Page 112 of A Column of Fire

Merchant ships needed guns as much as any other vessel. Seafaring was a dangerous business. In wartime, ships of one combatant nation could legitimately attack ships of the enemy; and all the major countries were at war as often as they were at peace. In peacetime, the same activity was called piracy, but it went on almost as much. Every ship had to be able to defend itself.

TheHawkhad twelve guns, all bronze minions, small cannons that fired a four-pound shot. The minions were on the gun deck, immediately below the top deck, six on each side. They fired through square holes in the woodwork. Ship design had changed to accommodate this need. In older ships, such gun ports would have seriously weakened the structure. But theHawkwas carvel-built, an internal skeleton of heavy timbers providing its strength, with the planks of the hull fastened to the skeleton like skin over ribs. This type of structure had the additional advantage that enemy cannonballs could make multiple holes in the hull without necessarily sinking the ship.

Barney cleaned and oiled the guns, making sure they were running freely on their wheels, and made some small repairs, using the tools left behind by the previous smith, who had died. He checked stocks of ammunition: all the guns had the same size barrel and fired interchangeable cast-iron balls.

His most important job was to keep the gunpowder in good condition. It tended to absorb moisture – especially at sea – and Barney made sure that there were string bags of charcoal hanging from the ceiling on the gun deck to dry the air. The other hazard was that the ingredients of gunpowder – saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur – would separate over time, the heavier saltpetre sinking to the bottom, making the mixture harmless. In the army Barney had learned to turn the barrels upside down once a week.

He even ranged the guns. He did not want to waste ammunition, but Captain Bacon let him fire a few balls. All cannon barrels rested on trunnions, like handles sticking out both sides, which fitted into grooved supports in the gun carriage, making it easy to tilt the barrel up and down. With the barrel at an angle of forty-five degrees – the attitude for maximum distance – the minions would fire a four-pound ball almost a mile, about one thousand six hundred yards. The angle was changed by propping up the rear end of the barrel with wedges. With the barrel level, the ball splashed into the water about three hundred yards away. That told Barney that each seven degrees of elevation from the horizontal added just over two hundred yards to the range. He had brought with him from the army an iron protractor with a plumb line and a curved scale for measuring angles. With its long arm thrust into the barrel, he could measure the gun’s angle precisely. On land it worked well. At sea, the constant motion of the ship made shooting less accurate.

On the fourth day, Barney had nothing more to do, and he found himself on deck with Jonathan again. They were crossing a bay. The coast was on the port bow, as it had been ever since theHawkhad left the Westerschelde estuary and entered the English Channel. Barney was no expert in navigation, but he thought that by now they should have the English coast on the starboard bow. He frowned. ‘How long do you think it will be before we reach Combe Harbour?’

Jonathan shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

An unpleasant possibility crossed Barney’s mind. ‘We are headed for Combe Harbour, aren’t we?’

‘Eventually, yes.’

Barney’s alarm grew. ‘Eventually?’

‘Captain Bacon doesn’t confide his intentions to me. Nor to anyone else, come to that.’

‘But you seem to think we might not be going home.’

‘I’m looking at the coastline.’

Barney looked harder. Deep in the bay, just off the coast, a small island rose steeply out of the water to a precarious summit where a great church was perched like a giant seagull. It was familiar, and he realized, with dismay, that he had seen it before – twice. It was called Mont St Michel, and he had passed it once on his way to Seville, three years ago, and again on his way back from Spain to the Netherlands two years ago. ‘We’re going to Spain, aren’t we?’ he said to Jonathan.

‘Looks like it.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t know. And besides, we need a gunner.’

Barney could guess what they needed a gunner for. And that explained why Bacon had hired him when there was so little work for him to do as ship’s blacksmith. ‘So Bacon and you have tricked me into becoming a member of the crew.’

Jonathan shrugged again.

Barney looked north. Combe Harbour was sixty miles in that direction. He turned his gaze to the island church. It was a mile or two away, in waves of at least three feet. He could not swim it, he knew. It would be suicide.

After a long moment, he said: ‘But we’ll come back to Combe Harbour from Seville, won’t we?’

‘Maybe,’ said Jonathan, ‘maybe not.’

11

While Odette gave birth, painfully and loudly, Pierre planned how to get rid of the baby.

Odette was suffering God’s punishment for her unchastity. She deserved it. There was some justice on earth, after all, Pierre thought.

And as soon as the baby arrived, she would lose it.

He sat downstairs in the small house, leafing through his black leather-bound notebook, while the midwife attended to Odette in the bedroom. The remains of an interrupted breakfast were on the table in front of him: bread, ham and some early radishes. The room was dismal, with bare walls, a flagstone floor, a cold fireplace and one small window on to a narrow, dark street. Pierre hated it.

Normally he left straight after breakfast. He usually went first to the Guise family palace in the Vieille rue du Temple, a place where the floors were marble and the walls were hung with splendid paintings. Most often he spent the day there or at the Louvre palace, in attendance on Cardinal Charles or Duke François. In the late afternoon he frequently had meetings with members of his rapidly growing network of spies, who added to the list of Protestants in the black leather notebook. He rarely returned to the little house in Les Halles until bedtime. Today, however, he was waiting for the baby to come.

It was May 1560, and they had been married five months.

For the first few weeks Odette had tried to cajole him into a normal sexual relationship. She did her best to be coquettish, but it did not come naturally to her, and when she wiggled her broad behind and smiled at him, showing her crooked teeth, he was repelled. Later she began to taunt him with impotence and, as an alternative jibe, homosexuality. Neither arrow struck home – he thought nostalgically of long afternoons in the widow Bauchene’s feather bed – but Odette’s insults were nevertheless irritating.