S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

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.’

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.’