The Indigo Ghosts

by Alys Clare

  I pictured the secret hold in which the men had shut themselves and I imagined what it had been like. It must have been unspeakable. And as well as the terrible conditions and each other’s inescapable company, those men had had the little corpse that they’d nailed through the throat to one of the ship’s ribs.

  ‘But the voyage came to an end, as voyages always do if you don’t sink.’ Henry smiled briefly. ‘And then, just as we knew we’d almost made it, Job Allcorn went. God above, how we tried to keep him going! Puma risked his skin fetching morsels to tempt him with, he managed to get hold of the dregs of a bottle of rum, he even nicked a blanket because old Job couldn’t stop shivering, but it did no good, none of it did.’ He shook his head, sighing deeply. ‘He was so old, and worn out. He died too, and we couldn’t put him in the barrel because it was full, so Puma and I carried him up on deck one night and gave him to the sea. We could see England,’ he added, his voice dropping to a whisper, ‘so we told Job he’d be right, he was home.’

  There was silence in the room, as if all of us there, Henry Wex, my sister, Judyth and I, were paying our respects to the dead men. And also to the ones who had endured. Who had survived.

  Only to die on England’s longed-for shores …

  ‘Then you, your father, Bartholomew Noble and Puma managed to get ashore without being seen,’ I prompted Henry, ‘but you left something behind.’

  ‘Mama Tze Amba,’ he murmured. ‘Yes. That tore us up but there was no way to take her with us. We had to swim, and she—’ He swallowed nervously. ‘She’d have taken against that and it doesn’t do to upset her.’ He made a furtive sign with his right hand, as if warding off a threat.

  ‘But you got her back again,’ I said softly.

  His head shot up and he looked guiltily at me. ‘Aye, soon as ever we could. My father said she’d be taken off the ship soon as she was discovered, and we knew full well she’d find a way to let them know she was there.’ How right his father had been, I reflected with a shiver of remembered fear. ‘My father said she’d be taken somewhere safe.’ Henry Wex paused. ‘It’s wrong to break into someone’s house, especially a decent man like that big coroner, and we’d have felt really bad if his wife or one of his children had seen and been scared, but we had no choice, and Puma was in and out again like a flash of lightning.’

  ‘Then you found your way to Buckland,’ I said.

  He dropped his head, covering his face with his hands. ‘We did,’ he agreed. ‘My father said we should go there first. He had strong memories, see, and he believed the old loyalties would hold true.’ He removed his hands, shaking his head. ‘But it’s all different now. We didn’t even get the chance to explain, to say why we were there, we were driven off as if we’d come to break in and rob them!’ His indignation was clear in his expression.

  ‘He was shot,’ he went on, his voice soft and sad. ‘My friend Bartholomew, shot in the back. He was running away, he was unarmed, and that bastard shot him. Killed him stone dead, right there where he fell.’

  ‘And then drained him of his blood,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ He sounded outraged. ‘No, no, it was us did that!’ he said, as if it ought to have been obvious. ‘Blood’s sacred, see? You’re a doctor, you ought to know that. It’s not to be wasted, and Bartholomew, he’d have agreed with that, he’d been there when other good men died and gave their blood to benefit those left behind.’ He leaned forward towards me. ‘It’s a way of living on, see?’ he added. ‘A brave man dies, and if something of him is absorbed into his friends, into those who fought alongside him, honoured him, loved him if you like, then he’s not wholly dead because something of him goes on.’

  Celia’s quiet voice broke the stunned silence. ‘Our ancient forebears on these islands took the heads of their enemies for much the same reason,’ she said.

  I looked at her and she smiled wryly. ‘Granny Oldreive?’ I said, and she nodded.

  ‘It’s as the lady says,’ Henry Wex was nodding. ‘It’s part of what Mama Tze Amba taught us, and it’s not a bad thing, like we all thought to begin with, but a way of saying to a dead friend, you’re still here with me. See?’ he demanded.

  And all three of us murmured, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then,’ I said, ‘you tried to gain admittance at the house in Plymouth.’

  ‘I did,’ Henry said ruefully. ‘And it was just like it had been at Buckland Abbey: no chance to make them see it was in their interests to speak to me, to see with their own eyes what we’d—’ He stopped. ‘That’s enough,’ he said very quietly, and I had the sense he was speaking to himself.

  ‘The master of the house was not at home,’ I said, ‘and the servant set the dogs on you.’

  Judyth gave a soft exclamation, muttering about the viciousness of those who would do such a thing. I thought briefly what a fine woman she was. Only a short while ago she’d been threatened with this man’s blade, wounded in the side by his knife point, and now she was castigating those who had hurt him.

  Henry must have had the same thought. Turning, he said to her, ‘I’m sorry, mistress, that I treated you so badly.’

  ‘I know,’ Judyth said quietly.

  He shook his head, ‘I was desperate,’ he murmured. ‘I am desperate. We didn’t know they were dead!’ he went on wildly. ‘My father took it bad. He’d gone on hoping that one or other of them’d be alive still. I’m alive, he kept repeating. But you were only a boy, I’d say, and they were men full grown. But look what I’ve endured! my father would say.’ He paused as the emotion overcame him.

  ‘But we found out,’ he went on, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Sir Francis, he’d died in Portobello back in ’ninety-six, and for all we weren’t that far away, we didn’t know, nobody told us! And John Hawkins was gone too, the year before.’ He shook his head. ‘That hit us bad, but we reckoned there was still a chance, what with them leaving descendants.’

  ‘But you were wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It was all for nothing, and we’d lost half our number.’ He dropped his head.

  I was filled with pity for him. ‘The bodies of your friends are in the coroner’s keeping,’ I said gently. ‘His name is Theophilus Davey, and he is indeed a good man. Presently he will release the bodies of your friends’ – I cast around in my mind – ‘Philpot, Job Allcorn and Bartholomew Noble, and you will be able to pay your respects.’

  Henry Wex looked up. ‘You remembered.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Slowly he nodded. Then, his eyes on mine, he said, ‘I was right about you the first time. I will take you to my father.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Theophilus Davey looked up to see one of his agents from the front office standing in the doorway, his face slightly flushed.

  ‘What?’ Theo demanded. He was busy.

  ‘Someone to see you,’ the young man said. Then, dropping to a whisper, ‘It’s Sir Thomas Drake.’

  Theo stood up, straightened his robe, buttoned his tunic and began to smooth a hand over his disarranged hair. Then he thought, Damn it, this is my office and if I look scruffy it’s because I work too hard and have far too much to do, and said calmly to the young officer, ‘Show him in.’

  He watched as his visitor came into the room. The Drake stamp was marked on his face: he looked very like his late brother and had the same short, stocky body, pale skin and patchy red beard, even barbered into the same little point. He was exquisitely dressed in a doublet of good, dark wool over expensive hose and boots, his heavy cloak looked as if it was more than equal to the worst winter weather and in his hand he carried a glossy felt cap with a curled feather stuck in it.

  ‘Good morning, Sir Thomas,’ Theo greeted him. ‘Please, be seated and tell me how I may help you.’

  Sir Thomas dragged forward a chair and flung himself down in it, legs splayed, then threw his cap towards Theo’s desk and missed. He might dress like a refined gentleman, Theo reflected with inner amusement, but his manners haven’t quite caught up.
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  ‘I believe, Master Davey, that it is I who may be able to help you,’ Thomas Drake replied. ‘We had a visit from one of your officers, accompanied by Doctor Taverner. My son discovered them and brought them to the house.’ Abruptly he shot forward in his chair and said confidingly, ‘That’s my son Francis, you know, and he’s at Oxford now.’

  Touched by the man’s evident pride in his boy, and by the way in which he had been so eager to express it, Theo said, ‘I believe I did know, yes. Splendid!’ he added brightly, guessing from Sir Thomas’s expression that the first part of his reply hadn’t been sufficiently enthusiastic.

  Sir Thomas waved a hand, smiling modestly. Then he said, ‘They were enquiring about a dead man who had been killed by a musket ball, as I am sure you know as it was you who sent them.’

  Theo wasn’t sure he ever sent Gabe anywhere, but it wasn’t the moment to point this out. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We told them nobody in my household fired that shot, which is God’s truth. However, I believe I am now in a position to suggest who did, because he’s returned.’ He sat back with a satisfied smile, as if to say, what do you think of that?

  ‘I hope there hasn’t been another death?’ Theo asked swiftly.

  ‘No, of course not, I’d have told you straight away if so. This man – foreign, he was, spoke with a lisp and a lilt, and eyes dark as pitch although what I saw of his hair was white – came calling on me yesterday, demanded an interview in my study and in private, then asked if any rough-looking men had visited me offering a certain item for sale.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way he asked, didn’t like the look of the fellow. Foreign, like I said, face like a skull and sallow of complexion, dressed like a merchant but there was something shifty about the man and I had my doubts.’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively, as if expecting Theo to grasp his meaning.

  Theo didn’t. ‘What did you suspect he was?’

  ‘He—’ Sir Thomas frowned hard. ‘He had the air of a man who conceals what he truly is,’ he said after a moment. ‘I can express it no better than that, Master Davey, and I do not think I should, for I might be mistaken, but I sense it as strongly as I sense you are a hard-working man with too much to do in whom I can safely place my trust.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Theo muttered. His mind was racing. A man who conceals what he truly is. And Gabriel Taverner had spoken of a delirious priest with two missing companions. Was the sallow-skinned foreigner who had clearly disturbed Sir Thomas Drake one of them? ‘What was this item for sale?’ he asked.

  Sir Thomas frowned again, clearly bothered. ‘He described a box made out of some red wood, about the length of a man’s forearm and a little over a hand’s breadth across. Decorated with a carved pattern, he said, only the pattern was hard to decipher because the box was very old.’

  ‘And what was inside this box?’

  ‘Bloody man wouldn’t tell me!’ Sir Thomas exclaimed. ‘I asked him – well, wouldn’t you have done? – but he said in that smooth, silky, sibilant voice of his that if nobody had approached me trying to sell such a box, then it was better for me not to know.’ He frowned again. ‘Yes – I remember now – he actually said, smug bloody devil, that he wasn’t at liberty to tell me.’ He muttered an oath. ‘Sly bastard.’

  ‘You clearly did not take to the man,’ Theo said.

  Picking up the irony, Sir Thomas grinned. ‘No, I most surely did not. Sent him on his way, and glad to see the back of him.’

  ‘But what makes you think it was he who shot the young man found by the river?’

  Sir Thomas leaned forward again. ‘Because my servant saw him out – I told him to, you see, because I wanted to make quite sure the man really was leaving – and he – my man – waited by the door and he watched, he kept his eyes on the fellow right till the moment he was through the gates and on his way. He didn’t like the look of him either,’ he added. ‘And just as the blasted man reached the road, he dived back down behind the gatepost – my gatepost if you please! – and picked up a bag and a long, thin object he’d concealed there.’ He paused. ‘Now my servant knows about such things and when he told me the long, thin object was a musket, I believed him.’

  ‘I see,’ Theo said slowly.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do!’ Sir Thomas said. ‘Your dead man by the river was killed by a musket ball, and now we have a suspicious stranger who carries such a weapon, yet keeps that fact hidden. It doesn’t take a genius to link the two.’

  ‘It’s not conclusive,’ Theo said cautiously, ‘but it is most certainly significant.’

  Sir Thomas gave him a long look. ‘I don’t want this business affecting my family, Master Davey,’ he said bluntly. ‘My boy’s at Oxford, like I just said, and he has a brilliant future ahead of him. We have a name in the county, Buckland Abbey is becoming an important venue for men of influence, among whom I number myself’ – he brushed at the fine wool of his sleeve, then fluffed up the deep frill on his shirt – ‘and … well, I would not want any echoes of the past clouding my children’s future.’

  Theo held his eyes. ‘I understand perfectly, Sir Thomas.’

  There was a heavy and slightly awkward pause.

  Then Sir Thomas said softly, ‘I am not proud of everything that I have done in the course of my life, but now that I have other, ah, other priorities, and a wife who reminds me daily of the fact, I am determined to put the – er – the excitement of my days sailing with my late brother firmly behind me.’

  For a brief moment Theo caught a wistful expression in Sir Thomas’s eyes, and he wondered how much the man would give for just one day back with the redoubtable Francis, on the deck of a fine, fast ship on a lively sea and a Spanish galleon lumbering along groaning with treasure coming into view on the horizon.

  ‘I understand that, too,’ he murmured.

  And Sir Thomas Drake gave him a grateful smile.

  Theo sat quite still for a while after his visitor had left. Then he went into the front office and told the lads to send Jarman Hodge to him as soon as he came in. The dark foreigner disguised as a merchant had pursued the possible trail of this very old, decorated box with its unknown contents to the Drake household, so logic strongly suggested he might also make enquiries of Richard Hawkins.

  As he returned to his desk he was saying a silent prayer for Gabe out in the woods below Rosewyke.

  Judyth wanted to come too, and Celia had the look on her face that I knew so well from when she was a child and feared being left out of something that promised to be exciting.

  I had gone upstairs to fetch my medical bag and another piece of equipment I thought it better to have with me, and the two of them were waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘You don’t know what you’ll be facing and you may well need another pair of hands,’ Judyth said.

  ‘We can watch out, Gabe,’ Celia said, ‘and warn you if you need warning.’

  I jumped down off the last stair and faced them.

  ‘No,’ I said. Celia looked mutinous, Judyth wary. I turned to my sister first. ‘Celia, Judyth’s been hurt.’ Judyth began on a protest but I didn’t let her get very far. ‘If you come with me she’ll come too, and she needs to rest.’

  ‘I do not need to rest,’ Judyth said forcefully.

  I put down my bag and, not stopping to think, gently took hold of her by her shoulders, looking down into her determined face. She felt strong. ‘You’re bleeding,’ I said gently. ‘You should remove your garments and let Celia look at the injury.’ The obvious thing was for me to perform that service, but neither of us suggested it and both of us knew why.

  ‘I’ll go and fetch my little looking glass,’ Celia said, enthusiastic now that she knew there was a task for her to do and I hadn’t said she couldn’t come with Henry Wex and me purely to be bossy and awkward. ‘You’ll be able to see for yourself, Judyth, and tell me what to do.’

  ‘It is nothing!’ Judyth said for at least the third time.

  I let her
go. We looked at each other for a moment, and it seemed that an understanding passed between us. Then Celia said, ‘Come along, Judyth, Sallie will be back by now and she shall put water on to heat.’

  Finally yielding, Judyth took Celia’s outstretched arm and slumped against her. As they went through the arch into the kitchen quarters, Celia turned to look at me. ‘Be careful,’ she said.

  I reached behind me and drew out the large and very sharp knife from the stout leather sheath I’d just strapped across my back when I fetched my bag. I held it out for a moment, and she nodded. I re-sheathed it, picked up my bag and hurried outside to where Henry Wex was waiting.

  He set off at a fast pace, not in the direction of the Rosewyke woods but on down the path to the road and then off towards Tavy St Luke.

  ‘Wait!’ I commanded. He stopped. ‘I thought you were hiding in the woods! One of the coroner’s agents followed your tracks from where you’d sheltered up on the moor, and he reported that they led here.’ I waved my hand towards the trees.

  Henry smiled briefly. ‘My tracks did, yes. Of course they did,’ he went on – no doubt my incomprehension was showing – ‘I’m here now, aren’t I, and I certainly didn’t fly.’

  ‘So—’

  But then I understood. It was so simple, and yet it had taken me several moments to realize. ‘So where are the others?’ I demanded.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Henry Wex, ‘and I will show you.’