Peril on the Sea (18 page)

A
S MORNING ARRIVED, the ship plunging through heavy swells, Highbridge did not die so much as cease to breathe, and a stillness overcame him. His gaunt, thoughtful appearance altered, and he became empty of life.

 

HIGHBRIDGE was buried at sea, accompanied by the service prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer,
We therefore commit his body to the deep
.

The crew had congregated, showing deference and sorrowful attention. They had suffered many injuries—hair was singed off by powder burns, splinters had dashed flesh, and some men had to struggle to stand upright. Many eyes were wet.

Afterward, Fletcher called Sherwin to the quarterdeck. “An epitaph is what Highbridge deserves, something in Latin.” The captain could barely speak, shaken by emotion.

“I cannot write in Latin, Captain,” said Sherwin.

“Of course you can,” insisted Fletcher, red-eyed with anger and sorrow. “What lawyer's son is not taught to tell his
veni
from his
vidi
? Highbridge was the finest sailing man I have ever known, and a forthright friend.”

“Sir, I can read the language,” persisted Sherwin, “but have never tried my hand at writing the Roman tongue.”

“Highbridge will have a stone of carved Latin, and you will make up the words,” insisted Fletcher, speaking now with determination. “I shall give the marble to a country church in Oddington or Appleton, some out-of-the-way village, the sort I told Highbridge he would retire to.”

“As you wish, sir,” said Sherwin, sounding resolute, but doubtful of his own talents.

“He would have hated such quiet towns,” said Fletcher, “all muddy lanes and chimneys. He was blessed with a seaman's death, and that's a gift indeed.” He spoke like a man trying to convince himself.

“But you do not, I hope, plan to give us all such a splendid reward,” Sherwin dared to remark, prompted by some inner apprehension.

“Are you afraid I'll sail you to a watery grave?” asked Fletcher with an unpleasant laugh. “Well, we shall see if you will be so lucky.”

“Captain Fletcher,” spoke up Katharine, “I have an epitaph in Latin, and I recommend it to you.”

“A female prodigy,” said Fletcher, an unpleasant quality in his voice. “My lady Katharine, you honor us.”

“In exchange, you will turn and go back to our point of rendezvous with the
Rosebriar
.”

“Will I?” said Fletcher, not in disagreement so much as wonder. “Will I indeed? Or will I prefer to castigate the Spaniards?”

“
Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re
. It is one of my father's favorite expressions.”

“Pleasing,” said the captain, “and fitting, too. Don't you think. Sherwin?”

“Indeed, sir, a perfect epitaph,” agreed Sherwin, not liking the way the captain's eyes cut one way and then another, in barely suppressed fury.

Mild in manner, mighty in deed
.

 

FLETCHER did not sail west to seek the
Rosebriar
.

For the next three days Captain Fletcher took greater risks, seeking to encounter the enemy, even with his supply of powder and shot entirely gone.

At night the
Vixen
sailed close to the struggling Spaniards, and Fletcher looked on as Drake's ship appeared and vanished, more than once, his
Elizabeth Bonaventure
dousing her stern lights so her famous captain could take prizes, sacking Spanish ships undetected except, as it seemed, by the captain and crew of the
Vixen
.

“He's a viper's pup, that Drake,” breathed Fletcher.

Sherwin overheard the remark, and he thought that the captain could not suppress a certain reluctant esteem.

 

WHAT WAS the captain trying to accomplish?

Katharine asked Sherwin, and he said that he wanted to
defend his country, of course, but the words Sherwin spoke were like homilies he had overheard in the past, nothing like his usual warm, spontaneous remarks. Sherwin was too exhausted to perceive what was happening.

Katharine began to wonder if she was the only one who doubted the captain's motives, and if she was insightful or succumbing to the distress of combat herself. She grew increasingly convinced that, in his angry sorrow, Captain Fletcher wanted to see everyone—every mortal on the earth—eradicated.

The ships at nights were shadowy presences hinted at more than seen. The radiance of burning Spanish vessels was cut into by the silhouettes of seacraft attempting to evade danger, or to seek it.

Fletcher gazed out across the darkness. He spoke to no one, and ate and drank but little. His destructive resolve was not evident unless one observed him closely, and took heed of the judgments he made—and the risks he undertook.

T
HE CAPTAIN was resilient and energetic, and he appeared younger than his years, as though the hunger for revenge at the loss of his friend provided a rejuvenating inner fire.

Sir Gregory, on the other hand, leaned on a shattered matchlock, twenty years older in a few days, and Cecil Rawes, the silent Yorkshireman, staggered through the smoke of the swivel guns, exhausted. Even Sherwin had the etched wrinkles and drawn countenance of a man who had slept little.

But if Katharine's long-absent sister, Mary, breathed any advice, it would have been the quietly urged
Trouble, trouble ahead
. The discharge of heavy ordnance had knocked even more of the oakum from many of the planks, and now the ship creaked from every quarter. These groaning timbers sounded like warnings to Katharine, cautions she would be foolish to ignore.

The
Vixen
continued to dog the Spaniards in their increasing disarray, and when an enemy galleon tried to
escape and plunge south, struggling through the high seas, Fletcher cut across her course, using the relatively slight bulk of the
Vixen
and the threat of hand-to-hand fighting to drive the would-be fugitive back.

Several times the captain challenged oncoming ships. Each time the advancing vessel shifted her sails and set a course that kept her in the disorganized assembly of her fellow countrymen. And each time this happened, Katharine was convinced that the captain swore under his breath and stamped his booted feet, sorry that the ships had not come together in a grand and mutually destructive collision.

Her suspicions were finally confirmed when the
Vixen
encountered a huge vessel, one of seven or eight hundred tons, and decorated with pennons and flags, the insignia of the aristocrats and knights who manned her.

This grand galleon broke from the Armada and parted the seas directly toward the smaller
Vixen
. And the captain gave a quiet signal:
Stay
.

Stay as we are, directly in her path.

 

NEITHER SHIP altered course.

Foreign sailors were visible, scarlet sleeves and highly polished armor, with pistols on tripods, the firearms being aimed, steadied, and, as they came into range, fired. The ship stubbornly drew closer, and the
Vixen
did nothing to alter her position, remaining squarely before the looming Spaniard.

The galleon's shadow arrived first, and the smell of her,
not unpleasant so much as novel—a whiff of freshly planed, perfumed wood amid the odor of gunpowder, and pleasing cooking spices, unlike the pitch and sulfur funk of most English ships.

The larger craft slammed the
Vixen
and rocked the smaller vessel, but the impact took place when a swell had lifted both ships, so that the Spanish galleon was approaching up a long slope of water and the English vessel was sliding down the other side.

Even so, the shock was great, and gun carriages shrilled belowdecks, men falling despite their ample preparation. The captain kept a grip on the rails of the quarterdeck, but Sherwin staggered, and searched for something to hang on to as the deck continued to slant. Only the gunwale kept Sherwin from sliding overboard, as Katharine, clinging to the rails near the captain, called out.

The Spanish vessel mounted the side of the
Vixen
, the keel groaning across the gunwales, and with an inexorable logic the upper deck of the
Vixen
began to break down, splinters spinning, the wooden structures giving a shrill, nearly living screech.

The
Vixen
was forced into the sea, her deck awash with water. As Katharine held on to the quarterdeck rail and the captain drew his sword, the English ship went all but under the larger ship with a groan, shuddering and creaking, ratlines trembling. The Spaniards themselves, far from attacking, were more intent on hanging on themselves, cursing the English in their foreign tongue.

Perhaps it was the sight of Katharine, mantled but clearly visible, clinging to the quarterdeck rail, that added to the Spanish hesitation to board and begin hand-to-hand battle. Perhaps the weariness that stunned the English had also altered the will of these would-be invaders. But as the
Vixen
at last spun sideways, the buoyancy of the smaller vessel asserting itself, the Spaniards gazed at their English counterparts with expressions that mirrored Katharine's horror.

A Spanish helmet flashed, a plume flourished in the wind, and a figure on the foreign quarterdeck lifted his hand in a salute, both admiring and dismissive, relieved to be rid of the privateer.

“Fletcher,” called a Spanish voice, in surprise, but with the kind of pleasure people feel when they see someone they have beheld only in woodcuts.

At the sound of his own name the captain snapped his sword back into its sheath with an air of satisfaction.

Fletch-air
.

The same voice added, in labored, heavily accented English, as though the unfamiliar phrase was quaintly courteous and amounted to a kind of salute: “Captain Fletcher, burn in hell.”

Fletcher could not suppress a smile.

 

KATHARINE COULD NOT contain her fury now.

“My father commissioned this vessel,” she told Fletcher. “You are under contract with my family.”

“What use is such an agreement here?” asked the captain.

The ship wallowed, masts swaying and creaking, the vessel recovering from the impact, but slowly, a living, ill-treated creature.

“Captain, I formally request,” said Katharine, “that you do everything in your power to intercept the
Rosebriar
.”

Captain Fletcher straightened his sleeves and brushed the sea foam from the heavy wool. He reached out and brushed a fleck of brine from Katharine's mantle with his gloved hand.

“My duties are legion,” he said, iron in his voice, “and I shall neglect none of them.”

“Your ship has fought well, and with honor. The Spanish are very nearly ruined. Will you fight until we are all destroyed?”

He gave her a severe smile but said nothing further.

She had a swift insight into what would motivate the man. “How much more of my family money do you want?” she persisted, so filled with feeling that she could not keep her voice from trembling. “If one-third of the
Rosebriar
's payload will not convince you to live up to your contract, will forty percent? Or as much as half?”

“If your ship reaches the Cornish coast at all, my dear,” said Fletcher, “I can seize her and keep everything.”

“My father and I need at least half of the proceeds to make good our debts,” said Katharine. “But I can offer you my own person as hostage against future payments, if you promise to treat me honorably.”

He swept her with a glance that was animated by sexual awareness. His answer was tempered by a knowledge of the responsibilities and challenges involved in maintaining a baronet's daughter both inviolate and secure. “Fortunately for both of us, Lady Katharine, I am not a dragon.”

“Are you not?” she heard herself say, in a voice charged with feeling. “Will my prayers be of thanksgiving that God put my life in your care, or entreaties for deliverance from your grasp?”

The crew was listening, as sailors will, pausing in their hurried efforts to steady the ship. Sherwin approached the quarterdeck, looking shaken by the collision, but flushed with relieved vitality. He stopped in his tracks when he caught the full meaning of Katharine's question.

“Two-thirds,” said Fletcher in a low voice only she could hear. “Promise me two-thirds, Lady Katharine, and I'll sail west to seek the
Rosebriar
.”

That was too much, she knew.

The price was too high, and yet she had no choice. Besides, the remaining one-third would still do much to restore the Fairleigh larder, and it would pay for the return of house servants, with enough, perhaps, left over for a thriving flock of geese.

Furthermore, Katharine had grown aware of the captain's complexities. He had read the burial service like a man who believed in God, and he looked upon her now as a man with tender feelings, as well as greed.

“Why not take it all?” she said.

 

I COULD, thought Fletcher.

But even as he was about to utter this threat, the captain felt an unseen companion nearby, breathing
Honor, honor
.

Ah, Highbridge, Fletcher nearly said aloud.

You are reminding me that I am not such a sinner.

Fletcher gave Katharine a smile and a bow, dismissing her courteously. She left his side. One of the reasons he wanted her out of his sight was that she reminded him too well of the young woman in the Fairleigh courtyard. He could love Katharine, embrace her and keep her, and this awareness made him feel protective.

The first threat she would have to be guarded against was his own. He saw her high regard for Sherwin and felt the ancient commander's ruse commend itself: how to put the aspiring historian and poet increasingly in the way of danger.

He motioned to Sherwin now, inviting him on the quarterdeck, and the young man had overheard enough to feel anxious.

“You would not strike a cruel agreement with Lady Katharine, would you, Captain?” asked Sherwin with that quality of assertiveness and optimism that the captain so appreciated. “After all, you wouldn't want the story of your life to be entitled
Avarice
.”