progress opens the great Southwark Fair, established under gracious charter by the fourth Edward. By tradition, it marks the end of harvest time, though for four years in a row the harvest has been poor. Nevertheless, for Bianca Merton it heralds the most profitable time of year for the Jackdaw, above even the staging of a new play at the Rose theatre.
There has been a Jackdaw tavern longer than there has been a fair. Only once in all that time has it not thrown open its doors to welcome a throng of happy fair-goers. When Bianca followed Nicholas out of England four years ago, for the first time in three centuries there had been no Jackdaw. The lopsided timber-framed building that had stood since the time of the first Richard, or the second Edward, or the third Henry – no one on Bankside is quite sure – was little more than ashes. The tavern Bianca Merton had bought on her arrival in England, the business she had made almost as profitable as the Tabard on Long Southwark, had been burned almost to the ground.
But now a new Jackdaw stands in its place. And Bianca knows that she has Rose and Ned Monkton to thank for it – and the sultan’s bejewelled ring that Nicholas brought back from Marrakech. The ring paid for it; the Monktons oversaw the tavern’s resurrection. Looking around the taproom now, she can only admire the result of their stewardship. The new brickwork of the chimney hearth is laid almost straight, nearly vertical. The mantel no longer looks as though it has been recovered from the black depths of some petrified forest. The benches, stools and tables are new. The ceiling beams – now as honeyed as when they were first cut from the tree, rather than blackened and smoothed with age – have been lifted just enough to save careless customers of even middling height from braining themselves. You can even see the carpenter’s marks on the posts that hold them up. New flagstones – level for the first time in a couple of centuries – no longer trip the inebriated. The casks smell more of the cooper’s workshop than of ale. Sometimes, when she gazes with unsettling unfamiliarity at this startling resurrection, Bianca has to remind herself that this really is her Jackdaw.
In the taproom a three-year-old boy with locks almost as dark and lustrous as his mother’s is protesting as volubly as his little lungs will allow.
‘But I want see Mord Lair! Let me see Mord Lair!’
Bianca caresses his cheek to soothe his disappointment. She does not subscribe to the prevailing notion that children should remain as still and silent as the furniture, animating themselves only with prayer and obedience. It was never that way in her family home in Padua and she doesn’t see why it should be so on Bankside.
‘The crowd will be too rough, sweet, and there’ll be quarrels occasioned by drink,’ she tells him. ‘When you’re older, I promise. But today Rose will hold you up to the window, so that you may see Mord Lair and all his horses. And his aldermenys. And his shurrufs.’
Bruno giggles his acquiescence.
‘Come with me, Master Bruno,’ Rose Monkton says, taking the lad by the hand. She is a plump buttered bun of black curls and shiny cheeks. With no child of her own, she dotes on little Bruno. ‘While your mother and Master Nicholas are at the fair, what say we blow soap bubbles from Uncle Ned’s tobacco pipe?’
Bruno excitedly puffs up his cheeks like bellows – the Lord Mayor and all his dignified splendour instantly forgotten.