Hugh Corbett 15 - The Waxman Murders Read Free Page B

would quietly disappear and re-emerge in some other town, perhaps some other country, as prosperous wool merchants. No more filthy bilges, dirty taverns, vermin-infested alehouses; no more water or wine from clay-lined tubs or hard bread alive with weevils or sea biscuit which stank of rat urine.
    ‘Land, land to the west!’
    Blackstock whirled around. He could make out the faint outlines of cliffs and hills before the mist closed again. He smiled and fingered the charm, a gargoyle, an imp with one leg crossed over the other, nailed to the mast. Soon they would make landfall.
    ‘Master! Master!’
    Blackstock stared up as the horn wailed the alarm from the raven’s nest above him.
    ‘What do you see?’ he called.
    The ship felt silent. No slap of bare feet against the sea-salted deck; no timber creaking or waves crashing. Some demon cloaked in the mist seemed to trail its fingers along Blackstock’s flesh.
    ‘What is it?’ he bellowed.
    ‘Ship to the north-east, an armed cog.’
    ‘What device?’
    ‘I cannot see.’
    ‘Damnation to you!’ Blackstock shouted back.
    Stonecrop needed no second bidding. Ram’s horn already to his lips, he blew three wailing blasts and the crew scrambled for weapons: bows, quivers, long pikes, swords, daggers and shields, whilst small pots of burning charcoal were brought up from below. Those who had them donned helmets, hauberks and other pieces of armour. Blackstock hurried up into the prow and stared through the mist boiling above the grim grey sea. Some distance away, sails billowing, a war cog was using the easterly wind to bear down on them. It was a ship very like his own, though slightly bigger, with raised stern and jutting poop. Again the horn wailed from the raven’s nest.
    ‘Master, south-east another ship.’
    Blackstock could hardly believe it. He went down the slippery steps from the prow and slithered across the deck, pushing and shoving his crew aside, up into the stern where the rudder men fought to keep the ship on a straight course. By the face of Lucca! Blackstock tried to quell his surge of fear. Another ship was heading out of the mist like an arrow. A cog of war, surely? Merchantmen would not be so bold. A king’s ship perhaps, but why now, on a freezing October day? They were here deliberately, they’d come to trap him! They must have left the mouth of the Thames and stood far out to sea, knowing the planned time and date of his landfall at Orwell. He had been betrayed!
    Blackstock screamed at Stonecrop to bring his war belt. He strapped this on and gazed wildly around. Never in his worst nightmare had he envisaged this, being trapped by two cogs of war, fully armed, against the English coast! The east wind was against him; it would be futile to try and slip between his opponents. He could run for land, beach his ship on the rocks, but what then? This had all been well plotted. The local sheriff and his comitatus would be waiting. Blackstock realised he had no choice but to fight.
    ‘Master!’ the lookout shouted. ‘The first one to the north is The Segreant ; its pennant shows a green griffin rampant.’
    Blackstock clawed his face. Paulents! That powerful merchant of the Hanseatic league had decided to take his revenge.
    ‘And the other?’ Blackstock shouted back, though he already knew the answer.
    ‘ The Caltrop ,’ the lookout shouted back. ‘It flies the silver wyvern.’
    Blackstock staggered to the taffrail and held it; staring down at the swelling sea, he felt sick. Von Paulents the German and Castledene the Canterbury merchant, the Kentish knight with fingers in every pie cooked in England, had plotted to trap him.
    ‘They are flying the Beaussons,’ Stonecrop yelled.
    Blackstock, peering through the haze, could now see both ships clearly as they closed, sails billowing, poop and stern crammed with fighting men. From the masts of both cogs floated blood-red ribbons, a sign that it would be a fight to the death, no quarter given, no