Peril on the Sea Page 9

  “That’s all I have finished just now,” he said.

  “A sterling fragment, dear Sherwin, but a shard only,” said the captain with a happy laugh. “Think what glorious verse you’ll be inspired to compose with this noble young lady aboard our vessel.”

  Sherwin had the good grace, Katharine noted, to blush.

  But any further conversation was interrupted by the distant sound of an approaching horse, adorned with bells, judging by the sound. Additional hooves clattered in the dooryard, and Baines hurried into the room.

  “Sir Gregory is here, my lords, with Cecil Rawes,” said the servant, “demanding to see Sir Anthony.”

  Anthony looked alarmed. “You must hide, Fletcher, all of you.”

  Captain Fletcher rose, and so did Highbridge and Sherwin, but they made no effort to leave the room. They did, however, fasten on their rapiers as Baines handed the weapons around to their respective owners. A sword was considered an item of dress, and some swords were purely ornamental. Few men sat at a table on a long evening, however, fully armed.

  “Sir Anthony,” said Fletcher easily, “I am a thief, but I am no coward.”

  “Captain,” said Sherwin, “if you will permit me, I want to confront this malevolent knight.”

  “My dear Sherwin,” said the captain lightly, but with an air of skeptical concern, “do you intend to practice swordplay on this country man-at-arms?”

  “If necessary,” replied Sherwin.

  The captain found this answer very amusing.

  “The Vixen could use a seasoned knight whenever we board a prize,” said Fletcher, when his quiet laughter was done. “Do try to spare this warrior’s life long enough to convince him to join us—whether he wants to or not.”

  There was a long tradition of sailors and fighters alike being kidnapped, tied up, and hauled aboard a ship, where they accepted their new duties with a good grace or ill.

  Sherwin felt a pitiless but undeniable thrill as the men from the Vixen filed from the room, leaving him to confront Sir Gregory.

  Not only would he profit by Fletcher’s wartime adventures, and by his own pen, putting silver into his own purse.

  Sherwin could even elude the law if he did what he would like to do now—stab Sir Gregory through the heart.

  23

  SIR GREGORY,” said Sir Anthony, indicating Sherwin, “this is our guest, by way of the Inns of Court.”

  He pointedly did not offer Sherwin’s name.

  Sir Gregory gave a nod, as though he was well aware of the omission. “Are you consulting a youthful lawyer, then, Sir Anthony, to mend your troubles?”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” said Sir Anthony with a puckish smile.

  Katharine was out of sight, in another room. For all her aplomb and powers of communication, she had expressed the desire to set eyes on Gregory only when he was trussed and plucked—but Sherwin knew that she was overhearing every word. He could hear her feet whisper on the straw matting in the next room, and he had to believe that Sir Gregory could hear her, too.

  “But I think you have had other guests this evening,” said Sir Gregory, “in addition to this young lawyer dressed like a ship’s soldier.”

  Sherwin was not prepared to like the man’s character or bearing, and he did not. But the knight, who had been wounded in his right cheek at some point in the past, had the stance of an experienced fighter, steady on his feet and ready for whatever came.

  He wore a heavy doublet of leather with high, padded shoulders, and tall boots. He carried a rapier at his left hip, and an elaborate dagger on his right, of the variety called a sword-breaker. Such weapons had deeply serrated blades. They were employed in the left hand and used to block or snatch rapier blades, and—sometimes—cause the slender blades to snap.

  Another individual, one not introduced to Sherwin, lingered in the corner, out of the firelight, watching Sherwin as though he might prove to be a traveling conjurer, about to make a toad vanish. Sherwin gathered that this was the redoubtable Cecil.

  “I am not here tonight to interrupt your feast,” said Sir Gregory, prodding the goose carcass with his gloved hand.

  He put the forefinger of his glove on the griffinemblazoned wine mug Captain Fletcher himself had used, and Sherwin wondered how much such a man could guess. “I have received word of strangers on the land,” continued the knight, “and I have ridden out to warn you.”

  “How thoughtful,” said Anthony. “You are most kind, Sir Gregory.”

  “What sort of men are these supposed strangers?” asked Sherwin, in an easy manner that sounded, to his own ears, entirely false.

  “I know not,” said Gregory. He looked Sherwin up and down, like a man sizing up a market-day ox. He seemed like a man accustomed to forceful statements, and not happy to be speaking to a putative lawyer from London.

  “Do you suspect that the Spanish have positioned spies and agents on the coast,” suggested Sherwin, “to tear down stiles and hedges, and prepare for an invasion?”

  “I have just such a fear,” said Gregory.

  “Or are you concerned that some other strangely disposed travelers might have set foot here?”

  “You guess too well,” said Gregory.

  “What do you suspect?” asked Sherwin.

  “I suspect pirates,” said Gregory.

  “Oh, no, that is impossible,” said Sir Anthony, no doubt sensing his great scheme dwindle to nothing.

  By saying this, Sherwin knew, Sir Gregory had unwittingly forfeited any freedom he had. He had, moreover, ensured that a sea voyage was in his immediate future. No man who suspected pirates could be allowed to spread further rumors through Devonshire.

  “You do not love Pevensey, Sir Gregory,” said Sherwin, “and I do believe you would prefer a more rewarding duty under a more adventuresome master.”

  Gregory’s next remark was nearly an admission that Sherwin was making accurate assumptions. It was a single syllable, voiced in a whisper. “Who?”

  “Come with me,” said Sherwin, “and find out.”

  Gregory was deeply puzzled, Sherwin reckoned, and resentful. He was also very interested.

  “You can join a ship,” said Sherwin, “that makes a man rich.”

  “And do what to win the money?” asked Gregory with a sullen stupidity Sherwin knew was false. Gregory was tempted.

  Sherwin asked, “Are you so particular?”

  “I am needed here,” Gregory replied, in a tone that was regretful.

  Sherwin could see that Gregory might have been a worthy acquaintance at some distant past, and might be again. His duties had coarsened him, and he was disillusioned.

  “Why?” asked Sherwin. “So you can threaten maidens?”

  He had not been prepared for the quick fury of this knight.

  The man’s rapier was instantly out of its sheath, and the point was touching Sherwin’s throat.

  Sherwin blinked, having to retrospectively imagine an event he had not actually perceived—the hand on the hilt, the breathtakingly fast flourish, the arm unbending, until it was locked at the elbow and the steel point an inch, or less, from Sherwin’s power of speech.

  “Who are you?” rasped Sir Gregory.

  Sherwin had studied swordplay with a series of masters, all of them one-eyed, and sporting eye patches of various hues, as was common among such experts, and each with his own style of offense: the Genoan admiring the dagger, the Parisian swearing that only a footman would fight with anything but a single, elegant épée.

  But the defensive maneuver proper when a blade was thrust against his throat was simple under any circumstances. Sherwin brushed the blade aside with his forearm, and grappled with his opponent, closing with him and striking him hard with the heel of his left hand, at the point of his chin.

  The knight’s head struck the edge of the table as he fell, and pewter dishes leaped and ran against each other.

  Sir Gregory lay there in the firelight like an effigy.

  He did n
ot move.

  VI

  NO ALLY TO THE

  QUEEN

  24

  WHILE SHERWIN stayed behind to meet with Sir Gregory and his hulking companion, Fletcher and Highbridge had made their way quietly, quietly down a hallway. Sergeant Evenage and Bartholomew were entertaining themselves in a side room—the clink of wine cups was unmistakable as Evenage told the boy one of his sea tales.

  Fletcher and his first officer went out into a back courtyard, paved with blue stone, where a young woman was setting out a dish for a cat.

  Many houses had a kitchen built well apart from the main portion of the dwelling as a protection against possible fire, and this place was no exception. A walkway led to the building with wide-flung doors where an oven’s fires were subsiding and a man with rolled-up sleeves and a heat-reddened face could be seen hanging a pot on a hook.

  The young woman—a pretty lass—caught Captain Fletcher’s eye, and he stopped still as a bat made a trio of the cat and her mistress. The flying mouse almost collided with the stone wall of the kitchen, then angled upward.

  The young woman caught sight of the creature and squealed, waving her hand at the pair of wings, as the cat looked up and then became momentarily rapt at the glimpse of a flying rodent flitting through the lingering July twilight.

  The young woman noticed the two seamen. “I have no love for bats, good sirs,” she said with a self-conscious laugh.

  “And yet they have to find a living,” suggested Fletcher gently, “out of the sky each night.”

  “Then, sir, let them hunt well away from me,” she said.

  Fletcher had to laugh, especially when the creature flitted and jerked over his own head, its compressed, enigmatic features impossible to gaze upon, it seemed to Fletcher, with anything like love.

  “Molly,” said the red-faced man, “come in from there.”

  But Fletcher put out his hand, and for an instant, out of courtesy or spontaneous affection, touched the young woman’s hand.

  “Have you ever considered a life on the sea?” asked Fletcher.

  “Oh, sir!” exclaimed the young woman in wonder and alarm. There was another feeling, too, Fletcher sensed. She would not protest too greatly if Fletcher decided to free her from this place.

  “Molly,” persisted the man from the kitchen, “come here where I can see you.”

  He gave the two mariners a courteous nod, polite enough, knowing his master’s visitors by reputation. But he was suspicious, too, and he closed the lower half of a stout double door, securing his daughter safely inside.

  The cat—a long-legged gray tom—came over to rub its flanks against the captain’s booted feet. Fletcher gave the creature a scratch between his ears. He could feel the scars under the cat’s fur, claw marks from past seasons.

  “I have been untruthful,” he said.

  “Have you, sir?” asked Highbridge.

  “I don’t want to avoid a fight with the Spaniards,” said the captain, “simply because I am so gentle-hearted.”

  “No, sir?”

  Fletched continued, “I’ll risk my life, and yours, too, for a fortune. The truth is more blunt, Highbridge: I do not want to be an ally to the Queen.”

  Fletcher recalled vividly in that moment that he had once been sentenced to hang, and actually wore a noose of new hempen rope. He had been caught off Gravesend with a shipload of stolen iron, great ingots of the weighty metal, brute-heavy and hard to handle, but iron good enough to be made into cannons. For this Fletcher had been found guilty not only of piracy but also of interrupting the Queen’s power to defend her realm—a species of treason.

  He had climbed the stairs of the scaffold and stood as the felonious charges proved against him were being read. Fletcher had been, although inwardly quailing, as prepared to die as was possible.

  And then a messenger had appeared in the gold-and-crimson livery of the Queen’s privy board of counselors, the Star Chamber, with a scroll bearing the Queen’s seal impressed into sealing wax.

  That evening in candlelight he had knelt in the presence of the red-wigged monarch as she made him a bargain he could not decline: she would grant his freedom for half of all that he ever took from any sea or port, from any English carrack or Arab dhow, any Dutch coracle or Spanish galleon.

  No other mariner paid such a steep portion to Her Majesty. Fletcher, as her former controller, was in a position to know. Not Drake, not Hawkins, not Frobisher. And for this he had received no knighthood, no public acclaim. No pamphlets puffed up his name in the bookstalls of Saint Paul’s, except to describe him as a felon.

  “She is hungry, our Sovereign Lady Queen,” said Fletcher now. “She is greedy, and I cannot forgive her.”

  “But she did offer you life these twenty years ago,” said Highbridge, “and, sir, you took it.”

  “Highbridge, do you remember how you came to be my right-hand man?”

  Highbridge rarely laughed out loud, but he had a warm smile. “I was fighting off half the crew of the Jesus of Lubbeck, Hawkins’s old ship, near Southampton harbor. They were drunk, and blasphemed in the presence of a lady. I complained civilly—”

  “And you would have been killed if I had not stepped in. I hired you on the spot, did I not?”

  “You said I would see high adventure and silver,” said Highbridge, “if I followed you.”

  “I feel responsible for you, Highbridge, more than for all the others put together. You were the first of my crew, the cornerstone. If any harm should befall you, I would hate myself, and everything living. And I would never forgive our Sovereign Lady.”

  “Sir,” said Highbridge, “there is the question of honor.”

  Fletcher made a hiss of impatience, a low, angry sound. “Do not speak to me, Highbridge, of honor. Does this tomcat know honor, or that pair of bat wings overhead?”

  “Captain,” offered Highbridge gently, “you are not a flying mouse.”

  “A pretty effort, this little protest of yours,” said the captain with sudden force, “and one that fulfills your own sense of honor, I believe. But the truth is, Highbridge, I am an even greater rascal than people think me.”

  Highbridge turned away, rigid with suppressed concern. He could not meet his master’s gaze. He spoke with a stiff deliberateness, choosing his words with care. “And do I understand, sir, that nothing I can say will make you change your mind?”

  “I swear to you, Highbridge, I would sooner take up arms and fight on behalf of the Devil.”

  Highbridge looked upward and Fletcher followed his gaze. The bat had returned once again, tumbling ever higher, as if falling into the sky.

  The captain put his arm on his old friend’s shoulder. “I’ll see you safe in some haven someday, Highbridge. With a cat named Hamm or Twill or some such, and a round fire to warm your boots. A cottage with a view of a river, Highbridge. And silver, Highbridge. Enough silver to buy—”

  “To buy honor, Captain? I think honor cannot be bought.”

  “You are mistaken, old friend,” said Fletcher with more weariness than anger. “Honor is bought daily, and for a cheap price, too.”

  But then Baines, the manservant who had served them dinner, hastened into the courtyard.

  “My lords,” he said, “I fear Sir Gregory has been killed!”

  25

  SHERWIN HAD NEVER USED the forearm block in actual fighting before, or the parry and subsequent blow that had proven alarmingly effective. He was shocked to see a vigorous adversary suddenly rendered harmless, stretched out with a vacant expression, the sort that only a lover should look down upon, a face empty of all misgivings.

  Sherwin was sorry at this—something about the rough knight’s spirit had been admirable, if not his character.

  Sir Gregory’s squire spoke to him anxiously and rubbed his limbs, and Sir Anthony called for his daughter. Katharine appeared from her side room and knelt across from the burly squire, pressing her fingers—gloveless and pale, Sherwin noted—against the pulse in t
he knight’s neck.

  “He breathes,” she said. “And his heart is quick.” She stood and gave Sherwin a look of conjecture. “Did you hit him with the butt of your pistol?”

  “My lady,” protested Sherwin, “I lifted only one hand against him.”

  Sir Gregory’s squire walked over to Sherwin and stood facing him. Sherwin wished he had the talent of the Milanese tumblers he had seen at Smithfield Market one afternoon, a troupe of acrobats who could roll and leap, waging mock battles with dramatic fatal-looking falls, only to jump up again to thrilled applause.

  Sherwin braced for the first blow, sure to be followed by another.

  “My name is Cecil Rawes, sir,” said the squire. “And I am ready to put out to sea.”

  Sherwin blinked in confusion, not understanding.

  “I’ll sail with you,” added the squire, in an accent that helped to explain his long silences, a pronunciation so unusual that the words were hard to understand, a Yorkshire burr. “I’ll sail a ship with you to put money into my poke, sir, if the ship will take me on.”

  At that moment the captain returned, and Bartholomew, the sergeant, and First Officer Highbridge with him.

  “How dead is this country knight?” inquired the captain.

  “Still alive, Captain,” said Katharine.

  Fletcher studied the unconscious knight briefly. “Not even half-dead,” he said. “He’ll return to health on board our ship.”

  “I’m not sending my daughter off to war,” said Sir Anthony.

  “My old friend,” said Fletcher, “I shall avoid the fighting as I would avoid confession with a priest of Rome.”

  Sir Anthony reached for his walking stick and swung it like a sword, experimentally, aiming at nothing. He staggered, and had to catch himself from falling by clinging to Sherwin. “My health,” he said, “will force me to stay here.”

  “Besides,” said Fletcher in a sympathetic tone, “your absence would be suspicious, while Lord Pevensey will assume that your daughter was sent away for safety.”