Prince

Chapter 34

A flock of seabirds, waking with the dawn, drifted across the bows. The dirty, off-white canvas of the sail billowed in the following breeze. The cloud had gone, and it was becoming a bright, sun-filled morning.

The river narrowed as they passed the ferry port and shipyard of Gravesend, bustling with dozens of great vessels. Tall cranes of oak and elm reached out their arms across the wharves. Dominating it all were the battlements of Gravesend fort, built earlier in the century by Elizabeth’s father, to deter any enemy who might think of attacking London from the Thames. Then the river broadened out again and the signs of humanity ashore diminished, though the waterway was still decorated by the slow-changing scape of dozens of sails. On another day, a man might have found himself captivated by the raw beauty of this wild stretch.

Shakespeare saw none of it and wished to hear no more of Peter Gulden’s treachery. He turned to the fisher. ‘How far have we come?’

‘Twenty-five miles, but the tide is turning.’

‘Do you recognise any landmarks, Mr Gulden?’

‘Only the Gravesend docks. I have been this way twice before. I would say there is an hour to go if this current holds, perhaps less.’

‘No, we have had the best of the tide,’ the fisher said. ‘It’ll be slow going now.’

The Thames began to curve northwards in the last great bend of the river before its gaping mouth opened into the North Sea. The waters were becoming rougher as the tide turned. A swell of waves pushed hard against the bows of the fishing boat. The turbulence and the stench of fish began to turn Shakespeare’s stomach, but he refused to submit to nausea, unlike Gulden, who puked over the side. The fisher had to use all his experience and knowledge of the wind to keep the craft on its downriver course.

‘There will be islands soon,’ the fisher said. ‘Canvey, Two Tree and Incular to the north, in Essex. A few others, too. Then Grain and Sheppey to the south, in Kent. Bleak, inhospitable places all of them, fit for nothing but sheep and outlaws.’

A high-masted square-rigger rode the tide past them, on its way upriver. From the poor state of its sails and rigging, a man might have deduced it was returning from a voyage halfway around the world.

‘There,’ Gulden said tersely, pointing northwards as the vessel finally straightened out eastward once more. ‘The tree.’

Shakespeare scanned the northern bank. He saw a few squat trees dotted along the land a mile or so up ahead, but none that stood out in any way. ‘Mr Gulden?’

‘The dead tree. It has the shape of a bull’s head. The two branches stick up like horns. I noted it before. That is the island.’

‘Canvey,’ the fisher said.

‘There is a series of creeks on its northern shore. The hellburner is moored in one of them. At low tide it will be stranded in the mud; but with this tide coming in it won’t be long before she floats.’

‘When were you last here?’

‘Two days since. It was not fully prepared; they were still loading the powder. They had men working on it, Scottish men. Carting aboard bricks and slabs of stone and rusted iron tools. It must be near completion. My work on the clock is finished. It is my best work

… I was told its success would bring my family to me. Now I pray you will destroy it before more harm is done.’

‘What are they planning for it?’

Gulden seemed about to speak, but then shook his head. ‘I do not know.’

‘You were about to say something, Mr Gulden. I suggest you say it before I spill your blood in the Thames.’

‘I did hear something… something I do not think I was meant to hear.’

‘Yes?’

‘Laveroke was with Sarjent. I heard them talk of a bridge. That is all. I straightway thought of the great London bridge…’

London Bridge. What better target for an enemy of England. Shakespeare shuddered. If a hellburner had killed a thousand men aboard a boom of wooden ships across the Scheldt, what might one of similar size do to this bridge, the greatest such structure in the world? Countless numbers would die and it would blow London in two, cutting the city off from Southwark for months or years to come. If true, it was a plot of nightmares.

London Bridge. The glory of England, a spectacle that men and women travelled from the far corners of the globe to set eyes on. Less a bridge than a small town. Many of the city’s greatest houses, some seven storeys high, were supported by its nineteen stone arches. More than a hundred and thirty of the finest shops lined its nine-hundred-foot span. It had once even had its own church, the chapel of St Thomas Becket, standing atop the central section, but the Protestants had closed it and turned it into a fine dwelling for a merchant. And at the southern end, the gatehouse with its piked heads of traitors, a symbol of unforgiving power to all who harboured treasonous thoughts about their monarch. The irony of that was not lost on Shakespeare.

London Bridge. Above all, it was a thoroughfare that carried the lifeblood of the city, the beating heart of England. Constantly in use, throughout the day. At its busiest times, it might bear the weight of two to three thousand people, along with their wagons, horses and driven farm beasts. How many men, women and children would die if a hellburner wrought its malign work there, blowing them to pieces or sweeping them into the river’s flood? It was enough to make any man quake with fear and anger.

As they tacked into an inlet to the east of the island, Shakespeare was thinking fast. He had little idea what to expect at this place. Gulden said there had been men here when last he came. But who would be here this day, and how would they be armed? He had two wheel-lock pistols and a pouch of a dozen balls and a horn of powder. Apart from that, he had his sword and poniard. It was little enough.

‘See that tower over there?’ said Gulden, pointing to a ruin. ‘We are not far off now.’

‘Moor here, Master fisher,’ Shakespeare said.

‘This place is naught but mud and sheep, master.’

‘I would dearly wish it so.’

The fisher brought the boat in close to shore. Shakespeare jumped out and found himself sinking in thick clay up to his ankles. The incoming waves lapped around his legs. He pulled Gulden out after him, by his collar. Stumbling, Gulden toppled headlong into the turbid surf. Shakespeare left him to struggle to his feet and turned to the fisher. ‘I would ask you to stay here. You already have my gold…’

‘I’ll be here, master. I have ears. I heard what was said.’

‘Good man. I need one more thing from you — rope.’

The fisher gave Shakespeare a coil of mooring cord, which he curled around his shoulder. Then he primed and loaded a pistol and pushed its muzzle into Gulden’s dripping face. ‘Which direction?’

‘We follow the shoreline a little north, then westward, in the lea of this hillock. I sailed there before. That castle — ’ he nodded towards the ruined tower, at the top of the incline — ‘that was used by them as a storage space and shelter.’

‘Walk.’

They trudged for quarter of an hour across the flat, desolate land. Even in this dry summer, the earth was boggy and the two men walked around dark pools, seeing nothing but seabirds. Gulden walked ahead, his back arched, knowing all the while that Shakespeare’s wheel-lock was pointed at him. To their right, the tower of the castle loomed. There was no sign of any human life. Suddenly Gulden stopped and pointed. ‘There.’

Shakespeare followed Gulden’s finger. He could see the tip of a mast about two furlongs off. He thrust the pistol into his belt. ‘Lie down, on your face. Hands behind you.’

Without ceremony, he uncurled the rope and bound Gulden, hands and feet. He wrenched the rope tight, painfully tight, then knelt beside him in the marshy grass. ‘If I survive, so might you. If I die, then you will waste and perish here. And no one will mourn you, Mr Gulden. The wind will blow through your bones for evermore, and no one will know that you are here, nor care. Not a soul on earth, nor God in heaven for what you have done…’

‘Forgive me, Mr Shakespeare.’

Shakespeare said nothing. He could no more forgive Gulden than he could forgive the man who had taken the casks of powder to the Dutch market. For a moment, he thought of gagging Gulden, but that would have been a cruelty too far and would have likely brought death. Anyway, he wasn’t going to cry out.

Shakespeare moved forward more cautiously. A little way off, to the left of the castle, he saw a copse of stunted trees and, from within it, a thin trail of smoke drifting skyward. Moving at a crouch now, he ran towards the thicket, a wheel-lock once again in his hand. From here he had a better view of the landscape. He could see the ship clearly. There were men moving about its decks. One or two others were ashore. The vessel was almost afloat with the rising of the tide.

He found the ashes of a fire in a clearing in the middle of the spinney. The earth was greatly disturbed. He shuddered at the sight of an empty, mud-thick coffin and a hole that looked like a grave. What in God’s name had been happening here? There was more evidence that someone had been here recently: a hunk of bread, an empty flagon, tatters of charred clothing, sticks of burnt wood.

Coming out of the woods, he made his way to the ruin of the castle, keeping behind the brow of the hill as far as possible so that he would not be observed from below. He approached the ruins at a crouch. There was an old flagon. A rat was gnawing at some discarded food and ignored his approach.

Shakespeare gasped involuntarily. Boltfoot Cooper’s caliver and cutlass were there. So Boltfoot had been here. He would not have left of his own accord without these weapons. Shakespeare picked them up. He had to do something, and fast.

He descended the incline towards the ship. If anyone looked up, he must be visible now. Close to the creek, he dropped to his belly, crawling forward to the raised bank of the creek. Looking over the grassy lip, he could see the mudflats sloping away down to the dark channel of water where the vessel rode. The ship was larger than he had expected. The Hope at Antwerp had been seventy tons, but from his knowledge he guessed this ship to be a bark displacing perhaps a hundred and twenty tons. Small enough at about sixty feet to negotiate these narrow waters, but large enough to carry many tons of gunpowder. It was afloat, but its painters were still secured. One plank from the gangway stretched down to a makeshift quay of old wooden struts driven into the mud.

Two men stood on the decking at the landward end of the plank. They were deep in conversation. From this distance, perhaps a hundred yards, he could make out their features clearly but did not recognise either of them. One was tall with a black beard, thin eyes and a military bearing. He had a scabbed nose. Shakespeare had heard of Sarjent suffering such an injury at the hands of Boltfoot. The other man was larger of body, with an enormous barrel chest, though not as tall as his companion. Shakespeare stared at them a few moments, buried as well as he could be in the tufts of grass. From the descriptions given him by Peter Gulden, it seemed entirely possible that the men were Sarjent and Quincesmith. His gaze drifted to the ship. Emblazoned on its prow was the word Sieve. Amidships he saw shapes, figures moving about. Eight or nine men, strangely attired in black. What could he do against such a band?

The creek was swelling rapidly with the incoming tide and the mooring lines were tightening as the ship rose. Soon, very soon, there would be enough depth to allow the vessel to bear room from this place. The shrouds were flapping in the wind. Would it sail this morning? Was this the day of reckoning? Surely, this was why these men were here. There was no loading, no construction. Their dread weapon was ready.

The two men who had been talking looked around. Shakespeare ducked lower in the tufty grass, so that his face would not be visible. The larger of the two clapped the other man on his back and they both began striding up the plank to the ship.

Shakespeare rose to his feet. He held out the first pistol at arm’s length, aimed it at the big man’s back, and fired. The recoil of the weapon knocked him backwards. Through the billowing powder smoke he saw that the two men had stopped at the head of the gangway and were looking back in his direction, unharmed.

The bull-chested one cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘You’re a little late.’ Then he laughed and kicked the boarding plank away from the vessel. He took a dagger from his belt and strode around the bulwarks, slashing at the mooring ropes, cutting the vessel adrift.

Shakespeare was reloading the wheel-lock, keeping his hands as steady as he could as he poured in the powder. From the corner of his eye, he saw that there was much activity aboard the vessel. A bundle was hanging in nets from the bowsprit and one of the men in black was clambering, like a monkey, along this spar at the front of the ship. The one he assumed was Quincesmith had a long-barrelled musket. He had climbed a companion ladder to the poop deck and now rested the muzzle of the weapon on the bulwark. He lit the match, blew on it so that it glowed, then fired.

The ball spat past Shakespeare and slapped into the mud a foot to his side.

Shakespeare dived to his left. He was an open target and his pistols were impotent against such a long-range weapon.

The ship was drifting out into mid-stream. Six of the figures in black were climbing the rigging, unfurling sails.

‘I know not who you are,’ the man with the musket called. ‘But if you want the man Cooper, you will be pleased to learn that he hangs from the bowsprit. Our Scots friends couldn’t find a cat, but they are satisfied that he will do as well in the casting of spells.’ He bellowed a laugh that made his barrel chest quake.

Shakespeare’s eyes drifted back to the bows. The black-gowned man was sawing at the rope that held the bundle. As Shakespeare watched, the bundle twisted from the severed netting, then fell like a stone into the dark waters of the creek.

For a moment it sank, then bobbed back to the surface, drifting beside the vessel on the side nearest the shore. Shakespeare tried to make sense of what had just happened. Was that really Boltfoot wrapped up like a dead mariner in a canvas shroud and tossed overboard? Was he alive or dead?

The ship’s sails were catching the wind and she was gathering a little speed. Shakespeare hesitated no more than a few seconds. He divested himself of his weapons and doublet and dived into the mud-churned water.

William Sarjent had taken the whipstaff, the lever that swung the tiller, and was steering a course away from the creek. He felt a rush of irritation that this man had somehow got so close to them. He seemed to be alone, though. Better to finish him now, before setting sail. They could not afford to miss this tide, so it had to be a well-aimed musket-ball.

At the side of the vessel, Jeremiah Quincesmith reloaded the matchlock and fired downwards at the swimming man. The weapon was accurate enough when fired horizontally with the support of a stand, but firing downwards from a moving vessel was near to hopeless. The balls slapped silently into the grey water, one after the other as Quincesmith loaded and reloaded. He cursed the Scots for their maddening superstition. Why hadn’t they merely put a dagger up beneath the cooper’s ribcage?

Shakespeare swam with all his strength. He was a strong swimmer, but he was encumbered by his clothing and held back by the tidal current that swept in and kept him from the bundle he had to reach.

‘Boltfoot!’ he roared above the waves, and choked on a mouthful of salt water for his pains.

He redoubled his stroke power. But the distance did not seem to shrink. On and on he drove himself, his muscles cramping, his lungs in agony. Suddenly he was there. He grasped hold of the canvas-wrapped weight. From his belt he took his dagger and slashed and slashed at the ropes and canvas that bound the limp parcel.

Desperately paddling his legs beneath the surface, he clawed at the bundle, ripping, shredding, hacking with no plan other than to free whatever was inside it.

Piece by piece, the canvas and ropes came away. And there was Boltfoot Cooper, motionless in his arms. Shakespeare slapped his face for a response but there was nothing, just cold blue flesh. Regardless, he lay back and stretched Boltfoot’s limp body atop his, clasping him beneath the armpits and kicking out with his feet to draw him, inch by inch, to shore and away from the musket-fire.