by Alys Clare
Table of Contents
Cover
Recent Titles by Alys Clare From Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
A Few Weeks Later
Recent titles by Alys Clare from Severn House
A World’s End Bureau mystery
THE WOMAN WHO SPOKE TO SPIRITS
The Gabriel Taverner series
A RUSTLE OF SILK
THE ANGEL IN THE GLASS
THE INDIGO GHOSTS
The Aelf Fen series
OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT
MIST OVER THE WATER
MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS
THE WAY BETWEEN THE WORLDS
LAND OF THE SILVER DRAGON
BLOOD OF THE SOUTH
THE NIGHT WANDERER
THE RUFUS SPY
CITY OF PEARL
The Hawkenlye series
THE PATHS OF THE AIR
THE JOYS OF MY LIFE
THE ROSE OF THE WORLD
THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE
THE WINTER KING
A SHADOWED EVIL
THE DEVIL’S CUP
THE INDIGO GHOSTS
Alys Clare
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2019
in Great Britain and 2020 in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 20195 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2020 by Alys Clare.
The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9027-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-685-2 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0410-3 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described
for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are
fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
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For Jon, Hannah, Imogen, Phoebe and Reuben; happy memories of the Mary Rose on a very hot day, with much love xxxxx
ONE
The autumn light was fading as I rode into Plymouth. The men on the north gate knew me and nodded a greeting as I hurried past. The streets were lively with townsfolk on their way home, and my horse and I had to draw into the side more than once as vast carts emptied of their produce slowly trundled out of town. Each delay was a stab to my conscience, for I should have been there earlier and, but for the desperate plight of a small boy who had fallen off a haystack and cut his head open on a sharp piece of granite, I would have.
The congestion in the narrow, winding streets showed no sign of easing, and in frustration I slid off Hal’s back and led him down a narrow side alley to an inn I’d often used where they know how to care for horses. Leaving him with the ostler and a few coins, I told the lad to look after him until my return.
Whenever that might be.
I was faster on foot, able to utilize the double-backs, the dark alleys and the little-known stairs, and soon I knew the sea was near. I turned a sharp corner, leapt down a short flight of steps and emerged onto the quay.
Like everywhere else in Plymouth, the waterside was crowded and noisy, the activity focused on the line of ships tied up, gangplanks down and commercial transactions still in full swing. As it was late afternoon, the nature of these transactions was already beginning to alter. I spotted at least three women who had nothing but their own bodies to peddle, and exchanged a glance with one of them. She was a handsome, wild-looking young woman and a few weeks back I’d treated her for the pox. Now she scowled at me, as if fearful I would betray her secret to her potential customers. It’s all right, I said silently to her, it’s the diseased ones I’d betray if I could, before rounding them up, treating them and trying to make them understand how to increase their chances of staying healthy.
But prostitution is as old as mankind, and without doubt the resultant diseases are too. I would be fighting a losing battle.
I stared up and down the line of seagoing craft.
And there, at the southern extremity of the quay and separated from her nearest neighbour by a good ship’s length, was the vessel I sought.
For a few moments I stood and simply looked at her.
She had always been a beautiful ship and in my eyes she still was, despite the scars and the depredations of her long years of fighting. I felt the familiar lift of the heart as I ran my eyes from her bows to her stern, but then another emotion seemed to insinuate itself into the elation, as if a desirable woman had smiled seductively and displayed a mouth full of rotten teeth.
And I recalled what I was there for.
I broke into a run and pounded down the quay until the steep wooden side of the Falco rose up above me.
They must have been looking out for me, for even as I’d approached, the gangway was being run out – why had it not been already in place? – and it thumped down on the stones of the quay at the precise instant I had need of it. Looking up, I called out to the figure standing at its other end, ‘Gabriel Taverner, physician. Permission to come aboard?’
I was close enough to see the extremity of relief on the young sailor’s gaunt face, and it gave me the same premonition of dread I’d experienced on noticing the absence of the gangplank. But the young sailor had already run down to meet me, and, looking into his wide, frightened eyes, I guessed it was only discipline that kept him from grabbing my arm and urging me to hurry.
He leaned towards me, muttering words I barely made out. ‘What?’ I demanded. ‘Speak up!’
But he shook his head.
As he slunk away, leaving me to make my own way to the captain’s cabin – he appeared to know who I was, and that I knew my way there – I didn’t know if to be irritated or relieved at his reticence. For what I thought he’d said was, Thank
God you’ve come. We’re all going mad here.
It began when Sallie brought me a note that morning as I was finishing my breakfast. Receiving notes is nothing unusual, for it is how some of my patients choose to communicate, presumably finding it easier to reveal complaints of a personal and embarrassing nature by letter rather than face to face with their doctor. Sometimes the notes contain money in settlement of my bill.
I held out my hand. Even as Sallie put the folded piece of paper into my hand, my hopes of it containing money faded.
‘It must have been left very early, afore I was up and about,’ said my housekeeper. She was peering over my shoulder; I could sense her avid interest. ‘I’ve been to and fro across the hall I don’t know how many times, and I heard nothing,’ she went on. ‘Either they were here when it was still dark, or else whoever left it walked on air.’ I turned in time to see her shudder and surreptitiously cross herself.
‘No need to start conjuring up supernatural beings, Sallie,’ I said briskly. ‘Will you bring more bread? Celia will be down soon.’
Sallie muttered something and, turning, left the room.
My housekeeper has the rare ability to show disapproval and irritation in the very way she puts her feet to the floor.
With a smile, I spread out the missive on the table before me and began to read.
And, even as I did so, a flicker of superstitious dread ran through me and I wondered at Sallie’s prescience …
This was what it said:
Aboard the Falco, Plymouth.
the eighth day of October in the year 1604.
To Gabriel Taverner, Rosewyke, Physician:
Gabe,
I urgently need your counsel and your help.
We are recently returned from the Caribbean and the Spanish Main. I shall not here describe to you the excess of assaults, both to our corporeal entities and to our spiritual wellbeing, that have been heaped upon us; for I pray that, in short time, I may recount same to you in person. In brief, I am close to despair.
I shall await you at midday in the inn known as the Tamar Rose on Plymouth quay. If this time is not to your convenience I shall return every day subsequently at the selfsame hour until we meet.
Your erstwhile captain
Ezekiel Colt.
I had not managed to present myself at the Tamar Rose at midday, nor at any time vaguely approximating it. As I was hurrying back to Rosewyke from the last of my morning calls – all of them local, which was why I was on foot and only then going to fetch my horse in order to set out for Plymouth – the urgent summons to tend the lad with the split head had turned up. And, despite the desperate tone of Captain Zeke’s note, despite my intense curiosity to find out what had happened, despite my growing dread for whatever fate had overcome my former ship, I’d had no option but to answer it. The lad’s life was starting to slip away along with his pumping, streaming blood, and I had only just been in time.
Now, ducking from long memory at the spot a few paces from the door to the captain’s cabin where for the first few days on the Falco I had always banged my head, renewed guilt at having ignored Captain Zeke’s summons for almost a whole day surged through me. But now, actually on board his ship and aware even in these initial moments that something was very wrong, the guilt was several times more powerful.
I tapped on the closed door and a well-remembered rasp shouted, ‘Enter!’
I opened the door and went in.
I had expected him to have changed to some extent, for it was more than half a dozen years since I’d seen him. But as I stood staring down at him, I felt my face drop in astonishment.
He met my eyes, his holding amusement. ‘As bad as that?’ he said. He was seated at his table, and with a foot pushed out the chair on the opposite side. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’
I went on staring at him.
He was a short, stocky man, and had always been inclined to fat. He did everything with enthusiasm, from killing the Spanish through sleeping with pretty women to eating and, in particular, drinking, and his appetites were reflected in his face and his body. In my memory his thick hair was reddish chestnut, his spade-shaped beard pure red, his eyes light grey and deeply embedded in the wrinkles and pouches a sailor develops from staring at the sun on the bright water, yet nevertheless full of life and sparkle.
My memory was false. Now his hair was widely streaked with white, the plumpness had fallen off him and the lines of laughter around his eyes and brow had been replaced with the deep furrows of a habitual frown.
I sank into the chair. I said, ‘Good God, what’s happened?’ And, before he could answer, I added almost angrily, ‘And why did you need to summon me when surely you have a surgeon on board?’
He had been rubbing his face with his hands as I addressed him. Now as he bared himself before me, I saw the desperate pain in his expression and regretted my words. I began an apology: ‘I am glad to be here, whatever the circumstances, and—’
He didn’t let me finish. He said quietly, ‘Gabe, you were with us in the Caribbean.’
It wasn’t a question, for he knew full well I’d sailed in those magical deep-blue waters several times. ‘I was.’
‘Then maybe you’ll understand,’ he muttered. Before I could pounce on that he went on, ‘That’s where we’ve been. Dominica, Trinidad, Maracaibo, Portobello.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Paid our respects to Sir Francis while we were there, and that was a weird moment, I can tell you …’ His eyes slid away and for a moment his face wore a strange, almost awe-struck expression. Grief, perhaps, for he would have followed Francis Drake to hell and back and had not forgiven the admiral’s officers for ignoring his dying wish to be buried on land and instead sending him in full armour inside his lead-lined coffin to the bottom of the sea.
‘Then on to Guatemala, and the plantations,’ Captain Zeke resumed. ‘We were watching out for our own ships, keeping the filthy hands of the Spanish and the Portuguese off what doesn’t belong to them, reminding them whenever we needed to that just because they’ve decided the whole fucking Caribbean and all the lands encircling it belong to them, the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily see it that way.’ He paused, waiting while the sudden angry blood drained from his face.
I remembered him back in the days when I’d sailed with him. He’d been a predator like no other, the combination of his extraordinary seamanship and the swift, responsive, highly manoeuvrable Falco making him invincible. So he believed – or he’d acted as if he believed it, which amounts to much the same thing – and so his crew believed, his ship’s surgeon included. The flames of our fury at the Spanish needed little stoking then, for the Armada was a very recent memory and all of us were still outraged at the cheek of the enemy for imagining they could simply sail to our precious island and take us over. (We might have felt differently, of course, had the elements not lent a hand in making our victory so easy and so overwhelming, but they did, and there it is. You don’t meet many sailors – many Englishmen at all, come to that – who won’t point out that God controls the weather as he does everything else, so whose side was he on, then?)
In Captain Zeke’s straightforward philosophy, one of the best ways to maintain an advantage over an enemy was to keep his pockets empty. A huge proportion of Spain’s wealth came from the Caribbean lands, so the job of the Falco and her sister ships was to interrupt the flow of gold, silver, jewels and trade goods. In the case of the near blockade that was imposed in some places in the last years of the previous century, interrupt could be translated into stop, or, more accurately, take away and stow safely in English ships.
Captain Zeke gave a great sigh. ‘So, we’ve been away near a year, we’ve sustained damage here and there, we’ve lost crew members to injury and sickness, and we’re ready to sail for home. More than ready – you can patch up a ship so she’s seaworthy out in those unholy, godforsaken places, Gabe, but to do the job properly you need a home port, English oak and English craftsmen.’ Ezekiel Colt was a
patriot to the last drop of his rich English blood. ‘We’ve left the Yucatan behind and our course passes south of Cuba and Hispaniola before we sail out into the Atlantic. Only we don’t, because a storm comes out of nowhere and, helpless before it, we’re blown straight back to the western end of Hispaniola.’ He shook his head, his expression full of horror. ‘God’s teeth, Gabe, I never saw anything like that storm. I thought it spelt the end of us, and I’d have been quaking in my boots because there was no priest on board and I was terrified of dying unshriven, only we were all far too busy mastering our horror and keeping the Falco afloat for room in our heads for anything else.’ He stopped, and shot me a swift, calculating look; almost an assessing look, it struck me. Then he said very softly, ‘There was something unnatural about that storm, Gabe, I’m telling you. It had – it was as if it had a purpose for us, and that was to stop us pursuing our chosen course and send us back into that accursed deep blue sea.’
‘The Caribbean,’ I murmured.
He gave an exclamation of impatience, as well he might. ‘Of course the fucking Caribbean,’ he muttered.
‘It was just a storm,’ I said mildly. ‘You have weathered storms before, and not seen the malice of the supernatural acting through their violence.’
He gasped, crossing himself. ‘Stop,’ he hissed.
The mood in the captain’s cabin was strange, and suddenly I realized I was cold. Yet it had been a warm day, and the early evening was mild … Enough, I thought. ‘So you found shelter and waited out the storm?’ I prompted briskly.
Captain Zeke looked up, and there was a flash of his old humour in his eyes. ‘We did,’ he agreed. ‘Our hosts were none too pleased at our presence, but they’d learned it’s best not to antagonize the English and they helped us when we asked. They were as eager for us to be gone as we were to go, however, and we sailed as soon as the Falco was seaworthy, the holds full of fresh supplies to see us safely home. Or so we believed,’ he added ominously.