The Unfinished Land

Broken Armada

REYNARD SHOTWOOD, no longer a boy, not yet a man, had pushed the last of his dead shipmates overboard two days before. Rubbing crusted salt from his eyes, he tried to say another prayer for them and for himself, but his lips were broken and his tongue filled his mouth so he could not make the words.

His uncle and the crew, English fishermen from the coastal town of Southwold, had been cut to pieces by grapeshot from a Spanish galleass. Except for one finger, missing its tip to the knuckle, Reynard had not been touched. But now, a week or more later, he was parched and starving.

Unfamiliar currents carried him through a thick, night-gray fog that looped and writhed over the toppled mast and the shredded sails like a sky filled with maggots. He had spent long, numb hours watching the bloodless, broken bodies of his uncle, the uncle’s partner in the boat, and the partner’s son bump and bob against the timbers and upper step of the mast, caught in eddies that seemed to mimic the whorls in the fog, the bodies rolling now and then to show their faces—if they still had faces—and stare blankly, resentfully, as if he should help them climb back aboard and resume their duties.

Yare, fast away! He could almost hear his uncle’s cry as their boat tried to flee the Spanish, but it was only a patting breeze and waves slopping through the scuppers. Now the bodies were gone, sunk or grabbed by sharks, those snapping dogs of the sea—but the fog still turned the sun into a cold moon and shaded the moon as dim and gray as death itself.

The sloop-rigged hoy, once as hardworking a boat as ever harvested the sea, managed to stay afloat even with its larboard a mass of wrenched decking thrust through with broken timbers. The starboard, rising a few fingers above the dark, lapping water, likely held a bubble, but soon that would leak away and the wreck would sink and no one would ever know how long Reynard had been out here, alive, alone—but of course not afraid. Not now. The worst had happened, other than dying, and fishermen often died. Their names were carved into boards nailed on the walls of his family church—a good Protestant church. But dead all the same, and so many.

And now many more.

The great battle off the coast of Flanders had been long and fierce. Boats from Southwold had left their dozing harbor to serve the English fleet, at the command of Lord Walsyngham and the Queen, though the fishing season was but half done and many families might go hungry—but the desperate need of Elizabeth and of England against Philip’s devils overcame village sense.

With the awful memory of the seaborne power the English ships had faced, it was easy for Reynard to imagine the Duke of Parma’s soldiers filling the streets of London with forests of muskets and half-pikes, crested steel helms thick and shiny as shingle on a beach—and row upon row of great bronze Spanish cannons rolling, flaming, and bucking, blowing up homes and churches, intent on punishing all who followed the faith of Henry and Elizabeth and not Mary of ill regard. Maybe there was no home to return to.

Not the best sailor or apprentice, he had never wanted to go to sea, and yet had never found his place on land. His mother, a once-lovely woman who had withered early under the toll of being a fisherman’s widow, lamented her son’s pointless fascination with bushes and birds, ferrets and mice, snakes and turtles—more interested in studying the insides of fish than catching or making them ready for market. He could see her now, a sallow-faced, gray-haired figure, with a perpetual half-smile—though she was no idiot, and had taught him letters early on—pounding out washing or packing oysters and lobsters into barrels, graced with slimy, odorous seaweed, for sale in any of the five larger towns nearby, or even in London after a night journey, to avoid the heat of the summer sun.

Reynard was too numb for regrets, though he suspected that if he lived much longer, an unlikely prospect, he would have many. Could he regret not being more grateful for a home and a roof—though a leaky roof, thatch unchanged for years—or regret not being a better nephew, which he did not, not yet, and not much? Perhaps he could regret not having planned a way to keep the hoy clear of the galleass. His mind worked that way, regretting the undone and impossible, not the undone but doable. He preferred contemplating inventions and miracles, not plotting and planning actual work. He preferred reading to playing but had neither books nor companions, since his life was spent in service, mostly, to his uncle, with barely a day off in a month.

In what was left of the hoy, Reynard had recovered a cask of salt cod and two butts of water. One butt had been holed, and the second, poorly coopered, had leaked dry. The hoy had been meant to convey stores to the Queen’s great ships, but the promised supplies had not arrived in Southwold by the time the boats put out to sea. There should have been more victuals for the English fleet, from the shore, from the Queen, before they engaged—so his uncle had complained. Only Reynard had lived long enough to suffer for it. His uncle was a hard man, a tough master, but fair enough and smart, and despite everything, Reynard had loved him as a grizzled, thick-browed, heavy-jawed, masculine mountain in his young life.

Maybe now, pulling his feet from the water and going through these memories, he could find his regrets. But for the nonce, sharks were of more concern. Their low triangular fins popped up here and there, swishing, probing; they no doubt remembered they had found food around this wreck before. He did not want to further flavor the ocean with his toes.

He rose on wobbly legs, feet wedged against the gunwale to see any change in the flat gray sea. No change. In the days since the battle, the fog had tempted with its promise of moisture. He had carefully gathered the remains of the spritsail and knuckled a dip in the canvas to catch fog and rain, but the fog did not condense or drip, and there had been no rain since the easterly winds and violent storms had broken up the Spanish fleet.

Reynard stared at the barrel of salt cod. At his present level of thirst, the thick white flesh, hard as wood, was worse than useless, with no water but seawater in which to soak it. Salt from either could drive him mad.

Having been fishing and delivering freight for only three years, Reynard had not yet had time to absorb all his uncle’s sea lore, but he suspected—he felt, in a strange way—that the currents which drove the wreck were carrying him north and west. For most of a day, he passed through a slightly brackish flow, probably out of the Baltic, where shoals of herring and mackerel, along with sturgeon and fat bream and plaice, drew out English boats to compete with the Basques, the Dutch, and the French. On their first fishing expedition, his uncle had dipped a ladle in that water and offered it to his lips, to let him taste it, to remember the flavor of its source and learn how to find his way by tongue as well as eye. Now the sea was colder and saltier. That did not seem to match any currents his uncle had taught him, not for this time of year, when the North Sea warmed. Perhaps the great battle, with its flashes and cries, its explosions and whistling shot, had frightened the sea into its own madness.

By morning of what he was sure would be his last day, Reynard’s cracked skin was streaked with blood and salt, and a long gulp of seawater seemed a good, a necessary, option, if only to soften his lips and relieve his parched throat. Still, perhaps in honor of his dead uncle, he had so far resisted, knowing that he would shortly thereafter follow his shipmates to the bottom.

Reynard’s head lolled. He tried to stay awake night after night and was now losing that struggle. Even as something powerful bumped his foot, he could not open his eyes, until abruptly he heard deep thumps and great splashes. He pulled his feet up tight against his butt and blinked until he saw, across the half-submerged deck, that a long, silvery-gray shark had pushed up to get at him and was stuck—unable to thrash free and back to the sea. Now it twisted and tossed its long scimitar tail, and gaped the most frightful open-jaw threats inches from his ankles and toes, its deep-sunk eyes intent on either dining or causing the ship to break apart. Reynard was already soaked, but rolled over the gunwale aft and grabbed for a splintered rudder bar. Without thought of the danger, so close was he already to death, he braced his feet against the broken planks, leaned out over the deck, wedged the bar under the shark’s heaving middle, then hunched along on his knees and fairly lifted the great fish, teeth and dead eyes and all, back into the sea.

After crawling aft to the only dry patch that remained, he leaned back, felt his toes to make sure all remained, and continued his shivering and weary watch. The sea, gray and uniform beneath greenish-gray sky, resumed its boring mien.

Scrawny at the best of times, with a knife-cut shock of thick black hair, by looks and attitude Reynard favored his mother’s side of the family, who claimed descent from the ancient peoples who had built the great stone circles. “Stone folk,” his grandmother had called them, “and specially the men.”

His mother had taught Reynard how to notch sticks or boards in ogham, or sign secretly on his arm with his fingers, called rankalva, which she explained had been taught to humans thousands of seasons before by great Ogmios. On occasion she dropped into a speech called Tinker’s Cant, a kind of bastard Irish sometimes heard on wagons offering to do light blacksmithing, knife-honing, and scythe-sharpening—gruffly spoken by dark, black-haired peoples, women wild, men quiet and shrewd, jacks of all trades traveling horse-and-sheep-pounded pathways across Britain. His grandmother had once belonged to those folks, and his mother still proudly boasted of her girlhood, and of how women survived and even prospered in that life.

But Reynard had since his father’s death felt there would be no prosperity or fortune in fishing with his uncle. Worse, he dreaded the sea. His fear of water had brought out a cruel streak in his uncle, who did his best to shock it out of him, and nearly succeeded. Once he had tied a rope around Reynard and dragged him along behind the hoy for several miles. The fishermen had watched closely to make sure he was not drowning, and he did manage in a way to learn to swim. But what appeared to follow—acceptance and a better attitude—masked a bitter hatred, strangely not of his uncle, but of the source of all their livelihoods—the sea, that forced them into such a desperate existence. So desperately sad had he become for the brusque, brawny man who had been his father, as the years passed and his memory faded, and so anxious had he become for novelty and wider fields, and to get away from the water and the smell of fish, that at age twelve he had run away from the coast and walked west across fallow fields and over hedgerows and along farmers’ lanes until nightfall, surrounded by birdsong, light airs, and a boundless, floating sense of weary accomplishment.

On that first moonless and starless night, hunger had replaced his floating ease and cold had set in, along with guilt. He had huddled within sight of quiet shade-wrapped cows in a long wicker enclosure, observed with envy the goings-on and passing candles of a farmer’s house, and finally snuck into the low, decrepit barn and wrapped himself in dirty, unturned hay, sour and wet, trying to sleep and not succeeding, until cock’s crow and a pale sunrise.

There was nothing for it but to beg at the farmer’s door or return to the coast, back to Southwold, the boat, his uncle, and his mother. He decided against begging. On his way back, he encountered a half-drunken press gang reeling over the road near Aldeburgh, alternately singing and calling out, hoping to fill the Queen’s own ships of war. Reynard’s black hair helped him hide in the shadow of a hedgerow. “Sir Frauncis Drake’s ship,” a sailor cried in a voice sharp as a billhook, “built in this very town of Aldeburgh, demands thee!”

Here was Reynard’s chance to flee a life of fishing and village monotony! But as much as Reynard admired Drake (and what Englishman did not?), this would still be a life at sea and not for him. He did his best to stay silent as he observed through a screen of cow parsley, grass, and hawthorn six sailors and two soldiers, swaying saps and cudgels from their broad belts, and towing two skinny, sad-looking lads bearing badges of resistance—bruises on faces and arms, ropes binding their wrists. Reynard did not wish another and stupider set of masters.

And yet now, three years later, here he was anyway, lost at sea like Oxenham’s men in his uncle’s tales. He had no idea what had happened to Drake’s ship in the engagement with the Armada, after the famed captain had captured a Spanish galleon and brought it to London to strip it of shot and gunpowder. Maybe Drake was dead or lost as well. Maybe he was alive and nearby, and soon they would meet, and the hero would rescue Reynard… What a tale that would be!

He tried to bring up some spit, but there was none to be had. Dry, rough tongue scraping cheeks brought only blood.

After the press gang had passed, Reynard had fallen asleep beneath the hedgerow, and then awakened to a strange black hand, streaked and lined with thorny white, reaching through the hawthorn to shake him. With a start, he had scrambled out of the thicket, brushing away leaves and twigs and dirt, and stood before a man who might have been older than he, or younger—hard to know, with his strange color and demeanor. Like an unholy spirit, the man had watched Reynard through eyes whose whites were black and whose pupils were a pale purple. Even in bright morning light, he appeared blacker than night, his skin blackest where touched by sun, yet brighter pale green-gray in the shadows. This bizarrely reversed fellow wore a ragged black and silver coat and breeches—and his hair hung elfin white streaked with green and blue.

“Thou must reach the island,” the dark visitor had told him. “Get thee swift to sea and find thy way to where the Crafters scrub and moil. That will be thy true beginning.”

“Who are you?” Reynard had asked in a trembling voice.

The dark man with purple eyes then faded, leaving Reynard on the road beside the hedgerow—alone and frightened. Later, the most memorable part of that odd vision had been that the man’s shadow was itself white. He had cast a white shadow.

The nearer Reynard had come to Southwold, the less he had felt comfortable with the dark man’s memory: dream or sorcery, trouble either way! And so he had tried to forget about him and told nobody, not even his mother, to whom he sometimes confided his dreams. He still had no explanation. But it was apparent he might not need to drink seawater to lose his mind.

Waves sloshed over his legs. Reynard stared at the worn fingers of his right hand, lifting them one after another, testing their flexibility. First he rearranged and retied the filthy, bloody tag of cloth on his little finger, serving as a bandage. The tag fell off and he saw that the old clot had closed over the exposed knuckle, making the bandage little more than a cushion. But he pushed it back over the wound and held his hand in closer, under his arm, moaning softly. After a time, he took out his hand and laid the fingers as straight as he could along his left arm and arranged, by folding and extending, a series of ogham symbols, engaging in rankalva—spelling out letter by letter old Irish words, as his grandmother had taught him, and as his mother had on occasion signed to him when she wanted chores done. “Do not show this to thine uncle,” his mother had advised. “He is unhappy with my side of the family. Oh, he is an honorable man, comes to that, but not ripe for such heresies…”

The letters and words, dancing from the fingers both injured and raw, brought him comfort. He could still shape the necessary letters, even though his hand throbbed. Somehow, that seemed important, though it was a skill he had never found useful after his grand­mother’s death.

His uncle had been no-nonsense, straight as a staff and just as blunt in his opinions—unlike Reynard’s father, his brother, who married, gambled, drank, had a son, and then died, leaving the uncle to take up the family and feed and find work for Reynard, who had always borne a distinct resemblance, black hair and all, to his grandfather, also a tinker, ne’er-do-well, and gambler—so his uncle had claimed, with quiet dismay at how life plagued and challenged sensible men.

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and saw nothing changed. But his fingers had a life of their own.

Old Goidelic words now danced on them, spinning a silent tale of the Anakim, powerful giants who had once lived in the Holy Land, vexing Moses and Joshua, and upon being pushed out of those countries, had moved to Ireland and Scotland. There, many centuries before, they had married into the dark Picts and other tribes and had acted as scouts and beacons for the even darker Roma, their distant cousins—according to his grandmother. “Stone people, and big,” she had confided. “I met one once, long ago. Handsome and very large. Thought I to marry him, but mine own mither would hae none o’ it.”

Reynard had once asked the dotty old priest of Aldeburgh about the Anakim, and the priest had scoffed and suggested he read his Wycliffe. “Or seek’st thou a dark grammary, to learn magic? Thou hast that evil, Gypsy look, I wot.”

Neither his uncle nor his mother possessed so expensive and rare a thing as a family Bible. And besides, through lack of books, Reynard’s reading skills were haphazard, though he was swift enough with ogham and the finger-forms that spelled out words to those who wished to hide them.

Still, his grandmother’s secret signs had not satisfied. He had wished to read about and learn of all the places and histories and fables and other glorious things that book-words described. Four months back, one cloudy spring afternoon, he had used his one free day to venture out of the small fishing town and, unannounced, knock on the door of a man known to be a tutor in Aldeburgh. The external beams of the instructor’s two-story, half-timbered house were painted pink, and the door was set with purple stamped-glass windows in leaden frames. Reynard had knocked several times, at first light raps, then heavy bangs, on the thick oaken door, and asked the small stooped man who answered if he had books. Dubious, baldheaded, wearing a sagging, great-shouldered coat over a long gray gown, the instructor had looked him over briefly for weapons, then shrugged and led this strange boy inside. In a dark-shelved inner apartment, away from windows and sun, by the smoky light of a brass candle, Reynard had stared in green envy at the instructor’s shelves of vellum-bound books, dozens of them, spines pale gray or tan, with titles calligraphed on their spines in sepia or black ink. The instructor had held out a clutching hand, rubbed his fingers, and with sucked-in cheeks and pinched lips studied Reynard.

“How much money doth your family possess?” he had asked.

“I come from fisherfolk.”

“So… very little?” This made the man’s face turn red as a slice of beef. Unable to pay, Reynard had been shown the door, with a kick on his bum for farewell.

As he had made his return to Southwold through the gloaming, the same press gang, minus sad boys, almost caught him a second time, but he escaped through a half-overgrown wicker gate and fled through a copse alive with bird screeches. At least there had been no dark man with a white shadow.

With his fingers, he shaped more of his grandmother’s words, concluding stanzas to ancient songs he did not understand, filled with nonsense lists and riddles and begging equally nonsensical answers that nobody had ever explained—then sighed and folded both hands into fists. The bandage fell off again. This time, he did not replace it.

All of it was nonsense for a fisherboy, nonsense as useless as salt cod in a barrel. Would that the Anakim could rise again and vanquish England’s enemies! But they did not, and would not, ever. This was no longer such a world.

For months now, all England—and certainly the northeast coastal towns—had experienced a numbing terror inspired by actual threats, but promoted by the Queen’s own henchman: agents of Walsyngham and whoever could be encouraged or commanded to cry in the village squares or carry alarming handbills from town to town. Weeks before the battle, dire warnings had been posted at inns and around wells and on the docks. Each village was asked to help the effort against the Spanish by contributing ships and boats. Some villages demurred, made excuses; bet against the Queen, some said, a dangerous treason if the Spanish were defeated. Reynard read well enough to feel concern, but understood better the fear his uncle had expressed that not to give over the use of their hoy would bring down the Queen’s anger. Beloved as the Queen was by most not Catholic, no one wished her servant Walsyngham’s disapproval, and so Southwold had eventually compelled twelve boats, nine pinnaces and three hoys, to join the fleet.

Farmers as well were reluctant to donate crops and animals to supply the navy or the coastal defenses. Rarely traveling more than ten miles from their land, these yeomen and landowners had difficulty imagining, in their inland fastnesses, a broad, wet ocean. Such, his uncle said, was what it meant to be English these days—surrounded by devils, and the farmers and highborn on shore caught in tides of ignorance and stingy greed.

“For which God willing I’ll soon die,” Reynard murmured, then cringed as his lower lip split, and not for the first time.

The fog! The cursed fog filled the sky with weird shapes. Devil’s fog, devil’s war, devil’s time—and his life had scarce begun.

He could no longer keep his eyes open, even knowing what he now saw might be the last he would ever see.

The salt crusting his eyelids crackled.

He dropped into dark misery.

Somehow, the visions would not leave him.

“Wilt thou tak’st these signs to some who wait?”

Reynard did not bother to open his eyes. He was raw inside from the knotted string of memories and visions, with no way of knowing which was what. There was nobody and nothing beyond his eyelids to see, he knew that already. And besides, he did not need to open his eyes, as the lids themselves had become clear as stamped-glass panes, useless to block such specters.

And yet…

A well-dressed gentleman stood before him, shoes set solid on the sun-touched water. At least his coloring and figure were not reversed. A fancy ostrich plume adorned his well-shaped and expensive hat. Reynard, who seemed to watch from all around, saw the gentleman’s pleasant smile and knew that something more was wanted of him. This was a man of privilege. Even for a vision, being so well-dressed showed money and power, and so he must needs be polite.

“Noble sir,” he murmured.

“Fine lad!” The beplumed gentleman leaned in and stretched out his arm. “I have summat to teach thee about the heavens and their ways. I have studied long, and think thou needest guidance on such matters, even now, before thy moment of being born.”

“I am already born,” Reynard said, wondering if the man was an idiot, or truly a ghost.

“Nay, thou hast not even a name, yet.”

“And what is your name, sir?”

“Frauncis,” the man said. “Thou’lt know me better in time.” His fingers tickled Reynard’s palm in patterns he recognized, letters leading into words, words forming a kind of poetic sense, of which he translated a crucial few: The First Mother… the First Word…

The First Star in the Sky.

Was that the stand of it?

A far metal peal interrupted.

Reynard lifted his chin.

The man collapsed like folded paper.

Reynard looked for the source of the clang that had roused him. Had it been a swinging bell? Bump of blocks against an anchor? After a short, dark time, he thought he heard other voices—not English voices, but not dreams, either—and craned his neck to find their direction, muffled as they were by fog, like every other sound—but real. He looked down at his fingers, but could recover nothing from the strange dream of the feathered man except his smile and the arch of his plume.

Again Reynard tried to stand, and nearly fell into the water. Words from across the lapping waves came flat and clear to his ears—Spanish words, and not from spirits. Dare he cry out in answer? What choice? To keep to this drifting pile of sticks meant a sure and drowned death. Could the Spanish do worse?

Walsyngham had insisted they could.

Reynard made his choice.

“Ahoy!” he tried to yell, but the call came out a dry, weak croak. He tried again, and once more, with no better result, then leaned on his elbow and stared into the gloom, cheeks puffy, eyes stinging with salt.

There it was! A great shadow pushed through the lower grayness, huge spritsail dragging under a boom big as a tree. The sail passed over his wreck, and the hoy hard-bumped a keel and swung slow about, grinding and spinning along a massive, bulged black hull. Above, from as high as the sky, more cries drifted down. He knew little Spanish, but these were words he could almost understand—nautical words. They had seen the wreck and were discussing it, he was sure.

Reynard rose to his knees to hold out his arms and reach for a ladder or rope, something to climb or cling to. Whatever the origin of the huge, potbellied ship and its crew, they were alive, it was afloat, and together offered at least a thin hope.

But nothing was lowered to his grasp, and the wreck kept grinding and spinning.

And then, suddenly, shouts and cheers from above, and a huge, dark mass plunged from over the rail into the water, just feet from the wreck of the hoy. Bubbles greened the sea, and a sad hump surfaced and rolled to show a long head, folded and broken legs—

A horse! A dead horse. With such a feast, the ocean would soon be thick with sharks. The words from above grew louder. The wreck had beat along about a third of the galleon, wrenching against solid oak and splitting the frame. Reynard was awash to his waist when a thick line uncoiled like a snake from the quarterdeck. He grabbed it and held tight. A grizzled old sailor leaned over the rail, scanned the dead horse and the wreck’s submerged tangle, then waved his arm and pulled back. A few seconds later, the old sailor was swung out again and down, sitting on a slung board, such as might be used to paint the hull or transfer sailors.

The old one laughed as if this was a joke and he was paying off a bet. He had very few teeth left. “Muchacho!” he said. “¡Oye, tú! ¿Eres inglés o castellano?”

Asking if he were English or Spanish. Reynard understood this much. But again, he could only croak.

The old man looked him over with a yellowed, doubtful eye. “I think inglés. Do not move. Thou art fast sinking.”

A great voice boomed from the forecastle, arguments broke out along the rail, and the old man was pulled up. Water slopped into Reynard’s mouth and he tried to swim, but his muscles knotted. The great ship moved on. He was sure that would be the last he would see or hear of any of them, but moments later, the old man descended again and flung him a second rope. “Tie it on!” he urged, and pointed to his own skinny waist. Reynard had enough strength to do that, and soon he was lifted like a sack, the old man keeping him steady as they both were hauled aboard the ship, passing gun ports, thick sheets of tar and hair to help repel shipworm, black steel spikes to discourage boarders—which could skewer them like fish on a hook. But the men pulling from the deck swung them about, and the old man, with surprising strength, pushed the boy up over the thick rail.

Reynard sprawled on his back, gasping, and the sailors and soldiers—dozens of Spanish soldiers in full battle gear—formed a solid wall, like a stand of brutal flowers. A great net had been slung above the deck, and hammocks still dangled from its squares. The soldiers carried half-pikes and halberds and wore crested helmets and bulge-breasted cuirasses, and they were bearded, brown or olive with sun and warm-climed Spanish blood.

They circled around Reynard, curious, disdainful. Some spat. Some moved in with short swords drawn, ready to dispatch this useless English wretch, until the old man cried out, “Santa Maria, madre de Dios!” and pushed them back. The soldiers rewarded him with grating laughter and what sounded like insults.

The old man leaned over Reynard and whispered to him, “Speak truth! Speak lies! But say thou canst tell us where we are.”

Reynard croaked and pointed to his mouth.

The old man lifted his gaze to the soldiers and curious sailors and called for water. The sailors grumbled, the soldiers parted and wandered off, but water was brought in a bucket by a frowning boy much younger than Reynard, and the old man ladled him his first drink in days.

“Not too much,” he advised. “Thou wilt heave on el maestro’s bloody deck.”

The water was sweeter than fresh apples and gave Reynard back a whisper. “What ship?”

“A mighty ship,” the old man said. “El Corona Royale, thirty-one guns! Sad boy, niño inglés, thou shalt surrender to the imperial navy of King Philip and the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and tell us where we sail!”

“¡No hay viento!” cried a voice forward.

“No wind,” the old man translated. “No wind anywhere.”

A man of great dignity and fine clothes came down to the middle deck to inspect their catch. He knelt beside Reynard and regarded him sadly. The old man, in oft-patched rags, with a rope for a belt, was a sorry contrast to this splendid fellow, whose gray-specked beard had been neatly trimmed, and whose enameled scabbard depended from a belt on a silver chain. His eyes were like emeralds, and his hands were pale and smooth—a young woman’s hands, untouched by the wear of rope or oar.

The old man bowed low. “This is el capitán del mar y de la guerra Jorge Cardoza de Vincennes, very powerful. Say something. Name anything—an isle thou know’st, a spit, a reef.”

“Where the sea doth strangle the wind,” Reynard rasped, sensing he would be tossed back into the water unless he said something, however stupid.

“Donde duerme el viento,” the old man said to the gentleman.

“Ah,” the gentleman said. “¡Él sí conoce el nombre!”

“Know’st thou this place?” the old man asked Reynard, with a sparkle of suspicion. “Or make cruel jest?”

Reynard tried to remember where he had heard the phrase, where the notion had come from. It might have been from his father before he died… but that would have been when Reynard was little, no more than three or four years of age. “My father told it to me,” he said, then put fingers to his mouth for more water and for food.

Sadly, deliberately, the gentleman in the fine clothes came off his knee and stood his full height over them—about five feet six inches, shorter than Reynard’s uncle and slighter, more delicate.

“¡Norte-noroeste!” cried the voice forward.

“How doth he know?” the old man muttered. “For days, the compass guideth not.”

And so it was. The Spanish were lost, too. The fog obscured the tops of sails and masts like a billowing blanket, dividing and reshaping into worms and wisps—but also hiding some of the damage the galleon had suffered in the great battle off Gravelines. Ragged sails hung, ripped and holed, rigging cut as if by shears, the ends tied and lifted for fidding and rejoining later, spars hanging but also tied away, bumping in dejection against the great masts.

The old man followed Cardoza, el capitán del mar y de la guerra, forward and up onto the forecastle. Two other boys, also younger than Reynard and curious about the prisoner, brought him more water. The oldest smiled, not in the least afraid. They were not unkind, he saw, not cruel—and he had heard many times that the Spanish tortured their own children when they were bad, that they flensed and ate fishermen and merchants for breakfast after breaking their necks in the noose. More grog tales, no doubt, but effective at keeping an air of menace about those who threatened the Queen.

“The Queen’s a fair tease when it cometh to Philip,” his uncle had said. “But now the old king’s dander is up and we are all put to it. If only the dander flaked from a worthier head. Philip will be their bloody ruin!”

The sailors knew a little English, and as they led him to a cage under the overhang of the stern castle, followed by the youngest boy, they tried out their few words, as if seeking his approval of their pronunciation. “Bastard, asshole, thou donkey—thou monkey dick!”

Reynard nodded and smiled.

After the sailors locked the cage, the old man brought him a bowl of lentils and vegetables soaked in oil, not butter. He ate with his fingers. The old man went away again, and now sailors crowded around.

“I know thou is good lad,” one sailor attempted.

“Él es rubio,” said another, with a cackle. “Él prefiere los pelirrojos.” His puzzlement set them back and forth with each other until the old man returned. Despite his rags, the old man seemed to be respected.

The sailors, bored, left them to talk alone.

“They remark thou hast red hair,” the old man said.

“My hair is black,” Reynard said.

The old man shook his head. “Sea-bleached, then. No doubt from terror. Mayhaps it will grow out black. I have told el capitán thou’rt son of a fisherman and know’st the waters north to Iceland. Make me not a liar!”

“I know some of the coasts and waters off France and Flanders, and some of Ireland,” Reynard said as he ate. His stomach was giving him pains.

“Hast thou fished with Basques? With Dutch?”

“My uncle fished with Basques off Flanders and Portugal,” Reynard said. “No Dutch.”

“Thou speak’st Basque?”

Reynard made a face.

“French?”

“No.”

“Gypsy? Roma?” the old man asked, doubtful.

Reynard shook his head, unsure—his grandmother had never liked the name or judgment of “Gypsy,” assuming as it did an origin in Egypt and a clannish, outlaw nature—but was not Tinker’s Cant touched by Roma?

“English!” the old man concluded, with a wry twist of his lips. “Well, el maestro is afraid, and el capitán saith little but frowneth much. We have wandered at sea ten days without wind. And even before the battle, we were stuck in this wallowing tub of shit for over two months! Thou seest plain our galleon is sad. The soldiers never chanced to get ashore. The battle, the storms, the currents…”

“Your guns sank my boat,” Reynard said. “You killed my uncle and our crew. They knew the sea better than I.”

“Many ships and sailors now grace the Lord’s deep,” the old man said. “I think maybe the planning not so good. But say nothing of this to el maestro or el capitán.”

Reynard’s strength was slowly returning, and with it things he had tried to forget—wild winds and pounding waves, shots and fire, screams as his uncle and the crew tried to keep the hoy behind the galleons and away from the guns of the swift Spanish pinnaces. The hoy had been built for cargo, not war, and her four old guns had been mounted in all the wrong places, while a galleass, fierce in the dark gray light of that horrible noon, as the tide reversed and all the Spanish ships seemed to flee in their direction, came abreast and let loose with the scattered shot that put an end to everyone but Reynard…

He lay back, shoulders against the rough bars, caged like a bear. It was said that the Queen liked to watch stags baited by dogs, and bears as well. There were dogs on this ship—big dogs. Reynard could hear them barking and growling. Mastiffs, he thought. Perhaps they belonged to the gentleman, el capitán.

But what kept his eyes from closing was fear of the living fog that had dropped no water into his sail and now followed all these sailors and soldiers northwest—to where?

Slowly he pieced together fragments of those long-ago tales his father had told him, of haunted seas and strange lands, and of the ring of seven islands at the top of the world. “Your grandmither, bless her and all she knows, tells me they are called Tir Na Nog, and they are places where mortals can live forever, and where gods, goddesses, and monsters roam according to their own laws. I have never been there, thanks be to God, but old fishermen who have, and told tales in mine youth, as I tell you now, spake of a slow, relentless storm that pulls and pulls, like a snake of wind and water, sweeping them north and west until there is no escape—all the way to where the wind goeth to die, and sailors with it. Some would say the nearest isle is a great land hidden beyond that storm, that none but demons should visit! So they say, and your grandmither as well… But we are sailors, and know teat from twaddle, do we not, boy?”

And he remembered, as if his father were alive again, him dandling a much smaller Reynard by both hands, and the large man’s laughter, the sweetest sound, silent now for seven years but alive in memory.

“But remember this, all respect to our kin and the good people they know!” His father had cackled, lifting him high. “Old seamen fart loudest on shore. Keep your wits, lad, and leave the dead to find passage to where the wind sleeps, for only they are allowed to fish there, and they catch nought but monsters—and there be no market for monsters in Southwold.”

The old man brought him a small bowl of peas and sodden biscuit, this time with a slice of half-cooked carrot. Reynard was grateful for anything.

“I had a boy of mine own,” the old man said, sitting beside the cage and watching him. “A son, a wife, and a daughter. They gave me joy and solace for twenty years, in the Philippines. All dead now. I am far too old, boy.”

The look he gave Reynard was strangely hopeful, but then the old man reached into his own mouth and wiggled a tooth.

The day darkened into night. Only then did the fog part, but beneath the upper deck’s overhang, Reynard saw little but a black wedge interrupted by a sliver of moon.

As morning painted the sky gray, the old man opened the cage door. “Come. el maestro says that, having fished here, thou may’st tell us what sort of animal doth follow our ship.” Then he looped rope around Reynard’s chest and neck, knotted the two loops, and led him to the hind castle and up two flights of steps to the far jutting peak of the poop. Here, three sailors and a soldier clung to the rail with white-knuckled fists, watching the ocean behind. All four crossed themselves.

“There,” the old man said, pointing down.

Reynard looked into the gray-green churn swirling around the rudder. He shivered, as he always did looking into the deeps. “I see nothing.”

The sailors pointed and jabbered. As the morning brightened, the old man said, “Water here is fresh. No salt. Are we at the mouth of a river?”

“I know not,” Reynard said. The sailors started jabbering again and pointing, and now Reynard did see something beneath the waves, pale green, patterned like the wash itself, undulating, serpentine—neither fish nor shark nor any whale he had ever heard of. His first impression was that it had a pair of arms, and he thought it could be a mermaid—though he had never believed in such—but then, as it swam to the surface and, after thudding against the rudder, vanished with a splash, he saw the “hands” at the ends of the arms were more like claws, the long tail was segmented like a lobster’s, and what parts he saw stretched at least fifteen feet.

The old man said, “It would board and eat us. The sailors hath piked it twice and shot it with a crossbow, sin efecto, sin hacer daño.”

Reynard shook his head and bit his lip. What did he know about lobsters that tried to board a ship? Nothing. But curiosity had taken over his fear. He was almost eager to know what this thing was capable of, and what it meant. He stared down at the waves, with an expression half grimace and half grin, trying to see below their wash and curl. The sailors watched the shape with wide, unhappy eyes. Then it slipped aft in the ship’s wake and vanished in rocky breakers to the starboard side.

Lookouts called that they were passing small islands jutting from the sea, capped with shrubs. The old man repeated in English. One larger island to larboard boasted a decent tree, some kind of twisted conifer with dangling cones as big as a man’s head.

Now Cardoza, el capitán himself, joined them on the afterdeck, accompanied by a harquebusier and two musket men. He finished strapping on his sword and cast a side glance at Reynard, then asked the old man, el viejo, if the boy was of use. Before the old man could answer, one soldier with a musket called el capitán’s attention to the island’s lone conifer. A skinny, twisted sack hung from the middle branches, as long as two tall men, striped and spotted red and black, catching sunlight like dark silk and reflecting sparks of gold. All observed in silence. One harquebusier said that in the New World, Indians hung their dead in trees. Another observed the same was true in the far east, where other sailors had been, though not him. The old man translated, but, like his mother, Reynard was quick at languages and already had the sense of their words. Truly the Spanish empire was vast, though likely Drake or Hawkins had been to these places as well.

The bigger island fell behind. There were no people visible on it, and the waves pounding the sharp rocks around its base were fierce, cutting and roiling the water and spraying up to land on his lips—fresh water indeed, whatever that implied. A low fog closed behind, but the watch cried out there was land justo delante—dead ahead. At the jagged, echoing clash of breakers, more sailors scrambled into the rigging, struggling to bring the ship about, to slow or stop its headlong plunge.

Reynard was distracted and only heard part of what the old man was murmuring to Cardoza. “Es posible que él puede ayudar con las lenguas bárbaras.” Did the old man mean that Reynard might be useful as a translator? That was even less likely than his talent for geography. But his grandmother’s words came back again, words so familiar…

And then the great hull slammed to an abrupt halt. Men flew from the rigging and the masts, onto the deck, overboard.

And a horse screamed, then another, not far behind him, perhaps in a stable or a cabin.

Back to the cage he went, tied up and left alone while the ship became frantic with activity. The galleon could not get free—it had beached itself, and waves seemed to drive it farther onto the shore—waves and something the sailors were calling, yelling it out, actually: “La tierra respira.”

They thought the land was breathing.

Reynard drew up his knees. The breezes that reached him were chill and smelled of forest. His pulse quickened.