Splintered Icon (10 page)

This new air of nonchalance amongst the gentlemen restored my confidence. Between men of superior breeding and education, and the illiterate spawn of taverns and prisons, I knew where to place my trust, and I left their common room with a light step. And in the gloom of the berth-hold, while the rogues and ruffians exchanged complaints and fears as they played with dice and picture cards, I read the life of Philopoemen, the slayer of the tyrant Machanidas in 208 BC, and felt inspired. If only my life could be lived like those of the great lawmakers, soldiers and philosophers of the past!

But all that afternoon the roll of the ship slowly increased, and the wail of the wind in the rigging grew louder, and the mutterings of the crew grew more alarming.

As Mr Harriot's assistant and steward, I waited at the table of the gentlemen and officers, moving swiftly between galley and the great cabin in which their meals were served. It was a duty which I carried out with the greatest pleasure. I would stand quietly in the background. They soon forgot my presence, except when aqua vitae was to be served or plates were to be removed. Sir Richard had brought musicians on the voyage, but I must confess that the screeching of their instruments at the dinner table gave me little love for music. But when the musicians had gone and the aqua vitae flowed, the conversations of the gentlemen began to flow also. I listened with great eagerness, and each evening I was able to learn as much as Dominie Dinwoodie had taught me in all my years as his pupil. And at night, lying in my hammock, I heard a different set of tales. It was as if there were two worlds occupying the same globe, neither of which intersected.

I soon learned that Mr Harriot was regarded with suspicion by some of the gentlemen. His passion was mathematics. But, I was surprised to learn from him, this was seen as one of the black arts, to do with conjuring or magic, even though geometry, arithmetic and astronomy were being taught in the new universities. He talked of the Pythagorean's claim that the ratios of the integers were connected to musical harmonics, and also to the motions of the planets - this latter no more than a rumour emerging from Europe.

But when the talk turned to the Copernican heresy, which placed the sun and not the earth at the centre of the universe, I sensed that it was becoming dangerous. Faces became serious; men began to hunch forwards, listening earnestly. And after too much aqua vitae, Mr Harriot discoursed boldly on the strange beliefs of the Italian monk, Giordano Bruno. 'He was in Oxford two years ago. He believes that the stars are globes like the sun scattered through infinite space, with worlds around these stars and creatures living on these worlds.'

'And what do you believe, Thomas?' Sir Richard's tone was dangerous, but my master seemed not to notice - or chose not to notice.

'That on this matter at least he is correct.'

'In the minds of the simple, such ideas are dangerous,' Anthony Rowse complained.

'The man is a Neapolitan heretic!' cried Marmaduke. 'He was expelled from the Dominican order. Some day the fool will burn at the stake.'

'I too heard him at Balliol,' said Rowse. 'He spoke well of the heresy of Copernicus, that the earth spins and the stars stand still. In truth it was his own head which turned round, and his brains which did not stand still.'

All this was too much for Sir Richard, who, furious at such extravagant heresy and equally drunk, roared like a bull and fired a pistol in the air. The ball bounced off a beam, sending a splinter flying, and struck the hand of one of the musicians, who fled howling from the room, blood spurting, while the captain's roaring transformed itself into raucous laughter.

'But it is mathematics which allows you to traverse the globe, Sir Richard.' This bravely from a young man, Abraham Kendall, who was fresh from Oxford University. 'Where would you be without the navigational skills of John Dee and Thomas Harriot?'

Anthony Rowse, the parliamentarian, had a face purple with drink. He waved a scornful arm in the air. 'To hell with the School of the Night and your occult heresies and your hellish triangles. Give me a bear pit and a brothel any day.'

'Much good would those do you out here, Anthony.' Harriot was now refilling his smoking-bowl.

'There is too much fancy in your reasoning, Thomas,' Rowse persisted. 'Planets orbiting the sun! Men on other worlds! You cannot believe these things.' He took a big gulp of aqua vitae, his eyes bulging.

'But Anthony, I do.'

Rowse sneered derisively. 'You will tell us next that one day men will fly like birds across the oceans.' He flapped his arms like the wings of a bird.

'Or fly to the moon!' Sir Richard roared, his face also turning purple in the process. I thought he would slide off his chair. He bit his wine glass, crunched the glass and spat out the shards, glaring angrily at Mr Harriot. He wiped a trickle of blood from his chin, and at that moment I believed I was in the company of lunatics. The musicians had not yet recommenced their screeching; the three still in the cabin were cowering in a corner.

And yet, in the midst of this bedlam, I was becoming aware that the roll of the ship was steepening, and that the sound of the wind in the sails and ropes was becoming angry. I drew comfort from the fact that none of the gentlemen seemed to notice or care.

The night brought gloom and squalls, and the Tiger wallowed up and down in waves as tall as itself, rolling from side to side like a pendulum, in a manner to make me want to vomit once again. As usual I followed Mr Harriot on to the deck, carrying cross staff and lantern. I had to clutch at rigging more than once to save myself from a fall, and once I stumbled and almost dropped the cross staff, with what outcome for myself I did not dare to think.

We planted our feet on the afterdeck, the lantern swinging and our bodies swaying to counter the movement of the ship. Whenever we broached the crests of the waves I could see little pinpricks of light all around, from the other ships of the fleet, but then we would plunge down and there was nothing but black water and a blacker sky. We stood on deck for a good half-hour, the rain penetrating our garments and soaking us to the skin, without sighting a single star. Finally Mr Harriot, his long black garment clinging to his sodden legs, said, 'Very well,' and we gave up.

I climbed into my hammock in my sodden clothes and lay shivering while sleep tried to overcome me. The Tiger creaked and grumbled from all directions, all but drowning out the snores and dream-mutterings of the men. Listening in the dark, as the waves crashed against the hull, and the wind howling
Wheel
in the riggings, my mind tried to grasp the reality that we were in some vast, swirling ocean which could swallow us up like a morsel. And as I slipped into that strange other-world between wakefulness and sleep, I wondered what God's purpose had been in creating so vast a kingdom of salt water, and how far down it went, and what creatures might lurk in its greatest depths. It was easy to feel fear.

I was awakened by the sound of a crash. Disoriented, in the near-dark, I did not recognise my surroundings, and it was a moment before my eyes penetrated the gloom and I saw that the berth was on its side, the deck timbers having turned to form a near-vertical wall while my hammock stayed horizontal. I thought that the ship was about to founder, and turned in terror, anticipating that a great wall of water would pour through the gratings and into the ship. None came, but the Tiger was groaning loudly, as if she was in pain. The long table, chairs and two chests were heaped up against the hull. As my eyes adapted I could make out that a chest had burst open and its contents -clothes, mainly - were sloshing in water. Almost immediately they began to slide in the opposite direction. To my dismay I was alone in the berth-deck.

I rolled out of my hammock and was instantly half-thrown, half-rolled along the wet deck timbers towards the side of the hold, where my ribs struck the corner of the long table and I cried out in agony. There was a
Bang!
and I swear that the hull flexed inwards, as if struck by a great hammer. I rolled aside as the ship began to level and the table threatened to right itself on me. I stood up, my side aflame with pain, gripped the table for balance and half-ran, half-stumbled to the ladder and scrabbled up. Halfway up I had to hang on or I would have fallen back.

I thought it was still a pitch black night before I saw that the hatch was battened down. The door was tightly shut and refused to move. I had to force it against a powerful wind. After the dark of the lower deck the grey light made me screw up my eyes. Driving spray stung my face like sharp glass. I found myself looking straight down into black foaming water and had to grip the handle for my life while my legs dangled over the sea. Then the ship rolled over to port and the door slammed shut and I wrapped my arms around a hand rail.

Low, black clouds were rushing past, barely higher than the waves, which were now like small mountains, taller by far than the Tiger.

Seamen were aloft from jib to spanker, while Mr Salter, gripping rigging on the deckhead, bawled obscenities and orders which I did not understand nor, I am sure, did they hear above the cacophony. His eyes were black with fatigue.

A wave tall as the hill behind our Tweedsmuir farm rose up. I looked up at it stupidly, convinced it was going to break over us, smash us to pieces. But the Tiger rode it like a bobbing seagull, rising up its steep side.

From the top of the monster wave I glimpsed a sea of yet more white-capped monster waves, stretching to the horizon and overlain by horizontally driven spray and rain. There was a solitary mast in the distance. But then the Tiger was sliding down into a black trough and tilting steeply as it did.

Four men on the bowsprit, gripping it with hands and legs, were pulling at lashings. As the Tiger gained speed the mast went under water, and when it next surfaced only three men were gripping it. It was some seconds before a head bobbed up, and an arm waved frantically, but then the ship was rising again on the next wave and the man was drifting sternwards. I recognised Mr Treanor, the Irishman. He passed yards from me, shouting, gulping water, eyes full of terror, but his words were lost in the storm. There was nothing to be done and the crest of the next wave took him from my sight.

A sudden gust of wind tore at the ship and she veered to port, tilting almost on her side. 'Get aloft, d'ye hear me?' Salter was roaring at me, pointing up at men clinging desperately to the foremast yardarm. 'Get up there, ye Scotch bastard! Release the foreshroud!' His voice was high and close to hysterical. I had no idea what the deck master meant but he was approaching me, bent double against the wind, with an axe in his hand, and the expression on his face told me it would be better to jump into the sea than disobey. He thrust the axe into my hand and I timed the sway of the deck to run towards the main mast, clutching it with arms and legs when it leaned over open water and the sea rose to within inches of me. Another brief run, slithering on the deck, racing a wave to a ratline, and then I was scrambling up the flapping rope ladder with the master's obscenities barely heard above the wailing
EEEEE!
of the wind from all around.

Aloft, the Turk, his bald head glistening and veins throbbing in his neck, snatched the axe from my hand and began to chop at a line which was snarling the corner of the sail. It took all my strength to grip the wet spar with both arms, and it was a miracle that the Turk, gripping with one hand while the other wielded the axe, was not thrown clear of the ship by the violent sway of the mast. The wind was stronger here and the water hitting my face like little stones was salt even at this height, and so was spray as much as rain. I could now see several masts scattered around a massive white sea.

Mr Salter was yelling something. The ship plunged until, even on the foremast yardarm, I found myself looking up at a huge wave. It broke over the deck, catching Salter at waist height and snatching him from the line he was gripping. He was swept across the deck and banged his head against the port side. He lay dazed, and seemed unable to stand up. But now there was another wave. The deck of the Tiger tilted towards it. Mr Salter was trying desperately to get to his feet, but the big wave would be on him in seconds. I clambered down at speed, racing the approaching monstrous wall. The wave reached him first, and for a moment he vanished in the swirling water. Then, as it receded, he was gripping the deck rail, his body dangling out over the ocean. There was a large purple swelling on his forehead. I tried to heave him on board but with his sodden clothes he must have been twice my own weight. How he held on I do not know. But then Manteo, the savage, appeared and was heaving at the man's dead weight, and we dragged him onto the deck. By now water was pouring out of his mouth and his eyes were rolling. By the grace of God and brute force we reached the hatch, pulled it open and managed to ease his now unconscious form down the ladder and into the berth-deck, where we heaved him into my hammock.

I stumbled back towards the gentlemen's quarters, stepping over some grey-faced soldiers, in search of the physician, Mr Oxendale. I found him, snoring, tied in his bunk bed by wrappings of sheet, his head banging off the bulkhead as the ship swayed. Two empty flagons of wine rolled back and forth across the cabin floor. His cabin companion, Anthony Rowse, was standing silently, gripping an overhead beam. He watched me without a word said; he had the eyes of a hunted animal. I could not help a feeling of contempt. I left him.

I do not know how long we stayed in that dark and swaying place, holding on to the timbers. At times Mr Salter seemed not to be breathing and I wondered if he was dead. The savage, from time to time, would put his finger under the mariner's nose and give a reassuring grunt. Presently I began to feel nauseous and my teeth began to chatter. At first I thought it was the motion of the ship, but my symptoms became worse and I began to feel hot and cold in turn.

It was, I think, an hour before light and spray flooded in from above, during which a dull ache in my belly slowly grew into a sharp pain. I thought at first that the door had blown open, but then the captain was coming down, gripping the ladder. Water was pouring off his clothes. He staggered hand over hand towards us, gripping timbers and overhead beams, and looked at Mr Salter silently. I wondered whether I should dare to speak, but then said, 'He is alive, sir.'