The Forest (39 page)

There was a long pause.

Seagull stopped mending his net and gazed at his feet. ‘Oh?’

‘No.’ And then, speaking softly, the merchant mentioned two illegal owling runs Seagull had made, one for a Lymington merchant, another for a wool dealer from Sarum. The first had been five years ago, the second more recent. But here was the interesting thing: young Willie could not possibly have known about either. Wherever Totton had got his information, it wasn’t from the boys. ‘So you see,’ Totton concluded, ‘when I bet Burrard five pounds on the Southampton boat, it was because I reckoned that even if you could outsail it, you wouldn’t want everyone to know. At least, the probability lay that way.’

Seagull considered. The merchant’s reasoning, of course, was quite right. As for his information, it seemed a waste of time to dissemble. ‘How long’ve you known?’ he asked simply.

‘Years.’ Totton paused. ‘Each man’s business is his own. That’s my rule.’

Seagull looked up at the merchant with a new respect. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut was the highest virtue for the fishermen, just as it was for the forest folk. ‘You had business with me?’

‘Yes.’ Totton had smiled. ‘Not that sort. It’s about the race. If my boy’s right and you are planning to win, then that alters the probabilities. And I’m in for five pounds.’ He paused. ‘I’ve heard that Albion wants to bet five pounds that you lose. So I’m asking you to take his bet. You won’t really be betting – I’ll provide the money. And I’ll pay you one pound whichever way it goes.’

‘You’re betting against yourself?’

‘Hedging.’

‘If you pay me either way, you’ll still be down a pound, won’t you?’

‘I’ve laid some other bets. I break even either way, if you’ll help me.’

‘But I might lose.’

‘Yes. But I can’t calculate the probabilities. When I can’t do that, I don’t bet.’

Seagull chuckled. The coolness of the merchant amused him. And to think he’d been wondering whether to drown young Jonathan. Not only was that pointless now but the lad, by confusing Totton’s calculations, was actually making him another pound. ‘All right, then,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll do it.’

But as Henry Totton sat in his hall now, staring ahead and remembering this transaction, he could only curse himself. He had settled his stupid bet. But what about his son? Why had he let him go with the mariner? Because the boy had hurt him and he was angry. Angry with a mere child who had only been thinking of the adventure of going with his friend. He had let him go; he had acted coldly towards him. And now he had probably sent him to his death.

‘Don’t despair yet, Henry,’ he heard Burrard’s gruff voice. ‘They’ll probably turn up in the morning.’

If the men Burrard sent out had failed to find any sign of Seagull and his boat it was not surprising. At the moment when they reached Keyhaven in the late afternoon he was just over a mile away at the end of the long gravel spit and had been there for some time. But he had made no attempt to get to Keyhaven, nor did he particularly want anyone to see him.

He had been lucky not to lose the boys. It had been very close. At the instant when he saw them rolling towards the side, he had let go of the tiller and lunged after them, grabbing one with each hand as the boat yawed. They had almost gone over, all three of them. ‘Hold him,’ he had cried to Willie as he released his grip on Jonathan and grabbed the rail with his free hand; and if Willie hadn’t clung on to his friend like a limpet, young Jonathan would surely have been lost.

The next quarter of an hour had been like a nightmare. They had dropped the sail and rowed; but each time they had seemed to make progress the current, with an awful dreamlike logic, had carried them further towards the long shadow of the galleass, which mysteriously hovered, sometimes hidden in the shrouds of the storm, sometimes glimpsed, yet never moving. At last, pulling for all they were worth, the men had managed, as the tide still swept them remorselessly, to touch the gravel edge of the spit and get the boat grounded almost on the very lip of the channel that rushed by, out to sea.

But now Seagull had other things on his mind. He cupped his hands over his eyes and stared intently across the water.

The storm had not slackened; but seen from the shore the downpour had resolved itself into trailing curtains of grey clouds that swept past remorselessly. Through these, nothing could be seen at more than a hundred yards; but in the brief intervals between, Seagull could see some way into the foaming channel.

At last he turned. The crew and the boys were doing their best to shelter from the rain in the lee of the boat, which they had pulled up on to the beach.

‘What are we going to do, Alan?’ one of them called now. ‘We going to Keyhaven?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of that.’ And as he turned and pointed they saw once more the long, tall shape of the galleass appear faintly out in the channel. ‘She ain’t moved,’ he said. ‘Know what that means?’ The man nodded. ‘I don’t reckon anyone but us has seen her,’ Seagull continued.

‘She may get off all right.’

‘And then she may not. So we’ll wait and see.’

And with that he returned to his position, watching.

The gravel banks in the west mouth of the Solent were not usually a hazard. Firstly, they were well known. Every pilot knew how to approach them. Secondly, the channel between them was deep and necessitated only a single turn as one came near the tip of the Isle of Wight. In spring storms, however, it was not unknown for vessels to run aground and shipwrecks to occur.

Clearly the galleass had run aground. With the tide running out, she would be left stranded, buffeted by the gale. She might even be blown over on to her side and broken up. It was hard to be sure but it seemed to Seagull that the crew of the stricken vessel were trying to work her free with the oars. Once, when he caught a glimpse of her, she was clearly listing. He could make out nothing. Long minutes passed.

But then, just for a moment, he saw her through the veil of rain again. She was half off the gravel bank now. But something else had happened. Somehow she had veered round; she was still veering as he watched. She was going athwart the tide, exposing her whole side to the wrath of the storm. She was keeling over. Then a great barrage of rain roared past and he could see no more.

Long minutes passed. Still nothing. Nothing but the howl of the storm. Poor devils, he thought. What frantic efforts would they be making now? Had the galley capsized? He stared, as if his eyes could bore through the rain.

And then, as though in answer to a prayer, the rain thinned. It almost stopped. Suddenly, ahead of him, he could see the centre of the channel where the gravel banks were and even further. He could make out the faint white shape of the island’s cliffs, over a mile away opposite. He stared at the gravel banks. The galleass wasn’t there.

Without even waiting to explain, he started running across the spit, to the seaward side. The curtain of rain was drawing back. By the time he had covered the few hundred yards to the beach looking out to the English Channel, he could see right out to the tip of the island. He saw the galley then.

At the westernmost tip of the Isle of Wight, where the old chalk cliffs had collapsed at some time, long ago, into the sea, there remained four spikes of chalk, like teeth, just off the white cliff’s high edge, as an indicator that the spine of land did not, in fact, end with the island but continued for some way, under the water. These sturdy outcrops, rising over fifty feet above the water, were known as the Needles. They were chalk, but they were hard and sharp.

The galley had listed badly. One of its masts had broken and was hanging over the side. The oars on the upturned side were either drooping or pointing erratically at the stormy sky. Even as he watched, she spun round helplessly. Then he saw her crash into one of the Needles. She drew back, after which, as if she meant to, the galley thumped into the rock once more.

A renewed cascade of rain interrupted his view. At first he could still see the nearer cliffs, but in a while they also vanished. And though he remained there on watch until it grew dark, he did not see the galleass again.

That night was not a comfortable one for Jonathan. Fortunately there were some blankets stored under the deck. The two boys, at least, were able to get tolerably dry and shelter in the hold during the night. The men pulled sailcloth out from the side of the boat and remained under that. Alan Seagull stayed out on the beach. He didn’t care.

It was somewhere in the early hours of the morning that the storm began to abate. By first light Seagull was waking them.

There was no sign of the galley as they rowed round the spit into the sea in the grey dawn. The sky was still overcast, the water choppy. It was not long, however, before Seagull called out and pointed to something floating in the water. It was a long oar. A few minutes later he steered the boat towards something else. A small cask this time. They hauled it aboard.

‘Cinnamon,’ the mariner announced. And it was not long before they found more. ‘Cloves,’ said Alan Seagull this time.

The galley had obviously sunk; but how much of its precious cargo was floating or had been washed ashore would depend very much on how badly it had been broken up before sinking. Judging by the number of spars they saw the galley had considerably disintegrated before going down.

‘Dad knows the currents,’ Willie explained. ‘He knows where to find the stuff.’

To Jonathan’s surprise, however, the mariner did not stay out long, but instead headed for the shore. ‘Why are we going in now?’ he asked Willie, who gave him a funny look.

‘Got to check for survivors,’ he said obliquely. The white cliffs by the Needles would have smashed any man who came up against them in the storm. The nearest safe beach, even if you could find it in the darkness, would have been three miles away and, strangely perhaps, few mariners could swim in those times. If the galley had gone down out in the sea that night, the chances were that its crew were drowned. But you never knew. Some might have floated to shore on a piece of wreckage.

They brought the boat in about two and a half miles along the coast from the sand spit, where there was a tiny inlet from which a stream descended. Dragging the boat into the mouth of the inlet, where it could not be seen, Seagull and his crew prepared to scour the area. The beaches were empty. Along the shore was mostly scrub and heathland. Ordering the boys to guard the boat, Seagull disappeared with the men.

Jonathan noticed that the mariner’s carried a small spar which he held like a club. ‘Where are they going?’ he asked after they had left.

‘Along the coast. They’ll fan out.’

‘Do you think there’ll be any survivors?’

Again, Willie looked at him a little strangely. ‘No,’ he said.

And at last Jonathan understood. The law of the sea in England was simple but bleak. The cargo of wrecks belonged to whoever found it, unless there were survivors from the ship to claim it. Which of course is why there very seldom were.

The two boys waited; it grew a little lighter.

It was during this time that Henry Totton reached the end of the spit at the Solent entrance and stared across the sea.

He had been out since first light. After a quick look down the estuary he had cut across Pennington Marshes, past the salterns to Keyhaven. From there he had a good view of the Isle of Wight and the shoreline nearby. There was no sign of anything. Then he had walked out along the spit in the hope that they might have been blown there. But there was not a trace of Seagull and his crew.

He gazed across the end of the spit at the narrow channel, then walked round to where he could see the Needles and scanned the sea and the long shoreline of the Forest’s western coast. And since by this time Seagull’s boat was concealed in its little inlet, he did not see it. But in the water nearby he did see some bits of wreckage and, knowing nothing of the Venetian galley, he assumed it was probably Seagull’s boat and that his son was drowned; so he wandered down the western length of the spit to see if the boy’s body was there. But there were no bodies on the spit, for the currents had carried what bodies there were to another place entirely.

Just then he saw his friend Burrard coming towards him and that gruff worthy, who had been out looking for him since not long after dawn himself, put his arm round him and took him home.

It was boring waiting by the boat. They did not dare to leave it in case Seagull returned suddenly, but the two boys took turns to walk along the beach a little way to see what they could find.

The current was starting to bring things in now: another oar, some rigging, a shattered barrel.

And bodies.

Jonathan had been inspecting the remains of a sea chest, wondering what it had contained, when he saw the corpse. It was about ten yards out and the waves were bringing it gradually towards him. The body was drifting face downwards in the water. He stared at it, a little frightened, yet curious.

He would probably have edged away from it if he had not noticed one thing: the tunic the man wore was of a rich brocade, threaded with gold. His shirt was bordered with the finest lace. This was a rich man: a merchant or perhaps even an aristocrat accompanying the ship on its northern voyage. Gingerly he went towards it.

Jonathan had never seen a drowned man before, but he had heard what they looked like: the bluish skin, the swollen face. He waded out until the corpse was beside him. The water was up to his waist. He touched it. It felt heavy, waterlogged. He did not look at the head but felt around the waist. The corpse was wearing a belt. It was not made of leather but gold thread. His fingers worked round it. He had to pull the body close to him to steady it.

Suddenly the dead man’s arm floated round with a bump, as if, in return, he was trying to grab the boy round the waist. For a terrifying moment Jonathan imagined the corpse might wrap its arm around him, press him close and pull him down under the surface to join his watery death. In a panic he threw himself backwards, lost his balance and rolled under. For a second, under the water, he caught sight of the corpse’s ghastly face, staring down, fish-like, at the bottom.