The rebels mark, p.5
The Rebel‘s Mark, page 5
Since their return from Padua, Bianca has become used to the summons that arrive from Cecil House, commanding Nicholas to drop everything and rush off to Greenwich, or Richmond, or Nonsuch, or Whitehall, or wherever else that appalling, cantankerous old battleaxe with the whitewashed face and the fake hair has mentioned in a moment of distraction that she’s bored, and rather fancies spending an hour or two discussing the latest advances in physic with a handsome fellow half the age of her usual doctors. And now this:
Sweet Bianca, Robert Cecil wants me to go to Ireland…
Sweet Bianca, it is only a small matter – a discreet message to collect…
Sweet Bianca, I will be back inside three weeks, given a following wind…
If wealth was measured in sweetness, she’d be the richest woman in Christendom!
Of one thing she is sure: Nicholas is not going to Ireland alone. She has heard enough talk in the Jackdaw’s taproom to know it’s a wild and dangerous place, even without the presence of full-blown insurrection. She has made up her mind. Her place is beside her husband. Little Bruno can stay with Rose and blow soap bubbles through Ned’s tobacco pipe. Three weeks, Nicholas has told her. Just three weeks. Bruno won’t even realize she’s been away.
Does that mean I am a bad mother?
She tries to push the self-recrimination out of her mind, like all the other times since she decided she couldn’t let Nicholas go to Ireland alone. She has come to the conclusion that, to reconcile herself, she must employ the English Bianca Merton and not the Italian one. In England, she reminds herself, children of all ages are farmed out to relatives, benefactors or patrons, sometimes to almost total strangers. It’s normal for an English child to be banished at the earliest opportunity. It’s the only way for them to rise – an indentured apprenticeship, or an education in a richer man’s household. She could believe that half the children now alive in England would be hard pressed to recognize their parents in a parade. Leaving Bruno with Rose and Ned Monkton for three weeks is nothing to trouble her conscience with. Even so, she cannot prevent herself imagining Robert Cecil as a child’s cloth doll, and Bruno gleefully pulling his arms and legs off. Yes, she thinks, the Devil take Robert Cecil and all his works.
As they walk three abreast – Nicholas on one side of her, Ned Monkton on the other, arm-in-arm – down Long Southwark, the wind ruffling the feather in Nicholas’s new cap of black sarcenet, Bianca’s thoughts turn from her husband and her son to the man whose courage allowed them all to return to England in the first place.
She admires how Ned carries himself these days. When he nods courteously to acknowledge a greeting, she wants to smile. She can see the wariness in their faces, even as they bid him good morrow. She knows what they’re thinking: can this really be the same poulterer’s son from Scrope Alley whose readiness for a jug of knock-down, customarily followed by an explosion of raw violence, was once the stuff of Bankside legend? What happened to the old Ned Monkton?
It had been Nicholas who first realized the cause of Ned’s ill-suppressed rage. Underneath that fiery, terrifying carapace lay a soul in despair. Trapped for most of the working day in the mortuary crypt at St Tom’s, his only company the vagrant and impoverished dead, Ned had been trying to drown his despair in quarts of knock-down and aggression. But that life is behind him now. Ned Monkton is reborn, and halleluiah for it. And though Bianca may feel a measure of pride that she and Nicholas have played their part in this resurrection, there is no question that it is Rose who can rightly claim most of the credit. Rose has given Ned back his soul.
Bianca glances at him now. She notes how he walks with a new confidence. Only his right hand shows any tension. It is clenched. Perhaps it is the sight of those huge fingers balled into a fist that makes those who acknowledge him in the street seem a little unconvinced by his apparent transformation. But Bianca knows that Ned does not keep his fist clenched for fear of being unable to control it. He does so because he doesn’t want anyone to see the M of scar tissue that disfigures his right thumb – the brand that shows he has taken another man’s life.
No matter that it was taken in self-defence, while trying to clear Nicholas of the false accusation of attempting to poison the queen, Ned carries that mark with no little shame. And no one – not Rose, Bianca or indeed Nicholas himself – can convince him that he should not.
Bianca tightens her arms a little, to draw these two very different men closer. A precious gift indeed, she thinks, to have such a husband, to have such a friend.
At the bottom of Long Southwark, on a patch of grass made sodden and muddy by the recent rain, a ceremonial muster is under way. The Lord Mayor is inspecting a score of young country lads who could almost pass for soldiers. Not one of them can boast a full suit of equipment. One has a steel tasset around his hips and thighs, the next is wearing a pauldron to protect his shoulders, a third has only greaves covering his shin. As for the rest: nothing but leather surcoats and breeches. Thank heaven, Nicholas thinks, that the rebels have no artillery to speak of.
With a sudden tattoo, a drummer brings the aspiring warriors to some semblance of attention. The muster ensign and his corporal, the only ones wearing breastplates, march up to greet the Lord Mayor and a brace of magistrates assembled for the purpose. The ensign signs the offered muster roll to confirm he has recruited the correct number of levies, as required by the Privy Council and the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey. In return, he receives a large purse for the future feeding, equipping, transporting and – if they’re lucky – the paying of his men. The Lord Mayor makes a brief but stirring speech about God’s fist smiting the papist rebels, doffs his hat to the recruits and rides off on the next leg of his progress through Southwark.
‘Where are you bound?’ Nicholas asks the nearest recruit, a gangly lad who looks as though he should be attending petty school rather than pike-drill classes.
‘To Ireland, if it please Your Honour,’ the boy says, ‘to kill the papist rebels.’
Nicholas smiles and wishes him God’s protection, relieved that at least these fellows are not destined for the Low Countries and a professional, well-drilled Spanish enemy.
Close by, an enterprising vendor of coney pies has chosen the muster as a likely spot to make a sale or two from his wicker basket. Ned, who has a fondness for coney, makes straight for him. Nicholas and Bianca follow. Ned has no sooner taken his first bite of pie when the muster ensign swaggers over. To Nicholas, he looks as unlikely a soldier as the others, a cadaverous fellow in his late forties with the gaunt, sallow face of a fallen priest. Beneath a shiny dome of forehead dressed with lank grey locks, a single functioning eye looks out on a world that it seems to be assessing for potential profit.
‘May I enquire, who is this bold fellow?’ the man says, making an exaggerated bend of the knee to Ned. When he straightens up again, he pauses in the moment before his knee locks, so that he looks like a dog flinching in expectation of a kick.
‘Ned Monkton’ – a glance at Bianca for approval – ‘steward of the Jackdaw tavern, owned by Mistress Merton ’ere,’ Ned replies proudly. ‘And who are you?’
‘Barnabas Vyves, gentles all,’ the ensign says elaborately, his gaze dancing from Ned to Bianca and Nicholas like a thrown stone skipping on water. It comes to rest on Nicholas, who is making a professional assessment of the missing eyeball.
‘An honest wound,’ the ensign says, raising a grubby finger to the empty socket, ‘earned in the storming of the breach at Cádiz in ’96 – shoulder-to-shoulder with the Earl of Essex.’
A likely story, thinks Nicholas. There’s no scarring. The missing eye is a deformity of birth, or lost in infancy through disease. He doubts that Barnabas Vyves has been anywhere near a contested breach, least of all with Robert Devereux standing at his shoulder.
Returning his attention to Ned, Vyves announces, ‘We could use a doughty fellow like you in the ranks of Sir Oliver Henshawe’s company. Sixpence a day, all found. Glory by the cartload. Will you step forward and help Her Majesty wrest back Ireland from the heathen rebel? Will you be the man to pitch the Earl of Tyrone on his traitorous pate and earn Sir Oliver’s enduring gratitude, payable in a lump sum on the day of victory?’
Oliver Henshawe.
The name jolts Bianca out of a passing daydream – Nicholas in full jousting armour, sweaty and victorious as he rides out of the lists to claim her favour.
‘Would that be the Oliver Henshawe whose family owns land out at Walworth?’ she asks, the image of a persistent young gallant with dark eyes and a fragile swagger prising its way free from the recesses of her memory.
‘Aye, that’s Sir Oliver.’
‘Is he here?’ Bianca asks, looking about.
‘Mercy, no, Mistress,’ Vyves assures her. ‘He’s out in Ireland, at the head of his fine fellows, smiting the queen’s enemies. I’m here to muster more of them to his banner.’ He looks at Ned again. ‘Stalwart fellows like this one.’
‘No, thanks,’ growls Ned. ‘I’ve got a tobacco pipe to get clean of soap.’
‘I’ve not heard that excuse before,’ says Vyves. ‘What if I say sixpence ha’penny?’
‘You can say the King of Spain wears a farthingale in ’is spare time, Ensign Vyves,’ Ned says. ‘The answer is still no.’
‘Pity,’ says Vyves. ‘We might have come to an agreement. You’d have found it worth your while.’
Nicholas decides to have a little sport with the man who stormed the breach at Cádiz.
‘Is it sixpence ha’penny before or after deductions for butter and cheese, blanket, bread and transport?’ he asks. ‘I think Ned here would be lucky to see fourpence. What do you say, Ensign Vyves?’
Vyves gives him a startled glance. ‘How do you know about pay an’ victuals? Have you been a-soldiering?’
‘A summer in the Low Countries, with Sir Joshua Wylde’s company. I was his surgeon.’
‘Oh,’ says Vyves.
‘Pity I wasn’t at Cádiz. I would have valued a word or two with the physician who tended to your eye, Ensign Vyves. I might have learned something. It’s been stitched neater than a maid-of-honour’s kerchief.’
Vyves gives a huff of discomfort. ‘Well, I can’t stand here passing pleasantries while Ireland hangs in the balance,’ he says hurriedly. He makes another knee, though only to Bianca, and marches off to the head of his file.
‘Well, they’re going to put the fear of God into the Earl of Tyrone, and no mistake,’ she says, watching him lope up and down the file of recruits as he berates them for their unsoldierly appearance. ‘We can surely expect his capitulation by this Michaelmas at the latest.’
‘You know of this Sir Oliver Henshawe?’ Nicholas enquires, with a narrowing of the eyes that Bianca could swear might be the first stirring of jealousy.
‘It was a long time ago, Husband – before I met you.’
‘Is that so? You’ve never mentioned him.’
‘I never saw the need.’
‘Was it serious?’
‘He seemed to think so. He paid court to me with much boasting and poetry. The boasting was ludicrous: he was going to fight his way to Madrid and bring back Philip of Spain’s wedding ring to place on my finger. And the poetry wasn’t much better: mostly embarrassing doggerel.’
‘Was this wooing a drawn-out affair?’ Nicholas asks, implying by his voice that whatever the answer might be, he could scarcely care less.
‘He began his suit in the July, I recall. By August he’d lost interest. I suspect he rather took offence at finding a mere tavern-mistress so resistant to his significant charms.’
‘How did it end?’
‘Uncomfortably. He stormed off in a huff. No matter. I’m sure there was a whole legion of foolish maids only too happy to flutter at his pretty plumage and his empty song.’
‘Oh, good. I mean—’
Bianca takes pity on him. Laughing, she says, ‘He never stood a chance. You may ask Rose, if you care to.’
‘No, no, it is of no matter…’ Nicholas’s voice tails off as the file of men marches away to a merry rhythm beaten out on a tambour and a smattering of cheers from the crowd. ‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ he says, ‘with the bold Sir Oliver at their head.’
Bianca doesn’t indulge him. Inside, she’s thinking: my husband is going to Ireland for Robert Cecil, and all he’ll have around him to keep him safe are a band of spotty farm boys and an ensign with only one eye.
It is late afternoon. Ned has returned to the Jackdaw. Bianca has brought Nicholas to the one place on Bankside where speaking freely always seems that much easier. It is her secret physic garden. Near the bottom of Black Bull Alley and close to the riverbank, it lies hidden from view behind a sagging brick wall with single door in it that looks as though it’s never been opened in a hundred years. In her absence in Padua, Rose tended it with thought and diligence. Her stewardship of this fragrant little paradise has allowed Bianca, on her return, to reopen her apothecary’s shop on Dice Lane. It has always proved a place where, if you sow and tend with honesty in your heart, good things will inevitably grow.
‘Must you forever dance to Robert Cecil’s tune, Nicholas?’ she asks when they are safely behind the door.
‘I made a compact with him. I would be his intelligencer, and he would not hang you for a papist and a witch. It seemed a sensible bargain.’
‘It was a pact with the Devil. I should never have let you make it.’
‘Cecil has kept his side of the bargain. I can hardly deny mine.’
‘I’m starting to think you actually admire him.’
Bianca plucks a sprig of hedge-mustard, remembering a promise to make up a syrup for Alice Nangle’s sciatica. She pops one of the little yellow seeds into her mouth. When speaking of the Crab, it seems to her sensible to chew on something efficacious in warding off poisons. The bitter taste makes her pull a face.
‘His mind is much consumed with thoughts for the safety of the realm and the queen,’ Nicholas says. ‘And with good reason – even more so now that his father, Lord Burghley, is dead.’
‘When you returned from Cecil House, after we came back from Greenwich, I could swear that he had asked you to do something troubling to your conscience. Has he?’
A slight hesitation tells her all she needs to know.
‘We have both had our consciences troubled in the service of Robert Cecil,’ he says.
She waves the sprig of hedge-mustard at him. ‘Anything I may have done was to protect you, Husband.’
‘I know.’
‘Then leave his service,’ she says defiantly. ‘Cast off the grip he has over you.’
‘How can I?’
‘Return to Barnthorpe if you must. Become a country physician.’
‘Most people around Barnthorpe would rather trust old Mother Cotton, the wise woman, than a fellow with a doctorate in medicine from Cambridge. They think physicians are mostly charlatans. Besides, there’s not one in fifty who could afford to pay me. We’d likely starve.’
‘Then help your father on the land. I’m sure he and your brother Jack could do with the extra hands.’
‘Me – a farmer?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll come with you. I promise I’ll try to behave as a good yeoman’s wife should, and not scandalize the labourers and the local parson.’
Nicholas stifles a smile at the thought of Bianca Merton setting the inhabitants of the wild Suffolk marshes on their ears. ‘You know that I cannot.’
‘You will not, more like.’
‘First, there is the stipend Robert Cecil pays me to be his children’s physician. And now that the queen, too, calls upon me I may command a goodly fee, if I choose to take patients from amongst the court.’
‘But you despise that manner of physic,’ Bianca tells him insistently. ‘You’ve told me before – you would rather give up altogether than waste your time prescribing purges for rich men who don’t know when to stop gorging themselves.’
‘I need the money.’
Bianca rolls her eyes. ‘The Jackdaw is turning a profit. My apothecary shop is prospering. Is this a matter of pride? Are you discomforted by the idea that a wife should maintain the household and not her husband?’
‘It has nothing to do with pride.’
‘Ambition, then. That must be it. The man I married – the man who would rather earn a shilling treating the poor at St Tom’s than a gold angel listening to a gentleman complain about his gout – has become ambitious.’
‘It has nothing to do with ambition – Kate.’
Bianca’s amber eyes narrow. Her head tilts slightly, which is never – as Nicholas knows to his cost – a good sign.
‘Kate? Why Kate?’
‘Sir Robert seems to think I’ve married Master Shakespeare’s Shrew.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Bianca says, ramming her fists into her waist. ‘You’ve married a shrew?’
‘I didn’t agree with him.’
She turns towards a clump of sow-fennel, addressing it directly. ‘Did you hear that? My husband doesn’t agree with the Crab that his wife is a shrew. Marry! I must dance for joy.’ She spreads her arms wide to encompass all the contents of the physic garden, calling out, ‘Come, ladies all, we must sing hosannahs – to husbands bold and brave.’
And then she begins to sing.
‘So happy I… no shrew am I… not mouse, nor vole, but vixen sly…’
Nicholas, taken aback as much by the beauty of her voice as by her sudden flight of wild fancy, sits down on an upturned pail. ‘Alright, alright. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. Be serious for a moment.’
Bianca turns towards him. The afternoon sun gives her hair the sheen of burnished mahogany. ‘Very well, Nicholas, I shall be the very model of seriousness. If it’s not pride, and it’s not ambition, then what is it?’
He chooses his words carefully.
‘I learn more from Robert Cecil than merely how to fill the queen’s occasional moments of boredom. I learn things most people do not.’
‘Such as?’
