The Roots of Betrayal c-2

by James Forrester

  “He led a boarding party. He went in with Kahlu, Francis, Harry, and Skinner and used the ship’s own cannon to blow a hole in the bottom of the hull. He’s swimming his way back now, look.”

  Clarenceux glanced over the gunwale. The ship he had hit was going down prow-first, slowly. The second nearby ship was listing to port; its crew was in a panic. Some were jumping into the water; others, not knowing how badly holed she was, were trying to sail her toward land. Carew and Kahlu were swimming back to the Davy followed by the others. Clarenceux almost laughed at how lucky Carew had been to have chosen to sink the other one of the two nearby vessels. The man has more lives than a cat.

  Clarenceux took stock of the situation. The ship to the east was without its sails, practically becalmed off the starboard side. As for the ship he had hit, the waves were over the deck now; only the masts and sterncastle were still visible. Men were swimming or clinging on to the rigging in the hope of a skiff coming along to save them. A number had already drowned, their bodies rising and falling lifelessly in the swell. The ship Carew had boarded was taking in water through its gun ports. But there were still two other vessels afloat.

  The most distant one was now about half a mile to the southwest, as yet unscathed. The other ship, which had lost all but two of its sails, was still mobile and firing, about two hundred and fifty yards away to the south.

  “We are just waiting for them,” muttered Clarenceux to Luke, as Carew and Kahlu climbed up the outside of the ship and clambered over the gunwale. As he spoke, another cannonball from the ship to the east hit the main deck below. The impact shook the boat and knocked Kahlu off balance. He picked himself up as Carew approached.

  “We’re holding them,” said Carew, “but only just. It would be better for us if we could sail.”

  A movement away to the east caught Clarenceux’s eye. A skiff was setting out, full of men. “Here they come,” he said, pointing.

  “Go below, alert them,” said Carew, turning to survey the rigging. For a moment Clarenceux considered telling him how few men were left alive below, but he thought better of it. Carew turned back to him, as if reading his thoughts. “Do what you can. Encourage them.”

  The ship rolled on a higher wave and a musket ball cracked into the sterncastle. Clarenceux ducked his head, scampered across to the ladder, and went down to the main deck. Men were still firing the gun on the port side and running around for more powder, more shot. Alice was nursing a man who had lost a leg and a lot of blood. She was mopping his brow-obviously she had given up on trying to save his life. Juanita was working fast, wrapping a tourniquet around the bleeding leg of a gunner, trying to staunch the rapid flow of blood. Stars Johnson had taken over from Dunbar in measuring out gunpowder. He looked up as Clarenceux jumped down the ladder.

  “Where’s Dunbar?” shouted Clarenceux.

  “Down below, looking for more gunpowder.”

  Clarenceux looked down the timber-strewn deck. “Give me powder for that saker.”

  “This is all for the demicannon,” replied Stars.

  “For the love of God,” yelled Clarenceux, “give me a charge anyway.”

  Stars passed a measure of gunpowder to Clarenceux who ran to the abandoned saker. A shot hit the outside of the hull and split the wood with an alarming crack. He looked and found a cache of shot for the gun and the priming flask lying on the deck. Pouring all the gunpowder into the barrel, he inserted the cannonball and wadding and primed the gun and, shouting for help, tried to run out the gun singlehanded. It hardly shifted. Juanita was suddenly beside him, grunting as she heaved on the carriage. Then another man joined them. “Fetch a linstock,” Clarenceux shouted over the sound of muskets and shrieking from the upper deck. He knelt to look along the barrel.

  The skiff was heavily laden, being rowed quickly toward him. He counted the men aboard: fourteen. Is this the work of God? Or the Devil? He closed his eyes.

  “Here,” shouted Junanita, thrusting the slow-burning linstock at him.

  He took it and looked at her face, streaked with sweat, fierce. The determination showed in her eyes. She was fighting for her life-as much as Carew or anyone. This is neither the work of God nor the Devil. This is war and I have chosen sides.

  Looking toward the skiff, which was now no more than sixty feet away, he lowered the gun, secured it, and applied the linstock. There was a moment while the priming sparked and burnt-and then the explosion. He watched the shot smash into the boat, splintering the rear of the skiff and sending the front of it and pieces of wood spinning up into the air. When they splashed down there were several men dead in the water, their heads bobbing on the reddened surface like fruit in a bowl. Only one of the survivors could swim and was fit enough to do so; he turned back to his own ship. The others screamed in panic as they thrashed about, drowning, clutching at the fragments of the boat.

  Clarenceux clambered across to the other side of the main deck and looked out through a gunport. There were bodies, limbs, and pieces of timber around the Davy, bobbing about on the water: the flotsam of a battle. The ship to the south was closer, about one hundred and fifty yards. The fifth ship, still unscathed, was also only a few hundred yards away to the southwest.

  Another cannon shot boomed out across the water. Clarenceux heard footsteps on the ladder and turned to see Carew stepping down.

  “I didn’t expect you to fight,” Carew said.

  “I’m fighting my own war. My cause is different from yours-but we’re allies.”

  Carew nodded. “Good. Find yourself a blade. We are about to be boarded.” He walked further down the main deck, inspecting the damage. “One ship might try to ram us against another, so we are attacked on both sides at once. If so, we will try to board whichever one has the most sails and, if we can take it, that will be our escape.”

  Clarenceux watched him go down to the orlop deck. Steam billowed up from the hatch. The Davy was sinking. One of the many blows she had suffered over the past two and a half hours of engagement had weakened the planking below the waterline.

  Carew reappeared. “Galley’s waist-deep in water.” He glanced out of the gunport at the approaching vessels. “If they realize, they will just hold back until we go down. They had better attack soon.”

  Carew went over to Juanita, who had given up the struggle to save James Miller. She lay his head on the deck and closed his eyes. Clarenceux shook his head. He knew they had no chance of taking another ship; there were too few of them left. But that seemed not to concern Carew, who knelt down beside Juanita, placed his hand on James Miller’s chest, then touched her face and kissed her.

  Clarenceux steadied himself as another cannonball smashed into the Davy. He felt resigned; he was barely aware of what he was expected to do. He stumbled toward the hatch down to the orlop deck and descended the ladder. Steam was hot and wet in the air. There was light on one side where a cannonball had splintered two strakes of the hull. When the water reached that point, the ship would flood in a matter of moments. She would heel over and sink quickly.

  He bowed his head, praying for salvation. He was past praying for anything in particular; he had no ideas left. All he could think of was to escape by trying to swim to shore. But that was miles away and he had never swum more than a few hundred yards. Also he would probably be shot in the water. Even if a bullet simply wounded him it might stop him from swimming so far. Carew would not reveal where Rebecca Machyn had gone either. All this would have been in vain. The best he could do was survive-and hope that the enemy commander would treat him as a herald and not as a pirate.

  But he had fired on a boat full of men and killed them. He could not refuse to fight the boarding party now. He had committed himself.

  Tears welled in his eyes at the thought of Awdrey and their daughters. He remembered little Mildred learning to climb the stairs. He prostrated himself, begging for mercy, for forgiveness. He prayed that his family might be safe and secure. He would have continued in that position, praying, had not
another cannonball smashed through the hull just astern, sending splinters flying through the dimness, cutting his face and arms and leaving him gasping against a barrel. The shock and the pain brought him to his senses. He looked out through the newly made hole and saw the sea surging not far below. He crossed himself and went back up the ladder.

  Clarenceux went between the corpses, looking for a blade. Remembering that Nick Laver had been wearing a cutlass, he searched for his corpse. He walked over and confronted the smashed head, the glistening brain, the loose eyeball. He saw the hilt of the weapon and drew it. As he did so, he noticed the other eyelid flickering.

  Clarenceux hesitated. How was it possible? He bent down and listened to his breathing, seeing the eyelid flicker again. “Help me,” whispered Laver. “End it now.”

  Clarenceux remembered the killing of the men in the skiff, how he had justified that to himself because it was war. Now Laver seemed like an apparition of one of them, making him confront at close quarters what he had done to those men at a distance. He was a living ghost, come from the sea, bloody and accusing. A ghost from the guns of warships.

  I killed men who were not dying. Why is it difficult to kill a man who wants me to kill him?

  Clarenceux suddenly jabbed forward with the dagger, aiming for Laver’s heart. He hit the breast bone and had to twist the blade loose, causing Laver to scream a chilling greeting to death. He stabbed again and hit a rib, and Laver screamed again, lifting a trembling hand to the destroyed side of his head. Frantic, Clarenceux stabbed a third time and thrust the blade deep into the man’s heart. The arm slowly fell, Laver froze into death. Clarenceux pulled the blade out, wide eyed with revulsion. He turned and ran up the ladder to the main deck in a blood-smeared daze, unable to think of anything but the need to stab his way clear of the ghosts plaguing his conscience. He bent down beside a corpse on the main deck, knowing that it was the body of John Devenish and that his Moorish blade was lying there. He picked it up, not even thinking about the musket bullets raining down from the two ships that were now only twenty or thirty yards from the Davy. He was barely even aware of the flames in the rigging. He ascended the ladder to the sterncastle as if they were the steps to heaven and looked down on the men sheltering there almost with disdain, as if their fear was contemptible.

  “Get down,” yelled Carew. “Get your head down!”

  Clarenceux looked ahead, toward the approaching ship. He slowly counted the sails. They were intact: it had not yet entered the fight. He watched it close on them, yard by yard, and looked at Carew. “That is the one?” Then, without waiting for confirmation, he walked to the back of the sterncastle and prepared to hurl himself aboard. It was now just forty feet away, rolling on a higher wave. A man on the deck opposite was aiming a musket at him; he did not care. He raised his sword aloft and held the dagger at the ready. The shot cracked the air but only grazed his arm. Thirty feet. Another musketeer came forward, and another. Luke scurried across to kneel beside Clarenceux, laying out Hugh Dean’s pistols on the deck. Carew came and stood beside him, staring at the men massed on the deck of the galleon. Luke took aim carefully and fired, striking one musketeer perfectly. The second shot missed. The third shot hit a man in the leg, the fourth hit a smartly dressed gentleman on the sterncastle in the arm. The fifth he did not shoot but held on to as he prepared to leap.

  The ship came closer. They were all in a group now, anxious for it to be over, staring at the men on the other ship. Clarenceux stood alongside Carew, Kahlu, Francis Bidder, Harry Gurney, Skinner Simpkins, Swift George, Stars Johnson, Juanita, Alice, John Dunbar and about a dozen others. On the opposite ship there were scores of men, many armed with guns. Shots continued to crack the air, but the shouting had started. There was just twelve feet between the two vessels, then ten, nine, eight. Clarenceux gripped the Moorish blade. Six feet, five-he leaped, eyes white-wide as he slashed at the mariner ready to greet him with a sword.

  It was a desperate fight. Clarenceux overpowered and killed the first man he fought, then charged down the deck, slicing with the wide-bladed sword and stabbing with the cutlass in his other hand. One man he slashed across the face; another lost his entire leg to a heavy blow. Another man suffered from the cutlass that Clarenceux jabbed upward, cutting his throat. As he fought his way into the men on the deck he saw Carew climbing the rigging while fighting two men, the pirate swung down and kicked one in the head as he stabbed the other. Luke saved his bullet for one man whom he singled out. He ran toward him, discharged the gun in his face, and then drew his sword. Juanita proved terrifying, the rage in her spilling out in a wide-eyed scream and a savage cutting and thrusting. But the desperation of the Davy’s crew could not hold back the tide of men they faced. Clarenceux saw Kahlu cut down, surrounded by four men. The silent hero fell to his knees on the deck and was immediately subjected to a frenzy of stabbings, leaving his body a bloody mess. They decapitated him and threw his head into the sea. Clarenceux himself was caught by surprise by a quicker swordsman and cut across the back of the wrist. Startled, he was knocked down from behind a moment later by the butt of a musket. Very soon only Carew and Skinner were still fighting. They had seized the masthead and were sheltering on the wooden platform, protected by it from the muskets fired from below. They beat off the attacks of those climbing the rigging, sending them tumbling into the sea.

  Clarenceux was disarmed, his hands were tied behind his back and he was dragged across the deck to the foremast, where he joined the other survivors, lying facedown. Of all those who had leaped, eight were dead, including Kahlu, Gurney, and Swift George. Juanita had tried to drown herself by jumping into the sea rather than surrender; the men had immediately gone after her in a skiff, dragging her out of the water. They started tearing her clothes off before they had even returned to the ship. Clarenceux was one of nine in a row at the foot of the foremast, alongside Francis and Luke. He reflected on the morality of the victors: in a battle against a foreign enemy, there would have been mutual respect. As this was a matter of policing, the vanquished were condemned criminals-regardless of how well they had fought. The victors believed they had a right to make use of a woman who had sided with those in the wrong.

  After a quarter of an hour, the gentleman whom Luke had wounded in the arm came among them, lifting each man’s head. When he came to Luke he recognized him; those green eyes were unmistakable. Holding his head up off the deck by his thick black hair, he spat in his face. Then he smashed his head down onto the planking three or four times. He stood up and kicked him hard, causing Luke to cry out. Finally he drew a pistol with his left hand. Luke, with his head to one side, pleaded through a bloodied mouth to show mercy. “I was only doing what anyone would have done, what you too would have done,” he shouted, laying with his cheek against the deck.

  “I follow my own orders,” snarled the gentleman. He slowly wound the wheel-lock key with his teeth.

  “The fight is over, let him live,” said Clarenceux. “It will only do your soul harm to kill him.”

  The gentleman kicked Clarenceux in the stomach. “Shut that mouth of yours, if you don’t also want a bullet.” He stepped on the back of Luke’s neck and then aimed his gun at the back of Luke’s head, holding the barrel just a few inches above the skull. Clarenceux saw Luke open his eyes; the next moment there was an ear-shattering report and Luke’s skull was like a smashed pot, its red contents spilled across the deck. The gentleman wiped his bloodied boot on Luke’s body and walked away.

  59

  It was early evening. Clarenceux was still lying on the deck. They had thrown Luke’s corpse over the side about an hour earlier but the smeared bloodstains were still there. He touched his lips with his tongue; they were dry and caked in salt. He was thirsty, hungry, cold, and tired. His killing of the men in the skiff in cold blood now seemed a thing of the distant past. So too did charging across the deck in a paroxysm of rage, killing and maiming. Only Luke’s death was still vivid. How had it come to this? Why had he ended up
on a stolen ship with godless pirates fighting the forces of her majesty?

  A boot kicked him. “Your turn.”

  Clarenceux looked up. A red-bearded figure was looking down on him. “The boatswain will speak to you. What’s your name and parish?”

  “I am William Harley from the parish of St. Brides, London. I am Clarenceux King of Arms, an officer in her majesty’s-”

  “You’re Harley? Good. To the captain, then.”

  Clarenceux was surprised. “How does he know I am here?”

  “Get up.”

  Clarenceux struggled to his feet. He looked out to sea; the Davy had sunk, shipping its sad cargo of corpses to the seabed. The two other ships remaining above water were close at hand. Men were aloft, fitting new sails.

  He was taken across the deck to the sterncastle. Here a door led directly from the upper deck into the captain’s cabin. It was paneled and had glazed windows on the port, stern, and starboard sides, allowing in plenty of light. There was a bed beneath one of the windows and a chest beneath the other. A table in the center, fixed to the floor, was set with a basket of bread, a pewter plate of meat, a silver mug, and a wooden wine flask. Beside it stood a large, broad-shouldered gentleman, aged about fifty, with a very long double-forked black beard and black hair. Both beard and hair were streaked with gray, adding to the man’s air of distinction. There was a flash of mischief across his dark eyes too, giving a sense that this was a man of daring and charm. He was dressed in an old-fashioned leather jerkin slashed repeatedly to reveal the white shirt beneath, with no ruff but a sword on his plain leather belt. His black cap sported a white feather. Clarenceux’s eyes were drawn to the ring: Or, three lions passant sable.

  “We have met before, haven’t we, Mr. Harley?” said Sir Peter Carew in a deep Devonian accent.

  “Nineteen years ago,” said Clarenceux. But as he said the words, he reflected that he knew the man much better than past acquaintance. Sir Peter was famous. He was a fearsome soldier and a fearless naval commander, and one of the most respected of all English seafarers because of his mixture of courtliness and courage. He had traveled to see the Ottoman Emperor in Constantinople and visited Buda when it was under siege-just so he could see what an oriental army looked like. He was a staunch Protestant who had led the suppression of the Catholic rebels in Devon and Cornwall in 1549. He had served as an MP, largely due to the influence of his patron, Lord Russell. He had been knighted by the old king. But most of all, he had done more than anyone else to clear the seas of pirates-at least, those pirates whom he had not befriended in the course of his duties. He also was perpetually in debt; he owed a small fortune to the Crown.