CHAPTER 12
THE SMUGGLERS
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Either find a way or make one
The port is behind them, the sea black and orange under the setting sun. Winds from the south-west have them tacking across the seas towards the Baltic at six knots. “It is a goodly speed,” the captain concedes to his strange guests. Pacificus’s eye is on him, and they will sleep in watches. Simon talks with Beth on the foredeck, his cloak around her shoulders. She did not want it, but he insisted. He does not stand close to her and she, in turn, does not move away. She does not hate him quite so much this evening, not after he dealt with Miller and rescued them. She has seen the way the crew looked at her, and still do. This man and his brother are all that stands between them and capture. He is her only defence. It’s hard for her to despise him under these circumstances. In fact, as he stands so tall in his mask and costume, he seems like a different person, someone else entirely. In her mind, she has hated a ragged leper in a lazar house on the marsh, not a mysterious cavaliere in black leather and velvet. She steals a surreptitious glance at him when she thinks he isn’t looking.
He breathes the salt spray through the mask like a cleansing balm, even though it stings. He had forgotten how much he loved it out here, how big the skies, how much space to think, to recover perspective. Beth stands quietly, clasping the cloak to her breast. He tells her various random things about the sea, the ship and the heavens. “Since my father first took me as a boy to the coast, almost from that day ’till now, I have dreamt about the ocean every week.”
Her heart misses a beat. Him as well? It is exactly her own experience. Should she tell him? The trail of their talk is interrupted by the sound of Piers acting the goat in front of Richard and the others, rolling round on the deck, pretending to be Miller, whimpering, pleading. Richard kicks him and tells him to get up. The sailors look on, sulky at the intrusion on their deck but will say nothing if their captain will not. And Cobbe won’t while this strange monk – or whatever he is – is sitting there, surrounded by them: Piers, Richard, three other boys and two girls of his heretic cargo. The sight of the Anabaptist children make Beth remember Samuel and little James back home on the marsh. Her eyes fall momentarily and Simon asks her if she is all right.
She nods and smiles politely at him, but now the thought that she might never see her brothers again overwhelms her. She confesses it, and he is quick to comfort her as best he can with reassurances. She glances back at Piers, now clutching the bow and talking to the Anabaptist children. For a long while, it seems, she and Simon follow the gulls dipping and squabbling. Sometimes he talks, sometimes they are silent, neither saying what they really want to, though neither leaving the chill air to go below either. Does he have the right to be her father now – to claim paternal fealty, just because he is lonely and she is the only thing of beauty to come from his whole life? The more the urge forces itself into his mind, the more unworthy and selfish he feels his claim. Let her alone for now, he thinks. God watch over her.
Meanwhile at the forecastle Pacificus is being adored by the other youngsters. Richard and Piers are too excited to feel yet what they are involved in; they creep about behind him, one holding the matchlock, the other his longbow. They all want to know about his days with the knights, his sea battles, his sieges. He tries to be stern, in order to keep the respect of the crew who are secretly listening. But when the crew are out of earshot he makes them sit down out of the wind. Tell us! Please tell us! Dulce bellum inexpertis;19 do they know what that means? Richard knows it: “War is sweet to those who have never fought!”
“Ah, so the Latin was not wasted after all.” Pacificus gently lets his eye fall past Richard to the middle distance, then crouches down with them, so that his sword catches on the rail. “Good. So if you really know what it means, then you will not ask me to talk about what I once was, and I pray you will never see it either.”
When he thinks they look penitent and downcast enough, he takes them about the ship, telling the crew to tighten this, loosen that, tidy the other. Piers lingers near the small cannons, as if he might be able to take one home if he is good. Pacificus crouches beside him and pats one reverently. “Now, these are your perieraes, two-pound shot, close range – have as many as you can get your hands on, stick them everywhere.” He points to a similar gun with a longer barrel. “These Falcons are for longer range, but still two-pound shot. But these,” he says, laying his hands on the largest cannonade, “these are your Minions, your persuaders; four-pound shot, can rip through the hull of any ship afloat with ease. Have as many as you can afford; even have them on the forecastle if you have a spare. Helps clear the way ahead when things get busy.”
The children mill like bees. They want to fire them, or else ride them like horses. Cobbe is scowling. Pacificus says he’ll make them all good sailors and they are ecstatic. He has a crew member bring them all water and scrubbing brushes and sets them to work on the poop deck, which seems to bring a smile even to old Cobbe, and at least keeps them busy before his old friend Christopher calls them below to their mothers. Pacificus finds a place for the Fenton boys with them on wool tods in the cargo hold, where they can be watched over, for the twenty or so crew are a mixed bag and still eye the passengers with unconcealed avarice. The Fenton children will be worth two years’ wages each, and well they know it.
When the children are settled, Pacificus and Christopher go back on deck to see if they can see any sign of the Genoese. Pacificus fends off his praise and thanks; it was as much self-interest as anything, he tells him. Both men fill in the years, where they have been and how they chose the religious path they now walk. Christopher clutches a grey blanket about his shoulders, dark curly hair flicking in the breeze. He is honest about the difficulties of being an Anabaptist, but then you can be honest at sea, away from land – no church commissioners or constables out here, just waves and fish. “I did not know then that to choose Christ in this way would mean so much hatred from the world.”
Pacificus reminds him that it was for smuggling contraband that he’d been arrested. “No, I didn’t mean that. I mean in every other matter we are outside the state and society’s protection, barred from every position, every comfort and advancement; it is these things I did not fully consider.”
“And yet you chose re-baptism and were thereby condemned for it by state and church alike. If you’re looking for pity, Christopher, you’ll be hard pressed to find it here. Think of your wife, your child!”
“I make no windows into men’s souls, friend. God will judge aright; only I am convinced by the Scripture – ”
“Convinced about what?” Pacificus raises his hands in incredulity. “That you should rend the church to justify your interpretation of Scripture?”
“Not rend the church asunder but rend the church from the state, as Tertullian answered Origen: ‘Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?’20 He saw what Origen could not, and neither can you, I suppose.”
“Tertullian? ‘What has the emperor to do with the church?’ Then you would… would – ”
“Rend her from Constantine’s sword! Surely you can see that? Restore her to her virgin state as in the days of the apostles; part of society, not the entirety, winning men voluntarily – not by coercion and force of law.”
“I see. And you think Henry or any prince in Europe would allow this? Why, not even Luther or the Genevans would allow it.”
“Christ does not seek their permission.”
“And what of the state? We are to leave it in the hands of godless men?” Idiot, Pacificus, you walked straight into that one. Does it need an answer? “All right, Christopher, but you must concede that even if all the Popes and bishops were Antichrists, as you no doubt say, even then their power to restrain the petty ambitions of Europe’s princes has been beneficial. Look at England, about to descend into a bloodbath at home and with the emperor.”
“There will always be bloodshed between nations while men have their say – you of all people know that. But we are not traitors to the king. We argue only for freedom to practise religion as we see it in the Scriptures, without interference.”
“Ha! Apply that across the board and it would be the death of religion.”
“No, Hugh; don’t you see? It is rather this religion held together by kings and Popes that will die – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. In arithmetic you cannot make a calculation right by going on, only by going back.”
Pacificus is trying to interject but Christopher raises his voice. “Besides, do you think this New Learning, this humanism, will forever stay within the church’s skirts? It won’t. With their Plato and their Aristotle, they will set up an independent world, free from the interference and petty tyranny of your state religion.”
Pacificus tries again to disagree but Christopher won’t have it until he’s done. “No friend, our way will be the flowering of true faith among hungry men – or do you think they come to Mass now because they have true religion?”
“And now you presume to judge men?”
“Judge men’s actions, Hugh, as is commanded by the Scripture. It is by their fruit that we know whether men belong to Christ, not in word only – or church attendance. But I’ll not play pedagogue to you, Hugh. You know all this already, and methinks already see it to be a truer way.”
“Oh! So now you judge me too!”
“I only know that you are not at peace.” Christopher rests his hand on the leather glove inside which Pacificus’s hand clenches the gunwale banister with white knuckles. “You did not find it with the knights, or at the White Horse, nor at the abbey.”
He does not pull away, but exhales with a shudder. “All right, all right, I will admit that I have struggled, and that the man Fenton has unmanned me. I just… just…” Pacificus drags his beret off and scrunches the velvet against the handrail. It distracts his attention and for a moment he looks down at it with an ironic smile. It is the sort of beret worn by men like Erasmus to symbolise free thought. Free thought, sweet heavens! Did Simon choose this for him on purpose? Can a man have free thought? Free from what? He scrunches his eyes tight into his head for a long moment. “Christopher, pray what is it that Christ demands of a man, for surely I have given him body and soul, and blood too these thirty years. He cannot still ask more?”
“You plead an offering of Saracen blood for your soul, Hugh?”
“Oh, a fine reply! And I suppose your sect would sit by and let them overrun and destroy Christendom!”
“And I suppose you would defend with a sword him who said to turn the other cheek, him who told Peter to put his away?”
“It’s different when you have an aggressor nation – ”
“Then fight them to defend your nation, not Christ’s church. For surely it is an abomination to him to shed a man’s blood to please him who commanded you to offer your enemy bread, water and clothing, not your blade.”
He has perhaps taken the wrong tack to try and win Pacificus, who has too much vested in it to see the wrong. He counters by listing his good deeds, even to the Mohammedans, but he knows he is just sending up smoke. Christopher and his sort are such proud expositors of the Scriptures that they set their opinions – for that is all they are – above the combined wisdom of the church fathers, embodied in the Holy Mother Church. Could there be more arrogance afloat than that? But Christopher won’t let him off easily, and for all his airy idealism he’s no lightweight when it comes to church history. The church fathers contradict themselves on major points, he says; the church has always cherry-picked and interpreted what they wanted from each source to support their latest corruptions. “Hugh, he who marries the spirit of the age today must be widowed tomorrow. There is only one solution, one source from which to argue.”
“Yes, yes, we know: your blessed Bible, Christopher! Well, here we are risking life and limb for it, and those of your family too, so say no more.”
They part friends still. “I’ll make a heretic of you yet, Hugh,” Christopher says. He thanks him again and goes below.
Pacificus goes to the captain for news. They are making good time, Cobbe says, and on the present course will make Antwerp by tomorrow afternoon. Pacificus tells him to make use of the current winds and run the ship due south until they reach the Channel. Cobbe is not happy; it will take them off course – he’s been his own master mariner these last three years, done this run a hundred times. But Pacificus insists, “You must trust me, captain. When that strong north-westerly is in the Channel I want us as far south as possible. If I’m not mistaken the Genoese will be close by then and I have something up my sleeve that will leave her standing.”
He was not wrong, for the next morning at first light, the Genoese is sighted on the horizon. It is far enough away, the quartermaster says, but Pacificus disagrees. “No, she will be on us before ever we make port. Send me the carpenter and let us be busy.”
With almost everyone’s help, including the women and children, the new masts are secured like the wings of a great swan, outstretched at right angles to the ship. The bases of these wings are each lashed to the main mast, then to the gunwales, so they rise out over the ocean like giant fishing rods. The carpenter has worked hard to fix the pulleys and ropes, and finally when the new sails are unfurled by the crew, everyone sees what Pacificus has secretly been about.
“It’s a fantastical arrangement, monk. I’ll grant you that,” Cobbe says. “So I take it we run straight – north-west with the wind?”
“Aye, captain, and then we can rig these new wings. If we rig her before, while she’s across the waves, we risk a wing dragging in the water and turning the boat. Once we’re running with them, we’ll have as much sail as the Genoese and more, per tonne.”
But first comes the crucial and dangerous job of threading the ropes through the iron rings on the hull. It takes only the briefest hesitation on the part of the crew to have Piers volunteering, then Richard. And even though Beth, as their older sister, says they should not, Pacificus pulls rank. “As my new page and squire, I think they should be allowed to earn their spurs – that is, if they don’t mind a ducking.” They do not. And so they are tied about the waist and lowered over the side of the ship.
Richard has half got the rope through the ring when the ship lists to port, and sure enough he is plunged right into the green surf. The salt water bites his flesh and floods his mouth, has him choking and gasping. He emerges to cheers. He has to try five times, with everyone watching and some laughing, but he heeds them not, holding on to the shouted encouragement of his knight: “Keep at it! It will go through! Again, again, lad!” With each ducking his fingers and body are more numbed as he struggles and struggles to get the rope through the rings. He can’t do it, there is too much movement. Everyone is watching. Beth would have had him pulled back after the third and forth attempt but Simon gently holds her back, saying quietly, for her only, “No, the boy ought to earn his spurs,” and so she lets it be.
With Pacificus urging him on, at last Richard succeeds. It is the same story for Piers, though he has it through in two attempts and pretends that the water is just the right temperature for a swim. He’s not saying that three minutes later, though, when his sister is rubbing down his shivering body below deck. Nevertheless, they are all back up on deck for the final hoisting of what the crew is dubbing “Pelican’s goose wings”.
“And what a speed she goes, Cap’n, what with the turning down wind and all,” the first mate bellows. “Eight knots and more!”
“He’s right too,” Cobbe says, doing his best not to look too impressed.
“You and I, captain, will take our lunch in port after all,” Pacificus says, “and perhaps you will have the quartermaster let my squire here handle the whipstaff? I dare say he’s not been to sea before.” Richard is beaming. To steer a great vessel like this is something he has only dreamed of.
“And you,” Cobbe says to Piers, who is about to ask for a turn on the whipstaff too, “can warm up those skinny limbs by climbing the rigging, just to the yardarm and back, and mind you do it quickly before your sister sees you.” Cobbe, you’re going soft, man, he thinks to himself. Mind, they were just like his own lads at that age, and these two at least have something about them.
Richard takes to his lessons at the helm with great sobriety, and by sun-up he is looking well at ease, even though running with the wind requires quite a rhythm to keep them straight; a quart to port then starboard, then port again, for the swell is always tending to bring the back of the ship round on them. But he gets it so well that the quartermaster leaves him with Able Seaman Jacques of Caister for ten minutes, while he goes to break his fast. By mid-morning they have lost sight of the Genoese and can see the flatlands around the point of Vlissingen, where they enter the five-mile-wide estuary leading into the great port.
They are yet forty miles from Antwerp but that westerly wind from the Channel is still gusting them straight towards their destination and there is no need to take down the goose wings yet. Richard marvels at the estuary, the number of ships passing each way, the sheer width of the last reaches of the river. It makes the approach to Norwich up the Yare – a journey he made with his father twice a year with the barley – seem like a domestic or provincial affair. With a sudden stab of longing he wishes his father had been there to see him. He wonders how large this city can be, that it should be served by such a river.
Soon after midday they come within site of the great spire of Our Lady’s Cathedral, and half an hour later Richard is relieved of the helm by the crew when they turn the final corner and the great port comes into view. By now, the goose wings are packed away and the children gathered on the forecastle, pointing out the various ships, the steep-roofed town houses and the great castle.
The men of Antwerp have built landing stages to take ten ships at one time. The captain points to the wharf where they must unload and where Pockington’s offices and warehouse are located. Pacificus says he wants the boat facing upstream for a quicker departure in case that is needed, and also that they bring four of the starboard perieraes onto the port side – and have them loaded and ready for action.
“You expecting an army then, are you?” Cobbe says. Pacificus smiles, then shakes his head. Take care of the improbable and you keep your head on your shoulders. Talk softly and carry a big a stick.
He calls a meeting of Christopher, Simon, Beth, Richard and Piers at the captain’s table. He is stripping and cleaning the matchlocks, then reloading them while he describes how the next hour will run. Even if they themselves are not being watched, Pockington certainly will be. They nod. He has thought of everything. He makes them repeat their moves, to be sure they have remembered all. No, Piers, you don’t get to take your father’s longbow. And what will he, Pacificus do? “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies,”21 he says – he will watch the watchers. This is the town where Tyndale was finally betrayed and caught last year; he won’t let it happen to them.
When the Pelican is finally secured and the gangplank fixed, it is Pacificus and Beth who leave first; he in his finery, Beth on his arm. They look in at the cluttered market stalls and barrow sellers, argue the toss over linen and spice, wine and almonds, and then stroll on, all the while moving closer to Pockington’s warehouse, and all the while watching the watchers.
And then he sees them – the ragged boy on the corner of the alley, and the beefy fellow in the jade cap and muddied travelling cloak. Both these take note of any entering or leaving of Pockington’s counting house, or the warehouse doors. The big one will need seeing to, but first the boy. He wanders near him, leaning in to Beth with a charming smile, for all the world like a loving relative sharing a joke or a compliment, actually whispering into her ear that she must not make eye contact. The boy is staring at Pacificus with his fine clothes and weapons and doesn’t see Beth pull the large white feather from her pocket and let it fall on the street. But Richard does, with Piers only thirty paces behind on the cobbles. He has his hand on his father’s basilard dagger, sheathed in his hose. Anyone messes with you or the lad, wave it in their face, Simon had said. The boys take to the narrow alley behind the ragged boy, and proceed to unpack the food bag. The ragged boy assumes, as they intend, that the food is stolen, and is greatly pleased to be offered a share of the spoils. He forgets his post instantly at the sight of English beef pie and plum pudding, joining Richard and Piers in the half-light. Why work all day for stale bread when you can eat like a king for free? The small beer they share is Sarah’s own – how fantastical, Richard thinks, and who would believe us back home that we shared it with a spy in a foreign land?
Pacificus whispers to Beth to walk slowly past the other watcher, then head down the side street he indicates with a discreet gesture. She saunters on as directed and with one look she nets him. Her unsteady steps into the half-light are quickly matched by his heavy boots. When she is far enough down the alley she turns to look at him again, and the sight of his bulk blocking the light brings home to her that this is no game. He is a big man, far bigger than Pacificus, who is pacing lightly behind him. How will the kindly monk she has known at Saint Helen’s Church – the one fussing over brushes, egg whites and ochre – fare in this dark, narrow alley, against such an opponent?
Pacificus is wondering the same thing. He walks as light as a sparrow, bobs his head, squinting in the shadows, weighing the man in front for weakness and vulnerability – a point of attack. This one’s a brute, bristled neck as thick as a capstan, scars which tell of skirmishes survived. Don’t look my way, girl; keep at him with your mother’s eyes. She does well, but he can see her fingers and thumbs fidgeting nervously; see she is afraid.
The man is too big to be cautious, over six-and-a-half feet of him. It would be easier to kill him than restrain him – let’s hope he doesn’t like the wheellock. It’s time! One – two – three – big breath, all or nothing! He rushes him, kicking the brute’s legs from under him, and dealing him such a blow with the brass butt of Hamberly’s wheellock that the man goes down like a baby. Pacificus bludgeons him once more, just to make sure he’s not faking it. The force of the blow makes Beth wince. The man’s arms and legs go limp. The next he knows, he’s hearing the tell-tale click of the matchlock. Beth has the barrel at his head. She stands calm and aloof, though inside she can hardly breathe for nerves. Pacificus binds him hand and foot.
“He… he’s coming to,” she quakes.
“Don’t fret, he’s secure.”
“Maître Cremuel?” the concussed man keeps saying. These are Englishmen – surely they all work for Cromwell? But not these ones: here is a gag and a woodshed; make yourself comfortable and count yourself lucky to be alive.
They return to the wharf and Pacificus sends Beth back to the Pelican for Christopher. Simon stands guard over the gospellers, while one of their number has gone to town to seek out friends where they might lodge. Christopher soon emerges onto the quayside dressed as a monk, with the hood of his cowl pulled low over his face. He is known here and must not be recognised. Pacificus nods when he passes, and the two of them go into the counting house to see Pockington. The clerks make way for them, all eyes on the monk – this is out of the ordinary. Pacificus asks for a private audience with Pockington, mid-fifties, squat, decked in red velvet and the most shocking pair of red silk stockings you have ever seen. The trader recognises Christopher Burgh, dismisses the clerks to their duties and scuttles like a crimson beetle through to his back office where they can talk in privacy. Christopher explains the complications and the imminent arrival of the Genoese. Pockington is unruffled, he knows his trade. There is no paper trail to him. Besides, he pays Maître Cremuel’s spies to inform for him too. The money is dealt with already, the stock is ready.
What is it? Pacificus wants to know. It is almond crates, the extra merchandise wrapped in skins and buried within. How many? One hundred and twenty-two crates, he says. “Good; we’ll take a hundred, but leave the rest for the Genoese – we must leave Cromwell’s men with something to take home. No point robbing them of their dignity as well as their prisoners. No, let them have some Bibles to parade about at Smithgate and burn as they will, keep them from disgrace. Can you deliver straightaway? We hope to leave this evening.” Pockington agrees, glad to be rid of them before the Genoese makes port. They shake hands and part well content.
Two hours later the Genoese’s four masts are spotted on the river. Cobbe’s men haven’t stopped since arrival, first with their regular cargo to export and then the new cargo to bring on board. Once Piers is back safe on board, he marvels and chatters like a monkey to see the pulleys on the yardarm and the wine kegs being brought on.
Pacificus bids farewell to Christopher Burgh and they talk a while on the quay, with a roving eye out for trouble all the while. Where will he go? Pacificus wants to know. After the Leyden fiasco, his sort are about as welcome in the emperor’s territory as they are with Luther – ils sentent de fagots!
He dismisses this, saying the Munster Anabaptists were a lunatic fringe, just as the Circumcellions had been in the time of the Donatists. No, he says, the devil only counterfeits what is genuine; don’t be fooled. “Well, why not back down just a little?” Pacificus reasons with him. “Become a Lutheran or Genevan pastor.” After all, he has the learning.
But Christopher shakes his head. “No, no,” he says, and adds that most of them are “evil priests working hand-in-glove with the kings of the earth. Their conduct speaks for them; they have no king but Caesar.”
“How charitable! Well, how will you work, support yourself?” But Christopher has the same insistent confidence in his Anabaptist God. “The Lord will judge aright” seems a popular sentiment among them, though his wife looks as if she won’t last long, and the poor children – what a life for a child! No bed, a father with no living. And here’s Christopher still trying to persuade him to read Tyndale’s Scripture, to convert; says he’ll find true faith and lasting peace for his soul. You’d think he’d be more worried about himself and his family; a price on your head means just that – deliver just the head and get your reward. But, he supposes, it’s like old Norfolk said: there’s no talking to them, these Anabaptists. He says he’ll think hard on what Christopher has said, but really, why would he wish away thirteen centuries of Christian tradition? And why would anyone for a noose?
Pacificus is glad to be under sail again and mid-Channel. He wonders whether he might have stayed a while longer and gone to the Genoese by night, to fix a net – or better, an old sail – to the underside of the hull. He did so once before, to the ship of a Teutonic knight – should have seen his face when he couldn’t pass three knots! But this time he accepts it will be best to capitalise on the speedy turnaround and a constant wind, and not risk being caught.
They pass her as she is putting into dock on their way out. Pacificus guesses the six who are spies, twitchy and nervous on the forecastle, waiting for the plank, or else a chance to distinguish themselves. They will not go empty-handed, and he hopes that will throw their master off making further investigations. The way Maître Cremuel glared at him last week at the castle was enough to make anyone look guilty. Only hope when he hears his proud new four-master was beaten by Toppes’ old barque on the Antwerp run, he doesn’t start to think and get suspicious.
And you’d have thought twenty-two crates of heretic Bibles would be enough to satisfy any reformer. But he didn’t know Cromwell. Not yet anyway.