Destiny's Tide

by Destiny's Tide (retail) (epub)

  Will Halliday looked at Ben, and saw the horror, saw the memories take hold, saw the tears flow afresh. For a moment, Benjamin Gonson was in the same place as his father, shuddering in pain on the ground a few yards ahead of them. For Ben, too, had seen his proud, gallant, and honourable brother David, the Knight of Saint John of Rhodes and Jerusalem, die by exactly this means.

  But Ben was a younger man, and seemed to have made his peace with God over what had happened to Sir David Gonson. Not so with their father.

  Ben led the way as they made their final push to the front, and fell to his knees beside the old man. Will knelt down, and rested his hands on William Gonson’s shoulders.

  ‘It isn’t David,’ said Ben Gonson. ‘It isn’t him, Father. These men were only coiners.’

  For long moments, William continued to shake with horror and anguish. Then he looked up at his living son, turned to look tearfully at Will, then looked directly into the dreadful spectacle before him. Finally, he turned to look at Ben once again.

  ‘No, son,’ he said, his voice broken and full of sorrow, ‘they are all David. All of them.’

  SIXTEEN

  The Osprey lay at single harbour in the Road of Calais, close under the north-west redoubt of the castle, in the midst of the fleet that had crossed from Dover. The king was gone, along with his escorting regiments, making for Boulogne by way of the coast road. Soon, most of the ships in the harbour would return to England. Most, but not all; and that was the substance of the raging quarrel between the cousins Jack Stannard and Simon Bulbrooke in the master’s cabin. Elsewhere in the ship, there was utter silence. The men of the crew stood or sat perfectly still, listening to the argument. Even young George Vincent, on duty in the bows where he was checking that the anchor cable did not snag in such a tightly packed anchorage, could hear almost every word.

  ‘Our time’s up, Jack!’ shouted Bulbrooke, a man to whom the notion of whispering was alien. ‘We were taken up for ten weeks, no more. We were taken up for Dover to Calais and back, nothing further – not for a war voyage, by Christ’s holy wounds!’

  ‘The Lord Admiral needs ships to run supplies from here down to Boulogne,’ said Jack, as patiently and quietly as he could. ‘Then they are needed to lie in the mouth of the river, to stop the French sending in ships or galleys to try and break the siege.’

  ‘Lisle can send the king’s own ships,’ snapped Bulbrooke. ‘Why should we care? Why should we do the fighting for the Navy Royal? Our hire is finished, I say. We should go home, I say.’

  ‘The estuary there is shallow,’ said Jack, with as much patience as he could muster. ‘The king’s ships draw too much water to run close inshore, and into the river itself. Besides, Lisle will pay generously for those ships whose owners volunteer for the service.’

  ‘Will he, now? And will he pay if we’re sunk or burned by the French? This hull is my livelihood, Jack. I have nothing else.’

  ‘This hull,’ said Jack, levelly, ‘is my father’s. And if I need remind you of it, cousin, he has granted me power of attorney over all his affairs.’

  Bulbrooke frowned.

  ‘Oh, I know full well how you and my uncle organise your business, cousin.’

  Jack stared at him. There was a depth of rage to Si Bulbrooke – and a depth of emptiness, too – that he had not glimpsed before.

  ‘Come, Si, don’t be nifflin nor waspy. Don’t dwell only upon the worst that could happen. Boulogne is where the war is, which means it’s where the glory is. Where the plunder is. Where the women are.’

  For once, Simon Bulbrooke was not to be mollified so easily.

  ‘And even if you’re right, Jack Stannard, do you think my luck would bring me any of those delights? Do you, now?’

  With that, he turned on his heel, left the cabin, and made for his berth in the fo’c’s’le, where, Jack knew for certain, there would be a flagon of strong ale or wine concealed among his possessions. Most likely, several flagons.

  * * *

  Will Halliday and Ben Gonson sat in a quiet corner of the Pope’s Head in Cornhill, but neither was in much of a mood for drinking. The horror of the scene at Tower Hill was still very much in their minds, although William Gonson had been put to bed under a physician’s direction, lulled by the strange, foul-smelling concoction that the man prescribed. As he slowly lapsed into sleep, he kept murmuring the same thing: ‘the shame, the shame’.

  ‘Coiners,’ said Ben bitterly. ‘No greater crime than clipping or debasing coins. Yet that’s counted as high treason, and earns them execution on Tower Hill, where those of royal and noble blood have perished before them. Not Saint Thomas-a-Watering, where David died.’

  ‘I don’t know the place,’ said Will. ‘I’m n-naught but a Suffolk foreigner, as you keep telling me.’

  Ben Gonson ignored the attempt at levity.

  ‘The southern boundary of the City liberties, the far side of Southwark. There’s a bridge over a stream that comes down from the Peckham hills, which forms the boundary of Camberwell. No better than a common sewer, in truth. And that’s where my brother suffered that same fate. No, the king didn’t want a Knight of Saint John perishing before a great crowd, in case they showed sympathy. In case they made a demonstration, Will. The knights were popular, to the very end, and David’s case was a sham. Every man who studied it in any degree at all knew that. One perjured witness – Babington, a renegade knight who’d deserted the order, who always hated David, who’d sworn revenge on him after my brother rightly accused him of cowardice. We heard tell that Babington had already been bought by the Lord Cromwell, before he fell, to act as a spy against his fellow knights. All of Babington’s evidence against David was a lie, there was no trial at all, but my brother had to die as an example, out there in the arse end of beyond.’

  Will looked round urgently, but the tavern was relatively empty, and none seemed to be listening. He had to shift Ben’s talk onto safer ground, although he had no real idea how to do so.

  ‘Well, then. Well. All passing s-sad. T-t-ime, though, to think of the future, surely? How go your affairs with Mistress Hussey, Ben?’

  Ben Gonson’s pursuit of a wealthy lawyer’s daughter seemed as optimistic, and, mayhap, as hopeless, as Will’s of Marion Bartleby. But Ben was not to be distracted so easily.

  ‘He didn’t need to leave Malta, Will. He could have stayed there, been safe, been alive today, like the other English knights who decided to ignore the king’s commands and stay loyal to the Order. Christ’s wounds, Will, he might have been Grand Master one day! But no, he came back. He knew the king had passed a law ordering the English knights to renounce their loyalty to the Pope, but still he came back – and then, within weeks, Parliament passed another act, this time dissolving the Order in England. I saw him for the last time not long after that, and told him he should get out of the country, get back to Malta. We all did, all of his sibs, and father, too. Especially Father. He’d been a gentleman usher to the king when he was younger, so he knew him.’ Benjamin Gonson, too, finally glanced around, and lowered his voice. ‘Father knew what the king could be like. But David just smiled – you should have seen his smile, Will, it was truly a gift from the angels – and said he was an Englishman, he would obey his king, and perhaps he would even go back to Melton and turn farmer. He was the most loyal of Englishmen, but because he had another loyalty, beyond these shores, some would name him traitor, and put him to death.’

  There was now a silent, sullen fellow, sat upon a settle in the far corner of the room, and Will wondered if he could overhear Ben’s words.

  ‘Ben, we should talk of other things, or we should l-leave.’

  ‘So all of that sits upon Father’s soul, but most of all, he feels the shame of Saint Thomas-a-Watering. That’s the strange thing, Will. I think he could have lived with it more easily if they’d carved my brother apart on Tower Hill.’

  ‘We should leave, Ben. We are leaving. Now.’

  * * *

  The Osprey wa
s in company with five other English ships, four of London and one of Southampton, making their way under easy sail down the coast. Three of the London ships carried troops, archers but lately despatched from London as reinforcements; the other three, including the Osprey, carried barrels of ale for the besieging army at Boulogne. The day was hazy, with strong sun and what seemed to be thunder in the far distance, but Jack was confident they would be able to run into the river of Boulogne long before any storm broke. The great headland that the French called Gris Nez already lay well astern, the fishing village of Saint John, which the French named as Audreselles, visible on the shore to the east, its church tower providing a convenient seamark. The low, swampy land Jack Stannard could see from his larboard rail marked the border between the English Pale and the French kingdom, but soon, if God willed it, the capture of Boulogne, to the south, would surely mean that this entire shore would be part of King Henry’s realm. As it had once been a part of the dominions of his ancestors.

  He saw Simon Bulbrooke, down in the waist, carrying out running repairs on one of the spare sails. A common sailor’s work, far beneath a man who was still, nominally at least, the shipmaster of the Osprey; but since the altercation at Calais, Jack’s cousin had preferred to keep his own company, and to attend any menial task which gave him an excuse to avoid the stern and his much younger kinsman. Jack thought little of it. Cousin Si had always been prone to moods, and he had no doubt that the darkness which presently afflicted him would lift in a few hours’ time, after they arrived at Boulogne. Good wine and a good whore would do wonders for Simon Bulbrooke’s spirits. They always did.

  ‘Sails ho!’

  The lookout’s call was urgent and unexpected. Jack looked away to the south-west, where the lookout’s arm was pointing, and realised at once that what he had thought to be thunder was, in truth, the sound of distant battle. Three ships, as far as he could see, running a little north-easterly upon the weak westerly breeze: a course which would bring the battle to the Osprey and the other ships from Calais, if it lasted that long.

  ‘A falling out between sea-thieves, most like,’ said Simon Bulbrooke, finally deigning to stand alongside his cousin. ‘Bretons or Brabanters, I’ll wager. Best steer well inshore, away from them.’

  Jack made no reply. He was screwing up his eyes, endeavouring to make better sense of the spectacle before him. He could see one small ship, with a larger one seemingly grappled to her. Another ship, about as large again, was standing off. This third craft was equipped with cannon, hence what Jack had first assumed to be thunder. The middle ship seemed to have no more than hand guns. She was a ballinger, by the looks of her, with just a single mast, the signifier of her kind: her assailant was a more modern affair altogether, with two masts. The ballinger looked to be in trouble, listing a little toward the smaller craft to which she was secured. So, the likeliest case, thought Jack, was that the small ship had been running from the ballinger, which had caught her and boarded, but then a more powerful ally of the small ship had come to her aid. As Cousin Si said, not a battle to concern.

  A sudden gust unfurled the flag flying from the shattered, leaning mast of the ballinger. It was the cross of Saint George.

  ‘All sail!’ cried Jack, as he moved to take the whipstaff.

  ‘No!’ Bulbrooke’s protest was urgent, and he grasped his cousin’s forearm fiercely. ‘Still not our fight, John Stannard! Let the ships with the archers go, if they have to – but what do we fight with? Do we dowse them with ale? Don’t think of being so damned shanny!’

  At first, Jack wondered if his cousin was right: perhaps he was being shanny, impetuous. Only the Osprey’s head seemed to be coming around to bear down for the battle, the sails cracking as they were brought round to catch more of the wind. And the Osprey had only her two small fawconets, firing one-pound shot, an armament that was likely to unsettle naught but grandmothers and babes in arms. If all the other masters in their little fleet decided upon discretion, then the Osprey’s course was suicide. Jack would have no choice but to veer away and apologise to an insufferably vindicated Simon Bulbrooke.

  Then, very slowly but in turn, each of the other ships in the little fleet shifted their helms and their sails, and followed the Osprey toward the battle.

  It should have been a close fight. The larger French ship – for the two enemies of the ballinger could surely only be French – not only mounted at least six cannon and a score or more handguns, but she probably had as many men as the crews of the six oncoming ships together. But she was already furiously engaged with the sinking ballinger, which was resisting all efforts at boarding while still subduing the crew of the smaller French vessel, alongside her. It was an unequal struggle; trying to fight both sides of a ship at once was one of the seaman’s many nightmares. As Jack watched, the larger Frenchman secured to the stern of the ballinger, its men swarming over the wales to attack the beleaguered English crew. The Frenchman’s position was such that he could still bring most of his cannon to bear on the oncoming English ships, and two of the Londoners, the other two ships carrying ale, veered away. But the Southampton ship, full of hard-bitten Welshmen, made straight for the Frenchman’s bows, tacking into the final approach. As she did so, the archers on her deck let loose. Jack watched the cloud of wooden darts rise, then fall, some into the sea, most onto the deck of the Frenchman.

  Jack made his decision. He shifted the whipstaff a little to larboard, making for the bows of the ballinger.

  ‘Stand off, for pity’s sake!’ cried Simon Bulbrooke. ‘Go with the Richard and the Grace of God! Their masters have more sense, John Stannard!’

  But the Osprey continued on its course. Now the three ships carrying archers were all in positions from which they could assail the larger Frenchman, their masters manoeuvring to avoid the cannon-fire as much as possible while remaining within the bowmen’s range. But the Englishmen on the ballinger were still losing the battle on their own vessel. Jack could see the man whom he took to be her captain, a swarthy fellow in what looked to be a finer shirt than the English Channel warranted, swinging swords ferociously in both hands and fighting off several men at once. Even Ryman would be impressed, Jack thought. But the enemy’s numbers were against the captain and his crew, and his ship was sinking under him.

  Still the Osprey edged closer and closer to the action. The large French ship opened fire with her chase guns in her starboard bow, but the angle was impossible, the hull of the ballinger obstructing the line of fire. In any case, the French captain had more pressing concerns, notably deterring the three seaborne troops of archers, the heirs of the heroes of Agincourt, all of whom were well within range and shooting at will.

  Simon Bulbrooke had vanished; he was the only man of the Osprey’s crew not on deck and not armed with some form of weapon. But his cousin’s whereabouts, and his faintheartedness, did not matter now. On Jack’s command, grappling hooks were thrown, and made fast to the bow of the ballinger. Jack took up his sword, formerly Thomas Ryman’s second-best blade, the weapon which the old man had once employed to train Jack relentlessly upon Dunwich cliff. He made his way into the bows, and led the men of Dunwich over onto the deck of the ballinger.

  ‘God for Harry, Suffolk and Dunwich!’ he bellowed. ‘Nobiscum deus!’

  A party of Frenchmen detached themselves from the main body of their crew and rushed forward to attack them, screaming ‘Le roi et Saint Denis!’ Jack swung his blade brutally, slashing at the men running toward him. He cleaved one skull open, and even before the brain-blood could properly stain his blade, he hacked into the gut of a fat creature and saw the entrails spill out. Jack Stannard had been well trained in swordplay, but this was no place for finery and delicate feints. All around him, Osprey’s men were fighting in the Dunwich way, hacking and stabbing ferociously. He saw young George Vincent wielding one of the old gutting-knives from the days of the Iceland fishery, screaming obscenities that would have horrified his virtuous mother in Peter’s parish, and smiled. The la
d had the makings of a decent fighter.

  The Frenchmen rallied. Jack could see their leader, a bearded, one-armed fellow in a buff-jerkin, extolling his men from the ship’s waist, directing some of them against the newcomers from the Osprey who were fighting to establish themselves in the bows, most against the English captain and his men, trapped toward the stern. The Frenchmen began to band together more tightly, pushing back against the men of the Osprey. Stephen Ball, a lad of no more than fifteen on his first voyage, took a pike in the stomach, looked astonished as his death-slime poured onto the deck, and fell forward into it. But two of Jack’s men avenged themselves upon his killer, one driving a bill into the man’s side and the other sticking a knife through the nostril, pushing up hard into the brain.

  The deck of the ballinger lurched. She must have been holed beneath the waterline by cannon fire from the larger Frenchman, and it was obvious to Jack that she would not swim much longer.

  A short, dark-skinned fellow came at Jack with an axe, but he ducked away and slashed into the man’s throat. Blood spouted over killer and killed, soaking the deck beneath them. Jack wiped it from his mouth with the back of his hand. Suddenly, there was a moment’s respite. His enemies were giving him a wide berth, realising he was a formidable fighter, and concentrating on the men with him. Jack looked again at the French officer, still exposed in the ship’s waist, directing more and more men toward the stern, against the ballinger’s captain.