The galleon's grave hg-3 Page 22

  There was a slight scuffling noise from outside, and Mannion stepped aside from the half open door to allow a bulky figure to duck into the room. He stood there, blinking, trying to acclimatise himself to the half light and the two sinister hooded figures seated behind the far table.

  'Sit down,' said Gresham. He was speaking in perfect Italian. Anna knew just enough of the language to follow the conversation. You cannot understand a human unless you understand his language, her father had said. Spanish she had spoken all her life, English she had learned from her mother and French and Italian she had been taught in the schoolroom. What would her father have thought if he had known where his daughter's future lay, here in a stinking room in Lisbon helping an English spy defeat a Spanish fleet?

  The man looked shocked. 'You are Italian?' he stuttered. He was not drunk, but had been drinking. The veins on his nose and the bloodshot eyes suggested this had been a lifelong hobby.

  'I'm the Englishman you were told to expect,' said Gresham, continuing the effortlessly fluent Italian. He had first learned the language because of an overwhelming desire to read Machiavelli in the original. 'A very unimportant Englishman, an expendable Englishman whose betrayal by you would bring few tears to the eyes of any in Government in England. Indeed, someone chosen because they were expendable. Someone without title or status, yet with access to a great deal of money. A very great deal of money. For the right service.'

  The man looked round the small room, nervous, licking his lips. Something flew through the air, a flickering blur of darkness from behind the table. The man swung round, exclaiming, ready to leap out of the door. He found it blocked by Mannion, holding the bottle of wine Gresham had just tossed to him. Grinning, Mannion reached down to the bag at his feet, never taking his eyes off the man, and brought out a simple pewter goblet. He reached down by the side of the man, placed the goblet on the table. Then, grasping the top end of the bottle in one great meaty paw, he placed the neck end in his mouth and yanked down. There was a crack, and the top half of the neck sheared off, smoothly down one side but jagged glass on the side facing the man. Mannion raised the bottle up, almost threatening the man with the jagged glass. He reared back, collided with the wall, struggling to grab the dagger in his belt. Before he could do so, Mannion had, in one seamless movement, plonked the bottle down on the table, reached forward to yank the dagger out of the man's hand and stepped back, plunging the dagger into the cheap soft wood of the table so that it sank in a full inch, and left it quivering slightly there. He motioned the man to sit.

  'Bartolome de Somorriva,' said Gresham. 'Italian, chief gun-founder at the Lisbon armouries.'

  Bartolome slumped onto a stool, his pulse beating heavily in his thick neck. The skin was stretched over one side of his face. Had it come too close at some stage to one of the great furnaces the gun foundries depended on for their business? He grabbed the goblet, poured wine into it so that it splashed over the side, took a great gulp. Mannion reached over, took the bottle and swigged at it from the sheared glass. He wiped his lips. And held on to the bottle.

  'That is my position. And my craft. You know it well.'

  'I also know that you've a wife and family in Italy, and two mistresses here in Lisbon, neither of whom is aware of the other.'

  Bartolome went pale for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.

  'What matter if one whore does not know of another?'

  ‘No great matter,' said Gresham, 'unless it becomes known that one Bartolome de Somorriva contracted the pox some three months ago, and has continued making the beast with two backs with his mistresses ever since, despite that knowledge. One of the women is also sleeping with several of the most important men in Lisbon, and has therefore in all probability infected those men as well.'

  Bartolome recoiled as if slapped in the face. 'How did you know?' he asked.*You would not, you could not tell these people…'

  'I require payment for my silence,' said Gresham in icy tones.

  'Payment?' said Bartolome, genuinely confused and totally off balance. 'I am not a rich man. I…'

  'The payment I require is different,' said Gresham. He had still not pulled back his hood, and the voice came from the black, ill-defined space shrouded by the folds of its cloth. 'Indeed, if you do what we ask, you'll be paid, most generously.' Gresham reached into his gown, drew out a purse and tossed it casually onto the table. It hit with a heavy thump. 'Go on, open it. Count it,' Gresham said.

  The gold coins fell onto the table in an avalanche of wealth. One rolled off the edge, and Bartolome scrabbled for it in the dust.

  'This is… most generous,' he said, looking up, the candlelight catching the sweat on his brow.

  'It's a simple down payment,' said Gresham. 'There's five times as much if you do what we ask.'

  An expression of knowing evil came into Bartolome's eyes. His assurance was seeping back, and clearly he was starting to feel on home ground. Carefully he fed each coin back into the purse, closed it, placed it somewhere amidst his considerable girth.

  'And what is it that you ask of me? I am a simple man. I am a mere maker of guns, a working man.' He held the empty goblet up high, not looking at Mannion, staring at the hooded figure seated in front of him. The silence stretched out. He began to feel foolish, arm outstretched, empty goblet in hand. He turned to look at Mannion, intending to gesture to him to fill his cup. Mannion held his eyes, swirled his tongue round his mouth and very slowly allowed a string of spit to dribble from his mouth into the goblet. Then, carefully, he filled it to the brim with wine, and stepped back.

  For a moment it seemed as if he would rise and try to strike Mannion, but it was fleeting. Instead he sat back in his seat, gazing bleakly at Gresham.

  'I came here because I was told there was a man who had something I would be interested in. Is that something merely a pack of insults?' He almost succeeded in hiding his fear.

  'It's simple’ said Gresham. 'King Philip's great fleet is short of cannon and shot Far too many of its vessels are armed either with ancient iron guns, or cannon designed to cut a swathe through cohorts of men, not to cut through the thick and seasoned wood of an English galleon. Too many of its ships have a mere five or ten rounds per gun.'

  'This I know’ said Bartolome, simply. 'This all Lisbon knows.'

  'And you also know that it wasn't until last month that your foundry obtained enough raw materials to start seriously the business of casting new brass cannon, the large cannon the Armada so desperately needs, and the shot to go with them. And that Spain is relying on Lisbon to provide a hundred new, large guns, a hundred and fifty even, and the attendant shot.'

  Bartolome spluttered, falling into the caricature he had previously adopted with Santa Cruz's harassed emissaries.

  'A hundred cannon! A hundred and fifty! It is nonsense! The God of war himself could not make so many guns in so little time…'

  'Spare me the drama’ said Gresham calmly. 'There are master gun-makers in France and craftsmen in Scotland who could come here to Lisbon for a price, men of experience and expertise, Catholic men with no love for England. Not only gun-makers, but the underlings, those other men who're so important in seeing that the mix of the metal is correct, that it cools at the right speed, that the bore is true… they too are there in Europe and in Scotland. But you've not sought to gain the services of these men.'

  'And why should I not do so?' blustered Bartolome. 'I have all sorts of men tormenting me every day to produce more guns. More guns! It is like a litany of hell in my ears! Do you not think I would stop at anything to reduce it?'

  'Yes’ said Gresham, 'for two reasons. Firstly, every master gun-maker brought here to Lisbon means less profit for you, who wish to have a monopoly in this most profitable of ventures. Secondly, you're not actually a very good master-gunner.'

  Bartolome bridled, tried to rise to his feet. A pressure akin to an earthquake pressed on his shoulder. It was Mannion. He sat down.

  Your record wherever you
have worked is bad. Explosions in the casting, explosions in the test-firing, explosions in the guns you've made when fired in earnest. In Italy they called you the widow-maker. You fled to Lisbon, telling them here that you sought more responsibility, and wished to make guns that would fire God's word as well as shot! Fine words, and fine forged testimonials from men in Italy with long titles but who unfortunately don't exist.'

  'This is untrue! I…'

  'Be silent.' Gresham had not raised his voice. The threat in its quiet tone silenced the Italian. 'My requirements are simple. You'll carry on making bad guns for the Spanish fleet. Instead of a hundred and fifty, you'll make no more than fifty, and they'll prove at sea to be more of a threat to the men who fire them than they are to the enemy they are fired at. And the round shot you manufacture, it'll be flawed. You'll ensure that it's cooled too quickly, unevenly, so that each shot will contain flaws. Flaws that mean when it's fired it'll fragment into splinters as soon as it leaves the barrel, and not smash whole into the hull of a good English ship.'

  Anna found that she had been holding her breath, for how long she could not guess. She had been to sea, could imagine the Spanish soldiers and sailors putting the linstock to the priming pan of their great cannon, could hear the screams as cut and fragmented men saw their cumbersome weapon blow up in front of them, see the incomprehension on the faces of the men as round after round seemed to have no effect on the weaving, dancing English ships. What futures, what horrors and what lives were being decided here in this filthy room? What a reckoning there was here. Was it Death who had become her guardian?

  'And my reward? My reward for betraying my faith as well as my profession? My reward for facing persecution, for being reviled, perhaps even for being exposed?'

  'Gold,' said Gresham flatly. 'Exactly five times what you have there in that purse. Not quite a King's ransom, but perhaps a Duke's at least. A passport for you to a life of ease. And the good burghers of Lisbon not realising that their sudden dose of the pox comes as a present from you, of course, nor your wife hearing the good news. And, of course, the King of Spain not being given the truth about the skills of his master gun-maker in Lisbon. I think you'll do rather well out of it. Better than the soldiers and sailors you'll cause to be cut to ribbons by their own guns.'

  They were clearly not an issue for the Italian. 'And what guarantee do I have that you will not betray me when you have used me? You come, Englishman, with a remarkably high profile to Lisbon. Carrying a beautiful girl, so they say in the wine shops, a Spanish Princess. Am I wise to place my life in the hands of a man so much in the public gaze?'

  'Meet my ward,' said Gresham, reaching over and flipping back Anna's hood.

  She was surprised to be revealed. She had had no warning. Her golden curls fell down as the gold had fallen on the table earlier, and in the face of her beauty it was as if the number of candles in the room had been quadrupled.

  Gresham let him look at her for a suitable time. 'She's a whore,' he said flatly. 'A Spanish whore, and a very beautiful one, but a whore for all that. She was servicing the Captain of the San Felipe when we captured it. I knew then that she was my passport to Lisbon.'

  Gresham let the Italian's eyes devour Anna. She was shivering, her eyes downcast. She had never felt so shocked. It was as if she had been stripped naked and paraded before this evil man, like a slave. In the face of the raw power exercised by Gresham, any words she might call up seemed pathetic trivia.

  'And she's yours, when all this is over, if you want her,' said Gresham. 'Another part of your payment.'

  'Mine?' said the Italian. 'How can that be? She knows I'm poxed. Soon no girl will sleep with me, unless they too are diseased.'

  His face wrinkled in distaste. Not at the thought of a diseased girl lying with him, Gresham knew, but at the thought of the treatments he would have to undergo to see if he could be cured. They were all painful and one, Gresham knew, required the surgical use of an instrument rather like a corkscrew.

  'She knows nothing,' said Gresham. 'She speaks only Spanish and a little English. She's mine to dispose of as I please. Do this job for me and she's yours.'

  It was probably the gold that did it, Gresham knew, not the offer of the girl, though he wondered. His fear had been that the man would turn them in to the authorities after the first purse, reckoning this to be the lesser of two evils. He had needed a distraction, something to stop Bartolome using his brain. What better way to stop him using his brain than making him think with his groin? The man had a voracious sexual appetite, that they knew. Yet no women, not even the whores, would look at him if it was known he had the pox. He could not keep his pox secret for long. Soon he would either have to be chaste, or spread his thinning seed between the thin legs of the women who were already poxed, a despairing pathetic group in any seaport or city whose closest relations in history were the members of a leper colony. To have his own whore, and one of such beauty, while he tried to fight free of the French malaise, now there was something even money would not buy him. And, if he chose to tell Anna what he had offered, it would bring her in touch with the reality of spying. And it would stop him thinking. The hot hunger for sex would override his brain, stop him from taking the money and betraying Gresham.

  'How will… how will you get the girl to me?' Bartolome asked.

  'We've spies everywhere in Lisbon,' said Gresham. Well, Walsingham did. 'I'll hear how the work in the Foundry goes. In Spring, if those reports are what I wish to hear, I'll return with the remainder of your money. And with the girl. She's clean from disease. I'll ensure she remains so. Until I deliver her to you, that is.'

  He left then, confused and elated, frightened yet reassured. Under his management Gresham doubted that the cannon and shot produced from the Lisbon armoury would have been of the highest quality. Now he felt certain of it.

  'What were you saying to the Italian?' asked a nonplussed George, who despite all the attempts of his tutors spoke only English.

  'How dare you,' said Anna, cutting in. Her voice was cold, the authority of her mother suddenly appearing on the young girl's face. Yet she spoke from despair. He felt shocked. Damn! He had not realised she spoke Italian. 'How dare you! To offer me as a whore to that foul man. Is this the way you treat those placed in your protection?'

  'It's the way I treat those who ask to come with me when I'm acting as a spy. The way I treat silly, empty headed girls who think what I do is simply exciting with an ever-so-slight risk. Just enough to arouse them! The way I treat people who think what I do is about amusement. The way I show them that it's about slime, and dirt, and filth. And about killing people who don't want to die. You had to justify your coming along tonight. That was how you paid for your passage.' The image of the Spaniard in the meadows swam before his eyes. Was this what Henry Gresham was reduced to?

  The two young people looked at each other in mutual hatred.

  'And will you give me to that diseased man?'

  'Of course not! It was a ruse! I won't return here. It was all a lie. A way of diverting his mind. I had to inflame him, stop him realising the stupidity of taking an English bribe.'

  'And you were kind enough to tell me of this, before you offered me to him.'

  No. He had not been kind enough. Because he had used her, as people had used him, and because he had become accustomed to seeing people as mere bargaining points. And the more he hated himself for doing it, the more he refused to admit that he was wrong, and the more he hated her.

  'In this spying,' said Anna, with sarcasm that would have cut through granite, 'is it always so that the women have to stay silent and flutter their eyelashes while the men do all the talking?' *No,' said Mannion, from somewhere beneath a tangled robe that he was having trouble getting over his head, 'sometimes they have to lie on their backs and flutter their…'

  'Enough!' said Gresham. 'You forget your place!' he hissed in embarrassment. Mannion's head emerged at long last, grinning.

  She directed a look of cold
superiority towards Mannion, who was too busy laughing at his own joke to notice. Yet his laughter did more to reassure her than anything Henry Gresham had done. Mannion made it clear that it was all a game. A hurtful, ludicrous and even shameful game, but a game nevertheless. But was it a game for Henry Gresham? Or had he allowed it to become his life? At the back of her mind was a nagging question. If his 'mission' had depended on it, would he have given her to this foul man?

  'I'm not happy with this,' George mumbled to Gresham, confused and with his sense of decency on high alert. Gresham ignored him.

  They doused the candles in silence, waited five minutes for their eyes to acclimatise, listened for the padding sound of feet outside that would tell them of men gathering. Going to the back of the room, Mannion kicked sand and dust aside off the floor to reveal a wooden trapdoor. Lifting it, careful to make no noise, they could just about make out wooden steps leading down into darkness.

  'Five steps down, missy,' whispered Mannion, close to her ear. She jumped, startled. Then, her anger still filling her veins, she decided that to show weakness would be to give in to the farce that her life appeared to have become. She stood up, straight. 'Six steps straight ahead,' said Mannion, 'bending low like. By then you'll see the stars.'

  They descended, and before she had time to start fearing the rats there was a gentle scuffling and another trapdoor was being lifted up from the inside revealing, as Mannion had promised, the stars. They were in another courtyard, also weeded over, leading from the back of the room they had just been in. Noises still came from the tavern, but less so now, muffled. There was no sign of any welcoming party. Gresham and Anna were just feet apart, yet it could have been miles. The cold tension between them crackled invisibly. George stood between them, frantically trying to understand what was beyond his comprehension.