Treachery (46 page)

Despite the pain in my ribs, I run the distance back to the Star, the letter clutched in my fist. I can only cling to the hope that Lady Arden will be safe until Doughty and Jenkes can play her as their trump card against Drake. The next move will be his to make.

Mistress Judith is waiting for me in the entrance hall and is upon me almost before I am in the door. ‘Sir Francis wants you.’ She clutches at my sleeve. ‘He is in his wife’s chamber, with others of his men. I have the sense something bad has happened, but no one will tell me anything. Nothing concerning the inn, I hope?’

‘Nothing for you to worry about, mistress,’ I say, but I can see that my distracted manner and drawn face do not reassure her.

It is Thomas Drake who opens the door to me, his expression forbidding. Without a word he gestures me inside. Lady Drake is folded into a window seat, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth. She springs up as I enter, her eyes questioning. I answer with a taut shake of my head and fresh tears well up and spill down her cheeks as she sinks back down.

‘You found nothing, I suppose?’ Drake stands by the fireplace. His mouth is set in a grim line. To his left, Carleill and Sidney sit at the writing table, as if waiting to take dictation.

I hand Drake the crumpled letter. ‘I found this down by the gatehouse to the castle steps.’

He runs his eyes over it and looks up at me, accusing.

‘I did not write it,’ I feel compelled to say. Still he holds me in that long, level stare.

‘Even so,’ he says eventually, ‘someone must have known that such a message would have the desired effect.’

I look at the floor. ‘The maid here has been spying on us – all of us – since we first arrived. I believe she is being paid by Jenkes the book dealer and John Doughty.’

Drake’s jaw tightens. ‘Get her in here. Thomas, go and find her.’ He turns back to me as his brother slips out. ‘The castle steps, you say? So you think they have taken a boat?’

‘That is my guess. A soldier on the battery there thought he saw a man and a woman boarding a small boat, rowed by a second man. She must have dropped the letter in the hope that someone would see it.’

‘Or else it is a trick on their part, to distract us.’ He rubs his beard. ‘Carleill, I still want men sent out by land to search. A party on every road out of the town. And if they have left by water, they will not have got far in a small boat. The Sound is full of my ships – we will question all those keeping watch, and on the foreign merchantmen too. Someone must have seen them if they boarded a ship.’ He snaps his head around at a stifled sob from Lady Drake. ‘Do not disturb yourself, my dear. We will find her safe and well, I promise.’

Privately I think this promise may be a little rash, but I say nothing. The door opens and Thomas marches Hetty in with a tight grip on her arm. She pulls away from him with a black look, but her face is puffy. Despite such intimidating company, she still struggles to keep up her defiant manner.

‘Let me go! I en’t done nothing,’ she says, addressing Drake. ‘I know no more’n I told him.’ She points at me.

He crosses to her with one stride and stands very close, bearing down on her. I can imagine grown men quaking before that glare, but Hetty merely stares back.

‘Those men you have been working for – where are they?’ he barks.

‘I don’t know. He only ever gave me letters to deliver. He didn’t tell me all their comings and goings.’

‘Well, we shall soon see if you are telling the truth,’ Drake says, as if it doesn’t matter to him either way. ‘I shall have your room and your belongings searched. Any money you had from them, you earned by abetting kidnappers. I’m sure you know the penalty for such a crime and I shall personally see that you are arrested for it if there is anything you are keeping back that could help to find Lady Arden. So if you want to save yourself, you’d better start talking, girl. Thomas, ask Mistress Judith to come here, would you?’

‘No!’

Thomas Drake already has the door open when Hetty’s strangled cry stops him. He closes it softly. Everyone is looking at her. A sob rises in her throat and slowly she reaches into her apron. When she draws her hand out, holding another folded and sealed letter, it is clear that she is shaking.

‘This is meant for you, sir.’ She holds it out to Drake, her eyes downcast, her voice no more than a whisper. ‘The man with no ears – he said I was to give it you at sunset. No earlier. And if I broke my word, he would send someone to kill me in my bed. The way he said it, sir – I didn’t doubt he meant it. He has these blue eyes that would burn you up, like the Devil, sir, and he speaks like icy water down your back.’ She shivers and two fat tears roll down her cheeks. For all Hetty’s posturing, this fear looks genuine. It is a striking description of Rowland Jenkes.

‘All right.’ Drake takes the letter and breaks the seal. He reads it in silence. We all watch as his face grows slowly darker. A muscle jumps in his cheek. For a long time he does not speak. Then he looks back to Hetty. ‘Is he expecting you to take a reply?’

She shakes her head. ‘No, sir. He said that was the last one for now. That was why it was important you didn’t have it too early.’

He nods. ‘Get back to your business. I shall tell Mistress Judith you are to be watched at every turn. If he gets in touch with you again, by any means, you come straight to me. Understood?’

Hetty nods; when Drake turns away, she scurries to the door.

‘Wait!’ Drake calls, as she is about to open it, and she jumps as if she has been stung. ‘That letter you left under the door of this chamber last night – who did that come from? Not the same man, surely?’

Confusion chases across her swollen face.

‘What letter?’

Drake takes a step closer, his jaw set tight, and she cowers against the door.

‘Addressed to me. Come now – you will do yourself no favours. Who sent the letter last night?’

‘I – I don’t know what letter you mean, sir,’ she says, looking genuinely fearful. ‘I never left no letter at this room last night, I swear it. Only the one this morning.’

‘God help you if you are lying, child,’ Drake begins, and she shakes her head frantically.

‘I’m not, sir, it’s God’s honest truth. If you had a letter last night, it didn’t come by my hand.’

Drake clicks his tongue. ‘Get out. What would you know of God’s truth?’ He makes an impatient gesture with his hand, like someone shooing away a dog; Hetty is out of the door in an instant. I have never seen her move so fast.

‘That girl should be under lock and key, brother,’ Thomas says, anger in his voice. ‘Even now she is not telling all.’

‘That is precisely why it would not help to lock her up,’ Drake replies. ‘These men may use her to make contact again. She is an easy conduit to me. If they do, we will have a better chance of finding them.’

Carleill gives a discreet cough. ‘The letter, sir?’

Drake holds it at arm’s length. ‘Listen to this.

My dear Captain Drake

Fair exchange is no robbery, as people like to say. One item of value in exchange for another. You have something of value to us, and vice versa. Bring it to the chapel on St Nicholas Island after sundown and we will make an exchange I believe will be satisfactory to both parties. Do not be deceived, Captain Drake – I speak of a fair deal. You are to come alone, without your armed men, carrying only the Coptic book. Moor your boat at the northern jetty and approach by the path that leads up the cliff. If you do not abide by these conditions, I fear it will be too late to effect any exchange.

I look forward to our transaction.

He pauses, sucks in his cheeks, looks around the room.

‘Is it signed?’ Carleill asks.

‘No. But we hardly need doubt who wrote it. This book dealer with no ears, Devil take him.’

‘Well, you shall not go,’ Thomas says, as if the decision rests with him. ‘Anyone can see it is a trap. Does he really think you would be such a fool?’ He snorts in disdain. Drake passes a hand across his brow, frowning.

‘Too late for an exchange means he will kill her if you do not do as he says, does it not?’ Lady Drake asks, from the window, fighting to keep her voice steady.

‘Noisy threats only, my dear,’ her husband says. ‘He would not harm her – she is all he has to bargain with.’ He does not sound as if he believes this.

‘Let us not forget there are two of them,’ I say. ‘They have devised this between them. Jenkes will get the book he covets, and John Doughty will get you, Sir Francis, alone and unarmed, where you cannot escape.’

‘Except that it is they who will be undefended,’ Thomas says, animated. ‘We have a fleet full of armed men at our disposal – why do we not simply surround the island, now that we know where they are, and blast the devils out?’

‘Because they would kill Lady Arden, fool,’ says Lady Drake. ‘Either those men will, or your soldiers. Francis would never risk her life.’

‘Sometimes there must be casualties in any conflict, my lady,’ Thomas replies, turning to her.

‘Casualties?’ Lady Drake stands, indignant. ‘What war are you fighting, Thomas Drake, against a book dealer and a traitor who has long carried a grudge against my husband? You think a woman’s life a fair price to pay for such a victory?’

‘My lady, John Doughty will not rest until your husband – my brother – is dead,’ Thomas says, trying to keep his tone respectful. ‘Would you have Sir Francis walk willingly to his execution? Because know this, my lady – they will not hand back your cousin, and I’m afraid you are the fool if you believe they would ever keep to such a deal. They will simply kill them both. Better we take the island by force—’

Lady Drake chokes down a sob.

‘Peace, both of you, I cannot think,’ Drake says, holding up a hand for silence. ‘There is only one landing stage on the island,’ he continues, as his wife and brother glare at one another, ‘and that is the one facing the Hoe. The Sound is full of my ships – how do they imagine they will escape, even supposing they keep their word? Do they not think my guns would fire on them before they had even cast off? They must have some other plan.’

‘Their plan is to kill you,’ Thomas says.

‘Is the island fortified?’ Carleill asks, rising. There is something immediately calming about his presence; he is the sort of man you would be glad to have in command in the heat of battle.

Drake shakes his head, his expression rueful. ‘Work was begun on defences nearly forty years ago, in King Edward’s time, but they were never finished. Two years ago the town corporation petitioned the government to make me military governor of the island. I offered a hundred pounds of my own towards building a fort, but the Privy Council did not believe the threat justified the cost, so the funds were never released. The town corporation maintains two gunners stationed there, to keep the smugglers off, but aside from the beginnings of the fort, the old chapel and four cannon on the south-east side, there’s nothing out there.’

‘In any event,’ Thomas says, ‘by the time they took to their boat, you would be dead, brother. It would be small comfort to fire on them then.’

‘I will go,’ I say. A long silence unfolds while everyone turns to stare at me.

‘But they will see you are not my husband from a mile off,’ Elizabeth Drake says. ‘And then they will kill Nell before you even reach them.’

‘I am not so sure,’ I say, turning to her. ‘For one thing, if the light is fading they will not see who is approaching, especially if he has a hooded cloak. And besides – I cannot vouch for John Doughty, but I suspect Rowland Jenkes is canny enough to have set this as a double trap. They will know, surely, that Sir Francis would not simply come unarmed to their summons. They will expect someone to take his place. And Jenkes will expect that person to be me.’

‘Why you?’ Thomas narrows his eyes.

‘Because he knows that I have a connection with both the book and with, erm, Lady Arden,’ I say, not meeting his eye.

‘Lady Arden? You?’ Thomas looks incredulous. ‘What connection could you possibly have with her?’ But I see understanding slowly dawning on his face even before he has finished the sentence.

‘Oh, be quiet, Thomas,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I think Bruno is right. If my husband is not there, they have no reason to kill anyone. It is the book this Jenkes wants, after all. Perhaps they will let Nell go once he has it.’

‘And what of John Doughty?’ Thomas chips in again, belligerent. ‘What does he get, if Francis does not come? Will he not want to keep Lady Arden to barter with?’

‘Besides, Rowland Jenkes has wanted to kill Bruno for two years,’ Sidney says, in a low voice. He has been unusually quiet, though I have observed him paying sharp attention from his seat in the corner. ‘Either way, one of them will have his revenge. Let
me
take the book. Neither has any vested interest in killing me. And let a boatload of armed men follow me and land out of sight, concealing themselves. I will hand over the book, escort Lady Arden to safety and then the armed men can show themselves. We can stop them before they make their escape.’

‘What a neat solution, Sir Philip,’ Thomas says. ‘I wonder that my brother did not think of it, with all his experience of combat.’

Drake shoots an irritated glance at Thomas. ‘It is a noble gesture, Sir Philip, and I am grateful for it. But we would do well not to underestimate these men. They will be prepared for any such stratagem, I am certain. Besides – I cannot possibly permit you to put your life in danger on my behalf. How could I excuse myself to the Queen and your family if anything should happen to you?’ He says this with an apologetic, paternal smile, but Sidney bristles and turns away. Once again he has been denied an opportunity for heroism because he is viewed as the Queen’s pet. Looking at him, I cannot help but be moved by the fact that he offered to go in my place, to save me.

‘If no one went tonight,’ Carleill says, carefully, ‘if we simply refused to play their game – what would they do then? They will not harm Lady Arden, surely, for then they would have nothing left to bargain with.’