Ross King - Ex Libris

And then I remembered what I had intended to ask him an hour or two earlier. I had actually stepped outside at the time and was in the midst of bidding him adieu. The sun had dropped behind the distant silhouette of Nonsuch House, and the waters of the river were grey as a gull's wing. I could feel the rumbullion going about its stealthy work inside me. I had missed my footing on the front step and there was a faint ringing in my ears that seemed to change pitch as we stepped outside. Our two shadows stretched all the way across the tiny garden.

'I was wondering,' I asked after we had clasped hands, 'did you ever meet Captain Plessington? Did he visit the Navy Office?'

'No.' Biddulph shook his head. 'I never met Plessington. Not once. He was far too important to deal with someone like me, you understand. I was only a humble assistant to the Clerk of the Acts in those days. No, I saw him only once, and that was on the night when the Sidney cast off her lines and sailed down the Thames. Plessington was standing on the quarterdeck, and I could see him faintly in the light of the stern-lamp.'

'But all of the preparations for her sailing…?'

'Oh, Plessington had a delegate for details like that. Everything was arranged either through him or the Sidney 's purser.'

'A delegate?'

'Yes.' He was squinting at his eaves now, frowning deeply. The wind sighed at our backs and riffled the waves. 'Now… what the devil was his name? It's just that I spend so much time in the reign of Queen Bess that sometimes my old brain gets befuddled by names. No… wait!' Suddenly his little face brightened. 'No, no, I remember his name after all. A strange name it was, too. Monboddo,' he pronounced triumphantly. 'Yes, that was it. Henry Monboddo.'

There is no sight so sublime, the philosopher Lucretius tells us, as a shipwreck at sea. And the wreck of the Bellerophon did indeed make a spectacular sight for the onlookers who left their crofts and cottages to gather on the windy shores of the Chislet Marshes. She broke apart on the Margate Hook at some time after five o'clock in the afternoon. She had already been bilged in the midships, and with her starboard bow forced by the waves against the reef-the largest and most dangerous reef along the entire coast of Kent-it was only a matter of seconds before she shipped a dozen tons of water through her hull and then heeled clumsily on to her beam-ends. Her masts had toppled like ruined steeples and her yards and shrouds were hurled away. The waves foamed white about her hull before bursting in cascades over her fo'c'sle deck. Everyone on the upper decks was swept into the roiling sea, while those still below decks fared no better. The men frantically working the hand-pumps were either drowned as fountains of water thundered into the hold or else crushed to death as casks and puncheons tumbled like rogue oxen across the tilting deck. Others broke their necks or skulls against the stanchions, which themselves were splintering to bits, and still others had the misfortune to be trapped by falling beams and then drowned as the tide of water burst through the hatchways. And so it was that by the time the Bellerophon was smashed to a thousand pieces on the Margate Hook, there was not a single soul left alive inside her.

Her wreckage was swiftly scavenged. Almost a hundred onlookers had gathered along the muddy stretch of beach, and three enormous stacks of driftwood were lit. The bonfires' garish light lent an almost festive atmosphere to the scene. The Margate Hook and the havoc it wreaked with the occasional passing ship made one of the few consolations of living on this desolate edge of Kent. Folk were hoping for a repeat of the famous episode three years earlier when the Scythia was cracked open like an oyster on the very same spot, making humble fishermen and winkle-pickers drunk as lords on two hundred butts of Spanish malmsey. So as soon as the sea grew calm enough, a flotilla of a dozen-odd cutters and smacks was launched into the waves. By first light more than a score of crates had been dragged ashore, as had thirteen sopping and dishevelled crewmen.

Among them was Captain Quilter. For more than ten hours he had clung to one of the ninety-nine contraband boxes as it bobbed and wallowed in the heavy swell, sucked back and forth by outgoing and then incoming tides. But as full tide had come a second time the bonfires suddenly loomed before him and the crate washed up with a bump in the shallows. He was exhausted and frozen from his ordeal, but no sooner had his feet touched shingle than three men wading rapidly forward-his saviours, so he thought-shoved him back into the combers. The crate was scraped ashore and stacked with a score of others.

'You people have no right of salvage here.' He had righted himself and was splashing through the mud and sand towards a group of figures gathered round one of the bonfires. More boxes and chests were being dragged from the waters, while a small convoy of donkey-carts laden with others began winding its way into the marshes. 'These crates are flotsam, the legal property of the Bellerophon , and I as her captain-'

A crowbar flashed, and again Captain Quilter collapsed to his knees. His hand fumbled in his belt for the firelock with which he had armed himself as protection against Rowley's gang, but of course the pistol had disappeared. Now what little remained of his ship and her cargo-what little return he could make for his investors at the Royal Exchange-was vanishing at the hands of these shoreline pirates.

In the warmth of another bonfire he discovered a handful of his crewmen, blue-lipped and shivering. Three of their number, Pinchbeck included, had died since being dragged ashore in the last hour. Their bodies had been lined up next to the eight other sailors whose soaked carcasses had washed ashore. The pockets of their sodden cloaks and galligaskins were being rifled by those too small or infirm to loot the greater riches of the washed-up chests. Quilter's heart sank at the sight. The looters pushing and shoving over the corpses looked like nothing so much as flapping turkey buzzards, but he was far too numb and weak to chase them away.

A few of the other scavengers on the beach proved more hospitable, however. Blankets were distributed among the survivors, along with chunks of bread and cheese, and even the odd bottle of brandy, from which the crewmen were helping themselves to feeble swigs. Some fifteen minutes later, one more of the crewmen had expired but Quilter himself was feeling revitalised by the twin blessings of the brandy and the flames, when suddenly there came-no one was quite sure from where at first-the crackle of musket-fire. For a moment Quilter thought the shot was intended for him, but then he saw the looters delving in the crates and among the corpses squawk with surprise and leap for cover. Then a second shot echoed across the beach.

By this time he was belly-crawling across the mud and wrack to shelter behind a waterlogged cask. The first streaks of dawn had appeared above the wreckage of the Bellerophon , which by now had spread itself across much of the horizon. The rain had thinned to a gentle mist and the Margate Hook was vanishing beneath the flooding tidewaters. Perfect sailing weather, thought Quilter with a pang. He watched part of the keel wash ashore on the heaving waves. Then another shot broke the silence and he lowered his head behind the cask. The bonfire was snapping and crackling in front of him, sending shadows and smoke across the sand. When he raised his head a moment later he was expecting to see Sir Ambrose wading ashore with his sword or pistol flourishing, but what he saw instead, swaying on the horizon, looking like her own ghost, was the Star of Lübeck .