curious nostalgia that he had thought never to feel again.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the vastness of the open sea, when you knew there was a God in heaven and that He was very close. On a clear day, the ocean was a glory to behold. The rolling waves, higher than the bowsprit of the Golden Hind, reaching as far as a man could see, north, south, east, and west; immense in their splendor. As the Hind descended from one wave into a long, dipping trough, the next wave rose like a tall, gray cathedral before them and the ship itself began to rise to meet it, before falling once more down a wall of water into an enormous, foam-wracked trough. Such days had terrified many mariners, yet Boltfoot loved them; until this moment, he had forgotten how much.
“Regrets, Mr. Cooper?” Drake bellowed, just after the second boom of the Elizabeth Bonaventure’s guns, as if reading Boltfoot’s mind.
Yes. That you cheated me out of my plunder, Boltfoot thought, but said nothing.
The ship continued its long sweeps across the hulk, turning with grace and speed, its bow low and eager to please, then firing with increasing accuracy from different ranges, crashing the hulk into splinterwood. Finally, when the supply of balls was exhausted and the hulk had all but disappeared beneath the sea, Drake ordered the master to take them home. “We will make for Deptford, where you will land me. Then you can take her back to Gravesend with Captain Stanley.”
They arrived back soon after a limpid sun rose the next day, the Elizabeth Bonaventure’s sails gleaming in the low eastern light. Boltfoot had stayed the night outside the great cabin in the stern-castle, taking turns with Diego to sleep in a hastily raised hammock. This was also the way it was working now at Drake’s home in Elbow Lane and at court when they stayed there. Despite his reservations about being protected, Drake was allowing Boltfoot and Diego to camp outside the chamber he shared with his wife.
The Lizzie dropped anchor in midstream, some way from the landing steps at Deptford. The coxswain, Matthew, lowered the captain’s boat and brought it into position. When the oarsmen were all at their stations, Drake descended the rope ladder, a small, indistinct figure against the vastness of the sleek, oiled oak of the bulwarks and the pitch-blackened hull below. Boltfoot followed him.
Herrik in his room above the chandlery on the Strand at Deptford, had been awake and watchful since first light. He had seen the Elizabeth Bonaventure from some way off. She was every inch a royal ship, proudly bearing flags with the white cross of Saint George and silken pennants of gold and silver, flying thirty yards or more from the masts. And then, as she came closer, he could see the rose shield of the Tudors adorning the low race-built forecastle-the same diminutive structure that made the ship so vulnerable to boarding yet, at the same time, as nimble and quick as a wild cat.
For a moment Herrick found himself admiring her lines. She was majestic and it occurred to him that if the English had many more such ships, they could trouble, if not match, any armada that Philip could muster and put to sea. He resolved that when this Holy mission was done with, he would go to Mendoza in Paris with information on what he had seen here. His Spanish masters should know the truth about this English fleet.
From the bag he took the two pieces of gun; the mechanism and the barrel in one piece, the stock separate. They clipped together easily. He primed the weapon with the fine willow powder and rammed home one of the balls into the muzzle. It fitted perfectly. Herrick removed his sighting stand from below the bed. It was short, no more than two feet. He had crafted it himself from wood he had found discarded outside the dockyard timber merchant’s lot nearby. At its top was a notch he had cut, on which he could rest the muzzle.
He opened the little window and looked out. Beneath him the early-morning throng was going about its business. No one looked up. Herrick took his pillow cushion from the bed and put it on the floor close by the window, where he placed it beneath one knee, crouching low so that his head would not be visible from the street below. He had a clear, unimpeded view of the landing steps where Drake would soon land.
He could see the cockboat now, rowed hard and in time by four oarsmen. The coxswain stood, directing their strokes. In the back, the captain sat in splendor, talking to a dark-skinned man to his left. On the other side of him sat a thickset man who looked for all the world like a broadsheet version of a pirate. Herrick studied the captain in the middle. Was this man definitely Drake? If his information was correct that Drake would come ashore from the Elizabeth Bonaventure this day-and Herrick had no reason to doubt it-then this had to be him. He took the portrait from his doublet and studied it briefly. This captain fitted every description of Drake he knew: the proud, puffed-out chest; the stocky stature; the jutting, sharp-cut golden beard; the curled, flame-red hair; the arrogance. Herrick discarded any doubts. This was Drake.
The cockboat was about two hundred yards away. Herrick rested the barrel of his snaphaunce musket on the makeshift stand, its muzzle protruding not more than an inch over the sill of the window.
He knew it to be a remarkable weapon. Before coming here to this eyrie in Deptford, he had taken the gun, concealed in his bag, out to the woods past Islington ponds. There he had expended three-quarters of the twenty- four specially manufactured balls in target practice. The musket was as accurate as claimed by its maker, Opel. He knew he could easily hit a man’s head from a hundred yards, probably one-fifty, and possibly even two hundred. With such a weapon ranged against them, no prince or captain-general would ever be safe again.
Herrick lined up the sights of the gun on his target and squinted down the barrel at Drake. He could take him now, while he sat in the back, literally a sitting target. But he held back; the boat was swaying in the choppy swell. Herrick could wait. He had been here at this window for sixty hours now, watching the Strand, the river, and the moored ships almost every moment of daylight, barely breaking for food or drink. Wait until Drake was closer to shore but not yet landed, that was the thing. This was the place, his man had assured him.
Drake’s head was in his sights now, as big and lush as the watermelons in the market at the bottom of the Capitoline Hill, near the English college. He let the muzzle drop and lined up on Drake’s chest. Aim for the biggest target-the body, not the head.
They were close enough now. The boat was in calmer water and there was no obstacle between the muzzle of Herrick’s gun and the body of England’s greatest mariner. Herrick held the stock hard into his shoulder to minimize recoil, then pulled the trigger.
The explosion in the small, enclosed room was deafening. The recoil threw him back. Smoke billowed from the muzzle. Herrick set the weapon on the bare boards of the floor, then looked from the window, trying to make out the boat. There was a mass of confusion and the vessel was rocking madly. The oarsmen were all now standing; they seemed to be crowded around Drake. Was he dead? He had to be dead. There was no time to lose; Herrick had to move fast. He couldn’t get back to London by boat. The river would be shut down immediately. He had a horse liveried at a tavern stable inland, half a mile to the south, toward the gabled manor house Sayers Court. His plan was to ride to Southwark, where there was a safe house, and stay there until the hue and cry died down. Perhaps a week, maybe more. The ports were all closed anyway since the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the searches of any foreigners trying to get across the Channel would now be redoubled. He must keep his head, stay low and wait.
He dismantled his weapon, threw it back in the bag, and stowed it beneath the bed. No need of it now. He had no other belongings, merely the clothes he stood in, the wheel-lock pistol at his belt, his thin-bladed skene and rapier. He shut the door of the room behind him and walked down the creaking staircase to the shop below.
Bob Roberts, his landlord, was there, standing at the doorway. He turned and smiled broadly at Herrick, clutching the base of his fume-belching pipe. “There’s quite a to-do out there, Mr. van Leiden,” he said, carelessly blowing smoke in Herrick’s face.
“What is it, Bob?”
“Hard to say. Looks like someone’s been hurt.” Roberts looked curiously at Herrick. “Are you all right, Mr. van Leiden? I heard a noise from upstairs. Thought you must have fallen out of bed.”
Herrick laughed. “That I did, Bob. That I did. And now I must take my leave of you and try again for some work. I will see you at dusk.” He stepped out from the doorway intending to hurry to the stables. But first he would join the throng at the waterfront, to make sure Drake was dead.
Boltfoot Cooper was drenched. He stood on the quayside, his eyes focused on a small window. Just before the shot rang out, Boltfoot had caught a dull glint from that window, in the middle of the row of shops and suppliers at the back of Deptford Strand. The dull glint had become a puff of smoke, swiftly followed by the familiar sound of a charge of gunpowder exploding. At that moment, Matt the coxswain moved to the side with the landing hook to pull the boat into the steps when she came alongside. The coxswain took the bullet in the lower abdomen and crumpled down and backwards into Drake’s lap.
Boltfoot’s eyes turned briefly from the window to Matt, then back to the window. As the puff of smoke
