Later, in her chamber, by the light of the tallow candle set beside the bed, Bianca reaches out to the hillock that her knees make of the coverlet. Propped there are two documents, the ink now dry, the words no longer deniable. They cannot be smudged into non-existence. They stand. It has taken all her courage to write them, because she knows that if they are read by anyone but herself, she will be dead.
I, Bianca Merton, formerly of the city of Padua, now residing in Bridge Ward Without, in the borough of Southwark, being reconciled unto God in the sure and lasting knowledge of resurrection, do here-within make my wilclass="underline"
To my well-beloved friends Ned and Rose Monkton, I leave the Jackdaw Tavern and all its stock, plate, furnishings, revenues and incomes in perpetuity, even down to their heirs. I do this in the trust that Timothy Norden, taproom boy, and Farzad Gul (a Moor), shall remain employed there for as long as they shall desire, and that they share in one tithe of the said revenues until the end of their days.
To my right beloved friend Nicholas Shelby, physician, I leave my father’s books, in the sure knowledge he will treasure them. He knows well the cost to him that wrote them of speaking against the prevailing thought and custom of the day. I leave him also my father’s silver Petrine cross – in memoriam of the faith I bore unto the said Nicholas, and in repentance for the words I left unspoken.
Bianca sets down the Will beside the bolster. She takes up the second document. It has taken her longer to write, because the words carry a weight that has made them harder to prise out of her heart.
I know not if you are on land or sea. But you are not here, and it would bring me great ease if you were.
It is no great trial to face death when He stands beckoning at the door. I have kept as faithful to the one true Religion as dwelling amidst heresy will permit, and I know God will take account of that when He determines how long I shall remain in Purgatory. Prayers for the soul are not permitted under England’s new faith, I know. But you are not a man who holds much with conformity. So pray for Bianca Merton’s soul, Nicholas Shelby.
I know now why you are compelled to remain so restless. You are searching for a truth that will not break, the moment you first step upon its shore. But know this: there is no such continent to be discovered, Nicholas. Not in this world.
I should not have sent you from me with harsh words. When Timothy found you that day, cast up on the shore, I knew you were a talisman, brought into my world by a goodly providence. And so has it proved to be. That I have not told you of my true feeling is my error alone. So I tell you now, Nicholas Shelby, that I love you.
Know this, Nicholas Shelby, that should I chance upon your Eleanor in heaven, I shall make all deference to her and say: The unbreakable truth he seeks was always there in his heart, and I could not sway him from it.
So now, as is the practice of my faith, I shall make my last confession before Almighty God. And I do so with you and Eleanor foremost in my thoughts.
I confess the sin of Envy.
18
‘He died in the night,’ says Connell casually. ‘It’s probably for the best. Hortop rests with God now.’ He gives a casual nod towards the far horizon.
‘You mean you cast his body overboard?’
‘What else would you have me do?’ Connell asks with a derisive shrug. ‘I can’t have a corpse aboard, Dr Shelby. Even a landlubber physician should know that.’
‘Why wasn’t I woken?’
‘You’re more use to me rested. Unless of course you can bring the dead back to life. Can you do that, Dr Shelby?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then why the concern?’
‘I could have confirmed he was dead.’
‘Confirmed?’ says Connell, his scoured brow rising. It makes Nicholas think of a serpent’s skin sliding over its bones. ‘Do you think I would have cast him out of the ship for being naught but a nuisance – while he still lived, Dr Shelby?’
‘No, of course not, but–’
‘I had money invested in that young boy. Why would I let Neptune have him for free?’ Connell scans the sky, apparently satisfied by the breaking cloud. ‘We should have a goodly sight of the sun soon, to fix our latitude. So I’ll attend to my duties, if you’d be so good as to attend to yours. If we have any more calamities aboard, I hope your physic proves more effectual that it did with poor Master Hortop.’
What did he expect of me? Nicholas wonders as he lies in his crypt above the crates of matchlock muskets. The boy’s back was broken. I’m a physician, not a worker of miracles.
He closes his eyes. Tries to catch up on lost sleep. The swaying of the Righteous has become almost comforting, now that the storm has passed. He rocks from side to side in the darkness, listening to the groaning of the hull and the snores of the sailors off-watch. But a nagging question keeps uncoiling itself in his mind like a worm in a grave: did Cathal Connell really have the living body of Edmund Hortop thrown into the sea?
It is a vigorous worm, with teeth that will not let go of Nicholas’s imagination. At length he climbs out of the hammock and goes back to the place behind the ladder. The hatch above is still open. But instead of a deathly grey light, sunshine now floods down onto the planks, illuminating a square a yard wide, which moves gently around the deck as the Righteous ploughs on through the sea.
Nicholas stands over the spot where he last attended to Hortop. A terrible image jumps into his mind – of the young apprentice, eyes rolling in terror as he realizes what the men lifting his makeshift stretcher intend.
He knows Connell could never have contrived it without the help of several men, and the tacit silence of anyone who might have woken and witnessed what was happening. Which means – if he’s right in his suspicions – that he’s in the power of a crew of murderers. He wonders what might have happened if he himself had not been in so deep a slumber.
As it sweeps to the motion of the ship, the square of sunlight picks out Hortop’s discarded mariner’s gabardine coat lying against the bulkhead. Nicholas stoops to retrieve it. It doesn’t seem right to leave it there.
As he lifts it up, a folded parchment with the remains of a heavy wax seal still attached lands with a secretive slap on the deck. Nicholas recognizes it as one of the documents he’d seen Reynard Gault of the Barbary Company hand Cathal Connell before the Righteous sailed – the same papers he’d watched the apprentices studying after the exercising of the cannon, huddled together in deep concentration as though revising for an examination. His memory echoes Gault’s words to him now: These are the young gentlemen’s… Keep them safe. A goodly profit depends upon them…
Nicholas looks up to check the hatchway is clear, then around at the sleeping, off-watch crew. Why he does this, he is not certain. Perhaps it is the thought that some of the men presently snoring in their hammocks within a few feet of him might be the very same men who hauled Hortop up the ladder to his death. Satisfied that he is not observed, Nicholas opens up the single sheet of expensive vellum.
The proximity of the deck beams requires him to stoop a little, his body shading the document. He moves closer to the shifting square of sunlight.