by S. J. Parris
Drake makes a non-committal noise and returns his gaze to the sea. ‘I have always loved this view,’ he says, after a while. ‘But that is nothing to how much I love to see it from the other direction, sailing back into Plymouth after months at sea.’ He raises his head and the salt breeze lifts his hair. ‘Of all the sights I have seen in the world, there is none I love so much as the sight of home.’
I do not speak, because at his words my throat constricts and tears prickle at the back of my eyes. I blink them away. Nothing so painful to an exile as the dream of homecoming. I allow myself to imagine I am gazing out across the peacock-blue waters of the Bay of Naples, and I wonder if I will ever see that view again.
Drake points to the horizon, where a scalloped band of cloud glides up towards the land, edged with lilac and gold. ‘If the Spanish ever do raise a fleet to invade this island, I believe this is where we will sight them first. Sometimes I fancy I see them – ranks of galleons appearing along the skyline. Then I blink and they are just clouds. But the image of it chills me to the bone.’
‘Pray God that day never comes,’ I say. ‘But if it did, I cannot think of anyone I would rather have commanding England’s defences.’
He smiles then, and the creases appear at the corners of his eyes. He rests a hand on my shoulder. ‘God go with you, Bruno. It may be that this voyage owes its success to you. If you had not discovered Gilbert, we would have been sailing straight towards a Spanish ambush. I will see you well rewarded, do not fear. And Sir Philip too, for his part.’
I incline my head in a gesture of deference. ‘God speed you, Sir Francis, and bring you safe home.’
‘I pray we meet again.’ He steps forward and embraces me, his strong hands crushing my bruised shoulders. When he releases me, I bow low and leave him standing there on the clifftop, lit by the evening sun, arms folded across his chest as he surveys his ships, his sea, his horizon. Every age produces only a handful of truly great men, and I have a feeling that I have been fortunate enough to earn the admiration of one of them.
The town gaol stands behind the Guildhall, an ugly building of dirty white stone with rows of mean barred windows squinting at the alley in front like narrowed eyes. I brace myself before entering and press a handkerchief over my nose and mouth, trying to push away the memories of my own experience in an English prison as the foul smells bring them rushing back. I hand over the fee to the turnkey, who unlocks a door and leads me along a filthy passage. A thin, high-pitched wailing seeps out from behind a side door, while someone pounds on another as we pass.
‘In there,’ the turnkey says, unlocking a door at the end of the passage. He rummages in one ear with a forefinger and regards his findings. ‘You got ten minutes. He can’t touch you, he’s chained up, but shout for me if you want to come out sooner.’
I blink, accustoming my eyes to the gloom as I hear the door locked behind me. The animal stink of excrement and urine is fierce here, but the straw beneath my feet looks relatively fresh. Gilbert is huddled in a corner. His face is bruised from his fall into the sea, and his hair hangs in matted rats’ tails, thick with salt. He screws up his eyes to peer at me, looking like some nocturnal creature without his eye-glasses. As I take a step closer he realises who I am and turns to the wall.
‘Are they feeding you?’ I say, to break the silence.
‘If you can call it that,’ he mutters.
‘Then Drake must be paying for it. Otherwise you would have nothing.’
‘Please convey my humble gratitude to him,’ he says, lifting his head and spitting the words at me. ‘They wouldn’t dare let me starve anyway – I’m expected at the Tower any day, didn’t you know?’
There is nothing I can say to that. I wrap my arms around my chest and keep my eyes to the floor. Perhaps it was a mistake to come here.
‘What have they done with the letter?’ he asks, after a while. He sounds as if he does not care.
‘Sent it to London.’ I crouch down so that I can look him in the eye without quite sitting on the floor. ‘You would save yourself a lot of trouble by just telling them the cipher. They will have it out of you one way or another.’
He shrugs. ‘Let them decipher it in London. Then they will see.’
‘What will they see?’
‘That I am not a traitor.’
I breathe in and out carefully through my cloth, and still the air makes me retch a little. ‘You will have a hard time persuading Captain Drake of that.’
‘He would understand if he read the letter.’
‘He can’t, it’s written in code. You are speaking in riddles, Gilbert. What would he understand?’ I try to keep my patience, reminding myself that I am at liberty to leave at any time.
‘That I did not betray him. Those letters I sent to the Spanish envoys – I never told them Drake’s true plans. I changed the details, the coordinates, each time so it was plausible enough to fool them, but not enough to jeopardise the voyage.’ He shifts his weight on to one side and stretches his legs out before him, wincing as he does so. ‘There was never any danger to the fleet, I made sure of that. But Robert Dunne took against me from the beginning – I once criticised his judgement in front of Drake. He was looking for ways to discredit me. One evening he followed me to church and saw me hand over a letter. He thought he could turn it to his own profit. If he had kept out of it, none of this would have happened.’ His voice quivers with anger as he speaks, and he draws a fist across his mouth to wipe away spittle.
‘But you must have known five gold angels would not keep Dunne quiet for long,’ I say. ‘So, what happened – you decided to silence him?’
‘I didn’t decide it, the way you make it sound,’ he says. He slumps back against the wall. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’ I catch a tremor of desperation in his voice. He looks very young. ‘Then I was out on deck that night the chaplain brought Dunne back drunk out of his wits.’
‘You saw your opportunity?’
‘I watched. No one paid me any attention – they had all grown used to the sight of me out there with my instruments. Dunne was in a terrible state. He vomited all over the deck. Padre Pettifer helped him to his cabin. I saw him leave and the Spaniard arrive with one of his potions. After he left, I stayed there on deck, trying to summon up the courage. I thought he’d probably be asleep. I hadn’t planned to do anything like that, but—’
‘You had no choice, is that it?’
‘I thought it was my one chance. I waited until everyone had gone but the watch, and they were too busy playing cards up on the foredeck to worry about me. I tried the door of Dunne’s cabin and it opened. He was lying face down on the bunk. I knew all I had to do was push his face into the pillow and hold him there – if I could do that, people would think he suffocated in his sleep with the drink – but he was beginning to stir and I was afraid he’d wake before I was done. He was stronger than me, I could not have managed it if he tried to fight back. I suddenly lost my nerve and was about to run when I heard was a knock at the door. I panicked. There was a cavity under Dunne’s bunk – all the officers’ cabins have them, for storage. I could hear the chaplain calling out, asking Dunne if he was awake. I curled up under the bunk and shut the door. Just in time – Pettifer came into the room and woke Dunne.’
‘Why did he do that?’
Gilbert shrugs. This part of the puzzle has no meaning for him any more. ‘I didn’t understand what he was saying. He kept telling Dunne that he should have no regard for the lies of a common whore, and if he ever repeated them things would only be worse for the girl. I don’t know what girl he was talking about.’
‘What did Dunne say to that?’
‘He was only half-conscious. He didn’t really listen. He just started babbling to Pettifer about hell and the Devil, and whether God could ever forgive sins as black as his. Pettifer said he would assure Dunne of absolution, as long as he didn’t go about repeating slanders.’
I nod to myself. Pettifer certainly knew how to us
e his position to guard his own dirty secrets. ‘Was Dunne reassured?’
‘I don’t think he was listening. It was clear he wasn’t in his right mind – he just kept moaning about how his soul was damned and he deserved to die for what he had done. I thought he was consumed with guilt over blackmailing me.’
‘Not quite,’ I say. ‘Did that make it easier?’
‘Not really.’ He picks at the quick of his fingernails. ‘Eventually Pettifer gave up. He said they’d talk again when Dunne was sober. I heard the door close behind him but I had to stay under the bunk until I was sure Dunne was asleep. I found a length of rope in the cavity. I guessed Dunne had used it to tie his trunks together when they were brought aboard. But it gave me an idea.’
‘String him up and make it look like he did it himself.’
‘If you’d heard him – I knew the chaplain would confirm that he had been in a state of despair. He would believe Dunne was overcome by his demons some time after they had spoken, so the rest would accept it too. It seemed like the perfect solution. Except that he was so heavy.’
‘You smothered him first?’
He nods, staring at the wall, his eyes unfocused. ‘I locked the cabin. He was sleeping face down. I sat astride him, kept my knees on his arms and pressed his face into the pillow. He was too deep in drink to fight much. It was moving him off the bed was the hard part. I was amazed no one heard us.’
‘You did not think that a man who dies by hanging looks different from one who was smothered? That it might arouse suspicion?’
He pushes a clump of hair out of his eyes. ‘I didn’t think of that, no. Not till afterwards – I overheard Drake discussing it with his brother the next day. At the time all I wanted was to get out. I locked the cabin behind me to delay anyone finding him and threw the key into the water.’
‘No one saw you leave?’
‘No. But the Spaniard was awake when I went below decks. He asked where I’d been. I said measuring the stars and he left it at that. But it didn’t take long the next day before I realised Drake was not convinced by the appearance of suicide. I thought, if that gets out, Jonas will mention me.’
‘So you saw a way to silence him and clear up any doubt about Dunne’s death at one stroke.’ It is not even a question any more.
‘I knew Jonas would not say anything to Drake until he was certain,’ Gilbert says. His voice has grown flat and emotionless; he is no longer justifying himself, merely recounting a series of events that already seem like the distant past. ‘I asked him if I could speak to him in private, away from the others, that night we all went ashore. I led him up on to the Hoe cliffs.’ He gives a weary shrug, as if the rest is hardly worth the telling.
‘If only he had not been illiterate, you would have been safe,’ I say.
‘Perhaps.’ His chin drops to his chest; he appears to have lost interest in me. We sit in silence for a few minutes. I can feel the smell seeping into my clothes, my hair, my skin.
‘Have you told Drake that you were giving false information to the Spanish?’ I ask eventually.
He looks at me as if I have lost my wits. ‘You imagine he would credit that? He would accuse me of lying. In any case, he will not lower himself to ask me. He will leave that job to Walsingham and his friends.’ A shiver jars his thin frame at the prospect.
‘Tell them everything,’ I say quickly. ‘That is what I came to advise you – do not try to hold anything back out of some misplaced loyalty to your Spanish paymasters. You will talk one way or another, and it were better you do it willingly.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that? I know Walsingham. I know what he does.’ He swallows hard. ‘But I have no loyalty to the Spanish. If I had, I would not have lied to them, would I?’
‘Then why do it at all?’
He makes a small noise of contempt through his nose. ‘Money – why else? They paid me well for what they thought were Drake’s plans. Of course they did.’ He gives a rueful laugh that teeters on the edge of tears.
‘But you worked for Walsingham – for the Queen. They would have paid you handsomely, surely? You were going to be England’s first renowned cartographer, you told me.’
He looks up at me and fixes me with his pale, urgent stare. ‘That was the problem.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘They informed me, after I had agreed to the voyage, that the maps I made for Queen Elizabeth would never be published. That was part of my commission. They were supposed to be kept secret to preserve England’s advantage over the Spanish.’ He swipes the back of his knuckles across his eyes and the chains clank ominously as he moves. ‘The thought of all that work, locked away in the dark, seen by no one but a handful of naval captains. I could not let that happen, don’t you see? Maps should not be tools of war, kept close by one country to gain power over another. I wanted my maps published and read. How else are we supposed to advance our knowledge of the world? The Spanish Ambassador offered me a great deal of money. But he also promised that, when I returned, he would have my work published in the Low Countries at his own expense.’
‘And afterwards? How did you imagine you would return to England, once you had published maps that were supposed to be state secrets?’
‘I did not intend to return. The Spanish Ambassador promised me a pension for life.’ He lowers his voice. ‘You only have to look how things are tending. Drake is brave, certainly, but there will be war with the Spanish soon and we do not have a hope of defending ourselves against invasion, not with all Spain’s power. I thought a clever man was one with a view to his own future.’ He chews his bottom lip and falls silent.
‘It didn’t occur to you that the Spanish might be less friendly when they realised all your information had been false?’
‘They would just have assumed Drake had changed his plans.’
He is naïve if he thinks the Spanish Ambassador would be so easily fooled, but then he has been naïve all along; it is no help to him to point it out now.
‘You almost got away with it.’ I rise painfully to my feet. ‘And now your maps will never be made. By God, Gilbert – you risked your life and took others for the sake of your own ambition? Was it worth it?’
His lips curve into a painful smile. ‘I thought it worth the gamble. History remembers the men who dare greatly in the pursuit of knowledge, Bruno. Without them, there would be no progress. To be one of those men who changed the course of the world – that is what I dreamed of. I would have thought you of all people would understand that. Have you not also risked your life to publish your books?’
I meet his eye. He is right; I recognise the desire that burns in him. The ferocity of a scholar’s ambition for his work can rival that of a father for his child. I have been guilty of it myself, but enough to betray my country? I never had a chance to consider that – my country rejected me first. I chose a life of exile for the sake of my books. And if I had to kill to give them life, or die for them, would I do it? I could not entirely discount the idea.
‘Tell Walsingham you sold false information to mislead the Spanish. He may show you mercy,’ I say, turning to leave.
He laughs: a dry, brittle sound, like the crackle of kindling.
‘No, he won’t.’ He shakes his head. ‘There will be no mercy for that. Walsingham would send his own grandchildren to Tyburn if he thought they had betrayed England.’
I can say nothing to this – I know it to be true. Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster is unbending when it comes to protecting the realm, and just as ruthless as Drake. Perhaps this is part of what makes him a great man, too.
‘I will die as a traitor.’ He seems to shrink even further inside himself as he says this. His voice is hollow, as empty of self-pity as it is of hope. I can offer him no comfort on this score.
‘Your time’s up, Spaniard.’ The key rattles in the lock and the door creaks open. ‘Out you get. Leave this filth to rot.’ Now that I have had my money’s worth, the gaoler evidently feels no further
need to waste his efforts on courtesy.
‘Remember what I said, Gilbert. Answer their questions and you may yet be saved the worst.’
The gaoler cackles. ‘Not bloody likely. This one’s going to the Tower tomorrow. And the French bastard next door. It’ll make this place seem like a fucking palace.’
‘Doctor Bruno,’ Gilbert calls, as the door is closing. His formality sounds strange in this pit. He struggles to his knees, the chains striking the stone. ‘Will you tell Drake I did not betray him? I want him to know that, at least, even if he does not believe me.’
I am still not sure if I believe him, but I nod anyway, snatching a last look at him through the tiny grille in the door before I blunder out into the air and sunlight, thinking about the risks a man will take to make his mark on the world. For Drake, this means pitting himself against the elements and the might of Spain to cross the ocean, not for the treasure, but simply to say that he has done it. For Sidney, it means leaving a wife and new-born child and a comfortable life of poetry and politics for the blood and dust of battle. For Gilbert, it meant gambling a traitor’s death against the chance to see his maps famed throughout Europe and his name spoken in the same breath as Mercator and Ortelius. And for me – a life in exile, chased from one court to another, knowing that I will never see my homeland again without facing death, all because I refused to keep my ideas to myself, because I too knew that I had to put my books out in the world, even if the act of doing so cost me my life. I believed Gilbert when he said his ambition was more than vanity. He wanted nothing less than to change the way men think about the world, and he was right: this I do understand.
EPILOGUE
‘Burn it.’ Sir Francis Walsingham pushes the bundle of papers across the table towards me. They have been rolled together and bound with a black ribbon. I reach out and lay a protective hand on them.
‘But, the Queen—’
He shakes his head. ‘She wants no knowledge of it, Bruno. Without the original, this is no more than an extremely dangerous fiction.’ He regards me with a grave expression.
