The Forest (38 page)

Alan Seagull had noticed, though. For a while he had helped his men unload; but as the last of the wine casks was safely lowered he moved along the quay to where the master of the other boat was directing operations. Standing beside him for a moment, he pointed up at the sky.

The burly Southampton man glanced too, then shrugged. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he growled.

‘Maybe you have.’

‘We’ll be back before it gets bad.’

‘I don’t think so.’

As if to make his point, a gust of wind suddenly came with a whistle over the rooftops of the Yarmouth houses, wetting their faces with a spattering of raindrops.

‘Swing that cask. Hurry now!’ the big man shouted to his crew. ‘That’s it!’ He turned to Seagull. ‘We’ll be gone first. If you haven’t the stomach for the crossing, then be damned to you.’ And turning his back on the other master, he went across the gangplank into his ship.

He was wrong in his assessment about their departure, however. For it was actually Seagull’s boat that cast off first and made for the harbour entrance. Under his direction the crew were rowing out. Before leaving, they had already reefed the sail, so that its shape, when it was raised, would be a narrow triangle rather than a square. To Jonathan, their leaving ahead of the big boat seemed a cause for rejoicing, but he could see from the tense faces of the crew and the concentrated look on Seagull’s face that they were anything but happy.

‘This is going to be rough,’ said Willie.

Moments later, they passed the sand spit and encountered the open water.

The one thing in the Solent that the sailor truly has to fear is the big easterly gale. It is not a regular occurrence, but when it does come it can be sudden and terrible. Its favoured month is April.

When the big easterly comes down the English Channel, the Isle of Wight offers no protection. Far from it. Sweeping in at the Solent’s wider eastern end, the wind barrels down its narrowing funnel and whips its waters to a frenzy. The peaceful paradise becomes a raging brownish cauldron. The island disappears behind great grey sheets of moving vapour. Over the salt marshes the gale howls as though it means to tear out the quivering vegetation and hurl it – thorn trees, gorse bushes and all – high over Keyhaven and into the frothing Channel beyond. Sailors who see the big easterly coming hurry to shelter as fast as they can.

Alan Seagull reckoned they just had time.

The wind came at them sharply the moment they cleared the sand bar. The choppy waves were developing already into a rolling swell, but being higher in the water now, the boat could ride this well enough. All ten of the crew were rowing: five a side, all skilled. His plan was to row well clear of the shore, heading a little upwind, then hoist a small sail and try, with a combination of sail, tiller and oar, to get as near to the Lymington river entrance as possible. Since Lymington was almost opposite they would almost certainly be carried too far west. But at least that would bring them to the comparative safety of the shallows over the mudflats and, with their shallow draught, they could row round the coastline of the marshes. If the worst came, they could beach the boat on the salt marshes and walk safely home. One thing was certain: it was anybody’s race now, if you could just get home.

The wind, although growing stronger, was still only gusting. Using the tiller, the mariner was able to keep the boat’s prow pointing north-east, roughly in the direction of Beaulieu as his men strained on the long sea oars. For perhaps a dozen strokes he would feel the wind blowing evenly in his face and the boat would make solid progress. Then a gust would catch them, roll the vessel, heaving the bow round, while a cascade of salt spray came flying off the crest of the swell, almost blinding him as he fought the tiller to bring the boat round again. To the east, up the Solent, he could see a brownish veil of rain above the waters. He tried to calculate where they would be when the rain got to them. Halfway across. Perhaps.

They made slow progress: a hundred yards; another hundred. They had gone about a quarter-mile when they saw the Southampton boat emerge behind them.

The larger boat took a different course. Laying its prow directly into the wind, staying close to the shore, its crew began to row lustily eastwards. Their plan was evidently to get as far up the coast as they could before the wind got stronger, and then make the whole crossing by sail, dashing with the wind half behind them straight for the Lymington entrance. The Southampton master’s bet was no doubt that Seagull would be blown too far west and be unable to get back in the increasingly bad weather. He might well be right.

‘We’ll raise the sail now,’ called Alan Seagull.

At first it seemed to be working. Using a minimum of canvas, with the boat nearly athwart the wind but aiming for the eastern edge of the Lymington estuary, he was able to supplement the oars. Every so often a squall would catch the sail and roll the boat so strongly that the oarsmen lost their stroke, but they pressed on. There was more and more spray, but from his occasional glances back to the island Seagull knew they were making progress. He could see the Southampton boat, following its steady path along the coast. Meanwhile, he was nearly a mile out and still in line with the harbour entrance. He scanned the clouds. The veil of rain was approaching quicker than he had expected.

‘Ship oars.’ The men, surprised, started to pull the oars in. Willie looked at him questioningly. In reply, he only shook his head. ‘More sail,’ he called out. The crew obeyed. The boat lurched. ‘All hands to starboard.’ They would need as much weight as possible to counterbalance the sail. ‘Here we go, then,’ he muttered to himself.

The effect was dramatic. The boat shuddered, creaked, and plunged forward. There was nothing else for it. The storm was coming in too fast to do anything now but try to run across, as far as they could, before it really struck. As the prow rose and dipped he watched the northern shoreline. He was going to be driven west, of course; the question was, how far? Rolling and pitching, fighting to keep his line, the mariner guided his vessel out towards the middle of the Solent.

And then the storm struck. It came with a roar and a cascade of rain, and a terrible engulfing darkness, as though it meant to deny the existence of everything but itself to those it had swallowed in its maw. The island vanished; the mainland vanished; the clouds above vanished; everything vanished except the spray and the sweeping sheets of rain and the billowing swell, which soon grew so high that the waves towered over the boat, which sank into troughs so deep it seemed a miracle it ever rose again. Frantically the crew trimmed the sail and Seagull eased the tiller. There was nothing to do but to run before the wind with a small sail and hope it would bring them swiftly to the edge of this watery abyss.

The two boys, holding fast to the rail at its edge, were sitting just in front of him on the deck. He wondered if either would be sick and whether to send them into the body of the ship. And thinking of his decision about what to do with Jonathan, the boy who knew his secret, it occurred to him that the circumstances could never be better than now. A shove with his foot when no one was looking and he’d be overboard in a trice. The chances of saving him in that sea? Minimal.

He could not see the shore, but he estimated that since the gale must now blow them almost due west, it should take them either to Keyhaven or the long spit of gravel and sand that came out across the Solent’s entrance. Either way, this would drive them on to a shore where they could safely beach the boat. Thank God there were no rocks.

He did not know how much time passed after this. It seemed a little eternity, but he was too busy on the tiller, as the boat rode and plunged in the swell, to think of anything much except that it could not, surely, be long before they came close to the spit. And he had finally reached the conclusion that they must be near indeed when suddenly a divide in the clouds hurtling overhead caused a short break in the blinding rain. Over the whipping spray, as the wind howled, it was possible to see forward a quarter, then half a mile, then further, as if he were looking into a huge grey tunnel. And then, as the little boat rose up from a trough, he saw a vision that made him gasp.

It was a phantom – a huge, narrow, three-masted vessel, a hundred and sixty feet long, appearing ghost-like through the receding curtain of rain. He knew at once what it was, for there could only be one ship of this kind in those waters. It was a great galley from Venice, making its entry into the Solent on its way to Southampton. They were magnificent ships, these galleys, or galleasses as they were often called. Little changed from the great ships of classical times, they carried three lateen sails, but could manoeuvre in almost any waters with their three mighty banks of oars. A hundred and seventy oarsmen they carried, galley slaves sometimes, just as in Roman times. Although their cargo space was not huge, the value of the cargo was: cinnamon, ginger, nutmegs, cloves and other oriental spices; costly perfumes like frankincense; drugs for the apothecaries; silks and satins, carpets and tapestries, furniture and Venetian glass. It was a floating treasure house.

But it was not just the sight of the phantom galleass that made Seagull stare in shock. It was the ship’s position. For the Venetian vessel, directly in front of them, was in the narrow channel that led out of the Solent. He let out a cry. How could he have been so stupid? In the rage of the gale he had forgotten one crucial factor. The tide.

The ebb tide had begun. They were not heading for the sand spit and safety. The gale was blowing them right into the current that, in moments, would sweep them inexorably through the Solent’s exit and out into the boiling wrath of the open sea.

‘Oars!’ he cried. ‘Port side.’ He threw himself against the tiller. The boat rolled violently.

And he just had time to see the two boys, caught unawares, tumbling across the deck towards the water.

By the time evening began to fall in Lymington, many people had secretly given up hope.

Not that you could really call it evening: the doors and shutters had already been closed against the howling wind and the lashing rain for hours; the only change was that the enveloping darkness of the storm had grown blacker until at last you could see nothing at all. Only Totton, with his hourglass, could tell the time with precision and know, as the grains of sand fell, that it was now eight hours since his son had disappeared.

At first, when the Southampton boat had arrived, there had been celebrations. In the Angel Inn, where most of those with money on the race had gathered, some people had started collecting their bets. But questions were also being asked. Had the other boat attempted the crossing? Yes. They had got out of Yarmouth first. What course had they taken? Straight across.

‘They’ve been blown west, then,’ Burrard concluded. ‘They’ll have to row round. We shan’t see them for a while.’ But behind his bluffness some detected a hint of concern and it was noticed that he made no effort to collect any of his own winnings. Totton, soon after this, went down to the quay and not long afterwards Burrard had followed him. The conversation in the Angel had grown quieter after that, the jokes less frequent.

Down on the quay it had been impossible to see anything past the waving reeds. Totton, after visiting the Seagull family, had insisted on going down the path across the marshes towards the river-mouth where Burrard had accompanied him. There he had gazed uselessly into the rain and the raging sea for half an hour before Burrard had gently told him, ‘Come, Henry, we can do nothing here’ and led him home.

After that, Burrard had set in motion enquiries of his own and returned in the evening to keep his friend company.

‘I owe you our bet,’ Totton said absently.

‘So you do, Henry,’ Burrard agreed cheerfully, understanding his friend’s need. ‘We can settle up tomorrow.’

‘I must go out and look for them,’ Totton suddenly declared a few moments later.

‘Henry, I beg you.’ Burrard laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘The best thing you can do is wait here. It’s impossible to see anything out there. But when your son comes back soaked to the skin after walking halfway along the coast, the best thing is for him to find you here. I’ve already got four men out looking in the likely places.’ The fact that two of them had already returned all the way from Keyhaven and reported no sighting of Seagull’s boat was a piece of information he did not share with Totton for the moment. ‘Come, tell that pretty servant girl of yours’ – this was a description of the poor girl that would have surprised most people – ‘to bring us a pie and a pitcher of red wine. I’m starving.’

So while he thus ensured that Totton ate something, Burrard sat with his friend in the empty hall, saying little, while Totton stared ahead as if in a trance.

Yet even Burrard would have been most astonished had he known what his friend was thinking of.

It had been the day before the race when Henry Totton had gone to see Alan Seagull.

The mariner had been alone, mending his nets, when he had seen the quiet merchant approaching and had been surprised when he stopped in front of him.

‘I have some business with you,’ Totton had begun, and as Seagull had looked up enquiringly, he had proceeded: ‘There’s a great deal of money on tomorrow’s race.’

‘So they say.’

‘You don’t bet, though.’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re wise. Wiser than me, I dare say.’

If Seagull agreed he did not say so. It was an unexpected thing for Totton to admit, but not half so unexpected as what came next.

‘I hear you’re going to win.’

‘Oh?’ The mariner’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘My son. Told me last night.’

‘And why’ – Seagull looked down at his nets again – ‘would he think that?’

‘He won’t say.’

If that was true, Seagull thought, then young Jonathan had kept his secret better than his own son. But was it true, or had this merchant come to threaten him in some way? ‘I expect it’ll depend on the weather,’ he said.

‘Perhaps. But you see,’ Totton went on quietly, ‘the reason I bet against you originally was because I didn’t think you’d care to win.’