The Merchant of Dreams (15 page)

CHAPTER X

Mal had hoped to question Smith again, but the assassin was hanged at dawn on Raleigh’s instructions. Two other newcomers to the crew were accused of being his co-conspirators, since no one could vouch for them. They protested their innocence most piteously, and in the end Raleigh relented and had them put ashore at Bordeaux to find their own way back to England.

As the
Falcon
made her way down the coast of Portugal the weather improved, and Mal was able to think about teaching Ned sword-play as they had agreed.

“We’ll be in Venice within the month at this rate,” he said, as they ate breakfast one morning. “That’s nowhere near long enough to teach you the finer points, but at least you can learn how to block a blow and give one back.”

Ned made a noncommittal noise around the hard biscuit.
Probably afraid of making a fool of himself in front of the men who assaulted him.
The bruises were faded to yellow, but he grew quiet whenever Hansford was around.

“Wasn’t that the bell for first watch?” Mal went on. “Perhaps we should wait until the crew have changed places before we get in their way.”

After a moment Ned took the hint. Hansford and his accomplices were in the third watch, and would be going to their hammocks soon.

“All right,” he said. “But we only have one sword between us. How will we manage?”

“I don’t trust you yet with edged steel,” Mal said with a smile. “I’ve no wish to die of a festering cut before we reach Venice. There’s bound to be something on board we can use as wasters.”

He got to his feet and went in search of the ship’s carpenter. Half an hour later he returned with two short poles, similar in size and weight to cudgels.

“I’m afraid you’ll get a few bruised knuckles, since there’s no cross-guard,” he told Ned, tossing one of the poles across the table.

Ned caught it easily.

“I’ve had worse,” he replied with a grin.

They practised every morning on deck after that, starting about an hour after breakfast and stopping only when the sun got too high in the sky. Their route had taken them south of Spain, within sight of the North African coast, before heading northeastwards into the heart of the Mediterranean, and the weather was now as hot as a summer’s afternoon in England, though it was only the middle of March.

Mal was right about the rapped knuckles, Ned thought ruefully as he braced himself for another attack. He had always wondered if the fancy hilt of Mal’s rapier was just for decoration, but he was beginning to appreciate how its graceful curves might deflect a blow away from its wielder’s fingers. He was not as badly outmatched as he had feared, though; Mal was still unsteady on the pitching deck, and had been impressed by the ease with which Ned had mastered his footwork.

“Good,” Mal said, after another repeat of their usual drill. “Now, I’m going to come at you and I want you to defend yourself. Don’t try to hit me back; you’re not going to kill a man in a fight if you get killed first.”

Ned tried to relax into the stance he had been taught: right foot forward, waster level with the ground and pointing inwards towards his opponent, left hand raised close to his body to stop a backhand blow. Mal kept his weapon low, his eyes never leaving Ned’s, challenging him to guess where the next attack would come from.

Mal’s cudgel moved in a blur, but somehow Ned blocked it, his arm seeming to move of its own accord.

“Very good. Again.”

Each time the blow came in at a different angle. Sometimes Ned parried; often he did not. At least these bruises were well-earned.

At last Mal called a halt.

“I think that’s enough for one day,” he said, tossing his cudgel to Ned.

Ned caught the weapon and sagged against the rail. Both their shirts were soaked with sweat and sticking to their backs, but Mal was otherwise as fresh as when they’d begun. Ned watched in mingled admiration, envy and lust as his former lover strode, slightly unsteadily, across the deck to their cabin.

“Fancy a trial o’ the ratlines?”

Ned looked around sharply, fearing to see Hansford, but it was just one of the younger sailors, a man of about his own age with spiky blond hair and a powder-burn cutting a swathe through his scrubby beard. He stood on the rail, holding onto the rigging, as if it were the most natural place in the world.

“The what?”

The sailor indicated the rigging: a set of seven or eight stout cables, joined by horizontal lengths of rope to make a crude ladder. They were hitched somewhere on the outside of the ship and converged on a tiny platform high above them. It made Ned dizzy just to look at it. He swallowed hard.

“A jest only,” the man said, leaping down onto the deck. “Captain Raleigh won’t thank us if one of his passengers is tossed into the sea.”

“Are you saying I can’t do it?”

“Well…”

“You’re on.”

He put the cudgels down and went back to the rail. The ratlines were just within arm’s reach, out beyond the safety of the deck, and he quickly scrambled up, standing on the rail with his hands clenched on the cross-ropes. The ship rolled gently beneath him.
Best get this over with.

He swung his feet out towards the ratlines, trying not to think of the fact he was now hanging over the side of the ship. His feet caught, and he clung to the lines for a moment, muttering prayers he thought he’d forgotten. Taking a deep breath he began to climb.

It wasn’t so bad once you got going. There was a rhythm to the ship’s movement, and the cross-ropes were spaced close enough together to be an easy reach for all but the smallest cabin boy. If it weren’t for the prospect of having to do this kind of thing in a gale, he could almost see himself taking up a sailor’s life.

He managed to get a third of the way up before he made the mistake of looking down. And saw nothing but sea below him.

It was some moments before he opened his eyes again and realised he was clinging to the tarred rope so tightly his hands had started to bleed. To calm his nerves he forced himself to breathe deeply and focus on the horizon. There. A ship, smaller than the
Falcon
, with triangular sails on its foremast, coming towards them.

Coming towards them.

“Sail ahoy!” cried the lookout. “Corsairs!”

Ned’s stomach turned over. The crew whiled away their rare moments of leisure by swapping tales of the corsairs’ cruelty and the various horrible fates awaiting those taken captive. Most able-bodied men ended up in North Africa, labouring in quarries or worse still chained to a bench on a galley, with no choice but to eat, sleep, piss and shit where they sat. Either way they would be worked to death in the space of a couple of years.

Cursing under his breath he scrambled down the rigging as fast as he dared. At last he glimpsed the rail just below him. With a last burst of bravado he swung his feet back onto the rail, jumped backwards and spun in mid-air to land on the deck, then sprinted for the cabin.

“Mal, get up! Corsairs!”

Mal groaned. “What?” He propped himself up on his elbows and squinted at Ned.

God’s teeth, I thought he was over the seasickness. He looks like the day’s leftovers at Billingsgate fish market.

“Corsairs. Slavers, like as not.”

Mal climbed unsteadily to his feet. “How far off?”

“I don’t know. Not far enough.”

“All right.” He leant against the bulkhead for a moment, his expression distracted. “We’d probably best get up on deck, but try and stay out of the crew’s way.”

“Can’t we stay in here?” Ned replied, looking around him. The cramped, stuffy cabin suddenly felt as welcoming as his own bedchamber back in Southwark.

“If the corsairs fire on us, we’re better up there being shot clean dead than shredded by splinters from a cannon hit.”

Ned retrieved Mal’s sword belt and dagger from the bunk, feeling as sick as his friend looked. Mal threaded his rapier hanger onto the belt and cinched it around his hips. Ned swallowed. Now there was a sight to stiffen a man’s sinews.

“Take your waster,” Mal said. “It’s not much of a weapon, but at least you know its weight and reach. We’ll get you a sword if Raleigh has any spare.”

Footsteps thudded overhead as men ran back and forth, putting on sail in an attempt to outrun the corsair ship. Mal and Ned left the cabin and made their way up to the poop-deck. Raleigh was directing his men with calm efficiency, as if being attacked by pirates were an everyday occurrence.

“Ah, Catlyn,” he said as they approached. “Ready for your first sea-action?”

Mal’s reply was drowned by a shout from aloft. “Enemy coming about, captain!”

“So, they have made their decision,” Raleigh said. “May God protect us.”

They all crossed themselves.

“Sure I can’t persuade ye to exchange that hat-pin for a more fit weapon?” Raleigh asked Mal, patting the hilt of his own backsword.

“Thank you, no,” Mal replied. “I’ll take my chances with the blades I know.”

“Please yourself; it’s no loss to me.” Raleigh turned back to his crew. “All hands to the guns!” He patted his first mate on the shoulder and added in quieter tones, “More speed, Master Warburton. As much as she can give us.”

The corsair galley was running before the wind at alarming speed, her oars shipped but ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. As she came nearer, Mal could make out the crew leering at them from the rigging, sun-darkened faces contrasting with the bright colours of kerchiefs or half-concealed by wild black hair. Not all were Moors, however; here and there he spotted the bleached hair and reddened skin of men from lands far north of Africa. Dutch, probably, or perhaps even renegade Englishmen. There were always a few who sought mayhem like others sought wine or women.

“Remember what we practised,” he told Ned. “Keep your weapon low and close. Don’t be tempted by anger to raise it up and leave yourself vulnerable.”

“I’ll try,” Ned muttered.

Mal caught his gaze. Ned was terrified, but trying very hard not to show it.
Of course. He’s never been in a real fight before, not one with guns firing and deadly blades on all sides.
Mal chuckled ruefully.

“What?” Ned glowered at him.

Good. A little anger will take the edge off his nerves. Just not too much.
“Don’t worry. You’ll do better than I did in my first battle.”

“Why? What did you do?”

“Very nearly shat myself with terror, for one thing,” Mal replied with a smile. “And dropped my pike on the sergeant’s head. Twice.”

Ned laughed. Into silence.

Raleigh’s crew watched in fascinated horror as the corsair ship changed course again, heading straight for their stern.

“What’s it going to do? Ram us?” Ned asked.

The galley was barely a hundred yards behind them now, and sat so low in the water that Mal could look down onto its bow deck from his position in the stern. The mouths of two large cannon stared back at him.

“Jesu help us,” one of the nearby sailors muttered, turning his swivel gun as far on its mount as he could, in an effort to train it on the galley.

“What is it?” Mal asked.

“They’re going to rake us.” When Mal gave him a puzzled look he added, “Fire on our stern.”

“And that’s bad, is it?”

“It’s the weakest part of the hull. Any shot that hits us will tear the length of the lower decks.”

“Hard a’larboard!” Raleigh yelled at the helmsman. “All larboard guns prepare to fire!”

The galleon heeled to the left, lines thrumming like lute-strings as the sails fought the wind. Slowly, too slowly. Puffs of white smoke issued from the corsair cannons, followed a moment later by a low thunder – and Mal staggered against the rail as the poop deck bucked underfoot. Behind him men screamed.

“Get down there and help carry away the injured,” Raleigh told Mal. He turned to his crew. “You there, fire on their gunners at will.”

The swivel gunners obeyed, the higher pitched bark of the small cannon ringing out as Mal and Ned clattered down the steps to the weather deck. The door to their own cabin lay in splinters, and a trail of destruction down the starboard side of the deck revealed the cannon-ball’s flight. The remains of a man, cut almost in two, were bleeding copiously onto the deck.

“God rest your soul,” Mal muttered, stepping over the corpse. “Here, Ned, help me with this one.”

Another man was lying face down, groaning, his leg bent at an unnatural angle. He screamed when they hauled him upright, and Ned nearly dropped him.

“Steady,” Mal told him. “No point in making it worse.”

Ned said nothing, only took a firmer grip of the man’s arm.

“Get him down to the bilges, out of the way,” one of the survivors shouted at them.

“But–”

“Just do it!”

They lowered the man down the ladder to the gun deck. Any moment Mal expected another cannonball to rip through the hull and smash them all to pieces. They shuffled through the gloom, dodging the cannons that rumbled gently back and forth with the motion of the ship and the men scurrying around them with ramrods and match-cords.

The wounded sailor began to struggle as they half-carried, half-dragged him towards the ladder leading down into the belly of the ship.

“Not the bilges!” he moaned. “In God’s name, don’t leave me to die, not in there!”

Mal glanced at Ned, who shrugged, his expression bleak. He halted and leant close to the man’s ear.

“Just as far as the main hold, eh? We can’t leave you up here.”

The sailor nodded, his face white with pain. Mal and Ned helped him down the ladder and made him as comfortable as they could on a pile of empty chunny sacks. The stink of the bilges was strong down here, but at least this level was dry.

The
Falcon
shuddered again as her own cannons fired, and dust rained down from the planks overhead. The three men waited, hardly daring to breathe, but there was no answering response from the corsair galley. Ned let out an audible sigh of relief.

“Come on, there’s nothing more we can do here,” Mal said, wiping the sweat and grime from his brow with the back of his sleeve.