The galleon's grave hg-3 Read online

  'We have no deep water port,' he said. 'The Dutch have shallow-draft vessels that can patrol the coast, vessels that can come inshore in a manner that no great Portuguese galleon can.' It was no secret that the recent conquest of Portugal meant that the core of any Spanish navy would be the fine seagoing vessels of Portugal. Spanish galleys were designed for the calm waters of the Mediterranean. Portugal's empire, now subsumed to Spain, had been built on ocean-going galleons, some said the strongest and most durable in the world.

  Silence. Parma gazed at the man, but said nothing.

  'Those Dutch fly-boats could blast our shallow barges out of the water before we came within sight of a Spanish armada,' the aide continued.

  'And we would never take Antwerp,' Parma said, after another long pause. Yet they had taken Antwerp. The implication was clear. They did the impossible.

  'How?' It was a senior officer, another man Parma had total trust in. He had been stranded with him for hours behind enemy lines — Parma shared the dangers and rigours of his men. He was as often in the front line with his men as he was found at base. It was one reason why they loved him so much.

  'How did we take Antwerp?' Parma replied. 'I thought you knew. Actually, I thought you planned most of it.' There was laughter round the table, an easing of the tension.

  ‘Not Antwerp, my Lord,' said the man with a smile and a deferential bow 'of his head, acknowledging the joke. 'How to get our soldiers over to England and past the Dutch?'

  'There are canals, old and new,' said Parma dreamily. He had shown a savage capacity to cut new canals through the flat lands of the Netherlands in days, getting his men where no one had expected them to be. 'There are empty boats to be sent to the coast, drawing off the damned Dutch in the face of their real enemy. There are embarkations at night-time when not even the Dutch can see what is happening, if it happens fast enough.' He stood up, unexpectedly. His men bowed their heads. 'But most of all, we have an army. What say we take Sluys? Ostend? All of Flanders? Even Walcheren?'

  The men stiffened, drawing themselves unwittingly to attention.

  Their General was suggesting a smashing, final blow to end the war, that endless haemorrhage of Spanish money and blood in the Netherlands. Parma held out his hand to his Secretary, clicking his finger to demand the letter from the King of Spain back. Parma did not open it again. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, away from his body.

  'I will have time to think over these matters. I will not be visiting Parma. The King has suggested my duties lie here.'

  So permission had been refused for the Duke to visit the Dukedom he had only inherited that year! He had formally requested leave of absence. Leave of absence in the winter, when campaigning was impossible and the opposing armies settled into quarters.

  It had been refused. But evidently he was too valuable in the Netherlands, Philip too concerned perhaps that if he left there for his ancestral homeland, changed the mist-clinging, cold and damp Netherlands for the hot beauty of Parma, he might never return. The men gathered round the Duke gave a collective sigh. They, the privileged inner cabinet, knew more than any their General's yearning to see his homeland. He had not even been educated there, sent instead to be brought up and educated in Spain.

  'Well,' said Parma, We have one country still to conquer, here in Flanders. Now let us set about conquering another.'

  Gresham could not sleep. They had been becalmed in Cadiz just as Drake was preparing to leave. Miraculously, Drake's luck had held. The two vast cannon hauled on to the beach by the Spaniards had missed the English fleet with virtually every shot, and no Spanish vessels had arrived to block them in the harbour. The Spanish troops marshalled in good order in the town, had no way of reaching the English ships. The Spaniards had tried to send fireships down on the English fleet at night, but the absence of wind meant that they had been easily hauled aside by small boats. Drake strode the quarterdeck, appearing to be in high spirits despite the perilous nature of his position. His Secretary, lugubrious as ever, was trying to run through figures of captured goods. Drake was clearly bored.

  The Secretary sighed and looked out over the bay to ten or fifteen flaring points, burning or burned-out Spanish fireships.

  ‘Well, my Lord,' he said, 'at least the Spanish seem to be doing your job for you.'

  Drake stopped his pacing, looked down at his Secretary, and then went to the front rail.

  'Look you there, boys!' he shouted at the top of his voice. Most of the crew had gathered in the cool of the night on the open deck, few were asleep. Drake waved his hand to point at the burning ships. 'The Spaniards are doing our job for us!' There was a great cheer and wave of laughter from the men. In no time a boat was being launched to check if any of the fireships still posed a danger. Or was the real reason to take the joke around the fleet, Gresham wondered?

  It was stalemate, until a fine wind blew up in the morning and sent Drake out to sea a significantly richer man than when he had first sailed into Cadiz harbour.

  'Well,' George said, surveying the wreck of the harbour, 'that won't help King Philip invade!'

  ‘Will it stop it?' asked Gresham. -

  ‘No,' said George, thinking for a moment. ‘Not if the King of Spain keeps his nerve. But it will delay it. For months.'

  George was snoring loudly now, his arm thrown part over Gresham, giving him pins and needles. He gently removed George's arm, sat up. It was Mannion, shaking him.

  'We're on the move. Thank God I can't smell Spaniards any more.'

  'They can't smell worse, than you,' Gresham yawned. 'Why do you hate Spain so much?' he said, more to pass the time while his brain reconnected with his aching body than for any real interest in the answer. 'I know I ought to hate it. I'm English. But I can't believe total ill of a country that builds such beautiful buildings. And there's an appalling beauty in the Mass; just listen to Byrd's music. And they saved Europe from the Turks at Lepanto. It's not a country without honour. Why do you hate it so?

  'I don't hate Spain as much as I hate that bloody Don Alvaro de Bazan, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz,' said Mannion. He spoke the name of Spain's High Admiral of the Seas perfectly, with what seemed to Gresham to be an excellent Spanish accent. There was a tone of venom in his servant's voice Gresham had never heard before.

  'Why so much hatred of a man you've never even met?' asked Gresham his curiosity aroused now.

  'Well, there you're wrong. I have met him, see.' Mannion was refusing eye contact, watching the sway of the rigging.

  'Tell,' said Gresham, simply, sitting down with his back to the rail, knees clasped in his arms, boat cloak wrapped round him to ward off the chill of dawn. He knew if he pushed Mannion the man would retreat. Mannion did what he wanted, not what he was told. It was why he respected him and valued his friendship so much.

  'Well,' said Mannion, after what was clearly for him some troubled thought, 'suppose there's no 'arm in your knowing. Particularly if it stops you sellin' out to Spain, not as you'll listen to anything I say, o' course. 'Cept for one thing. This stays between me and you, right? No blabbing of it to one of those fine girls you take to bed with you. No blabbing when you're in drink at College. If they ever let us back, that is.' Mannion looked at the prone figure of George, reassuring himself that he was truly asleep.

  Who would I tell your secrets to, thought Gresham? I have no one else I trust, except this other lump of a man asleep by my side. Would I break your confidence, you, the oldest, the best and the only friend I have? ‘No blabbing,' he said simply. Mannion looked at him, nodded, and sat down beside him. All the action was up in the bow or at the stern, the waist of the vessel for once surprisingly deserted.

  'You see, I were a ship's boy. Never known who me parents were. All I know was that the man who brought me up — a cobbler, he was, and a bloody bad one judging by the number of customers who came back to complain — told me that I were a bastard, and a charge on his good nature. That was in between thumpin' me, o' course. Thumping me wa
s about the only fun 'e had. So as soon as I was big enough, and I always were big, he packed me off, sold me to a captain sailing out of Deptford.'

  Ship's boys performed a variety of lowly jobs on board ships. If they survived they picked up enough knowledge to get a decent berth as a swabber, the lowest rating. From there was the path to becoming a seaman proper. It was a rough, dangerous way to learn a trade, and there were dark whispers in every port of sailors turning to the boys for sexual satisfaction, of boys who objected ending their lives as an anonymous splash overboard in a lonely sea.

  ‘ ‘E weren't a bad man, Captain Chicken, though it warn't the best name for a sea-going Captain.' Mannion's accent, never refined, was slipping back, Gresham noticed. Was he talking to Gresham, or talking to himself? 'Anyway, I stuck with 'im five or six years, 'til I were ready to take on a job as real seaman. Surprised, weren't you, when I knew so much about ships?' He turned to Gresham, who nodded, fascinated, gripped by the unfolding human drama. 'I know more than half these buggers 'ere,' said Mannion gesturing dismissively to the crew gathered fore and aft. 'Then the Captain, 'e got a new ship. Off to Cadiz we was, takin' fine cloth from England and bringin' back fine wine.'

  'Cadiz?' Gresham sat up, turned to look Mannion in the face. 'Here? This port? Where we are now?'

  'The very same,' said Mannion, 'fuckin' awful hole that it is. We'd arrived, taken the cargo off and were waitin' for the wine to be loaded. Some delay or other, don't know why. Crew went ashore — not me, I was waitin' on the Captain and his good wife — and the crew ashore got into a fight with some Spaniards. Next thing we know, fifty soldiers are clamberin' up the side o' the old Deptford Rose, and before we can think we're all of us ashore and clapped in a Spanish jail, God help us! They treat their animals better than they treated us!'

  Mannion paused. Gresham sensed that the years had rolled back, and that he was, in his mind, actually back there, in the foul, stinking cell they had thrust him into.

  'Any road, once they've roughed us up a bit, me and the crew, and 'ad their fun, we're hauled in front of what they call a court. Sir Francis Fucking Drake 'ad just knocked off a load of Spanish ships, so the English were really popular in Cadiz. And guess who the senior naval officer is, in charge of this Court and running the whole show?'

  The Marquis of Santa Cruz,' whispered Gresham. 'Was it really him?'

  'Oh, it was 'im alright. His bloody galleys had come out o' the Med for some reason, were staying in Cadiz — just like those bastard galleys that nearly did for us yesterday. They do it a lot, send the galleys out, just to prove they're sea-going vessels, not just right for the Med. Rarely get further north than Lisbon, tell the truth. They're not sea-going vessels, really, you see. Not North Sea vessels, at any rate.' Mannion paused.

  'What happened? asked Gresham, caught up in the drama of the story.

  'We were 'eathen pirates, apparently. Funny, I'd thought we were just God-fearing Englishmen trying to earn an honest living. The 'eathen pirate was Lord Fuckin' Drake, but they hadn't captured 'im. They'd captured us, so we were sentenced in 'is place.'

  'Sentenced?'

  'Sentenced. In the case of the Captain, to burn as a heretic. We were all mustered to watch it. Includin' his wife, of course. God wants good women to stand by and see their God-fearing 'usband burned to a crisp, apparently. Or at least, that's Spanish religion. After that, those of us with any muscle were sent to the galleys. It's the smell I'll never forget. That burnin' smell. That smell of a human bein' burned.'

  'You were a galley slave?' asked Gresham, incredulous. 'But that's

  … awful! It's unbelievable…' He was lost for words. Gresham knew that, incredibly, some of those working the oars in Spanish galleys were 'volunteers', forced by poverty and imminent starvation. Yet he also knew how many were common criminals, in effect condemned to death by their service.

  'Not as unbelievable as it was for me,' said Mannion. 'Santa Cruz, 'e was eatin' his dinner when he sentenced us. Three types o' wine, I remember. They chain you to a bench,' he said bitterly, 'all the time you're at sea. You sit at the bench, you sleep at the bench, you eat what crap they give you at the bench, you piss and shit at the bench. And once you get chained there, you expect to die at the bench. 'Cept it's not all bad.' He turned, and grinned at Gresham. 'It's a padded bench, y'see. Otherwise you'd have the skin stripped off your arse in half an hour. Food's alright, really. Surprising. They need to keep you fit, you see. And all because of 'is Highness the Marquis of Santa Cruz. I'll never forget it. 'E couldn't give a shit. We was just dirt, flies to be stamped on by 'is fine leather boot! They called it a court but they'd made their minds up long before we was ever dragged before 'em. It were a farce. Men's lives at stake, and it bein' treated halfway between a joke and when a farmer decides to kill an' eat a chicken.'

  'So how did you get out?'

  'Luck. Pure luck. The bloody Spaniards talk about Lepanto as if it wiped the bloody Turks off the face of the water. Well, it didn't. We were sent — our boat, that is — to sort out some bloody Turkish corsairs, 'cept they sorted us out. Rams. These galleys have bloody great rams on their front, lined with brass. Our captain must 'ave got it wrong. Any road, we was rammed. Three benches in front o' me. I can see that brass end shinin' now, straight through the 'ull. Pulped those men. Then, as we were still movin' forward, their ram splintered the hull, like it were paper, crashin' on down to us. Man on the right o' me, caught by the ram, smashed to bits. Man on the left 'o me, bloody great splinter, straight into his gut.'

  'And you?' said Gresham.

  ‘Not a mark on me. Ram broke the bench exactly where the ring was sunk to hold the chain. Result? I'm free — 'cept I've got half a ton of loose chain and a ring bolt round me knees, even if it ain't attached to the ship any more. And, of course, the galley's sinking, isn't she? Water flooding through the deck, already at me knees.'

  'So what happened?' asked Gresham, like the child he had never been asking for the end of a story from the mother he had never known.

  'The water's comin' towards me in waves, gettin' higher all the time. And then, on top of one of them, I see the key to the padlocks round our feet. The overseer kept it in a leather wallet — 'e must have dropped it. I grab it. By this time the water's at waist height when it's at its lowest, but slappin' me in the face when it's high. So I take a deep breath, and I ducks down underneath the water, tries to get the key into the locks.'

  'What then?'

  'I does one, and then the ship lurches over. I lose the key. I lose the key! I'm cryin', cryin d'you hear, cryin' underwater. An' I just want to breathe, don't care if it's water or air, I just got to open me lungs. And I'm clenching my fist, without thinking. And when I clench it for the last time, there's something in it.'

  'The key?' Gresham breathed.

  'The key! So I shove it in the second lock, thinkin' I'm dead so what the Hell. And it opens. My legs are free.' 'And then?' Gresham asked.

  'Don't know,' said Mannion. 'All I know is that I'm floating on the surface. And breathing. Breathing.'

  'But how did you get home?' asked Gresham.

  'Well, now,' said Mannion, clearly deciding that he'd made enough of a confession, 'that's a different story. Save it for another day. Ended up in England. Your father gave me a job. Gardener!' Mannion barked a short, savage laugh. 'Can't tell you how good that word sounded. Gardener. Feet on God's earth for evermore. Catch me if you can wi' me feet on anything that moves ever again!' He made as if to stand up, then thought better of it, returned to Gresham's side. 'But I'll tell you one thing. When I 'eard we was goin' to Cadiz, I thought Christ! When I 'eard it was with Drake, I thought Christ Almighty! And when I saw those galleys, ain't no words no Christ ever 'eard passed through my brain. I was about to ask you to kill me if it ever looks like we're goin' to be captured by those bastards.'

  'Why didn't you?'

  'Thought it was daft- Thought we was dead anyway. Thought it was kind of poetic justice, someone like me being blow
n to bits by a bloody Spanish galley. Didn't like it, though. Never given up on anything before.'

  Gresham looked deep into Mannion's. eyes. He was beginning to realise what this journey must have cost Mannion in courage.

  'Why did you come with me on… this?'

  "Cos people like me can't choose what 'appens to them. If they're lucky, they can choose who it 'appens with. I chose you. So the rest follows, don't it? Fall in love with Spain, if you like and you're that stupid. Me, I don't choose countries. I choose people.'

  It had been chaos when Sidonia arrived at Cadiz, guided as he had feared by the plumes of smoke. Troops were milling around the town, each under their own command. Some were drunk, and it would only be a matter of time before one or more of them went out of control and started to loot or rape. Yet with relief he saw the smoke was coming from ships in the bay, not the town. 'My Lord, what are your orders?'

  The militia officer was respectful, but forceful. He knew Sidonia's reputation. A hard taskmaster, but fair. As for Sidonia, he had no training as a General, but the necessary actions seemed obvious to him. He took fifty of the best mounted troops, and rode through the town, grabbing the disorganised men as he found them, sending the drunkards off to the dungeons in the Castle and organising the remainder into detachments of mixed horse and foot. Small enough to be mobile, yet powerful enough to hurt seriously a landing party, he placed the detachments all along the shoreline, defined a command structure. He gave the command to men who he either knew, or simply those officers with natural authority. Next he ordered such few light cannon as the city could muster and placed them in hurriedly constructed batteries along the shoreline. Now let the enemy land by boat! He had Cadiz scoured for powder and shot, placing it in the cellars of the stoutest brick and stone houses, within reach of his shoreline detachments but out of range of the English guns. Messengers were sent to the galleys, apparently his only effective fighting force afloat, and a line of communication set up. There was no escape from the harbour for any Spanish vessel, so a rider was sent to the next fishing village along the coast, with enough gold to send the entire fishing fleet out to sea to search for Recalde's squadron to tell it to return to Cadiz.