by S. J. Parris
He considers this. ‘It’s possible. Though until he turns up alive or dead, it is useless to speculate. Let us concentrate on what we have in our hand.’
‘And what is that?’ I kick a heel against the panelling, frustrated with myself, with him, with Robert Dunne and whoever killed him. ‘A clutch of useless hypotheses, with no proof save the testimony of a frightened whore. And a lot of bruises and a lighter purse to show for it.’
He laughs. ‘Poor Bruno. The things you do for me. But we have one more thing up our sleeve that you forgot to mention.’
‘What is that?’ I extricate myself from his grip and rub my ribs.
‘The address of Dunne’s lodgings. We should go there before we are expected at this supper.’ He makes a face. ‘Drake has gone out to the ship this afternoon to meet Dom Antonio. He wanted me to go with him but I excused myself. Said I had to write my report to Walsingham. He grew anxious then and asked that I convey nothing of our present troubles.’
‘Are you trying to avoid Dom Antonio?’
‘Until I know what is happening with the voyage I must keep up this pretence that we are returning to London with him. He can’t continue his journey until my armed men arrive, and Drake feels he is one more liability here, if there is a killer at large. You know Philip of Spain has offered a reward for his death too.’
‘Dom Antonio’s? I am feeling left out.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure Pope Gregory would like you dead, if he could reach you. It is quite the badge of honour, it seems, to have a head of state seeking your assassination. The only person who wants my hide is my wife, most of the time.’
‘And the Queen, when she learns you have taken off for the New World without her permission.’
‘Ah, yes. And her. Do you know’ – he spins around to face me, eyes blazing – ‘Drake actually suggested I should take Dom Antonio and the women and return to Buckland Abbey for a few days? Keep them out of all this, as he put it. What in God’s name does he think I am?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – Dom Antonio’s official escort, perhaps?’
He glares. ‘I will not be dismissed by Drake again. Come on. We cannot be the only ones who know about Dunne’s lodgings here. If he left behind anything useful, let us make sure no one else finds it first.’
Rag Street is a steep, cobbled lane uphill from the harbourside. The sign of the Bear can be seen swinging from a three-storey house halfway along. There is no entrance except the low door to the tavern, so I push it open and Sidney follows me in, ducking his head to avoid the beam. This part of town looks as if it might once have known better fortunes than it enjoys now; though the houses are large, it is evidently a neighbourhood where a room and a meal could be got cheaply, and without anyone asking too many questions.
A few groups of drinkers, largely sailors by the look of them, sit around the benches by the fireplace with leather tankards between them; I feel their gaze slide over me and Sidney as we enter, but they soon return to their talk. We make straight for the harassed-looking woman who comes out from behind the serving hatch, wiping her hands on her apron and pushing her hair out of her eyes where it is coming loose from her cap. She stares at Sidney with naked amazement; it would seem she is not used to so much finery all in one place. He sweeps off his hat and makes a bow.
‘Mistress,’ he begins, with aplomb, then leans in and lowers his voice. ‘We are looking for the lodgings of one Robert Dunne. We believe he stayed here?’
Immediately her face hardens. ‘Friends of his, are you?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Well, I en’t seen him for a good few days. I started to think he might have run out without paying what I’m due. Over a month’s rent, he owes me.’ She balls her hands into fists on her hips and glares from Sidney to me, as if expecting one of us to answer for him.
‘I’m afraid, good madam, that Robert Dunne is dead.’ Sidney adopts a sorrowful expression.
The woman puffs up her cheeks and blows the air out forcefully through pursed lips. ‘Well, that explains it. I’ve been knocking on that door for days with no reply. Someone said there was a smell. How shall I get my money now?’
‘He’s not in the room,’ Sidney says, sending me a quizzical glance. ‘There is to be an inquest into his death tomorrow. I’m sure his debts will be taken care of once his estate is settled. We come at the request of his widow to look through his effects.’
‘Widow?’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘Now there’s a thing. I always thought he was a bachelor. Never mentioned no wife to me.’
‘He didn’t go home to visit her?’ I ask.
‘Not since he’s been here, and that was just after May Day. This last week is the longest he’s been away, that’s why I thought something might have happened. There were those two men came here a couple of times looking for him – they haven’t been back either. I wondered if he was in trouble.’
‘What were they like, the two men?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘Well spoken, both of ’em. Not dressed up so fine as your friend here, but they had the look of gentlemen. At least the one with the beard did, for all he had so many teeth missing. The other spoke nice, but was obviously a wrong ’un – missing both ears, he was, though he tried to hide it under his hat. Eyes blue as cornflowers. Wasted in that ugly face. Not that I spoke to ’em much, mind. They didn’t stop to chat.’
Sidney and I exchange a look.
‘Can we see the room?’ I ask.
‘If you can get through a keyhole. Or under the door. Whoreson’s locked it and taken the key with him, hasn’t he? I want that back off him and all, ’fore he’s buried. God rest him,’ she adds, just in case.
‘You don’t have a spare?’ Sidney frowns.
‘I dare say there’s one somewhere, but damned if I can find it. My husband used to do all that. I haven’t got round to it since he’s been gone.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Sidney says, with a pious expression.
‘Not as sorry as that bastard’ll be when he gets tired of his whore and tries to come home,’ she says, pressing her lips together. Sidney, for once, is lost for a reply.
‘I can get through a keyhole,’ I say. She looks at me.
‘Come on, then.’
She leads us through a door at the back of the tavern into a small, dingy courtyard that smells as if all the residents empty their pisspots into it. At the back there is an archway with a door leading off it and another at the far end.
‘That’s the street entrance,’ she says, indicating. She pushes open the first door, set into the wall. ‘Second floor, the room at the front, facing inwards. If you do any damage forcing the door, I want paying for it.’
To my relief, she doesn’t offer to accompany us. The stairwell is so quiet you can almost hear the dust swirling. From behind a door on the first floor comes a faint sound of moaning.
‘Nice digs,’ Sidney says. ‘Imagine a gentleman, coming to this.’
‘A lesson to stay away from the card table.’
‘Some of us are luckier than others.’
‘Robert Dunne probably thought that once. Lady Luck is more fickle than a street whore.’
The smell of piss is even stronger on the stairs, but there is something else too, a whiff of corruption that intensifies the higher we climb. Light is sieved through slats in the shutters; we feel our way, and the boards seem brittle and rotten beneath our feet. As we reach the second-floor landing, we disturb a cat from its slumber on a window seat; it snarls and darts away through our legs, making us both start and cry out, and then laugh with relief. The smell is worse here.
Sidney tries the catch of the door and gives it a little shake, just to be sure. ‘Dear God, she is not mistaken. It smells as if something died in here.’
‘Well, we know it wasn’t Robert Dunne,’ I say, moving him aside and kneeling to insert the blade of my knife into the keyhole. I work it for a few minutes, until the knife slips and nicks the edge of my finger.
Cursing, I suck the blood away and return to the task.
Sidney leans against the wall, arms folded, watching.
‘It is a fascinating trick, this. Are all Dominicans taught it?’
‘Yes. We learn it as novices, along with our Aquinas. So that we can let ourselves into nuns’ bedchambers with minimum fuss. Give me your hat pin.’
‘What?’
‘The one holding your feather in.’ I look up. ‘There are always sacrifices in the line of duty, Philip.’
He sighs, and passes the pin. I bend it into shape, then slide it into the lock alongside the blade of my knife. After a little effort I feel rather than hear the click, that perfect moment of alignment when everything fits into place and the shaft turns, drawing back the bolt.
‘I will teach you one day,’ I say, handing him the pin.
‘Hardly an appropriate skill for the Countess of Pembroke’s brother.’
‘But a very apt one for Sir Francis Walsingham’s son-in-law. Well, then.’ I push the door open a crack, feeling my stomach contract as the smell worsens. ‘Let us see what secrets Dunne left behind.’
The room is dark as a crypt, and smells as bad. The shutters are pulled tight across the window and blades of light slice through the darkness from the cracks between them. Taking a deep breath, I cross to the window, feeling a crunching beneath my boots as I do so. I lift the wooden bar that holds the shutters in place and pull them open; a forlorn light filters through the cracked glass.
‘Christ and all His saints! Look at that!’ Sidney jumps back as if he has stepped on hot coals, pointing at the boards; the floor of Dunne’s room is writhing with white maggots, hundreds of them, like a living carpet. ‘Where are they coming from?’
‘There.’ I point to a ragged blanket in one corner of the room, where fat sated flies circle lazily around whatever is concealed beneath. Sidney retreats to the doorway, gagging. I am almost inured to the smell of death after the church this morning, though I fear what we may find under the blanket. Before I have the stomach to lift it, I wrestle with the catch of the window; it sticks, but I shake it with greater urgency until something snaps and the casement creaks open, allowing a gust of air into the foul room. One or two flies make their escape. I exhale, gasping, and suck in a gulp of clean air.
‘Sword,’ I say, stretching out my hand to Sidney.
Reluctantly he unsheaths it and takes one step into the room, holding it, hilt-first, towards me. ‘Try to keep it clean,’ he says as I take it. ‘It’s mostly ornamental.’ I give him a look and return to the pile of rags. Gingerly spearing one corner of the blanket with the point of the sword, I brace myself and whip it away, my left hand over my mouth. More flies, dislodged, swarm angrily upwards, as I stare at what lies beneath.
Behind me, I hear Sidney laughing. It sounds slightly hysterical.
‘Poor fellow,’ he says. His voice comes out strangled. ‘Poor old boy. What have they done to you, eh?’
The corpse of a dog is slumped on its side in the corner, so heaving with flies and grubs that it almost seems to be moving. It looks to have been some kind of terrier, a ratting dog. Brown and white fur sticks up in tufts from the decaying flesh.
‘Must have been Dunne’s,’ Sidney says, peering at it from a safe distance. ‘I suppose it starved after he didn’t come back for it.’
‘In three days?’ I shake my head. ‘This dog has been dead longer than that. But look at all this.’ I sweep a hand around the room. I am not sure what I had been expecting to find in Dunne’s lodgings, but it was not a miniature apothecary’s shop.
The room is L-shaped, with the shorter arm to the left of the door, where a pallet with a straw mattress leans against the wall. The only other furniture is a table strewn with dried leaves and flowers, sheets of paper, a metal bowl and tripod, a pestle and mortar and several glass bottles stoppered with corks. Beside these lies a pair of leather gloves.
‘Come in, Philip, for God’s sake, and close the door. They’re only maggots, they won’t bite. Do you know what this is?’
He sheaths his sword, pulling the door to behind him and gagging again as he does so. He picks his way across the maggots to look where I am pointing. As he reaches out to pick up one of the dark green leaves, I grab his wrist. ‘Don’t touch it. It is so deadly the poison can be absorbed through the skin. First your arm is paralysed, then your heart stops.’
‘Monkshood?’ he asks.
‘Without a doubt.’ I pull one of the gloves on to my right hand and pick up an elongated blue flower. ‘One of the deadliest toxins known to man. Or beast,’ I add, nodding towards the dog. ‘It looks as if Robert Dunne had his own little poison laboratory here.’ At the back of the table is a small vial of dark green glass with a silver stopper. I lift it; it is three-quarters full of a clear liquid.
‘Intended for Drake, you think?’ Sidney says, peering closer.
‘He certainly meant it for someone – you don’t make a tincture like this to cure stomach ache. It only takes a small dose – this could easily be smuggled on board and slipped into a glass. The effects are fatal almost immediately. As I suspect our four-legged friend there found out.’
The papers piled up on the table and beneath it bear witness to a disturbed mind; Dunne appeared to have been scribbling in a frenzy and scattering the pages around him. Some look like recipes, listing measurements of leaves, seeds, roots and aqua vitae, with manic crossings-out and demonic faces scrawled in the margins. Others are the beginnings of letters never sent; these are more interesting. I shake a maggot off one of the sheets on the floor and begin to read aloud.
Dearest Martha,
I beg you to consider that God in His wisdom sometimes sees fit to answer our prayers in roundabout ways, by degrees and in unexpected guises. God He knows how long we have prayed for a child and here is an answer, though perhaps not the one you looked for. But this child we can raise as our own and keep the girl as nursemaid, and who will be any the wiser. I pray you do not dismiss it out of hand, wife, for sooner than you think I shall be a rich man, God willing, and we shall begin a clean page as I know you have long desired. I will no longer be the man I have been
The ink fades here and the letter ends, unsigned. I give a low whistle. Sidney shakes his head, incredulous.
‘Did you ever hear such a thing? Perhaps that whore wasn’t so foolish as she seemed – it was Dunne himself who was deluded. Did he seriously think to persuade his wife to take in his whore’s child? And the girl too, under her roof?’
‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘You have met Martha Dunne. I should quake to serve her a dish she didn’t like at supper, never mind cross her in this way. It seems the man’s misplaced optimism extended beyond the card table.’
‘Except where his immortal soul was concerned, apparently.’ I unfold another balled-up page from under the table. Nothing of any real significance, nor the next. Then I smooth out a third, and my pulse quickens as my eyes skim it. ‘Listen to this, Philip.’
Do you think your deeds will not find you out? You may be sure they will be judged by God and man. As for God’s judgement, I leave that to your conscience, but if you wish to escape the censure of your fellow man, and most especially your captain on whose goodwill all our fortunes depend, you know my price. Another five will seal my lips for good.
‘Blackmail?’ Sidney looks at me, eyes wide. ‘Who is it addressed to?’
I turn the paper over and back. ‘No name. Damn it. So it was true – the girl Eve said Dunne had found out a wicked secret about one of his fellow sailors, one he said would cost the man dear, but she could tell me no name either. He was evidently threatening to inform Drake.’
‘That explains the five gold angels.’ He moves over to the window, sticks his head out and breathes deeply.
‘It looks as if the fellow did pay up. Dunne must have been so pleased with his success he thought he’d try again.’
‘But his lips were sealed for good,’ Sidney
says, grim-faced.
‘What we don’t know is whether these are drafts of letters he subsequently sent, or just idle scribblings,’ I say. ‘I wonder if his wife knew he had cooked up this plan with the girl.’
‘One more reason for her to be rid of him,’ he observes.
‘And yet we stumble every time on the fact that his wife was a day’s ride away at Dartington. So if she was behind it – who did the job for her?’
Sidney wanders back to the table; the crunching of maggots under the soles of his boots sets my teeth on edge.
‘I cannot think clearly in this foul air,’ he says. ‘Let us bundle up these papers and read them somewhere else – I don’t think I can bear another minute. You can take contagion from the dead, can you not?’
‘If you get too close,’ I say. ‘Let us just be sure we have not missed anything.’
I stand in the middle of the room and allow my gaze to travel slowly around every corner, lifting my hand occasionally to swat away the flies.
‘Do you suppose—’ Sidney begins, but I hold up a hand to silence him as I freeze, alert to a sudden disturbance in the air, an interruption of the stillness. I turn slowly, straining my ears; the door I told him to close is only pushed to, a foot or so ajar, and now I hear it, an unmistakable creak on the boards outside.
‘Who’s there?’
There is no reply; only a taut silence, like the intake of breath. I gesture to Sidney; his hand is moving to his sword when there comes a noise – a soft whistle, a rush of air quicker than a heartbeat – then the thud of a blade hitting the cracked plaster behind me. Sidney yelps, a delayed reaction, and I stand, immobile, unsure which way to turn. After what feels like an eternity, but can only be a fraction of a heartbeat, I whip around, thinking he has been hit, but he is unharmed though white with shock, staring at the knife embedded in the wall.
In an instant I stir into action, hurl myself through the door and on to the landing, closely followed by Sidney; footsteps clatter on the stairs, two floors below by now. We give chase immediately; I almost lose my footing on the worn treads of the steps but by the time we reach the courtyard it is empty, the only sound the banging of the street door as it slams behind our mysterious assailant. With a hail of inventive curses, I wrench it open and see a figure fleeing around the corner. I make to run after him but the pain in my ribs becomes too much to bear and I have to slow down, gasping for breath; as I lean against a wall, doubled over, I see Sidney overtake me, nimble and long-limbed, right hand clasped around the hilt of his sword. When I have recovered my breath, I set off again in pursuit, rounding the corner into the next street to see Sidney gaining on the man and finally, in one impressive burst of speed, diving at his back and bringing him crashing to the ground. I catch up with them just in time to see the man struggle to his hands and knees, with Sidney standing over him, sword drawn. The man lifts his head and wipes away a trickle of blood from his nose.