The Merchant of Dreams (13 page)

“Bastards!” Ned panted, catching the doorframe with one flailing hand and bracing his feet against the deck.

One of the sailors ducked and grabbed his ankle, hauling it up so that Ned was now suspended between his captors like a sack of turnips. He struggled as if the very devils of Hell had hold of him, but the doorframe slipped from his grasp and he was carried into the fetid blackness beyond.

Mal twitched awake and heard the cabin door creak shut.

“That you, Ned?”

There was no answer. Mal hitched himself into a sitting position, noting that he felt less queasy than he had done for a while. He turned to see a dark shape moving about the cabin.

“Ned?”

The figure leapt towards him, the sweep of his arm alerting Mal to his intent. Mal dodged and rolled over the side of the cot, landing heavily on the deck as the blade thunked into the wood where he had been lying. He carried on rolling until he was sure he was out of reach, then leapt to his feet. The assassin was between him and his blades, damn him. Mal dodged back around the table. The man hesitated, and Mal cast his mind about the cabin in search of a weapon. A lantern, on the hook behind and to his left. No point in a feint; they could barely see one another in the darkness.

He stepped back and reached up to his left, fingers brushing the lantern’s greasy exterior. In a moment he had it unhooked, and transferred it to his right hand. Throw or swing? The assassin chose that moment to dash around the end of the table. Swing it was, then. He parried the incoming blade and continued to back away around the table. Just a little further, then he could get back to his bunk before his opponent and retrieve his weapons.

A cry rang out in the night air, distant but shrill. Ned? Mal threw the lantern at the assassin and ran for his bunk, scrabbling at the back of the mattress until he found his rapier and dagger. He turned just in time to catch another downward-angled thrust, this time on the sheathed rapier. Seizing the scabbard close to the tip with his other hand, he pushed his opponent backwards. The man staggered and almost fell, giving Mal time to draw both blades.

“That evens the odds, eh?”

The assassin began backing towards the cabin door. Mal lunged, driving the forty-inch blade across the space between them. The man cried out; a hit! Then his heavier blade crashed down on the rapier, driving it towards the deck.

Before Mal could pull the rapier back for another strike, light flooded the cabin.

“What’s all this?” Raleigh bellowed. “Catlyn? And who are you?”

But the would-be assassin had already fled through the other door.

“He won’t get far.” Raleigh crossed the cabin and was out of the door after him with scarcely a glance at Mal. “Master Warburton! Belay that miscreant!”

Mal followed him, blinking against the lantern’s afterimages that danced before his eyes.

Out on deck, his assailant had already been apprehended by three of Raleigh’s men. He cowered back from the captain but did not struggle to break free. There was little point, unless he preferred drowning.

“Who is this man?” Raleigh asked Warburton as the first mate clumped down from the poop-deck.

Warburton looked the man up and down, his white eyebrows twitching.

“Smith, isn’t it?” he said to the man. “Tom Smith.”

Smith said nothing.

“Why were you attacking my passenger?” Smith looked pointedly away, and Raleigh cuffed him round the temple. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, man. Who are you, and what is your purpose on my vessel?”

Smith spat at Raleigh’s feet.

“Take him away,” Raleigh said, gesturing to his men. “He hangs at dawn.”

As the prisoner was led towards the hatch down to the lower decks, the door of the forward cabin opened and Ned limped out. His clothing was torn and half undone, and he sported a split lip and several bruises.

“Dear God in Heaven!” Mal crossed the deck to his friend and slipped an arm under his shoulder to support him. “Who did this?”

Ned shook his head. Mal looked around at the crew, but no one would meet his eye.

“Seems our friend there had accomplices, distracting your manservant so you could be attacked with ease,” Raleigh said. “Master Warburton, half rations for all the men in the third watch until we find out who it was.”

Hansford glowered at the captain.

“I heard Smith whispering and joking with some of the crew,” he said slowly. “Mocking the lad here for being a mite too fond of his master, if you know what I mean, sir.”

“I hope you’re not insinuating anything unseemly about my passengers, Master Hansford.”

“Nay, sir, not I. I’m just saying what I heard.”

“Do you know who these men were?”

Hansford shook his head. “‘Twere dark, cap’n.”

“I see.”

“As for allies, I couldn’t rightly say. We took a few new men on, just afore we sailed.”

“Very well, we’ll look into it further in the morning.” Raleigh looked around at his crew. “Well, what are you waiting for, ye lubbers? Back to work.”

Seeing there was no chance of further progress tonight, Mal helped Ned back inside. They sat on one of the benches in silence until Raleigh had retreated to his own cabin, then Ned began stripping off his soiled clothing. Mal found flint and tinder and lit one of the lanterns, then hung it from a beam where he could get a better look at Ned’s injuries. His friend stood naked and shivering, not meeting Mal’s eye. Dark fingertip-sized bruises were already blooming on his arms where his assailants had seized him, and larger ones marred his back and chest.

Mal retrieved some clean under-linens from his own knapsack and handed them to Ned.

“I should bind your chest,” he said as Ned pulled on the drawers. “You’ve likely cracked a rib or two.”

He took one of the sheets and began ripping it into strips with his dagger.

“You don’t have to–”

“Yes I do. I asked you on this expedition, and if it wasn’t for that assassin wanting to get me alone, you wouldn’t be in this state.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. Hansford was just looking for an excuse–” Ned winced as Mal wound the first bandage around his chest. “I’ve come across his kind before.”

“It was Hansford? The lying bastard.”

“Aye, and a couple of his mates.”

Mal recalled some of the rougher sorts he’d met on campaign, men who took out their frustrations on anyone weaker than them, by any means that amused them. He swallowed.

“Did they…?”

Ned shook his head. “Just roughed me up a bit.”

“I’d like to rough
them
up. With the edge of my blade.” He tucked in the loose end, and tore off another strip of linen. “Hansford will get off scot-free, I suppose. No man is like to betray his superior or his comrades, not for a stranger.”

Ned grunted his agreement.

“Still,” Mal went on, “as Raleigh said, it’s too much of a coincidence that we were attacked at the same time.”

“Perhaps yon assassin did egg them on, then took advantage of the distraction.”

“Perhaps.”

He finished up the bandages, then helped Ned back into his shirt. On impulse, he leaned in to kiss his friend’s temple.

“Don’t,” Ned muttered, pulling away.

Mal nodded in understanding. The last thing Ned wanted to think about was the suspected sin that had earned him this beating. He sheathed the dagger and laid both weapons along the outside edge of the bunk, between him and the door, then settled down next to them.

He lay there for hours, listening to Ned’s breathing slow into sleep, wondering who had sent the assassin aboard. Plenty of people knew he was leaving with Raleigh: Jos Percy, the astronomer Harriot and his friend Shawe, indeed everyone at Raleigh’s supper. Then there was Walsingham and his daughter, and perhaps through her, Grey. Dammit, it could hardly have been more public if he had printed a broadsheet and had it cried through the streets of London. There were too many connections at Court, too many threads linking him to his enemies. Perhaps exile was the only answer after all.

CHAPTER IX

When they got back to Deadman’s Place, Gabriel was in the back garden cutting kale for supper. Coby stopped to help him, glad to be free of Sandy’s company for a while. The kale plants stood in neat rows, their lower leaves yellowed with frost. Most of the other beds were bare, or covered with half-dead weeds.

“Ned tries his best with the garden,” Gabriel said, “but it was such a bad summer we scarcely had a harvest, never mind seed left over for spring. I dare say it’ll turn to wilderness now he’s gone.”

His carefree tone had a brittle edge; Coby guessed he shared her loneliness.

They walked to the end of the garden. Over the hedge they could see the Rose Theatre, taller than any other building in Bankside, and beyond it and to the left… Her breath caught in her throat. A familiar-looking timber framework loomed against the evening sky. With the sun behind it, it almost looked like it was on fire.

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t I mention? They’re building a new theatre on the site of the Mirror.”

“Oh.”

“Apparently it’s going to be called the Swan. Everyone says it’s a pity the name ‘Fortune’ was already taken, since that’s what it’s costing.”

He laughed, and she couldn’t help but smile back. They carried the piles of kale leaves into the kitchen, and Gabriel began tearing them up to add to their pottage. Sandy was sitting at the table with his back to them, reading by candlelight. Probably another of those mathematical treatises they had brought back from Sark. He usually read them at night, since they were in Latin.

Latin. Why would he be reading Latin so early in the evening? Had he put the spirit-guard on already? She moved round to the other side of table, and her guts twisted in panic. It was the red book from the library.

“Grey’s book?” she cried out. “You stole Grey’s book?”

Sandy looked up. Or rather, Erishen. She was already beginning to tell the difference.

“It’s of no use to him.”

“But… You stole it.”

“I believe you already mentioned that.” He turned his attention back to the ciphered text.

“When he finds out, we’ll all be arrested.” She went to the back door and looked out at the darkening sky. “There’s still time to take it back, curfew isn’t for at least another hour. We’ll pretend we left something behind at Suffolk House and–”

“No, I will not give it back. It was not rightfully his to begin with.”

“What’s going on?” Gabriel said, looking round from the hearth. The firelight limned his delicate features, turning him into the image of his namesake, stern and beautiful.

“Master Alexander–” she spat out the formality “–has stolen the book we were supposed to be translating. It belongs to the Duke of Suffolk.”

“It belongs to one of my kinsmen,” Sandy said.

“Your dead kinsman. Long dead.”

“But reborn. According to our laws–”

“I don’t give a fig about ‘your’ laws. This is England. You’ve stolen the duke’s property; that’s a felony, and you will be hanged for it.”

“Enough!” Gabriel said. “Is this true, Catlyn?”

“The book was in the possession of the duke,” Sandy conceded.

“You brought stolen goods into my home?” He seized Sandy by the front of his doublet and hauled him to his feet. “Christ’s bones, man, we could all hang for this.”

“Then we had better leave for France before they come for us,” Coby said.

“Now?” Gabriel said. “It’s almost dark. Where would we get a ship at this time of night?”

“Leave that to me,” Sandy said. “My kinsmen–”

“A pox on your so-called kinsmen!”

“Wait!” Coby cried. “He has a point. The skraylings aren’t happy with all the spy-hunts and executions as it is; I’m sure they’d give Lord Kiiren’s friends sanctuary.”

Gabriel released Sandy, none too gently.

“So I am supposed to abandon my home and friends and flee into exile,” he said in ominously quiet tones, “all because of a madman’s whim?”

“You work for Walsingham too,” she replied. “You know our lives could be forfeit at any moment. Look what happened to Marlowe.”

Gabriel sighed, and shrank from wrathful archangel to a tired, frightened young man.

“I shall go and pack my belongings straight away,” he said, heading for the stairs.

“He will be safer with us,” Sandy said when he was gone.

He would have been safer if we had never come back to England. He would have been safer if Mal and Ned had never met.
But she had not the heart to say so out loud.

Coby went over and over the contents of her knapsack in her mind, afraid she had forgotten something vital. Changes of shirt, drawers and stockings, all of which would no doubt be filthy by the end of the first fortnight; lock-picking tools; paper and a stick of black lead; wash-ball and flannel; comb; her precious supply of desert fire. And of course the knife on her belt and the pair of pistols Mal had given her for her birthday, along with a flask of gunpowder and a small bag of shot.

The gown and small-linens were laid out on the bed. Should she put them on now? Grey was looking for three men, so two men and a woman might evade the search better, but that would mean revealing her sex to her companions. After a moment’s prevarication she folded them up and stuffed them into another sack. That was a decision she wanted to put off as long as possible.

The door opened, making her start.

“Come,” Sandy said. “The guild-house will be closing soon. And bring your belongings. I do not intend to come back here.”

“You will have to learn better manners,” she muttered, swinging her knapsack over her shoulder, “if you are to spend time amongst good Christian folk.”

“Then you can teach me on the way to France.”

Gabriel was waiting for them in the kitchen, already wrapped in a threadbare cloak of ruby velvet lined with silvery rabbit fur.

“Don’t leave anything valuable behind,” Coby said to the actor. “Grey is going to tear this place apart looking for us.”

Gabriel looked about the house. “A good point. I will ensure he finds nothing else of interest here.”