Ship of Fire (18 page)

“They have our range, Admiral,” said Captain Foxcroft.

Chapter 44

Ahead of us the English pinnaces were braving the passage past the fortification that defended the mouth of the harbor. The
Golden Lion
sailed right behind them, the water around her punished by the guns on the hillside, and the first shots from the fortress. Scribbles of smoke appeared everywhere along the shore closest to us, harquebus fire snapping across the water, smacking our hull.

Many of the harquebusiers, it seemed, had saved their powder for the passage of the admiral's vessel, harrying us as we brought up the rear of our escaping fleet. Angry wasps snapped through the air, gunshots humming through our rigging, barking splinters from our mainmast, answered by musket fire from our maindeck.

Ross Bagot reported to our captain that our gun deck cannons could not be raised to fire upward, into the high hillside battery. Jack Flagg and the tough-sinewed Chubbs deployed our quarterdeck gun, but it was plain even to my landsman's eye that the few maindeck guns we could bring into play were weak compared with the weapons dug in on both shores.

Soldiers who had hurried to take positions along the rocky shore now leveled firearms across their tripods, and took aim. When they vanished behind a sudden screen of smoke, vague figures reeling with the recoil, their shots spanked our canvas and rattled across our deck.

Ahead of us the
Golden Lion
was exchanging fire with the fortified battery at the harbor mouth. The beautiful warship shuddered, splinters rising and spinning into the sky as we watched. A cannon rose off her deck, flung high into the air and falling, from our distant vantage point, like a length of dark kindling back among her crew.

Captain Foxcroft proved a capable sailing man, teasing enough power from the wind to bring us past the blazing battery, our prow parting bits of broken timber from our sister ship. And we gained further speed as we loosed a broadside, our shots punching the stone face of the fortress. Dust rose from the puncture stars on the blue-stone walls as the Spanish gunners, the very men who the previous day had watched us sail by with no show of hostility, now rammed home charges and fired them with a frenzy.

But our ship's sails were full now, shaken out and swelling with the wind, a good breeze at our stern. We were too weary to raise a cheer, but the land began to fall away from us, the beach and the playful surf spreading wide on either side as we gained the open water, sea swells sending spray over our deck. The air was free of smoke and the stink of smoldering freight, and seabirds danced overhead.

The
Golden Lion
came-to, well out of the harbor, waiting for us in the easy waters ahead.

She had an ugly hole amidships and her gunports were smashed, but her rigging and masts looked, to my eye, largely intact. Our vessel swept close to her sister ship, every one of us straining forward to take in the sight of fellow mariners and fighting men, their faces, too, besmirched and etched with weariness.

A call was lifted from the
Golden Lion
, words I could not make out, followed by others, the message lost to me as a sea swell broke over our ship, a sudden bath of cold but welcome sea water.

Captain Foxcroft stepped before me to say, “Master surgeon, I'll have a crew row you across.”

I must have gaped stupidly.

The captain had to peer into my eyes with a look of concern and expand his message. “Their master gunner has taken hurt, Tom,” he said, speaking as though experienced in communicating with battle-stunned men. “A shot has smashed his leg, and—between us—their ship's surgeons are worse than helpless.”

I nodded, as though I understood perfectly, but remained rooted to the spot.

Admiral Drake put his hand on my shoulder. “Their master gunner needs a surgeon, Tom, or he will die.”

Chapter 45

Vice-Admiral Borough met me as I scrambled onto the ship.

I was half-drenched with sea water from my brief passage between the vessels, and my awkward climb up the side. Standing beside the vice-admiral was the red-mustached sergeant William and I had seen on that distant evening in London—it seemed a lifetime ago—gazing down from this very ship.

Vice-Admiral Borough offered me a bleak glance, and in a voice leaden with pessimism said, “You should have a look at what's happened.” Hercules, carrying my surgeon's satchel, followed me into the surgeon's cabin.

I was appalled at what I found there.

The drink-stunned surgeon of the
Golden Lion
was prostrate on the floor of his cabin, outfitted in a leather apron and the round leather cap of a medical man, but unable to do more than lift his head and mumble. His mate was little better, propped in a corner in an enfeebled state. Red wine and vomit stained the floor around them.

Hercules attended to both men. “This one is drunk, sir,” he reported. “And this one is also drunk.”

My patient lay on the scarred pine-plank table, and he was in a terrible state.

A ligature had been applied to the leg above the master gunner's knee, as was proper, but the binding was too loose to pinch off the flow of blood. A first cut with a bone saw had been made, the skin parted and bleeding, and the injured man was struggling to sit up.

I worked quickly.

As I refastened the binding around his leg, tightening it, I had Hercules press a flask of aqua vitae to my patient's lips. The gunner was a strongly built man with a brown beard and powder burns, tiny black spots, seared into his features. His hands were clammy, but his pulse was strong.

“It was a culverin-shot,” said the gunner, his lips trembling with pain, “one of the long Spanish cannon.” The right leg was beyond saving, crushed so badly its mangled condition itself helped prevent bleeding. The gunner seized my arm imploringly, his eyes asking a question he could not put into words.

“We'll see you alive,” I said, “and back in England.”

“Are my mates unhurt?” the gunner was asking as I seized the handle of the mallet.

I brought the tool down just so, a firm tap, like a glazier freeing glass from a church window. Just that amount of force, and nothing more, and my patient fell back upon the table.

I selected one of my master's own bone saws, made by a blade smith in Whitechapel. I breathed a prayer to Our Lord that a wayward sinner might nonetheless be an implement of His will, words I had heard my master speak on occasions similar to this.

I lifted the saw.

And I could not use it.

Chapter 46

Hercules stared at me expectantly.

But I was frozen, unable to put the teeth of this fine-steel saw into the flesh of the patient before me. I had never performed an amputation. I never would. All along I had been lucky in my medical challenges, able to meet the demands that had come my way.

But this operation was beyond me. My palms were wet, my vision blurred, my own poverty of talent and courage exposed.

I parted my lips, about to apologize to Hercules. You are apprentice to a novice, I wanted to say. It's your misfortune, Hercules, but that's the plain truth.

Be quick, Tom
.

I heard my master's voice as clearly as the creak and groan of the ship's timbers around me.

“You don't have to worry about me,” said Hercules, interrupting my inward thoughts.

I blinked.

“The sight of a cut-off leg,” said Hercules, “won't bother me, sir, very much at all.”

Tom
—
it's as easy as kiss-the-duchess
.

It was easy for a man who heard mermaids speak, I wanted to tell him.

All too easy for a gentleman and scholar who should have known that guns sometimes explode.

To my surprise my hands knew what to do, acting without my will—as though my master guided them.

I cut off the injured leg above the knee, working speedily. Hercules attended me, as I instructed, lying over my patient's middle to keep his body from rolling with the easy motions of the ship. The ligature was well tied—there was little bleeding. The wet sap of living bone clotted the teeth of the saw but did not dull them, and the amputation was done before I could further doubt myself.

Vice-Admiral Borough visited my patient when I had made the gunner comfortable, dosed with tincture of opium. All evidence of the previous botched surgery, including the two surgeons, had been removed and mopped, the severed limb wrapped in linen and secured in my satchel.

The vice-admiral gave a nod as he examined the clean bandages I had applied, and the tidy order I had made of the cabin, mustard roots and dental-pinchers restored to their shelves.

“Well done, surgeon,” he said.

I accompanied the vice-admiral to the quarterdeck, the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
not a bowshot away from us. She was indeed a handsome warship. Admiral Drake leaned against the quarterdeck rail, and even at this distance I could see him rising and falling on his tiptoes, looking my way and running his hand over the rail impatiently.

Drake lifted a hand, gesturing,
Hurry!

Chapter 47

A gale rose just as I bid farewell to Vice-Admiral Borough.

The swells were deepening, the boat crawling up the face of one wave, and down the back of another. A storm was brewing.

The oarsmen gritted their teeth, rowing hard. As we approached, the faces of Jack Flagg and Anne peered anxiously down at me. The
Elizabeth Bonaventure
rose high and then plunged, nearly capsizing the boat and its crew of oarsmen.

Hercules carried the surgeon's satchel, with its additional burden. Even so encumbered, Hercules was able to clamber easily up the ladder of webbed cordage. But now the boat groaned against the hull of our ship, an abyss opening and shutting between our boat and the warship.

The boat's crew rowed frantically, escaping, leaving me positioned like a spider on the warship's hull. I dangled, clinging to the webbing with numb fingers. Seamen called out to me, and Anne's voice joined them, but I was strengthless against the plunge of the ship, seas rising up and surrounding me, and nearly dragging me off the side.

I did not belong at sea, I reminded myself with a shuddering laugh, and this was further evidence.

I closed my eyes and hung on. And as I clung to the side of the ship, I heard a voice.

Thomas
.

In the fume and toss of the sea, wasn't there a shape, off in the vapor spinning through the wind? A mermaid, as surely as I was flesh and bone, a green, half-seen figure spinning, gone.

Jack Flagg and Anne reached steadying arms, until I set my feet on the deck of the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
.

About the Author

Michael Cadnum is the author of thirty-five books for adults and young adults. His work—which includes thrillers, suspense novels, historical fiction, and books about myths and legends—has been nominated for the National Book Award (
The Book of the Lion
), the Edgar Award (
Calling Home
and
Breaking the Fall
), and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (
In a Dark Wood
). A former National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is also the author of award-winning poetry.
Seize the Storm
(2012) is his most recent novel.

Michael Cadnum lives in Albany, California, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by Michael Cadnum

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1970-5

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com