Down: Pinhole (22 page)

Norfolk glowered but the tall, rather elegant man beside him said, “By all means, sir. You are welcome. I am Captain Hawes. My good duke is admiral of the fleet but
Hellfire
is my vessel.”

John came up and shook the man’s hand. Hawes was resplendent in a sixteenth-century style naval uniform that on closer inspection was threadbare in places with multiple patches. John looked at the largest patch, breast-high, and wondered if he’d been wearing it when he died.

“What a marvel it is,” the captain said. “To be alive, I mean. I can scarcely remember what it felt like.”

“It has its moments,” John said. Norfolk had moved several paces away, petulantly folding his arms against his chest. “Can I ask you what your plan is, captain?”

“You may indeed. We know full well from the telegraph messages we have received that the Iberians are proceeding swiftly from the east, upwind from their last known location off the Isle of Wight. We should have a sighting within an hour or two, I should think.”

“What size is their fleet?”

“As large as ours, perhaps larger. Some eighty ships with as many as thirty galleons, and the rest galleasses, carracks, and light ships. There might be some eight thousand sailors and marines onboard. Though not trifling, it is a far sight smaller than the Duke of Parma’s armada which attacked my good Queen Elizabeth.”

John blinked in confusion. “You were part of the English victory in—what year was it?”

“It was 1588 and I was indeed part of that action. I was first mate on the
Bark Talbot
, a vessel that was ordered by Lord Howard, our admiral, to be one of the fireships deployed against the armada at the battle of Gravelines. To this day, I regret losing her this way, though the tactics were decisive.”

“Can I ask if you died there?”

“I did not. I survived the campaign, only to perish on land, some years hence, penniless, as we did not receive compensation from the crown for the ship’s taking. Yet the seeds for my coming Down were sown that year when I did strike and kill a lazy cabin boy.”

“And here you are, still fighting the Spanish.”

“That is so. Many times over the seemingly endless centuries. Sometimes we prevail, sometimes, it is they. As new men come to Hell, we may learn some new industry or tactics. We know that you presently have ships of steel and flying machines and weapons of great destructive power but we do not have the means to make these things. Instead, we eke out improvements to what we know, but I am told your singing cannon is a marvel. Let us hope it will lead to fewer casualties among our men.”

“And more on their side.”

The captain nodded gravely. “Such is the nature of war.”

Hawes gave an order to bear four degrees leeward. When he was satisfied at the course correction he let John know they might resume their conversation. John asked a seemingly simple question that once posed, proved to be vexing. “Why are you fighting?”

The captain responded with raised eyebrows, moving John across the quarterdeck out of Norfolk’s earshot. “Why am I fighting? An interesting question. I, myself, am fighting because the duke commands me and the king commands him. Brittania is fighting because that is what kingdoms do, on Earth, as I do recall, and in Hell.”

“Yeah, but here, you’ve got no religious differences with the Iberians or anyone else as far as I can see. That ought to eliminate a lot of conflicts.”

“True, religion is moot in this world as we have no illusions of salvation. We fight for land, we fight for power and for our enemy’s women, and we fight mightily out of fear of conquest and deprivation. We are base creatures, sir, and we behave so. Now, may I ask you a question? I have heard you are here by accident, but why then do you help the king as you have done?”

“I’m looking for a woman who’s also here by accident.”

Hawes sighed. “I have the vague recollection of what love feels like as I still possess the faintest memory of the sun against my face.”

A sailor’s voice pierced the air from his perch on the topsail trestletree. “The Iberians ho!”

“This cannon of yours. Three thousand yards, you say?” the captain said.

“The land-mounted ones. The one below, level-fired, maybe a thousand yards. Hopefully.”

“Hope is in short supply in Hell but I will add my hope to yours.” Hawes bowed and turned to the duke. “Admiral, I await your orders.”

Norfolk blew his nose into a handkerchief and said, “Hold for them. Let them close the range.”

Hawes obeyed and the opposing fleets drew toward one another. John watched the Iberian armada materialize in all its glory and through his spyglass he saw their sailors swarming the decks and riggings.

“Three thousand yards on land and a thousand on sea,” Hawes said to himself, judging the distance between the Iberians and the cliff-mounted cannon and to the
Hellfire
. “Let us form an infernal triangle.” Then he shouted, “Come alee and luff up. All hands to quarter, all hands to quarter!”

Soon the great ship was dead in the water, rolling gently in place and presenting its starboard broadside to the approaching armada. To the east, the assembled English fleet copied Hawes’s maneuvers and held fast. John sidled up to Norfolk and asked him who was commanding the Iberian armada, but Norfolk dismissed him with a backhanded wave and walked to the starboard railing and busied himself with his spyglass.

Hawes beckoned John with a finger and said, “I hear Norfolk is smarting from the thrashing you gave him at court. He is not a man to forgive such a thing. An old adversary, the Duke of Olivares, commands the Iberians. His master is King Pedro who has ruled Iberia with an iron fist for nigh on seven hundred years. During his time on Earth he was called Pedro the Cruel and he has exceeded his reputation here. On this day Olivares will be expecting fireships. He will not be expecting your cannon.”

“You’re letting him come to you.”

“Yes, but he will not think we will stay massed as we are. He will expect a group to try to outflank him and close to three hundred yards, our usual best range. When he sees us standing firm he will scratch his bald head and approach cautiously. He must go through us if he is to enter the estuary.”

“I told William to take out the middle and rear of their fleet. I’d advise you to use the
Hellfire
gun to pound the tip of their spear.”

“I concur and will discuss this with Norfolk. Now, please go below and attend to your cannon. Await my orders and good luck to you, sir.”

On the gun deck the firing hatches on the starboard side were open wide and the crews stood uneasily by their assigned ordnance. John had the crew of his singing cannon pack a powder cartridge and load a shell from the ammunition locker. Then he put some cloth wadding into his ears and stuffed a small piece into the hole in his tooth for good measure. The gun deck was airless, hot, and malodorous. He dropped onto his haunches to look out the hatch. The sea was getting choppier.

On the quarterdeck Hawes and Norfolk passed a spyglass back and forth and kept estimating the range of the
Volcán
, Olivares’s flagship. The wind from the west freshened and it began to rain. The sky darkened.

“A storm,” Norfolk spat.

“It speeds their demise,” Hawes said. Then he added, “Hopefully.”

Ten minutes passed, then twenty.

“A thousand yards, I reckon,” Hawes said, his eye glued to the spyglass. The rest of the armada stretched to the west as far as he could see.

“Light the lantern,” Norfolk commanded. A mate obeyed and swung it from side to side in broad sweeps.

From high on the chalk cliffs, William spotted the signal and swung a lantern in reply.

“You may fire,” Norfolk said.

John heard the command passed down below decks and stepped well back as flame was put to the touchhole powder. First he heard twin, distant retorts from the land guns, followed by a bone-crushing blast from the ship’s piece. The singing cannon belched fire and threw itself backwards ten feet against its rope stays whereupon the gunnery crew suddenly became animated, springing into action, packing and loading another lugged round into the muzzle and heaving on the ropes to reposition the gun.

William had not noticed that King Henry had arrived and had come to stand a short distance away, Cromwell at his side. Both men peered through spyglasses. When the boom of the charges dissipated, the high-pitched whistling of the shells lingered on.

Suddenly there was a waterspout.

One of the land-based rounds landed harmlessly amidst the main grouping of armada vessels.

But a second later there were two impacts, iron against wood, one to a galleass to the rear, struck by one of the cliff cannon, the other to the lead galleon. The
Hellfire
round had caught the
Volcán
cleanly to the portside of the bow just above the waterline where it tore through her main cannon deck spewing shards of wood in its wake and filling the cavernous space with limbs, heads, guts, and blood.

The Duke of Olivares stood immobile near the wheel, failing to comprehend what had just happened. The
Hellfire
was completely out of range and yet his ship had been holed. The
Volcán
captain was quicker to react and began screaming to his crew to change course windward but just as the rudder bit,
Hellfire’s
next round struck below the waterline, hitting the main powder stores when it tore through the hull. The galleon exploded in a giant fireball and on the cliffs King Henry openly wept at the sight.

“Keep up the fire!” Henry shouted, and on land and sea the three cannon rained shell after shell upon the armada, de-masting and sinking ships even as they attempted to turn tail.

The storm from the west intensified, churning the sea to the color of a bruise. Then the fog began to roll in, obscuring the gunners’ views. Below decks, John reeled from the percussions. His mouth and lungs filled with acrid gunpowder. The gunnery crew had perfected the art of loading the lugged shells and there was no sense subjecting himself to more of the fetid atmosphere, so he scrambled up and eagerly gulped fresher air.

“Cease fire!” Hawes cried but before the order could be relayed, Norfolk countermanded it and insisted that the firing continue.

John watched the two men argue but rank prevailed and the cannon kept lobbing shells into the impenetrable fog. The cliff guns too kept up their barrage but if they were finding their targets, no one on the English side could know. Then, John saw a large flash from the cliff and heard a different kind of explosion, a deeper, throatier percussion than the usual cannon retort.

The cannon farther away from William had split from metal fatigue and steel spewed over the plain. The king and Cromwell were spared but the same could not be said for its gunnery crew and a group of nearby soldiers who were shredded by shrapnel, their guts and brains splattering the cliff. William shouted for the second cannon crew to cease-fire and ran to inspect the twisted metal and nearby carnage.

King Henry stamped through the grass, stepping over broken bodies, Cromwell scurrying by his side. He furiously demanded an explanation why his new cannon had failed, leaving William to explain through tears that John Camp had foretold the problem and that the solution lay in foreign iron.

“Hear this, Cromwell?” Henry bellowed. “Today we have beaten the Iberians. Tomorrow we will sail for the Norselands and take their ore. And the day after that we will conquer all of Europa.”

John ran up to the quarterdeck and told Hawes that one of the cannon had failed and advised him to allow the ship’s gun to cool. By now fog had engulfed the
Hellfire
and the visibility was down to twenty yards at most. Suddenly fire belched from the gray shroud and the thump of incoming cannon fire pierced the air. The Iberian vessel,
Martillo,
intrepidly piloted by its captain, the Duke of Granada, had not turned tail with the rest of the armada but had used the fog to conceal her advance through the storm and was now broadside to the
Hellfire
.

The top of the
Hellfire
mizzenmast was felled by chainfire and crashed onto the stern, narrowly missing Hawes and Norfolk. John found himself covered by canvas and realized his right leg was pinned by a section of the mast. He heard Hawes order his portside cannon to open fire and the return barrage was deafening. A knife blade poked through the canvas only inches from his chest and with a rip, the face of Antonio appeared. John felt his leg being freed and when he was lifted through the torn sail, he saw Simon and Luca had shifted the mast.

“Were you hurt?” Luca shouted.

He tested his leg. “I’m okay.”

“We’re being boarded!” Simon yelled, pointing at the looming Iberian ship.

Grappling hooks were flying through the air, catching on rails and rigging. Musket balls were thudding into flesh and wood. The two ships came together with a splintering thud and shrieking Iberians clamored on board with sabers drawn.

“Fight or perish!” Antonio shouted.

John drew his sword and without a moment’s thought rushed at a nearby boarder and ran him through. Though they had never trained together, John found himself in an effective combat formation with his three new comrades, the four of them, two-by-two and back-to-back, protecting each other’s rears. Around them, men fell, cut down by steel and lead, and the deck ran red with slippery blood.

An Iberian sailor who had swung from the riggings of his ship to the Hellfire topgallant mast, dropped down onto them, felling Simon and Antonio. The Iberian recovered his bearings, took the knife from his teeth and started to bring it down on Antonio’s face when John viciously swung his sword, catching the man’s knife arm at the inside of the elbow. The sailor cried out, the blood spurting from his brachial artery, then collapsed, helplessly watching himself bleed out through his stump.

Antonio delivered a terse, “Grazie,” to John then resumed fighting.

There was a shuddering volley of cannon fire from the
Hellfire
gunnery deck and the
Martillo
erupted into a fireball.

John heard Captain Hawes scream that they’d hit their powder lockers. The Iberian ship began to list heavily, stretching and popping the grappling lines that held the two vessels together. The remaining boarders, realizing their fates were sealed, decided to take their chances with the stormy sea and to a man they jumped ship. There was a rolling round of hurrahs from the
Hellfire
crew then Hawes ordered the remaining grappling lines cut. He ran down the stairs to the maindeck to personally survey the damage and stooped to cradle one of his wounded men, a man who, on Earth, would have been gone, but here, with a ball through his chest, still had open eyes and a pleading look.