Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

The thought was enough to loosen a man’s grip on his sanity.

At least Master Pyckard had not known he was wrong as he died. He had thought he had so arranged matters that the men responsible for the rape and murder of the woman he adored had finally paid for their crimes — when all he actually managed to do was to help protect the guilty man.

He took the pot of ale out to Alice and stood beside her while she sipped the warm brew. She was thin, terribly thin, but he was ensuring that she ate and drank enough to keep body and soul together. He had been well trained in that during the last weeks of his master’s life.

She finished the drink and without looking up, passed him the pot. He took it, and as he did so, their fingers touched. Only for a moment, and then the contact was broken, but when he turned to go inside, he heard a sob, and stopped. Her hand grabbed for his belt and she pulled him to her, and for the first time since Adam’s death, Moses heard her weep for her brother and husband as she clung to him.

He had the pot in one hand, and the other hovered over her back and head — she was his brother’s widow, in Christ’s name — and then he crouched at her side and put his arms around her.

And from that day, she began to improve.

Rob was happy enough to go and watch the ships at every opportunity when his master would let him, or when Simon was away and he could spend his time more as he wanted. The sea held a particular fascination for him, and he liked to come to the jetty and watch the lighters rowing out to the great vessels in the haven.

It appealed to him, the idea of floating away from here, the sails filled with the wind, men sitting and lazing in the sun as the boat did all the work. Oh, yes. Rob knew all about sailing. The only hard work was when you arrived in a port and had to get the ship emptied and refilled with all the goods, but apart from that, all the work was easy. You sailed during the day, and when it grew dark, you stopped and slept. A sailor’s life was a good one, so far as Rob could see.

Of course there were some, like that old woman Stephen, who tried to warn him that ships were filled with men who had unhealthy interests in young boys, but Rob knew that was rubbish. He had a little knife in a sheath about his neck anyway, and if some matelot tried anything nasty, he’d soon see the filthy sod off. He wasn’t scared of anyone. Bailiff Puttock had also told him not to get involved in the sea, but that was just because the big lummock got seasick stepping over a puddle. Hopeless. No, it was the sea for Rob. Without a doubt the best way for him to earn a living.

One morning, he had had enough. He had risen as early as he could, and it wasn’t his fault that he was a little late to his master’s house. With all the complaints, you’d have thought he never bothered to turn up at all. He lit the fire immediately he got in, anyway, and that was all he was supposed to do. Light the fire, get some water heating, and warm up some food if there was anything. Well, there wasn’t that morning. He couldn’t help it, he had forgotten to buy anything the night before. He’d been on his way to the baker’s shop when an older seaman had offered to buy him an ale in the Porpoise, and he’d left there much later feeling a little wobbly.

But the Bailiff didn’t accept any of his reasons for the lateness of his start, and to be honest, Rob didn’t give a clipped ha’penny. Not now. He had friends on a ship, and he was going to go out and join them. He’d bet there was a place on a ship for him: all he had to do was ask. He was strong and fit. It’d be a piece of piss.

It took him only a little time to find his friend from the night before. The man was a great barrel-chested, black-haired giant with one eye and a mouth devoid of teeth on one side, where another man had hit him with a stool in a brawl.

‘I want to be a sailor,’ Rob told him eagerly.

The men with the giant looked rather taken aback. One laughed, but two others eyed him speculatively. The giant bent down and peered at him more closely with his single eye. ‘Why?’ he asked simply.

‘Because I don’t want to have to work so hard. I have to get up with the dawn now, and clean the house all day, and cook …’

He trailed off as all the men began to laugh.

One asked, ‘Do you get to sleep through the night?’

‘Do you get thrown out into the rain when the weather’s bad?’

‘Have you ever been whipped with a leather belt for being slow to run up a rope?’

Rob looked from one to the other, then back to the giant. ‘I want to be a sailor,’ he repeated.

‘You do?’ The giant took him by the shoulder. They were not far from the Ropery, a long building in which the hempen strands were twisted and joined to create long cables. Outside was a tall flagpole as advertisement. A long rope dangled from the top, thirty feet overhead. ‘Climb that.’

‘Me?’ Rob squeaked, staring up at the flag fluttering from the top.

‘Go on!’

‘I can’t climb that, it’s too high!’

‘Come back again when you can,’ the man said, and returned to his friends, laughing.

Rob looked up at the flag again. ‘No one can do that!’

The oldest, greyest man strolled over and stood beside Rob. He looked down at the lad with a sorrowful expression. Then he sprang up lightly, gripped the wooden pole with his hands, crossed his shins about the wood, and quickly slithered his way up it to the very top. Once there, he kept on rising until he was sitting on the topmost button.

Rob didn’t wait to see him return to the ground. He walked homewards, disconsolate. At Simon’s house, he looked about him in the small parlour and began to re-lay the fire, throwing a faggot on top and wondering whether he’d ever be able to go to sea.

As luck would have it, that afternoon and evening there was a foul thunderstorm. Rob remained in the house while it raged, and Bailiff Puttock spoke of another storm he had known. He had been off the Islands south and west, when the storm struck, and the ship had almost foundered on rocks. He had been miraculously lucky to survive.

In his mind’s eye, Rob had a vivid picture: a ship with shredded sails, rolling and slipping towards rocks. The waves crested over the green/black shapes, exploding upwards as the ship moved towards them. And Rob saw a face at the prow, a face full of terror as he screamed the danger to the crew. It was his own face he saw.

And in that moment Rob decided he would prefer to remain on land.

Of all those who survived the murders of Dartmouth’s terrible September 1324, Peter Strete, disgraced clerk to the powerful John Hawley, was the most fortunate.

His injuries were a long while in the mending. However, when he could move again, and his eyes had healed and reopened, the Bailiff had him taken to the monastery at Buckfast for convalescence. There he gradually healed, under the careful nursing of the Brother Almoner, until at last he could walk unaided.

The Brother Almoner was a quiet, kindly old soul. When Strete gradually came to speak to him, and mentioned his tribulations in the gaming dens of Dartmouth, the old man cackled himself into a coughing fit.

‘I suppose they preferred games of chance, like those with dice? Hazard or somesuch?’

‘Many dice games, yes,’ Strete admitted. ‘But they are safe, because they depend upon chance. That is as fair as any man could hope for.’

‘Unless the dice were marked, or had a little hole drilled in them so that a bit of quicksilver could be dripped in, and the hole filled. Then you only have to tap the dice once or twice to change the fortune of the thrower. A man can fleece another with ease like that. Dear oh dear. They must have taken all you had!’