Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [95]
The knight was unknown, but Nicholas recognised the helm and the voice of the master. They belonged to Mick Crackbene, the man he had fought and got rid of at Lagos. Got rid of for ever, he’d hoped. Nicholas started to run.
Seized and dragged into darkness, Diniz was swinging the stock of his handgun before he saw his assailant. ‘Get down,’ Nicholas said. ‘Or cover your face. Crackbene’s there. Crackbene’s sailing that ship. He mustn’t see us.’ He pulled his own neckerchief from his jerkin and held it out. The boy jerked to his knees.
The deck swayed. Ochoa’s voice and the mate’s shouted hoarsely. Diniz glared at the Fortado. Ignoring the kerchief and Nicholas, he lurched to his feet with his weapon, paused, and launched himself directly into the light. It wasn’t surprising. Prisoner of his grandfather, Diniz had been wrested from Cyprus on the same roundship on whose deck he now stood, and Michael Crackbene had been his gaoler.
Nicholas scrambled after. The Fortado was already slanting away, her mainsail adapting, her blue starboard flank beginning to lift as she was set to veer west and north. Something glittered along the line of her rail. The man in armour still stood at the stern, but the other had changed his position. Judging Diniz just within reach, Nicholas obeyed a roll of the ship and flung himself on him. As the boy crashed, collapsing beneath him, Nicholas realised what he had seen: a line of swivelling cannon, hitherto covered. Then he understood what Ochoa was shouting, and heard the comito repeat the command, and saw that in the moments he had missed, the three great bombards and two breechloaders along the Ghost’s starboard rail were all standing ready and manned, the matches ready to touch.
He thought afterwards that he shouted an order, but if so, it had no effect. In explosion after thundering explosion, the Ghost’s leeside bombards fired one by one at each heave of the ship; fired at the Portuguese caravel Fortado, licensed by her monarch to trade off the Guinea coast. The first three-hundred-pound ball shredded her mainsail. The second raked her from rail to rail just above the well of the deck, so that two of her cannon sprang into the sea. The third pierced the pavilion of the poop, and went on to break her mizzen in half.
There was no fourth, for Nicholas had got to the swivel-gunner by then, and knocked him back from his post. The man rounded on him; others loomed; the mate leaped forward, his hand on his sword, and Nicholas whipped out his blade. High on the poop deck Ochoa held back at first and said nothing. Then he shrieked a command, and then another, in his mumbling, furious voice. The men stood panting, their fists doubled, but on the second invitation they jumped as if he had flayed them and, abandoning the guns, scampered to set their hands to the toil of getting the ship on her way.
Even so, the ship’s lash came out before the sails were drawing to Ochoa’s satisfaction, for it was plain that his men had no relish for running off from a prize, and especially one that had been all set, by God, to tempt them round and rake them with a broadside. But Ochoa, for all his fancy clothes, had a rude way, Nicholas suspected, with dissidents. At least, before Diniz was fully recovered the sails had filled, the helm returned to its course and, picking up speed, the Ghost abandoned her victim and, flying before the steady, violent wind, resumed her passage to Arguim.
Searching for Diniz, Nicholas found him sitting clutching his broken head in the great cabin, with the lamp lit and Gelis van Borselen busy with water and linen beside him. Nicholas hesitated, seeing the light; and then said nothing. At present the Fortado was in no state to follow, and although she might try to fire, they must be at the extreme range of her guns or passing beyond it. He stood, therefore, one hand