The Lion of Sole Bay (Strong Winds)

by Julia Jones

  “I am your Kapitein. I endure no insolence.”

  Luke’s left eye watered and his cheek burned. He turned them into the night air and the rain to cool them. He’d felt pain worse than this from primary school bullies. It was her contempt that hurt. Plus he deserved it for his ignorance and weakness.

  She was checking calculations now and tapping in new numbers. He couldn’t see the compass or the plotter because she was blocking them. He couldn’t steer the course she’d ordered and he didn’t care. He gazed starboard across the waves. How many miles to Holland?

  Drie Vrouwen wasn’t showing any navigation lights and those thick cabin curtains meant that there was nothing from the portholes either. Her hull was black, her upper-works dull red. She would be very hard for any other ship to see.

  Not like the night when she’d been full of candles for all those people who had died. Where had they died, he wondered now?

  The breaking waves were still visible, catching the lighthouse beam in the near-darkness. White water on the Whiting bank. A whiting was a sort of fish. He’d seen people sitting on the beach at night time trying to catch them when they came in to feed in the shallows. Maybe there’d be fish there now.

  Should he drive Drie Vrouwen onto the Whiting Bank on purpose? Stick her there like he should have let her stick on the Deben Bar?

  The waves were rough. They’d bang her on the hard sand. Maybe she’d start to leak. She was metal but even metal had to be joined together somewhere. Would she float when the tide came up? Or would she fill – like that other metal container that Luke didn’t never think about – except in nightmares.

  Luke didn’t want to drown. Not if he didn’t have to.

  “A fisherman fills his boots and goes straight down,” his dad had said.

  But he’d also said that drowning was a horrible death. Luke guessed that Mike and Ants wouldn’t want to drown any more than he did.

  The quick flashing light had gone astern. Luke peered round the edge of the spray hood. He could see another pinpoint of white light in the distance.

  “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand…”

  The beam of the lighthouse was closer and stronger. It kept getting in the way of his concentration. Would he ever get the hang of counting seconds? If this was a proper electronic adventure, he’d have Powers he could use.

  “Press the OFF switch.”

  That was funny. He could hear Anna in his head. Or maybe it was Lottie? She was telling him to turn off his Nintendo and not even to carry on playing until he reached the ‘Save Game’ point.

  Maybe he was getting delirious. People did at sea. It was the salt. Or the motion. Or your brain hitting the sides of your skull.

  “PRESS THE OFF SWITCH!”

  The voice was getting louder. It was definitely Anna – his ratty big sister who always knew best.

  “Put it down and walk away then.”

  That’s what she’d say when she knew he simply couldn’t press OFF in the middle of a game. When his Nintendo was warm in his hand and magnetically full of life.

  “PUT IT DOWN AND WALK AWAY!”

  Oh. Okay. Thanks Anna. He’d got the message now.

  “I’m not playing any more. I’m going back to my friends,” he said, as quick and as clear as he could, to Elsie. “You can take your own tiller.” And he was past her before she properly heard what he’d said.

  “I’m not helping any more and you can have your oilskin back,” he told Helen, as he arrived cold and wet in the cabin.

  “You know she told you that you’d be going on watch with her?” he said to Mike, jerking his head towards Helen. “Well, you shouldn’t. And you shouldn’t either,” he said to Ants. “We shouldn’t never have helped them get off the Deben Bar. We’re prisoners and that’s what we ought to behave like. I don’t care if we took their pills or ate their foul food. We’re not their crew. We shouldn’t help them.”

  “The Royal Katherine even …” said Mike, pushing his hands behind his back and turning to face Helen. “I’m sorry, Mejuffrow de Witt, but Luke’s right. Policy of non-cooperation from now on. Non-collaboration even.”

  Luke didn’t get the difference but Helen obviously did. Especially when Mike repeated it in Dutch. ‘Collaboration’ – that must be a really bad word.

  Elsevier came storming down the steps. She ordered Helen to take over the steering and then she hit Luke again. She used her fist, this time, not her glove. Punched him on the jaw.

  He reeled back.

  Mike stepped towards her, shocked and objecting, but rather uncertain and surprised. She punched him in the stomach.

  Mike doubled up gasping for breath.

  Angel flung herself at Elsevier, teeth and claws, and then Hendrike came bellowing from nowhere. She full-on charged Angel, knocking her over, then plonking her heavy weight on top.

  “I’m obliged, mijn lieve koe,” said Elsevier, kicking the small girl with her leather riding boot.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said to Luke, who was coming at her as bravely as he dared.

  And there was that gun again, pointing at Angel. “You are keen to behave like prisoners? You go into prison then. NOW!!!” she screamed. “This is your child, Van der Traitor. Filthy turncoat. English kiss-arse. Get into the side cabin. And you too, mud-spawn.”

  She was screeching and waving her arms. Striding around and swirling her cloak. Out of her skull hysterical, you’d have thought. Except that her gun stayed pointing rock-steady at Angel’s head.

  Angel’s eyes had gone weird again. They’d sort of rolled back so you could only see the whites.

  “Oh my god, she’s having another episode.”

  Completely not noticing any danger Mike hurled himself at Hendrike. She didn’t topple though, she was far too heavy. He knelt beside his daughter.

  “Angela, sweetheart, Daddy’s here.”

  “Please,” he said to Hendrike. “Please will you get off? How can I possibly move her with you sitting there?”

  “Okay,” said Elsevier. “Help him shift her to the side cabin. My gun’s on the boy.”

  “I have reached the North-East Whiting, Kapitein. I need to change course.” Helen shouted from outside.

  Hendrike shoved them into in a cramped bare room. There was a cupboard, a patch of floor and the rest of it was bunk.

  Angel wasn’t floppy this time, she was rigid. Mike got her onto the bunk and was struggling to roll her to her side and keep her there in a recovery position. They could hear Hendrike grunting as she locked the door.

  Then it all went black. They felt Drie Vrouwen change direction. It was like she was trying to bounce them off her metal walls. Luke was struggling to find somewhere to brace himself so he didn’t fall on Mike and Ants. It was impossible. Another wild, disorientating plunge and he landed on the bunk beside them.

  “It’s Orfordness,” he said to Mike “We’re going round the bit that sticks out into the sea. That’s where the lighthouse is. My dad says it’s always rough between the Whiting Bank and Orfordness.”

  Bill could have told him – or Donny could have – or Gold Dragon who had let him be such a happy first-time hostage – that it was about to get a whole lot worse.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sole Bay I

  Thursday 6 November, dark of the moon

  Luke, Helen, Angel

  The tide was on the turn again. By the time the flood had started running north to south they would be away from Orfordness and the shelter of the curving coast. The tide would be in the same direction as the northerly wind and the waves would be smooth and huge instead of spiky and unpredictable. As soon as Elsevier set their course east or north-east for Holland they would be broadside to the swell. They would go sideways up and sideways down, rolling between the mountains and valleys.

  “What’s broach
?” asked Angel.

  The word had sort of come to Luke as Drie Vrouwen seemed to be sliding uphill sideways and trying to flip right over before lurching down again. It was like she was some sick-making, gravity-defying gyroscope and no-one who had tried her in a theme-park would ever be persuaded to get on more than once.

  Luke and Mike and Angel were all lying together on the bunk, arms round each other and holding tight, trying not to be hurled up onto the low ceiling or sideways against the walls. They could only feel each other’s bodies: not see.

  He’d tried the word because it felt like talking would be a good idea. There’d been silence for a moment then Ants had tried to ask about what he’d said. That was good that she could manage that. She must be getting better.

  “Getting stuck and turning over. It’s not…the right word.”

  It was hard to think coherently let alone find words when your brain seemed to be bashing about inside your skull like a ball in a bucket. “It means…they’re…completely mad,” he said. “You can’t…argue…with the sea. Whoever you think you are.”

  He guessed their cabin was somewhere under the cabin roof where they’d tied the stolen figurehead. There were thuds and sounds of sliding as well as the struggling roar of the engine and the slap of solid water when they hit the crest of a wave. He remembered how the bundle had been working loose – as if the lion inside was attempting to escape.

  Then a new noise joined the din above their heads. It was Drie Vrouwen’s ship’s bell swinging wildly through more than 180 degrees, clanging against the wind as it tried to loop the loop.

  “Kapitein, we cannot keep this course.”

  Helen’s foot slipped in the slick of her mother’s vomit. The only light in Drie Vrouwen’s cockpit came from the chart-plotter display. The pale pink line that marked their current course ran left to right across the screen. It looked so simple – and so flat! There was nothing to indicate the lurching upwards and the tipping sideways; the terrifying hesitancy near the top before the beginning of the downward slide and the fitful instants of peace in the trough between the waves before the whole sequence began again, though never quite the same each time.

  Her mind was running slow. The ship’s bell was a tocsin, an alarm call. If the barge rolled over there would be nothing she could do. They would all die but the prisoners would die locked in. She had lured them on board. Their deaths would be her fault.

  Helen and her mother had both been sick. The Stugeron she’d taken hadn’t been enough. Her mother hadn’t taken anything at all. She had been too distracted by whatever was happening in her head. There would be lumps of pease pottage scattered in the slime.

  Helen knew she should find a bucket, fill it with saltwater and sluice the sick away, then pass it to her retching mother. But she wasn’t going to do that. The other thing was more important. She was going to be sick again but first, in these few moments before she heaved, she had to make the Kapitein listen.

  “We must point her bow to the waves.”

  “Why so? I wish to return to my country. I do not choose to travel to the Pole.”

  How was it that Elsevier had not been sick? Was that the stone bottle of geneva that she was always lifting to her mouth?

  The ship’s bell rang once more. A flat, metallic noise.

  Helen felt the bile rising in her throat. She gulped it down. The deck on the downhill side was under water.

  “I have a faster way. I have learned from my rowing.”

  She must persuade Elsevier to round into the up-slope of the waves. Find a better angle and their leeway would keep them on their eastwards course. They could sidle crab-wise home. Alter later if they had to.

  She couldn’t give in. Must gain control of the tiller.

  “Please, Kapitein, allow me.”

  The older woman surprised them both as she relinquished the helm and moved aside. She needed her other hand to light the next cigar. It was wearing having to do so much for lesser folk. The girl could take a turn before she fetched a second bottle.

  Luke felt Drie Vrouwen begin rearing up and plunging down. Rearing up and plunging down. Not rolling.

  He and Mike and Angel were feet first to the boat’s direction. Lying on a blanket on some sort of hard and shiny mattress. They carried on holding their arms around each other as they slid rhythmically forwards and back along the bunk.

  It wasn’t pleasant but it was easier. The bell went quiet. The lion thumped but didn’t grind.

  They didn’t try to talk any more. It was sufficient to believe that they might live. Perhaps they even slept a while?

  Angel couldn’t stay asleep for long, even when she’d had seizures. She woke and it was dark and the boat was still going up and down, up and down. Luke and her father were lucky to be out of it. She mustn’t fidget or she’d wake them.

  This cabin was so small. She couldn’t see the walls and ceiling but she felt them pressing on her.

  The three of them slid backwards down the bunk. Their heads were jammed against the end. She tried to ride the boat’s rhythm – like she was pumping her knees to skate a half pipe.

  The tickly feelings racing round her legs and arms: the fireflies of light …

  “Dad!”

  Mr Vandervelde stirred and mumbled. Knocked his head and remembered where they were. Groaned.

  She knew he’d rather sleep but she couldn’t wait. “Have you got my fitting pills?” No reason why he should have. “Cos I haven’t had them since before yesterday. I think I need them urgent.”

  That woke him.

  “Your pills! I hadn’t even thought.”

  “But have you got ‘em?”

  “Mum usually keeps them. She knows I’m so forgetful.”

  “Only about some things.”

  “I’ll tell those women. If they know you’re getting multiple seizures, that you need medication, they’ll surely have to take you home.”

  Mike knocked his head in a different place as he sat up. The ceiling was so low above this bunk.

  Luke woke. His hand went groping for his Nintendo. His knuckles hit the bunk-end, then tangled in Ants’s spiky hair.

  She mustn’t hit him.

  “I can’t see.”

  This hateful dark. Lowestoft Lass had electric light. Never mind you had to save it because of the battery, it was there, with switches. Hendrike and Helen couldn’t live with candles all the time.

  “Stay still,” he said. “I’ll try and find a light.”

  “Can’t stay still,” said Angel. Drie Vrouwen plunged deeply. They all slid downhill and Luke’s stomach hit his throat.

  “Think theme-park,” he told them. “Let yourself go with it. Try roller-coaster ride.”

  “Never,” said Mike.

  “Even boarding wasn’t doing it for me.”

  “Well, I dunno, talk or something. But I need to climb over both of you because I reckon we’ll all feel better if we can see.”

  “I think so too.” Her tickly feelings were like twenty million insects running sprints with all their tiny feet but she was going to try again what Luke said. She tried to breathe more slowly, wished she was in that kayak with the paddle.

  “Can I hold you, Dad? Like you’re my safety bar. You can talk about your work if you want. Say your papers even. We don’t mind.”

  Luke climbed over with nothing much worse than a knee in Angel’s stomach and an elbow toppling him onto Mike’s chest. Then he began to move about on the tiny patch of floor, struggling to keep his balance, groping to find a switch.

  “Okay,” said Mike. “Let’s have the Royal Katherine. Battle of Sole Bay, May 28th 1672, afternoon. It’s my Lecture Number 3 ‘The Prize’. I know all of them by heart.”

  Mum probably does as well, thought Angel. But she doesn’t let on because she loves him. Her mum and dad seemed as funny and
endearing as if they were garden gnomes unexpectedly brought to life. How could she have doubted them?

  “So which one’s the Royal Katherine, Dad? Was that the one that got blown up?”

  She was breathing a bit fast and she gripped Mike’s arm with both hands. Maybe she could do that channelling again. Focus her feelings into a stream. Use that gold and red.

  “Good heavens no! That was the Royal James. She burned for hours. No-one whoever saw her could forget the sight. The Royal Katherine was the one that got captured by the Dutch. The English prisoners started shouting that she was going to sink so the Dutch let them back on deck. Then they fought them and won and sailed her back to Harwich.”

  Luke turned on the light.

  “Will those women see it,” Mike wondered anxiously. “Will someone come and hit us again? I’m so sorry children. I’m a useless protector. You’d better let me stand near the door. I’ll explain about your condition, Angela.”

  There was only one tiny porthole and it was covered by a sort of blackout curtain.

  “Don’t do that, Dad. I need you talking. I’m trying to do what Luke said. Trying to ride it.”

  “Start talking, Mike,” said Luke. “I’ll try and find something to hit them back.”

  “If you’re sure. Well, here goes…The Stavoren was captured between four and five o’clock in the afternoon of May 28th 1672. Ever since the tide had turned and they’d put about, the English and the Dutch fleets had been sailing roughly south-east in two long lines, firing at each other. There was still very little wind and the tide was against them.”

  Luke settled himself on the heaving floor and began to search inside the cupboard. There wasn’t much there: no clothes or personal things. Just files and boxes. The files were all full of paper so he didn’t bother with them. Began looking through the boxes. The drum was in one of them and another had a folded cloth with a big circle and coloured symbols that he didn’t understand. They looked sort of astrological.