S. Parris - Treachery

‘Why did he do that?’

Gilbert shrugs. This part of the puzzle has no meaning for him any more. ‘I didn’t understand what he was saying. He kept telling Dunne that he should have no regard for the lies of a common whore, and if he ever repeated them things would only be worse for the girl. I don’t know what girl he was talking about.’

‘What did Dunne say to that?’

‘He was only half-conscious. He didn’t really listen. He just started babbling to Pettifer about hell and the Devil, and whether God could ever forgive sins as black as his. Pettifer said he would assure Dunne of absolution, as long as he didn’t go about repeating slanders.’

I nod to myself. Pettifer certainly knew how to use his position to guard his own dirty secrets. ‘Was Dunne reassured?’

‘I don’t think he was listening. It was clear he wasn’t in his right mind — he just kept moaning about how his soul was damned and he deserved to die for what he had done. I thought he was consumed with guilt over blackmailing me.’

‘Not quite,’ I say. ‘Did that make it easier?’

‘Not really.’ He picks at the quick of his fingernails. ‘Eventually Pettifer gave up. He said they’d talk again when Dunne was sober. I heard the door close behind him but I had to stay under the bunk until I was sure Dunne was asleep. I found a length of rope in the cavity. I guessed Dunne had used it to tie his trunks together when they were brought aboard. But it gave me an idea.’

‘String him up and make it look like he did it himself.’

‘If you’d heard him — I knew the chaplain would confirm that he had been in a state of despair. He would believe Dunne was overcome by his demons some time after they had spoken, so the rest would accept it too. It seemed like the perfect solution. Except that he was so heavy.’

‘You smothered him first?’

He nods, staring at the wall, his eyes unfocused. ‘I locked the cabin. He was sleeping face down. I sat astride him, kept my knees on his arms and pressed his face into the pillow. He was too deep in drink to fight much. It was moving him off the bed was the hard part. I was amazed no one heard us.’

‘You did not think that a man who dies by hanging looks different from one who was smothered? That it might arouse suspicion?’

He pushes a clump of hair out of his eyes. ‘I didn’t think of that, no. Not till afterwards — I overheard Drake discussing it with his brother the next day. At the time all I wanted was to get out. I locked the cabin behind me to delay anyone finding him and threw the key into the water.’

‘No one saw you leave?’

‘No. But the Spaniard was awake when I went below decks. He asked where I’d been. I said measuring the stars and he left it at that. But it didn’t take long the next day before I realised Drake was not convinced by the appearance of suicide. I thought, if that gets out, Jonas will mention me.’

‘So you saw a way to silence him and clear up any doubt about Dunne’s death at one stroke.’ It is not even a question any more.

‘I knew Jonas would not say anything to Drake until he was certain,’ Gilbert says. His voice has grown flat and emotionless; he is no longer justifying himself, merely recounting a series of events that already seem like the distant past. ‘I asked him if I could speak to him in private, away from the others, that night we all went ashore. I led him up on to the Hoe cliffs.’ He gives a weary shrug, as if the rest is hardly worth the telling.

‘If only he had not been illiterate, you would have been safe,’ I say.

‘Perhaps.’ His chin drops to his chest; he appears to have lost interest in me. We sit in silence for a few minutes. I can feel the smell seeping into my clothes, my hair, my skin.

‘Have you told Drake that you were giving false information to the Spanish?’ I ask eventually.

He looks at me as if I have lost my wits. ‘You imagine he would credit that? He would accuse me of lying. In any case, he will not lower himself to ask me. He will leave that job to Walsingham and his friends.’ A shiver jars his thin frame at the prospect.

‘Tell them everything,’ I say quickly. ‘That is what I came to advise you — do not try to hold anything back out of some misplaced loyalty to your Spanish paymasters. You will talk one way or another, and it were better you do it willingly.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that? I know Walsingham. I know what he does.’ He swallows hard. ‘But I have no loyalty to the Spanish. If I had, I would not have lied to them, would I?’

‘Then why do it at all?’

He makes a small noise of contempt through his nose. ‘Money — why else? They paid me well for what they thought were Drake’s plans. Of course they did.’ He gives a rueful laugh that teeters on the edge of tears.

‘But you worked for Walsingham — for the Queen. They would have paid you handsomely, surely? You were going to be England’s first renowned cartographer, you told me.’

He looks up at me and fixes me with his pale, urgent stare. ‘That was the problem.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They informed me, after I had agreed to the voyage, that the maps I made for Queen Elizabeth would never be published. That was part of my commission. They were supposed to be kept secret to preserve England’s advantage over the Spanish.’ He swipes the back of his knuckles across his eyes and the chains clank ominously as he moves. ‘The thought of all that work, locked away in the dark, seen by no one but a handful of naval captains. I could not let that happen, don’t you see? Maps should not be tools of war, kept close by one country to gain power over another. I wanted my maps published and read. How else are we supposed to advance our knowledge of the world? The Spanish Ambassador offered me a great deal of money. But he also promised that, when I returned, he would have my work published in the Low Countries at his own expense.’

‘And afterwards? How did you imagine you would return to England, once you had published maps that were supposed to be state secrets?’

‘I did not intend to return. The Spanish Ambassador promised me a pension for life.’ He lowers his voice. ‘You only have to look how things are tending. Drake is brave, certainly, but there will be war with the Spanish soon and we do not have a hope of defending ourselves against invasion, not with all Spain’s power. I thought a clever man was one with a view to his own future.’ He chews his bottom lip and falls silent.

‘It didn’t occur to you that the Spanish might be less friendly when they realised all your information had been false?’

‘They would just have assumed Drake had changed his plans.’

He is naïve if he thinks the Spanish Ambassador would be so easily fooled, but then he has been naïve all along; it is no help to him to point it out now.

‘You almost got away with it.’ I rise painfully to my feet. ‘And now your maps will never be made. By God, Gilbert — you risked your life and took others for the sake of your own ambition? Was it worth it?’

His lips curve into a painful smile. ‘I thought it worth the gamble. History remembers the men who dare greatly in the pursuit of knowledge, Bruno. Without them, there would be no progress. To be one of those men who changed the course of the world — that is what I dreamed of. I would have thought you of all people would understand that. Have you not also risked your life to publish your books?’

I meet his eye. He is right; I recognise the desire that burns in him. The ferocity of a scholar’s ambition for his work can rival that of a father for his child. I have been guilty of it myself, but enough to betray my country? I never had a chance to consider that — my country rejected me first. I chose a life of exile for the sake of my books. And if I had to kill to give them life, or die for them, would I do it? I could not entirely discount the idea.