The rebels mark, p.30
The Rebel‘s Mark, page 30
After the initial violence of the capture they had shown her no further anger or hostility, but rather a studied indifference, as though she was nothing more than a package they had been ordered to transport from one place to another. During the first few days of her captivity the urge to escape had flowed through her body like the shock of ice-cold water on the skin. Her senses had trembled with expectation. She thought she might take any risk to find her way back to Nicholas, to return safely to Bruno. But her captors had never let go of the leash, not even when the call of nature forced her to beg them to stop. Then she had to endure the humiliation of relieving herself like a dog on a lead, though they had shown her the small civility of turning their backs while she crouched. At night, or when they were resting during the march, a guard was always appointed to keep hold of the leash. Besides, where would she go? she asked herself. She had no real idea of where she was, or in what direction Dublin lay.
Looking back, she can place a form of order on events. First, there is the period that she calls Hoodman Blind, after the child’s game. The raiding party – now a dozen strong – makes little dashes through the landscape. These are interspersed with periods of hiding from English patrols. Then there is the Strolling period. It takes place in territory that Bianca assumes is firmly under rebel control, because the crops stand unburnt in the fields and cattle graze contentedly under the first proper sunshine in weeks. Were it not for the fact that she is a prisoner, and sick with worry that Nicholas might have been caught in the ambush, or what he must going through after her disappearance, she might even enjoy it.
But the pace never slackens. However, now it is driven not by the possibility of pursuit, but by some definite intent on the part of her captors. Where they are taking her, they will not say. What is to happen when they get there is a secret she is not permitted to learn. Eventually a numbing resignation takes hold of her. She becomes submissive, a condition previously alien to her. She no longer resists when they hurry her with a tug of the rope. She sleeps when they sleep. She eats what they eat: oatmeal and bread – never less than her equal share, which serves to confirm her growing view that she is important to them.
Finally comes the Progress. In this, the most recent period, Bianca becomes in her imagination very much like the queen, journeying through her realm and lodging by night in the houses of the nobility. In truth, these start off as the humblest of dwellings. But they show a definite improvement as each day passes. So much so that within a week she is sleeping in substantial stone tower houses, much like Kilcolman.
The Progress is her very own achievement, and Bianca is rightly proud of it. It begins on the night they spend in the company of the first host, who looks as though he might have some authority over her captors. He is a fidgety, bald little man but well dressed, and his house has real furniture: high-backed chairs, a table and a good collection of pewter. The sword he wears is a size too big for him, as – apparently – is his own self-regard. But by the deference her captors show him, Bianca assumes he is a minor chieftain of some sort. When she is brought before him, she decides that now is as good a moment as any to play her hand. Adopting the haughtiest pose possible on the end of a leash, she tosses her head to display her mane of dark tresses to best effect – ignoring the fact that she has only ever washed them in cold water from a pail or a stream since leaving Dublin.
She learned long ago in Italy that the lot of the captive common soldier was to languish and perhaps die in a dungeon, whereas a gentleman could expect to be swapped, or his freedom purchased with gold. And if not a ransom – for she cannot imagine either Robert Devereux or Robert Cecil dipping their hands in their purses on her account – then at least an exchange of prisoners. Adopting her proudest voice, she says, ‘I don’t know who you are, sirrah, but I am Bianca Shelby, wife to the physician to the Earl of Essex. My husband is also often called to attend Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, in London. I demand you release me at once.’
At first her stratagem seems to have failed. The little bald chieftain stares at her blankly. Bianca decides her plan needs a little embellishment. These men are surely Catholics, she thinks. Perhaps it might be wise to separate the Paduan Bianca Merton from the Bankside one.
‘I am also a servant of the one true faith, of Holy Mother Church. I am half-Italian, and while living in the Veneto I was gainfully employed by His Eminence, Cardinal Santo Fiorzi.’
Then she repeats this in Italian, and recites the beginning of the Holy Mass in Latin, just to be sure. It is, after all, true – even if it was almost twenty years ago now.
The response takes her by surprise. Her host almost prostrates himself before her. It seems that he only needed a little time to take in the wonderful news. As for her captors, they proceed to jump around as though they have discovered they have taken Queen Elizabeth herself. From that moment on, Bianca makes the swift transition from parcel to prized possession. She is treated gently, almost with reverence, although, with much regret, they decline to let her off their improvised leash.
And so, after a week or more of peripatetic journeying, Bianca finds herself standing beside a pleasant little river that winds contentedly through stands of alder and oak, flanked by well-tended meadows. Encamped along the bank, almost as far as she can see, is an army that she judges to be twice the size of anything Essex might now field. And, watching over it, a small castle of dark-grey stone with a little portcullis. The river is the Blackwater, her guardians tell her in a rare moment of openness. We have reached our destination.
But quite where that destination is, Bianca cannot tell. In the English army, maps are as rare as griffon eggs and about as dependable. They carry little detail. All she can recall of the Blackwater is a meandering line that could be thirty leagues or more in length, for all she knows. And when she asks where upon that line she stands, or indeed who dwells within the castle walls, the old reticence returns.
The portcullis drops behind Bianca with a menacing rumble. She is reminded of the many journeys she has made on the Thames, and the dark mouth of Traitors’ Gate that she has always imagined might somehow suck her in like a leaf carried on the current, never to escape. Rough, ungallant hands sweep over her body, searching for hidden weapons. How could she possibly have contrived to secrete a knife about her person? Do these guards not know she has been roped to her captors for days?
At last she is permitted to step out of the gatehouse. She is led across a courtyard packed with all the appurtenances of rebellion: wagons piled high with hay for the horses; armourers hammering like demons at damaged plate; spinning whetstones that send showers of sparks into the air as they sharpen sword blades; blacksmiths pouring molten lead into moulds to make musket balls… She can tell, by the expensive gold accessories worn by some of the men she passes, that this is the headquarters of someone of high importance. She dares to hope that person is the Earl of Tyrone. Surely a man of his station will know his chivalrous duty and arrange her freedom. And if he demurs, well, a man is a man whether he’s an earl or a potboy, and she hasn’t met one yet that she could not bend to her will. Except – and only then on occasions – Nicholas Shelby.
But what if Tyrone is just as his enemies would portray him – a merciless butcher, bent on ripping the English out of Ireland by their admittedly shallow roots? What if he imprisons her in some foul dungeon while he tries to extort concessions out of the Earl of Essex? She cannot imagine that ending in her favour.
In fact Hugh O’Neill turns out to be neither of these extremes. The sternness of his appearance is countered by kindly, almost merry eyes. His voice has a pleasant, lazy current beneath the initial gruffness. He is dressed simply in woollen plaid, the gold fittings on his belt and the sheath of his dagger being the only clue to his rank.
‘It is our joint good fortune that you were taken by fellows who owe their fealty to my trusty friend, James Fitzthomas,’ he tells her after she has been given food and drink and her leash removed. ‘They always have an eye for useful loot.’
Bianca remembers the little fellow to whom she had first admitted her identity. ‘Well, you may tell Master Fitzthomas that I’m not loot. I’m Bianca Merton,’ she says proudly, guessing that Tyrone is the sort of man to quickly tire of false pleasantries.
‘Oh, I know who you are. Or at least I know who you claim to be. I just don’t know whether to believe you. Some people will say anything when they think their lives are in danger.’
‘Is my life in danger?’
‘That rather depends.’
‘Upon what?’
‘Upon how good you are at the healing arts.’
‘Why? Are you sick?’ she asks.
‘Only of English perfidy.’
‘Then why have I been brought here?’
‘I would like to think it’s because God Almighty favours our cause,’ Tyrone says, without smiling.
‘If you’re not in need of healing, then who is?’ she asks. ‘You can’t have had me brought all this way to treat blistered feet or lame cattle.’
‘A guest of mine.’
‘Have you no healers of your own?’
‘This isn’t London, Mistress. We’re at war, and Ulster is a wild place,’ Tyrone points out. ‘Most of our physicians are scattered with our bands. The few that I have close to hand, well, let us say this: Ireland is not exactly known as the wellspring of medical advancement. So when the wife of the physician to the Earl of Essex, and a licensed apothecary to boot, falls like a ripe fruit into my hands, I’m not about to pass on the opportunity, am I?’ He glowers at her, though his eyes still twinkle mischievously. ‘You are these things, are you? Because if you’re not, I have a very quick way of finding out.’
‘I am,’ Bianca says, feeling her resolve begin to crumble. ‘You have my word for it.’
‘Then come with me.’
Tyrone’s castle seems to have been built for an ancient, smaller breed. There is not a passage down which Bianca is led that does not cause her to bend her head. She feels the cold, uneven stone brushing her shoulders, rasping her elbows. She wonders if Tyrone has changed his mind and decided to imprison her anyway. She has no option but to follow him, pressed from behind by three of his retinue.
At last Tyrone bounds energetically up a narrow, winding stone stairwell to a low door set into an archway. A guard stands before it. He dips his head at Tyrone’s approach.
Another prisoner must lie within, Bianca thinks. She racks her memory, but she can think of no figure of importance that Nicholas has ever mentioned falling into rebel hands.
At Tyrone’s command, the guard raps twice on the door. Not pejorative hammerings that would suggest an enemy imprisoned on the other side, but almost respectful, as though to give warning. She hears a woman answer in English, heavily accented.
A brief exchange follows, to determine if all is proper and decent within. Then the guard lifts the latch and opens the door. No rattle of chains, or keys turning in unbreachable locks. If there is a prisoner within, thinks Bianca, they have a remarkable degree of freedom. She follows Tyrone into the neat little chamber.
Poking out from a sheet of fine linen edged with Alençon lace is a plump, rather grey face, redeemed by a set of rosebud lips. The heavy black eyebrows guard a pair of closed lids. The linen rises and falls over the swell of the breasts in faltering steps, like an old man climbing steep stairs. A slow, whining whistle accompanies each exhalation.
But it is not the woman on the bed who seizes Bianca’s attention. It is the one standing beside it. A tall, strongly built young woman with a wise face, a face as dark as any foreign merchant to be seen in Padua or Venice. She is dressed plainly in a cloth gown, her black hair roped back over her brow. Even to Bianca – no stranger to the whole palate of human colours, thanks to a childhood spent in close proximity to Venice – the presence of such a woman in this damp, wild place is startling. But what truly rocks her on her heels is her belated identification of the woman’s accent.
Spanish.
‘This is the young woman I need you to heal,’ says Tyrone, indicating the figure whose face pokes out of the coverlet. ‘Her name is Constanza. You need know nothing more of her than that.’
Oh, I know far more than you think, Bianca replies silently in her head as she struggles to impose some small control over her reeling mind. For instance, I know the likelihood of there being more than one Constanza of Spanish stock presently to be found in Ireland. I would consider it as likely as discovering that you were keeping a live cockatrice in your castle and feeding it on nectar.
But Tyrone has one last shock in store for her.
Bianca is too astounded by the realization that she has managed to achieve the one thing that both she and Nicholas, not to mention Robert Cecil and Edmund Spenser, had thought impossible – even if it was without her own active agency – that she doesn’t hear the footsteps of someone else entering the chamber. And she only half-registers Tyrone saying, ‘You’re just in time. Is this the physician’s wife? Has Fitzthomas hooked us a fine fresh salmon, or nothing but a wee pollan?’
But she hears the reply alright. She hears it because the voice is familiar.
‘Oh yes, my lord,’ says Piers Gardener. ‘That’s Mistress Bianca. I’d recognize that head of hair anywhere, even from behind.’
33
When two separate shocks of such magnitude strike at the same time, the only way to keep standing – or so Bianca thinks, as her head turns from Constanza to Piers Gardener, back to Constanza and then again to the scrivener, like a coney’s swivelling as it searches for foxes – is to start with something you can handle. Force order upon the storm, even if it’s only a temporary order. Break it down into fragments. Deal with each one in turn. Hope that in the meantime you don’t drown in a flood of disbelief. Start with what you know.Start with Piers Gardener.
She sees at once how easy it must have been for him to pass between the two sides, constantly on the move, alone, under no one’s supervision. What was it he had called himself when they’d met in the Tholsel at Dublin when she and Nicholas first arrived in Dublin: grey merchants… It’s the dust we pick up from always being out on the road…
She knows she should despise him as a traitor, but looking at that child’s face with its moon-calf eyes and its golden curls of hair, she wonders how Gardener found the courage. She can think of a score of questions to ask him, from: How long have you been spying for the rebels? to: Did you murder Edmund Spenser because he found out? But they have to form a mannerly queue in her mind, because at the front is the one question that bursts from her mouth without even the preamble of acknowledging his sudden appearance in the chamber.
‘Please God, Master Piers, tell me if my husband is safe?’
He looks genuinely concerned to put her mind at rest. He opens his palms as though she were holding him responsible for any harm that might have befallen Nicholas. ‘He was, when I left Dublin, Mistress. I have not been much in his company of late, but I have heard no ill report of him.’
‘You must tell him you have seen me. He will be losing his mind with worry.’
Before he can answer, Tyrone puts a stop to the exchange. ‘Madam, if you want to see your husband again, the fastest way is to bring this woman out of her malady. The sooner you begin, the sooner we can decide how it may be contrived – without jeopardizing Master Gardener’s position.’ He extends his hand in invitation towards the bed. ‘Will you attend her – please?’
Bianca steps forward, her heart racing. A blizzard of possibilities, blind alleys, opportunities, missteps, potential triumphs and certain disasters swirls in her head. Gardener is the means of saving Nicholas from grief… but now that she knows Gardener is a rebel spy, Tyrone will never let her leave. If she cannot heal Constanza Calva de Sagrada, Tyrone will have no use for her. If she can heal Constanza, how will she contrive an escape? What if the woman on the bed isn’t Constanza Calva de Sagrada at all, but some other stray Spaniard with a similarly given name?
Start with something you can handle… force order upon the storm, even if it’s only a temporary order…
Taking a deep breath, Bianca looks the Earl of Tyrone squarely in the eye. ‘There are too many men in this chamber for decency,’ she says firmly, as though it were her castle, not his. ‘We need privacy. Please, leave us.’
Tyrone shoos away his attendants. ‘You, too, Master Gardener,’ he adds. ‘We may consider what is to be done later.’ Then, from the doorway, he adds, ‘Please work swiftly, Mistress. This woman is of great importance to me. I need her well again.’
When the door closes, Bianca hears a key turn in the lock. From the bed, Constanza lets out a low moan. The woman who stands beside her stares at Bianca with deep suspicion in her dark, distrusting eyes.
Bianca thinks back to the meeting with Robert Cecil in the Paris Garden lodgings. In her head, she hears again a fragment of the exchange between Cecil and Edmund Spenser: Where was this meeting to happen, Master Spenser?
At Kilcolman… the perfect place.
Addressing the woman she assumes is Constanza’s servant – the woman she reasons must have been the one who spoke English, because the other is near enough unconscious – Bianca says, as though it were nothing more than a trivial observation, ‘Mercy! This is a wild and desolate place in which to fall sick. I haven’t seen the like since I was at Kilcolman Castle, with Master Edmund Spenser. Tell me – what ails your mistress?’
And there it is: the sudden gleam that enters the eyes of the extraordinary figure standing beside the sickbed of Constanza Calva de Sagrada. The suspicion has fled, replaced by a gleam of understanding. Of empathy. The budding of new-found hope. As if both women have found each other after a long and arduous trek across whole continents of obstacles.
