Ship of Fire (6 page)

We had sworn a solemn oath of loyalty to both Her Majesty and to the Lord Admiral himself. We had vowed to watch and learn, as only a doctor and his assistant can, the nature of our famous charge, the admiral of the war-fleet, Drake himself. I knew in one corner of my mind that this sacred promise could violate that trust a patient should have in his physician. If Drake fell ill and in his fever babbled confessions, we were bound to betray him.

I had wondered, too, at our great urgency, hurried into a pinnace before the night was out with only the clothes on our backs. A hasty message was sent in the darkest hour of night to Martin Frizer, a doctor with chambers near Moorgate, and the round-cheeked physician, cowled and armed with a silver-hilted sword, arrived breathless at the summons. One glance at the ready-to-depart Lord Admiral, and an earnest plea from my master, and Martin Frizer promised to preserve the life of our patient Titus Cox “as God gives me the power.”

I had not been able to bid farewell to dark-haired Jane, or give the chambers that had been my home anything more than a hurried backward glance. All was haste, a solitary rat darting across Fenchurch Street as pikemen escorted us through the night-stunned city toward a wherry that hurried us toward the Admiralty docks. My master had explained that Drake and the Lord Admiral were working fast to complete the fleet and sail before the Queen, who was more changeable than weather, could withdraw her permission for the voyage.

I gave none of this a thought now as our pinnace took on speed, her ropes taut, the cheerful seaman at the helm calling out that if we kept this pace we'd catch the
Golden Lion
on her course for Plymouth. Mudhens along the river bank scurried awkwardly, and a chalk white horse watched us pass, our wake stirring the reeds.

We were the sole gentle passengers on this ship, but there was a crew and a cargo, bales of straw packed into the hold, and small wooden kegs, each marked with a red daub I recognized as the Admiralty's insignia. These barrels were ranked in tight rows, and held tightly in place by the straw. There were so many of these kegs that the hatch could not be closed, and bits of straw spun off into the wind. I would have taken the containers to be rare wines, knowing that sailors enjoyed their drink whether land-bound or at sea, except that the barrels were double-lashed with new black iron hoops, thick and sturdy.

My master took a cup of morning wine with the vessel's captain, a short-legged mariner with a well-trimmed beard. I asked a young man spreading a thick canvas over the hatch, protecting the kegs from the rising spray, what the nature of our cargo might be.

He laughed. “Such a cargo as could carry us well, sir, and carry us far, all the way into the sky.” He extended his explanation by adding, “Such cargo as could turn us into carrion, sir.”

At that moment the canvas flapped, a great, breathy thunder, caught by a sudden wind. The captain gave a great cry, and the canvas would have taken off across the river if I had not reached for it, fumbled, and held on.

I kept a grip on the edge, and stretched the canvas tight while a seaman tied it into place.

“Well done, sir,” said the young man. He leaned close to me. “Our hold is stuffed with gunpowder,” he said. “Black as hearth dust and packed tight in kegs, for the culverins and serpentines of the fleet.”

I nodded, as though I quite naturally understood such matters—which in part I did. Culverins were cannon of great girth, made for lobbing shot high and far. Serpentines were long-barreled guns. I had seen—and heard—gunnery practice in London just outside Bishopsgate, the bronze and iron pieces primed and fired with volumes of blue smoke, and I had dreamed of firing such a gun myself some day.

But this was real gunpowder, not the stuff of my imaginings, and it was packed under our feet. “It's safely stored, I see,” I offered with the air of a man who cares nothing for his own safety.

“Nothing in the nature of gunpowder is safe, sir,” said my new friend with a laugh. “I've seen a cask of new-mixed fine-grain blow up as soon as sunlight hit it. No, sir, you'd be wise to pray the straw doesn't heat up in the hold, and blast us to Gravesend.”

It was true that decaying straw, like manure in a pile, can ferment and grow warm. But I doubted that this clean straw could flicker into flame. My skepticism was confirmed by the twinkle in my new friend's eye.

“I'll work hard to surmount my fear,” I said in the dry tone I had heard my master use on men of heavy wit.

My new friend laughed again. “I'm called Jack Flagg,” he said. “I've signed on aboard the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
as a gunner's mate.” He was my age, with a youthfully wispy beard, like mine, both of us trying to compete with the full sets of well-trimmed whiskers sported by the older men around us. He was liberally freckled, on both his face and his hands, and his eyes were sharp blue. Bruises marred his lively features, especially around his left eye, and his lower lip was swollen. His knuckles were scuffed, his right hand puffy, and I wondered if this injury had caused him trouble, grappling with the canvas.

I introduced myself, and wanted to add: and I have cured fevers and picked a splinter from a gunner's eye.

Jack squared the long, tasseled cap he wore more squarely on his head and said, “We have both corn powder, coarse-grained, and serpentine powder, fine as sifted flour, but a gentleman like yourself is safe enough. It's the gunners who risk their lives, sir, not a scholarly surgeon's mate, such as yourself.”

I had noticed that kind-hearted seamen in the tavern often took an attitude toward me that was both respectful and patronizing. Respectful because I was the son of a gentleman, and assistant to a gentle doctor, and because I could read both Latin and English. But patronizing because they had sailed before the wind, ice-daggers glittering in the rigging, while I had been studying learned treatises on the varieties of vomit.

Jack went on, “I was sent to the arsenal to collect this shipment of powder, and make sure it didn't get wet.”

I envied this young man, still unable to sprout a full beard and yet entrusted with such an important duty.

“I would have disembarked last night,” he added, “but I had my wits knocked out of my head by a giant and three of his mates outside the Red Rose Inn.” He lowered his voice and confided, “I cannot drink wine or beer without swelling up in a fighting mood.”

This explained the bruises, where someone's right fist had found its target. And it further impressed me. This was a youth of spirit, already a man of the world. To further dampen my pride, I had stowed my rapier in a large chest, near the sea bag that held spare stockings and my cloak. Jack Flagg sported a seaman's dirk—a short, all-purpose knife in a leather sheath at his hip.

“But no doubt you have had many medical adventures,” said Jack warmly, perhaps recognizing that his personal accounts had put me in his shadow. “You've certainly stuffed wounds with gun-wadding in your time, and sawn off limbs by the dozen.”

I looked aft, to make certain I was out of earshot of my master, and lied. “I've cut off more legs than I can count.”

“Have you then?” said Jack, his eyes wide with respect.

“Of course,” I added, and as I spoke I reached out to a strand of rigging, fine-woven rope, to steady myself against the bucking of our vessel. It was not strictly an untruth. I had cut off none.

A voice called out from the helm, a husky bawl, “Hands off the sheets, sir,” someone directed me, “lest you spoil her trim.” Or words to that effect—the accent was strange to my ear and the sailing terms all but foreign.

Jack clapped a hand on the rail.

“Keep your balance,” he said, with every show of kindness, “like this.”

With spray in my eyes, I suffered the indignity of being shown how to hang on to a rail.

Chapter 11

The two days we spent sailing from the mouth of the Thames along the coast westward to Plymouth were celebrated by the crew of our pinnace as a speedy voyage, and well favored by the wind. Before noon on the first day we passed the
Golden Lion
cutting a pretty wake but slower than our vessel. Her sailors called out greetings.

For me it was a time spent seasick, so much so that I found a place in the prow, and let the wind refresh my spirits. My master, too, looked pale as pudding, and he said this was to be expected until “like old sailors we goat-foot around the deck.”

He was right—I was feeling hale and seaman-like by the time we reached Plymouth.

The harbor was crowded with ships' boats and barges, packet boats for carrying messages, and carracks for delivering freight. The warships themselves were packed close, robust, brightly painted vessels, each ship a towering web of rigging, sails tight-furled. Rumor was that privateers raked the coast, legalized pirates of several nations. Merchants and fishermen alike had hurried into harbor, grateful for the protection of the Queen's fighting ships.

I tried to spy our flagship—and our famous admiral—but could make out little in the crowd of shipping. I had seen Drake himself once or twice before, from a great distance. His river-boat had been pointed out to me, a long, low vessel painted red and gold, with silk pennants fluttering, carrying the famous red-whiskered mariner to Parliament, where he served. I had remarked to myself more than once that we were alike in the coloring of our hair, an unusual carrot-bright hue, and that we both hailed from the same West Country moorlands.

Our pinnace, propelled by oars, threaded through the crowd of ships' tenders and shallops, vessels used to carry messages from shore to ship. The harbor was at first glance haphazard, frigates nearly tangling with warships. But soon a brisk pattern emerged, and by the time we glided toward the inner harbor what had seemed chaos now looked like a well-ordered hive, ships' provisions lined along the distant wharf, barrels being lowered into lighters—supply boats—and the sing-song of orders being called out in every anchored hull we passed.

We approached a vessel painted a dazzling black and white, the scent of fresh paint in the air. The
Elizabeth Bonaventure
was a big ship. She had proud castles fore and aft, but her appearance was sleek, her newly pitched rigging hanging dark and stiff in the gray afternoon. Her masts were festooned with flags and pennons, none of them stirring—except one.

This flag toyed with the wind, emblazoned with a red-winged dragon, its talons wrapped around the globe.

It was the crest of Sir Francis Drake.

Chapter 12

“Heave hard there,” a voice sang out, “or she'll crush us all flat.”

Hovering over the ship, and high above our pinnace, a wooden crane lowered a large crate. The load shuddered downward, shadow swaying. Through the slats of the crate, rows of cannon balls gave off a dull, leaden gleam.

“Saker balls,” said Jack Flagg at my side. I recognized the pleasant smile he gave me, an expert showing off his special knowledge. “The saker uses smaller shot than most guns, although the falconets aboard this ship will fire the smallest shot of all, the size of pigeons' eggs.”

My heart quickened.

I had, in years past, played at war with my friends among the pig-troughs and millponds, flailing away with a wooden sword. Now I doubted the wisdom of entrusting my life to such a fighting vessel. I gazed upward, my ears alive with the sounds of orders, quick-barked commands, and the rhythmic songs of men heaving, and heaving again.

A high-pitched metal whistling rose and fell, a sweet but plaintive signal which I recognized from my own dock-side wanderings as a boatswain's call. I thrilled at this sour music, even as I hesitated, unsure how to clamber up the ladder of knotted rope that had been flung down to us.

“Come along, Tom,” called my master eagerly, already up and over the wale of the ship high above.

I climbed upward, laboring, using the webbed cordage as a foothold, hand over hand. I slipped twice, and Jack Flagg reached back to help me.

My friend would have said something welcoming, or perhaps cheerfully challenging—his eyes were alight with friendship. But a ferocious voice demanded that if he did not stow every keg of powder in the magazine by dark he'd be “flayed alive and rolled in salt.”

The gray-haired master gunner gave a wry smile, the corners of his mouth turned down, as though to soften his speech, but he made an unmistakable gesture: hurry! Jack vanished back into the pinnace at once, and soon the kegs were handed up and carried across by a chain of men, into the ship's hold.

It was all so strange to my eyes and ears, and so ripe with danger—from the powder kegs to the pikes carried by the soldiers—that I was afraid to make a move, sure that I would be impaled on some dirk or grappling hook. The gray-cloaked soldiers handed firearms down into the hold carefully. They were harquebusses—portable weapons made to be held against the shoulder, and discharged into an enemy.

As I watched, a load of shot, blue-black and round, broke free from a crate and struck a long, slim-barreled gun on the main deck with a resounding report. The stoutly built gunner let forth a bellow, and men scampered after the rolling shot, seizing the offending balls as they made their way heavily across the deck. The master gunner knelt beside the long-barreled gun and examined it carefully. He ran his finger along the seam where, at some point in the past, smiths had joined the two halves of this formidable weapon.

A dark-haired gentleman with a well-trimmed beard separated from a group of seamen. He took a coin-sized object from an inner pocket and held it in the flat of his hand, adjusting his stance to catch the sunlight. He returned the miniature sun-dial to his pocket and made his way toward us, eyeing us as he came, a smile of greeting fixed upon his face, his eyes alight with inquiry.

“I am Sam Foxcroft, the ship's master,” he announced himself simply. “I'm just in receipt of word from the Admiralty regarding our newly appointed medical men.”