Ship of Fire (10 page)

“My lord,” I said, adding more than three years to the truth, “On the next anniversary of my birth, I shall be twenty-one.”

“Old enough,” he replied with satisfaction.

I felt a dash of my own pride, and a spirit of my own that prompted me to ask, “My Lord Admiral, is your gloved right hand unhurt?”

He withdrew his hand, and placed it below the table.

“Why,” he said, “do you ask?”

Chapter 21

Before I could respond, a distant cry reached us, a call from a mast top.

“Sail, off the port beam,” I thought I could make out—the nautical phrasing was both foreign and dimly audible to my ears.

“Thomas,” he said, his cheeks flushing, “we'll see if we can't pluck a few fat hens.” He left the cabin, cradling his gloved right hand in the other.

He returned at once with Captain Foxcroft, the two of them in rapt conversation. The vessel the lookout had spied on the horizon was no doubt well armed, the captain was saying. More important, our fleet, including the
Golden Lion
, had been left behind by our rapid progress, and scattered by the increasingly heavy weather.

Captain Foxcroft hesitated to say more in my presence, but the admiral waved his yellow-gloved hand impatiently, and so both men continued a discussion laced with naval jargon. The admiral could order the ship's master to sail in any direction or circumstance, but some courtesy made the sea-knight take pains to explain his commands.

“If we voyage alone, what does it matter?” concluded Admiral Drake. “We'll teach our enemies that God fights for Her Majesty on the high seas as well as on land, or any heathen shore.”

“May it be so,” said the captain with little heart.

Captain Foxcroft accepted a flagon of cider, and then studied me for a long moment as he drank.

“I am making Thomas Spyre here,” said the admiral briskly, “our new ship's surgeon.”

“There is logic to the choice, Admiral, it might be said,” said the captain after a long moment. “I have heard that he can handle a sword.”

“So if he cannot cure,” said the admiral with a laugh, “then God grant that he can kill.” He had a way of rising to his tiptoes for a moment to emphasize certain statements, and his cheeks colored, as I am told mine do, with feeling.

“But forgive me for suggesting,” the captain continued, “that this surgeon's youth argues against him. We have Sir Robert Garr on board, a playwright and scholar of seven languages, who wrote that famous poem about the liver. He has cured fevers with his knowledge of stars and planets—”

“Thomas is older than he looks,” said Admiral Drake. “And he is from the West Country moorlands—a place that breeds canny men.”

“I've seen evidence of that,” said the captain, with the faintest trace of a smile.

“Sir Robert,” said Drake, “wrote a play about John Hawkins, called ‘Knight of the Something Something.'”

“‘Knight of the Ocean Sea,'” said the captain. “It was quite good, by my reckoning.”

“The speeches were badly metered,” said the admiral, “the swordplay childish—I did not like it.” John Hawkins was a well-known sea fighter, and Drake had sailed with the storied captain early in his career. Drake had become far more famous. “I know Sir Robert studied medicine and alchemy and can brew poison from a dried scorpion—but he's not in good health.”

“We could wait for the
Golden Lion
to come up,” said Captain Foxcroft. “No doubt the vice-admiral could spare us a medical man.”

“The master surgeon of that ship,” said Admiral Drake, “is a man pickled in wine, with a mate little better.”

“Vice-Admiral Borough,” said the captain, with a courteous smile, “is a good friend of mine.”

“And a stubborn man,” said Admiral Drake, “sailing—as God has willed it—on a creeping-slow ship.”

The captain parted his lips, to defend his friend or counsel caution, I did not wait to hear which.

“If the admiral will permit me,” I said, putting as much maturity into my tone as I could muster, “to attend to his own injury, I would be grateful.”

“I wear this kid-skin glove to protect a hurt,” Admiral Drake said when we were alone, “as you have guessed.”

“May I examine your wound, my lord?”

He tugged the fingers of the glove, wincing, and stretched his hand before me, palm down.

“If it please you, sir.” I tenderly turned the hand over, and moved the lamp from the side shelf to the tabletop.

The inner ball of his thumb was swollen, angry, and I could easily spy the cause.

“Some splinter has lodged here,” I said. “And it gives you grief.”

“An armorer tried to sell the Queen's navy a few score bill-hooks,” said the admiral, pepper in his voice. “Halberds with a protruding blade, for ship-to-ship fighting. We'll need such weapons, and very soon.”

To hear this famous sea-knight mention battle brought a thrill to my heart, despite my stricken spirits.

“The shafts of the weapons were some whoreson wood,” the admiral continued, “nothing like the fine-grained ash they should have been. When I tried one out, battling with a sergeant, the poxy thing broke in my grasp.”

“I'll tweezer it out, with your consent—”

He smiled, his storm-blue eyes narrowing.

The ship's boy brought my master's satchel.

“What is your name, lad?” I heard Admiral Drake ask the boy as I searched among the steel and bronze tools.

“My lord,” said the boy self-consciously, “I am called Hercules.”

“And was some ancient Greek divinity your father?” asked the admiral.

“Hercules Biggand is my name,” said the boy, surely no older than six or seven years. “With your permission,” he added.

“Stay here, lad,” said the admiral, “and hold this lamp for the two of us, while our ship's surgeon drags a spear from my skin.”

Hercules had a steady hand, and his help was necessary to keep the motion of the ship from shifting shadows. I bent close.

I questioned my skill as I sat there in the sea-rocked vessel, mariners barking orders beyond us on the deck. I knew well that surgery was difficult enough in a quiet city, on a steady floor in my master's chamber. Shaken by feeling, and a newcomer to medical practice, who was I to undertake even a very minor operation on this great seaman—on board an increasingly unsteady war-vessel?

I tried to imagine what my master would have advised, but instead I heard the lesson of my sword-teacher.

If you would strike fast you must strike straight
.

One instant, and the splinter was withdrawn.

Chapter 22

“They have one little saker, there in the prow,” Jack Flagg said.

He was indicating an indistinguishable glint on the distant ship as we approached. “They'll have a few more guns covered over with sailcloth,” he added.

“Hidden?” I suggested.

“Making their peaceful intentions clear,” said Jack.

He hesitated, and then he added, “The seam in the gun was weak, as nobody could have known.”

I did not have the words to weigh my feelings just then.

“When that cannon sundered, Tom,” he continued, his voice hoarse with sorrow, “my heart stopped dead in my body, and I doubt it's started beating again. You're in my prayers.”

I thanked him, strong feeling choking my speech.

“I have a token for you,” he said. He stretched out his hand, and into mine placed a barbed claw-like thing, a talon, it seemed, carved of wood. I closed my grasp around it, gingerly, aware that this was no common gift.

“It's the fighting spur of Pepper John,” said Jack. “The best rooster to ever draw blood on the Southbank. I traded a hanged man's knuckle for it. It's yours, Tom, and may it bring you luck.”

I wanted to protest. This gift was too gracious, and too valuable. How could my friend load and fire war-engines if he was stripped of every charm against ill-fortune?

Jack and I fell silent as a mariner relieved his bladder in the piss-barrel nearby. The big containers were kept tied to the ship's side in case of fire—nothing damped a blaze like urine. Fire was a great threat on a sailing vessel. One of the most potent weapons of sea battle were the legendary fire-ships, vessels packed with pitch and set alight, and set forth with the wind in their sails to ram and destroy enemy craft.

A soldier vomited down his stockings before he could reach the rail, and a muffled cry rose up from the galley, where rumor had it the cook was having trouble keeping his great copper stock pot on the fire. And then the master gunner called for Jack, and I realized, as my friend hurried off to attend to the guns, that there was little time for heart-to-heart conversation on a warship.

A mariner's song flavored the breeze as men climbed the mainmast to work the softly thundering sails.

We captured a Flemish carrack that afternoon, a stocky little merchantman with two masts and gold paint about her stern.

Her sailors hauled the ship up out of the wind, and made no attempt to flee or fight as we approached. Our pikemen stood by with gleaming points at the end of their shafts, some of them armed with a weapon called Welsh-hooks, a stout staff with a long sharp bill at the end. Gunners stood by, wicks at the ready, giving off soft feathers of smoke.

Our purser and his mates climbed aboard the
Sint Joachim
to inventory the bales of wool and the barrels of medicinal spirits, supervising the wrestling of the cargo up and into our own hold. When all was done, in the space of an hour or two, the Flemish sailors waved farewell and set sail for the east, apparently relieved to have come so close to the famous sea fighter without loss of life.

I felt relieved, too—that the first act of war I had ever witnessed was a matter-of-fact act of plunder, carried out with efficiency and an air of mercy. If this was sea battle, I thought, perhaps I would live to see England again.

My master's body was committed to the sea before a sunset blotted by clouds. The mortal remains of William Perrivale, worshipful Latinist and gifted physician, were sewn into a swaddling of sailcloth weighted with shot.

The yellow-bearded chaplain hunched into the sea spray whipped through the air by the rising wind, and protected the leaves of his leather-bound book with his mantle. I knew the prayers, even though I could not utter them out now as the chaplain recited them in the rising storm. I wept as never before in my life.

A few sailing men and gunners attended the service, and Captain Foxcroft and the admiral were present, but I understood the pious brevity of the prayers, and the continued activity as men worked the ship. Shipboard death was mourned simply, and was far more common than I had imagined.

As the chaplain closed his prayer book, and the last eddy of foam coiled over my master's remains, someone touched my shoulder.

Chapter 23

I was grieved beyond tears by then, and welcomed contact from my shipmates, but this man's physical appearance stilled my tongue.

I had glimpsed his bright plume among the crew, but I had not seen him face-to-face before this, and never with his expensive cap removed. This gentleman's head was bald, and he sported flowing mustachios, but what disturbed me about his appearance was the tint of his skin. He embarrassed me by uttering some patch of Italian—Petrarch, I suspected—and he apologized at once in gentlemanly English when I could not respond in kind.

“I show off my learning the way a bawd shows off her dimples,” said this tall man in a civil manner. He gave me a hand to help me stay upright—we were both swayed one way and another by the spirited seas. “I am Robert Garr, and I used to take a cup of wine or two with Titus Cox. That worthy doctor used to mention your master as a great friend.”

“You would have found my master the best man under Heaven,” I said, and then I had to silence myself, close to tears again.

Sir Robert gave a sympathetic sigh.

I realized that it was not simply the ashy light of the dying day that gave a strange tint to his features—Sir Robert had in truth a striking and unusual coloration. His skin, his lips, and the moons of his fingernails, were all the same off-hue. This well-known knight and poet was blue.

He was not bright blue, but the dusty cloud-blue of a fresh bruise. It was a medical symptom I knew from William's consultations with a few unfortunate scholars in London. Sir Robert's condition was the result of quicksilver poisoning.

The mercury that learned men used in their studies seeped into their flesh over months and years. In unlucky instances, it turned them this unholy tint, and in some star-crossed cases it even drove them mad. Many philosophers dabbled in alchemy, believing that base metals could be turned to gold by using quicksilver and other rare elements. Sir Robert's condition was striking, but one shared by other seekers.

“Captain Foxcroft whispered a word in my ear,” said Sir Robert. “Something about taking you under my wing, if you seemed in need of my help.”

I bridled inwardly. The admiral had chosen me to be one of the ship's officers, and I was determined to live up to Drake's faith in me.

“Not that I suspect you'll need any special advice, good Thomas,” said Sir Robert with polite haste.

“We are lucky to have such a spirited shipmate,” I offered, liking him despite my stung pride. “You are a well-famed playwright and poet, as I hear.”

Gentlemen scholars were often carried on a ship, and were expected to work the vessel and to fight, when the occasion rose. Such men of letters helped fund the voyage with fat donations, and with any luck would survive to write a glorious history of the vessel.

He gave a quiet chuckle. “The truth is, I wrote my heroic poem ‘The Liver in Her Glory' when I was but twenty years of age, and I am much fallen from my former knowledge.”

“I regret I did not attend a performance of your play,” I heard myself say smoothly, like any gentleman in a London wine-shop. I appreciated Sir Robert's honesty, and relished a chance to talk with such a learned man. In my sadness, I remembered to converse as my master had taught me, trying to be both kind and truthful. “I've heard little but praise for it,” I said. It was nearly true.