‘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.’
When he had pulled on his purple robe, he stepped out on to the deck, his silvery hair flying in the salty ocean breeze. Meg followed. No eyes flickered her way. She was unused to that, for she had worked hard to learn how to draw men’s attention, then steal their gold or their papers or their life while they were distracted. In dreamy silence the crew went about their tasks, mending sails, climbing the rigging to the yards, or drawing the lines to bring fresh fish aboard. No singing, no ribald laughter. Duncombe was caught up in his duties, not trusting these jolt-heads to keep them on a safe course.
Never had she felt more alone, though she had been a solitary soul since her chieftain had decided to utilize her natural talents for the good of Ireland. It felt as though she was condemned to purgatory aboard a ship of ghosts.
On the forecastle, Dee peered down at the magic circle he had inscribed in scarlet paint. She watched him take position in the centre of the strange symbols, untroubled by the rolling sea as if his legs were affixed to the deck. For long moments, he bowed his head, beginning one of his monotonous incantations, his words lost beneath the wind.
Red Meg’s chest tightened and she shivered, not with cold but with unease as the shadows thrown across the deck by the masts and the rigging shifted without explanation. Behind her, she thought she heard a sound like a giant snake coiling on the poop deck. As Dee threw his head back and raised his arms, the wind grew stronger. It lashed his hair and whipped the deep sleeves of his robes. Overhead, the sails boomed as they filled to their limit.
She watched the doctor as the carrack surged across the waves, and then, satisfied that he would be distracted for a while, returned to the cabin. Sliding the bolt across the door, she hurried to the chest under the window and searched through the jumble of contents until she found one of the gilt mirrors Dee carried with him for his divinings. In her time with him, she had learned some of his tricks.
When she had studied the charts scattered across the trestle, she set the looking glass in the centre and peered into its depths. The words seared through her mind with such force that she almost recoiled and was momentarily disorientated. Then the mirror clouded over, clearing to reveal a familiar face peering up at her.
‘Will Swyfte,’ she said with a seductive smile. ‘How I have missed those dark eyes.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GOLDEN SPIKES OF morning sunlight glinted off glass. Across the low ceiling of the captain’s cabin, shimmering pools flickered as Will peered into the depths of the obsidian mirror set unsteadily on the trestle table. The pounding of the waves on the hull throbbed through the stifling stale air, loud enough to hide any conversation from prying ears.
In the looking glass, Meg’s lips and eyes teased him as always. Will felt relieved to see she was well. Yet if
