Ship of Fire by Michael Cadnum

cook was having trouble keeping his great copper stock pot on the fire. And then the master gunner called for Jack, and I realized, as my friend hurried off to attend to the guns, that there was little time for heart-to-heart conversation on a warship.
    A mariner’s song flavored the breeze as men climbed the mainmast to work the softly thundering sails.
    We captured a Flemish carrack that afternoon, a stocky little merchantman with two masts and gold paint about her stern.
    Her sailors hauled the ship up out of the wind, and made no attempt to flee or fight as we approached. Our pikemen stood by with gleaming points at the end of their shafts, some of them armed with a weapon called Welsh-hooks, a stout staff with a long sharp bill at the end. Gunners stood by, wicks at the ready, giving off soft feathers of smoke.
    Our purser and his mates climbed aboard the Sint Joachim to inventory the bales of wool and the barrels of medicinal spirits, supervising the wrestling of the cargo up and into our own hold. When all was done, in the space of an hour or two, the Flemish sailors waved farewell and set sail for the east, apparently relieved to have come so close to the famous sea fighter without loss of life.
    I felt relieved, too—that the first act of war I had ever witnessed was a matter-of-fact act of plunder, carried out with efficiency and an air of mercy. If this was sea battle, I thought, perhaps I would live to see England again.
    My master’s body was committed to the sea before a sunset blotted by clouds. The mortal remains of William Perrivale, worshipful Latinist and gifted physician, were sewn into a swaddling of sailcloth weighted with shot.
    The yellow-bearded chaplain hunched into the sea spray whipped through the air by the rising wind, and protected the leaves of his leather-bound book with his mantle. I knew the prayers, even though I could not utter them out now as the chaplain recited them in the rising storm. I wept as never before in my life.
    A few sailing men and gunners attended the service, and Captain Foxcroft and the admiral were present, but I understood the pious brevity of the prayers, and the continued activity as men worked the ship. Shipboard death was mourned simply, and was far more common than I had imagined.
    As the chaplain closed his prayer book, and the last eddy of foam coiled over my master’s remains, someone touched my shoulder.

Chapter 23
    I was grieved beyond tears by then, and welcomed contact from my shipmates, but this man’s physical appearance stilled my tongue.
    I had glimpsed his bright plume among the crew, but I had not seen him face-to-face before this, and never with his expensive cap removed. This gentleman’s head was bald, and he sported flowing mustachios, but what disturbed me about his appearance was the tint of his skin. He embarrassed me by uttering some patch of Italian—Petrarch, I suspected—and he apologized at once in gentlemanly English when I could not respond in kind.
    â€œI show off my learning the way a bawd shows off her dimples,” said this tall man in a civil manner. He gave me a hand to help me stay upright—we were both swayed one way and another by the spirited seas. “I am Robert Garr, and I used to take a cup of wine or two with Titus Cox. That worthy doctor used to mention your master as a great friend.”
    â€œYou would have found my master the best man under Heaven,” I said, and then I had to silence myself, close to tears again.
    Sir Robert gave a sympathetic sigh.
    I realized that it was not simply the ashy light of the dying day that gave a strange tint to his features—Sir Robert had in truth a striking and unusual coloration. His skin, his lips, and the moons of his fingernails, were all the same off-hue. This well-known knight and poet was blue.
    He was not bright blue, but the dusty cloud-blue of a fresh bruise. It was a medical symptom I knew from William’s consultations