He is still counting his good fortune when he hears cries from aloft, attracting Yaxley’s attention.
Looking up, Nicholas sees several hands perched high in the rigging, pointing in the direction of the headland that Cathal Connell had told him was the Rass Lafaa, the Head of the Snake. He turns in the direction indicated by the outstretched arms.
Low against the glittering wave tops, a dark shape is moving across their path, faster than this breeze should be able to carry a ship. Then Nicholas sees the silver, rhythmic glint of foam marking the sweep of a bank of oars as they strike the water in unison.
‘It’s the Moor corsair,’ Yaxley says, confirming Nicholas’s fears. ‘I think he means to come down upon us.’ He looks at Nicholas, his grey eyes searching for an answer.
‘It’s Connell,’ Nicholas admits, sensing a lifting of the hairs on the back of his neck that has nothing to do with the breeze. ‘It’s me he’s after. He has friends in England who will go to the scaffold if I live to reach home. We can fight him off, though, can we not?’
Yaxley gives him a troubled look. ‘With a better wind, aye. But at present we’ve precious little way on us. We can’t manoeuvre. He’ll be able to keep out of range of the culverins, then cross our stern. All he has to do then is rake us with his bow-chaser cannon until we’re a hulk and half of us dead. When he’s ready, he’ll close and board us.’
‘Surely we have some defence against that?’
‘Only the rabinet,’ Yaxley says, indicating a light cannon set upon a swivel-iron near the stern. ‘A charge of hail-shot from that will clear them off. But they’re not fools. They won’t risk boarding until that’s battered down. It doesn’t have the range of their bow-chaser.’
‘Can we not fly a signal, tell the Kasar el Bahr that we’re in danger?’
‘We can barely see it from here, Dr Shelby. Besides, we’re all but out of range of their ordnance. The Moors are good gunners, but no one can carry a shot further than the God Lord means it to fly.’
‘How long do we have, Captain Yaxley?’
‘Less than an hour, I’d imagine. She was out of the water for careening – that’s why she was on the beach. Her hull will be clean of weeds and barnacles, so she’ll cleave the water all the faster. So you’d best get down on your knees, Dr Shelby, and beg the Almighty to fill His lungs and start blowin’.’
No sooner are the words out of Yaxley’s mouth than the pennants fluttering from the mastheads fall limply, like accusing fingers pointing down towards the deck. The newly set canvas hangs sullenly from the yards, fractiously banging against the masts until eventually all movement ceases.
The Almighty, it seems, has other things to do today than blow.
Sometimes the corsair is visible from Nicholas’s vantage point beside Yaxley, sometimes not. The slight swell, or the glare of the sun on the water, can erase it for minutes at a time. On one occasion it vanishes long enough for Nicholas to hope a sudden catastrophe has swallowed it up. But always it returns, a little larger, a little clearer. By the sandglass next to the compass box, Nicholas can see that half an hour has passed since the first shout from the rigging. The corsair is now some five cable lengths off the Marion’s beam, just out of effective range of her armament, manoeuvring to come up from astern – a wolf stalking an exhausted, limping hind.
And still there is no wind. The Marion has barely shortened the distance to the Rass Lafaa.
Yaxley orders the sternmost culverin to try its luck with a ranging shot. The concussion feels like a blow against Nicholas’s chest. In the still air, the choking smoke drifts slowly towards the bow, filling Nicholas’s throat with the acrid, devil-stink of burnt black-powder. The splash of the landing shot rises out of the sea neatly abeam the corsair, but fifty yards or more from the swaying rank of oars.
‘The bastard’s canny,’ Yaxley says. ‘He knows we haven’t enough way on us to turn the culverins on him, once he’s clear of our quarter. If we’re not careful, we’re goin’ to get well and truly bit in the arse, Dr Shelby.’
Yaxley orders the helm put hard over, trying to swing the Marion and keep her beam-on to the corsair. But in the calm air and sluggish sea, she merely takes up a crabwise drift.
Now Nicholas can see his enemy clearly. Her oars sweep with a disciplined rhythm, powered by manacled slaves who know that to falter is to invite the lash, or worse. She is a weapon powered not by the sinew of a bowstring or the flame of igniting powder, but by human effort. He sees the janissaries, clad in mail jerkins and helmets, waiting to hurl their grapples against the Marion’s stern. And he sees Cathal Connell in her prow, his salt-scoured face grinning like the Devil’s dancing monkey.
‘Cast me adrift, Captain Yaxley,’ Nicholas says. ‘It’s me they want.’
Yaxley’s face seems unnaturally calm, given the circumstances. He seems not to have heard what Nicholas has said. Instead, he draws his sword and waves it aloft. ‘Load the rabinet!’ he shouts. ‘Hail-shot – two canisters! All hands muster on the sterncastle to deny boarders!’
It dawns on Nicholas that when a man has watched a wave the size of a small mountain break over his vessel and has lived to emerge on the other side, a battle is not lost until God says it is.
The rabinet’s crew load the barrel of the swivel-gun with wadding, powder-bag and two cloth balls containing the hail-shot. Nicholas has seen its effect in the Low Countries: a spraying blast of musket balls that can sweep away men as a thunderstorm can flatten a field of Suffolk wheat. But now, looking at the corsair as she closes, he can see the gun crew crouching by the bow-chaser cannon in her prow. Its heavy shot will soon smash the stern of the Marion, destroying the rabinet before it can be effective.
‘Captain Yaxley, lower one of your skiffs,’ Nicholas shouts, at last accepting the hand misfortune has dealt him, knowing the card he’s turned is the one with the skeletal horseman on it. ‘It’s me he wants. If you set me adrift, Connell will have his prize. If you don’t, he’ll slaughter every last one of us. I’ve seen what he can do.’
Yaxley seems torn. His eyes dart from Nicholas to the approaching galley and back again. He seems to be gauging whether his conscience can stomach the knowledge of what will happen to Nicholas if he agrees. With a frown of regret, he calls to the main-deck, ‘Lower away the skiff!’
A murmur of approval from one or two of the crew puts the seal upon Nicholas’s growing sense of abandonment. He has never felt so alone in his life, not even after Eleanor’s death. To be set adrift, certain to fall into Connell’s hands, brings fear enough. But to lose all hope of seeing Bianca again – just when it seemed he was free – threatens to turn him from a man into a distraught, howling child. It takes all his will to stay on his feet.
‘God Himself knows I wish there was another way, Dr Shelby,’ Yaxley says, staring at the deck planks, no longer able to look Nicholas in the eye. ‘But I must think of my men.’
‘It’s the right thing to do, Captain Yaxley. There is no fault to be laid at your door.’
‘Do you know how to use a wheel-lock pistol, Dr Shelby?’ Yaxley asks, drawing one from his belt and offering it to Nicholas.
As a lad, Nicholas had often gone wildfowling with his father’s old matchlock in the marshes around Barnthorpe. And in Holland he learned how to use a modern wheel-lock from the Protestant mercenaries he’d served with. He nods.