S. PERRY - The Saracen’s Mark

Just because there’s a wedding feast in the taproom, that doesn’t mean the Jackdaw has turned its back on the rest of the world. The door is open to all with good intent in their hearts. And to everyone’s relief, Solomon Mandel’s acquaintances from the three Barbary Company ships moored at Lyon Quay have behaved just as their captain, Cathal Connell, promised. Indeed, like mariners everywhere, they’ve won admiration for their dancing.

‘Marriage is a fine estate, is it not?’ asks Connell, as by pure fortune he and Nicholas find themselves in close proximity. ‘Without it, we’re little better than the beasts.’ He is clearly drunk. His voice has a wistful edge to it, as though – by some malign conjunction of the stars and the sea – matrimony is for ever barred to him.

‘It can have its price,’ says Nicholas, remembering how the loss of Eleanor had almost broken him, led him even to attempt the sin of self-destruction in the dark and turbulent Thames.

Connell misunderstands entirely. ‘Aye, well, more fool a fellow for marrying a scold.’ He takes another swig of ale, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Though to be honest with you, I’d take all the scolding that Mistress Merton could give me. What a landfall a woman like that could be to a lusty man. A nice deep harbour and no mistake.’

Inside, Nicholas flinches at Connell’s coarseness, but for Ned and Rose’s sake he keeps his fists under tight constraint.

‘Forgive me for being blunt, but you don’t look to me much like a doctor,’ Connell continues, a disappointed smile on his face, as though he wishes Nicholas had risen to the bait.

‘That’s what the College of Physicians like to tell me.’

‘You see, Doctor Shelby, ‘I’ve known men swear they sailed all the way to China and back, when the truth is they did nothing but hang around the stews on the Bristol quays, tupping the doxies and pissing in the Avon.’

Nicholas looks around the taproom to see if Ned or Rose is near enough to allow him to disengage with a degree of politeness. They aren’t.

‘Sailors aren’t the only tellers of tall tales, Captain Connell,’ he says, resigning himself to the conversation. ‘You should see some of the cures I’ve witnessed prescribed by upstanding members of my profession.’

Connell grunts. ‘Now, a trading contract is something a simple fellow like me can understand. I ship the cargo. I get paid. Easy. But if I fall ill, and I pay a physician to heal me, only God knows whether I’m to be cured or killed. Not much of an incentive to do business, now, is it?’

The words are weighted with inebriated good fellowship. But there’s a barb in Connell’s silky brogue. Nicholas decides he doesn’t much care for the man Solomon Mandel has brought to the Jackdaw. They seem poles apart: the quiet, contemplative Jew and the salt-flayed, murderous-eyed captain of the Righteous .

‘Think of it as a mariner might,’ Nicholas says, struggling to hide his irritation. ‘We’re using inaccurate charts. We don’t know where the rocks lie. At least, that’s my opinion, for what it’s worth. The College of Physicians, on the other hand, likes to tell me they’ve sounded every ocean.’

A thought occurs to him. With the three Barbary Company ships presently at Lyon Quay, is this the man Robert Cecil had intended Nicholas should sail with, on his mission to Marrakech?

‘Tell me, Captain Connell, have you by chance been asked to take anything other than cargo on your next voyage to the Barbary Coast?’ he asks.

In drink, Connell cannot hide a betraying flicker of suspicion. ‘What are you suggesting, Dr Shelby – that I’m in the habit of putting in at Brest to let off a couple of Jesuit priests fleeing the queen’s justice?’

‘I’m not suggesting that at all, Captain Connell. I simply wondered if anyone asked you to carry a passenger.’

The reek of mad-dog is pungent on Connell’s breath. ‘I carry certain young gentlemen for a schooling in seamanship, if that’s what you’re hinting at.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of apprentices. I was thinking of me.’

‘ You? Why would Dr Shelby want to go to the Barbary shore? Especially if he has that waiting by his bedroom door?’ He nods towards Bianca, the ale causing his head to dip more heavily than he intended. ‘I’d be permanently moored with that one, I can tell you. I’d be wearing her ankles for a scarf all the livelong day.’

Nicholas has the sudden desire to smash Connell in the face, to add another raw wheal to all the others that seem to glare at him like contemptuous eyes. But even in drink, Connell is very probably an expert with a blade. And if there was ever a wise time and place to find out, a wedding feast is not it.

‘So the answer to my question, Captain Connell, is no, is it?’

Connell’s inebriated gaze sharpens. ‘Now you come to mention it, I was asked if I could find a berth for someone.’

‘Who asked you?’

‘Reynard Gault. He’s a leading merchant of the Barbary Company. A good fellow to invest with. Has the Midas touch. Knows all the right people.’

‘The Cecils, by any chance?’

Connell shrugs. ‘Why would you want to travel to the Barbary shore anyhow, Dr Shelby?’

Certainly not for Robert Cecil, answers Nicholas silently. Certainly not for saltpetre to make better gunpowder. Certainly not to find out why one Adolfo Sykes hasn’t been writing to the queen’s privy councillor of late.

‘Purely out of academic interest, Captain Connell. The Moors translated all the writings of the ancients into their language. If it were not for them, our knowledge of medicine, mathematics, natural philosophy – all these – would be the poorer. There may be much we can learn from observing how they practise physic.’

‘Is that a fact, Dr Shelby? And there’s me thinking they were savages.’

‘Oh, undoubtedly. Some of the translations back into Latin and Greek are only now being printed in Europe.’

Connell gives a derisive snort. Drops of foamy spittle land on Nicholas’s boots. ‘Then you’d think the heathens would have more reverence for the God who gave them the knowledge to do it, wouldn’t you?’

‘As a matter of interest, Captain Connell, when did this Master Gault of the Barbary Company make his enquiry?’

Connell takes a gulp of ale to help him think. ‘That would have been three days ago.’

‘Three days – are you certain?’

‘Reynard Gault isn’t often seen around the quays, he’s too grand for that. It was three days ago, for sure.’

Three days.

Hot anger surges through Nicholas’s blood, followed swiftly by a sense of foreboding. He had refused Robert Cecil’s request on Thursday, four days ago. Which means that either Cecil has found a replacement… or, more likely, the serpent isn’t yet ready to ease its jaws and let its prey escape.

The flitch of hog has been eaten. The fat is cooling in pots for later use. What Farzad doesn’t need for cooking, Bianca will use as a base to hold the herbs in her balms and mastics. Nothing goes to waste. Even Buffle, the Jackdaw’s dog, is gnawing the last scraps of gristle off a bone. In the taproom the dancing, the games and the songs have become increasingly bawdy as the bride and groom are prepared for the bedding. But when the door of Bianca’s old chamber is finally closed, leaving Ned and Rose to themselves, only a few revellers remain on the landing, serenading the newly-weds with saucy songs of encouragement. Soon even they return to the taproom and its fuggy air of glutted contentment.