Ship of Fire (9 page)

The Admiral Drake looked right into my eyes. Perhaps he remarked to himself the similarity in our coloring, both of us with the same red hair. He gave me a smile. This pleased me greatly, and I stood as straight as any man on deck. Then he took us all in with another glance before he spoke in a quiet voice.

I caught the sound of Admiral Drake's words, his accent like the folk of my home town near the River Tavy. “Yes, Captain Foxcroft,” he said, “give the men a taste of black powder.”

“Touch it into the hole, there, in the breech of the gun,” whispered the master gunner with fresh excitement. “Now, young sir, if it please you. Right in there,” he added fervently, pointing with a gnarled, big-knuckled forefinger.

Not me, I wanted to protest.

Just then—with the storied sea-knight looking on, and every other crew member on the ship casting their eyes my way with envy and anticipation—I could not move.

William leaned toward me. “Come on, Tom—it's as easy as kiss-the-duchess,” he said with a wink.

I hesitated, blowing nervously on the glowing wick. Jack Flagg smiled and rolled his eyes. I was grateful for the good humor of his mock-scowl: hurry!

I stepped forward, wasting not a further moment, and I thrust the glowing wick into the touch hole.

I held my breath.

Nothing happened.

I thrust the wick in farther, all the way in, my knuckles on the cold gold-brown bronze of the gun.

Chapter 19

The next moment, I was lying flat on the wooden deck.

In my surprise, I did not know why I was there. High above me loomed the mainmast, a sail billowing with the breeze, rigging taut and black against blue sky. I puzzled out what must have happened.

A sick fear gripped me.

I was coughing by then, the thick stink of sweet-acrid sulfur in my nostrils. I tried to lift my head but I could not control the sinews of my neck and arms. Even my eyes were failing me, stinging with the smoke. Jack was kneeling beside me, and seamen gazed down at me, their features creased with concern.

I was nearly deaf, too, even as I struggled onto one elbow, and worked myself to my feet, Jack helping me. I read the words on his lips, but even then took a shaky moment to comprehend.

An explosion.

A gun had burst.
The
gun, the one I had fired.

I understood this all now.

I put my hands to my head, reassured to feel my skull in one piece. Jack was beseeching me to tell him if I was hurt badly. I could not answer, upright on my weak, unsteady legs. Like a drunkard far gone in wine I pieced together what I would say, some weak jest, as soon as I could move my lips.

I groped across the deck through metal fragments that my hands and booted feet struck and knocked aside, bits of what looked like a bronze bell shattered and strewn about the planks. I did not know fully what I sought, or what person. I felt my way through the thick, parting smoke, and fell to my knees beside the stretched form of my master.

I seized his hand and rubbed it, to work life into his pulse, as I had seen done by William himself in reviving a patient suffering a swoon. I tugged at his arm, and spoke, my voice muffled and strange in my own ears.

I implored him to speak to me.

Hands stretched out, other men coming to my aid, but I did not have a glance for them, or a thought. I bent down over my master hearing my own, foreign-sounding voice like a sound from many fathoms down, calling for him to look at me. I begged him to turn his eyes and look into mine. I put my hands on his chest, and on the pulse points of his neck, but my senses were too unsteady to be trusted, a ringing sound in my ears.

My master's unseeing eyes were unmoving, his limbs slack where he sprawled on the deck. His pupils were fixed and wide. A fragment of dark bronze was fixed in the center of his forehead, a ragged star shape of metal, a fine trickle of blood threading down, across his temple, to the wooden planks.

Ross Bagot put a hand out to me. I was beginning to be able to make out sounds as Captain Foxcroft joined him, his steps causing subtle vibrations in the deck. The captain addressed me solicitously, words I still could not hear clearly. The smoke had been driven clear by the wind now, and I wondered which of these men to send for medicines, vinegar to splash on my master's face, spirits of wine to awaken his tongue.

I caught the eye of a ship's boy, a wide-eyed lad with hair the color of straw. My voice was heavy, my words sluggish, as I directed the lad. “Bring me the doctor's satchel from the shelf.”

The boy stared. The captain murmured something to the child, and he scampered off. I leaned over my master and slapped his cheeks. I told him we'd see him right, and very soon, too, imitating the manner and speech William himself had employed during similar crises.

The ship's boy hurried back with my master's satchel, and I found the lancet and bleeding cup within. I would open a vein and drain a cup of blood—a sure remedy for a host of emergencies.

Like many fighting ships, our vessel had a man of God on board, a straw-haired man with a wispy yellow beard, with no ornament to show that he was a cleric. With every show of prayerfulness this man knelt beside me. I was grateful at the sound of Our Father, in straight-forward prayer-book English. Christ Jesus would aid my master's recovery.

I was confused, too. More than confused—the prayer awakened me to a feeling of inexpressible uncertainty. The chaplain offered a prayer for “our departed shipmate,” and I felt an unsteady surge of anger.

My master was not dead, I wanted to protest, and it was unseemly in the extreme to pretend that he was. I put out a hand to silence the chaplain, and Jack Flagg put his arm around me, despite my protest, saying, “Come away, Tom.”

I struggled.

The chaplain and my friend the gunner's mate were both misguided. My master could look to me for good judgment. I would open a vein, release the dark humors that had captured my master's senses, and he would be sitting up and asking for a cup of rhenish wine in no time at all.

“On deck there,” sounded a clear, commanding voice that cut through the ringing in my ears.

The captain, the gunner, and all the present ship's company on the main deck straightened immediately.

Admiral Drake leaned over the quarterdeck rail and gave the order, “Take the surgeon's mate into my cabin.”

Firm hands seized my arms.

“And Captain Foxcroft,” the admiral added crisply, “look to the ship.”

Chapter 20

I sat in an oak-paneled cabin.

Pewter flagons perched on a shelf, held in place by a restraining rail against the movement of the ship. Rolled-up charts peeked out of leather sleeves, sepia coastlines marked with dark brown writing. A compass was fastened to the tabletop, set within a box and kept steady by gimbals, brass pivots that secured the compasss against the motion of the swells.

A ship's boy brought a pitcher and poured cider into one of the flagons, a large drinking vessel with a hinged lid, and set it before me.

“Admiral Drake sends his best compliments,” said the lad, my hearing improving with each heartbeat, “and begs you await him with good cheer.”

Despite my numb senses, the fact that I was about to have an interview with the great sea fighter made me apprehensive. Was I going to be blamed for the accident with the gun, and its consequence? William would be very angry with me, when he recovered.

The lad left me alone with my disordered fears. I would be accused of some felony, and spend the voyage in chains, my future among rats. I made no move to drink, although I kept my hand on the flagon to keep it from skittering off the table.

I stood at once as Admiral Drake entered the cabin.

His cheeks were ruddy, flecks of spray even now soaking into his brightly colored doublet. He unfastened the rapier from his waist, and set the weapon on the floor. He motioned for me to sit, but I would not.

He poured cider from a silver pitcher and drank.

“He's dead,” said Admiral Drake.

My ears were still ringing somewhat, but I could make out his speech, and indeed the subtle sounds of the ship all round, clearly enough. The admiral's words, however, carried no meaning that I wished to take in.

The admiral continued, “We'll have the prayer book service for burial at sea this evening, at the set of sun. It is a pity. He was a good doctor, and an honest man by every account, but now he's gone to God.”

I kept my mind a perfect blank.

“You understand me, don't you?” said the admiral in a gentle but probing voice.

“I need to go to him,” I heard myself manage to say.

“Your master is killed,” he said, “as you must know. The gun burst into pieces. It's rare but not unheard of. A fragment smote him, and you will not serve him anymore.”

His accent was very much that of the Dartmoor neighbors of my boyhood.
Yew-er mauster iss killt
.

“I know far more about medicine,” I said, forgetting every courtesy, “than any of this ship's company.” I was immediately ashamed of myself for speaking so bluntly to this great man, and I silenced myself.

“It delights me to hear it,” said the admiral. “But your master is with Jesus.”

Each heartbeat hammered this tidings into me. I looked away. I closed my eyes and opened them again, perhaps hoping that this ship's cabin, the vessel, would prove a mere nightmare.

“Then,” I rasped, “I must go back to England.”

“How?” he asked.

“In one of the ship's boats,” I said. “A pinnace, perhaps.”

He gave a gentle laugh. “Thomas, you will voyage with us.”

“But with no master to serve—” I faltered.

I wept, then, wordless, a breaking of my soul that left me baying like a beast for a long while.

When I could speak again, I heard the admiral's gentle command, “Take a sip of good cider, Thomas. And sit down.”

I did sit, and the admiral joined me, pouring himself another serving of golden brown cider. I could not keep from noticing that he handled both the pitcher and the flagon a little clumsily, using his gloved right hand sparingly.

“Sir, I will go home,” I insisted, taking a swallow of this strong, warming drink.

“And leave my ship without a surgeon, Thomas?”

“I am no surgeon, my Lord Admiral.” Despite my great grief I was clear-headed enough to employ proper courtesy.

“If I say you are a surgeon,” said Admiral Drake, “then you are one.”

“I know too little of green bile,” I protested, “or the dangers of excess phlegm, or the right quantity of aniseed for curing fever—if that is what it's for.”

“A surgeon bleeds the feverish,” said the admiral, “cuts off the blasted limb that offends the body's health, and gives strength to the uneasy soul.” He leaned forward. “We are two red-haired men with accents much alike, and I'll wager you, too, have a preference for cider over beer.”

“I like beer as well as cider—” But I recognized the truth in what the admiral was asserting. Our cider is a bracing fermented drink, and West Country apples are renowned.

“Your family must have lived near mine, Thomas.”

“I was a boy in Moreton.”

“Not a day's walk from Tavistock,” said the admiral, “where my family fished the river and milked the cows for many a year.”

“I know,” I said truthfully, “that every hamlet of Dartmoor is proud to be associated with your fame.”

“We're two fellows who waded the River Tavy,” said the famous knight with a brisk good cheer. “And I'll not see you turn into a coward over the death of your good master.”

Coward or not, I wanted to respond, my own honor did not matter to me.

“Do you think your master is the last man you'll see dead within the fortnight, Thomas Spyre?” continued Admiral Drake. “We're voyaging to singe the beard of the king of Spain, right into the harbor of Cadiz. There we'll burn everything we can set spark to, and you'll see Spanish blood. It will run down the decks. You'll win glory and perhaps a few
reals
of Papist gold. And you'll be surgeon of this ship, or I'll set a knotted lash to your back.”

“If my patients die, my lord,” I persisted woodenly, “if they sink away and lose their lives under my care, sir, the fault is yours.”

To my great puzzlement—and perhaps my relief—the admiral laughed. “Thomas, surgeons do little to save a man's life. What a doctor knows about the ways of breath and bone could be written on the side of a thimble. Our Lord Jesus cures us, or takes us, as he chooses. You'll be as sound a doctor as any under the sky, or I'm a goose.”

To my further surprise I found myself wryly smiling through my tears, understanding at least a part of the admiral's ironic view of my profession. “Because you have such a low opinion of medicine, you know I'm equal to the challenge.”

“I'll have the sailmaker stitch you a scholar's hat,” he replied, “a floppy one, the sort philosophers wear when they dispute the weight of the moon's shadow.”

I could not keep myself from laughing, despite my grief. “My Lord Admiral, dressing me like a learned gentleman will not make me one.”

“It will,” said Admiral Drake, “if I say it does.”

He spoke with such a spirit of self-assurance that I was dazzled—and very nearly convinced.

“Can you set a splint?” he asked with a smile.

“I have done it, sir.”

“And cauterize a wound?” he continued, his bright, steady eyes on mine.

Many doctors advised searing an injury, especially gunshot wounds, with a hot iron. My master had taught me that cauterizing did more harm than good. “My lord, if you desire it.”

“Tell me, Thomas—how old are you?”

I recalled then my vow to the Admiralty in London, swearing that I would spy on this great Englishman. Such a promise could not be lightly broken. It would be an advantage to my mission to stay on as surgeon.