The Sister Queens by Justin Scott

Author:Justin Scott [Scott, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2023-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Salt tide roaring home to the Narrow Sea and sweet water from a thousand English brooks hurled Will Shakespeare’s boat at London Bridge. It made no difference that the drowned wherry men had stolen the oars. Coupled and inseparable, the River Thames and its ocean consort were in command. They whirled his boat like a top and threw the frail wooden shell at a rock-girdled pier.

Overboard! said Will’s quiet voice.

He ripped off his heavy cloak and jumped into the water on the instant the boat struck with an awful noise of splintered planking. The torrent swallowed him. It pulled him under, covered his head, tossed him in the air, and dragged him under again. Currents and cross-currents tumbled him so violently he could not distinguish the light sky above from the dark below. Water rammed into his mouth and his nose.

Curb your fear. You wrote what pain it is to drown.

What dreadful noise of waters in your ears!

Swim before you drown. You know you can.

He had been sure he would drown in the Avon when Val’s acolyte taught him to swim. He could see his little boy self sniffling fearfully in a shallow pool below the Clopton Bridge, the dark sentinel shaded by its arch, and his mother smiling in sunlight.

‘Will!’ she called from the riverbank, laughing at the jest of a most obvious truth. ‘Boys who swim in the water fly like birds in the air.’

His mother’s jubilant fancy had filled his imagination forever. Now, mauled by the Thames, he located the orient-pearl glow of daylight above the water, and he thought he saw under him the dark shape of the riverbed. It was much closer than it possibly could be. But hadn’t old John Stow written of a mud bar below the center arch of London Bridge – an underwater island cast up by the roiled stream – where the river was suddenly shallow? The current shoved him deep into soft mud, trapping his foot like an arrow stuck in an archery butt.

He had to breathe air. He had to rise, and if he couldn’t he would breathe the water and that would kill him. His other foot landed on something hard and he saw the shape of a great anchor – what could only be a holding anchor scattered from a fearful wreck, lost when the cable broke. He pushed off with all his strength. The mud released him and suddenly his head was in the light. Gulping sweet air, he found himself atop the water, buoyed up by his frog-copied swimming stroke.

He was far below London Bridge, swept free of the rock piers and into the middle of the wide Thames. He was so far from either bank, and so low in the water, the only landmarks he could see were the bridge behind him and St Paul’s square tower far to his left. Too far to swim against the stiff current and the icy chop. The cold was sapping his strength. How long could he swim? Not long enough to reach the bank.

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