‘Will you cut their Dutch throats, in their temple praying?’ he bellowed.
‘Aye,’ the men called back, ‘we will cut their throats.’
Curl’s mouth tightened, his lips turned down; he banged the butts of his pistols down on the table once more. ‘Then stand with me, brothers-in-arms. Our swords shall play the orators for us. Be bold, be resolute — and this day you shall see a victory for England as great as Agincourt or Crecy!’
The Swiftsure, a royal ship of three hundred tons with thirty-four guns, cruised upstream with elegant majesty. As a fighting ship against the Armada, she had carried a complement of one hundred and eighty men, but James Adam had been able to muster no more than thirty, which was enough to get the ship under way and man the cannon.
They had departed from Gravesend with great speed. She was well scrubbed, having recently been refitted and armed in preparation for a tour of duty patrolling the narrow sea.
‘Well, Mr Cooper,’ Adam said as they rode the churning flood past Dartford, ‘it seems we are shipmates once more. I had heard you were now a scurvy freshwater mariner.’
Boltfoot ignored his old master’s insult. They had been together before Drake’s circumnavigation. Adam had always been fair enough, but he had been hard, too.
‘Catch her, Mr Adam,’ Shakespeare said. ‘That is all I demand of you — catch this wretched vessel.’
‘If the Swiftsure cannot, nothing can. I reckon her the fleetest galleon in the Navy Royal, sir. With the wind and tide behind us, we’ll make ten knots. Your floundering bark will not make half that speed.’
‘How do we do this? Can we board the Sieve? Gulden insists he is able to disarm the clock.’
‘I trust you are making jest with me, Mr Shakespeare.’ Adam glanced at the Dutchman who stood with them on the poop, his brow creased in fear. ‘If it was my decision, I would string the man up from the yard-arm here and now.’ He turned back to Shakespeare. ‘There is but one thing to do — blow her out of the water, and all in her.’
Shakespeare had feared this was what he would say. It was not an option that brought him joy. Cecil might be pleased to learn that they had saved London Bridge, but he would not be happy with a thunderous blast breaking the peace of Her Majesty.
‘Now then, Mr Shakespeare,’ Adam said, ‘pray tell me, what do you think that ship is, ahead one mile? Does that bark look like your Sieve?’
Shakespeare shrugged his shoulders. One vessel looked like another to him. From this distance there was no way of knowing. ‘We will need to close on her to tell.’
‘Close to four cables,’ Adam ordered his helmsman. He turned back to Shakespeare. ‘Eight hundred yards. Nearer than that would be insanity. I am not firing cannon at a ship packed with ten thousand or more pounds of powder when I’m broadside to her, sir, for she would blast us all to heaven.’
Boltfoot nodded grimly. ‘That’s her. I’d recognise the bastardly bark from ten miles, let alone one.’
‘Helm,’ Adam called. ‘Bark ahead, mid-stream. Master gunner, prepare to fire starboard sakers, four cables. Helmsman, maintain course, then turn about on order.’
Shakespeare grasped James Adam’s sleeve. ‘God’s blood, you cannot fire on her. Look about her, sir. The river teems with ships and boats.’
Adam shook his arm free from Shakespeare’s grip. ‘Would you have us wait until we are outside Greenwich Palace, or the Tower? Or why not let her sail merrily into the bridge itself, which is, you say, their plan? Do you think there will be fewer vessels as we approach the great wharves and dockyards? The Thames is the busiest waterway on the face of the earth, Mr Shakespeare. There is no safe place to do this. I will attempt to take her as she passes the Erith marshes, then all we can do is pray.’
He sighed in resignation. ‘Fire at will, Mr Adam.’
James Adam grinned. ‘Our figurehead is a tiger, Mr Shakespeare. Let me show you how we open our jaws and bite…’
The first volley fell fifty yards short of the Sieve. ‘Come about, helmsman,’ Adam called. ‘Master gunner, prepare for a second salvo, larboard sakers, range plus fifty yards.’
From the poop of the Swiftsure, Shakespeare could see frantic activity aboard the target ship. He felt the tight knot of fear. If the Sieve got through to London Bridge, it would be slaughter on a scale never known.
‘Fire all guns!’
The second volley roared forth and the Swiftsure reverberated with the recoil, throwing up a great wash of water.
‘A hit!’ the master gunner cried out.
They had all seen the ball smash into the sterncastle of the bark. They saw, too, the mad racing of those aboard the Sieve, crowding to the back of the ship to see whence the attack had come.
‘Come about again, master gunner. Starboard sakers, three and a half cables.’
Shakespeare squinted through the fug of gunpowder smoke that belched from the saker cannons, medium-sized guns that could hurl a five-pound ball a mile or more. He tried to peer closer; one of those on the Sieve was climbing down a rope ladder to a cockboat.
‘Fire!’
The sakers boomed again. The Swiftsure rocked violently. Smoke billowed up. Time seemed to stand still.
And then it happened…
Chapter 37
At first they saw a plume of flame shoot up, fifty, a hundred feet in the air, perhaps more. A whoosh of fire, as if the earth itself spewed forth its entrails. So monstrous, so malevolent, it towered over the world and grew so that a man might think it would develop horns, hooves and a flashing red tail.
Almost simultaneously there was a great cloud of smoke, littered with a mass of wood splinters, iron, stones, bodies; all hurled upwards and outwards with uncontainable, venomous energy. Then the sound, a blast of such ear-splitting ferocity that the brain could scarcely register it, and the shock — a sudden wind with the power to knock a man off his feet, senseless.
The Swiftsure pitched over to the larboard at such an angle that all those aboard, all the cannon, all the stores, were hurled down. One saker drove two gunners into the sea, another crushed the master gunner’s left leg.
Shakespeare fell hard into the bulwark, which saved him from going over the side. Boltfoot smacked into him, winding them both.
As the vessel righted itself, then heeled back over, they saw Mr Adam and the helmsman sliding across the deck like a pair of children sliding down a slope of snow on wooden boards. Shakespeare clung on to a rope, and Boltfoot clung on to Shakespeare’s waist.
At last the Swiftsure steadied. Shakespeare jumped up. He looked over the bulwark and saw two men in the sea. ‘Men overboard!’ he shouted, and dived in without thinking what he was going to do.
The water was churning foam. For the second time that day Shakespeare pushed out with an overarm stroke to try to save life. Then he saw the ship’s boat, broken loose from its line to the Swiftsure, just two yards away. He lunged for it, grabbed the side and clambered in. There were two oars aboard. He started rowing towards the two seamen, one of whom was floundering, the other seeming unconscious.
Up on the ship’s deck, Boltfoot looked upriver to a patch of water and floating debris where once a hundred-ton bark had been. Now it was no more than a hulk, alight and belching forth hot steam and smoke and surrounded by flotsam. No one within a hundred yards of the Sieve could have survived. Boltfoot looked at his hand. It was shaking. His hand had never shaken before, even in the hottest exchange of fire. He tried to imagine what such a blast would have done to London Bridge. It would have reduced its nine-hundred-foot span to rubble.
James Adam struggled to his feet and came across the wet, slippery deck to where Boltfoot stood. He put an arm around his shoulders. For a moment, Boltfoot forgot the pain of his scorched back and welcomed the touch of another human being.