Virgin Earth (20 page)

John’s Mediterranean voyage took him to Malaga, to join the rest of the English fleet in readiness for the assault on Algiers, and then they sailed in force to Majorca for revictualing. At both stops John begged for the use of the ship’s boat and went ashore with his satchel and his little trowel; he came back with his satchel bulging.

“You look as if you have murdered a dozen infidels,” Captain Pett said as Tradescant returned, mud-stained and smiling through the Mediterranean sunset.

“No deaths,” John said. “But some plants which will make my name.”

“What’ve you got?” the captain asked idly. He was not a gardener and only indulged John’s enthusiasm for the undeniable benefit of having a steady and experienced man on board who might command a troop of men if needed.

“Look at this,” John said, unpacking his muddy satchel on the holystoned deck. “A starry-headed trefoil, a sweet yellow rest harrow, and what d’you think this is?”

“No idea.”

“A double-blossomed pomegranate tree,” John said proudly, producing a foot-long sapling from his satchel. “I’ll need a barrel of earth for this at once.”

“Can it grow in England at all?” Captain Pett asked curiously.

Tradescant smiled at him. “Who knows?” he said, and the captain suddenly realized the joy that fired his temporary maverick officer. “Who can tell? We grow a cultivated sort in the orangeries. This is far more fragile and lovely. But I shall have to try it. And if I win, and we can grow wild pomegranates in England, then what a glory to God! For every man who walks in my garden can see things that until now he would have had to travel miles to find. And he can see that God has made things in such variety, in such glorious wealth, that there is no end to His joy in abundance. And no end to mine.”

“Are you doing this for the glory of God?” Captain Pett asked, slightly bemused.

John thought for a moment. “To be honest with you,” he said slowly, “I cling to the thought that it is for the glory of God. Because the other thought is heresy.”

Captain Pett did not glance around, as he would have done on land. He was master of his own pinnace and speech was free. “Heresy? What d’you mean?”

“I mean that either God has made dozens, even hundreds, of things which are nearly the same, and that the richness of his variety is something which redounds to His holy name…”

“Or?”

“Or that this is madness. It is madness to think that God should make a dozen things almost the same but a little different. All a man of sense could think is that God did not make them. That the earth they feed on and the water they drink makes plants in different areas a little different, and that is the only reason that they are different. And if that is true, then I am denying that everything in the world was made first by my God in Eden, working like a gardener for six days and resting on the Sabbath. And if I am denying that, then I am a heretic damned.”

Captain Pett paused for a moment, following the twisting path of Tradescant’s logic, and then let out a crack of laughter and hammered Tradescant on the shoulder. “You are trapped,” he exclaimed. “Because every variety that you discover must make you doubt that God could do all this in six days in Eden. And yet what you say you want to do is to show these things to the glory of God.”

Tradescant recoiled slightly from the loud good humor of his captain. “Yes.”

The captain laughed again. “I thank God I am a simple man,” he said. “All I have to do is to sack Algiers and teach the Barbary pirates that they cannot hazard the lives of English sailors. Whereas you, Tradescant, have to spend your life hoping for one thing but continually finding evidence to the contrary.”

A familiar stubborn look came across John’s face. “I keep faith,” he said stolidly. “Whether to my lord or to my king or to my God. I keep faith. And four sorts of smilax do not challenge my faith in God or king or lord.”

Pett was optimistic about the ease of his task, compared with John’s metaphysical worries. He was part of a well-victualed, well-commanded fleet with a clear plan. When they came to Algiers it was the task of the pinnaces to patrol the waterways to trap the pirates inside the harbor.

John and the other gentlemen recruited for the adventure were called into the captain’s cabin on the day the whole of the English fleet was assembled and moored in readiness half a league off shore.

“We’ll send in fireboats,” Pett said. “Two. They are to set the moored shipping ablaze and that will destroy the corsairs’ fleet. It’ll also spread smoke across the harbor and under cover of the smoke we’ll assault the walls of the harbor. That will be our task and that will be where you come in, gentlemen.”

He had a map unrolled before him on the table. The English fleet was shown as a double line of converging white flags with the distinctive red cross. The corsair ships were shown as a black square.

“Which way is the prevailing wind?” Tradescant asked.

“Onshore,” Pett replied. “It will blow the fireboats in, and then the smoke will go into their eyes.”

“Do we have scaling ladders for the harbor walls?” someone asked.

The officers nodded, Tradescant among them.

“And you each of you know the men you are to lead and have checked their equipment?” Captain Pett confirmed.

Tradescant nodded and glanced around him, wondering if anyone else had a sense of sick dread in their stomachs, the fear of a man who had never seen a battle before.

“Then do your duty, gentlemen,” the captain said simply. “For God and King James.”

John wanted the attack to start at once, certain that his small core of courage would diminish if he had to wait a moment. He stood with his landing party at the side of the pinnace and watched the fireboats go in through the mouth of the harbor. The two little barges were loaded with explosives and tar and were rowed with a single oar by a volunteer. The rower’s task was to get the little craft through the choppy water at the harbor mouth and then as close as he dared to the moored shipping, despite the rain of musket fire which came down from the trapped ships. He was to light the coil of pitch rope which served as a fuse, point the boat in the right direction and then plunge into the sea and swim as fast as he could back to the English ships while the fireboat, smoldering with its cargo of explosives, was supposed to float up against the enemy shipping.

“At least I wasn’t ordered to do that,” Tradescant whispered miserably to himself, watching the little boat head toward the harbor mouth and seeing a cannonball splash with horrid weight into the water beside it.

The boat bobbed in, the sailor’s head just visible; they saw the flame of the fuse and his swift dive into the water, and then… nothing. The fuse had gone out and they heard the ironic cheers of the pirates as the fireboat bobbed uselessly against the wooden sides of their ships.

“A free gift of powder and explosives to our enemies,” Captain Pett said savagely. “Stand down, everyone; there will be no attack until the tide is up tomorrow.”

Tradescant spent a sleepless night, with the taste of fear like cold sweat on his lips, and in the morning showed a white face on deck at the head of his landing party. He checked them over. They all had muskets primed and ready, they all had brightly glowing fuses palmed confidently in their hands. One man had the scaling ladder and he was wearing a helmet Tradescant had managed to scrounge in Majorca. Tradescant nodded to his troop with affected confidence and was irritated to see, by the hidden smile one from another, that they saw and understood his pallor.

“Soon be over, sir,” one of them said cheerfully. “And you’re either dead or safe in minutes.”

“Thank you,” John said repressively, and went to the ship’s rail to watch the fireboats go in.

They failed again, and the next day too. By day four Tradescant ate a hearty breakfast and was at the rail to watch the fireboats try once more and felt as nonchalant as his men. Boredom and disappointment had driven out fear and now he wanted the battle to be joined. What he could not tolerate was the waiting and the immense irritation when the winds dropped and the fireboats burned harmlessly in the middle of the bay and then exploded with a loud crack that made the pirates cheer.

It was dawn; the tide suited them high at dawn. The weather suited them at last, a gray mist on the water which would make the pirate muskets uncertain of their aim shooting into grayness, and a brisk onshore wind which should blow the fireboats inward to the harbor.

“But hardly a surprise attack,” Tradescant grumbled, at the pinnace rail. The wind blowing steadily onshore lifted the brim of his hat.

“The principle is right,” someone said behind him.

Tradescant thought of his old master’s preference for sound practice over principle, but held his peace. They all watched together as the two barges were rowed to the harbor mouth. The sailors on board lit the fuses to the explosives, burning twists of rope dipped in pitch. No one could tell how long they would take to burn with any accuracy. It was a brave man who stayed on board a barge that would blow up at any moment to steer it closer and ever closer to enemy shipping.

The two sailors did well. “Jump!” Tradescant muttered under his breath as they went through the harbor mouth and drifted toward the ships, while the waiting English ships could see the sparks at the foot of the powder kegs. Then there were two dark shadows leaping and two splashes in the water, and then an almighty roar as the first barge went up in flames and drifted toward the trapped corsair ships.

But just as it should have collided with the wooden rowing ship there was a sudden lull.

“The wind!” Captain Pett yelled in anguish. “What the devil has happened to the wind?”

It was nothing, a lull before a storm, but it was enough to ruin the English plans. The fireboats exploded and burned as they should have done as two little torches afloat on the dark water of Algiers harbor, the corsair ships remained moored safe in its lee and the pirate crews came out on deck with toasting forks and made as if they were frying their bacon for breakfast on the English attack.

“What do we do now?” someone asked. “Stand down again?”

“Today we attack,” Captain Pett said. “We follow orders.”

John found his feet were strangely heavy in his boots. There was nothing for him to do until the
Mercury
was close enough either to shore or to a ship, and then he was to lead a boarding party.

“There will be no smoke,” he said shortly. “No cover. And they are ready and waiting and confident.”

“My orders are to attack whatever the success of the fireboats,” Captain Pett declared.

He called for the sails to be crowded on and the
Mercury
moved slowly toward the mouth of the harbor. There was another pinnace before her, and one behind; all the English captains were staying within the letter of their orders though the chances of the attack succeeding with the wind down and the fireboats sputtering into darkness was remote. The Turkish guns, expertly manned from the high harbor walls, bombarded the incoming ships. “Like ducks on a moat,” John said angrily.

The
Mercury
sailed in, obeying orders.

“Please God he does not put us ashore and expect us to scale the walls,” Tradescant muttered into his neckerchief. He looked back at his men. They were waiting grim-faced for Tradescant to lead them; ahead of them were the high walls of the fort with the sharply etched windows where a dozen muskets waited for the English to come into range, clearly visible on the water which was brightening with the morning light and shielded neither by mist nor smoke.

Captain Pett sailed inward, obeying his orders to the letter, but with a man at his elbow with a telescope trained on the commander’s ship, waiting for a signal. At last the flag reluctantly fluttered out.

“Retreat ordered,” shouted the man with the telescope.

“Retreat!” Captain Pett bawled. At once the drum began to beat and the other English ships wheeled around and started forcing their way, against the prevailing wind, back out of the harbor mouth.

The rest of the fleet sent in barges and took the ships in tow. It was an ignominious end to an attack, but John caught a rope and made it fast, feeling as lighthearted as a lad. The desire for battle had been replaced completely with a profound longing for the safety and comfort of his home.

Elizabeth greeted John home with a touch of coolness. She had been painfully aware that he had left despite her wishes, and she had prayed every night that he would be spared so that he could come home and they could start again, start as friends and lovers again. But when he walked into the Canterbury cottage, not a scratch on him, his face tanned and smiling, and a small wagon of plants waiting outside in the lane, her most powerful feeling was deep irritation.

John sent the wagon on to Lord Wootton’s garden with orders to see that the plants were unloaded and watered, and came into the house asking for a bath and that his linen be burned on the kitchen fire.

“It’s lousy,” he said. “It has driven me mad for days.”

Elizabeth set water to heat, pulled out the big wooden washtub and set it on the stone flags of the floor. John stripped off his clothes and left them at a heap near the door.

“God be praised, I am glad to be home,” he said and gave her a smile. She did not smile back at him, nor did she come into his arms and put her face against his warm bare chest. John did not hold out his arms. He was afraid he might smell and he knew his head and his beard harbored lice. But he would have been glad of a greeting which was passionate, or even affectionate. Elizabeth pouring hot water into the tub offered a dutiful welcome, not an exciting one.

“I am glad to see you safe home,” she said calmly, and put on another pot of water to heat.

John tested the water with his foot and then stepped in. Elizabeth handed him the washball of herbs tied in cotton, and a bowl of sludgy soap.

“I was afraid you might be fired on, sailing past the Spanish coast,” she said. “There were rumors that the fleet would go against Spain.”

“I would have thought you would have been glad to see me put a cannonball into the heart of papistry,” John observed, sitting in a bath of soapy water and sponging the salty grime of several months’ voyage off his neck.