The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [142]
‘Got to check for survivors,’ he said obliquely. The white cliffs by the Needles would have smashed any man who came up against them in the storm. The nearest safe beach, even if you could find it in the darkness, would have been three miles away and, strangely perhaps, few mariners could swim in those times. If the galley had gone down out in the sea that night, the chances were that its crew were drowned. But you never knew. Some might have floated to shore on a piece of wreckage.
They brought the boat in about two and a half miles along the coast from the sand spit, where there was a tiny inlet from which a stream descended. Dragging the boat into the mouth of the inlet, where it could not be seen, Seagull and his crew prepared to scour the area. The beaches were empty. Along the shore was mostly scrub and heathland. Ordering the boys to guard the boat, Seagull disappeared with the men.
Jonathan noticed that the mariner’s carried a small spar which he held like a club. ‘Where are they going?’ he asked after they had left.
‘Along the coast. They’ll fan out.’
‘Do you think there’ll be any survivors?’
Again, Willie looked at him a little strangely. ‘No,’ he said.
And at last Jonathan understood. The law of the sea in England was simple but bleak. The cargo of wrecks belonged to whoever found it, unless there were survivors from the ship to claim it. Which of course is why there very seldom were.
The two boys waited; it grew a little lighter.
It was during this time that Henry Totton reached the end of the spit at the Solent entrance and stared across the sea.
He had been out since first light. After a quick look down the estuary he had cut across Pennington Marshes, past the salterns to Keyhaven. From there he had a good view of the Isle of Wight and the shoreline nearby. There was no sign of anything. Then he had walked out along the spit in the hope that they might have been blown there. But there was not a trace of Seagull and his crew.
He gazed across the end of the spit at the narrow channel, then walked round to where he could see the Needles and scanned the sea and the long shoreline of the Forest’s western coast. And since by this time Seagull’s boat was concealed in its little inlet, he did not see it. But in the water nearby he did see some bits of wreckage and, knowing nothing of the Venetian galley, he assumed it was probably Seagull’s boat and that his son was drowned; so he wandered down the western length of the spit to see if the boy’s body was there. But there were no bodies on the spit, for the currents had carried what bodies there were to another place entirely.
Just then he saw his friend Burrard coming towards him and that gruff worthy, who had been out looking for him since not long after dawn himself, put his arm round him and took him home.
It was boring waiting by the boat. They did not dare to leave it in case Seagull returned suddenly, but the two boys took turns to walk along the beach a little way to see what they could find.
The current was starting to bring things in now: another oar, some rigging, a shattered barrel.
And bodies.
Jonathan had been inspecting the remains of a sea chest, wondering what it had contained, when he saw the corpse. It was about ten yards out and the waves were bringing it gradually towards him. The body was drifting face downwards in the water. He stared at it, a little frightened, yet curious.
He would probably have edged away from it if he had not noticed one thing: the tunic the man wore was of a rich brocade, threaded with gold. His shirt was bordered with the finest lace. This was a rich man: a merchant or perhaps even an aristocrat accompanying the ship on its northern voyage. Gingerly he went towards it.
Jonathan had never seen a drowned man before, but he had heard what they looked like: the bluish skin, the swollen face. He waded out until the corpse was beside him. The water was up to his waist. He touched it. It felt heavy, waterlogged. He did not look at the head but felt around the waist. The corpse was wearing a belt. It