Ship of Fire (14 page)

The wind was strong, nearly always off the starboard quarter, which Captain Foxcroft said was the prevailing breeze in this ocean, and ideal for sailing. The captain was generous with sea-lore, and despite his steadfast caution, so unlike our admiral's blazing self-confidence, he took pains to inquire that my bereavement was not an undue burden to me.

On rare occasions the
Golden Lion
appeared far behind in our wake, but no other fighting ships kissed the horizon. The soldiers prepared their weapons, and practiced, their halberds crashing as they cross-checked friendly blows.

After hours of practice, I became accustomed to the fume of the wicks and the deafening reports of the guns. Jack gave me a wave through the smoke from time to time, and I waved back. The gunners nodded at me approvingly—I was the young surgeon who had lost his master, and they extended to me some genial brotherhood, perhaps out of compassion, with a dash of respect.

Each night a seaman hung the usual red stern lamp behind the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
, and in the darkness it was easy to convince ourselves that we were not alone on the sea.

Chapter 33

“My mother and I will be safe, won't we, when the sea battle begins?” Anne asked me one evening when her mother slept.

“What shot could penetrate all these futtocks and ribands?” I responded, parroting some knowledge of the ship's frame I had picked up.

“Thomas, we shall need more armor than simple faith in shipwrights,” she responded, putting her hand on mine.

Her touch was warm.

Some heavy-footed commotion somewhere above distracted us momentarily, the captain and the first mate singing out orders, another urgent adjustment to the canvas on the main and mizzen masts.

“I would give my blood and breath to protect you,” I said.

Never had I made such an extravagant statement, certainly not to Jane, the doe-eyed landlord's daughter back in London.

“I see, Tom,” she said, not the response I had expected. She gave a warm but pensive smile. “We shall be defended by the good wishes and high hopes of our fighting men.”

I could say nothing more, warmed by the hope that she considered me one of the men who would fight.

No doubt a playwright or philosopher could summon the wit to discourse with a lovely woman on a warship. But the noise and cramped quarters, the steps and coughs and heavy tread all around, defeated every hope for intimacy—or even a tender thought. The ship's armorer was busy at his forge, his hammer pealing, the cook was bawling at one of his mates, a laughing, half-serious scolding audible even here, declaiming, “If I had another poxy rabbit-sucker for a mate I'd hang myself.”

I stepped closer. It was my sudden intention to kiss her, surprising even myself.

But before I could complete the act, her mother stirred, and coughed.

She sat up, saying, “Anne, the lamp is smoking.”

It could not last, this peace.

Gradually the evening came when gunners cleaned their guns, polished them, and sang songs I had not heard before. These were deep-voiced chanteys, with strangely charm-laden lyrics intended not for our ears, but for the benefit of the guns.

Far and true/powder and fire
, chants about unerring cannon shots, and an enemy dashed to the Deep.

The whetstones sang on the cutting edges of boarding hooks and daggers, until no greater keenness could be purchased. A quiet came over the deck. Soldiers and mariners put their heads together, callused fingers pointing where a land-haze rose up over the horizon. We rounded some vague shadow-spit of shore.

The admiral uttered the words himself, leaning over the quarterdeck rail as a coastline crept by. “The Spanish mainland,” he said. “And a joy to behold.”

Wine casks and fishing net drifted on the swells, evidence of Spanish shipping and harbor life. My own heart beat fast, and Jack's eyes met mine with a glow of ill-suppressed excitement.

“Cadiz harbor,” murmured Jack, “is less than a day away.”

Chapter 34

All night we did not sleep, our ship keeping steady progress under canvas that glowed in the starlight.

Every man whispered now, if he spoke at all. Stories were told of shipboard voices drifting for miles, alerting the enemy. Captain Foxcroft paced, gazing back at the
Golden Lion
, the warship lagging but persistent, growing ever closer.

Admiral Drake was not to be seen for the moment, keeping to his charts and his prayers, we understood, in his cabin. No one was permitted to strike a spark on deck, and soldiers wrapped cloth around their boots to muffle their steps.

Hercules polished my own boots in the shaded lamplight of our cabin, working oil into my sword belt. He had me stand still while he brushed me all over with boar's-hair bristles. I felt like an adventurer.

I asked Hercules if all surgeons went to battle so polished and darned, and he said, “Of course, sir. There is no other way.”

“To do what?” I had to ask.

“To kill,” he said simply, “or to die.”

On the morning of the seventeenth day we were at sea, the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
came-to, as mariners put it—stopping at a point in the sea swells, and turning into the wind.

The
Golden Lion
drew near, pennons curling and snapping in the breeze out of the northwest, her sails booming and cracking as she made all possible haste to join us. It was a thrill to see this warship, and to observe the sun-brown faces of soldiers and seamen other than our own, the mariners on both vessels too tense with anticipation to wave or call out. A few smaller ships, pinnaces like the one we had sailed out of London, bobbed well behind the
Golden Lion
. There were no additional craft—the refitted merchant warships had been scattered by the weather.

Captain Foxcroft beckoned to me, welcoming me with a care-worn smile as I joined him on the quarterdeck. Sir Robert was there, too, outfitted in high, flared boots, and a broad sword belt with a blazing silver buckle. His features were shaded by the brim of his feathered hat, and, like the captain, he wore a highly polished breastplate.

It was the sight of this armor that quickened my heart and chilled me at the same time. Perhaps I had hoped that some jaunty maneuver would take the place of battle, the capturing of another prize-ship, perhaps, some symbolic defiance while we waited for the bulk of our fleet.

I greeted these men wordlessly, all of us too full of feeling to trust speech. Every creak of the ship's timbers, every hush of sea around her hull, was amplified by my senses. I wondered, too, how many of these sturdy, eager men would be alive to see sunset.

Admiral Drake remained in his cabin.

A lookout called some mariner's warning and men turned to watch a vessel on the horizon. Another vessel loomed in the hint of a harbor not far to the east.

“Spanish fishermen,” muttered the captain.

High above, suntanned mariners strained from the castles atop the masts, watching the sea. Men adjusted their swords nervously, and gunners made minute adjustments to the gun carriages. Captain Foxcroft bit his thumbnail, his eyes shifting from point to point on the ocean. We could not tarry here long, right in the sea-road from the mouth of the great enemy harbor of Cadiz.

But with the painstaking slowness I had seen before at sea—keen anticipation offset by agonizing deliberateness—the
Golden Lion
, labored to come even closer. Laces of sea-foam rose and fell around the ships. Vice-Admiral Borough, a wary bear of a man in a brilliantly brocaded jerkin, leaned out over his quarterdeck rail and called some greeting, his words lost in the lift and fall of the sea.

“You led us a merry chase,” cried the vice-admiral again, and added some further word.

At that moment the admiral climbed the steps from his cabin.

His breastplate blazed in the full morning sun of the quarterdeck, and the crest of his helmet flashed. His cheeks glowed, and he stood on his tiptoes, gazing around at the ship and her crew, inhaling the salt air.

Every one of us must have been joined by the same eager hope—that Admiral Drake might give us a share of his great confidence.

And that is what he did, taking in the sight of every man under the sky, meeting our gaze with his, and filling each of us with a feeling of promise. He did not forget me, touching my gaze, too.

Admiral Drake gave a nod, studied the wind with a smile of satisfaction, and then turned and spoke quietly to the captain. Captain Foxcroft took a deep, ragged breath. But he obeyed promptly enough, singing out orders in a firm voice.

The ship's trumpeter licked his lips, pursed them experimentally, then lifted his shiny brass horn. A first, thready note was nearly silent. And then the trumpeter tried again, and this time the call lifted,
to arms, to arms
.

Our vessel made for the Spanish harbor, leaving Vice-Admiral Borough bending over the rail of his ship, calling after us in dismay.

Chapter 35

Approaching the Spanish mainland was like watching invisible needles stitching in rocks, castle walls, spires and towers of a city on an illustrated cloth. The wind propelled the vessel forward at a pace that allowed much time to wonder at the hulls and masts growing ever more definite beyond the rocky mouth of the harbor.

Captain Foxcroft kept one hand on the rail of the quarterdeck, and gave the orders Admiral Drake passed on to him. All English flags and pennons, and Drake's own insignia, were struck—brought down—the long, tapered flags fluttering and seeming to struggle against the hands taking them in. False flags were run up, insignia and colors I did not recognize, and the sight of which brought a laugh from Sir Robert.

“They are Flemish flags, if they are anything,” he said, in response to my question. The lowland country was in no conflict with any other, and her flag disguised our militant intentions perfectly.

It was afternoon when the sound of sea lapping on rocks reached us, and that exhalation rose all around of salt and seaweed—the presence of a shore. Which tiny figure along this beach, I wondered, would prove the vigilant sentry who put our lives in danger? A net-mender shaded his eyes. A child stood on a high rock to watch our sails. In the distance, within the mouth of the harbor, fishermen drew in a long net, a boat at the outer circumference of the skein guiding it in.

The captain and admiral made their way down the quarterdeck stairs, and hid below-decks, the admiral barely able to suppress a laugh as he peered out from the shadows. One glimpse of the famous sea fighter
El Draque
, we knew, would be enough to send the port into panic.

But the extreme foolhardiness of our position became all the more clear as we came within range of the harbor defenses.

The entrance to the port of Cadiz was defended by a great stone fortress. A sentry on a low tower watched as our ship made way ever closer. Our warship, followed by her reluctant, laggard companion, could be easily raked and ruined by the fort's archers and cannon.

We inched past the rocky foundation of the citadel. My skin prickled as the distant sentry studied us. He called to a fellow soldier, and soon guards gathered behind the battlements to count our guns. No doubt they wondered why a Flemish warship was in such a hurry to enter Cadiz harbor, a refuge for freighters and their precious cargoes.

In their armor and halberds, these Spaniards looked more colorful than their English counterparts, more fond of canary yellow sleeves. Their beards were uniformly dark, their teeth bright as they pointed out our guns, merely curious, it seemed, what our mission might be. Ross Bagot, our master gunner, making every show of innocent lounging, lifted a languid hand in greeting to the Spanish guards.

My friend Jack and a wiry gunner's mate named Chubbs manned one of the smaller weapons that projected out over the main deck. Jack's gun was angled so it would fire at any vessel approaching off the starboard bow, should one appear. Jack, too, made a dumb-show of innocent activity, prompted by the master gunner to a theatrical preoccupation with a flaw in a leather bucket. The ship's mates passed among the seamen, encouraging a show of harmless knotting and scrubbing.

Flemish or not, our vessel kindled the curiosity of the sentries. A Spanish soldier hefted a musket. I could see him judge the aim and range, with no real intention of discharging the firearm. He was already losing the opportunity as our ship took on greater momentum, the wind muscling her forward, white water parting wide at our prow.

The
Golden Lion
followed, and the few pinnaces in her wake. They met with no more hostility than we had encountered, the soldiers at last relaxing and retiring behind the battlements.

“It's as easy as kiss-the-duchess,” I said hopefully—it had been one of my master's favorite phrases.

“The king of Spain,” observed Sir Robert, “has all his cannon pointed toward land. No one here expects an attack from the sea.”

The captain and the admiral were back on the quarterdeck, the admiral indicating the array of ships that lay ahead, merchantmen and caravels, lighters and fishing boats, too many ships to fit along the wharves, many of the great hulls anchored off shore. Gilded wine-ships, multicolored galleons—some of the vessels were surely loaded with silks, or even silver ingots and bricks of pure gold.

The admiral motioned for me to join him, and I was surprised that my knees were steady despite my pounding pulse. Now that we had stolen past the fortress I began to allow myself a hopeful lightening of spirits. Perhaps warfare would now prove just another sport, the taking of a rich cargo or two, and a speedy escape.

A horseman left the stone fort, looking our way from time to time as he rode with increasing purpose back into town, a cloak flowing out behind as the steed rocked into a gallop.

We were in the harbor now, with no easy way of turning back. Many of us counted the ships before us and around us, warships and galleys among them. Mouths worked silently, fingers ticking off the magnificent ships anchored in the peaceful waters.