Michael Jecks: The Death Ship of Dartmouth

Reluctantly, for Pyket was never happy on ladders — give him a strong hempen cable for preference, he swung himself over the coaming, and let himself down into the dark depths.

Here he was shin-deep in cold seawater. As he stood there, sniffing, listening, he could feel the movement of the ship through his bare feet. The creaking and groaning of moving strakes was deafening, and the steady lapping of water in the bilge and at her sides was magnified until it sounded as though waves were hammering at her. More troubling were the five barrels which had been dislodged from their moorings and now floated about, threatening to crush him if he was careless. The great bales were massive; he felt sure from the smell that they were full of cloth. An experienced seaman could recognise the odour of different cargoes without difficulty.

It was not that smell that made him scowl, though. No, it was the overwhelming stench of oil. And the atmosphere of terror that even to his stolid mind seemed to pervade the vessel.

Bailiff Simon Puttock smiled, and Ivo le Bel quailed.

The Bailiff was a tall man with calm grey eyes in a slightly pale face. In the past, when he had been Bailiff to the Stannaries of Dartmoor, he had been responsible for maintaining the King’s Peace over the wild lands, and he had travelled widely, his features burned to the colour of old oak. Since he had been promoted to this new position at Dartmouth, he had been forced to remain indoors more often, which he deplored. For him, far better that he should be able to wander the open moors, free of concerns and God-damned figures. He couldn’t return yet, though. Not for a while.

For all that Simon would prefer to be at home in Lydford, there was something attractive about the noises of this busy, industrial port. The slow, steady creaking of timbers as ships rolled from side to side, the trickle and slap of small waves, the howl of the wind on a cold evening when a man was already in a warm house by his fire, all were welcome. The assault on the nostrils was less so, though. There was a permanent stench of fish from the salting yards where they were gutted, spread and dried, and it was not enhanced by the odour of rotting flesh where the fishguts lay in the middens, to be dug over by the great seagulls. Tar and seaweed, hemp and coal smoke, all smothered the town like an unwholesome blanket, and at the same time there was the perpetual din of the smiths, carpenters, shipwrights and others, all of whom seemed to delight in as much clattering and crashing of metal and wood as possible.

‘Sir Bailiff, I hadn’t seen you there.’

‘I’m no knight, Ivo — you know that. Why are you in charge? Did you find the body?’

‘This is my tithing, Bailiff. I am responsible to the Coroner when he arrives.’

‘Fine. What happened?’

‘This fellow says he put up boards to protect people, but the victim still fell in. He must have struck his head — look.’

Simon winced at the sight. The man’s head was a mess: he had fallen forwards, clearly, and his left temple was a bloody, blackened wound.

‘As I said, I watched the paver here put up his warnings. Some thieving bastard must have stolen them, leading to this accident.’

The man lay in the hole with his head at a curious angle, his legs twisted together. The left arm was under his body, while the right was flung out into the middle of the hole. His head was resting near the wall, the wound right by a rock which had been smeared with his gore.

Simon asked, ‘Does anyone know him?’

There was a ripple as all shook their heads.

‘Ivo, have you sent for the Coroner?’

‘I was about to.’

‘Hurry, then,’ Simon said, and he set off for the pie shop down near his chamber, where his clerk would be waiting for him.

As he crossed the street, he saw old Will the gaoler — a tatty, degenerate-looking man with a paunch like a bishop and a threadbare white beard — walking up to the gaol in the market square. There was no one there so far as Simon remembered, but Will was a dedicated man. The gaoler was generally amiable, and called ‘old Widecombe Will’ because he had been the youngest son of a farmer from that little vill. Bored with prodding cattle to pull the plough, he had preferred to run away to sea. At least, that was his tale.

It was not entirely true. He had been a farmer’s boy, although the legitimacy of his birth left a little to be desired. Also, rather than leaving his home from boredom, there was the matter of Millicent, the maid from the neighbouring hamlet, who had grown suddenly large with child. Still, in essence he had not lied. Now the father of six other (legal) children, and four grandchildren, he had a certain position in the town, and he was immensely proud of it. And part of his responsibilities for this year was the maintenance of the simple gaol.

The Bailiff sighed. Another day of numbers and reports lay ahead. Oh well. He knew he must remain patient. Before long, with fortune, he would be able to go back to Lydford. To his home, his beautiful wife Meg and their children. They would be missing him, as he missed them. He was needed there.

At the door to the pie shop, he hesitated, recalling that body in the hole. There were some details that looked out of place. Surely … but no. The fool of a sergeant must have moved him; there was nothing to worry about. Yet the scene stuck in his head, even as he entered and chose a good beef pie.

Henry splashed through the water, running his hands over the strakes. There was no apparent leaking, and as he passed down the hull, he began to relax. All about him was the constant noise of running water, trickling, dripping, slopping about, but that was the normal sound of a working ship. The important thing was, he could see no holes or broken strakes, and by the time he had reached the stern, and had stumbled only once over a rib, he was feeling much happier. The second side of the ship appeared to be as safe, but he was nothing if not assiduous.

It was as he stepped over the rib, planting his foot carefully down in the water, that he felt something brush against him. He screamed shrilly as he took in the sight of the corpse under the water, with its gaping mouth, pale, dead eyes and the hand that moved gently as though beckoning Henry to join him in death.

By the time Simon had entered his little counting-house, his latest clerk was already sitting at the trestle table, an anxious frown marring his brow as he added figures from a row of tally-sticks. Seeing Simon, he looked up and his mouth moved into a smile of welcome which somehow didn’t touch his eyes.

‘Bailiff — oh, right. Good. We’ve a lot to get through today. There’s a new ship come in.’

‘The burned one?’ Simon asked, crossing the room. At the far side there was a broad window which was shuttered most of the winter, but now in the late-summer was more often opened. He pulled up the heavy bar and set it on the floor, then pushed the shutters wide on their hinges. ‘It is one of the few advantages of this job, you know, that I have this marvellous view. And you, Stephen, persist in closing the shutters at every opportunity!’

Stephen, a thin young man of two-and-twenty, smiled nervously. ‘I feel the chill so much, Master Bailiff, and-’

‘Chill? Look out there at the sun,’ Simon scoffed. ‘It’s a beautiful day, perfect weather. You could ride across the whole forest of Dartmoor to South Zeal market and back today.’

‘As you wish, sir,’ Stephen said. ‘Yet the open window will let in every gust and gale, and it blows my parchments all about the place.’

‘Use a stone to weight them down, then,’ Simon said unsympathetically, leaning against the window’s frame and listening. The hammering was continual down here, near some of the shipbuilders. At first he had hated the din, longing for the peace and tranquillity of the moors, but now he had grown accustomed to it, and when the men stopped working in the evening, he rather missed it.