thing I was certain of on this voyage it was that Isabela had to die and I was the one who would have to ensure that she did.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what answer I gave to the two Jesuits when they returned to the tower of Belém. It wasn’t the promise of the wealth they offered me. Naturally, if it had been a simple matter of theft or deception, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take their money, except, of course, to try to bargain my fee up. But murder, that’s an entirely different matter.
But it was the sight of that corpse which persuaded me to agree, knowing that after weeks of torment, one day the tide would rise and keep rising until it was over my head and then I would become that foul abomination lying on the paving slabs. You think I was a coward? Well, you just imagine descending into a crypt, gagging on the foul stench of maggots and decay, then lifting a coffin lid and seeing your own rotting face in that coffin staring sightlessly up at you. Picture that if you can, then tell me honestly, if you’d been offered a way out of that accursed tower, would you have chosen instead to hang there in chains, unable to move as the cold waves broke over you, and wait day after day for that fatal tide? Would you have chosen to stay and watch that body rot before your eyes? Would you?
The Jesuits had seen to it that I was bathed and given such clothes, bedding and money that I would need for the voyage. They had ensured not only that Isabela found a suitable ship, but also that I obtained a passage on the same one. The agent had been bribed with a generous purse not to demand papers or inquire too closely into the identity of his clients. The priests had done all they could to make things easy for me, as they said. What happened after that was in my hands. But the question was – how to do it? And I had no more ideas about that now than I’d had when I first boarded the ship.
Isabela must have felt me studying her for she suddenly turned and bestowed another of her smiles in my direction. ‘Poor Dona Flávia. I do believe she will kiss the ground when we reach England.’
And so would I. At least with her and her husband gone from the ship, I might be able to get Isabela alone. Every time I had tried, particularly after dark, Dona Flávia descended like a huge blubbery angel determined to defend the girl’s honour. She seemed to regard safeguarding Isabela’s virtue as her personal mission, though of course she made use of the girl as if she was her own daughter, sending her to fetch things from the sleeping quarters or massage oil of lavender into her temples when she declared herself unable to sleep.
But even if I could get the girl away from Dona Flávia I couldn’t just walk up behind her and pitch her overboard. There were always too many eyes on watch and though I had made a friend of one of the sailors by buying wine from him, paying double what the dog piss was worth, I was pretty sure even he would raise the alarm if I tried to throw someone into the sea. It had to be made to look like an accident.
Even when pig-boy and his father, and Dona Flávia and her husband had all left the ship, there would still be two other passengers who were travelling on to Iceland and those two men seemed equally determined to make friends with Isabela. Hardly surprising since she was the only girl aboard. But it was going to be hard to prise their attentions away from her.
The boat rocked alarmingly as Dona Flávia finally plopped down into it, gasping and wailing that she would never, never set foot on that rope ladder again. When her husband mildly pointed out that she would have to climb up it again tomorrow as there was no other way back on board the ship, she declared she would rather stay on the shore and live in the stone cottage for the rest of her life. The sailors smirked at one another and cast off.
By the time we reached the shore, though, no one was smiling or even had the energy to talk. With our