Treachery (64 page)

‘He was there in that back pew right enough,’ Sidney says, shrugging on his doublet. I make an encouraging noise and swing my legs gingerly over the side of the bed, testing the damage after a night’s rest has allowed my torn muscles to stiffen. Everything hurts.

‘I stationed my armed men at either end of the pew, then I slipped in beside him. He was pretending to pray. I leaned over and whispered, “Gilbert’s not coming tonight, my friend.” You should have seen his face.’ He pauses, halfway through fastening his buttons, smiling to himself as he recalls. ‘Of course, he tried to claim he didn’t know any Gilbert, didn’t know what I was talking about. But when I told him Gilbert had been arrested and told us everything, and he could tell us his side the easy way or the hard way, he couldn’t be helpful enough.’

‘That was cleverly done,’ I say, as I have said at this point during all the previous accounts.

‘It was a gamble, I’ll admit,’ he says, straightening his ruff and checking his reflection in the spotted glass. ‘But it paid off. He was terrified as soon as I suggested he could be questioned in the Tower. He’s only a small fish – a French merchant who lives here in Plymouth, has some arrangement with agents of the Catholic League to pass letters to couriers on French ships. He had no idea what was in them – just a bit of easy money for him.’

‘So Gilbert’s letters were going direct to the Spanish Embassy in Paris,’ I murmur, pulling myself up to standing on the carved bedpost.

‘Straight into the hands of Mendoza,’ Sidney says. ‘If we hadn’t found out in time, Drake’s entire fleet would have been sailing right into a Spanish ambush.’ He shakes his head. ‘I still don’t understand it. Gilbert Crosse never seemed like a man to be excited by money – you only have to look at his clothes to see that. And there’s no evidence that he was driven by religious conviction – he comes from a good Protestant family. So if it wasn’t for money or faith, then what?’

I shrug my less painful shoulder. ‘Perhaps the letter will give us some clue. It’s encrypted, of course, but Drake will have sent a copy to Walsingham by now. His cryptographers will make short work of it.’

‘They will have its meaning unravelled by the time Gilbert arrives at the Tower,’ he says, running a tortoiseshell comb through his hair. ‘Then he can explain himself in person.’ He sounds unconcerned. I try not to think of how Gilbert might be encouraged to explain himself in the Tower.

‘By then, Bruno, you and I will be out to sea,’ Sidney continues. ‘Just think of it – the wind in our hair, this town and all its vices far behind us, the open horizon and adventure ahead.’ His face is alight with the prospect of it.

‘Pettifer and Savile just waiting to give us an accidental nudge overboard any time the sea is rough,’ I say. He turns and glares at me.

‘You had better stop your naysaying in Drake’s hearing,’ he says, pointing his comb at me.

So it seems there is no way of deferring this choice any longer. At present, all I wish for is more time to rest. I am prevented from replying by an urgent hammering on the door.

‘Get that, would you, Bruno?’ Sidney says, strapping on his sword. ‘It will be Drake’s messenger, I’ll wager. I wonder if he will give us Dunne’s cabin? You wouldn’t be superstitious about sleeping in a dead man’s bed, would you? Personally I don’t care for that sort of nonsense, but I know most mariners would – oh, for the love of Christ, we’re coming!’

The knocking grows more insistent. I pull the door open to find Hetty standing there wearing her usual expression of sullen resentment. I am surprised she is still employed; perhaps Mistress Judith has yet to hire a replacement. Hetty does at least have the grace to look slightly sheepish in my presence.

‘Near wore my knuckles to the bone there,’ she mutters. ‘Someone downstairs to see you.
Sir.
Says it’s urgent.’

‘Who is it?’ I am wearing only my shirt and underhose. I cast around for my breeches.

‘Not you.
Him
.’ She points through the open door at Sidney. ‘I dunno but he looks important.’

‘Well, let us not keep him waiting, then,’ Sidney says, brushing past me, beaming magnanimously at the girl and puffing out his chest as he strides towards the stairs. He looks like a man who expects at long last to be rewarded.

I throw on my clothes, tame my hair as best I can, and follow Sidney down to the entrance hall a few moments later. Over the banister I can see him talking to a man who wears the green and white Tudor livery, though he is spattered head to foot with mud. His coat is sewn with a gold badge which I recognise, as I draw closer, as the crest of Queen Elizabeth. Sidney, when he turns to me, is as pale as if he were seasick.

‘This messenger has come from the court. Ridden almost without stopping, he says. To give me this.’ He holds up a letter on creamy paper, sealed in thick crimson wax. The messenger stands patiently, eyes lowered and hands folded, while Sidney rips it open. I watch his gaze travel over the lines inside, his face growing taut with fury as he comprehends its meaning. He turns to me, his eyes burning.

‘Duplicitous bastard!’ he spits, turning on the unfortunate messenger, who takes a step back.

‘What is it, Philip?’ I ask, though I think I can guess.

‘See for yourself,’ he snaps, thrusting the letter into my hand and storming out of the door, leaving it banging in his wake.

I know where I will find him. I limp after him along Nutt Street but his anger has driven him faster than I can walk with my present injuries; he is already far ahead of me by the time I have skimmed the letter, tipped the poor messenger and asked Mistress Judith to give him something to eat and drink. I understand my friend’s fury, but not his surprise. Did he really believe the Captain-General would take him to the other side of the world, knowing he did not have the Queen’s permission to leave England? Drake must have dispatched a messenger the day we arrived; he realised immediately that no amount of Spanish gold would compensate Queen Elizabeth for such flagrant disobedience. From the minute Sidney announced his intention to travel with the fleet, he was a liability to Drake. I have to admire the smoothness of the Captain-General’s deception; the promises he has held out to us over these past days – promises that ensured our ongoing help with his situation – all the while knowing his messenger was tearing up the road towards the court, ready to unleash the Queen’s fury.

I glance down at the letter in my hand as I approach the Mayor’s front door. It is curious to think of Elizabeth Tudor writing this in her own hand, barely able to contain her indignation as she dips her quill. The writing is bold and swooping, with long tails and loops, the signature underscored with curlicues. It is a confident hand, but the quill has been pressed so hard to the page that the ink has spattered and blotched in places. This is a letter that expresses its depth of feeling in its imperfections, a letter written in the heat of sovereign anger. She absolutely forbids Sidney to sail with Drake, on pain of withdrawing patronage from both of them. If he leaves court now, she tells him, he had better not bother to return. He is to be on the road the day he receives this letter, without delay, and bring Dom Antonio directly to court as promised. She is calling her puppy to heel, snapping her fingers to watch him come running. And he has no choice. No wonder he is boiling. I only hope I have arrived in time to stop him throwing a punch at Drake; I have a feeling Sidney would come off worse.

I might be entitled to feel deceived too, I think, as I wait for my knock to be answered. I have put my life in danger to help Drake this past week, for a promised reward that he knew all along he had no intention of giving. True, I did it for Sidney’s sake, and for Lady Arden’s, but it is hard to escape the feeling that Drake has made use of us.

I can hear raised voices as I am shown along a passage to the parlour we visited yesterday. But before the maid reaches the door, we are intercepted by Lady Drake, who puts a finger to her lips, slips her arm through mine and leads me through the house to the garden door, despite my protests.

‘Better you leave them to sort out their differences,’ she whispers, nodding back to the parlour, where Sidney’s aggrieved tone competes with Drake’s lower, mollifying cadences. I cannot make out their words, but I hardly need to. ‘Sir Philip is very angry, isn’t he?’ she adds. ‘Poor thing. I know how much he wanted this adventure. But on the whole, my husband does better to upset him than the Queen, don’t you think? Besides, he may not be so furious when he hears what my husband proposes instead.’ She leans closer, as if to impart a great secret, and giggles, a hand pressed to her lips. There is a girlish quality about Lady Drake, I think, as I bend my head to play along, which some men would find alluring, though I have always preferred the sort of woman who is unafraid to look a man in the eye as one adult to another. ‘He thinks you and Sir Philip and Dom Antonio should be our guests for a few days at Buckland Abbey, before you leave for London.’

‘Sir Francis is not staying in Plymouth?’

She shakes her head, impatient. ‘Of course he is. Once he has seen Jonas buried, he is anxious to set sail as soon as possible, but first he wants me and my cousin away from Plymouth. We are to return home tomorrow, in your company, if Sir Philip is agreeable. I think we could make your stay a pleasant one.’ She pauses for a knowing smile. ‘But for now, Bruno, I think it would do you good to take the air,’ she adds, propelling me out into the courtyard.

I see Nell sitting on a bench in the shade of an apple tree, affecting to read a book. She does not raise her eyes until the last moment, when she feigns surprise and shyness at my arrival. Her hair is bound up and dressed in a narrow French hood to disguise the damage done by the fire, and she wears a silk scarf around her throat to cover the bruises left by the rope. Though she is pale, the cuts on her face are less prominent and her eyes have regained something of their sparkle. There is a new awkwardness between us as she places her book carefully beside her and offers me a tentative smile, though her eyes grow wide at the sight of my new injuries.

I make a small bow. ‘My lady. You are looking rested. How are you feeling?’

‘I look hideous, Bruno, there is no need to lie about it,’ she says, gingerly touching the cut on her cheek. ‘And you have looked better yourself, if we are being truthful. But bruises will mend, and we are alive, thank God.’ She laughs, though I can see it still pains her to swallow. ‘Sir Francis says you were extremely brave and caught the killer.’

I offer a modest shrug. ‘He gave himself away, really. Poor boy.’

She arches an eyebrow. ‘How can you pity him? He will be executed as a traitor, Sir Francis says.’ She gives a delicate shudder. I have the impression she rather relishes the prospect. I can only assume she has never witnessed a traitor’s execution.

‘He will probably die of fright before they get him near the Tower.’ I take a seat on the bench beside her. Gilbert knew that what he did was treason, even before he committed murder for it, and he would have understood the penalty: the slow journey to Tyburn on the hurdle, the sight of the gallows and, beside it, the scaffold with the butcher’s block and the brazier, where you would be laid after choking a few minutes at the end of the rope, to have your genitals cut off, your torso slit open from throat to navel, your entrails unwound on a stick before your eyes and your heart cut out and thrown into the fire. Anyone who has watched such an execution can never scrub those images from his memory; with that end in mind, you would need a compelling reason to betray your country.

I still do not understand what drove Gilbert. He had none of the traits of a religious fanatic, that I could see. Quite the opposite: he considered himself a man of science, so I thought, but some of these young converts learn to hide it well. Perhaps we would never know, unless he spoke up in the Tower. I wince at the thought.

Nell reaches over and eases her hand across mine. I find myself twining my fingers with hers, though it is hard to drag my mind away from images of what awaits Gilbert once he is taken to London.

‘But you are not too distraught at being forbidden to sail with Sir Francis?’ She says this with a knowing look.

‘I can stomach the disappointment. But Sidney is livid. He is young – he longs for adventure.’

‘And you?’

‘Not so young any more. As for adventure – I do not seek it out, but it seems to follow me regardless. I don’t need to cross an ocean to find it.’

‘So I have learned,’ she says, touching the scarf at her throat. She traces small patterns on the back of my hand with her fingertips. Goosebumps rise on my skin. ‘Bruno …’ she begins, hesitant. ‘There in the crypt, when we thought … I spoke a little recklessly, I fear. I pushed you to say something you did not mean.’

‘My lady, Nell …’ I say, though I am not sure how to continue.

‘Come, Bruno, let us at least be frank with one another. You do not love me – you barely know me, nor I you. I like your company, better than I have any man’s for a long while. That night, I imagined that if we survived I might be bold enough to defy every convention, but—’ She breaks off and squeezes my arm, her expression full of regret. ‘I am not so green that I can forget the distance between us.’

I nod. An unexpected sadness swells in my throat; not at the loss of her so much as at the reminder that this is how it will always turn out for me. I have learned, to my cost, that to love someone means lowering my defences, and in a life like mine I cannot afford to do that.

She leans her head against my shoulder. ‘I wish it could be otherwise, Bruno. I curse the obligations of rank sometimes, but there it is. In another life, you would have been the sort of man I looked for. But since I am not free to choose, I think for the present I am happier with no husband. Perhaps neither one of us is made for marriage, eh?’ She smiles. ‘Though I must confess I would have loved to see my family’s faces if I introduced you as my betrothed. Especially Cousin Edgar the boar. They would be lost for words.’

‘I think,’ I say carefully, ‘that if I were ever to marry, I would want it to be for a more substantial reason than to scandalise someone’s relatives.’