Peril on the Sea (16 page)

The captain murmured something to Highbridge, and the officer spoke to Lockwood. The boatswain's whistle piped, and to Sherwin's surprise the ship made no move to turn about and flee east with the strong west wind—the same force that compelled an entire Spanish navy closer, so close they would be in easy cannon range soon.

Very soon.

Sherwin had a muted sense of what the captain might have in mind: if the
Vixen
could lance through the parting
mass of the Armada and reach the site of the burning cargo ship, she could cut what remained of the
Rosebriar
out of the fleet and guide her toward the open sea. This was a desperate hope, and such an attempt was carrying a lust for wealth to an extreme. No amount of possible reward, in Sherwin's view, made such a risk remotely desirable.

The wind behind the Spanish grew more forceful, driving the urcas and the galleons together. The ships were close to colliding, and within the fleet some did grind together, the sound like doors slamming. Sherwin had the impression that the enemy fleet was on a long slope, sliding down an incline. That accounted for the relentless momentum behind them, and for the virtual silence. Sherwin told himself that he needed more time before he started to kill people—or to die.

He was not prepared. And when more ordnance was fired—the Spanish gunners seeming to have as much enthusiasm as gunpowder—he was relieved at how wide of the mark the shots were, too far short, too far aft.

Bartholomew was putting up screens so sparks and splinters from either side would not distract Sherwin during the fight to come. A shot hit the side of the
Vixen
—a single, round reverberation that made Sherwin jump.

Evenage was unseen, on the other side of the woven partition, and the sergeant said, “Hold on to something, sir.”

A simple command that, under the circumstances, made little sense.

“Sir,” urged Bartholomew, “please set your feet and hang on.”

T
HERE WAS NOTHING to hang on to, and no immediate need, as far as he could see.

In truth, however, Sherwin could see very little aside from the chased brass of his firearm, because of the smoke from the Spanish guns flowing through the wind. The gunports of the
Vixen
rattled and clattered belowdecks, the vibration of the wooden shutters traveling through the vessel.

He knew what it portended, and how vulnerable a ship was with her gunports, so close to the waterline, gaping open. He felt the ship shift subtly as the guns were shoved out through the ports, ready to fire. And yet Sherwin still felt that some reprieve might be enjoyed, that the mood might change once more, and the entire exercise fall to bluffing and gesturing, no one really about to be hurt.

Then the staggered explosions shocked Sherwin and made it hard for him to breathe, as a cloud of yellow and green smoke filled the air and seared his lungs, and he was
instantly all but deaf. He did set his feet, then, too late, after he had nearly fallen.

Tears flowed down his cheeks, his eyes burning with the smoke. As the fumes were torn away by the breeze, a craft that had appeared small and pretty was upon them—hard upon them as the increasingly rough sea flung her violently against the English ship. A fresh, even-stronger swell lifted the Spanish vessel far above, so that her gunwales were higher than the English deck for a moment, and the attacking Spaniards launched pikes and pistol shots down upon the crew of the
Vixen
.

Without further warning, the English privateer was pinned by two Spanish vessels, the urca and the galleass. The hulking galleon swooped down from the west. Her forward guns aimed and fired, missing badly.

There should be a truce, thought Sherwin, now that we have all proven our courage. There was no need to go on with this hazardous conduct. He felt the keen weighty presence of his father just then, not a ghost so much as a memory so true it was both painful and joyous. He experienced his father's calming reassurance, but he also felt his father's trepidation, a wordless prayer that the son not join his father in the life to come.

Sherwin needed more time to consider how to take a life, if the need presented itself, just as a pistol ball struck the gunwale before him, splinters flying, the lead projectile humming past his ear.

Or it would have been a hum if he had heard it, and had
not been suddenly even more completely deaf. He pulled the stiff trigger of his own weapon, and he could feel the mechanism as it whirred and clicked. The blast knocked the firearm off its tripod, and smoke was everywhere.

 

IN ADDITION to the tumult of combat, the ships themselves struggled, hulls grinding together. The privateer's deck slanted one way and then another as the friction from the vessels on either flank gripped and grated against the English ship. At times the vessels parted, only to have the resulting gaps close in an instant.

It might have been soon after the initial combat, or after an hour—Sherwin could not be sure. But at some point in the late morning, the Spaniards made an attack composed not of lead shot and projectiles but of human beings.

There was no warning, aside from the sound of a trumpet on one of the Spanish ships, a pretty, sharp flourish, a resonance at odds with the cannon fire and smoke. The armed, helmeted force on the adjacent vessel was poised to attack.

The crew of Fletcher's ship thrust pikes, halberds, and axes threateningly across the alternating shrinking and expanding space between the vessels. Men with stone bows—crossbows adapted to discharge rocks—fired down on the helmeted Spanish, and it was clear to Sherwin that Captain Fletcher's crew was eager to fight, and skillful.

“Steady, men,” called the captain, as Sherwin's sense of hearing continued to return.

The captain stood, sword in hand, on the quarterdeck, and despite his resolute stance Sherwin could see a look of fervent concern in his eyes—for his crew and for his ship. As his men cried out, challenging the enemy, Sherwin sensed a corresponding loyalty on the part of the crew—for the captain and for the ship he had created from a vision.

The gap once again closed—and the assault commenced.

Sherwin had his sword at the ready when a Spaniard in an iron corselet and gleaming, crested headpiece slipped between the two vessels, and suffered his leg to be crushed.

The accident had been so easy to foresee, and so instantly regretted, that it looked like an act the Spaniard had performed on purpose, to win an ill-advised wager. As the ships parted again, the Spaniard tumbled onto the deck of the
Vixen
, looking all the more fierce for having been already injured, limping badly, and yelling.

Sherwin stabbed him in the throat, doing a poor job of it, not getting a good grip on his rapier, and not driving with all his weight behind the thrust. The Spaniard collapsed. Bartholomew was on the Spaniard at once, stabbing in and out several times with a thin dagger and then leaping away as the Spaniard's companions seized him and pulled the guttering, bleeding man to safety.

Fletcher's crew fought with pikes and axes, countering the Spanish trespassers with a brutal fury. The foreigners
retreated as Sherwin lost his own footing. He slipped on blood, falling hard, right beside the seemingly lifeless body of First Officer Highbridge.

 

HE WAS SHOCKED at the force of his own fall, and even more dismayed at the unexpected condition of the first officer.

Sherwin tried to puzzle through the events that had caused Highbridge to be injured. He had no way of estimating the time that had passed between the first cannon shot and this thunder that shook the ship now, timbers splintering, men cursing loudly. Perhaps they had been fighting for hours. Perhaps he himself was injured. An unpleasant flavor filled his mouth—bile and gall, a graveyard poison. The cabin was a refuge somewhere beyond the smoke.

If Bartholomew had any misgivings about having assisted in killing a Spaniard, he showed none, although in Sherwin's eyes he looked less like a boy than a small old man, smoke-seared and drained.

Lead bounced from the deck, slingshots loosed from the Spanish mast tops, as perilous as any bullet. A splinter sang off Sherwin's corselet, a sound like a flawed church bell.

He felt the blow in his body, in his lungs and in his belly. He knew that without armor he would have been cut in two, and that he was every instant close to losing his life.

T
HE INTERIOR of the cabin was thick with oily dust from the pitch and fiber that had been knocked from the timbers by the reverberating percussion of their own artillery.

Sherwin and Bartholomew staggered into the cabin, carrying the first officer, smoke rising from their sleeves and boots where bits of gunpowder and gun wadding had caught on the clothing. Highbridge was as inert as any human Katharine had ever seen, and her first impression was that he was no longer living.

There was no sign of a wound, but Highbridge was turning a sickened azure hue, his lips sea-gray. Katharine knelt to put her hand on him, feeling for a pulse. A round bruise was appearing on his forehead, like a moon burning through cloud. A pistol shot had struck Highbridge, she guessed, but the bullet had not broken the skin.

She had a memory of Orwell, the ostler's son, who climbed on the roof of the Crossed Keys inn near Fairleigh one midsummer night. He fell off the roof and
turned blue, just as blue as Highbridge was this instant. His father had hurried from the barn, knelt, and called his son's name, the youth insensible, lost. But then the ostler had known exactly what to do.

Just as Katharine did now.

She seized Highbridge by the shoulders, and shook him hard and repeatedly, with all her strength—until at last he coughed.

Highbridge took a ragged breath. He opened his eyes and took a long moment to make an inventory of what he beheld. His eyes were bloodshot, and one of his pupils was an outsized ragged oval, and the other a pinprick of black.

He reached up to take Katharine's hand, and his grip was powerless. What he said next made no immediate sense to Katharine, in large part because she could not hear beyond the numbing reports of ordnance that made the
Vixen
lurch.

Highbridge was saying a single word, and it rhymed with
witch. Bitch, itch, flitch
. Sherwin could not understand. Highbridge had suffered a head wound—perhaps his faculties were scattered. To see the formerly upright officer so stricken disheartened Sherwin, and he wished for some power to restore the man to health.

Bartholomew was the first to comprehend.

“He says give the Spanish pitch, sir,” said Bartholomew. “Flaming pitch, to start them burning.”

 

SAILORS CARRIED the smoking buckets aloft, and heaved them across the seething water.

A few flaming pails of burning pitch plunged into the abyss of water between the vessels, on either side of the
Vixen
. These errant, fuming buckets sent up spouts of steam and drowned like living entities.

But several flaming projectiles were heaved—by brawn and good judgment—far enough and well enough to annoy their attackers. One bucket was hurled back, and the scattered contents caused alarm, until Sir Gregory and Sherwin joined in stamping out the flames.

The sergeant opened the wooden box of iron bomboes, and he and two able-bodied men were soon setting the fuses alight and heaving the sputtering objects, with their spiraling plumes of smoke, high over the enemy vessels. Sherwin joined them, aware that this was evidence of a suicidal desperation on his part.

He did not feel despair, however, and he certainly did not want to die. His reasoning was that his life was quite possibly already forfeit, his future entirely finished, and that he was as good as food for crabs and eels already. Therefore, he might as well throw himself even further into the fight.

The explosions were earsplitting, and soon the urca and the galleass were both aflame, and the urca was so crippled and so engulfed in fire that the galleon had to break off her attack, in an attempt to avoid entanglement with her fiery sister vessel.

 

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON before the character of the day altered from one discordant, violent action after another.

The silence was unsettling—eerie, more stupor than peace.

The bulk of the Armada had swept north and east of Fletcher's ship. The
Vixen
had turned to worry the flank of the enemy force, but remained for the moment out of range of its gunners. The lookout called that Captain Hawkins could be seen, coming up from the west. With the promise of English warships to arrive from the direction of Southampton to the east, there was every sign of a great battle to come.

All this made the present silence more uncanny.

Sherwin was enjoying a pipe of tobacco leaf brought to him by Bartholomew, the fumes snatched away by the wind. He felt that he had never been anywhere but on this ship, and any sense he had of a past, or a future, was little more than a fugitive fantasy. The guns were silent, and the loudest sound now was the breathy thunder of the sails.

“Does tobacco sweeten your humors?” asked Katharine.

“Dr. Reynard,” said Sherwin, “swears that it counteracts the effect of gun smoke.”

He offered Katharine the mouthpiece.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I'll not turn my body into a flue, Sherwin, even if it pleases Dr. Reynard.”

Feeling pleasantly rebuffed, Sherwin gave the tobacco pipe back to Bartholomew. Katharine's voice was so unlike any of the sounds that had rent the air that day that he put his arms around her, not solely to embrace her but to keep her just exactly where she was as long as possible.

His iron corselet by then had been removed, although he kept the sword at his hip. He knew his hair was matted and his doublet was wet through with sweat. He had killed a man that day, and he did not relish the truth of that, feeling his own pulse hammer
you, you, you.

You are living, at the cost of another man's life.