by S. W. Perry
‘It will be safer for everyone if we don’t tarry. We plan to leave tomorrow. Before the sun comes up.’
Yeoman Shelby sits down at the table board again. He picks up his pewter jug and tips the last of the ale into his mouth. The old, familiar stoicism of the farmer comes over him again. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose I’ll have to be the one to tell your mother. By the sound of it, you’ve enough trouble of your own to worry about.’
For a man almost universally feared for his size and his volcanic temper, Ned Monkton looks at this precise moment like a child deprived of a treasured toy. If Rose didn’t know her husband better, she would swear those are tears brimming in his eyes.
He has come from Nonsuch like a whirlwind. But even whirlwinds can arrive late. As Yeoman Shelby prepares to break the bad news to his wife, Ned Monkton stands in the doorway of the lodgings by the Paris Garden, looking around as though he half-expects Nicholas and Bianca to jump out from the kitchen. It was just a prank, Ned. See what a new sort of fellow you’ve become – quite unafraid to laugh at yourself.
‘Surely they could ’ave waited a few days?’ he says in a hurt voice that seems to belong to a far smaller man.
‘Master Nicholas was denounced, ’Usband,’ Rose says, looking up and seeing little but the swell of his chest and his great auburn beard. ‘Some villain wrote a letter to the Privy Council – said he’d intrigued with Dr Lopez in the matter of the queen’s poisoning.’
‘The queen’s been poisoned?’ Ned growls in astonishment. ‘This is worse than I feared.’
‘No, ’Usband, the queen has not been poisoned,’ Rose explains carefully: Ned, alarmed, can be a tad unpredictable. ‘But that didn’t save Dr Lopez. Now Master Nicholas has ’ad to flee abroad to escape the same fate.’
‘Because he was denounced for something he didn’t do?’
‘I think you’ve got the tail of it, ’Usband,’ Rose says with a relieved smile. ‘Now ’ang on tight, in case it wriggles free.’
‘Are you making merry with me, Wife?’ Ned says, enfolding Rose in his huge arms.
‘Mercy, never!’
‘Where ’ave they gone?’
‘We’re not to know that, ’Usband – in case the Earl of Essex come here asking.’
‘When will they return?’
‘That depends on how long it takes Sir Robert Cecil to find out who did the denouncing and make him confess he was lying through his poxy arse.’
Ned considers this with a dark scowl. ‘Then I must start at first light, Wife.’
Rose’s eyes widen. ‘Start what?’
‘I owe Master Nicholas my life,’ Ned says. ‘The least I can do is find out who’s slandered him.’
Rose marvels that such a fearsome carapace can hold such a good heart. She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Master Nicholas needs you here, to help me make sure the labourers don’t rebuild the Jackdaw with the roof on upside-down. Besides, I know what you’re like. You’ll be no use to him if you’re arrested for affray.’
‘But I must do something.’
‘We’ll put our heads together after you’ve rested from your journey,’ Rose says. ‘You must be tired.’
‘Tired of being an ’usband without a wife,’ Ned says, scooping up Rose in his arms as easily as if she were filled with goose-down – which, on bad days, Bianca claims is nearer the truth than it should be, especially the head part. He carries her towards the stairs like a prize.
‘Been hungry while we’ve been apart, ’ave you, ’Usband?’ she asks coyly.
‘Ravenous,’ he replies, opening his mouth like a great fish. ‘Them Nonsuch servant maids are all bone and gristle.’
‘You’ll need something you can get your teeth into then, I suppose.’ She gives his beard a playful tug. ‘Serious, though – someone needs to find the wretch what denounced Master Nicholas, else your fine mane will be grey as winter before he and Mistress Bianca can return home.’
‘I shall give the matter my most careful attention,’ Ned promises as he starts to climb the stairs, ‘right after I’ve ’ad a good rummage through the larder.’
The two Spanish soldiers leaving the cathedral of St John the Evangelist in Den Bosch are clearly men of some mark. It shows in the quality of the corselets and padded breeches they wear, slashed to reveal stripes of crimson silk, and in the silver hilts of the swords of fine Toledo steel at their belts. It shows, too, in the haughty disdain with which they look down upon the burghers and their womenfolk. Provincial, they would call them contemptuously. Utterly lacking the vivacidad of the Spanish.
‘Take as an example that peasant girl there,’ says their leader, a somewhat portly Castilian of middle years whose burnished breastplate has been let out more than a little since he was first fitted for it at the Escorial in Madrid, ‘the one staring at the cathedral as though she’s never seen a house of God before. Comelier than most Netherlanders, I’ll grant, but just look at that scowl. To think that we shed fine Spanish blood trying to save the likes of her from the Lutheran heresy!’
‘I know her, Don Antonio,’ says his companion, the captain of the city’s Spanish garrison.
‘You’ve had her? I hope you washed her first.’
‘Mercy, no! The swineherd doesn’t lie with his pigs, does he?’ the captain of the garrison replies. ‘She preached here, in the square, until Father Vermeiren put a stop to it.’
‘Preached? She knows her Bible? Surely a vagrant such as she cannot read.’
‘She was railing at the likes of the Pole, Copernicus, shouting at the top of her voice that man has no business delving into our Lord’s plan for the cosmos.’
‘Well, at least the wretch knows heresy when she hears it,’ Don Antonio says with a hearty laugh.
‘She said it serves only to let Satan deceive us. The parts I heard sounded very shrill.’
The Castilian shakes his head in wonder at the manner of barbarian he has been set amongst, and then forgets the wild-eyed maid as though she had been a mere shadow and not a woman at all.
Don Antonio considers himself a man of no mean station. He is well educated, widely travelled and cultured, especially in matters of the arts. He has been sent to Den Bosch by Archduke Ernst of Austria, currently enjoying the pleasures of Antwerp in the aftermath of his triumphal entry at the head of a Spanish army into that city. And he has more important things to think about than a young woman in the threadbare gown of a Beguine staring like a mad thing at a cathedral.
‘Speaking of Satan, Don Antonio,’ says the captain of the garrison, jabbing a gloved finger back over his shoulder, ‘the fellow who painted that thing in there… what sort of man could possibly imagine such depravity? No Spanish church would tolerate a blasphemy like that for a moment. We’d burn it – and the painter along with it: palette, brushes, oils, pigments… the lot.’
‘Brabantian food and Brabantian weather,’ suggests Don Antonio. ‘They rot the mind. Quite why His Excellency the archduke wants it in his collection is beyond me. But that’s an Austrian for you.’
‘If it were hanging on my wall, it would give me nightmares,’ says the captain of the garrison. ‘The deepest mineshaft is where I’d put it, or in a weighted crate at the bottom of the sea.’
‘Ah, but you know little about fine art, my friend,’ says Don Antonio. ‘And what an archduke wants…’
The two men reach the place where the grooms are waiting with their horses – Andalusian stallions, each with a hindleg bent slightly and resting on a tilted hoof, for all the world like a pair of bored courtiers awaiting a royal audience.
‘I shall return in a few days, to make the appropriate arrangements with the Church authorities,’ the Castilian says, presenting the offered stirrup with a foot clad in the supplest Valencian leather. ‘But one thing is clear to me. Be it the food, the weather or the imaginings of a deranged mind, if Signor Hieronymus van Aken is correct in what he has depicted in that painting, we’d best start offering the Lord rather more Hail Marys than we d
o at present.’
7
Next morning in Yeoman Shelby’s farmhouse there is a sombre mood, at odds with the joyousness of the night before. Quiet farewells are said. Leave is taken, embraces exchanged. Tears are shed, visible and secret. A cart is prepared and harnessed to the placid old Suffolk punch that does the heavy lifting at Barnthorpe, ready to carry Nicholas and Bianca to Woodbridge. Nicholas knows, from his conversation with his father last night, that there is a Dutch herring boat moored there. But there is no safety to be had by announcing their entry into the town, so they will remain in the cart, hidden beneath a sheet of tarred flax until the last practical moment.
‘The horses we brought – you’d best cover up their brands,’ Nicholas tells his father. ‘It’s unlikely a Privy Council searcher would know the Tabard’s mark, but better not to take unnecessary chances.’
He gives the members of his family one last embrace and climbs aboard the cart. He settles down with Bianca on the hard wooden planks and pulls the sheet of flax over them. He hears Jack’s muffled voice urging the punch forward, feels the wheels turn and the cart lurch. He cannot bring himself to lift the sheet and look back.
‘It’s safe,’ Jack Shelby calls as he brings the old Suffolk punch to a halt in a narrow lane by the Bell tavern in Woodbridge. ‘There’s no one about.’
Throwing back the cover, Nicholas and Bianca climb down from the cart. Jack helps them unload the bags they’ve taken off the Tabard’s horses. ‘Don’t leave our parents to wonder what’s become of you, Brother,’ Jack warns. ‘Not like you did when—’ He stops, glancing at Bianca.
‘It’s all right, Jack. She knows all about Eleanor.’
Jack nods in understanding. ‘Aye, well, not as long as that, eh?’
‘I promise.’
‘What do you want me to do with the horses?’
‘Next time there’s a flock being driven down to London, have someone take them to the Tabard in Southwark. Put out the word they were found on Blackheath.’ He hands Jack a few half-angels. ‘Here, that’s to pay for the trouble. They might even get a reward from the landlord.’
A brief, brotherly clasp of hands – nonchalance hiding the pain – and the cart moves away down the lane towards the river. Nicholas watches it go for a moment, then he hoists the bags over his shoulder, wraps the fingers of his free hand over Bianca’s and leads her down to the little quayside in search of their means of escape.
Moored below the old Tide Mill are a couple of English wool hoys and the Dutch fishing boat that Nicholas’s father told him about. The air is heavy with the putrescent stink of tidal mud. The estuary echoes to the scream of gulls.
The skipper is easy to spot: tall and thin, with a nose like a heron’s bill. When he walks, he looks like one, too – as though he’s about to take wing. He wears a grubby leather tunic stained with fish oil. He is supervising the unloading of casks off the tubby little herring buss.
‘We’re trying to reach Antwerp, Meneer,’ Nicholas explains in his imperfect Dutch. ‘But we need discretion. There’s a father who doesn’t approve of a marriage. And a jealous brother.’
The man looks them up and down. Beneath the sharp features he seems a friendly fellow, perhaps a decade older than Nicholas. He nods in sympathy. ‘Can you pay?’
Nicholas says, ‘We can pay. Can you give us passage?’
‘If you don’t object to the smell of herring.’
‘We’ll live with it.’
‘I am Jan van der Molen,’ the skipper says, extending a hand for Nicholas to shake. It is slippery to the touch. ‘You are English, not Dutch, yes?’
Nicholas confesses that he is.
‘A Lutheran or a Catholic?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not to me. It might in Antwerp.’
Nicholas is about to tell him that he and Bianca are prepared to take the risk, when the sound of horses’ hooves and the jangling of harness echoes over the river. Turning his head, he sees a troop of ten mounted men-at-arms come clattering down the quayside. A sudden reappraisal of his prospective passengers is clear in van der Molen’s face. His eyes narrow as he steps back to put distance between them.
The troop dismounts a few yards away. A sergeant in breastplate and pikeman’s pot-helmet orders two of his men to guard the horses while the rest fan out along the quayside. Nicholas glances towards the Tide Mill, gauging his chances of slipping away unobserved. Even as he does so, one of the men calls out, ‘Stay where you are, Master. Seek not to thwart the queen’s business.’
Bianca glances at her husband, alarm written clearly on her face.
‘Surely they can’t have found us already,’ she whispers. ‘Have we been betrayed?’
Nicholas weighs the possibilities. If the attorney general or the chief justice has moved with uncharacteristic speed, then it is quite possible that he and Bianca are the quarry these men seek. But, equally, simple ill fortune may have brought this group of searchers to the harbour at the worst possible moment.
‘I’ll speak Dutch, you speak Italian,’ he says between clenched teeth. ‘We’ll bluff our way out of trouble.’
While his companions board the vessels moored against the quay, calling with imperious voices for the crews to stand aside and let them search, the soldier who challenged Nicholas is approaching. ‘I am commanded to search this vessel and all here for evidence of papistry,’ he shouts in a thin voice.
Nicholas lets out the breath he’s been holding. ‘It’s alright,’ he whispers to Bianca. ‘It’s not us they’re after.’
She gives him a frightened glance. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s very far from alright.’
He stares at her, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If they search my bags, they’ll find my father’s Petrine cross. They’ll know I’m a Catholic.’
The perplexity in Nicholas’s eyes turns to horror. ‘You packed it?’
‘You said they’d be searching for Jesuits trying to enter the realm, not leaving it.’
The soldier is now only a few paces away. There is no time left for Nicholas to think of a plan that won’t unravel the moment it’s attempted.
‘State your business here, Master,’ the soldier commands.
Up close, Nicholas can see he is a slight lad of no more than eighteen. His head is almost enveloped by the steel pot he wears. It makes Nicholas think of a cockle peeping out of its shell. But he is armed, and his companions more than make up for what he lacks in stature.
Nicholas can think of only one way of forestalling the imminent discovery of Bianca’s Petrine cross. But it means he cannot pretend to be Dutch, and it will place him irrefutably at Woodbridge. All the subterfuge, from the argument at the Tabard to the perilous crossing of the Thames at Gravesend, will have been in vain. It would have been less trouble, he thinks, to send Lord Popham or Sir Edward Coke – even Essex himself – a map of their journey.
‘I am on Privy Council business, Sergeant,’ he says, favouring the boy with a rank he clearly does not hold. ‘As such, I am entitled to pass without hindrance.’
‘You have proof of this, Master?’ the lad asks, showing an unwelcome but commendable refusal to be cowed.
‘I do,’ says Nicholas. He reaches into one of his bags and takes out a small square of parchment with a heavy wax seal attached and offers it to the searcher. It is Robert Cecil’s letter of safe-passage.
Whether he can read the pass or not, the lad stares at the heavy wax seal, clearly in awe.
‘It is the seal of Sir Robert Cecil,’ Nicholas says helpfully. ‘And when I next see the queen’s secretary, I shall commend you to his favour, Sergeant…?’
‘Lambarde, Master – if it please you,’ the lad says, wide-eyed. ‘Henry Lambarde, of Ipswich. But I’m not a sergeant.’
‘Then I shall recommend to Sir Robert that you ought to be,’ Nicholas tells him, trying to sound as lordly as he can, and hoping the lad won’t wonder why someone on official duties is wearing an old canvas doubl
et. But young Henry Lambarde of Ipswich just grins with delight. ‘Then pass, on the queen’s business’ – a glance again at the letter of safe-passage – ‘Dr Shelby.’
‘And you can tell your officer there’s no call to search Master van der Molen’s vessel. I can vouch for him,’ Nicholas says, thanking whatever lucky star is at this moment hanging precariously above his head.
When the soldier has gone, the master of the herring buss says, ‘So, you’re planning to elope with the daughter of the English queen’s minister! That takes some courage, I must say.’
The Dutch word weglopen is close enough to the English meaning for Nicholas to comprehend its meaning. ‘No,’ he says with a contrite smile. ‘We’re already married. And Sir Robert has but one child, a son. He’s about three.’
‘He’s a famous man in Holland, Sir Robert Cecil,’ van der Molen says in admiration. ‘We count him up there with the late Earl of Leicester. They have given us goodly assistance against the Spanish. You could have told me the truth; I’d still have taken you.’
‘Thank you, Master van der Molen. I would have been more open with you, but as you can see, I am on Sir Robert’s business.’
‘I won’t enquire further,’ the Dutchman says. ‘You’d not be the first Englishman who wanted to be put ashore in the Spanish provinces in secret.’ He gives a sad smile. ‘My father was one of the Sea Beggars. He took almost as many Spanish ships as he did herring – till they caught and hanged him. Bring your fine lady and your bags and come aboard.’
The stink of fish is even more prevalent once Nicholas and Bianca are on deck. The herring buss is a plump old lady of the sea, almost as broad as she is long. Her prow and stern are as well rounded as any Amsterdam matron. She has two masts and a little wooden cabin on the afterdeck. She offers the troubling prospect of a rolling, pitching journey across the Narrow Sea, but she looks sturdy enough to take it.
‘Antwerp, you said,’ muses van der Molen as the last of the herring casks have been rolled onto the quay.
‘If you can; we’ll make it worth your while.’
