Gregory House - The Queen's Oranges

As dry as Ned’s mouth felt at this sight, his hands were bathed in moisture. “Rob, do you know where this ship was to go after Bristol?”

The young artificer gave a nod and rewrapped the axes. “Yes, Ireland.”

Oh no, thought Ned. Now they had two fates to avoid. The King’s Majesty did not take well to supplying weapons to his sometime disloyal subjects amongst the wild Irish. In fact he frowned very severely on the practice. Malefactors tended to make nodding acquaintance with the hemp noose at Tynburn or Tower Hill scaffolds. Ned swallowed with a desert dry throat. What could be worse?

“They’re pretty good too and most have the Tower mark.”

Alright, that’s what could be worse! Theft from the Royal Armoury to sell to the Irish was treason, pure and simple. Thus spectre of being hung drawn and quartered overshadowed that of being burnt at the stake or hung. Ned may have felt unsettled and nervous after the ambush but this combination of weapons and black powder made his hair stand on end. “By Christ’s blood, Rob! Can…can you get them off the ship?”

His friend considered the question for a moment before sadly shaking his head. “Not with so many watching, not with over two gross of weapons including bills and halberds to move, let alone the armour. Not a chance.”

Another problem to deal with. Great! As if he didn’t have enough already and now it got worse. Ned tried to speak but his tongue froze over the number of weapons, two gross that was almost three hundred arms. “Ahh, two gross of weapons?”

“Yes and fifty sets of foot men’s Almain rivet,” Rob added helpfully.

Armour?Fifty sets? Ned wasn’t the most martial of gentlemen. He didn’t pester old veterans for stories of skirmish, battles and sieges, well no more than any young lad with aspirations. However he did know enough about the Art of War to recognise that this was enough to outfit a large number of men in all the modern apparel of war.

“Could we claim these and the powder for the ship’s defence?” This was a desperate gambit and Ned knew his voice sounded squeaky and falsetto with apprehension.

“I doubt it Ned. It’s more like the equipment needed to arm two hundred or so men. As for the powder, well this vessel only has six small Gonnes, and that’s several, several times more than they would ever need.”

Oh well, another vain hope dead before its time, but now Ned’s daemon was whispering another suspicion into his ear. “Rob, did you find these in areas suggested by Albrecht?”

Once again his friend shook his head. “No. Most of this wasn’t hidden that well. Strange that.”

It was unfortunately predicable. Ned was beginning to wonder exactly who suggested to Mistress Black that what any merchant’s daughter on the rise and purveyor of heretical books needed was her own ship. Somehow he suspected it was Albrecht Hagan, whispering from the curtains with ready ledgers at hand. In this mind set of suspicion, Ned’s daemon also came up the next question. “Do you think that Meg knows of this?”

This was a very dangerous consideration. Her brother didn’t even need to pause before replying. “No, not at all. She showed me all the caches that she used and anyway, for this quality of weaponry you’d need to know an official high up at the Tower. It just isn’t Meg. I have to push her to carry more than a surgeon’s knife.”

As an indication of the sort of moral degradation his legal training had caused, a suspicion of linking the disappearance of Ben Robinson, this discovery and Margaret Black flashed through his imagination, before being crushed firmly under foot. Damn that inquisitiveness. It could be really corrosive to a person’s soul and this time he couldn’t blame his daemon.

If not the apprentice apothecary and suspected heretic then that left only two suspects-Albrecht and Joachim. Said to be boon friends and companions who also smuggled bibles and, ahem, concealed gonne powder. According to Rob the vessel was perfectly set up for running illicit trade, and the Irish could be expected to pay generously for modern weaponry to be used in their inter-family disputes. But if the texts were so well hidden, why be sloppy with the weapons? A tide waiter or land waiter could be bribed to ignore many things. Not weapons though. That smacked heavily of treason and a man had few defences against such a charge.

Ned made a mental note to have a very frank talk with Albrecht when this was over. He also wondered, considering the packed contraband, what space had been left for the legitimate cargo. “Rob, who do you think arranged the hidden powder?”

His friend frowned as he replaced the wrapped weapons. “As you saw, it was behind a very clever false wall. That would be a lot of work and expense.”

“Joachim perhaps or Albrecht?”

“I’m not sure Ned, to tell the truth. The ship master could commission it, but then so could the cargo agent.”

That left one dead and silenced and the other alive and suspect. To Ned, the odds of pinning down the slippery Albrecht weren’t ones he’d place a groat upon.

“Do any of the crew know of your discoveries?”

“No. Meg set them to repairing the rigging and repainting the ship.”

He gave a brief prayer of thanks for their diverted attention. “Excellent. Can you hide all this again, somewhere different?”

His companion paused in thought and sadly shook his head. “Ned, all the common places have been used. I don’t think so.”

This was exasperating. He had a ship that’d been rigged for smuggling, every crevice and hidey hole of which was packed to the brim and it wasn’t even his cargo. “All right, since I own half of this damn boat build some more. I don’t care how or where, so long as the crew don’t know and a casual search can’t find them.”

Rob leant against the solid oak beam and pinched thoughtfully at his chin. Finally after a couple of minutes pause he slowly nodded. “It… it can be done Ned, but it’ll cost. We need skilled craftsmen and the parts smuggled in. Emma’s lad Mathew, at the cartwrights, should be able to help and I’ll put it around that we’re repairing from the fire.”

“Fine, whatever it takes.” Ned would have quailed at the rapidly mounting cost, except for the also rapidly escalating crisis. He waved consideration of mere gold aside, even if his daemon quailed in horror as a result. “Rob, being killed always trumps being in debt. Anyway we’ve got worse problems than contraband.”

The large artificer gave a disbelieving snort and shook his head, so Ned launched into the story of his morning ambush, and all went well until the section concerning his escape over the roof. Rob Black stopped it there, getting Ned to give a fuller description of what happened in the alley. Then Rob pulled his lip pensively, before drawing Ned cautiously towards the bow. The artificer passed Ned the lantern then ferreting around in yet another secret hole by the charred section. And lo and behold, like a market fair mummer, Rob conjured from the shadows a small flat box the length of his forearm

“That weapon they used was a sort of harquebus as you said.” Rob once more pulled at his lip in thought and shook his head. “Four shots in under a minute-not a common weapon that. I’d say it’s a very special harquebus, with replaceable breech chambers and that quality of craftsmanship is pricy. Only a lord could afford it and since there were two, he’d have to be fairly dripping in gold. Tell me, did they look like these?”

Rob flicked the catch opening the box. Inside was revealed a pair of beautiful small harquebus a foot long, but with a completely different firing mechanism to the one he had fired in training. There was the small clamp on an arm, but rather than hold a match, it had a small metallic looking rock in its jaws. And that wasn’t all. Under this jaw was a disc a couple of inches across, set into the lock and trigger plate.