her choose her words carefully, ‘foolishness. Too much is at stake. Too much invested in this expedition. You would not be able to raise the funds for another voyage for months, if at all.’
‘She is right,’ Carpenter whispered in Will’s ear, bracing himself against the movement of the deck beneath his feet. ‘If we turn back, we lose everything. You have no right to make that decision to save this woman, however much she means to you.’
‘Please,’ Strangewayes begged, arms outstretched. The word was almost lost beneath the creak of the rigging and the boom of the wind in the sails. ‘Grace
Will hid his dismay and beckoned to Grace. Carpenter was correct; he had no choice. Holding her chin high, she followed him back on to the poop deck where the crew could not overhear their conversation. ‘What have you done, Grace?’
‘I can cope with any hardship. I have in me the heart of a lion, like our Queen.’ She turned away from his damning gaze and looked out over the heaving blue-grey swell.
‘You have led a sheltered life-’
She spun round, her cheeks colouring. ‘Sheltered? My life was destroyed when my sister was torn from the heart of my family, as was yours. If I can survive that misery, I can survive anything.’
Will saw her pain, still raw after all those years, and changed his approach. ‘I know there is steel in you. But even with all that you have endured, you have barely scraped the surface of the dangers that exist in the world. You must trust me on that.’
Seeing that he had only her well-being at heart, she softened. ‘I know you wish to protect me, as you have always done, but I have had my fill of being pushed aside like a girl and told only what is good for me. I believed Jenny dead, but your unwavering faith has given me hope and that, somehow, is more painful by far.’ Tears stung her eyes. ‘Over the years, I have grown to understand the secrets hidden in your words, and between your words and behind them.’ She laughed, brushing the teardrops aside. ‘Perhaps I would make a good spy.’
‘And what secrets have you learned?’
She lowered her eyes and whispered, ‘The ones in your heart, the ones in mine. I would rather be dead than suffer any longer in this twilight world filled only with ghosts and what-might-have-beens.’
Will understood, completely, and hated himself for it. ‘You vex me, Grace,’ he sighed.
She smiled, taking it as a compliment. ‘When Nat returned to the palace with your message, I made him tell me what you had planned.’ She saw his face harden and added hurriedly, ‘Do not blame Nat. He is a good soul and I can twist him round until he tells me anything. He thought he was doing me a kindness by telling me you had survived, but while his back was turned I took a carriage to Tilbury.’
‘And you crept on board and hid away.’
‘On the orlop deck, sneaking down to the bilge when anyone came.’
Despite himself, Will felt some admiration. ‘You are very determined,’ he said, showing a stern face. ‘But now you have created a great problem for me. I fear what you might see on this terrible journey. And whatever you may say, my men cannot help but try to protect you when danger arises, and by doing so they will put their own lives at greater risk.’
‘I would not see any of them hurt on my behalf.’
‘Nevertheless, that is the grave situation in which we now find ourselves. How to proceed?’ His brow knit, he glanced out to sea, but saw only that strange, troubling cloud on the far horizon. What had already seemed dire was now fraught with even greater dilemmas. ‘I must think on this awhile. Go to Tobias, but do not distract him from his duties. He will find you a berth in the captain’s cabin and curtain it with sailcloth. You must stay away from the men at all costs, do you understand?’
She nodded. In her brightening eyes, he thought he saw a glimmer of excitement. For all the danger, she was enjoying her great adventure. At the top of the steps, she glanced back. ‘Will, I am sorry if I have angered you, but to ease this pain in my heart, I would risk anything.’ He held her gaze for a long moment, and then she descended to find Strangewayes, ignoring the lingering stares of the crew.
‘Master Swyfte,’ Courtenay bellowed from the main deck, ‘I would have that course now. The Atlantic is not the pond at Baldock Green. We can sail around here till Doomsday without ever stumbling across our destination.’
‘Prepare your charts, captain,’ Will called back. ‘I will have your settings in no time.’ His hand fell to the leather pouch hanging at his side, feeling the weight of the secret he had concealed. All the risks he had taken, all the deceptions, and all the plans he had made, were coming to a head. This ship of fools had passed the point of no return and only darkness lay ahead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The naked woman bucked and writhed above the old man. The rhythmic creak of the narrow bed echoed around the captain’s dusty cabin, accompaniment to a symphony of moans. The waves lapped. The hull groaned. Flushed from their ardour, Red Meg O’Shee wiped the sweat from her pale forehead with the back of her slender hand. Beneath her, Dr Dee grunted, his grey eyes glassy. Though she ground her hips and swung her breasts and used every love-making skill she had mastered in her hard life, the Irish spy felt that the magician was almost oblivious of her presence. She knew he was aroused; his hardness inside her was testament to that. Yet his gaze searched only an inner horizon and his lips moved in whispered conversation with things she could not see. Sometimes she thought she heard responses from the corners of the cramped cabin, and then her arms prickled into gooseflesh.
She hid her distaste for what she endured. This was business, no more, and she had long since grown inured to the demands of staying alive in a trade not known for the longevity of its practitioners. But she wondered how much longer she could continue this way. Since she had stolen Dee from under the noses of the English, she had kept him bewitched with her thighs and the stupor-inducing concoctions she had been taught to mix by the wise women in the green hills of her homeland. But after Liverpool, other devils rode him.
She had watched him weave his magics with mirrors, hunched over their glittering surfaces uttering a guttural language that sounded like pebbles dropped on wood. In response, she had seen the shadows seem to lengthen around the cabin, and move of their own accord. And as of that moment he had been like a man drifting through a dream, ignoring her honeyed whispers as he took command of the vessel. The crew had fallen further under his insidious influence, going about their work in silence with the same glassy-eyed distraction. Captain Duncombe had stood by her at every turn.
As the west coast of Ireland faded from view, she sensed other, unseen passengers aboard, voices whispering down in the bilge or on the gun deck or the orlop deck, although each proved empty whenever she investigated. Flickers of movement in shadowy corners, gone when she looked directly. The nights were worse, until she had become afraid to sleep. A haunted ship carried her away from all she knew, she could deny it no longer.
She felt Dee’s muscles grow taut and raised herself off him before he spilled his seed, finishing with her mouth in a manner that would have drawn admiration from the doxies along Bankside. Once done, she whispered in his ear, ‘You have made my head spin, as always, my sweet. I am caught in your spell.’
‘I have business on deck,’ he muttered, pushing her aside. Meg flashed a murderous glance, but hid it before the doctor saw, though she doubted he would have cared; he already appeared to have forgotten her.
‘Where do we sail, my love?’ she asked, as she had many times, in her gentlest voice.
‘West,’ he grumbled, distracted. ‘Where the dead live.’
She sighed at his usual reply, climbing off the bed to tie back her red hair with a green ribbon that matched her eyes. While she pulled on her white linen smock, Dee prowled around the cabin with the vitality of a man half his age. At ease with his nakedness, he tugged at his beard as he examined charts, then stood at the window and watched the white wake trailing from the carrack’s stern. ‘I know,’ he snapped to no one she could see. ‘We will be there when we are there.’
