'Why did you… how did you know…?' 'Pleased I 'appened to be around.'
She felt she ought to say something, started scrabbling for words. Mannion put his finger to his lips.
'Look, girl,' he said, and somehow the 'girl' was not patronising. Rather, and very strangely, it made her feel an equal. 'People like
'im upstairs' — it was clear he was referring to Henry Gresham — 'they need 'elp from the people who really know how it works. You give it your way. I give it mine. Truth is, we're both on the same side. 'Im upstairs, 'e'd use a sonnet to say it, and then not get it right. Us, we don't need fancy words. We just need to know as 'ow we're on the same side.'
He grinned at her, gave an ironic touch to his forehead, and left, leaving the stable door open. A few of the horses had become restive at the tension and the voices, and before she left, almost without thinking, she walked down the length of the stables, reaching out a hand here and a hand there, talking nonsense softly. The smell of horses was all around, not offensive like the stench of human sewage, but somehow rich and warm, tempered by the delicate scent of straw and fodder.
It was a strangely assorted trio that watched as the Anna's scratch crew dropped her dun sails and eased gently out of Deptford, enough hours of daylight left to get her safely out to sea: the young man of fashion in his prime, the waif-become-spy and the great bulk of the serving man.
For two of them at least, it was not the blustery wind nor the rapid, chopping motions of the boat that held their attention. It was the other vessel that also slipped its moorings at exactly the same time as they did, let them build up a lead and then started to follow a suitable distance behind.
'Coincidence?' asked Gresham.
'You must be jokin',' said Mannion. 'But, you know, you get feelings, don't you? Even before your business with the captain. I got a feeling about this one.'
'I've got a feeling about the whole bloody trip,' said Gresham, under his breath. No point in alarming Jane. The wind streamed her hair behind her as she gazed excitedly at civilisation slipping past them. Her maid was puking over the side. She had told everyone she was going to be seasick, and was determined not to let them down.
'We can still turn round,' said Gresham. 'Yeah,' said Mannion, 'we could.'
They watched as they made more open sea. The sails behind them, even darker than their own, stayed steady, neither coming nearer nor turning for France.
Chapter 5
1 July, 1598 At Sea
They rigged and lit the running lights as night came on, one at the stern and one at the bow. Then, unusually, two bright lights at the mast head, one to port, one to stern, hung from the widest yard of the mainmast. A landsman would have thought it routine. For someone like Gresham, who had sailed with Drake, it was extraordinary. Was it his imagination, or were the shadowing sails catching up on them?
Mannion thought so. 'What's it look like to you?' Gresham asked him. There was complete trust between them at moments like these.
'Well,' said Mannion, 'I ain't seen this many lights outside of a Palace. Must want someone to see us. As for that ship, they're smaller than us, but faster.' Mannion paused to collect his thoughts. 'Smuggler's sails, probably not heavily armed.' Smugglers tended to favour the darkest possible sails to avoid recognition at night, even darker than the traditional dun sails that a number of the London vessels favoured. What was following them was a smuggler's boat — large enough to take a decent cargo, but small and nippy enough to make the Channel crossing at speed, probably with a few popguns to discourage boarders. 'Room for lots o' men on board, mind.'
'If you were them and you wanted to do us damage…' asked Gresham.
'I doubt they want to do us damage, at least not right off. It's what you're carrying they wants, and that means keepin' you alive, at least until they've found it. After that…' Mannion needed to say no more on that count. When Gresham had been milked of his information, he and the rest of them would tell no one of the assault, pursue no vengeance, provided of course they were at the bottom of the Channel. 'I'd wait till it's real dark, pull up on us, grapple and board. They could have ten, fifteen men, easy, spare for a boarding party. Mebbe more, God help us. There's two of us, and fer all they know we've only got a couple o' piss-pant servants with us, 'stead of four trained men. The crew 'ere, most of them'll be asleep. And any road, they ain't goin' to shed too much blood for us, are they? Even if they haven't got their own men among 'em, which they probably have. Like 'im up there.'
A thick-set sailor with a villainous low forehead was crouched in the tiny crow's nest. The vessel behind them could simply crack on sail and overtake them within the hour if it so chose, but that would give Gresham an hour to prepare if a suspicious look-out called the alarm. If it could be managed, it would be far better to creep up on the Anna, the look-out and whoever was in command bribed to silence. As if to echo their thoughts, the master came up to them, touching his forelock in the traditional salute.
'I'll be taking myself off for a while now. The ship's in good hands.' He motioned to the sailing master, a surprisingly young man with a shock of fair hair under a woollen cap and a ready grin.
'Could be coincidence,' said Gresham.
'Yeah?' said Mannion.
They gathered their four men in the tiny space of Gresham's cabin, bent almost double, and gave them instructions. If anything, the four of them looked more excited than frightened. Jack and Dick were both dark-haired, well-built men, the difference being that Jack had twenty years on Dick, most of that spent at sea. Tom was the man with the broken nose Mannion had brought along to knock some respect into Cecil's messenger: no great brain, but brilliant fists. Edward was thin, lugubrious, and the best oarsman on the Thames.
The Anna carried four small brass cannon on either side, but the one addition Gresham had made to her when he had bought the ship were four swivel cannons on the stern, two on either side of the upper deck. The for'ard pair could cover the tiny main deck as well. Such a gun was usually designed to sweep grapeshot across an enemy's deck, but its size was limited by the fact of it being more often than not simply secured to a strengthened guard rail. Too powerful a load, and the recoil would smash the wood and unseat the gun, making it useless. On the Anna, each gun was secured on a metal rod that passed down through the deck and was secured deep within one of the main frames of the ship. As a result, the guns could take and fire quite a sizeable ball, as well as grapeshot.
'Do we tell the girl?' asked Mannion.
They knocked on her cabin door. She had not undressed, but was clearly about to. Gresham felt stupid, bent low under the deck timbers, the girl sitting on the crude bed that jutted out from the side of the hull.
'We think we might be being followed, by another boat. There's a chance it might try to board us. Things could get violent, I'm afraid.'
'Why should they want to board us?' asked Jane, outwardly reasonably calm. Gresham had been terrified she would get the vapours, or whatever women did.
'I… I'm carrying… material that could be of advantage to any number of people.' He found this very difficult, but anyone successfully taking the Anna would be likely to take her and her maid, before dumping them over the side. It seemed unfair not to tell her as much as possible, given what would happen to her if they lost. 'But the truth is, we don't really know who they are. It's what I do. I live in a world where… where for a lot of the time we know very little, particularly where the threat comes from, or even why it comes.'
He was impatient to get back on deck. There were things to do.
'Here, take these.' He handed her two pistols, expensive flintlocks primed and half cocked. They were part of the extra supplies he had ordered at the last minute from The House. 'Bar the door when we leave. Do you know how to use these?'
'I've watched others do so,' she said, looking distastefully at the gleaming, oiled weapons.
'Check the flint is here.' He motioned to the firing mechanism. 'And that there's powder there. See? The metal cover lifts back if you do… this.' He tossed a small, oiled, canvas bag onto the bed. 'There are spare flints and four separate charges of powder. The guns are on safety now, the hammer pulled back, so it won't fire unless you pull back a little further, until you hear the second click and it locks. Then it'll fire when you pull the trigger. Hold it
