S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

Later, when the horses are fed and stabled, the dust of the ride has been brushed from doublet and gown, bellies filled with steaming lamb pottage, thirsts slaked with ale and sack, and Faith has taken Bianca away to show her the chamber where she and Nicholas will sleep, Nicholas and his father share a moment together.

‘You’ve hardly said a word, lad, all evening.’

‘That’s not true!’ Nicholas protests. ‘I’ve barely had a moment to put food in my mouth.’

‘I mean about why you’ve come back.’

‘I thought it was time you met Bianca,’ Nicholas says, feeling the guilt warm his cheeks.

‘Nothin’ to do with that fellow they put to death in London – the queen’s physician?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because you’re a physician, too, an’ you work for Sir Robert Cecil, an’ you’ve had audiences with the queen ’erself, an’ ’er old physician just got himself quartered for tryin’ to poison her, an’ you don’t make a habit of dropping by out of the blue to discuss the price of wool at Woodbridge market. Will that do you?’

‘I hadn’t imagined you’d heard about Dr Lopez up here.’

‘This is Suffolk, Nick, not the moon. Jed Blackwell took a flock down at the end of May; got home the day before yesterday. He told me folk down there spoke of little else.’ His craggy face, scoured by salt-marsh and the east wind, darkens. ‘How could a man of medicine plot to poison the queen? He must have had the Devil in his heart.’

‘He didn’t poison anyone. They butchered an innocent man.’

Now there is real fear in his father’s eyes. ‘Are you involved in this somehow, Nick? Is that why you’ve come here, without a word to warn us?’

‘Yes. And it’s only for tonight.’

A cruel payment, he thinks, for such a welcome.

‘Deal straight with me, boy,’ Yeoman Shelby says, leaning forward across the table. ‘Are you a fugitive?’

Nicholas considers his answer before speaking. ‘Not yet. Sir Robert Cecil is still for me.’ He shrugs. ‘But for how long…’

His father takes a draw of his pipe. For Nicholas, the scent of the smoke he exhales brings back a flood of childhood memories, all the more poignant for knowing he cannot seek shelter here.

A look of sad admonishment from his father. ‘What, in the name of all that’s holy, have you got yourself mixed up in, Nick? And you with that sweet new bride of yours. I had hoped you’d found a new, happier life for yourself – after Eleanor.’

‘I have.’

‘Then why are you on the run?’

‘I was denounced. An anonymous accusation. It has no merit.’

His father says, ‘It’s not your way to run from a fight, boy. Remember those bloody knuckles you got at Cambridge, when the “gentlemen” mocked you as country-pate?’

‘This is different, Father. There’s such a madness amongst the Privy Council these days – they see plots against the queen even when there are none. That is how innocent men go to the scaffold.’

His father gets up from his chair and walks to the window. He peers out into the dark night as if he expects to see men-atarms already dismounting in the courtyard. ‘We’ll hide you here at Barnthorpe – in the old priest hole.’

Nicholas remembers the tiny space under the parlour stairs where, as a boy, he’d played hide-and-seek. His grandfather had fashioned it during the reign of the sixth Edward, to hide any Catholic priest who might manage to slip into the county by way of the Deben river. His father, though obedient to the new religion, has never bothered to seal it up.

‘No, Father,’ he says. ‘I’ll not put the family in danger. I’m going back to the Low Countries. It will be safer for me there.’

‘How long?’

‘Until Sir Robert can unmask the source of this slander against me.’

‘Will you tell me where?’

‘Best if I do not – for your own sake.’

‘Exile then?’

‘For a while. When Bianca and I are safely sheltered, I’ll send word to Sir Robert, ask him to tell me when it’s safe to return.’

His father turns back from the window, jabs the bowl of his pipe in Nicholas’s direction. ‘Have you no mind for the sorrow that will bring your mother?’ It is not in Yeoman Shelby’s nature to speak of the sorrow it will bring him , but Nicholas can see it in his eyes.

‘It will be safer for everyone if we don’t tarry. We plan to leave tomorrow. Before the sun comes up.’

Yeoman Shelby sits down at the table board again. He picks up his pewter jug and tips the last of the ale into his mouth. The old, familiar stoicism of the farmer comes over him again. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose I’ll have to be the one to tell your mother. By the sound of it, you’ve enough trouble of your own to worry about.’

For a man almost universally feared for his size and his volcanic temper, Ned Monkton looks at this precise moment like a child deprived of a treasured toy. If Rose didn’t know her husband better, she would swear those are tears brimming in his eyes.

He has come from Nonsuch like a whirlwind. But even whirlwinds can arrive late. As Yeoman Shelby prepares to break the bad news to his wife, Ned Monkton stands in the doorway of the lodgings by the Paris Garden, looking around as though he half-expects Nicholas and Bianca to jump out from the kitchen. It was just a prank, Ned. See what a new sort of fellow you’ve become – quite unafraid to laugh at yourself.

‘Surely they could ’ave waited a few days?’ he says in a hurt voice that seems to belong to a far smaller man.

‘Master Nicholas was denounced, ’Usband,’ Rose says, looking up and seeing little but the swell of his chest and his great auburn beard. ‘Some villain wrote a letter to the Privy Council – said he’d intrigued with Dr Lopez in the matter of the queen’s poisoning.’

‘The queen’s been poisoned ?’ Ned growls in astonishment. ‘This is worse than I feared.’

‘No, ’Usband, the queen has not been poisoned,’ Rose explains carefully: Ned, alarmed, can be a tad unpredictable. ‘But that didn’t save Dr Lopez. Now Master Nicholas has ’ad to flee abroad to escape the same fate.’

‘Because he was denounced for something he didn’t do?’

‘I think you’ve got the tail of it, ’Usband,’ Rose says with a relieved smile. ‘Now ’ang on tight, in case it wriggles free.’

‘Are you making merry with me, Wife?’ Ned says, enfolding Rose in his huge arms.

‘Mercy, never!’

‘Where ’ave they gone?’

‘We’re not to know that, ’Usband – in case the Earl of Essex come here asking.’

‘When will they return?’

‘That depends on how long it takes Sir Robert Cecil to find out who did the denouncing and make him confess he was lying through his poxy arse.’

Ned considers this with a dark scowl. ‘Then I must start at first light, Wife.’

Rose’s eyes widen. ‘Start what?’

‘I owe Master Nicholas my life,’ Ned says. ‘The least I can do is find out who’s slandered him.’

Rose marvels that such a fearsome carapace can hold such a good heart. She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Master Nicholas needs you here, to help me make sure the labourers don’t rebuild the Jackdaw with the roof on upside-down. Besides, I know what you’re like. You’ll be no use to him if you’re arrested for affray.’

‘But I must do something. ’

‘We’ll put our heads together after you’ve rested from your journey,’ Rose says. ‘You must be tired.’

‘Tired of being an ’usband without a wife,’ Ned says, scooping up Rose in his arms as easily as if she were filled with goose-down – which, on bad days, Bianca claims is nearer the truth than it should be, especially the head part. He carries her towards the stairs like a prize.