Heartstone

We passed between the guncrews. I remember one man holding a linstock staring at me as I went by. He was shirtless, with a short, scarred, muscular body, a square bearded face. He looked at me as though I were something from another world, an apparition.

We walked to the ladder. At the bottom Leacon said quietly, 'Can you make it up?'

'After all I've been through to get here? Yes.'

I climbed after him, though the effort sent pain slicing through my shoulders. Fresh, salt air wafted down from above, making my head swim for a moment. Leacon reached the deck and helped me up. Again, through the stout netting, I saw the great masts rearing up into the blue sky of another hot July day. The sails were still furled, but on deck and up in the rigging sailors stood in position, ready to release them on command. The deck was more crowded than ever, everyone at battle positions. As below, guncrews had taken up positions of readiness beside the cannon. Half the blinds were open, giving me a view of the Great Harry and the other warships beyond on one side, and on the other the Isle of Wight, where, away in the distance, I saw smoke rising from several large fires.

I looked along the deck. Archers stood at some of the open blinds, and perhaps fifty pikemen stood together, nine-foot-long half-pikes raised with tips poking through the netting, ready to thrust up at boarders. An officer with a whistle round his neck stood watching; he glanced up at the fighting top in the topmast where lookouts stood, the only ones with a clear view of what was happening.

Near us, on the opposite side of the deck, three officers were arguing. One I recognized as the purser. The second was Philip West. He looked haggard as he spoke to the third man, a tall officer in his forties, richly dressed. He had a dark brown beard framing a long, frowning face, a pomander as well as a sword at his waist. Round his neck he wore a massive whistle on a long gold chain. He was examining what looked like a tiny sundial. He looked up as West finished speaking.

'If the beer's bad,' he said impatiently, 'they'll just have to do without.'

The purser answered, 'The men are parched. And starting to murmur—'

'Then give them what there is!'

'They won't drink it, Sir George,' West said impatiently. 'It's bad—'

Sir George Carew shouted back, 'Don't talk to me like that, knave! God's death, they'd best behave, all of them. The King is watching at South Sea Castle, and he'll have a special eye on this ship!'

West turned his head away. He saw me then; his mouth fell open in astonishment and horror. I met his gaze grimly. There was nothing he could do to me here. Leacon stared at him too, angrily, then turned to me. 'Let's go up.'

We mounted via the space under the aftercastle, next to the mainmast, and arrived on the lower aftercastle deck, where helmeted handgunners stood with arquebuses and hailshot pieces propped against the side of the ship. There were no blinds here, only portholes at eye-level for them to stick their weapons through. I had a view through a wide doorway giving on to the walkway between the castles, above the netting. Two sailors in check shirts stood in the doorway leading to the aftercastle, watching as a pair of soldiers carried a long box across the walkway from the forecastle end. On either side of the doorway the two long cannon I had seen from the weatherdeck on my first visit were positioned, angled to fire outwards past the ship through a gap in the rigging, guncrews beside them. The cannon were bronze, beautifully ornate. Looking back, I saw two lines of handgunners, their feet braced, their long, heavy weapons thrust through little portholes. If the Mary Rose grappled with a French ship, they would fire hailshot of metal and stone at the opposing crew.

'More arrows,' the soldiers said as they reached the doorway.