'But all of the preparations for her sailing…?'

'Oh, Plessington had a delegate for details like that. Everything was arranged either through him or the Sidney's purser.'

'A delegate?'

'Yes.' He was squinting at his eaves now, frowning deeply. The wind sighed at our backs and riffled the waves. 'Now… what the devil was his name? It's just that I spend so much time in the reign of Queen Bess that sometimes my old brain gets befuddled by names. No… wait!' Suddenly his little face brightened. 'No, no, I remember his name after all. A strange name it was, too. Monboddo,' he pronounced triumphantly. 'Yes, that was it. Henry Monboddo.'

Chapter Twelve

There is no sight so sublime, the philosopher Lucretius tells us, as a shipwreck at sea. And the wreck of the Bellerophon did indeed make a spectacular sight for the onlookers who left their crofts and cottages to gather on the windy shores of the Chislet Marshes. She broke apart on the Margate Hook at some time after five o'clock in the afternoon. She had already been bilged in the midships, and with her starboard bow forced by the waves against the reef-the largest and most dangerous reef along the entire coast of Kent-it was only a matter of seconds before she shipped a dozen tons of water through her hull and then heeled clumsily on to her beam-ends. Her masts had toppled like ruined steeples and her yards and shrouds were hurled away. The waves foamed white about her hull before bursting in cascades over her fo'c'sle deck. Everyone on the upper decks was swept into the roiling sea, while those still below decks fared no better. The men frantically working the hand-pumps were either drowned as fountains of water thundered into the hold or else crushed to death as casks and puncheons tumbled like rogue oxen across the tilting deck. Others broke their necks or skulls against the stanchions, which themselves were splintering to bits, and still others had the misfortune to be trapped by falling beams and then drowned as the tide of water burst through the hatchways. And so it was that by the time the Bellerophon was smashed to a thousand pieces on the Margate Hook, there was not a single soul left alive inside her.

Her wreckage was swiftly scavenged. Almost a hundred onlookers had gathered along the muddy stretch of beach, and three enormous stacks of driftwood were lit. The bonfires' garish light lent an almost festive atmosphere to the scene. The Margate Hook and the havoc it wreaked with the occasional passing ship made one of the few consolations of living on this desolate edge of Kent. Folk were hoping for a repeat of the famous episode three years earlier when the Scythia was cracked open like an oyster on the very same spot, making humble fishermen and winkle-pickers drunk as lords on two hundred butts of Spanish malmsey. So as soon as the sea grew calm enough, a flotilla of a dozen-odd cutters and smacks was launched into the waves. By first light more than a score of crates had been dragged ashore, as had thirteen sopping and dishevelled crewmen.

Among them was Captain Quilter. For more than ten hours he had clung to one of the ninety-nine contraband boxes as it bobbed and wallowed in the heavy swell, sucked back and forth by outgoing and then incoming tides. But as full tide had come a second time the bonfires suddenly loomed before him and the crate washed up with a bump in the shallows. He was exhausted and frozen from his ordeal, but no sooner had his feet touched shingle than three men wading rapidly forward-his saviours, so he thought-shoved him back into the combers. The crate was scraped ashore and stacked with a score of others.

'You people have no right of salvage here.' He had righted himself and was splashing through the mud and sand towards a group of figures gathered round one of the bonfires. More boxes and chests were being dragged from the waters, while a small convoy of donkey-carts laden with others began winding its way into the marshes. 'These crates are flotsam, the legal property of the Bellerophon, and I as her captain-'

A crowbar flashed, and again Captain Quilter collapsed to his knees. His hand fumbled in his belt for the firelock with which he had armed himself as protection against Rowley's gang, but of course the pistol had disappeared. Now what little remained of his ship and her cargo-what little return he could make for his investors at the Royal Exchange-was vanishing at the hands of these shoreline pirates.

In the warmth of another bonfire he discovered a handful of his crewmen, blue-lipped and shivering. Three of their number, Pinchbeck included, had died since being dragged ashore in the last hour. Their bodies had been lined up next to the eight other sailors whose soaked carcasses had washed ashore. The pockets of their sodden cloaks and galligaskins were being rifled by those too small or infirm to loot the greater riches of the washed-up chests. Quilter's heart sank at the sight. The looters pushing and shoving over the corpses looked like nothing so much as flapping turkey buzzards, but he was far too numb and weak to chase them away.

A few of the other scavengers on the beach proved more hospitable, however. Blankets were distributed among the survivors, along with chunks of bread and cheese, and even the odd bottle of brandy, from which the crewmen were helping themselves to feeble swigs. Some fifteen minutes later, one more of the crewmen had expired but Quilter himself was feeling revitalised by the twin blessings of the brandy and the flames, when suddenly there came-no one was quite sure from where at first-the crackle of musket-fire. For a moment Quilter thought the shot was intended for him, but then he saw the looters delving in the crates and among the corpses squawk with surprise and leap for cover. Then a second shot echoed across the beach.

By this time he was belly-crawling across the mud and wrack to shelter behind a waterlogged cask. The first streaks of dawn had appeared above the wreckage of the Bellerophon, which by now had spread itself across much of the horizon. The rain had thinned to a gentle mist and the Margate Hook was vanishing beneath the flooding tidewaters. Perfect sailing weather, thought Quilter with a pang. He watched part of the keel wash ashore on the heaving waves. Then another shot broke the silence and he lowered his head behind the cask. The bonfire was snapping and crackling in front of him, sending shadows and smoke across the sand. When he raised his head a moment later he was expecting to see Sir Ambrose wading ashore with his sword or pistol flourishing, but what he saw instead, swaying on the horizon, looking like her own ghost, was the Star of Lübeck.

The Hansa merchantman was barely visible through the spindrift. She was still listing badly and scudding recklessly under bare poles, but, for all that, she was intact and afloat. The crewmen could be seen on her upper decks, hoisting what little canvas was left on to the splintered masts. But the bursts of musket-fire, Quilter realised, were coming from much closer to shore.

A fourth shot crackled along the strip of beach. The looters cursed among themselves and retreated deeper into the safety of the osiers. Quilter could see them fumbling at their belts for their daggers and old-fashioned matchlock pistols whose tapers were impossible to light because of the drizzle.

He shifted his gaze to the left, to where a cutter with its sail flapping and swelling had emerged an instant earlier from the smoke and wreckage. After a second he made out a figure in the prow, a man bent on one knee as if paying homage to a superior. Except the man wasn't paying homage to anyone, Quilter immediately realised, he was taking aim with his musket at the few figures left among the pyramids of crates. At a fifth crack one of the figures shrieked like a kite, arched its back, then dropped in the sand. The cutter splashed forward, its prow nodding in the waves.