My plan was now simple. I would return to Queen Marguerite’s court as rapidly as possible and resume my duties. If my mistress was still intent on learning more of Thomas Cromwell and what it might, or might not, mean for England’s future relations with France, she might gain some enlightenment from Stephen Vaughan and might decide to despatch some other emissary to Antwerp.
‘Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit,’ as the good Thomas à Kempis writes.* Many more days would pass before I stood once more before the queen and very few before I found myself in the presence of Stephen Vaughan.
At St Katherine’s Dock in the shadow of the Tower of London I walked along the quayside, once again in search of a suitable ship to convey me across the Channel. I was now eager to return home without further delay. Too eager. Decisions made in haste are often repented at leisure. There were, I discovered, five vessels making ready to sail for Calais, but the only one whose lading was complete was a small two-masted carrack, more like a coasting vessel than one built for the open seas. Her name, blazoned on the stern, was Hope, but peeling paint had partly obliterated the word so that, at a quick glance, it seemed more like ‘Hole’ – an omen I would have been well advised to heed. The master, a boisterous fellow who seemed little more than a boy, welcomed me aboard warmly and offered me the use of his own cabin if I could have my chest brought down and stowed in time for him to catch the evening tide. Oh, that I had heeded Solomon’s words, ‘He who hastens with his feet falls into sin.’
The little ship slipped her moorings and moved gently downstream before a benign breeze. The late sun peered across the city roofs and spires behind us. The waterfront villages were reflected clearly in the untroubled surface of the Thames. To landsmen like myself it seemed that the Hope carried a large crew for such a small vessel. I mentioned this to the master as we sat in the aft cabin over a light supper.
‘Every one hand-picked, Sir,’ he assured me. ‘Handy with crossbows and wheel locks and cannon. You’re well protected by my boys.’
‘Need we such protection?’ I queried.
Doughty (that was the seaman’s name, Thomas Doughty, as I should have mentioned) drew off his red cap and shook out a full crown of fair hair that looked almost golden in the gently swaying lamp above. ‘The Narrows is a violent place, Sir. Ships leave law and order behind when they up-anchor.’
‘Pirates, you mean?’
He threw back his head in a deep-throated laugh. ‘Pirates! Now that’s a word for legal lubbers to conjure with! What does it mean, think you? In France, for example? You are French, are you not?’
‘I am currently at the royal court of Navarre.’
He waved his knife, on which was impaled a lump of cheese, in my face. ‘Well then, in Navarre, what do they think about pirates there?’
‘Much as they do in England, I am sure – that they are gallows-fodder rogues: thieves, cut-throats, rakehells, like their cousins ashore. The one difference between them and rufflers is that the ruffler attacks innocent wayfarers on the highway and the pirate preys on folk who use the seaways.’
Doughty mouthed the cheese, chewed it briefly and swallowed with the help of a draught of ale. Then, continuing to waggle the knife, he continued. ‘Let me put a supposal to you. Suppose your king of Navarre is at war with my king of England. And one of your ships comes across mine. There is a fierce battle. The poor old Hope fights long and strong but, at the last, she is overborne. She is captured and taken back to Navarre. Would that, think you, be an act of piracy?’
‘No, ’twould be an act of war and your ship a prize of war.’
‘Just so. But suppose your vessel had been long out of port and her master did not know that England and Navarre were at war. What then? Is his attack still an act of war – or an act of piracy?’
‘A nice point for the law men,’ I muttered.
‘Aha!’ Doughty pounced for the debating kill. ‘And who’s to send for the law men when we’re all a-tussle and there’s holes in the sheets and blood on the deck?’
The disputation was lost but I grasped at the only argument that was in sight. ‘There are courts ashore for deciding such cases.’
He sat back with a triumphant smile. ‘Much good your courts will do me when your countrymen have slit my throat and sent me down to Father Neptune.’ Once more the cabin filled with his roared laughter.
I joined in. ‘You have bested me, Master Doughty. I see now what a blessing it is that my land of Lower Navarre has no port and no ships. So you are safe from us.’
Night fell and the master, true to his word, left me in possession of his cabin. Before testing the comfort of his berth I took a brief turn of the deck. The Hope was stationary, riding at anchor, sails neatly furled. We were close inshore, and lights indicated nearby dwellings.
‘Tilbury,’ one of the crewmen informed me. ‘We spend the night here. Sandbanks out there.’ He nodded in the direction of the sea. ‘We’ll be away at first light.’
‘The weather looks fair for our crossing.’
‘Maybe,’ he replied, sniffing loudly. ‘But ’tis on the turn. I can smell it.’
With those discouraging words in my ears, I returned to the cabin and laid down on the bed. Only too well aware of how prone I was to sea-sickness, I hoped the mariner was wrong. But it was not only the prospect of bouncing across the Channel that caused me some disquiet. There was something about Doughty’s demeanour that was disturbing. He talked easily of piracy and lawlessness at sea. It was almost as though he revelled in it, and savoured the freedom from restraints that landsmen live by. I made up my mind to remain vigilant and not to sleep. The next I knew it was morning.
Crossing the cabin and steadying myself against the frame, I opened the door and peered out. The tranquil scene of the previous evening had been replaced by one of vigorous movement. A mix of rain and spray flung itself in my face. The Hope bucked through the waves like an eager colt. I could just hear Doughty on the aft castle above me shouting orders to four of his men who were aloft and clinging to the gyrating mainmast as they tended the taut-stretched sail.
Fixing my eyes on the swaying scene above was a mistake. Everything became a frenzied blur. My head throbbed. My knees buckled. My stomach rebelled. I managed three paces to the side rail. Clinging to it in miserable desperation, I leaned over and committed the contents of my belly to the foaming bow wave that rose up to meet me, then as suddenly fell away again. Wedged into the corner where the aft castle rose from the main deck, I tried to be a stable element amidst the demented chaos of rearing water and roaring wind.
‘A God’s name, Sir, go in!’ a sailor shouted above the cacophony as he wrestled a snaking rope.
I nodded but made no move. Not trusting my quivering legs, I could do nothing but stare into the horizonless grey of sea and sky, which was only relieved by creamy wave caps and the outline of another distant vessel which, like ours, was labouring through the storm.
After a while I felt a firm hand on my arm. ‘Go in, Sir,’ Doughty commanded, his mouth close to my ear. ‘You’re in the way of my men here.’
With the master’s aid I stumbled back into the cabin and laid down on the bed. I heard Doughty busying himself pouring liquid from one container to another.
‘Sit up, Sir, and drink this. ’Tis sovereign against what you call the “maldymer”.’ He held a metal cup to my lips and I gulped down a bitter-sweet liquid. My head fell back on the pillow and I closed my eyes on the swaying world.
The next few hours were among the strangest of my life. All around me the Hope’s timbers groaned and protested. The sea hurled itself frantically against the hull, its savagery inches from my body beyond the meagre shield of a thin oaken wall. Sometimes its force was so strong that it resembled the roar of cannon and the whole ship trembled at it. Did I sleep? Did I dream? Or did the cabin fill with grotesque sea demons, glowing-eyed dragons and multi-headed serpents? Did the Hope lose its battle with the elements and was I fathoms down, drifting and writhing amidst rock and coral and the bones of other dead ships? Desperately, I forced my breath-starved body upwards through the liquid night, longing for air and life. My strength and my will drained away until, just as I resigned myself to death, I broke through the surface, my gaping mouth greedily sucking air.
I opened my eyes to see the cabin filled with daylight and felt the ship rocking gently, no longer the plaything of the tempest. I looked around the empty cabin, thankful that it was not spinning before my eyes. But when I tried to move, my limbs were slack and aching. I found that I was shivering, my cold shirt wet with sweat.
I must have drowsed again, for the next thing I knew was a tall, thin-bearded man in a leather jerkin gazing down at me. ‘Ah, señor,’ he said, ‘esta’s despierto.’
I thought I must be dreaming again. Who was this stranger and why was he speaking to me in Spanish? I have a little of the language (though in Navarre our neighbours speak an outlandish dialect of it) – enough to be able to ask who he was and what his position was in the Hope’s crew.
He laughed. ‘My position? Why, I am in command. This vessel is my prize. Or, no, it is a prize of His Imperial Majesty, Charles V. I am Hernando Valdes, captain of the San Gabriel. You, I think, are Señor Bourbon, a passenger. Not one of these English scoundrels.’
I eased my tender limbs into a seating position on the edge of the bunk. ‘What has happened here?’
Valdes sat in one of the cabin’s two chairs. ‘You remember nothing?’
‘Only that there was a storm and I was taken ill.’
He nodded. ‘You had a slight fever, I think. Yes, it was quite a bad storm. Wind from the south-west. Your ship was, I gather, bound for Calais but was driven far to the north. We are from Santander and had just cleared your accursed Channel when the storm broke. We took in all sail to reduce speed as much as possible. But your English pirates? They were under as much sail as they dared. They were actually trying to catch us. They came up on our port quarter.’
‘Pirates, you say?’
‘Oh yes. Your Master Doughty – Protestant pig – was more interested in taking my ship than caring for his own.’ He explained how the Hope had kept close to his vessel even though her own sails were threatened with shredding.
‘Madman! Madman!’ Valdes growled. ‘I could not believe he was bent on closing with us. In that weather! He could have sent us both to the bottom.’
The Spaniard explained that he had been forced to hoist more sail to draw clear of the Hope. ‘So, what did your pirate dog do? Fired his bow cannon! He thought to scare us, I think.’
‘He had no chance of hitting your ship in that weather,’ I said.
‘You are right, but this hellhound had the devil’s luck. One shot struck our rudder. No serious damage but it was jammed. For the moment we were helpless.’
‘What did you do?’
Valdes shrugged. ‘What every good Catholic sailor would do: I prayed to St Elmo, and the storm died. Just like that.’ He slapped his hand on the table.
‘That must have made it easier for Doughty to grapple the San Gabriel.’
‘Of course. But to grapple is one thing. To capture is quite another. The San Gabriel may be a small fighting ship. She has only four cannon – two port and two starboard – and they were useless. With no steerage I could not bring them to bear. But I have a fine fighting crew and I keep them well practised with handguns and crossbows. So we were quite ready for Master Doughty and his seaport dregs.’ He gave a growling laugh. ‘He soon discovered my porcupine has more quills than he expected.’ Captain Valdes gloated as only Spaniards can, as he described the brief action that resulted in his capture of the Hope.
‘And what will happen now?’ I asked somewhat nervously.
‘We should make port tomorrow morning unless the tide and the estuary currents are against us. There I will deliver what is left of this heretical crew to the authorities.’
‘Were many of Doughty’s crew killed?’
Valdes shrugged. ‘A dozen.’ Again the gruff laugh. ‘The others will wish they too had died before the Inquisition is finished with them. They are bound for the galleys.’
‘And me?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Do not concern yourself, Señor Bourbon. We have no quarrel with Navarre. I am sure you will soon find a coaster to give you passage to Calais.’
I stood up and was relieved to discover that my legs supported me as I crossed to the stern window. It afforded a view of a wide expanse of water with, beyond it, a flat landscape extending to the horizon of what seemed to be marshland dotted with fishing villages.
I turned to face the captain. ‘And where exactly are we?’
He rose and went to the door. ‘You will excuse me, Señor. I must go and make sure my prisoners are as uncomfortable as possible. Where are we? Making our way up the Scheldt – towards Antwerp.’
* ‘Man proposes but God disposes’, Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ