the youngest of Gresham's crewmen instantly, yet the unexpected crossbow fire had reversed the odds. A scything blow from Harry, who captained the barge, sent one of the boarders off into the river, another from young Will opened up another's face from left to right, slicing through the left eye and releasing a fountain of blood that appeared black against the white skin of the man's face.
Two left, with one wounded. The fight was over.
Mannion had not left his position in the stern. Gresham had moved down into the well of the boat, behind his men, standing over Jane. He felt rather than saw the slight tugging behind him, the deck moving in a different way beneath his feet. He swung round to see three bedraggled men hauling themselves out of the water from the side opposite the battle. Two of them were stumbling to their feet on the narrow deck, dripping water over the planks. The enemy had been cleverer than Gresham thought, and sent men round to the undefended side of the boat to catch them by surprise. The man with the bolt through his arm took courage when he saw his compatriots, and with a huge bellow lurched upright and hurled himself into Gresham's boat. It leaned viciously, dangerously under his weight.
Six boarders now to five defenders.
Gresham felt the battle lust come upon him. A red haze covered his vision. He lunged at one of the boarders who had not quite made it on to the deck. He twisted away, Gresham's axe landing where his wrists had been an instant before, but still held on. In making his move Gresham exposed himself to the man on his right, whose face suddenly took on the shape of a cross as a crossbow bolt penetrated his head from one side to another. His eyes crossed and an expression of total confusion came across his pock-marked face. 'Oh!' he said quietly, and sank to the deck. The man who Gresham had missed flipped over the hull and on to the deck, jumping to his feet.
Five boarders to five defenders.
Harry looked to have taken a broken arm, but was still swinging gamely with his left hand. Will and the other man were forcing their two remaining boarders back towards the bow. Mannion jumped down to join his master, throwing the crossbow he had reloaded to one side. Gresham made as to pull back for a mighty swing with his axe, saw the man opposite him start to lunge and bent aside, plunging his axe into the back of his head with a sickening thud as he fell past him.
Four attackers to five defenders.
Half turned, he saw a sight from Hell. The boat was bobbing erratically up and down, caught in the waves the battle had generated.
The enemy with the crossbow bolt in his arm was standing over the huddled bundle that was Jane, the boarding axe he had grabbed from the deck raised high above his head, a killing lust in his eyes. Blood from his wounded arm was falling, dripping into Jane's hair.
Slowly, so slowly, the arms went back over the man's head, as slowly, so slowly, Jane appeared to be bowing her head and scuffling about in her skirts. Slowly, so slowly, she flung up her beautiful head, and in her hands was a long, thin dagger of Spanish steel. Like a nun praying for an offering she clutched the dagger in both her hands and in supplication raised it to the man bending over her, thrusting it hard into his groin. His scream of dying agony ripped through the fog, brought even the fighting at the bow to a momentary halt with the animal scream of pure pain. The axe dropped to the deck, and the man toppled backwards, the dagger still inserted in his middle. Jane was clutching at the hilt like a drowning woman, sobbing with her own agony. She seemed unable to let go, and she toppled over with the man, ending lying on top of him in an awful parody of the beast with two backs.
Three attackers to five defenders, all forced now to the bow of the boat, all desperately fighting for their lives against Gresham, Mannion, Will, Jack and the wounded Harry.
In one fluid movement Gresham turned and hurled his axe forward into the forehead of the man in front of him. It clove his head near in half.
The remaining two men looked at their struck companion and dropped their weapons, raising their hands, looking beseechingly into the eyes of Gresham.
'Kill them,' said Gresham.
More screams rang out above the water.
Gresham turned to Jane. Very gently he rolled her off the corpse of the man she had killed, ignoring the frantic sobs that were shaking her whole body. Very gently he prised her fingers from off the hilt of the blood- soaked dagger, the blood already drying and sticking to both their hands. As she let go of the dagger, the man's head lolled back, mouth gaping, revealing his bare neck.
A string of beads, rosary beads, lay on the sweated hair between shoulder and neck.
Gresham placed an arm under her shoulder and picked her up in his arms, carrying her to the rear platform where only a short while earlier they had sat in so much state. The other boat still clung to them, the grapnel holding. It had splintered a V-shape in their side, above the water line, and the boats screeched as if in pain as the broken and exposed wood of both vessels rubbed against each other.
Jane was shivering as well as shaking, great racking sobs heaving through her whole body. He said nothing, as yet. He knew what was to come. Her eyes were wide, startled, endlessly moving in her head. They rested for a brief moment on the man she had killed, his head flung back in the agonised rictus of a shrieking death, the hilt of the dagger still sticking up into the night air like some awful erection.
He held her as she vomited over the side, her meal floating away silently downstream. The vomiting noises continued long after she had emptied her stomach.
'Why?' She turned to him, finally. 'Why?'
He did not answer, merely held her closer as Mannion and the others set about finding where they were and towing the other boat home.
Why, indeed.
Why was he being hunted on the river? Why was life a string of so many squalid little agonies, always ending in death, the smell of fresh blood?
He had the answer to neither question. As for the last question, it had been asked of humankind for all eternity, with no answer that he could believe.
He held Jane in his arms, mourning the death of innocence.
Chapter 5
Gresham had lain awake during the night, his whole body tensed with anger. There were few tears left in him, and he shed none that anyone could have seen.
He knew what life was. Two thirds of a woman's children could be swept off from life before they were months old, whilst ague, palsy and the plague could bite into the wealthiest and poorest households alike with no warning. There was only one answer. Live, whilst there was life. Fight the powers that condemned men and women to know the truth of their prison yet have no means of escape. Laugh in the face of the fragility of existence.
Yet the tide of despair had swung down on him, as he had known it would, and engulfed him. The dark of the night flowed into his mind and extinguished all light. The mood came on him rarely, but when it did it threatened all that he was. He felt the pulse beating through his body, felt how frail was a human's hold on life, knew how easily the pressure of that pulse could be let out from its prison by the deftest and gentlest wielding of the knife or dagger. As the blood pounded through his head, causing an agonising pain to throb behind his eyes, the temptation to release the pressure with the sharp cleansing point of metal became almost unbearable. It was as if his blood was prisoner inside his body, screaming and pummelling to get out, as the sailors trapped between decks on the Maria had screamed and punched at the unyielding timbers in their frenzy to escape. No more pressure, no more pounding, no more pain. Release. Yet he was a coward, he told himself as he stared sightless into the dark. 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all..That man Shakespeare had it right, damn him.
His own innocence had died long since, and his survival was a matter of pride rather than of necessity. He had known in his heart that a new dawning and a first sight of the night would come to Jane, as it came to all thinking people, and that the black edge of despair would tear at her soul. The knowledge that it would come did not lessen the pain of its arrival. She had killed a man, and such a thing killed a part of the person who did the act. There was no other way. It was the way of life to demand death. So at least he would meet Jane in Hell. Yet he had reluctantly decided before the events of the previous night that any Heaven without Jane might as well be Hell for
