The galleon's grave hg-3 Page 8

  Fourteen men stood up and cheered, three of the sailors hurled their hats up into the air, threatening to roll the boat right over and do the Spaniards' job for them. Gresham nearly lost his footing, stumbled and had to fling a hand out to grab the side. 'Sit down you stupid bastards!' yelled Mannion. He had taken an oar right at the back, placing himself closest to Gresham, 'unless you want to swim home!' The men grinned at him, touched their foreheads mockingly, and sat down. Mannion bellowed at George.

  'And sit in the middle of the bloody boat, will you? Unless you want to sink us after the bloody Spaniards couldn't!' George roared with laughter, and moved his body. The boat lost its list. Trumpets sounded from way behind the galley, and even this far away the clattering sound of mounted men could be heard from the bridge. The Spaniards had seen a great ship run itself aground. A sentry had assumed it was one of the great English galleons come to land men and cut off" Cadiz from reinforcements.. Gresham looked at the men in the boat. He spoke with a quiet authority that belied his age. And the men listened. How strange that the men did not seem to see his fear, the dread of the ball smashing to his body, and the even worse fear of being maimed and crippled.

  They found two whole men alive from the other boat, another one clutching a broken arm and a fourth with a splinter in his gut that was like half a spear and would take a day to kill him, agonisingly. And it could just as easily have been any one of us, Gresham was thinking, had the chief gunner on the galley decided to make their boat his first target. A lottery. The role of a dice. It was bad to place too much value on life, thought Gresham, when its chances were so random.

  Hands reached down from the deck of Elizabeth Bonaventure to haul the wounded men aboard. The Boat was deep in the water, Gresham noticed, riding more sluggishly than he had ever seen her, every corner crammed with looted cargo. There would be even less space to sleep on the decks now. He stepped up, reaching for the ladder but stopped abruptly as he sensed the bulk of Mannion beside him. In the near pitch-black, with the boat heaving and tugging beneath them, Gresham turned to Mannion.

  'Did Drake know those galleys were there? Did he even know it was me he was ordering to the bridge? Or was it just another gentleman adventurer he saw in the dark?'

  Mannion shrugged. 'Who knows what Drake knows? They say he uses magic to know where enemy ships are.'

  'If he knew those galleys were there, then I think he just tried to murder me.'

  'But it won't help his case with Burghley if you pop your clogs, will it?' Mannion replied.

  There was a cry from above, a tired, impatient seaman wanting the boat for yet another journey, wanting it empty before he and his men climbed down on board.

  'What better way to cover a death than that? Hot-headed young man desperate to prove himself, charges off into the dark not knowing two Spanish galleys are waiting for him. Fortunes of war. Perfect.'

  'But if that were true, it means Drake was willing to kill fifteen, thirty of his own men as well.'

  'Yes,' said Gresham, 'it does, doesn't it? If it were true…'

  'It's just doesn't make sense!' said George. He was standing on the deck, leaning over with his hand out to help Gresham aboard. 'Be honest. You may have been sent to spy on Drake, but so what? You're a fly, a pin-prick in his scheme of things! Let's be blunt, you're not important enough for Drake to risk offending anyone important in London.'

  'Or I'm so unimportant as for it not to matter,' said Gresham, drowning in the confusions of his life.

  There was another yell from topside, and the three men clambered up, George leading Gresham. Their limbs were tired now, dragging, aching with delayed shock. Mannion always insisted Gresham went first, reckoning he would at least have a chance to grab his young charge if he slipped and fell.

  Drake may have used magic to find Spanish ships. He seemed to need no magic to find Gresham. If he was surprised to see the return, his exhausted, drawn face did not show it. 'AND WHY ARE YOU HERE AND NOT ON MY BRIDGE?' he roared. 'I sent you to guard a bridge, not to run home with your tail between your legs at the sight of a few miserable Spaniards!'

  It was a gross accusation of cowardice. Gresham stared calmly at him, the only light the dull flicker of a lantern with the creaking rigging acting as a night chorus. He reached up to his left shoulder, where there was a ragged tear in the Jack of Plate. Gresham fumbled in the tear, enlarging it slightly, and drew out a flattened lump of lead. Mannion had seen him stagger as the galleon had been at its closest to them, but thought it merely a response to the boat dipping into a wave. Gresham's eyes did not leave Drake's. He tossed the fragment of spent musket ball towards Drake, who made no movement to catch it. It fell softly against Drake's doublet, rattled to the deck and rolled away. Gresham was angry now, as angry as he had ever been.

  'I'm willing to prove my bravery, Sir Francis,' he said calmly, eyes still locked with Drake's. And for once he felt calm, not having to hide the tremors of his heart, the uncertainties of his mind. 'Prove it in the accepted fashion, if so be your will, and on this deck. But I'm not prepared to be a fool. Eleven of your men are dead, one more likely to be so within days. Only a fool would take a longboat of men armed with swords and muskets against a fully-armed galley. But if you wish me to do so, I'll step back into that boat, with my servant here, and row down the throat of the galley that's still patrolling out there. It won't get you your bridge. Thirty men in small boats will never get you that. But it will get you a death, if that's what you want. And it will give me my honour.'

  Sometimes death would be a release, thought Gresham. Secretly did he yearn for its simplicity, a curtain brought down on a life he no longer felt he could control?

  There was a stunned hush from the men, a blur of movement. Suddenly Drake had a pistol in his hand and was pointing it directly between Gresham's eyes. His thumb reached up, and without the barrel wavering an inch Drake cocked the gun. Gresham felt rather than saw Mannion stir beside him, knew that Mannion was about to reach for one of the two throwing knives he kept inside his sleeve. He gave a quick flick of his head. Mannion stepped half a pace back. Drake saw the nod, flickered a glance to Mannion and then back to Gresham.

  ‘When I want to kill you,' said Drake, 'I will.'

  He fired the pistol. He must have swung it inches aside just as he fired. Gresham felt nothing, saw only the orange flame, smelled the powder. I'm alive, he thought, stunned. Alive. 1 can still feel. The bullet passed harmlessly into the black void that lay beyond the Bonaventure. Drake roared with laughter and tucked the pistol back into his belt.

  'The Spaniards couldn't kill you, Henry Gresham, in three tries. I could have killed you in one. And by the way, you're right,' he said conversationally to Gresham. 'I should have sent two or three of the pinnaces, not two longboats with no artillery. It was a mistake. A mistake men have died for. I will pray for them. It was also a mistake I recognised almost as soon as it was made. That's why the second galley turned away, to chase off the two pinnaces I sent as reinforcement,' he said solemnly. 'And you,' he said, talking to Gresham but turning to his crew, 'you'd better be advised to pray that I don't decide to kill you. You see, I'm far better at it than the Spaniards!'

  A gust of laughter came from his men as Drake retreated into his cabin.

  'Jesus!' swore Mannion, hand only now retreating from the hilt of his knife. 'Where did they get that one from?' 'Not from Jesus, I think,' said Gresham, tiny shudders of exhaustion starting to pass through his taut body. All he wanted now was to sleep. And not to dream at all.

  'Interesting,' said George. He had found a strip of dried meat from somewhere, and was munching it. 'My father's money probably paid for the powder in that gun he just fired at you.'

  How strange it was that Spain demanded two things of its leading nobles, other than faith in the true God, thought the Duke of Medina Sidonia. The first was to know how to service and run an estate, to be a glorified farmer whose responsibility was with the people who grew the crops as well as with the crops t
hemselves. The second was to be a soldier, to know how to kill those very same men and women, to destroy rather than to make anything grow. Well, the Duke's beloved orange groves were in no danger of destruction, and the men tending them looked well enough. He enjoyed it here more than anywhere else. In the great house he could never be alone. Here in the peace of the groves the men had work to do, and knew enough of their master's habits to carry on about their business, seeming to ignore him and speak only when spoken to, allowing him his only moments of relaxation from the inexorable duties his rank and his household forced upon him.

  Was it true? Or had the previous day's messenger simply left too early, and therefore merely reported a rumour before the real truth had emerged? What was certain was that the Queen of Scots was dead, a fact that Sidonia guessed would change the whole political perspective of Spain. King Philip of Spain, locked away in the rocky isolation of the Escorial Palace, working eight, nine, ten hours a day at his interminable papers, pained by gout — what would he do now? Would this insult to a Catholic Queen in a land Philip had once reigned over tip Philip's hand over to war? Sidonia would be loyal to his monarch. To be otherwise was unthinkable. Yet here in the quiet of his groves, on the land his family had owned for generation after generation, he sometimes allowed himself to think the unthinkable: To go to war over Mary would be farcical. A woman who had claimed Catholicism as others claim a warm cloak on a cold night, she had first chosen to marry a syphilitic idiot who most of Europe thought she murdered, and then capped it by marriage to a rampaging drunkard of a Scots warlord. And Mary was a product of the French royal line, Spain's greatest enemy and threat! Was Spain to go to war for a changeling whore who had once styled herself Queen of France?

  Sidonia was no genius. Patience was as important a quality for a Spanish nobleman as brains, yet his mind was no slouch, and faster, he feared, than the slow brain of his King. Here in the quiet of the groves it was clear to him that King Philip was out of touch in his isolation and that it was not always wise to assume that God was totally on one's side. There had to be something humanity could not understand about God, had there not, or else God would be too close to humans? Sidonia would be happier if his King listened less to God and more to the advice of the men in touch with the real Spain. Surely God sometimes chose to speak to his anointed through his ministers and nobles, as God had chosen to speak to his people through the prophets? If war had to be fought at all, better to fight it in the name of the English attacks on Spanish shipping. Something deep in Sidonia's soul rebelled against the possibility of war at sea. An army could be delayed by a storm. A fleet could be destroyed, with neither man nor beast having control over the elements. In the game of chance that was war, why add the wholly unpredictable elements of wind, sea and storm into the equation?

  The news — or was it rumour — that concerned Sidonia now was about the one man who seemed to make the sea work for Spain. The Marquis of Santa Cruz was not just Spain's High Admiral, he was the most successful Admiral of all time. It was his galleys that had crushed the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto, saving Europe for Christianity and turning back the tide of Islam that seemed hellbent on placing mosques in Barcelona and Madrid. The irascible, cruel old man had been ill for some while, that was widely known. Now the messenger reported that he was in his death throes. Sidonia came to the edge of one of the groves, and let his gaze rest on the rolling landscape before him. How much more secure was dry land than the rolling fortunes of the sea. Yet he feared King Philip would launch his Armada against England with his High Admiral no longer at its head. Could it be done? Well, anything could be done given enough time, money and the support of God. But without Santa Cruz it would be an infinitely more perilous venture. For once, the gentle scent of the fruit, sharp yet invigorating, failed to cleanse his soul. He left the groves a deeply troubled man.

  The messenger from Cadiz reached him in the middle of the night. The harbour was under attack from an overwhelming force of English ships, almost certainly led by Drake himself. He was awake almost immediately, before the servant who brought the message was through the door and halfway across the room. He struggled to sit up from under the rich silk sheets, calling for his Secretary in a calm voice. There was no point in hurrying the dressing process. He could dictate orders just as quickly while a host of men swarmed round him, offering him the pot to piss in, the fine linen shirt and the sheer hose, the value of which would have kept one of his peasants in bread for a year. How many to help him dress? Ten, maybe fifteen, not to mention the maids bobbing and curtseying just outside the door. Great men had to appear to be great, he reminded himself as he had done all his life.

  Andalusia was a military province for Spain. The troops, albeit mostly local militia, were there precisely to repel raids from corsairs, and he had hopes of getting three hundred cavalry and nearer three thousand troops ready to march and ride within hours. The problem was assembling them from their various garrisons. Would it be best to make his home at San Lucar the rendezvous? Or get them to join him on the road? Or send them straight to Cadiz? Speed, he decided, speed was the primacy. The troops could march for their lives, straight for Cadiz. He would not make it before midday; many of them would be there by dawn. What matter if he was not there to command them? A half-smile flickered across his face as he struggled into the snug-fitting doublet. They were probably better off being commanded by the Captain of the fortress in Cadiz, the Duke thought, than by a farmer whose family owed more than nine hundred thousand ducats. Any more delay and Drake could have landed men, sacked the town and his sailors impregnated enough women to bring up a whole new city of heathen bastards.

  He pushed back the urge to grab a drink and some meat and run for his horse. Instead he allowed himself to be sat in the ornate dining room while varieties of cold meat from last night's supper were paraded before him. He picked at them, allowing himself a maximum of twenty minutes for the charade to go on, before elegantly wiping imaginary grease off his moustache and beard, and rising. The footmen stood back and bowed deeply. The retinue was small, only thirty mounted men as guards and fifteen servants, but it would have to do. The mounted soldiers who normally provided his escort were the best riders, and the best mounted. It would have been madness not to send them to the outposts and garrisons to direct the troops and the militia to Cadiz.

  He did not give a backward glance to the orange groves he so loved. He simply nodded to his family, hastily assembled to bid him farewell. To show too much emotion would be to show weakness, reducing the distance between himself and the ordinary men and women over whom he ruled. He pushed out of his mind the urge to turn to lock eyes with his wife. They said he was hen-pecked, married to a Portuguese harridan. How little they knew. Nevertheless, once out of sight, he dug his golden spurs into the side of his horse, feeling it rear up and surge forward like the fine beast it was. Not even the great Duke was safe from the wrath of King Philip if he arrived to find Cadiz a smouldering ruin. Involuntarily, he looked to the skyline, damning himself immediately for a fool, knowing the distance was much too far to see any smoke, unless Drake had set the whole world alight.

  Chapter 4

  May-June 18th, 1587 The Netherlands; The Capture of the San Felipe

  Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Governor of the Netherlands, read the letter from his kinsman Philip II of Spain with total concentration. His aides waited silently by his side. He was a handsome figure. He had been called from sitting for his portrait. As a result he was extravagantly dressed, with no bonnet or cap but a vast, fashionable ruff angled forward so that its back was halfway up the back of his head. The doublet was picked out with gold lace inlays, the puffed sleeves of a different colour. Yet despite all the finery it was his face that commanded attention: angular, the nose straight,' the fine head of close-cropped dark hair, the beard and moustache perfect of their kind. It was the eyes that drew one to him: dark, yet with a mysterious depth to them, the eyes of a man who had seen and felt too much. Stra
nge, newcomers thought. Here was a man, a grandson of King Charles V of Spain, a nephew of King Philip II, born not so much with a golden spoon in his mouth as born with the world at his feet. To add to his birth came striking good looks, a high intelligence and the body of a fine, wild animal. Why did his eyes speak of such sadness? The head of the House of Farnese commanded respect in Europe, not just in Italy. Yet from the start the Duke of Parma had chosen the military life. At twenty-six years of age he had been an aide-decamp at the Battle of Lepanto. Many young men had died in that epic battle. Those who had survived had an honour no man could ever take away from them and no man equal. Was it not at Lepanto that the infidel hordes had been stopped in their tracks, a victory won not for man but for God?

  And then at the ridiculous age of thirty-eight years he had been placed in command of the King of Spain's Army of Flanders, that most troubled of provinces where the local Dutch were not only fighting Spain, their temporal master, but fighting God with their Protestant heresy. He had recaptured most of Flanders by his wits, his unconventional tactics and by his capacity to command the fierce loyalty of his soldiers. They had said Antwerp was a general's grave, crowed in advance at the humiliation the young Duke of Parma would meet there. They had swallowed their words when Antwerp had fallen. If Drake was a god of evil to many Spaniards, a man whose success could only have been achieved by the sale of his soul to the Dark Lord, then Parma was the equivalent to the English.

  He finished reading the letter, carefully folding it and handing it back to his secretary. 'We are to invade England,' he announced to his men. They looked at each other, questions on their brows. 'The King will send a great Armada, is assembling it even now. It will occupy the English fleet while we sail over the Channel to England.' His tone was flat, giving nothing away. He had thirty thousand men under his command, the finest army in Europe, in the world. No one doubted that if they could be landed in England they would cut through its heart like a crossbow bolt through paper. There was silence. Finally, one of his aides found the courage to speak. He had served the Duke from the days of Lepanto, was the most trusted of all. He often acted as spokesman for the others.