by S. J. Parris
‘Because I knew the letter to be a forgery,’ Drake says, looking calmly at Gilbert. ‘Jonas Solon could not read or write. That letter could only have come from someone trying to cast the blame elsewhere. Presumably the man who killed both Dunne and Jonas.’
‘But—’ Gilbert is staring at him, shaking his head, though it is hard to tell whether the frozen expression in his eyes is fear or disbelief. ‘That can’t be, there was—’
‘A letter among my papers, signed by Jonas?’ Drake almost smiles. ‘Yes. It was written for him. But someone with access to my personal correspondence might have seen it and not realised.’
Gilbert shakes his head; he moves back against the table as if it might offer some protection.
‘Did they recruit you at the Spanish embassy?’ I ask, in a conversational tone. ‘You were afraid that Dom Antonio would identify you, weren’t you? What did you put in the wine you gave him?’
‘There was nothing in the wine. I don’t know what you are talking about. I wrote no letters from Jonas – my Castilian is not good enough. You must be mistaken, both of you …’ His words tumble over one another, until he falters.
‘Who told you the letter from Jonas was in Castilian?’ I ask. Gilbert’s mouth falls open; his Adam’s apple bounces in his throat as he tries to swallow.
‘I have not shown that letter to anyone except Bruno,’ Drake says. ‘Though I almost asked you to translate it. You were counting on that, I suppose?’
‘No – I – there are others on this ship who speak Spanish – why do you not ask them?’ he blurts.
‘Because they are not left-handed,’ I say. He seems to crumple at this; the fight goes out of him and he slumps against the edge of the table so that he is half sitting on it.
Drake holds his hands wide. ‘Why, Gilbert?’ He sounds like a disappointed father. Gilbert raises his eyes briefly to his captain, then drops his gaze to the floor. He does not answer.
‘Robert Dunne found out what you were up to, didn’t he?’ I say. ‘And he tried to use it to his own advantage. Five gold angels is a lot of money, whatever the Spaniards are paying you. And then he asked for more. I’d have been angry too. And afraid that the money would not buy his discretion for long. Better to silence him permanently.’
Gilbert still does not speak, nor look up.
‘And even then you realised you weren’t safe,’ I continue. ‘Sir Francis was not convinced by the suicide, so you decided to make Jonas your scapegoat.’
Still nothing. I catch Drake’s eye; he gives a minute shake of the head. After some moments, Gilbert looks up.
‘You cannot prove any of this.’ His voice sounds dull, as if he does not believe it.
‘I have asked Captain Fenner to search your quarters,’ Drake says. ‘If you have any correspondence hidden there, we will bring it to light.’
‘You cannot do that.’ He looks indignant. ‘Not my private things—’
‘Nothing is private on my ship,’ Drake snaps.
‘You will find nothing,’ Gilbert says, though he sounds afraid.
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘He thought he was going to church this evening, before you asked him to stay and show Dom Antonio the maps. Perhaps you should search his person. You hide the letters inside your shirt, don’t you?’ I take a step closer to Gilbert. ‘When you fell against me in the boat that first night, you were afraid I had dislodged them.’
In this instant, I know we have him. Gilbert’s face grows white and rigid; his left hand closes instinctively over his breast, as if to protect whatever is hidden there. Drake glances at me, nods approval; the brief hesitation is enough for Gilbert. He swings his legs over the table and lunges for Dom Antonio. The Portuguese, who has been watching all this time with a face of growing incredulity, is caught unawares; before he can react, Gilbert has whipped Dom Antonio’s ornamental dagger from its sheath at his belt and is holding it to the Portuguese’s throat.
‘Gilbert, let him go. What good will it do you now?’ Drake fights to keep his voice reassuring. Dom Antonio lets out a strangled whimper.
‘It is all lies,’ Gilbert says, through his teeth. ‘But you will not listen. You will have me arrested with your lies. You know nothing about it.’
‘Let Dom Antonio go, and I am willing to discuss anything you wish,’ Drake says.
Gilbert shakes his head. He sits upright, the knife still held in place. ‘You are lying.’ He turns to me, desperation in his face. ‘This is all your doing. If you had not come here, interfering in matters that were not your business—’ He breaks off. ‘I thought we had some affinity, you and I, as fellow scholars?’
I look at him, at his strangely earnest, self-righteous expression. We have more affinity than he knows; I have done the same undercover work, betrayed the trust of others and coded my betrayal into secret messages, delivered by fast riders in the dead of night. I have done it for the money, but also because I believe in the freedom of this realm of England, however imperfect, and I want to defend it, even though it is not in my blood. I wonder what lured Gilbert into his spying. Sidney is right; I do not believe it was merely the money. Gilbert is too complex for that.
‘Put the knife down, and we will talk,’ Drake says, in that same, steady tone. ‘If you are innocent of all these charges, I want to hear you answer them, believe me – I would like nothing more than to hear your defence. But you cannot help yourself by harming anyone else.’ He holds a hand out for the knife, nodding encouragement.
Gilbert darts a quick glance over his shoulder, at the casement I left open when I entered. ‘Let me leave the ship,’ he says. ‘Give me your word that I can leave the ship unhindered.’
‘Where would you go?’ Drake says. He is beginning to sound weary.
‘To your Spanish friends?’ I ask, moving a step closer. Gilbert flinches as if he has been struck. I can read the fear in his eyes; he is like a cornered animal, unsure whether to fight or run. But the hand holding the knife is trembling violently; he is not a born killer. I would wager he has never stuck a blade in anyone, nor has any desire to, but panic is making him desperate. Drake puts out a hand to stop me. Without taking his eyes off us, or the point of the knife from Dom Antonio’s neck, Gilbert eases himself up on to his haunches on the bench. At the last moment, he pulls the casement towards him and swings his torso through the gap, shoving Dom Antonio aside as he disappears through the window to the gallery. I throw myself across the table after him, as Drake rushes for the main door that opens on to the quarter deck. If he tries to climb to an upper deck, we will have him trapped.
By the time I have hauled myself through the open window, Gilbert has already pulled himself up on the wooden rail and is leaning out to grab at the lower part of the rigging. I reach for his leg and almost catch him, but he is young and nimble, and not injured as I am, and he jerks his foot out of my grasp, pulling himself further along the hull of the ship by means of the outer rigging, though he is encumbered by the knife that he clutches in his right hand. The wind tugs at my hair; the ship’s timbers creak as it rolls gently, though here, suspended above the water, every slight movement feels as if it might throw me off balance. I swing myself up to the ropes after him, when I see him hesitate. He has reached the end of the rigging; he must climb up to the deck of the ship or try to reach across to the rigging of the mainmast some feet away. He looks up, to see Drake and Fenner, with several more of the crew and the armed guards, staring down at him from the rail of the quarterdeck above. He glances down, at the dark green water below. I watch him coil himself; he means to jump across to the next web of rigging, but that brief pause has allowed me a couple of feet closer. Just as he gathers his forces to spring, I let go with my left hand, swing my body out from the ship and lunge at him. He flails with the knife, grazing my hand before I grasp the sleeve of his doublet around his right wrist. I tighten my grip; he can’t move his hand to wield the blade and his balance is thrown; he teeters backwards and his spectacles fall but he regains control. I
am gratified to find that, though he is nimble, I am the stronger; I pull his hand back and smash the inside of his wrist hard against the hull. Something cracks as his bones make contact; he yelps in pain, but still he holds tight to the knife. He tries to wrestle his arm out of my grip but I draw his hand back and crunch it against the side a second time; this time he cries out and drops the knife. I do not bother to watch it fall and disappear with barely a splash into the water below.
But I cannot draw my own knife without letting go of the rigging with my right hand. Instead I release Gilbert’s wrist with my left and grab him instead by the hair, pulling his head back and ignoring his cries as I manoeuvre myself around behind him, hooking my left leg around his knee and pressing him against the ropes from behind. He tries to lash out, but I slip my right arm under one of the ropes and catch his wrist again, holding myself to the rigging by keeping the rope in the crook of my arm.
‘Are you going to give me that letter, Gilbert, or must we fight over it?’ I hiss in his ear, my breath coming in jagged gasps. He struggles against me, but I am pinning him to the ropes with my bodyweight now, and I feel him weakening.
‘There is nowhere left for you to run, Gilbert.’ I spit the words at him through the bite of the wind. The swell seems greater up here, the gusts fiercer. ‘Surrender now, give me the letter, and he may yet treat you with clemency.’
He makes a noise that might be a hollow laugh. Then he makes a sudden stab backwards with his elbow. I grit my teeth.
‘I don’t want to do this, you know,’ I say, as I grab him by the hair again, drag his head back and smash it forwards again between the ropes into the wooden side of the ship. The blow was not as hard as I could have made it, but there is a nasty crunch and he lets out a howl. His head drops forward, limp, and I feel the resistance subside in his body. I reach around under his left arm, pull at the front of his doublet until I hear a button rip, and fumble around inside until my fingertips make contact with paper and I draw out a folded letter. ‘Thank you,’ I mutter. ‘You could have made that easier on yourself. You might as well climb up to Drake now,’ I add, prodding him in the back. His head still droops forward and I wonder if the blow could have knocked him out. If so, Drake will need to lower a rope and haul him up. I glance up, about to call up to Drake, when Gilbert suddenly jerks his head backwards, as hard as he can, slamming the back of his skull into the bridge of my nose. I cry out in pain and shock; caught off balance, I let go of the rope with my left hand, though I keep hold of the letter. Blood drips down my lip and over my chin. Gilbert gives me a strange, fleeting smile, clasps a hand around my wrist and flings himself out into the air, tumbling backwards like a jongleur, dragging me with him.
I feel the pull of his weight; my right arm is wrenched out from behind the rope and I catch one dizzying glimpse of the sheer wall of wood at my back and the distance down to the sea. But my leg is still hooked inside one of the ropes; I jolt to a sudden stop and an excruciating pain shoots up my arm as my shoulder jars with all the force of Gilbert’s trajectory halted as he dangles there, gripping my left sleeve. My leg is bent back; something tears in my knee as I swing back against the ship, hanging upside down as Gilbert swings wildly with his free hand, trying to get a better purchase on me. I close my eyes; only two things matter now – holding on to the rope with my leg, and not letting go of the letter. I can feel my leg slipping; above us, Drake is barking orders, but there is no chance of him reaching us in time. Just as I fear my arm can no longer take the strain, I hear a tearing sound; I glance down and see the cuff of my shirt rip away from the sleeve. Gilbert sees what is happening; he claws the air with his free hand but the last stitches give way and I watch him plummet, almost gracefully, to the sea. He hits the water in a plume of white spray. Almost immediately, a longboat is lowered over the side from the main deck, men shouting to one another as it descends. I fix my eyes on the frothing water below; is Gilbert trying to make his escape, or knowingly taking his secrets to the bottom of the Sound? As I go on squinting at the shifting patterns of light on the surface, a dark shape bobs up and strikes out through the waves, away from the ship. So Gilbert can swim: there is my answer. The longboat has almost reached the water. He will not get far.
‘Give us your hand then, mate,’ says a voice, very close to me. I jerk my head up, spluttering through the blood filling my nose. A burly man, one of Drake’s crew, has climbed down the rigging over the side of the ship and is holding out an arm the size of a thick branch. He slips it under mine, pulls me upright against the rigging and half carries me to the top, where Drake’s face peers over the rail. With the last of my strength, I manage to raise my arm and hold out to him a blood-spattered letter, sealed in crimson wax. As they lift me on to the deck, I look back to see two men hauling a dripping figure out of the waves and into the longboat.
THIRTY
‘Drake will have to reconfigure his entire route now.’ Sidney pulls back the drapes at the chamber window and throws wide the shutters. If I open one eye, I can just glimpse a pale blue sky washed with early morning sun.
‘He may even ask us to help him,’ he continues, lacing his breeches. ‘You know a little of navigation, and he is now without a cartographer, after all. There is no possible way he can refuse us a place on the voyage, after what we have done. That courier fellow did not come without a fight, I can tell you.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I ease myself up on one elbow. Every movement of my left shoulder is jagged with pain. The bruise across the bridge of my nose throbs gently. Sidney has already told me of his encounter with Gilbert’s contact in the church, embellishing his own heroics with each retelling. I let this pass; I am only glad he can finally feel he has played a part in resolving Drake’s troubles.
‘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 tortoi
seshell 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.
