Treachery. S. J. Parris

‘I don’t know. I assume so.’

      ‘Did he have friends on board the Elizabeth?’ I ask. ‘People he was close to?’

      He blinks at me. ‘I often saw him talking with the Spaniard Jonas. They knew one another from the circumnavigation in ’77. Beyond that, I don’t know what he did when he went ashore. You would have to ask the men. I don’t really associate with them much.’ He casts his eyes down as he says this and I realise that he is lonely aboard the Elizabeth; he belongs neither with the hardened sailors nor with the gentlemen officers. It would be a long voyage for him to the New World, I thought, with only his astrolabe for company.

      ‘Though if anyone would know whether Dunne seemed of a mind to take his life, I suppose it would be the chaplain, Padre Pettifer,’ Gilbert adds. ‘Some of the men do seem to confide in him.’ The curl of his lip as he says this suggests he cannot fathom why.

      ‘But not you?’

      ‘No,’ he says, firmly. ‘I would rather confess my sins directly to God, when the need arises.’

      I nod, turning away to hide a smile. The silence is broken by a crackle and a flare from behind me; I turn to see Sidney lighting the lantern. Already, I sense his impatience; he has decided this over-earnest young man is no more than a gossip, lurking to see what details he can scavenge. But I have a feeling that Gilbert has not told us everything. I rest my hand on the latch, as if to close the door, but he seems reluctant to leave.

      ‘I understand you have written books on cosmology, Doctor Bruno, and that you argue the universe is infinite?’ He shuffles as he says this, and blushes, as if he were asking a girl to dance. I acknowledge the truth of it with a tilt of my head. ‘They say your theories have caused a good deal of controversy.’

      ‘So did Mercator’s projection of the globe when he first published it,’ I say. ‘It is hard to persuade people that the world may look different from the way they have always perceived it.’

      He nods vigorously, his face alight. ‘Yes, indeed. I would like so much to discuss these ideas with you in detail, Doctor Bruno. You can imagine, I’m sure, how starved one grows of intellectual discussion among men like this. I pray we will have the chance while you are in Plymouth.’

      I respond with a non-committal murmur and hold the door open for him.

      ‘Well, I shall leave you to your sad task,’ he says, after a pause. He turns, casting a look back at the cabin. ‘Perhaps you may find something of interest in there.’ He smiles, still trying to peer over my shoulder. I return the smile, and politely close the door in his face.

      ‘What sins could a milksop like that have to confess – coveting his neighbour’s astrolabe?’ Sidney rolls his eyes. ‘God’s tears. Do you know what we used to do with fellows like him at Oxford?’

      ‘I wouldn’t like to guess.’

      He grins. ‘Well, that’s you taken care of for the voyage, Bruno. You two can have a wild old time with your measurements and your instruments. Starved of intellectual discussion! He has a fine opinion of himself for a bloody clerk.’

      ‘Ah, leave him alone,’ I say. ‘Help me lift this chest on to the bunk.’

      ‘Oh, I see – just because he’s heard of your books.’ Sidney folds his arms and nods. ‘Suddenly he’s your best friend. Well, I think he’s odd.’

      ‘I don’t disagree. But let’s concentrate on this for now.’

      Between us, we grip the ends of the wooden chest and heft it on to the rumpled bed. It weighs less than I had expected, and we almost lose our balance.

      ‘He was very eager to share his misgivings,’ I remark, watching as Sidney lifts layers of clothes out of Dunne’s chest.

      ‘Probably just glad to have someone listen to him,’ Sidney says, without looking up. ‘I can’t imagine the rest of the crew have much time for a whey-faced scribbler like that.’

      ‘He seemed sincere, though, do you not think?’ I lean against the wall, running through Gilbert’s uninvited confidences in my mind. ‘If he truly suspects that Dunne didn’t kill himself, it must be a relief to unburden his fears. I imagine Drake put an end to any such speculation the minute it was voiced.’

      ‘He wanted to be sure we knew about the Spaniard, though. Do you think there’s anything in that?’

      ‘You mentioned poison earlier as the simplest way to kill a man without suspicion. I wondered why we had not thought of that before. And now we have a resident herbalist who took him a philtre the night he died.’

      ‘But apparently they were friends,’ he points out.

      ‘Gilbert said he saw them talking. That is not necessarily the same thing.’ I suck in my cheeks. ‘I don’t know how we go about asking this Jonas questions without putting him on his guard. Especially if he does have something to hide.’

      ‘You have a knack for that sort of thing,’ Sidney says. ‘That’s why Walsingham values you so highly.’

      ‘I’m not the only one Walsingham values on this ship, apparently.’

      ‘Yes.’ He nods towards the door. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on that clerk. He’s bound to be reporting back. He must not know of our plan to sail with the fleet until we are underway – I don’t want him tattling to Walsingham. Now then – what’s in here?’

      He lifts the last of the clothes out of the chest and throws them down on the bunk with a disgruntled noise. ‘Nothing except shirts, and not very good ones at that.’

      ‘There must be something else.’ I turn slowly, taking in the bare cabin. The yellow light throws sickly shadows up the walls as it sways on its hook with the ship’s motion. Already I feel my own balance knocked off-centre now that we are back on board; that same sense that everything certain and solid has been pulled away from under me. I reach out a hand and lay my palm against the rough wooden wall of the cabin to steady myself. There are so few possessions here, so little to give us any sense of the man whose life had ended swinging from a ceiling beam like a side of beef. I shudder. ‘He was certainly travelling light for someone who expected to be away for a year.’

      Sidney stuffs the clothes into the chest without bothering to fold them and lifts it off the bunk. The ship gives a sudden shift back and forth as if on an unexpected wave, and he staggers with the weight of the chest, dropping it to the floor, narrowly missing his foot. The movement causes the cone of light from the lantern to lurch wildly from side to side, briefly illuminating the shadowy recesses of the cabin.

      ‘Dio mio, what is that?’ I grab the lantern from its hook and fling myself across to the bunk, pulling back the rumpled sheets where a dark red stain blooms on the white linen.

      ‘What have you found?’ Sidney crowds in beside me, curious, his shadow falling across the bed.

      ‘Move back, I can’t see. Here, hold this.’ I hand him the lantern and lift the sheet closer to my face. The stain is dry, the fabric stiff. I lean in and sniff it.

      ‘Wine,’ I say, letting the sheet fall back to the bed. ‘For a moment I thought it was blood.’ I pull the top sheet away to reveal a bottle of dark-green glass, empty, and two stoneware mugs. Both have the dried dregs of wine inside. I stick my nose inside one and sniff.