Ship of Fire Read online

  Color in his cheeks, the admiral gave the order, “Pay them back in kind, Captain Foxcroft.”

  The battle that followed could have taken a few minutes or it could have consumed many hours. The sun, which had been retiring toward the sea behind us, stopped in its descent, and the wind ceased, our sails and the canvas of our enemy hanging slack.

  The Genoese gunports spouted fire, and our own gunners vanished in the poisonous, lung-searing smoke. At times there was silence, except for the gasping of the gunners, swabbing the gun barrels, jamming home a charge of powder, working round lead shot down the muzzles of our cannon.

  Then, once again, the near-silence was obliterated by the thunder of gunfire.

  When the smoke lifted from time to time, the Genoese treasure ship was stripped of rigging, ropes dangling, scraps of clothing and flesh sown across her maindeck. Her gunwales gaped, and bloody men wrestled a gun back into its port. Pistol shots whipped our deck from her fighting tops—the firing positions high on the masts—answered by muskets and longbows of our own.

  It took so long to reload a firearm or a cannon, so many deliberate well-rehearsed steps, that for long moments the fight seemed to take place underwater, mates slowly reaching for their powder scoops, gunners bending down to use their bronze reamers, singed fingers cradling another round shot, all performed with a sodden rhythm.

  Everything else we had ever accomplished in our lives was far off and colorless, now. We could barely remember any other place but this calm, suddenly windless late day. Our ship rocked with yet another broadside.

  I had heard of ships weakened and sunk during battle without suffering an enemy blow, planks and pegs loosened by the recoil of their own guns. The Genoese ship was holed now, three ragged shot-wounds near the waterline.

  And more damage was exposed as the water lifted and fell away, an ugly stitching of bright wounds along her hull. As she let loose another uneven broadside the recoil rocked the treasure ship gently back, and predictably forward again. Each time this happened the ragged punctures in her hull dipped downward, into the brine.

  At last water began to flow through her gunports and then up, over her gunwales, tide stretching across her deck.

  Chapter 38

  “Board her before she sinks!” cried Drake.

  But as our stern swung slowly toward the freighter, the merchant guns continued to bark fire at us, and men in our ship’s waist ducked involuntarily as some new variety of shot shrilled through the air, an ugly, stomach-turning sound.

  “It’s chain shot,” remarked the admiral to me. “Meant to cut our men to pieces.”

  The big cargo ship was burning now, the lapping, rising harbor water kissing flames, white steam lifting. Gun smoke mixed with the reek of burning cargo, some distinctive odor the admiral recognized. “Raw silk!” cried Admiral Drake in anguish, striking the rail with his fist. “Tons of the stuff.”

  At last the ship sank. There was nothing to be done. The battle-hewed cargo ship went down, a swirl of water over her masts, and the fume of smoke lingering, slowly spinning, over the tangle of cordage and splinters that belched up out of the water.

  I had heard of such disasters, but had always imagined survivors, clinging to spars and drift-planks, men swimming to assist their shipmates. Plenty of useless wreckage burst to the surface, and a single, floating human arm, but no human struggle, triumphant or otherwise, played out across the water. Our nearness to such great loss of life, scores of men drowning while we stood, gave me a pang of nausea.

  “This is a grievous waste,” said Drake. “And yet—as our Lord Jesus decides.” He turned to me with a smile. “We’ll get our hands on treasure yet.”

  Night fell.

  Anne and her mother were safe in their cabin, the door fastened shut. Anne would open it only after questioning me, saying she did not believe I was Thomas Spyre—the young man she had known would not have participated in such a thunderous battle.

  “It’s me, in truth,” I insisted earnestly. “Wanting only to see you.”

  Anne held the pistol as she opened the door. “I keep it primed and bent,” she said, answering the question I had not brought myself to ask.

  Loaded and cocked, she meant. “There’s little danger to you and your mother,” I said. The ringing in my ears made me unsure whether I spoke too loudly, or too softly. Mariners who had been to war were often half deaf for the rest of their lives.

  “You speak of danger,” said Anne, her eyes friendly even as her tone was cool. “You stood on deck, as I imagine, with timber fragments cutting off heads all around.”

  “I believe heads remained attached to bodies,” I responded. “On our ship.”

  Her mother was sitting up in her bunk, a blanket drawn up to her chin. Her eyes were bright with fear, and I put a hand to her forehead. It was cool. I had feared that the percussive force of so much gunfire might have done her harm.

  She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her. I thought I made out the words, “I am the picture of terror.”

  “When is Admiral Drake,” Anne demanded, “going to turn this ship about and back to sea?”

  “He does not confide his every thought to me,” I responded. I was trying to make light of the matter, but I sounded—I realized too late—dismissive.

  “Is our admiral mad?” Anne asked. “Has he shared his madness with his officers and his crew like a kind of plague?”

  Words fled me.

  “Is there no peace-loving man,” asked Anne, “aboard this ship?”

  “I have a remembrance for you,” I said, a little speech I had memorized. “And I pray that it might bring you luck.”

  Only as I extended my gift to her did I realize how inappropriate it looked—a twisted, claw-like relic.

  She put her hands behind her involuntarily. She gave me a courteous smile, but her eyes said What is it?

  “The fighting spur of Pepper John,” I said, feeling every bit the coarse, ill-spoken knave. What had inspired me, I asked myself, to offer her such an ugly gift? I heard my voice continue, “The bird was a legend among fighting cocks.”

  “The foot of a warrior chicken,” replied Anne.

  “A humble offering,” I said, my voice clouded with shame.

  She accepted it, cupping her hand around it gingerly. “A token of your regard?” she asked.

  “Of that, and my good wishes,” I managed.

  “Your very good wishes?”

  “Indeed, perhaps even my love.”

  Had I said too much?

  “I shall keep it among my treasures, Tom,” she said. And she added, perhaps to banish the doubt in my eyes, “Truly I will.”

  She did something then that made me marvel long afterward.

  She put her lips on mine.

  I was more pleased to see Hercules than I would have imagined, especially to see him unhurt. He was in the surgeon’s cabin, where he had set out an array of medical implements on our table, as I had instructed. As surgeon’s mate he had to stand duty here, receiving patients or attending them. Hercules peered around the cabin doorway, and did not seem eager to step beyond its threshold.

  “No reports of anyone splinter-torn,” he announced. “Or shot-ripped, sir, or anything of the kind.”

  His eyes were full of questions. I knew he wanted me to tell what I had seen on the quarterdeck while he stood watch here, protected but confined. I peered into the jar of leeches, and felt a protective urge even toward those dumb creatures. I shook the jar, and they each gave a sullen, sleepy twitch.

  “Hercules,” I consoled him, astonishing myself with my own careless tone, “you missed no great sight.”

  I performed my duty as surgeon, moving about the ship, greeting soldiers and seamen, and hearing from all hands that there were no injuries. A few gunners had blisters from setting their hands on hot gun barrels, but these were not considered wounds, and my queries of concern were met with laughing. “It’s just a kiss, doctor, and nothing to be worried about.” Or wor
ds to that effect—the accents and phrases were sometimes unfamiliar, but the voices determined and full of good cheer.

  The ship’s crew and fighting men were excited, but it was another kind of joy than the peaceful anticipation we had experienced on the open sea.

  The tide was ebbing—the one that would have carried us to safety if Drake had decided to escape. Apparently, he had decided to spend the night here. Our ship, and the Golden Lion and a few other modest English vessels, were surrounded in the darkness of the enemy harbor.

  We were trapped.

  Chapter 39

  Vice-Admiral Borough was on his way toward our ship, his boat rowed by a crew across the short interval between the two warships, the oars making rhythmic splashes in the water.

  The night was cold, and dark enough to make me wish for the all-seeing eyes of an owl. But some of the late-arriving English pinnaces had sacked a small merchant ship, abandoned by its terrified crew, and set the vessel alight. Flames from the ship climbed the masts and illuminated the black harbor.

  The port of Cadiz itself was a source of light. Barrels of pitch burned in well-spaced rows along the wharf, and the outline of the monuments and churches of the town were pricked out by lamps and torch lights.

  Church bells had been sounding an alarm, and halberds and lances gleamed where soldiers were mustering in the town squares. Guns rumbled, hauled unseen by horses, and Jack had whispered to me that a new battery was being prepared, on a slope overlooking the harbor.

  Admiral Drake and Captain Foxcroft greeted the vice-admiral with every courtesy, and I stood with the purser, Gilbert Brownsword, and other worthies of the ship, Sir Robert, Ross Bagot, and various master sergeants among them.

  Vice-Admiral Borough was a solidly set man with a square head and the stumpy, strong legs of many seasoned mariners. He had thinning brown hair and a stylishly short beard. He ran his eyes over the company assembled to welcome him on the quarterdeck, and as Drake introduced me, Vice-Admiral Borough remarked, “Verily, Admiral, your surgeon’s a youth.”

  “Let him lance a vein, and you’ll be young again, too,” said Drake with a laugh, and I was grateful for the smile the famous knight gave me, before he descended the stairs with the vice-admiral.

  The two secluded themselves in Drake’s cabin. Captain Foxcroft breathed on his hands, and when he caught my eye he approached me and murmured, in a low voice, “I pray the vice-admiral will persuade our worthy leader to preserve our lives.”

  I was stirred by this frank concern on the part of our captain. “Do you think the danger very great?” I found myself asking.

  The captain gave a humorless laugh. “It could not be greater.”

  Officers from the two ships mingled on our quarterdeck, huddled in wool mantles against the night chill while all around us, across the water, came the sounds of hooves and military-sounding commands, a town ready for battle.

  Vice-Admiral Borough stumped up to the quarterdeck to gaze across the black water, toward the vague outline of his own ship.

  Captain Foxcroft joined him, and I heard Vice-Admiral Borough say, “Drake believes he will make them spend the best blood in their bellies.”

  The captain inclined his head thoughtfully. “By which he means—?”

  “He means to burn every ship in the port,” said the vice-admiral, “sift them of every gold real, and if he could sail across bare land the many miles to King Philip’s bedchamber in the Escorial he would do it.” He shook his head in silent exasperation.

  Captain Foxcroft slumped at this confirmation, leaning against the quarterdeck rail, but the other officers straightened, hands finding sword hilts, chins lifting. Even I, sharing our captain’s doubt, felt a thrill.

  And more than a little uneasiness.

  When the vice-admiral had been rowed back to his own ship Drake gave the command to make way farther into the inner harbor.

  In the glimmering illumination of far-off pitch lamps, seamen leaped eagerly to their duties. Our warship eased forward, the bare wind and slack tide just enough to propel us among the widely dispersed cargo ships.

  We had selected a large, dark profile—a freighter lower in the water that our own, and showing not a single light. As we approached this vessel she came alive. Weapons glinted, men gathering on her maindeck.

  “Can you fight two-handed?” asked the admiral, suddenly at my side.

  I answered that I could.

  It was true—I had studied the technique of fighting with a knife in my left hand, and the rapier in my right. Drake pressed a dagger into my hand, a short stout blade with a leather-wrapped grip.

  “I took it from a Spanish captain,” said the admiral, “in the days when I robbed gold fresh from the mines.” It was a matter of legend, Drake intercepting the mule trains in the jungle mountains of the New World, scattering the armed guards. “It’s my gift to you, Thomas,” he added, “in the Queen’s name.”

  I could barely find words to express my thanks.

  “I want you to board with the fighting men,” said the admiral.

  I tucked the dagger into my sword belt, taking deep breaths, as I had been trained, preparing myself for sword-play.

  “Stay near Sir Robert,” said Admiral Drake. “Do everything you can to keep him alive.”

  “Indeed, my Lord Admiral,” I said earnestly, “everything in my power.”

  “He might pen a play about me some day—if his muse is equal to the task.”

  “No doubt you’ll inspire many a poet,” I returned, happy to delay my departure in conversation.

  The admiral laughed and squared the cloak on my shoulders. “And take care to preserve yourself, too, while you’re about it.”

  Chapter 40

  I followed the attacking, clattering tumult of armed humanity, leaping down into the cargo ship.

  For much of the night’s fighting I had known that we were striking an enemy as well as seeking treasure, crippling the ships that would otherwise raid our homeland. That defensive necessity was a spur to our fighting. But now I began to sense battle-gluttony among my fellows, a fierce joy in doing harm. I sensed it in the hoarse voices of my fellow fighters, and it made me feel unclean.

  The rapier was in my fist, but pressed against my leg by the crush of fighting men around me. I could not have slipped and fallen even if I had stumbled badly—I was held upright by the press of bodies yelling and struggling forward across the deck.

  If anything, Sir Robert kept my own head from being split, fighting well with his blade, skewering an arm brandishing an ax, kicking, bellowing threats, and lashing yet another attacker across the face. Enemy seamen began to abandon the vessel, dropping down into boats on the far side of the ship. The purser’s mates called up from the cargo hold, “She’s full of iron, sir, great black pig-bricks of it.”

  Gilbert Brownsword half stumbled, half lowered himself down into the hold, the dark, metallic tang of iron in the air, rust-sour. He was up again soon, calling out toward our quarterdeck, “Crude iron, my lord,” and Drake’s command rang from the flagship, “Burn her to the waterline.”

  Some twenty ships were set alight by our fighting men, as they searched for coin and treasures, carrying off gilded statues and silver flagons, plated candlesticks and weapons, destroying what they could not easily carry, or was not worth the effort—like a load of iron. Sometimes a ship’s crew would set a vessel burning as we boarded, out of spite, or to prevent us from stealing her contents.

  I attended a few bruises, helped a stunned soldier or two climb to his feet, but there were virtually no injuries to the forces from our ship, and as a surgeon I found little demand for my fledgling prowess.

  I stayed with Sir Robert all through the darkest hours of the night, boarding one ship after another, and while we often had our weapons drawn, we did little further fighting. It seemed to me that such rapine demanded a violent sort of greed, but caused little injury, boarding axes and crowbars the most important weapons.

  This re
mained true until we boarded the last, great hulk of a vessel.

  She was so close to the wharf that the decks were brightly illuminated by the burning barrels of pitch along the shore. We could hear the curses and taunts of soldiers in the Corregidor, the tall stone citadel in town.

  We sprang upon this ship like men who had never labored at any other occupation, none of us stumbling, now, every man an expert. But at once this was not like the other vessels we had sacked. The men here were determined, perhaps because the citizens of the town were spectators, nearby and in danger from us, and our own fighting men were growing both over-confident and tired.

  Spanish pikemen battled our soldiers, backed by officers with drawn rapiers. Halberds and Welsh-hooks clattered against the staves of Spanish pikes. Our soldiers made progress, foot-to-foot against the defenders, but then the wall of defenders began to push us back. We locked arms with them, a living tangle of sweating creatures. A wooden weapon snapped, a Spanish helmet clattered and broke, struck by the iron bill of a weapon, but the mass of wrenching, grunting men were knotted, neither side strong enough to win.

  I struggled through this tangle of fighting folk, and found Sir Robert, engaging a gentleman swordsman at one end of the struggling mass. “Dog-livered knave, I’ll make you sweat,” Sir Robert cried, with a playwright’s zest.

  I wondered if he had rehearsed this remark privately—it did not sound like an inspiration of the moment. I felt yet another instant of great fondness and protectiveness for this gentleman of so many talents.

  But perhaps Sir Robert was also weary from his long night’s labor. He fought well enough at first against this Spaniard. The man was built like a wine barrel on two legs, a stout, thick-legged gentleman in a plumed hat—a thick-necked, heavy-shouldered sword-fighter. Their rapiers glinted in the sudden spill of light from a pitch barrel knocked over on the quarterdeck, and as this flame erupted even higher the eyes of the two combatants took on a scarlet, flickering glow.

  But as the fight ensued it was plain that Sir Robert was too tired. He did not embarrass himself with his stance, holding his blade in the flexible grip of a skilled fighter. But he was only just escaping being cut to the quick, his opponent’s blade much faster, and wielded by a more muscular and far less weary arm.