follow.
‘Damn you, Robert. Why can you not control yourself?’ he croaked. ‘Must I spend the rest of my days pulling you back from the brink of another atrocity?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘This is my life in essence.’
After a moment, he heard the aristocrat climb to his feet and move to stand in front of him. Carpenter bowed his head, waiting for the blow. When none came, he looked up to see Launceston holding out a hand to help him to his feet. The pallid face was dappled with bruises.
‘I realize this is a burden for you. I cannot control my urges alone,’ the Earl said, his whispery voice almost lost in the rustling of the leaves.
Carpenter sagged, his guilt magnified. ‘We are both lost souls,’ he muttered. Dazed, the wild pig lurched upright and with a squeal crashed away through the undergrowth.
The aristocrat slipped the dagger into his grey breeches. ‘The world can look as black as pitch, but there are things which bring a little light in. When I first recognized my desires, on the third night of my incarceration in the hole beneath the cellar, with the rats and the beetles scurrying around and my father above ordering the fiddler to play louder to drown out my cries, I thought I would follow a solitary path for the rest of my days. But when you offered me the hand of friendship in my bleakest moment, I realized there was still some hope, even for a rogue like me.’ He hauled the other man to his feet. ‘We are who we are, and we do our best to struggle down this long road, but the journey is better for having someone at your shoulder.’
Carpenter sucked in a calming gulp of air. ‘Then I have a request, from one friend to another.’
‘Anything.’
‘If there comes a time when I ask you to kill me, you must do so without a second thought.’
Launceston blinked slowly, the endless depths of his pale eyes revealing nothing of his thoughts, nor any dismay he might have felt that such an act of friendship would condemn him to the life of loneliness he feared. Carpenter strode away, without waiting to hear if an answer would come.
Back at the beach, he helped load the remaining provisions into the rowing boat, sweating in the mid-morning sun. When they were done, the two men sat in silence for the journey across the waves to the
With everyone now aboard, the small crew spared by Courtenay prepared the ship for departure. Sails were unfurled and the anchor raised. An apprehensive mood seemed to have fallen across everyone, Carpenter noted. On the forecastle, Swyfte leaned against the rail watching the shore where Dee still stood. His mood seemed to have darkened. Was he now regretting taking a path that could only end in death for all of them, Carpenter wondered? Did he feel anything?
As the anchor burst from the waves trailing glistening diamonds, a low, plaintive howl rolled out across the lonely island. Carpenter felt the hairs on his arms prickle at that sound, and he shuddered. Had the Mooncalf somehow survived the destruction of the tower? But when he glanced to the prow, he saw a curious thing: Swyfte was smiling.
On the beach, Dee gave a slow wave and then turned and walked into the trees. Amid the cries of gulls, the
Sanburne, the acting captain, was a seasoned voyager and had accompanied Courtenay on many a foray into enemy waters. Lean and weather-beaten, with a shaven head and a gold hoop in his ear, he was more taciturn than the
Carpenter gripped the rail as the ship bucked. How much simpler it would be to leap into that blue-green swell, he thought, but even if he found the courage, or the cowardice, he was not sure if the Caraprix would let him.
Salt spray misted the air. Above the white-topped waves, a haze hung around the looming rocks. The brassy light thinned, and the temperature dropped in the growing wind.
‘There is no going back now.’ Swyfte had appeared at the rail beside him, his gaze fixed on the Pillars of Medea.
‘An ending is all I want,’ Carpenter muttered.
After a moment, Will said, ‘I would thank you for accompanying me, John. We have had our differences, you and I, but you are a good man.’ Carpenter felt a spike of guilt in his heart at that.
And then the shadow of the basalt columns fell across them, and the sea heaved and they could only grip the rail and pray for the calm waters on the other side. In the boiling cauldron between the pillars, the haze closed around them, and the far horizon and the island both fell from view. Gripping on to the stays, Sanburne stood as if made of stout oak, unyielding in the face of the elements. His barked orders rose above the roaring of the ocean and rang out across the deck with the rhythm of a galley’s drums.
Carpenter craned his neck to look up the length of the black columns. How unnatural they appeared. Through the mist, he thought he could discern carvings of grotesque figures and symbols etched into the rock face, but the tossing of the deck threw him so violently he could not be sure. He shivered in the chill of the shade, but then the
Swyfte was smiling. Carpenter noticed a faraway look in his eyes and wondered what was on his mind. Was he not afraid of what lay ahead?
As the galleon turned towards open waters, Sanburne strode up, frowning. ‘Trouble, captain?’ Will asked.
‘You might say that, Master Swyfte.’ In his right hand, he held out the ship’s compass and with his left he jabbed a finger towards the sky. ‘Though I be bound for Bedlam, it seems we now sail in a world where the sun rises in the west.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
BLOOD PUDDLED ON the stone flags. Five bodies lay scattered across Queen Elizabeth’s antechamber in the Palace of Whitehall, all good men and true, all despatched in an instant by the thing that had swooped through the open window on leathery wings. Cecil hauled himself on to shaking legs from the corner where he had cowered like a frightened child. His white ruff was now stained, and more blood speckled his right cheek, but he had survived, by little more than the grace of God.
As he wiped his face clean with his kerchief, he looked around the scene of slaughter and tried to compose himself. How close they had come to disaster this time. The door to Her Majesty’s bedchamber flew open and a rush of bodies swept out: the Queen herself, wrapped in a cloak of midnight blue, her frail body hunched over, her face hidden in the depths of a cowl; Essex at her elbow, aglow in his white doublet and hose as he guided her towards safety; and three pikemen with faces like Kentish ragstone.
Essex flashed an anxious glance at the spymaster as he went. What passed between them moved from desperation to dread. How much longer could they carry on this way was the question they asked each morn when the sun finally rose. The threat crept ever closer to Her Majesty’s door. Soon they would not be able to repel it.
Once Essex had led the Queen out of the antechamber, silence settled, but only for a moment. Raleigh slipped in, the pink lining of his half-compass cloak looking unnecessarily flamboyant in that butcher’s shop. ‘Gone, like the wind,’ he said, going over to the open window and looking out across London. ‘Our Enemy never fail to find inventive ways to make us suffer.’
‘You speak as if you envy them their skill in murder,’ Cecil snarled.
‘I respect a dedicated foe. That is the only way to find a means to defeat them.’ The adventurer inhaled a deep draught of the cool air, scented with the coal-smoke from the first home fires of the day.
‘One day the Queen will find you skulking around the palace, and then your only view will be of the rats in your cell in the Tower,’ the spymaster muttered. He joined the other man at the window, relieved to see the first silver streaks of dawn. ‘Food is short and people starve. Fresh water is fouled and cows deliver young with two
