The Rebel's Mark by S. W. Perry

Author:S. W. Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

21

Whether it is said in jest or in deadly earnest, it leaves Nicholas speechless.

‘Aren’t you going to make me welcome?’ Gardener asks, whatever doubts he may just have expressed seemingly forgotten. He gives Nicholas the broad smile of the utterly innocent.

‘Of course, forgive me,’ Nicholas says hurriedly. ‘God give you good eventide, Master Gardener. I must confess you are the last person I expected to walk into the Jackdaw on Twelfth Night.’

To his relief, Bianca appears at his shoulder.

‘Master Piers, what a happy surprise! Whatever are you doing in London?’

‘There has been a change of Surveyor of the Victuals, now that the Earl of Essex is to take the field,’ Gardener says. ‘Sir George Beverly has been appointed in Ireland. I have come with his letters to the earl. It is the first time I have been in London; nay, in all of England. It is such a large city. I have never seen such a place. I can walk from one side of Dublin to the other in the time it takes the Christchurch bell to ring an hour’s quarter. Here I feel I might walk all day and not traverse it. How do you not all get lost in such a place?’

‘We find a tavern and ask for directions, Master Gardener,’ Nicholas explains with a smile.

Bianca readies a table and orders hot wassail to take the chill out of Gardener’s cheeks. ‘When we were with you last in Ireland I recall you were hoping your position might be made permanent,’ she says. ‘I take, from your presence here, that your wish has been granted.’

‘Seven pounds per annum,’ says Gardener proudly.

‘You mentioned you’d come from St Paul’s, asking after me amongst the Stationers’ Company,’ Nicholas reminds him.

‘Aye, they seemed not to know of you,’ says Gardener. ‘I’m sure that when we met in Dublin you said you were visiting Master Spenser on the guild’s behalf. Was I mistaken?’

Nicholas feels himself colour. He prays that, in the low light from the hearth and the candles, Gardener hasn’t noticed. ‘It was a privy matter,’ he says, trying not to hurry his words, ‘regarding Master Spenser’s rather controversial pamphlet on the present situation in Ireland. Only the president of the guild and a few of his closest officers knew about my journey.’

‘Ah, that explains it,’ says Gardener, beaming as though a heavy burden has been lifted from his conscience.

Bianca enquires where he’s lodging. A storeroom floor somewhere deep in Whitehall, he tells her – a place he can never find by the same route twice in a row. She insists he at least spends tonight at the Jackdaw; there is still one straw mattress free in the communal lodging room on the top floor beneath the attic, and enough venison pottage left to nourish a slight but hungry frame. He asks the price. Bianca assures him there isn’t one, not for the man who saved their lives in Ireland.

While Gardener warms himself before the fire, they press him for news. The hospital

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