‘Ah, and here we come upon it,’ said Marlowe. He had been riding ahead, his horse kicking up spatters of mud from the rough road. Lewgar looked up. On either side of them sprawled a patchwork of fields, dappled yellow and coming to life in the cold spring sunshine. He lifted his head and looked ahead.
And he felt the colour drain from his face.
Lewgar had never seen the open sea before. His early life had been spent entirely in Wymondham. Occasionally he and his sister had walked with his parents out to the River Tiffey, where his mother and sister would pick wildflowers and his father would take him fishing by the water’s edge and lecture him on the evils of papistry and the need for good learning in pursuing a career in the ministry. On the occasional trip to London – even on this journey – he had seen the wide expanse of the Thames, much of it barely visible under its carpet of sails and masts and wherries and barges. This was something different, something awe-inspiring and terrifying.
Ahead of them, the road wound on towards Plymouth, marked out by tiny-looking spires and smudges of smoke. Beyond it, an endless mottled grey stretched on to the horizon, the colour of weathered stone, marked here and there with flecks of white. Unlike the rivers, there was no other side. The horizon drew a hard, grey line against the crystal blue wash of the sky. Lewgar swallowed. ‘The sea,’ he said.
‘The sea,’ agreed Marlowe. ‘And we must thank our horses for bringing us here.’ He had reined in, and he hunched forward, stroking his mount’s mane and whispering in its ear. ‘Fine beasts, horses,’ he said. His brash voice now mastered the wind, which raised the mane of Lewgar’s own beast. ‘These creatures … they are strength. They are wind and fire and air and earth. Every element intermingled. Are they not?’
Lewgar considered the curve of his horse’s neck, frowning down at it. This was typical of the flights of fancy Marlowe had come out with on the long journey down from Cambridge. Beer wasn’t beer – it was sweet nectar fit to nourish us. Boiled fish wasn’t fish, but an example of God’s design in fitting out beasts for the better motion of man in a cycle akin to the movement of the celestial spheres. Lewgar stroked the horse’s ear. It was soft, like velvet, with fine hairs on the inside. It flicked back upwards. ‘They are fine creatures. Mastery of the horse is a sign of nobility of the soul. It is what our word “chivalry” denotes.’
Marlowe twisted his upper body in his saddle, giving Lewgar his profile. ‘A fine learned sentiment,’ he said. Though he was smiling, there was something like contempt in his voice. Lewgar felt his colour rise. ‘Come. We must strike off that way for Wembury.’ Without waiting for an answer, he urged his horse onwards and to the left, where a path broke off from the main highway and wound its way through a sea of green fields, toiled over and brought to order over generations. Mud was flung up again in his wake.
Cursing, Lewgar followed.
He would get Marlowe for that. When this adventure was over, treasure or not, he would see that the fellow might continue his spiery outside Cambridge.
***
Wembury only distinguished itself from similar clutches of hamlets they had ridden through by its proximity to the sea. The dwellings stood apart, forming a loose square, the centre of which was a thoroughly churned, muddy expanse of nothingness, with only a post at the centre to mark it. This, Lewgar supposed, would be fit for proclamations and ordinances sent down from London. The salty tang of sea air hung heavy over everything, and the wind whistled through the place. No inn sign hung from any of the buildings. Each of them was of a different quality from those found in the inland cities and towns; Lewgar noticed this immediately. They were larger, for one, each having room to grow, and they were built of stone rather than timber and plaster. Their windows were tiny, still shuttered by thick chunks of splintered and aged wood. Only stone and wood, he supposed, could withstand sea winds and squalls.
A path snaked away from the village square, leading up a small rise to a hulk of a place settled amongst tufts of grass – what might in a previous century have been a manor house, but which now looked like a sad remnant. It looked unwholesome, haunted. Lewgar looked away from it and back to the village.
There were few people about – a pair of women stood in a doorway; a crowd of men in breeches and shirtsleeves lounged against the wall of another building. All were silent; all turned at the approach of the two riders. The place appeared to be to Plymouth what any number of suspicious little hamlets were to London. It was as though the greater town had sneezed, sending forth little gobbets to land a distance away where they hardened, resentful at being cast out.
‘Shall we stop?’ asked Lewgar. He, like Marlowe, had slowed his horse to a bare trot.
Without turning in the saddle, his fellow said, ‘no. To the sea.’ He led the way through the secretive little village and its quiet citizens, striking out on the other side for a path which disappeared amongst a series of hillocks on its way to the water.
The road underfoot, mean as it was, bore, like the village square, signs of recent traffic. Gravel and mud were crushed and uneven. Here and there were trampled the unmistakeable splodges of horse dung, their earthy reek mingling with the rising salt in the air. The hillocks on either side changed from green to a wispy light brown, and the mud shifted to a sandy white.
And then, as the land dipped, two things seemed to lurch into view at once.
The first was the great horseshoe of shingly beach, forming Wembury’s own wide cove. It curved outwards on the left to rocky headland; on the right it did the same, but much closer, with meadows of pure green rolling gently uphill. The beach itself appeared to be protected, embraced by these two arms of land. Soft waves rolled too, washing up the beach, breaking on the spits of jagged-looking rocks which jabbed outwards from sand to water. Well clear of these were several wooden jetties, running on weathered struts out into the sea; at each were moored small skiffs, clinker-built rowing boats, and even a small cog and a larger drifter. A number of men in flat caps, in their shirtsleeves or stripped down to their breeches and hose, were tending them.
The other thing, farther away than Lewgar had expected, was the ghost ship, the Sparrowhawk. It looked, he thought, surprisingly whole, though its sails and masts were broken, leaving only shards of black poking forlornly at a strange angle. The risen ship had not washed up on the beach but sat out against a small, triangular island about half a mile beyond the headland on the right. Oddly, it was still partly submerged. White foam was breaking around its hull a few yards aft of amidships; its bottle-nosed prow stood high, proud, though its paint had darkened. The rest of the bow likewise appeared to be making a vain effort to rise out of the water, whilst the sea clung doggedly to the stern.
‘There she is,’ said Marlowe, unnecessarily. ‘Drake’s lost treasure ship. I shall speak with the countrymen. You might keep your lips sealed.’ He raised a finger to the sky. ‘Words are like gold. They should be spent little and with care. Idle talk without thought is a curse peculiar to man, is it not?’ Without waiting for an answer, he slid from the horse easily and began leading it down towards the beach. More clumsily, Lewgar followed, passing an old church with a tall, turreted tower set amidst bracken, and not much else.
‘What ho, my friends,’ Marlowe announced as he neared the closest jetty. It was a manner of speaking he had used to every tapster and ostler and groom and bar wench throughout the journey: he was a king of familiar bonhomie, as though he intended every man to think him a long-lost friend. The only thing he never offered was his name. Lewgar found it cheap – a sham of friendship. Yet, he had to admit, it appeared to work. People warmed to shallow displays of amity.
But not these people.
Lewgar could tell immediately that they were wary. The fishermen exchanged a few words as the two men approached, and, as they drew closer, settled themselves to shiftier eye conferences.
Not to be put off, Marlowe held up a hand in salute. ‘Good day to you all.’ He had a good speaking voice when he chose to use it �
� a persuasive one that sounded rich in imaginary authority. ‘I judge from the ground that the road to yonder ship is well travelled.’ He too, Lewgar thought, had noticed the mutilated state of the path, on which the pair now cast fashionable, slimline silhouettes.
An older fisherman, apparently nominated as spokesman, stepped away from his little boat and began clambering along the jetty. He had a curious, flat-footed gait, as though he expected the jetty itself to roll and plunge. He touched his cap to the strangers – a brief, two-fingered effort. And then he raised his bearded face.
‘What news, lads?’ he shouted. His voice was clear – the cove was protected from the winds – and heavy in its native accent. Lewgar resisted the urge to laugh. He had heard, since childhood, people mocking countrymen’s voices.
‘Rather it is we who seek news,’ said Marlowe, sweeping off his own hat and giving a short bow. He jabbed the hat out to sea. ‘Of the Sparrowhawk.’
‘Oh yar?’
‘Yes. Is it she, to be sure? Drake’s ship?’
The fellow shrugged, not meeting Marlowe’s eyes. ‘So they say.’
Who is they? Lewgar wondered.
‘And what can you tell us of her?’ asked Marlowe. His voice was bright, airy.
‘Can’t say,’ said the man, now sullen. ‘Bad business.’ He looked up. ‘Ghost ship.’
‘What?’ asked Lewgar.
‘Yar. Ghost ship. Yonder ship’s been seen, ay, seen sailing. Lost, but seen drifting. Crew of ghosts, by my reck’ning. Fellers ’ave seen ’er these parst years. And suffered the worse for the seeing.’
Lewgar rolled his eyes. He could imagine the backwards country people, huddled over their hearths, exchanging false news of the old ship being seen sailing, probably in heavy fogs, crewed by ghostly sailors. Likely it had become part of their common tales, meant to scare young children from wandering too close to the water’s edge. It was nonsense, of course. Such tales attended on coastal towns, blowing landward for educated men to laugh at. In Cambridge, in London, it was known that the Sparrowhawk had been lost, had gone down years since, with its hoard of treasure – if it had ever carried treasure – aboard or otherwise.
‘She has drawn many, then?’ asked Marlowe. ‘Since washing up there, I mean.’
The fisherman shrugged, wiping his hands on his loose, open-fronted shirt, first the backs and then the fronts. ‘Some men down from London come, I reckon.’ His vowels were hopelessly rounded, making an ‘oi’ of his ‘i’. He shrugged again. ‘Queen’s men, by the sound of them. Coroner’s men, rather, for the crown. And them letters they ’eld.’
‘And they found nothing aboard her?’ asked Lewgar. Talking seemed a good way of avoiding laughter.
Again, the fisherman shrugged. ‘Not nothing what ter find. All at the bottom of the sea. Storm brought ’er up weeks since. Not nothing on ’er. Not nothing but bad fortune on any ship what the sea don’t want no more.’
Superstition! thought Lewgar, the word he had scrambled for earlier rising in his mind. The provinces were awash with it. It was as though the reformed religion had meant nothing to them but the loss of their idols. Like children, they clung to foolish superstitions.
‘Is it a rare thing,’ asked Marlowe. ‘To have such a wreck wash ashore?’
‘Not so very rare. Bits and pieces. I’ve ’eard it said that if that sea thar were drained by God, a man might walk himself across ter France without he never sets foot on the bottom. ’ole fair carpet of wrecks and dead men’s bones.’
Lewgar imagined this and shivered. Yet it was true enough. He might not have seen the sea before, but he had heard enough of ships lost, cargoes lost, fortunes lost, and investors ruined. His father had always said that the New World was there to be brought to God’s salvation before the Spaniards could spread their devilry; but those who ventured to it risked being lost at sea, where they’d find their way to Heaven through hundreds of fathoms of that forbidding grey.
‘My name,’ Marlowe announced, ‘is Mr Richard Tyndall, lately of London.’
Lewgar spluttered, his lips quivering.
‘Oh yar? And your friend?’
‘Mr Thomas Lewgar. Of Cambridge. Corpus Christi College.’ He pouted, raising his chin in defiance of Marlowe’s flagrant lie, refusing even to dignify it by looking at the fellow.
‘Yes,’ went on Marlowe, unperturbed, ‘we are Tyndall and Lewgar. And we come to you with a request. A plea, in faith. Would you take us out to her?’
This time Lewgar did turn, his offended mind dragged back to the beach by Marlowe’s question. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Out to her? You heard the fellow – the ship is a ruin. Stripped bare.’ He made an attempt to lower his voice and failed, adding loudly, ‘I thought we came to see how she lay and ask these crea- these people about her condition. Her past.’
Marlowe turned a cock-eyed grin to him. ‘Acta non verba, Thomas. Courage is the queen and mistress of all virtues. And so,’ he said, turning away again and thrusting a hand out towards the old fisherman, ‘let our deeds be as bold – bolder – than our words. Take us to sea, my friend, and to see, if it please you.’
Lewgar considered protesting but thought better of it. He knew instinctively it would at best be pointless, and at worst it would make him look like a coward and a fool before the low men of the village. Going to sea could not, anyway, be much different from taking a short journey by river in a wherry. The water looked calm enough, broken as it was only by those drifting white caps. Whichever fury of nature had cast the Sparrowhawk up and caught it on the rocky island had passed. And these folk would know their trade; out to the old wreck, a brief survey from the safety of a littler vessel, and so back. Quite what they might learn, he had no idea – but go he would. He had let Marlowe lead him this far.
‘By all means,’ he said. ‘Semper prorsum.’ Always forward, he thought. Hopefully not downwards.
There followed some commotion, some delay, as the fishermen broke into a laconic, barely comprehensible babble, laying on their accents thick but keeping their voices low. Lewgar tried to follow the expressions on their faces: rolled eyes, sideways smiles, gap-toothed grins. He could just about make out their thoughts on the two strangers: another pair of city boys come down to chase ghosts.
Muddle-headed jackasses, that’s what their looks said.
But, eventually, their friend the old man signalled them to come forward with a thick hand corded with blue veins. Marlowe shook it. The fisherman jerked his head towards his fellows. ‘Young Sam there’ll tend to yar beasts.’ Lewgar watched, a little doubtfully, as a man of about twenty with a sullen droop to his face moved towards the horses. ‘I’m Tolchard.’ Again, he gave his cap two fingers. ‘I warn you. Nor nothing ter see out thar. Them coroner fellers come down, been out thar afore you. All come back after sailing round ’er. All saying the same. Nor nothing ter see.’
‘Indulge us,’ said Marlowe. Tolchard shrugged, and together the three of them clattered along the jetty, passed the company of other fisherman – still they looked amused, contemptuous – and on to a small rowing boat with a single mast and triangular sail. Stepping into it after the old man and Marlowe, Lewgar felt his stomach lurch as the vessel bobbed under their weight.
In his mind’s eye, he could see all that separated them from the water – a thin, a painfully thin, series of overlapping slivers of wood. As Tolchard untied the little boat from its moorings, called backwards and forwards to his fellows on the jetty, and cast off, Lewgar focused on the island and its wreck, breathing shallowly. It seemed farther away, somehow.
‘A fine craft you have here,’ said Marlowe, cheer lifting his voice over the slap and splash of the oars. Despite his age, Tolchard managed both, barely grunting. The sail caught, the wind seeming to spy their intent and deciding to be helpful, and the boat nosed into the waves. ‘So you have had much trade in men coming forth to inspect the wreck.’
‘Can’t rightly talk and speak,’ was the fisherman’s reply. Marlowe turned on the bench
he’d taken and gave Lewgar a shrug. He ignored it.
Later, he’d be unable to tell how long the journey had taken. It might have been twenty minutes or an hour – he kept his eyes shut for much of it, praying silently. There was something dreadful, something hideous about being robbed of the surety and safety of land. Sailors, like soldiers, must be madmen, their own wits unmoored.
‘Sweet Jesus.’ It was the smell, as much as Marlowe’s oath, which drew open Lewgar’s eyes. He gasped.
Tolchard had done well. He’d drawn them up alongside the hulk, just below a great black breach in her hull, the splintered planking making it look like a yawning mouth lined with rotten teeth. The stench was overpowering: it was as though a whole street of fishmongers had simultaneously thrown their waste out at the height of midsummer. It seemed to pulse out of the Sparrowhawk in thick, throat-catching waves.
Up close, her corpse became even more ghostly. Black from a distance, her planking turned a greyish brown. It had swollen, too, in places, so that pieces of wood seemed to have bulged and blistered. Everywhere along the exposed bottom were shellfish – barnacles and limpets – crusted and grey, making whole sections of the lower hull appear to be turning to stone.
Odd, he thought, that they hadn’t made a home of the upper parts of the ship which, though bare, somehow looked less damaged…
What he took at first for exposed oysters were birds’ droppings, scattered up and down the side. As if crying their ownership and protesting the intrusion, the creatures filled the sky with shrieks and caws. Looking up, beyond the wreck, Lewgar could see beady eyes glaring down from above vicious, dagger-like beaks. An army of gulls wheeled about overhead; still more lined the decking, jostling one another for space, fluttering their wings.
The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller Page 4