The galleon's grave hg-3 Read online

  ‘Your gun carriages are huge, long, tailing back into the body of the ship, cumbersome to handle. You lash the gun to the side of the ship for firing, and need to untie it every time you reload. Your company are united when they hear the divine service, but are three separate groups in action — officers, sailors and soldiers. The soldiers are tasked to load a gun, under the command of a sailor. When it is done, they must return to their battle station and prepare to board an enemy. So the gunner has to call them back after each round is fired. It must take a full fifteen minutes for one of your great guns to reload and fire again.' Unless it was on a galley, set on a rail and chasing a longboat, thought Gresham.

  'And your English ships?' asked the Duke. The commanders and the officers of the San Martin had been motioned to sit. 'How do they differ?'

  'Their English ships.' The bitterness in Gresham's voice would etch steel. 'I'm a traitor, if you remember. The cannon are placed on short, four-wheeled carriages. The lashings allow the gun to be run back for reloading, hauled forward for firing. Each gun has a crew of seamen, dedicated to just that gun. They think five minutes to reload and fire a long time.'

  The silence must have been seconds, seemed minutes.

  'Call for the others,' the Duke ordered. 'Get them aboard.' He turned to Gresham. ‘You may leave,' he said. 'Understand me. You are either a very honourable man, or a self-serving traitor of a type who offends me deeply. Events will develop, the weighty matters of which I have charge, and in time I will decide your future and your status.'

  'Well,' said Mannion, on the deck, 'we're back where we usually are. Everyone hates us.'

  The shock of hearing the truth from Gresham had changed something inside Anna, something she was hardly aware of herself but which at the same time left her knowing that her life had altered for her in a way that could never be reversed. Suddenly the candle-lit masques and the overheated, fetid evenings at Court and nobleman's house seemed frivolous, cheap, the glittering jewels little more than baubles, the conversation that had once been so amusing thin and shallow.

  The scrupulous travel arrangements made by Gresham would get her to Dover and thence by ship to Calais well before it was likely that he would be unmasked as a Spanish spy. Operating on the basis that the best hiding place was in the open, Gresham had spread it widely around that he was returning from the Netherlands to Calais, there to meet her and start again the search for her fiancй. She felt a growing disquiet in the days before her departure, as what pathetic few belongings she had were packed into wooden chests, a disquiet over and above the appalling confusion she had been thrown into by the death of her mother and Gresham's strange revelations. Nor was it sadness at leaving London and England, where she had hardly had the time to feel at home. It was as if a beacon of danger had been set alight inside her head where only she could feel it, yet with no hint as to where the danger was coming from. From where were these signals emanating? The servants were smiling in her presence, Gresham's friends assiduous in their escort duties without being more presumptuous than all young men had to be.

  The chaperone.

  It had to be her.

  The sour-faced creature accompanied Anna saying nothing, sitting like a stiff pudding in her presence, never smiling, never talking. Yet once, as the great carriage had rolled out of The House, Anna had seen what seemed like the faintest of nods and thinnest of smiles cross her face as she seemed to see someone out of the window. Craning to see beyond her, Anna had spotted two finely-dressed men in a livery she did not recognise, lounging by the main gate of The House. And they had been there on her return, two different men in the same livery there again on her next outing.

  The servants were fond of her, and through them it did not take long to find out the identity of the livery. Burghley. Lord Burghley. The father of Robert Cecil. Her instincts had been honed by Gresham's double-dealing. If she was being spied on by any men associated with Robert Cecil, the news was not good. And was her suspicion about the chaperone correct? The woman had asked leave to be absent for a day, visiting a sick relative in Islington. Feeling both guilty and rather soiled, Anna charmed one of the younger ostlers into following the chaperone, swearing him to secrecy and leaving him heart-stricken with love. When both had left, with a week to go before her intended departure to Dover, she waited until the corridor was silent and slipped into the chaperone's room. It seemed innocent, and she started to ask what on earth she was doing in another woman's room. Then she saw the small writing desk placed by the window, a gap between its lid and the wood it rested on. A quill pen had been stuffed in the desk, but the nib end left sticking out, holding up the lid. The letter, nearly finished, had been interrupted for some reason — perhaps someone else had come into the room and the chaperone had thrust the paper and pen hurriedly in the desk? The contents were clear. In a few lines of spidery handwriting it gave Anna's date of departure from London, the name of the ship she was to pick up in Dover, even its Captain's name. The ostler reported later that evening that he had trailed the woman to Whitehall Palace. Cecil was spying on her, through this dreadful woman, had paid a spy to be as close as any person could be short of sharing her bed.

  She shivered, fear temporarily replacing blood in her veins. Giving the details of her departure to Cecil could surely only mean that Cecil intended in some way to stop her. Well, she had learned some things in these tumultuous recent months. She called the chaperone into her room, speaking to her in a tone of supremacy that she knew would annoy her.

  'I have decided to bring forward the time of my departure,' she announced. 'I have received notification that the ship must leave earlier.' All lies, of course, but if she managed to annoy the chaperone enough she might not seek to see the evidence.*My belongings are few. I intend to leave tomorrow, must do so if I am to make the ship in time. Your presence will not be required. I will have an escort of servants, and my two maids.'

  The woman's colour rose and her lips became thinner than usual, if that were at all possible. She swept out of the room, treading on the edge of impertinence with the shallowness of her bow. Anna made no arrangements to leave, of course. She merely made sure that, half an hour before the time she had given the chaperone, she stationed herself by a window looking out onto the Strand. There were a dozen men in the Cecil livery, six of them on horseback, joking and chatting with each other opposite the main gate. She called the chaperone, and the steward after telling him to bring three of the porters along.

  'You have been spying on me for Robert Cecil,' said Anna flatly. The chaperone started to bridle, expostulate, it is a fact,' said Anna. She turned to the steward, a loyal, elderly man who doted on Gresham. 'Master Robert, you do not know me. I will happily tell you why I believe beyond doubt that this woman has been spying on me and on The House for one of your master's greatest enemies.'

  ‘I need no such explanation, ma'am,' said the steward sombrely, ‘I need only your word. Your instructions?

  'Her judgement must await your master's return.' If he is ever allowed to return, thought Anna. 'My request is that until that time she is kept secured in a room from which she cannot escape, and allowed no contact either by voice or by paper with the outside world in general and the Cecil family in particular.'

  The steward nodded, and the last Anna ever saw of the chaperone was her hunched, furious figure being led through the door surrounded by porters.

  The ship to take her to France was marked, known. She was under no illusions that the imprisonment of the chaperone was only a temporary measure. She had to assume there were other spies in The House. The minute she left Dover would be reported, possibly Folkestone as well if they wanted her that much. But why did Cecil want her? What to do? The answer was obvious. She would go now, with a handful of servants, when no one could expect it, and she would not head east to the Channel ports, but south, where there were boats for hire in plenty but no one would expect her to go.

  It was a good plan, and she handled it in a manner Gresham w
ould have been proud of. The small party slipped out at dusk, spending the night at an inn a few miles out of London. Two days later, at a tiny port so obscure she could not remember its name, she had enough money to bribe a fisherman to risk the dash to Calais. She wrinkled her nose at the stink of fish, recognising that because no proper lady would choose such a vessel it was her best disguise. Scudding out of the small fishing port, the boat's single cabin her own for the journey, three servants and a maid crammed on the deck, she felt a triumphant lifting of her heart. She had beaten Cecil! She had outsmarted her enemy! And done so with no help from the young man appointed her guardian.

  She was not aware of the significance of Monday 1st August, a relative lull in between the Armada's first engagement with the English and the renewed battle. She did not know that the captain she had appointed knew the Spanish fleet was coming up on him but had gambled on slipping ahead of them. She did not see his jaw drop as the leading ships of the Armada came out of the drizzle, and the pataces leaped forward after his ungainly smack, desperate to capture fishermen for the intelligence they could bring.

  She did hear the running on the deck, and the first cry from the pursuing vessels in Spanish, a peremptory command for the English ship to halt. In what seemed like seconds, stunned Spanish sailors were grinning at the unexpected Spanish beauty from the cabin door. They took her over to the San Mateo. Let the captain of that great ship decide what to do with her.

  Tuesday 2nd August. The stitching on Gresham's clothing was beginning to break now, his salt-encrusted garments starting to fall apart. For those who washed at all there was only sea water, and Gresham began to dream of cool, clear river water, and hot, steaming tubs where a man could rinse the taste of salt from his mouth once and for all. The ship was becoming foul now, the stench of shit wafting up from the bilges as they ate the half-rotten biscuits, the dried strips of what might have been fish, and ate the olives that seemed little more than a thin layer of dry flesh over the stone.

  For the rest of his life, when the Armada was discussed, people would turn to Gresham and ask him to describe the battle. After all, he had sailed on the Armada, held a ringside seat on board the Spanish flagship. 'What was it like?' the men or the women would ask, waiting to be shocked. 'Chaos,' Gresham would answer. 'First boredom. Then confusion. Smoke, and noise, and rolling thunder. And chaos.'

  Gresham supposed the basic situation was simple enough, though nothing felt clear in the days before the Armada fought through to Calais. The Spaniards kept to their half-moon formation, the growing number of English ships snapping at their heels. Wherever there was any action, when a Spanish ship fell behind or was threatened, or an English ship seemed to present a chance for the Spaniards to grapple and board it, there the Duke sent the San Martin.

  "E's a brave bastard, I'll grant him that,' grunted Mannion grudgingly, as the Spanish flagship headed straight for a squadron of English vessels, their firepower dwarfing his.

  'He's a leader,' said Gresham simply, 'and though he's not a sailor by nature he knows he has to lead from the front, and lead by example.'

  There had been a rising tide of excitement on the deck the first time the San Martin had heeled over and headed towards the English. Gresham and Mannion were pushed and buffeted as the soldiers, left with nothing to do for weeks on end, not used to the frozen world of boredom that a sailing ship could be, now sensed that a job for them might be coming. Weapons were being checked, priming secured and slow-match lit from a linstock begged from the gun captains.

  'He's got to grapple with the English,' said Gresham. 'It's his only hope of defeating them. Yet they won't let him get near them. They'll stand off and try to blow him to pieces.'

  Gresham remembered one moment vividly. The San Martin had headed for five, six English ships, straight for them. For a moment it looked as if they would collide with the leading English ship. Suddenly, without warning, operating by some pre-arranged signal, the leading English ship suddenly hauled round to port. The San Martin responded to a volley of orders, her sailors cursing as they stumbled over soldiers, and heeled round ponderously to match the turn. The two fleets were broadside to each other now. With a trembling, gaping roar the San Martin let go her main broadside, two decks of guns blaring out hatred to the English. The deck heaved beneath their feet and the rigging shuddered, a hot wave passing over their faces with the bitter stench of powder on its breath. A vast, thick cloud of smoke covered the ship, and dimly through it the English ships could be seen, similarly wreathed in smoke with the flashes of yellow piercing the gloom. The English vessels appeared and disappeared, firing as they came to bear on the Spanish. Here and there a stay snapped, and skipping splashes could be seen on the waves as balls went low, but the English fire seemed to be doing remarkably little damage. It was chaos, impossible to grasp the broader picture, the noise terrible but the ships still fighting at arm's length.

  'Do you think that Duke of yours knows about the Shambles?' asked Mannion.

  'I don't know about the Shambles!' said Gresham.

  Five minutes later he was clambering up to the high poop deck, dismissing the soldier who tried to stop him imperiously and bowing low before the Duke.

  'I am in combat,' said the Duke, hardly bothering to look at Gresham. To him the rate of fire from the Spanish flagship seemed painfully slow, the English firing three or four times as fast. Yet for the vast expenditure of powder and ball extraordinarily little damage seemed to be being done. This is the time for those who fight with their hands, not for spies.'

  'It may be the time for men who drown at sea, my Lord, unless I can impart my knowledge to you.' Mannion was translating. That got his attention.

  'Well?' The Duke clicked a finger, and his own translator took over.

  'The large English vessel over there…' said Gresham. 'You have sent your galleasses and some other vessels to cut her out. Yet look where she is positioned.' Gresham had to remember to pause for the translator to do his work. 'The ship is carefully placed under the lee of Portland Bill. There is a four mile an hour tidal rip there that will draw ail but the strongest vessel on to what is known as the Shambles, a long shallow bank two miles east of the Bill. It is possible that the ship is hoping to lure as many of your vessels as possible on to the shoal.'

  The Duke looked at him. He turned to the ship's Pilot, and spoke to him in voluble Spanish. The Pilot was deferential, but also angry and sweating.

  "E's saying 'e has no knowledge of what you say, but that of course with the coast so badly mapped it might be true. It's balls. 'E's got his tables, they all 'ave. It's just that 'e didn't think we'd be stopping here, so he hasn't done his homework.'

  ‘I shall send a message to the vessels concerned,' said the Duke, dictating quickly to a secretary. 'I write a warning, but also a question; whether what you say is correct. You will remain here with me.'

  The wind was dropping, but it did not seem to bother the tiny patache that skipped across the waves like a dog taken off its leash. The failing wind had caused the galleasses to break out their oars, and in theory the vast vessels were in their element, the oars giving them independent power and manoeuvrability. Yet the great oars, with four men to pull each blade and three to push it back, were vulnerable to cannon fire. One or two blades smashed, destroyed the rhythm of the others, causing the blades to damage each other. As they watched the galleasses seemed to dance in towards the English ship, but then withdraw, as if an invisible fence was keeping them from the final kill. The galleasses hoisted sail, but they were difficult to manoeuvre under sail and even at the distance they held the tidal race could be seen to boil the water under their sterns.

  Here and there it seemed as if the high-sided Spanish ships were close enough to board the daintier, leaner English vessels. A great cheer went up from the decks of the San Martin as it looked as though one English ship had been stopped, grappled to the side of a Spanish galleon. There was a groan as it was seen as a trick of the light, the English ship pul
ling away. The English flagship suddenly detached from the engagement.

  "E's seen those there in trouble, and 'e's going off to help 'im,' said Mannion, straining to see through the thick fog of gunsmoke, Both he and Gresham were semi-deafened now, having to shout even to be half heard.

  A sharp cry came from the masthead, and every head on deck turned. A new English force had appeared from nowhere, and was bearing down on the Spanish transports. The Duke had tucked them away to the east, ahead of the main force.

  Was Sidonia brave? Or foolhardy? He gave brisk orders for ships to detach and protect the transports, but the San Martin plunged after the English flagship and its followers. Gresham saw the Duke's lips move, half-heard words in Spanish through his deafened eardrums.

  ‘What's he saying?' he bellowed to Mannion, coughing as powder smoke bit into his lungs.

  'Dunno,' yelled Mannion, 'but I think it's something like expecting at last to have a real fight!'

  The San Martin ploughed forward, the great banner that had been consecrated in Lisbon Cathedral streaming from its mast. She had to be recognised as the flagship. The English ships, seeing their sole pursuer, started to turn. The soldiers cheered. Now! Now! Now the two Commanders must grapple and fight like men!

  The first English ship suddenly slewed round, presented her broadside to the San Martin and let loose. Five or six Spanish guns replied. There was a savage crack and the flagstaff vanished, splintered off, leaving a foot-long stump. Shrieks came from on deck, and three, four men slumped at their posts, the thud of a musket falling on to the deck suddenly audible in one of the strange, momentary silences that take place in battle. Then the English ship sailed on, turning to let the next vessel line up and deliver its broadside.