Martyr

Chapter 22

The Elizabeth Bonaventure, a Royal ship of six hundred tons with thirty-four guns and a crew of two hundred and fifty men, slipped away from the quay at Gravesend on the tide and made sail with the wind. It was a chilly morning, just past break of day, and a brisk breeze stretched the ship’s pennants bravely and churned the gray surface of the Thames.

The sailors set to work, coiling ropes, scrubbing down the decks of all the land detritus that had collected in port. Behind them, growing more and more distant, the smoke of London spiraled hazily into the sky. Gradually the river grew broader and the great ship moved elegantly onward through the swift, turbulent flood on her way down to the sea. As the wind freshened, it whistled through the shrouds and sails, casting a curious spell that, for a while, rendered all aboard silent in their toil.

Boltfoot Cooper rested his left arm on the polished oak bulk-wark and watched Vice Admiral Drake from a distance of not more than forty feet. He kept his right hand on the hilt of his cutlass, which was thrust loosely through his belt. At last, in the early afternoon, they reached the gaping mouth of the river and flew before the wind into the narrow sea.

“Cooper!” Drake’s gruff voice rang out above the wind. “Drag yourself here, man!”

Boltfoot moved resignedly toward his former captain. He had vowed never to take orders from him again, nor ever to set foot aboard another of his vessels.

“Report to the carpenter, Mr. Cooper. There will be plenty of work to do on the spars and casks. Make yourself useful. I don’t need watching like a babe out here.”

Boltfoot stood his ground. “I am ordered to remain with you at all times. Who is to say that one of this crew is not a hireling of Spain?”

“By the bones of the deep, Mr. Cooper, would you disobey an order of your captain? I’ll have you hanged at the yardarm.”

“My captain is Mr. Shakespeare and my admiral is Mr. Secretary Walsingham, as you know, sir. I am answerable to them and to them only, save the Queen and God.”

“Huh! You have a fine spirit this cold morning, Mr. Cooper. Take a tot of brandy.” Drake turned to his lieutenant. “Captain Stanley, be good enough to ask the galley steward to bring us a bottle of Aquitaine liquor.”

Stanley, thought Boltfoot, looked a little bit disgruntled, as if it were not his place to call upon a steward to serve them, especially with Boltfoot and Diego in close attendance. But though Harper Stanley might have felt slighted, the lieutenant did not complain. When the brandy arrived, Boltfoot insisted on tasting Drake’s first, for poison. Drake scowled at him. “You think me as womanly as a Spaniard, Mr. Cooper?”

Boltfoot glared back and grumbled, “Marry. If it were mine to choose, I would poison it myself.”

“And I would gladly make you drink it, Mr. Cooper!”

Diego clapped Boltfoot on the back. “Do not listen to him, Boltfoot. I think he loves you. Let us drink a toast to the Elizabeth Bonaventure.”

“Is she not yare, gentlemen?” said Drake. “Mr. Hawkins has done a splendid job here. Low to the sea, fast and responsive. She has the narrow waist of a wanton. It will be a rare Spanish galleon can match the Lizzie when we have the weather gauge. Now, Mr. Stanley, bring forth the Master Gunner and let us prepare to have some sport with the ordnance. We will soon be upon the target hulk.”

They were moving on a broad curve northward, close to the tidal sands of Pig’s Bay near Shoebury Ness. A coaster with coals from the north tacked southward past them and disappeared slowly into the Thames. The Lizzie had been Drake’s flagship sixteen months earlier on his Caribbean raid. She was already a quarter of a century old on that voyage, but John Hawkins had streamlined her and made a new ship of her. Since then, with advice from Drake, he had made more adjustments to improve her speed and maneuverability. Sleek, fast, like a wisp in the wind but with the firepower of a dragon, the Lizzie was a Spanish galleon commander’s nightmare.

At last, a boy at the top of the mainmast called out, “Hulk ahoy.” And soon they all saw it, a weathered old vessel stuck fast in the sand with nothing left but its hull and a broken skeleton of spars and masts, dating back to the turn of the century or more.

“We will take six turns, Master Gunner. First turn long range, five hundred yards,” Drake announced. The Master Gunner, a broad-shouldered man of thirty, bowed to his Vice Admiral and went straightway to the gun deck, where he began issuing orders.

As they came around for the first turn and as the great cannons boomed and recoiled on their four-wheeled carriages, the smoke of gunpowder choked out the sun, like a crackling bonfire of greenwood in autumn. Boltfoot kept his eyes on Drake and remembered the long sea days of the circumnavigation in the great oceans with a curious nostalgia that he had thought never to feel again.

In his mind’s eye, he could see the vastness of the open sea, when you knew there was a God in heaven and that He was very close. On a clear day, the ocean was a glory to behold. The rolling waves, higher than the bowsprit of the Golden Hind, reaching as far as a man could see, north, south, east, and west; immense in their splendor. As the Hind descended from one wave into a long, dipping trough, the next wave rose like a tall, gray cathedral before them and the ship itself began to rise to meet it, before falling once more down a wall of water into an enormous, foam-wracked trough. Such days had terrified many mariners, yet Boltfoot loved them; until this moment, he had forgotten how much.

“Regrets, Mr. Cooper?” Drake bellowed, just after the second boom of the Elizabeth Bonaventure’s guns, as if reading Boltfoot’s mind.

Yes. That you cheated me out of my plunder, Boltfoot thought, but said nothing.

The ship continued its long sweeps across the hulk, turning with grace and speed, its bow low and eager to please, then firing with increasing accuracy from different ranges, crashing the hulk into splinterwood. Finally, when the supply of balls was exhausted and the hulk had all but disappeared beneath the sea, Drake ordered the master to take them home. “We will make for Deptford, where you will land me. Then you can take her back to Gravesend with Captain Stanley.”

They arrived back soon after a limpid sun rose the next day, the Elizabeth Bonaventure’s sails gleaming in the low eastern light. Boltfoot had stayed the night outside the great cabin in the stern-castle, taking turns with Diego to sleep in a hastily raised hammock. This was also the way it was working now at Drake’s home in Elbow Lane and at court when they stayed there. Despite his reservations about being protected, Drake was allowing Boltfoot and Diego to camp outside the chamber he shared with his wife.

The Lizzie dropped anchor in midstream, some way from the landing steps at Deptford. The coxswain, Matthew, lowered the captain’s boat and brought it into position. When the oarsmen were all at their stations, Drake descended the rope ladder, a small, indistinct figure against the vastness of the sleek, oiled oak of the bulwarks and the pitch-blackened hull below. Boltfoot followed him.

Herrik in his room above the chandlery on the Strand at Deptford, had been awake and watchful since first light. He had seen the Elizabeth Bonaventure from some way off. She was every inch a royal ship, proudly bearing flags with the white cross of Saint George and silken pennants of gold and silver, flying thirty yards or more from the masts. And then, as she came closer, he could see the rose shield of the Tudors adorning the low race-built forecastle-the same diminutive structure that made the ship so vulnerable to boarding yet, at the same time, as nimble and quick as a wild cat.

For a moment Herrick found himself admiring her lines. She was majestic and it occurred to him that if the English had many more such ships, they could trouble, if not match, any armada that Philip could muster and put to sea. He resolved that when this Holy mission was done with, he would go to Mendoza in Paris with information on what he had seen here. His Spanish masters should know the truth about this English fleet.

From the bag he took the two pieces of gun; the mechanism and the barrel in one piece, the stock separate. They clipped together easily. He primed the weapon with the fine willow powder and rammed home one of the balls into the muzzle. It fitted perfectly. Herrick removed his sighting stand from below the bed. It was short, no more than two feet. He had crafted it himself from wood he had found discarded outside the dockyard timber merchant’s lot nearby. At its top was a notch he had cut, on which he could rest the muzzle.

He opened the little window and looked out. Beneath him the early-morning throng was going about its business. No one looked up. Herrick took his pillow cushion from the bed and put it on the floor close by the window, where he placed it beneath one knee, crouching low so that his head would not be visible from the street below. He had a clear, unimpeded view of the landing steps where Drake would soon land.

He could see the cockboat now, rowed hard and in time by four oarsmen. The coxswain stood, directing their strokes. In the back, the captain sat in splendor, talking to a dark-skinned man to his left. On the other side of him sat a thickset man who looked for all the world like a broadsheet version of a pirate. Herrick studied the captain in the middle. Was this man definitely Drake? If his information was correct that Drake would come ashore from the Elizabeth Bonaventure this day-and Herrick had no reason to doubt it-then this had to be him. He took the portrait from his doublet and studied it briefly. This captain fitted every description of Drake he knew: the proud, puffed-out chest; the stocky stature; the jutting, sharp-cut golden beard; the curled, flame-red hair; the arrogance. Herrick discarded any doubts. This was Drake.

The cockboat was about two hundred yards away. Herrick rested the barrel of his snaphaunce musket on the makeshift stand, its muzzle protruding not more than an inch over the sill of the window.

He knew it to be a remarkable weapon. Before coming here to this eyrie in Deptford, he had taken the gun, concealed in his bag, out to the woods past Islington ponds. There he had expended three-quarters of the twenty-four specially manufactured balls in target practice. The musket was as accurate as claimed by its maker, Opel. He knew he could easily hit a man’s head from a hundred yards, probably one-fifty, and possibly even two hundred. With such a weapon ranged against them, no prince or captain-general would ever be safe again.

Herrick lined up the sights of the gun on his target and squinted down the barrel at Drake. He could take him now, while he sat in the back, literally a sitting target. But he held back; the boat was swaying in the choppy swell. Herrick could wait. He had been here at this window for sixty hours now, watching the Strand, the river, and the moored ships almost every moment of daylight, barely breaking for food or drink. Wait until Drake was closer to shore but not yet landed, that was the thing. This was the place, his man had assured him.

Drake’s head was in his sights now, as big and lush as the watermelons in the market at the bottom of the Capitoline Hill, near the English college. He let the muzzle drop and lined up on Drake’s chest. Aim for the biggest target-the body, not the head.

They were close enough now. The boat was in calmer water and there was no obstacle between the muzzle of Herrick’s gun and the body of England’s greatest mariner. Herrick held the stock hard into his shoulder to minimize recoil, then pulled the trigger.

The explosion in the small, enclosed room was deafening. The recoil threw him back. Smoke billowed from the muzzle. Herrick set the weapon on the bare boards of the floor, then looked from the window, trying to make out the boat. There was a mass of confusion and the vessel was rocking madly. The oarsmen were all now standing; they seemed to be crowded around Drake. Was he dead? He had to be dead. There was no time to lose; Herrick had to move fast. He couldn’t get back to London by boat. The river would be shut down immediately. He had a horse liveried at a tavern stable inland, half a mile to the south, toward the gabled manor house Sayers Court. His plan was to ride to Southwark, where there was a safe house, and stay there until the hue and cry died down. Perhaps a week, maybe more. The ports were all closed anyway since the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the searches of any foreigners trying to get across the Channel would now be redoubled. He must keep his head, stay low and wait.

He dismantled his weapon, threw it back in the bag, and stowed it beneath the bed. No need of it now. He had no other belongings, merely the clothes he stood in, the wheel-lock pistol at his belt, his thin-bladed skene and rapier. He shut the door of the room behind him and walked down the creaking staircase to the shop below.

Bob Roberts, his landlord, was there, standing at the doorway. He turned and smiled broadly at Herrick, clutching the base of his fume-belching pipe. “There’s quite a to-do out there, Mr. van Leiden,” he said, carelessly blowing smoke in Herrick’s face.

“What is it, Bob?”

“Hard to say. Looks like someone’s been hurt.” Roberts looked curiously at Herrick. “Are you all right, Mr. van Leiden? I heard a noise from upstairs. Thought you must have fallen out of bed.”

Herrick laughed. “That I did, Bob. That I did. And now I must take my leave of you and try again for some work. I will see you at dusk.” He stepped out from the doorway intending to hurry to the stables. But first he would join the throng at the waterfront, to make sure Drake was dead.

Boltfoot Cooper was drenched. He stood on the quayside, his eyes focused on a small window. Just before the shot rang out, Boltfoot had caught a dull glint from that window, in the middle of the row of shops and suppliers at the back of Deptford Strand. The dull glint had become a puff of smoke, swiftly followed by the familiar sound of a charge of gunpowder exploding. At that moment, Matt the coxswain moved to the side with the landing hook to pull the boat into the steps when she came alongside. The coxswain took the bullet in the lower abdomen and crumpled down and backwards into Drake’s lap.

Boltfoot’s eyes turned briefly from the window to Matt, then back to the window. As the puff of smoke cleared, a face appeared. It was clean-shaven, as pale as a carved marble bust, and it was peering hard toward them. After the initial shock, the oarsmen and Diego clustered around Matt, lifting him off the Vice Admiral’s lap and laying him down in the bottom of the boat where they could tend to him. Drake immediately took control of the situation. Boltfoot scrambled out of the boat, dragging himself through the water to the steps, which at this high tide, were below the river’s surface.

Boltfoot pulled himself up the steps onto the quay, his clothes dripping wet. Crowds were now milling around, trying to see what had happened in the cockboat. After a moment standing on the quay getting his bearings, he pushed his way through the throng and looked across to the window he had seen. The face was no longer there. He started to stride toward the building. He was surprisingly quick, despite his clubfoot. His cutlass was now drawn and hanging loose in his hand at his side. The chandlery where he had seen the face at the window was sixty to seventy yards away. There was a man at the doorway now. He was bearded and looked for all the world like a casual onlooker. Another man appeared beside him. He was clean-shaven, like the face at the window. It was the face at the window. Boltfoot’s pace quickened.

Herrick’s eye caught Boltfoot’s as soon as he stepped out from the doorway. He recognized him instantly as the piratical figure sitting beside Drake in the cockboat. His cutlass was drawn and he was coming straight toward him in a difficult, loping stride, one leg dragging as if it were injured. Had the sailor been hurt in the melee when Drake was hit? Herrick switched plans; he would not go to the waterfront. This man was coming for him. Swiftly, Herrick turned right and ducked down an alley, barging past a waterseller, knocking the great conical butt from his shoulders to the ground. The butt was well hooped for strength and did not shatter, but the water flowed forth. The water-bearer cursed, but Herrick was already gone.

Boltfoot appeared in the alley as the water-bearer was lifting his ungainly butt back onto his shoulders.

“Where did he go?”

The water-bearer, a gray-haired man with a stoop, pointed down the alley and indicated that the fugitive had turned right at the end. “And give the whoreson a bloody nose from me!”

Boltfoot had unslung his caliver and was priming it. He loped on. At the end of the alley he turned right and saw the back of the intruder, perhaps thirty yards ahead of him. It was an impossible shot, but Boltfoot knew he would never catch the man on foot. He stopped, knelt, held the wheel-lock gun in his right hand, resting on his left forearm, took aim as well as his heaving lungs would allow, and fired.

Herrick felt a searing pain in his side, just below his left armpit, and arced forward. But he did not falter. His right hand clutched at the wound. His fingers were wet with blood but the wound would not stop him. At most, he reckoned, the ball had torn a bit of flesh and skin but had ricocheted off his ribs. He was lucky. He ran on.

The alleys were dense and mazelike, with jettied overhangs from the crowded buildings. Many of the buildings were in some way connected to the sea trade that was the essence of this town: sailors’ lodgings, alehouses, stews, chandlers. Herrick pushed on, loping like the wolf evading a shepherd whose lambs it has just slaughtered. He was fit but his chest and lungs hurt. At last he came out of the main part of Deptford. He ran across a dirt road, then another, narrowly avoiding a horseman who had to rein in sharply. Ahead he saw the stable and slowed to a walk. One of the ostlers was just leading his mount out into the cobbled yard.

“Good morrow, Mr. van Leiden. Fine timing, sir. Your mount is ready for your morning ride.”

Herrick caught his breath. He took the reins from the groom and accepted his cupped hands as a step-up, then swung himself onto the horse. Slow down now, he told himself. Slow down. Don’t arouse more suspicion. He managed to smile at the ostler and found a coin for him in his purse.

“Thank you, sir.” Then, “It seems you have hurt yourself, Mr. van Leiden.”

“I fell and caught my side on a piece of iron. I think it was an old spoke from a carter’s wheel.”

“Too much of the falling-down juice, is it, sir?”

Herrick laughed. “Something like that.” Over the groom’s shoulder he saw, in the distance, the advancing figure of the limping gunman who had just shot him; his awkward running style was unmistakable. Herrick dug his heels into the horse’s flank, shook the reins, wheeled around, and was gone.