S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

When the horses are aboard and tethered, and Bianca has been assigned to calm them, Bell sits on one of the two cross-benches and motions Nicholas to take the other. At each bench is a pair of sturdy oars. Nicholas wonders if two men will be strong enough to get the pinnace away from the bank.

‘We’ll float off when the water rises,’ Bell says confidently, as though reading Nicholas’s thoughts. ‘It won’t be long, if I’ve timed it right.’

‘Today is not the first time you’ve done this, Master Porter,’ Nicholas suggests.

Bell laughs. ‘Throw a stick on the Tilbury marshes an’ you’re like to hit a horse-thief on the noddle. As I told you last night, they like to steer clear of the ferry.’

Within a few moments the pinnace begins to shift, her keel sending up the sound of iron on gravel from the riverbed like the groaning of a sea monster fighting to shake off its chains. How Bell guides them across the river, Nicholas has no idea. He can see nothing beyond the stretch of his oars, hear nothing but their watery slash as they rise and dip. The river itself is silent. It is back-breaking work; he would never have thought the sinewy figure behind him, calling out encouragement, capable of it. But there is a hardness in Porter Bell’s body that is not apparent at first sight. He has endured a Spanish cell in the Netherlands. Pain of his own choosing is easy for him to bear.

Bell has just announced they are approaching the northern shore – though how he knows is a mystery – when the pinnace strikes something in the water. One of the horses begins to panic. Its head tosses wildly, threatening to yank the reins out of Bianca’s hands. The huge chest begins to rise; the hind legs flex; the wide black eyes roll; the nostrils gape. The horse is on the verge of rearing. In the next instant it will hurl itself into the river. Worse, thinks Nicholas, the fear will spread to its neighbour and they’ll all be dashed beneath the flailing hooves. And Bianca is the first one in the way of a ton of terrified horseflesh.

He lets go of the oars. Caught in an ungainly crouch between sitting and standing, he can only watch in horror as the horse begins to rise.

And then all is calm again. The horse is standing foursquare, its pupils no longer the size of angel coins, snorting as if it’s the humans causing all the fuss. Its companion goes back to scratching its lower lip on the gunwale of the boat.

And there is his wife: as slender as one of those boys who play the female parts at the Rose, calming the beast with a caressing hand on its neck. From the sleeve of her gown she had produced – with the skill of a Bankside street trickster – a sprig of camomile and is wafting it under the horse’s nose.

‘Something else you learned from the young jockeys of Padua?’ Nicholas asks, half in jest, half in stupefied admiration.

‘Preparation, Husband,’ she says with a sweet smile. ‘A horse is much like a man. You have to think ahead for them.’

As the north bank of the river appears out of the fog – another magic trick, he thinks – Nicholas cannot help but wonder if what Southwark says about his wife’s supernatural abilities might not, after all, be true.

Porter Bell has brought them to a safe landing spot, far enough from the ramparts of Tilbury fort and the ferry jetty to slip unnoticed into the county of Essex. He wishes them good fortune and vanishes back into the foggy river, a diminutive Charon who’s found a way back from his own personal Hades.

‘How do we find our way from here?’ Bianca asks as the sound of the oars striking the water fades. ‘I can barely see my hand in front of my face.’

Nicholas explains his plan. They will take the track that runs from Tilbury to Chelmsford, then join the old drovers’ road to Melton, crossing the Suffolk border below Nayland. The Tabard’s palfreys are sturdy beasts, accustomed to long distances. Three days, he reckons, if the weather holds.

But striking out from the shore into the white soup of early morning would be insane, he adds. It might just be possible to keep the golden blur of the rising sun to their right as they head north, but the Tilbury marshes are dangerous. Lose the path, and there any number of stinking creeks waiting to suck the unwary down into the ooze. Better by far to wait for the fog to burn off a little. So they hobble the horses and settle down to wait.

And within a short time the fog begins to dissolve, like breath left in the air on a cold day. Nicholas wonders if it’s another of his new wife’s skills she hasn’t yet told him about.

In the long shadows of evening, Nicholas and Bianca take shelter below the treeline of Botwulf’s Wood on the outskirts of the little hamlet of Barnthorpe. The setting sun burnishes the thatched-roof houses and the tithe barns with a soft golden light. It is dusk on the third day following their crossing of the Thames, as Nicholas had anticipated. But he is not yet ready to announce his arrival.

Bianca knows why he’s hesitating. He’s waiting for the villagers to come in from the fields; then they won’t have to lie, if the Privy Council’s men arrive to ask them if they’ve seen one Nicholas Shelby, son of this hamlet, wanted for the wholly fictitious crime of attempting to poison their queen.

When the way is clear, they walk the horses quietly down into the courtyard of Yeoman Shelby’s farmhouse. Through the little leaded windows Nicholas can see his mother and his sister-in-law, Faith. They are laying out the board for supper, heads slightly bowed as they chatter while they work. He goes to the porch, stands for a moment in its familiar shelter before knocking.

It is Faith who opens the door. She stares at him in the gathering darkness, refusing to believe what her eyes are seeing. Then she cries out, ‘Mercy! Jesu and all His saints save and protect us!’ A pewter dish slips from her hand, rattling itself into stillness on the flagstones. Then she flings herself at him.

‘Faith, whatever is it?’ his mother calls out.

And when Faith draws enough breath to answer, Nicholas is forced to endure a warm and enveloping scrimmage of arms and cheeks and hands and bosoms before he can utter a word. He catches a melee of images: Faith beaming as rosily as an apple hanging ripe from a bough; his mother, eyes bright with tears; his father holding him at arm’s length to get a proper look at him – once he’s laid aside his long-stemmed clay pipe, something he doesn’t do even when Parson Olicott comes to call; his brother Jack taking him in a well-meaning headlock as if they were boys again; and what seems to be an ever-growing litter of Jack and Faith’s children, who shriek in delight at the return of Uncle Nicholas and insist on being hoisted aloft, protesting tearfully at any imagined favouritism whenever they’re not staring in silent awe at the slender, comely young woman with waves of dark hair who stands silently, but smiling slightly, in the doorway.

‘And this must be our new daughter,’ his mother says, when he has been allowed to disentangle himself.

Now it is Bianca’s turn to endure the emotional avalanche. ‘You are right welcome, child,’ Goodwife Shelby says, embracing Bianca as though they’ve been friends for ever. ‘My son does not write much’ – a glance of reprimand in Nicholas’s direction – ‘but when he does, it’s mostly about you.’

As they fuss over her, Bianca feels a sweet pain grow inside her. The comfort of family has been denied her for so long. Her father and mother are both dead, her own birthplace is in a different land. She surrenders to this unconditional welcome, aware that her own familial past has never felt more distant.