Destiny's Tide Read online

  Destiny's Tide

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  PART TWO

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  PART THREE

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  PART FOUR

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  PART FIVE

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  For Felix

  PROLOGUE

  OCTOBER 1537

  Off the coast of Suffolk, a three-masted ship of some eighty tons cuts the waves of a heavy sea as she approaches the coast. The land is home, the far distant lights and fires of the little town just in sight. But the stiff wind, very nearly a gale despite the bright sunrise astern, is easterly, turning the familiar, beloved coastline into a lee shore, the dread of all mariners. The ship’s helmsman, though, is determined to bring his hull home, on the flood tide, despite the huge risk he is taking.

  The helmsman is a pale, skinny youth of middling height. His hair, unruly at the best of times, flies in the wind like a ragged reed-bed. By rights, his hands should not be on the whipstaff at all. Although he has taken a helm many times, it has always been in easy waters and fair winds. But of the vessel’s far more capable shiphandlers, one lies in a grave in Emden, dead of a sudden bloody flux while they were lading. Another sits on a barrel just behind the youth, his hands raw, his face lined with exhaustion, his eyes closed more than they are open. As for the other—

  ‘Can you see it yet, Jack?’ says the old man on the barrel.

  John Stannard, known universally as Jack, squints his eyes, and stares into the distance. The shore is familiar to him, but so are its dangers. He can see the cliff, at the foot of which many brave ships have met their ends, and the tower of All Saints high upon it. He can see the waves breaking upon the Kingsholme, the vast bar of shingle that stands like a castle wall between him and the safe haven behind it. He scans further to starboard, to where he knows the seamark to be, trying to keep his focus even as the hull bucks under his feet.

  ‘Not yet, Master Nolloth! No, wait – yes! Yes, I have it!’

  As the ship crests a wave, Jack catches another glimpse of the tall pole that marks the end of the Kingsholme, and the narrow entrance to Dunwich harbour to starboard, north of it. The youth has learned from the first day he drew breath that Dunwich harbour was once so open, so commodious, that it was the finest haven in the entire east of England, and the port a rival even to London. But that was before the great and terrible storms of years long past; before the shingle swept across and sealed the entrance, like the bolting of a gate; before the sea swept away so much of the town itself, the town that had once been a great and mighty city, if legend spoke true.

  It is said that the ancient Greeks and Romans spoke of Atlantis, but Englishmen speak of Dunwich.

  ‘Very good,’ says Jed Nolloth, rising from his makeshift seat. ‘I’ll take her now, and bring her in.’

  The timbers of the Matthew of Dunwich groan as the forces of wind and tide work upon the hull. She is heavily laden, her hold full from a successful voyage, and although this makes her slower, it also makes her steadier, less prone to being blown off course by the breeze. But with such a full cargo, the Matthew will also be the very devil to get back on course if her helmsman makes an error and deviates from it by the merest fraction. And this particular helmsman has never steered this course before. He has only ever observed others, much older and more experienced than him, con ships through the eye of a needle that is the entrance to Dunwich harbour.

  ‘Let me, Master Nolloth! You stood watch for ten hours – Christ’s nails, you can barely stand, Jed. And look at the state of your hands, man!’

  Nolloth glances over his shoulder, and nods toward the stern cabin, below decks.

  ‘He’ll want me to do it, Jack. He won’t trust you to. You know that as well as I. Recall, lad, how he bellowed at you when you merely suggested coasting down to Thorpe Ness and lying over there until the wind changed.’

  ‘He won’t know, Jed,’ said Jack Stannard, impatiently. ‘He’s too drunk. Too ill. He’ll sleep for hours yet, mayhap until long after we berth. He may never even know that it was I who conned us into harbour. You know I can do it, Jed, even if he doesn’t. You taught me more than he ever did. If you stay at my side and help me with the commands for the sails, I can handle the helm.’

  The old man’s expression is a battlefield of conflicting thoughts. But in his heart, he knows that young Jack Stannard is right. After his efforts in the latter part of their voyage home, Nolloth no longer has the strength or the grip to handle the whipstaff in such a sea, and with such a tight course to steer. Besides, Jed Nolloth has experienced the wrath of the man below decks many times before, and has less fear of it than most.

  ‘Aye, well then, Master Jack, let’s be about it, and pray to Maria maris stella we don’t come to grief on Kingsholme or Southwold shore.’

  The young man smiles, sets his eyes upon the distant seamark, then hums a note. Quietly at first, then louder upon each line, his tone a warm tenor, he sings a song that Jed Nolloth has never heard before, a song that is certainly not one of the staples of the Dunwich alehouses. Nor is it a prayer to Mary, star of the sea, the light and hope of all mariners.

  ‘Benedicite, what dreamed I this night

  Methought the world was turned upside down…’

  It is a difficult tune – as difficult, in its own way, as steering a ship – but Jack voices it easily, even adding his own little inflections and improvisations. It reminds him of another time, when his life seemed to be set on a very different path. The song earns him curious glances from the half-dozen nervous seamen huddled on deck, in the waist of the ship, awaiting the next commands from the helm. But they are Dunwich men who know the Stannards as well as their own kin, so they well know Master Jack’s singular talent. They also know that he has never been responsible for bringing a ship into the haven.

  ‘The sun, the moon, had lost their force and light,

  The sea also drowned both tower and town…’

  Jack Stannard sings on, holding every note as he keeps his eyes on the seamark and the rapidly approaching shore, his hands gripping the whipstaff firmly despite the growing pain in his forearms. From time to time, he breaks off from his song to order an adjustment to the sails, none of which Jed Nolloth sees fit to contradict. With every yard that the Matthew takes, though, a little more of Jack’s confidence in his ability to steer her into harbour vanishes, like spray off the cutwater. He thinks instead of dear Alice, his young wife, of her warm, flawless body, and of her cutting wit. Perhaps she is watching from a window ashore, praying to the Virgin and all the saints that the next hour will not make her a young widow. He thinks of Meg, his little daughter, by far the most precocious two-year-old in Dunwich. He thinks of the good days he once knew at school, of his singular sister, of the solace found in song, of the happiness he implo
red God to bestow upon his family, friends and himself.

  He thinks of everything but these two things: of the possibility that he will fail to bring the ship safe into harbour, and of the creature of nightmares below decks.

  His father.

  * * *

  Never again would the Grey Friars of Dunwich sing the office of Terce, or any other. Even as rays of morning sun streamed through the stained glass in the east window of their church, they were stopped, in the middle of the second verse of Nunc sancte nobis spiritus, by the abrupt entry into the chancel of their church of a gross, sweating pig of a man, wearing a rich black gown over a grubby blue jerkin. At his back stood four ill-attired brutes in buff-jerkins, all of them the size of heifers. All had daggers at their belts.

  ‘I am Fane Rudsby,’ bellowed the pig, his voice suggesting the east of London, ‘commissioner acting with authority from the Lord Cromwell, tasked with the dissolution of this place!’ Rudsby looked about imperiously. ‘This travesty of a service is ended. Done. Finished! The whore of Babylon is brought low, I say!’

  Another strong gust of wind rattled the glass in the windows, as if providing an affirmatory chorus to the commissioner’s words. In the misericords, friars looked at each other in confusion, and at their prior, Gilbert, a stooped, quiet and godly man, who seemed as bewildered as any of them. A little apart from the others, in the second row of choir stalls, a short, wiry fellow, his face unusually tanned and scarred in that company, held his emotions in check. Friar Thomas’s own shock at the unexpected proceedings was no more than momentary; he had experienced many worse calamities. Indeed, there was a time when he had inflicted them. But he saw tears streaming down the ancient, cracked cheeks of Friar Anselm, the eldest of their community. The voices of the others faltered and broke as they tried to resume the singing of the familiar words of the hymn.

  ‘Cease your caterwauling, you papist shits!’ bellowed the commissioner.

  ‘Pray, sir,’ said the prior, with a calm that astonished Friar Thomas, ‘for God’s sake, let us complete our last office—’

  The commissioner’s face turned puce.

  ‘By no means! The king’s order, Master Prior! Signed by the Lord Cromwell himself!’ The fellow waved the paper before him as though it were a dagger. ‘This place, this abomination of corruption and bestial sin, is done! It is finished! You will all be gone, I say, all of you foul boy-fuckers, you simonists, you whoremongers! Now, sirrahs!’

  With one exception, the friars moved out into the body of the church, where most milled around, looking at each other in bafflement. Friar Anselm, though, remained where he was, and attempted to sing the remaining verses of the hymn in his cracked and quiet voice. The commissioner’s men piled into the misericords and manhandled the old friar out of his place. Friar Thomas made a step forward, intending to intervene, but was pulled back by the firm grip of the prior.

  ‘They are too many, my friend,’ said the senior man, too quietly for Commissioner Rudsby to hear, ‘and what would it serve? See, Anselm complies.’

  Comply he might, but the ancient man still cast one defiant look back toward the image of the Virgin above the altar, crossing himself as he did so. He, of all of them, had been the one least willing to face the truth of what was about to happen, seemingly unable to comprehend that the life he had known for half a century was about to end. In those last few weeks of the community’s existence, Thomas had often asked Anselm what he would do when the commissioners finally came.

  ‘Deus providebit,’ was all the old man would say, with a beatific smile.

  But God had not provided.

  Friar Thomas did not take one final, lingering look at the colours and images adorning the priory church, as the prior and Anselm did. Instead he turned, went up the day stairs, and joined the half-dozen brethren who were hurriedly taking up their few worldly goods and packing them in sackcloth. He nodded to young Martin, barely a month short of the completion of his novitiate, who would now never embark upon the vocation for which he was so obviously and ideally suited. Better suited than Thomas, for certain, no matter how fiercely the older man had once believed the flame of the Holy Spirit to burn in his unworthy breast. Martin was wrapping a well-thumbed prayer book, a gift from his mother, and his string of paternoster beads. He, like old Anselm, was in tears.

  For his part, Friar Thomas reached under his trestle bed, and drew out the bag containing his worldly goods. There was nothing to pack: he had undertaken the task weeks before, unlike those who had retained false hopes until this, the very end. But his bag was substantially larger than any other in the room, and as he lifted it onto the bed, a glint of metal caught his eye. It was almost as though his old sword, once the alpha and omega of his life, was tempting him, as it had so often in his old existence. The king’s vile commissioner might be alone in the church, he thought, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to run him through, especially for Thomas, to whom wielding such a blade had once been as much second nature as singing the words of Terce now was. He looked at the metal, then wrapped the sackcloth more tightly around it. Rudsby might, indeed, be alone, but his men were all over the Greyfriars, they were armed to the teeth, and in any case, no one man’s death could prevent the fate that had been decreed far away, by King Henry and his fateful agent, Thomas Cromwell. He thought of a nun of his acquaintance at Campsey Priory, killed like a worthless dog while trying to protect a beloved statue of the Virgin when the convent was dissolved the year before. Futile beyond all measure.

  Friar Thomas crossed himself, took up his bags, then turned to say a final farewell to his fellows.

  The thousand-year existence of monasteries, of holy and devout communities of good men and women, was over in England. Blythburgh priory had not long surrendered to the king’s commissioners, even proud, mighty, Sibton and Leiston abbeys were gone, and now the conventual houses of Dunwich were brought low, too. None would now chant the monastic hours, none would ever again take God’s word out into Dunwich town and the Sandlings beyond. What the town – what the kingdom – would do for schools, hospitals, and simple Christian charity, remained to be seen. For Friar Thomas, the last ten years of his life had just become a closed book, and no matter what some of the younger and angrier friars said, that book would never be reopened. The young men placed their faith in the disquieting talk from Lincolnshire, where thousands were said to have risen in Louth and other towns. There was even a fresh, wild rumour that a great army of them had marched on Lincoln itself, occupied the cathedral, and demanded the return of the monasteries and the other old ways of faith.

  Friar Thomas gave little credit to such talk. Even if there was truth in it, he knew what a royal army would do to a peasant mob, no matter how large.

  He walked out into the monastic precinct, passing two of the commissioner’s men. They were tearing pages from books ransacked from the library, then casting them onto a fire. Many pages, though, were caught by the strong wind, and fluttered in the air like dying birds. Friar Thomas caught one, and recognised it as a page from the Consolations of Boethius. The friary’s copy had been very fine, and a favourite of his, so he thrust the page into his bag. The commissioner’s men laughed at him. Friar Thomas had wielded the sword in his bag to kill men for much, much less, and knew that if he wished, he could easily despatch the two sneering louts faster than they could cast another book upon the fire. But he was older and wiser now, and ten years in the Greyfriars had taught him to call to mind his Saviour’s words.

  Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

  Friar Thomas made his way to the splendid gate in the west wall, and stepped out into the world, not stopping to look behind him. Curious, he thought: the bells of Dunwich’s three remaining churches were ringing, as if in celebration. Thomas wondered for a moment whether they were rejoicing at the fall of Greyfriars, but he dismissed the notion. The Franciscans were loved in Dunwich – no, they had been loved. It was all in the past tense for the monasteri
es now. As the bells rang Thomas realised that he was no longer a Franciscan, no longer a friar, no longer bound by the Rule. But there were other lives to live, as he had told himself many times in recent weeks, since the prospect of the surrender of Greyfriars was known. Above all, there was the other life that he had once known, and to which, in some form or other, he would now return.

  The life of the sword.

  * * *

  The shore was very close now. Jack Stannard and Jed Nolloth could see and hear the waves breaking on the Kingsholme. The seamark, the tall post, was obscured behind the skeletal ribs of the Nicholas of Walberswick, wrecked on the bar in the previous year after her helmsman failed to hold his course. Jack kept his eyes trained firmly upon where he believed the post to be. He was sweating, an unaccustomed condition for him. But then he was aware of a noise under the deck beneath his feet, heard what sounded like a scream of pain, and cast a horrified glance toward Nolloth, whose expression was equally fearful. Jack felt his heart beat faster, and his mouth turned dry.

  ‘Saint Mary’s cunny!’ bawled Peter Stannard, emerging onto the deck, swaying drunkenly, and rubbing the terrible lesions on the back of his hand so fiercely that blood dripped upon the deck. ‘What are you – you! – doing with your hands on the whipstaff, boy?’

  What are you singing for, boy? Why are you playing at Robin Hood, boy? Where’s your sister, boy? You dare to be happy, boy? You’re never going to be a bishop, boy, nor a lawyer, now the fucking Cardinal’s fallen and his school with it, so let’s see if you’re cut out for a seaman, boy.

  No, you don’t steer for a lee shore like that, boy. Fuck and blood, boy, I’ll strike you if I want, boy, and as for that sister of yours—

  You’re not your brother, boy. You’ll never be your brother.

  The litany of assaults, verbal and otherwise, flooded into Jack’s mind, stretching back into his very earliest memories. Oh, his father could charm, and be generous, even devout, but only rarely, those occasions being as unpredictable as the wind. Without warning, the mood would change, as though he was being possessed by Satan himself. The mysterious illness meant that, for most of the last two years, the dread side of Peter Stannard was the only one he presented to the world, making the ugly, broad-nosed countenance he bore at the best of times into a fearsome mask. Unaccountably, the one exception, the one matter in which Jack had steeled himself to expect a terrible confrontation with his father, was his determination to marry Alice, to which his father had assented with barely a word. The reason had become apparent in short order, but Alice was a creature of infinite resource and intelligence, who deflected the attentions of Peter Stannard with an easy laugh.