The galleon's grave hg-3 Read online

  It was clear.

  'You might care to include a new issue in your plans. An issue we did not discuss earlier,' Walsingham continued.

  'A third issue?' He really must stop sounding like a parrot. 'The Marquis of Santa Cruz is resident in Lisbon.' 'The Spanish High Admiral?'

  'The one and only. The victor of Lepanto, and one of the cruellest and most savage commanders alive in Europe at the present time. And the best ally we have.'

  'The best ally. Gresham was shocked. Was the Spanish High Admiral in Walsingham's pay? 'But Santa Cruz is a brilliant, inspirational commander. Santa Cruz is to Spain what Drake is to England — except Santa Cruz knows how to command a fleet.'

  'Quite,' said Walsingham. 'Santa Cruz is a brilliant commander. He is an appalling administrator. Ships are piled into Lisbon harbour almost lying on top of each other. Some have a full supply of cannon but no shot. Others are loaded with shot but have no powder. There are vessels with spare cannon, some with no cannon at all. Meanwhile, pay is in arrears for the sailors, and men are dying of illness. Food newly taken on board ships is being eaten first, with the result that the older stock is left to rot. Either the sailors become ill through eating it, or they starve. I repeat, while the ships of King Philip's Armada lie in harbour, Santa Cruz is our best ally.'

  'But if and when they, leave for sea?' Gresham followed on.

  'That would be a different story. King Philip will try to write a battle plan for his fleet. He is prescriptive, fearful of losing control. Santa Cruz will ignore his King's orders if by so doing he can achieve victory.'

  'So it would be a good thing if Santa Cruz's health problems became… terminal?'

  'It would indeed.'

  'Surely you've tried to make them so?' said Gresham. 'You must have a horde of spies in Lisbon to know what you know about the state of the Spanish fleet. No man can avoid an assassin for ever.'

  'No. But some men are better at it than others.'

  'And you would appreciate… help in eliminating Santa Cruz, if the opportunity arose.'

  'An excellent turn of phrase,' replied Walsingham. 'So will you depart for Lisbon with England's cause at the centre of your heart?' There was a sudden sharpness in Walsingham's tone. Did Walsingham suspect Gresham's loyalties? 'There are those who think your enthusiasm for the Mass is not feigned. Those who have noted your failure to condemn Spain as a proper Englishman should, your admiration for what you call parts of its culture. Nonsense, of course, but dangerous nonsense, if heard by the wrong people.'

  Had one of the wrong people reached the conclusion that he was sympathetic to Spain and thus enlisted Walsingham in having him killed? 'I'll depart for Lisbon with my survival at the centre of my heart. And hope, perhaps, that from that there may be some profit for England. As for Spain, I'm honest enough to see what it does well. That doesn't mean I want it ruling here in England. And my actions so far have shown what I'll sacrifice for England.'

  Did Walsingham believe him? It was impossible to know, except Gresham was certain that if Walsingham believed now he was a spy for Spain he would not have left the house alive. Walsingham's final words were ominous.

  'Take care, Henry Gresham, that you do not plot the end of your own life, needing no interference from men such as me.'

  Well, there was no answer to that.

  Gresham regaled George and Mannion with the gist of his conversation with Walsingham. He vaguely wondered about telling Anna, but dismissed it more or less instantly. True, her life might depend on whether or not Gresham's judgement of Walsingham was sound. But these decisions were man's work. 'So do you trust him?' George asked.

  'Not completely,' said Gresham. 'It's why I rather wanted to go on these two trips as my own man, and not Walsingham's. It's still conceivable that he set me up to die either in some trade-off with Burghley, Cecil or even the Queen, and he made it clear that I might be spying for Spain. I'm pretty sure he doesn't believe that. What I do think is that if he felt a need to have me killed it's passed, and for the moment he finds me useful.'

  'Do spies ever have any certainty?' asked George in exasperation.

  'Well, one at least,' said Gresham cheerfully. 'They always know someone wants them dead, even if they don't always know who it is.'

  No English ship was foolish enough to sail into Lisbon harbour. Gresham found a ship to take them to St Malo. Even there they found the captains unwilling to sail to Lisbon, for fear of being seized for the Armada. Eventually they came across a tubby little coastal vessel that had never lost sight of land in its long life and whose sole armament consisted of four iron cannons that had probably never been fired since they came out of the foundry forty or fifty years earlier. Gresham doubted it was a ship that the Admiral of the Armada would die for, but even this captain seemed unwilling. In desperation, Gresham asked that if he would not take them for his sake, then would he consider taking them for the girl's sake, in her forlorn search for her French fiancй. He agreed then, grudgingly. He was French, which helped of course.

  If Cadiz had been full of ships, Lisbon was, fourfold. If Gresham had been worried about drawing too much attention to himself, he soon realised what a false worry it had been. It was chaos in the harbour, the normal trade of one of Europe's busiest ports piled on top of the vast fleet that Philip was assembling.

  'Bloody Hell!' said Mannion. ‘You could feed England with what it costs to keep this lot idle here in port!'

  They eventually came to rest in a dilapidated grey stone building which had slipped its foundations, leaving a large crack in the wall, and stone window ledges that drooped down to the left like a mouth frowning out of one side. The owner was an elderly Dutch merchant, reduced to letting rooms because of the terrible impact the continuing war in the Netherlands was having on trade.

  'Strange, innit?' grunted Mannion, eyeing the meal they had been brought suspiciously. 'I thought as 'ow we'd stand out here, being English. Fact is, I doubt anyone'd notice.'

  The port was heaving with every nationality on earth. Walking down the street where their house was situated they had heard Italian, French, Dutch and German spoken as well as Portuguese and Spanish. And English. The speaker was an elderly man, dressed in the simple robe of those aspiring to the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood, of course. Gresham knew of the hundreds of English men who fled to France and trained for the priesthood in Allen's grotesquely named 'School of Martyrs', but he had failed to realise the numbers who came to Portugal to do the same thing. Perhaps, he grinned inwardly, they knew just how deeply Walsingham's spy service had infiltrated the seminaries in France.

  'Converting the natives,' Mannion announced. He had been out scouting. 'Most of 'em training here reckon to work as missionaries, either in the New World or in Goa and round there. Bloody sight safer than being sent over to England, I bet.'

  'I think a lot of these ships in the harbour are intended to convert the natives. The natives in this case being us, the English.' Gresham gazed bleakly out through the sagging stone window, the shutter thrown wide open to let what breeze there was waft through. If Cadiz had given him an overwhelming sense of the power and wealth of the Spanish Empire, then Lisbon increased the threat to a nightmare.

  'Walsingham'll want to see you pretty quick once we get 'ome,' said Mannion, following his gaze. 'You'll 'ave a lot to tell him.'

  'If he's still alive when we get back,' said Gresham, his depression deepening. Walsingham was clearly a dying man. 'And I bet his spies have already given him the name, tonnage and condition of every boat in this harbour.'

  They presented themselves to the Governor General, out of courtesy and necessity, as it was only by his leave that Gresham had been allowed to enter Lisbon. He was a harassed, grey figure, rumoured to be in permanent conflict with the Marquis of Santa Cruz.

  'These are strange times,' he muttered in passable English, 'and it is good to be reminded of matters of the heart,' he paused to smile at Anna, 'when so much other talk is of war. You and your most elegan
t ward must visit us. We are holding a reception. I will arrange for a card to be issued to you both.' He snapped his fingers at a servant in glorious livery, who bowed and left to attend to the matter. 'I must also apologise,' he added.

  'You have been most gracious in permitting us to visit,' said Gresham, 'and I cannot conceive of any need for an apology.'

  'No, no, I must,' the old man said. 'I have been intending to find details of this Monsieur… Jacques Henri? Is that his name? Yet there has been so much to do here, I fear, so many people, so many orders

  … it has slipped my mind.'

  'I am sure it will be no problem. We have an address…'

  'Better, I think, if you allow me to send you a pair of my servants to guide you there.' The old man saw the expression in Gresham's eyes. 'No, not to keep guard over you as you might think. There is no secret about what is gathering in this harbour, and I would be most surprised to think that your Lord Walsingham was not paying a dozen men here to report back to him on every vessel that enters and leaves.'

  It was an uncanny echo of a conversation Gresham had had with Mannion. How much did the Governor General know? Gresham searched the man's face, and looked to George. There was no hint of any ulterior meaning from the Governor General, and a simple shrug from George. Even his refined political sensitivity was on hold here in Lisbon.

  'It is simply that the wars in the Netherlands, which many see as only lasting because of the support the English give the rebels, have damaged trade and there is much resentment. Also, El Draco destroyed many smaller vessels off this coast earlier in the year, many families are facing poverty now. Shall we say that two of my servants with you when you go out and about might dispel any… misunderstandings,' the Governor General replied. 'And of course, you will not be staying long,' he said with a tone of finality.

  'As long as it takes to find the fiancй and to ensure that my ward is adequately cared for,' said Gresham, cursing inwardly. He had hoped for at least a week in Lisbon, perhaps even two or three.

  The two servants, dressed in the same extravagant livery, turned out to be four, each pair working a twelve-hour shift. They dismissed with courtesy the invitation to reside inside, preferring to sit instead in the small lobby that led in from the street. It was a position from which they could monitor all the comings and goings from the house.

  Anna came into Gresham's room unexpectedly, just as he, George and Mannion had laid out on the bed the robes of the trainee priest, the acolyte. The cassocks with their built-in hoods were rough-tailored, coarse. She looked from the clothes to them and reached her own conclusion.

  'You are slipping out tonight. In disguise.'

  George reddened in the face.

  'You know who it is you have to meet. You have thought about this long ago, ordered your clothes. I was, how do you say, a bonus? If I had not agreed you will still have come to Lisbon, perhaps in disguise all the way.'

  'Would still have come to Lisbon…' said Gresham.

  'I do not care about English now! And you will take me with you,' announced Anna. 'You have four robes there. A few pins will hold up the hem of one of them so that it fits me. I have this right. You have been enabled to come here because of me only. I too must be involved. It is only fair.'

  'But you can't come,' said George, all his honesty showing through in his face. 'This could be dangerous…'

  This isn't fun,' said Gresham angrily, cutting in. 'This is playing with the fate of nations. It isn't a game.' He would make her realise that what was a game to her was life and death to him. He would make her realise.

  'No?' said Anna. 'Yet that is exactly how you treat it. A game. A game where the excitement is to lose your life, the prize to value life if you survive. My life is a meaningless game. A marriage with a fat Frenchman. Why should I not play your game? Because the thing between my legs is different?'

  The coarseness shocked Gresham. He looked to Mannion and George. To his astonishment, Mannion seemed to be on the girl's side.

  'Look,' he said to Gresham, 'we could use her. If she's willing.'

  A sudden wave of tiredness came over Gresham, and he motioned to Mannion to carry on. Mannion turned to the girl, took her by the arm and led her into the corner of the room, dust dancing in the slanting beams of diminishing sunlight. They had a whispered conversation, Anna going deep red and then recovering. Chin held high, she nodded. Mannion grinned, and nearly forgot himself, reaching out to pat her bottom in approbation before realising the potential mistake and withdrawing it just in time.

  They had travelled with two maids for Anna, including the loyal Mary, and it was harder to get rid of them than it was to avoid the guards. Eventually they were sent off to a separate room, Anna pleading a headache of such intensity that even the noise of the maids sleeping in their truckle beds at the foot of her four-poster would be too terrible to bear. Stripping off down to her shift, she put the gown over her head, clamped her hair rather than pinned it and forced a cap over it, leaving the hood to be a disguise when they left the house. There was a tap on the door. Mannion. He put his finger to his lips, motioned her across the dusty hallway to Gresham's room, ushered her in. Only then did he walk to the end of the hall, click his fingers, and call up the stairs one of their servants brought from England to stand guard outside Anna's door.

  'No one goes in, no one comes out. Clear?' The servant nodded.

  There was a door set in the panels by the side of the vast stone fireplace, a long-forgotten crest emblazoned over it in stone. Mannion picked its cumbersome, ancient lock in seconds, and it swung open for perhaps only the third or fourth time in ten years. It was a servants' passage, leading down into the kitchens that underpinned the whole mansion, empty at this time of night and stinking of grease and burned meat. All four had put their hoods up now, and they walked carefully past the racks of hanging copper pans, careful in case by knocking one against another they rang out like a peal of bells. The dying embers of the great fire flickered on the metal, caught the three hooded figures first in shadow and then in half-light. A child seeing them would have screamed, thinking hooded Death in four forms was walking the streets of Lisbon that night. A great door led directly from the kitchen to the road outside, for ease of delivery. It was locked with another huge mechanism, and bolted top and bottom. They ignored this, and went instead to a tiny door on the left side of the cavernous room, with its arched ceiling. It too was locked, but its bolts had rusted in. Some attempt had been made to force the metal bar into its receiving half-circle of iron, but the bolt had only engaged very slightly. Easing both bolts back ever so gently, Mannion swung it open when again he picked the primitive lock. He grinned inwardly. The three hours he had spent attempting to seduce the cook and the other women in the kitchen had paid dividends, including the knowledge gained from the lazy walk he had taken out of this very door to piss in the street and making the door appear bolted on his return.

  It was lighter in the south at this time of night, Gresham noticed, but the streets were almost deserted, activity seeming to be concentrated in the harbour area. They slunk through the streets, fine stone houses built high but casting even deeper moon-shadow as a result, narrow and with the heat of the day still radiating from their stone and brick facades, in contrast to the cold light of the moon. Gresham and Mannion knew where they were going. A wild sense of excitement filled Anna's heart as she followed Gresham and George, Mannion behind her, excitement tinged with terror at what she had allowed herself to become.

  It took them fifteen minutes of walking, their good pace limited by the need to keep in the shadows, their heads bowed and their hands clasped humbly in front of them. Those who wished to officiate at the Mass did not run through streets at midnight. It was suspicious enough that they were out anyway. They started to climb a slight hill, the stone houses giving away to ill-built timber structures, bleached by the sun into premature age. Light was bleeding through the shutters of one, large rambling building, raucous conversation and lau
ghter exploding from it. They ducked into a tiny courtyard, bathed in shadow, and Mannion stripped off his gown, revealing the jerkin and trews of a working man. Anna watched from under the lip of her hood, fascinated. Simple though Mannion's dress was, it was cut in the Lisbon style, a subtle difference from that which a workman in London might have worn, the material thinner, the style more loose and flowing, more generous, to cope with the heat. He ducked into what was clearly a tavern or an inn. A door opened, a shard of light cut through the gloom and suddenly Mannion was back beside them. 'Round the back.'

  With a quick look to left and right, they crossed the narrow street, unpaved and little more than a path, through an open side gate and into what had clearly once been a stable yard but which was now weed-strewn and derelict. Evidently guests who stayed the night at this inn came on foot and brought no horses with them.

  'For God's sake, George,' said Gresham, 'whatever you do, don't start knocking things over now.'

  The tiny room had probably once been a stable, but was rough-plastered now, a small table at each end. By the door were two country stools, three-legged and with the wood hardly smoothed. Two candles were on the furthermost, equally crude table, with a chair behind it, facing the door. Gresham placed the candles carefully together. He took one of the stools and placed it behind the table at the far corner of the room where a chunk of plaster had fallen off some two or three feet up from the earth floor, revealing a patchwork quilt of reeds or straw.

  'Sit there,' said Gresham to Anna. He was angry with her for her insistence on coming. He would show her tonight what being a spy meant. She had asked to come, so let her taste the reality of it.

  He arranged her hood so that it threw a deep shadow over her face, concealing it. The hoods of the cassocks were unusually deep, she noticed as only a woman would, extending far further forward than was normal. Gresham seated himself in the centre of the table furthermost from the door, the candles half blinding anyone who came in from the night, obscuring the face and figure of the man behind the table. George was seated, as invisible as a man his size could be, by the door.