Peril on the Sea (12 page)

Sir Gregory lay there in the firelight like an effigy.

He did not move.

W
HILE 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!”

S
HERWIN 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 the 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.”

Sir Anthony gave a sharp, unhappy nod.

“She may be further out of harm,” said the captain, in the tone of a man proposing a rabbit hunt, “with a shipload of brave Englishmen than she ever would be on this estate.”

Sir Anthony bowed his head, silently conceding that Fletcher might be right.

“I know you, Captain, if you please, sir,” said the squire, “by an engraving I saw in Winchester, in a broadside,
A Most Easy Guide to the Bloodiest Pirates of England
.” He spoke clearly so his accent might be understood. Sherwin knew the publication well, and thought it quite inferior work.

“What other pirates were there?” asked Fletcher.

“Only you, Captain Fletcher,” said Cecil Rawes.

“There were surely others,” said Fletcher in a tone of mild inquiry.

“There were going to be other printed sheets in the
series, sir,” said the squire, “but the printer died, stabbed in a brawl.”

“Killed by Drake's agents, would be my guess,” said Fletcher, “keen to burnish his reputation.”

“Go now,” said Sir Anthony with a sob he could not hide. “Be quick, all of you, before I change my mind.”

 

SIR GREGORY was put, still unconscious, into a wheelbarrow, and his squire rolled him along through the dark. The fields that Sherwin had first seen only that morning were now a deeply foreign land, and the road that had seemed welcoming was now cut and sliced with challenging ruts.

Baines followed with another wheelbarrow, one with a creaking wheel. The conveyance contained a small brass and leather trunk holding much of what Katharine would need during a short voyage, and all that necessity would allow her to bring on board the ship. Along with garments and an ivory comb, Katharine had placed into this chest a large banner, folded into a tidy, weighty triangle. She had told Sherwin that this was the griffin crest of her family, proof of the
Vixen
's pacific intentions.

“Did you know, sir,” Bartholomew asked Sherwin, “that there is a race of men without arms or legs that slithers along the Nile?”

“The anthrogastropods,” said Sherwin. “I doubt such folk exist.”

“Sergeant Evenage says he saw such a man,” said Bartholomew,
“a pickled corpse at Canterbury fair. His face was in his ribs, and his mouth opened directly to his stomach.”

Katharine walked beside him, tearful at having taken leave of her father, and Sherwin did not feel that talk of armless, legless beings was what she needed to hear.

“Maybe someday, Bartholomew,” said Sherwin, “you will be pickled, and on display at Smithfield. A Credulous and Innocent Manikin, Captured from His Pirate Lord.”

“I doubt,” said Bartholomew, “that you, sir, will allow that to happen.”

 

WHEN HE WAS A BOY, farmland at night had always brought joy to Sherwin.

The withy gatherers would tie their small, lopsided vessels along the bank of the river during the summer darkness, and Sherwin had heard their voices, the soft conversation of men and women, brought across the fields with eerie clarity by the water.

Sherwin felt fortunate to possess a cheerful outlook regarding night, because the moon had been swallowed by cloud and an owl knifed the air overhead, a white-spanned hunter. Sherwin was undaunted. The trees, which had been entire nations of greenery and bird life by day, had retired into a dense darkness that, far from being reassuring, nevertheless seemed all the more wonderful with promise. The smells of the land, too, were rich and various: manure and fermenting hay, sap from recently
split firewood, and the odor of field greens, timothy and sedge, drifting from the recently thatched roofs of Fairleigh's cottages.

The night had a quality of the unexplained for Sherwin, because he wondered if he would ever see such an hour on dry land again. He knew, as they took the road down to the sea cliff and made their way carefully along the sloping beach path, that the vessel waiting at the far edge of the high tide might be the conveyance that would bring him to the end of his life.