by S. J. Parris
‘You dare to blame me for this? It was a pitiful scrap of a life this boy had, but it was not yours to throw away when it no longer suited you. None of these children are your property to dispose of. And you will hang for this, I will make sure of it.’
‘Will you?’ she says, a ghost of a smile hovering at her lips. ‘You, Doctor Bruno, with all your influence in this town? You are fond of the boy, I see. And after only one night.’
‘Have you no pity?’ I shout, taking a step towards her. My hand flies to the unfamiliar knife at my belt and I am gratified to see that she looks genuinely frightened. ‘He is a child,’ I say, more quietly, letting my hands fall to my sides. ‘A child.’
‘Bruno,’ Sidney says gently, from the doorway. ‘There is nothing we can do here. Let us go.’
‘Listen to your friend, Bruno,’ Mistress Grace says, folding her arms, though her gaze strays warily to the dagger. ‘I have no doubt the physician will find that the boy died of some sudden seizure. It happens all too frequently.’
‘I’m sure it does, in this place.’ Even as I spit the words at her, I feel the weight of hopelessness settle in my chest. The physician will be part of her circle too, as will the magistrate, the Sheriff, the constables. There will be no justice for one orphan boy. And no one now to testify that anything illegal went on at the House of Vesta between him and Ambrose Pettifer. My accusations will look like no more than malicious slander. ‘We should leave two of your men here to make sure she does not run,’ I say, turning to Sidney. ‘Sir Francis Drake wants her questioned.’
‘I have no intention of running anywhere, but I will not have your men in my house,’ she says, narrowing her eyes. ‘You have no grounds for it. And Sir Francis Drake would do well to remember he is no longer mayor of this town.’ She says this with a hint of satisfaction. We both know any threats I can make are empty. She is entirely confident of her immunity here and not even Drake’s influence can touch it.
I give her a last, hard stare, to let her know I have not surrendered, then cross to the bed and look down at Toby. His eyelid is still twitching and his limp hand jerks involuntarily, but his face has grown a waxy grey, his eyes sunk into shadow. He is halfway across the threshold of death already; if a physician really has been called, he would need a miracle to bring the boy back now. I reach out and take his hand; his fingers are cold and clammy. I wonder what she gave him; with the arsenal of ingredients she keeps to poison infants in the womb, she would not be short of possibilities. I murmur a benediction over him in my own language; it is many years since I last administered any sacraments of the church, and I never will again, yet in this moment I feel there is nothing else I can offer him. The words form as easily as if I had been repeating them every day, and there is a strange comfort in the old familiar expressions, though only for me – Toby cannot hear me now, and would not understand if he could.
‘By the sacred mysteries of mankind’s restoration, may Almighty God remit for you the punishment of the present life and of the life to come, and may He open to you the gates of Paradise and admit you to everlasting happiness.’ The way I say it, the sentiment sounds more like a challenge than a prayer. Yet there is a sense of reverence in the room; when I turn back to the door, Sidney and his armed men are standing with their heads bowed. I shoulder past them to the stairs with my eyes to the ground, so they will not see my face. She is right – I caused his death. I failed to save him. And for what?
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘You cannot blame yourself, Bruno. Who was to know she was so ruthless? Here, this way.’
I have not spoken as Sidney leads us back towards the Mayor’s house. His pace hurts my legs and my ribs but I do not complain; what have I to complain about? A churchbell peals insistently from somewhere beyond the rooftop, summoning the town to Evensong.
‘I should have known. A woman who throws young girls into the gutter once they have borne her a child to sell? Look at us – walking the streets with armed guards. We were so busy worrying about our own safety that we did not see the real danger. So much easier for her just to silence the boy. God damn her!’ I burst out, stopping at the corner of a side street to catch my breath. ‘We should have taken him with us this afternoon. He would still be alive.’
‘You could not have known,’ Sidney says again, laying a hand on my arm.
I retreat into silence; he does not know, because I never speak of it, how heavy the dead weigh on my conscience. In the turbulent years since I left San Domenico Maggiore, there have been others whose lives I feel I could have saved if I had been quicker to recognise a killer – even those who became victims precisely because they tried to help me. Some nights, their faces appear to me in the mist of sleep, quietly accusing. Sidney takes the view that regret is the most pointless of all sentiments, since the past cannot be changed, but he is young still; I am finding that the more years I accumulate, the closer my regrets shadow me.
‘I wonder if your inamorata is back from Mount Edgecumbe,’ Sidney says, casually, turning up a small side street. ‘She will want to express her gratitude to you, no doubt.’
‘She is hardly my inamorata.’
He only raises an eyebrow and makes a show of suppressing a smirk.
The Mayor’s house is the grandest in the street: a fine four-storey double-gabled building of white stone, with vast windows that stretch almost the entire width of the façade on the first three floors, their expanse an imposing display of wealth for anyone who knows the cost of glass.
We are shown into a spacious parlour on the ground floor by a liveried servant. Drake is seated behind a table at the far end of the room, poring over papers. His head snaps up as we enter, his eyes questioning.
Lady Drake sits in the window, her auburn hair bound up in a gold caul. She is deep in conversation with a portly older man who wears a fine wool doublet and leather boots, his fingers studded with gold rings. He offers a bow to Sidney and introduces himself to me as the Mayor; as I shake his hand, I recall Mistress Grace’s loaded remark about how Drake should remember he is no longer mayor of Plymouth. Did she mean to imply that she need fear no reprisal from the current mayor? The suspicion colours my impression of the man; there is something unctuous about his manner, and I must force myself to accept his welcome with a smile. But he barely has a chance to speak before Lady Drake launches herself at us and clasps both my hands.
‘Doctor Bruno, I am forever in your debt. I never believed I would see my cousin Nell alive again.’
‘Is she here?’ Though it is true that I have given Nell little thought since I left her this morning, now that I am here, I realise how much I want to see her, to be assured that she is recovering.
‘They brought her back after dinner – in a carriage! Was that not kind of Sir Peter? All she could talk of was how she owes you her life.’ I fear she might weep, but she gathers herself and presses my hands firmly as she fixes me with a new, more knowing expression. ‘She will want to reward you.’
‘Your gratitude and your husband’s is all the reward I need, my lady,’ I mumble. The Mayor stares at me as you might an exotic animal. Sidney is pointedly looking out of the window. ‘Besides,’ I say, extracting my hands and tapping the dagger at my belt, ‘Sir Francis has already made me a handsome present.’
‘My cousin is resting,’ she says, ‘but I will tell her you are here. I’m sure that will do more than any physician’s draught to restore her spirits.’
‘Elizabeth, my Lord Mayor,’ Drake says, rising from his seat, ‘I must speak with these gentlemen in private.’
‘Of course, of course. I will have some refreshment brought. It is dusty in the streets today, is it not?’ The Mayor bustles towards the door with officious politeness. ‘My Lady Drake, would you like to take a turn in the garden?’
‘Thank you, your worship, but I think I shall see how my cousin is recovering,’ Elizabeth says, smiling sweetly. ‘And whether she is ready to receive visitors.’
‘Well?’ Drake sa
ys, impatient, when the three of us are left. ‘Where is the boy?’
‘Dead,’ Sidney says bluntly.
‘What?’
‘Mistress Grace poisoned him. She must have done it as soon as we turned our backs this afternoon.’ I shake my head bitterly. ‘I should never have left him.’
‘I will have a messenger send the constable there directly,’ Drake says, his voice hard with anger. ‘But this is bad for us. Without the boy, there is no witness to this crime you accuse Pettifer of. And if you cannot prove the crime, you cannot prove there were ever any grounds for blackmail, and the murder charge falls apart.’ He looks at me steadily as he says this. I do not miss the emphasis on ‘you’.
‘You think I am mistaken?’ I ask quietly.
‘Not entirely,’ he says. ‘Pettifer will never admit to what you accuse him of with the boy. And though it pains me to say so, I acknowledge there could be truth in that. As for the trade in babies – I can well believe it. But I think our chances of holding them to account for it are small, when the most powerful men in the town will not move against Mistress Grace. I have sent men to fetch the pregnant girl from Stonehouse, though I imagine they will have thought of that and moved her elsewhere. I only hope she is safe.’
‘Then we cannot prove that Pettifer committed the murders?’ I hear my voice faltering.
‘Unless there is some evidence that Dunne’s blackmail demands were addressed to him, it remains your word against his. And he is well connected in the town.’
‘Whereas I am a foreigner and a Catholic, as far as everyone here is concerned,’ I say, finishing the thought for him.
Drake holds his hands out, as if to show he is helpless to deny it. ‘Pettifer would use that against you. No jury in the county would consider a case against him, I can promise you that now.’
‘Then what?’ I look from him to Sidney, waiting for one of them to make a suggestion. To have found the killer – to have directly caused a boy’s death in pursuit of him – only to watch him slip effortlessly out from every accusation, would be a bitter defeat. ‘Will you take him on the voyage, Sir Francis, suspecting him to be a murderer?’
‘There is something I wish you to see, Bruno. Come and look.’ He beckons us over to the table where he has a number of papers spread out. He picks up a sheet and hands it to me.
I skim the contents briefly. It is a short letter addressed to Captain Drake, dated some months ago, executed in a neat, sloping hand; the writer is putting his arguments for a greater degree of responsibility on the voyage, with a commensurate fee, on account of his wide experience of the Spanish coastline and ports, and in acknowledgement of his unofficial role as ship’s physician. He also asks for a better berth. Though the letter is written in English, it is signed by Jonas Solon. I look up from the paper and stare at Drake, bewildered. His jaw is clenched tight.
‘I don’t understand – so Jonas could write after all?’ I falter.
‘No. He asked someone to write this for him. He thought I would be more inclined to consider his request if he made it formally, in a letter, like an educated man.’ He pauses to master whatever emotion this memory of Jonas has stirred in him. ‘I had forgotten all about it, until I was reminded. Bruno – Ambrose Pettifer wrote it for him. That’s what he wanted to tell me.’
I look down, half expecting the floor to give way beneath me. A long silence follows. I cannot think what to say – my only thought is of the apology I will have to make to Pettifer, and how it will stick in my throat.
‘This letter was among my correspondence,’ Drake says. ‘I had to dig it out when Ambrose mentioned it. But what interests me is this. Look – here is the forged confession letter, supposedly from Jonas. I have been comparing them while I waited for you. The hand is quite similar in places, do you not think? It looks as if whoever wrote the confession letter had tried to imitate the writing in this letter here’ – he points to the paper in my hand – ‘not realising it was not written by Jonas himself.’
‘Which means someone would have had to find it among your papers,’ I say, slowly, almost to myself. Someone with access to Drake’s private letters.
‘But,’ Sidney jumps in, ‘surely it could be a double bluff? Pettifer could claim someone tried to copy his hand, whereas in fact he wrote both—’
‘Philip,’ I say, with quiet despair, ‘it means that Pettifer already knew Jonas was illiterate. He would not have written the confession letter.’
‘He could still have killed Dunne, just as you described it,’ Sidney says, trying to sound encouraging. ‘The blackmail makes that plausible.’
‘Perhaps,’ Drake says, again, in that slow, thoughtful way that clearly means he disagrees. ‘But something about this confession letter sits uncomfortably with me, and I cannot quite put my finger on it.’
‘Whereas the writer has put his fingers all over it,’ Sidney says, examining the paper. ‘He is not a neat draughtsman, whoever he is trying to imitate. Look here, at the left margin, where the words are smudged and blotched all the way down. I recall a chap at Oxford who did the same – he wrote with his left hand, and would not learn with his right, so that every time he copied a line he would blot the first part as he went along. His tutor refused to read it, so he—’
‘Give me that.’ I snatch the letter from his hand, tilting it to the light. Sidney is right; I have failed to see what was in front of me all along. Drake is staring at the paper; he too has begun to understand.
‘No. No – it is not possible. But why?’ He raises his eyes to me. ‘I have had him under my nose all this time. I can hardly—’
‘Who?’ Sidney says, turning from me to Drake, aggrieved at being left in the dark. ‘What have you found?’
‘Gilbert Crosse is left-handed,’ I say, tapping the letter. ‘The first time we met him he offered me the wrong hand to shake and corrected himself. I thought he was having a joke at the expense of a foreigner – we laughed about it, remember?’
‘Gilbert? You think he wrote this? Then – he killed Dunne?’ Sidney stares at me, disbelief etched in the lines on his forehead. ‘Why?’
‘Because Dunne knew what he was up to,’ I say. ‘And was making him pay for it.’
‘And what was he up to?’
I glance at Drake. ‘That time I saw Gilbert at church – the man who had been sitting beside him slipped out halfway through the service. He was wearing riding clothes. I would bet that Gilbert’s very public show of piety has provided him with a useful meeting place that no one suspected.’
‘Passing secret letters, you mean?’ Sidney’s eyes grow wide. Drake presses his fingers to his temples. ‘To whom?’
‘Jonas as good as told me, though I didn’t realise it at the time,’ I say. ‘He said, “if anyone is spying on this ship, it is not me”. I just supposed he meant it as a figure of speech, to emphasise his innocence. But I think he suspected that there really was a spy. And think how keen Gilbert was to point our suspicions towards Jonas from the beginning.’
‘Gilbert has been acting as my clerk since the first days of planning this voyage.’ Drake speaks quietly, still holding his head as if it hurts him to speak. ‘He has seen all the navigational charts – he knows each nautical mile of our proposed route and has every coordinate plotted in his logs. What do you imagine the Spanish would pay for that information? It would lead our entire fleet directly into a trap.’
‘Robert Dunne must have guessed at it somehow,’ I say.
‘Instead of warning me, he used the knowledge to try and squeeze some money out of Gilbert – guessing he could afford it with Spanish gold in his purse.’ Drake bunches his hands into fists by his sides and his jaw tightens.
‘But we now know that Dunne was planning to poison you somewhere along the way – his loyalty no longer lay with the voyage. He was more interested in what he could gain from threatening Gilbert in the short term.’
‘That doesn’t explain Gilbert’s betrayal.’ Sidney looks incredulous. ‘Why
would he spy for the Spanish? Risk the safety of the whole fleet, when he was travelling with it? It can’t just be the money, surely?’
‘Only Gilbert can answer that,’ Drake says, his voice thick with sorrow, or anger, or both. I look at him.
‘We must find him. He said he was going to church, did he not? Quick – if we get there in time, we may even catch him passing a letter to his contact. We could take them both at once, and have evidence in our hands.’ I am halfway to the door, a hand on my knife, when Drake speaks.
‘Wait, Bruno. Gilbert is not at church. He meant to go, but I had forgotten I promised Dom Antonio a tour of the Elizabeth Bonaventure – he has been pestering me to look around since he arrived. He was keen to see the charts of our voyage – I sent a message asking Gilbert to look after him aboard since I was coming ashore to see my wife and check on Lady Arden.’
‘Well, if Gilbert is still on board, what are we waiting for?’ Sidney says. ‘He can’t go anywhere. Let us hurry back to the ship and arrest him.’
‘Oh, God,’ I say, staring at Drake.
‘What is it, Bruno?’ He catches the alarm in my tone.
‘The other night – Dom Antonio recognised Gilbert. He knew they had met before. Gilbert denied it, quite fiercely – said Dom Antonio must be confused by all his travels. In the end Dom Antonio couldn’t be certain and conceded he must be mistaken.’
‘I remember that,’ Drake says, anxiety flaring in his eyes.
‘What if Dom Antonio was right? Why would Gilbert deny it, unless they had met somewhere that would give away details he didn’t want people to know?’
Drake’s brow creases. ‘Gilbert has worked and studied in Europe, I know that much. He was clerk to the English Ambassador in Paris for a time last year – perhaps they met there.’
‘Wherever it was, there’s a reason Gilbert denied it. And he has already silenced two other people who could have exposed his secret.’