The Grand Banks Letters

• Chapter 1 The Sealed Cask
• Chapter 2 Departure from Plymouth
• Chapter 3 Shadows on the Water
• Chapter 4 The St. Malo Connection
• Chapter 5 Crossing the Meridian
• Chapter 6 Fog over the Banks
• Chapter 7 A Letter in Cipher
• Chapter 8 Salt and Treason
• Chapter 9 Rendezvous at Ferryland
• Chapter 10 The Factor's Ledger
• Chapter 11 Whispers in the Shallows
• Chapter 12 The King's Compass
• Chapter 13 The Midnight Haul
• Chapter 14 Intercepted at Sea
• Chapter 15 The French Shore
• Chapter 16 A Merchant’s Betrayal
• Chapter 17 The Diverted Cargo
• Chapter 18 Blood on the Drying Flakes
• Chapter 19 Dead Reckoning
• Chapter 20 The Decoded Parchment
• Chapter 21 The Haven of Placentia
• Chapter 22 Tempest and Turmoil
• Chapter 23 The Traitor Unmasked
• Chapter 24 Skirmish off Cape Race
• Chapter 25 The Final Despatch
• Chapter 26 Sovereignty of the Deep

The salt-crusted taverns along the Barbican in Plymouth were loud with the usual spring violence of trade. It was March of 1614, and the West Country was preparing its annual invasion of the North Atlantic. Hundreds of ships—broad-beamed galleons, nimble caravels, and battered pinnaces—were taking on timber, hardtack, and mountains of coarse Spanish salt. In less than a month, the fleet would ride the easterlies toward the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where the ocean was so thick with cod that men said a horse could walk across their backs, provided the horse had a steady head and did not mind getting wet.

Inside the cramped cellar beneath the warehouse of Master Jonas Vance, however, the talk was not of fish, but of oak.

Vance was a man whose knees creaked when he walked, but whose eyes were as sharp as a cooper’s adze. By trade he was a fishmonger’s agent; by practice, he was a man who noticed when things did not weigh what they ought to. Before him sat a two-hundred-pound tight cask, freshly hooped with hazel bands and marked with the scorched seal of the Plymouth Syndicate. To any wharf-rat hauling it up the gangway of the Fortune, it was merely salted pork destined to feed sixty men through the damp misery of a fog-bound summer.

"Hold the lantern higher, Francis," Vance muttered, pulling a brass-hafted knife from his belt.

Francis, a young man with ink-stained fingers who had spent the last two years as Vance’s clerk, lifted the horn lantern. Its tallow candle cast long, flickering shadows across the damp stone walls. "If the master cooper sees you scraping his mark, he will have the bailiffs on us before noon."

"The master cooper didn't lay these staves," Vance said softly. He ran his thumb over the belly of the barrel. "Look at the grain. This is French oak. Red oak from the forests around Dinan. The West Country cooperage uses English white oak, brought down from Dartmoor on the back of mules. The West Country cooperage also knows how to spell 'Plymouth' without an 'e' at the end."

Vance drove the tip of his knife under the top iron hoop. With a dry crack, the wood groaned, and the head of the cask loosened just enough for him to lever up a stave.

Instead of the gray, glistening brine of preserved pig, a dry, faint smell of beeswax and pine rosin rose from the gap.

Francis leaned in, forgetting his fear of the bailiffs. "Is it powder?"

"Worse," Vance said. "It's paper."

With the practiced skill of a thief—or an customs inspector, which in Devonshire amounted to the same thing—Vance reached into the cask. Beneath a three-inch cap of salted fat, designed to fool any casual spike driven through the bung by a lazy port officer, lay a oiled-canvas bundle, tucked into a hollowed-out block of cedar.

Vance slit the canvas with his blade. Inside were three rolled sheets of thick French rag parchment, tied with green silk thread and sealed with unrefined red wax. The stamp in the wax was distinct: a stylized codfish twisted around an anchor, surmounted by a small, neat lily—the fleur-de-lis of St. Malo.

"Read the address," Vance instructed, handing the outer parchment to the young clerk.

Francis blinked in the dim yellow light, squinting at the fine, sloping hand. "It is in French, sir. Or mostly French. 'To the Factor of the Sieur de la Roche, Placentia Bay. Deliver before the second turn of the tide after the feast of St. John.'"

"And the signature?"

Francis flipped the letter over, his fingers trembling slightly against the heavy paper. "There is no name. Only a mark. A cipher made of three crossed keys and the letter R."

Jonas Vance leaned back against a stack of dry cod-bales and wiped his greasy knife on his doublet. Outside, the tide was turning in Plymouth Sound. The timbers of the warehouse groaned as the water dragged at the pilings, and from the harbor came the distant, rhythmic shouting of sailors hauling on the capstans.

"The French king thinks he owns the water because his grandfather splashed about in it," Vance said, his voice flat and hard. "Our English merchants think they own it because they have the King's patent. But neither King James nor Louis knows what happens when sixty French ships and eighty English vessels anchor in the same shallow bay with

The morning of the third of April broke cold and grease-gray over the Catwater, with a biting easterly wind that smelled of Dartmoor peat and rotting seaweed. It was a wind that did not invite lingering. For the ninety-odd men and boys preparing to board the Fortune, the weather was a harsh master that brooked no delay. On the cobblestones of the Barbican, the chaos was absolute, a frantic chorus of shouting carters, braying pack-mules, weeping wives, and the rhythmic, iron-shod rumble of hand-barrows rolling down the slips.

Francis stood on the slippery timber edge of the wharf, a heavy woolen cloak wrapped tight around his narrow shoulders. His fingers, usually stained with the iron-gall ink of the counting-house, were stiff with the damp chill. Under his arm he hugged a leather portfolio, bound with double straps and sealed against the salt spray. Inside lay the ship’s true manifest—and, tucked into a false lining of the pigskin cover, the ciphered letters Jonas Vance had pulled from the French oak cask only forty-eight hours prior.

Beside him, Vance looked like a monument carved from salt-fish and stubbornness. The elder agent did not wear a cloak; he wore a thick grease-stained jerkin of boiled leather that had survived three reigns and at least two shipwrecks. He was watching the loading of the Fortune’s hold with the squint of a man who trusted no scale he had not balanced himself.

"Watch the trim of those water-casks, you lubberly sons of ditch-water!" Vance roared down at a pair of red-faced deckhands who were struggling to sling a great tun into the main hatch. "If she heels to port before we clear the breakwater, I’ll have the cost of the timber out of your hides!"

The captain of the Fortune, a hard-bitten mariner named Richard Thorne, stepped up to the edge of the wharf, chewing on a stalk of dried fennel. He was a short, square man with a beard like a gorse bush and teeth that looked as though they had been filed down by decades of hardtack. He looked Francis up and down with an expression that combined pity with mild disgust.

"So this is the quill-driver you’re foisting on me, Jonas?" Thorne said, his voice a low rumble that sounded like gravel sliding down a chute. "He looks as though a stiff puff off the Lizard will blow him straight into the bilge. Can he handle a musket if we run into a Biscay rover?"

"He can read a ledger in a gale, which is more than you can do on dry land, Richard," Vance replied without turning his head. "And he knows the difference between a St. Malo bill of exchange and a piece of waste paper. If the French are playing a double game in the bays this summer, you’ll need a clerk who can see through their ink as well as you see through their fog."

Thorne spat into the rising tide. "The French will play whatever game they always play. They’ll try to dry their fish on our rocks, we’ll burn their flakes, and then we’ll all sit down in the evening and trade brandy for tobacco. It’s been the way of the Banks since old King Harry’s time. I don't see why this year should be any different."

"It is different because the money is different," Vance said softly. He stepped closer to the captain, his voice dropping below the din of the harbor. "The merchants of St. Malo have bought three new galleons from the Dutch. Not bankers’ ships, Richard. Men-of-war, pierced for thirty guns apiece. They aren't building those to carry salt-cod. They’re building them to keep us off the Avalon peninsula. If they hold the harbors at Placentia and Trepassey, they control the passage to the north. We’ll be left fishing the shallows of the outer banks like starving dogs waiting for scraps from the table."

Francis felt a cold lump of lead settle in his stomach. The parchment sheets now resting against his ribs seemed to grow heavier. The letters had spoken of 'the Great Design' of the Sieur de la Roche, a nobleman whose influence at the court of the young King Louis XIII was rising like a spring tide. If the French succeeded in establishing a permanent military presence under the guise of their fishing stations, the English West Country merchants—who relied on the Grand Banks for nearly half their annual wealth—would be ruined.

"Get your gear aboard, boy," Captain Thorne muttered to Francis, his humor gone. "We lose the tide in half an hour. Once we clear the Mewstone, the wind will be on our quarter, and I don't intend to wait for any clerk who is still dreaming of his mother's hearth."

Francis nodded, his throat too dry to speak. He scrambled down the wooden ladder that hung over the side of the wharf, his boots slipping on the green slime of the lower rungs. He leaped onto the deck of the Fortune, landing awkwardly on a pile of hemp anchor cables. A couple of sailors laughed, but it was a good-natured ribbing; they were too busy with their own preparations to torment a clerk.

The Fortune was a vessel of one hundred and forty tons, stoutly built of English oak in the yards of Biddeford. She was designed not for speed, but for capacity and endurance. Her sides bulged outward to maximize the space in her hold, which was already crammed with eighty tons of salt, twenty barrels of ship’s biscuit, ten casks of salt beef, five of pork, and an endless array of nets, hooks, lines, lead weights, and split-bamboo drying mats. She carried six small cast-iron demi-culverins on her main deck—more for defense against pirates than for naval warfare—and a crew of sixty men, most of whom would spend the summer gutting, splitting, and salting cod on the rocky shores of Newfoundland.

From the deck, Francis watched as Jonas Vance remained on the stone wharf, a solitary, dark figure against the gray slate roofs of Plymouth. As the gap between the ship and the land began to widen, Vance raised a single hand, not in a wave of farewell, but in a solemn gesture of warning. He pointed three fingers toward the water, then touched his chest. It was the sign of the crossed keys—the cipher from the French letter.

"All hands to the capstan!" the first mate, a giant of a man named William Hawkins, bellowed from the forecastle. "Heave him up! Bring the anchor home!"

The deck beneath Francis’s feet began to vibrate as twenty men threw themselves against the wooden bars of the capstan. They began to sing, a rough, discordant shanty that was drowned out by the creaking of the great hemp cable winding around the drum.

"Heave away, the wind is fair, Farewell to the maids of Plymouth Hoe, We're bound for the Banks of the cold gray sea, Where the codfish swim and the salt winds blow..."

The sails, heavy with winter damp, were sheeted home. They fluttered with a noise like musket fire before filling with the easterly breeze. The Fortune shivered, her timbers groaning as she felt the pressure of the wind, and then she began to move. The gray stone towers of the Plymouth citadel slowly slid past the starboard rail, followed by the dark green slopes of Mount Edgcumbe.

Francis climbed up to the poop deck, trying to stay out of the way of the active crew. As the vessel cleared the shelter of the Sound, the long, rolling swell of the English Channel took hold of her. The ship did not so much cut through the water as wallow through it, her broad bows throwing up great clouds of white spray that drifted across the deck like sleet.

Almost immediately, Francis felt his head swim. The world became an unstable, shifting place of rising horizons and sudden, sickening drops. He clung to the wooden pin-rail, his knuckles turning white as he tried to keep his footing.

"First time outside the harbor, Master Clerk?"

Francis turned his head slowly, terrified that any sudden movement would unleash the rebellion brewing in his stomach. Standing near the binnacle was the ship’s master, a quiet man named Thomas Miller, who was responsible for the actual navigation of the vessel. Unlike the loud and aggressive Captain Thorne, Miller was a studious individual who spent his hours squinting at charts and adjusting his cross-staff.

"I have been to Bristol by water, sir," Francis managed to say, his voice barely louder than the whistling of the wind in the shrouds.

"The Severn is a duck-pond compared to what lies ahead," Miller said, not unkindly. He adjusted the wooden hood over the binnacle to shield the compass from the spray. "We have three thousand miles of gray water before we see a tree again, Francis. If your stomach is going to fail you, do it over the leeward rail. The captain has a short temper for men who spoil the deck."

"I shall... I shall be well, sir," Francis lied, gripping the rail harder as the Fortune plunged into a trough between two green swells. "Tell me, Master Miller, do we sail alone? I thought the syndicate’s vessels were to travel in company."

Miller pointed a thick finger toward the southwest. "Look there, through the haze."

Francis squinted through the salt-crusted air. A mile or so to the southwest, the pale sails of another ship were visible against the dark line of the sea. She was a larger vessel than the Fortune, her high sterncastle catching the pale gleam of the afternoon sun. Behind her, two smaller barks rolled heavily in the swell.

"That is the Grace of God out of Weymouth," Miller said. "And the two barks are the Mary and the John. We’ll keep company as far as the Scillies to keep the privateers from getting brave. After that, it’s every man for his own market. The first ship to reach the harbors of the Avalon peninsula gets the best drying beaches and the first choice of the local timber. If you're late, you find yourself stuck in some muddy cove where the sun never shines and the fish rot before they can dry."

"And the French?" Francis asked, trying to sound like an assistant agent rather than a terrified clerk. "Will they be ahead of us?"

"The St. Malo men are already gone," Miller said, his face darkening. "They sail from a latitude three degrees north of us, and they don't care about the spring gales. They’d run their vessels through a field of icebergs if they thought there was a extra quintal of cod to be made by it. By the time we drop anchor in Ferryland or Renews, they’ll have been there a fortnight, claiming the best stages and setting up their flakes."

"But the King's charter gives us the right to the shore," Francis argued.

Miller laughed, a dry, coughing sound. "The King's charter is a very fine piece of parchment, Francis. It has a great deal of gold leaf on it and a big wax seal that looks very impressive in a London courtroom. But King James’s writ doesn't run in sixty fathoms of water, and it certainly doesn't run when there are three French crews to every English one on a beach five hundred miles from the nearest bailiff. Out there, the only law is the law of the salt-tub and the musket."

The master turned back to his compass, leaving Francis to his thoughts. The wind was freshening, veering slightly to the northeast, which allowed the Fortune to put her head down and run. By dusk, the low-lying coast of Cornwall had faded to a purple smudge on the northern horizon, and by midnight, the flashing light of the Lizard was nothing more than a spark that appeared and disappeared with the rise and fall of the swell.

Francis spent the night in the steerage, a cramped, triangular space beneath the poop deck that smelled of wet wool, tallow, old beer, and the bilge water that sloshed beneath the deckboards. He lay on a narrow wooden bunk, his leather portfolio tucked firmly under his head like a pillow. Every time the ship plunged, his stomach seemed to rise into his throat, but despite the misery of his seasickness, his mind remained sharp, honed by the danger of his task.

He reached into his jerkin and touched the hard edges of the pigskin cover. The letters were there. He had spent the previous evening, before boarding, trying to make sense of the columns of numbers and French phrases that Vance had copied out.

One name had appeared repeatedly: L'Espérance. It was not the name of a merchant, but of a ship—a sixty-gun French vessel that had reportedly been fitted out at Brest under the personal direction of the Duke of Guise. According to the letters, L'Espérance was not intended for the fishery. She was carrying sixty soldiers, twelve brass cannons, and a cargo of heavy timber for the construction of a permanent fort.

If L'Espérance reached Placentia before the English fleet arrived, the balance of power on the Grand Banks would be permanently altered. The English fishermen, who returned to Devon and Dorset every autumn, would find themselves facing a permanent, fortified French colony that could close the fishery at its pleasure.

As the hours dragged toward dawn, the movement of the ship became wilder. The Fortune was now clear of the land, entering the open waters of the Western Approaches where the Atlantic swell met the shallow shelf of the Channel. Francis could hear the heavy water crashing against the bow, the scream of the wind through the rigging, and the occasional, muffled shout of the watch on deck.

He slept only in fitful bursts, haunted by dreams of salt-crusted keys that locked out the sun, and of a great white ship that sailed through the fog without a crew, its decks piled high with dried bones instead of cod.

When the gray light of morning finally filtered through the small, thick glass of the steerage companionway, Francis dragged himself up the ladder. The air on deck was bitterly cold, but it tasted clean and washed the sour taste of bile from his mouth.

The world had transformed. There was no land in sight—nothing but an endless, tumbling waste of gray-green water under a sky of low, scudding clouds. The Grace of God and her two barks were still visible, but they had drawn further apart, their hulls disappearing entirely in the troughs of the great waves, leaving only their pale, straining sails visible like white gulls against the dark water.

Captain Thorne was standing by the mainmast, arguing with the first mate. He held a piece of salt beef in one hand and a wooden mug of small beer in the other.

"The wind is hauling to the north," Thorne was saying, pointing his beef at the sky. "If we stay on this course, we'll be driven down into the Bay of Biscay before the week is out. I want the course changed two points to the west-northwest. We need to make our northing now, while we have the strength in the crew."

"If we go north now, Captain, we’ll run straight into the St. Malo run," Hawkins replied, rubbing his scarred chin. "We’ll be right in the track of their bankers. If there are French privateers about, they’ll be looking for lone vessels on that line."

"Let them look," Thorne growled. "The Fortune isn't a helpless merchantman. If they want our salt, they’ll have to pay for it in lead. Master Miller! Set the course west-northwest. And tell the lookout to keep his eyes peeled for anything with a square sail and a high stern."

Francis walked over to the binnacle, trying to keep his balance on the wet deck. "Captain Thorne?"

Thorne turned, his eyes narrowing. "Well, Master Clerk? Have you finished painting my cabin floor with your breakfast?"

"I am recovered, sir," Francis said, ignoring the jibe. "I was wondering... if we go north, do we pass near the French ports? St. Malo or Brest?"

Thorne gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. "We don't pass 'near' them, boy, unless we want to find ourselves in a French gaol. But we cross their path. The ships from St. Malo, Dieppe, and Granville all use the same great highway of the sea. They go north of the Scillies, then make their run across the Atlantic along the forty-eighth parallel. It’s the shortest road, but it’s also the roughest."

"And if we see them?"

"If we see them, we look at them," Thorne said. "We see how deep they sit in the water. If they’re light, they’re going out to fish. If they’re heavy and have too many men on deck, they’re up to no good. Now, go down to the cabin and start your work. I want the salt-ledger checked against the cooper’s tally before we lose the light. We’ve got eighty tuns of Spanish white in the hold, and if so much as a peck of it has gone damp through your negligence, I’ll have you drying fish on the outer rocks until your toes fall off."

Francis bowed slightly and made his way toward the small cabin in the stern. It was a dark, cramped space, lit only by a single stern window that was constantly washed over by the gray sea. The air smelled of damp paper, old leather, and the vinegar used to wash the bulkheads.

He sat down at the small oak desk, which was fitted with wooden ridges to keep his ink-pot and papers from sliding off. He opened the ledger, but his eyes did not see the figures. Instead, he reached into his portfolio and pulled out the ciphered letter.

He laid it flat on the desk, holding it down with two heavy iron paper-weights. He knew he had only a short time before the ship reached the deep ocean, where the daily struggle for survival would leave him little time for scholarly puzzles. If there was a key to this cipher, he had to find it now, before the fog of the Grand Banks swallowed them all.