Earthly Joys Read online

  ‘Can it grow in England at all?’ Captain Pett asked curiously.

  Tradescant smiled at him. ‘Who knows?’ he said, and the captain suddenly realised the joy that fired his temporary maverick officer. ‘Who can tell? We grow a cultivated sort in the orangeries. This is far more fragile and lovely. But I shall have to try it. And if I win, and we can grow wild pomegranates in England, then what a glory to God! For every man who walks in my garden can see things that until now he would have had to travel miles to find. And he can see that God has made things in such variety, in such glorious wealth, that there is no end to His joy in abundance. And no end to mine.’

  ‘Are you doing this for the glory of God?’ Captain Pett asked, slightly bemused.

  John thought for a moment. ‘To be honest with you,’ he said slowly, ‘I cling to the thought that it is for the glory of God. Because the other thought is heresy.’

  Captain Pett did not glance around, as he would have done on land. He was master of his own pinnace and speech was free. ‘Heresy? What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean that either God has made dozens, even hundreds, of things which are nearly the same, and that the richness of his variety is something which redounds to His holy name …’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or that this is madness. It is madness to think that God should make a dozen things almost the same but a little different. All a man of sense could think is that God did not make them. That the earth they feed on and the water they drink makes plants in different areas a little different, and that is the only reason that they are different. And if that is true, then I am denying that everything in the world was made first by my God in Eden, working like a gardener for six days and resting on the Sabbath. And if I am denying that, then I am a heretic damned.’

  Captain Pett paused for a moment, following the twisting path of Tradescant’s logic, and then let out a crack of laughter and hammered Tradescant on the shoulder. ‘You are trapped,’ he exclaimed. ‘Because every variety that you discover must make you doubt that God could do all this in six days in Eden. And yet what you say you want to do is to show these things to the glory of God.’

  Tradescant recoiled slightly from the loud good humour of his captain. ‘Yes.’

  The captain laughed again. ‘I thank God I am a simple man,’ he said. ‘All I have to do is to sack Algiers and teach the Barbary pirates that they cannot hazard the lives of English sailors. Whereas you, Tradescant, have to spend your life hoping for one thing but continually finding evidence to the contrary.’

  A familiar stubborn look came across John’s face. ‘I keep faith,’ he said stolidly. ‘Whether to my lord or to my king or to my God. I keep faith. And four sorts of smilax do not challenge my faith in God or king or lord.’

  Pett was optimistic about the ease of his task, compared with John’s metaphysical worries. He was part of a well-victualled well-commanded fleet with a clear plan. When they came to Algiers it was the task of the pinnaces to patrol the waterways to trap the pirates inside the harbour.

  John and the other gentlemen recruited for the adventure were called into the captain’s cabin on the day the whole of the English fleet was assembled and moored in readiness half a league off shore.

  ‘We’ll send in fire boats,’ Pett said. ‘Two. They are to set the moored shipping ablaze and that will destroy the corsairs’ fleet. It’ll also spread smoke across the harbour and under cover of the smoke we’ll assault the walls of the harbour. That will be our task and that will be where you come in, gentlemen.’

  He had a map unrolled before him on the table. The English fleet was shown as a double line of converging white flags with the distinctive red cross. The corsair ships were shown as a black square.

  ‘Which way is the prevailing wind?’ Tradescant asked.

  ‘Onshore,’ Pett replied. ‘It will blow the fire boats in, and then the smoke will go into their eyes.’

  ‘Do we have scaling ladders for the harbour walls?’ someone asked.

  The officers nodded, Tradescant among them.

  ‘And you each of you know the men you are to lead and have checked their equipment?’ Captain Pett confirmed.

  Tradescant nodded and glanced around him, wondering if anyone else had a sense of sick dread in their stomachs, the fear of a man who had never seen a battle before.

  ‘Then do your duty, gentlemen,’ the captain said simply. ‘For God and King James.’

  John wanted the attack to start at once, certain that his small core of courage would diminish if he had to wait a moment. He stood with his landing party at the side of the pinnace and watched the fire boats go in through the mouth of the harbour. The two little barges were loaded with explosives and tar and were rowed with a single oar by a volunteer. The rower’s task was to get the little craft through the choppy water at the harbour mouth and then as close as he dared to the moored shipping, despite the rain of musket fire which came down from the trapped ships. He was to light the coil of pitch rope which served as a fuse, point the boat in the right direction and then plunge into the sea and swim as fast as he could back to the English ships while the fire boat, smouldering with its cargo of explosives, was supposed to float up against the enemy shipping.

  ‘At least I wasn’t ordered to do that,’ Tradescant whispered miserably to himself, watching the little boat head towards the harbour mouth and seeing a cannonball splash with horrid weight into the water beside it.

  The boat bobbed in, the sailor’s head just visible, they saw the flame of the fuse and his swift dive into the water, and then … nothing. The fuse had gone out and they heard the ironic cheers of the pirates as the fire boat bobbed uselessly against the wooden sides of their ships.

  ‘A free gift of powder and explosives to our enemies,’ Captain Pett said savagely. ‘Stand down, everyone, there will be no attack until the tide is up tomorrow.’

  Tradescant spent a sleepless night, with the taste of fear like cold sweat on his lips, and in the morning showed a white face on deck at the head of his landing party. He checked them over. They all had muskets primed and ready, they all had brightly glowing fuses palmed confidently in their hands. One man had the scaling ladder and he was wearing a helmet Tradescant had managed to scrounge in Majorca. Tradescant nodded to his troop with affected confidence and was irritated to see, by the hidden smile one from another, that they saw and understood his pallor.

  ‘Soon be over, sir,’ one of them said cheerfully. ‘And you’re either dead or safe in minutes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ John said repressively, and went to the ship’s rail to watch the fire boats go in.

  They failed again, and the next day too. By day four Tradescant ate a hearty breakfast and was at the rail to watch the fire boats try once more and felt as nonchalant as his men. Boredom and disappointment had driven out fear and now he wanted the battle to be joined. What he could not tolerate was the waiting and the immense irritation when the winds dropped and the fire boats burned harmlessly in the middle of the bay and then exploded with a loud crack that made the pirates cheer.

  It was dawn, the tide suited them high at dawn. The weather suited them at last, a grey mist on the water which would make the pirate muskets uncertain of their aim shooting into greyness, and a brisk onshore wind which should blow the fire boats inwards to the harbour.

  ‘But hardly a surprise attack,’ Tradescant grumbled, at the pinnace rail. The wind blowing steadily onshore lifted the brim of his hat.

  ‘The principle is right,’ someone said behind him.

  Tradescant thought of his old master’s preference for sound practice over principle, but held his peace. They all watched together as the two barges were rowed to the harbour mouth. The sailors on board lit the fuses to the explosives, burning twists of rope dipped in pitch. No-one could tell how long they would take to burn with any accuracy. It was a brave man who stayed on board a barge that would blow up at any moment to steer it closer and ever closer to enemy shipping.

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