Heartstone

'I did not understand how dangerous until yesterday. But Barak said I was using you and he was right. I am sorry.'

'Where is Jack?'

'Well on his way to London.' I took a deep breath. 'George, there is something else you will find hard to believe. Something Rich used to get me on the ship—and it's why your company was put on the Mary Rose. Yesterday you took on a new recruit. Hugh Curteys.'

'Yes,' he answered, sounding defensive. 'He came in the afternoon, he wanted to enlist and I let him. I remembered seeing him that time before, and recalled what a good archer he was. He said his guardian had agreed.'

I smiled wryly. 'Did you believe that?'

'All the companies are under-strength. If I had refused he would only have got himself into another.'

'George, Hugh Curteys is not who he says. He is not even a boy. "He" is a girl, Hugh's sister. She has been impersonating him for years.'

He looked at me blankly. 'What?'

'That wretched man Hobbey forced the impersonation on her, for gain. He has admitted it. George, please, take me up to the aftercastle with you. Let me show you.'

He looked at me dubiously. 'Can you make it up there?'

'Yes. If you help me. Please.'

He looked me in the eye. 'You realize you should try and get off this ship, now. There are a few rowboats going between the ships and shore with messages.'

'I must take Emma Curteys with me. I've got this far, against all my enemies could throw at me.'

Leacon looked round the little cabin, shook his head again, then said, 'Come.'

'Thank you again, George.'

As I moved away, my robe caught on a splinter in the planking of the wall. I threw off the filthy, dusty thing, then tore off my coif too. In my shirt, I followed Leacon from the little cabin. As I went out I heard cannonfire. It sounded close.

* * *

OUTSIDE, guncrews of half a dozen men stood round the cannon in positions of readiness, in their shirts or bare-chested. The gun ports were open. The air was stifling, thick with the stench of unwashed bodies. Each member of the guncrews stood in a fixed place: one holding a long ladle; another with a wooden linstock and smouldering taper, ready to light the powder; a third with an iron gunball at his feet, ready to load. The master gunners stood behind the guns, watching an officer in doublet and hose, sword at his waist and a whistle round his neck, pacing up and down between the double row of guns. The men lifted tired, strained faces to stare at us. The officer stepped forward, glaring at me. 'Who the hell are you? Who put you in there?'

'Assistant-Purser West. He—'

A whistle sounded loudly from the top of the ladder. The officer thrust out his arm to stop us moving. 'Stay back! Wait here!'

The whistle had been a signal. The officer blew his own whistle and I watched as another practice followed, the crews swinging smoothly into motion, moving with speed and grace. The iron cannon were loaded with shot from the back, the bronze ones, which had been hauled back for the purpose, from chambers at the front. Vents on top of the guns were filled with powder and the bronze guns were rolled forward, the ropes binding them to the walls slackening. The movement made the deck tremble again. Each master gunner placed the taper next to a hole at the back of each gun, into which another man had already mimed pouring in a dob of powder from a flask. Then everyone stopped and waited, still as a tableau for half a minute, until another whistle sounded. The guns were hauled inboard again, and the gunballs removed. Everyone took up their former positions. The officer said, 'Good enough. We'll give them a hot cannonade!' He inclined his head at us. 'Get out, quick!'

We passed between the guncrews. I remember one man holding a linstock staring at me as I went by. He was shirtless, with a short, scarred, muscular body, a square bearded face. He looked at me as though I were something from another world, an apparition.

We walked to the ladder. At the bottom Leacon said quietly, 'Can you make it up?'

'After all I've been through to get here? Yes.'

I climbed after him, though the effort sent pain slicing through my shoulders. Fresh, salt air wafted down from above, making my head swim for a moment. Leacon reached the deck and helped me up. Again, through the stout netting, I saw the great masts rearing up into the blue sky of another hot July day. The sails were still furled, but on deck and up in the rigging sailors stood in position, ready to release them on command. The deck was more crowded than ever, everyone at battle positions. As below, guncrews had taken up positions of readiness beside the cannon. Half the blinds were open, giving me a view of the Great Harry and the other warships beyond on one side, and on the other the Isle of Wight, where, away in the distance, I saw smoke rising from several large fires.

I looked along the deck. Archers stood at some of the open blinds, and perhaps fifty pikemen stood together, nine-foot-long half-pikes raised with tips poking through the netting, ready to thrust up at boarders. An officer with a whistle round his neck stood watching; he glanced up at the fighting top in the topmast where lookouts stood, the only ones with a clear view of what was happening.

Near us, on the opposite side of the deck, three officers were arguing. One I recognized as the purser. The second was Philip West. He looked haggard as he spoke to the third man, a tall officer in his forties, richly dressed. He had a dark brown beard framing a long, frowning face, a pomander as well as a sword at his waist. Round his neck he wore a massive whistle on a long gold chain. He was examining what looked like a tiny sundial. He looked up as West finished speaking.

'If the beer's bad,' he said impatiently, 'they'll just have to do without.'

The purser answered, 'The men are parched. And starting to murmur—'

'Then give them what there is!'

'They won't drink it, Sir George,' West said impatiently. 'It's bad—'

Sir George Carew shouted back, 'Don't talk to me like that, knave! God's death, they'd best behave, all of them. The King is watching at South Sea Castle, and he'll have a special eye on this ship!'

West turned his head away. He saw me then; his mouth fell open in astonishment and horror. I met his gaze grimly. There was nothing he could do to me here. Leacon stared at him too, angrily, then turned to me. 'Let's go up.'

We mounted via the space under the aftercastle, next to the mainmast, and arrived on the lower aftercastle deck, where helmeted handgunners stood with arquebuses and hailshot pieces propped against the side of the ship. There were no blinds here, only portholes at eye-level for them to stick their weapons through. I had a view through a wide doorway giving on to the walkway between the castles, above the netting. Two sailors in check shirts stood in the doorway leading to the aftercastle, watching as a pair of soldiers carried a long box across the walkway from the forecastle end. On either side of the doorway the two long cannon I had seen from the weatherdeck on my first visit were positioned, angled to fire outwards past the ship through a gap in the rigging, guncrews beside them. The cannon were bronze, beautifully ornate. Looking back, I saw two lines of handgunners, their feet braced, their long, heavy weapons thrust through little portholes. If the Mary Rose grappled with a French ship, they would fire hailshot of metal and stone at the opposing crew.

'More arrows,' the soldiers said as they reached the doorway.

'Give them here.' The sailors took the box and carried it to the ladder, which continued upwards. They climbed up nimbly, then descended again to resume their positions in the doorway. Leacon and I ascended to the top deck of the aftercastle, into the sunshine, underneath another span of netting fixed to wooden supports that enclosed the deck. The aftercastle was far longer than the weatherdeck, and just as crowded. Around half Leacon's company were there, perhaps twenty men standing at open blinds on each side, with a few placed behind ready to replace any who fell. Snodin was pacing slowly up and down the deck, his plump face set hard. He saw me and stared with an astonished frown. Like the men on the deck below most wore helmets and cotton jacks—Pygeon, some way off, had on the bright red brigandyne he had won from Sulyard. The men held strung bows upright at their sides, angled carefully so the tops did not touch the enclosing netting above, arrowbags at their waists, bracers on their wrists. The box of arrows lay open in the middle of the deck. Here and there the archers were interspersed with swivel gunners, their thin, six-foot long weapons fixed to the rail above the blinds. The guns were at rest, muzzles up and long tails resting on the deck. At the far end of the aftercastle, under an enormous flag of St George, Sir Franklin Giffard stared down the deck, his face set and resolute. Through the open blind next to me I saw the sea, forty feet below. I swallowed and looked away. Then I looked backwards, and stared.