S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

But it is the familiar little figure beside him, reduced even further by his neighbour’s magnificence, his crooked stance a blemish on this otherwise-pristine canvas, that truly draws Nicholas’s attention. It is Sir Robert Cecil.

Nicholas’s heart sinks. He has always known that friendship and loyalty would mean nothing to Lord Burghley’s crook-backed son if he thought the realm’s safety was at stake. Look how he had turned his back on old Lopez.

And then, to his astonishment, he hears a woman’s voice. It comes from his left, in a pool of shadows the candlelight has not penetrated. And it is even more familiar to him than Cecil’s broken outline.

‘Mercy, Husband!’ Bianca Merton says. ‘I let you out of my sight for one moment and you wander off like a brainless goat in an olive grove.’

Robert Cecil’s men have brought a spare horse for Nicholas to ride the short distance from Essex House to the Strand. He wonders grimly if that’s because Cecil and Bianca had expected to find him beaten and unable to walk unaided.

A footman leads the way with a horn lantern. The queen’s secretary, Nicholas and Bianca ride together, almost stirrup to stirrup, their mounts picking their way carefully through the night. Three grooms make up the rearguard a short way behind. The sky is clear, an intense black velvet broken only by a quarter-moon and a scattering of attendant stars. Along the broad earthen path, grand houses loom like abandoned temples in an ancient landscape. Owls call like lost souls from the fields of Covent Garden.

The Lord Treasurer’s son rides with an ease that makes the twisted curve of his shoulders seem a natural facet of his horse’s movement. For once, he appears supple. To Nicholas, he looks like a creature who belongs to the night. He seems strangely good-tempered for a busy man called out when he should be abed.

‘I have not bested the handsome Earl of Essex for a while,’ Cecil says as they emerge from Ivy Lane onto the Strand. ‘We can expect tantrums at court, of course. Strange how such a well-made shell can hold so petulant a yolk.’

‘I cannot thank you enough, Sir Robert,’ Nicholas says, for what must be the fourth time since leaving Essex House. He turns towards Bianca. ‘I despaired of seeing my wife again.’

‘I thank God all heretics are not so determined, else I might begin to fear for our realm’s safe continuance.’ It is said with humour. But Nicholas knows there had been a time when Robert Cecil would have spoken those words in all seriousness. ‘Your wife is not a woman to be dismissed easily, Dr Shelby,’ Cecil continues. ‘She insulted my gatekeeper, put one of my grooms in fear of his soul with her threats of witchcraft, refused to let my secretaries have a moment’s peace until they fetched me… What is it like, being married to a shrew?’

‘That is not strictly true, Sir Robert,’ Bianca interjects. ‘I confess that I did imply to your gatekeeper that he was a pustule, and I might have told that groom I have a distillation that makes the privy member shrink, and that I would put some in his ale if he didn’t fetch me someone with a little authority. But your secretary punished me for it, by having me sit in an empty chamber for two hours until I could stand it no more and went in search of you myself.’

‘Do you know who denounced me, Sir Robert?’ Nicholas asks.

‘Not yet. It appears Devereux’s secretaries acted impetuously. I suppose I should commend their enthusiasm.’

‘I’m surprised he let me go so willingly.’

‘In the correct order of things, I should have deferred to him – Devereux being an earl. But I am the queen’s privy councillor and secretary, and my father carries the queen’s favour more securely than he does. I interrupted our noble young friend at a late supper with the Earl of Salisbury.’ He laughs. ‘A main course of poetry, followed by an unexpected dish of indigestion. To my mind, all very satisfactory.’

At Cecil House the servants are used to visitors in the small hours, expected or not. There are returning ambassadors, envoys, intelligencers, agents of influence and a host of others who need to rest after delivering their secrets to the Cecils. A guest chamber in the south-eastern corner tower is swiftly made ready. It is small, but finely furnished with a carved tester bed and Flanders hangings. Cold brawn and hippocras arrive, as if from nowhere, to quell the hunger and slake the thirst.

‘You do know it to be a lie: that I conspired with poor Lopez to poison the queen?’ Nicholas tells Robert Cecil as he bids them good rest.

‘Of course. I never doubted it. Why would I turn out in the dead of night to haul you away from Robert Devereux, if I had?’

‘Slanders can be hard to erase, these days.’

‘We shall speak tomorrow. Perhaps by then one of my clever fellows will have learned more about the identity of your accuser.’

When Cecil has departed, Nicholas stretches out, laying his head back on the bolster. It’s a blessed comfort after the confines of the narrow cot at Essex House.

Bianca crawls around him on all fours, drawing the tester’s curtains – enclosed; confined. ‘You have Rose to thank, not me,’ she says, her face cut by a thin line of candlelight penetrating through a gap in the fabric.

‘She must have recognized Essex’s livery.’

‘For once she was paying attention to something other than the fancies in that head of hers. I shall have to stop calling her Mistress Moonbeam.’ Bianca sits beside him on her haunches, though in the darkness he can barely see her outline. ‘You didn’t , did you?’

‘I didn’t what?’

‘Seek to poison the queen?’

‘No!’

For a moment he thinks she might doubt his innocence. Then she adds, ‘You do realize there can be but one poisoner in our union, Nicholas? You’re the healer, I’m the poisoner, remember? My mother, God save her soul, would turn in her grave in Padua if she thought I’d broken the family chain.’

He laughs. ‘You’ve never really poisoned anyone, have you?’

‘Of course not.’

He can’t see if she’s smiling, or if she has that steely glint in her amber eyes that comes whenever she’s decided to keep something to herself.

‘Well, not a fatal poison. But there’s always a first time for everything, Nicholas.’

‘Sir Robert will summon us in a few hours,’ he murmurs. ‘We should sleep, or else–’ He breaks off to yawn. In the darkness within the tester he feels Bianca’s weight as she places herself astride him.

Then he hears her say, ‘I think I choose the “else”.’

The view from Robert Cecil’s study windows on the fourth storey of the north-western tower affords a fine panorama of Covent Garden fields. Beyond the stands of ash, oak and elm, Nicholas can make out Longacre and the hamlet of St Giles, greyed by a mid-morning shower. On Cecil’s desk is the squat golden box of a clock, just like the one Bianca had seen during her wait the previous evening. It has a dome for a bell on top. The single hand – counting off the hours – is an elongated, stylized ray of sunlight radiating from a central Helios with a human face. With a little mechanical cough, the sunbeam slips above the Roman numerals XI etched around its circumference. From within comes a whirring of coiled springs and the biting of ratchet teeth, followed by the tinny tolling from the bell. Cecil looks up from his papers and catches Bianca looking at the apparatus.

‘A fine horologe, is it not, madam?’

‘ La misura del tempo ,’ Bianca reads from an inscription below the face. ‘The measure of time.’