Fire

by C. C. Humphreys

  It was all swiftly explained, as much as Aaron needed to know. He knew Pitman’s other trade, indeed was one of those the thief-taker would recruit from time to time when he needed men. He’d been away at the recent raid, else he’d have been on it. ‘Tut, these Saints, eh?’ Aaron shook his head. ‘Fucking madmen. I mean, I think doom is coming, right? Just don’t reckon Jesus is on his way back to rule us.’

  ‘Well, they do. And they are a danger. And I need to be strong enough to face them.’ He gestured down. ‘Take a look at my leg.’

  Aaron rose and undid the bandages. When the flesh was exposed, he winced. The skin was still a brownish yellow, with purple lines running like rivers on a map down to the knee. ‘Bullet or blade?’

  ‘Blade.’ As Aaron bent to sniff and wince again, Pitman continued, ‘It went bad. I had a fever, just come out of it two days since. Bettina attended me.’

  ‘With her own potions? She did not let a quack near you?’

  ‘She’d bite his bill if one tried. But I think in tending the flesh she missed something else. I’ll show you. Help me sit.’ With his arm around his friend’s neck, and despite the pain, he managed to swing onto his rump. The leg was stretched out before him. ‘D’ye see?’

  Aaron did not need to bend again – the angle of upper leg to knee was obvious. ‘Certainly broken,’ he said. ‘Lie back and let’s see how bad.’

  Pitman chewed his lip to still his own cries as the smith probed, turned the leg, lifted it. Finally, when his brow was wet with sweat, Aaron laid the leg back down, sat on the bed’s edge. ‘The good news is that it’s none so bad – a clean fracture, it feels. But it’s already started to knit together and it’s knitting wrong. That’s why you’re angled and it’ll never have the strength to bear you true. Also, you get up onto it too soon and it could break again – worse, maybe even pierce your skin – and then,’ he shrugged, ‘not even Bettina’s potions would save ye.’

  ‘ ’Tis what I thought.’ Pitman nodded. ‘Can you reset it?’

  ‘I can. I will –’ he raised a hand, ‘but not now.’

  ‘But I need to be about quick. This will take some healing.’

  ‘It will. But trust me, we have one shot at getting this right and I will not rush it. It’s still inflamed at the break, which I do not like. That needs must settle, and I’ll show Bettina ways of aiding that.’ As Pitman came up on his elbows to protest, Aaron put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently back down. ‘No, man. You will bide. A week I say, at the least. Then I will return, with a leather strap for your mouth, a sleeping draught for your mind and a couple of stout fellows to hold you down as a caution.’ He rubbed at his jaw. ‘I’ll never get those teeth back you knocked out at Newbury when I put your shoulder back that one time.’ He winced. ‘Nay, I vow I’ll fix ye,’ he continued, a smile returning, ‘or your name’s not Evelyn.’

  13

  SEA FIGHT

  3rd June 1666

  ‘Fire!’

  As the gun captain shouted and plunged the slow match into the top hole, William Coke stepped to the side, turned away and, taking a deep breath, shoved his fingers into his ears.

  The culverin roared, lurching back on its carriage, the breeching ropes straining to their limits. Smoke poured from the muzzle, obscuring everything, but Coke did not need to see, so often had he done this now. As other cannons followed, firing the length of the gun deck, he grabbed the pole, stepped up to the cannon’s mouth, shoved the stick and its wet cloth all the way in and swabbed it up and down. After the ceaseless broadsides of the last two hours, there was so much powder scattered over the deck that one spark could be a disaster.

  ‘Load again!’ yelled the gun captain, removing the wedge at the cannon’s rear so that the barrel angled up. As Coke stepped away, the second captain came forward with the cloth cartridge bag. Laying the pole down, Coke bent and lifted the eighteen-pound smooth iron ball with a grunt. Another man, Forbes, should have been doing that; but Dutch shot had carried away both his legs, together with the head of the man beside him, and the fingers of a third, one ball halving their crew from six to three. Each of them now did all the tasks. Death had promoted him from second sponger and second loader to the first rank of both.

  As he waited for the second captain to shove the cloth bag of gunpowder down the muzzle, Coke glanced out of the gun port and through the gunsmoke shredded by the wind of their passage. The aft of the enemy ship was just passing, perhaps seventy yards away; close enough so that he could read, amidst all the gilt of the decoration, the Dutch lettering. Apparently the Hogens he’d been trying to kill came from their main province of Amsterdam. He’d spent some years in that city, when in exile during Cromwell’s protectorate. Now he wondered if he’d just helped murder someone with whom he’d once drunk jenever.

  ‘Bill, you dozy cunt!’ The second captain slapped his shoulder. ‘Load the bastard.’

  ‘Aye, aye.’

  ‘Belay that!’ It was Squires, the gun captain, who’d countermanded. He’d been leaning into the splintered gap that the enemy’s ball had opened in the ship’s side, peering out. Now he straightened up, which, at maybe five foot, he was just able to do; while Coke, closer to six, held the back of his head to the ceiling, forever hunched. ‘It’s the last of ’em, for now. No doubt the admiral will turn us round to ’ave another go at the herring fuckers. But we’ve some time afore that happens. Let’s get the gun cleaned and squared away.’

  Another go? How many more can we have? Coke thought – but did not say. He’d learned in his four weeks aboard that a landsman voicing any opinion at sea received mockery, extra tasks, even punishments. He’d seen what happened to others swept up in the press like himself who questioned or whined. So he’d curbed his temper, shed only hidden tears, and did what was asked of him. As now.

  The officer in charge of their gun deck bellowed out what Squires had already guessed. ‘Clear away. Make safe!’ the lieutenant called. Coke fetched the cartridge out of the gun with a hook, then plied a broom until all the powder scattered near him could be scooped up and stowed. Other men appeared from above, and the bodies they’d been unable to shift during combat were carried away – many in multiple pieces. Coke looked in the opposite direction. He knew he mustn’t glimpse any of the guts that were being dumped in buckets. He would probably spew. He usually did.

  ‘Cap’n?’

  The word accompanied a tug on his arm. He turned – and there was Dickon. Only exhaustion had prevented Coke from fearing for the lad during the previous two hours of fight. Now he had to resist the urge to sweep his ward into his arms. Instead, he whispered back, ‘It’s Pa, or Da. Remember that. No rank here.’

  ‘Pa-pa,’ the boy stuttered, then offered up a water flask. Coke took it and drank deep. Four weeks at sea and the water was on the turn, but it tasted like nectar right then. He looked at Dickon as he drank. It had seemed like some small way of protecting the lad, if Coke claimed paternity. His size and quietness made men wary of him. But truly, Dickon needed little protecting. Indeed, all had taken to him, treating him almost like a luck charm, many tousling his thick corn-stalk hair as he passed by. For the boy was always grinning, laughing, capering. Nothing daunted him – not even his first two days of battle, it appeared.

  ‘Are you well, son?’ Coke asked, seeking in the wide face for any hurt or terror.

  ‘Aye, aye, Cap…Pa! Ca-pa! Capa!’ Dickon laughed. ‘Whoa! The bangs, the whizz, the fire!’

  A voice intruded. ‘When you’re done, all topside. There’s grub and beer.’

  The lieutenant’s call started a rush. Men swiftly finished the last of their tasks and soon Coke, bent over, was following Dickon to the stair, up and through the next gun deck and out onto the main deck of His Majesty’s Ship Prince George. He took deep breaths of the salty air, paradise after the hot and smoky hell below. He took more when he glanced over the rail and noted that the enemy fleet, who had passed the English line, was tacking about. He was bound for hell aga
in, and soon.

  There was little more than hardtack biscuit to eat, with the beer as sour as the water, but he wolfed both down as Dickon prattled. He’d spent the entire fight aloft on the foremast. If the Dutch had decided to disable the Prince George, it was up there they’d have concentrated their fire. But as they passed, they’d gone broadside to broadside with the English and Dickon, when he was not trimming the rigging, repairing ropes and swinging around the sails, had had a true bird’s-eye view.

  ‘There was some Ho-ho-hogens we hardly hit at all, Capa,’ he grinned again at the new title he’d made, ‘and others we fair bl-blasted. Mind, they blasted us too.’ A brief darkness clouded his eyes. ‘I feared for ye, Cap, ah, Pap!’ The eyes brightened. ‘But you are whole. Whole and not h-holed!’

  He laughed and Coke could not hold back his own smile. The boy he’d found frozen in his doorway two winters before had been barely able to speak. Now he could talk, even read. And make jokes. ‘Not quite,’ he said, touching his own cheek. It may have been lost to the black powder that had near transformed him into a blackamoor, but he had a splinter the size of a finger there, delivered by that same Dutch shot that had carried off his comrades. Considering what it had done to them, he was thinking of leaving it in as a charm.

  ‘Belay that!’ yelled Dickon suddenly, squirming wildly. And a moment later a face popped out of the boy’s collar, all wide eyes and chattering teeth. ‘Now, now, Tromp,’ Dickon said, and reached up to bring the little spider monkey from his cave. The animal swung out but wrapped arms and legs around the boy’s neck. Four equally wide eyes now stared up at Coke but he knew better than to reach a teasing finger. The monkey had already bitten him twice; indeed, it would bite anyone except his new master, his old one having died of a fever as the voyage commenced. Dickon, though, had discovered a common passion – which he produced now.

  ‘Nuts!’ he said happily, holding out a handful of peanuts. Tromp – named for the Hogen admiral they fought – grabbed one and shelled it rapidly between little teeth, pausing only to hiss at Coke when he took one too.

  ‘How the devil do you get these, Dickon?’ Coke asked, crunching.

  ‘Friends, friends,’ came the reply. The boy nodded past his captain’s shoulder. ‘Are our other friends leaving the p-party, think you?’

  Coke turned. Were the Dutch manoeuvring to leave or return? Had they won? He truly did not give a fig for England’s cause. He didn’t know what it was and he had been kidnapped to fight for it. But he would have liked respite from both the work and the danger. Especially from the empty feeling in the stomach that was always there as he helped hurl death at the Dutch, as he awaited a death hurled back. Two days they’d been fighting, with endless shifting to get the wind in their sails. ‘Shifting’ was not the term, he knew; but he’d resisted learning any more of the language of the navy than he needed to operate the gun he’d been assigned to, as he was considered far too old and rigid to work aloft. But at least he knew that the wind behind them was called the weather gauge. Sudden attacks happened when they had it, terrible defence when the enemy did. But surely, whoever had it, no battle at sea lasted longer than two days? Yet even if it was over, what would happen then?

  A similar, yet different flutter came to his stomach. There was a perverse part of him, he knew, that enjoyed combat for this one reason: during it, he could think of nothing else. It had been the only time in the four weeks since his pressing that he’d thought of anything other than home.

  But he did now. While Dickon and the monkey ate nuts and chattered, the boy telling more of what he’d seen aloft that Tromp had missed being tucked inside his shirt, Coke could only look to the sea and watch the rolling ships’ masts transform into London church spires. One he especially noted – the narrow tiered column that rose from St Clement Danes upon the Strand. The last church he’d been inside. The one where he’d married Sarah Chalker. He closed his eyes – and saw her, facing him at the altar rail. He tried to hold onto that vision, to see only her, her and a moment, that one when he had realised, when he’d known that he was truly, completely happy for the first time since he had departed for the late king’s wars.

  He could not hold it long. Other visions came to crowd it out. Many were jumbled together, and as blurry as when he’d been cozened and betrayed. The taint of the sleeping draught not quite disguised by sack; the touch of Rebekah’s naked skin on an attic bed; her cry of rape as the men burst into the room; and the worst, by far the worst: Sarah’s cry when she saw him there, on their wedding night, naked with another. The way he couldn’t speak, deny, unable to raise his thickened tongue from the base of his mouth. The blow from the presser’s coiled whip had sent him back into a darkness that lasted for so long and only ended when sea water was dumped on him and he’d awoken aboard the Prince George.

  He lifted his shut eyes to the north, trying to reach beyond sight. Where are you now, Sarah? In the theatre? Still working even though you are so ill? I’d hoped to let you leave there, if you chose, to rest and deliver your baby – our baby – safely. In the house I’d bought you – the house that must have been sold again, since I failed to make the last payments. Are you still in Sheere Lane then, acting by day, resting at night? Or has Pitman, recovered by now, taken you in because Bettina insisted? Because he insisted too? I pray so, though I have rarely been a praying man. Above all, I pray that I survive this battle and the next and them all and can somehow get back to you whole. To explain the foul conspiracy that took me. To ask forgiveness for my foolishness. Simply, in the end, to love you.

  The tug on his arm had become too insistent to ignore.

  ‘Cap’n,’ said Dickon, in a low voice. ‘Something’s happening.’

  Coke opened his eyes, and even though they were a landsman’s he could see that things had changed. The Dutch ships that had broken through the English line were re-forming to port and they would have the weather gauge, the wind bearing them down to the attack. But he saw on the starboard side that there were other Dutch ships there, a smaller group. And that same wind could blow the English upon them like a vengeful storm.

  It was this that the man who’d climbed from the quarter to the poop deck now turned to address. ‘Hearken, my steady lads,’ bellowed Sir George Ayscue, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, in a voice well used to reaching over wind and water, ‘you’ve given the Hogen Mogens hellfire, and they’ve run off – for now. But a Dutchman’s memory is as short as his cock,’ laughter came at this, which Ayscue topped, ‘and no doubt Admiral de Ruyter over there,’ he gestured to port, to the ships that had broken through, ‘will be upon us soon. But why should we wait when there,’ his hand waved to starboard, ‘lies Admiral Tromp a-wallowing, with only twelve ships at his command. If we get among ’em, the Hogens will find it hard to fire without hitting their brothers. If we get among ’em, me boys,’ his eyes gleamed, ‘there’s prizes to be had.’

  A cheer came at this. Coke shifted on his bare feet. Even his poor share of the takings of an admiral’s flagship would give him a bag of guineas – money for bribery, perhaps, to fund his escape?

  Ayscue continued. ‘Now, you know you can leave the way of it up to me. And the first thing I want to do is preserve your lives to partake of the bounty.’ Another cheer. ‘So my gallant Lieutenant Hardiman here,’ he turned and clapped the shoulder of a tall young man beside him, ‘is going to take yon sloop Antelope,’ he waved to a vessel paralleling their course to port, ‘into the heart of ’em. Break ’em up and make them easy takings. For the Antelope is the finest of His Majesty’s purpose-built –’ he paused a moment, ‘fireships!’

  If men had been prepared to punch the air and cheer the admiral’s soaring voice, they dropped their hands now. A fireship, Coke thought, glancing to the vessel. Even he could see now what he had missed when glancing at it before – the wide doors aft; the longboat chained and trailing at them. He’d heard the talk below decks, the way of it. A skeleton crew would sail the swift vessel, packed with combustibles
, at the enemy. At the last possible moment they would climb into the longboat, light the fuse and cast off. Though it was a tactic that had had some success – for living in a floating tinder box, there was nothing a sailor feared more than fire – it was the opinion on the gun deck that the skeleton crew would be true skeletons ere long.

  Hence the sudden drop of enthusiasm, the looks anywhere but at the poop deck – and at the admiral who knew what they thought was coming, and spoke it anyway. ‘Yes, hearties, I know what you think: he’s about to call for volunteers. Even if,’ he leaned onto the rail, his eyes hawk-bright, ‘even if I only have to command men aboard. But we all know it takes nerve to hold a fireship steady, to withstand the shot of the enemy, to repel any attempt at boarding. Such nerve is not possessed by reluctant men. So let me offer this.’ He raised both hands in the air. ‘We do not need, and cannot spare, many sailors. But the Antelope lost its gun crew to a stray Hogen ball. So we need five men who can handle a cannon and who can fight – five landsmen then. And I can promise them –’ he paused, ‘a double share of any prizes the Prince George takes. And, of course, a king’s and a nation’s eternal gratitude.’

  There had been a shifting, as the admiral spoke, with the sailors stepping away from the landsmen. Coke found himself among those who, like himself, did not have the wind- and rain-beaten faces acquired by years before the mast. Some, indeed, who still wore vestiges of the clothes they’d been pressed in, many like him on a Sunday, with their best doublet now a tattered thing, their finest lawn shirts darkened with tar and gunsmoke, their breeches in shreds. They looked around, looked down or to sea, anywhere but up at the admiral; as if not seeing him, he would not see them.

  Only Coke looked up. For a vision had come to him – of Sarah’s hand in his as he pushed the ring onto her finger. He cleared his throat, so he could speak loudly. ‘If it’s landsmen you desire, Admiral,’ he said, ‘why not offer them something they truly want? Not coin, which, odds are, they will not survive the fight to spend. Promise them their free passage home, as soon as the task is done.’