by J. D. Davies
Eighteen
The English ships were ten days out from the coast of Sierra Leone. With the additional vessels acquired by one means or another from the Portuguese or Frenchmen, the fleet was now ten strong, and a fine sight under full sail. The weather was calm and propitious, hot but less oppressive than it had been upon that terrible shore. The trade wind filled the Jennet’s sails, carrying her easily onto the great arc that swept south-westerly before, God willing, it would blow her north into the very heart of the Indies.
Tom Stannard stood at the starboard rail upon the quarterdeck, looking out over the limitless ocean. Bruno Cabral had told him of this seemingly strange course that ships had to take for the easiest passage to the Americas, and explained why it was harder to sail there directly. He had patiently demonstrated the navigation of the great ocean to Tom upon his portolans and rutters. Those charts now lay upon the table in the cabin beneath Tom’s feet, but he could barely bring himself to look at them. They brought back the sight of Cabral’s head upon the fire at Conga. Only in the last two nights had he been able to sleep without being woken time and again by the recurring nightmare of that sight. In it, Cabral’s eyes were open, and he was attempting to speak, but Tom could not hear his words.
His father had been standing double watches, and Tom finally felt able to relieve him properly. Even so, he could still think of little else, and he was not alone in this. The men of the Jennet, usually ebullient, stood around listlessly, or else whispered to each other. For a foreigner, Cabral had been liked and respected. Ned Bultflower, too, was mourned. It was one thing for men of Dunwich to perish at sea; that was the fate they all expected. But to die in the hellhole of Conga, and, in Cabral’s case…
Tom turned and walked to the larboard side.
It had taken the best part of a day of questions and halting mistranslations to establish what must have happened to Bruno Santos Cabral. John Hawkins had dispatched him to Kings Sheri and Yhoma to demand an end to the massacre of the inhabitants of Conga, but he must have been waylaid by a group of desperate defenders, killed and stripped, European clothes being highly regarded among the native people. Naked, he would have been indistinguishable from any of the countless dead natives, so it was pure chance that his remains were made a part of the grotesque feast of celebration for the victory of the two kings.
Hawkins had accepted the story, along with the profuse apologies of the two kings and their promise of several dozen more slaves by way of compensation. But Tom had his doubts, and expressed them to his father as soon as he returned to the Jennet. Cabral’s body would not have been oiled, as that of every warrior on both sides was, so it should have been recognisable as not belonging to a native. True, European clothes were much treasured among the native people, but the only ones actually to wear them were kings; it was a curious reflection of England’s long-neglected and much-mocked sumptuary laws, where clothes of certain kinds and materials were meant to be worn only by those of a certain rank. And King Sheri, Tom told his father, was roughly the same height and build as Bruno Cabral.
Jack had listened patiently, as he always did.
‘Well, Tom, mayhap it happened as you think it did, or mayhap it happened as we were told it did. But it matters not a jot now. We will be off this coast in the morning, and even if we weren’t, no man would ever be brought to justice for the killing of Bruno Cabral. Nothing can bring him back, and nothing can undo what happened to him. All we can do now, son, is give succour to his immortal soul. I’ll say the requiem for him, and if and when we come to a proper church in the Indies, I’ll pay a priest to say Masses. So when we’re away from the shore, and from the eyes of Drake and his friends, will you join me in the requiem? If not for me, then for him.’
‘Aye, Father, I will. But I’ll add one thing more. When I next write to Meg, I’ll ask her to light candles in Dunwich, and to find a priest to say a requiem for his soul.’
* * *
The English had left the coast of Africa in haste, not even taking time to careen. Thus it was a foul, slow fleet that made its way out into the great sea passage known as the Middle Crossing. But as he had explained to his captains, Hawkins had two reasons for such a rapid departure. One was to ensure that they were across the Atlantic before the worst of the ferocious tropical storms struck; the other was that every additional hour spent upon the sickly coast of Guinea increased the risk of men falling victim to disease. Jack Stannard concurred, but still felt a strong sense of trepidation. Cabral, who should have been his pilot for the ocean crossing and the waters within the Indies, was dead, and although he and Tom had Cabral’s charts, and could fix their position as well as any man in the fleet, these were still wholly unknown waters, further away and broader than any either of the Stannards had sailed before. But Hawkins and many of his men had been this way in the past, so the Jennet fell in astern of the Jesus, endeavouring to keep the huge flagship – and, at night, its telltale stern lantern – in sight at all costs.
That was how the voyage went, day after day, week after endless week. Watches changed, positions were established by compass, cross-staff and trailing board, men occupied themselves with the thousand little tasks and repairs that a ship always required, and parties worked the pumps or scrubbed the decks. They ate food that was increasingly tough or stale, the fruits they had taken aboard in Africa giving way to the old diet of poor john, salted mutton and hard cheese, with half-measure on Fridays. They drank water that was sometimes foul, or else rot-gut beer, which was worse. They went to the heads. All the while, they looked out at nothing but the infinite sea, the only variety coming from its myriad changes of colour from green to blue to grey. Without exception, every man aboard the Jennet had only ever sailed in waters where their ship was out of sight of land for no more than a few days. Now, for the first time, they all came to know the seemingly endless extent of the great ocean, and found themselves in awe of it.
Fortunately, although it was unconscionably slow, the passage was benign. There were no storms such as that which had struck them during the voyage to Tenerife. To the contrary: now it was calms that impeded their progress. Many a day, the winds dropped to little or nothing, and a thick blanket of weed closed around the hulls of the ships. They would barely move for hours, sometimes days, on end, merely drifting forward almost imperceptibly on the ocean current. The air was heavy and cloying. Then the wind would pick up again, sails would be set, and men would gulp in fresh air as though it were the nectar of the gods.
Once a week, one or both of the Stannards were invited to dine with John Hawkins and some of his other officers and gentleman volunteers, a courtesy he extended to his other captains on the other days. Hawkins kept considerable state in his cabin aboard the Jesus, evidently reckoning that it befitted the Queen of England’s admiral – or at least, a man who considered himself as such – to do so. Hence the silver plate from which his guests ate, the fine glasses from which they drank, the liveried pages who served them, and, most remarkable of all, the band of musicians that played during the meal.
Hawkins held forth upon one subject after another, his opinions always couched as though they were facts, with no man willing to contradict him. He spoke much of what King Philip was like, of the state of affairs in France and Flanders, of the evils of the Pope, even of such matters as the state of the roads in England. Jack listened dutifully, half an ear alert to anything that could be construed as worthy of reporting to Francis Walsingham, but it was notable that the one matter Hawkins always avoided was what they might find, and what they might do, in the Indies. The success of the voyage – perhaps, indeed, their very survival – depended on how the Spaniards responded to the arrival of this alien, heretical, interloping fleet in what they considered their own private lake; yet the matter was never even mentioned. After the second or third such meal, Jack came to a conclusion. Either John Hawkins thought their task would be so easy that it was unworthy of discussion, or it was a prospect that even he found too awful to cont
emplate.
* * *
One day, after they had been at sea for two or three weeks, Tom went down into the part of the hold where the slaves were being held. The Jennet was not a large ship by the standards of some of the others in the fleet, and Hawkins had allotted only thirty to her, placing most of the others in the much more commodious hulls of the Jesus, the Minion, the Swallow, and his own William and John.
As he entered their space, Tom was at once overwhelmed by both the stench of human waste and the pairs of eyes that suddenly fixed on him. He looked around. The Jennet’s allocation consisted of seventeen men, six women and seven children, but one of the men had died when they were barely six days out from Sierra Leone, and his body had been unceremoniously slung over the side, he being deemed not worthy of Christian burial. Two of the children were weak, and he could not see them surviving the voyage; but then, they would hardly fetch any great price. A strong chain, secured to bulkheads at either end, fastened the captives to each other at the ankles, and also to the ship. They were taken up on deck for an hour a day, both to exercise themselves and to give a work party the opportunity to clean the space where they were held, a task that had at once become the most hated on the ship. The men of the Jennet looked on them with various expressions in their eyes: contempt from some, fear from others, greed from those who were calculating their likely profit at the voyage’s end, lust from some who spent that hour gazing longingly upon the naked breasts of the women or, in a few cases, on the bodies of the men or boys. In the eyes of some, there might even have been a hint of pity.
Tom Stannard was not sure which of these feelings reigned in his own heart and mind, so his going below decks to consider the slaves more closely was, in that sense, an attempt to know himself better. He looked into the eyes of several of the slaves, trying to deduce what they thought of him, of their condition, of what they believed their eventual fate might be. He saw no hatred there, and no curiosity, either. None of them attempted to throw themselves forward to beg for their freedom. None attempted to speak to him – not that he would have understood a word. One of the children, a boy, clung more tightly to his mother and began to weep softly.
Did they think as he did? Cabral had said they did not, and his terrible fate suggested that, at the very least, these people believed in very different things. Perhaps not, though. Tom remembered, many years before, walking unsteadily from a Westminster alehouse to see the final stages of the burning of a martyr, and observing his sister’s response. England burned men too, the differences being that it supposedly did so in the name of God, and the spectators did not eat the victim.
Did they hate as he did? Oh, most certainly, Tom thought. Witness the fate of the people of Conga, so despised by their enemies that they were slaughtered, handed over to the English or herded into the river. That was a hatred that every man in England could understand. There were still oldsters around Dunwich who spoke of how many men their grandfathers or great-uncles had slaughtered in the wars between York and Lancaster, while even in his own time – perhaps even at that very moment, for all he knew – both the French and the Flemings were witnessing bloody massacres very much like that which had taken place at Conga.
Did they love as he did? The mother’s tenderness towards her child, stroking his hair to calm him, reminded him of Catherine and their sons. But as for other loves, the loves that he felt…
One fellow seemed to be staring at him more intently than the others, and Tom averted his eyes. He made a show of testing the chain, then turned, left the chamber, and went above to breathe some fresh air and stare at the distant horizon.
* * *
Within a week, Tom Stannard obtained conclusive proof that the slaves also sickened and died just as Englishmen did. The first man to succumb was Rob Garwood, one of the brothers who had survived the great storm on the outward voyage. He failed to appear for his watch and was found in the heads, moaning feebly as the bloody flux poured from him. Within two days, he was dead. Half a dozen more of the crew fell ill, together with the same number of slaves. Tom tended them as best he could, using what little knowledge he had gleaned from his aunt and sister; he even had the unfamiliar experience of wishing that Meg was there in that moment, aboard the ship, for she would undoubtedly have had a better idea of what to do. As it was, his treatment consisted of little more than isolating each case as it developed, no easy matter in a relatively small ship; applying damp cloths to their foreheads; and giving them as much as they asked for of water, beer or wine, according to their choice.
The sickness was not confined to the Jennet alone. Word came across of cases in all the ships, including the flagship, and in the fifth week, the Stannards learned of the passing of Edward Dudley, the bluff old soldier.
‘Perhaps it would have been more merciful if Hawkins had fired his weapon that day at Tenerife,’ said Jack, as father and son stood on deck.
‘Dudley was a good man,’ said Tom. ‘A brave soldier, too, and true to his word – mark how loyally he served Hawkins after he was spared.’
The first sign of discontent came from the men’s eyes. Dunwich men were always confident, even with those who were supposedly their betters, but more and more of them looked away, or down to the deck, whenever Tom or Jack Stannard passed. Around the same time, men who were engaged in conversation fell silent when a Stannard came near, and responses to orders became more sullen, the orders themselves being carried out more slowly. Singing in the fo’c’sle at dusk-tide ceased, along with the sound of Tom Bateman’s fiddle. Men became irritable with each other, taking offence at words that would usually have been passed over without remark. Fists were raised, parentages challenged. The Stannards said nothing of it to each other; they knew their crew, and knew that sooner or later, one of them would come forward to present their grievances.
It was Hal Ashby, of all men, who presented himself before Tom Stannard. A gaggle of men stood in the ship’s waist, whispering to each other but clearly willing Ashby onwards. Jack, for his part, leaned upon the starboard rail, determined not to give any impression of undermining his son’s authority.
‘Beg pardon, T— that is, Cap’n Stannard.’ Ashby’s speech was hesitant.
‘Out with it, Hal.’
‘We – that is, the crew – well, truth is, I need to speak frank, like. To putter, if ye’ll permit it.’
To putter: to raise a complaint. Tom smiled. He had not heard the expression since the old times in Dunwich.
‘Hal, you and I have known each other since we were children, searching for bones from the old graves of John’s churchyard at the foot of Dunwich cliff. You’ve always spoken frankly to me, and I don’t expect you to stop because of where we are, or what we do.’
‘Well. So, then. Cap’n, we never expected the voyage to be like this. We’ve always sailed in the seas around England – aye, down to Finisterre or Tenerife mayhap, but never anything like this. When you told us of this voyage, truth be told, we were all blinded by the prospect of coin. The wages we’d earn would be more than we’d get on ten voyages over to Antwerp or Bremen, and then there was all the talk of our share of profits from the cargo once it was sold. They, Cap’n. Once they are sold.’
‘All true enough, Hal – and God willing, all of that will still come to pass.’
‘But that’s the thing. We’re so very far from Dunwich, we’ve been away so very long, and we’re still nowhere near these Indies men talk of. And what profit will there be if them below decks are all dead before we get there? What use our wages if we’re all dead too?’
‘God willing, Hal, the sickness is abating.’
‘But might start again, from them in the hold.’
‘So what is it the men want?’
Hal Ashby swallowed hard. ‘To throw ’em all over the side, Cap’n. To cut our losses and set course directly for England. To return home to Dunwich, Tom Stannard.’
The audacity and callousness of it stunned Tom, who could think of no response. Inste
ad, it was his father who stepped forward.
‘Two things, Hal Ashby.’ Jack spoke loudly, so that the men in the waist could hear. ‘One. You say we should set course directly for England. And how do you propose to do that?’
Ashby looked around to his confederates for support, but saw only shrugs.
‘You – you and Goodman Tom, here – can navigate the ship.’
‘Aye, we can, unlike you. You’re a good enough navigator in coastal waters, Hal Ashby, when you have seamarks to fix on, and even for crossing the German Ocean. But you’ll never master Cabral’s charts, nor the cross-staff, the trailing board, and all the rest. Do you know the stars? Can you tell Orion’s Belt, or the Crab, or the Great and Little Bear?’
‘But I wouldn’t be navigating if you—’
‘Two. If you throw the prisoners over the side, you’d best throw us over, too, for the only way you’ll do that to them is by fighting your way past us. And if we’re food for the fishes, Hal Ashby, then who’s going to steer you back to England, eh?’
Ashby’s jaw was wide open, and he was shaking.
‘Master Stannard—’
‘My ship, Hal Ashby, don’t you forget that,’ said Jack, his voice clipped and angry. ‘So even if by some miracle you do get her back to England, you’ll hang as pirates and murderers, the whole set of you. You know my daughter – and you know she’ll make certain of it.’