LYMINGTON

1480

Friday. Fish market day in Lymington. On Wednesdays and Fridays, at eight o’clock in the morning, for one hour, the fishermen set out their stalls.

A warm early April morning. The smell of fresh fish was delicious. Many of them had been landed down at the little wharf that dawn. There were eels and oysters from the estuary; hake, cod and other white fish from the sea; there were goldfish also, as they called the yellow gurnard then. Most of the women in the small borough went to the fish market: the merchants’ wives in their big-sleeved gowns with wimples covering their heads, the poorer sorts and the servants, some in back-laced bodices, all with aprons and little hoods on their heads to make them look respectable.

The bailiff had just rung a bell to close the market as, from the direction of the wharf, two figures appeared.

Even a glance, as the lean figure made his way up the street that warm April morning, and you felt you knew him. It was just the way he walked. It was so obvious he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. The loose linen leggings he favoured flapped cheerfully on his calves, leaving his bare ankles exposed. On his feet he wore only sandals secured with leather thongs. His jerkin was made of ray – striped cloth – blue and yellow, none too clean. On his head was a leather cap he had stitched together himself.

Young Jonathan Totton could not remember ever seeing Alan Seagull without this item of headgear.

If Alan Seagull’s cheerful face took a short cut from his mouth to his chest, if his sparse black beard went from his mouth down to his Adam’s apple pretty much without pausing for such an ornament as a chin, you could be sure it was because he and his forebears had reckoned they could do perfectly well without one. And there was something about his cheerful, canny grin that told you they were right. ‘We’ve cut a corner, there,’ the Seagull smile seemed to say about their chin, ‘and we could probably cut a few more too, that you don’t need to know about.’

He smelled of tar and of fish, and of the salty sea. As he often did, he was humming a tune. Young Jonathan Totton was enchanted by him and, walking proudly beside the mariner, he had just reached the point on the sloping street where the squat little town hall stood when a voice, calm but authoritative, summoned him: ‘Jonathan. Come here.’

Regretfully, he left Seagull’s side and went over to the tall-gabled timbered house outside which his father was standing.

A moment later, with the older man’s hand resting on his shoulder, he found himself inside and listening to his father’s quiet voice. ‘I should prefer, Jonathan, that you should not spend so much time with that man.’

‘Why, Father?’

‘Because there is better company to keep in Lymington.’

Now that, Jonathan thought, was going to be a problem.

Lymington, lying as it did by the mouth of the river that ran down from Brockenhurst and Boldre to the sea, was geographically at the centre of the Forest’s coastline – although, strictly speaking, on its small wedge of coastal farmland and marsh, it had not been included in the legal jurisdiction of the Conqueror’s hunting forest.

It was a thriving little harbour town nowadays. From the cluster of boathouses, stores and fishermen’s cottages down by the small quay, the broad High Street ran up quite a steep slope fronted by two-storey timber-and-plaster houses with overhanging upper floors and gabled roofs. The town hall at the crest of the hill on the left-hand side, typical of its kind at that date, was built of stone and consisted of a small dark chamber surrounded by open arches in which various sellers offered their wares; above which, reached by an outside staircase, a spacious overhanging penthouse served as a courtroom for discussing the town’s affairs. In front of the town hall stood the town cross; across the street, the Angel Inn. About two hundred yards further along the crest of the slope, a church marked the end of the borough. There were two other streets, at right angles, a church, a market cross – for Lymington had the right to hold an annual three-day fair each September. There was a stocks and a tiny prison house for malefactors, a ducking-stool and whipping post. There was a town well: all this to serve a community of, perhaps, four hundred souls.

From the High Street you could look down over the wharf and the little estuary water to the high slope of the river bank beyond. From behind the town hall, you could see the long line of the Isle of Wight on the other side of the Solent.

This was the Lymington that contained better company than Alan Seagull.

It was hard to say when Lymington had first begun. Four centuries before, when the Conqueror’s clerks had compiled his Domesday Book, they had recorded the little settlement near the coast known now as Old Lymington, with land for just one plough, four acres of meadow and inhabitants to the number of six families and a couple of slaves.

Technically, small though it was, Lymington was a manor held along with many others, by a succession of feudal lords who first began to develop the place. Its original use, as far as they were concerned, was as a harbour from which boats could cross the narrow straits to the lands they also held on the Isle of Wight. Even this choice was not inevitable. The feudal lords also held the manor of Christchurch where, soon after the death of Rufus, they had built a pleasant castle beside the new priory and the shallow harbour. At first sight that seemed the natural port. The trouble was, however, that between Christchurch and the Isle of Wight there were some awkward shoals and currents to navigate, whereas the approach to the Lymington hamlet was discovered to have a deep and easy channel.

‘The crossing’s shorter, too,’ they observed. So Lymington it was.

It was still only a hamlet; but around 1200 the manor lord had taken a further step. Between the hamlet and the river, on an area of sloping ground, he had laid out a single dirt street with thirty-four modest plots beside it. Fishermen, mariners and even traders, like the Tottons, from other local ports were encouraged to come and settle there. And to induce them still further, the development, known as New Lymington, was given a new status.

It became a borough.

What did that mean in feudal England? That it had a charter from the monarch to operate as a town? Not quite. The charter was granted by the feudal lord. Sometimes this might be the king himself; in the new cathedral cities springing up at this time – places like Salisbury – the charter would come from the bishop. In the case of Lymington, however, it was granted by the great feudal lord who held Christchurch and many other lands besides.

The deal was simple. The humble freemen of Lymington – they would be called burgesses now – were to form themselves into a corporation, which was to pay the lord a fee of thirty shillings a year. In return, they were recognized as free from any labour service to the lord, and he also threw in the concession that they could operate anywhere on his wide domains free of all tolls and customs dues. Confirmed half a century later by a second charter, the Lymington burgesses could run the borough’s daily affairs and elect their own reeve – a sort of cross between a small-time mayor and a landlord’s steward to answer for them.

Know ye all men present and to come that I, Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, have granted and by this my present charter have confirmed to my burgesses of Lymington all liberties and free customs … by land and by sea, at bridges, ferries and gates, at fairs and markets, in selling and buying … in all places and in all things …

So began the stirring words of the charter, typical of its kind, by which the lord’s small harbour graduated into a little town.

But the feudal lord was nonetheless the borough’s lord and its burgesses and mayor, as the reeve was called nowadays, though free, were still his tenants. They still owed him the rents on the plots of land – the burgages – and tenements they occupied. If they made rules, he had the right to approve them. In day-to-day matters of law and order they and their borough were subject to his manor court. And even though, as time went on, the king’s courts took over more and more of local justice, the feudal manor of Old Lymington, based on the rural land holding outside the borough, still continued as legal custodian of the place.

For about a century the great events of English history barely touched the place. Around 1300, when King Edward I asked why this borough had failed to supply a vessel for his campaign against the Scots, his commissioners reported back: ‘It’s a poor little harbour – only a village, really’ and they were excused. But the next century saw a dramatic change.

When the terrible Black Death swept across Europe in the years following 1346 it altered the face of England for ever. A third of the population died. Farms, whole villages, were left empty; labour was so scarce that serfs and poor peasants could sell their labour and acquire their own free land. In the great deer forests, with their small populations of woodsmen and huntsmen, there was little to change; but in the eastern half of the New Forest, on the Beaulieu estate, a muted form of the great agricultural revolution did occur. There were no longer enough lay brothers to run the granges. The abbey continued its life of prayer, therefore; its monks actually lived rather well. But instead of running the granges on their huge estates, they mostly let them out, sometimes subdivided, to tenant farmers. Young Jonathan was taken out to one of the granges from time to time to visit his mother’s family, who had lived there very comfortably for three generations. When his father pointed eastwards along the coast, he did not say to Jonathan: ‘Those are Cistercian lands’ but ‘that’s where your mother’s farm lies’. The Beaulieu monks were no longer a special case. They were just another feudal landlord, now.

And if the abbey retreated, the little port advanced. Soon after the great Death, when the third King Edward and his glamorous son the Black Prince were conducting their brilliant campaigns – in the so-called Hundred Years War – against the French, the Lymington men were already able to supply several vessels and mariners. Better yet, this proved to be one of the few wars that were actually profitable for England. Plunder and ransom money flowed in. The English took land and valuable ports from their French cousins. Modest though it was, the port of Lymington found itself trading wines, spices, all sorts of minor luxuries from the rich and sunlit territories of the French. Its merchants grew in confidence. By the time, in 1415, that heroic King Henry V won the final English triumph over France at Agincourt they felt very pleased with themselves indeed.

And if, in recent times, things had not been going so well, their attitude was: ‘There’s still money to be made.’

 

There were times when Henry Totton worried about his son. ‘I’m not sure he really takes in what I say to him,’ he once complained to his friend.

‘All ten-year-olds are the same,’ the other assured him. But this was not quite good enough for Totton and, as he looked at his son now, he felt an uncertainty and disappointment he tried not to show.

Henry Totton was of rather less than medium height and he had an unassuming manner; but his dress informed you at once that he meant you to take him seriously. When he was a young man, his father had given him clothes suitable for his station; and this was important. The old Sumptuary Laws had long ago set out what each class in the richly varied medieval world might wear. Nor were these laws an imposition. If the aldermen of London wore crimson cloaks and the lord mayor his chain, the whole community felt honoured. The master from Oxford University had earned his solemn gown; his pupils as yet had not. There was honour in order. The Lymington merchant did not dress as a nobleman and would have been mocked if he had; but he did not dress like the peasant or the humble mariner either. Henry Totton wore a long houppelande – a sleeved coat, buttoned from neck to ankle. He wore it loose, without a belt and, although plain, the material was the best brown burnet cloth. He had another, made of velvet, with a silken belt for special occasions. He was clean-shaven and his quiet grey eyes did not quite conceal the fact that, within the precise limits belonging to his station in life, he was ambitious for his family. There had been Totton merchants in Southampton and Christchurch for centuries; he did not intend the Lymington branch to lag behind their many cousins.

He tried not to worry about Jonathan. It wasn’t fair to the boy. And God knows he loved him. Since the death of his wife the previous year, young Jonathan was all he had.

As for Jonathan, looking at his father, he knew he disappointed him even if he did not quite know why. Some days he tried so hard to please him, but on others he forgot. If only his father would understand about the Seagulls.

It was the year his mother died that he had taken to wandering down to the quay alone. At the bottom end of the High Street, where the old burgage plots came to an end, there was a steep slope down to the water. It was a sharp drop in every sense. The old borough stopped at the top of it; so, as far as people like the Tottons were concerned, did respectability. Down that steep social slope clustered the untidy cottages of the fishermen. ‘And the other flotsam and jetsam,’ as his father put it, that drifted in from the sea or the Forest.

But to Jonathan it was a little heaven: the clinker boats with their heavy sails, the upturned boats on the quay, the seagull cries, the smell of tar and salt and drying seaweed, the piles of fish traps and nets – he loved to wander among all these. The Seagulls’ cottage – if you could call it that – lay at the seaward end. For it was not so much a cottage as a collection of articles, each more fascinating than the last, which had gathered themselves together into a cheerful heap. It must have happened by magic – perhaps the sea one stormy night had deposited them there – for it was impossible to imagine Alan Seagull going to such trouble to build anything that was not meant to float.

Perhaps, though, the Seagulls’ cottage would have floated. Along one wall the remains of a large rowing boat, hung lengthwise, its sides turned outwards, formed a sort of arbour where Seagull’s wife would often sit, nursing one of her younger children. The roof, which tracked this way and that, was made from all manner of planks, spars, areas of sailcloth, exhibiting here and there ridges and bumps that might be an oar, the keel of a boat, or an old chest. Smoke issued at one place from what looked like a lobster pot. Both roof and the outer plank walls were mostly black with tar. Here and there a tatty shutter suggested the existence of windows. By the doorway stood two large painted scallop shells. On the seaward side of the cottage a boat stood and fishing nets hung out to dry, with numerous floats. Beyond that lay a large area of reed beds, which sometimes smelled rank. In brief, to a boy it was a place of magical wonder.

Nor was the owner of this maritime hovel a pauper. Far from it: Alan Seagull owned his own vessel – a singlemasted, clinker-built craft, bigger than a fishing boat and with enough hold to carry small cargoes, not only along the coastal waters but even across to France. And although nothing was ever polished or showy, every part of that ship was in perfect working order. To the ship’s crew he was the master. Indeed, it was widely believed that Alan Seagull had a bit of money hidden away somewhere. Not like Totton, of course. But if ever he wanted something, it was noticed that he could always pay for it with cash. His family ate well.

Young Jonathan had often hung around the Seagull place, observing the seven or eight children who, like fish in an underwater grotto, would continually dart in and out of it. Watching them with their mother, he sensed a family warmth and happiness that had been missing from his own life. He was walking alone near their cottage one day, when one of them, a boy of about his age, had slipped after him and asked: ‘Do you want to play?’

Willie Seagull – he was such a funny little boy. He was so skinny you might have thought he was weak; but he was just wiry, and he was ready for anything. Jonathan, like the other sons of the better-off merchants, had to attend a small school run by a schoolmaster whom Burrard and Totton had hired. But on days when he was free, he and Willie would play together and every day had been an adventure. Sometimes they would play in the woods or go up the Forest streams to fish. Willie had taught him to tickle trout. Or they would go down to the mud-flats by the sea, or along the coast to where there was a beach.

‘Can you swim?’ Willie asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Jonathan replied and soon discovered his new friend could swim like a fish.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll teach you,’ Willie promised.

On level ground Jonathan could run faster than Willie; but if he tried to catch the smaller boy, Willie could dodge him every time. Willie also brought him into games with the other fishermen’s children down by the quay, which made him very proud.

And when, encountering Alan Seagull by the waterfront one afternoon, Willie had said to that magical personage, ‘This is Jonathan; he’s my friend,’ young Jonathan Totton had known true happiness. ‘Willie Seagull says I’m his friend,’ he had told his father proudly that evening. But Henry Totton had said nothing.

Sometimes Willie was taken by his father on his ship and would be gone for a day or two. How Jonathan envied him then. He had not even dared to ask if he could go too; but he was sure the answer would be no.

‘Come, Jonathan,’ the merchant now said, ‘there is something I want to show you.’

The room in which they were standing was not large. At the front, it gave on to the street. In the middle stood a heavy table and around the walls were several oak cupboards and chests, the latter with impressive locks. There was also a large hourglass, of which the merchant was very proud and by which he could tell the precise time. This was the counting house where Henry Totton conducted his business. On the table, Jonathan could see, his father had arranged a number of items and, guessing at once that these were intended for his instruction, he gave an inward sigh. He hated these sessions with his father. He knew they were meant for his own good; but that was just the trouble.

To Henry Totton the world was simple: all things of interest were shapes and numbers. If he saw a shape he understood it. He would make shapes for Jonathan out of parchment or paper. ‘See,’ he would show him, ‘if you turn it this way, it looks different. Or spin it and you produce this figure.’ He would rotate triangles into cones, build squares into cubes. ‘Fold it,’ he would say of a square, ‘and you have a triangle, or a rectangle, or a little tent.’ He would invent games for his son with numbers, too, assuming these would delight him. And all poor Jonathan could do, to whom such things seemed dull, was yearn for the long grass in the fields, or the sound of the birds in the woods, or the salty smells down by the wharf.

He would try so hard to be good at these things, to please his father. And just because he was so anxious, his mind would seize up and nothing would make sense and, red-faced, he would say foolish things and see his father try to hide his despair.

Today’s lesson, he could see at once, was meant to be straightforward and practical. Spread out on the table were a series of coins.

‘Can you tell me’, Totton asked quietly, ‘what they are?’

The first was a penny. That was easy. Then a half-groat: twopence; and a groat: four pence. Standard English coinage. There was a shilling: twelve pence; a ryal, worth more than ten shillings. But the next – a splendid gold coin with the figure of the Archangel Michael killing a dragon on it – Jonathan had not seen before.

‘That’s an angel,’ Totton said. ‘Valuable and rare. But now’ – he produced another coin – ‘what’s this?’

Jonathan had no idea. It was a French crown. Then came a ducat and a double ducat. ‘That’s the best coin of all, for sea trade,’ Totton explained. ‘Spanish, Italians, Flemings – they’ll all take a ducat.’ He smiled. ‘Now let me explain the relative value of each. For you will have to learn to use them all.’

The use of European currency was not only for the merchant who traded overseas. Foreign coins were found at inland market towns too. The reason, very simply, was that they were often better value.

The fifteenth century had not been a happy period for the English. Their triumph over the French at Agincourt had not lasted long before that extraordinary figure Joan of Arc, with her mystical visions, had inspired the French to kick the English out again. By the middle of the century when the long drawn-out conflict of the Hundred Years War finally ended, the conflict had become costly and trade had suffered. Then had followed the generation of dispute between the two branches of the royal house, York and Lancaster. If these so-called Wars of the Roses were a series of feudal battles rather than a civil war, they did nothing to promote law and order in the countryside. With civil disorder and land rents falling, it was not surprising if the royal mints, as they have always done when the treasury is empty, clipped the coinage. And although some efforts had been made in recent years to improve its value, Henry Totton was quite right in saying that good English coinage was hard to find. Trade therefore, whenever possible, was carried on in the strongest currency, which was usually foreign.

Henry Totton quietly explained all this to his son. ‘Those ducats, Jonathan,’ he concluded, ‘are what we really need. Do you understand?’ And Jonathan nodded his head, even though he was not truly sure whether he did or not.

‘Good,’ the merchant said and gave the boy an encouraging smile. Perhaps, he thought, since Jonathan was in a receptive mood, he would touch upon the question of ports.

Few subjects were dearer to his heart. For a start, there was the whole question of the great Staple port of Calais and its huge financial dealings. And then, of course, there was the vexed question of Southampton. Perhaps, he considered, he would explain Calais first, today.

‘Father?’

‘Yes, Jonathan?’

‘I was thinking. If I stay away from Alan Seagull, I can still play with Willie, can’t I?’

Henry Totton stared at him. For a moment he scarcely knew what he could say. Then he shrugged in disgust. He couldn’t help it.

‘I’m sorry, Father.’ The boy looked crestfallen. ‘Shall we go on?’

‘No. I think not.’ Totton looked down at the coins he had spread on the table, then out of the window at the street. ‘Play with whom you like, Jonathan,’ he said quietly, and waved him away.

‘You should see it, Dad!’ Willie Seagull’s face was shining as he helped his father, who was mending a fishing net.

It had been the very next morning after Totton had had his conversation with his son that Jonathan had taken Willie Seagull into his house for the first time.

‘Was Henry Totton there?’ the mariner broke off his humming to enquire.

‘No. Just Jonathan and me. And the servants, Dad. They have a cook and a scullion, and a stable boy and two other women …’

‘Totton’s got money, son.’

‘And I never knew, Dad – those houses, they don’t look so wide at the front, but they go back so far. Behind the counting house, there’s this great big hall, two floors high, with a gallery down the side. Then there’s more rooms at the back.’

‘I know, son.’ Totton’s was a very typical merchant’s house, but young Willie had never been in one before.

‘There’s this huge cellar. Whole length of the house. He’s got all sorts of stuff down there. Barrels of wine, bales of cloth. He’s got sacks of wool, too. There’s boatloads of it. And then’, Willie went on eagerly, ‘there’s this attic under the roof, big as the cellar. He’s got sacks of flour and malt, and God knows what up there.’

‘He would have, Willie.’

‘And outside, Dad. I never realized how long those gardens are. They go from the street all the way to the lane at the back of the town.’

The layout of the Lymington burgage plots followed a pattern very typical in English medieval towns. The street frontage was sixteen and a half feet wide – the measure known as the rod, pole or perch. This was chosen because it was the standard width of the basic ploughing strip of the English common field. A strip two hundred and twenty yards long was called a furlong and four furlongs made an acre. The burgage plots were long and thin, therefore, just like a ploughed field. Henry Totton had two plots together, the second forming a yard with a rented workshop and his own stables. Behind this, his double garden, thirty-three feet wide, stretched back almost half a furlong.

Alan Seagull nodded. He wondered if Willie hankered after this sort of thing himself but, as far as he could see, his son was quite happy just to observe the merchant’s way of life. All the same, there were two warnings he decided it was time to give his son. ‘You know, Willie,’ he said quietly, ‘you mustn’t think that Jonathan will always be your friend.’

‘Why, Dad? He’s all right.’

‘I know. But one day things will change. It’ll just happen.’

‘I should mind that.’

‘Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. And there’s something else.’ Alan Seagull looked at his son carefully now.

‘Yes, Dad?’

‘There’s things you mustn’t tell him, even if he is your friend.’

‘You mean …?’

‘About our business, son. You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘You keep your mouth shut, don’t you?’

‘’Course I do.’

‘You mustn’t ever talk about that. Not to any Totton. You understand?’

‘I know,’ Willie said. ‘I won’t.’

The bet was made that night. It was Geoffrey Burrard who made it, in the Angel Inn.

But Henry Totton took it. He calculated and then he took it. Half of Lymington was witness.

The Angel Inn was a friendly establishment at the top of the High Street; all the classes of Lymington folk used the place, so it was no surprise that Burrard and Totton should have chanced to meet there that evening. The family of both men belonged to the class known as yeomen: free farmers owning their own land, or prosperous local merchants. Both were important figures in the little town – men of worship, as the saying was. Both lived in gabled houses with overhanging upper floors; each owned shares in two or three ships and exported wool through the great Staple entrepôt at Calais. If the Burrards had been in Lymington longer than the Tottons, the Tottons were no less devoted to the interests of the borough. In particular, the two men were united by a common cause.

The big port of Southampton had been a significant town when Lymington was only a hamlet. Centuries before, Southampton had been granted jurisdiction over all the smaller harbours along that part of the southern coast, and the rights to collect any royal customs and taxes on cargoes shipped in and out. The mayor of Southampton was even called ‘Admiral’ in royal documents. But by the time of the Hundred Years War, when Lymington was supplying the king with vessels of its own, this overlordship of the bigger port seemed an offence to Lymington’s pride. ‘We’ll collect the customs for ourselves,’ the Lymington burgesses declared. ‘We’ve got our own borough to support.’ Indeed, there had been sporadic disputes and court cases, now, for over a hundred and sixty years.

The fact that several of the burgesses of Southampton were his kinsmen in no way diluted Totton’s commitment to this cause. After all, his own interests lay in Lymington. With his precise mind he went into the whole matter thoroughly and advised his fellow burgesses: ‘The issue of royal customs is still in Southampton’s favour, but if we limit our claims to keelage and wharfage tolls, I’m sure we can win.’ He was right.

‘Where would we be without you, Henry?’ Burrard would say approvingly.

He was a big, handsome, florid-faced man, some years older than Totton. Exuberant, where Totton was quiet, impetuous where Totton was careful, the two friends had one other rather surprising passion in common.

Burrard and Totton loved to bet. They frequently bet against each other. Burrard would bet on a hunch and was quite successful. Henry Totton bet on probabilities.

In a way, for Totton, everything was a wager. You calculated the odds. It was what he did with every business transaction; even the great tides of history, it seemed to him, were just a series of bets that had gone one way or the other. Look at the history of Lymington. Back in the days of Rufus the lords of the manor were a mighty Norman family; but when Rufus had been killed in the New Forest and his young brother Henry had taken the throne, they had foolishly supported Henry’s other brother, Robert of Normandy. The result? Henry took Lymington and most of their other estates, and granted them to a different family. Since then, for three and a half centuries, the lordship had passed down by family descent until the Wars of the Roses, when they had supported the Lancastrian side. Well enough; until 1461 when the Lancastrians had lost a great battle and the new Yorkist king had beheaded the lord of the manor. So another family held Lymington now.

Even his own modest family had taken part in that dangerous game of fortune. Totton had secretly been rather proud when his favourite uncle had become a follower of that most aristocratic adventurer of all, the Earl of Warwick who, because of his power to change the fortune of whichever side he joined, was known as the Kingmaker. ‘I’m a yeoman now,’ he had told Henry before setting off, ‘but I’ll come back a gentleman.’ Serving the mighty Kingmaker a man might indeed advance to a fortune. Nine years ago, however, just after Easter, the Forest had echoed with the news: ‘There’s been another battle. The Kingmaker’s slain. His widow’s come to Beaulieu seeking sanctuary.’ Henry’s favourite uncle had been killed, too, and Henry had been sorry. But he did not feel it as a tragedy, nor even as cruel fate. His uncle had made a bet and lost. That was all.

It was a cast of mind that kept him calm and even-tempered in adversity: a strength, on the whole though his wife had sometimes thought it made him cold.

So when Burrard had proposed the wager, he had calculated carefully.

‘I bet you, Henry,’ his friend had exclaimed, ‘that the next time you have a vessel going across, fully laden, to the Isle of Wight, I can run a laden boat against you and get back first.’

‘At least one of your ships is faster than anything I’ve got,’ Totton had stated.

‘I won’t run one of my own.’

‘Whose, then?’

Burrard considered a moment, then grinned. ‘I’ll run Seagull against you.’ He watched Totton, eyes gleaming.

‘Seagull?’ Totton frowned. He thought of his son and the mariner. He preferred to keep some distance between them. ‘I don’t want to have wagers with Seagull, Geoffrey.’

‘You aren’t. You know Seagull never bets anyway.’ Strangely enough, this was true. The sailor might have a devil-may-care attitude in most of his dealings with the world, but for some reason known only to himself he would never bet. ‘The wager’s with me, Henry. Just you and me.’ Burrard beamed. ‘Come on, Henry,’ he boomed affectionately.

Totton considered. Why was Burrard betting on Seagull? Did he know the relative speeds of the boats? Unlikely. Almost certainly he just had a hunch that Seagull was a cunning rascal who would somehow pull it off. He, on the other hand, had observed Seagull’s boat many times and had also taken careful note of the speed of a neat little vessel at Southampton in which he had recently acquired a quarter share. The Southampton vessel was definitely a little faster.

‘The bet is against Seagull’s vessel,’ he stated. ‘You have to persuade Seagull to make the crossing for you or the bet’s off.’

‘Agreed,’ his friend confirmed.

Totton nodded slowly. He was just weighing up the factors when young Jonathan appeared in the doorway. It might not be such a bad thing, he thought, for his son to see his hero the mariner lose a race. ‘Very well. Five pounds,’ he said.

‘Oh-ho! Henry!’ Burrard whooped, causing other faces in the place to turn in their direction. ‘That’s a big one.’ Five pounds was a large wager indeed.

‘Too rich for you?’ Totton asked.

‘No. No. I didn’t say that.’ Even Burrard’s cheerful face was looking a bit taken aback, though.

‘If you’d prefer not …’

‘Done. Five pounds!’ Burrard cried. ‘But you can buy me a drink, Henry, by God, for that.’

As young Jonathan advanced, it was obvious to the boy from all the faces round that, whatever it was, his father had just done something that had impressed the men of Lymington.

It was perhaps to hide a trace of nervousness that Geoffrey Burrard, catching sight of young Jonathan, greeted him with unusual bluster. ‘Ho! Sirrah!’ he cried, ‘What adventures have you been having?’

‘None, Sir.’ Jonathan was not quite sure how to respond, but he knew that Burrard was a man to treat with respect.

‘Why, I supposed you’d been out slaying dragons.’ Burrard smiled at Jonathan and, seeing the boy look doubtful, added: ‘When I was your age, you know, there was a dragon in the Forest.’

‘Indeed,’ Totton nodded. ‘The Bisterne dragon, no less.’

Jonathan looked at them both. He knew the story of the Bisterne dragon. All the Forest children did. But because it concerned a knight and such an antique beast, he had just assumed it was an ancient tale like that of King Arthur. ‘I thought that was in olden times,’ he said.

‘Actually not.’ Totton shook his head. ‘It’s quite true,’ he explained seriously. ‘There really was a dragon – or so it was called – when I was young. And the knight at Bisterne killed it.’

Looking at his face, Jonathan could see that his father was telling the truth. He never teased him anyway. ‘Oh,’ Jonathan said, ‘I didn’t know.’

‘What’s more,’ Burrard continued in a serious tone and with a wink to the company that the boy did not see, ‘there was another dragon seen over at Bisterne the other day. Probably descended from the first one, I should think. They’re going to hunt it, I believe, so you’d better be quick if you want so see it.’

‘Really?’ Jonathan stared at him. ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘Yes. But they killed the last one, didn’t they? Quite a sight, I should think, when it’s flying.’

Henry Totton smiled and shook his head. ‘You’d better get home,’ he said kindly and kissed his son. So Jonathan obediently left.

By the time Henry Totton came home himself, he’d forgotten about the dragon.

 

They set out soon after dawn. Willie would have been ready to go the day before, as soon as he heard about it, but as Jonathan pointed out, they needed a full day, starting at dawn. For it was a twelve-mile walk each way to Bisterne, where the dragon was.

‘I’ll be with Willie until dusk,’ he had said to the cook as he slipped out quickly, before anyone could ask him where he was going.

The journey, although quite long, was a very easy one. The manor of Bisterne lay in the southern portion of the Avon valley below Ringwood near the place called Tyrrell’s Ford. So they only had to cross the western half of the Forest, move along its southern edge and then descend into the valley beyond. Leaving early, even at a walk, they could be there by mid-morning, with no need to return until late afternoon.

Willie was waiting for him at the top of the street. Anxious to get well away before anyone stopped them, they went quickly along the lane that led through the fields and meadows of Old Lymington, crossed a stream by a small mill and within half an hour were passing the manor of Arnewood, that lay between the villages of Hordle and Sway.

It was a clear, bright morning, promising a warm day. The countryside west of Lymington was one of intimate little fields with hedgerows and small oaks in rolling dips and dells. The pale-green leaves were starting to break out on the bare branches; white blossom from the hedges was being scattered on the lane by the light breeze. They passed a ploughed field whose furrows were receiving a visit from a flapping mass of seagulls.

To anyone familiar with the inhabitants of Lymington, the two boys passing Arnewood manor would have been easy to identify, since each was a perfect miniature of his father: the serious face of the merchant on the one boy, the cheerful chinlessness of the mariner on the other, were almost comical. Within an hour, however, they were leaving the world of Lymington well behind. They came to a wood through which there was a narrow track. And then, passing through a belt of stunted ash and birch, they emerged on to the wide open world of the Forest heath.

‘Do you think’, Willie asked nervously, ‘the dragon comes here?’

‘No,’ said Jonathan. ‘He doesn’t come over this way.’ He had never seen his friend hesitant before. He felt rather proud of himself.

It was a five-mile walk along the southern edge of the heath, but the going was easy on the close-cropped, peaty forest turf. The morning sun was behind them, catching the sparkling sheen of the dew on the grass. The great sweep of the heath was sprinkled with the sharp yellow stare of the gorse brakes. Here and there, on the little hillocks away on their right, small round clumps of holly trees could be seen. Holly holms the English had anciently called them. But more recently they had acquired another name. For since the deer and ponies ate their overhanging branches as far up as they could – to the browse line as it was termed – the trees had each acquired a mushroom shape and, taken together, a clump of holly trees on a hillock appeared to have a sort of hanging brim. Therefore the Forest folk nowadays referred to them as holly hats.

They walked for an hour and a half on the springy turf. They had walked nearly five miles along the edge of the heath when they came to the big rise known as Shirley Common. And then, as they reached the crest, they stopped.

The Avon valley lay below.

It was a richer world. First a small field, where bracken had been cut and heaped and some goats were now browsing; then groves of oak and beech and further fields swept gracefully down the slopes, until they reached the parkland and lush meadows along the wide banks of the Avon, of whose silver waters, here and there through the trees, they caught a tantalizing glimpse. Then, beyond the valley, the low ridges of Dorset stretched into a bluish haze. You could see at once that this was a landscape fit for knights and ladies, and courtly love. And dragons.

To the north, however, two miles away across a broad sweep of brown and open heath, the wooded ridge rose up, behind which lay the dark forest village of Burley.

‘I think’, said Jonathan, ‘we might see the dragon now.’ He looked at Willie. ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Where does the dragon live?’ asked Willie.

‘There.’ Jonathan pointed to the long Burley ridge with its northern promontory of Castle Hill. The ridge at this time was known as Burley Beacon.

‘Oh.’ Willie looked at the place. ‘It’s quite close,’ he said.

It had probably been a solitary wild boar. There were not many left in England, now. They had all been hunted away. There were pigs that ran in the Forest, of course, in the mast season every autumn; and occasionally one of these might turn wild and be mistaken for a boar. But the real wild boar, with its grizzled hair, powerful shoulders and flashing tusks, was a terrible creature. Even the bravest Norman or Plantagenet noble, with his hounds and his huntsmen, might know fear when this huge ball of fury charged out of his cover towards him. It was the most exciting chase, though. All over Europe the boar hunt was the noblest aristocratic sport, after the joust. The boar’s head was the centrepiece of any great feast.

But the island kingdom of England, though graced with many forests, lacked the vast empty tracts of France or the German lands. If a wild boar lived, his presence would be known and noblemen would hunt him. Four centuries after the Norman Conqueror came, few English boars remained in the south. Now and then, however, one would appear. For some reason it might not be caught. And over the years, perhaps living in isolation, it could grow to a huge size.

It seems likely that this is what occurred in the Avon valley some time around 1460.

The manor of Bisterne lay in a beautiful setting on the broad valley floor, on the forest side of the Avon a little way north of Tyrrell’s Ford. Bede’s Thorn it had been called in Saxon times, which had evolved in stages to Bisterne. Kept by its Saxon owner after the Conquest, it had passed by inheritance to the noble family of Berkeley from the western county of Gloucestershire; and it was Sir Maurice Berkeley, married to the niece of no less a personage than mighty Warwick the Kingmaker, who, just before the start of the Wars of the Roses, had often delighted to stay at his Bisterne manor and hunt in the Avon valley with his hounds.

The boar, it seems, had a lair somewhere up on Burley Beacon, overlooking the valley, and had been known to raid the farms there. Some time around Martinmass, when most of the livestock were slaughtered, it had come down to Bisterne, following the streams that led down from Castle Hill, until, near the manor house, it had come to Bunny Brook. By the manor farm it had found milk pails cooling in the stream, taken the milk, and then killed one of the farm’s remaining cows.

Its appearance at this time would have been terrifying indeed. It was not only the black beast’s blazing eyes, frothing mouth and tusks. If thwarted, the wild boar has a hideous scream; its breath in the cold November air would have steamed; boars also move across the ground with the strangest silence. As it ran across the Bisterne fields by the pale light of dawn it would have seemed an unearthly creature.

And no wonder, one cold November night, the brave Sir Maurice Berkeley went out to fight the monster. The encounter took place in the valley and it was bloody. The knight’s two favourite hounds died in the mêlée and Sir Maurice, having killed the beast himself, received wounds that became infected. By Christmas he was dead.

Some legends are invented later, from half-forgotten events; others spring to life at once. Within a year, the whole county knew of Sir Maurice Berkeley’s battle with the Bisterne dragon. They knew the dragon flew over the fields from Burley Beacon. They knew the knight had killed him single-handed and died of the dragon’s poison. And if the wider world was soon distracted by the knightly dramas of the Wars of the Roses, in the New Forest and the Avon valley, as the years passed, men remembered: ‘We had a dragon not so long ago.’

It was another two miles from the crest of Shirley Common to Bisterne manor, and the boys took their time descending. Sometimes they could see the spur of Burley Beacon, at others it was hidden; but they kept an eye out in that direction in case the dragon should take wing from its hill and come flying towards them.

‘What’ll we do if we see it coming?’ asked Willie.

‘Hide,’ said Jonathan.

On the lower part of the slope the track led through woodland. The slanting morning sunshine made a pale-green light in the undergrowth. Mosses gathered by the bases of the trees, ivy on the trunks. They heard a pigeon cooing. The path veered left out of the trees and led down the side of the wood. A grey hen scuttled across in front of them from the long grass. And they had only descended another hundred yards when suddenly on their right there was a flapping sound and, in a flash of dark metallic blue, a blackcock with his lyre tail, disturbed by something, burst over their heads out of the trees.

‘That made you jump, Willie,’ said Jonathan.

‘So did you.’

Soon after this they came down on to the open valley floor and saw at once that they had entered a world where a dragon might appear at any time.

The world of Bisterne was very flat. Its large fields stretched over two miles westwards to the Avon’s silver waters which, as they often did in spring, had spread out over the lush water-meadows in a magical, liquid sheen. The manor house – it was more of a hunting lodge for the Berkeley knights, really – was a single timber-and-plaster hall with a stable yard attached, standing by itself in the middle of open parkland where cattle grazed and rabbits in an enclosed warren bobbed on the close-cropped grass. Away in the distance were the slopes behind which Burley Beacon lay; and dotting the landscape from hedgerow and field, single oaks or elms were holding out their bare arms as though expecting the winged monster to fly down from the Beacon and perch upon them.

It was quiet. Occasionally, they heard the lowing of cattle; once, the sawing sound of swans’ wings, beating over the distant water. And now and then a hoarse cawing and sudden flapping would come from the crows in the trees. But most of the time Bisterne lay in silence, as though all nature were awaiting a visitation.

Not many folk were about in the fields. A few hundred yards south of the manor hall lay a small thatched farmhouse with a slip of ash trees by the brook nearby. Coming down the cattle drove beside it they met a cowherd who, when they asked him politely where the dragon had been slain, smiled and pointed to a field behind the farm. ‘That’s Dragon’s Field,’ he told them. ‘By Bunny Brook.’

They wandered about for an hour or more along the paths and down to the river. They could see by the sun that it must be noon when Willie announced that he was hungry.

Just down river, at the old cattle crossing of Tyrrell’s Ford, there were some cottages and an old forge. Saying they had come from nearby Ringwood, so as not to draw any suspicion on to themselves, Jonathan begged some bread and cheese, which a woman in one of the cottages gave them readily enough. He asked her also about the dragon.

‘Twenty years or more since he was killed,’ she said.

‘Yes. But what about the new one?’

‘I haven’t seen that myself,’ she said, with a smile.

‘Perhaps it isn’t there,’ said Willie to Jonathan, as they ate their bread and cheese by the river.

‘She only said she hadn’t seen it,’ Jonathan replied.

After they had eaten they slept for a while in the warm sun.

It was past mid-afternoon when they went back up the drove by the farmhouse. If they felt daunted by the long walk home, they tried not to show it. They knew they needed to step out now to be safely back at dusk.

They were halfway up the drove when they encountered the cows, about half a dozen of them, being driven to the farmhouse by a boy. He was older than they were, perhaps twelve, and eyed them curiously. ‘Where d’you come from?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Want a fight?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I got to drive these cows anyway. What’re you doing here?’

‘Came to see the dragon.’

‘Dragon’s Field’s over there.’

‘We know. They told us there was another dragon now, but there isn’t.’

The boy looked at them thoughtfully. His eyes narrowed. ‘Yes there is. That’s why I have to get these cows in.’ He paused and nodded. ‘Comes over every evening, just like the last one did. From Burley Beacon.’

‘Really?’ Jonathan searched his face. ‘You’re making it up. Nobody’d stay here.’

‘No, it’s true. Honest. Sometimes he don’t do much. But he’s killed dogs and calves. You can see him flying at sunset. Breathes fire, too. Horrible-looking thing, really.’

‘Where does he go?’

‘Always the same place. Down into Dragon’s Field. So we stay away from there, that’s all.’

He turned away then, tapping the nearest cow with his stick, while the two boys went on. They didn’t speak for a moment or two.

‘I think he was lying,’ said Willie.

‘Maybe.’

Now they were returning, it did not seem to take long to get back up to the crest of Shirley Common. Although the sun was not yet sinking in the afternoon sky, there was just a hint of chill in the April breeze and a tinge of orange in the golden haze to the west. Once again the whole valley from the Avon river up to the ridge of Burley Beacon was stretched out before them in a panorama.

‘We’d get a good view from here,’ said Jonathan.

‘We’ll get back late,’ said Willie.

‘Depends when it comes. It might come now.’

Willie didn’t reply.

Jonathan knew his companion hadn’t been as keen to go as he was. Willie had done it for friendship’s sake. Not that he was afraid – or no more afraid than he was, anyway. In most of their games, especially playing by the river or anything to do with water, it was Willie with his funny chinless face who was the dare-devil and Jonathan who was cautious. And he knew that he wouldn’t have dared to come there alone. But as the long day wore on Jonathan had also discovered something else in himself that he hadn’t known about before: a quiet, driving determination rather different from his friend’s free nature.

‘If we get back after curfew’, Willie said, ‘we’ll get whipped.’

Even in the villages, the curfew – the couvre-feu when the fires were damped down for the night and all men were supposed to be indoors – was generally observed. After all, there was nothing much you could do in the deep darkness of the countryside anyway, unless it was some poaching or an illicit affair. In Lymington, men like Totton might cross to their houses from the Angel after dark, but generally the streets were empty. The curfew bell sounding from the church signalled a long silence.

Jonathan had never been whipped before. Most boys were, from time to time, by parents or schoolmasters but, perhaps because of his nature and the muted atmosphere that his mother’s illness had brought to the house, he had escaped this normal punishment. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘But you can go back if you want, Willie.’

‘And leave you alone?’

‘It’s all right. You go on. You’ve got time.’

Willie sighed. ‘No. I’ll stay.’

Jonathan gave his friend a smile and realized for the first time that he himself was capable of being ruthless.

‘What if there isn’t a dragon any more, Jonathan?’

‘Then we won’t see it.’

But what if there was? They waited an hour. The sun was sinking across the valley now. A faint mist rose from the distant water-meadows. The heath that swept down to the north of them a burnished, orange tint. But the line of Burley Beacon, catching the sun’s full rays, was gleaming gold as though it might ignite.

‘Watch the Beacon, Willie,’ Jonathan said and ran off down the slope.

It was only two hundred yards to the edge of the field. For some reason the bracken had been cut there and raked into heaps by the hedgerow, yet never carted away. It was easy enough to build a compact little shelter with a good, thick bed of bracken to lie on. If bracken made bedding for animals, he reasoned, it would for humans too. When he was done he went back to Willie.

‘We won’t get home tonight. It’s too late.’

‘I guessed that.’

‘I’ve made us a shelter.’

‘All right.’

‘Did you see anything?’

‘No.’

Sunset came and Burley Beacon turned fiery red, and it was easy to imagine a dragon, like a phoenix, arising from its embers into the evening sky. Then the sun sank and the western sky turned crimson, and the fire on Burley Beacon went out. Above, the first stars appeared.

‘I think it may come now,’ said Jonathan. He had quite a clear picture of what it would be like: about the size of a cow, he supposed, with a large wingspan. It would be green and scaly. The wings would sound like a huge swan when they beat and there would be a hissing noise from the fire coming out of its mouth. That was the main thing you’d see in the dark. He estimated it would fly across about a mile in front of them on its way down to Bisterne.

The sun was gone. The stars were brightening in the sapphire sky. The line of Burley Beacon looked dark and dangerous as the boys both waited, their eyes fixed upon it.

When, at dusk, there was still no sign of Jonathan, Henry Totton had reluctantly walked down to the quay and approached the disreputable dwelling of Alan Seagull. Had he seen his son? No, the mariner replied, a little perplexed; both boys had been missing since dawn and he had no idea where they were.

At first Totton had been afraid they might have gone out in a boat, but Seagull was soon able to discover that no boat was missing. Could they have fallen into the river somewhere?

‘My boy’s a strong swimmer,’ Seagull said. ‘What about yours?’

And Totton realized to his shame that he did not know.

Then word came that someone had seen them leave the top end of the town in the early morning. Could they have encountered danger in the Forest? It seemed unlikely. There had been no wolves reported for years. It was early for snakes.

‘I suppose’, said Alan Seagull glumly, ‘they could have fallen in a mill-race.’

By curfew time the mayor and bailiff had been consulted, and two search parties had been equipped with torches. One had gone to the mills of Old Lymington; the other through the woods above the town. They were prepared to search, if necessary, all night.

The shelter was quite effective. By packing the bracken close, they kept most of the moisture out. The night was not chilly, fortunately, and by lying together they kept warm. They had discovered a bramble and some stinging nettles in the dark, but apart from that, and the fact that they were extremely hungry, their sufferings were not great.

There was no moon that night. The stars, peeping from behind shrouds of cloud, were very bright. They had waited for a long time for the dragon, but by the time their eyes were drooping they had decided that, if it was residing at Burley, it was not coming over tonight.

‘You’ll wake me if you see it,’ Jonathan made Willie promise.

‘And you wake me.’

But once they were settled down, perhaps because of the dew forming on their faces, or through fear of animals disturbing them, neither boy slept for a while. And it was as they were gazing up at the night sky that Willie raised a subject they had discussed the day before. ‘You really think your dad’s boat from Southampton will beat my dad’s?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jonathan truthfully. The huge bet had been the talk of Lymington the previous day. After a short pause, however, thinking he owed it to his friend and his family to give them the best information he could, he added: ‘I think if my father’s bet so much on the race he must be sure he’s going to win. He’s very careful. I don’t think your father ought to bet on winning, Willie.’

‘He never bets.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Says he takes enough risks anyway without betting as well.’

‘What sort of risks?’

‘Never mind. I can’t tell you.’

‘Oh.’ Jonathan thought. ‘What can’t you tell me?’ It sounded interesting.

Willie said nothing for a bit. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said finally.

‘What?’

‘My dad’s boat can go faster than your father thinks. But you mustn’t tell him.’

‘Why?’

Willie was silent. Jonathan asked him why again, but got no answer. He gently kicked him. Willie said nothing.

‘I’ll pinch you,’ Jonathan offered.

‘Don’t.’

‘All right. But tell me.’

Willie took a deep breath. ‘Do you promise not to tell?’ he began.

All Lymington was buzzing when Jonathan Totton and Willie Seagull returned safely in the morning, which they were able to do quite early since they had hurried along the Forest edge as soon as the first hint of dawn had allowed them to see their way.

All Lymington rejoiced, all Lymington was curious. And when all Lymington discovered that they had been up all night and worried themselves half to death because the two boys had gone looking for a dragon, all Lymington was outraged.

At least, they claimed they were. The women all said that the boys should be soundly whipped. The men, remembering their own boyhoods, agreed, but were more or less lenient. The mayor told the fathers firmly that if they didn’t deal with their sons he would take them to the whipping post himself. Everyone privately blamed Burrard for telling them foolish stories about dragons in the first place. So Burrard hid in his house.

Henry Totton, before delivering sentence on his son, explained to him carefully that this showed the dangers of mixing with people like Willie Seagull, who had obviously led him astray; and was astonished when his son stoutly assured him that the whole expedition had been his idea and that it was he who had made Willie stay the night. At first he was unable to believe it, but when finally he did, his grief and disappointment were very great. For once, however, Jonathan really didn’t care.

Alan Seagull took his son by the ear and hauled him away to the quay and along to their strange house into which they disappeared together. There he took down a strap from the wall and hit Willie twice, after which he was laughing so much that his wife had to finish the job for him.

The punishment of Jonathan, however, was a sadder affair. Nobody laughed. Henry Totton did what he knew he must do. He did it not only with a sense of mystification at the whole episode but also with the belief that it could only make this strange boy hate him. So that Jonathan, although the whipping hurt, was rather proud of the whole affair; while his poor father ended the session in a far greater agony than any his son felt.

He is all I have, the merchant thought, and now I have lost him. Because of a dragon. Nor – so little did the poor man know of childhood – had he any idea what to do with Jonathan next.

It was a source of complete amazement to him therefore, the next day, when his son quite cheerfully asked him: ‘Will you take me to the salterns with you when you go there next time, Father?’

And anxious not to lose the chance of a reconciliation he answered quickly: ‘I’m going there this very afternoon.’

The unusual warmth of the last few days had changed to more typical April weather. Small white and grey clouds crossed the washed blue sky. The breeze was damp; occasional gusts brought a light spotting of rain, as Henry Totton and Jonathan, having walked to the church at the top of the High Street, turned left and descended the long lane that led down towards the sea.

The coastal strip below the borough was a bare and windswept place. From Lymington quay, the river’s small estuary continued south for about a mile until it emerged fully into the Solent. On the right side, below the small ridge on which the borough stood, and extending southwest for two and a half miles to the little inlet and hamlet of Keyhaven, lay the wide, watery flats of Pennington Marshes.

It was an empty-seeming place: green wastes of tufted marsh grass, little gorses soaked with salty mist, small thorn trees stunted and warped by the sea breeze dotted the landscape. Beyond, the long line of the Isle of Wight hovered across the Solent, its blue-green slopes turning into chalk cliffs away on the right. You might have thought the place was habitation only for the gulls and curlews and wild duck upon the marshes. But you would have been wrong.

For down near the shore a string of small buildings and a score or more of what looked like tiny windmills, their sails at present motionless, told a different story, reminding you that it was this marshland that provided the most important commodity the merchants of Lymington shipped: salt.

There had been salt pans there since Saxon times. The need for salt was huge. There was no other way of preserving flesh or fish. When the farmers killed their pigs and cattle in November, the meat had all to be salted so it could be used during the winter. If the king wanted venison from the Forest for his court or to feed his troops, it must be salted. England produced vast quantities and it all came from the sea.

Henry Totton owned a saltern on Pennington Marshes. They could see its boiling house and wind pumps as soon as they started along the gravelly path across the levels. It was one of a group down by the shoreline. It did not take them long to reach the place.

Jonathan liked the salterns; perhaps it was because of where they were, so close to the sea. The first thing needed for making salt was a large feeder pond, set just in from the shoreline, into which the sea water could flow at high tide. Jonathan loved to watch the sea come rippling in down the curving channels. He and Willie had once made a similar construction of their own when they were playing on a sandy beach along the coast.

The salt pans that came next were carefully built. They were, in fact, a huge single basin – shallow and dead level – divided into small ponds, about twenty feet square, by mud banks six inches high and just wide enough for a man to walk on. Water from the feeder pond was baled into these with wooden scoops; but they were only filled about three inches deep. From here, the salt-making began.

It was very simple. The water had to evaporate. This would only work in the summer and, the warmer the weather and hotter the sun, the more salt you could produce. The season usually began at the very end of April. In a good year it might last sixteen weeks. Once, in a very bad year, it had lasted only two.

The idea was not to leave the water to evaporate in a single pan.

‘Evaporation takes time, Jonathan,’ his father had told him long ago, ‘and we need a continuous supply.’

So the method was to move the water up a line of pans, so that it gradually evaporated and achieved a higher salt concentration as it went. To keep it moving along the pans, they used wind pumps.

They were very simple; they had probably been used on the marshes below the New Forest in Saxon times and were hardly different from those known in the Middle East two thousand years before. They were about ten feet high, with a simple cross carrying four little sails like a windmill. As the sails went round they drove a cam, which operated a rudimentary water pump below. From shallow pan to shallow pan the water was pumped along, until it reached the final part of the process at the boiling house.

Totton’s reason for going out today was to make a thorough inspection so that any repairs needed after the winter could be made in good time. He and Jonathan went over it together.

‘The channel to the feeder pond needs dredging,’ remarked the boy.

‘Yes.’ Henry nodded. Several of the mud walls in the salt pans needed mending, too.

Here Jonathan made himself particularly useful, walking lightly over every one of the narrow barriers, marking each crack he found with a splash of whitewash. ‘Don’t we have to clean out all the bottoms, too?’ he asked.

‘We do,’ his father said.

The final process was the actual salt-making. By the time the evaporated sea water reached the last salt pan it was a highly concentrated brine. Now the salt-maker would place a lead-weighted ball into the pan. When it floated, he would know the brine was thick enough. Opening a sluice, he would allow the brine to flow down into the boiling house.

This was just a shed, with strengthened walls. In here was the boiling pan, a huge vat over eight feet across, under which there was a furnace, usually heated by charcoal or wood. Here the vat gradually boiled away all the water, leaving a great piecrust of salt.

The boiling was almost continuous during the salt-making season. Each boiling, or turn, took eight hours. Starting on Sunday night and ending on Saturday morning, this allowed sixteen turns a week. At this rate Henry Totton’s boiling pan was able to produce almost three tons of salt each week. It was crusty and not very pure, but it was pure enough.

‘We burn nineteen bushels for each ton of salt produced,’ Totton remarked. ‘So,’ he started to calculate for the boy, ‘if the cost of fuel per bushel is …’

It was only moments before Jonathan’s concentration had started to wander. He didn’t enjoy the boiling house as much as the rest. When the boiling was going on, the clouds of steam, impregnated with salt, were blinding. His throat would feel on fire after a while. The area all round the boiling house would grow hot and cloudy. He would run away whenever he could to the fresh sea breeze, the curlews and seagulls along the shore by the feeder pond.

His father had just finished explaining how to calculate the total profit achievable if the weather held good for the full sixteen-week season when he noticed that Jonathan was looking at him thoughtfully.

‘Father, can I ask you something?’

‘Of course, Jonathan.’

‘Only’ – he hesitated – ‘it’s about secrets.’

Totton stared. Secrets? It was nothing to do with salt, then. Nothing to do with anything he had been trying to teach the boy in the last half-hour. Had Jonathan taken in anything he’d said? The all too familiar wave of disappointment and irritation started to sweep over him. He fought to control himself, not to let it appear in his face. He wished he could bring himself to smile, but he couldn’t. ‘What sort of secrets, Jonathan?’

‘Well … It’s like this. If someone tells you something important, but they make you promise not to tell anyone, because it’s a secret; and if you wanted to tell someone, because it might be important; should you keep it a secret?’

‘Did you promise to keep a secret?’

‘Yes.’

‘And is the secret something bad? Something criminal?’

‘Well.’ Jonathan had to consider. Was the secret that his friend Willie Seagull had told him so bad?

It concerned Alan Seagull and his boat. The secret was that it could run faster than Totton thought. And the reason for that was that Seagull was in the habit of making some very swift and illicit voyages indeed.

His cargo on these occasions was wool. Despite the increasing cloth trade, it was still wool that was the backbone of England’s export trade and her wealth. In order to ensure his treasury profited from it, the king insisted, as his predecessors had done, that the entire trade was funnelled through the great entrepôt, known as the Staple, of Calais. On all Staple wool duty was paid. When the monks of Beaulieu sent their vast clip abroad – mostly through Southampton, a little through Lymington – or when Totton bought wool from Sarum merchants, it all went through the Staple and was duly taxed.

When Alan Seagull made his illicit runs for other, less honourable exporters, he did so at night, slipping across from coast to coast, paying neither duty nor heed, for which he was well paid. Others did the same all along the coast. It was known as owling. It was illegal but every child in every harbour knew that such things took place.

‘It could get someone in trouble,’ Jonathan said carefully. ‘But I don’t think it’s very bad.’

‘Like poaching,’ his father guessed.

‘Like that.’

‘If you gave your word, you should keep it,’ said Totton. ‘No one will ever trust you if you don’t.’

‘Only …’ Still Jonathan was uncertain. ‘What if you wanted to tell someone to help them?’

‘How help them?’

‘If you had a friend and it would save them money.’

‘To break your word and betray a confidence? Certainly not, Jonathan.’

‘Oh.’

‘Does that answer your question?’

‘Yes. I think so.’ Although Jonathan still frowned a little. He wished there were some way of warning his father that he was going to lose his bet.

There were times during the next two weeks when Alan Seagull found it hard not to laugh.

The whole of Lymington was placing bets. Most were small, a few pence usually; but several merchants had a mark or even more on the race. Why were they betting? Often, the mariner guessed, it was just because they didn’t want to be left out. Some reckoned Seagull’s small craft would outsail the bigger ship because of the shortness of the crossing; others made elaborate calculations based on the likely weather. Others again put their trust in the soundness of Totton’s judgement and followed him.

‘The more they talk the less they know,’ Seagull pointed out to his son. ‘And none of ’em really knows anything.’

Then there were the bribes. Hardly a day passed without someone coming to the mariner with an offer. ‘I’ve got half a mark on your boat, Alan. There’ll be a shilling in it for you if you win.’ More interesting were the people who offered him money to lose. ‘I don’t know the Southampton men,’ one merchant told him frankly. ‘And besides, the only way to be sure of the result is if you promise to lose.’

‘It’s funny,’ Seagull remarked to Willie. ‘All these people come at you like waves and you can just sail across them. The way things are now, if I win I get paid and if I lose I get paid.’ He grinned. ‘Makes no difference, see? You remember that, son,’ he added seriously. ‘Let them do the betting. You just say nothing and take the money.’

More impressive was Burrard. At the end of the first week he told Alan: ‘A mark to you if you win.’ At the end of the second: ‘I’m in deeper now. Two marks.’

‘Is he stupid?’ Willie asked.

‘No, son. He ain’t stupid. Just rich.’

Totton, meanwhile, remained as calm and quiet as usual. This Seagull respected. ‘I don’t like him, son,’ he confessed. ‘But he knows when to keep his mouth shut.’

‘So are you going to win, Dad?’ Willie asked. But to this, infuriatingly, his father would only reply by humming a little sea ditty to himself.

Willie did better, however, when he asked his father if he could go with him for the race, for after a pause, and looking at him with amusement, his father, to Willie’s great surprise agreed.

This was a great prize. He shared it with his friends, who were duly envious. Jonathan’s eyes opened wide and every day asked Willie again: ‘Is it really true you’re sailing? I know’, he would add confidentially, ‘that you’re going to win.’ It was heaven.

But was his father going to win? Willie had boasted to Jonathan that he would, that night out at Bisterne, and he certainly wasn’t going to take it back. But he wished he knew what his father was really up to.

The truth of the matter was that Alan Seagull didn’t know himself. Certainly, he hadn’t the least intention of publicly disclosing his vessel’s speed. If that were needed to win, he would cheerfully lose. But you never knew with the sea. Something might happen to the other boat. The sea itself would decide, and chance, and his own free will. He hadn’t a care in the world. Until one evening, three days before the race.

He knew something was up the moment he saw young Willie, and the sheepish way he was approaching; but even so, he was completely taken aback by the boy’s question.

‘Dad, for the race, can Jonathan come in the boat too?’

Jonathan? Jonathan Totton? When his father was betting on the other boat? The mariner stared in amazement.

‘If his father says yes, that is,’ Willie added.

Which he certainly won’t, thought Alan.

‘I said I thought you might let him. He isn’t heavy,’ Willie explained.

‘Let him go in the other boat, then.’

‘He doesn’t want to. He wants to come with me. And anyway …’

‘Anyway what?’

Willie hesitated, then said quietly: ‘Dad, the Southampton boat’s going to lose isn’t it?’

‘So you say, my son.’ Alan started to smile, but then a thought hit him. ‘Willie?’ He looked at his son carefully. ‘You think I’m going to win?’

‘’Course I do, Dad.’

‘Is that why he wants to come with us, then? Because you told him we’d win?’

‘I don’t know, Dad.’ Willie looked awkward. ‘Maybe.’

‘Did you tell him about our business?’

‘No, Dad. I mean, not really.’ There was a pause. ‘I may have said something.’ He looked down, then raised his eyes hopefully to his father again. ‘He won’t tell, Dad. I swear.’

Alan Seagull said nothing. He was thinking.

There were quite a few people in Lymington who knew Alan Seagull’s business. His crew for a start. One or two merchants also – for the obvious reason that they gave him the illicit wool to carry. But Totton wasn’t one of them and never would be. And the rule in the business was very simple: you didn’t talk to people like Totton. For sooner or later, if people like him knew, things would get out; boats would be stopped, men fined, business disrupted and, strangely intangible but perhaps most important of all, freedom would be limited.

Did Totton know? Perhaps not yet. What he really needed, Seagull thought, was some time alone with Jonathan. He’d be able to tell, he guessed, if the boy had told his father. If he had, there was nothing to be done. If not … he mused. If the boy were out at sea, some men in his situation would quietly tip him overboard. He shrugged to himself. There was no chance of Totton allowing him to come anyway. ‘Don’t say any more about our business. Just keep your mouth shut,’ he ordered his son, and waved him away. He needed to think some more.

Jonathan found his father sitting in an upright chair in the hall, under the gallery. Totton was asleep.

The gallery passage that ran from the front to the back of the bigger Lymington houses was quite an impressive feature, but it was not handsome. Although two storeys high, the central hall was quite narrow, so that the gallery seemed to overlook a rather cramped covered area. Since the death of his wife, instead of going at the end of his workday to the pleasant parlour at the back of the house, which looked over the garden, and where his wife had liked to sit, Totton had taken to sitting in a chair in the rather awkward space of the hall. There he would remain until it was time to eat dinner, which he punctiliously did with his son. Sometimes he just sat staring quietly ahead; sometimes he dozed a little. He was dozing when Jonathan approached him.

Jonathan, after standing in front of him for several moments, touched his wrist and gently asked: ‘Father?’

Totton woke with a perceptible start and stared at the boy. He had not been sleeping deeply but it took him a moment to focus his mind. Jonathan had that slightly doubtful look on his face, which suggests a child is hoping for a permission he expects to be refused.

‘Yes, Jonathan.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

Totton prepared himself. He was fully awake now. He sat up straight and tried to smile. Perhaps, if the request were not too foolish, he would surprise the boy and grant it. He would like to please him. ‘You may.’

‘Well. The thing is …’ Jonathan took a deep breath. ‘You know the race between your ship from Southampton and Seagull’s boat?’

‘I do indeed.’

‘Well. I don’t think he’ll say yes anyway, but I was wondering: if Alan Seagull said I could, do you think it would be all right if I sailed with him?’

‘In Seagull’s boat?’ Totton gazed at him. It was a few moments before he could quite take it in. ‘For the race?’

‘Yes. It’s only to the Isle of Wight,’ Jonathan added helpfully. ‘I mean, we don’t go out to sea, do we?’

Totton did not answer. He couldn’t. He stared away from Jonathan, towards the door of the parlour where his wife used to sit. ‘Do you not know’, he enquired at last, ‘that my bet is against Seagull’s boat? You want to sail with my opponents? With a man I had asked you to avoid?’

Jonathan was silent. He was really only thinking that he wanted to sail with Willie; but he wasn’t sure if he should say so.

‘How will that look to people, do you suppose?’ Totton quietly asked him.

‘I don’t know.’ Jonathan felt crestfallen. He had not thought about what other people might think. He did not know.

Henry Totton continued to stare away. He felt a sense of mortification and of rage. He could hardly bring himself to look at his only son, but finally he did. ‘I am sorry, Jonathan,’ he said softly, ‘that you do not feel any sense of loyalty to me, or to your family.’ Which, God help me, he thought, is only me now, anyway.

And suddenly Jonathan understood that he had hurt his father. And he was sorry for him. But he did not know what to do.

Then Henry Totton, overcome with the uselessness, the utter hopelessness of achieving love between himself and his son, shrugged his shoulders in despair and exclaimed: ‘Do what you like, Jonathan. Sail with whom you wish.’

And then there was a struggle inside the boy, between his love and his desire. He knew he should say he would not go, or at least offer to sail in the other ship. This was the only way to tell his father he loved him; although he was not sure, even then, that the cold merchant would believe it. But his desire was to go with Willie and the carefree mariner, and to sail the sea in their little craft with its secret speed. And as he was only ten, desire won. ‘Oh, thank you, Father,’ he said and kissed him, and ran out to tell Willie.

Willie appeared the next morning. ‘My dad says you can come,’ he reported gleefully. Henry Totton was out, so he did not hear these good tidings.

There had been a brief April shower, but now the sun was shining. The news was far too exciting to contemplate indoors, so it was not long before the two boys set off together to find amusement. Their first plan was to walk a couple of miles northwards and play in the woods at Boldre; but they had not gone a mile when, as the lane dipped down a gentle incline, their attention was caught by something on the lip of higher ground just ahead.

‘Let’s go into the rings,’ said Jonathan.

The place that had attracted them was a curious feature of the Lymington landscape; it was a small earthwork inclosure set on a low knoll from which it overlooked the nearby river. Buckland Rings it was known as – although its low, grassy walls formed a rectangle rather than a circle. Dating from Celtic times, before the Romans came, it might have been a fort to guard the river, or a cattle pen, or both; but while the borough of Lymington might well contain descendants of the folk who built it, even the memory of this earlier settlement had probably been forgotten over a thousand years before. Animals grazed on the sweet grass within and children played on its banks.

It was a good place to play. The earlier rain had made the grassy banks slippery and Jonathan had just defended the fortress from assault by Willie for the third time when they saw a handsome figure riding down the lane who, when he caught sight of them, gave a cheerful wave, dismounted and strode towards them.

‘So,’ he said genially, ‘today you battle by land and soon your fathers will battle by sea.’

Richard Albion was a very pleasant gentleman. His ancestors had been called Alban, but somehow, over the last two centuries, like some forest stream that gradually alters its course, the pronunciation of the name had shifted from Alban to the more comfortable Albion within whose banks, so to speak, it had been flowing very easily for several generations. As foresters, they had maintained a position among the gentry of the area and married accordingly. Albion’s own wife was one of the Button family who held estates near Lymington. In late middle-age now, with his grey hair and bright-blue eyes, Richard Albion bore a striking resemblance to his ancestor Cola the Huntsman of four centuries before. A naturally generous man, he would often stop to give some child a farthing; he was familiar with most of the inhabitants of Lymington by sight; and so he knew at once who the two boys playing on Buckland Rings must be. He chatted to them very amiably, therefore, and discussed the coming race.

‘Will you watch it, Sir?’ asked Jonathan.

‘Indeed I shall. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Why, the whole area will be there, I should think. As a matter of fact,’ he added, ‘I was just in Lymington, trying to place a bet on the race myself. But I couldn’t find any takers.’ He laughed. ‘The whole town’s so deep in already that nobody dares bet any more. See what your father’s done to the place, Jonathan Totton!’

‘Which way were you betting, Sir?’ asked Willie.

‘Well,’ the gentleman answered him honestly, ‘I’m afraid I was betting on the Southampton ship, not because I have any idea who will win, but because I like to be on the same side as Henry Totton.’

‘And’ – Jonathan was not sure if it was proper to ask, but Albion was not a man to take offence – ‘how much would you bet, Sir?’

‘Five pounds, I offered,’ Albion replied with a chuckle. ‘And no one would take my money!’ He grinned at them. ‘Either of you interested?’

Jonathan shook his head and Willie answered seriously: ‘My dad told me never to bet. He says only fools bet.’

‘Quite right,’ cried Albion, in high good humour. ‘And mind you do what he tells you.’ And he got on his horse and rode away.

‘Five pounds!’ said Jonathan to Willie. ‘That’s a lot to lose.’

Then they resumed their play.

Although Alan Seagull had not yet forgiven his son for his stupidity in telling the Totton boy his secret, he was in a tolerably good mood when he caught sight of Willie that afternoon. He had just counted up all the money he had been promised and, even if he lost the race, he would be paid more for this run then he had made in the last half-year. If he won, then with Burrard’s money he’d do better still. Student of human nature though he was, the mariner confessed himself astonished by the whole business. But he wasn’t expecting any more surprises, when Willie came up to him and enquired: ‘You know Richard Albion, Dad?’

‘Yes, son. I do.’

‘We met him at Buckland Rings today. He wants to bet on the race. Against you. But he can’t find no takers. All the Lymington money’s already been bet.’

‘Oh.’ Alan shrugged.

‘Guess how much he was going to bet, Dad.’

‘I don’t know, son. Tell me.’

‘Five pounds.’

Five pounds. Another five-pound bet! Seagull shook his head in wonderment. Someone else was actually prepared to wager that amount of money that he would lose. Nothing to Albion, perhaps. A small fortune to him. For a long time after his son had run inside the mariner sat staring out at the water, thinking.

Darkness had just fallen when Jonathan heard his father coming along the gallery passage.

Until the last few days of her life, when she could not move, his mother had always come to kiss Jonathan goodnight. Sometimes she would stay a while and tell him a story. Always, just before going, she would say a little prayer. She had only been dead a few days when Jonathan had asked his father: ‘Are you going to come to say goodnight to me?’

‘Why, Jonathan?’ Totton had asked. ‘You are not afraid of the dark, are you?’

‘No, Father.’ He had paused uncertainly. ‘Mother used to.’

Since then, Totton had come to say goodnight to his son most evenings. On his way up the stairs the merchant would try to think of something to say. Perhaps he might ask the boy what he had learned that day; or mention something of interest that had happened in the town. He would enter the room and stand quietly by the door looking down to where his son lay on his little bed.

And if Totton could think of nothing to say, Jonathan would just lie still for a moment and then murmur: ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Father. Goodnight.’

This evening, however, it was Jonathan who had been preparing something to say. He had been thinking about it all afternoon. So when his father’s quiet shadow appeared in the doorway and looked towards him without speaking, it was he who broke the silence. ‘Father.’

‘Yes, Jonathan.’

‘I don’t have to race with Seagull. I could go in your boat, if you prefer.’

His father did not reply for a little while. ‘It is not a question of what I prefer, Jonathan,’ Totton said at last. ‘You have made your choice.’

‘But I could change, Father.’

‘Really? I don’t think so.’ There was just a hint of coldness in the voice. ‘Besides, you have already promised your friend to go with him.’

The boy understood. He perceived that he had hurt his father, that now his father was hitting back with this quiet rejection. He was so sorry, now, that he had wounded him, and afraid, too, of losing his love; for his father was all he had. If only he did not make it so difficult.

‘He would understand, Father. I’d rather go in your boat.’

Not true, thought the merchant, but aloud he said: ‘You gave your word, Jonathan. You must keep it.’

And now came the other matter that had been on the boy’s mind. ‘Father, you remember at the salterns you told me that if I knew a secret I promised not to tell, that I must keep my promise?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well … If I tell you something and ask you to keep it a secret, but I don’t exactly tell you everything, because if I did, that would be giving away the other secret … Would that be all right?’

‘You want to tell me something?’

‘Yes.’

‘A secret?’

‘Between us, Father. Because you’re my father,’ he added hopefully.

‘I see. Very well.’

‘Well …’ Jonathan paused. ‘Father, I think you’re going to lose this race.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘But you are sure of it?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘There is nothing further you wish to say, Jonathan?’

‘No, Father.’

Totton was silent for a little while. Then his shadow began to recede and the door slowly closed.

‘Goodnight, Father,’ said Jonathan. But there was no reply.

The morning of the race was overcast. During the night the wind had turned and was now coming down from the north; but it seemed to Alan Seagull that it might yet change again. His canny eyes glanced out at the waters of the estuary. He wasn’t sure he liked the weather. One thing was certain: they would have a fast crossing to the island.

And after that? His eyes scanned the crowded quay. He was looking for someone.

Yesterday had been strange indeed. He had made bargains before, but never one so unexpected. Surprising though the business was, many things had been resolved.

One of these was the fate of young Jonathan.

The scene at the quay was lively. The whole of Lymington had gathered there. The two boats, moored by the waterside, were clearly contrasted. The Southampton vessel was not a full-size merchant ship but the more modest short sea-trader known as a hoy. Its size was forty tuns – which meant that in theory it could carry forty of the huge, two-hundred-and-fifty-gallon casks of wine that were then in use for the big shipments from the Continent. Broad, clinker-built of oak, with only a single mast and a large, square sail, the hoy looked primitive when compared with the great three-masted ships, six times its size, which the English merchants usually imported from the shipbuilders of the Continent. But it served its purpose well enough in coastal waters and could easily make the Channel crossing to Normandy. It carried a crew of twenty.

Seagull’s boat, although of similar construction, was only half its size. Besides the two boys, it had a hand-picked crew of ten, plus Seagull himself.

The cargo carried by each vessel was typical for the run across to the Isle of Wight: sacks of wool, fardels of finished cloth, casks of wine, some bales of silk. For extra ballast the Southampton boat also carried ten hundredweight of iron. Both boats had been inspected by the mayor and declared fully laden.

The terms of the race had been carefully worked out between the parties and it was the mayor who now called the two ship’s masters together on the quay and rehearsed them.

‘You cross to Yarmouth fully laden. You unload on to the quay there. You return unladen, but with the same crew. The first back is the winner.’ He looked at them both severely. Seagull he knew; the big, black-bearded master from Southampton he did not. ‘On my orders you will cast off and row out to midstream. When I wave the flag, you may hoist sail or row forward as you wish. But if you foul the other boat then or at any time during the race, you will be judged the loser. I will decide who is first back and my decision on all matters is final.’

The two-way crossings, laden and unladen, the unloading, the opportunity to use oar and sail and the changeability of the weather – all these had added enough uncertainty, the mayor had judged, to make the race worth watching; although personally he couldn’t see how the bigger boat could fail to win and had placed his own bet accordingly.

The Southampton man nodded, scowled at Seagull, but held out his hand nonetheless. Seagull took it briefly. But his eyes were hardly on the other mariner. He was still scanning the crowd.

And now he saw who he was looking for. As he turned back to his boat, he called Willie over to him. ‘You see Richard Albion, son?’ He pointed to the gentleman. ‘Run quickly and ask him if he still wants to bet five pounds against me winning the race.’

Willie did as he was told and a minute later returned. ‘He said yes, Dad.’

‘Good.’ Seagull nodded to himself. ‘Now just you run back to him and tell him I’ll take his bet, if he cares to lay it with a working man.’

‘You, Dad? You’re betting?’

‘That’s right, son.’

‘Five pounds? Have you got five pounds, Dad?’ The boy gazed at him in astonishment. ‘Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t.’

‘But Dad, you never bet!’

‘Are you arguing with me, boy?’

‘No, Dad. But …’

‘Off you go, then.’

So Willie ran back to Richard Albion who received the offer with almost as much surprise as the boy. Without hesitation, however, he came striding across to Seagull’s boat. ‘Do I hear you’ll really take a bet on this race?’ he enquired.

‘That’s right.’

‘Well.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I never thought I’d live to see the day that Alan Seagull took a bet. What’ll it be, then?’ His sparkling blue eyes gave just a hint of concern on the mariner’s behalf. ‘No one will take my five pounds, so name your figure and I’ll be honoured.’

‘Five pounds is all right with me.’

‘Are you sure?’ The rich gentlemen had no wish to ruin the mariner. ‘I’m getting a bit nervous about five pounds myself. Couldn’t we make it a mark? Two if you like.’

‘No. Five pounds you offered, five pounds I took.’

Albion hesitated only another second, then decided that to question the mariner any further would be to insult him. ‘Done, then,’ he cried and gave Alan his hand, before striding back to the watching crowd. ‘You’ll never guess,’ he announced to them, ‘what’s just happened.’

It only took a couple of minutes for the whole of Lymington to be buzzing with this unexpected news – and scarcely a couple more before there were theories about what it meant. Why was Seagull suddenly abandoning the habit of a lifetime? Had he lost his head? Had he got five pounds anyway, or had he found someone to stake him. One thing seemed clear: if he was betting, then he must know something they didn’t.

‘He knows we’re going to win,’ cried Burrard, cock-a-hoop.

Was it so? Those who had bet against the mariner began to look uncomfortable. Some of them, standing near Totton, turned to him nervously. What was going on, they demanded? ‘We were following you,’ they reminded him.

Henry Totton had already endured some chaff when it had been noticed that his son was in Seagull’s boat. ‘Your son’s sailing with the opposition?’ his friends had cried. He had treated the question with perfect equanimity. ‘He’s still friends with the little Seagull boy,’ he had replied calmly. ‘He wanted to go with him.’

‘I would have stopped him,’ one merchant remarked grumpily.

‘Why?’ Totton had given a quiet smile. ‘My son’s extra weight and will undoubtedly get in the way. I think he’ll cost Seagull a furlong at least.’ This shrewdness had drawn some appreciative laughs.

So now, as they looked at him accusingly, he only shrugged. ‘Seagull has made a bet, like the rest of us.’

‘Yes. But he never bets.’

‘And he is probably wise.’ He looked round their faces. ‘Has it not occurred to any of you that he may have made a mistake? He may lose.’ And faced with this further piece of common sense, there wasn’t much anyone could say. There was a feeling, all the same, that there was something fishy about the business.

Nor was this suspicion confined to the spectators. Down in the boat, Willie Seagull was looking at his father curiously, while the mariner, his leather hat squashed at a jaunty angle on his head, leaned very comfortably against a cask of wine. ‘What are you up to, Dad?’ he whispered.

But all Seagull did was murmur a short sea-shanty:

And that was all Willie could get out of him until the mayor’s voice cried: ‘Cast off.’

Jonathan Totton was happy. To be with his friend Willie, and the mariner on their boat – and for such an event – it did not seem to him that heaven itself could be much better.

It was a bracing scene. The little river between the high green slopes on its banks had a silvery tinge. The sky was grey but luminous, the ribs of the clouds spreading southwards. Pale seagulls wheeled round the masts and dipped over the reeds, the waterside echoing with their cries. The two boats were out in midstream now, the Southampton boat nearer the eastern bank. At the quay it had looked larger, but to Jonathan, now, down on the water, the hoy with its built-up platforms fore and aft seemed to tower over the fishing boat.

The crew were all ready. There were four men on the oars, but only to keep the boat steady in the stream. The rest were in position to raise the sail. Seagull was on the tiller, the two boys, for the time being, crouched down in front of him. As Jonathan looked up at the mariner’s face, with its dark wisps of beard against the gleaming grey sky, it looked, for a moment, strangely sinister. But he put that thought from him as being foolish. And just then, on the shore, the mayor must have waved his flag, for Seagull nodded and said: ‘Now.’ The boys looked forward as the square sail went up with a flap and the four men on the oars gave a few good pulls, and in a few moments they were moving down the stream with the north wind pressing behind them.

Looking across to the quay, Jonathan could see his father’s face watching them. He wanted to get up and wave to him, but he did not because he was not sure his father would like it. Soon the borough on its sloping crest was falling behind. A shaft of light through a break in the cloud lit up the town’s roofs for a few brief, rather eerie moments; then the clouds closed and greyness descended. They were slipping downstream fast. The trees on the river bank intervened and the borough was lost to sight.

The smaller craft was able to pick up speed more quickly so that they had moved just ahead of the Southampton boat for the moment. They were in a long reach, now. To the right lay the open wastes of Pennington Marshes; to the left a strip of muddy marsh; and ahead, past a broad tract of mud banks that the high tide had submerged, the choppy waters of the Solent.

For sailors, the Solent harbours had some remarkable benefits. At first sight, the entrance to the Lymington river might have seemed unpromising. Across the river-mouth, stretching from below Beaulieu in the east to beyond Pennington Marshes in the west – some seven miles in all and over a mile wide in places – lay vast mud-flats, through which various streams cut narrow channels. Rich in nutrients, growing eelgrass and algae, this large feeding area produced molluscs, snails and worms in their billions, which in turn supported a huge population, some year round, some migrant, of waders, ducks, geese, cormorants, herons, terns and gulls. A paradise for birds but not, one might suppose, for mariners. Its virtue for shipping, however, lay in two features. One was the obvious fact that the whole twenty-mile stretch of water was sheltered by the comfortable mass of the Isle of Wight, at whose eastern and western ends one entered the sea. But the real key was not the shelter. It was the tides.

The tidal system of the English Channel operates rather like a see-saw, oscillating about a fulcrum, or node line. At each end of England’s south coast, the waters rise and fall considerably. At the central node, although much water washes back and forth, the water level remains relatively constant. Because the Solent lies quite near the node its tidal rise and fall is modest. But the barrier of the Isle of Wight adds another factor. For as the tide in the English Channel rises, it fills the Solent from both ends, thereby setting up a complex set of internal tides. In the western Solent, where Lymington lies, the tide usually rises with a gentle current for seven hours. There is then a long stand – sometimes, in fact, there are two high waters a couple of hours apart. Then there is a short, fast ebb tide, which scours out a deep channel in the narrows by the western end of the Isle of Wight. All this is perfect for the shipping using the big port of Southampton.

And even modest Lymington was amply favoured. By high water, the huge mudflats were all submerged. The little river channel was easy to see and deep enough for the draught of any of the merchant vessels then in use.

As they entered the Solent now, the boat began to pitch against the dark and choppy waves that the wind had raised; but it was quite a light motion and Jonathan enjoyed it. Ahead lay the broad slopes of the Isle of Wight, only four miles away. Their destination, the small harbour of Yarmouth, was almost directly opposite. Looking east, he could see the great funnel of the Solent, rolling away for fifteen miles, a huge grey corridor of sky and water. On the west side, past the marshes and Keyhaven, a long sand and gravel spit with a hooked end came out for a mile from the coast towards the chalk cliffs of the island and, through the narrow channel between, Jonathan could see the open sea. The salt spray stung his face. He felt exhilarated.

With the wind directly behind them, there was nothing to do except run before it. Coming back, however, would be more difficult. Although the boat had a large, centred rudder, the primitive square sail was not well adapted for tacking. They might need to use their oars then. Perhaps, he supposed, this might turn out to the smaller vessel’s advantage. It would need to be so, for already he could see that the Southampton boat was closer. Before they were halfway across, he suspected, the heavier ship would overtake them.

Jonathan might be contented enough, but as he looked across at Willie he noticed that his friend was not. The two boys had shifted forward a little to a position just below the small deck on which Seagull was standing at the tiller. While Jonathan had been gazing eagerly out at the seascape, the other boy, sitting a few feet away, had been frowning and shaking his head to himself.

Jonathan slid over to him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he enquired.

At first Willie did not reply, then, lowering his head he muttered: ‘I can’t understand it.’

‘What?’

‘Why my dad hasn’t raised the big sail.’

‘What big sail?’

‘In there.’ Willie nodded towards the space under the aft deck. ‘He’s got a big sail. Hidden. He can outrun almost anyone.’ He jerked his thumb back towards the Southampton boat, which was now visibly gaining on them. ‘With a following wind like this they’d never catch us.’

‘Perhaps he will raise it.’

Willie shook his head. ‘Not now. And he’s bet on the race. Five pounds. I don’t know what he’s doing.’

Jonathan stared at his friend’s small, chinless face, so perfect a replica of his father’s, saw his worried frown and suddenly realized that the funny little boy who ran through the woods and played in the streams with him was also a miniature adult, in a way that he was not. The children of farmers and fishermen went to work alongside their parents, while the child of a well-to-do merchant did not. The poorer children had responsibilities and, to an extent, their parents treated them as equals. ‘He must know what he’s doing,’ he suggested.

‘Then why hasn’t he told me?’

‘My father never tells me anything,’ said Jonathan, then suddenly realized that this was not true. The merchant was always trying to tell him things, but he never wanted to listen.

‘He doesn’t trust me,’ Willie said sadly. ‘He knows I told you about his secret.’ He glanced at Jonathan. ‘You never told anyone, did you?’

‘No,’ said Jonathan. It was nearly true.

For a little while, however, Seagull’s boat managed to keep just ahead of the other as the coast of the island drew closer.

They were halfway across when the Southampton boat passed in front. Jonathan heard a cheer from her men but Seagull and his crew ignored it. Nor did the bigger boat, as they drew nearer to Yarmouth, establish more than a half-mile lead.

The port of Yarmouth was smaller than Lymington and protected from the Solent waters by a sand bar that acted as a harbour wall. They were still about a mile out from the harbour entrance when Jonathan noticed something strange: the sail was flapping.

He heard Seagull call out an order and two of the men leaped to loosen one of the sheets while two more tightened the other, altering the angle of the sail. Seagull leaned on the tiller.

‘Wind’s changing,’ cried Willie. ‘Nor’-east.’

‘That’ll make it a bit easier to get back,’ ventured Jonathan.

‘Maybe.’

The Southampton boat was having to employ the same tactic, but was already nearer the harbour entrance, so had the advantage. Before long they saw it turn and make for the narrow channel by the sand bar, dropping its sail as it passed into the protection of the harbour; but it was some time before they could do the same. Just before they made their run in he saw Alan Seagull gazing up at the sky, watching the clouds. The half-smile that was usually on his face had gone and it seemed to Jonathan that he looked worried.

As they came in, the Southampton boat was already tied up and its crew busy unloading.

The town of Yarmouth had also been founded by Lymington’s feudal lord. In this case he had laid out his borough as a little grid of lanes on the eastern side of the harbour water. Though small, it was a busy place, for the greater part of the Isle of Wight’s trade flowed through it. During the last hundred years, the quay had been built and lifting equipment set up, so that ships could unload directly on to the dock instead of into lighters.

The boat had no sooner tied up than the crew sprang into action. While gangplanks were pushed out from the quay and a beam moved out, the mariners raced to raise a block and tackle from the masthead by which the heaviest items, like the casks, could be swung outboard from the yardarm. Everybody was busy. Even the two boys rushed up and down the gangplanks with bales of silk, boxes of spices and any other cargo they could carry. Jonathan had hardly a moment to look, but he knew that, with their smaller cargo, this was where they should be able to make up some time against the Southampton boat. He was so busy that he scarcely noticed that over the harbour the sky was getting darker.

Alan Seagull had noticed, though. For a while he had helped his men unload; but as the last of the wine casks was safely lowered he moved along the quay to where the master of the other boat was directing operations. Standing beside him for a moment, he pointed up at the sky.

The burly Southampton man glanced too, then shrugged. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he growled.

‘Maybe you have.’

‘We’ll be back before it gets bad.’

‘I don’t think so.’

As if to make his point, a gust of wind suddenly came with a whistle over the rooftops of the Yarmouth houses, wetting their faces with a spattering of raindrops.

‘Swing that cask. Hurry now!’ the big man shouted to his crew. ‘That’s it!’ He turned to Seagull. ‘We’ll be gone first. If you haven’t the stomach for the crossing, then be damned to you.’ And turning his back on the other master, he went across the gangplank into his ship.

He was wrong in his assessment about their departure, however. For it was actually Seagull’s boat that cast off first and made for the harbour entrance. Under his direction the crew were rowing out. Before leaving, they had already reefed the sail, so that its shape, when it was raised, would be a narrow triangle rather than a square. To Jonathan, their leaving ahead of the big boat seemed a cause for rejoicing, but he could see from the tense faces of the crew and the concentrated look on Seagull’s face that they were anything but happy.

‘This is going to be rough,’ said Willie.

Moments later, they passed the sand spit and encountered the open water.

The one thing in the Solent that the sailor truly has to fear is the big easterly gale. It is not a regular occurrence, but when it does come it can be sudden and terrible. Its favoured month is April.

When the big easterly comes down the English Channel, the Isle of Wight offers no protection. Far from it. Sweeping in at the Solent’s wider eastern end, the wind barrels down its narrowing funnel and whips its waters to a frenzy. The peaceful paradise becomes a raging brownish cauldron. The island disappears behind great grey sheets of moving vapour. Over the salt marshes the gale howls as though it means to tear out the quivering vegetation and hurl it – thorn trees, gorse bushes and all – high over Keyhaven and into the frothing Channel beyond. Sailors who see the big easterly coming hurry to shelter as fast as they can.

Alan Seagull reckoned they just had time.

The wind came at them sharply the moment they cleared the sand bar. The choppy waves were developing already into a rolling swell, but being higher in the water now, the boat could ride this well enough. All ten of the crew were rowing: five a side, all skilled. His plan was to row well clear of the shore, heading a little upwind, then hoist a small sail and try, with a combination of sail, tiller and oar, to get as near to the Lymington river entrance as possible. Since Lymington was almost opposite they would almost certainly be carried too far west. But at least that would bring them to the comparative safety of the shallows over the mudflats and, with their shallow draught, they could row round the coastline of the marshes. If the worst came, they could beach the boat on the salt marshes and walk safely home. One thing was certain: it was anybody’s race now, if you could just get home.

The wind, although growing stronger, was still only gusting. Using the tiller, the mariner was able to keep the boat’s prow pointing north-east, roughly in the direction of Beaulieu as his men strained on the long sea oars. For perhaps a dozen strokes he would feel the wind blowing evenly in his face and the boat would make solid progress. Then a gust would catch them, roll the vessel, heaving the bow round, while a cascade of salt spray came flying off the crest of the swell, almost blinding him as he fought the tiller to bring the boat round again. To the east, up the Solent, he could see a brownish veil of rain above the waters. He tried to calculate where they would be when the rain got to them. Halfway across. Perhaps.

They made slow progress: a hundred yards; another hundred. They had gone about a quarter-mile when they saw the Southampton boat emerge behind them.

The larger boat took a different course. Laying its prow directly into the wind, staying close to the shore, its crew began to row lustily eastwards. Their plan was evidently to get as far up the coast as they could before the wind got stronger, and then make the whole crossing by sail, dashing with the wind half behind them straight for the Lymington entrance. The Southampton master’s bet was no doubt that Seagull would be blown too far west and be unable to get back in the increasingly bad weather. He might well be right.

‘We’ll raise the sail now,’ called Alan Seagull.

At first it seemed to be working. Using a minimum of canvas, with the boat nearly athwart the wind but aiming for the eastern edge of the Lymington estuary, he was able to supplement the oars. Every so often a squall would catch the sail and roll the boat so strongly that the oarsmen lost their stroke, but they pressed on. There was more and more spray, but from his occasional glances back to the island Seagull knew they were making progress. He could see the Southampton boat, following its steady path along the coast. Meanwhile, he was nearly a mile out and still in line with the harbour entrance. He scanned the clouds. The veil of rain was approaching quicker than he had expected.

‘Ship oars.’ The men, surprised, started to pull the oars in. Willie looked at him questioningly. In reply, he only shook his head. ‘More sail,’ he called out. The crew obeyed. The boat lurched. ‘All hands to starboard.’ They would need as much weight as possible to counterbalance the sail. ‘Here we go, then,’ he muttered to himself.

The effect was dramatic. The boat shuddered, creaked, and plunged forward. There was nothing else for it. The storm was coming in too fast to do anything now but try to run across, as far as they could, before it really struck. As the prow rose and dipped he watched the northern shoreline. He was going to be driven west, of course; the question was, how far? Rolling and pitching, fighting to keep his line, the mariner guided his vessel out towards the middle of the Solent.

And then the storm struck. It came with a roar and a cascade of rain, and a terrible engulfing darkness, as though it meant to deny the existence of everything but itself to those it had swallowed in its maw. The island vanished; the mainland vanished; the clouds above vanished; everything vanished except the spray and the sweeping sheets of rain and the billowing swell, which soon grew so high that the waves towered over the boat, which sank into troughs so deep it seemed a miracle it ever rose again. Frantically the crew trimmed the sail and Seagull eased the tiller. There was nothing to do but to run before the wind with a small sail and hope it would bring them swiftly to the edge of this watery abyss.

The two boys, holding fast to the rail at its edge, were sitting just in front of him on the deck. He wondered if either would be sick and whether to send them into the body of the ship. And thinking of his decision about what to do with Jonathan, the boy who knew his secret, it occurred to him that the circumstances could never be better than now. A shove with his foot when no one was looking and he’d be overboard in a trice. The chances of saving him in that sea? Minimal.

He could not see the shore, but he estimated that since the gale must now blow them almost due west, it should take them either to Keyhaven or the long spit of gravel and sand that came out across the Solent’s entrance. Either way, this would drive them on to a shore where they could safely beach the boat. Thank God there were no rocks.

He did not know how much time passed after this. It seemed a little eternity, but he was too busy on the tiller, as the boat rode and plunged in the swell, to think of anything much except that it could not, surely, be long before they came close to the spit. And he had finally reached the conclusion that they must be near indeed when suddenly a divide in the clouds hurtling overhead caused a short break in the blinding rain. Over the whipping spray, as the wind howled, it was possible to see forward a quarter, then half a mile, then further, as if he were looking into a huge grey tunnel. And then, as the little boat rose up from a trough, he saw a vision that made him gasp.

It was a phantom – a huge, narrow, three-masted vessel, a hundred and sixty feet long, appearing ghost-like through the receding curtain of rain. He knew at once what it was, for there could only be one ship of this kind in those waters. It was a great galley from Venice, making its entry into the Solent on its way to Southampton. They were magnificent ships, these galleys, or galleasses as they were often called. Little changed from the great ships of classical times, they carried three lateen sails, but could manoeuvre in almost any waters with their three mighty banks of oars. A hundred and seventy oarsmen they carried, galley slaves sometimes, just as in Roman times. Although their cargo space was not huge, the value of the cargo was: cinnamon, ginger, nutmegs, cloves and other oriental spices; costly perfumes like frankincense; drugs for the apothecaries; silks and satins, carpets and tapestries, furniture and Venetian glass. It was a floating treasure house.

But it was not just the sight of the phantom galleass that made Seagull stare in shock. It was the ship’s position. For the Venetian vessel, directly in front of them, was in the narrow channel that led out of the Solent. He let out a cry. How could he have been so stupid? In the rage of the gale he had forgotten one crucial factor. The tide.

The ebb tide had begun. They were not heading for the sand spit and safety. The gale was blowing them right into the current that, in moments, would sweep them inexorably through the Solent’s exit and out into the boiling wrath of the open sea.

‘Oars!’ he cried. ‘Port side.’ He threw himself against the tiller. The boat rolled violently.

And he just had time to see the two boys, caught unawares, tumbling across the deck towards the water.

By the time evening began to fall in Lymington, many people had secretly given up hope.

Not that you could really call it evening: the doors and shutters had already been closed against the howling wind and the lashing rain for hours; the only change was that the enveloping darkness of the storm had grown blacker until at last you could see nothing at all. Only Totton, with his hourglass, could tell the time with precision and know, as the grains of sand fell, that it was now eight hours since his son had disappeared.

At first, when the Southampton boat had arrived, there had been celebrations. In the Angel Inn, where most of those with money on the race had gathered, some people had started collecting their bets. But questions were also being asked. Had the other boat attempted the crossing? Yes. They had got out of Yarmouth first. What course had they taken? Straight across.

‘They’ve been blown west, then,’ Burrard concluded. ‘They’ll have to row round. We shan’t see them for a while.’ But behind his bluffness some detected a hint of concern and it was noticed that he made no effort to collect any of his own winnings. Totton, soon after this, went down to the quay and not long afterwards Burrard had followed him. The conversation in the Angel had grown quieter after that, the jokes less frequent.

Down on the quay it had been impossible to see anything past the waving reeds. Totton, after visiting the Seagull family, had insisted on going down the path across the marshes towards the river-mouth where Burrard had accompanied him. There he had gazed uselessly into the rain and the raging sea for half an hour before Burrard had gently told him, ‘Come, Henry, we can do nothing here’ and led him home.

After that, Burrard had set in motion enquiries of his own and returned in the evening to keep his friend company.

‘I owe you our bet,’ Totton said absently.

‘So you do, Henry,’ Burrard agreed cheerfully, understanding his friend’s need. ‘We can settle up tomorrow.’

‘I must go out and look for them,’ Totton suddenly declared a few moments later.

‘Henry, I beg you.’ Burrard laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘The best thing you can do is wait here. It’s impossible to see anything out there. But when your son comes back soaked to the skin after walking halfway along the coast, the best thing is for him to find you here. I’ve already got four men out looking in the likely places.’ The fact that two of them had already returned all the way from Keyhaven and reported no sighting of Seagull’s boat was a piece of information he did not share with Totton for the moment. ‘Come, tell that pretty servant girl of yours’ – this was a description of the poor girl that would have surprised most people – ‘to bring us a pie and a pitcher of red wine. I’m starving.’

So while he thus ensured that Totton ate something, Burrard sat with his friend in the empty hall, saying little, while Totton stared ahead as if in a trance.

Yet even Burrard would have been most astonished had he known what his friend was thinking of.

It had been the day before the race when Henry Totton had gone to see Alan Seagull.

The mariner had been alone, mending his nets, when he had seen the quiet merchant approaching and had been surprised when he stopped in front of him.

‘I have some business with you,’ Totton had begun, and as Seagull had looked up enquiringly, he had proceeded: ‘There’s a great deal of money on tomorrow’s race.’

‘So they say.’

‘You don’t bet, though.’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re wise. Wiser than me, I dare say.’

If Seagull agreed he did not say so. It was an unexpected thing for Totton to admit, but not half so unexpected as what came next.

‘I hear you’re going to win.’

‘Oh?’ The mariner’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘My son. Told me last night.’

‘And why’ – Seagull looked down at his nets again – ‘would he think that?’

‘He won’t say.’

If that was true, Seagull thought, then young Jonathan had kept his secret better than his own son. But was it true, or had this merchant come to threaten him in some way? ‘I expect it’ll depend on the weather,’ he said.

‘Perhaps. But you see,’ Totton went on quietly, ‘the reason I bet against you originally was because I didn’t think you’d care to win.’

There was a long pause.

Seagull stopped mending his net and gazed at his feet. ‘Oh?’

‘No.’ And then, speaking softly, the merchant mentioned two illegal owling runs Seagull had made, one for a Lymington merchant, another for a wool dealer from Sarum. The first had been five years ago, the second more recent. But here was the interesting thing: young Willie could not possibly have known about either. Wherever Totton had got his information, it wasn’t from the boys. ‘So you see,’ Totton concluded, ‘when I bet Burrard five pounds on the Southampton boat, it was because I reckoned that even if you could outsail it, you wouldn’t want everyone to know. At least, the probability lay that way.’

Seagull considered. The merchant’s reasoning, of course, was quite right. As for his information, it seemed a waste of time to dissemble. ‘How long’ve you known?’ he asked simply.

‘Years.’ Totton paused. ‘Each man’s business is his own. That’s my rule.’

Seagull looked up at the merchant with a new respect. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut was the highest virtue for the fishermen, just as it was for the forest folk. ‘You had business with me?’

‘Yes.’ Totton had smiled. ‘Not that sort. It’s about the race. If my boy’s right and you are planning to win, then that alters the probabilities. And I’m in for five pounds.’ He paused. ‘I’ve heard that Albion wants to bet five pounds that you lose. So I’m asking you to take his bet. You won’t really be betting – I’ll provide the money. And I’ll pay you one pound whichever way it goes.’

‘You’re betting against yourself?’

‘Hedging.’

‘If you pay me either way, you’ll still be down a pound, won’t you?’

‘I’ve laid some other bets. I break even either way, if you’ll help me.’

‘But I might lose.’

‘Yes. But I can’t calculate the probabilities. When I can’t do that, I don’t bet.’

Seagull chuckled. The coolness of the merchant amused him. And to think he’d been wondering whether to drown young Jonathan. Not only was that pointless now but the lad, by confusing Totton’s calculations, was actually making him another pound. ‘All right, then,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll do it.’

 

But as Henry Totton sat in his hall now, staring ahead and remembering this transaction, he could only curse himself. He had settled his stupid bet. But what about his son? Why had he let him go with the mariner? Because the boy had hurt him and he was angry. Angry with a mere child who had only been thinking of the adventure of going with his friend. He had let him go; he had acted coldly towards him. And now he had probably sent him to his death.

‘Don’t despair yet, Henry,’ he heard Burrard’s gruff voice. ‘They’ll probably turn up in the morning.’

If the men Burrard sent out had failed to find any sign of Seagull and his boat it was not surprising. At the moment when they reached Keyhaven in the late afternoon he was just over a mile away at the end of the long gravel spit and had been there for some time. But he had made no attempt to get to Keyhaven, nor did he particularly want anyone to see him.

He had been lucky not to lose the boys. It had been very close. At the instant when he saw them rolling towards the side, he had let go of the tiller and lunged after them, grabbing one with each hand as the boat yawed. They had almost gone over, all three of them. ‘Hold him,’ he had cried to Willie as he released his grip on Jonathan and grabbed the rail with his free hand; and if Willie hadn’t clung on to his friend like a limpet, young Jonathan would surely have been lost.

The next quarter of an hour had been like a nightmare. They had dropped the sail and rowed; but each time they had seemed to make progress the current, with an awful dreamlike logic, had carried them further towards the long shadow of the galleass, which mysteriously hovered, sometimes hidden in the shrouds of the storm, sometimes glimpsed, yet never moving. At last, pulling for all they were worth, the men had managed, as the tide still swept them remorselessly, to touch the gravel edge of the spit and get the boat grounded almost on the very lip of the channel that rushed by, out to sea.

But now Seagull had other things on his mind. He cupped his hands over his eyes and stared intently across the water.

The storm had not slackened; but seen from the shore the downpour had resolved itself into trailing curtains of grey clouds that swept past remorselessly. Through these, nothing could be seen at more than a hundred yards; but in the brief intervals between, Seagull could see some way into the foaming channel.

At last he turned. The crew and the boys were doing their best to shelter from the rain in the lee of the boat, which they had pulled up on to the beach.

‘What are we going to do, Alan?’ one of them called now. ‘We going to Keyhaven?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of that.’ And as he turned and pointed they saw once more the long, tall shape of the galleass appear faintly out in the channel. ‘She ain’t moved,’ he said. ‘Know what that means?’ The man nodded. ‘I don’t reckon anyone but us has seen her,’ Seagull continued.

‘She may get off all right.’

‘And then she may not. So we’ll wait and see.’

And with that he returned to his position, watching.

The gravel banks in the west mouth of the Solent were not usually a hazard. Firstly, they were well known. Every pilot knew how to approach them. Secondly, the channel between them was deep and necessitated only a single turn as one came near the tip of the Isle of Wight. In spring storms, however, it was not unknown for vessels to run aground and shipwrecks to occur.

Clearly the galleass had run aground. With the tide running out, she would be left stranded, buffeted by the gale. She might even be blown over on to her side and broken up. It was hard to be sure but it seemed to Seagull that the crew of the stricken vessel were trying to work her free with the oars. Once, when he caught a glimpse of her, she was clearly listing. He could make out nothing. Long minutes passed.

But then, just for a moment, he saw her through the veil of rain again. She was half off the gravel bank now. But something else had happened. Somehow she had veered round; she was still veering as he watched. She was going athwart the tide, exposing her whole side to the wrath of the storm. She was keeling over. Then a great barrage of rain roared past and he could see no more.

Long minutes passed. Still nothing. Nothing but the howl of the storm. Poor devils, he thought. What frantic efforts would they be making now? Had the galley capsized? He stared, as if his eyes could bore through the rain.

And then, as though in answer to a prayer, the rain thinned. It almost stopped. Suddenly, ahead of him, he could see the centre of the channel where the gravel banks were and even further. He could make out the faint white shape of the island’s cliffs, over a mile away opposite. He stared at the gravel banks. The galleass wasn’t there.

Without even waiting to explain, he started running across the spit, to the seaward side. The curtain of rain was drawing back. By the time he had covered the few hundred yards to the beach looking out to the English Channel, he could see right out to the tip of the island. He saw the galley then.

At the westernmost tip of the Isle of Wight, where the old chalk cliffs had collapsed at some time, long ago, into the sea, there remained four spikes of chalk, like teeth, just off the white cliff’s high edge, as an indicator that the spine of land did not, in fact, end with the island but continued for some way, under the water. These sturdy outcrops, rising over fifty feet above the water, were known as the Needles. They were chalk, but they were hard and sharp.

The galley had listed badly. One of its masts had broken and was hanging over the side. The oars on the upturned side were either drooping or pointing erratically at the stormy sky. Even as he watched, she spun round helplessly. Then he saw her crash into one of the Needles. She drew back, after which, as if she meant to, the galley thumped into the rock once more.

A renewed cascade of rain interrupted his view. At first he could still see the nearer cliffs, but in a while they also vanished. And though he remained there on watch until it grew dark, he did not see the galleass again.

That night was not a comfortable one for Jonathan. Fortunately there were some blankets stored under the deck. The two boys, at least, were able to get tolerably dry and shelter in the hold during the night. The men pulled sailcloth out from the side of the boat and remained under that. Alan Seagull stayed out on the beach. He didn’t care.

It was somewhere in the early hours of the morning that the storm began to abate. By first light Seagull was waking them.

There was no sign of the galley as they rowed round the spit into the sea in the grey dawn. The sky was still overcast, the water choppy. It was not long, however, before Seagull called out and pointed to something floating in the water. It was a long oar. A few minutes later he steered the boat towards something else. A small cask this time. They hauled it aboard.

‘Cinnamon,’ the mariner announced. And it was not long before they found more. ‘Cloves,’ said Alan Seagull this time.

The galley had obviously sunk; but how much of its precious cargo was floating or had been washed ashore would depend very much on how badly it had been broken up before sinking. Judging by the number of spars they saw the galley had considerably disintegrated before going down.

‘Dad knows the currents,’ Willie explained. ‘He knows where to find the stuff.’

To Jonathan’s surprise, however, the mariner did not stay out long, but instead headed for the shore. ‘Why are we going in now?’ he asked Willie, who gave him a funny look.

‘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 was not made of leather but gold thread. His fingers worked round it. He had to pull the body close to him to steady it.

Suddenly the dead man’s arm floated round with a bump, as if, in return, he was trying to grab the boy round the waist. For a terrifying moment Jonathan imagined the corpse might wrap its arm around him, press him close and pull him down under the surface to join his watery death. In a panic he threw himself backwards, lost his balance and rolled under. For a second, under the water, he caught sight of the corpse’s ghastly face, staring down, fish-like, at the bottom.

He stood up, steeled himself and went back. He pushed the dead man’s arm firmly away, got hold of the belt, took a deep breath and searched with his fingers under water until he found what he was looking for.

The leather pouch was fastened to the belt with thongs, but they were tied in a simple knot. It took him a little time, moving beside the corpse as the waves brought it in, but the water was still up to his knees when he got it loose. The purse was heavy. He did not trouble to open it, but glanced about to see if he was observed. He wasn’t. Willie was still by the boat in the creek. The thongs were just long enough to tie round his waist under his clothing. He did so, adjusted his sodden shirt and tunic over the purse and went back.

‘You’re wet,’ said Willie. ‘D’you find anything?’

‘There’s a body,’ he replied. ‘I’m afraid to touch him.’

‘Oh,’ said Willie and ran off. A short while later he returned. ‘He was washed up on the beach. I got this.’ He was holding the belt. ‘Must be worth something.’

Jonathan nodded and said nothing.

They waited some time, until Seagull returned. He gave them a glance, saw the belt but made no comment.

‘Anyone out there, Dad?’ Willie asked.

‘No, son. There’s no one. The bodies’ll be coming in on the beach now, I reckon.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We’ll be taking the boat out. See what we can find. Be out all day, I shouldn’t wonder.’ If there was anything of value on the beaches or in the Channel waters for miles around, Alan Seagull would be sure to find it. ‘You boys cut home. Tell your mother where we are,’ he instructed his son. ‘Your father’ll be worried about you,’ he remarked to Jonathan. ‘You make sure you go straight home. All right?’

So the two boys obediently set off. It was only a five-mile walk back if they crossed directly above Pennington Marshes. They went along at a good pace.

There was a break in the clouds and pale sunlight was filtering on to Lymington as the two boys came down the High Street from the little church towards Totton’s house. They realized that people were looking at them. One woman ran out and seized Jonathan’s arm and started to bless God that he was alive, but he managed to shake her off politely and, not wanting to be further delayed, he broke into a trot.

When he reached his house he went to the street door that gave into his father’s counting house thinking, if his father was at home, to surprise him. But the room was empty, so he went through it into the galleried hall, which was silent also.

For a moment he assumed that it, too, was empty. None of the servants was there. The light came in through the high window and fell into its pale, vacant spaces; it seemed like a yard that had been swept clean before its owners had departed for another place. Only when he had taken a couple of steps into the hall did he realize that the upright wooden chair under the gallery passage was occupied.

It was turned slightly away from him so that the first thing he noticed was his father’s ear. But the merchant had not heard him. He was sitting in his usual posture, but staring so straight ahead that it seemed as if he were in a trance. Saying nothing, the boy tiptoed forward, watching his father’s face.

He had not seen grief before. When his wife had died, believing he was protecting the boy, Totton had hidden his distress beneath a calm exterior. But now, thinking himself alone, he was staring in silent misery at the images his mind presented before him: the baby he had loved, but left, as was proper, to be cared for by his mother; the toddler he had watched and for whom he had done nothing but make plans; the child he did not know how to comfort; the boy who only wanted to sail away from him; the son he had lost.

Jonathan had never witnessed anguish, but he did now. ‘Father.’

Totton turned.

‘It’s all right. We’re all safe.’ The boy took a step forward. ‘We were blown down the coast.’ Totton was still staring at him as though he were a ghost. ‘There was a shipwreck in the storm. Alan Seagull is still out there.’

‘Jonathan?’

‘I’m quite all right, Father.’

‘Jonathan?’

‘Did your boat get home?’

His father was still in a daze. ‘Oh. Yes.’

‘So you won your bet.’

‘My bet?’ The merchant stared. ‘My bet?’ He blinked. ‘Dear God, what’s that when I have you?’

So Jonathan ran to him.

And then Henry Totton suddenly burst into tears.

It was some minutes, as he lay in his father’s arms, before Jonathan gently disengaged himself and reached for the purse around his waist. ‘I brought you something, Father,’ he said. ‘Look.’ And he opened it and took out the contents. They were golden coins. ‘Ducats,’ he said.

‘So they are, Jonathan.’

‘Do you know what they’re worth, Father?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘So do I.’ And, to his father’s astonishment, he repeated, entirely correctly, the values the merchant had told him in their lesson three weeks before.

‘That’s exactly right,’ said Totton with delight.

‘You see, Father,’ the boy said happily. ‘I remember some of what you tell me.’

‘The ducats are yours, Jonathan.’ He smiled.

‘I got them for you,’ said his son. He paused a moment. ‘Can we share them?’

‘Why not?’ said Henry Totton.