by C. J. Sansom
‘Tomorrow.’
‘The King comes then. As principal archers we have to parade before him outside the town in the morning.’
‘We shall be gone before then.’
‘That we shall,’ Barak agreed firmly. ‘We leave first thing.’
Leacon glanced over to where his men stood, many looking weary and anxious. Pygeon cast his brigandyne to the ground, where it made a tinkling noise. Sulyard glared at him. Carswell asked the whiffler, ‘Master Snodin, may we get back to camp, get some food?’
‘Proper food,’ another man said, ‘not biscuit you have to knock the weevils out of!’ There were murmurs of agreement.
Snodin shouted, ‘We’ll leave when the rest arrive, with Sir Franklin!’
‘Was today their first day on the ships?’ I asked Leacon.
‘Yes. Not a good day either.’
Everyone jumped and looked round at a tremendous boom. Another cannon shot from the Round Tower. There was an answering flash and boom from the Gosport side.
‘What are they doing?’ I asked Leacon.
‘Practising covering the harbour, should the French try to gain entrance. We should be able to stop them, those cannon have a range of over a mile. But if they defeat our fleet at sea, there will be nothing to prevent them making a landing elsewhere.’
‘George,’ I said, ‘I wonder if I might ask yet another favour.’
He looked at me curiously. ‘Yes?’
I nodded at the men. ‘It is confidential.’
He sighed. ‘Come round the side of the warehouse.’
We went round the corner, out of earshot of the company.
‘Did it not go well today?’ I asked.
‘The whole company has been on the Great Harry. God’s death, the size of that ship. It has enough cannon to conquer Hell itself. None of the lads had encountered anything like it. Even when we were climbing up the rope ladder, a gust of wind came and it started swinging to and fro, us clinging on like snails to a drainpipe. I could see the men were terrified of tumbling into the sea. Then on board they all slid and fell with every little movement of the sea. And they didn’t like being under that netting.’
‘I have heard of it. Fixed above the decks, so boarders would fall on top of it. With soldiers carrying small pikes standing underneath.’
‘The mesh on the netting is thick, you feel hemmed in standing under it. And if anything happened to the ship, if it went over, you’d be trapped under it.’ He laughed; something wild in the sound made me frown. ‘Not that most of the men can swim. We should have been given more time to practise; we’ve been here a week. The men are getting bored and irritable doing nothing, hence the desertions. You can’t easily replace skilled archers. The sailors laughed at them sliding about, which didn’t help. The sailors go barefoot, clinging to the deck like cats.’
‘Soldiers and sailors must fight the same battle. If it comes.’
‘In two or three days, from what they say.’ The haunted look was back in his eyes. ‘We’ve been told we’re going to the Great Harry. As the flagship she will be at the head of the line. The men are all cast down, and Snodin doesn’t help, snarling at them over every grumble they make. Being on the ship, he hasn’t had a drink all day and that doesn’t aid his temper.’ He sighed. ‘Well, Matthew, what is this favour?’
‘George, I would not trouble you were it not important. But a woman’s fate may be at stake. I need to speak again to Philip West, that I saw at the Godshouse.’ I took a deep breath. ‘He is on the Mary Rose. I want to know if you can help me get on board there, this evening, to talk to him.’
Leacon looked doubtful. ‘Matthew, they are only allowing people with official business on the ships.’ He looked out to sea. The big rowboats had lit their lanterns now, little points of light dancing on the water. The setting sun outlined the ships from behind in a fiery glow.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘It’s important.’
He considered. ‘Easy enough to pay a boatman to take us over to the Mary Rose, but getting on board may be another matter even with me there. You certainly won’t get on without me. Very well. But I cannot take long, I need to get back to camp; the men are downhearted and they must make ready to parade before the King tomorrow morning.’ He brushed away a mosquito; now dark was coming they were starting to whine around our ears.
‘George, I am more grateful than I can say.’
‘First I must wait until the rest of the men arrive with Sir Franklin. He can lead them back to camp, then – ’
He broke off. Snodin, out of sight, was yelling furiously. ‘Stand up! Stand, you lazy slugs!’
‘God’s death,’ Leacon muttered. ‘He’ll go too far – ’ He walked rapidly round the warehouse, Barak and I following. Many of the men now lay sprawled on the ground. Snodin was haranguing them furiously. ‘Lazy bastards! Stand up! You’re not in your dirty houses now!’
Nobody moved. Carswell said, ‘We’re tired! Why shouldn’t we rest?’
‘The captain told you to wait, not lie on the ground like fucking toads!’ The whiffler was almost beside himself, purple jowls trembling with fury.
Everyone turned as Leacon appeared. ‘Don’t talk to Master Snodin like that, Carswell!’ he snapped.
Pygeon stood, pointing a shaking finger at the whiffler. ‘Sir, he’s been throwing abuse at us all day, all we wanted was to rest our legs after being on that ship!’
‘Afraid, jug ears?’ Sulyard called out contemptuously.
Then a new voice spoke up. ‘If going on the flagship’s such an honour, let the King come and serve on it!’ Snodin turned and stared at Tom Llewellyn. The boy, normally so quiet, had stood up to face him. ‘Let King Henry come and do this for sixpence a day, that’s worth less than fivepence now!’
‘And let us go back and get ready for the harvest!’ another man called. Snodin whirled from speaker to speaker, so quickly it made some of the men laugh. Leacon stepped forward and grasped the whiffler by the shoulder. ‘Calmly, Master Snodin,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Calmly.’
Snodin stood, breathing heavily. ‘They have to be ready for battle, sir.’
‘And they will be!’ Leacon raised his voice. ‘Come, lads, it’s been a hard day, but I have been on ships before and you soon find your balance. And I have seen to it that a cow has been slaughtered for your meal tonight. Stand now, ready for Sir Franklin. See, the rest of the company are pulling up at the wharf!’
For a second nothing happened. Then, slowly, all rose to their feet. Leacon walked Snodin away a short distance and spoke quietly in his ear. Barak and I went over to where Carswell and young Llewellyn stood together nearby. ‘Bold words, lad,’ Barak said to Llewellyn.
The boy still looked angry. ‘I’d had enough,’ he answered. ‘After today – we’ve all had enough.’
Carswell looked at me. There was no humour in his face any more. ‘It’s real now,’ he said. ‘I see what it’ll be like if there’s a battle. If the Great Harry grapples with a French warship it’ll be cannon tearing into us, pikes thrust up at our bowels from their decks if we board. I always thought I had a knack for imagining things, Master Shardlake, but I could never conjure anything like that ship.’
‘The size of it,’ Llewellyn said wonderingly. ‘It’s as big as our church back home; those masts are like steeples. I thought, how can such a thing float? Each time the deck shifted I thought it was sinking.’
‘The pitching of a ship is strange at first,’ I said, ‘but Captain Leacon is right, you get used to it.’
‘We practised shooting our bows from the upper decks,’ Carswell said, ‘but the ship kept moving and throwing us off balance. The sailors were all laughing and guffawing, the malt worms. And it’s hard to draw fully under that netting.’
Pygeon had come over to us. ‘You spoke well, Tom,’ he said. ‘All this to save King Harry, that doesn’t give a toss if we live or die.’
Carswell said, ‘But if the French win they’ll do to our people what we did
to them last year. There’s no help for it, we must fight.’
Sulyard shouted across, ‘What’re you plotting, Pygeon, you treasonous papist?’
‘He’s been trying to keep his courage together all day,’ Carswell said contemptuously. ‘The more he shouts the more you know he’s frightened.’ He looked at me. ‘Why have you come back to this damned place, sir?’
Suddenly a well modulated voice called out, ‘How now, what’s this?’ Sir Franklin had appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed as usual in fine doublet, lace collar and sleeves, the rest of the company behind him. ‘Where’s Leacon?’ Leacon went over to him, followed by Snodin, who looked surly. Sir Franklin peered at them. ‘Ah, there you are. All well?’
‘Yes. Sir Franklin, I wonder if you would lead the men back to camp? Master Shardlake has asked me to do something for him.’
‘Legal business?’ Sir Franklin looked at me dubiously. ‘You here again, sir? You don’t want to get yourself too tangled up with lawyers, Leacon.’
‘It should not take much beyond an hour.’
I said, ‘I would be grateful indeed if you would allow it, Sir Franklin.’
He grunted. ‘Well, don’t be long. Come, Snodin, you look as though someone had dropped a bag of flour on your head.’
‘Wait for me at the inn, Jack,’ I told Barak.
He leaned close. ‘You can’t ask Leacon to go with you, not with his men in the mood they are. They’d have put Snodin in the water if he hadn’t stopped them.’
‘He’s agreed,’ I said brusquely.
‘I think you would like to stay and tackle Rich too.’
‘Maybe so, to see this done.’
‘Then I begin to fear for your reason.’
Barak walked away. I returned to where Leacon stood, watching as Sir Franklin led the men away.
‘Will the men be all right?’ I asked.
‘I’ve told Snodin to go easy, and they won’t challenge Sir Franklin.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Right. The Mary Rose.’
THE CAMBER was full of rowboats tying up for the night. We found a boatman, a stocky middle-aged man, who agreed to take us across to the Mary Rose, then wait and bring us back. We followed him down the slippery steps. Above us music and voices sounded from the Oyster Street taverns. The man set the oars in the rowlocks and pushed out into the open sea towards the lines of ships. Behind them the sunset was shading into dark blue, starkly outlining the forest of masts.
All at once we were in a world of near silence, the sounds from the town fading. The air, too, was suddenly clean and salty. The water was calm, but out at sea for the first time in four years I felt uneasy. I gripped the side of the boat hard and looked back to shore. I could see the city walls, the Square Tower and, beyond the town walls, the soldier’s tents lining the coast, all turned pink by the setting sun.
‘Thank you for doing this,’ I said to Leacon. ‘After that trouble with the men.’
‘Thank God I thought to ensure fresh meat tonight. The biscuit’s going bad. There’s a couple of men down with the flux. And one man accidentally slashed himself with his knife yesterday. At least I think it was an accident. The company’s down to eighty-eight.’
I looked back again to the retreating shore. Now I could see all the way down to South Sea Castle, a little pink block in the sunset, becoming tiny as we rowed out further into the Solent. Reluctantly, I turned my head away.
Slowly, we approached the warships. As we drew closer we saw haloes of dim light flickering above the decks from candles and lamps. The sound of a pipe and drum drifted across the water. Leacon stared ahead, preoccupied, then said with a sort of quiet desperation, ‘I have to encourage my men, I must. I must try and lighten their mood, though I know the nightmare they may face.’
‘God knows you are doing what you can.’
‘Does He?’
We had almost reached the warships now, their masts and high castles seeming impossibly tall, gigantic plaited ropes stretching down to the water securing the anchors. The light was almost gone, the bright paintwork on the upper decks turned to shades of grey. The boatman swung away to avoid a stream of ordure running from a beakhead latrine. Voices and more music drifted down as the vast hull of the Great Harry reared before us. Something was happening on the main deck. A little platform had been built projecting out over the water, a pulley dangling from it. It was being used to heave something up from a large rowboat. I realized to my astonishment that it was a large, high-backed chair, covered with an oilcloth, in which an enormous dead pig had been tied.
‘Careful,’ I heard someone shout. ‘It’s bumping the side!’
‘What on earth is going on?’ I asked the boatman.
‘Some freak of sailors’ humour,’ he answered disapprovingly.
We rowed past the flagship to the Mary Rose, the rose emblem above the bowsprit dimly outlined. I craned my neck to stare up.
The lowest, central section of the ship was perhaps twenty feet high; the long aftercastle, of at least two storeys, double that. The forecastle was taller still, three levels of decks projecting out over the bow like enormous steps. A sudden breeze came, and I heard a strange singing noise in the web of rigging that soared from decks to topmast. As we drew in close I heard a cry from the fighting top, high on the mainmast. ‘Boat ahoy!’
The boatman steered in to the centre of the ship, between the high castles. I looked apprehensively at the great dark hull, wondering how we would get on board. My eye travelled upwards to squares outlined in tar that must be the gun ports, stout ropes running up from rings in the centre to holes in the painted squares above, the green and white Tudor colours alternating with red crosses on a white background, the colours of St George.
‘How do we get up?’ I asked apprehensively.
Leacon nodded up at the painted squares. ‘Those panels can be slid out. They’ll drop a rope ladder down from one.’
We came athwart, and the rowboat knocked against the hull with a bump. A panel was removed and a head looked out. A voice called down the watchword I had heard in camp: ‘God save King Henry!’
‘And long to reign over us!’ Leacon shouted back. ‘Petty-Captain Leacon, Middlesex archers! Official business for Assistant-Purser West!’
The head was withdrawn, and a moment later a rope ladder was thrown down. It uncoiled, the end splashing into the water beside us.
Chapter Thirty-nine
OUR BOATMAN hauled the ladder aboard, then turned to us. ‘Climb up, sirs. One at a time, please.’
Leacon grasped the ladder and climbed onto it. He began to ascend. I watched apprehensively as he moved upwards steadily, hand over hand. I started with surprise as, a little above my head, a gun port suddenly swung outwards. There was the sound of squeaking wheels from within, and the mouth of a huge cannon appeared in the gap with a strange, juddering movement. ‘That axle needs greasing,’ a sharp voice called. The cannon was withdrawn, and the gun-port lid banged shut. I looked up to where Leacon had reached the top of the ladder. Hands reached through the opened blind and he squeezed through the narrow gap.
‘Now you, sir,’ the boatman said. I took a deep breath, grasped the rungs, and climbed up. I did not look down. The gentle bobbing of the boat was disorientating. I reached the blind and hands stretched out to help me through. It was a drop of several feet to the deck, and I stumbled and nearly fell. ‘It’s a fucking lawyer,’ someone said in wonderment.
Leacon took my arm. ‘I’ve asked a sailor to go and look for Master West.’
I looked around. Thick rope netting with a small mesh enclosed the deck, secured to the rail above the blinds and, in the middle, to a wooden central spar seven feet above our heads supported by thick posts running the length of the open weatherdeck. The wide spar formed a walkway above us, running between the two castles; a sailor was padding across in bare feet. I looked up at the twenty-foot-high aftercastle. Two long, ornate bronze cannon projected from it, angled to fire outwards. Two more projected from the f
orecastle, pointing in the opposite direction.
‘What a creation,’ I said quietly. I looked along the weatherdeck. It was around forty feet wide and almost as long, dominated by three iron cannon on each side, a dozen feet long and lashed to wheeled carriages. The deck was illuminated by haloes of dim light from tallow candles inside tall horn lanterns. Perhaps sixty sailors sat in little groups between the guns, playing dice or cards; they were barefoot, most with jerkins over their shirts and some with round woolly hats, for there was a cool breeze now. Many were young, though already with weatherbeaten faces. A small mongrel greyhound sat beside one group, avidly watching a game of cards. Some of the sailors looked over at me with cool curiosity, doubtless wondering who I was, their eyes little points of light. One group was talking in what I recognized as Spanish, another sat listening intently to a cleric reading aloud from the Bible: ‘Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.’ A rancid meaty smell and little wafts of steam rose from some of the hatches with heavy wooden grilles set along the deck.
‘First time aboard a warship, sir?’ One of the sailors who had helped me aboard had stayed with us, from curiosity perhaps.
‘Yes.’ I looked up, through the netting, to the fighting top high on the foremast. There the man who had called out our presence stood looking out to sea once more. A small boy was clambering up the rigging, as rapidly as the Queen’s monkey in its cage at Hampton Court.
A sailor sitting nearby turned and spoke to me in a heavy, jocular tone. ‘Have you come to make them fetch up our dinner, master lawyer?’ I noticed that nearly everyone had wooden spoons and empty bowls beside them. ‘Our bellies are barking.’
‘Let’s hope it’s edible,’ another man grumbled. He was poking something from under his fingernails with a tool from a tiny steel manicure set. He winced as he extracted a large splinter.
‘That’s enough, Trevithick,’ our sailor answered. ‘This gentleman’s on official business.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The food’s corrupted through lying too long in the barrels, sir. We don’t like the smells coming from below. We were supposed to get fresh supplies today but they ain’t come.’