Somehow Nick found the ladder leading upward. Once up at the next level, he began yelling, “Fire! Fire! Get up top. Get up top.”
Suddenly the ladder was overwhelmed by a mob of terrified sailors and whores, some nude, all scrabbling and tearing at each other to be first up the ladder.
“One at a time,” Nick bawled. He pulled one sailor off the lower rungs and threw him back. Then he hoisted a naked whore bodily up the ladder, boosting another woman, this one partially clothed, after her. After the women were safely up top, he stepped back to allow the men to climb to safety.
Luckily, most of the crew were on shore; otherwise the panic would have trapped them all below hatches, people being trampled to death in the frenzy to get out, blocking access to the ladders. The smoke was thickening, the hungry crackle of flames louder. Soon the gunpowder would explode. When that happened, they would all be shredded into bloody rags, the ship reduced to kindling.
Nick herded the sailors and their whores up the next ladder to the deck. “Get off the ship,” he yelled, but they needed no heeding and were already swarming down the gangplank.
Nick looked around for Gavell and Stace and saw Gavell running behind the others down the gangplank to the quay. He assumed Stace was not far behind, although he could not see him in the crowd.
Knowing he was taking a foolish risk, Nick descended the ladder one more time to the second level. He knew going down deeper into the hold would be suicide. Holding on to the ladder, he yelled, “Annie! Annie!” but it came out as a croak, his lungs already clogged with smoke. He tried to listen for a voice calling for help, but all he could hear was a sound like the Apocalypse, a great roaring as if the world were falling in on itself and dissolving into ash; his eyes were stinging and tearing up and he could see nothing at all. Then the smoke and heat became too great and he knew he would die if he did not get out. Swiftly he made his way topside and ran down the gangplank, his face covered in soot, his clothes and hair singed, his lungs burning, the cool touch of the clear night air on his skin the most exquisite thing he had ever experienced.
A crowd had gathered on the dock to watch, as if it were some outlandish carnival attraction. “Get back,” Nick yelled, waving both arms. “There’s gunpowder aboard.”
At the word gunpowder, the crowd scattered and ran, stumbling over each other, women screaming, men shouting and trying to drag the fallen by their arms along the street.
As Nick turned back to look at the ship, there was a tremendous flash, and the stern seemed to lift into the air and hang there, brilliantly illuminated from below by an almost celestial light. Then everything flew apart. Wood and iron rained down from the sky; Nick saw a running sailor pierced through the back of his shoulder by a sliver of wood with the ease of a rapier thrust; another was knocked senseless by a lump of metal; yet another was scored across the cheek by a flying nail.
The ship’s back was broken, a smoking hole where the stern had been. Slowly, almost languidly, the bow rose in the air until the ship was almost vertically poised in the water; then the whole structure began to slide down into the river like a red-hot piece of iron quenched by a blacksmith. Nick watched as the flames of the burning hulk were progressively extinguished as the oily swell of the river rose higher up its sides, steam hissing at the water line. Suddenly the ship was gone, more quickly than Nick could have thought possible. Somers Quay, where the ship had been berthed, looked unnaturally empty, as if a tooth had been removed, leaving a blackened hole. Bubbles rose on the surface of the river, and all that remained of The Dalliance were charred spars and flotsam floating on the surface. The crowd gave a collective sigh, as if they had just watched the finale of a mystery play where devils had dragged a damned soul kicking and screaming through the open gates of hell.
Then the authorities arrived in force: customs officials, Beefeaters from the Tower, bailiffs who patrolled the warehouse district. As they tried to disperse the crowd and keep them back from the wharves, where sailors were putting out fires on other ships caused by falling debris and sparks, shouting and jostling started. The sailors from The Dalliance began to arrive, and seeing their beloved vessel destroyed, they began to drunkenly resist the bailiffs and Beefeaters, throwing wild punches and cursing as if they blamed the authorities for the loss of their livelihood. Soon a general melee of fighting had broken out from Somers Quay all the way to Billingsgate Fish Market.
Nick pushed his way through the crowd, dodging punches, sometimes returning them, looking for Annie. He could see no sign of her but did not really expect to. If by some miracle she had escaped the burning ship, she would probably have made off by now into the dark backstreets near the port.
Eventually he found Gavell on the edge of the crowd that had now gathered to watch the fighting and cheer on the sailors. He was standing on a hitching post so he could see over the crowd, his face pale, staring at the great gap where The Dalliance had been only an hour before as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He started when Nick took him by the arm as if he had seen a ghost.
“Did you see Annie?” Nick shouted over the noise. Then he realized that Stace was missing.
“I lost him after I talked to you,” Gavell said, in response to Nick’s querying look. “I thought maybe he had given up the search.”
Or was hiding in the hold waiting to ambush me, Nick thought.
He studied Gavell carefully, but all he saw was a man in shock. This did not mean Gavell and Stace had not lured Nick to the ship in order to kill him; it simply meant something had gone wrong and Stace had failed to make it out in time. Either that, or Annie had seen her chance to remove Nick and had taken it. Now Annie was gone, and Stace was missing.
“Come on.” Nick pulled Gavell down from his perch. “Richard may be in the crowd somewhere.”
They searched the quays, then the nearby taverns, hoping against hope that Stace had decided to rinse the smoke out of his lungs with a tankard of ale. All to no avail. After what seemed like hours, they gave up.
“Maybe he’s gone back to Leicester House?” Nick said, more to give Gavell some hope than because he believed it himself. Stace was not known for his independence of thought, following behind Gavell like a faithful dog. If he hadn’t shown up by now, Nick believed he never would. He had gone down with the ship.
Gavell obviously felt the same way. He was somber, and as the night wore on, he became more and more listless, as if he knew their search was hopeless. If not for the fact that Nick suspected the two men of luring him to his death, perhaps in league with Annie, he would have felt sorry for him. Despite the horror of their deaths, there was a kind of justice in both Stace and Annie going down with the ship, as this was the fate that had been planned for him.
Around midnight, Nick led Gavell down an alley running along the side of a warehouse to Thames Street. He planned to follow Thames Street west and then turn south to the bridge and so back to Bankside. He had no intention of admitting to the authorities that he’d been on board when the fire broke out. That would put him at risk of being sued by either Essex or the captain of the ship. In view of the bad relations between him and Essex, he had no doubt Essex would ruin him if he could. Besides, it wasn’t he who had started the fire; it was Annie or Stace, Essex’s own agents.
Nick couldn’t help but feel that the sinking of The Dalliance was an ill omen for Essex, a sign that whatever Essex put his hand to, it would end in destruction. If it was Stace who had locked Nick in the gunpowder room, then it had been on the orders of Essex. Nick could not imagine Gavell and Stace acting on their own initiative. And if Essex had ordered Nick’s death, then it was either because he was enraged at Nick for defying him or because he was somehow involved in the death of Winchelsea and the attempted murder of Thomas and John.
Guilty of treason or not, it was clear to Nick, Essex was cursed.
CHAPTER 24
The Black Sheep Tavern, Bankside
When Nick returned to The Black Sheep alone—Gavell had carried on t
o Leicester House, drawn by a glimmer of hope that Stace would be waiting for him there—he found Rivkah coming down the stairs after checking in with John.
“How is he?” Nick asked. But he knew from her expression that he was the same.
“What happened to you?” Rivkah exclaimed when she came closer and saw that Nick was covered in soot, his hair and clothing singed. She said this with a slightly hysterical edge to her voice.
For once, Nick knew not to joke. As far as he could tell, fire was the only thing Rivkah was truly afraid of.
Last winter, when drunken sailors had set fire to the roof of her house, Nick had gone through the door to get Eli and Rivkah out and had seen a look in her eyes that was more akin to a wild animal at bay than a human being. He had had to manhandle her bodily through the back door and lock her out. The sound of her frenzied curses and sobs still came to him in his dreams.
“One of the ships at the dock exploded and sank,” he said. “I happened to be at the wharf and got a bit too close.” He shrugged, hoping to appear casual.
Rivkah looked narrowly at him as she set down her basket and rummaged in it. But for once she did not question him further. Instead she said, “I have some ointment for burns.” She handed him a small clay pot. “You can doctor yourself tonight. I’m going home.”
Nick could tell that the reek of smoke in his clothes and hair deeply disturbed her.
After she left, Nick slathered some ointment on the worst burns, then climbed the stairs to see John. Maggie was asleep, her head resting on the bed beside John. Nick drew up a stool and sat down, taking his friend’s hand in his. John’s flesh was warm, but his hand felt lifeless and unresisting. Oddly, Nick noticed that John’s fingernails had grown and his chin was now covered with a beard. These signs of life seemed to mock the corpselike stillness of his body, the pale, sunken look of his face.
Nick bowed his head over his friend’s hand. “John,” he said. “If you can hear me wherever you are, we need you to come back to us.” His voice caught in his throat, still croaky with the smoke he had inhaled. He felt a sudden desperation well up in his chest, as if he saw the long years ahead without his friend at his side. “Don’t be a selfish arsehole. You’ve had a long enough rest. Now it’s time to get up, damn you.” He squeezed John’s hand hard. “I need you. Do you hear me? I need you.”
Then he felt a touch on his arm, and for a brief moment he thought maybe John had heard him and awoken. But when he raised his head, he saw Maggie looking at him.
Nick scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. “I was just seeing how he was,” he said. “I need to get some clothes out of the chest, anyway.”
He stood and turned his back on Maggie before she could say anything, the look of compassion on her face almost unmanning him. Randomly grabbing a handful of clothes from the chest, he ran down the stairs into the taproom. There he sat on a bench in the cold, empty room, his arm draped across Hector’s back, staring at nothing.
* * *
The next day, Nick heard that the body of a woman and a man had been found floating in the river that same morning. They had been drawn downstream to Sabbes Quay, halfway between Billingsgate and the Tower, and snagged between two broken pilings. If they were Annie and Stace, then the poetic justice of their bodies being discovered like Simon Winchelsea’s was not lost on Nick. Aside from the sex, the corpses were too charred to be recognizable, but the burned condition of the bodies made it virtually certain that they had come from The Dalliance. If Gavell had told him the truth about Annie being on board, then either the female corpse was one of the whores who had not made it out, or it was indeed Annie.
Remembering Annie’s intelligence, her fearlessness, the quick wit with which she had bested the Puritan preacher at St. Paul’s Cross, not to mention her extraordinary ability to transform herself into any character she chose, Nick felt unaccountably sorrowful. He had to keep reminding himself that not only was she a murderer who had tried to kill him twice, but she was a traitor to his Queen. It was better for everyone if it were Annie who had died on the ship.
As for Stace, Nick felt only a mild regret.
* * *
That same day, Nick walked over to the infirmary to find Eli. He had a favor to ask, and he could not, in all good conscience, ask Rivkah to do it. Even so, considering Eli’s own experience with the burning of his home, Nick felt guilty about asking him.
“You want me to examine the bodies found in the river this morning?” Eli asked. “The ones believed to have come from the ship that exploded?”
“Yes.” Nick needed to be as certain as possible of the identity of the dead woman.
Eli looked at Nick thoughtfully. “Rivkah told me you were pretty singed last night. She said you told her you had been on the dock when the ship blew up.”
“That’s right.”
“Mmmm.”
“What?”
“Only that the burns and smoke inhalation I can hear in your voice could not have been the result of standing a hundred yards away on the dock, if you’ll excuse me for saying so.”
Nick sighed. “I’ll explain what really happened on the way.”
Eli grinned. “I’ll get my bag.”
* * *
St. Mary-at-Hill, Ward of Billingsgate
The remains of the burned corpses had been taken to the crypt of St. Mary-at-Hill in the Ward of Billingsgate on Lovat Lane just off Eastcheap. They would lie there for a few days to see if someone claimed them, then be buried without ceremony in Potter’s Field.
When Eli removed the sheets from the bodies, Nick stepped back and tried not to gag. The twisted, blackened things did not resemble human beings so much as overcooked lumps of pork. And the smell was disturbingly similar.
“Have you ever wondered why Jews do not eat pork?” Eli asked conversationally, as if he had read Nick’s mind. “One of the reasons is because it is so similar to human flesh. It would be hard to know what one was eating.”
Nick swallowed down bile. “Get on with it, will you?” He made a vow never to eat pork again.
Taking out a stylus from his bag, Eli began to poke at one of the bodies. “Definitely female,” he murmured. “You can tell by the width of the pelvic bones.” The breasts had been flattened by the trauma to the body.
“Can you tell if she was wearing men’s attire?” Nick asked.
Eli looked at him oddly, then scrutinized the corpse. “There are scraps of material on her legs. Here”—he pointed—“and here.”
Nick saw flakes of what looked like burned parchment.
“Thin hose would have burned away, so I would say she was dressed in a skirt and bodice made from some heavier material.”
He began to examine her hands. “Ah, now this is interesting.” Eli pointed to one of her fingers. At the base of a blackened stump—what would have been the first finger on her right hand—were the partially melted remains of a ring. Carefully, he eased it off and gave it to Nick.
Nick held it close to the lantern the sexton had loaned them for the examination of the bodies. He scraped the metal with his finger and saw a faint sheen of gold beneath. The stone in the setting was cracked and discolored, but Nick could make out the red of jasper. He remembered admiring such a ring on Annie’s finger when they had first met at Leicester House and thinking the stone was the same fiery color of her hair.
Sadly, he put it in his pocket. He would return it to Annie’s family if he could. The only thing he thought odd was that the body was wearing only one ring; when Annie had been dressed as a lady, as was her rank, she had worn multiple rings. Perhaps she had donned the disguise of a whore to come aboard the ship. It would certainly have prevented anyone from asking what she was doing there. She could have gone below deck and hidden in the cargo until the ship set sail.
“I’ve seen enough,” Nick said. “Thank you.”
Eli covered the body again with the sheet.
“If it’s any consolation, she probably died from breathing in smoke
and did not burn to death.” His mouth turned down, as if he was remembering the gruesome fate of his family.
Nick put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for doing this, Eli. I know it’s not easy.”
“What about the other body?”
“Is it a man?”
Eli nodded. “Judging from the size and girth. And then there’s this.” He pointed to a thick blackened line around the waist. Clearly a belt.
“I’ll send someone round to see if he can identify him,” Nick said.
Even if Gavell could not recognize the face of his friend, the enormous size of the corpse certainly fit. That, coupled with Stace’s continued absence when he had nowhere else to go, would make the identification as certain as it could ever be.
On his way out of the church, Nick dropped a sovereign into the hand of the priest. “For the woman,” he said. “A service and proper burial in your churchyard with a headstone.”
“What shall I inscribe on the grave marker?” the priest asked.
“Protea.”
In Greek mythology, Proteus was a sea-god, known as the shapeshifter. In view of Annie’s skill at changing her appearance, and the way she had died, Nick thought it apt.
CHAPTER 25
St. Mary-at-Hill, Ward of Billingsgate
Two days later, Nick attended the service for Protea, aka Annie O’Neill, at St. Mary-at-Hill. He and Gavell were the only mourners. He had sent a message to Leicester House informing them of the time and place of the funeral, but neither Essex nor Edmund had chosen to show up. Nick remembered the way Essex had been unable to keep his hands off Annie in his study when Nick had been eavesdropping; he recalled how Edmund’s eyes had followed her every movement with a besotted shine in them. Their lack of concern for her mortal remains bespoke a shallowness of spirit that did not surprise him in Essex but came as a shock to see in Edmund. In Nick’s opinion, loyalty should not end with death, even if it had been misplaced in life.
The Course of All Treasons Page 21