Shattered Icon

by Bill Napier

  He stood silently, his mind grappling with the notion of a speaking cabbage. Then: 'God's wonders will never cease. We will speak further of Pythagoras, Mr Ogilvie. But for now, you will tell nobody what you heard on deck last night. Keep your mouth firmly shut.'

  'I will, sir. I will.'

  On the stairs, Mr Harriot paused briefly and looked back at me, puzzled. As his footsteps receded, I almost forgot my bruises. I am not ashamed to say that I wept with happiness. I had told a gentleman that I was not tavern spawn, to be worked to death on the riggings. I would tell him of my new proof of the theorem of Pythagoras. Who could say, perhaps Euclid had been my salvation? Within the hour, stiff and light-headed, I was on deck again, breathing the spray-filled air and thrilled to be a part of this voyage.

  But I did not have time to reflect on my good fortune, if such it would turn out to be. Mr Holby was still missing and a search of the ship was underway. The Turk spotted me and I joined him and Michael in the bowels of the ship. We carried burning tar-covered ropes for light. I was still unfamiliar with the ship and soon became lost as I followed the Turk down ladders and along dark corridors. The smell of wood-smoke was strong as we passed the galley. In the very depths of the ship, when it seemed the next stage down must be the sea, the smell was truly vile.

  'Seawater in the bilge,' Michael explained to me.

  'What is the bilge?' I asked.

  Michael laughed. 'Scotch, it is the space between the hold and the keel. The seawater leaks into it and creates the foul stench. Is your ignorance so great that you will ask me what is the keel?'

  I ignored him and followed the retreating Turk, whose flickering shadow reminded me of some genie. In the black hold we clambered around the barrels and sacks, while chattering and scurrying surrounded us and red eyes in dark corners reflected the light from our ropes. Once I accidentally trapped one of these large and dangerous creatures. It reared up on its hind legs and glared at me furiously. I stared uncertainly. Suddenly something hissed by me. There was a thump and a cry of delight from behind as the Turk's knife thudded into the body of the big rat. It lay quivering, impaled on a sack of grain. As I leaned over it I saw dozens of fleas spreading away from its body. Had I tried such a trick with my ballockknife I would have hit the rat with the hilt, or more likely have missed it altogether. The Turk didn't need to say anything; he saw the wonder in my eyes. His yellow teeth were exposed in a knowing, triumphant grin. A valuable lesson. My conceit after having defeated the four men in Southwark had led me to fancy myself as something of a fighter. But against such a one as the Turk, I was no warrior at all!

  Now the effects of the beating were stiffening my muscles. Every time I moved I was in pain. 'You carry on,' I said. 'I will search for Mr Holby on my own.'

  We split up. I had little doubt that Mr Holby had gone overboard the previous night, and that there was a murderer in our midst. But following Mr Harriot's instructions, I could say nothing about this.

  It soon became clear that a man could stow away in the ship with ease. There must have been a hundred quiet corners where a body could have been concealed. I grew more and more confused in direction as I stumbled through storerooms and along dark passages, up and down ladders, sometimes coming across sacks of food, sometimes piles of wood, huge jars of olive oil, meat pickled in salt water, heaps of rope, bales of sailcloth, barrels of water and beer, racks of cannonballs. Rats were everywhere, in their hundreds or thousands. And when I thought I had explored every inch of the ship, I would find another room with another cargo. My tarred rope had all but burned out, and I was seeking a ladder to take me up to the fresh air, when there came a cry from the forward part of the ship.

  There was already a crowd of sailors clustered around the barrels when I reached the unfortunate Mr Holby. At least I assumed it was Mr Holby. All we could actually see was a pair of bare, blotchy feet protruding from under a stack of beer barrels twice the height of a man. The dark liquid oozing out from around his feet was not, I believe, beer. It was blood from his crushed body.

  CHAPTER 9

  I had been spared the task of extricating Mr Holby's squashed body from under the barrels. A bell had summoned everyone on deck. Mr Salter was standing as we emerged from the hatch. There was more work to be done on the sails, and he bawled instructions at us. I did not think that the man knew how to speak in a normal voice. The wind was stronger but I no longer felt the mal de mer, as the French call it, of the day before, and wondered whether the beating had removed it from my body.

  I could scarcely walk, let alone set about climbing. Mr Salter, seeing my predicament, approached me. 'Do you need help up the ratline, Ogilvie?'

  I knew what the help would be. 'No, sir,' I said in a humble tone which by no means came naturally to me. I forced my limbs to haul my body up the ropes. At least I would be out of range of the cudgel.

  I had not been aloft ten minutes when Mr Salter called me down, iron in his voice. I thought of his cudgel hammering at my already painfully bruised ribs and limbs, and was gripped with such fear that I thought to jump off the foremast to my death rather than face another beating. But when I stood before him, close to fainting, he said simply, 'The captain wishes to see you this moment.'

  I cannot describe the emotions which flowed through me as I stood at the desk of Sir Richard Grenville in his great cabin. The man had a face of granite. Mr Harriot stood next to me. I told my story exactly as I had given it earlier, of my beating by Mr Salter, my sleeplessness because of the pain, and my hearing a strange noise, like something heavy being dragged on the deck overhead. And when I had finished, he stared at me coldly and then both men spoke of me as if I was elsewhere. 'What do we know of this boy?'

  'You see as much as I do, Richard. There is one thing. He seems to have acquired learning in patches, his mind is lively and he has a mathematical ability, perhaps considerable, which I have yet to test to its limit.'

  'Another damned sorcerer in the making, by the sound of it,' growled Sir Richard. 'But what we need to know is, can we rely on his testimony? Is he reliable?'

  'Damn me, Richard, Holby has vanished. If he is not onboard ship then he is at the bottom of the ocean. He didn't jump. He was not pushed or he would have cried out. Ogilvie's story is consistent with the only reasonable possibility. Holby was stabbed or knocked out and thrown overboard.'

  'First Holby and then the carpenter.'

  The carpenter! So the man under the barrels was not Holby after all, but a second victim.

  'It seems we have a murderer in our midst, Richard.'

  'Aye. For what motive, Harriot?' The two men were looking grimly at each other. At that moment I sensed -no, I knew - that this voyage had some secret purpose. And whatever that secret purpose might be, someone onboard was trying to frustrate it.

  Sir Richard suddenly became aware of my presence again. 'Leave us,' he ordered brusquely.

  I had reached the door when Mr Harriot said, 'Ogilvie. I need an assistant. I think you would be more usefully employed in my service than on the masts. Are you agreeable, Richard?'

  Sir Richard waved his hand casually in agreement. I wondered if St Peter, waving his hand to direct an undeserving soul towards heaven, could have induced greater happiness.

  'Do you recognise the pole star?'

  'I do, sir. The Bears guide us to it. There they are, at the end of the Little Bear. And we have the pointers of the Great Bear. The Bears circle the sky but never dip below the horizon. All the other stars in the sky seem to rotate about the pole star, but this is an illusion. It is really the earth which rotates. The stars are fixed in the sky, embedded in a crystal sphere.'

  'And if you were standing at the North Pole, where would Polaris be?'

  'Directly overhead. All the stars move in horizontal circles about it.'

  We were mid-ship, far enough away from the great lantern on the afterdeck for our night eyes to be unaffected by it. Mr Harriot had a strange bowl, made of clay and filled with some burning herb.
He was sucking the smoke along a hollow tube and into his mouth. 'Now put on magic boots. Take giant strides over the surface of the earth towards the equator. What do you see in the sky as you move south?'

  I took a moment, unsure what answer Mr Harriot expected of me. 'Sir, the pole star would no longer be overhead. As I strode to the equator in my magic boots, the pole star would sink lower and lower in the sky.'

  'And at the equator?'

  'The pole star would then be lying on the horizon. All the stars would move in big vertical circles around the axle joining north and south. And if I moved south of the equator, Polaris would disappear from sight. Except that I would then see the other pole star, the one at the South Pole.'

  'Except that there is no such star. The Italian traders and missionaries, travelling by overland or on coastal routes around the tip of Africa, have described the southern skies. Marco Polo travelled even further south than the missionaries. He saw many wonders in the southern sky. He saw a star as big as a sack, and four bright stars in the form of a cross. He even saw the south pole of the sky a spear's length above the horizon. But he described no southern pole star. Even so, we in the North have an infallible way to find our latitude on the surface of the earth.'

  He paused. I said, 'Find the altitude of the pole star above the horizon. If it is overhead, you must be at the North Pole. If it lies on the horizon, your ship must lie on the equator. And if it is sixty degrees from the zenith, we are sixty degrees from the north pole of the earth and so thirty degrees from the equator. That is, our latitude is thirty degrees.'

  'And I have an instrument for the very purpose of measuring altitude. It is called a cross staff, and I will train you in its use shortly. So, Ogilvie, you see how to determine how far north or south we are. But now the question arises, what about east or west? Here we are, sailing on an empty ocean. There is nothing around you but waves and sea monsters. Are we a hundred leagues from England? A thousand? How close are we to the Caribbean or the Americas?'

  I felt that I was being tested. As anxious to please as a puppy with a new master, I searched my brains desperately for an answer. It was with extreme reluctance that I had to say, 'I do not know, sir.'

  Mr Harriot laughed, while clenching the tube between his teeth. 'Neither does anyone else, young Ogilvie, do not be so downcast. Consider a line drawn from the North Pole of the earth, through London, to the South Pole. This is a line of longitude. If the sun is at its highest point along that line, then at that same moment the sun is also at its lowest point along the opposite line of longitude, one hundred and eighty degrees away.'

  A light dawned, vaguely. 'But if we know the moment of noon in England, and if noon on our ship comes six hours later, then we must be a quarter of the way round the globe, since the sun takes twenty-four hours to travel around the earth. Therefore our longitude is ninety degrees away from that of England.' I could hardly contain my pride in providing the answer.

  Mr Harriot smiled. 'But how can you tell when it is noon in England?'

  'Set a clock to noon when you leave England! Whenever it reads noon on the clock, whatever the time of day or night on the ship—'

  'What clock? A sand glass? An Egyptian water clock? A spring clock? These barely keep time on stationary ground. On a heaving ship they are useless.'

  'Then I am baffled, Mr Harriot.' I could see that I was failing, not only as a warrior, or even as a mariner, but also as a scholar. The dreadful thought came to me that perhaps my level in life was that of a shepherd after all.

  Harriot laughed again. 'Don't look so dismayed! The problem has defeated the best minds in England and elsewhere. But with half the globe still to be discovered, and trade routes to be found joining us to Cathay, and vast treasures being brought from the Americas, the man who solves the problem of accurate navigation will become rich beyond measure.'

  CHAPTER 10

  A secret purpose!

  Somewhere around three in the morning my eyes refused to stay open a minute longer. I staggered to bed and slipped under cool sheets. I sank into dreamland with a jumble of sailing ships, ballockknives, heads on poles and a hardwood truncheon rising and falling, rising and falling, thumping again and again into the body of a fifteen-year old boy; and Salter, vomit trickling down his head, his face contorted in anger, shouting, 'Secret purpose, secret purpose, what is the secret purpose?'

  In the grey light of the morning I skipped breakfast, paid the little Italian landlady, threw my holdall with the manuscript into the back of the Toyota and took off, following the signs to The North. Once on the motorway I pushed ninety, keeping in the fast lane most of the way. I was feeling angry.

  Partially it was professional pique. Tebbit got up my nose. I didn't like being treated like one of the servants, excluded by a snap of the fingers from what might just turn out to be a superb piece of historical research. Certainly not by some minor gentry who seemed to think he was master of the universe. The Roanoke expedition was the first attempt to colonise North America; Tebbit had been handed a journal with something to say about that, and I wanted to know what it was. In any case, I doubted if he had the proprietorial right to deny me my slice of history.

  And I felt entitled for another reason: my kidney was still aching. All the way up the motorway, the words secret purpose kept going through my head.

  I'm damned if I'm going to let this slip through my hands; just translate and walk away.

  I was in my flat by noon. I kept ringing the Tebbit number, but it was permanently engaged, and I finally drove out to Picardy House. I was met by an impressive array of Bentleys and Jaguars, and thought for a moment I'd stumbled on a party until my eye caught the uniformed policeman and the people in white overalls fussing around the back of a police van.

  A policeman with a yellow traffic jacket circled his finger at me and I wound my window down. 'What's your business here?' He was trying for an authoritative tone, but he didn't have the Salter touch.

  'I want to speak to Sir Toby.'

  'You're not a relative, then?'

  'No, I hardly know the man.'

  'He's been dead for two days, sir. Don't you read the papers?'

  It took some seconds for the news to sink in. Apart from his florid cheeks, Tebbit had seemed healthy enough three days ago. I wondered if he'd had a heart attack. 'Maybe I should clear off.'

  At that moment Debbie appeared at the front door, speaking to someone who looked like a lawyer. She was dressed in a dark grey cardigan with a long black skirt. She seemed matter-of-fact, cool even. She spotted me and waved. I waved back.

  The policeman leaned forwards, spoke in a confidential tone. 'You've met the daughter? A real goer if you ask me. The mother died years back and she's the only sprog. Imagine inheriting this lot at her age.'

  'If this is the funeral

  'No, sir, he's on ice in town. This is just grieving friends and family. You might say Sir Toby was well-heeled.' The policeman leaned even closer; his breath was garlicky. 'And this lot look as if they own half of Lincolnshire.'

  The lawyer was heading for his top-of-the-range BMW, and Debbie came smartly down the steps towards me. 'Mr Blake? Harry?'

  I didn't know quite what to say. 'Debbie, I was sorry to hear about—'

  'Of course, you've been away. Daddy was killed, you know.'

  'What?'

  'By burglars.' Spoken conversationally. 'Do come in.'

  I picked up the manuscript, feeling a bit dazed, and followed her into the house. The study door had blue and white tape across it, with the words POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. 'The forensic people say they're nearly finished. They had the whole house until this morning.'

  She led me into a long, dull room whose centre was taken up with a massive table surrounded by about twenty chairs. There were drinks and canapes on the table and a couple of dozen people standing around. Subdued conversation filled the air and there were curious glances in my direction.

  'I feel I'm intruding,' I began.

 
; 'No you're not. Did you finish the translation?' she asked, nodding at the manuscript in my hand. She was unconsciously chewing a lip. Her eyes were a bit glazed and I thought she was probably doped with sedative.

  I had no chance to reply. A small, stocky man, a white-haired forty, detached himself from a group and sidled up. There was a startling resemblance to the late Sir Toby; the same small, bullet-like eyes and turned-down mouth. He looked at Debbie and then at me. And like Sir Toby, he made no attempt to be friendly. 'What's your business here?'

  'My name is Blake. I'm an antiquarian bookseller. Sir Toby asked me to translate and value a manuscript. I was sorry to hear—'

  'Never mind that. Just leave it there.' He nodded at the table.

  ''The translation isn't finished. I wanted to discuss the manuscript with Sir Toby.'

  'Well, that will no longer be possible. Just leave the manuscript on the table.'

  'Forgive me, but I don't know who I'm talking to.'

  'I'm his brother.' Spoken an octave higher, to show his irritation at the impertinence. 'If you're worried about your fee, send it to me at this address.'

  'That'll be fine.' And next time I'll use the tradesman's entrance, you repulsive toad.

  'What did you find, Harry?' Debbie's voice was quiet and solicitous, and I wondered how such a nice kid could have come from this arrogant family.

  I opened my mouth but the Tebbit brother got in first. 'I'm sure it doesn't matter now, Debbie. And I expect Mr Blake has other things to do.'

  'Uncle Robert, that journal belonged to Daddy and he wanted to know what was in it.'

  'Maybe I should just go, Debbie,' I suggested.