‘Madness,’ said Ryman. ‘Aye, futility. And to what purpose, Jack? One ship more or less will make no difference to Lord Lisle. Not against such a host as lies yonder.’
‘We were ordered to join the fleet,’ said Jack Stannard, sullenly.
The two men stood upon the sterncastle of the Alice, almost dead in the water a very little south and east of Selsey, the breeze having died away to nearly nothing.
‘Listen, Master John Stannard – in war, nothing happens more often than orders being overtaken by events. Not wounds, not slayings, not battles. God’s teeth, how often have I witnessed proof of that, and the consequences? Nothing can be more certain than that the French being here renders your orders ancient history, not worth the paper they’re written on. Besides, Jack, as you know better than I, without Nolloth, you have no steersman able to carry out your intentions. Certainly none who’s sailed these waters before.’
Simon Bulbrooke would have said the same to him, just as he had said it at Calais and off Boulogne. Not our battle. Thomas Ryman was more eloquent, and more right, than cousin Si had ever been, but Jack, of course, could never say so.
‘You’re wrong in that, Master Ryman. Aye, mayhap I’ve not sailed these waters before, but I’ve taken a helm and set courses countless times. I can sail this ship past the French, directly into Portsmouth.’
I can do this. I will do this.
The years-old memory of the young Jack Stannard, at the helm of the Blessing off Dunwich shore, returned unbidden.
‘Christ’s holy nails, boy,’ protested Ryman, ‘and do you think the French will just allow you to do that?’
Jack Stannard turned away, leaned heavily on the starboard rail, and looked out toward distant Portsmouth, the high tower of its church visible even so far away. He could not tell Ryman what else was in his mind, of the dark, competing thoughts that lurked there. Bringing the Alice to the fleet would redeem the reputation with Lord Lisle that the scheming of Nolloth and the Rakers threatened to destroy. True, the Alice might be late to the muster, delayed beyond measure by her purposefully crippled and tardy hull, but bringing her into harbour, in the very teeth of the great French fleet, would surely forgive all.
But, God willing, not only Lisle would be watching. If the king was at Portsmouth, then he, too, would see John Stannard triumphantly steer the Alice into harbour. If the king was sufficiently impressed, who knew what rewards would accrue to Dunwich and the name of Stannard?
Jack turned, and looked out over the waist of the ship. Men were milling about. The Suffolk men and the Flemish gunners eyed each other suspiciously, but from time to time, members of both parties turned and looked across to him. They knew, as did he, that any course of action he embarked upon would have to be agreed by them. They were not fools or bedlam-men, and they would hardly agree to an attempt to outsail the entire French fleet. Besides, they all knew the evident truth that the Alice could barely outsail the most ancient Lubeck hulk.
Jack Stannard smiled, and offered up prayers of thanks to Maria maris stella, to Saint Nicholas, and to his dear Alice.
Ryman saw the smile, saw Jack walk forward and call for the crew’s attention, and shook his head throughout the young man’s speech to the men. It was insane. No: it was insane beyond all measure, more insane than anything he had ever heard or seen in war. But if all his years of soldiering had taught Thomas Ryman one thing, it was that the most insane schemes were often the most brilliantly successful.
Either that, or they brought their instigators to terrible, bloody, and utterly deserved, ends.
* * *
The ship that edged its way under the lee of Selsey Bill during the late afternoon was undoubtedly a man-of-war, finely painted, and with castles fore and aft. But the ship that rounded the headland the following morning with all sails set, trying to catch every whisper of breeze coming off the land, was a very different beast. Very nearly flush decked, its hull dark and dirty, it was every inch a poor trading vessel, low in the water, making heavy going even of the lightest of seas. It turned west, struggled to make any headway at all, but finally managed to complete a clumsy tack, stayed, and got onto a beam reach, then began to pick up the flood tide. The ship headed for the shore, then began sailing west along it, painfully slowly, as close inshore as it dared. Lookouts on the French fleet, if they took any notice of the ship at all, would observe its clumsiness, its awkward trim, and decide that this poor, lumbering hull, struggling toward Portsmouth or Southampton, was of no interest to them.
That, at least, was Jack Stannard’s prayer.
The castles had come down during the night, while the Alice lay at single anchor off Pagham. God knew what the poor villagers made of it – the night had little moon, and the many lanterns, lighting the work of bringing down the redundant castles or repainting the sides of the ship, must have given the Alice the semblance of Satan’s own state barge, summoned up from the fiery river. Add to that the cacophony of sawing, hammering and swearing in strange Suffolk tongues, and the good folk of Sussex must have been cowering under their beds.
Now the Alice was coasting westward. The breeze remained negligible and intermittent, and despite all courses and topsails having bonnets to them, the ship’s progress painfully slow. Every eye was on the terrible sight to the south-west of them: the easternmost ships of the huge French fleet, lying in the anchorage that Jack’s portolans named as Saint Helen’s Bay.
‘By the lead, three!’
The leadsman’s cry from the bow was reassuring. But then, the Alice was crossing the mouth of Chichester harbour, and there was bound to be a decent channel up to the ports at the head of it. As to what lay ahead, though, Jack was in utter ignorance. This was where Nolloth would have come into his own. He knew these waters, knew where the shoals were, knew how the tides ran. But none of the other crew of the Alice had ever ventured so far west: all of Dunwich’s voyages were northward or eastward, and, if southward, no further than London. Jack Stannard could remember his father once telling him that this seaway, this Solent, had a strange pattern of double tides. The Alice was being carried forward on a strong flood, but how long it might last was an utter mystery. Her young shipmaster could rely only upon prayer and the soundings from his leadsman.
‘By the lead, three and a half!’
There was other activity in the Solent now. Ryman, standing in the bows, could already see many ships lying opposite to, and west of, the French, clustered around the mouth of Portsmouth harbour and off the shore beyond that. Now, though, more and more ships were emerging into the waterway, including several very large ones. They had no sails aloft, so their emergence from the harbour could be due only to towing. Once beyond the harbour mouth, sails fell from their yards. But they did not fill, and the great ships did not move forward. The very slight breeze that the Alice was managing to catch would be lost to the fleet ahead, thanks to the lee of Wight; while even a landman like Thomas Ryman knew that the flood tide propelling Jack Stannard’s ship forward would work against King Harry’s Navy Royal, trapping it in the immediate approaches to the harbour. But then, no man of Dunwich was truly a landman, for every child of that town, above any town in England, drank in the ways and perils of the tide with their mother’s milk.
‘Master, yonder!’
The lookout’s call from the crow’s nest atop the mainmast was shrill.
‘Larboard, abeam!’
Ryman in the bows, and Jack at the stern, moved as one to the larboard rail, and saw at once the object of the lookout’s attention and alarm.
The French were deploying a squadron of two dozen or so craft from the northern vanward of their fleet. They were a magnificent sight: long, low vessels with brightly painted hulls, sharply raking bows, and ensigns and pennants of burgundy, adorned with white crosses. They had lateen rig, but no sails were set. They did not need to be. The vessels moved heedless of wind and tide, edging further out into the middle of the Solent. The French galleys were advancing to challenge King Henry’s fleet; but on
e of them was not. One of them, a small but still obviously powerful vessel at the rear of the galley squadron, had detached from its fellows, and was steering its own course toward the north-east.
Toward the Alice.
* * *
Ryman watched the galley until he was certain that it was bound for them, and only them. Then he crossed the waist of the ship, making for the stern and Jack Stannard. He knew that all men’s eyes were on him. Several were crossing themselves, others turning and bowing toward the carved statue of the Virgin that stood atop the belfry. But they all knew he was a warrior, and had been a man of God. If any man could save them from the French, they would be thinking, it was Thomas Ryman.
He stood before Stannard, and saw that the young man’s face was white. Jack was a good lad, and might make a good warrior one day – if he survived this one. Thomas Ryman intended to ensure that he did.
He put on the broadest, falsest grin he could muster.
‘Be of good cheer, Master Stannard!’
‘Good cheer? We can’t resist a galley, Master Ryman, and in this light a breeze, we can’t outrun her.’
‘Be of good cheer, I say, and listen to my words, Jack. You’re the man of the sea, and I’ll take your word for it that we can’t outrun her. But I’m the man of war, and you take my word for it that we can resist her. Let me tell you how, Jack Stannard.’
THIRTY
The galley was a splendid sight. Although she was by no means at full speed, she had enough momentum to create a breeze of her own, allowing her flags and swallow-tail pennants to spill out splendidly. She was bow on, and Jack Stannard could only admire the fineness of her lines. They could hear the drumbeat now, and the banks of oars on either side cut the water in time with it. The range closed with each grain of sand that ran through the glass, and Stannard prayed to Maria stella maris that Ryman was right. If the old man was wrong, then Jack would shortly be joining his Alice in Purgatory, or else rotting away his remaining years as a slave upon an oar in just such a galley.
He could see the Frenchman’s gun, too. It was a single great cannon, mounted in the bows, and its mouth seemed to be pointing directly at him. The galley had to be within its range, and the moment of truth was at hand.
But he could now see the faces of individual Frenchmen, too, and they were the faces of men with lazy smiles. A few were slapping each other on the back, but in doing so, they demonstrated that they were not carrying weapons. They were anticipating making the easiest of prizes out of this wallowing, ungainly English merchantman.
Still the great gun in the bows did not fire.
Jack looked down into the waist of the Alice, and saw Ryman standing alongside Capelle, the captain of the Flemish gunners, a tiny, wiry fellow with no teeth. He and Ryman had taken to each other at once; thanks to his years as a solider, the erstwhile friar could speak a smattering of most of the languages of Europe, and he and Capelle swiftly established that they could have been only a few yards from each other at one point during the great Battle of Pavia.
Ryman looked back at Jack, and nodded. But it was still nominally Jack Stannard’s ship, and, as her nominal captain, he gave the necessary command.
‘Now!’
The gun crews on the larboard side whipped back the pallings covering the two demi-culverins. The guns, already primed and loaded, were run out. Jack turned, and saw the smiles on the faces of the Frenchmen turn to looks of dire alarm. A bell was rung furiously aboard the galley. Men ran to the great gun. But it was already far too late.
‘Give fire!’ cried Ryman.
Capelle repeated the command almost simultaneously in Flemish, and the two guns fired, almost precisely together. Jack Stannard had seen and heard sea-ordnance fired many times, most recently in the Forth, but he had never been aboard a ship doing the firing. The impact of the recoil almost knocked him from his feet. The noise was deafening, worse than the loudest thunderstorm he had ever known at Dunwich, and the stench from the powder smoke stung his eyes and nostrils. The entire hull shook violently, and large cracks appeared in the deck. In that, at least, Nolloth had been right: partly through his malignant design, partly through the Stannards’ ambition for too powerful an armament, the hull of the Alice could not bear the firing of such heavy ordnance.
For what seemed like entire minutes, the dense cloud of acrid smoke lay thick upon the ship. Neither Jack nor any other man of the Alice could see anything, not even the person standing closest to them.
Just after the guns fired, there were sounds of timber shattering across the water, then the screams and wails of dying men. Jack still expected the galley to come on, to fire her great gun or simply ram the Alice, as the Galley Subtile had rammed the Scotsman in the Forth, thereby giving the lie to Ryman’s confident assertions. But as the smoke finally cleared, the sight before him confirmed that the old man had been right. The balls of both guns had struck the bow of the galley, shattering timbers and bringing down the jackstaff. Two bloodied and mangled bodies, obviously dead, were slumped over the larboard rail, and several more dead and wounded lay inboard, some being tended to. Best of all, men were trying desperately to repair the carriage of the great gun, which leaned at an angle. The galley was turning to starboard. Along the larboard rail, archers and hackbutters were belatedly appearing, and loosing shots at the Alice. But the range was too great, and splashes in the water told where their efforts fell short.
Jack shook the hand of Capelle, then stood before Thomas Ryman and smiled.
‘You were right, old man!’
‘God be praised for that, and praise Him for the old truths of my former trade, which Master Capelle here knows as well as I do. In war, Jack, always think as a warrior thinks. And a warrior would never waste precious shot from his best weapon on what he takes to be a feeble, ugly craft, barely able to keep the sea. But your turn now, Master Stannard. The galley captain will be in a rage, and will want revenge. So get us safe into Portsmouth before he can come against us again.’
* * *
The galley took an eternity to make its turn, first east, then south, then north-west again. As it did so, Jack Stannard prayed for the wind to get up. A fresh easterly, in the name of God, to carry the Alice home into Portsmouth harbour. But the sails stayed nearly limp.
Ahead, the English fleet was finally drawn up in battle order. Its own galleys were to the fore, exchanging cursory shots with their French counterparts. But the English had no more than a half-dozen such craft, together with a dozen or so smaller rowbarges, and would be overwhelmed if they ventured too close to the French. Behind the galleys, two huge flagships were to the fore of the main fleet itself. Jack Stannard recognised the great ship that was further away, closer to Wight. He had seen it once, lying off Erith, during one of his father’s voyages into the Thames river. Peter Stannard had taken great delight in telling him its name, and its famous history, and the features of its design. The Great Harry, it was, England’s mightiest carrack, named for the king himself: more properly, the Henry Grace à Dieu. Dunwich caulkers, including a cousin of John’s mother, had gone to Woolwich to work on her when she was built. Thanks to Will Halliday’s letters, Jack also knew of the part the great ship had played in the demise of William Gonson, although neither young man could fathom what might drive a man to do away with himself in such a perverse manner. Now, though, the Great Harry was in full commission. She flew vast ensigns bearing the Saint George Cross, an impossibly long swallow-tail pennant in the same colours hanging limply from its main-topmast head. The ship flew the royal standard at the jack, and as the king himself could not be on board, that could only mean the presence of the Lord High Admiral, Viscount Lisle.
The nearer flagship, nearly as large and flying the colours of a vice-admiral, John Stannard did not know. But the king could not be aboard her, either, for there was no doubting where Henry, eighth of that great and famous name, was at that moment. Although it was still two or three miles distant, Jack could make out a squat stone fort, stand
ing on the very beach just before Portsmouth. From its ramparts flew a vast royal standard, far larger than that on the Great Harry. Around the fort was arrayed a huge army, the sun glinting upon the helms, armour and weapons of those defending the King of England himself.
‘He’s through his turn,’ said Ryman, pointing astern.
Jack swung round, and saw the galley head on once again, coming directly for the Alice. The drumbeat, though still very distant, was more urgent now, the oars cutting the water with vehemence. And the French were not going to make the mistake of underestimating Jack’s ship a second time. A large crew stood around the great gun in the bow, which had evidently been righted. There would be one shot, to shatter the ship and demoralise her crew, then the galley would close for boarding. There were no empty hands on her deck now: pikes, halberds and swords were being held aloft, the French roaring as they closed on their prey.
One chance. One chance only.
‘Two points a starboard!’ yelled Jack to Chever, the helmsman, who immediately put over the whipstaff.
Ryman looked curiously at Jack Stannard.
‘We’ll not make the fleet,’ said Jack, ‘nor Portsmouth itself. But that channel, yonder – the portolans say it leads into a wide harbour called Langstone. If we can get in there—’
The galley fired.
The blast seemed a hundred times greater than that from the guns aboard the Alice. Jack Stannard heard the ball whistle through the air, and prepared himself for Saint Peter, and his longed-for reunion with his Alice. Instead, there was a terrible impact forward. Planks and top timbers seemed to leap into the air, taking on a life of their own. The top half of Bateman, a foretopman from Blythburgh, fell to the remnants of the deck, twitching and bleeding, his shocked eyes seemingly still staring at Jack, but of Bateman’s bottom half there was no sign. Capelle was struck in the left breast by a huge oaken shard, which drove right through his body, the force carrying the master gunner over the starboard rail. All along the deck of the Alice, men screamed or fell to their knees in supplication.
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