Treachery (17 page)

‘What have you found?’ Sidney crowds in beside me, curious, his shadow falling across the bed.

‘Move back, I can’t see. Here, hold this.’ I hand him the lantern and lift the sheet closer to my face. The stain is dry, the fabric stiff. I lean in and sniff it.

‘Wine,’ I say, letting the sheet fall back to the bed. ‘For a moment I thought it was blood.’ I pull the top sheet away to reveal a bottle of dark-green glass, empty, and two stoneware mugs. Both have the dried dregs of wine inside. I stick my nose inside one and sniff.

Sidney grins. ‘You are better value than a hunting dog, Bruno, just as I told Drake.’

‘This smells odd,’ I say, passing it to him. ‘Sweet. It’s familiar, but—’

He inhales, his face in the mug. ‘Christmas, that’s what it smells of. The wine must have been spiced. It fits, I suppose. Everyone said Dunne was drunk that night. He must have put this away in his cabin before he even left for shore.’

‘But there are two mugs here. It looks as if he was drinking with someone.’ I sniff the mug again. He is right; the lingering sweet smell calls to mind winter spices. ‘Might someone have slipped something into his drink? Something that would account for the wildness of his behaviour?’

‘So they could kill him while he was out of his right mind, you mean?’ Sidney scratches the back of his neck. ‘I suppose that’s possible. What do you think – the Spaniard and his herbs again?’

I frown. ‘Who knows? I would like to talk to this Jonas, before we make up our minds against him. But it seems he would have had the means. Wait – what’s under here?’

The space beneath the bunk, where it is built into the wall, has been converted into a cupboard for storage. I open one of the doors, but the cavity appears to be empty. ‘Give me the light, would you?’

Sidney crouches beside me, shining the lantern into the corners. I lay on my front and wriggle my head and shoulders into the hole, pressing my hands around the boards on the floor and sides.

‘What are you looking for?’ Sidney asks, passing the light in to me.

‘I don’t know. But where would you hide anything valuable, if not in the chest? There must be something in here.’ My voice is muffled by the enclosed space. ‘He was going to sea for a year or more, you’d think he would have brought some personal possessions with him. Some memento of home. This room is so spartan, it seems wrong.’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to be reminded of home,’ Sidney says. ‘Maybe he saw it as a chance to escape all that.’

I say nothing. I have a feeling he is not thinking about Dunne. Just as I am on the verge of conceding defeat, I notice some scratch marks on one of the wooden planks at the back of the storage cavity. I place the light beside me, stretch awkwardly to my belt for my knife, and slip the blade in under the board to prise it up. It lifts easily to reveal a small recess. I reach in and retrieve a fat leather-bound book with an ornate jewelled clasp.

‘What have you got?’ Sidney asks, impatient.

‘An English testament, by the look of it. Here, hold this.’

I wriggle out backwards, hand him the lantern and brush myself down. We sit together on the bunk, heads bent close over the book. He undoes the clasp and opens the stiff cover to the first page.

‘Well, I’ll be whipped,’ Sidney whispers.

A hole has been cut in the pages of the book, very precisely, identical on every page, all the way through to the back cover. Inside it is a velvet purse with a drawstring. I lift it out and test the weight.

‘Let’s have a look,’ Sidney says, holding out his hand. I tip the purse up and five bright coins jangle into his open palm. Sidney whistles.

‘Five gold angels. Christ’s bones! I thought Robert Dunne was supposed to have gambled away his last groat. Where would he get a sum like this?’

‘Perhaps he won it.’

‘Unlikely, from everything we’ve heard. We should take this to Drake. It’s an old trick, this, you know.’ He pokes the cavity cut out of the book. ‘This is how Catholics often smuggle vials of chrism and holy water through the ports. Revenue officers don’t think to look inside books. Let’s see if there’s anything else under there.’ Sidney rests one knee on the planks and leans in with the lantern to grope around in the space beneath the boards. ‘Ha! What have we here?’

He passes me a folded paper and reaches back inside, bringing out a tarnished metal coin.

‘Look at this.’ He holds it out on the flat of his palm. Peering closer, I see that it is about the size of a sovereign, but of cheap metal, imprinted not with the Queen’s image but with an insignia depicting a flame above a dish. ‘What do you make of that? It looks like no coin I’ve ever seen. Foreign, do you think?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t think it’s a coin at all. More likely some sort of token – a private currency, perhaps? Though it is not a symbol I recognise.’

He examines it, shrugs. ‘Let’s take a look at the paper, then.’

The letter has been sealed with crimson wax, and the seal is neatly broken in two. I unfold it and hold it out so Sidney can read it with me.

Will Bryte

Edward Morgan

Abe Fletcher

Robert Dunne

Francis Knollys

Thomas Drake

Francis Drake

A line has been drawn through the first three names on the list. Sidney looks up at me, a glint of excitement in his eye.

‘What do you make of this?’

I scan the list. ‘I’d like to know if Bryte, Morgan or Fletcher were either of the two men Lady Drake mentioned – the jurymen from Thomas Doughty’s trial who died this year.’

‘I don’t recognise those names, but that was my first thought. I’ll wager you are right. Is this list in Dunne’s own writing, I wonder?’

I open the book again. On the top right-hand corner of the inside cover, the name
R. Dunne
is written in ink, and below it,
Plymouth 1577
. The curling loops on the R and D are quite different from the script on the list of names.

‘If Dunne wrote his own name in his book, then I would say no. Turn the paper over.’

Sidney holds out the back of the sheet, where the paper was folded and sealed. In the same hand is written ‘Master Robert Dunne’.

Sidney bends closer to examine the wax. ‘No imprint. Whoever sent it knew it would mean something to Dunne. But why send him a list of names that includes his own?’

‘A threat, perhaps. Letting him know that his time is coming. Though it seems odd to give a man warning that you plan to kill him.’

‘And implying that you intend to strike at Drake and his brother as well,’ Sidney says, rubbing his chin. ‘Why did Dunne say nothing to Drake?’

I look sideways at him. ‘Perhaps he had good reason not to.’

‘How so?’

I sit on the edge of the bunk, tracing the raised pattern the jewels make on the book’s cover with my fingertips. ‘What do we know of Robert Dunne? A gentleman, though deeply in debt. One of the jurymen who condemned Thomas Doughty to execution seven years ago. Which makes him one of John Doughty’s targets for revenge.’

‘If the John Doughty story is true,’ Sidney says, leaning against the door. ‘It might be nothing more than rumour and coincidence.’

‘True. But I am just trying to set out all the possibilities. We know that Robert Dunne was an obsessive gambler, and that he was using this voyage to escape his creditors.’

‘We also know that he expected to come into money in the not too distant future, if your twitchy friend the cartographer is to be believed.’

‘He’s not my friend. But yes. Dunne may have meant his spoils from the voyage, but what if he meant something else? And we’re told that he had been seen more than once in the company of a couple of strangers – meetings he clearly didn’t want his fellow sailors to know about.’

‘Then there’s the Judas book, and the dealer we presume to be Rowland Jenkes. Dunne was mixed up in that, don’t forget. And now this mysterious purse. Maybe he stole it from someone, who killed him in revenge?’

‘Or maybe it was some kind of payment.’

Sidney looks at me expectantly. When I make no reply, he shrugs. ‘It’s a tangle.’

I tuck the letter inside my doublet. ‘We should ask Drake about this list. If this is the jury that condemned Thomas Doughty, it may shed some light. Didn’t you say John Doughty went to prison because it was alleged that the Spanish had recruited him to assassinate Drake?’

Sidney narrows his eyes. ‘So it was said at court, but—’

‘And suppose that were true? If you were John Doughty, bent on revenge, how would you go about it? Drake travels with armed men wherever he goes, and he would recognise you a mile off, so how would you ever get near him? If you were clever, might you not recruit someone to do the job for you? Someone who could get close to Drake without him suspecting anything?’

He stares at me. ‘Someone like Robert Dunne, you mean?’

‘It is no small task to persuade a man to take another’s life. Especially when the man concerned is considered a hero. You would need to find someone who is vulnerable to coercion in some way. This might be an advance payment.’ I tap the purse with my forefinger.

‘Philip of Spain has offered twenty thousand ducats to the man who rids him of El Draco. That would be incentive enough for many. You think John Doughty aimed to use Dunne to assassinate Drake, for a share of the reward?’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s quite a convoluted theory, Bruno.’

‘I know.’ I place the purse back inside the book and tuck it under my arm with a sigh. ‘I would be glad to hear a simpler one, if you have it.’

He presses his lips together. ‘Not yet. We should show all this to Drake, see what he makes of it.’

‘He may not thank us for suggesting he is next on the murderer’s list.’

‘I doubt he will lose much sleep over the idea. If Drake feared the assassin’s knife he would never set foot outside his own door.’ Sidney affects indifference, but it is plain he is impressed by Drake’s bravery.

Holding up the lantern, I close the cupboard door and take a last look around the dead man’s cabin. A sudden melancholy sweeps over me at the bareness of it, the thought that a life can leave so few traces. Hard not to think of what I would leave behind me, if someone came for me in the dark watches of the night. No widow, no child, no land. Nothing but the books I have written. At least, I suppose, that is some sort of mark in the sand. I am about to leave when something flashes on the floor; a brief wink as I move the light.

‘Wait – what was that?’

I crouch and retrieve from between the floorboards a small pearl button in the shape of a flower. I hold it out on my palm for Sidney to examine.

‘Did this come from any of the shirts or doublets you took out of the chest?’

‘Don’t think so. This is not a cheap thing, and Dunne’s clothes were shabby, for the most part. But let us look again.’

He prises open the chest and dumps an armful of the dead man’s clothes on the bed. Between us we lift up the meagre collection of shirts and doublets. They give off a stale, damp odour.

‘The shirts all lace at the neck,’ I point out.

‘And these doublets have buttons wrapped in thread,’ he says, dropping them back in the chest and wiping his hands. ‘Unless it belonged to the clothes he died in, it’s not his.’

‘So we might conclude that someone else lost this button in here. Perhaps in the course of a scuffle.’

‘Torn off while hoisting him to the ceiling?’ Sidney suggests. ‘That can’t have been an easy task.’

‘Hold on to it,’ I say. ‘And look closely at the buttons of everyone on board from now on. Its owner may not realise it is missing.’

Sidney drops the button into his purse for safekeeping, along with the coin. I slip the list of names inside my doublet and tuck the prayer book back under my arm.

We emerge on to the deck just as the door of the next cabin opens and Sir William Savile appears, fastening a short green cape to his shoulder. He looks surprised to see us in Dunne’s quarters but greets us with his usual heartiness. Again I detect a faint hint of irony in it, as if we are all agreed that we are acting a part. Or perhaps I am too ready to be suspicious.

‘Gentlemen. What are you up to in there – looting?’ He grins, nodding to the book, and I curse myself for not having thought to conceal it.

‘Sorting through Dunne’s belongings for his widow,’ Sidney says, with a touch of hauteur. Savile raises an eyebrow.

‘Ah. I see the Captain-General is not afraid of setting you to menial tasks,’ he says, but his eyes are still fixed on the book. ‘For my part I have told him I will keep the watch once in a while, but I draw the line at scrubbing out the heads. Is that a book of Dunne’s? I never saw him read anything except a hand of cards.’

‘It is a testament,’ I say. ‘Perhaps he preferred to keep his devotions private.’

He inclines his head. ‘Looks like a handsome book. Costly. For a fellow who claimed he didn’t have a shilling. And died owing me, I might add, among others. May I see?’

He meets my eye with an expectant smile as he holds out a hand. I make no move to release the book.

‘You played cards with him, then?’

Savile gives a short laugh. ‘For my sins. His enthusiasm for the card table was in direct proportion to his lack of talent for it, poor devil. The first night we docked in Plymouth, Sir Francis took a private room at the Star and we gentlemen dined together. There was a game after supper. Dunne went out early, and lost with a very bad grace, I must say. I was among those he promised to repay. He stormed away in a great fury. Not what you expect from an officer, but then some of these country gentlemen are rather unpolished, don’t you find?’ He addresses this question to Sidney, who refuses to return the slick smile, despite the fact that he almost certainly shares Savile’s views. There is something unpalatable about seeing one’s own snobbery reflected so nakedly in another.

‘Were the stakes high?’ I ask.

He turns and allows his glance to slide up and down me before resting on my face. ‘As high as befits the status of the players. But etiquette demands that you don’t enter into a game unless you can meet the stakes. Very bad form otherwise.’