Peril on the Sea (15 page)

Highbridge made a questioning sign to the master gunner. Aiken inclined his head confidingly toward the first officer, knowing what was being asked without perceiving the words.

Sherwin could hear him clearly: “Enough for two or three days' steady fighting.”

The captain passed along this estimate to the captain of
the
Roebuck
, and the response was, “We have a limited supply ourselves—I pray it proves enough.”

 

THE TWO SHIPS PARTED, the
Vixen
tacking her way westward, the
Roebuck
lying to, enduring the bucking seas by remaining across the wind.

Highbridge stood close to the captain, murmuring into his ear. Sherwin thought he could read the entreaty on the first officer's lips. Fletcher looked away with that characteristic falcon stare, gazing everywhere but into the eyes of another man.

When she had nearly vanished beneath the horizon, the
Roebuck
turned into the wind, a shape like a fly on the gray seas, sailing haltingly in the
Vixen
's wake.

“Highbridge,” said Captain Fletcher, for all to hear, “order up red wine for every man, double rations.”

The featured beverage on most vessels was beer or cider. But a privateer enjoyed the spoils of shipping from around the world, and the men were cheered by this welcome revitalization. Red wine, furthermore, was thought to strengthen the liver, the seat of courage.

And courage, thought Sherwin, was what they would all soon require.

 

THAT EVENING Sherwin joined Fletcher and Highbridge in the captain's cabin.

The cabin had tall, narrow windows, like those of a tall, narrow London house, and beyond the windows the sea was agitated, fuming in the wake of the
Vixen
. An assembly
of strongboxes, with large black locks, was secured under a table, and the cabin wall was partly adorned with an arras, a hanging screen against a bulkhead.

The arras was decorated with the depiction of a ship sailing into a harbor, protected by a benevolent figure twice the size of the vessel, half-submerged in the water. This giantess or goddess was a modestly attired female form, extending one hand to shield the vessel, as it seemed, from the rays of the sun.

The captain poured Sherwin a mug of wine. “Or,” asked the captain, “will you have brage, Highbridge's drink of choice?”

Sherwin liked brage—ale laced with honey and spices—but decided it was more politic to enjoy the same beverage as Captain Fletcher.

The three of them sat in the shivering lamplight. The smell of the burning candles was sharp—expensive tallow, but smoky. The drinking cups and candle holder were kept from sliding to the floor by fiddles—detachable rails fixed around the edge of the table.

Highbridge could not hide a benevolent, even satisfied, smile. “Our gunners need no practice,” he was saying. “Nor will our guns burst—we put those new sakers to use against the
Santa Catalina
.”

One of the reasons for gunnery practice was to see that the ordnance was sound—bursting weapons were a cause of many fatalities.

“I recollect our combat with that ship,” said the captain, “with no pleasure.”

“And our repairs are holding—we suffer not a single leak,” said Highbridge.

“All the more reason,” said the captain dryly, “to smash our ship to toothpicks.”

Highbridge laughed. Sherwin had never seen him so lighthearted. The first officer excused himself and left the cabin for the wet, tumultuous conditions on deck.

“Highbridge and I agree, Sherwin,” said the captain, “that we are on a course to kiss the Devil.”

“Sir?”

“Where the
Rosebriar
is expected to appear,” said Fletcher, “and where I fear the Spanish are hiding, are in the same vicinity on the charts.”

“Where is that, sir?”

“Off that Cornish promontory called the Lizard.”

Sherwin was too excited by this news to say anything for the moment.

Fletcher pulled at his lower lip thoughtfully for a moment. Then he added, “When you write the play,
Fletcher and His Ship Part Hell and Win Enduring Peace in Triumph
, make sure some tall youth portrays Highbridge. Some dark, frank man of strength, acting as my conscience.”

“Is it true that we will fight the Spanish, sir?” asked Sherwin.

He did not want the hour to arrive—but the fear drew him in at the same time, an enthralling dread.

“Fight them?” asked Fletcher, as though the question surprised him. Then he gave a sad laugh. “Sherwin, we may have no choice.”

T
HE SUN was an unsteady presence the following morning, the twentieth day of July.

The cry from aloft that dawn had a different quality from that of any human voice Sherwin had ever heard, a shrill of marvel and apprehension.

“There,” cried the lookout once again, like a man driven to the point of mania. “There, off the starboard bow!”

The deck was instantly thronged with shipmates, who stood observing the seas to the west. There was nothing there—no ship in sight.

A mist had risen to the west, in response, perhaps, to the rising of the sun, and the sea, easier in its temperament, remained sullen. Katharine joined Sherwin with the captain on the quarterdeck, but the captain was the only individual on the deck who did not strain to see what was hidden through the haze.

He seemed to know what was beyond already, or perhaps he had seen enough at a glance to be able to infer all the rest.

The sea was a wrinkling, unwrinkling expanse, and it met the blurred ether of gray that descended from the sky, and not so much as a floating spar marred the ocean's surface.

And then a ship appeared, a craft with angled sails, her canvas being shaken out as the blustery gale faded and lost strength.

She was a pretty ship, the sort built for speed and maneuverability—an urca, as Sherwin knew from his wharfside haunts, watching Canary wine being delivered. This solitary craft was a foreign ship, almost certainly Spanish, but so elegant in her lines and peaceful in her manner that Sherwin felt his shipmates around him relax.

The mist lifted further, and another vessel joined the first—a galleass, a low-cut, cunning ship, familiar to Sherwin only from tavern woodcuts.

The sight of this second vessel was less reassuring than the first, in Sherwin's eyes, but she likewise looked pacific in intent. She was so appealing as she spread her canvas, catching the milky sunlight, that Sherwin could believe that no harm would ever fall upon anything living.

At the sight of a third vessel, a galleon larger than the
Vixen
bearing down past the two smaller craft, the crew around Sherwin turned to their battle stations without a murmur of command.

The vision that was about to reveal itself was anticipated by everyone aboard the ship, and as the haze was diluted, moment by moment, the pricking out of one more ship,
and then another, took place like the careful hand of a seamstress piercing a certain but invisible pattern.

Galleons worked their way into a ragged line ahead of merchant vessels that wallowed low in the water, the cargo ships no doubt heavy with fighting men and arms. The smaller urcas and galleasses sped ahead of the others in the fleet, finding water unbroken by any wake.

 

ONE HUNDRED SHIPS, and more.

Every observable vessel of the still-far-distant Armada set her sails and aimed her course directly at the sudden English interloper.

Fletcher was intent, but as yet made no sign of apprehension. He gave a quiet command to Highbridge, and soon footsteps pounded belowdecks, and the ship resounded with the sound of gun carriages, a chorus of groans and squeals as the artillery was swabbed and primed in the bowels of the ship.

The armorer's store of weapons chimed somewhere belowdecks as mariners were outfitted with pikes and short swords, able-bodied seamen reappearing on deck with the look of an anxious but determined fighting force. Lockwood thrust a short-ax through his belt, and Sir Gregory appeared carrying a tongue-of-beef halberd, stabbing the air experimentally with a look of intense satisfaction. Evenage wore an iron corselet and sported a helmet, a handsome gleaming piece of armor with a metal crest.

But the captain had the air of an astronomer trying to descry his favorite planet. He gazed long at the Armada as the vapor lifted and the entire fleet became visible. This quiet abstraction on the part of the captain gave Sherwin to believe that the
Vixen
was in preparation for battle only as a precaution.

Sherwin was startled when Fletcher called for Katharine, not in a tone of voice of Sherwin had heard before.

The captain was suffused with emotion.

He ordered Katharine to come to his side, and pointed out across the water to indicate the sight of a single burning ship that, in a fleet of warships, caused him the greatest consternation.

Within moments, Katharine was in tears.

“Is that your ship?” asked the captain, a voice tight with fury. “Is that the
Rosebriar
, with our treasury of cinnamon bark?”

Katharine could only nod and give a breathless “I fear so.”

A
SLURRY OF SMOKE rising from a pack of ships showed where a vessel had been taken as a prize and set alight—and her cargo either wasted or plundered and the ship scuttled.

But there was no time after the discovery of the loss for any financial or emotional inventory. As Sherwin stood comforting Katharine, the sea around them altered.

One instant the gray water was restless and shifting, with the Armada standing clear as an imposing backdrop, an impending but still-distant threat. The next moment several more vessels were so close that the figures of sailors and soldiers could be seen, and the far-off naval tapestry had new dimensions, texture, and depth.

The wind was stirring after a brooding respite, and the rigging sang a low, solemn warning. The originally sighted urca and galleass drew near, followed by a wedge of vessels, and behind that advance the entire Armada bulked all the closer to the
Vixen
.

After the tense but ultimately benevolent contact with
the
Roebuck
, Sherwin was expecting a parley, perhaps at most a warning shot, followed by Fletcher buying time as his crew set the sails for a swift departure eastward.

This hope was punctured somewhat when the captain said, “Katharine, step into my cabin, if you please, and take your ease there for the duration.” He added, “Don't despair about your ship, my lady—if we are stubborn and Spanish gunnery incompetent, we may salvage a good deal of treasure yet.”

He said this as a man might discuss gammon to accompany his ale, in a distracted, easy tone that gave no hint of what was about to come. Katharine did not take his advice at once, seeming both shaken and hopeful at his remarks. Fletcher shot a glance toward Sherwin and said, “You don't intend to enter battle naked, do you, friend?”

Naked
, in a military sense, meant unarmed. Bartholomew was at Sherwin's side at once, carrying what looked like the iron cast of half a man. A battle corselet was fitted over Sherwin, opening and closing like a book around him. Buckles were fastened, and Sherwin felt like the grand tortoise he had seen at the Smithfield bestiary, a large tub of a creature with sleepy reptilian eyes and an appetite for watercress.

“If I fall into the water,” said Sherwin, “I'll sink straight to the bottom.” His voice had a bronze resonance, and he could not keep from enjoying the heroic tenor of his accent as he added, in an attempt at humor, “I shall battle the giants of the deep.”

“Hush, sir,” protested Bartholomew. “Speak of dire events, and they are sure to happen.”

 

WITHOUT ANY PROTOCOL, with no warning or opportunity to reflect or pray, the urca vanished behind a cloud of white smoke, and a cannon shot skipped across the water. We're still too far apart, thought Sherwin. The distance was so great that the artillery had been comically ineffective, like a market-day brawl just half in earnest.

But it could only be seen as abruptly impolite, this first shot, not so much a warning as an attempt to test the range. The report of the cannon was muted by distance but was a metallic, percussive punch in the belly nonetheless, and to his surprise Sherwin smelled the smoke in the next instant.

He caught a brief snatch of Spanish language,
Madre de díos
carried on the wind—harsh, musical, and surprising. Another voice called, from the arriving galleass, and behind them a galleon, at the head of a flotilla of her companions, was growing huge against the rest of the approaching force.

The
Vixen
was going to be wedged in after only a few more heartbeats, and Sherwin looked at the captain, sure the order would come for the vessel to turn about.

“Steady on, Highbridge,” said Fletcher, fastening his mantle about him like a man in the theater pits, settling in for an hour of entertainment. He glanced at Sherwin with a further comment: “If we turn and flee now, we'll never
get our hands on so much as a stick of our precious cargo.”

Katharine was still at Sherwin's side; before she left, she did something that stirred him as much as the line of attack descending on the
Vixen
. She put her lips to Sherwin's, kissed him, and said, in a shaken whisper, “You are my heart.”

This statement struck Sherwin all the more fully because of the expectation that soon the parts of bodies—limbs, bones, and for all he knew actual hearts—might be strewn about him.

She was gone then before he could respond, and he was left trying to pull together a fragment of poetry in response—all he wanted to do was sink into a safe, quiet place beside her.

A swivel gun fired from the approaching galleass, and Evenage called to Sherwin, “Quickly, sir, if you will,” and Sherwin hurried to the gun mounts on the deck, taking the matchlock he was given by Bartholomew and settling the firearm onto its support.