S. Parris - Treachery

Sidney crouches beside me, shining the lantern into the corners. I lay on my front and wriggle my head and shoulders into the hole, pressing my hands around the boards on the floor and sides.

‘What are you looking for?’ Sidney asks, passing the light in to me.

‘I don’t know. But where would you hide anything valuable, if not in the chest? There must be something in here.’ My voice is muffled by the enclosed space. ‘He was going to sea for a year or more, you’d think he would have brought some personal possessions with him. Some memento of home. This room is so spartan, it seems wrong.’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to be reminded of home,’ Sidney says. ‘Maybe he saw it as a chance to escape all that.’

I say nothing. I have a feeling he is not thinking about Dunne. Just as I am on the verge of conceding defeat, I notice some scratch marks on one of the wooden planks at the back of the storage cavity. I place the light beside me, stretch awkwardly to my belt for my knife, and slip the blade in under the board to prise it up. It lifts easily to reveal a small recess. I reach in and retrieve a fat leather-bound book with an ornate jewelled clasp.

‘What have you got?’ Sidney asks, impatient.

‘An English testament, by the look of it. Here, hold this.’

I wriggle out backwards, hand him the lantern and brush myself down. We sit together on the bunk, heads bent close over the book. He undoes the clasp and opens the stiff cover to the first page.

‘Well, I’ll be whipped,’ Sidney whispers.

A hole has been cut in the pages of the book, very precisely, identical on every page, all the way through to the back cover. Inside it is a velvet purse with a drawstring. I lift it out and test the weight.

‘Let’s have a look,’ Sidney says, holding out his hand. I tip the purse up and five bright coins jangle into his open palm. Sidney whistles.

‘Five gold angels. Christ’s bones! I thought Robert Dunne was supposed to have gambled away his last groat. Where would he get a sum like this?’

‘Perhaps he won it.’

‘Unlikely, from everything we’ve heard. We should take this to Drake. It’s an old trick, this, you know.’ He pokes the cavity cut out of the book. ‘This is how Catholics often smuggle vials of chrism and holy water through the ports. Revenue officers don’t think to look inside books. Let’s see if there’s anything else under there.’ Sidney rests one knee on the planks and leans in with the lantern to grope around in the space beneath the boards. ‘Ha! What have we here?’

He passes me a folded paper and reaches back inside, bringing out a tarnished metal coin.

‘Look at this.’ He holds it out on the flat of his palm. Peering closer, I see that it is about the size of a sovereign, but of cheap metal, imprinted not with the Queen’s image but with an insignia depicting a flame above a dish. ‘What do you make of that? It looks like no coin I’ve ever seen. Foreign, do you think?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t think it’s a coin at all. More likely some sort of token — a private currency, perhaps? Though it is not a symbol I recognise.’

He examines it, shrugs. ‘Let’s take a look at the paper, then.’

The letter has been sealed with crimson wax, and the seal is neatly broken in two. I unfold it and hold it out so Sidney can read it with me.

Will Bryte

Edward Morgan

Abe Fletcher

Robert Dunne

Francis Knollys

Thomas Drake

Francis Drake

A line has been drawn through the first three names on the list. Sidney looks up at me, a glint of excitement in his eye.

‘What do you make of this?’

I scan the list. ‘I’d like to know if Bryte, Morgan or Fletcher were either of the two men Lady Drake mentioned — the jurymen from Thomas Doughty’s trial who died this year.’

‘I don’t recognise those names, but that was my first thought. I’ll wager you are right. Is this list in Dunne’s own writing, I wonder?’

I open the book again. On the top right-hand corner of the inside cover, the name R. Dunne is written in ink, and below it, Plymouth 1577 . The curling loops on the R and D are quite different from the script on the list of names.

‘If Dunne wrote his own name in his book, then I would say no. Turn the paper over.’

Sidney holds out the back of the sheet, where the paper was folded and sealed. In the same hand is written ‘Master Robert Dunne’.

Sidney bends closer to examine the wax. ‘No imprint. Whoever sent it knew it would mean something to Dunne. But why send him a list of names that includes his own?’

‘A threat, perhaps. Letting him know that his time is coming. Though it seems odd to give a man warning that you plan to kill him.’

‘And implying that you intend to strike at Drake and his brother as well,’ Sidney says, rubbing his chin. ‘Why did Dunne say nothing to Drake?’

I look sideways at him. ‘Perhaps he had good reason not to.’

‘How so?’

I sit on the edge of the bunk, tracing the raised pattern the jewels make on the book’s cover with my fingertips. ‘What do we know of Robert Dunne? A gentleman, though deeply in debt. One of the jurymen who condemned Thomas Doughty to execution seven years ago. Which makes him one of John Doughty’s targets for revenge.’

‘If the John Doughty story is true,’ Sidney says, leaning against the door. ‘It might be nothing more than rumour and coincidence.’

‘True. But I am just trying to set out all the possibilities. We know that Robert Dunne was an obsessive gambler, and that he was using this voyage to escape his creditors.’

‘We also know that he expected to come into money in the not too distant future, if your twitchy friend the cartographer is to be believed.’

‘He’s not my friend. But yes. Dunne may have meant his spoils from the voyage, but what if he meant something else? And we’re told that he had been seen more than once in the company of a couple of strangers — meetings he clearly didn’t want his fellow sailors to know about.’

‘Then there’s the Judas book, and the dealer we presume to be Rowland Jenkes. Dunne was mixed up in that, don’t forget. And now this mysterious purse. Maybe he stole it from someone, who killed him in revenge?’

‘Or maybe it was some kind of payment.’

Sidney looks at me expectantly. When I make no reply, he shrugs. ‘It’s a tangle.’

I tuck the letter inside my doublet. ‘We should ask Drake about this list. If this is the jury that condemned Thomas Doughty, it may shed some light. Didn’t you say John Doughty went to prison because it was alleged that the Spanish had recruited him to assassinate Drake?’

Sidney narrows his eyes. ‘So it was said at court, but-’

‘And suppose that were true? If you were John Doughty, bent on revenge, how would you go about it? Drake travels with armed men wherever he goes, and he would recognise you a mile off, so how would you ever get near him? If you were clever, might you not recruit someone to do the job for you? Someone who could get close to Drake without him suspecting anything?’

He stares at me. ‘Someone like Robert Dunne, you mean?’

‘It is no small task to persuade a man to take another’s life. Especially when the man concerned is considered a hero. You would need to find someone who is vulnerable to coercion in some way. This might be an advance payment.’ I tap the purse with my forefinger.

‘Philip of Spain has offered twenty thousand ducats to the man who rids him of El Draco. That would be incentive enough for many. You think John Doughty aimed to use Dunne to assassinate Drake, for a share of the reward?’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s quite a convoluted theory, Bruno.’