The Roots of Betrayal

by James Forrester

  Alice returned, her large figure coming toward him in a slow gait as if there was no reason in the world to hurry. She nudged him along the bench, so she could sit down beside him. “Amy is not here. Pieter, the landlord, says he will provide us with a meal. Where’s Juanita?”

  “I do not know. She just said good-bye and walked off.”

  “Ungrateful cow. Probably hightailed her way to sleep with the nearest merchant heading back to Castile.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  “We’re the lucky ones. Think of the men still in the hold of that ship.”

  “There was nothing I could do. I tried.”

  “It is not right for us to be sitting here and them being taken off to their deaths. I never really liked Skinner, and Stars was a bit delicate, but Francis was a good man. The best of them are dead.”

  She fell quiet. Then she said under her breath, “Raw is upstairs.”

  “Here? He made it back?” Clarenceux was astonished. “He made it back here faster than we did.”

  “I don’t suppose he was keen to stay too long in the water.”

  A young woman with a scar on her face walked between the tables toward them. “Alice,” she said.

  Alice looked up. “Ursula,” she breathed, struggling to her feet. She embraced the woman and held her a long time. Clarenceux reflected that he had seen almost no sign of emotion from Alice since he had met her, and only now was it seeping through, like a flood just beginning to break through the cracks in a dam.

  “So many,” said the bond woman, tears on her cheek.

  Alice said nothing. She simply held on to Ursula. Eventually they broke away. Alice turned to Clarenceux who had remained seated. “Come on,” she said. “Let us go and see the Robin Hood of the High Seas.”

  Clarenceux followed Ursula and Alice up to the attic chamber. There was a large bed and very little else. A baby boy, aged about twelve months old and dressed only in a shirt, was sitting in the corner of the room, playing with some wooden blocks. Raw Carew was lying on the bed, sweating, with his legs naked, attended by a red-haired young woman with a pair of tongs. There was blood all over his right thigh.

  “It’s not coming,” she said, concentrating on the gash and dabbing at the fresh blood.

  Carew shook his head. “It hurts—I can’t believe it.” He started laughing. “It’s funny, it hurts so much.” He turned to Alice and held out a hand toward her. “I’m glad to see you,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly.

  Clarenceux looked at the mess of Carew’s leg. The musket ball had not broken the thigh bone—Skinner had been wrong on that point.

  “How did you escape?” Carew asked, looking at Alice, still holding her hand.

  “He hasn’t actually said so, but I think Mr. Clarenceux here did me and Juanita a good turn,” she replied.

  “Just you and Juanita?” Carew looked at Clarenceux. “Not the others?”

  “There was nothing I could do,” Clarenceux said quietly. “Your uncle intends to take them to London.”

  “And hang them there, on the pirates’ dock at Wapping, no doubt.” Carew suddenly winced and then cried out, panting through gritted teeth. He started whooping and then laughing again. “They call me the bastard but he deserves the title far more.” He gasped at the pain from the operation. “You should have saved them too.”

  “Hold on; this is going to hurt,” said the woman, gritting her teeth as she sponged the blood away and delved deeper with the tongs.

  “It damn well hurts already!” shouted Carew, laughing more with his eyes closed, pulling himself up by his stomach muscles. He bent his forefinger and bit it to try to control the pain. “Damn Peter Carew! Damn the lot of them.” Another howl of laughter escaped his finger biting.

  Amy pulled the tongs out of the wound, clutching the musket ball. It was large—three quarters of an inch in diameter. “There’s your friend.”

  “Friend?” exclaimed Carew, lying back, breathless. “I think not.”

  Clarenceux felt he was not wanted. He was disappointed to see Carew in this position, making jokes even though he had so recently lost so many men. Saying that he, Clarenceux, should have rescued the other prisoners. He turned and went downstairs, found the landlord, and asked for some food. Provided with a bowl of ham and pea broth and a large hunk of dark bread, he took himself off to an empty bench and sat there eating in silence.

  After a while his indignation began to subside and he began to take more of an interest in the tavern. This was where Rebecca had been seen; perhaps she was still in the vicinity? He looked among the men in their shirts, jerkins, and doublets; they all looked like mariners or ship owners. She could have sailed on from here to anywhere in the world. Perhaps that was why Denisot had sent her here, so she could be taken on to France.

  Just then, Alice appeared. “He wants to talk to you,” she said.

  “What sort of mood is he in?”

  She gave a little laugh. “He’ll claim he walked here on water, if he thinks that will impress you. But we love him nonetheless.”

  “He shows so little…regret.”

  Alice shrugged. “He cannot afford to be regretful. Not when he’s seen so much and lost so much. You have to regard people as liable to leave you—whether through betrayal or through death. He is not as thoughtless as you think.”

  Clarenceux stood. “I’ll go up and see him.”

  “Where did you disappear to?” Carew asked as Clarenceux entered. Amy had finished bandaging his thigh and was leaving the room with a bucket of bloody water.

  “I went to have some food. And to think about those still aboard that boat.”

  Amy stepped past Clarenceux and closed the door behind her. The two men were alone.

  “Who is still aboard?”

  “Stars Johnson. Francis Bidder. Skinner. A few others.”

  Carew closed his eyes. “Harry? Luke? Swift?”

  “Dead. Kahlu too.”

  “Kahlu will show up yet. There’s no one who can get the better of him.”

  Clarenceux shook his head solemnly. “I saw him cut down, with my own eyes. I saw him killed.”

  “So have many men, Mr. Clarenceux.”

  Clarenceux walked across the room to the window. He looked out, bending his head to avoid the angle of the roof. The quay was as busy as ever.

  Carew shifted on the bed. “Come, are you not glad to be alive? We cheated them. We cheated death. Does that not give you a thrill?”

  Clarenceux turned. “A thrill? We did not cheat anyone, least of all Death. Death picked off whom he wanted, laughing all the way. We offered to send Death men by the whole boatload—and Death gladly accepted. You are a godless man and I despise that in you. Whatever has taken the place of God in your heart is cold and evil. Every single one of those corpses now rotting in the sea has more good in it, even now, than you!”

  Carew raised himself onto one elbow. “Every man who fought for us knew he was risking death. The women too. None were pressed men aboard my ship. Not one.”

  Clarenceux looked Carew in the eye. “There you lie.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  Carew raised a finger, pointing at Clarenceux. “We had an agreement. I would bring you here to Southampton and help you find that damned woman and you would tell me where Denisot is. I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. You have not.”

  “You did not bring me to Southampton. Your natural father’s brother did—and not out of kindness, I might add. He had orders to take me to London—and to sink the Davy rather than let me go.”

  Carew took a moment to comprehend what Clarenceux had just said. He swung his legs around and sat on the bed, biting his lip with the pain. “You mean, Sir Peter Carew sank the Davy because of you? Not because of me?”

  “I am sorry if it injures your pride but yes,
that is the fact.”

  “All those men died just because you wanted to find that woman?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake.”

  Carew suddenly became solemn. “No, no, Mr. Clarenceux. You misunderstand me. You may think me godless—and I am, thankfully—but we are allies, as you once said. Your enemy is my enemy. Whoever wanted to arrest you killed my men.”

  “We came here to find Rebecca Machyn. Now we are here, will you still help me? Avenge those deaths?”

  Carew stood. Clarenceux heard him and turned to watch him. Blood started to run through the dressing and down his leg.

  “Amy!” Carew shouted. “Amy!” She came quickly, almost in a panic. She looked at his wound, but Carew was not calling her because of the blood. “That woman who came on the Davy—Swift George told me that she and the man with her got into a small boat that day with John Prouze. Where did Prouze take her?”

  She was astonished to see him on his feet. “Have a mercy, Raw, what are you standing up for?”

  “Just tell me. Where did he take her?”

  “I don’t know. The fort, I suppose.”

  “Which fort?”

  “Calshot. Prouze serves Captain Parkinson at Calshot.”

  Clarenceux was curious. “What did he say to you?”

  Amy gently pushed Carew back onto the bed and grabbed a towel to wipe the blood away. “He said the Catholic Treasure was going to arrive that day. But it was late. That is why he stayed with me that night.”

  “This man, Prouze, knew in advance?” asked Clarenceux. “Not after she arrived? And he used the words ‘Catholic Treasure’?”

  “Does that make a difference?” asked Carew.

  Clarenceux turned to him. “Of course it makes a difference. The Catholic Treasure is the document that was stolen from me. If he was expecting her to bring it, then he had been forewarned by someone else.”

  “The treasure is your document?” asked Carew, forlorn. “Hell’s breath, I thought it would be gold.”

  Clarenceux started pacing across the room. “If Nicholas Denisot not only paid for her to come to Southampton, he probably arranged for her to be received here too. It was either him or someone who was privy to the same information as him. Either way, Denisot hijacked the Knights’ plot. ‘Percy Roy’ he called himself—just as they did in their letter. He was pretending to be them.”

  “There was a man with her when she came too,” said Amy, wiping the blood off the floor. “A tough-looking man.”

  “Robert Lowe,” said Clarenceux. “Her brother. He was mentioned in the secret message that Cecil showed me. No doubt it was through him that Denisot learned about the Knights’ plot. He and Denisot spirited Rebecca Machyn away from London and brought her here, far from Scotland and the reach of the Knights.” He looked at Carew and then at Amy. “But why would they have sent a message to John Prouze?”

  Amy stopped wiping. “They didn’t. It was sent to Captain Parkinson.”

  “Parkinson is corrupt,” added Carew, “but he is loyal; he would not lift a finger against the queen. He knows he only controls this port because he is trusted in Westminster—but he would hide anyone in that fort at the end of the spit, if you paid him well enough. If Denisot could afford to pay two hundred pounds for the woman and her brother to come here, then it sounds to me as if money was freely available.”

  Clarenceux scratched his beard. “But why? Why bring her here?”

  Carew picked up a pair of breeches from the floor and started to put them on. “Because from here the document could be taken anywhere in the world.”

  “Then how do we set about finding it?”

  “We go to Calshot Fort,” replied Carew, struggling to get his right leg into his breeches. He grimaced as he tried to bend it.

  “Raw, don’t be stupid,” gasped Amy as the dressing partly came away and more blood flowed down his leg.

  “Shut up, woman—kind though you are,” replied Carew. “It’s just a deep cut. It’s not going to slow me down, still less is it going to stop me getting dressed. Or taking this gentleman to see Captain Parkinson.”

  63

  Clarenceux lay under a blanket on the rushes on the floor of the hall. He slept for short periods, drowsing more than sleeping, as he had been accustomed to since finding himself on board a ship. When he heard footsteps coming down the stairs in the darkness, not having a knife, he felt vulnerable. Tensing his muscles, he listened to the movements as whoever it was felt their way around.

  “Mr. Clarenceux?” whispered a woman’s voice.

  “Who is it?”

  “Ursula.” He heard her moving in his direction. She felt where he lay and knelt down beside him.

  “Mr. Carew has asked me to offer you a bed for the night,” she whispered. “He wishes to assure you it is more comfortable than the hall floor.”

  “A bed?” Clarenceux sensed her crouching down close to him. “Is that all?”

  “A bed and anything else you might want. He has a great deal of respect for you.”

  “How much is he paying you?”

  “Sir, he is good to us. The last time he was here he gave me and my sister twenty pounds each, so we could help her little boy get well and look after each other. That was after he had left—he did not ask for anything in exchange. I am not expecting you to do anything you do not wish to do, and nor is he. I am simply offering some small kindness, which is a mark of his respect for you and mine for him.”

  Clarenceux raised himself onto one elbow. He clasped her shoulder. “You humble me. I was too quick to judge. Carew confuses me—callous one minute, kind the next. Confrontational then respectful. He seems to act selfishly while quietly being generous. Most men are the opposite: they pretend to be more generous than they really are. He shows me my faults. I am too proud.”

  She touched his face, running her finger over his cheek and down over his beard. “Come up to my bed. There you can be as proud as you want. Or as humble as you want. It is up to you. I will not think the worse of you either way.”

  64

  Saturday, May 20

  Next morning Clarenceux was able to bathe at the Two Swans and eat another meal. Once Pieter and Marie Gervys realized that their guest was not only a friend of Raw Carew but a gentleman and the bearer of a royal commission, they went out of their way to help him. They even provided him with a clean set of clothes, which, if they were not of the finest quality, nevertheless gave the impression that he was far from being a pauper. Gervys lent him his own cloak. Ursula trimmed his hair and beard. As she reminded him, there was no point going to see Captain Parkinson and expecting him to part with valuable information if he looked like a shipwrecked sailor. She kissed him and pressed into his hand a small dagger. “For luck,” she said. “In case it turns out to be bad.”

  Amy had arranged for them to borrow a sloop. Carew shook off her assistance, determined to walk to the quay as normally as possible, even though the wound caused him to flinch. He admired the sloop: the fore-and-aft rigged sails were new and the rudder freshly greased, and without waiting to be helped he climbed down into the boat. Clarenceux followed.

  It was a bright but blustery morning, with clouds scudding across the blue sky. Carew took charge of the sailing, forbidding Clarenceux to touch a single rope. The herald was happy to watch the man in his most natural state: judging the wind and the currents, looking out for the patterns in the water. It was like watching a man have a silent conversation with the elements. At one point he wondered whether Carew in old age would be like those who find it easier to move on water than on land. He had heard of such instances: kings and dukes who wanted only to travel by water in their advanced years, even sedan chairs being too much for them. But then he put the thought out of his mind. Raw Carew was not a man destined to grow old.

  “How did you escape from Sir Peter Carew’s ship?” Clarenceux as
ked, when they were about a mile from Southampton.

  Carew loosened the sheet and let the twisted hemp run through his fingers, still concentrating on the wind. “I jumped when the mast was leaning over at its greatest angle. Everyone would have expected me to swim to shore. So I swam underwater and hid beneath the sterncastle. No one could see me there—not from the gunwales, not even from the top of the sterncastle itself, because that projects out beyond the hull. When I had got my breath back, I swam as far as I could underwater, surfaced, and swam again. Not many people could hit a man’s head in a heaving sea like that, so when I was five hundred yards out I started to swim around the ship in a wide arc and came ashore near where we are heading to—Calshot.”

  Clarenceux was impressed. “But that must have been more than six miles—did you not worry about your leg?”

  Carew continued to look at the horizon. “I reckoned that if I was going to bleed to death, no one would ever have found me. I would have passed into legend, into stories. Otherwise—well, I did not have anything else to do. So I just swam.”

  Clarenceux felt humbled again. “It was God’s will—you know that. It might not have been a miracle, but it was the will of God that you survived.”