Ship of Fire by Michael Cadnum Read Free Book Online Page A

boat, not in greeting but to encourage us in sailing so fast.
    â€œI am filled with delight, Tom,” said my master, “that you’ll see for yourself what full sails and clear sky do for a town-weary spirit.”
    We had sworn a solemn oath of loyalty to both Her Majesty and to the Lord Admiral himself. We had vowed to watch and learn, as only a doctor and his assistant can, the nature of our famous charge, the admiral of the war-fleet, Drake himself. I knew in one corner of my mind that this sacred promise could violate that trust a patient should have in his physician. If Drake fell ill and in his fever babbled confessions, we were bound to betray him.
    I had wondered, too, at our great urgency, hurried into a pinnace before the night was out with only the clothes on our backs. A hasty message was sent in the darkest hour of night to Martin Frizer, a doctor with chambers near Moorgate, and the round-cheeked physician, cowled and armed with a silver-hilted sword, arrived breathless at the summons. One glance at the ready-to-depart Lord Admiral, and an earnest plea from my master, and Martin Frizer promised to preserve the life of our patient Titus Cox “as God gives me the power.”
    I had not been able to bid farewell to dark-haired Jane, or give the chambers that had been my home anything more than a hurried backward glance. All was haste, a solitary rat darting across Fenchurch Street as pikemen escorted us through the night-stunned city toward a wherry that hurried us toward the Admiralty docks. My master had explained that Drake and the Lord Admiral were working fast to complete the fleet and sail before the Queen, who was more changeable than weather, could withdraw her permission for the voyage.
    I gave none of this a thought now as our pinnace took on speed, her ropes taut, the cheerful seaman at the helm calling out that if we kept this pace we’d catch the Golden Lion on her course for Plymouth. Mudhens along the river bank scurried awkwardly, and a chalk white horse watched us pass, our wake stirring the reeds.
    We were the sole gentle passengers on this ship, but there was a crew and a cargo, bales of straw packed into the hold, and small wooden kegs, each marked with a red daub I recognized as the Admiralty’s insignia. These barrels were ranked in tight rows, and held tightly in place by the straw. There were so many of these kegs that the hatch could not be closed, and bits of straw spun off into the wind. I would have taken the containers to be rare wines, knowing that sailors enjoyed their drink whether land-bound or at sea, except that the barrels were double-lashed with new black iron hoops, thick and sturdy.
    My master took a cup of morning wine with the vessel’s captain, a short-legged mariner with a well-trimmed beard. I asked a young man spreading a thick canvas over the hatch, protecting the kegs from the rising spray, what the nature of our cargo might be.
    He laughed. “Such a cargo as could carry us well, sir, and carry us far, all the way into the sky.” He extended his explanation by adding, “Such cargo as could turn us into carrion, sir.”
    At that moment the canvas flapped, a great, breathy thunder, caught by a sudden wind. The captain gave a great cry, and the canvas would have taken off across the river if I had not reached for it, fumbled, and held on.
    I kept a grip on the edge, and stretched the canvas tight while a seaman tied it into place.
    â€œWell done, sir,” said the young man. He leaned close to me. “Our hold is stuffed with gunpowder,” he said. “Black as hearth dust and packed tight in kegs, for the culverins and serpentines of the fleet.”
    I nodded, as though I quite naturally understood such matters—which in part I did. Culverins were cannon of great girth, made for lobbing shot high and far. Serpentines were long-barreled guns. I had seen—and heard—gunnery practice in London just outside