VII
ARMADA
30
THE SUN was an unsteady presence the following morning, the twentieth day of July.
The cry from aloft that dawn had a different quality from that of any human voice Sherwin had ever heard, a shrill of marvel and apprehension.
“There,” cried the lookout once again, like a man driven to the point of mania. “There, off the starboard bow!”
The deck was instantly thronged with shipmates, who stood observing the seas to the west. There was nothing there—no ship in sight.
A mist had risen to the west, in response, perhaps, to the rising of the sun, and the sea, easier in its temperament, remained sullen. Katharine joined Sherwin with the captain on the quarterdeck, but the captain was the only individual on the deck who did not strain to see what was hidden through the haze.
He seemed to know what was beyond already, or perhaps he had seen enough at a glance to be able to infer all the rest.
The sea was a wrinkling, unwrinkling expanse, and it met the blurred ether of gray that descended from the sky, and not so much as a floating spar marred the ocean’s surface.
And then a ship appeared, a craft with angled sails, her canvas being shaken out as the blustery gale faded and lost strength.
She was a pretty ship, the sort built for speed and maneuverability—an urca, as Sherwin knew from his wharfside haunts, watching Canary wine being delivered. This solitary craft was a foreign ship, almost certainly Spanish, but so elegant in her lines and peaceful in her manner that Sherwin felt his shipmates around him relax.
The mist lifted further, and another vessel joined the first—a galleass, a low-cut, cunning ship, familiar to Sherwin only from tavern woodcuts.
The sight of this second vessel was less reassuring than the first, in Sherwin’s eyes, but she likewise looked pacific in intent. She was so appealing as she spread her canvas, catching the milky sunlight, that Sherwin could believe that no harm would ever fall upon anything living.
At the sight of a third vessel, a galleon larger than the Vixen bearing down past the two smaller craft, the crew around Sherwin turned to their battle stations without a murmur of command.
The vision that was about to reveal itself was anticipated by everyone aboard the ship, and as the haze was diluted, moment by moment, the pricking out of one more ship, and then another, took place like the careful hand of a seamstress piercing a certain but invisible pattern.
Galleons worked their way into a ragged line ahead of merchant vessels that wallowed low in the water, the cargo ships no doubt heavy with fighting men and arms. The smaller urcas and galleasses sped ahead of the others in the fleet, finding water unbroken by any wake.
ONE HUNDRED SHIPS, and more.
Every observable vessel of the still-far-distant Armada set her sails and aimed her course directly at the sudden English interloper.
Fletcher was intent, but as yet made no sign of apprehension. He gave a quiet command to Highbridge, and soon footsteps pounded belowdecks, and the ship resounded with the sound of gun carriages, a chorus of groans and squeals as the artillery was swabbed and primed in the bowels of the ship.
The armorer’s store of weapons chimed somewhere belowdecks as mariners were outfitted with pikes and short swords, able-bodied seamen reappearing on deck with the look of an anxious but determined fighting force. Lockwood thrust a short-ax through his belt, and Sir Gregory appeared carrying a tongue-of-beef halberd, stabbing the air experimentally with a look of intense satisfaction. Evenage wore an iron corselet and sported a helmet, a handsome gleaming piece of armor with a metal crest.
But the captain had the air of an astronomer trying to descry his favorite planet. He gazed long at the Armada as the vapor lifted and the entire fleet became visible. This quiet abstraction on the part of the captain gave Sherwin to believe that the Vixen was in preparation for battle only as a precaution.
Sherwin was startled when Fletcher called for Katharine, not in a tone of voice of Sherwin had heard before.
The captain was suffused with emotion.
He ordered Katharine to come to his side, and pointed out across the water to indicate the sight of a single burning ship that, in a fleet of warships, caused him the greatest consternation.
Within moments, Katharine was in tears.
“Is that your ship?” asked the captain, a voice tight with fury. “Is that the Rosebriar, with our treasury of cinnamon bark?”
Katharine could only nod and give a breathless “I fear so.”
31
ASLURRY OF SMOKE rising from a pack of ships showed where a vessel had been taken as a prize and set alight—and her cargo either wasted or plundered and the ship scuttled.
But there was no time after the discovery of the loss for any financial or emotional inventory. As Sherwin stood comforting Katharine, the sea around them altered.
One instant the gray water was restless and shifting, with the Armada standing clear as an imposing backdrop, an impending but still-distant threat. The next moment several more vessels were so close that the figures of sailors and soldiers could be seen, and the far-off naval tapestry had new dimensions, texture, and depth.
The wind was stirring after a brooding respite, and the rigging sang a low, solemn warning. The originally sighted urca and galleass drew near, followed by a wedge of vessels, and behind that advance the entire Armada bulked all the closer to the Vixen.
After the tense but ultimately benevolent contact with the Roebuck, Sherwin was expecting a parley, perhaps at most a warning shot, followed by Fletcher buying time as his crew set the sails for a swift departure eastward.
This hope was punctured somewhat when the captain said, “Katharine, step into my cabin, if you please, and take your ease there for the duration.” He added, “Don’t despair about your ship, my lady—if we are stubborn and Spanish gunnery incompetent, we may salvage a good deal of treasure yet.”
He said this as a man might discuss gammon to accompany his ale, in a distracted, easy tone that gave no hint of what was about to come. Katharine did not take his advice at once, seeming both shaken and hopeful at his remarks. Fletcher shot a glance toward Sherwin and said, “You don’t intend to enter battle naked, do you, friend?”
Naked, in a military sense, meant unarmed. Bartholomew was at Sherwin’s side at once, carrying what looked like the iron cast of half a man. A battle corselet was fitted over Sherwin, opening and closing like a book around him. Buckles were fastened, and Sherwin felt like the grand tortoise he had seen at the Smithfield bestiary, a large tub of a creature with sleepy reptilian eyes and an appetite for watercress.
“If I fall into the water,” said Sherwin, “I’ll sink straight to the bottom.” His voice had a bronze resonance, and he could not keep from enjoying the heroic tenor of his accent as he added, in an attempt at humor, “I shall battle the giants of the deep.”
“Hush, sir,” protested Bartholomew. “Speak of dire events, and they are sure to happen.”
WITHOUT ANY PROTOCOL, with no warning or opportunity to reflect or pray, the urca vanished behind a cloud of white smoke, and a cannon shot skipped across the water. We’re still too far apart, thought Sherwin. The distance was so great that the artillery had been comically ineffective, like a market-day brawl just half in earnest.
But it could only be seen as abruptly impolite, this first shot, not so much a warning as an attempt to test the range. The report of the cannon was muted by distance but was a metallic, percussive punch in the belly nonetheless, and to his surprise Sherwin smelled the smoke in the next instant.
He caught a brief snatch of Spanish language, Madre de díos carried on the wind—harsh, musical, and surprising. Another voice called, from the arriving galleass, and behind them a galleon, at the head of a flotilla of her companions, was growing huge against the rest of the approaching force.
The Vixen was going to be wedged in after only a few more heartbeats, and Sherwin looked at the captain, su
re the order would come for the vessel to turn about.
“Steady on, Highbridge,” said Fletcher, fastening his mantle about him like a man in the theater pits, settling in for an hour of entertainment. He glanced at Sherwin with a further comment: “If we turn and flee now, we’ll never get our hands on so much as a stick of our precious cargo.”
Katharine was still at Sherwin’s side; before she left, she did something that stirred him as much as the line of attack descending on the Vixen. She put her lips to Sherwin’s, kissed him, and said, in a shaken whisper, “You are my heart.”
This statement struck Sherwin all the more fully because of the expectation that soon the parts of bodies—limbs, bones, and for all he knew actual hearts—might be strewn about him.
She was gone then before he could respond, and he was left trying to pull together a fragment of poetry in response—all he wanted to do was sink into a safe, quiet place beside her.
A swivel gun fired from the approaching galleass, and Evenage called to Sherwin, “Quickly, sir, if you will,” and Sherwin hurried to the gun mounts on the deck, taking the matchlock he was given by Bartholomew and settling the firearm onto its support.
The captain murmured something to Highbridge, and the officer spoke to Lockwood. The boatswain’s whistle piped, and to Sherwin’s surprise the ship made no move to turn about and flee east with the strong west wind—the same force that compelled an entire Spanish navy closer, so close they would be in easy cannon range soon.
Very soon.
Sherwin had a muted sense of what the captain might have in mind: if the Vixen could lance through the parting mass of the Armada and reach the site of the burning cargo ship, she could cut what remained of the Rosebriar out of the fleet and guide her toward the open sea. This was a desperate hope, and such an attempt was carrying a lust for wealth to an extreme. No amount of possible reward, in Sherwin’s view, made such a risk remotely desirable.
The wind behind the Spanish grew more forceful, driving the urcas and the galleons together. The ships were close to colliding, and within the fleet some did grind together, the sound like doors slamming. Sherwin had the impression that the enemy fleet was on a long slope, sliding down an incline. That accounted for the relentless momentum behind them, and for the virtual silence. Sherwin told himself that he needed more time before he started to kill people—or to die.
He was not prepared. And when more ordnance was fired—the Spanish gunners seeming to have as much enthusiasm as gunpowder—he was relieved at how wide of the mark the shots were, too far short, too far aft.
Bartholomew was putting up screens so sparks and splinters from either side would not distract Sherwin during the fight to come. A shot hit the side of the Vixen—a single, round reverberation that made Sherwin jump.
Evenage was unseen, on the other side of the woven partition, and the sergeant said, “Hold on to something, sir.”
A simple command that, under the circumstances, made little sense.
“Sir,” urged Bartholomew, “please set your feet and hang on.”
32
THERE WAS NOTHING to hang on to, and no immediate need, as far as he could see.
In truth, however, Sherwin could see very little aside from the chased brass of his firearm, because of the smoke from the Spanish guns flowing through the wind. The gunports of the Vixen rattled and clattered belowdecks, the vibration of the wooden shutters traveling through the vessel.
He knew what it portended, and how vulnerable a ship was with her gunports, so close to the waterline, gaping open. He felt the ship shift subtly as the guns were shoved out through the ports, ready to fire. And yet Sherwin still felt that some reprieve might be enjoyed, that the mood might change once more, and the entire exercise fall to bluffing and gesturing, no one really about to be hurt.
Then the staggered explosions shocked Sherwin and made it hard for him to breathe, as a cloud of yellow and green smoke filled the air and seared his lungs, and he was instantly all but deaf. He did set his feet, then, too late, after he had nearly fallen.
Tears flowed down his cheeks, his eyes burning with the smoke. As the fumes were torn away by the breeze, a craft that had appeared small and pretty was upon them—hard upon them as the increasingly rough sea flung her violently against the English ship. A fresh, even-stronger swell lifted the Spanish vessel far above, so that her gunwales were higher than the English deck for a moment, and the attacking Spaniards launched pikes and pistol shots down upon the crew of the Vixen.
Without further warning, the English privateer was pinned by two Spanish vessels, the urca and the galleass. The hulking galleon swooped down from the west. Her forward guns aimed and fired, missing badly.
There should be a truce, thought Sherwin, now that we have all proven our courage. There was no need to go on with this hazardous conduct. He felt the keen weighty presence of his father just then, not a ghost so much as a memory so true it was both painful and joyous. He experienced his father’s calming reassurance, but he also felt his father’s trepidation, a wordless prayer that the son not join his father in the life to come.
Sherwin needed more time to consider how to take a life, if the need presented itself, just as a pistol ball struck the gunwale before him, splinters flying, the lead projectile humming past his ear.
Or it would have been a hum if he had heard it, and had not been suddenly even more completely deaf. He pulled the stiff trigger of his own weapon, and he could feel the mechanism as it whirred and clicked. The blast knocked the firearm off its tripod, and smoke was everywhere.
IN ADDITION to the tumult of combat, the ships themselves struggled, hulls grinding together. The privateer’s deck slanted one way and then another as the friction from the vessels on either flank gripped and grated against the English ship. At times the vessels parted, only to have the resulting gaps close in an instant.
It might have been soon after the initial combat, or after an hour—Sherwin could not be sure. But at some point in the late morning, the Spaniards made an attack composed not of lead shot and projectiles but of human beings.
There was no warning, aside from the sound of a trumpet on one of the Spanish ships, a pretty, sharp flourish, a resonance at odds with the cannon fire and smoke. The armed, helmeted force on the adjacent vessel was poised to attack.
The crew of Fletcher’s ship thrust pikes, halberds, and axes threateningly across the alternating shrinking and expanding space between the vessels. Men with stone bows—crossbows adapted to discharge rocks—fired down on the helmeted Spanish, and it was clear to Sherwin that Captain Fletcher’s crew was eager to fight, and skillful.
“Steady, men,” called the captain, as Sherwin’s sense of hearing continued to return.
The captain stood, sword in hand, on the quarterdeck, and despite his resolute stance Sherwin could see a look of fervent concern in his eyes—for his crew and for his ship. As his men cried out, challenging the enemy, Sherwin sensed a corresponding loyalty on the part of the crew—for the captain and for the ship he had created from a vision.
The gap once again closed—and the assault commenced.
Sherwin had his sword at the ready when a Spaniard in an iron corselet and gleaming, crested headpiece slipped between the two vessels, and suffered his leg to be crushed.
The accident had been so easy to foresee, and so instantly regretted, that it looked like an act the Spaniard had performed on purpose, to win an ill-advised wager. As the ships parted again, the Spaniard tumbled onto the deck of the Vixen, looking all the more fierce for having been already injured, limping badly, and yelling.
Sherwin stabbed him in the throat, doing a poor job of it, not getting a good grip on his rapier, and not driving with all his weight behind the thrust. The Spaniard collapsed. Bartholomew was on the Spaniard at once, stabbing in and out several times with a thin dagger and then leaping away as the Spaniard’s companions seized him and pulled the guttering, bleeding man to safety.
Fletcher�
��s crew fought with pikes and axes, countering the Spanish trespassers with a brutal fury. The foreigners retreated as Sherwin lost his own footing. He slipped on blood, falling hard, right beside the seemingly lifeless body of First Officer Highbridge.
HE WAS SHOCKED at the force of his own fall, and even more dismayed at the unexpected condition of the first officer.
Sherwin tried to puzzle through the events that had caused Highbridge to be injured. He had no way of estimating the time that had passed between the first cannon shot and this thunder that shook the ship now, timbers splintering, men cursing loudly. Perhaps they had been fighting for hours. Perhaps he himself was injured. An unpleasant flavor filled his mouth—bile and gall, a graveyard poison. The cabin was a refuge somewhere beyond the smoke.
If Bartholomew had any misgivings about having assisted in killing a Spaniard, he showed none, although in Sherwin’s eyes he looked less like a boy than a small old man, smoke-seared and drained.
Lead bounced from the deck, slingshots loosed from the Spanish mast tops, as perilous as any bullet. A splinter sang off Sherwin’s corselet, a sound like a flawed church bell.
He felt the blow in his body, in his lungs and in his belly. He knew that without armor he would have been cut in two, and that he was every instant close to losing his life.
33
THE INTERIOR of the cabin was thick with oily dust from the pitch and fiber that had been knocked from the timbers by the reverberating percussion of their own artillery.
Sherwin and Bartholomew staggered into the cabin, carrying the first officer, smoke rising from their sleeves and boots where bits of gunpowder and gun wadding had caught on the clothing. Highbridge was as inert as any human Katharine had ever seen, and her first impression was that he was no longer living.
Peril on the Sea Page 12