by Julia Jones
The Lion of Sole Bay
“Between four and five o’clock I saw the Greenwich board a disabled Dutch ship which had fallen among our ships. The Greenwich took her and carried her away.”
The Journal of John Narborough, Lieutenant and Captain of the Prince, May 28th 1672.
To Georgeanna and Nyx, with love.
First published in 2013 by Golden Duck (UK) Ltd.,
Sokens,
Green Street,
Pleshey, near Chelmsford,
Essex.
CM3 1HT
www.golden-duck.co.uk
All rights reserved
© Julia Jones, 2013
ISBN 978-1-899262-19-9
Image of the Stavoren © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
UK
All other illustrations © Claudia Myatt
www.claudiamyatt.co.uk
Design by Megan Trudell
www.emdash.me.uk
e-book conversion by Matti Gardner
[email protected]
Strong Winds series
Author’s note
Luke, who is the hero of this story, has already appeared in other titles in the Strong Winds series. This, however, is his own adventure and there’s no need for you to have read any of the previous books before you set out with him through the woods to the creek on the night of Halloween.
Luke has lived in Suffolk all his life but, at the beginning of this story, he knows almost nothing about the Battle of Sole Bay which took place off the Suffolk coast in1672. If you know as little as Luke (or as little as I did before I began my research) you might like to read the series of lectures contributed by our mutual friend Mr M.W. Vandervelde. They are at the back of this book and can be read at any time – or not at all. Mr Vandervelde is so full of enthusiasm for his subject that he admits he’s often given his talks to a row of chairs in an empty hall or even to his wife’s collection of garden gnomes.
Suffolk people will notice that many of the places in this story are using older, alternative names. The tide times, stages of the moon and the weather in this story are correct (+ 24 hours) for October/November 2010.
Julia Jones, Essex 2013
CHAPTER ONE
Halloween I
Friday 31 October, moon entering the last quarter
Luke, Angel
Luke waited until he was certain he couldn’t hear the car any more. Then he waited a little longer. It was a quiet car. So quiet the engineers had to fix a noise to tell people the engine was on. What if Lottie or Anna remembered one more thing and came back? He needed to know they were completely gone.
Then he let himself through the wicket gate and into the magic wood. He wasn’t going down the asphalt track or through the cleared picnic area. He was living in the Land of Legends now. He was on a Quest.
Luke crouched low as he traversed the top hedge. It was brambly and bristling. There were nettles in the grass.
His backpack was no trouble. In his mind he’d taken out the t-shirts, pyjamas, boots and spare jeans and refilled it with imaginary weapons and a magic cloak. The extra blanket, sleeping bag and buoyancy aid were awkward because they were bulky and the supermarket carrier – loaded with all the provisions Lottie seemed to think he’d need for a week – was a complete pain. Its handles were too small to fit over his shoulders and, because Luke was still quite short for his age, it dragged through the damp grass. When he tried to lift it higher, it banged against his ankles. He might get jumped at any moment. How could he use his sword arm while carrying stuff like this?
For a moment Luke considered running down the track to the moorings and leaving his luggage on his dad’s boat. Coming up and starting his Quest again.
That would be one life lost before he’d properly begun.
Luke paused and glanced round, checking for danger. Then he put down the buoyancy aid, the sleeping bag, the blanket and the food carrier and slipped the backpack off his shoulders. He opened it and rummaged inside. In a game all this would be his inventory. He pulled out the scarf Lottie had forced him to pack.
“It’s nearly November,” she’d said. “There’s no heating on Lowestoft Lass and you’ll be out of doors most of the time – except in the mornings on the kayak course. People who work outside need to dress sensibly. Even Bill would agree with me about that.”
Lottie was his step-mum. He mainly liked her quite a lot. He wasn’t certain that he always liked the way she talked about his dad. Lottie was getting banished from his life this week along with all the rest of them – especially her daughter Anna, his know-everything step-sister.
Luke’s dad was Bill Whiting. He worked part-time in a boatyard. Bill was Liam’s dad as well, and Vicky’s. Liam and Vicky had chosen to go to Italy with Lottie and Anna. They’d all be on the main road to the airport by now.
Lottie was a singer. Her career had gone quiet after she’d had Vicky but now she was making a comeback and she had a recording date at a studio in Milan. Anna was going because she sort of managed her mother and Vicky would go anywhere as long as she didn’t get left behind.
Liam was going – almost out of his head with excitement – because Anna had booked tickets to a Champions’ League football match with Manchester United and AC Milan in the San Siro stadium. She said it was his Christmas and birthday in advance. Probably for ever.
Luke didn’t like football and had managed to make out he wasn’t that bothered about seeing the recording studio or going on an aeroplane. He hadn’t never in his whole life spent time alone with his dad. There’d been his mum when he was a baby. And then, later, there’d been Lottie. Then his dad had gone away and Lottie had gone too and all of them – him, Liam, Vicky and Anna – had been taken into care.
They’d met Donny and Gold Dragon and Strong Winds. And Xanthe and Maggi and Skye. The bad days were like a done dream. No more shouting or worry about money. They could be what they liked now.
Bill had been paid out for some salvage and he’d bought an old wooden fishing boat called Lowestoft Lass which he was beginning to restore. He and Luke were going to live on Lowestoft Lass all week and Bill had said he could do with some practical help.
No-one had ever described Luke as practical. Practical was mainly Liam. Luke, they said, was dreamy.
Now Luke was ready to enter the wood above the water. He wasn’t going to come out the same person as the Luke who lived at home with the rest of them at Bawdsey. Nor the Luke who went to school neither. If he got through this wood safely, then he was going to come out someone new for this week: someone who would make his dad feel proud of him.
He looked at his bags and bundles – all that for one half-term holiday!
He hooked the scarf through one arm of the buoyancy aid and through both handles of the food carrier. He wrapped the next bit around the blanket and tied some knots, but then it wasn’t long enough so he extended it with a pair of thermal leggings. Another of Lottie’s orders. You wouldn’t think she was as bossy as Anna but she was. He’d had to pack a full set of waterproofs as well!
The sleeping bag got shoved into the carrier on top of the eggs and bread, then he fastened the loose end of the leggings to his backpack. Hitched the backpack over his shoulders so that he was pulling everything else behind him. It wasn’t exactly how it would work in a game but it left both his arms free for attack and defence plus it would brush out his tracks if there were sniffer monsters on the trail.
Luke fitted an imaginary arrow to his imaginary bow and carried on to the place where the trees grew close together and he could begin his descen
t to the river unseen by mortal eyes.
The supermarket carrier twisted and bumped. It must have brushed out his tracks pretty well on the grass as he made it into the wood without being jumped once. But then it started snagging against undergrowth and fallen twigs. It was possibly worse in the few places where it did run free as it collected a whole bow-wave of leaves which fanned out behind him. He was leaving a track like a motorway.
Jabberjays flew shrieking from the branches. Ivy snaked up and down the tree trunks while grey-brown roots lay across his path like old, gnarled knucklebones. The next section of the wood floor was littered with small, greeny-brown balls. They were totally spiny. They looked explosive.
Luke stopped and took off the backpack. Then he tried to untie the bundles but the knots were strained too tight. He stood up slowly and rotated 360 degrees, imaginary bowstring pulled taut against his ear, squinting intently along his imaginary arrow. Nothing dared move but he knew that they were waiting. A dark-green holly loomed twenty feet high. He’d never seen a bush so tall. It was a wood giant, robed and sinister among the brown and gold of the autumn leaves. He wondered how soon it would transform.
Luke wasn’t used to being on his own. They’d all been in the car, cases packed and changes of clothes ready, when Lottie picked him and Anna up from school. She’d brought snacks but there wasn’t hardly time to eat anything as she drove round the head of the creek and along the narrow road to the gate at the beginning of the track. They’d been carrying on the row about them dropping him at the top and not coming all the way through the wood to the boat.
“Bill won’t be back from work yet and I really need to know you’re safe.”
“What’s different about being safe at the top of a track and safe at the bottom end? I’m twelve now. I can take myself down. I’ve gotta do things for myself sometimes. You even said so.”
“Ring me then. As soon as you get there.”
“But you’ll be driving.”
“Okay. Ring Anna.”
“Might not have reception.” He could see they were about to gang up and insist. “Okay, okay, I’ll text you when I can.”
These days were short. Luke remembered it was Halloween and looked back at the wood giant. Was there something stirring in its twisted leaves? He needed to check out the area. Create a forcefield maybe. He couldn’t do that carrying a backpack and a blanket and a buoyancy aid and a supermarket bag. He propped them together and used the first of his invisibility philtres. He hadn’t got many, even playing by imaginary rules.
Then he was off, darting from tree to tree, leading his pursuers away from his inventory and away from the moorings as well. He was planning to reach Fynn Creek further down. There was a path between the riverbank and the trees that would bring him round and back to the houseboats. He needed to arrive at Lowestoft Lass from an unsuspected direction. He’d only got a week. He had to start it special.
***
Halloween. Trick or treat. Most of the other Year Eights were going round each other’s houses. No-one had invited Angel and, even if they had, her parents would have fussed. They’d have wanted phone numbers. Find out who was organising. Ring the other parents. Check she wouldn’t be exposed to flashing lights or eating the wrong food or over-excited.
To be fair they’d had some bad experiences in the days when everyone got asked to everyone else’s parties. Angel’s mum and dad had invariably been called within the first half hour to come and take their daughter away.
She wasn’t a kid any more. She wasn’t going to go home and bob apples. So she told her parents she might have an after-school rehearsal for a Christmas show. That seemed far enough away to be safe.
She didn’t have any idea what she was going to do – except she was going to do something. If she hung around until it was nearly dark she might find a group of other people in her year and they might not notice it was her. Rules changed on Halloween. She’d bought a mask.
Her parents were so pleased it was embarrassing. Her mum got out her diary to pencil in the date and her dad wanted to ring the school straight away for tickets. Angel had to switch her story fast.
“It’s not like that. Not for parents. It’s just a tutor group thing. We might be doing a dance for end-of-term assembly.”
Well, they might have been doing a dance for end-of-term assembly. Except they weren’t. And she wouldn’t have been in it if they were.
Angel didn’t feel comfortable with telling lies and making plans so she did the whole day in school. Thought she’d go crazy. Didn’t even bunk at lunchtime. Couldn’t believe how boring it was. And people did this all the time?
Her phone was confiscated second period to stop her messing about. She was sent out in third period and by fourth she was in isolation. She’d never last in school till she was sixteen. Today she was doing it for her mum and dad. This once.
Angel was straight down the skate-park as soon as the clock hit half-past. Didn’t wait for the bell or get her phone back. Grabbed her bag and punched the exit knob, then jumped down the steps of isolation, dodged through the cars and the bikes and the buses and ran.
Angel was quick and she had brilliant balance. She’d gone out over the roof at one of her primary schools. At some places they’d thought she might be an athlete or a gymnast so her mum and dad had tried taking her to all sorts of different coaching sessions. They still hadn’t completely given up. Every half-term and holiday they paid out and persuaded her along. The clubs they chose all felt like school – people talking at you all the time and waiting ages for your turn. Angel was a rubbish listener and she hated standing still. The other kids would get annoyed and start picking on her. Then there’d be a fight.
She’d got her tracksuit in her bag. It was black, with a hood. Wicked! As soon as she reached the public conveniences she changed into it and shoved her skirt and blazer in the bag instead.
Angel gave a skip of relief. She hated skirts. You could wear trousers to secondary school but they hadn’t known that when she joined and her mum and dad said they weren’t going to buy trousers until she’d grown out of the skirt. Basically they’d got fed up with buying her new uniforms cos she got thrown out of schools so often.
Angel hadn’t got thrown out of Fitzgerald (so far) but she hadn’t grown either. She’d always been small and she’d learned that if you were the smallest in the class you needed to be tough. That was partly why she’d dyed her hair red at the beginning of the second year. She gelled it to make it spring out from her head like a mane – warning people to back off. Her mum and dad hated it of course. It was no good trying to explain why she’d done it.
The skate-park was good. If she had a bike or a board of her own she’d be down here all the time. She’d given up asking her parents. It was partly the kit was expensive but mainly they were worried she would hurt herself. There wasn’t no-one responsible at the skate-park.
Angel knew that it was mainly the pills she had to take that made them fuss. And she wasn’t any good at thinking about risk. They’d offered to buy her a scooter for her birthday if she’d completed a whole page of the frigging Behaviour Modification star charts that Extended Learning kept giving her.
And she had! But then the scooter was one of them stupid little folding ones. Her mum had bought it and it was pink …
Angel had run out of the house and down to the railway line and taken herself off to Ipswich and hadn’t come back all day. When she did come home she knew her mum had been crying and her dad was in a grump. She’d tried to say sorry but she just couldn’t see why they couldn’t see it. She’d asked if she was adopted but that made her mum cry some more and anyway they said that she wasn’t. She must have been swapped at the hospital.
There was a gang of hard-lads at the skate-park. They were older than Angel and they didn’t do school. They did cigarettes and beers and other stuff and then they started shouting or got si
lly. When they were hanging-out the other kids soon went home.
They had all the kit though – stunt-bikes and skate-decks – and Angel knew they were as bored as she was. If she played up to them a bit, they’d usually let her use a deck or a bike. Then she could practise the wheelies and the flips, the grinds and the three-sixties that made them watch her and tell her she was a dude. She’d be buzzing and scared enough to concentrate.
If she got scared too much…that was different.
It didn’t work out so well today. The lads had been there a while already and they were getting restless. It wasn’t long before they took back the kit they’d lent her. Then they headed for the train station and the river wall. It wasn’t worth her splitting and going back up the town cos it wasn’t dark yet. Angel balanced across the railway bridge and did hand-flips on the flat top of the covered seating. The lads passed a bike up for her to try some stunts but then a couple of passers-by shouted that they were calling the police so they took it back and slouched on towards the boatyard.
Angel had been in school all day. Her body fizzed and crackled with unused energy. Maybe she could climb the crane. She’d leave if they started swearing at anyone or doing damage.
They were over the No Admittance gate – bikes and all – and into the Phoenix Yard. There were a load of boats standing out of the water on the stones. Some of them were on trailers but there were others propped up on telegraph poles or metal legs. The surface was pebbles so it wasn’t any good for boarding but the lads had a couple of well-small bikes and soon they were daring each other to ride in and out of the props, close under the boats. You had to duck right down to do it.
Angel was the best obviously because she was the smallest but the others couldn’t be beat by her because she was a girl. So they got stupider and louder and started showing off more and taking more risks.