The creek was swelling rapidly with the incoming tide and the mooring lines were tightening as the ship rose. Soon, very soon, there would be enough depth to allow the vessel to bear room from this place. The shrouds were flapping in the wind. Would it sail this morning? Was this the day of reckoning? Surely, this was why these men were here. There was no loading, no construction. Their dread weapon was ready.
The two men who had been talking looked around. Shakespeare ducked lower in the tufty grass, so that his face would not be visible. The larger of the two clapped the other man on his back and they both began striding up the plank to the ship.
Shakespeare rose to his feet. He held out the first pistol at arm’s length, aimed it at the big man’s back, and fired. The recoil of the weapon knocked him backwards. Through the billowing powder smoke he saw that the two men had stopped at the head of the gangway and were looking back in his direction, unharmed.
The bull-chested one cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘You’re a little late.’ Then he laughed and kicked the boarding plank away from the vessel. He took a dagger from his belt and strode around the bulwarks, slashing at the mooring ropes, cutting the vessel adrift.
Shakespeare was reloading the wheel-lock, keeping his hands as steady as he could as he poured in the powder. From the corner of his eye, he saw that there was much activity aboard the vessel. A bundle was hanging in nets from the bowsprit and one of the men in black was clambering, like a monkey, along this spar at the front of the ship. The one he assumed was Quincesmith had a long-barrelled musket. He had climbed a companion ladder to the poop deck and now rested the muzzle of the weapon on the bulwark. He lit the match, blew on it so that it glowed, then fired.
The ball spat past Shakespeare and slapped into the mud a foot to his side.
Shakespeare dived to his left. He was an open target and his pistols were impotent against such a long-range weapon.
The ship was drifting out into mid-stream. Six of the figures in black were climbing the rigging, unfurling sails.
‘I know not who you are,’ the man with the musket called. ‘But if you want the man Cooper, you will be pleased to learn that he hangs from the bowsprit. Our Scots friends couldn’t find a cat, but they are satisfied that he will do as well in the casting of spells.’ He bellowed a laugh that made his barrel chest quake.
Shakespeare’s eyes drifted back to the bows. The black-gowned man was sawing at the rope that held the bundle. As Shakespeare watched, the bundle twisted from the severed netting, then fell like a stone into the dark waters of the creek.
For a moment it sank, then bobbed back to the surface, drifting beside the vessel on the side nearest the shore. Shakespeare tried to make sense of what had just happened. Was that really Boltfoot wrapped up like a dead mariner in a canvas shroud and tossed overboard? Was he alive or dead?
The ship’s sails were catching the wind and she was gathering a little speed. Shakespeare hesitated no more than a few seconds. He divested himself of his weapons and doublet and dived into the mud-churned water.
William Sarjent had taken the whipstaff, the lever that swung the tiller, and was steering a course away from the creek. He felt a rush of irritation that this man had somehow got so close to them. He seemed to be alone, though. Better to finish him now, before setting sail. They could not afford to miss this tide, so it had to be a well- aimed musket-ball.
At the side of the vessel, Jeremiah Quincesmith reloaded the matchlock and fired downwards at the swimming man. The weapon was accurate enough when fired horizontally with the support of a stand, but firing downwards from a moving vessel was near to hopeless. The balls slapped silently into the grey water, one after the other as Quincesmith loaded and reloaded. He cursed the Scots for their maddening superstition. Why hadn’t they merely put a dagger up beneath the cooper’s ribcage?
Shakespeare swam with all his strength. He was a strong swimmer, but he was encumbered by his clothing and held back by the tidal current that swept in and kept him from the bundle he had to reach.
‘Boltfoot!’ he roared above the waves, and choked on a mouthful of salt water for his pains.
He redoubled his stroke power. But the distance did not seem to shrink. On and on he drove himself, his muscles cramping, his lungs in agony. Suddenly he was there. He grasped hold of the canvas-wrapped weight. From his belt he took his dagger and slashed and slashed at the ropes and canvas that bound the limp parcel.
Desperately paddling his legs beneath the surface, he clawed at the bundle, ripping, shredding, hacking with no plan other than to free whatever was inside it.
Piece by piece, the canvas and ropes came away. And there was Boltfoot Cooper, motionless in his arms. Shakespeare slapped his face for a response but there was nothing, just cold blue flesh. Regardless, he lay back and stretched Boltfoot’s limp body atop his, clasping him beneath the armpits and kicking out with his feet to draw him, inch by inch, to shore and away from the musket-fire.
Chapter 35
Shakespeare fell back into the mud, his feet in the water. He panted for breath. Boltfoot lay beside him, still as death. He had been far lighter to carry here through the waves than Shakespeare would have imagined. It was no effort at all, but now all his energy was expended.
Had he really lost Catherine and Boltfoot within the space of a week? The two people, apart from his children, that he loved best in the world. He could not let it happen. With a force born of rage, he struggled to his knees, then turned Boltfoot on his side.
‘You are going to live, Mr Cooper,’ he said. ‘I order you to live.’
He pulled back his right hand, full swing, and slammed it into Boltfoot’s back as if he were a midwife determined that an uncrying newborn should utter its first wail and take its first breath. The back arched at the blow and a terrible scream broke forth from somewhere inside. Boltfoot spewed out water, then retched and howled again.
‘Boltfoot!’
Shakespeare tried to turn Boltfoot over, but he fought against it, spluttering, gasping for breath, coughing up water.
‘Help me, Boltfoot,’ Shakespeare ordered, once again trying to turn him over.
Boltfoot let out a yell of pain, the noise of a dying animal, the scream he had refused to emit even when he lay long hours in the coffin and when he was passed across the fire. Now it came from him, as if from the ravines of hell.
Shakespeare stopped trying to move Boltfoot and he flopped forward, taking in great aching breaths.
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Blood of Christ, Mr Shakespeare! My back…’
Shakespeare examined Boltfoot’s back and saw the tatters and flaming crust of red blisters. He looked out across the creek. The bark was just disappearing around the low headland, its sails unfurled and billowing with the breeze that came up the Thames from the North Sea. He tried to gauge whether it would head up the river towards the bridge or down to the open sea, but could not tell from here.
‘Boltfoot, I see your terrible injuries, but we have little time. Are you able to walk?’
Boltfoot turned on to his front, on all fours. Slowly, he rose to his knees. Shakespeare got up and stood before him. He reached out and took his hands, lifting him to his feet. ‘What has happened to your back? What did they do?’
‘Those madpike Scotch witches roasted me like a suckling pig. Nine times they held me over the fire.’ Boltfoot winced as he spoke.
‘I say again, can you walk, or shall I leave you here and go for assistance?’
‘I’m coming, master. I wish to drown those black-clad drabs as they tried to do for me.’
Shakespeare was about to turn away, inland, when the fishing boat hove into view, drifting in on the tide.
‘I think assistance has arrived, Boltfoot.’
‘Did you see the bark, master fisher?’
‘Indeed, sir. Driving upriver with the tide, and with the wind for the moment. But it will soon change against
