S. Parris - Treachery

I glance down at the letter in my hand as I approach the Mayor’s front door. It is curious to think of Elizabeth Tudor writing this in her own hand, barely able to contain her indignation as she dips her quill. The writing is bold and swooping, with long tails and loops, the signature underscored with curlicues. It is a confident hand, but the quill has been pressed so hard to the page that the ink has spattered and blotched in places. This is a letter that expresses its depth of feeling in its imperfections, a letter written in the heat of sovereign anger. She absolutely forbids Sidney to sail with Drake, on pain of withdrawing patronage from both of them. If he leaves court now, she tells him, he had better not bother to return. He is to be on the road the day he receives this letter, without delay, and bring Dom Antonio directly to court as promised. She is calling her puppy to heel, snapping her fingers to watch him come running. And he has no choice. No wonder he is boiling. I only hope I have arrived in time to stop him throwing a punch at Drake; I have a feeling Sidney would come off worse.

I might be entitled to feel deceived too, I think, as I wait for my knock to be answered. I have put my life in danger to help Drake this past week, for a promised reward that he knew all along he had no intention of giving. True, I did it for Sidney’s sake, and for Lady Arden’s, but it is hard to escape the feeling that Drake has made use of us.

I can hear raised voices as I am shown along a passage to the parlour we visited yesterday. But before the maid reaches the door, we are intercepted by Lady Drake, who puts a finger to her lips, slips her arm through mine and leads me through the house to the garden door, despite my protests.

‘Better you leave them to sort out their differences,’ she whispers, nodding back to the parlour, where Sidney’s aggrieved tone competes with Drake’s lower, mollifying cadences. I cannot make out their words, but I hardly need to. ‘Sir Philip is very angry, isn’t he?’ she adds. ‘Poor thing. I know how much he wanted this adventure. But on the whole, my husband does better to upset him than the Queen, don’t you think? Besides, he may not be so furious when he hears what my husband proposes instead.’ She leans closer, as if to impart a great secret, and giggles, a hand pressed to her lips. There is a girlish quality about Lady Drake, I think, as I bend my head to play along, which some men would find alluring, though I have always preferred the sort of woman who is unafraid to look a man in the eye as one adult to another. ‘He thinks you and Sir Philip and Dom Antonio should be our guests for a few days at Buckland Abbey, before you leave for London.’

‘Sir Francis is not staying in Plymouth?’

She shakes her head, impatient. ‘Of course he is. Once he has seen Jonas buried, he is anxious to set sail as soon as possible, but first he wants me and my cousin away from Plymouth. We are to return home tomorrow, in your company, if Sir Philip is agreeable. I think we could make your stay a pleasant one.’ She pauses for a knowing smile. ‘But for now, Bruno, I think it would do you good to take the air,’ she adds, propelling me out into the courtyard.

I see Nell sitting on a bench in the shade of an apple tree, affecting to read a book. She does not raise her eyes until the last moment, when she feigns surprise and shyness at my arrival. Her hair is bound up and dressed in a narrow French hood to disguise the damage done by the fire, and she wears a silk scarf around her throat to cover the bruises left by the rope. Though she is pale, the cuts on her face are less prominent and her eyes have regained something of their sparkle. There is a new awkwardness between us as she places her book carefully beside her and offers me a tentative smile, though her eyes grow wide at the sight of my new injuries.

I make a small bow. ‘My lady. You are looking rested. How are you feeling?’

‘I look hideous, Bruno, there is no need to lie about it,’ she says, gingerly touching the cut on her cheek. ‘And you have looked better yourself, if we are being truthful. But bruises will mend, and we are alive, thank God.’ She laughs, though I can see it still pains her to swallow. ‘Sir Francis says you were extremely brave and caught the killer.’

I offer a modest shrug. ‘He gave himself away, really. Poor boy.’

She arches an eyebrow. ‘How can you pity him? He will be executed as a traitor, Sir Francis says.’ She gives a delicate shudder. I have the impression she rather relishes the prospect. I can only assume she has never witnessed a traitor’s execution.

‘He will probably die of fright before they get him near the Tower.’ I take a seat on the bench beside her. Gilbert knew that what he did was treason, even before he committed murder for it, and he would have understood the penalty: the slow journey to Tyburn on the hurdle, the sight of the gallows and, beside it, the scaffold with the butcher’s block and the brazier, where you would be laid after choking a few minutes at the end of the rope, to have your genitals cut off, your torso slit open from throat to navel, your entrails unwound on a stick before your eyes and your heart cut out and thrown into the fire. Anyone who has watched such an execution can never scrub those images from his memory; with that end in mind, you would need a compelling reason to betray your country.

I still do not understand what drove Gilbert. He had none of the traits of a religious fanatic, that I could see. Quite the opposite: he considered himself a man of science, so I thought, but some of these young converts learn to hide it well. Perhaps we would never know, unless he spoke up in the Tower. I wince at the thought.

Nell reaches over and eases her hand across mine. I find myself twining my fingers with hers, though it is hard to drag my mind away from images of what awaits Gilbert once he is taken to London.

‘But you are not too distraught at being forbidden to sail with Sir Francis?’ She says this with a knowing look.

‘I can stomach the disappointment. But Sidney is livid. He is young — he longs for adventure.’

‘And you?’

‘Not so young any more. As for adventure — I do not seek it out, but it seems to follow me regardless. I don’t need to cross an ocean to find it.’

‘So I have learned,’ she says, touching the scarf at her throat. She traces small patterns on the back of my hand with her fingertips. Goosebumps rise on my skin. ‘Bruno …’ she begins, hesitant. ‘There in the crypt, when we thought … I spoke a little recklessly, I fear. I pushed you to say something you did not mean.’

‘My lady, Nell …’ I say, though I am not sure how to continue.

‘Come, Bruno, let us at least be frank with one another. You do not love me — you barely know me, nor I you. I like your company, better than I have any man’s for a long while. That night, I imagined that if we survived I might be bold enough to defy every convention, but-’ She breaks off and squeezes my arm, her expression full of regret. ‘I am not so green that I can forget the distance between us.’

I nod. An unexpected sadness swells in my throat; not at the loss of her so much as at the reminder that this is how it will always turn out for me. I have learned, to my cost, that to love someone means lowering my defences, and in a life like mine I cannot afford to do that.

She leans her head against my shoulder. ‘I wish it could be otherwise, Bruno. I curse the obligations of rank sometimes, but there it is. In another life, you would have been the sort of man I looked for. But since I am not free to choose, I think for the present I am happier with no husband. Perhaps neither one of us is made for marriage, eh?’ She smiles. ‘Though I must confess I would have loved to see my family’s faces if I introduced you as my betrothed. Especially Cousin Edgar the boar. They would be lost for words.’