had smiled to himself. This was going to be easier than he had expected. He would not have to make the long journey to Edinburgh after all. He carved a slice of breast flesh with his dagger. It was a good knife, crafted from hard steel and bone. He had killed with it before and it would serve its purpose again.
In the back room of The Pelican, sometimes known as the Devil’s Tavern, close by Wapping, to the east of the Tower, Holy Trinity Curl rattled a pair of wheel-lock pistols in the air. ‘Will you die like dogs or fight like men?’ he bellowed.
‘We’ll fight!’ the powerfully armed men roared back. There were thirty-eight of them in the room, too few to fill it. There should have been seventy or more, fifty at the very least. Warboys had even suggested there could be more than a hundred.
‘Where are the others?’ Curl had whispered to his lieutenant, Oliver Kettle, a few minutes earlier.
‘Slipped away, scared, the mangy-arsed maggots.’
‘And Warboys? Why is he not here? He’s not scared. Never, not Warboys.’
‘Tom says Warboys is sick with the flux. But I reckon he’s cup-shot in a gutter somewhere. He’s always been one for the strong ale and aqua coelestis when things got rough. Maybe he’ll turn up.’
‘Well, the devil’s puke on them all. We’ll stand and fight, Mr Kettle.’
‘Aye, that we will.’
‘The poor will join us for they have nothing to lose, the prentices will fight with us for they hate the strangers, and the merchants will do nothing to stop us for they want their trade back. Our only foes are the Cecils and their council of traitors. Who could fear Little Crookback or Old Whitebeard? Wait until the Sieve blows, then we will strike. Then the people will join our apostle band and tear down the walls of the palaces. It will be as if Bedlam had opened wide its doors. Do the men all know their separate duties?’
‘They do. Eight to the Dutch church with me, with honed blades and sharp axes; twenty on the street with you to march on the bridge and gather men as you go; those remaining — the ones who should have been under Mr Warboys’s command — will cross the river with Mr Foal instead, there to meet Mr Sarjent, Mr Quincesmith and the Scots contingent when they disembark. Together, they will march on Greenwich. All will stand firm. There is not a craven spirit in this room.’
Curl had his doubts. He surveyed the men ranged before him; they were hard enough now, but how would they be when the firing began? He banged the butts of his wheel-locks on the table, repeatedly, like a drumroll. The men roared back their approval, and Curl’s misgivings began to evaporate into the smoke-filled room.
‘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,
