The Knifemaker of Venice - Preview

PROLOGUE

March 1594

North Atlantic

The terror roared out of the night. White-tipped mountainous seas overwhelming the black horizon, tearing sailors from decks and ripping iron-hard sails from their masts. The White Dove, one hundred tons, thirty-four crew and a cabin boy, was struck broadside. Hurled into the trough’s maw and almost overwhelmed by the breaking water, the valiant ship attempted to right itself and claw up the face of the wave, although its helmsman had already been swept into the icy depths. Timber splintered. The ship’s death throes vibrated through the desperate survivors clinging to life with silent determination. Men of the sea did not cry
out at their misfortune.

The storm struck eight days after the ships sailed from Dartmouth on the English south coast. White Dove and twenty-eight others had departed for the forty days’ windward journey to the Newfoundland fishing grounds, to return in August with their abundance of salted cod. Richard Sheriff, cabin boy and son to a fisherman father, wedged between fallen spars and tangled ropes that had saved him from being sucked overboard, screamed as the sharp talons of fear hooked into his mind.

The ten-year-old had seen winter storms at home, tossing waves high on the cliff face and the castle at the mouth of the River Dart. A sea monster hurling its way skywards. He had begged his father to leave him ashore. Embarrassed him in front of the men gathered at the tavern. Let me stay with my sister, he had pleaded. Elizabeth, four years his senior, was now in service at the merchant’s house at the top of town. The sea is the mother you never knew, his father had told him. She will rock you to sleep with her gentleness, but we must hope she never scolds you.

He did not want the sea to be his mother, he insisted. The men around him laughed but his father’s voice was stern. They would sail for Newfoundland.

And now here he was: soaked and frozen from the brittle, cold Atlantic, surrounded by hundreds of rats swarming onto any solid surface, spray stinging his face. The ship was dying beneath his feet. Sobbing with terror, he squinted at his father crawling crab-like towards him, fighting the pull of the sinking ship.

His father, bloodied, head cut, arm gashed, untangled him. Shouted above the wind’s roar: he must survive. Then the boy saw the rolling white water tumble from the foredeck. Heard the ship’s back breaking. He felt his father’s strong arms embrace him, his bearded face close to his. His last words bellowed against the howling wind. Live, boy! Care for Beth! Protect her! They rolled, pounded through the tumult. The ship was going down. A wave tore them apart. He choked. Kicked hard. Not knowing up from down. Blind. Finding strength he had never known, gasping, he broke the surface amid the flotsam, cresting an immense wave. He clung to splintered wood, sweeping aside ship’s rats. He raised a desperate arm at another ship, one that had turned, its damaged sails flapping, and was rescued.

The wild night exhausted itself hours later. The ship limped back to port, bearing the only crew member saved that night from the White Dove. Richard Sheriff swore never again to give the sleeping monster lurking below the surface the chance to drag him down into its savage maw.

PART ONE

PURSUIT

CHAPTER 1 

February 1604 

Totnes Town Forge 

Devonshire

The water boiled, hissing its resistance to the heated metal plunged into it. Outside the forge’s warmth a cold dawn eased into the sky, ghosting the River Dart in early mist. Richard Sheriff pulled the forged blade free from the water trough under the watchful eye of Joshua Conway, fifty years old, owner and master of the town forge.

‘Aye, good enough, now scrape it, lad, get that scale off the metal,’ said Conway. ‘It’s a working man’s knife you’re forging there. Right now it’s brittle, so what do we do next?’
‘We temper it, Master Conway.’

The blacksmith made no reply. He had cared for Richard Sheriff since he was orphaned. Given him a trade. Taught him step by step to work metal: pitchfork tines, ploughshares, boat hooks and chains. Watched as the lad’s skill had grown so that he could finesse horse bosses intricate enough to please the local landowner for his prized mounts. Now the lad was being taught how to forge a working man’s knife. Durable, wooden handle, a decent tempered blade for farm labourer and fisherman. And if the apprentice could master the skill, that would free Conway to undertake other work to give the forge extra income. God knows they needed it. These days spent teaching his apprentice to make a knife were worth the patience required.

A child, only eight or nine years old, stood ready at the firepit. Richard nodded at the bellows boy. ‘Tom, not too much heat. Give it a steady blow. Watch the colour of the coals – when they turn bright orange then ease off.’

Richard gripped the cooled blade with tongs and eased it into the coals. The gradual heating of the blade allowed the cutting edge to stay harder than the spine. The bellows boy’s face was a study in concentration, eager to please. Richard gave him an encouraging smile.

‘We’re learning together, Tom. Watch the dance. Don’t let the flames get too high.’

As the child pulled down on the bellows bar, increasing the coals’ glow, Conway stood on the other side of the firepit. ‘Get the heat up slowly, Richard.’ There had been mistakes in the past. A blade that turned blue in the heat was over-tempered and would have to be rehardened and the entire process started again. That was a costly error in time and fuel.

Richard worked the blade into the firepit, waiting until the coals changed the blade’s edge to a light straw colour. ‘Steady, Tom,’ Richard warned the child. ‘A little more now.’

The flames remained constant. A purple hue tinged the blade’s spine as Conway stepped away and eased closed the forge’s door. The breeze had picked up from downriver. Even a slight increase from a draught could affect the heat in the coals. Joshua Conway had a lifetime of experience and made Richard temper the blades before dawn when the air was at its stillest.

Satisfied that he had achieved the right colour, Richard pulled the metal free of the firepit and laid it on the anvil. Conway always insisted that no blade to be tempered should be quenched when it came from the fire, but left to cool in the air. Then the colour along the edge could be checked. Richard raised his head, his concentration momentarily broken. He sought affirmation with a glance at Conway, who nodded. His apprentice was always absorbed in his work. A sign that meant every touch, smell and sight of the metal being forged came as naturally to him as breathing.

A couple of years before, Richard had helped Conway with a new fire cage for the beacon that stood on the Kingsbridge road a mile above the town. The Queen of England had reigned for forty-five years and England was never stronger than when she had
died the previous March. The beacon had been lit by the county’s principal landowner, Sir Edward Seymour, and watched by a crowd of hundreds. The flames fought their way through the cage as the townspeople mourned the loss of their queen and celebrated the coronation of the new King, James I.

Joshua Conway had turned to his apprentice. ‘That beacon will be lit to warn of danger or in celebration. It’s a testament, lad, a part of your heritage.’

‘Our heritage, Master Conway,’ Richard had replied.
Conway checked the blade. Once cooled, it would be cleaned with abrasive sandstone and then sharpened. He was grudging in his praise, but when given, it was genuine. ‘Another few months with me keeping an eye on you, and I reckon you’ll be a knife maker in your own right. The extra money will help get us through next winter.’

Richard’s pride glowed. ‘But the real money is selling to the merchants, Master Conway. They would spend handsomely for something more elaborate than a fisherman’s blade.’

‘Aye, well, don’t get ahead of yourself. Fancy knife making needs a wealthy sponsor to buy what’s needed to make it fancy. You stick to making an honest knife. A wooden handle, horn if someone’s prepared to pay extra for it. Blacksmithing puts the food on the table, not blade making.’ He reached for a cloth-covered iron lock and key on the workbench. ‘Get this up to the jail and fit that door we measured last week. We’ll finish the blade when you’re back. And don’t linger up there. I reckon there’ll be trouble brewing by ten o’clock and they’ll want any agitators locked up.’ He thrust the lock into Richard’s hands. ‘And they’ll need that to keep them under lock and key, won’t they? Then get yourself back here and finish what you started.’

Richard wrapped the lock in the cloth and pushed it into a satchel. ‘The hanging?’ he asked.
‘Aye, the hanging. Poor wretch.’

Despite the hour and the chilly wind funnelling up the Dart, crowds were already gathering on the High Street. Stalls were being set up
amid the smell of cooked pies in baskets; a dog whelped from a kick as it sniffed too closely. A brazier glowed, its coals soon to roast chestnuts. Richard crossed the street, shouldering his way through the gathering spectators. Most had come from nearby villages. The Castle Arms alehouse already had men spilling into the square, their boots and cloaks mud-caked from having walked the miles to get to the hanging.

The smell of fresh bread assailed him. He had not yet had breakfast, given Master Conway’s insistence on blade making before dawn brought the inevitable breeze upriver. His mouth watered and he thought of buying a pie or a small loaf before fitting the lock. But the lock was important. It needed to be done and then he could turn his back on the ugly sight that was soon to take place. By then the atmosphere would have taken on a mixture of awe, grim anticipation and the sense of a festival gathering. The Candlemas candles had only just burned out; these crowds now showed little of the solemnity that had marked the holy day. They had come for a spectacle. A fiddle player struck up a tune; a drummer beat out a repetitive rhythm on his tabor; notes from a penny whistle fluttered across the gathering. Men and women danced a jig. Cackling laughter pierced the air. There would be enough drunkenness to contend with once they had stretched the poor woman’s neck.

Richard turned his back on the crowds, went down a narrow passage and up steps leading to the town walls that would take him to the guildhall jail. Nothing more than three windowless cells with straw bedding secured by plank and batten doors, it was known as the Darkhouse: in Richard’s mind, the most loathsome of places for a prisoner to be kept. He shifted the weight in his satchel. A fortnight after forging it, the ward lock felt heavier.

The constable on duty nodded at him. A local blacksmith posed no threat to the prisoner he guarded. Richard had previously measured the door needing the replacement lock. As he worked away, he heard the whimpering of the condemned woman from the adjacent cell. Forcing himself to concentrate on the job at hand, he urged himself to hurry so that he could get back to the forge and leave this place of death. Agnes Cleve was a homeless woman, a
common sight in the parish, particularly where the soldiers drank. Seen as a perpetual offender, guilty of petty crime, begging and prostitution, now she was going to be hanged. As anyone with a conscience knew, the Poor Law discriminated between the deserving and undeserving and according to the ill-thought laws she was a vagrant. That she had remained in the parish for so long was only because some townspeople took pity and gave her scraps. But then her child, an infant, was found dead. The court accused her of its killing and sentenced her. Only God knew the truth. The mite likely died of hunger. But the woman was a blight on the town and there were enough voices raised against her.

The lock fitting was more difficult than he anticipated but after a final test he was satisfied. He bagged his tools in time to avoid the half-dozen constables and their soldier escort who arrived to take the woman to the gallows. One constable gestured him away from the door. Stepping back he watched as two men went into the cell and dragged the distraught woman from the darkness. She struggled, hysteria giving her strength, and the men tried to restrain her.

‘For pity’s sake give her some ale!’ Richard cried. ‘Dull her mind to what awaits her.’

A soldier snarled at him: ‘None of your business, smithy. Get your arse back where it belongs.’

Two men grabbed the woman by each arm. One of them laughed cruelly. ‘Waste ale on this? I’ll dull her senses for you.’ His fist punched the side of the woman’s head. Her legs gave way.

Richard hurled himself at the men. His sudden attack caught them by surprise. His tool bag swung, sending one of them flying. The woman dropped to the ground. Richard fought hard, ignoring the flurry of blows striking him, drawing blood and curses. He didn’t see the raised musket. And then came the shattering pain. Before he fell unconscious the last thing he heard was the dull finality of the key tumbling the metal wards of the new lock into place.

'THE KNIFE MAKER OF VENICE - Published in the UK in 2026 by Head of Zeus, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

© David Gilman, 2026.

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