S PERRY - The Angel’s Mark

Raised by her father, the Earl of Arundel, on the extraordinary premise that a woman’s intellect is in every respect the equal of a man’s, Jane FitzAlan had won renown as a scholar in her own right. She’d even translated books by Euripides into English. No wonder John had loved her so, thinks Lizzy. She often imagines Jane standing by the Nonsuch library shelves, understanding effortlessly the contents of whatever volume she plucks from the shelves. Jane would never have had to ask Gabriel Quigley what they mean – as Lizzy sometimes does. Jane would never have feared appearing foolish in John’s eyes. Late wives, she thinks, can cast such dreadfully long shadows.

‘You have no notion of how good it is to be here again,’ Kat says, lifting a finger to trace the rain running down the leaded windowpane. ‘Sometimes I miss Nonsuch dreadfully.’

‘You should stay – join the household. It would make John happy.’ Lizzy laughs. ‘It would make me even happier.’

‘I can’t, Lizzy.’

‘Why not? Cold Oak is a pleasant enough house, but I know how much it pains you when Fulke comes.’

‘That’s where the problem lies, Lizzy. Fulke would never allow it. And I have no means of my own.’

‘You wouldn’t need means .’

‘Oh, Lizzy, we both know John wouldn’t be content unless he was maintaining me in the manner of a grand lady – and he’s already got one of those!’

‘But you’d be so welcome.’

‘I’d be a burden on his purse, that’s what I’d be. Besides, Fulke would accuse me of trying to turn John against him.’ Kat takes her fingertip from the glass and studies it, as if she expects her skin to have absorbed the rain outside. ‘Thank you, but no. Cold Oak suits me fine.’

‘John told me Fulke was vile to you, as usual, when Baronsdale and the others came down to plan the Accession Day banquet,’ Lizzy says, petting Nug as he begins to whine.

Kat grins. ‘You know me, Lizzy: I gave as good as I took. You should have seen Baronsdale’s face, when I asked him how long it would be before the College would allow a woman to practise physic. You’d have thought I’d suggested he make Lucifer a senior fellow.’

‘I envy you, Kat, I really do – having the courage to make those boring old men squirm in their ruffs,’ says Lizzy, the spectre of Jane FitzAlan tapping her on the shoulder once again. ‘I’d give anything to have the knowledge that John has, to be able to discuss physic with him on equal terms. But it’s just not the way God has made things, is it? At least, it’s not the way He made me .’

‘Look, the rain’s easing,’ says Kat. ‘And Nug’s weary of listening to women’s chatter.’

The bell at St Mary Overie has just rung nine. The Jackdaw is almost empty, save for a pair of strong-armed wherrymen taking a late breakfast, and a fellow with a bald pate and a rash on his thin neck, who sits on his own, staring mournfully into his smallbeer. Nicholas reckons he’s a chapter-clerk from the Bishop of Winchester’s palace across the way. He’s probably wondering how he’ll explain to his dean the painful irritation that heralds a dose of the French gout. Not for nothing does Southwark call its whores ‘Winchester geese’. Mercury – administered by catheter, or burned over a flame and inhaled. The remedy pops into Nicholas’s head unbidden. But what use is such knowledge to him now? What does Nicholas Shelby know about anything, other than how not to drown?

‘How did you find me?’ he asks Bianca Merton a while later.

‘It was Timothy, our tap-boy. He went down to the river one morning with the slops and found you lying on the shore. He said you looked like a drowned bear, like one of those poor creatures they bait in the bear-garden.’

He assumes she wants an explanation. He can’t give one – not yet. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t pay you,’ he says, knowing few along the river will save you out of pure compassion. ‘I have nothing.’

She shrugs. ‘Then that’s exactly what you owe me. You’ve taken barely a bowl of broth every other day – and you purged most of that.’

‘There’s not much I can remember–’

‘I don’t doubt it. There’s not many who go into the river around here and come out alive. You were racked with the ague, even yesterday morning. I thought a syrup of lobelia might help. It did – a little. Not enough, though. So I gave you theriac. A few drops, and a day later… well, here we are.’

She smiles warmly. It’s a broad, open smile – not the eyes-lowered, modest twitch of the mouth that a tavern-mistress would usually give a physician. Then he remembers that a physician is probably the last person on earth he resembles. ‘Theriac? Are you an apothecary, then?’

Those intense amber eyes hold his for a moment, challenging him. If circumstances were different, he thinks, they’re the sort of eyes that might entice a man into any number of betrayals.

‘Does that tell you I’m an apothecary?’ she asks wryly, glancing towards the window and the wooden sign hanging beyond. It still shows a painted jackdaw. There’s not a unicorn’s horn – the apothecary’s traditional sign – anywhere in sight. ‘How could I be such a thing, when the Grocers’ Guild refuses to admit a woman to the trade? No, Mr Shelby, I am a tavern-mistress, plain and simple.’

He’s more aware now of the slight accent in her voice, though her English is faultless, gentle even. At rest, her upper lip is downturned slightly at the corners, which gives her mouth an impatient set. Her jaw is given to sudden tensions that come without warning when she speaks. What causes these sudden hardenings of the expression? he wonders. What do they hide?

He can think of a score of questions he should ask her. Simple ones like: why did you choose to administer mercy to a total stranger? Or, why did you not call a constable and have this half-drowned vagabond taken to the Bridewell prison? But what he really wants to ask Bianca Merton, the owner of the Jackdaw tavern who says she’s no apothecary – and is clearly neither plain nor simple – is how she got her hands on theriac?

To make it properly, it is said you need ingredients bordering on the magical. It’s also the most expensive physic money can buy.

In an empty byre that still stinks of its former occupants, Elise shelters from the rain and tries not to remember. But now that Ralph is no longer with her, memory is her only companion. And memory can cling tighter than Ralph’s little fingers ever did.

In her mind, it is once again early summer. They have spent five days in the angel’s house. Elise thinks it is as close to heaven as you can get without actually being dead.

Out of the blue, the angel comes to her with news that she and Ralph are to leave. ‘Please, not to Bankside,’ Elise begs, while Ralph sinks his fingers into her like the monkey she’d seen clinging to its trainer at the Bermondsey fair. ‘If we can’t stay here, we wish only to go to Cuddington – to the great house my mother was always telling me about, the one with the goose-down bed and mutton to eat every day. Otherwise, we would rather die.’

If Cuddington is where you’ll be happy, then that is where we’re going, the angel replies kindly.

Why did I not take up Ralphie and flee again before it was too late? Elise asks herself, as the guilty tears stream down her cheek and the wind whines through the gaps in the wall of the byre. She knows the answer now: the angel was working her magic upon her, making her compliant, bending Elise to her will. And that night she must have used a particularly potent magic, because after supper Elise found herself so confused that if the angel had told her she was going to Greenwich, where the queen had personally asked to see her, she would have believed it and gone like a lamb.