The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘Dutch? How do you propose we pass ourselves off as Dutch?’

  ‘Easily. I can muster enough of the Hogen-mogen language – from my summer with the army of the House of Orange. You’ll have to speak Italian. I cannot imagine they’ll know the difference.’

  Bianca is still not convinced. ‘But once they learn we didn’t enter Dover, the very next place they’ll search for us is your family home. And what if they decide to put someone at Aldgate, to keep watch on the road east? They’ll take us before we’ve even left the city.’

  It is not often that Nicholas is ahead of his wife in matters devious. He grins. ‘We’re not taking the road from Aldgate, either.’

  ‘Then short of sprouting wings and flying out of London, where exactly are we going?’

  But, to her ill-suppressed fury, Nicholas refuses to be drawn.

  Time, thinks Nicholas. It is all a matter of judging the falling of the hours. Linger, and Essex might change his mind and come after him. The Chief Justice and the Attorney General might discover an urgency that is usually quite alien to their grand offices. But act too hastily, and flight will look like an admission of guilt. And without preparation, he and Bianca could face the prospect of impoverishment and destitution in a foreign realm. These are the thoughts that drive Nicholas Shelby as he prepares for their departure from London.

  ‘What shall we do for money?’ Bianca asks, over a breakfast of brawn and bread.

  ‘We still have plenty left from the prize I brought back from Morocco. Then there’s my stipend for attending Sir Robert’s son – he owes me for three months.’

  ‘But a heavy purse will draw thieves like a carcass draws flies.’

  ‘We’ll take just enough for our immediate needs.’

  ‘And when that runs out?’

  ‘I’ll ask Sir Robert to put the Cecil seal on a letter of credit. Antwerp might be Catholic, but she still trades with England, and the great banking families of Europe have agents there. We’ll not starve.’

  Then there are the mundane practicalities of leaving Bankside. Who will ensure that the fingers of a carpenter’s mangled hand are straight and useable, rather than twisted and inflexible, if Dr Shelby is not there to splint them? How will the victim of a street robbery bear the pain of his beating if Mistress Merton is no longer around to provide a decoction of henbane and mandragora? Who will make the powder of cinnamon, myrrh, white amber and cassia lignea to help with a difficult childbirth? And if Dr Shelby is not on hand to diagnose a case of bladder stones, and Mistress Merton is not there to mix the fennel root, lovage, black peony and motherwort to dissolve them, how is relief to be found? There are few Banksiders with the money to bring in a physician from across the river. And anyone in Southwark claiming to have studied medicine at Oxford, or Cambridge, or Paris, Basle or Uppsala – or Thebes on the River Nile, for that matter – is without doubt a charlatan.

  Throughout the next day Nicholas and Bianca attend to these and other questions. Nicholas returns to St Tom’s. He takes great pleasure in announcing his freedom to the warden, telling him that he won’t be around for a while as he intends to travel to Dover.

  ‘There’s no hospitals in Dover, Shelby – just whores, fishermen and sailors,’ the warden points out with a noisy sniff, as though this is the end he’s always imagined for Nicholas. ‘I trust you’ll not be after any of St Thomas’s mercury.’

  ‘No hospitals, but plenty of ships,’ Nicholas counters, explaining that he’s on his way to Paris to take up a position as physician to a rich Huguenot. Dover… Paris… the trail will have any Privy Council searcher tied in knots for weeks.

  Leaving the warden to enjoy his sour jealousy, he seeks out a competent barber-surgeon he trusts. He offers the fellow enough out of his own purse to cover his twice-weekly consultations at St Tom’s.

  Meanwhile Bianca enlists the help of some of the older women of Bankside. She chooses carefully: women of sound common sense who’ve spent a lifetime caring for children, husbands, parents; women she can trust to prepare a serviceable poultice, plastrum, syrup or tincture. She gives up a few of her secrets in exchange for a clear conscience. Then she sends Rose across the bridge to ensure a line of credit with an apothecaries’ merchant in Blackfriars who can provide ingredients.

  But what to do about Rose herself? The woman can barely pass a minute without her eyes welling with tears, or loud snorting noises issuing from somewhere deep inside her misery. She has reverted to her former feather-brained self – the persona Bianca calls Mistress Moonbeam. Now Rose is forever misplacing or dropping things and getting her words jumbled up.

  ‘Ned and me… when you leave… that you’re safe… how shall we know...?’

  ‘Dry your eyes, Rose, dear.’

  ‘But how long…? You won’t even say.’

  She is only partially mollified when Bianca requests that Rose writes to her husband Ned at Nonsuch, summoning him back to Southwark. ‘I’m entrusting the reconstruction to the Jackdaw to you both,’ Bianca tells her. ‘If Nicholas and I have not returned before it is completed, I want you and Ned to manage it for me. You may have our lodgings here, until the Jackdaw is fit for you to move into.’

  Nicholas encloses Rose’s note in a letter that he writes to his friend John Lumley, asking him to release Ned from the Nonsuch household. He also asks Lord Lumley to read Rose’s words to her husband, because Ned does not have the learning to read them for himself.

  Then there is the matter of what to carry on the journey. Nicholas has purchased a collection of pouches and bags from a saddler in Bermondsey. But what to put in them? For him, the choices are made within minutes: his sturdy white canvas doublet that has seen him through all manner of tribulations, three shirts, a change of under-breeches, a knife and spoon, a plate and, for defence against cut-pads and thieves – or, God forbid, any bounty-hunter the Privy Council might send after him – the wheel-lock pistol he brought back from Morocco, along with powder and ball.

  Bianca, too, has little to take. Most of her belongings were lost in the arson that destroyed the Jackdaw. Since the fire she has purchased only two new kirtles, one of bottle-green linsey, the other of scarlet mockado, a damask doublet-bodice dyed a fine golden-yellow, two pairs of boots, a farthingale of canvas and whalebone (which will be utterly impractical on a journey on horseback) and some linen under-smocks, plus essential personal items such as a hair comb and eating utensils. Mercifully, on the day of the disaster she had left her favourite carnelian bodice at the Dice Lane shop. Her father had bought it for her on her eighteenth birthday. He’d chosen one of the best tailors in Padua, though he had been far from wealthy. It would have broken her heart to have lost that. That will have to come.

  There are some items, she decides, that are frankly indispensable. She will not consider going without her own lip colouring, which she makes out of alum, cochineal and gum arabic. Nor will she forgo the little casket in which she keeps the cloves, candle-soot mixed with crushed alabaster and civet, and the application cloth that she uses to clean her teeth. A fugitive she may be, but a Paduan woman has standards to maintain, regardless of the current state of catastrophe.

  But what to do about her father’s books and his silver Petrine crucifix, also saved because – thank God – they, too, were at Dice Lane?

  The books are far too cumbersome and heavy to take. But the cross, on which a finely worked St Peter is being crucified upside-down because he feels unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord, is barely six inches long. Sentiment, alone, would recommend it. And it could well be useful once they are across the Narrow Sea, adding credibility to the story Nicholas has contrived to explain their arrival in the Catholic territories of the Low Countries: that they are recusants, forced to flee from the cruel oppression of Elizabeth’s Protestant ministers. So the cross comes, too. Everything else – hers and Nicholas’s – goes into their wooden chest for safekeeping.

  Deciding that the hardest leave-taking should be tackled soonest, she
takes herself down Black Bull Alley to the little patch of ground she owns tucked away behind an ancient brick wall close to the riverbank.

  She stands before the old, lopsided wooden door awhile before entering. The air here is heavy. It is freighted with the essences of a vast weight of muddy grey-brown water sliding past on its way to the sea, bearing with it the detritus of London: a cat that drowned at Esher; a memento that a grieving lover cast in at Kew; a shattered wheel from an old cart abandoned up at Richmond; a rack of rib bones from the shambles at Lambeth Palace; the hopes and fears – and yes, the waste – of two hundred thousand Londoners, and all those souls who people the riverbank along its journey from Avalon, or Eden, or wherever else the English think it rises.

  But once Bianca steps inside her little physic garden the air changes. It seems to thrum to the competing scents of thyme and catmint, wormwood and lavender, and all the other herbs and plants she nurtures here, for her balms, concoctions and infusions.

  And so she takes a sad farewell of the place she calls her ‘other heart’. The place where she can speak her most privy thoughts out loud and know they will receive a safe, warm, fragrant – and, most of all, unjudging – reception.

  How will you be, when I see you again? she wonders. Will you be old and weary, your leaves drooping on their stems like the lank strands of an old woman’s hair? Will Rose, whose mind flits as heedlessly as the insects that dance upon your petals, let you die while I am somewhere far away?

  Unable to hold back a tear, Bianca turns and walks back through the little stone archway, locking the door upon the one thing in her life she cannot entirely trust to another’s care.

  ‘Antwerp?’ says Cecil, as though weighing the word and finding it heavier than he expected. ‘I already have a man in Antwerp.’

  ‘That was not my motive for choosing it, Sir Robert – if you recall.’

  Cecil nods pensively. ‘It’s close. I can call you back with ease. And you should be safe enough from the likes of Coke and Popham. But according to my man’s dispatches, several high-ranking officers from the Archduke of Austria’s household have been seen in the city. The Dons have appointed him governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and he could be planning to make it his headquarters. It might prove too hot for an Englishman. And your new wife does rather have a habit of drawing attention.’

  ‘Then we’ll go to Paris, or into the German states. Maybe the Palatine.’

  Cecil considers this for a moment. Then he takes up a quill and paper. ‘I’ll write the letter of credit you have requested – on one condition.’

  I wouldn’t have expected otherwise, Nicholas thinks. With Robert Cecil, there’s always a condition.

  ‘Keep your eyes and ears open,’ Cecil says. ‘Well-dressed Dons talking loudly in taverns – that sort of thing. Their galleons putting in, or making sail. Bodies of troops arriving or marching out.’

  ‘I don’t speak Spanish, Sir Robert.’

  Cecil taps the corner of one eye. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘And on the slight chance that I do learn something, how shall I pass it to you?’

  ‘Let me know where you settle. Use the cipher we agreed upon when you went to the Barbary shore for me last year. Apart from that, write nothing down. I’ll inform my agents. They’ll seek you out. It’s safer that way.’

  Not necessarily for me, thinks Nicholas. You don’t want me travelling the roads of Europe with a list of your agents in my head.

  In the late afternoon he returns to Bankside, richer by six months of stipend, plus his back-pay. The money is a mix of English nobles, florins and ecus, drawn from the fund Cecil uses to pay his agents abroad. Along with the purse is a letter of introduction to the banking families with whom the Cecils have dealings in Paris, Rotterdam and Montreux. Nicholas also bears a passport letter with the Cecil seal attached, permitting him to leave England, though Sir Robert has warned him that if Essex, Coke or Popham were to persuade the Privy Council to issue a charter of arraignment, then their document will take precedence and the safe-passage will be worthless.

  ‘So if we’re not really going to Dover, and we’re not going out of the city to the east by Aldgate, then where are we going?’ Bianca demands to know, staring at the gleaming coins. ‘Are we taking wing to Barnthorpe, like angels?’

  ‘We’re going to Gravesend,’ he says.

  Bianca gives him a puzzled look. Gravesend is separated from the road into Suffolk by the cold and turbulent Thames, ever widening as it flows towards the open sea.

  And then she remembers a cold, foggy April night three years past. She and Nicholas had been searching the lanes below the Hythe for a tavern in which to lay their heads. They had gone to the little town that lies to the east of King Henry’s great royal shipyard at Woolwich, in the search for a witness to a monstrous crime. She remembers that night not only for the reason behind their visit, but also for the fact she had thought it was to be the night Nicholas would – at last – find the courage to bury Eleanor’s ghost and lie with her. It hadn’t happened, of course. It had been too early, she had realized. But as the memories of those hours fall into place in her mind, she smiles.

  ‘I think I know why we’re going to Gravesend,’ she says, her amber eyes gleaming with mischievous light. ‘We’re going to see Porter Bell.’

  6

  Nicholas has chosen the perfect day to leave. A misty dawn gives way to a clear blue sky, trimmed at its southern rim by a thin white fleece of cloud. The day has other things to commend it than simply the weather. In the old faith, it is the feast day of St John the Baptist. But to Banksiders it is Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June. Last night was St John’s Eve. On the Pike Garden a great bonfire had been lit, and the smell of roasting meat hung on the night air until well after midnight. Knock-down and mad-dog, stitch-back and dragon’s milk flowed down thirsty gullets by the barrel-full. Those whom the locals call maltworms were swiftly relieved of their purses whenever they subsided into drunken slumber in a doorway or under a hedge. In the months ahead, more than a few Southwark lads and lasses would find themselves standing nervously before the priest at the entrance to St Saviour’s. Bianca had mourned her last evening in Southwark not just because she was leaving, but also for the profit the Jackdaw might have turned, had it still been standing.

  She and Nicholas had been careful to keep a clear head. It had been easy for him; he still drinks only carefully, after his descent into Purgatory when Eleanor died. Vagrancy is not a state he has any intention of returning to. As for Bianca, she limited herself to a couple of glasses of Rhenish at the Turk’s Head, taking care to sit with her back to the window, so that she might not see the skeleton of the new Jackdaw rising from the ashes a little further down the lane and lose her nerve.

  This morning much of Bankside is still abed, snoring through its inebriated dreams. Those who are already up are preparing for the day’s continuing celebrations: more feasting, drinking, dancing. A robust game of football has been planned in the Paris Garden, though today Dr Shelby will not be around to treat the broken limbs, squashed noses and flayed knuckles.

  When he and Bianca arrive at the Tabard’s stables in the clear light of early morning, Tom Prithy sees they have put their domestic spat behind them. They favour him with a cheery wave as they ride out of the Tabard’s livery stables towards the Kent road. Dr Shelby’s had a word with her, the ostler thinks. He’s reminded her of the wifely station ordained by God. Let’s hope the peace lasts until Dover.

  They ride at a comfortable pace. Hurrying will only serve to draw attention. As they ride down Kentish Street and into the Surrey countryside beyond, the only traffic they meet are laden farm carts coming into the city. The sun is up, the buttercups speckling the fields like gold coins scattered from heaven. Nicholas unlaces his white canvas doublet a little. He has left the more expensive one he’d purchased for the wedding last August in his clothes chest at the Paris Garden lodgings; there’s no point looking like a fine prize for a
cut-purse.

  ‘I never knew you could ride like a man,’ he says, observing how Bianca has chosen a man’s saddle, hitched up her gown and now sits astride her horse with a confidence he finds thrilling. He knows he should be scandalized, but he rather enjoys the way she disregards convention.

  ‘In Padua I wanted to ride in the annual horse race,’ she tells him, her face lighting up with the memory. ‘The boys let me practise with them; but I beat a few of them, so they wouldn’t let me compete. They said it was an affront to decency. I quite like being an affront to decency.’

  At St Thomas-a-Watering they pass the black, rotting remnants of the traitors and thieves hanged on the gibbet there and left as a warning for wiser folk. It reminds them of what they’re fleeing – the price of failure.

  At Blackheath they let the horses quench their thirst from a stream, lingering until a drover and his flock have passed out of sight and the way is empty. Then, unobserved, they turn off the Kent road and strike north-east across the heath, towards Woolwich, where the new galleons of the queen’s navy are rising from their wooden cribs. Before they reach the dockyard, it is Nicholas’s intention that they should join the eastern road to Canterbury. He thinks they can be in Gravesend by dusk.

  ‘I hear tell this place is notorious for felons and cut-purses,’ Bianca observes anxiously as they pass along a rutted track between banks of wickedly barbed gorse.

  Lifting the flap of a saddle pouch to reveal the polished wooden stock of the wheel-lock pistol, Nicholas smiles. ‘It’s the pistol Captain Yaxley of the Marion gave me when I returned from Morocco. I’ve already loaded it with powder and ball,’ he says confidently. ‘If we see cut-purses ahead, all I have to do is take the turning wrench, crank the wheel, prime the pan, set the dog-tooth… and give fire.’