‘This is the one!’ Cranston shouted.
Moleskin brought his small craft alongside. He yelled at Sir John to sit down before he put them all in the Thames, then, standing up, shouted, ‘On deck! On deck!’
Athelstan, gazing up, saw a man come to the side, a lantern in his hand.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city, and his clerk, Brother Athelstan. Sir Jacob Crawley is expecting us!’
‘About bloody time!’ the voice bawled back.
A piece of netting was thrown over the side of the ship, followed by a strong rope ladder. Moleskin brought the skiff closer in. Sir John grabbed the ladder and heaved himself up as nimble as a monkey. Athelstan followed more gingerly, helped by a smirking Moleskin.
‘Take it carefully, Father,’ the boatman advised. ‘Don’t look down, just take your time.’
Athelstan did, half-closing his eyes. As Sir John lurched over the bulwark the ladder swayed and Athelstan clung on for dear life. He moved upwards, then Cranston’s strong hands lifted him by the arms and dragged him on to the deck rail with as much dignity as a sack of oatmeal. Athelstan unslung his leather bag from around his neck, then lurched as the ship moved. He would have been sent sprawling if Cranston had not held on to his arm.
‘It takes time to get your sea legs,’ Cranston said. ‘But stand with your feet apart, Brother.’
Athelstan obeyed, blinked and stared around. The deck was cluttered with leather buckets, coils of rope, some sacks, balls of iron and two braziers full of spent charcoal. Athelstan glimpsed figures moving about in the mist. He looked to his left, down the deck towards the stern castle, then to his right where the forecastle rose up. A sailor, naked except for a pair of breech clouts, the same man who had first greeted them, studied Athelstan carefully.
‘You must be freezing,’ Athelstan commented. ‘No shirt.’
‘Aye, I am that, Father. But you had best come. Sir Jacob Crawley is fair bursting with anger.’
He led them along the deck and knocked at the door in the stern castle.
‘Piss off!’ a voice shouted.
The sailor shrugged, grinned over his shoulder and opened the door. He ducked as a tankard was thrown at his head.
‘Sir Jacob, Sir John has arrived.’
Cranston, grinning from ear to ear, brushed by the sailor.
‘Jacob Crawley, you dirty old sea dog!’
Athelstan followed cautiously. The cabin smelt musty and sweet. The man who half-rose from his chair at the table to greet Cranston was white-haired, small, lithe, and brown as a berry. He was dressed in a dark blue cloak tied around the middle with a silver belt. A cap of the same colour, with a feather stitched in the brim, lay on the table. Crawley grasped Cranston’s hand, beaming from ear to ear, and poked him gently in the stomach.
‘More of you than before, Sir John?’
Then all the more for the Lady Maude to hang on to when the going gets rough!’
Both men bellowed with laughter. Crawley shook Athelstan’s hand, patting him absent-mindedly on the shoulder. He indicated two empty stools at the table and Cranston and Athelstan joined the men already crammed around it. Crawley introduced them to the others: Philip Cabe, second mate; Dido Coffrey, ship’s clerk; Vincent Minter, ship’s surgeon; and Tostig Peverill, master-at-arms. A motley lot, Athelstan thought, in their sea-stained clothes – lean, hard-faced men with close-cropped hair, weather-beaten faces and unsmiling eyes. They sat, ill at ease, and Athelstan sensed their dislike and impatience at being kept so long.
‘We have been waiting for hours,’ Cabe snapped, his leathery, horsey face full of disapproval.
‘Well, I’m bloody sorry, aren’t I!’ Cranston shouted back. ‘I’ve been bloody busy!’
‘Now, now.’ Crawley clapped his hands like a child. ‘Sir John, some claret?’
Cranston, of course, accepted with alacrity.
‘Father?’
Athelstan smiled and shook his head. He unpacked his writing bag and laid out ink horn, quill and parchment. He stared around the low, crowded cabin, noticing the cot bed in one corner. He felt rather dizzy, especially when the ship moved and creaked as if the whole world was about to roll. Once Cranston had drained his cup, and Crawley had just as quickly refilled it, the king’s admiral of the eastern seas leaned forward and belched.
‘How many years, Sir John?’
‘Sixteen, sixteen years since we chased the French off the seas and now the buggers are back!’
Athelstan moved his arm and nudged Sir John – a reminder that this was business, not some drinking contest between old friends. Cranston coughed.
‘Master Cabe,’ the coroner began, ‘you are now the senior surviving officer of this unhappy ship. I understand Captain Roffel was taken ill and had died by the time the ship dropped anchor in the Thames?’
‘Yes. On the 14th October the captain complained of pains in his belly. He said it was like fire.’
Cranston turned to Minter. ‘Did you examine Roffel?’
‘Yes, I did. I thought it was some form of dysentery – violent cramps, putrid faeces, high fever, sweating.’
‘And what did you prescribe?’
‘I concocted some binding ointment, but nothing worked. By 20th October, Roffel was delirious. He died the night before we sailed up the Thames.’
‘Do you think he was poisoned?’ Athelstan asked.
He studied the ring of faces in the flickering light of the single lantern. Minter’s vinegarish features broke into a crooked smile.
‘Oh yes, Father, he was poisoned. But not,’ he added hastily, ‘as you think. Belly cramps, stomach bile, dysentery, inflammation of the bowels and rectum are common on ships. Rats shit on our food, the water’s brackish and the biscuits have more weevils than flour.’
‘How many people died on this voyage?’
‘Two. The captain and the cook, Scabgut.’
‘What did the latter die of?’
‘He suffered from similar cramps. But there’s usually a death on every voyage – if it’s not the food, then a man falls overboard.’
‘So,’ Cranston intervened, ‘there was nothing suspicious about Roffel’s death?’
‘Nothing whatsoever. Though he did have his own supply of wine.’
‘But I drank from that as well,’ Coffrey the clerk intervened.
‘In which case,’ the surgeon concluded, ‘Captain Roffel ate and drank nothing we didn’t.’
‘We understand,’ Athelstan said, ‘that Captain Roffel was a hard man?’
‘Like flint,’ Cabe replied. ‘Hard as rock. He had a stone for a heart.’ He smirked. ‘God’s Bright Light! What a name for the devil’s own ship!’ He lifted a hand. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Roffel was successful. We always came back with our holds full of treasure. But we took no prisoners. Roffel always made sure of that.’
‘And Ashby?’
‘No bloody use at all!’ Peverill the master-at-arms snorted. Athelstan caught the jeering note in his voice.
‘A landsman if there ever was one. Sir Henry Ospring always insisted that he joined us for at least part of the voyage. No bloody use, was he?’
A murmur of approval greeted his words.
‘Sick as a dog he was,’ Cabe added. ‘He hated ships and he hated the sea. I think that’s why the old bastard sent him. Captain Roffel was always taunting and making fun of the lad.’
‘And Ashby hated Roffel?’ Cranston asked.
‘No, he didn’t hate him, he despised him. Almost as badly as he did Sir Henry Ospring.’
‘Well, it may come as news to you,’ Cranston said ‘but Ospring’s dead and Ashby’s in flight.’
His words created little surprise and the coroner quickly gathered that both Roffel and his patron Sir Henry Ospring had been hated as iron-hard taskmasters.
‘But Ashby had left the ship before Roffel died?’
‘Yes, he landed at Dover on 19th October. Our holds were full of booty and Sir Henry’s estates lie two miles to the north of the port. Ashby took his master’s portion, a very generous one too, and left.’
‘And Roffel was sickly then?’
‘Yes, he had been for some days, Sir John.’