To the Far Blue Mountains

*

Chapter 1

My Horse, Good Beast That He Was, Stood Steady, Ears Pricked to listen, as were mine.

When a man has enemies he had best beware, and I, Barnabas Sackett, born of the fenland and but lately returned from the sea, had enemies I knew not of.

The blackness of my plumed hat and cloak fed themselves into the blackness of the forest, leaving no shape for the eye to catch. There was only the shine of captured light from my naked blade as I waited, listening.

Something or somebody was in the forest near me, what or who it might be I knew not, nor was I a believer in the devils and demons thought to haunt these forests.

Devils and demons worried me not, but there were men abroad, with blades as keen as mine, highwaymen and creatures of the night who lay waiting for any chance traveler who might come riding alone ... to his death, if they but had their will.

Yet the fens had trained me well, for we of the fens learned to be aware of all that was happening about us. Hunters and fishers we were, and some of us smugglers as well, although of these I was not one. Yet we moved upon our hidden ways, in darkness or in light, knowing each small sound for what it was. Nor had wandering in the forests of Raleigh's land among the red Indians allowed my senses to grow dull.

Something lurked, but so did I.

My point lifted a little, expecting attack. Yet those who might be waiting to come at me were but men who bled, even as I.

It was not attack that came from the darkness, but a voice.

"Ah, you are a wary one, lad, and I like that in a man. Stand steady, Barnabas, I'll not cross your blade. It is words I'll have, not blood."

"Speak then, and be damned to you. If words are not enough, the blade is here.

You spoke my name?"

"Aye, Barnabas, I know your name and your table, as well. I've eaten a time or two in your fen cottage from which you've been absent these many months."

"You've shared meat with me? Who are you, then? Speak up, man!"

"I'd no choice. It is the steps and the string for me if caught. I need a bit of a hand, as the saying is, and the chance to serve you, if permitted."

"Serve me how?"

He was hidden still, used as were my eyes to darkness, yet now my ears caught some familiar note, some sound that started memory rising.

"Ah!" It came to me suddenly. "Black Tom Watkins!"

"Aye." He came now from the shadows, "Black Tom it is, and a tired and hungry man, too."

"How did you know me then? It is a time since last I traveled this road."

"Don't I know that? Yet it is not only I who know of your coming, nor your friend William, who farms your land. There are others waiting, Barnabas, and that is why I am here, in the damp and darkness of the forest, hoping to catch you before you ride unwitting into their company."

"Who? Who waits?"

"I am a wanted man, Barnabas, and the gallows waits for me, but I got free and was in the tavern yonder studying upon what to do when I heard your name spoken.

Oh, they kept their voices low, but when one has lived in the fens as you and I ... well, I heard them. They wait to lay you by the heels and into Newgate Prison."

He came a step nearer. "You've enemies, lad. I know naught of them nor their reasons, but guilty or not they've a Queen's warrant for you, and there's a bit in it for them if they take you."

A Queen's warrant? Well, it might be. There had been a warrant. Yet who would know of that and be out to take me? We were a far cry from London town, and it was an unlikely thing.

"They are at the cottage?" I asked.

"Not them. There's a bit of a tavern only a few minutes down the road, and they do themselves well there while waiting. From time to time one rides to see if you are about at the cottage, and I think they have a man in the hedgerow."

"What manner of men are they?"

It was in my mind that my enemy, Captain Nick Bardle of the Jolly Jack, was out to take me, but he himself was a wanted man, and he'd have no thought of Newgate.

"A surly lot of rogues by their looks, and led by a tall, dark man with greasy hair to his shoulders and the movements of a swordsman. He seems the leader, but there's another who might be. A shorter, wider man ... thicker, too ... and older somewhat if I am to judge."

My horse was as restive as I. My cottage was less than an hour away ... perhaps half that, but the night was dark and no landmarks to be made out. My situation was far from agreeable.

My good friend and business associate, Captain Brian Tempany, was aboard our new ship, awaiting my return for sailing. It was off to the new lands across the sea, and for trade with whom we could. And perhaps, for Abigail and me, a home there.

A Queen's warrant is no subject for jest, even if he who had sworn to it was dead and the occasion past. The warrant should have been rescinded, but once in Newgate I might be held for months and no one the wiser.

Once back in London, Captain Tempany might set in motion the moves to have the warrant rescinded, or my friend Peter Tallis might, but to do that I must first reach London and their ears.

"Go toward the cottage, Tom, and be sure all is quiet there, and along the hedge as well. Then come back along the track and meet me. Lay claim to a boat."

"I'll do it."

"A moment, Tom. You spoke of a favor?"

He took hold of my stirrup leather. "Barnabas, it is hanging at Tyburn if I'm caught, and it is said that you are lately home from the new lands across the sea, and that you sail again soon. There's naught left for me in England, lad, nor will there ever be again. I am for the sea, and if you'll have me aboard, I'll be your man 'til death.

"If you know aught of me you know I'm a seaman. I've been a soldier as well, and am handy with weapons or boats. Take me over the sea and I'll make out to stay there."

There was sincerity in him, and well enough I knew the man, a strong and steady one, by all accounts. To be a smuggler in Britain was to be in good company, for the laws were harsh and many a churchman or officer was involved in it, or looking aside when it was done.

Our fens in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were havens for smugglers, for there were many winding waterways by which a boat could come from the sea, and a score of towns the boat could come to with no hint that it came from the sea.

"Think well of what you ask, Tom. It is a far land to which I'll go. There be savages there, and forests such as you've never seen. It will be no easy time."

"Whenever was it easy for such a man as I? The scars I carry speak of no easy times, lad, and however bad it may be it will be better than the steps and the noose, and that's what awaits me here."

When he had gone I sat listening for a time, untrusting of the darkness, but heard no sound for the slow dripdrip of raindrops from the leaves. Black Tom would be a good man in Raleigh's land ... a good man.

My horse started of his own volition, impatient of standing, and sheathing my sword I let him go, then loosened the flap of my saddle holster on the right side. As we drew near the tavern I turned my mount to the grassy border along the track that we called a road.

A tall man who moved like a swordsman? A man with black and greasy hair? I knew of none such.

Before me appeared the lights from dim and dirty windows, and I remembered the tavern. An old place, with a stable for horses. The door opened and a man came into the darkness as I drew rein. He closed the door behind him, and I waited.

He stood a moment, then went around the house to the stables. After a moment he emerged, mounting the horse he led, and turned along the track ahead of me. At a respectable distance, I followed.

This must be the man who would ride to the cottage to see if I was about. Would Black Tom mistake him for me?

My stay at the cottage need not be long. It was a thing of sentiment as much as business that had brought me back, for the feeling was on me that I'd not again see the home my father had been given for his service in the wars. My father was Ivo Sackett, yeoman, soldier, first-class fighting man ... a decent man, too, and as good a teacher as he was a fighter.

There was William to see, for he would care for the land whilst I was gone over the great waters, and we had a few small matters to speak of. He was a man to be trusted, but in the event something happened to him ... after all, all men are mortal.

My father had schooled me well, and although he left me a fine stretch of fenland, I had no desire to remain there, nor had he wished me to. He had trained me well in the use of arms, of which he was a master, and taught me better than he knew of reading and writing.

"Lad," he would say to me, "I know a weaver who became a great merchant, and the men who rode with William the Norman had only their strong arms and their swords, but with them they became the great men of the kingdom. For some men an acre and a cottage are enough, but not for you, Barnabas. I have tried to fit you for a new life in the new world that's coming, where a man can be what he's of a mind to be."

This cottage and the land in the fens was what my father had done. Now was the time for me. Deep as was my affection for the cottage and the fens, I knew there was a broader, wilder world. I had my father's contempt for the courtier who suspends his life from the fingertips of those in power, looking for morsels. I would be beholden to no man.

The rider I followed was slowing down now as he drew nearer the cottage.

He drew up suddenly, listening, but sensing he was about to halt I had myself pulled up close under a tall hedge, and he could not see me.

He stared down the road behind him for a long time, then he started on, but I held my horse for I had a feeling he would stop again. And he did so, turning in the saddle to look back. After a moment he started again, seemingly reassured.

When he was near the lane that turned down the slope to my cottage, he drew up and dismounted. Purposely, I let my horse take two steps that he could hear.

Instantly, he froze in position, staring toward me. But I sat silent, knowing he was worried-frightened a little, or at least uneasy-and this was what I wanted.

He led his horse into the opening of the lane leading to my cottage, and what he saw or failed to see satisfied him, for he mounted again. But he rode on to where he could look toward the water side of my cottage, and then it was that I started to hum a tune and walked my horse toward him. He was around a turn of the lane but he heard me, as I knew he would, and as I turned the corner I saw him, halberd in hand.

"Ho, there!" I said, not too loud. "Is this the way to Boston?"

"Ahead there, and you'll see the marker." He leaned toward me, peering. "You came up the track?"

"Aye, and a start it gave me, too! Something was there ... I know not what. I spoke to it, but had no answer, and came on quickly enough. Damn it, man, if that be your way, be careful. I liked not the smell of it."

"Smell?"

"Aye, a fetid smell ... as of something dead. I saw no shape or shadow, but ... have you ever smelled a wolf?"

"A wolf?" His voice rose a little. "There are no wolves in England!"

"Aye ... so they say. Not wolves as such, I suppose, but I have smelled wolves ... not your ordinary wolves, you understand, but huge, slinking creatures with ugly fangs. Bloody fangs! And they smelled like that back there. Have you heard of werewolves, perhaps? I sometimes think-"

"Werewolves? That's just talk ... campfire talk, or talk by peasants. There are no wolves in England, and I-"

"Well, I've had a smell of them. That was in Tartary where I went for Henry the Seventh-"

"Henry the Seventh!" His voice was shrill. "Why, that's impossible! It has been almost a hundred years since-"

"So long?" I said. "It scarcely seems so." I leaned toward him. "Werewolves! I'd know that odor anywhere! The smell of graves opened! Old graves! Of bodies long dead!" Pausing, I said, as if puzzled, "But you said King Henry the Seventh was nearly a hundred years ago?"

"Nearly." The man was edging away from me.

"Well, well! How time goes on! But when you have passed, you know, when you're no longer subject to time-"

"I must go. They await me at the tavern yonder."

"Ah? A tavern? I was tempted to enter, but you know how it must be. When I enter the others leave. So I-"

"You're mad!" The man burst out suddenly. "Crazy!" And he clapped his heels to his horse and raced away.

From the hedge there was a chuckle. "He didn't know whether you were crazy or a ghost, Barnabas." Black Tom shivered. "On a night like this a man could believe anything out here in the dark." He gestured. "Come quickly! We have a boat."

Down the lane I rode, with Black Tom trotting beside, hanging to my stirrup leather. There was time for only a glance at the cottage, dark and silent, its small windows like lonely eyes. I figured William was at the hut, some distance away. I felt a twinge at my heart, for the cottage had been my boyhood home, this place and the fens. Inside was the fireplace beside which my father had taught me my lessons. No man ever worked harder for the future of his son, teaching me all he could from what he had seen and learned.

No more ... my father was gone, buried these several years. A wave of sadness swept over me. I started to turn for another look ...

"Quick! Barnabas, into the boat! They come!"

It was no common boat, but a scow, and I took my horse quickly across the plank, and we shoved off upon the dark, glistening water. We could hear the hoofbeats of horses.

Looking back, I felt warm tears welling into my eyes. It had been my home, this cottage on the edge of the fen. Here I had grown to manhood, and here my father had died.

And where, in my time, would my body lie?

Chapter 2

We of the fens knew every twist and turn of the waterways that formed an intricate maze where a stranger might soon become lost. A man might believe the fens, seen from West Keal, utterly flat and without a hiding place. But there were many islets, hidden coves, willow-sheltered channels, and occasional fields.

Over the years the fens had changed much, while seeming not to change at all.

Roman efforts to drain them had largely failed, due to changes in the sea level and long periods when no effort had been made to continue the work. Now Elizabeth was considering a new effort at drainage, for once drained the fens became the richest of farmland.

We who lived in the fens had small concept of their actual area, and no doubt felt them larger than they were, for they seemed vast, extending into several shires, although boundaries meant little.

The Romans had come, even, it was said, to the place where we now went. It was an islet of no more than three acres cut by several narrow, winding waterways.

There were few low-growing oaks, gnarled of trunk and thick of branch, but not tall, and some birch trees. Backed against a limestone shoulder was the hut, a place already ancient when my father played there as a child, and how ancient no man knew. Many times had the thatch been renewed, and long ago I had watched my father replace the door. I had come here before first sailing for America, but now, almost a year later, nothing had changed.

Even Black Tom, who knew the fens, had not known of this place. William knew, and I. Black Tom looked around, admiringly. "A tidy place! A man could live here on the eeling alone."

"Aye, but I am for America, Tom, love it though I do. It is a good place, with the cries of the marsh birds and the glow of the last light on the yellow water lilies. Nor shall I forget the sound of oars as a boat moves through the fens, or the way the morning mist lies close above the grass."

"You were born here?"

"In the cottage we just left My father was a soldier home from the wars, given this land in respect of things done. It was what he wanted, I think, land of his own and a free, honest life. He had lived by the blade and bow in many a land.

He taught me much the schools teach, and much that no school could teach, and I honor him for it. He wanted a better life for me, and I shall have it, in America." Black Tom nodded.

"My father finished his life," I continued, "and made a better foothold for me.

And I in my time shall do the same for my sons. Yet it is honor I wish for them, honor and pride of person, not wealth. Nor do I wish for titles, or a place near a Queen or a King, for pride of title or family is an empty thing, b'ke dry leaves that blow in the cold winds of autumn."

"You have a wife?"

"Nay ... but soon, if all goes well. A bonny lass who will go with me to America." I considered, and smiled. "It is not so much that I wish to take her to that wild land, but that she will not be left behind. She's a lovely lass, and we sail well together. I've a fine ship waiting, a cargo loaded, and she waits upon the wind ... and me."

"She must be a strong lass, to risk a wild land."

"Aye, and I've thought much upon that, Tom. It is well for men to risk dangers, for we have broad backs to bear the blows, but I marvel at the courage of women who go with us, and must think of bearing children alone, and in a far place.

"I wonder sometimes. Why do I go, Tom, when I have this? If Queen Bess drains the fens I would be a man of wealth, for much of this about us is mine. But I will not stay for it."

"With me it is different, lad. There's the noose at Tyburn waiting for my neck," said Tom.

"Perhaps, Tom. But think you: others like you stay. How many men in Britain today would sail for America? How many do you know that have lurked in the towns, hiding or moving from place to place rather than try a new land? They hide from change. They fear it. We do not."

"What of the savages there?"

"I have known but few, and as their lives need strength, they respect strength.

As they must fight with their enemies, they respect a fighter. As a coward is a danger to them, they despise a coward.

"There are honest men among them, and dishonest, even as with us. One must deal fairly, and watch himself against weakness, for they despise that. Give no gift without reason or they will think it an offering from fear, and kill you out of hand.

"In the forest they are masters, craftsmen as sure and true as men can be, and there's much to learn from them. Vast areas of the land seem to be uninhabited, for they are few in proportion to its size. They are a different people, of different backgrounds, and you cannot expect them to react like Christians. They have not heard of turning the other cheek-"

"And well enough they haven't. I never got far with that myself."

We came upon William. He and I had much of which to talk, of plantings and harvests and what to do with the money earned from the produce of my land, little though it was. In all I owned but some small pieces of tillable land, and some from which rushes might be cut-enough for a man's living and a bit over.

William was a solid man, and I'd promised him half. When there was sufficient earned, he was to buy another small piece of land.

"And what if you come not back, Barnabas?"

"Leave it in the trust of a good man. For if I come not back, a son of mine surely will."

William and I had known each other from boyhood, although he was the older by some seven years, a strong, resolute man who had land and crops, and worked hard with his hands.

I said to him, "And if the time comes you wish to cross the sea, come to me and I shall find a place for you."

"I am an Englishman, Barnabas. I want no more than England."

Was he wiser than I? My father had lived through wars and troubles, and it left him with a sense that nothing lasted but what a man made of himself. "Be wary," he advised me, "of trusting too much. Men change and times change, but wars and revolutions are always with us.

"Own a bit of ground where you can plant enough to live, and be not far from fuel, for days and nights can be cold. Be friendly with all men and censure none, tell nobody too much of your affairs and remember in all dealings with men, or women, to keep one hand upon the doorlatch ... in your mind, at least.

"Men distrust strangers, so have a few places where you are known ... but not too well. Not even a marsh-rat will trust itself to one hole only, so always have an escape route, and more than one, if it can be."

So in the days of my growing up we had used more than one market town, to become somewhat known in each, and we went to church now here, now there. My father did no smuggling as many fen-men did, but we knew the smugglers. We of the fens were a close-mouthed lot, not given to talking to strangers, but with a strong loyalty for one another.

The mysterious swordsman, if such he was, might ask in vain and learn nothing to help, nor would he find me now, for a myriad of watery routes led to many towns and villages in several shires.

With a warm fire going William and I talked much, and at the last he said, "Do not worry about your fields. I shall handle them as I would my own, and will take one-third."

"One-half," I repeated.

He shook his head. "You give too much, Barnabas."

"One-half," I insisted. "I wish you to have the reward of your care, and with what you have and what you can make of mine you can become a man of consequence."

"You go to a far land, Barnabas. Are you not afraid?"

"The forest seems safer than the London streets, William, and there is land for the taking-forests, meadows, and lakes. And there is game."

"Poaching?"

I smiled. "There are no lords there to bespeak the deer or the hare, William.

There is enough for all. I shall take seed to be planted, William, and tools for working the land and cutting down the forest I shall build what I need. My hands are fanning with tools, and necessity will add to their skill."

He shook his head, slowly. "No, Barnabas, it is for you to do this. I have not the courage to risk all upon a chance. My own land is here. I shall plough my own acres, sleep in my own cot."

"I wonder what it is?" I said. "I wonder what chooses between us, that I go and you stay? Our situations are not too different, one from the other, nor is one less or more the man than the other, it is only that we are different."

He nodded. "I have thought much upon this, Barnabas, and asked of myself the reasons. I do not know. Perhaps it is something in the blood of each of us that you go out upon the sea and I cling to my small holding here.

"You will allow me to say I think it a foolish thing you do? What will you do for drink, Barnabas?"

"I will drink water."

"Water? But water is not fit for men to drink. For the cattle, for birds and beasts, but a man needs ale ... or wine, if you are a Frenchman."

"The water of the new world is wine to me, William. I ask no more. The water of the streams is cold and clear."

And so we parted, we two who were friends but strangers, we whose paths would diverge, yet cling. As he waved good-bye from the island, I thought there was a little of wistfulness in his face. Perhaps something deep within him longed to follow me to the far lands. But that may have been my own pride in what I was, and where I was going.

The route we took to London must be roundabout. I decided upon Thorney. It was a lovely fenland village, a place I'd loved since boyhood when my father had told me stories of Hereward the Wake, the last man to hold out against William the Conqueror. Thorney had been one of the last places he defended. From here I would ride on to Cambridge, and then London.

So easily made are the plans of men! We poled our clumsy craft down the watery lane, reeds and willows tall about us. The dawn light lay gray-gold with the sun and mist upon the fens, and around us there was no sound or movement but the ripples of water around our hull and the small, ultimate sounds of morning birds among the leaves. My horse had no liking for the scow, and the uncertain footing worried him, yet the craft was strong if not swift.

Seated in the stern, I turned my eyes ever and anon toward our wake, but there was no sign of pursuit. Nonetheless, I was uneasy. It disturbed me that I knew not my enemies, for these were no common thief-takers. There was motive here.

Well ... soon I would be abroad upon the seas, and if they wished they might follow me to Virginia and to those blue mountains that haunted my days and nights with their unfathomable promise and mystery.

Unfathomable? No. For I would go there. I would walk the dark aisles of their forests, drink from their streams, challenge their dangers.

The last shadows wilted away to conceal themselves shyly among the reeds and under the overhanging branches to wait the courage that night would bring them.

The sun arose, the fog lifted, sunlight lay gently upon the fens. Some distance off we saw men cutting reeds and grass for thatch, then they were blotted from view by a thick stand of saw-sedge, seven to ten feet tall, but giving the appearance of a simple meadow if looked upon from distance. Passing through it was quite another thing, and I recalled returning from those meadows as a boy with cuts upon arms and legs from their wicked edges.

What memories would my children have? Would they ever know England? They would be far away and in another land, without schools, without books. No. There must be books.

It was born then, this idea that I must have books, not only for our children but for Abigail and myself. We must not lose touch with what we were, with what we had been, nor must we allow the well of our history to dry up, for a child without tradition is a child crippled before the world. Tradition can also be an anchor of stability and a shield to guard one from irresponsibility and hasty decision.

What books then? They must be few, for the luggage of books is no easy thing when they must be carried in canoes, packs, and upon one's back.

Each book must be one worth rereading many times, each a book that has much to say, that can lend meaning to a life, help in decisions, comfort one during moments of loneliness. One needed a chance to listen to the words of other men who had lived their lives, to share with them trials and troubles by day and by night in home or in the markets of cities.

The Bible, of course, for aside from religion there is much to be learned of men and their ways in the Bible. It is also a source of comments made of references and figures of speech. No man could consider himself educated without some knowledge of it.

Plutarch also. My father, a self-educated man, placed much weight upon him. He was, I quote my father, urbane, sophisticated, and intelligent, giving a sense of calmness and consideration to all he wrote. "I think," my father said, "that more great men have read him than perhaps any other book."

"Barnabas?" Black Tom was watching the riverbanks. "Is your boat anchored in London?"

"Aye. And there is a man in London with whom I speak. I shall be gone for a long time, and there are things he must do for me here, business he must handle when I am far from England."

"Do you trust this man?"

"Aye," I said, after a moment of thought, "although he has the name of one gifted at conniving. Yet we have things in common, I think."

"What manner of things?"

"Ideas, Tom. We have shared large ideas together, Peter and I. There is no greater time than for young men to sit together and shape large ideas into rounded, beautiful things. I do not know if our thoughts were great thoughts, but we believed them so. We talked of Plato, of Cathay and Marco Polo, of Roman gods and Greek heroes, of Ulysses and Jason."

"I know nothing of these."

"Nor I, of some of them, but Peter did. And I learned and became curious and someday I shall know more of them. Peter spoke also of a strange man who came once to his booth in St. Paul's Walk to sell some ancient manuscripts, a man who spoke of the wise Adapa and the Hidden Treasure of the Secret Writing. He spoke as if he expected somehow that Peter would respond, but although it disturbed him, Peter knew nothing of Adapa.

"We talked of many things, Peter and I, and it is he who will handle all sales of furs and timber for me when I am gone away. When my ships return to England, he will dispose of their goods and order things for me.

"Also, he has books I must have, and charts of land where we go."

"They are new lands. How can there be charts?"

"A good question, yet those lands may only be new to us because our knowledge is limited. They may have been old lands to those before our time. Although much history remains, much more has been lost. Men have always gone out upon the sea, Tom, and some few of them have made records. And if we do not leave records, who will know where we went or what we did? I shall try to write of these things, Tom."

"I cannot write."

"Nor could others who went abroad upon the world. So much was done, so little recorded. And much was recorded and then lost. Peter has talked to me of men and nations, of deaths and battles of which I never heard.

"Avicenna? Who is he? Somewhere I heard the name, but Peter knew. A great man, a great writer, a man of knowledge in many areas, a very great man, indeed. If such can live and we not know of him, how many others might there be?

"The strange man who came to Peter and then never came again ... who was he?

Where had he found the manuscripts and charts he sold? Who was the one he called the Wise Adapa? Even Peter had never heard of him, nor scholars at Cambridge whom he knew.

"I have myself seen the chart of Andrea Bianco that shows well the coasts of Brazil, and the chart was drawn in 1448, and it is said that Magellan found the straits named for him because he, too, had a chart ... drawn by whom?"

"This all may be as you suggest," said Tom dryly, "but I worry less about charts of a distant land than a road to London that will keep us free of the Queen's men."

"Worst of all," I said, "I do not know my enemies. Someone stands behind them with a well-filled wallet, or they would not have come so far upon a chance."

We slept in turns, and when I last awakened our scow had brought us in the late afternoon to a point of trees where there was an opening in the reeds lining the shore.

"We will leave the boat here." I stood and stretched, liking the feel of my muscles underneath my shirt. I could feel the ripple of them and sense their power, and before we were once more aboard ship I would have need of them ... this much I guessed. We glimpsed the steeple of a church, and a ruined tower.

Thorney should be near.

"The point," I said to Tom. "We will land there." Leading my horse ashore, we went along the lane toward the road that led to the village. No one was in sight. Already shadows were long and dusk was upon us.

The street was almost empty, and only a few heads turned to look as we passed along the cobblestoned street. Outside of the village I mounted, and with Black Tom trotting beside, we made good time for a mile, then changed places.

Willows lined the track we followed to Whittlesey. The market square was empty, shadows everywhere. A few lights showed.

"I've a friend here," Tom said. "We'll knock him up and have a place to sleep the night and a quick start come morning."

Glancing up at the tower of St. Mary's, I knew I'd miss the bells, for we could hear them far across the fens when out for eels or cutting thatch. Many a time I rested from labor to hear them.

We shared work, we of the fens, and I'd worked in many parts of Cambridgeshire or Lincolnshire, travelling along the narrow waterways to meet friends with whom I fished. We of the fens were much less likely to remain close to home than others of our time, who knew little of any place more than a few miles from their homes.

Even now change was upon us. Ours was a restless as well as a violent age. Men from the villages had gone out upon the water with Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, with Gosnold or Newport, and some of them returned with gold and all with tales.

Tom stopped before an ill-looking cottage on the edge of the village, a cottage set well back in the trees and close to the river.

A rap brought no response, nor did another. Tom was growing irritable when a shadow loomed at the corner of the cottage. A voice growled, "Who comes?"

"Richard, you're a poor host if you do not open your door and trot out the ale.

You've two quiet men here who would remain quiet, wanting food and a quick start before the day breaks, and no bothering with keepers of taverns who remember too well. Will you have us in?"

"Aye, Tom. I'll have you in, and collect the two shillings you owe from a fortnight past."

He disappeared. After a moment there was the rattling of a chain and the door was opened. Once inside, Richard stirred the fire to a blaze, lighting up our faces.

He was a long thin man with a dour expression. Yet upon a closer glance, when the light caught the side of his face, I saw that the wrinkles of ancient laughter had woven a net of humor around his eyes and mouth.

"There's a horse outside, Richard, that will need rubbing down, and care. You'll see to it?"

"I will ... when I've put something on." He puttered about, filling two flagons of ale and pushing out a plate of bread and cheese. "There's apples, too," he added, "if you'll be asking no questions how they was come by."

While we ate he went to the stable, and when he returned Tom said, "There might be some asking about, Richard, and we'll be wanting no word of our passing."

"Not likely I'd be talkin', Tom, but I do wish you'd stay on a day. There be a fine piece of bog oak close by that will bring a pretty penny, but I'll need a strong hand or two."

Such a find was not uncommon, and was like the finding of a treasure trove to a poor man. Sunken ages ago by a falling of the land or rising of the sea, many great trees had been buried in the peat, and perfectly preserved by it, and if sawed immediately into planks and timbers were worth a good bit to the finder.

But if let to lie about, the wood decayed, so the work must be done at once and the planks allowed to dry and season in the air.

"Is it true, Tom, what they be sayin' about drainin' the fens?"

"It is. And when drained it will be the richest farmland in the kingdom."

"Aye," Richard grumbled, "but it ruins the eeling, and there'll be not so many birds. We live well enough now, with no drainage done, a goose to the table whenever we wish, eels and pike for the eating or the market, and our patches of crop land no tax gatherer can find. If the fens be drained, strangers will come in. Wild and lawless they say we be, and that we stink of our fens, but we are free men and better it is to remain so.

"Once the gentry ken how rich is the land they'll have it from us by hook or crook, or they'll come on with their laws to interfere with the hunting, the digging of peat, or the cutting of thatch. They'd have us bound out to labor on their farms instead of us living free."

True enough, and well I knew it, for most of the fens were held in common. Once the fens were drained the fine, free life would be gone and the birds and eels with it. We lived well, often better than a lord in his castle, for it was all about us, for the taking.

Yet I was leaving this for a new world, new ways of living. Was I the fool? Was I leaving a certainty for a chance? No matter. My way was chosen. Not for a minute did I consider not going.

Was it some impulse buried deep within me? Was there in my blood and bones some selective device that chose me and a few others like me to venture? To go on? To penetrate the strange and the new? Were we something chosen by nature for this purpose? Had we control over our actions, or were we mere tools of the way of things that must ceaselessly go forward?

William would stay, Richard would stay, even Peter Tallis would stay, yet I would go. My friend Jeremy Ring would go, and Black Tom Watkins. You might say he was fleeing the noose, aye, and how many others here in Britain were likewise fleeing, yet did not go?

"We will sleep now, Richard," I said, "for tomorrow Tom and I must travel far ... and fast."

Chapter 3

Dark were the London streets, and wet with rain. We walked my horse along the narrow lanes, keeping free of streets where we might be seen and spoken of.

"We will do well to stay clear of taverns," Tom suggested.

"We've a place, Tom, a sure place. It is the house of a sailor's wife, a clean place and the food is good."

"Women gossip."

"Not this one. She's a good lass. The house was left her as an inheritance. She lets rooms and feeds folk who want something better and cleaner than the taverns, and waits for her sailor to come back from the seas."

"A lonely life."

"Aye, but Mag is the girl for it."

Hounding the corner we saw the tall house before us. Dismounting, I tapped on the door.

"Who's there?" It was Mag's voice.

"A friend of Jeremy's, whom you know. I've a horse and a man with me."

"I'll open the gate."

The window slid softly shut and we led my horse around the corner to the gate in the dark lane. The gate swung open. Mag whispered, "I'll get something on. There be hay and grain in the stable."

"She does well, this sailor's wife," Tom suggested.

"She's a good woman." I wanted to put him straight on that. "And there be many such. You know a sailor's life."

"Aye," he said without bitterness. "I've been left ashore once, near drowned several times, taken by pirates twice and, when I come ashore, robbed by landlubbers. It is better to smuggle than work the deep seas."

Mag held the door for us. "I've drawn some ale. It is on the table, and there'll be some'at to eat in a bit." Her eyes searched my face. "You're all right?"

"There's a Queen's warrant up for me, Mag, but it will be recalled, I am thinking. In the meantime I must sleep, and in the morning would get word to Peter Tallis in St. Paul's Walk."

"I know the man. How is Jeremy?"

"Well enough. I left him aboard ship. We sail for Virginia."

"Ah? It is far, I think. Jack was wishful of sailing there, and he spoke of it often. He knew Captain Newport, and was wishful to sail with him. My Jack is a gunner, and a good one."

We ate, and then we slept, yet scarcely had my eyes opened in the morning than Mag was at the door. "Get dressed," she whispered through the crack. "Peter will be here. There's some'at of which we must speak."

Tom was awake. "Morning is it?"

"Peter will be here later. Mag got word to him, somehow," I said.

Mag sat with us over her own glass. "I sent the lad next door to Peter. He's a bright one and for a tuppence he'll run any word for you, and keep both eyes and ears open. He also brings me the news. Lord Essex is at York House awaiting the Queen's pleasure, but the word is that she'll not see him, she's that angry and put out. And there's been fighting down the country and a man named Genester is dead ... murdered, they say."

"Killed in a fair fight," I replied.

She glanced at me, and Tom, too.

"We went to get a sick man he'd taken away to let die, and they were waiting for us. We were all in it, Jeremy as well, but it was I who killed him, man to man in a duel.

"The old man he'd taken there to die had been a friend to my father, so we went to bring him back for proper care. Genester expected to inherit if the old man died, and Genester intended to let him die. But Genester has friends at court, and I have none."

"They'll throw you into Newgate until there's a trial,'' Tom warned. "And it's a pure hell, filthy and crawling with lice. There's good people in there for debt, and every kind of human vermin you can find mixed in among them."

"I did only what had to be done," I said. "Now I must see Peter and board my ship."

"Won't they be watching it?"

"They will." I looked over at Mag.

She leaned her forearms on the table. "Virginia," she said, "Raleigh's land. Is it so grand a place, then?"

"A broad land, with forest and running streams and meadows the like of which you've never seen. A beautiful land, Mag, a place in which to rear tall sons."

"I have no sons," she said.

"You've time, lass. Get that sailorman of yours and come to America. Raleigh is said to be making up a group to settle there, and if all goes well my ship will be back. Peter will know when it comes, for he's to buy and sell for me. Come, I will find a place for you."

"My father sailed with Hawkins in '67," she said. "He talked much of the new lands, the savages, and the Spanish to the south."

A thought came to me. "Mag, you've others here?"

"One man only now. A fortnight or more he's been here. Paid in advance, he did, and well."

"A seafaring man?"

She lifted a shoulder. "Who knows? Conrad Poltz, he is, and polite enough, but he does not stop to talk. Not after the first day."

"What, then? He asked questions?"

"He claimed knowledge of Jack, that he'd known him. But I do not think he had.

He was asking about others here. He rises early and spends the day along the river, watching the ships."

Conrad Poltz. I knew not the man.

My friend Coveney Hasling might know this Conrad Poltz, but Hasling was also known to be my friend and might be watched. It was Hasling who had, in a way, given me my first chance. He was a kindly old man who was interested in antiquities, and wandered about the country buying old things found by diggers of ditches, cutters of peat, and such like. When I found several ancient gold coins, I had taken them to him, and he bought some, and saw to the selling of others.

Tallis might also know this Conrad Poltz.

Peter Tallis was a man of parts, a man of many strange talents. He was a skillful forger, and had been known to prepare documents, alter others, connive in many ways. It was to him I had gone when I wanted a copy of Leland's book on the old places of England. The book was known to exist in manuscript, but no printing had as yet been made, and until I went to America, I'd thought of searching for antiquities to sell.

Little happened in England that Peter Tallis did not know, and his booth in St.

Paul's Walk was well situated to hear all that went on, and was the clearing house for information and gossip in all of London.

London was a vast melting pot, changing rapidly from the somewhat provincial city it had been. Ships were coming and going from the new lands, fishing, trading, attacking Spanish vessels. They brought strange wares to the market places of London, and stranger stories. Men who had been prisoners returned with their tales of the Barbary Coast, of the Levant, of the Guinea coasts and the islands of the sun. And it was Elizabeth who pulled the many strings from behind the scenes as well as in the open.

More than one vessel that went out to the Spanish Main was secretly financed by the Queen herself. King Henry VIII, who desperately sought a male heir to carry on his building of the English empire, died not knowing what an heiress he had sired in Elizabeth. From his seat in the Valhalla of dead kings, he must have looked back with amazed pride to see what Anne Boleyn had given him in that small red-haired daughter he had seen but rarely.

My father had often talked to me of kings and men, of governments and battles and the leading of peoples. "A king must think not only of today," he had told me, "but of tomorrow and tomorrow. When a law is passed, he must understand its consequences. Moreover, he must always think of the succession.

"Henry the Eighth saw very clearly all the enemies England had, and that he must have a strong hand to follow him. We are a small island in a stormy sea, and there are many enemies for such. King Henry knew that we must have the strength to stand alone, and as the years passed and he had no heir, he saw all his work coming to nothing.

"He married again and again, but there was no son who lived. Of course, Elizabeth ... a daughter by Anne ... he had her, but he had no faith in the ability of a woman to stand against the storms that would assail England. There were women enough for Henry without marrying them. What he wanted was a son, an heir, one who could sit upon the throne of England with wisdom and power. He died not knowing what he had sired in Elizabeth."

Peter Tallis had echoed many of the things my father had said, and we had talked much in those days before my first voyage to America. Now I would see him again.

We went to our room to wait for Peter. As we lay half asleep, a faint stirring came from the room above me, as of someone moving quietly, not wishing to be heard. It was very early still, and at that hour anyone might move quietly, not wishing to awaken those who wished to sleep. Yet I listened and gradually my ears became familiar with the natural creakings and stirrings of the old house, and could easily distinguish those other sounds, however faint they might be.

A door above closed softly, and faint creaks on the stair told of someone descending.

Mag had returned to her room across the hall. Whoever it was came softly along the hall to our door and paused there, listening. I could hear his breathing and was tempted to leap up and jerk open the door, but instead lay very still.

After a moment his footsteps retreated along the hall and I heard the outer door open, then close.

Instantly, I was up. Tom's eyes opened and I explained. "I don't like it," I added. "He may be a spy."

I rose, buckled on my sword, and went across the hall to Mag's room. She opened at my knock.

"Mag, tell Peter to meet us at the Prospect of Whitby. This man Conrad Poltz worries me. We shall be at the Prospect by eleven of the clock, and we will wait one hour. No more. If Peter does not find us there, or cannot come at that hour, let it be at The Grapes. We will stay there. Then we must be off for the ship."

Hurriedly we went to the stable. My horse was gone!

A glance was all that was needed. Turning swiftly, we went out the gate. At a fast walk I led the way to the river.

"If it is a boat you have in mind, he would have thought of that," Tom warned.

"Upriver then, quickly."

By divers lanes and alleyways, we wove between buildings and across barnyards, which were many in London. We came suddenly to the old tavern where I had first met Jeremy Ring.

A man was leading a horse to the water trough and I knew him at once as one of the rowdy crew who had been drinking with Jeremy Ring that night when first we met.

"You'll be remembering me?"

His smile was wry. "If need be, but I can forget as easily."

"Well, then. Remember me long enough to tell me if there's a boat about, and then forget you've seen me."

"I've a boat at the old dock below, but I'd not wish to lose it."

"Do you know The Grapes?"

"Aye."

"You'll find your boat there, when we're done with it, nicely tied. In the meanwhile I'd not have you visit The Grapes without a drop of something. Spend this, or a piece of it." I put a coin in his hand.

"What of Jeremy? We miss him about here."

"We've been about together, and he'll be waiting aboard ship. We've a voyage coming."

"Ah? I have given thought to it myself."

"Give more thought, and if it is to Raleigh's land you come, be asking of me discreetly. There's a new land yonder where there are no lords nor gamekeepers, and the air has the flavor of freedom in it. And there's a wide land all about, fit for a man to move and breathe in."

"The savages?"

"They be few and the land be wide. They plant a little corn and live much by hunting. I think we can live together, for some I have met were good people, although they love the ways of war."

"Here I know what to expect and where to turn."

"Aye, but there's no press-gangs yonder, nor any debtors' prisons."

"Give them time," he said grimly, "and they'll have both."

"It may well be, but I think not. There's a different temper in the minds of those who go over the sea. There will be abuses, for they are only men and not angels, but they will be the better for starting afresh."

Once in the boat we pulled strongly for the Prospect, holding close in shore where we might not quickly be seen. My ship was waiting for me, and I was keen to reach and board her again.

"We must sail for America, Tom, to forge a new land, you and I and others of our like."

"Others of my like?"

"Why not, Tom Watkins? Why not, indeed? There are no privileges there, and let us not have them. You are a man, Tom Watkins, and you have lived. You have erred as have we all, but we know what is right and just. The land yonder is fresh, wide open for such as you and me, and if we make again the old mistakes the fault will be ours. If we see clearly we can build something new."

"I am a simple man, Barnabas. I have given no thought to such things. It's for my betters-"

"Betters? Who is better unless he makes himself so? You can be one of those for whom laws are made if you so will it, or you can be a maker of laws yourself."

"I cannot read, Barnabas. I have no learning."

"You have lived, Tom. You have done good things and bad, you have seen others who did likewise. You know what you respect and what you do not, so all that is left is to weigh each law, each idea against what you know, decide how you would like things to be, and then work to make them so."

"The great lords will own the land. There is talk that the Queen will grant them land."

"You have not seen it, Tom. This is no tiny island bounded by the sea, but a vast land stretching westward. If you do not like what they do you may go west, but once you breathe the air in America, you will no longer worry about great lords. England itself will change, but she will change first over there where the land is new."

We bent to the oars then, and there was no time for talking, and truly I had much to think on that had no part of kings or lords or free air or land. I had first to wonder who it was that pursued me and why the Queen's warrant was still out for me. It was easier to swear out a warrant than to recall one sworn, and this might be the very same one caused by Genester, my old enemy. But I had a feeling there was another reason, of what I knew not.

Again the thought of those blue mountains came to me, and as much as I loved England, the lure of them was a challenge, making me forever restless. But had I the right to take Abigail to that far country? Yet had she not lived aboard ship with her father? And she had few ties in England.

I had not the right, yet even as I told myself that, I had to smile at my foolishness, for I had not the choice, either. Abigail had said she would not be left behind. She would be there beside me.

We moved alongside the small dock, tied the boat to an iron ring, and walked up to the Prospect. I entered. Black Tom waited without.

Two men sat within, and one of them was Peter Tallis. The other man was stocky, with a scar on his right cheekbone. He wore a black cloak.

We moved to a table in a corner, and spoke in low tones.

"We have but little time," Tallis said quietly. "If you are found we will both be in Newgate and you on the way to Tyburn."

"Tyburn!" I was startled.

"Genester had friends, and they have stirred the Queen to anger. You have been pictured as a dangerous rebel, a murderer, and a mutineer. They say you attacked your ship's captain, that you stole a ship's boat, that you looted cargo."

"But I was taken forcibly! I was knocked on the head! My own goods were stolen!"

"They will say you were pressed. You will be taken up for murder, for piracy on the high seas and several other charges."

"Cannot the Earl help me?"

"He is an old man, and ill. He is in no condition to do anything. There is one thing he has done, however. He has given you the ship. He has made it over to you, from topm'st to keelson."

"Given it to me? I understood it was simply to carry me over the sea, and my goods back."

"It is in your name. She is an old vessel but sound. Captain Tempany is aboard with a full crew, but the ship is watched, although they do not yet know you own her. But they will have you, no matter how."

"I don't understand. With Genester dead, I thought-"

"You sold some gold coins to Coveney Hasling?"

"I did."

"You found them, you said, on the dyke near Reach?"

"What has that to do with it?"

"Barnabas, you are in more trouble than you know, and I see no way out for you.

Those coins you found were gold, and Roman. It so happens some such coins were in the royal treasure, along with the Crown jewels when King John lost them in the Wash."

"But-"

"It is believed by the Queen, and undoubtedly by some more loyal to themselves than Her Majesty, that you have found the Crown jewels."

"What?"

My voice raised somewhat, and the other man in the common room turned to look at us.

"Why, this is foolishness! The jewels were lost in the Wash!"

There was irony in Peter's tone as well as his glance. "And who comes from the fens near the Wash? You do. Who suddenly appears with gold coins? You do."

Every Englishman knew the story, but we of the fens had cause to know it best, perhaps, because it happened right at our door.

King John's forces were moving up from Weisbeck to a crossing of the Willestrem.

In the train of supply wagons that followed were the Crown jewels, all the royal regalia, along with many ancient possessions of England, valued as greatly as the jewels themselves. Much gold and silver plate, gems beyond number, gold coins stamped with the symbols of many royalties and kingdoms, and also the sword of Tristan.

All he possessed was there, and King John moved forward toward their stop for the night, which was to be at Swineshead. The King was in pain from the gout, impatient to be at ease and off his horse, and the Willestrem was a simple enough stream that seemed to offer no danger.

If they considered the tides of the sea at all, they did not understand how fierce they might become where the rushing force of the sea suddenly narrowed at the river's mouth.

What happened was sudden. The supply train was in the water, fording the river, when the full rush of the tide swept in. In an instant they were engulfed, and in another they were gone-only here and there a man or horse fighting the rush of water, a few splashing ashore.

In an instant the accumulated treasure of the Crown of England was gone, swept away by the tide. Buried in mud, perhaps, or floated into the deeper waters of the Wash, only to sink into the mud at the bottom.

The blow was a bitter one. Within hours, King John himself was dead, poisoned some said, but more likely dead as a result of the cold and wet, combined with gorging himself on the good food at Swineshead.

The treasure had never been found.

And now, because of a few gold coins happened upon when washed from the mud of the dyke, I was accused.

"That is nonsense," I said. "The coins were obviously lost by some traveler, or dropped by some looter after a battle. I found them in the mud, washed out by a heavy rain. They had been in a leather bag."

"I believe you, but there are those who do not."

My thoughts raced ahead. Even to one as relatively inexperienced as I, it was plain to see what would happen. I should be imprisoned and questioned, perhaps tortured. There was nothing for me to tell, so the torture might continue for a long time, and surely imprisonment would follow.

How could I convince them that I had found nothing beyond the coins I had sold?

I was suddenly sick and empty. There had been other coins, too. Following upon my little success with my first find, I had obtained the Leland manuscript and set out to investigate another place I recalled from my travels. There, too, I had been fortunate.

"Believe me, Peter, I know nothing. Only that I must escape, and now. If I do not, I see no way to avoid prison."

My voice lowered. "Peter, I cannot longer wait." In my mind came something my father had told me. It was a chance. "Peter, go to Tempany. Tell him to sail at once."

"And you?"

"Tell him to watch for a boat from off the Bill of Portland."

"All ports will be watched, you may be sure of it."

"Tell him to sail, but to take his time when passing the Bill and to keep a sharp lookout. I have a thought of what I can do."

Turning my head to look, I suddenly noticed that the other man was gone!

Instantly, I was on my feet. "Peter, I shall send you goods. You market them and buy for me. You'll do this?"

"As we planned. Of course."

In an instant, I was out of the door, and in two strides across the narrow stone wharf. Peter followed me. Black Tom took one look at my face and unloosed the mooring.

From in front of the Prospect, we heard a rush of feet and a rumble of voices.

Peter stepped quickly into the boat with us. "I do not think they know me," he said, "and if I can get away-"

We shoved off, but not out into the stream. Hugging the shore where we would not be immediately visible, we eased away from the Prospect-first under some looming houses beside the Thames, then under the reeds that grew along the bank. We were strong men, Tom and I, and we bent to our oars with a will. Behind us we heard curses and shouts, but looking back we could see nothing but the green of the bank, those lovely banks of the Thames that I might never see again.

"Where are you for?" Peter asked.

"The Grapes. I promised to leave the boat there."

"Good! In Limehouse I have friends."

"Can we trust them?"

Peter chuckled. "With everything but your money or your wife. Rob you, they might. Betray you, never!"

It was an old building, patched up and vine-grown, with willows, and in back of these, elms. We left the boat at The Grapes, and went down a lane from the river.

Peter's friends were a motley lot, as pretty a bunch of rogues as it had ever been my fortune to see-and better seen by daylight than after dark.

"Horses? Of a surety! Anything for you, Peter! We have excellent horses, and if you'd not be seen, we have covered lanes leading in all directions."

He leaned toward me, an evil-looking man with a hatchet face and a bad scar pulling down one eyebrow. His breath was foul, but his manner genial enough. I noted a dagger in his waistband.

"You might," he said, 'leave some'at on the table for the poor o' Limehouse ... the poor being me." He spread wide his mouth in what I took for a grin and looked at me slyly from under his brows. "You be one o' Peter's friends, be ye?

Peter it is who knows the gents. Peter's a smart one, a shrewd one, knows a thing or two, he does. He's had me out of Newgate twice, lad ... twice! I owe him for that, and a thing or two else."

The horses were brought around, two fine geldings, and a mare for Peter, who would be riding into the heart of London. We parted, leaving a silver crown.

We rode north, following devious country lanes. We saw few people, herdsmen who waved at us as we passed, and once a girl milking a cow, from whom we begged a draught of the fresh warm milk.

At nightfall we came upon a small tavern, and rode into the yard. A swarthy, hard-faced man faced us inside the gate. He looked from one to the other of us, and liked not what he saw.

"It be a lonely road for travelers," he said.

"Aye, but a pleasant way to see the land," I replied. I think it was of shillings and pence that he thought, and little else beside.

"It's a bed we want, and a bit of something to eat," I said. "And we've enough to pay."

"Aye. Get down then. The woman's inside."

"The horses will be wanting a rubbing down," I said, "and oats."

"If there's a rubbing down, you'll do it yourself," he replied. "As for oats, we've none about."

"Hold up, Tom," I said to Watkins. "We'll go down the road a bit. There's grass a-plenty there, and our horses will fare the better for it."

The tavern keeper saw his pence leaving and it upset him. "Oh, be not so much in a hurry," he protested. "Maybe I can find a bit of grain."

"Find it," I said, "and the rubdown, too. I'll pay for what I get, but I'll get it, too."

He liked me not. There was a hard, even look to his eye, but the thought of a bed was on me, and a warm meal, else we'd have gone down the road to whatever lay ahead.

The door opened under our hand and the common room of the inn. The woman who came out drying her hands on her apron was pleasant-faced.

"A place to sleep," I said, "and something to eat."

She gestured at a table. "Sit. There's a bit of meat and bread."

The bread was good, freshly baked and tasty. The meat was likewise. Whatever else he did, the man lived well. With such food before him, he'd little reason to growl.

He came into the room, drew a draught of ale, and sat at another table. He'd have a swallow and then he'd stare at us. Finally he said, "Do you come far?"

"Far enough for hunger," I said.

"From London town?"

"London!" I said. "Hah!" Then I added grimly, "I've no liking for towns. I'm a country man."

That he had no liking for strangers was obvious. I wondered if it was the way here, or whether he had another reason.

He looked at Tom. "You be lookin' like a man from the sea," he ventured.

"Aye," Tom said, "I've been there."

"So have I," he said then. And to our surprise, he continued. "I did m'self well on a voyage with Hawkins, so I left the sea and came here to where I was born.

I've the inn," he said, "a few cows and pigs and some land of my own out yonder.

It is better than the sea."

He took a draught of ale. "But I liked the sea, liked it well, and Hawkins was a good man. No trouble made him show worry."

A thought suddenly came to me. "Did you know David Ingram?"

He turned and looked at me sharply. "I knew him. Was he by way of bein' a friend to you?"

"I did not know him," I said, "but I'd give a piece to talk to him. He made a walk I'd like to hear about."

He snorted. "It took no trouble to hear him. He talked of little else. Browne ... now there was the man. He saw it all, but had little to say."

"From the land of Mexico to Nova Scotia is a far walk," I said. "It was a time to see what no white man had seen before."

He took his ale and moved to our table. Putting it down, he leaned forward.

"Ingram was a fool," he said. "He was always a fool, to my mind, though there were those who thought much of him. He was good enough at sea, only he had a loose mouth. Browne was the better man."

He went into another room and came back with a sheet of parchment. "See this? He drew it for me. Drew it the year after he got back. He's gone now, but this he drew with his own fist."

He pointed at a place on what was the coast of the Mexican gulf. "They walked from there along the shore, traveling at night to avoid Indians, much of the time. They crossed a big river here," he put his hand on a spot, "on a raft they built. It landed here. They saw some big mounds ... walked north by east."

I watched his hand. "Here." He put his finger on a point almost halfway up the river and east of it. "They found some of the finest land under heaven right here. Great bulls ... shaggy ones ... wandering about in grass to their knees.

Streams flowing down from mountains ..."

"Mountains?"

"Aye ... mountains to the east. They found a way through those mountains, but that was much farther north, I think."

The parchment lay on the table before us, and I looked long upon it as we talked. This man Browne had been beyond the blue mountains of which I had heard.

He had seen a fair land, and great rivers. I had no need to copy the sheet before me, for it was engraven in my mind.

Chapter 4

We rode westward.

Yet soon we were angling off to the south, into areas I knew not of. Here Black Tom had the advantage of me, for he had traveled to Bristol ere this, and even into Cornwall.

"They're a rum lot," he commented, speaking of the villagers. "Some are fine people, friendly to strangers, but others will have nothing for him, not even a word. You'd think they'd be curious and wanting news, but no such thing. They are content with what is about them.

"It is changing," he continued. "Twenty years ago it was much worse, but with Drake, Hawkins, and all the talk of them, many of the country folk know as much of what goes on as do those in London."

After a bit our course changed, to the south. There was only the small beginning of a plan in my thoughts, something of which my father had told me in one of his odd bits of talk, although nothing he said was ever a careless thing. He had lived too long, close to wars and rebellions, not to expect such things to occur again, and there were times when a man must take shelter. It was with this in mind that he had told me of various places, caves, ruins, coves ... all manner of spots where a man might go in need of hiding.

When I had told Peter to have the ship pick me up off Portland Bill it was this I had in mind, for there was a cave on the seaward side of the Portland isle of which few men knew, a cove large enough to hide a fair-sized vessel, as it had on one or another occasion.

Even local fishermen knew little of it. Although some were aware of a black opening there, they had better things to do than prowl about against the face of dangerous rocks. If I could get there I could remain out of sight until my ship appeared offshore. Then a quick dash, and with luck we'd be aboard unseen.

Tom talked much as we rode, yet I listened with only half an ear, for I'd a feeling there was a troublous time before us. If it was truly believed we had found King John's royal treasure, the search for us would be wide as England.

Riders would have gone out to all the ports and towns, and it behooved us to hold to the back ways, as we had done.

Another night we stopped in a village and bought cheese, bread, and ale. Then we found ourselves a woodcutters' hut in Pamber forest, built a small fire on the hearth, rolled up on the floor in our coats, and went to sleep.

Suddenly, I heard a faint creak. How long had I slept? In an instant my eyes were open. There was someone at the door. Slowly the door was pushed open, and a head appeared, a head and a hand, then a blade.

A man stepped in. Behind him was another. With my left hand I threw back my blanket and with my right I lifted the pistol from my saddle holster.

I heard Tom stir.

"Come in, gentlemen!" I said. "But please, no quick movements as I've no wish to be cleaning scattered brains from the wall, and my pistol never travels alone.

It has a mate."

Tom came to his feet near the wall, a cutlass in his hand.

"If you wish, Barnabas, I'll carve a bit of meat for you," he said.

"Now, now!" The man in the door came a step farther into the hut. "No need to get your backs up."

"Stand fast!" I said quietly. "Tom, throw some fuel on the fire. We'll want to see our guests in a better light."

With his left hand, Tom threw a handful of brush to start the morning fire on the dying coals. When the fire flared up, he added sticks.

The man in the doorway was blond and smiling, although his leather jerkin was scarred and torn, his shirt almost gone, and there were bloody stains on both shirt and jerkin. The light in his eyes was cheerful.

"Aye!" he said, "A lucky chance is this! You'll be Barnabas Sackett, and a lot of the devil's trouble you've brought us!"

"Us? Who might you be referring to?"

"Let me get closer to the fire and I'll do some talking. You've naught to fear from us, though we're perhaps the only men in England can say that. What a noise you've raised, my friend! Why, the woods and roads are alive with men, all searching for Barnabas Sackett! What is it you've done, man? Stolen the Crown jewels?"

"Are you followed?" Tom asked. "Speak up, man!"

"No. We gave them the slip, the ruddy beggars. But not by much, and I'd say that before the day is broad you'd best not be about here. They've roused the country to search for you."

He squatted by the fire. "Not four hours agone they came suddenly upon us, rushed in with halberds and blades, even some with forks. We'd a lively set-to there, for a bit, and we lost a lad, but accounted for two or more of them, and some hurt. We drove them off, then we went through the hole in the wall of an old abbey and escaped." He laughed with satisfaction. "They thought us surrounded, snug and tight. Tell us, Barnabas. Are you guilty?"

There was no use lying. "Almost a year back," I explained, "I came upon a rotting leather purse, buried in mud on the Devil's Dyke, nigh on to Reach.

There were some gold coins inside. I sold them."

The blond man stared at me, his eyes twinkling a bit. "And they think you've found the royal treasure! Have you?" He searched my eyes.

"The gold coins was all, and I think them lost by other means at another time,"

I replied. "But they'll have me hidden deep in a dungeon at Newgate, trying to torture it out of me, and I have other plans."

He held out his hand to me. "Pimmerton Burke is the name. Pim to my friends, and you'll be among them, I hope. I am afraid I cannot vouch for all the scruples of my companion here, but he's a likely lad in a bit of trouble. Sam Cobbett's his name yon. He took a wicked blow on his pate with a club, and he's been addled ever since."

"Addled? Who says I'm addled?" Cobbett grumbled. "I'm not so addled as you, Pim, but I'll confess the head aches something fierce."

Outside, the wind was picking up. Wind blew down the chimney and guttered the fire. We added fuel and huddled closer. These were landless men and probably thieves, wanted, maybe, by the law. Or, worse still, wanted by no one.

Pim looked a good man, but I wanted to test him.

"You know the country about here?" I asked.

"I know it." He drew in the dust of the floor. "See? There's an old place, some earthworks ... ditches and a rampart. It is a mile or so, perhaps two miles this side of the village."

"I think," I said abruptly, "that we'll go west." I got up. "And we'll go now."

"Now?" Pim was reluctant.

"Now," I said.

Sam Cobbett looked up at us. "Leave a place like this? It's blowing out, and there's rain a'coming. You go if you like. I'm snugged in here, and here I'll stay."

Pim shrugged. "I'll go along."

Outside, we saddled quickly. Pim led off, but when we were scarce a half mile out, I stopped him. "Now for your earthworks," I said.

He stared at me, then laughed. "You don't trust easily," he said.

"I don't," I said.

"Well, now. There's a man," he said, and led off into the driving rain, our cloaks billowing about us, the track slippery beneath.

We came to the earthworks, low green mounds and trees covering several acres.

With Pim and Tom I went to the top of the wall, just our heads rising above it.

Pim pointed a way that led down lanes among trees, a way that would keep us free of people unless there was a chance meeting on the road.

"It would help," he said, "if I knew exactly where you were going."

It was then I took a risk. This man could help me with his knowledge of the people and the area, knowledge I did not possess. "I am for the New World," I said. "I love England, but my destiny lies yonder ... over the seas. Come with me, Pim."

"I have thought of it," he agreed. "It is a temptation when all else is gone. I have only strength and ingenuity, and neither trade nor land."

"It is a far land," I said, "and a dangerous one."

"I'd venture it," he said, "though a simpler land would be more to my wishing."

He pointed. "A track lies yonder. The road is traveled by few, and will take us well on our way."

He looked at me. "Is it Bristol, then?"

"A likely place," I agreed, "with ships for any land, but mostly for ships to the west."

We mounted once more. It was a weary time, for neither Tom nor I had slept but the least bit, and our eyelids drooped. Pim Burke led the way, pausing from time to time as he approached a turn in the lane to look before him.

It was scarcely light when we came up to the door of an inn, in Odiham, a fine-looking timbered building scarcely fifty years old, and Tom led our horses around to the stable while Pim Burke opened the door and led the way inside.

A stout, red-faced man was kindling a fire. He turned to look. "Ah? Is it you again? You are a rascal, Pim. Will the Queen's men never take you?"

"I hope not," Pim said cheerfully, "although Newgate might be better than some places my head has lain this past fortnight. Can you have something put on for us, Henry? My friends and I have a hunger two days old ... or so it feels."

"Sit yon." Henry pointed toward a table in a corner near another door. "

'Friends' did you say? Are there more?"

"One more. He stables the horses now."

"We will pay," I said.

"Ah? Did you hear that, Pim? Did you listen well? Such words are music to an innkeeper's ears. You would think we held open house here, the way you come by to eat whenever you're near."

"It may be the last time, Henry. I am for Raleigh's land, across the sea."

Henry turned and looked. "Well. I shall be sorry to see the last of you, Pim, but you're a good man, too good to be strung up at Tyburn, and that's where you'll end if you stay on here."

Henry went to the kitchen and emerged with a large meat pie which he served with a quick stroke of his cleaver. "It is cold," he said, "but good. There's some lentils, too, and a bit of pudding. You have the look of travel behind you, and you'd best eat whilst you can."

He put his hands on his hips. "I'd be about it quick, too, if I were you, for there's two or three of the locals who come in, and they're curious."

He turned away. "I've ale or beer, but if you want it there's milk and buttermilk. We be country folk here, and there's milk in plenty."

"Milk," I said, "by all means. There's always beer."

He looked at Pim. "Get your man in here. I'd like you to be off before the locals come."

When Pim disappeared through the door to the stable, the innkeeper walked back and planted his big fists on the table, one of them still clutching the cleaver.

"He's a good man, Pim," he told me. "I've known him twenty year. Strong ... a fierce fighter at the fairs and such like, always in trouble but nothing bad.

There's not an evil bone in him. He's my wife's brother, and I love him like he was my own, but I fear for him. Is it you he'd be going with to America?"

"Likely," I said. "I've a ship coming."

He looked at me again, for after a few rough nights of travel in rain and wind I looked like no man who would have a ship.

"As you see," I said quietly, "all has not gone well. Pim is not the only one with troubles, but the ship awaits and I've been over the sea before."

"You're not from about here. Your voice has a twang to it."

"I'd say the same of yours."

He did not speak his doubt but I could see it plain enough. It mattered little.

He was not anxious to know, nor I to tell.

We ate then, and we ate well. When scarcely an hour had passed, we were gone.

We rode on, avoiding traveled roads, avoiding inns. At last we rode into a lovely village in a hollow of the downs, a place called Rockboume.

There we took rooms for the night. We brushed and cleaned our clothes.

Pim sat on the floor near the window, watching me. "Something worries you, Barnabas."

"Aye."

"Do you know a place called Durdle Door?"

"Aye."

"At daylight then."

We had come far, but not fast, for we had skirted around villages and towns instead of riding through.

Where would our ship be? Had it been seized by Her Majesty? That well might be.

I walked to the window and looked down onto the cobbled street.

"Tom?" I said.

Something in my tone drew him, and he stepped near, looking onto the street where I looked.

A man in cloak and boots stood across the street. A stocky man, well set-up. And as I looked down, he looked up, and we saw each other plain. He lifted a hand to me, and started across the cobbled street toward the door.

I had seen him before!

Chapter 5

It needed no guessing to know this was indeed the man. The air of assurance, the stride in his walk-all carried an air of purpose.

"What will we do?" Tom asked.

"If he wishes to talk, then talk I will."

"Be careful," Tom advised.

"We shall want a small boat," I said to Pim, "a boat with a sail and with some speed."

Pim looked up at me, his feet against the wall. "To go where?"

"To sea, perhaps," I said. "If we must, we will buy it. If you find what we need, return here, but keep a sharp eye out, for there may be trouble brewing."

I went downstairs.

The man waited in the common room with two flagons of ale, one left standing on the table for me. My flagon, if I sat where it was, left my back to the door.

Taking up the flagon I moved it to where I could sit and see the door.

He smiled, with genuine appreciation. "Good! I like a cautious man." He leaned forward. "Now Barnabas Sackett, let us talk."

"Talk, then. I shall enjoy the ale, the quiet of this room, and the view of the river yonder."

"You are in a delicate position, Barnabas."

He proceeded to present the Queen's case against me. I listened patiently, hearing him out. I was wondering what he wanted. When he had finished, I told him of the leather bag, and the contents therein.

The man smiled. "And the other coins?"

"What others?"

He smiled, but he was not amused. "Do not take me for a fool! I took you for a shrewd young man, but yours is the story of a fool."

"Nevertheless, a true one."

"No more of this!" He slapped a hand upon the table. "You have found the treasure. The Queen wants it. England owns it." He paused. "Others want it, too.

If you are caught, the Queen will have it from you, have no doubt of that. You will get Newgate or Tyburn for your trouble."

"And-?"

"There are others. Such a treasure could give a man wealth, and such wealth is power. If you deal with those others, you could get something ... enough to make you rich. Also, you could be given a chance in some other country."

"Who are you?" I asked suddenly.

He passed only a moment, then looked up at me, for his eyes had been on the backs of his hands. "I am Robert Malmayne."

I knew the name.

For a moment all was cold within me, for he was a man known, yet unknown, a man of secret power, a man who moved in the shadows of men close to the Queen, yet it was whispered that he was a Jesuit. It was also whispered he was a secret agent of the Queen herself, that he was the right hand of the Pope. Such stories were common, a fabric of gossip and lies and rumor. Yet one fact remained. He had power.

"You will deliver the treasure to me," he said, his voice as cold as ice. "And you will have a share. Otherwise, I shall destroy you-like that!" He snapped his fingers. "You think you have a ship, but my men are aboard her, and in command.

We know you were to join her in Falmouth, so undoubtedly the treasure is there, waiting."

Falmouth? I had said nothing of Falmouth, nor had it entered my plans. My intent was to join her across the bay from where we now were, off Portland Bill.

Somebody aboard, Tempany, perhaps, or Jeremy Ring-possibly even Abigail-had let Malmayne's men believe Falmouth was the place, and an obvious one it was, too.

Abigail, perhaps, but why? She believed I could do anything, never reckoning with impossibilities or the limits of strength.

But what could we do against Malmayne's men? I knew neither how many there were, nor how armed or how cunning.

"One thing you can be sure of, Malmayne. The treasure is not in Falmouth now."

Well, that was honest enough. So far as I knew, it was still at the bottom of the Wash, no doubt beyond the reach of men. Certainly, I did not lie.

"Why should I believe you?" Malmayne persisted.

Let Malmayne believe what he wished. What I needed was a chance to escape.

I stood up. "Malmayne," I said, "let it be Falmouth then. You say you have my ship. You say I have the treasure. A little of something is better than nothing at all, so let it be Falmouth."

"Where is the treasure?"

I smiled contemptuously, and hoped I did it well. "Do you think I will tell you that? And then be dropped off a cliff with my throat slit? Falmouth it is, or nowhere, and you or your men come about me and all will be thrown to the winds."

He did not like it. Or me.

He stared at me, drumming his fingers on the table. "Betray me," he said at last, "and you will die ... when I choose to let you die."

I took up my flagon, finished my ale, and went back upstairs.

He was looking after me, smiling.

Closing the door of my room behind me, I called for Black Tom and Pim. They had disappeared.

I thought swiftly.

What must be done must be done quickly. I looked out the window, searching for some sight of Tom or Pim. There were many people about, fishermen, sailors, tradesmen, but I saw nothing of Tom and Pim.

I was turning from the window when suldenly my attention was caught by a girl tugging a two-wheeled cart, piled with bags which looked like laundry. She had stopped around the comer from the street and close under my window, and she was punching the bags into some kind of shape. As I looked down, she suddenly looked up. "Jump," she said, just loud enough for me to hear. Clutching my scabbard, I stepped to the sill, glanced left and right, then jumped. I landed easily, rolled over, and was immediately covered by a bag of laundry.

"Lie quiet now, or you'll cost me a crown."

Taking up the shafts of the cart, she began to tug it along the street, walking easily along, then turning.

I smelled the river.

She lifted one sack and looked down at me. "Ah, but you're a handsome lad! Glad it is I've saved you, although I wish you could stay about a bit. There's a boat casting loose. It has one brown sail and is called The Scamp. You'd best get aboard and go below. No need to thank me, your friend Pim did that. What a lad he is, to be sure! And a crown with it. Well, a girl can't have every day like this or she'd get no washing done at all!"

She lifted the sack. I swiftly rolled over the edge of the cart and to my feet.

The boat was there. In a few quick strides I was aboard.

I saw Pim forward, and saw him cast off, heard the complaint of a block as a sail was hoisted.

Below my eyes grew accustomed to darkness and I saw Black Tom. All three of us were safe-at least for the moment.

Black Tom Watkins looked at me, then mopped his brow. "Cold, I was! Cold, with the fear of death in me. Thank God, you came. Was it the lass?"

"Aye." I told them of Robert Malmayne. "It is nip and tuck for all concerned now, since Robert Malmayne thinks I have the royal treasure."

"You mean there's trouble still?"

"It's only begun, Tom. Malmayne and his men will try to follow. But we've a ship to take, an ocean to sail, and a new land to make our own!"

"You've an appetite," he said grimly. "I hope your teeth are big enough!"

"They'll be," I said, and felt the bow dip and the spray splatter my face, run down my cheeks. I touched my tongue to my lips. We were at sea again.

Chapter 6

The waters of Lulworth Cove were quiet. Only a few fishing boats were about.

Looking back toward the shore, I saw no unusual activity, no evidence that what had happened aboard had attracted attention.

Pim saw me looking at the hills and gestured at one. "There's a stone forest yon. Trees, or something very like them, buried long ago and turned to stone."

We slid easily through the opening and into the longer swells of the sea. This was a wide bay, and yon lay the Bill of Portland.

The Durdle Door was out of sight now, and only the high cliffs were visible. The sea was picking up. I glanced at the sky.

Tom Watkins nodded grimly. "Aye, she's coming on to blow, Barnabas, and a bad thing it will be for us. An ill wind, to be sure."

I took the tiller from him and he went forward with Pim.

The salt taste on my lips was good, and I liked the wind on my face. The place toward which we went would be no easy place to find, and a dangerous one with cliffs and rocks close aboard. Yet it had to be.

How long our wait would be I could not know, but we must wait, and watch, and hope that the ship would not pass us by in the night and storm. Chesil Beach lay off to the west of us, a curving, shelving beach of gravel and sand, of pebbles rolled up by the sea; and no more dangerous stretch lay along the coasts of England than that innocent-seeming shore.

Good ships had been lost there, and not a few of them either. Good ships, and good men aboard them, their bodies washed up and left by the sea. After every storm a man could find old coins, old timbers, all manner of odds and ends back to the time before the Romans. Who knew what lay under that water? What yet undiscovered treasure?

Again I looked toward the shore, misted over now with the thickening air. That was England, the land of my birth, my home. Even now I was a wanted man there, but that was circumstance and no fault of the land nor the people. I was sailing away, but I would love her always, and wherever I went a bit of her would be with me.

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder. Yet I had faith in the intentions of my countrymen, no matter how far they might at times stray from those intentions.

At last we moved in toward the Bill, rounded in, and among scattered rocks we found our way, and then a dark opening, darker now. Carefully, I eased the tiller, and the boat slid through the portals into a vast cavern, literally a cathedral of stone. From far above came a faint glimmer of light. There were holes, I had heard, from sheep pastures atop Portland Island that looked into the cavern, and the holes had been ringed with rocks to prevent unwary sheep from falling through.

Pim Burke looked around, awe-struck. "How did you know of this place?" Staring around, he asked, "Is there another way out?"

"Nobody knows," I told him. "Two passages lead off from here. One winds back for a ways, to a gravel beach at the end. My father was there once, and found a Roman sword laying. He left it lay."

Outside, rain began to fall. Our boat rocked quietly upon the water, feeling only the gentle swell, an afterthought of the waves outside. Even the sea sounds were muted here in this vast, domed cavern, and we heard only the lap of water, the murmur of our own voices. Yet we could see from the cavern mouth, and could watch for ships.

Would she come? Had they received my message? Were they free to come, or had they been taken and imprisoned, too?

A slow hour passed, and I knew it was but the beginning, for we might wait many hours, even days.

Slowly the hours drew by. We took turns sleeping, yet kept a watch from the cavern mouth where we could not be seen. Visibility was poor, and we would not have much time.

Waves broke against the rocks, snarled and sucked their teeth against the black rocks. While the others slept I watched and held my sword and thought of what lay before me.

I dozed, awakened, dozed again, yet was awake again at last to watch the sea darken. Dipping both oars into the water I rowed the boat through the wide entrance into open water. Waves broke furiously over sharp-toothed rocks nearby.

One huge pinnacle, already worn and ravaged by the sea, stood a grim and silent sentinel against the wind.

Black Tom sat up, then moved to shake out the sail. He glanced at me and grinned. "God ha' pity on the poor sailors on such a night as this!"

Pim Burke sat up. "They'll see us from the cliffs yon," he warned.

"Aye, if they're out and standing in the rain, they'll see us, but he would be a fool indeed who had a warm fire on his hearth to be standing on the black cliffs looking upon the sea. A fool or a poet, I'm thinking!"

"Or a wife with a husband still out," Pim Burke added. "My ma has watched from such a cliff, and many a time, for sons and husband ... and watched in vain, more times than not."

"England's given enough of her blood to the sea," Tom Watkins said, "time and again. Since men first walked her shores, they have gone down to the sea and left their hearts there, and their bones on the bottom."

Talking had become hard with the wind upon us, and blown spray and spume in the air, so we desisted from speech and I clung to the tiller, meeting the heavy seas as well I could. She was a good craft that and, bad as the seas now were, no doubt the boat had known worse. Yet as our bows were splattered with foam, I could not think of the dead men's skulls below, and wonder if we three might add ours to the lot.

All the night long we fought the sea, and there was no sail against the sky, not even a bare pole. So with dawn we put about and ran in for the cove, and it was a bitter thing we did to make that cavern mouth at all, but make it we did, riding the crest of a big one that took us safely over the last rocks and left us there, just inside the mouth.

No longer was the water calm within the cavern, for the storm outside brought great, rolling seas within, swells black and shining that rose until we feared our mast would shatter against the roof. But of course it was not so high at all, just in our fears.

It was no good place to be, even so. Yet such is man that soon we became used to our lot. I broke out some biscuit and passed it about, and as we lay there upon the rise and fall of the swells and the booming of the sea within, we chewed our biscuit and wished for an end to the storm.

At last the wind changed, the swells became less, and once more we could see out across the stormy sea. The wind howled like all the banshees in Ireland, but no ship showed herself upon the sea. The long day through we watched, and when the night came weariness lay heavy upon us, and occasionally through the broken clouds the moon shone down.

Next day, again we fought the sea and schooled our boat to take the waves, and a gallant craft she was. And then, with the dawn breaking clear, we saw her bare poles black against the rising sun, rolled and tossed and smashed about, and I knew her for what she was, the ship we were waiting for.

"There'll be a line overside," I said.

They watched as we drew nearer and nearer, our two courses becoming one. She was down to just enough canvas to hold her nose into the wind, and I glimpsed at least two men on the deck as we closed in.

"It's her or Newgate," I said. "And if we miss, at least we'll lie clean upon the sea's bottom."

"Aye!" Pim balanced to the roll and rubbed his palms down his shirt to dry them for a clean grip. "Take us to her, man."

The ship came alongside as our courses became one, and a line was tossed to us.

We took it sharply and bent it quickly to make fast; and then a ladder was over and I glimpsed the face of Sakim-my friend the Moor.

We made fast the painter that would tow the boat after we were aboard, and Pim took the ladder by its side and went up like a monkey and over the rail.

"Tom?" I knew he could not hear in the wind and the creaking and groaning, but my gesture spoke.

He looked with no favor on the swinging ladder but it was no new thing to a man who had boarded many a smuggling craft, so he grabbed the ladder, slipped badly, then went up.

I held the end of the line I must pull to release her so she'd fall astern on the painter. For an instant I held it, then tugged and grabbed for the rope ladder. One foot missed, the other toe landed fair, and up the ladder I went, banging a finger badly against the hull, and over.

When our boat fell back to the painter's end I thought it might snap, but the line held and she towed there behind us, a gallant craft, handsome, sturdy, and sure. I blessed her in my mind for a good little ship, and turned to the deck with my hand on my sword.

"You've no need to worry." It was one-eyed Jeremy Ring at my side. "We got rid of Malmayne's gang in London. And you can thank your lady for it."

"Abigail?"

"Aye! She smuggled them rum from the ship's locker and we lugged them all ashore."

He showed me to the after-cabin. I opened it to the light, and stepped in.

She was standing there, her hands out to me, and her lips bright with a smile, her father behind her.

With me they were at last, England on our beam, and America yonder across the sea, and a fit lot of men with me to start a new land. If they lived. And if I did.

We went into the cabin and Captain Tempany got to his feet from behind the table where he had spread his charts. "Lad, lad! It is good to see you! We were afraid, especially when they came aboard in London, and we knew them for Malmayne's men."

"Are we safe?"

He looked up from under thick brows. "Have you forgotten the Queen? There'll be ships out for us when they know you've escaped."

I had thought myself secure once aboard ship. Now my confidence was gone. But the boat was fully crewed, with my old friends Sakim, Jublain, and Jeremy Ring.

There was also a crew of good craftsmen, to homestead the new American world.

The ship was also heavily laden with munitions.

Abigail was quiet, obviously worried. "Barnabas, if they should ever take you to prison I do not know what I should do!"

"Go on as you have and leave the matter to Jeremy and to Tom Watkins."

"What could they do?"

"Men have escaped from Newgate, and I think escape would be my only chance. You see, nobody will believe the truth about the coins. It seems too much luck for one man to have. Tell me, is my chest aboard? With the charts?"

"Yes. There are some other charts and some papers that Peter Tallis brought, too. They say he is dishonest, Barnabas, but I like him."

"And so do I. Abigail, if anything should happen, you go on with your father to Raleigh's land, and wait for me. I shall come."

"Nothing will happen."

She said it, but she did not fully believe it. Nor did I. I would not feel entirely safe until we set foot on American land.

"My place is with you, Barnabas. Do you think it is only men who wish to see new land? I, too, want to see those shores again. I, too, want to see what is beyond them."

I was silent, for I knew what she said was true, and I did not want to persuade her otherwise. In that I was selfish. I wanted her with me always.

"It's no land for a gentle, lovely woman," I protested feebly.

She looked at me, laughing. "Barnabas, when I was not yet fourteen and off the coast of India, I used a pistol repelling boarders off my father's ship."

Later I spoke of my worries again to Captain Tempany.

"All we can do is what we can," I began, "and when we have done that it rests with God. I do not want you to risk a shelling of this boat by refusing a command to lay-to. If they take me, go on about your business. I'll find a way to come to America."

He shook his head. "Lad, lad! You do not know what you risk! I visited a friend in Newgate for debt. A foul and ugly place it is, and every privilege you get you pay for!"

Then we talked long of trade, of Indians and goods, of the buying and selling, for we had much planned.

"It is the new lands for you, my boy," said Captain Tempany, "and for my daughter, too, I hope."

Suddenly there was a dull boom. For a moment my heart seemed to stop.

"We had better go on deck," Tempany said. "I fear for you, lad."

We opened the door and stepped out on the deck, and at once we could see her, not two miles off, clearly visible ahead, a Queen's ship and a big one, holding a course that would take her across our bows.

Jeremy Ring came toward us. "She fired a warning gun, Cap'n, shall we heave-to?"

"We must, I fear."

Abigail came quickly to my side and took my hand. Her cheeks were pale, as mine must have been. We stood there, shoulder to shoulder, seeing the ship come down upon us.

"Forty-two guns," Ring said grimly. "We couldn't fight her, Cap'n."

"I'll fight no Queen's ship," he said.

A boat was already bobbing upon the waves, and Sakim stood amidships with a ladder. It seemed only a moment until the emissary was aboard. For such he was, I knew.

"I have orders to search you," he said. He was a handsome young man, obviously impressed by Abigail. "I hope I shall offer no inconvenience, but I must seize the man Barnabas Sackett, if he be aboard."

"I am aboard, Lieutenant," I said quietly, "and there is no need for a search."

"I must search," he said. "It is said there is treasure aboard."

He was thorough, I grant him that, and he gave us such a search as few ships have been subjected to, but he found no royal treasure.

At last I stood by the ladder. "Abby," I said, "Abby, I-"

"Go," she said, "but come to America when you can. I shall be waiting."

They stood about, Brian Tempany, Jeremy, Tom Watkins, Jublain, Pim, Sakim, and the others.

I looked around at their faces, spoke my thanks to them, and then went over the rail and down to the boat.

From the deck of the Queen's ship, I watched the other one sail away, her canvas drawing well.

"She's a fine craft," the lieutenant said, beside me.

"The best," I said, choking from the sadness in me. "They are good folk, loyal and strong."

"Come!" he took my arm. "You must go below. I regret the necessity but you must be held in irons for the Queen's officers."

"Wait," I pleaded, "let me see her out of sight."

He took his hand from my arm and left. And so I stood, alone upon the deck of the ship that would take me to prison, watching all that I loved sail away into the misty distance of a wind-blown sea.

Soon there was no topm'st to be seen, only the gray line where sea and sky met, and an emptiness in my heart.

They took me below then, and they clamped irons upon my wrists and ankles. They chained me to a bulkhead, and they left me there.

I was fed a little. I was given water. And I was visited by no one.

Chapter 7

Of Newgate prison I'd heard a great deal of talk, but it in no way prepared me for what it was. To a free man living in the fens, with fresh air to breathe and going about when he chose, where he chose, it was a frightful thing to be confined, and worse to be confined amid filth and the filthy.

No sooner was I brought into the prison than I was loaded with irons, shoved about, and abused. Then the prisoners came to me with demands for garnish, which I provided, having hidden money about me.

One lingered. He was a bold-faced rascal, a thief, he added, and occasionally a highwayman.

"You can have the irons off," he told me, "for a bit of something to the jailer, and for a bit more you can live well, but never let them think there's an end to what you have, for then you will be thrown into the worst hole they have and left to rot. There's no bit of human feeling in them. Many a man has died here."

His name was Hyatt. I found myself liking the man. I was in sore need of somebody with a knowing way about Newgate.

"It is Croppie you must see," he advised with a knowing wink. "Henry Croppie is the one, and he's a brute, mate, a bloody brute who'd kill you with his bare hands."

"I also have two hands," I said.

"Aye, but there's a sinister power in his, and delighted he is to put it to use on some poor soul. If he kills you it is no loss to him, but if you kill him it's Tyburn or Execution Dock."

A wicked gleam lit up his face. "It is said you know where there's treasure ... gold, mayhap, and gems. Is it true then?"

Now a man who has nothing is of no use to anyone, but if there is a chance of gain even the best of men are sometimes swayed, so I merely shrugged. "Let them believe what they want," I said. "I admit nothing, deny nothing."

With a bit of coin placed in the proper hand I had my irons removed, was changed to better quarters, and found choicer food available. It was not in my mind, however, to remain long where I was.

The questioning would begin. "It is like so," Hyatt said. "They will speak gently at first, try to get what they want without effort, and if they do not get it, they will bear down."

For a week I went about the prison, my nostrils repelled by the vile stench, yet taking in all that went on, and all who were about, for help may come from strange quarters and I was in no position to hold back from the roughest hand.

Men and women mixed together, some children ran about, all in the filthiest rags, faces and hands dirty, with the worst of criminals mingled with debtors and those thrown into gaol for heresy, which was an easy thing if one talked but loosely of Queen or Church.

One day I was called to a private room where two men sat. One was a slender man with a tight, cruel mouth and a tightly curled wig. He looked at me with an aloof and distant expression.

The other man was square and solid-looking, a man of the Army, I would have guessed, or perhaps the captain of a warship.

"You are Barnabas Sackett?" this one asked.

"I am, and a loyal yeoman of England," I added. "I am also an admirer of Her Majesty."

"There be many such," he replied shortly. "Now to the matter at hand. You have traded certain gold coins to Coveney Hasling and others?"

"I have."

"Where did you obtain these coins?"

Relating the events of the day on which I found such coins was simple, and then I followed by relating that once I knew antiquities might have value, I went to another place and found more.

"So quickly? So easily?"

"It was chance. One in a thousand, I suppose, although there are many places in England where old coins are found."

"Your home is in the fens?"

"It is."

"You live near the Wash?"

"Some distance from it, actually."

"But you know it? You've sailed on it?"

"Many times."

"You know the story of the loss of the royal treasure?"

For hours they questioned me. The man with the wig had a cold, fierce eye and there was not one whit of mercy in him, nor any belief in my story.

He turned at last. "Damn him for a liar, Swalley!" he said. "I told you this would do no good. I say the rack ... or a thumbscrew. He'll speak the truth fast enough. His kind have no belly for pain."

"How is yours?" I said roughly. "I think you have no stomach for it, either.

Have done with this. I have spoken the truth. If you do not care to believe, do what you will, for I have nothing else to tell you."

He looked at me for a moment, and then he struck me across the face with the back of his hand. It was not much of a blow, and I smiled.

"If we each held a sword," I said, "I'd have your blood for that."

"What? You threaten me? Why, you-!"

"I am an Englishman. I am freeborn. A man who strikes a prisoner so is a coward, and you, sir, are doubly a coward."

"Here! That will be enough of that!" Swalley came to his feet suddenly. "I am sorry, Sir Henry."

He pointed a finger at me. "You! You will tell us where lies the royal treasure or, by the Lord, you shall be put to the question."

"I have told you all I know. You waste time. Would I be going to America if there were such a treasure?"

Swalley stared at me, then smiled with thick lips that repelled me. "How do we know you were not for Spain? Or for Italy? We know you have the treasure, for word has been given us that you have it, that you took it from the Wash this past year. It is sworn to."

Appalled, I stared at him. Then I shook my head. "That is obviously a falsehood.

There is no treasure."

"Think of it," Swalley said quietly. "We will talk again."

So I was returned to my cell. I looked about the bare room with its cot, its white-washed walls and bare ugliness, and felt hatred for the first time.

What right had they to seize and confine me in this manner? Taking me from all I loved, from my chance at a future of some worth, and bringing me to this horror?

Yet moaning and wailing was not my way. I had never complained, for who cares for complaints? If something is wrong, one does something.

Hyatt ... I must see Hyatt. I went forth from my room, guessing very well that once questioning began there would be no longer such freedom, even though many a malefactor enjoyed it. I should be taken, held, confined, tortured.

Suddenly I stopped. Before me was Peter Tallis, talking to a thin, wiry little man whom I had seen about before. He glanced my way but gave no indication that he knew me. I walked swiftly past him, looking about for Hyatt.

He spoke as though talking to the small man. "Barnabas, this is Feghany. In prison he is known as Hunt, for Feghany means a huntsman or something like. He is a good man, and will help.

"I have word. If you escape, it must be now. No delays. You are to be taken to a dungeon and they will have the treasure out of you or you shall die. It is in the hands of the men you saw."

"I will need a horse ... three horses."

I was standing, looking about as if for someone, seeming not to be aware of his presence or that of Feghany. Others moved about us. Across the larger room I saw Hyatt.

"There will be horses at house you know, a house you once visited after the theatre."

Tempany's!

"Go there when you leave. Waste no time. Ride far north and west. The Queen will be desperate. Her men will be everywhere searching for you. You can rely on Feghany."

He moved on to talk to another prisoner, while Feghany loitered near me. "Have you got a Kate?" he said, low-voiced.

"A Kate?"

"A pick, for opening locks. You're going to need one. I'm thinking they'll have the cramprings on you before night."

At my blank look, for I knew nothing of thieves' cant, he said, "Cramp rings ... irons ... shackles." He looked disgusted, "Don't you know nothing?"

He promised to bring me one.

Whatever else happened, I had to be away from this place. The stench on the main floor was disgusting. Crossing the floor I went to my own cell.

Once inside, I looked at the window. Six feet from the floor, over four feet wide and slightly arched at the top, it was crisscrossed with iron bars. The bars were at least six inches apart, and there were two horizontal bars that crossed also.

There was a bench and a bed in my cell, and a wooden bucket. The bench was heavy to move, and could not be moved back quickly, so I upended the bucket and stood on it to get a better look at the sill.

The bars were set into the stone, but I noted with satisfaction that weathering had worn the stone on the outside. Peering out, I could just make out a wall beneath my window. If I could lower myself to that ...

Footsteps alerted me and I stepped down and moved the bucket. I was sitting on my bed when the cell door opened amid a rattle of shackles.

A guard was there, and Feghany was helping him carry the irons.

The guard grinned. His teeth were broken and yellow. "You git the cramp rings again, lad! Tomorrow."

"But I paid you!" I protested.