The galleon's grave hg-3 Page 25

  Ostend was a town where people walked hunched, where even the deputation from England with all its gold found that there was no food in the hostel. Cecil rose to his feet, issued peremptory orders to his servants. Ludicrously, he returned two hours later with two mangy hunting dogs and two thin fishing nets. 'If there is no food, then we shall find it!' he pronounced proudly. The dogs ran off when the servants took them out, the fishing nets proved to have two vast holes in them, and something in the manner of the servants persuaded Cecil not to ask them to set out on the choppy sea in the small boat that was all they could hire. It was Mannion who went out and returned with three eggs, half a cheese and some mouldy ham. They ate it like village children at a feast.

  The delays felt endless, the frustration almost like a physical force pressing down on them. They were in Ostend, but Parma was reportedly in Bruges. Messengers were sent between the two camps, frequently crossing to arrange a meeting. Parma was no longer in Bruges. Where was he? No one knows. 'Inspecting his troops.' How much inspection can an army stand? There was no entertainment in Ostend, not even coal. Her Majesty's Ambassadors sat huddled round a smoking peat fire, praying for real warmth. Cecil's education was expanded even more. The smoke from a peat fire does not sting the eyes. Any more than it warms the body.

  Dale, Cecil and Gresham rode to Ghent in the second week of March, their only food an orange apiece. There were brigands riding, lurking in what was left of the woodlands on either side of the road, just out of musket range, lean men on horses, watching, gauging the strength and the commitment of their escort. The eggs they got when they arrived were like a King's feast. They did not compensate for the fact that Parma's emissary had gone, with no one seeming to know where. Finally the ambassadors met with Gamier, Parma's secretary, a small man in his mid-thirties, wearing a heavily furred cloak down to his knees, wearing what could only be called a cassock of blue velvet with gold buttons and a gold chain around his neck. There was more talk, more delay. Then, at long last, they agreed for proper negotiations to start at Bourbourg, near Dunkirk.

  'I fear this delay is intentional, that we are simply being stalled while Spain prepares her Armada,' said the Earl of Derby to Gresham. He had fallen into the habit of exchanging words with the young man, to Cecil's evident discomfort.

  'It's possible, of course, my Lord,' said Gresham, toying with a rock-hard crust of bread that even his starving stomach was unwilling to take. 'Yet it's one of the Duke of Parma's techniques as a leader to be everywhere and yet nowhere, to move around his command to no obvious plan.'

  'What advantage is there in it?' asked Derby, intrigued. He was an intelligent man with a quick brain, and a major supporter of the players.

  'They say it's one reason why there's been no assassination attempt against him. That and the loyalty of his troops,' answered Gresham. 'Yet it also means that no commander can be secure against a sudden, ruthless inspection. The first thing he demands is a parade of the men, with the muster roll.' The plague of all European armies were the officers who took money for recruits who had either died, or never existed at all except as a fictional entry on just such a muster roll. It was a foolish officer who played this trick in Parma's army, and one who finished his career at the end of a rope. 'And, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'have we considered if this is the Duke's way of testing our sincerity, our strength of purpose?' *Well, it may be so,' said Derby, 'but I will tell you now that he has tested this man's strength of purpose near to breaking point!' He stood up, ordering one of the very few remaining bottles of wine he had brought with him from England to be opened. A whole dozen bottles had been smashed to pieces in their passage over the Channel.

  There had always been an old head on Henry Gresham's young soldier's body, but that night the youthful blood must have been running even more strongly than usual in his veins. Despairing of the conversation in the crude inn where they were staying, with the wind shrieking through the ill-mended windows and rattling the doors, he flung a cloak over his shoulders, threw open the door and took himself off through the night air. The houses were close, crowded in on each other, not dissimilar to London except with no roar of traffic and the ceaseless yelling of trades-people. Mannion tucked in behind his master, silent. They walked briskly for quarter of an hour, reaching the outskirts of the town. The rain was holding off, though the air was thick with wet and cold, and there was a pleasant tingling in Gresham's body after the exercise. The moon emerged briefly from behind the scudding clouds, revealing the dark shape of the town wall before them. It was as if they had the whole town to themselves, apart from a lame, skulking dog that had shadowed them all the way from the inn.

  They were halfway back when the attack came. The men must have been waiting down a tiny, stinking jennel that led off the main route. It was the mud that saved Gresham, that and the fact that for a few seconds the wind had ceased its howling. There was a slight squelch as the lead attacker drew his foot from out of the slime that coated the streets. It was a tiny noise, but it was enough for Gresham and Mannion to swing round and face the men. The jennel was so narrow that only one man could leap out from it at a time. It was the one weakness in the attackers' plan. Without the sudden drop in the wind's noise the dagger would have been plunged into Gresham's back, the first he knew of it the sharp, sudden agony and the drawing down of the blinds in his eyes. As it was he turned to see his enemy, the hand, with the dagger in it held high, was already descending. The man with a ragged beard and pock-marked face, teeth drawn back in a grin of concentration, a strangely incongruous pink tongue poking out between the misshapen teeth. A second figure was close behind, already starting to swing a huge cudgel at Mannion's head.

  Some instinct made Gresham lunge forward, not pull back as most men would have done, and tuck his head down. He collided with the man, his head burying itself in the stinking woollen tunic. He was under the blow now, and the man tried to pull his arm back, redirect the dagger into Gresham's heart. With one hand Gresham grabbed the man's arm, while bringing his head up with a savage jerk under the man's chin. Gresham's hat was in the mud now, so bone met bone. The man's jaw snapped shut. There was a gurgling scream, and the arm Gresham was grasping suddenly flopped. His attacker had bitten off his tongue. Gresham flung the man away from him, directly in the path of the third man to emerge from the jennel. They were brave, or starving and made desperate by their hunger. There was another gurgling scream, and the first attacker slumped to the ground. From his stomach the tip of a blade poked through. The third attacker must have held his sword out before him, and Gresham had inadvertently thrown the first man back on to its point, impaling him on his friend. This attacker was a slight figure, dressed in a billowing cloak, close-shaven and with a wide, dark hat that hid his face. He placed a foot on the now dead body of his accomplice, sought to drag his sword out of the body. Then his hat went flying, and a startled expression lit his face, before he toppled forward, hand still clutching the embedded sword. Mannion had killed the second man, taken his vast cudgel and swung it into the back of his head with massive force, crushing bone and brain in an explosion of blood. The two Englishmen stood, panting slightly. Gresham had not even taken his sword out of its scabbard.

  'Thieves?' he gasped to Mannion.

  Mannion put his foot out, rolled over the body of the third attacker. It was clear he was of a different class, his clothing breathing wealth, his complexion clear. And there was his sword, of course. Mannion bent down, withdrew it from the body with a sickening sucking sound. It was immaculate except where it was now stained with blood, the hilt finely decorated.

  'Spanish,' said Mannion, taking in both the sword and the dead man. He used the tip of the sword to part the man's doublet. There was a gleam of gold. With the delicacy of a surgeon, Mannion let the sword blade pull on the precious chain, revealing the top of a crucifix. 'Not thieves,' said Mannion. 'Hungry, desperate local men — look how thin they both are — probably hired by this one here, who chooses to lead from behind, wit
h his sword out and ready in case anything went wrong.'

  'Damn!' said Gresham.

  'Damn right,' said Mannion. 'This wasn't Walsingham, or Cecil. Or the Queen. You've got up everyone's nose, haven't you? It was Spain as wanted you dead tonight.'

  The street was empty, the fight almost silent, apart from two gurgling, blood-stopped screams, the greatest noise the weight of their own breathing. They" hauled the three bodies roughly back into the jennel. Gresham tried not to think about the starving dog and what it would do to the bodies.

  The others had gone to bed when they returned to the inn, with the exception of Cecil. A cloak clutched round him, he was huddled in front of what little was left of the fire. He glanced suspiciously at Gresham.

  'Taking the air?' he asked, the irony thick in his voice. 'You might as well yell a challenge out for someone to kill you, to walk these streets at night! Or did you have someone you needed to see?'

  Sometimes the truth was the best weapon. 'Someone did try to kill us, as it happened. Three of them. And one of them a Spaniard, a gentleman by the look of him.'

  Cecil blanched, his thin hands giving an involuntary tug at the thick cloak. 'A Spaniard, you say? Are you sure?'

  The surprise in Cecil's voice was unmistakable. Gresham doubted even he could counterfeit it.

  Mannion was wearing something that looked more like a tarpaulin than a cloak. He drew it aside, and tossed the dead Spaniard's sword onto the rough trestle table that was set back from the fire. Spanish steel was renowned throughout Europe, their swords the best. The intricate working of the hilt was unmistakable. A man's sword was as accurate a guide to his breeding as his clothing, and told the viewer as much about him.

  'It's not just his weapon,' said Gresham, flinging off his own cloak and settling by the fire, reaching out his hands to its thin warmth. 'Clothes, appearance. And this.' He tossed a purse onto the table. Cecil looked at it, reached for it, fingered the coins inside. 'Spanish money,' said Gresham.

  'But this is in breach of our immunity. No one, no one attacks a member of a diplomatic mission!' Cecil breathed. 'In political terms it is the equivalent of blasphemy.'

  'Then we have some unbelievers in our proximity,' said Gresham. He noted Cecil's care for his and Mannion's safety. Or, rather, the complete absence of any such care.

  'Do you have an explanation for this attempt?'

  No, thought Gresham, I do not. Or at least, not yet. Nor will I find one until you cease your prattling and I am allowed to think. 'Welcome to Walsingham's world,' he said to Cecil. 'There's no diplomatic immunity in our world. The enemy don't wear a certain uniform to tell you they are your enemy. The knife can come as easily from the back as from the front.'

  Cecil still seemed deeply offended at the perceived insult to English diplomacy. If Cecil ever came to real power, he would deal with ambassadors and not spies, thought Gresham.

  Their problem was that they seemed to be dealing with no one. Finally, when they were reduced to despair, they were allowed their first meeting with Parma himself. Cecil was scornful in his despatch to his father, and the rather more formal one to the Queen; The room was full of poor, battered furniture, hardly better heated than their foul lodging, too small for the assembly gathered there. Gresham thought differently. This was a soldier's meeting. Parma would hardly notice the decorations or the fittings of where he met, he who had destroyed so many towns and cities. Meetings for Parma, Gresham thought, were not about gilded chairs, or precedence. They were business. Or was he clever enough to realise that by holding his meeting in such a poor room he disarmed the diplomats he met, put them off balance?

  The ambassadors droned their formalities and Parma's intelligent eyes flicked between them as if measuring their worth. The chair he sat in was ornately carved, but across the back, on the left hand side, there was a blackened, circular indent six inches or more long, as if someone had lain a red-hot poker there and let it eat into the wood.

  Within minutes Parma had chosen Derby as the real leader of the party, as well as its designated leader, taking him by the arm, pouring his wine himself. And he paid attention to Cecil as well, the man there simply because of his father's name. But the man tasked by the Queen, as Gresham had found out, to write to her daily on the progress of the negotiations.

  Gresham received the merest of passing nods, despite a warm introduction from Derby. An hour? Two hours? They had waited so long for this meeting) yet such conversation as there was seemed trivial, meaningless. Gresham lost track of the time. Finally, the delegation bowed out, their eyes stinging. No peat. On this fire, but damp wood, so that their clothes would smell for months of the slightly rancid stink of smoke from wet timber. The tap on the shoulder came as the others were ushered to separate rooms to wash before the dinner Parma had organised.

  ‘You have a labour of love to conclude, I believe?' It was Count d'Aremberg, one of Parma's closest advisers. He was smiling. How typical of his master, the smile said, to consider the hunt for a missing fiancй in the midst of considering the fate of nations. 'The Duke can spare you a few minutes, before the formalities, to discuss your search, and report on your initial findings.'

  Gresham was ushered back into the conference room, through an arras and into a small back room with furniture no better than in the main hall. The Duke of Parma, General in Chief of His Most Catholic Majesty's Army in the Netherlands, looked calmly at Henry Gresham. They were alone.

  'Are they genuine?' he asked, with no preamble, 'these two wise men and these five or six fools they have sent to negotiate with me?'

  'They're genuine, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'in that they truly wish for peace. England is by far the weaker combatant. And they'll remain so while they think there's still hope, though in their hearts they don't believe you'll make peace or even that you have the power to do so.'

  'So,' mused Parma, after a moment's thought, 'at last, here is Henry Gresham. The young bastard who dances with the Queen of England, the man who is one of Walsingham's trusted recruits, the brave adventurer who makes his name fighting for England at Cadiz, the controversial academic, the man of fabulous wealth who survives an attempt by Drake to kill him.' He paused. 'And the man who all this while has been spying for Spain.' He paused again. There was a slight smile on Gresham's face. 'The man who attends Mass once a week, at huge personal risk, not just now, but for years,' Parma went on, 'and whose allegiance to his faith overwhelms his allegiance to what he sees as a corrupt state. The man whose reports are deemed among the most important and secret to reach the Escorial Palace, and some of very few sent in their entirety on to me. The man who admits he has been forced to do things to damage the Spanish cause, such as corrupting the chief armourer in Lisbon, so as to retain his credibility with his English masters and to prove himself to the heretic Walsingham. Spain's great secret. The man — the very young man — they talk of in whispers as Spain's secret weapon. The man whose real name is known only to the King, to a single one of his private Secretaries and, recently, to me.'

  Henry Gresham bowed his head in acknowledgement. The sense of relief was almost palpable, the sense of no longer having to deceive. 'And the man who would like passage to Spain,' Gresham stated. To end deception, and to join the Armada. I have vital knowledge of Drake, of the English fleet. I must be there to advise the Duke!' He was pleading now. The thought of having come so far and not be there at the climax was unthinkable, obscene.

  There was a glint in Parma's eyes. 'You have heard the news that your Walsingham is dead?'

  Gresham's expression did not change. 'I had not heard, my Lord,' he replied. 'But it was expected.'

  The Duke of Parma looked deep into Gresham's eyes. 'We will talk,' he said. 'And you will tell me everything.'

  'I have much to tell you, my Lord,' said Gresham.

  Neither men noticed that there was a small gap in the planks beneath their feet, a gap not covered by carpet or a thick layer of rushes. Nor did they notice the briefest flicker, as if someone h
ad been crouched beneath the floor listening, and had moved to their exit.

  Chapter 9

  28th May — 6th August, 1588 The Battle of Portland Bill

  What the hell am I doin',' Mannion asked, 'on a bloody Spanish ship, surrounded by bloody Spaniards and fighting for bloody Spain? I hate fuckin' Spaniards! Unlike you!'

  They were standing feet apart on the deck of the San Salvador, unbothered by the heaving of the choppy seas. The smell of the Spanish ship — the sweet and sour tang of olives, the acidic tang of cheap wine, distinct from the raw, thinner smack of English beer, the richness of garlic and herb — was unfamiliar, exotic. The ship drove through the water in stately progress, rather than rising and falling upon it. The garish paint on the upperworks and on the vast castles at bow and stern, full even now with fighting men, was an alien world. There was no chance of the Captain of the San Salvador lending a hand with a rope, as Drake sometimes did. There was deep segregation on board the Spanish ship, and an even deeper hostility between the sailors and the soldiers.

  'You chose to come,' said Gresham, more saddened than he dare admit by his friend's misery. ‘You knew it was likely to happen. You knew I had to be here.'

  'Are you sure you shifted the money?' Mannion was obsessed that their betrayal of England would leave them penniless.

  'I've told you’ said Gresham tiredly, 'the money's safe. You may be servant to a traitor. You won't be servant to a poor traitor.' He turned to face Mannion, more in retaliation than to elicit information. 'And the arrangements for the girl? You're sure they're watertight?'