Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

Jane felt as if she would never breathe properly again. She had bitten down on the rough gag in her mouth so many times and dampened it with her saliva that it had at least thinned. Yet it made no difference — she could not cry out. The boat had clearly caught a good wind, had turned, leaned over and beat up the

Thames to wherever it was heading, the thuck! thuck! thuck! of its bow driving into the waves. Jane eased herself over on to her back, her mind remembering the feel of the diseased hands spreading her legs. Pushing upright with all her might, she leaned against the side planking. Damn! Her head, as hard as she could push upwards, still rested half against the straw-filled canvas nailed to the wall. She had wondered if bloodying her body against the wood would have attracted the attention of those sailing the boat. She looked at her children. Their terrified eyes looked back at her. She winked at them, denying the despair in her own heart. It's all right. Mother is here with you. The man has gone. Someone will come and rescue us.

They did not believe her.

There were yells from the deck, and a lurching, forward motion as the sail was dropped and the boat brought round.

Jane struggled with all her might to get noise out of her mouth. The children, seeing her, tried the same. All that emerged were strangled, gurgled noises, easily absorbed by the straw, the timbers and the oiled canvas.

Footfalls on deck. Silence. The men had left. A lurching yaw to the right. Someone had hooked a rope on to their vessel. Movement, far less forceful than when they had been under sail. Silence on their own deck. Towed. They were being towed.

More shouts. As from afar. Cessation of motion. Footfalls on deck, brief. They were being moored to something, somewhere. Quick jerking movements of the boat. They were in quiet water, but water disturbed by other vessels. Heavy, heavy thuds on the deck aft of them. Strange noises, distorted, as of voices far away.

Jane knew what celebrations had been planned for that night, the celebrations she and her children should have witnessed from the stands at Whitehall. They had been commandeered for the great mock naval battle. Some man hired by the King had saved her from rape, saved her from being spoilt evermore for the man she loved. Perhaps a crew would come on board, find them, release them. Her heart soared. Yet she prayed to God the thumps she had heard on the deck had not been gunpowder.

And then, the lantern hung on the swinging hook so long ago began to flicker and die. Oh God, she thought. Within seconds the cabin was in total darkness. No sight now. No feeling in her numbed hands and legs. Only the sharp rocking motion of the clumsy boat on the short waves.

Above her, on the deck, the five squat barrels sat. From each a fuse led, joining together at deck level and running as a strand through a scupper on the side, hanging a foot and a half on the outside below deck level. A rough nail secured the fuse to the planking. An easy height for a man in a small boat to drive alongside, stand up and light the fuse, and get away before the powder exploded.

Gresham pushed through the increasing chaos to the waterline. More and more of the attacking boats were trying to set out. Many were simply swung downstream. A number, their rowers reduced to frantic exertion, were crawling towards the opposite bank. Every now and again a crew gave up and the boat shot off with the current.

A young man was roundly cursing five others. It looked as if they had set out, been swept downstream, rowed all the way up to Whitehall once more, and now he wanted them to start again. Gresham went up to him.

'I need to beg the greatest favour of my life from you,' Gresham said simply. 'Can I at least know the name of the person I'm asking?'

The young man gazed at the figure in front of him. Tall. Dressed in black, every fold breathing money. The most unsettling eyes the young man had ever seen. Soft leather shoes muddied to destruction. A courtier, all right. But something else.

'I'm called Walter,' the young man stated, equally simply.

'I'm called Henry Gresham,' he said, every particle in his body shrieking out for him to speed this up.

I bet you're not, thought Walter. I bet you're an earl of something like that, dressed as you are. But the man had given him his name.

'Pleased to meet you, Henry Gresham,' he said, offering his hand. Now he'd done it. Call an earl by his real name and it was your head bobbing along in the river the next morning. 'My full name is Walter Andrews.'

The first name of his son, thought Gresham. The second name — spelling apart — the only Bishop he had met and respected. Was it an omen? Henry Gresham did not believe in superstition. Yet his heart lifted. 'Pleased to meet you, Walter Andrews,' said Gresham as they shook hands solemnly. To business. 'My wife and my children have been kidnapped. Two of them. A boy and a girl. They're on one of the boats out there in this… mess.' As if to echo his words, there was a blast and a column of flame, followed by screams. 'Will you take me out on to the river and check all the boats…?'

Gresham had learned his self-control early. Learned to bear the taunt of 'bastard!', to bear the scorn of others, learned that to show what you feel is the ultimate weakness. Yet he had based that philosophy on a lonely, appalling selfishness. He had never allowed for the fact that one reasonably large person in his life, and two rather smaller people, would breach the route to his heart. So, for only the second time in his life, his emotion overrode his control. Disgusted and hating himself, he felt the hot tears burst up uncontrollably in his eyes and fall, burning, down his cheeks. 'Will you help me find my wife?'

Walter turned to his men. They were gawping at the scene in front of them. They had heard it all.

'Well,' said Walter, 'as for me, it's the first time someone's asked me to do anything useful all evening. As for these bastards he turned to his men — 'they're in revolt. Played out. Knackered. I don't suppose for a minute they'll agree to give up their sweat…' He turned to look at them.

'Bastards!' they called out in unison, with a strange happiness. 'We won't do it for fuckin' you, Walter Andrews!' said the oldest of them, rising to his feet. Gresham's heart sank.

'But we'll do it for fuckin' 'im!' he shouted. 'Show us the way to your wife, master! We're the men for it!' There was raucous cheering, a rush to put the oars in the water.

'They're not exactly easy,' explained Walter. 'In fact, they're fuckin' impossible. But they're good when they do get it together.'

Gresham grinned at him, the fire of war in his blood. He grabbed Walter's hand. 'One-masted, biggish, a hatch for'ard and a much bigger one aft. Taken late in the day, so presumably with minimal decoration, fake masts and the like.'

'We'll find 'er,' said Walter Andrews, 'if she's there to be found.' His eyes were looking for a way through the crowded waterway. His hand was raised, waiting to drop and signal for his oarsmen to bite the oars into the water. Suddenly he saw the opening, dropped his hand. They careered through three boats, rigged as galliasses, whose rigging had become inextricably entangled.

'Where d'you want to start?' asked Walter Andrews.

'Where the danger is,' answered Gresham flatly.

It was clear even to Sir Robert Mansell that the promised battle was not going to happen. It was rumoured that the King and Queen were about to leave the stands, bored by a few small boats firing cannon and muskets with blank shot. James would be more than bored, thought Sir Robert, if he knew what this failed extravaganza had cost him. He had one ace up his sleeve. Half of the fortress of Algiers was primed to explode at the climax of the battle, its wood and plaster walls impregnated with barrels of powder set to ignite with the lighting of one fuse. Just before the walls collapsed, three of the attacking boats were meant to explode as if hit by shore batteries. The powder set in the 'walls' and that in the three boats was not normal gunpowder. Those responsible for the fireworks had been allowed at it. The boats would go up with a fiery blue flame, sending rockets into the sky. The explosion of the fortress would be predominantly red and yellow.