Read Chapter 39: The Fireship Gambit

The pinnace *Hare* wallowed in the chop a quarter-mile off Calais Roads, her lanterns doused, her sails reefed to nothing. Hartley stood at her tiller, watching the Spanish lanterns—hundreds of them, strung like a necklace of fire across the dark water. The Armada lay at anchor in its crescent, patient, massive, waiting for Parma’s army to embark from the Flanders flats.

Behind him, the *Raven*’s old cutter had been stripped bare and filled with pitch, tar, sulfur, and every scrap of sailcloth the dockyard could spare. Her name was long gone—burned off her transom in a fire at Baltimore—and Hartley found it fitting. She was no longer a ship. She was a weapon.

“Tide’s turning, Captain.” Abel Carver, his boatswain, crouched beside him, voice low. “Another ten minutes and she’ll carry us straight onto their bows.”

Hartley nodded, watching the nearest Spanish galleon swing at her anchor. The tide was already beginning to drag her stern toward the English shore. They were nervous, these Spaniards. They knew the shallows, knew the night, knew what fireships meant.

“You’ve the boat ready?” Hartley asked.

“Two launches, lashed alongside. One man at the tiller to hold her course, then we cut and go.” Carver paused. “The men are asking who steers.”

Hartley said nothing. He looked back at the *Hare*. Isabel stood at her rail, a dark shape against the lesser darkness, watching him. He could feel her gaze, steady, unafraid. He had argued, raged, pleaded—all of it wasted. She had pointed out, calmly, that she was the finest pilot among them, having steered fishing boats through the Irish gales since she was twelve. He had pointed out that she was the daughter of an English gentleman and the ward of a queen’s minister. She had pointed out that her father was dead and the minister could go hang.

She had won. She always won.

“I will,” Hartley said. “I’ll hold her course.”

Carver’s jaw tightened. “Captain, the flames will take you before you reach the boat.”

“Then I’ll swim.”

“You’ll burn.”

“Then I’ll burn.” Hartley turned to face him. “But she goes where I put her, Abel. Center of their fleet. If I leave her to a lesser hand and she drifts wide, we’ve spent our only card on a losing hand. I put her there or I don’t come back.”

Carver studied him a long moment, then nodded once. “The men will hear it the way I do. We’ll have the boat ready and two oarsmen waiting.”

Hartley stepped to the rail of the *Hare*. The wind was picking up, smelling of rain and sea-salt and, faintly, of smoke from the scattered cook-fires of the French shore.

“Isabel,” he called softly.

She came to him, a cutlass at her hip, her hair bound tight under a leather cap. She looked, he thought, like something out of the old tales—a warrior woman, a spirit of the sea. She had saved his crew with prayer and courage in the storm. She had shamed them all with her swordplay on the deck of the Duke’s flagship. She had refused to leave his side.

“You don’t need to say it again,” she said before he could speak. “I know the risks. I’ve counted them. I choose them anyway.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.” She stepped closer, close enough that he could smell the salt and tar on her clothes, the faint sweetness of the lavender she kept in her sea-chest. “But if you burn tonight, Thomas, I want to see it. So I can tell the truth of it when I’m old and grey.”

He reached out, took her hand. Her fingers were callused from the ropes, warm despite the cold night air.

“If I don’t come back,” he said, “see that Hawkins gets the map. The real one, not the copy. And tell him—tell him the landing isn’t at Church Cove. I don’t know where it is yet, but it isn’t there.”

“Tell him yourself,” she said, and squeezed his hand, and let go.

He turned and climbed into the *Raven*’s old cutter.

She was a wreck, and he felt it as soon as his boots hit her deck. The planks groaned underfoot, the rigging hung slack and rotten. The holds had been packed with every combustible the dockyard could spare—tar-casks, sulfur barrels, bundles of dry faggots soaked in oil. The stench was overwhelming, thick enough to choke the breath from a man.

His chosen crew—six men, all volunteers, all knowing the odds—stood ready at the lines that would release the launches. Carver had insisted on coming, and Hartley hadn’t argued. There were few men he trusted more.

“Cast off,” Hartley ordered.

The *Hare*’s lines splashed into the water. The cutter caught the current, swinging slowly, her wounded hulk turning bow-first toward the Spanish fleet. The lanterns ahead grew brighter, closer.

“Oars out,” Hartley said. The launches flanked her, their oars dipping in unison, guiding her, holding her course.

The Spanish watchtowers must have seen them by now. A horn sounded, thin and distant. Another answered it. Then, from the flagship—the same great galleon Hartley had boarded, whose rudder he had blown out—a cannon fired, the ball skipping across the water a hundred yards to port.

“They know,” Carver said.

“Light her,” Hartley ordered.

Carver touched a torch to the prepared kindling in the forward hold. The flames caught fast, leaping with a roar that seemed to shake the sky. The heat was immediate, savage, driving the men back.

“All hands to the boats!” Hartley shouted.

The launches came alongside. Men leapt, scrambling over the rail, splashing into the small craft. Carver was the last, save Hartley, standing at the tiller with the flames already licking through the deck behind him.

“Captain!” Carver shouted, his voice nearly lost in the roar.

“Go!” Hartley roared back. “I’ll hold her steady!”

The launches pushed off, oars biting the water. Hartley was alone on the burning deck, the tiller hot in his hands, the flames racing toward him along the tarred ropes and oil-soaked planking.

He turned the cutter’s bow. The Spanish fleet loomed ahead, vast, dark, monstrous. The nearest galleons were already beginning to haul at their anchors, but it was too late. They were anchored too close together, their maneuvering space too tight. The panic was beginning.

But the tide was fighting him. The cutter was beginning to swing, her bow pulling to the east, toward the open sea, away from the great mass of the Armada. If she swung wide, she’d burn out in open water, and the Spanish would laugh at them come morning.

Hartley threw his weight against the tiller, but the rudder was stubborn, the cables charring. He felt the deck sag beneath him. The smoke was in his throat, his lungs. He couldn’t see, could barely breathe.

“No,” he said aloud, to no one. “No. Not yet.”

He let go of the tiller and ran. The ropes that held the spare rudder lines were coiled by the mast, and if he could anchor the cutter by one kedge anchor, kick the bow around—

The flames caught his coat. He beat them out, felt the skin of his forearm blister. He reached the lines, hauled on them, felt the tiller shift beneath his grip, and the cutter’s bow began to swing back, toward the heart of the Spanish fleet.

But the fire was everywhere now. The canvas was burning overhead, falling in sheets of flame. The deck itself was catching, the seams opening, the pitch bubbling up through the cracks. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. He fell to his knees.

The last thing he heard, above the roar and the crack of burning timber, was the scream of Spanish sailors as the fire came among them.

Then the deck gave way, and he was falling through flame and smoke and shattered planking, down into the cold, dark sea.

The water closed over his head, shocking in its coldness. He had no strength to swim. His coat dragged him down, his boots filled with water, the weight of the sea pressed on him like the hand of God.

He saw light above—the burning cutter, drifting now, wreaking havoc among the Spanish. He saw dark shapes thrashing in the water around him, struggling, drowning.

And then, out of the murk, a hand closed on his collar and hauled him upward.