She who rises up in strength

Chapter Thirty

Mariner has often imagined what the inside of Bridewell prison would be like. No criminal in Southwark has not done so, they trade stories about it, but none told her of how they would strip her out of her shirt, to determine she was in fact a woman. Mariner feels herself fold in upon herself, like ancient drawings of ships taken by kraken and leviathans, bucking in the centre, masts cracking, to be pulled asunder. She says nothing as they unwrap her bindings in the small room the guards kept for their own meals and work. She makes no sound or movement as they poke the skin of her breasts experimentally and make comments that she is, in fact, a lovely size for such a short-haired unnatural thing. She does not fight when they lead her to the deepest part of the prison, low under the earth where there is nothing to smell but dank straw and people’s waste and where sludge of the streets that pours through the high, barred, open windows when the rain comes. There is only one other prisoner there, buried under a pile of filthy straw, unmoving.

Spectators come, the guards let them down for a penny, to eye her fine breeches and shirt with its delicate embroidery and to speculate if she had been an imposter or perhaps a man had decided to cut her hair and dress her up to fuck her. They watch and wait for her to piss in the bucket to find out if she has a cock hidden. She thinks often of Kit, of the way Lazarus held his hand behind the dead body of his father, that earnest, protective gesture. Lazarus will persuade his lover to cut his losses, to flee to Prague or some other alchemist city and why should Kit not go? Mariner slumps against the slick straw and none of these thoughts hurt her. What spears her, over and over, is that Daisy Gale’s last thoughts might not have been that she was losing her pregnancy but that Mariner had wanted her dead.

‘You have a visitor!’ the jailor calls through the door. Mariner blinks. She looks at the plate of bread in front of her, untouched, weevils crawling.

‘What day is this?’ she calls back.

‘A day hence.’ Then his voice drops to a lower register. ‘It’ll cost you to see her alone.’

Mariner realises he is talking to someone, that there truly is a visitor and not just more onlookers come to gape. Kit, she thinks, it must be Kit, thank God he has not fled – but when the door swings open and Elody sweeps in, holding her fine gown up above the straw, Mariner can do nothing but stare.

‘Come on, you,’ the jailor says, bustling into the room and diving a hand into the straw to heave out the woman. For a moment, she dodges him, wriggling around in the straw like a spaniel and it is bizarrely comical, this cruel man bending and floundering to catch her. Then he does, seizing her by the hair and wrenching her up. With a jerk of horror, Mariner realises she can’t be more than twelve.

‘Another witch,’ the jailor says smugly, as the young girl hangs limply in his hands. ‘Killed her stepfather.’

He drags her out easily, her filthy toes and knees bumping on the floor. Mariner cannot help but catch her eyes, sees the miasma of despair inside them, the solid, unmoving resignation. This is the way, her gaze seems to say. You cannot be quick, you cannot be smart, you cannot think your way from the blow that is coming so be dead now. Untether your soul and mind from this body that will burn or hang. Mariner looks away as the door slides shut and the bolt is dragged across with a screech. She and Elody are locked in together. She is wearing all dark colours today, garbed like a widow, face covered by a veil that she lifts to meet Mariner’s eyes. She holds a small bottle in her black gloved hand; the glass dark green so Mariner cannot see what is inside. She sets it down on the straw and kicks it towards her.

‘The human body can survive many things but not without fluid,’ Elody says.

‘Is it poison?’

‘It could be poison, I suppose. We have never spoken of the many reactions a person may have to different toxins; after all, a woman can die from a bee sting.’

She is ashamed, suddenly, of the part of her that desperately hopes Elody is here to say that she is sorry, that none of this was her doing, that perhaps even Lazarus and Kit are the ones responsible and she only said what she said because of Pyncher’s accusations, that she is working hard to save Mariner’s life. Elody smiles. How easily this woman has always been able to read her every thought, and Mariner’s shame deepens, her cheeks flushing painfully.

‘Do you grieve me so, Mariner Elgin?’ Elody’s voice is so sweet it turns her stomach. Self-loathing rises, agonising helplessness. She blinks, hard and fast, tells herself; you must not cry in front of this woman. You must not beg. You are a fucking sailor.

‘Was any of it real?’ Mariner asks, willing her voice not to crack.

‘I could ask you the same thing.’ Elody’s face, strangely, is tautly earnest. ‘Did you love me, myself, or did you only love the freedom I gave you? The name and the chance to finally get what you needed, to live and fuck and love as a man?’

‘I am a woman who only loves women.’ Mariner rests her head wearily back against the slick, damp stone. She feels as if she has been fighting this battle all of her life. ‘What other way is there to be that? Than to live as a man?’

‘I know,’ Elody says, but she does not know. How could she? Mariner thinks, with her own money for a house she can hide women in, buy ships in, be free in? No one in Southwark is coming to bash her head in for it. ‘It was what I liked about you, truthfully. I intended to keep you, but you made it impossible.’

‘How?’ Mariner cannot get rid of the incredulity in her voice.

‘You threatened to expose my secrets. You asked me for the life of that girl; you set our love against her need and found her more important.’ Elody’s eyes are incredulously shiny, suddenly. ‘Before that moment, I was sure that you were mine, that nothing would compel you to act or speak against me, not even your Kit, but I was wrong. You tried to use your love to control me. That is all love is, really. For did not your Daisy do the same thing? Coming to my house to manipulate you with her love, and then you came to me to do the same. No love is without motive.’

‘That is not true, Ella.’ Mariner takes the childhood name she heard on Lord Isherwood’s lips. Elody seems startled but quickly recovers.

‘It is. No love is without condition.’ Her eyes are distant. ‘My mother loved me so much so that I would hate my father more. She taught me the beginnings of my art, of herbs and recipes, to follow God. Then she died when I was only nine years old. I was left alone with my hate and my faith and my art. My father loved me so I would be pliable and useful and to soften some of the hate my mother left inside me and then he sent me away too. He had power over me, he used my love and turned it to rage when he sold me in marriage. That is all love does, twist to rage and despair. The truest alchemy there is.’

It is so close to how Mariner is feeling at this moment, bitter and sorrowful, that she has to bite her lip.

‘We could have been different,’ she says, pressing her head back against the wall.

‘How?’ Elody’s voice is softly derisive. ‘You so happily slipped into the skin I gave you to wear, you tossed your old one aside without compulsion. What was there of you to love?’

‘I took that name and skin for you!’ Mariner protests. ‘I thought you loved me as I was and that would be enough to endure it, but you saw nothing in me but opportunity.’

‘Not true.’ Elody’s voice crumbles slightly. ‘I cherished you, but… this is how things must be. How they are ordained to be.’

‘Ordained?’

Elody nods, her face a strange rictus of excitement Mariner has never seen before.

‘When the true church fell in England, my father could set aside my mother. Every terrible thing that has happened in this country happened because King Henry strayed from his true wife, and with the bastard daughter of a lute player on the throne, England will never be saved. Not until she bows to his Holiness once more. Kit is the alchemical child, he will tame the Red Lion, he will make the elixir of life and I will do as my father never could.’ Elody’s eyes take on a frantic gleam. ‘With Kit’s creations, his Holiness will live forever, and all the poor and sick of the world will flock to him to receive blessing and healing. Kit Skevy will be transformed, a saint for the true believers to pray to and turn to. The coffers of the Vatican will never dry, we will supply armies to King Philip endlessly. This Armada will take Britain, a new heir will be named and the Spanish Infanta will take her rightful place as Queen. Every wife, every daughter cast aside by this terrible heresy of the English church will be restored.’

In her words, Mariner finally hears Elody Isherwood. She hears the young girl, cast aside by her father, mourning a mother, mourning a family. She sees the resentment that has grown there in place of grief, the thorny hatred that has blossomed into a woman who is not only ready to turn traitor, she believes herself a crusader.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Mariner asks.

‘So you will know it a mercy.’ Elody’s face is transformed with fervour. ‘The alchemical child will bring the consecration of Emmanuel’s sweet and holy blood to England. Better for a reformer like yourself not to see it. Better to hang than burn, dearest.’

Mariner had no idea that Elody even knew she was a reformer. How strange to be categorised this way, to have her death arranged because of it. If she is truly still a reformer, with her want of women, breeches and the open sea, then she is the poorest excuse for a disciple there has ever been.

Elody picks up the bottle from the floor, pressing it into Mariner’s hands and Mariner could almost laugh to see the glitter of tears in her eyes. Does she believe her own distress? Is it possible?

‘May God have mercy on your soul,’ says Elody.

And yours, Mariner thinks, I loved you and I hate you and I hope you burn in hell as I will surely do, but she says nothing. She stares at the small bottle and does not look up to watch Elody leave. She knows she could drink it now, that she could be free, but there is Elgin inside her mind, a memory from the past when a sailor had thrown himself into the surf at night, holding a cannonball. He told her those who did such things were possessed by the devil.

‘They will not be saved?’ Mariner asked.

‘The grace and mercy of our Lord is boundless, perhaps our understanding is limited compared to the power of Christ.’ Elgin put his hand around her small shoulders. ‘But perhaps the Lord God lets the devil take them down to hell to warn us of the sin of despair.’

Mariner presses the bottle to her forehead and weeps, because no matter how the world has shifted for her this year, her feet cannot be removed from what she believes to be true. If she is to die, then she will not lose the chance to see Elgin again. She throws the bottle across the room where it lands in the straw. If the young girl is brought back in and slowly pulls the vial inside her nest, Mariner does not care to notice.

‘You’re a woman.’ There is a voice calling through the shutter, pulling her out of dark dreams. This one isn’t cruel or angry, it is lilting and Irish. ‘I must say, now you make a lot more sense.’

Mariner thinks she might be dreaming as the door opens and Captain Larkin, in her tall boots and felt cap, is let inside.

‘Jesus!’ Captain Larkin, pulls her scarf around her neck up over her chin and nose. ‘Worse than a brig.’

Mariner rubs a hand over her eyes, just to check that it’s really happening, but Captain Larkin does not move, nor does her face become any more impressed.

‘Did she send you?’ Mariner finally asks.

‘Who? Your cousin?’ Mariner does not bother to arrange her expression into anything less scornful. Something flies through Captain Larkin’s blue eyes and then disappears. ‘Not your cousin.’

‘If so, we were ungodly in more ways than I anticipated.’

She expects revulsion, she expects guardedness, what she does not expect is a laugh, hoarse like a seagull, from behind Captain Larkin’s blue and grey woven scarf. The creases around her eyes deepen with it.

‘You speak quite freely of it. This… cousinly love,’ says she.

‘Freely for a dead woman.’ Mariner is too tired to lie. She won’t bear the heaviness of them anymore. ‘It is not as if they can kill me worse for wanting a wife.’

‘I am not sure about that. You are not yet condemned. I would take that secret to God, Master Blackwater.’ Captain Larkin walks carefully across the cell and looks up through the damp window, examining the pouring waterfall of overflow dripping through it. Mariner wonders what secrets Captain Larkin will take to God, when her time comes. Then the Captain turns back to face her. ‘But that is not your name. Hardly feels right to call you the Southwark Poisoner.’

‘I did not do it.’

It seems important to tell her, for some reason.

‘Not my business—’ Captain Larkin shrugs lightly ‘—but I’ll have your name if you’re giving it.’

‘Mariner Patience Elgin.’

‘Mariner.’ The way she says it, the firmness of her lips around a smile, it sounds so pleasing. ‘You sailed then?’

‘Aye. The Golden Riall, The Foresight.’

‘Captain Drake’s ships.’ Captain Larkin’s blonde eyebrows disappear under her cap. ‘How?’

‘My uncle was a ship’s surgeon. My parents and his wife and child died in a fire at sea. He took me in, took me with him on his travels.’

‘You were playing a lad.’

‘Until I was caught.’ When Captain Larkin tilts her head curiously she says: ‘First blood in a bunk.’

‘Ah.’ Captain Larkin nods. ‘That is bad luck.’

If only it could be a defence in court, the horrendous bad luck of it. To have been born with a sailor’s heart in a woman’s body, to be born poor when riches could have freed her, to be born loving only women when it is so horribly sinful to do so. Such abominable fucking bad luck to be alive in a world that very much wants her in hell already.

‘I have always thought so,’ Mariner sniffs, swallowing back her tears. ‘Will you come to my trial?’

‘No, I will be sailing.’ Her eyes dart away and Mariner quickly realises why. This is a voyage bought for Elody. The Spanish Armada is coming and she has everything she needs now; if she gets Kit to Lisbon or Rome. It will likely do no good, but speaking the truth aloud is suddenly important. This is who Elody is, it says, how it helps the cringing disbelief inside her that remembers the soft nights and tender kisses.

‘She is intent on treason against the Crown, you know that.’

‘I know that any treason to an English queen is likely music to Ireland’s ears.’ The Captain’s voice is sharp. ‘Besides, I do not turn down gold. I cannot afford to.’

Mariner thinks of Kit, stowed away in The Seahorse, headed for the Spanish Armada and beyond that, a shackled life as a performing alchemist for Elody Blackwater. Then she thinks of Lazarus’ hand on his, so precariously barely hidden in a room full of England’s most powerful men.

‘There is a man with more gold,’ she says. ‘Lazarus Isherwood, the new Lord Isherwood. I’d wager he’s still in London.’

Captain Larkin is unmoving, staring at the pouring water.

‘Why?’ she asks. ‘It will not help you.’

‘It will help someone I love. She has him, Kit Skevy. My…’ She stumbles. Can she call him her friend, her family, her brother after what she has said to him? ‘Please.’

‘I’ll promise nothing, but I’m not one to turn down a better deal.’ She turns back to look at Mariner. ‘So.’

Mariner can tell she does not want to say farewell – for how disingenuous would it seem? – and Mariner is not quite ready for the conversation to stop so she blurts out:

‘Why did you come?’

Captain Larkin gives her a long look, as if considering her answer, and then lowers the scarf around her lips.

‘To answer your question. Yes, I am afraid, always, of this—’ She gestures to the cell around her. ‘Of getting on the wrong side of an angry judge, of a pirate’s noose or a traitor’s badge, yes, I am afraid.’

Captain Larkin crouches right in front of her and cups her face. It is desperately tender, and Mariner cannot stop the tears that fall down her cheeks.

‘But I am more afraid of being stranded on dry land, and at least in the heavenly realms there is the great glass sea to sail,’ says she. ‘Set it against your fear, if you can.’

Mariner gasps, tries not to weep but it is impossible, and she pushes her grubby hand into her face, wishing she could scratch out her own eyes.

‘Whist, whist, mairnéalach.’ There are warm fingers pulling her hand away and dry, chapped lips against her forehead. A benediction, a blessing, and Mariner feels the warm breath of the captain on her face. It is too much generosity, she doesn’t want this much affection born of pity from such a woman. She would earn it, if she could, if there were time. So instead, she pulls away, lets Captain Larkin rise, her blue eyes greyer and more stormy than Daisy’s ever were.

‘See the horizon for both of us,’ says Mariner.

‘Aye.’ Captain Larkin nods. ‘Sailor.’

Mariner lets the word sink into her chest as the door opens and closes, holds it over her heart like a brand, and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut. There she sees a woman captain, standing by the mast with the world before her, chasing the wind over the glittering waves.