Fire (14 page)

His son gave one of his rare smiles. ‘And how would you know that, Da?'

‘Never you mind. Tell him to come quick.'

‘And if he won't?'

‘He will.'

Josiah nodded and left. Pitman lay back down, staring at the ceiling. He hoped Bastable was still there. It had been a year since
last he'd seen him and the plague had taken so many. If he was, he would come. For friendship, sealed in those years after the war when they'd all – he, Aaron and Bettina – been part of the mad crew, the Ranters, praising God in the open field, with drink, with dance, with…love – but for comradeship too. He'd saved the man's life on the ramparts at Turnham Green – twice, and on the same day.

‘I will ever be in your debt, Pitman. You have but to call,' he'd said.

Now the debt would be repaid. For Aaron Bastable, blacksmith, was the best breaker and resetter of bones he'd ever known.

He dozed, his dreams a haze of tobacco smoke, fiddle music and naked flesh under a full moon. Stairs creaking woke him. Voices on the landing.

‘Goliath laid low, eh? I told you no good would come of forsaking sin for righteousness.'

The man grinning in the doorway didn't look much different than when Pitman had last seen him. Still the insolence in the close-set eyes, one straight on, one askance, as if always both questioning and mocking the world. Both under a thatched roof of thick black hair, eaves silvered, above a face that was all folds and creases, every one lined in the residue of smoke that was the smith's trade.

Peering in at his elbow, eyes bright, was Josiah. ‘Off to chapel, boy,' Pitman said, raising himself up.

‘But, Father, I'd rather stay and hear you tell your old war tales. Master Bastable told me a few coming over and –'

‘Did he, by God? Then you already know more than you need. Off with you now.'

‘Father.'

Reluctantly, Josiah turned about. The front door closed. ‘Have no fear,' Aaron said as he came into the room, ‘I told him naught of consequence. Didn't even mention that time when you and I was so drunk we dressed up as Catholic priests and went and took confession up at his Lordship's manor house.' His offset eyes filled with light. ‘By God, those Papists had stored up some sins, hadn't they? We had to set unusual penances, did we not? For the maids anyhow.' His voice went high. ‘ “Oh no, Father Evelyn, I shouldn't touch that. But I will, if you'll only forgive me. Ooh, Father Evelyn!” ' He tipped back his head and guffawed. ‘By God, you had four and I had five before his Lordship cottoned on. I think it was her Ladyship's cry of “Father Evelyn, what's that under your cassock?” that tipped him off.' He feigned a limp around the room, rubbing his backside. ‘We was lucky his blunderbuss was only loaded for starlings, I tell ye. Though Bettina was picking shot from our arses for weeks.'

Pitman laughed with his friend. His memory of the night, indeed of most of the three years he'd spent as a Ranter, was hazy, lost in smoke and debauchery. ‘I've a feeling you are overestimating our conquests – and our capacity, man. And only you took the shot, if you recall. You were never the fastest over a wall. You'd proved that at Turnham Green ramparts.'

Aaron pulled a stool to the bedside and sat, running his hand through his thick hair. Coke dust rose and fell in sunbeams from the window. ‘You're right there, Evelyn, and I still thank –'

‘Sht!' The thief-taker's hand shot up. ‘You know I never use my given name. Few remember it now. It's Pitman to you, Pitman to all.'

Mischief returned to the eyes. ‘But it's so pretty a name. Why, any maid would be glad to own…erk!'

Pitman had extended his raised hand, grabbed Aaron's throat and squeezed. His friend slipped free, fell back, choking and laughing. ‘Very well, very well, Corporal Pitman. Tell me what means this summons.' He glanced down the bed to the bandaged leg, an eyebrow raised.

It was all swiftly explained, as much as Aaron needed to know. He knew Pitman's other trade, indeed was one of those the thief-taker would recruit from time to time when he needed men. He'd been away at the recent raid, else he'd have been on it. ‘Tut, these Saints, eh?' Aaron shook his head. ‘Fucking madmen. I mean, I think doom is coming, right? Just don't reckon Jesus is on his way back to rule us.'

‘Well, they do. And they are a danger. And I need to be strong enough to face them.' He gestured down. ‘Take a look at my leg.'

Aaron rose and undid the bandages. When the flesh was exposed, he winced. The skin was still a brownish yellow, with purple lines running like rivers on a map down to the knee. ‘Bullet or blade?'

‘Blade.' As Aaron bent to sniff and wince again, Pitman continued, ‘It went bad. I had a fever, just come out of it two days since. Bettina attended me.'

‘With her own potions? She did not let a quack near you?'

‘She'd bite his bill if one tried. But I think in tending the flesh she missed something else. I'll show you. Help me sit.' With his arm around his friend's neck, and despite the pain, he managed to swing onto his rump. The leg was stretched out before him. ‘D'ye see?'

Aaron did not need to bend again – the angle of upper leg to knee was obvious. ‘Certainly broken,' he said. ‘Lie back and let's see how bad.'

Pitman chewed his lip to still his own cries as the smith probed, turned the leg, lifted it. Finally, when his brow was wet with sweat, Aaron laid the leg back down, sat on the bed's edge. ‘The good news is that it's none so bad – a clean fracture, it feels. But it's already started to knit together and it's knitting wrong. That's why you're angled and it'll never have the strength to bear you true. Also, you get up onto it too soon and it could break again – worse, maybe even pierce your skin – and then,' he shrugged, ‘not even Bettina's potions would save ye.'

‘ 'Tis what I thought.' Pitman nodded. ‘Can you reset it?'

‘I can. I will –' he raised a hand, ‘but not now.'

‘But I need to be about quick. This will take some healing.'

‘It will. But trust me, we have one shot at getting this right and I will not rush it. It's still inflamed at the break, which I do not like. That needs must settle, and I'll show Bettina ways of aiding that.' As Pitman came up on his elbows to protest, Aaron put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently back down. ‘No, man. You will bide. A week I say, at the least. Then I will return, with a leather strap for your mouth, a sleeping draught for your mind and a couple of stout fellows to hold you down as a caution.' He rubbed at his jaw. ‘I'll never get those teeth back you knocked out at Newbury when I put your shoulder back that one time.' He winced. ‘Nay, I vow I'll fix ye,' he continued, a smile returning, ‘or your name's not Evelyn.'

3rd June 1666

‘Fire!'

As the gun captain shouted and plunged the slow match into the top hole, William Coke stepped to the side, turned away and, taking a deep breath, shoved his fingers into his ears.

The culverin roared, lurching back on its carriage, the breeching ropes straining to their limits. Smoke poured from the muzzle, obscuring everything, but Coke did not need to see, so often had he done this now. As other cannons followed, firing the length of the gun deck, he grabbed the pole, stepped up to the cannon's mouth, shoved the stick and its wet cloth all the way in and swabbed it up and down. After the ceaseless broadsides of the last two hours, there was so much powder scattered over the deck that one spark could be a disaster.

‘Load again!' yelled the gun captain, removing the wedge at the cannon's rear so that the barrel angled up. As Coke stepped away, the second captain came forward with the cloth cartridge bag. Laying the pole down, Coke bent and lifted the eighteen-pound
smooth iron ball with a grunt. Another man, Forbes, should have been doing that; but Dutch shot had carried away both his legs, together with the head of the man beside him, and the fingers of a third, one ball halving their crew from six to three. Each of them now did all the tasks. Death had promoted him from second sponger and second loader to the first rank of both.

As he waited for the second captain to shove the cloth bag of gunpowder down the muzzle, Coke glanced out of the gun port and through the gunsmoke shredded by the wind of their passage. The aft of the enemy ship was just passing, perhaps seventy yards away; close enough so that he could read, amidst all the gilt of the decoration, the Dutch lettering. Apparently the Hogens he'd been trying to kill came from their main province of Amsterdam. He'd spent some years in that city, when in exile during Cromwell's protectorate. Now he wondered if he'd just helped murder someone with whom he'd once drunk jenever.

‘Bill, you dozy cunt!' The second captain slapped his shoulder. ‘Load the bastard.'

‘Aye, aye.'

‘Belay that!' It was Squires, the gun captain, who'd countermanded. He'd been leaning into the splintered gap that the enemy's ball had opened in the ship's side, peering out. Now he straightened up, which, at maybe five foot, he was just able to do; while Coke, closer to six, held the back of his head to the ceiling, forever hunched. ‘It's the last of 'em, for now. No doubt the admiral will turn us round to 'ave another go at the herring fuckers. But we've some time afore that happens. Let's get the gun cleaned and squared away.'

Another go? How many more can we have? Coke thought – but
did not say. He'd learned in his four weeks aboard that a landsman voicing any opinion at sea received mockery, extra tasks, even punishments. He'd seen what happened to others swept up in the press like himself who questioned or whined. So he'd curbed his temper, shed only hidden tears, and did what was asked of him. As now.

The officer in charge of their gun deck bellowed out what Squires had already guessed. ‘Clear away. Make safe!' the lieutenant called. Coke fetched the cartridge out of the gun with a hook, then plied a broom until all the powder scattered near him could be scooped up and stowed. Other men appeared from above, and the bodies they'd been unable to shift during combat were carried away – many in multiple pieces. Coke looked in the opposite direction. He knew he mustn't glimpse any of the guts that were being dumped in buckets. He would probably spew. He usually did.

‘Cap'n?'

The word accompanied a tug on his arm. He turned – and there was Dickon. Only exhaustion had prevented Coke from fearing for the lad during the previous two hours of fight. Now he had to resist the urge to sweep his ward into his arms. Instead, he whispered back, ‘It's Pa, or Da. Remember that. No rank here.'

‘Pa-pa,' the boy stuttered, then offered up a water flask. Coke took it and drank deep. Four weeks at sea and the water was on the turn, but it tasted like nectar right then. He looked at Dickon as he drank. It had seemed like some small way of protecting the lad, if Coke claimed paternity. His size and quietness made men wary of him. But truly, Dickon needed little protecting. Indeed, all had taken to him, treating him almost like a luck charm, many tousling his thick corn-stalk hair as he passed by. For the boy was
always grinning, laughing, capering. Nothing daunted him – not even his first two days of battle, it appeared.

‘Are you well, son?' Coke asked, seeking in the wide face for any hurt or terror.

‘Aye, aye, Cap…Pa! Ca-pa! Capa!' Dickon laughed. ‘Whoa! The bangs, the whizz, the fire!'

A voice intruded. ‘When you're done, all topside. There's grub and beer.'

The lieutenant's call started a rush. Men swiftly finished the last of their tasks and soon Coke, bent over, was following Dickon to the stair, up and through the next gun deck and out onto the main deck of His Majesty's Ship
Prince George.
He took deep breaths of the salty air, paradise after the hot and smoky hell below. He took more when he glanced over the rail and noted that the enemy fleet, who had passed the English line, was tacking about. He was bound for hell again, and soon.

There was little more than hardtack biscuit to eat, with the beer as sour as the water, but he wolfed both down as Dickon prattled. He'd spent the entire fight aloft on the foremast. If the Dutch had decided to disable the
Prince George,
it was up there they'd have concentrated their fire. But as they passed, they'd gone broadside to broadside with the English and Dickon, when he was not trimming the rigging, repairing ropes and swinging around the sails, had had a true bird's-eye view.

‘There was some Ho-ho-hogens we hardly hit at all, Capa,' he grinned again at the new title he'd made, ‘and others we fair bl-blasted. Mind, they blasted us too.' A brief darkness clouded his eyes. ‘I feared for ye, Cap, ah, Pap!' The eyes brightened. ‘But you are whole. Whole and not h-holed!'

He laughed and Coke could not hold back his own smile. The boy he'd found frozen in his doorway two winters before had been barely able to speak. Now he could talk, even read. And make jokes. ‘Not quite,' he said, touching his own cheek. It may have been lost to the black powder that had near transformed him into a blackamoor, but he had a splinter the size of a finger there, delivered by that same Dutch shot that had carried off his comrades. Considering what it had done to them, he was thinking of leaving it in as a charm.

‘Belay that!' yelled Dickon suddenly, squirming wildly. And a moment later a face popped out of the boy's collar, all wide eyes and chattering teeth. ‘Now, now, Tromp,' Dickon said, and reached up to bring the little spider monkey from his cave. The animal swung out but wrapped arms and legs around the boy's neck. Four equally wide eyes now stared up at Coke but he knew better than to reach a teasing finger. The monkey had already bitten him twice; indeed, it would bite anyone except his new master, his old one having died of a fever as the voyage commenced. Dickon, though, had discovered a common passion – which he produced now.

‘Nuts!' he said happily, holding out a handful of peanuts. Tromp – named for the Hogen admiral they fought – grabbed one and shelled it rapidly between little teeth, pausing only to hiss at Coke when he took one too.

‘How the devil do you get these, Dickon?' Coke asked, crunching.

‘Friends, friends,' came the reply. The boy nodded past his captain's shoulder. ‘Are our other friends leaving the p-party, think you?'

Coke turned. Were the Dutch manoeuvring to leave or return? Had they won? He truly did not give a fig for England's cause. He didn't know what it was and he had been kidnapped to fight for it. But he would have liked respite from both the work and the danger. Especially from the empty feeling in the stomach that was always there as he helped hurl death at the Dutch, as he awaited a death hurled back. Two days they'd been fighting, with endless shifting to get the wind in their sails. ‘Shifting' was not the term, he knew; but he'd resisted learning any more of the language of the navy than he needed to operate the gun he'd been assigned to, as he was considered far too old and rigid to work aloft. But at least he knew that the wind behind them was called the weather gauge. Sudden attacks happened when they had it, terrible defence when the enemy did. But surely, whoever had it, no battle at sea lasted longer than two days? Yet even if it was over, what would happen then?

A similar, yet different flutter came to his stomach. There was a perverse part of him, he knew, that enjoyed combat for this one reason: during it, he could think of nothing else. It had been the only time in the four weeks since his pressing that he'd thought of anything other than home.

But he did now. While Dickon and the monkey ate nuts and chattered, the boy telling more of what he'd seen aloft that Tromp had missed being tucked inside his shirt, Coke could only look to the sea and watch the rolling ships' masts transform into London church spires. One he especially noted – the narrow tiered column that rose from St Clement Danes upon the Strand. The last church he'd been inside. The one where he'd married Sarah Chalker. He closed his eyes – and saw her, facing him at the altar rail. He tried
to hold onto that vision, to see only her, her and a moment, that one when he had realised, when he'd known that he was truly, completely happy for the first time since he had departed for the late king's wars.

He could not hold it long. Other visions came to crowd it out. Many were jumbled together, and as blurry as when he'd been cozened and betrayed. The taint of the sleeping draught not quite disguised by sack; the touch of Rebekah's naked skin on an attic bed; her cry of rape as the men burst into the room; and the worst, by far the worst: Sarah's cry when she saw him there, on their wedding night, naked with another. The way he couldn't speak, deny, unable to raise his thickened tongue from the base of his mouth. The blow from the presser's coiled whip had sent him back into a darkness that lasted for so long and only ended when sea water was dumped on him and he'd awoken aboard the
Prince George.

He lifted his shut eyes to the north, trying to reach beyond sight. Where are you now, Sarah? In the theatre? Still working even though you are so ill? I'd hoped to let you leave there, if you chose, to rest and deliver your baby – our baby – safely. In the house I'd bought you – the house that must have been sold again, since I failed to make the last payments. Are you still in Sheere Lane then, acting by day, resting at night? Or has Pitman, recovered by now, taken you in because Bettina insisted? Because he insisted too? I pray so, though I have rarely been a praying man. Above all, I pray that I survive this battle and the next and them all and can somehow get back to you
whole.
To explain the foul conspiracy that took me. To ask forgiveness for my foolishness. Simply, in the end, to love you.

The tug on his arm had become too insistent to ignore.

‘Cap'n,' said Dickon, in a low voice. ‘Something's happening.'

Coke opened his eyes, and even though they were a landsman's he could see that things had changed. The Dutch ships that had broken through the English line were re-forming to port and they would have the weather gauge, the wind bearing them down to the attack. But he saw on the starboard side that there were other Dutch ships there, a smaller group. And that same wind could blow the English upon them like a vengeful storm.

It was this that the man who'd climbed from the quarter to the poop deck now turned to address. ‘Hearken, my steady lads,' bellowed Sir George Ayscue, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, in a voice well used to reaching over wind and water, ‘you've given the Hogen Mogens hellfire, and they've run off – for now. But a Dutchman's memory is as short as his cock,' laughter came at this, which Ayscue topped, ‘and no doubt Admiral de Ruyter over there,' he gestured to port, to the ships that had broken through, ‘will be upon us soon. But why should we wait when there,' his hand waved to starboard, ‘lies Admiral Tromp a-wallowing, with only twelve ships at his command. If we get among 'em, the Hogens will find it hard to fire without hitting their brothers. If we get among 'em, me boys,' his eyes gleamed, ‘there's prizes to be had.'