Treachery

‘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.