'Wait for me at the inn, Jack,' I told Barak.
He leaned close. 'You can't ask Leacon to go with you, not with his men in the mood they are. They'd have put Snodin in the water if he hadn't stopped them.'
'He's agreed,' I said brusquely.
'I think you would like to stay and tackle Rich too.'
'Maybe so, to see this done.'
'Then I begin to fear for your reason.'
Barak walked away. I returned to where Leacon stood, watching as Sir Franklin led the men away.
'Will the men be all right?' I asked.
'I've told Snodin to go easy, and they won't challenge Sir Franklin.' He took a deep breath. 'Right. The Mary Rose.'
THE CAMBER was full of rowboats tying up for the night. We found a boatman, a stocky middle-aged man, who agreed to take us across to the Mary Rose, then wait and bring us back. We followed him down the slippery steps. Above us music and voices sounded from the Oyster Street taverns. The man set the oars in the rowlocks and pushed out into the open sea towards the lines of ships. Behind them the sunset was shading into dark blue, starkly outlining the forest of masts.
All at once we were in a world of near silence, the sounds from the town fading. The air, too, was suddenly clean and salty. The water was calm, but out at sea for the first time in four years I felt uneasy. I gripped the side of the boat hard and looked back to shore. I could see the city walls, the Square Tower and, beyond the town walls, the soldier's tents lining the coast, all turned pink by the setting sun.
'Thank you for doing this,' I said to Leacon. 'After that trouble with the men.'
'Thank God I thought to ensure fresh meat tonight. The biscuit's going bad. There's a couple of men down with the flux. And one man accidentally slashed himself with his knife yesterday. At least I think it was an accident. The company's down to eighty-eight.'
I looked back again to the retreating shore. Now I could see all the way down to South Sea Castle, a little pink block in the sunset, becoming tiny as we rowed out further into the Solent. Reluctantly, I turned my head away.
Slowly, we approached the warships. As we drew closer we saw haloes of dim light flickering above the decks from candles and lamps. The sound of a pipe and drum drifted across the water. Leacon stared ahead, preoccupied, then said with a sort of quiet desperation, 'I have to encourage my men, I must. I must try and lighten their mood, though I know the nightmare they may face.'
'God knows you are doing what you can.'
'Does He?'
We had almost reached the warships now, their masts and high castles seeming impossibly tall, gigantic plaited ropes stretching down to the water securing the anchors. The light was almost gone, the bright paintwork on the upper decks turned to shades of grey. The boatman swung away to avoid a stream of ordure running from a beakhead latrine. Voices and more music drifted down as the vast hull of the Great Harry reared before us. Something was happening on the main deck. A little platform had been built projecting out over the water, a pulley dangling from it. It was being used to heave something up from a large rowboat. I realized to my astonishment that it was a large, high-backed chair, covered with an oilcloth, in which an enormous dead pig had been tied.
'Careful,' I heard someone shout. 'It's bumping the side!'
'What on earth is going on?' I asked the boatman.
'Some freak of sailors' humour,' he answered disapprovingly.
We rowed past the flagship to the Mary Rose, the rose emblem above the bowsprit dimly outlined. I craned my neck to stare up.
The lowest, central section of the ship was perhaps twenty feet high; the long aftercastle, of at least two storeys, double that. The forecastle was taller still, three levels of decks projecting out over the bow like enormous steps. A sudden breeze came, and I heard a strange singing noise in the web of rigging that soared from decks to topmast. As we drew in close I heard a cry from the fighting top, high on the mainmast. 'Boat ahoy!'
The boatman steered in to the centre of the ship, between the high castles. I looked apprehensively at the great dark hull, wondering how we would get on board. My eye travelled upwards to squares outlined in tar that must be the gun ports, stout ropes running up from rings in the centre to holes in the painted squares above, the green and white Tudor colours alternating with red crosses on a white background, the colours of St George.
'How do we get up?' I asked apprehensively.
Leacon nodded up at the painted squares. 'Those panels can be slid out. They'll drop a rope ladder down from one.'
We came athwart, and the rowboat knocked against the hull with a bump. A panel was removed and a head looked out. A voice called down the watchword I had heard in camp: 'God save King Henry!'
'And long to reign over us!' Leacon shouted back. 'Petty-Captain Leacon, Middlesex archers! Official business for Assistant-Purser West!'
The head was withdrawn, and a moment later a rope ladder was thrown down. It uncoiled, the end splashing into the water beside us.
Chapter Thirty-nine
OUR BOATMAN hauled the ladder aboard, then turned to us. 'Climb up, sirs. One at a time, please.'
Leacon grasped the ladder and climbed onto it. He began to ascend. I watched apprehensively as he moved upwards steadily, hand over hand. I started with surprise as, a little above my head, a gun port suddenly swung outwards. There was the sound of squeaking wheels from within, and the mouth of a huge cannon appeared in the gap with a strange, juddering movement. 'That axle needs greasing,' a sharp voice called. The cannon was withdrawn, and the gun-port lid banged shut. I looked up to where Leacon had reached the top of the ladder. Hands reached through the opened blind and he squeezed through the narrow gap.
'Now you, sir,' the boatman said. I took a deep breath, grasped the rungs, and climbed up. I did not look down. The gentle bobbing of the boat was disorientating. I reached the blind and hands stretched out to help me through. It was a drop of several feet to the deck, and I stumbled and nearly fell. 'It's a fucking lawyer,' someone said in wonderment.
Leacon took my arm. 'I've asked a sailor to go and look for Master West.'
I looked around. Thick rope netting with a small mesh enclosed the deck, secured to the rail above the blinds and, in the middle, to a wooden central spar seven feet above our heads supported by thick posts running the length of the open weatherdeck. The wide spar formed a walkway above us, running between the two castles; a sailor was padding across in bare feet. I looked up at the twenty-foot-high aftercastle. Two long, ornate bronze cannon projected from it, angled to fire outwards. Two more projected from the forecastle, pointing in the opposite direction.
'What a creation,' I said quietly. I looked along the weatherdeck. It was around forty feet wide and almost as long, dominated by three iron cannon on each side, a dozen feet long and lashed to wheeled carriages. The deck was illuminated by haloes of dim light from tallow candles inside tall horn lanterns. Perhaps sixty sailors sat in little groups between the guns, playing dice or cards; they were barefoot, most with jerkins over their shirts and some with round woolly hats, for there was a cool breeze now. Many were young, though already with weatherbeaten faces. A small mongrel greyhound sat beside one group, avidly watching a game of cards. Some of the sailors looked over at me with cool curiosity, doubtless wondering who I was, their eyes little points of light. One group was talking in what I recognized as Spanish, another sat listening intently to a cleric reading aloud from the Bible: 'Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.' A rancid meaty smell and little wafts of steam rose from some of the hatches with heavy wooden grilles set along the deck.