‘On the Great Harry. Listen, can you get me something to drink? There’s beer in the tent with the green flag.’
I went and found the tent he described. There were some barrels of beer and drinking vessels stored there and I filled a tankard. I took it back to him. He drank greedily, then he gave me an amused, calculating look. ‘Have you come for the boy?’
‘What boy?’ I asked eagerly. ‘Do you mean Hugh Curteys?’
‘The one that was with you the first time you came here, the good archer.’
‘Have you seen him? Please, tell me.’
‘We were supposed to go on the ships this morning, but the King was on the Great Harry and they weren’t going to put us on till he’d gone across to the Mary Rose. We were waiting on the wharf, when your lad ran up. Hot and dusty, carrying a bow. He recognized Captain Leacon and asked to join the company. By then four of us were crouched against a wall shitting like dogs, and the company’s already short. So the captain took him on, and sent us sick ones back.’
‘I need to find that boy.’
‘You’ll have a job. Just after, there was a great commotion and the King’s barge came speeding back to shore. Then the French fleet comes into view round the Isle of Wight.’ With difficulty, Sulyard leaned up on his elbows. ‘Do you know what’s happened since? Have the French landed?’ I understood the reason for his unaccustomed civility; it was not just drink he wanted; he was afraid the French would come and butcher him in his tent.
‘No. They’re skirmishing out at sea. Listen, did they take the boy on board the Great Harry?’
‘They must have done.’
‘I must try and find him. I must go into town.’
‘They won’t let you in, they’ve been clearing civilians out all morning. You’d need to go to the army quartermaster’s office at the royal tents.’
‘Is the King there?’
‘I heard he went to South Sea Castle to watch the battle. I saw him when he landed – Christ, it took eight men to get him up the steps. Listen, can you get me out of here? Off the island?’
‘No, Sulyard, I can’t. I told you, I am going into Portsmouth.’
He scowled, then gave me a leering wink. ‘You like the boy, eh?’
I sighed. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘No. You’ve brought us enough bad luck.’
MY ONLY CHANCE now was to try and find the quartermaster. As I had told Hobbey, I planned to say Emma was a young woman driven by patriotism to impersonate a man and join up – I had heard tavern tales of such things. But I feared she could already have been rushed on board the Great Harry.
I rode past the town walls where the royal tents stood behind the long shallow pond, the Great Morass. There were over thirty of them, each as large as a small house, the heavy fabric woven in the vibrant colours I remembered from York. The largest and most spectacular, heavily guarded, with elaborate designs and threaded with cloth of gold and silver, would be the King’s tent. Soldiers and officials bustled to and fro. From all the tents the flags of England and the Tudor dynasty hung listlessly. I thought, it will be starting to get dark soon, ships do not fight in the dark. That will be the time to get Emma off the Great Harry.
On the seaward side of the pond the sandy, scrubby ground was alive with hundreds of soldiers. Companies had been joined together to form groups of several hundred, the captains patrolling in front on horseback. Nearby a troop of perhaps three hundred pikemen stood at attention, their weapons rising fifteen feet into the air; if the French attempted a coastal landing they would charge them on the beach. Somewhere a drum beat softly, regularly. All along the coastline more groups of pikemen and halberdiers stood ready. There were only a few archers at the front of each group, most would be out on the ships.
At the shore the ground shelved upwards to a little bank, blocking my view of the sea. Cannon were being set up along the top, and men were digging holes and fixing in pointed wooden stakes, angled to point seaward. I saw yet more cannon being dragged across. Ahead of me was the bulk of the new South Sea Castle, a solid, heavy square with wide-angled bastions. It bristled with cannon, as did a smaller fort a little way along the coast. On the tower at the top I saw a group of brightly coloured figures, the one at the centre far larger than the others. The King, watching what was happening out at sea.
There was a tremendous crashing roar, and smoke rose from South Sea Castle as a battery of cannon fired, presumably at the French galleys. Cheers sounded from the soldiers standing on top of the bank, so perhaps one was hit. I remembered Leacon saying the biggest cannon could hit a target over a mile away.