The Roots of Betrayal (5 page)

Rogation Sunday, May 7

Clarenceux was awake early with the sound of wind and rain. He slipped out of the bed and opened the shutters on his side of the chamber. There was no glass here; only the front windows of the house were glazed. The wind spat rain in his face. Dark clouds above the heavy downpour were moving rapidly across the sky. He left the shutters part closed to stop the rain entering.

Awdrey blinked, sat up, and rubbed her eyes. She let her arms fall across the linen counterpane and watched as he poured water from the ewer into the basin to wash his face and hands.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.” He heard a child laughing in the next chamber. “That was a good night's sleep.”

“We needed it,” she replied. “You are often grumpy when you are tired.”

“Thankfully I am married to the most understanding woman in the world.”

He took off his shirt and threw it to one side. Lifting a fresh one from his clothes chest, he pulled it over his head, and took a pair of clean hosen. His velvet doublet was laid over a pole nearby. He buckled his shoes, tied his lace ruff, and went through to check on their daughters—just as a crack of thunder split the distant sky.

Mildred was awake and sitting up in her cot, trying to climb out. Annie was out of bed, playing with two wooden dolls on the floor.

“Good morning, sir,” Annie said when she saw him. “Was that thunder?”

“Yes, Annie. It looks as though the Lord wishes that we get wet on our way to church. But go and see your mother.” He lifted Mildred from her cot and let her walk unsteadily through to the next chamber, holding his finger. He saw Annie climbing onto the bed, cuddling her mother as she lay there, listening to the rain. “Good girl, Millie, walk to your mother. That's good.” A flash of lightning lit up the chamber for a moment. He counted to twelve before he heard the thunder. “Annie, come now, it is time we should be getting ready for church.”

“Do we have to go?” Annie whined. “It is raining.”

“Yes, we most certainly do have to go. It's Rogation Sunday. And it is the Lord's will that it rain today.”

“What is Rog…Rogazing—that day you said?”

“It is the day when we ask for God's mercy and for Him to bless the corn in the fields and the animals in the pastures. And people who properly obey God's laws do not eat but follow solemn processions led by priests in purple clothes. We ask that the good Lord sends rain, so our crops will grow well.”

She looked up at him. “Will you wear purple clothes?”

Clarenceux smiled. “No, Annie, I am not a priest.”

Joan, the maidservant, came up the stairs from where she had been preparing the kitchen fire ready for the cook later. She made a small bow. “Godspeed, sir. How is it with you?”

“Good day, Joan. All is well,” answered Clarenceux. “We are just getting ready.”

A shutter banged in the wind on a house nearby. “Can we wear purple clothes?” Annie asked Awdrey.

An hour later Clarenceux led his wife, two children, and maidservant in their traveling copes through the hard rain and wind to the nearby church of St. Bride, just off Fleet Street. As a parish church it was Protestant, but as it was their parish church, Clarenceux felt his family needed to make an appearance. He knew that those who did not—“recusants” as they were called—only drew attention to themselves. They were all dressed in their best clothes, even little Mildred. Thomas, the cook, and the stable boys stayed at the house. Someone had to. Thieves thanked God for church services.

In London the rain was a mere inconvenience. It meant that there would be mud in the streets tomorrow. Women who had hoped that they could have dried their laundry would be disappointed. Messengers knew they would have to ride a little slower. In the Channel, however, the weather meant hardship and death. As it was a Sunday, most fishing vessels were neither at sea nor about to set out. But for a few ships, including the
Davy
, the weather spelled danger. The sea heaved in great waves that left boats bobbing like corks on the surface. The rain prevented sailors from seeing the rigging clearly—and if they fell from a height onto the deck, they could expect to break their backs or necks. If they fell into the sea, the chances of them ever grabbing hold of a rope were very slim. Most men and boys who fell overboard in a storm were not missed until after the danger had abated.

Off the Kent coast, William Gray knew it was going to be tight. The timbers of the
Davy
groaned as he wiped the spray of a wave from his face and yelled at the boys and men in the rigging. But moment by moment, as he swayed with the deck and cursed the clouds, he saw that his change of direction was slowly bringing him nearer to safe harbor. The people he had to deliver to Southampton would be very sick, but that would be the limit of their problems. As soon as the storm abated, he would press on, hoping to reach Southampton on the tenth.

One hundred and fifty miles southwest, things were very different for the
Nightingale
. A galleass built thirty years earlier, she was nearing the end of her useful life. She had been built in England, captured by the Scots, recaptured by the English in 1544 and converted into a galleon, then captured by the French in 1552, and finally seized by Raw Carew in the Bay of Biscay two years ago. Now her deck leaked, her hull was so patched as to render her barely seaworthy, and her hold was waist-deep in water. The eight cannon she carried were worth more than the rest of the boat. That was why Carew particularly wanted to bring her ashore in Southampton. It was one of the few ports where he could dock her and disembark the cannon without her majesty's officers arresting him. The only problem was Captain James Parkinson, the constable of Southampton Castle and captain of Calshot Fort. He exercised a loose extortion business on the town, charging merchants' ships a toll for passing Calshot into Southampton Water. That was the way of things in these parts. For Carew it was both a good thing and a bad one. It meant a vicious rule from an unpredictable brigand with royal protection, but this was the safest port for miles around. The next one he could call home was near-lawless Dartmouth. Only in these two places could he offload ordnance and find a purchaser who would ask no questions.

Now, as the thunder rolled above them, the main mast snapped, crashing down on the deck, and Carew knew that the
Nightingale
would never see land again. Loosening the rope binding him to the sterncastle, he let go of the whipstaff and tried to get to the hatch. Suddenly the vessel heeled to one side; he slipped and was almost washed overboard as a great wave crashed down on the deck. Grabbing hold of a rope that had fallen with the main mast, he held on until the ship righted itself, and scrambled back to the hatch. Crawling inside, into the darkness of the main deck, with the wind still howling above his head, he stumbled toward the center of the boat, feeling his way past frightened people to where the main mast traveled down through the main deck to the orlop deck below.

“Are there any lights left?” he shouted, holding on to the metal ring around the base of the main mast, where lanterns were normally fastened.

“They went out the first time we heeled over.”

There was a flash of lightning from above. “Is there anyone on the deck below?”

No one answered. All around were cries and groans. “Is the ship sinking?” called a woman's voice. “What are we going to do?”

Carew could hear the note of panic. “I'm going down to make sure there's no one below,” he said calmly. In reality his mind was filled with two words: the name of a ship that had haunted him all his life, the name of the ship on which his father had drowned.
Mary
Rose
. But now was not the moment to let his fear overcome him.

He felt his way beyond the stem of the main mast and started crawling toward the opening down to the orlop deck when another mighty wave smashed against the side of the vessel. She heeled over perilously, sending people, belongings, flagons, swords, platters, stools, lanterns, musical instruments, chests, and everything else on the main deck crashing to the port side. A demi-culverin broke away from its fastening and slid back, crushing a man against the side, breaking his pelvis and leg so that he started screaming in agony and fear. This time the ship did not right herself. She was listing, at about twenty degrees to port.

Carew cursed and pressed on to find the hatch down to the orlop deck. Pulling it open, he shouted down into the darkness. “Anyone down here?” No one answered. He could still hear the wind from above but there was another, more ominous sound—oak timbers grinding against one another and the rushing and splashing of the sea. Reaching out and feeling the ladder, and gripping it to make sure it was still firm, he started to descend. Five steps down his foot plunged into cold water.

The ship took another battering, sending her further over so that she was now listing at about thirty degrees. Nothing could save her now. “Is anyone down here?” yelled Carew. “If there is, call out.” Another wave shook the ship. Carew wiped his soaked face and started to climb back up into the main deck. “Gather above,” he called to everyone there. “We are abandoning this ship. Take nothing with you that you are not already holding. The ship is sinking. Gather on”—a wave crashed through the hatch, soaking him and filling his mouth with salt water—“on deck.”

“Captain, I can't move,” yelled the man whose leg had been smashed by the cannon. “Don't let me drown, please don't let me drown, for the love of God, please, Mr. Carew! Don't leave me here!”

Supporting himself by holding on to the side of the ship, Carew shouted back, “I have no love for God, Stephen, but I do for you, as I do for all my men.” He hoped the man would not see him draw the knife in the dim light. He bent forward and, holding the man's cheek close to his own, he kissed him—then cut his throat.

Another wave broke over the ship and Carew was flung across the man's dying body and the frame of the demi-culverin. He pushed himself back and got to his feet, still holding the knife. He sheathed it and steadied himself against the wall of the ship as he watched men climb the ladder up onto the deck for what they knew would be the last time. He waited for the last to go. And waited too long.

The fear crept up on him faster than the water as he leaned against the mast. The dark sea swamped his eyes and sank through his mouth and nostrils, filling every crevice of his body and stopping him breathing: a sea of pure fear. The next moment he was drowning in that same fear, his body neither at the surface nor at the depths of the sea, lashing out, struggling against his father's fate, which had washed over him ever since he was four years of age.

Another wave broke through and struck his face, bringing him to his senses. It washed around his feet—but then he realized it was not the wave. The water had risen through the orlop deck and was sucking the ship down. “Are all gone, all from down here?” He waited a moment longer and then jumped for the ladder as the eddies of water swept around the mast, sending the chests and wooden things floating up behind him.

The ship lurched suddenly as another wave broke over the deck. It was listing now at sixty degrees. Carew could see men in the water. Hugh Dean had taken one of the skiffs and was hauling them aboard. But each skiff held only ten men—twelve at the most. And the ship was fast disappearing beneath the waves. Carew looked across the deck and saw the main mast floating now, with half the ship submerged. Men were clinging on to it, waves crashing over them.

Carew could swim. Most seamen regarded it as bad luck to learn, and few non-mariners even thought about it, but Carew was different. He loved the water and had learned as a boy, delighting in showing off his swimming skills. Now he plunged toward the main mast and, reaching below the water, he unsheathed his knife and cut the stays and ropes that fastened it, allowing it to float free. Then he swam further and reached the foremast, where the ship's ax was fastened. Carew yanked it free and, sitting astride the mast, started to chop at the wood. Being Norwegian pine, the wood chipped easily, but the high waves crashing down threatened to sweep him away. The half-submerged vessel rose and wallowed ten or fifteen feet every time. Still Carew chopped and cut, reaching a frenzy of cutting and hacking as he watched the
Nightingale
descend further beneath the water. Lower she went, sinking and then higher on a wave—only to plummet down with groans of timbers as the futtocks splintered. Several planks had already come away from the half deck of the sterncastle. Still Carew chopped, hearing the cries of his men around him in the water, clinging to the rigging, in constant danger of being washed away.

The ship was almost gone; most of the deck was below the waterline, the foremast lifting out of the sea and the hull breaking up with every wave. Carew continued to chop at the deep scar in the mast. As he did so he saw a shape move to his left: Kahlu was swimming back to him. “Grab the rope!” Carew yelled, pointing to the trailing rope of the foremast topsail. Another wave surged and crashed over them but still Carew brought down the ax as hard as he could. The forecastle disappeared beneath the next wave. Carew tumbled forward into the water as more planks split from the sinking ship. He swam as hard as he could away from it, fearful of being dragged down. As he swam he thought of Kahlu still holding the rope—Kahlu, who came from another continent, who could not speak but had so much to say. He knew that Kahlu would keep on holding that rope even if it dragged him down to the seabed. At that moment his hand struck flesh and his head broke the surface. Kahlu was indeed still holding the rope. The mast had cracked under his weight at the last instant, as the ship had heaved and gone down.

Treading water, Carew put his arm around Kahlu and shouted in his ear, “Thank you, my friend.” They looked at the place of the sinking. The heavy guns, the ballast, and the brick ovens in the galley had dragged down the water-filled hull, but much wood remained afloat. Planks were everywhere. A stool bobbed to the surface as a wave crashed over them. Then a small pipe appeared. Carew grabbed it and stuck it in his mouth, clenching it between his teeth as he swam to the nearest skiff, which was already heavily overloaded. Reaching it, he looked around again.

The amount of wood and the number of corpses that floated before his eyes was shocking and saddening. It seemed that twenty dead men and women were rising and falling with the waves. Already the sea had scattered the bodies of those who had been so close to him in life. Time and the sea were washing them all to their separate oblivions. Another huge wave swept down. But as it descended he caught sight of the other skiff, with just six or seven men aboard. And the main mast about fifty yards to his right.

Another great wave splashed over them. Carew knew that if he did not bring them all together now, they would be washed away. He took the pipe from his teeth and blew it. Water poured out and just a squeak of sound. He shouted instead. “Hugh! Take this boat and lash the foremast to it. I'm going to the other boat to gather in the main mast. We must build from whatever is left floating.” As Dean nodded to show he had understood, Carew started to swim through the cold waves toward the other skiff, which was drifting farther and farther away.