The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012)

by Davies, J. D

  It was no time to stand upon the dignity of my rank. I seized a leather bucket from one of the Welshmen and flung its contents into the conflagration. Smoke and steam stung my eyes, and I retched. Recovering myself, I took another bucket, and another, and another, standing shoulder to shoulder with a desperate band of Merhonours. I was reaching for yet another bucket when Francis Gale appeared at my side. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘we need officers on deck. Men are jumping off the hull.’

  I ran to the upper deck, gulping at the blessed air, feeling the welcome breeze through my sweat-sodden shirt. It was a cloudy night with a choppy sea; a grey dawn was just coming up over the low lands to the east. But the light was ample enough to see some of the Welshmen struggling with the likes of Lanherne, Treninnick and several other petty officers. I could see the mysterious bearded figure in the midst of them, intoning strange, sing-song words that sounded like an ancient lament. Quite suddenly there was the roar of an explosion, and a tongue of flame spat forth from our hull – the heat had fired the charge left in one of the starboard culverins.

  This was the last straw for one man. He suddenly broke free from the throng, reached the starboard rail, leapt up onto it, and stood there for a moment, framed against the sky, before jumping off. I ran to the ship’s side. Although the Merhonour could have been making no more than two or three knots, there was already no sign of the man. No doubt he could not swim, but even so preferred to take his chance in the water than face the apparent certainty of being consumed by flame, or torn apart when the fire reached the powder magazine. The Bachelor’s Delight was on our other quarter and thus in no position to rescue him; besides, Roberts was maintaining a prudent distance, closer to the Royal Oak than to us, no doubt in case the flames reached the gunpowder barrels in the Merhonour’s magazine and blew her apart. From his viewpoint, that must have seemed a very real possibility. Smoke was billowing out of the gunports adjacent to the officers’ cabins on the starboard quarter. Another of the culverins fired spontaneously, causing another great wail from the terrified men on deck. The destruction of the cursed ship seemed imminent…

  ‘We’ve had a half-dozen jump, Captain,’ reported Ali Reis, part of the small band of loyal men trying to restrain the herd. ‘The first of them could swim, so they’ve got to the boats, but those that followed have sunk like stones. May Allah rest their souls in eternal peace.’

  Francis and I went to the stern and looked down upon our three ship’s boats, which, as was customary, were being towed behind the ship. I saw that the swimming Welshmen had been joined by others; a few men were clambering out of the lower ports and hauling themselves like apes along the tow-ropes. If the fire had been in the powder store, the captain of the Merhonour would have run to join them, but our case was surely not as desperate as that. Or so I prayed.

  ‘Very well, then,’ I said, and turned to Francis. ‘One thing for it, I think, Reverend.’

  Francis and I hurried back beneath decks, fighting our way through the throng of men rushing to the stern with pails of water. The smoke on the lower gun deck was thick, and I coughed as I jumped from the bottom of the ladder. Men were screaming and running about in confusion, believing – not unnaturally – that they would be trapped by flames above them, but there was no time to concern myself with that. Down below to the orlop, to the armourer’s store. The armourer, a sullen old Lowestoft man named Oakes, was already at his station and duly unlocked at his captain’s command. He handed Francis and I as many flintlock muskets, pistols and cutlasses as we could carry.

  Returning to the main deck, I saw the unmistakeable black figure of Julian Carvell and threw a musket to him. The Virginian grinned, as he always did when he had a weapon in his hand. He fell in behind us and joined us on the upper deck, where I handed my armful of weapons over to Ali Reis. He kept one for himself and passed the others to Lanherne, Macferran and the rest of the loyal men. The men loaded and primed their weapons swiftly. As guns were levelled at them, the score or so of panicked, screaming Welshmen fell back from the ship’s rails, into the waist of the deck. My men fanned out to surround them.

  ‘Mister Lanherne,’ I cried, ‘you have my leave to shoot any man who attempts to break out of confinement! And get Treninnick up here to translate that to them!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ came the cry from my coxswain.

  ‘Francis,’ I said, ‘recite some prayers, or a psalm, or something of the kind. Lanherne and Treninnick will assist you.’

  He looked at me in astonishment. ‘They’re an unlikely pair of curates, Captain, and this does not appear to be a very receptive congregation.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I said, ‘but I think they are god-fearing, all the same – though which god is the question, of course. And I have observed that nothing calms a troubled soul more than the old words of reassurance.’

  Francis Gale could not dispute that, for it was the foundation upon which his entire vocation stood.

  I returned below. The scene appeared unchanged. Flames still spat from the canvas partitions of the officers’ cabins. Steam hissed as water from leather buckets was flung onto the seat of the blaze. Kit Farrell turned and raised a finger to his forehead in salute. Like the rest of him, both finger and forehead were singed and covered in grime and sweat.

  ‘Think we’re getting it under control, Captain,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Lieutenant Giffard has gone below to oversee the drawing of water from the pump wells and the sea. And the beams and planks aren’t catching. We’ve men below keeping the deck above them watered. Thanks be to God that none of the officers seem to have had any powder in their cabins.’

  ‘Thank God indeed, Lieutenant.’ I looked about me; there seemed to be a new feeling among the men, a sense of triumph supplanting that of fear. Everything was as ordered as it could be. Relays of men now passed buckets down the line to those at the front, who were being relieved every few minutes and supplied at once with generous tankards of small beer by the cook and his mates. This would have been Kit’s doing, of course; yet another debt of gratitude I owed to my friend.

  ‘Do we yet know how it began?’ I asked.

  ‘They say it was in the boatswain’s cabin,’ said Kit. ‘Pewsey left a candle burning when he went on watch. Seems it fired a bunch of rosemary he kept hanging there for luck.’

  Kit gesticulated toward the hunched figure of the boatswain, who was sitting upon the deck a little way forward. Pewsey was rocking slowly back and forth against one of the timber knees, sobbing and reciting the words of the eighty-third psalm over and over to himself: As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountain on fire, so persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, Oh Lord. So much for his lucky rosemary, supposedly the favoured charm of seamen since Aphrodite arose from Poseidon’s lair garlanded in chains of the stuff. I decided at once that there was little point in questioning or upbraiding the man; that could wait for later in the morning. For now, it was only important to ensure that the ship was safe and her crew following orders. With the former apparently assured, it was time to address the latter.

  * * *

  I returned to the upper deck, and to my astonishment found myself in the midst of a rhetorical disputation.

  ‘Yea, the second epistle of Peter warns us against false prophets, and you are truly one such – yes, you, the bringer-in of damnable heresies, as the apostle tells us – if I but had my sword in my hand, you foul Welsh imp of Satan –’ cried Francis Gale in exasperation.

  The bearded Welshman was shouting something back to him in his own tongue, a strange torrent of words in which one phrase recurred over and over: derfel gadarn. The other Welshmen were nodding vigorously or howling approbation of their ringleader.

  I must have worn a puzzled expression, for Francis shook his head violently and cried, ‘Ah, Captain Quinton, I am as Elijah was amidst the priests of Baal, one lone prophet of the Lord shouted down by his enemies. And
if we are to believe the First Book of Kings, at least Elijah knew what the priests of Baal were talking about.’

  ‘They resist the word of God, then, Francis?’

  My chaplain nodded to Lanherne, who had evidently been translating once again for Treninnick and thus for the Welsh. ‘The bearded one, there, proclaims the fire as final proof that the ship is truly cursed, Captain,’ said the coxswain of the Merhonour. ‘There is this thing, this derfel gadarn – Treninnick calls it a wooden saint, so God knows what it was – which obviously meant much to them. The English seem to have burned it, or him. The old man cries out that the destruction of the ship by fire will avenge the fate of the derfel gadarn.’

  ‘Then what is he – the bearded man? Why does he have such power over these wretches?’

  ‘Treninnick has heard some of the others name him as Ieuan Goch of Myddfai, Captain,’ said Lanherne. ‘Or in English, Red John of some place that might as well be on the moon. He claims to be a seer – in his tongue, a druid.’

  ‘A druid,’ I sighed. ‘Of course. What else could he be? We need but the Holy Grail, a few forest nymphs and the ghost of my grandfather to give us a full measure of madness aboard this ship. But the Merhonour is cursed, as they say, so it must only be fitting.’

  I looked around me in despair. I needed a healthy dose of scepticism from a Phineas Musk or a Roger d’Andelys, but neither was to hand. I needed the erudition of Uncle Tris…

  Uncle Tris. A boy balanced upon his knee, listening to the wondrous tales of the Knights of the Round Table. Drinking it all in, memorising it all, praying that one day he could be counted among that noble brotherhood…

  ‘Derfel!’ I cried. ‘One of the seven warriors of Arthur who survived the battle of Camlan! He was made a saint, or so the legend tells us. Lanherne, get Treninnick to ask them if this derfel gadarn of theirs is something to do with the same tale.’

  Before Lanherne could address himself to Treninnick in Cornish, the bearded Welshman took a step toward me. ‘A saes who knows of Saint Derfel,’ he said in fluent, rolling English. ‘Truly the days of miracles have not ceased.’

  Francis Gale moved threateningly towards him. ‘Damn you, man, I wasted all that time and breath upon you when the ship was in dire peril, yet you understood me perfectly all the time?’

  The Welshman smiled and waved his arms to no apparent purpose. ‘There is no listening more revealing than when a man thinks none can hear him. I think you are a Shropshire man by your voice, priest, so you should know us better than these others do. You are, after all, very nearly one of the Cymru yourself.’

  Francis scowled: no greater insult can be directed at a borderer than an insinuation that he truly belongs on the other side of it. The druid, or whatever he was, then turned to face me directly. His eyes were black and penetrating, bearing an unsettling similarity to those of the Countess Louise. ‘You see, Captain, in the four hundred years since you conquered us, we Welsh have ever found it useful to pretend not to understand you saes. Whereas we understand you clearly. All too clearly, indeed. We understood you when the wooden shrine of Saint Derfel, which we had venerated for near a thousand years, was taken to London and burned by your Cromwell – Thomas, that was, not the so-called Lord Protector.’ He almost spat out the last word; evidently Ieuan Goch of Myddfai was no enthusiast for Oliver, our late king in all but name. Perhaps that was something I could turn to my advantage.

  ‘Great God, man,’ I protested, ‘that must have been a hundred and thirty or more years past. How could you claim this fire as vengeance for that?’

  Ieuan Goch of Myddfai opened his arms toward the daylight breaking over the Dutch shore. ‘The ninetieth psalm of David: a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. In other words, Englishman, we Welsh have long memories.’ His voice rose and fell in strange, song-like cadences.

  ‘Long memories and mightily insolent tongues,’ said Francis. ‘Show respect when you address Captain Quinton, brother and heir to the Earl of Ravensden.’

  I raised a hand, for I sensed that this peculiar Welshman required a delicate approach; and if well handled, perhaps he could be the key to securing the loyalty of his countrymen.

  ‘I take it you have never used the trade of the sea,’ I said. ‘How, then, did you come to be taken up by the press?’

  The Welshman grimaced and stroked his great beard. ‘I was in Merlin’s town of Carmarthen, tending to the sick who still favour the true old healing over these modern charlatans, your so-called physicians and surgeons, such as that creature you keep beneath decks.’ Craigen, surgeon of the Merhonour, was a feeble Scot whose remedies for all human conditions seemed to comprise bleeding, or sawing off a limb, or both. ‘I had the misfortune to be aboard a vessel at Carmarthen quay, tending to a ruptured sailor, when Lord Carbery’s press officers swept up the river. They were not discriminating in their choice of men, so long as they made up the number they had been given.’

  ‘You are a healer, then?’

  ‘Healer, bard, seer – all of these things. I am a dryw in direct descent from Rhiwallon, physician to the high and mighty lord Rhys Grug, Prince of Deheubarth, and his son Cadwgan. Surely you have heard the legend of the physicians of Myddfai, Englishman?’

  This so-called druid was unduly puffed up in the pride of his unpronounceable lineage. I recalled once attending a play with my brother: some part or other of the tragic history of King Harry the Fourth. Charles’ friend Follett was cast as some fantastical Welshman called Glendower who claimed to be able to summon monsters at will. His scenes involved much rolling of eyes and emphasising the wrong parts of words, traits that drew hoots of laughter from the usual boorish London audience. It was only now that I realised how well Follett seemed to have researched his part.

  ‘No, I have not,’ I said slowly: I had to be careful now, for the wrong word risked marring all. ‘But I will deal plainly with you, Ieuan Goch of Myddfai. You can tell me the tales of your physicians and your princes. Indeed, I will appoint you an assistant to the surgeon so that your skills may be useful to us all. And as such, of course, you will be paid better than you are now, as a mere landsman.’ Ieuan Goch’s eyes flashed at that. I calculated that a wandering druid would depend chiefly upon alms, and the proverbial poverty of Wales would bring him precious little of those. ‘But you can also secure for me the wholehearted loyalty and effort of the Welshmen aboard this ship, beginning by assuring them the fire is almost extinguished, so their lives are safe. And do all in your power to quell this talk of a curse. In return, the Welshmen will be esteemed as our equals, and your bards in centuries to come will sing your praises.’

  The old man looked me up and down as though he were assessing the market value of a bull. ‘You are a strange creature, Matthew Quinton,’ he said with a curious impertinence that I permitted to pass. ‘Young, yet so much less of an oaf than most of your saes brethren. A man seemingly aware of history, yet so unaware of your own, I think.’ He rolled his eyes, this strange, unsettling creature, muttered some words in his own tongue, then settled his gaze back upon me. ‘There is a Welsh saying, a fo ben, bid bont: let him who would be a leader, be a bridge. And indeed, I think you have been a bridge to us in this dealing, so perhaps you will be a leader worthy of our trust.’ He looked out, over the ship’s rail, toward the other ships within sight and especially toward the distant hull of the Royal Charles, flying the royal standard at the main. ‘I have thought much upon this war, and have concluded it is meet and proper that we of the Cymru should serve the noble prince James, son of the martyr, of the blood of the ap Tudurs and the mab darogan, the son of destiny, he whom you call King Harry the Seventh.’ He had concluded – the towering arrogance of the man! Nothing of obeying orders, or doing duty; yet I would make nothing of it, for after all, he had travelled a different road but still arrived at the place where I wished him to be. ‘Very well, then,’ said Ieuan Goch of Myddfai, bowing his head to me. ‘Let it be so, My Lor
d.’

  ‘I am addressed as Captain, Welshman – keep “My Lord” for the likes of the comte d’Andelys when he returns aboard.’

  Ieuan Goch of Myddfai nodded his head, but his eyes narrowed. ‘Be not so certain of that which you cannot see and do not know, My Lord,’ he said. With that, he raised his right hand, pressed two fingers to his forehead in an immaculate gesture of salute and turned away, leaving me staring after him in perplexity.

  Wronged shall he live, insulted o’er, oppressed,

  Who dares be less a villain than the rest.

  Thus, sir, you see what human nature craves,

  Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves;

  The difference lies, as far as I can see,

  Not in the thing itself, but the degree;

  And all the subject matter of debate

  Is only, who’s a knave of the first rate?

  ~ John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester,

  A Satire Against Mankind (published 1679)

  Lord Percival and Phineas Musk emerged from the Lanthorn Tower and found themselves in the midst of a torrential downpour. In his deposition, Musk states that he favoured an immediate retreat back into the dryness they had just forsaken, but his master was intent on pressing on. The vast bulk of the White Tower, one of London’s most enduring landmarks, loomed over them as they made their way west through the inmost ward of the city’s fortress, passing the ruins of the old medieval palace and its great hall as they made for the Bloody Tower. Musk contemplated the thickness of the walls and wondered whether they could withstand the two terrible enemies that assailed them, the plague and the Dutch.