Cobham swears again and shouts more orders. The crew reset the sails and the carrack lurches. Cobham jams the tiller over so that she slews eastwards, out to sea.

There is another long silence. The sailors are tense.

‘Well?’ Cobham shouts.

‘Coming on after us,’ the boy cries.

There is a groan.

‘Bloody pirates,’ Cobham says. ‘No good, this. Th’Earl of Warwick’s supposed to be keeping the seas clear and look at this. Unless . . .?’ An idea strikes him. ‘Who are they?’ he calls up to the boy. ‘You make ’em out?’

‘Sun’s shining on a quantity of metal.’

‘Harness?’

‘Could be. Helmets, anyway.’

‘Might even be Warwick’s men,’ Cobham supposes.

They look up at the patched sails, and the next minute they watch them sag as the wind dies. The carrack loses way. Cobham swears once more and begins pumping the tiller as if this might speed them on their course.

‘You!’ he shouts. ‘Cook! Stop eating your bloody biscuits and whistle up the bloody wind!’

The cook – the pardoner says he is a Genoese – begins whistling. A light air riffles the heavy sail.

‘Keep whistling, you whoreson! Keep whistling!’ Cobham storms around his deck. ‘Saxby! Saxby there! Let go what we don’t need.’

Saxby is the master’s mate, a bully with dark curly hair and a gold hoop pressed through his ear. He grasps the cook’s still warm firestone and hefts it and staggers with it to the ship’s side. He shunts it over and it hits the sea with a kerplunk that shoots a fountain of green water above the ship’s rail. The cook doesn’t pause in his whistling. Then Saxby and three others tip the anchors over, each one disappearing with a deep booming splash.

‘Christ on His cross,’ Cobham mutters. ‘Cost me more than a penny.’

‘Gaining on us, master!’ the boy cries down.

‘Right,’ Cobham says. ‘We need to lose all this if we are to get clear. You there! Master Daud and your boys! Lend a hand. Everything overboard.’

Thomas and Katherine set to, joining the sailors as they begin hauling bales and packages overboard, tipping them over the carrack’s side into the sea below. The pardoner can hardly stand to watch but mews ‘no, no, no, no’ as his bags go over with the rest. Some sink, others float. Cordage, sailcloth, buckets, bales, boxes, anything not fastened down goes over. In the carrack’s wavering wake they leave a stream of bobbing wood spars and planks and canvas-wrapped bags.

One of the men emerges from the cabin with the pardoner’s sack-covered pack.

‘Master!’ the pardoner cries, springing into action. ‘Not that one! That is all I own!’

The sailor looks at Cobham, who narrows his eyes.

‘All right,’ he nods. ‘Put it back.’