Grove of Eagles

CHAPTER ONE

Life sometimes is like the phases of the moon: one dwells in deep shadow without expectation of change, rootless and motiveless; then in the term of a day the shadow has gone and one is startled and quickened by the unsheltered rays of a new sun.

The environment into which Walter Ralegh took me, besides offering me a partial escape from the cold and barren futility of my passion for Sue, was as foreign to life at Arwenack as the de Prada house in Madrid. At Arwenack there was a constant coming and going of important folk, and a thin layer of culture was laid over the bare exigencies of life like a linen cloth on a dining board. But it went no deeper and it had little or no substance. At Sherborne the demands of material forces were no less present and no less urgent, but here culture existed as a separate and independent unit, and intellect for the first time came into its own. Doors of the mind were opened looking upon new and exciting country as vivid and as unexplored as anything in Guiana or the colony of Virginia.

Here were books treating of every subject from astrology to campaigns of war, from botany to Greek history, from chemistry and experiments in alchemy to poetry and philosophical speculation.

Nor were they ranged along the walls of a single room they proliferated about the house, left open on tables and settles, dropped where they had been temporarily abandoned and where they would be most convenient picked up. Globes and maps abounded and musical instruments and paintings and busts, and old parchments and vivid tapestries, and boxes and tables made of strange spice-smelling wood.

The Raleghs’ house was just new built, and they had barely moved in. Unlike the low design of Arwenack, this stretched out tall into the sky, supported by slender turrets at the four corners. No floor was of great expanse, but their being five gave much more space overall than at first seemed.

The kitchens were in the basement. Above them a splendid blue dining chamber looked through tall stone-mullioned windows across the formal walled gardens to the stables. Two of the turrets were incoporated in this room like ears, the others being utilised for the staircases. Here also was a narrow but handsome hall and two smaller rooms.

On the next floor was the green withdrawing chamber with the Ralegh coat of arms the shield with the five lozenges on the ceiling and over the wide fireplace. Behind was Ralegh’s study and a ladies’ withdrawing room with closet and close stool. Above this again was the Raleghs’ bedroom, but here the turrets were separate rooms, and behind on this floor were two guest chambers, one now given over to little Wat and his nurse. On the fourth floor were the principal guest chambers, while above was a warren in which slept and lived the indoor servants.

The accommodation was none too ample, for there were always extra people staying in the house, not relatives like Arwenack or casual callers, but men visiting and staying with Sir Walter to discuss some project, mathematical, theological, parliamentary or colonial. They would sit long into the night, their talk ranging far beyond the confines of the subject they had come to discuss. Perhaps a dozen such men visited regularly and these I came to know well; a few would stay for weeks at a time, a part of the household and of its intellectual life. Such intimates were George Chapman, a poet, Thomas Hariot, an astronomer, Matthew Royden, a free-thinker, the Earl of Northumberland, an alchemist, Dr Dee, the Queen’s astrologer, and of course Laurence Keymis who was an Oxford fellow and a mathematician and was closest to Ralegh of all these men.

Lady Ralegh was a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, woman of about 30, with a slender neck and a subtle smile. Although many more beautiful women came to the house I never saw Sir Walter look at any one of them with that interest which betrays a straying fancy. Lady Ralegh was the ideal hostess for him, taking all incursions upon her hospitality with determined calm. Sometimes she would sit through a stormy intellectual argument, her head slightly lowered, taking no part yet by her presence keeping the argument from becoming an outright quarrel; sometimes she would rise and go to her household duties or to care for baby Wat, and the talk would be less sparkling for her absence.

Yet she never contributed to it, and indeed I believe the talk most times went too deep for her. Sir Walter also most times went too deep. She could not follow the unrestricted, imaginative flights of his mind. Her subtlety was comparatively shallow but her judgment was more sure, and watching her, one could see the way her wits detected the working difficulties of what he proposed. When she did criticise a plan or a notion of his, he paid her too little regard.

They both doted on their son who was now near two years of age and a vigorous happy boy. Indeed their life, one would have thought, was idyllic. Their love for each other was manifest. Their magnificent 450-acre estate set with fine trees and full of wild life was large enough to occupy any country man’s love of land. Ralegh bred horses, his falcons were the best in Dorset, he planted trees and shrubs and supervised with all his rare energy the cultivation and the improvement of his land. And he kept a new kind of open court to which came not the aristocracy and the powdered gallants of Westminster but the cream of England’s art and thought.

An idyll, but there was a worm in the bud. Sir Walter was still excluded from the Queen, his office of captain of her guard was in abeyance; he had no power in the land. And Sir Walter, I soon saw, joined with his splendid intellect and towering imagination a festering ambition to be back in the Queen’s favour.

Adding new poison to the first months of my stay with him was the reception given to his adventures in Guiana. The Queen was not impressed and still would not see him. Cecil was cold and unwelcoming, asking what profit Sir Walter had to show for the money invested. Howard, as became a sailor, was more downright about it, saying Ralegh was a fool to have pursued legendary gold mines when there was gold on the high seas already mined and waiting to be seized by a bold man.

But worse was to come. A rumour spread no one knew whence it came but Keymis was of the opinion that it had originated with the Bacons that Sir Walter, a man of action in his youth but a courtier tied to the Queen for far too long, had thought better of personally undertaking such an expedition with all its hardships and hazards and at the last had not accompanied it at all but had spent the summer with his relatives the Killigrews in Cornwall and had rejoined the ships at Falmouth when they returned.

I remember the evening when Sir Walter came back from Westminster and first told this story to his wife and Carew Ralegh and Laurence Keymis and Arthur Throgmorton, Lady Ralegh’s brother. Sir Walter was a man of considerable temper; but under strain he went white, his skin more sallow, that was all. However, neither Keymis nor Throgmorton a great supporter of his brotherin-law were so concerned with restraint. Their anger overflowed like lava from the lip of a volcano. Carew Ralegh, Sir Walter’s elder brother, was quieter in his manner and more sophisticated.

“It is at best a foolish story,” he said, “for it can so easy be denied. Slander is most dangerous when it’s hard disproved. We have a hundred men who can swear where Walter spent his summer.”

“My hundred men are in Portsmouth and Weymouth and dissipated over the west country. Where this calumny will do harm is at Westminster and Greenwich. Those of influence in those places who can answer for me are relatives and friends whose word may be suspect.”

“I’m surprised that Robert Cecil does not speak for you,” Lady Ralegh said. “I wrote him so soon as I heard you was home. And none could be closer to the Queen.”

“Oh, Cecil,” said Arthur Throgmorton, contemptuously, “you rest too much on his goodwill. His only concern is for himself, and his friends can go hang.”

“You’re wrong, Arthur,” Ralegh said sharply. “Robert Cecil is our friend and always will be. But his position is delicate, with the Queen still favouring Essex. In any event he could only recommend my case to Her Majesty, he can prove nothing of my whereabouts since he only has my word for ‘em.”

“And your word is not enough!” said Keymis explosively. “That’s what I find hard to stomach. They even choose to cast doubts upon the whole voyage by saying we picked up Topiawari’s son on the Barbary coast. One is truly staggered to observe the lengths malice will go to!”

“You have kept notes and diaries, Walter,” Lady Ralegh said. “Why do you not send them to the Queen or to Cecil asking that they be examined and pronounced on? It’s impossible to fabricate such pages, thumbed and stained with the marks of travel.”

Ralegh tapped out his unlit pipe. “By the living God, Bess, I think it is an ideal But I would improve on it: the story would be better writ up and published, not as diaries but as a sober account of all we saw and did. If they pretend to believe I could conjure out of my imagination all the wonders of that voyage, then they’ll defeat their own object by making fools of themselves ! “

“Even then it will not succeed unless it reaches the Queen,” murmured his brother. “There will be jealous hands ever ready to snatch it away.”

“She cannot fail to read it!” Sir Walter said, getting up sharply and moving about the tall green candle-lit room on his long legs. Again his height seemed greater than it was, and the flames scrawled calculating shadows over his face. “The problem is not how to get it to her but how quickly it may be got to her. If I’m to prepare for a full expedition next spring, things must be set in train before the turn of the year.”

“I’ll help you, Walter,” said Keymis. “There must be a good map drawn and all scientific data. Is John Shelbury free?”

“No, he’s in Islington on business for me and will not be back for two weeks. If “

“Can this boy write?”

Sir Walter looked coldly at me. “That’s what he was brought for.”

“And is it readable what he writes?”

“You’ve read it in letters already without hardship.”

“Try me,” I said.

“That we will.” Sir Walter in his pacing passed by his wife and laid a loving hand on her shoulder. “And tonight.”

“Tonight?” said Lady Ralegh. “But no! You’ve rid all day. Supper is waiting.”

“I’ll sup lightly with a glass of canary in my chamber. Sotll Laurence. So’ll this lad. There’s no time to waste.”

I did not normally sleep in the house, but in the small Norman castle on the other side of the stream where Walter Ralegh had first lived when the estate was granted him four years ago and where he now housed the outdoor servants and any servants visitors might bring. But for the several weeks during which the account of the voyage was being written I slept on a couch in an ante-room off Sir Walter’s study, and I saw that couch too seldom.

At ordinary times Sir Walter retired to sleep at midnight and rose at 5 a.m., from then on driving through the day with immense and consuming energy. But this was not an ordinary time, and while he was writing the account of his experiences in Guiana his endurance was limitless and he expected ours to match. I recollect chiefly hours with aching limbs and pricking eyes, sitting copying or making notes or sharpening his pen or standing at his elbow for new instructions.

Although it was all done in a fever of inspiration most pages were written twice and many more often. I remember one lovely day in late October we had worked from six until twelve, and then broke for dinner and a rest. There were a few personal belongings I had left in the castle, so I hurried over in the hot afternoon to fetch them.

The narrow valley between the two houses was threaded by a trout stream, and at the higher end amid a copse of trees Sir Walter had had the stream dammed and a pool created where the Ralegh family and their guests and sometimes the servants at stated hours swam in the summer. At the lower end the stream was spanned by an old stone bridge which also carried the London road on the other side of the wall bordering the estate. Here was a big raised stone seat sheltered by an ancient durmast oak, where Ralegh sometimes sat, and he was already there this afternoon and beckoned me. I saw that he had an ink-horn and some sheets of paper with him.

“It’s a good point of vantage, this,” he said when I climbed up. “Here I can watch the stream and the bubbles of the trout. Or I can see the keep and think of England’s past, or turn to view my house which I trust will play a part in England’s future. As for the present,” he looked over the wall, “it passes by from time to time on horseback or in coach and four, and if I mind to I can greet it as it goes! That’s all helpful to thought and meditation.”

“You have written some more, sir?” I asked, looking at the pages he held.

“I have re-done a page or two. The break of dinner gives one a new sight.”

“The break of dinner always sends my father to sleep.”

“That’s a hazard of nature that comes on in later life … Not, I imagine, that your father is so much older than I. Here, see what you make of this.”

I squatted on the wall and read the page he handed me. It was a description of a day when they had almost reached the limits of their endurance.

“When we reached the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining the river we beheld that wonderful breach of waters which ran down Caroli: and might from that mountain see the river, how it ran in three parts about twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve waterfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with such fury that the rebound of water made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain: and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had arisen over some great town. For my own part I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the strange thunder of water, that they drew me on by little and little until we came into the next valley where we might discern the same. I never saw a more beautiful country nor more lively prospects, hills so raised here and there over the valleys, the river winding into divers branches, the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass, the ground of hard sand easy to march on either for horse or foot, the deer crossing every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes; cranes and herons of white, crimson and carnation perching on the river’s side, the air fresh with the gentle easterly wind, and every stone that one stopped to take up promising by its complexion either silver or gold.”

For a moment the sonorous prose carried me with the scene he described.

“Copy that, will you.”

“Yes, sir.”

He must have caught some hesitation for he said sharply: “You have some suggestion?”

“Oh, no, sir … Except perhaps … if I may venture it, wasn’t the last line as you wrote it before superior to this one? “

“What? Read it to me.”

“Before, sir, you ended: ‘and every stone that we stepped on girt with grasses and strange flowers.’ Is that not more in keeping with the whole than: ‘and every stone that we stopped to take up promising by its complexion either silver or gold’?”

“You have not lived as long as I.”

“No, sir. Shall I write this now?”

“In a moment. Sit where you are.”

I sat and waited.

“It’s possible, Killigrew, that the interests of style would best be served by the gentle cadences of the first ending. But you must educate yourself to discover that other aims must sometimes be served. This is not merely a journal recording the quest for empire. It is a broadsheet of persuasion, and so one weighs in the balance the virtues of rare flowers against promise of profit, the values of a ringing sentence against the musical clinking sound of coin, and in such case the former gives way.” He took the sheet from me and read it through again. “No, I think there is little wrong with the new ending.

It has style of another sort. It lifts the end instead of letting it fall. I don’t fault it on any count.”

“Very good, sir.”

“One thing that’s not very good, Killigrew, is your obstinacy in not conceding a point when it is won. It’s a grave mistake in a secretary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even if you maintain your own opinion against the opinion of your betters, maintain it so in secrecy, not by an expression on your face like a flag nailed to the mast as the ship sinks.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Did your father find you a handful?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He told me he did. And now and then even here I have noticed that the rebel stirs. We have no ships to board here, boy. Have you found yourself a wench?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you have one in Cornwall?”

I hesitated, and wondered if he had been told something. “I had one but I lost her, sir.”

“By death?”

“By marriage to another man.”

Sir Walter turned to gaze over the wall into the road, but it was only a wagon passing drawn by two oxen, with an old man, drooping between wisps of white hair leaning forward in his seat, whip held crosswise like a bow.

“It is never too young to be a rebel, but it is bad to feel too much about women too soon. At seventeen they should be a pleasant jest or a means of advancement.”

“As you said, sir, I am not educated.”

He glanced at me, his eyes assessing. “Your acceptance of that fact, boy, would carry a greater conviction if you admitted it with a show of humility. The way you speak suggests that you think your ignorance is a better condition than my wisdom.”

I did not know what to say so said nothing.

“Not that I have paused always,” he said, “to give myself the best advice. Or I should not be here, reduced to pen and paper to explain myself at a tedious length when a single audience would do.”

I picked up the sheet he had dropped.

“This journal, Maugan, is in effect a letter to the Queen, who still holds me in disfavour for my marriage. She was my great love and remains so on a queenly level. Knowing her with some closeness through the years I have come not only to an esteem of her brilliant qualities but to an understanding of her susceptibilities. And I have met few women with a greater susceptibility to the colourof gold. Now get off with those sheets and make a good copy. I have no liking for arrogant secretaries.”

When the manuscript was finished he took it to London to find a printer, who must, he said, set it out before the New Year. He was much up and down to Durham House in those months with Keymis and Carew Ralegh; but I was usually left behind. Only once did I go with him and stayed three days. I saw then what state he still kept in London.

On the second day I had time off and went with an apprentice staying in the house to a performance at the Blackfriars Theatre. There I saw a Greek play performed in English. It was called Oedipus and was about a young man who had incestuous relations with his mother and murdered his father, not knowing until too late who they were. This made a profound impression on me. Partly perhaps it was because it was the first play I had ever seen, but mainly the subject of the play bit deep into my mind. It was as if the story laid bare knowledge I had never reached to before but which I had always had.

All that winter Elizabeth Ralegh stayed at Sherborne with her son, so I attended on her often. Sir Walter was a deeply complex character, difficult, volatile, unpredictable, of sudden tremendous energies and equal depressions; his wife had a resolved calmness which cushioned these explosive forces. It was only when he was away that one discovered how much the effort cost her; she would herself be irritable and exhausted and at a low ebb though she never ceased to count the days till his return.

Before I left Cornwall Mrs Killigrew had been much concerned for my spiritual safety at being put in Ralegh’s charge. Sir Walter, she said, had more than once come near to being brought to trial for atheism; not long ago a commission had sat to determine what evidence there was to proceed; it was acknowledged that he had been a close and loving friend of that noted rake and blasphemer, Kit Marlowe, and there were rumours of much evil in his home; that a friend of his had been seen to tear out leaves of the Bible to dry tobacco on, that God was as often cursed as praised in his presence. I wondered if Mrs Killigrew would still think my soul in peril if she had seen me walking with Lady Ralegh on the green terrace below the house of a winter’s afternoon, or playing ball with Wat in one of the preached alleys, or trying to help Lady Ralegh with her erratic spelling when she wrote an important letter, or fishing for trout with Hardwicke, a cousin of theirs, or listening to George Chapman putting forward his profound Christian convictions at the supper table.

What did obtain in this house, as distinct from any other I ever knew, was that no dogma was accepted without a fair examination of its merits. Royden, the free-thinker, or Hariot, the mathematician, were as free to express their views and just as subject to examination and criticism on them. No opinions were sacrosanct.

After Sir Walter in importance in the house and greater in intellectual stature was this Thomas Hariot. Of Lancashire blood but Oxford birth, he had first been Sir Walter’s mathematical tutor, though himself by eight years the younger; then later he had been steward for the new Sherborne estate. Now, though no longer living permanently in the house, he was still Ralegh’s personal accountant and adviser. Few knew the limits of his genius. The scandalous Marlowe had once asserted that “Moses was but a juggler and Hariot can do more than he,” and there were others who thought him little less capable.

It was round him, I thought, rather than round Sir Walter that it seemed likely that accusations of blasphemy might centre, for in talk one night I heard him cast away the whole of the Old Testament and throw grave doubts on the divine inspiration of the New. Nor, he said, did he believe in the story of the creation of the world nor in any of the miracles. Natural laws, he said, could not be disrupted by spiritual forces nor, if there. was a God, would it be in the divine interest so to disrupt them.

Recently he had accepted the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland, and now divided his time between Sherborne and Isleworth where he was building himself a telescope on the principles laid down by Roger Bacon three hundred years ago. When it was finished he hoped this telescope would magnify the sun and the moon and the stars by fifty times. He was an enthusiastic believer in the atheistic theory that the earth revolved round the sun, and he often strove vainly I am glad to say to convince Sir Walter of this.

According to Keymis who was himself a mathematician, Hariot was turning topsy-turvy the whole science of algebra. Keynus tried to explain to me something of his new methods. Equations had long existed but for the most part were cumbersome and unusable; Hariot, again by some magic which I could not follow, brought all the symbols over to one side and equated them to zero. While I could not see quite how it was done I could just perceive the gateway that this opened and the vast empires of unexplored thought which lay beyond.

Hariot, though so brilliant, suffered from ill-health and lassitude. Keymis said he was a fool not to publish more of his speculations and conclusions otherwise lesser men or later men would seize upon his ideas and take the credit but Hariot would not bestir himself. Ideas were of the brain and needed only intellectual energy of which he had a plenitude. Promulgating those ideas in written form needed application at the desk and physical effort.

No less than Hariot, Sir Walter too was prone to ill-health and lassitude. Running along with his great energy, his intense application to whatever he had in view, his enthusiasm for the new idea or the splendid conception, was a narrow streak of hypochondria. He would of a sudden and without good reason become utterly depressed about his prospects of success and about his health. Once in a month or so he would be taken with pains in his abdomen or with serious digestive disorders or with gout in his back which would prostrate him and, when it was gone, leave him in complete melancholia for a day or so. Not even his wife or son could shift him out of it before it was due time. He would never be seen by an apothecary but would dose himself with infusions of bark or herbs brought back from his travels.

Even when in good health he was fond of experimenting on himself with dosages and brews; sometimes out of scientific interest, sometimes I believe out of a morbid curiosity in his own body’s strength and weakness. All around him who were unable to refuse were dosed from time to time, I among them; and I believe it was his sudden discovery that I knew something of the uses of herbs that weakened the barrier which my youth and his great position put between us.

The samples of strange medicines and infusions he had brought back from the Indies filled half a room, and where Katherine Footmarker would have been satisfied to make from them a salve to cure a burn, he would delight in heating the ingredients in a crucible to see if they would explode. Many times he burst tubes and bottles and the mixture ran to waste on the floor. Sometimes he would laugh like a mischievous boy at the result.

It was strange to see him so, because most times the shadows sat upon his face as if they marked it for their own.

After he came back from Cornwall he was much busied writing a forceful report of the deficiencies of the defencesof the West Country. He also wrote constantly on war matters to the Privy Council, bombarding them with ideas and suggestions and warnings. His policy was always that offense was the best defence, and he argued that if an attack on England were to be warded off, a resumption of active war was the best way to avert it. He even offered to send a pinnace at his own expense to discover so far as it could the present state of Spanish preparations. For the most part it seemed that the Privy Council paid no heed to his advice.

I remember one night at the turn of the year he was absent unexpectedly and Lady Ralegh was worried for him. He returned in early morning, and told that all yesterday he and the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset with a group of servants had been hunting a Jesuit priest. In the night they had caught him and now he was where he could do no more harm.

One knew and averted one’s thoughts from the later processes of the Law; but Sir Walter was restless all day and the following night was absent again. When he returned it seemed that he had obtained permission to see the priest in his cell and so having spent one night hunting him, he now had spent all the next arguing with him on religion and listening too.

I heard him say to Keymis: “Such men have to be stepped on, stamped out they would betray England, assassinate the Queen but I found his beliefs vastly interesting. This is the other end of the scale from the Brownists whom I spoke for in Parliament recently … Whence comes the certitude, the morbid infallibility of such men, each convinced of a passionate dogma that allows no compromise, each believing in the same God but ready to perpetrate all injury upon the other for a set of interpretations! It confounds me. I believe intolerance to be one of the cardinal sins! “

Hariot was at the table but he did not speak then, a quiet plump man with a bland pasty face and eyes screwed up as if unaccustomed to the light; but that night a great debate developed, first at the supper table and then later in the green drawing chamber.

It began on the nature of the soul and ranged over all the quarters of the mind, passing this way and that with the quickness of a ball between tennis players. Ralegh asserted that there were three divisions of the soul, which consisted of the animal, the reasonable and the spiritual. The souls of beasts rose only to reason and consciousness through the perception of what was before their eyes; man achieved a closer kinship with God by perceiving, though dimly, the reality beyond the material world. Christ, he said, was of the same substance as God, as far spiritualized beyond man as man was beyond the animals. Through Christ only could man begin to apprehend the wisdom and the purchase of God, for God by His nature was pure and eternal and therefore never to be wholly discovered.

“How do we know what we may or may not discover, Walter? ” Harlot said suddenly in his soft cushiony voice. “Where are the limits of human reason set except by the human himself? Except by his sense of unworthiness, except by prohibition of the church or state, except by his own lack of reason. We are yet at the birth of knowledge. If there is a God, then, as sceptics, we are all agreed that He is Transcendent, above the universe, beyond human experience. But he may well not be beyond knowledge.”

“I don’t deny the value of what knowledge we may get, Tom,” said Sir Walter. “But I don’t fret myself at its limitations. I don’t believe we can ever measure the infinite, plumb the bottomless, adapt our conception of the nature of time to the beginning or end of the universe. We are joined to the earth, compounded of the earth, and we live on it. The heavens are high and far off. Eternal grace can only come by revelation.”

“But how do you define eternal grace, Walter?” asked the Earl of Northumberland, a thin, younger man with sharp brown eyes like a thrush. “I’m with Tom on this, though we seldom see eye to eye on philosophical matters. Where does human aspiration end and divine grace begin? If by observing Tycho’s great star we may foretell the second coming of Christ, are we not reaching to a knowledge beyond the normal limits of our powers; if by studying the aqueous sign of Pisces we may calculate and predict the excessive rain which has fallen on this land in the last three years, are these not “

“Yes,” said Sir Walter, “we’re reaching to a knowledge beyond the normal limits of our powers, and often failing, as we shall always fail. There has been no second coming of Christ yet. When He comes I do not think we shall have to study the heavens to be forewarned. God is above nature. We may accept His existence or deny it, but we shall not get nearer Him by an excessive marshalling of fact or an excessive exercise of reason.”

Thomas Hariot filled his pipe. “We are all groping, friends; Henry here most of all. To him the horoscope and the telescope are equal servants of philosophy and as worthy of trust. It’s a common view. Even Johann Kepler appears to hold it, alas for him. I do not hold it. Until a firmer line is taken we shall make no sure progress. Once the division has been made I believe there is no limit to what we may know and what we may do. The capacity of men to reason differs as much as their sensibility to material things. But because knowledge may be stored, each pioneer may leave his discoveries behind him like a ladder leading to the next loft, waiting for another to climb. In the world of science there should be no need of prediction which is a form of guesswork only of speculation which can be susceptible of proof. That is true science, and it is the true destiny of man.”

“I think,” said Sir Walter, “there cannot be a true destiny of man which rests on intellectual pride.”

“Ah, but it is not personal pride. As men we are insignificant, temporary we carry, a few of us only, the bricks of knowledge one or two rungs higher. If there is pride, then it is pride of species, that in this great universe where God seems increasingly remote we ask nothing of ourselves but to be worthy of our reason and worthy of our place. Mortality, that is certain; immortality, that is the gift of God.”

Towards the end of the year Lord Northumberland married Lady Perrot, the widow of Sir Thomas Perrot. Lady Perrot had in her maidenhood been Lady Dorothy Devereux and was the sister of the Earl of Essex. As soon as they were married Northumberland brought her to the house and reconciled her with Sir Walter.

Fifteen years ago, I was told, before either of them was married, Sir Walter had had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Perrot which had resulted in a duel and in their both spending six weeks in the Fleet as a punishment. But the swordplay had not let the bad blood, and there had never been any reconciliation. When Lady Dorothy married Sir Thomas she had done so without the permission of the Queen, so had been banished from Court. She had taken up her husband’s attitude towards Ralegh; so a year or so later when she had come secretly into the Queen’s presence at Lady Warwick’s hoping for forgiveness, Ralegh had drawn Her Majesty’s attention to her and she had again been summarily banished. This had led to the first great quarrel between Sir Walter and Lord Essex, when Essex had violently denounced Ralegh to the Queen while Ralegh was within earshot.

Sir Walter, though quick to take offenceand quicker to give it, was never one to remember a grievance beyond the next sunset; and the new Countess of Northumberland seemed ready enough to be his friend. However, what Henry Percy was really angling for was bigger fish. He wanted a reconciliation between Ralegh and his new brotherin-law. Changing in all speed, as the rest of this strange circle seemed able to do, from philosophy and necromancy to hard politics, he argued that there was now nothing but old memories dividing the two great men. Essex, I heard or rather overheard him say, had suffered several recent defeats at the hands of Robert Cecil; his standing with the Queen was not so secure as it had been a year ago; and above all he was for a forward policy against Spain as Ralegh was. Cecil wanted negotiation and peace. On his own Cecil was stronger than either of them. United they could outweigh him. Also Sir Walter wanted more than anything a return of the Queen’s favour. If his forthcoming book should fail to gain it Essex’s friendship might turn the scale.

“The only obstacle,” said Northumberland, fingering the goblet he held, “is in the essential similarity between you and Robert little as you may think so, Walter. Y’are both proud, both quick of temper, impatient of others less able than yourselves. You’ve both got the energies of three men. And you’re both warm-hearted under your arrogance. Once come together and you may likely become the closest of friends.”

Sir Walter said: “Well for my part I wish him no ill. He’s a man who has matured and sobered greatly since the days of our quarrels. I would happily talk with him at some friend’s house. But I find it hard to suggest such a meeting since I stand to gain so much more than he.”

“Let’s not be too sure of that,” said Northumberland. “At any event I think this is the time to make the approach. And I can do it direct, without the knowledge of Anthony Bacon or any of his cronies. He’s a truly generous man, Wat; but he is surrounded by mean advisers.”

“I could wish for nothing better,” said Lady Ralegh, looking at her husband. “Lord Essex was my friend before we married, and he stood by me in trouble when some others did not. But there is one thing I do not like, which is that this reconciliation would seem to be aimed at Robert Cecil, who is also our friend. I would not wish him to feel we were changing sides against him. There is a matter of loyalty to be considered.”

“Oh, loyalty from Cecil!” said CarewRalegh.

Sir Walter was at his walking again. “I don’t think it need be aimed at anyone, Bess. Anyway, Henry’s is a pretty notion and we must not reject it. As for his wife, having realised my great error in so short a time, I cannot believe that any brother of hers could but be worthy of the highest esteem. I’ll meet him wherever or whenever you say.”

“As soon as it can be done,” said Lady Northumberland. To Lady Ralegh she said: “We have come a long way. Let us go on in friendship. I think my brother will want it too.”

They met for a parley in London, though I do not know where, just at the turn of the year. Sir Walter’s book on Guiana had been delayed at the printer’s, but a proof copy of it was put in Essex’s hands and he declared himself greatly impressed. The meeting went well, for Sir Walter came home to Sherborne alive with enthusiasm for the future. He was certain now that friendship with Essex would not shake his accord with Cecil. Why, he asked, should they not all three be on good terms? They had nothing to lose except enmity and outworn divisions. At that I heard Carew Ralegh mutter: “Get Essex and Cecil to lie in the same bed? Get a peacock to lie with a snake.”

Essex, said Ralegh, had told him he had some great project on hand for the coming summer together with Howard, the Lord Admiral, which gave some clue as to its nature but he was not permitted to divulge more. Ralegh, if not too deeply engaged in Guiana, might be invited to play some major role. This was the greatest of temptations, for it appeared to be putting into effect the very urgings that Sir Walter had been sending in to the Privy Council all winter. And glory close at hand always weighed heavier with the Queen than glory at a remove of four thousand miles. In the meantime Sir Walter had invited Essex to visit him at Sherborne; by then the book would be out and its effects known. All the same he flung himself with his usual feverish impatience into immediate preparations for a new visit to Guiana. Even if only on a reduced scale, smaller much than last summer, it must be undertaken to fuffil his promise to the natives and keep their interest in England alive.

From my knowledge of what went on, it win have been guessed that I was treated all through the winter more like a member of the family than a servant, far more like a cousin than a secretary. I shared their board and was as often as not at their private talk. This was done so naturally, almost, one thought, in absence of mind, that I was quite won over.

Sir Walter was a man with high standards for his helpers and a biting tongue when they fell short, and it took me time to get to know him. But he had disarming qualities which would take the sting out of his arrogance. For a man capable, as I saw sometimes, of dubious stratagems of business and the most tortuous approaches to statecraft, he yet had a profound candour among his friends, and a frankness and a capacity for trust that I have not seen bettered.

I looked at no girl while at Sherborne, though one or two looked at me, but I made a friend of Victor Hardwicke, a kinsman of Lady Ralegh who acted as an assistant steward on the estate. When Sir Walter was away we would borrow two of his nags and go riding together; he was 24 and a great change from the raffish Belemus, being a serious young man with an infection of the lungs, who coughed much and played the lute and wrote poetry and was in love with a married woman at Cerne Abbas, the young wife of the hosier who sold Sir Walter his gloves and his jerking.

He told me that Sir Walter, in spite of his great incoming from the wine and broadcloth business, was in debt from his expeditions to Guiana to the amount of œ30,000. He had lost also œ40,000 on his adventures in trying to found the colony in Virginia, and this had never been properly recouped.

“The taking of the Madre de Dios two years ago should have enriched him permanently but he gave all his profit to the Queen œ80,000 or more to buy his liberty. So he is in straits.”

“Like others,” I said, thinking of my father.

“Yes, but while out of favour he has little opportunity to recover his losses. That’s why he must go with Essex. It’s his great chance. Unless the Queen relents, Guiana must wait.”

At least, I thought, my father has a marriageable son …

Nothing all this while of Drake and Hawkins. Then in the new year came word that they had taken Havana. This set aside all Sir Walter’s fears for them. The genius of the old sea-dogs had triumphed over the new organisation of Spain, for Havana was the key to the West Indies.

It was in this mood that he first went down the steps of Sherborne to welcome the Earl of Essex from his carriage. I watched them from a window.

My master always loved to dress magnificently, was fond of diamonds and big pearls and grey silks, and this was an occasion when every magnificence was justified. As they walked up the steps together there was little to choose between them for brilliance and for dignity. They were both big men but Essex, fourteen years the younger, topped his host by perhaps two inches; brown bearded in a fuller fashion but with a clean shaven front chin, dark haired, big boned, slim waisted, vital. One saw the magnetism even at a distance.

I saw little else at that meeting, for they dined six only together: the Raleghs, with Carew, Essex and the Northumberlands. At ten the coach drove away. In spite of all protestations to the contrary, a meeting such as this between the two greatest contenders for the Queen’s favour was fraught with significance for all who ruled England and therefore the more secret the better. I wondered if Sir Robert Cecil would hear of it. Some said that a pin dropped in the royal bedchamber at Greenwich would always be heard in Theobalds.

For the next days Sir Walter was thoughtful and moody not depressed nor yet exalted, as if the meeting had gone but moderate well. In fact, though I did not know it then, he was wrestling with his great decision. Essex had offered him a command in the venture which he and Lord Admiral Howard were planning.

The only comment Sir Walter made in my hearing was: “I wish such power as they are being granted had been put in Francis Drake’s hands. If he has captured Havana with his meagre force, with what Essex is mounting he could have won the war.”

That month was published by Robert Robinson a book entitled The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the Great and Golden City of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado). Performed in the year 1595 by Sir Walter Ralegh, Knight, Captain of Her Majesty’s Guard, Lord Warden of the Stannaries and Her Highness’s Lieutenant General of the County of Cornwall.

Its reception could hardly have been more gratifying. Four printings were sold in as many weeks. The Germans, the Dutch, the French, the Italians wished to bring out editions. Many in England spoke of it. Cecil, to whom the book was dedicated, politely praised it. Bitt Sir Walter found no happiness or satisfaction in this at all. He lived each day on tenterhooks, for the one person who counted gave no sign. She might not yet have read it. For all he knew it might have been deliberately kept from her. He waited on Cecil to enlist his help; Cecil was polite but cold: his father was unwell; he could not leave Burghley House except on the business of his office.. Essex yes, said Sir Walter, even Essex was more generous than Cecil. Warmly and impulsively he commended it to the Privy Council and promised to see that the Queen received her copy. Still no response.

There was also some laughter, and in time this seeped through to Sherborne. The Bacons led the scornful whispering. Men without heads? Amazons who consorted with men for only one month of the year and if they conceived male children returned them to their fathers though females were brought up to be as warlike as themselves? This was Sir Walter at his usual game. He would sell his soul, perhaps already had sold his soul, to gain advancement. A pretty piece of fiction, this relation of supposed travels in a remote country.

One evening at supper Thomas Harlot said to him: “I wish you had let me see the manuscript in some early form, Walter. It’s ill to me that these statements should have been allowed to pass into the printed book, that you, the apostle of scepticism, should seem to ask your countrymen to believe such wonders.”

“My countrymen, Tom, are as obtuse as you. Read the book again. I am saying these are the stories I have heard from the Indians. Whether they are true is another matter; but often such legends have a solid substance of fact behind them. Further visits will provide opportunity to prove or disprove them.”

“Then I think it would have been a strategy to have made this crystal clear … But these oysters growing on trees. You saw them?”

“If Laurence were here he would confirm it. Ask him when he returns.”

Laurence Keymis had been away three weeks in Portsmouth. Sir Walter had been able to fit out one good and seaworthy vessel. Keymis at least was to go. If Sir Walter went with him then he turned his back on the great Essex and Howard enterprise. Now was the last moment of choice.

“For my part,” said Lady Ralegh the evening Keymis returned, “I as little welcome one adventure as th’ other. Each is fraught with separation and loneliness for me. Each is fraught with danger and hardship for you. Here we’re happy. Let younger men bear the edge of these enterprises.”

“Oh, younger men,” said Sir Walter restlessly. “Yes, that’s true. Yet, by the living God, at 44 a man still has something to give And, maybe, less to lose though I doubt that. Bach year I find I’ve more to part from. You weave your silken ties, Bess.”

“I wish they were stronger.” Her discerning eyes followed him as he got up and stood scowling into the fire.

“Well, the choice tonight is not neither but either. And, Laurence, the choice is made. You must go alone.”

Keymis’s spectacles flashed in the firelight. “So be it.”

“If my expedition with Essex is a success, I shall stand a chance of sending a fine fleet to Guiana next year. You must go as my envoy, Laurence. Tell them I shall be with them soon ~“

CHAPTER TWO

A day after Sir Walter’s decision he said brusquely to me: “Well, Killigrew, you see how the wind blows for me. For you there are three choices. One, you go home, two, you stay here, three, you go with Keymis. TeH me within the week which it is to be.”

“If I stay with you, sir,” I said, “what of this seafaring adventure? Is there a place for me on that?”

He smiled thinly. “It’s early days to promise but I should have thought it likely. If the worst befell I could take you as a personal attendant.”

“I should be happy to be that.”

“There may be bitter fighting. I can’t tell you more.

“That I’ll be glad to see.”

He inclined his head. “Yes, well, then, is that your choice? You’d be advised to sleep on it.”

“No, sir, that’s my choice.”

It must have been some tune that week that a first letter came from Belemus.

“Dear Witless (it ran), All goes badly here as usual. In a world of constant rain and wind we keep warm and fed and allow our vassals to venture out into the half light and the mud of winter, but

300

I wonder often how long the roof will be above our heads. Your father departed at the break of the year for Westminster, but I learn at his first arrival in London he was pounced upon by some of his creditors and thrown into the Fleet. He was there two weeks, but from his last letter it seems that a friendly hand at Court has got him released and if nothing more has befallen he is now on his way home. Your grandmother, dear Lady K., has taken on a new chapter of life and directly she heard of your father’s plight left for London with her personal maid in tow. She looked frail enough to sink in the first gale, but I seriously believe it would take a tidal wave. Anyway they are likely to have passed each other en route or collided ere this.

John’s marriage with little chimney-smoking Jane comes no nearer, and, ever as a mirage, retreats as we advance towards it. Your Meg bites excessively at everyone, including poor Dick. I believe that in everyone on whom she sharpens her teeth she sees the image of you.

Another old friend of yours, Captain Elliot, put in to the Haven last month and came ashore. For a pirate he is well informed, bringing us news that King Philip is ill with gout and ulcers and a double tertian fever. I hope the news is in no way exaggerated. His usual mate Love was with him and I learned from him the way they have been making money of late: they have been buying guns and powder in Hampshire stolen by the profiteers who are arming and supplying our ships; then they have taken them to Spain and sold them to the Spanish at a fine profit. So if another Armada sails it is like to be partly provisioned with English cannon and shot. Neat, is it not?

Your father was no sooner out of the house than who should pop up but your witch friend from Truro trailing prophecies and little spiders wherever she strode. She appears to have put a spell on Mrs Killigrew who sweats more night fevers over her two youngest than over all earlier hatchings. Though I wish no hurt to Footmarker I like not so much this affection that has grown between her and Mrs Killigrew, for it smacks of the evil eye. Footmarker sees a doom on the house, and your stepmother, poor wight, cosseted by debts as high as her pink ears, is hardly to be blamed if she believes there’s a truth to it. It is not a healthy friendship …”

On the last day of January Laurence Keymis sailed. The night before he left for Portsmouth there was a party at Sherborne, but Sir Walter was in no mood for it and went early to bed. He commanded me to bring him up some books, and as I was collecting them Laurence Keymis came to me and gave me a note that I was to deliver with the books. The note was open and was a short poem of farewell.

“Put it on the top book, Killigrew. He’ll see it there.”

“Yes, Mr Keymis.”

The other took off his spectacles and polished them. When he did this he always frowned as if angry, but tonight I could see he was full of emotion, and his eyes had tears in them.

“I hope you realise,” he said suddenly, “your privilege in serving such a man.”

I muttered something and he put on his spectacles, looping them energetically round his ears.

“Such men as he are born once in a century. The warriors who are thinkers. The scholars with the courage to fight. In times of peace they rot, presumed upon by lesser men who fear their brilliance and their superiority. They are banished into obscurity by their fellows or their monarchs, pursued by envy and spite or ignored and derided. Only in need and in time of great peril do other men turn to them. L-Look at your master! A man chock full of faults I who know him so well would not deny one of them but also a man so full of talents and inspiration that he is like one with a quiverful of arrows, each sharp and true. A born leader, the greatest living strategist, a poet, a philosopher, an essayist, an orator, a skilled musician, a s-soldier, an explorer, a founder of new Englands overseas. The crowds hate him, the leaders of the country ignore him, the Queen banishes him. But we who know him we who know him, Killigrew, live to serve him! “

I thought as I climbed the spiral staircase that Laurence Keymis would never have spoken to me so freely if he had not been full of wine.

After Keymis had left Sir Walter remained in very low spirits. He felt, he said, that he had turned away from his true mission in search of a more immediate prize and a less enduring glory. Then, as often, he fell sick. He was certain he had a stone in the kidney, and sent for works on anatomy and surgery to see how it might be removed. Bess Ralegh waited on him personally, and on the fifth day he was suddenly weld again and writing a long urgent personal message to Essex on the recruitment of sailors for the fleet.

This done he turned to another interest. While ill he had had two young dogs for company in his room and he had been observing their behaviour.

“Animals,” he desired me to write down, “of a certainty can communicate one with another and have reasoning powers of a lower but similar order to man. Their senses, however, are .. more highly refined. Therefore I cannot see that my perception or any man’s perception is better than theirs. In so far as perceiving is a matter of sense and what else can it be then I can advance no reason why my apprehension of reality is preferable to theirs. If our perceptions differ, they may be in truth and I in error just as well as I in truth and they err. If I must be believed before them, then my perception must be proven truer than theirs. Without proof none should be asked to believe it. Even if by demonstration it seem to be true, then will it be a question whether it be indeed as it seems to be. To allege as a certain proof what of its nature must be uncertain is absurd!”

That night none of his favourite companions was in the house and he had only Lady Ralegh and me and Victor Hardwicke on whom to sharpen this argument. He paced up and down in his black satin suit, discoursing at us and expecting us to challenge his reasoning while we sat for the most part helplessly by.

It must have been about the fifth or sixth of February, and a gale was howling outside. A log fire burned in the hearth and half up the chimney. The two dogs, the object of his argument, lay well fed and dog-sleeping before the fire, their ears twitching once and again as their master passed, but giving no other sign of superior perception. The firelight flickered on Lady Ralegh’s composed face, on her dark velvet robe with its tufted sleeves and long hanging cuffs, and the close gown of white satin under it, on the chains of pearls at neck and waist.

I wondered if this gale would be blowing round the Cornish coast and whether my father was safe home after his experience. His creditors were becoming more desperate. So therefore would he. I wondered what it was like in Paul and where the Reverend and Mrs Reskymer were sleeping. Perhaps it would be cold and the Reverend Reskymer would say “Come into my bed this way we shall keep each other warm.” And Sue would slip out shivering in the dark, her hair like seaweed, her face like a water lily drifting in the dark, her night shift a reflection of the moon. So she would lie beside him, soft and slim and straight and he would put out his hand and stroke her thighs …

“Well, Maugan,” said Sir Walter, stopping in front of me. “What have you to say to that?”

“Sir,” I said, “I believe my apprehension of reality to be preferable to any, for I have not heard a word of what you’ve said.”

Lady Ralegh drew in a sharp breath at this insolence, which was greater than at first appeared, but Sir Walter after looking surprised suddenly laughed. He seldom laughed.

“You assert that my philosophical speculations have no validity outside the brain that breeds them? A stinging rebuke! Well, it’s true that intellectual speculation may run ahead of reason. But the reason of man in itself ends and dissolves like a river running into a sea. What do you advocate an end of curiosity? You at your age? Between birth and death, Maugan, there’s little time. What there is is not entirely wasted if it strikes a balance between questioning and faith.”

That week he rode again to London and supped in the company of Lord Admiral Howard, Lord Thomas Howard, the Earl of Essex, Sir Francis Vere, Sir Conyers Clifford and our cousin Sir George Carew. It must have been a strange meal for I knew that Sir Walter was on bitter terms with Lord Thomas Howard and he seldom saw eye to eye with Sir Francis Vere. However, he came back a Rear Admiral for the purposes of the expedition. The Queen still would not see him, but her consent to this appointment showed that his disgrace was less deep than it had been.

In the succeeding weeks the whole house was caught up in feverish preparations. Sir Walter was more often in London than at Sherborne, but without warning he would suddenly arrive, mud spattered, out of temper and on edge, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied, but always turning the house upside down.

With his second-in-command, a grizzled sailor of forty called Robert Crosse, who was Francis Drake’s favourite captain, Sir Walter had been given the responsibility of enlisting or otherwise obtaining crews for such of the ships as were to commission in the Thames. Most of these ships were transports and victuallers; they were scattered from Gravesend to Greenwich, and some were in poor shape and needed serious repair.

In March Cecil received secret confirmation of Drake’s capture of Havana, and he withdrew his opposition to the expedition, though he warned the Privy Council that a serious obstacle was appearing from another quarter. King Henry of France was bankrupt and weary of war. In order to keep him in the field at all he needed support. He needed, he said, an English army.

What was worse he now knew it existed. Massing some 10,000 strong under its finest commander, it was preparing to embark in English warships on one of the biggest enterprises ever to leave England not, however, to succour the French but to aid some secret adventure farther afield, perhaps to defend Ireland or to attack Blavet. This was not good enough. Though Henry distrusted English intentions to the extent that he would not grant them the port of Calais, which he held with a strong garrison, he wanted their troops inland at this crucial time. Meantime he edged nearer and nearer to that ominous peace treaty with Spain. The only way of preventing such a treaty might be to accede to his demands.

Sir Walter was in a fever lest the whole expedition should now come to nothing. The sixteenth of March was a Saturday and the day, I learned, when Sir Robert Cecil was drafting the Generals’ commissions which would give them authority to take this formidable fleet and army away from English shores. The Queen, said Sir Walter at dinner, though the most gifted and the most brilliant woman he had ever met, was much given to indecision. Now of all times she might be excused for hesitation in the signing. On her choice might hang the future of the world.

When home he would usually find respite from his activity in London by other activities of body or mind, all undertaken with the zest of youth; but now he drooped. One of his sick spells loomed. It rained all Sunday morning, and after divine service he retired to his study and sent word that he would take a light dinner in his room. Arthur Throgmorton and Carew Ralegh played at backgammon all afternoon, a game that was never now brought out in Sir Walter’s presence. Once he had played it largely, but since his friend Christopher Marlowe had been killed in a duel originating at the board he would not have the draughtsmen near him.

The rest of us spent time in the stables admiring a white gelding Sir Walter had bought, and a sorrel mare which had foaled last week. Little Wat, having received no encouragement from his father, toddled with us. Lady Ralegh stayed indoors and helped Mrs Hull, her sempstress, line a stomacher with grey cony’s skin.

Ralegh’s depression bred restlessness in me, and I had a return of the acute malaise of last August. I felt that wherever I went I was an animal in a cage and the cage was my love and desire for Sue Reskymer. Somewhere in the world there must be escape for me. Before supper I went a walk with Victor Hardwicke but strode along so violently that he ran out of breath and had to call a halt.

“One would think the devil was after you, friend. Remember my age and infirmity! “

I stared at him moodily. “If you cannot walk a mile across a park you’re not in good state for a campaign at sea, Victor.”

“Oh, pooh to that.” He coughed. “Who ever had to walk a mile on a battleship? That is the beauty of the form; superior to soldiering; one is conveyed into the fight. Much to be preferred.”

“There may be soldiering in this too. De Vere’s men are not coming with us for the pleasures of a sea voyage.”

“Well, then, they can fight on land. I’m to keep a diary of the trip. Tell me I shall need breath to writer That’s what Cousin Bess would argue!”

“Who? Lady Ralegh? She doesn’t want you to go?”

“No, she’s superstitious. She’s a mixture, is Bess. To her Sir Walter can do no wrong; but all the same she considers him unlucky. She says on each voyage he loses some splendid youth. John Grenville last time. Who this? She doesn’t want it to be me.”

“I wouldn’t call you a splendid youth,” I said.

“Agreed! The dangers which threaten don’t threaten me. Tell her so.” He linked his arm in mine. “Let us walk back at a more endurable pace.”

That evening we supped frugally. Sir Walter came down but his presence cast a blight on the table. At the end of the meal he said, well, tomorrow, unless he heard to the contrary, he would return to the Thames-side to continue his recruitment. It was, he said despondently, a task like gathering sand in the fingers; no man had stomach for the job; as fast as crews were brought together they slipped through his grasp and ran away.

He was about to go upstairs to his study when Bell, one of the servants, brought in a dripping rider with a message from Essex. It contained only four words. “Her Majesty has signed.”

In the melancholic mood that still hung over me like some miasma I had caught from my master I watched and listened to the rejoicing and the toasts that followed without ever becoming a part of them. Much wine was drunk and everyone was joyful. Victor Hardwicke brought out his lute and they sang songs. The victory might already have been won. In fact this was only the preliminary victory over a monarch’s indecision. Whatever the project, I had already seen enough of the Spanish to know that the expedition was not likely to bring an easy or a cheap victory. Sir Walter himself must have known that, for he it was who was constantly warning his countrymen against underestimating the strength and courage and determination of the enemy. Yet tonight he was transformed and as happy at the news, it seemed, as any heedless boy.

All thought of retiring to his study was gone, and instead maps were brought and he watched smiling while the others pored over the charts and speculated as to the destination of the fleet. Their first objective, he said, would be to cover Drake’s and Hawkins’s triumphant return. Afterwards they would sail to seek glory of their own.

“It’s clear, Cousin,” Victor Hardwicke said, “that you know exactly where we are bound and will not tell.”

“I am Rear Admiral only of the White. Lord Admiral Howard will command the first squadron, the Earl of Essex the second, the Lord Thomas Howard the third. It will be for them in conference to decide the movements of the fleet and what the crews and officers shall be informed of and when.”

“What is your flagship to be?” Arthur Throgmorton asked.

“Warspite. Our newest.”

“And Ark Royal?”

“The Lord Admiral’s.”

Voices crossed and re-crossed. Victor picked up his lute again and smiled at me. His angled, hollow-checked face was haloed by the candles. He began to pluck gently at the strings.

“If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor? For love is warm, and courage listeth cold. If love were mine “

“Victor,” said Sir Walter.-“D’you know the song ‘Weep not, my wanton’ which was all the rage last summer? Here, let me have your lute. It goes so...”

He took the instrument and began to play with nearly as accomplished a touch as the young man. Carew Ralegh, the cool and cynical, of all people, took up the refrain and sang in a fine clear voice, and soon the rest of us were joining in. I saw Lady Ralegh,her small determined head a little on one side, her lips moving but no sound coming from them as she watched her husband, her brother, her brotherin-law, her cousin, all men close to her. Then her eyes suddenly lifted towards the door. Sir Walter stopped in mid-chord.

Bell stood there with another messenger, he even wetter and more mud be-spattered than the first.

I think it was in all our minds that perhaps between church and dinner the Queen had veered away from her early resolution and had sent to countermand the first order. Sir Walter tore open the second message which was much longer. One could see as he read it that it was unwelcome news, but he said nothing as he read.

“What is it, Walter?” Carew Ralegh asked. “More from Essex? “

“No … No, it is from John … Sir John Gilbert, my stepbrother. He writes from Plymouth. A picket boat, he says, has just come in bringing news of Drake and Hawkins. The ” he stopped and cleared his throat. “The report of their having captured Havana is false. In all their enterprises they were heavily defeated. And Drake is dead.”

CHAPTER THREE

In April the remnants of Drake’s fleet began to arrive in Falmouth. In this disastrous expedition the great Hawkins had died too, and the remaining officers and men of whom only 400 were left, were in much sickness and want. (My father said bitterly that the failures always put straight into his haven like the survivors of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s last voyage in ‘83 if a success the captains sailed straight for Plymouth or Dartmouth, and those towns got the spoils.)

In April too occurred another event of great consequence. The Spanish in Picardy abruptly changed their front of attack and with a brilliant and unexpected thrust invested Calais and then took it, massacring the entire garrison. By these thunderbolts the face of the war was changed. More than had ever been admitted had been expected of Drake’s being at sea again; now he was gone and there was a Spanish port at our throat. It was the one thing the Armada of ‘88 had lacked.

Twice in the month I rode with Ralegh to London. By exertion and exhortation the naval expedition was kept in being, though none knew if it would ever leave our shores. In early May I sailed with Captain Crosse in Swiftsure to join the fleet assembling at Plymouth. Sir Walter was to follow with the main body almost at once. At Plymouth the bay was alive with warships. Lord Admiral Howard had arrived with Ark Royal and Lion and six other battleships the day before us. His kinsman, Lord Thomas Howard, was expected later in the week aboard Mere Honour and with a squadron in his wake; the Earl of Essex in Due Repulse had been the first to arrive and kept princely state aboard her. He was also, it was said, feeding the whole fleet out of his own pocket in order to save the sea stores.

Hardly had we arrived than a message came overland from Ralegh to Captain Crosse that he could not hope to be at Plymouth with the rearguard for two weeks yet. Half the victuallers were still unready, and stores could not be brought to the dockside and loaded in time. He would, he promised, sail from Gravesend on the 16th with every ship in his charge, if he had to hang the captains and sail with farmers’ boys.

“The Generals will not like it,” said Crosse. “There are murmurings against him already that he does not make sufficient haste. When they stop quarrelling among themselves they see Sir Walter in the background, not yet arrived, the great eccentric, and they use him as a convenient peg for their grievances.” In the same bag came a letter from my father which had reached Sherborne after I left.

“Son Maugan,

This is to advertise you that your grandmother is likely to be gone from us ere this reaches you. She journeyed to London early in the year and was seized with heart cramps on making her return to us last month. The condition has continued and worsened since: I do not think she can survive another seizure. She has been a noble woman and will take her place with the blest above.

I trust you are finding profit in your employ. It is a fine opportunity for any young man; especially for one such as you.

We have lost eight lambs of the murrain and I fancy there is an evil eye upon the house. Trudy, the bay mare, is ill of the bolts. We have sown the castle fields with oats this year. Pray God they do well, for we are sore put. Your affectionate

Father.”

I had received a small monthly wage at Sherborne. It would pay for a horse. I asked Captain Crosse and he said: “I have nothing for you here. If you are back by the 18th you should be in safe time.”

When I reached Arwenack it was the afternoon of the 10th and sunny and warm; after being away for a few months the beauty of the land and bay caught at my breath: the chestnut trees in the drive were almost out and lifting their candles towards a blue sky innocent and remote. A yellow-sailed troy was luffing out into the bay; seagulls were crying their lonely lament; the sea was a glistening mirror which the distance breathed on and made hazy.

The first person I saw was my grandmother sitting out on a chair on the front lawn.

My father said:

“She’s better, yes, she’s better, though for how long … I truly believe her ailment was brought on not by shortness of breath but by shortage of money. For her return home from London she wished to hire a coach, but your Uncle Henry being in Holland and William refusing, she was constrained to attempt the hire herself, whereupon her great debts and mine too all but prevented her. For a man and five horses she was asked 6s. a day so prices go ever up and she engaged one Foster to have them for a quarter of a year your grandmother was never one to pare her cheeses but it was all but lost because Foster demanded a surety for their return and there was much to do your grandmother weeping tears of rage, she says before Mr Atkinson stood surety for her. By then anger had so taken hold of her that the first of many seizures came on before she reached Basingstoke.”

My father hunched his shoulders as if cold. The year had not dealt favourably with him. In a face grown fleshier his eyes looked smaller, little prominent blue stones with pink under-rims. The life had gone out of his fine hair; it might have been gathered from some thrashing floor.

“Have you news of the Fermors, Father?”

“Ah, yes, I’m advanced in that direction. When I was set free of prison I went to see Sir George and had it out with him very straight. Either a date was appointed, I said, or he must look elsewhere for a sire for his grandchildren. So he has stated October next. The eighth will be the day, God helping. Hearing this, and determined that there should be no other delay, I stayed on at Easton Neston until the marriage contract was drawn up and signed.”

… And Lady Killigrew said: “They can have taught you no manners at Sherborne, or you would have come straight to me on arrival, knowing how mortal sick I’ve been. Is there opportunity for advancement there? Whom do you meet? Is Lady Ralegh following this new fashion in French hoods? … Your stepmother, you will observe, is enceinte again. You would have thought we had enough brats to feed. You must look to no further help from this house, boy; I never thought we would have come to these straits. A Wolverstone in penuryl Times have changed for the worse when a man may not make use of his authority to some purpose … The Queen has lived too long: government has become oppressive and parsimonious though God knows who will come after her not, I pray, that pole-shanked drivelling Stuart: if so I shall be glad to die before her.”

… “So you’re home for a visit, Master Maugan,” Meg said. “I thought you’d funned away for good. Do not be scared o’ me; I’ve never asked nothin’ but what I thought was freely given. Indeed, twas th’other way round most of the time as I trust you’ve not forgot. Have you found some nice wench at your new home who’ll just be at your beck and call when you d’ want her and no other time?”

… “Sometimes I wish I could go in the church,” young John Killigrew said as he unloosed his shoes in the bedroom that night. “Have you ever thought of it, Maugan? No, well, it might not suit you, but I should not dislike it. I have small interest in my father’s life here it is not a godly life nor one I’d willingly copy. I believe I should be happier if you were my full brother and could inherit in my place …”

… And Belemus said: “Dolphin was here last week, with your old friends aboard. But they were all but caught. It was a great to-do.”

“Caught?”

“By Jonas in Crane. Elliot had barely time to slip his anchor and take the tide up river.”

Crane was a crompster, a type of vessel fairly new to the navy, a ship of some 180 tons: three massed and low built, with speed and an armament of 2 eighteen pounders and fourteen smaller cannon, so that she could catch and kill all but the biggest. She was the terror of the Elliots and the Burleys of the coast.

“The difficulty,” said Belemus, “was that the man aloft aboard Crane reported a suspicious vessel slipping away in the dusk. Captain Jonas, of course, has received many favours in this house; but this was altogether a trifle well, blatant. Other people would know of a ship sheltering in Mylar Pool. Your father could do nothing personal so I was sent aboard Crane. After some delicate negotiation œ100 changed hands God knows how your father found it and Crane went off to investigate a report that there was a pirate ship in the Helford River.”

I whistled.

Belemus went on: “By the way, d’you still hanker after little Mistress Reskymer, for I hear her spouse is sick…”

… All yesterday I had been resisting a desire to go to Paul. I knew it must end in frustration, yet, now the excuse existed, I had to go.

When I got to the church Philip Reskymer was from home and only Sue was there with a black-browed hairy man who topped her by a foot. She changed at sight of me.

“Do you know each other? This is Maugan Killigrew, Mr Arundell, Mr John Killigrew’s son from Arwenack. Mr Henry Arundell of Truthall, Maugan.”

“Formerly of Tolverne, sir?”

“Formerly of Tolverne.” Mr Arundell let breath escape from between thick lips indecently red by contrast with his black beard. “I know of you, boy. I’m told you saw my brother in Spain.”

We walked slowly round among the hammering masons as I gave an account of the meeting. So I knew them all now, Sir Anthony, dying for a lost faith with his white wispy hair haloing a fading brain; Thomas Arundell, narrow faced, blue eyed, faintly squinting, an artist and a passionate exile; Alice, to whom I had delivered his letter, thin and eroded and grown to a carved chair in which she overlooked her green lawns: now Henry, fat as a king, bearded like a footpad. I knew now of whom he reminded me: his nephew Thomas waiting to inherit from his ailing brother Jonathan in the tree-smothered house by the river.

Yet under or over these thoughts, distinct as a thread of crimson in a dull fabric, was awareness of Susanna Reskymer, of what she wore, of how she moved and breathed and spoke.

Mr Henry Arundell was a close friend of the Reskymers and had come on a similar mission to my own, to which Sue replied: “Oh, he is not well, but I don’t think his disease would be dangerous if I could persuade him to a greater ease and an increased rest. Today he is in St Ives on matters to do with this rebuilding. He would suffer no one to do it for him. I expect him home any moment. You’ll sup with us, Maugan?”

“Thank you.”

To my relief Mr Arundell would not wait; blowing breath and importance, he said he had business with the St Aubyns and must go; Philip and Susanna must visit him at an early date and spend the night. Mr Arundell rubbed his black beard and looked Sue over. Philip must appreciate his luck and take advantage of being alive …

When he had gone off with his two servants riding behind him a silence fell between us. I could hardly believe my good fortune at having her alone, yet I did not know what to do with it. Eleven months ago I had slept with her. We had parted in anger and not written since. That parting was a barrier I could not climb.

We walked back to the church, which was being slowly raised again.

“Where do you live now?”

“In the cottage which John Pieton rented he who was killed. It’s convenient to be near the rebuilding … You have been with Ralegh, Maugan?”

“Still am. I came back for a week only because my grandmother was sick. Then I heard Mr Reskymer also was ill…”

“He is more ill than he’ll acknowledge, but to his friends I keep up the presence as he wishes. It’s a bloodlessness which troubles him. But he has a rare inner strength, Maugan, arising from his faith, and I believe it will carry him a good way yet.”

Two men, broad shouldered, with the thick haunches of the Cornish, were lifting a huge stone into position at the foot of a pillar. We stopped to watch them. So far our words had been as formal as if Henry Arundell were still here.

“And you?” she said.

I spoke constrainedly of my life at Sherborne. “I go now with Ralegh on a naval commission which leaves this month.”

“I had heard rumours. Where are you bound?”

“That we don’t know. It’s a small armada with soldiers aboard.”

She was silent for some time. “How much are you committed to it, Maugan?”

“Committed? Oh, completely. Besides, I want to go.”

She knitted her brows. We walked slowly round towards the ruins of the vicarage. “I don’t like it, Maugan. There is bound to be danger. Think of Drake and Hawkins and so many others. It’s not just danger from combat, though that may be great; there is danger from fever and other disease.”

“Where there is danger there is usually hope of profit.”

She looked up, eyes green behind their lashes in the falling sun. “There could be profit nearer home. I was glad you came today. I wondered if you had met Henry Arundell before. You see …”

“The connection? No, I don’t.”

“… I wonder if Philip could help. It might well be arranged.”

They had not yet begun to rebuild the Reskymers’ house, but the kitchens were being used, and horses were standing in the stables. A servant ran out to ask Sue about supper, and she answered composedly, mistress of the house and the situation. Her circumstances were changing her, giving her greater poise and assurance.

She said: “Henry Arundell’s steward died last month. He is looking for a new one and seeking someone well learned who can take over much of the management of his estate. He says it is difficult to find the right man. I know you are very young for such a position, but it might be possible that he would take you.”

I suppose I should have been happy that she was concerned for my safety, but with the perverseness of the rejected lover I thought the proposition smacked of condescension. “This is not a time when I could apply to him.”

“It would be the only time, while he needs one. Philip was at Cambridge with him, and with his persuasion the position might be got. It would be a big move for you, with a prospect of advancement.”

“An advancement from being at Ralegh’s side?”

“From what you tell me it’s only as a writer that you’re employed. Henry Arundell is a bachelor and getting up in years. He’s looking for someone young and energetic and reliable. One way or another, you could make your fortune there.”

“You’re still anxious I should make my fortune?”

“You know the reasons.”

“Tell me them.”

“Perhaps you think I’ve forfeited the right to be interested in your life, to wish to advance it.”

“… Never that. But I think the advancement must be along my own route.”

She bent to rub some grass off her shoe. “Henry Arundell also has close connections with the Howards. They are relatives, of course, and of great influence in and around the court different from Ralegh, who many think will never return to influence and power.”

I did not speak and we moved on through the coppice to the cottage.

She said: “As it happens my father was at one time in the employ of a Howard at least, it was the same family though a Devonshire branch. This was before he was married. He often used to talk about it to say what a powerful family they were and what connections they had.”

All the brambles had been neatly cleared.

She said: “I have a strange feeling about this naval voyage, Maugan, a premonition. I wish you would not go, but stay here in your own country.”

“And near you,” I said harshly.

The wind blew a flicker of hair over her eyes as she straightened up. She blinked and seemed to shiver as she turned away.

“My marriage cannot go on for ever, Maugan, that’s now clear.”

I stood beside her, already part wishing I had never come.

“Sue, when your marriage ends, then you must think it all over again. Until it does you laid down for yourself prohibitions that I asked you to break and you would not.”

“Yes, but it need not prevent our being within distance … Truthall is not so far from here “

“It is too near yet. Besides I cannot and wouldn’t leave Ralegh for any Arundell or any Howard. I don’t always admire him, but being in his company is living in another air. I can make it no plainer than that …”

“Oh, you have made it very plain! “

“Yes, but don’t mistake me. You are the wife of Philip Reskymer. If at any time you become the widow of Philip Reskymer, then that’s a new situation.” I touched her shoulder. “Until then I go my own way, and immediately my own way leads me on this voyage.”

“Which I say you should not take! “

“Which I shall take. I may come out of it with some prize.”

“Maugan, you could find a greater prize here.”

“There’s only one greater and that’s out of my reach. When it’s not, give me first news.”

“You’re dead to all all reason.”

“Reason was never a complete answer, Sue. It never can be, between us.”

I did not stay to sup after all. When it came to the point I could not bear to see Philip Reskymer again. To wish a man dead, to rejoice in his ill health, is a damned thing. I rode home in the dark. Always, I thought, it was a mistake to come this way.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sir Walter reached Plymouth aboard his flagship with the supply ships straggling out behind him at nine o’clock on the morning of Friday the 21st. I transferred at once to Warspite where I shared a tiny cabin with Victor Hardwicke, but I saw little of Sir Walter during the next ten days, he being more often on some other ship than on his own. A great quarrel broke out at dinner aboard Due Repulse the first night Sir Walter dined there, it being concerned with some question of precedence between himself and Sir Francis Vere, leader of the land forces. Victor said he thought Sir Walter, bent on unity and agreement among the commanders, had been prepared to smooth the thing over; but his brotherin-law took up the quarrel and if Essex had not intervened there would have been a duel. As it was Arthur Throgmorton, though a Lieutenant-Colonel in Gerard’s, was dismissed the army and put under guard. It was not a pretty omen for the success of the expedition.

Even less so was the fact that the Lord Admiral and Lord Essex were almost at each other’s throats. Only my master’s new harmony with Essex was unimpaired.

Every day the army drilled on the Hoe, forming squares, advancing in line, wheeling in strict formation, while the gentry sat their horses discussing strategy or partook of dummy charges across the green. Two deserters were hanged by Essex’s command as a warning to the others.

At length orders were issued that all land companies should embark on the ships, this on the 31st, and the embarkation was complete by midnight. I have seldom seen a finer body of men: veterans nearly all, well clothed and well armed, over 6,000 strong, though short in cavalry: the army had perhaps 200 horses and the gentry a like number.

In the night three quarters of the great fleet warped out of Catwater into the Sound. At four o’clock in the morning of the Tuesday a gun fired from Ark Royal intimated that the fleet was ready to leave. At six Sir Walter was rowed back from a last conference saying that on Essex’s generous intervention Arthur Throgmorton had been released and allowed to rejoin his company.

It was a fine sunny morning with a fresh breeze from the north-west, not warm but invigorating. We had finished prayers and breakfast when Lord Admiral Howard flying his crimson flag set sail, followed by his squadron; the Earl of Essex, fluttering the biggest flag of all, orange tawny on a white ground, was next to go. The Hoe and all the land round was bordered black with tiny people waving and watching. Next came the Dutch fleet, and then Lord Thomas Howard flying blue. It was after midday before we ourselves were under way, bringing up the rear.

Out of the harbour the wind had much freshened and the sea ahead was dotted as far as the eye could see with lurching and tossing ships. This was to be an exercise in manoeuvre before the fleet sailed in earnest. We warped and tacked all day between Rame Head and Fowey, for the most part in confusion but as the day wore on falling into a greater order.

Sir Walter went quickly to his cabin and was not seen again they had joked at Sherborne that he was a poor sailor but I had no better fortune and vomited from four in the afternoon until nightfall. Hardwicke, the delicate, stood the pitching and tossing without discomfort and laughed at my antics.

We passed the night uncomfortably off Blackbeetle Point near the entrance to Fowey Haven, and all the following morning plied up and down in pursuance of orders from the Lord Admiral; then, the wind backing about four in the afternoon, the whole fleet put back into Plymouth Sound and anchored in line all the way across to Cawsand. At eight a counsel was called aboard Ark Royal, and Sir Walter, his hair and beard looking blacker against his sallow face, commanded me to go with him.

It was a full Council of War, and for the most part I stood on deck with midshipmen, secretaries and others in attendance on the great men. But towards the end I was sent for and carried up papers Sir Walter had brought setting forth his views on fire-power in relation to shore batteries, a subject on which as usual he had original and controversial views.

In the great cabin were yellow lanterns hanging and gently swaying; lattice windows still light with the evening light; ten principal captains and five admirals; gold braid on blue velvet, silver braid on scarlet; jewelled sword belts with wrought leather. Wine cups stood on a baize-covered round table like sentinels about the littered charts; a few men were smoking, and the smoke rose to mix with the hazy breath and argument and wine fumes and the smoke of the lanterns.

Essex was speaking, his face flushed, as if argument had ruffled him. “Let us remember, my Lords, that this is a sacred cause, undertaken not primarily in search of gain but to preserve our country and our religion. To remind all of that purpose, services shall be performed thrice daily, at the morning, in the evening, at the cleaning of the glass…”

Presently Sir Walter spoke. I do not remember a word he said, only the tone of his voice. It was a tone I had heard him use only once or twice before. It deferred too obviously; it was full of flattery and ingratiation. For one who knew him well it was plainly insincere and used only with a purpose. In the seat of honour beside Essex sat the old Lord Admiral, white-bearded, hawk-nosed, a jewelled skull cap over his scant hair. On the other side of Essex was Lord Thomas Howard, the third in command. A man in his thirties with a sailor’s face, weather-beaten but arrogant and lean, he watched Sir Walter carefully while he spoke. These were the first two Howards I had ever seen, and after what Sue had said I stared at them with a new interest. As if some communication passed between us he lifted his head and his eyes looked me over assessingly; then he turned away and took snuff. A moment later and I was out in the summer evening again breathing a fresher air.

The following morning, which was the 3rd of June, the fleet set sail in earnest, Lord Admiral Howard leading off his squadron at ten, and ourselves weighing anchor shortly before four in the afternoon. The north-west wind had by now returned and it blew intermittently throughout the next days.

On the Friday Sir Walter called me up to his cabin. His desk was littered with books pulled from their shelves, and he was considering the optimum length-to-weight ratio of the galleon. From the behaviour of Warspite in the short time he had been sailing in her he had come to the strong conclusion that she was too short for her width, being in length only two and a half times her beam, which in Sir Walter’s opinion was a backward step in design; and that she was much over-gunned for a vessel of 648 tons: 36 guns, twenty of them heavy culverins, being likely to over-charge the ship’s sides in any grown sea. On these matters he wrote and talked for upwards of two hours; then, looking as exhausted as I felt, he dropped his pen and rang the bell for a cup of the cordial he had brought with him for seasickness; I took a cup as well, though I should have had more confidence if Katherine Footmarker had mixed it.

He was in a natural and approachable mood, and I asked him whither we were bound.

He said: “Our captains, except those at the council, still sail under sealed orders. If any are separated they make for Cape St Vincent.”

“Which is not Ireland or Blavet.”

“Which is not Ireland or Blavet.”

“I have heard it said, sir, that the Spanish fleet is concentrated in two ports: Ferrol and Cadiz.”

The ship lurched over a wave and slithered down the hind side.

“You are not ill-informed.”

“I was in the Groyne for a week, sir, never as far south as Cadiz.”

“I forget your Spanish adventures. But it does not entitle you to information not yet divulged to others.”

“No, sir. I can only guess.”

“And keep your guesses under lock and~key … By the living God, I feel ill! It would be a humiliation to be laid aside at a time like this.”

“There must be many others the same.”

“No doubt most of the three hundred green-headed youths in their feathers and gold lace will be wishing themselves ashore again. But it is different for them. The leaders should be above physical frailty …” He took a sip of his cordial, and the whole cabin leaned and creaked as he did so. “Ships stink so foul of bilge water and foetid air, it does not give one a chance. Also there’s the heat and stink of the cook room directly under us. In merchant ships they sometimes build the galley in the forecastle … No doubt this does not worry my Lord Admiral, since he is a sailor born.”

“Lord Thomas Howard,” I said, “is a sailor too?”

“Oh, a fair one. Though no fighter. He commanded at the Azores when my cousin, Richard Grenville, fought the Spanish fleet alone. Howard commanded his squadron away and left Grenville to his fate. His action has been defended because he was outnumbered. I have openly said what I thought of his behaviour and there was to have been a duel fought between us, but it was stopped by the Queen.”

The wind was freshening and they were taking in the mizzen which was almost above us, Sir Walter’s cabin being four flights up in the poop.

“I should be happier in a world quite bereft of Howards,” he said broodingly. “Oil and water … we do not mix. But Lord Thomas is much to be preferred to his uncle, Lord Henry Howard. If ever you meet him I commend him to your study.”

“At Wednesday’s council meeting, sir, I thought none spoke with sincerity or candour.”

Perhaps fortunately he did not take the remark as directed at himself.

“Much between the Earl of Essex and the Lord Admiral is jealousy and the question of precedence … But on that I should not cast stones. When I arrived in Plymouth Francis Vere was claiming a position beyond his due, and we had hard words before it was settled.”

The ship lurched and the cabin seemed to turn in a semicircle.

“I know what you are thinking, young Killigrew: that if leaders may endeavour to be above seasickness, they should much more be above petty deceptions and small jealousies, over which they have some control. Well, I can tell you they are not. Greatness is a condition of brain and marrow: it is in no way connected with virtue, which is of the soul. Indeed, looking into my own heart, which is in essence the only one I shall ever know, it seems to me that the very faculties which make for excellence of talent and wit, make also for a deficiency of patience and humility and generosity towards one’s rivals and fellow men. In command I want command, not to dog at the heels of some strutting popinjay raised to his position by accident of birth. If there is equal talent in an equal position I do not acknowledge it, save grudgingly as in the case of Vere and he no less of me. Never equate the great with the good, young Killigrew, or you will suffer deeper disillusions than you are suffering now.”

“I confess I’ve an anxious thought for the success of an expedition in which all the leaders are at dagger’s point.”

“All leaders are always at dagger’s point where there is more than one leader. This is the flaw of so many enterprises. But take heart: some succeed in spite of it. This may; we are a formidable force. Eighteen of the Queen’s galleons, twelve great ships from the City of London, eighteen Hollanders, many transports and victuallers capable of fighting on their own behalf. We may meet the Spanish fleet at sea; if not we shall sweep wide with our pinnaces and fast craft to pick up all small vessels as we go, so that none may turn and fly ahead with news of our coming. This is what I have been waiting for for five years, to avenge my cousin Grenville and the men who died with him! “

I saw much of Sir Walter during the next few days. Confined as he was to his own warship, his restless energies had no suitable outlet. Once his sickness had lessened he was ever about, inspecting the guns, talking with the gunners, plotting our course with Captain Oakes. Warspite was a fine new ship, but as Sir Walter said, already stinking of the foul water which slapped about in her bilges. I would not have liked to be a common sailor, for it was not possible to walk upright between decks, the clearance being not above five feet, and the men slept side by side on the decks with only some fourteen inches of space to lie in. There was little light or air below because, except in the calmest seas, the gun ports had to be kept closed and there was small hope of healthful rest or cleanliness.

So as to be less conspicuous to the casual sail, our fleet spread wide in extended order during the day and drew together at nightfall with the sound of trumpets blown and cheerful shouts from one vessel to another.

The Sunday was wild, and Warspite plunged and groaned like a coach in a muddy lane. Victor fell and sprained his arm. Monday and Tuesday were fair and calm, but this was followed by a gale coming up from the north-west, with rain, on the Wednesday afternoon. Great combers built up under the declining sun and moved after us, overtaking us so that we lurched to the top of them scattering spray and spume over the poop windows, poised high regarding a tossing gray-faced white-lipped world, and then yawed drunkenly into the valley behind. It looked more awful even than it felt, for while we were riding the crests other vessels around us disappeared into pits from which it seemed they would never climb, or swung at such strange angles to the hurrying seas that they seemed about to turn over and sink.

Days passed without sight of land or foreign sail. On Friday, the sea having fallen and the day being fair, Lord Admiral Howard summoned another council aboard his flagship, and Sir Walter embarked on a naval barge, this time taking Victor Hardwicke with him. I was left behind to think of Sue and to dream of battle and spoils. When the council was over, which was not until three in the afternoon, Victor took an early opportunity to whisper one word in my ear. It was “Cadiz”.

The next day three fly boats, two from Amsterdam and one from Middleburgh,were chased and after a fight taken. The captured masters were brought aboard Warspite. Though Sir Christopher Blount, who had been concerned in their capture, tried to have them taken aboard Lioness, he was brusquely overruled by Sir Walter. Three days out of Cadiz, with a cargo of salt and wines, the Flemish master of the Middleburgh boat, entertained in Ralegh’s cabin with greater courtesy than Sir Walter had just extended to his soldier colleague, was forthcoming enough. Cadiz harbour, he said, was full of shipping, there being 20 powerful galleys of the Andalusian squadron, four of the great Apostle galleons of the Guard, two older Portuguese galleons and three of the new treasure frigates which were recently back from their defeat of Drake at Puerto Rico. In addition there were about 40 vessels of a treasure fleet loading cargoes for New Spain. No rumour had yet reached Spain of an English force approaching: it was widely thought that with the death of Drake and the fall of Calais all our energies would be turned towards defence.

News of such import was at once sent to the other admirals, while the three fly boats were searched and some of their cargo seized. That evening the sun was bloody as it set almost behind us.

We were now beating down the Spanish coast, and the following day about six in the morning we sighted the Burlings, which are islands off Vigo the first land we had seen since the Cornish coast.

One night my master had Sir John Wingfield, a tall sombre soldier, and the Earl of Sussex to dine, and after they had gone he stood for a while beside me on the deck staring across at their receding barge.

“The days draw in as we go south,” he said. ‘A fancy if there is one disadvantage to the lower latitudes, it is this. D’you feel homesick for England yet, Killigrew?”

“I have felt so often seasick that there’s been hardly room for the other.”

“Yet you must recall those English June nights when the sun seems barely to set at all; it stays in a blue cloud under the horizon reflecting light until it is time to rise again. There’s a harshness about tropical skies that I find less alluring. Perhaps all Englishmen, wherever they may settle, have an enduring picture in their hearts of soft summer cloud and blossomscented wind and the night skies of midsummer.”

“I wonder how MrKeymis fares in Guiana.”

“I wish we knew. Now there is a rich and lovely country where I would gladly see Englishmen settle … Yet perhaps he is the happiest man who moves no distance from his birth-place or only travels often enough to return and appreciate it the more.”

We climbed up to his cabin. He seemed to want me to go in, so I did so, and he poured two cups of canary. The sea was slight tonight and the creak and dip of the ship, now one was used to it, was not displeasing. Out of the stern windows you could count the lights on the waters; the stars above were like reflections of them.

“Medina Sidonia is Captain-General of Andalusia,” Ralegh said, “and so responsible for the defence of Cadiz. I wonder if he will show a greater capacity for command than he did of the Armada of ‘88. Though sometimes I fancy he has not been fairly judged … Well, we shall soon know …”

“When is the attack planned?”

“If this weather holds we should double Cape St Vincent tomorrow and be off Cadiz by Thursday. I hope the attack will begin on Friday morning, though with caution so much prevailing one can never be certain.”

“Is Lord Essex cautious?”

“Oh, by no means: he is more forward than I. But while we are at sea Lord Admiral Howard’s word is the final one; and I know it is the Queen’s express wish that Lord Essex should not put himself into danger. So the Lord Admiral has a dual and difficult responsibility, to bring off a victory without losing his ships and at the same time to see that his second in command and near equal runs no personal risk.”

One of the lanterns had blown out and another had smoked its glass, so the room was now in semi-shadow. On the table with my cup was Sir Walter’s pipe and a small Guiana idol made of copper and gold which he usually carried in his pocket and which he had been showing to Wingfield. He seldom missed an opportunity of advancing his ideas of Empire.

He said abruptly: “Time was, and not so long since, when the Queen was concerned for my safety, when I was called back to Court each time I adventured away. There were times when I was beside her in all things and this headstrong stripling kept at a distance or disregarded. I confess they are times I look back on with pleasure and regret. They were times … of comradeship with Her Majesty and inwardness with her such as few men have ever known. She is one of the greatest women who have ever lived and at the same time one of the most exacting.”

I said nothing.

“This talk, this scandal, this poison breath that goes about telling of inwardness of person between a woman of 62 and a boy of 29; these late nights together: they are nothing. I know the Queen. I know her well … Of course she permits liberties; I know that even intimacies but never the final intimacy, nor never would. She is the bride of England …”

He walked to one of the lattice windows. His back was bent to look out. The green and gold satin of the cloak drooped like a flag.

“The Court is a cesspool of intrigue and vice. Brother is against brother, friend will cut down friend. But she rides above it in a delicate equipoise. To the outsider it may seem insecure; yet she is firmly held and preserved there by the admiration and trust of five million people. Nor will she ever be dethroned except by …” He paused.

“Except by?”

“Except by Him who can never be denied. She will be 63 this September. Her father died at 57, her grandfather was 53. May the Living God preserve her for many years yet.”

“Amen.”

“D’you know,” he turned from the window, “the intrigue rages about her and grows with each year. Since I came upon this voyage I have been approached by two … gentlemen I’ll not otherwise name them to discover my opinions and whom I will support if the Queen should die. I said thank God Her Majesty still lives and while she has breath in her body I am no other’s servant. She lives, I said, and enjoys health and still dazzles the day so brightly that all rivals look sick beside her! And so they do … James of Scotland, Arabella Stuart, Lord Beauchamp, even the Infanta is suggested, even Henry of Navarrel Faugh, I’d as soon see England a commonwealth without a king as have any of them!”

His shadow flickered across the table as he moved to his bookshelves and began venomously thrusting back the books.

After a while I thought he had forgotten me so I quietly put down my cup and went to the door.

He said sharply, without turning: “The Court is rotten, Maugan,but I would return to it for all its rottenness. Someday you shall go with me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Though you’ve great-uncles there securer placed than I ever was … I wonder they never take you. It will be my first care to place young Wat at Court when he is of age and if I live to see that day.”

“Even despite the rottenness.”

“Even despite that. For once tasted there is no other flavour. I serve the Queen, if she will have me. But over and above that, even though it may be evil, there is at Court the flavour of power, the smell of government; once having been at the centre of the wheel, life on any outer part is empty and void. If this venture goes well I shall resume my old place and perhaps move into a better. God grant us a good fightl …”

On the Tuesday morning we rounded Cape St Vincent, standing close into the land to make the most of the light easterly airs which were stirring there. In Lagos Bay the wind quite dropped and we were hard put to it to make any way at all. Much of the afternoon Sir Walter spent scanning the distant shore for sign of life, for ours was the squadron closest in; but he detected none.

Unknown to us, however, we had at last been seen. At some moment late that forenoon, two families living in caves in the cliff had sent their men into Albufiera with news. From that village officials came to the cliff edge and counted eighty sail moving slowly south towards Faro. Then, on donkeys and mules, over the rough tracks, they sent messengers east, north and west: to Faro and Cadiz, to Lagos and Portimao, to the Duke of Medina Sidonia at Castilnova, to Seville and Xeres and all the towns of Andalusia.

In the meantime we made scarcely measurable progress, creeping towards Cape Santa Maria, the last landward point before the bay of Cadiz. The weather had set in too fair.

On Wednesday the sea was glassy; tiny white clouds gathered about the sun and were sucked up in the heat. Warspite’s water was rancid by now, the beer salt and foul smelling, much of the butter had putrefied and three hundredweight of cheese had to be thrown overboard. More than thirty men were already down with febrile and stomach ailments. In the morning and evening a mist haze gathered and was thick in patches, so that sometimes another ship would appear near us its hull invisible and its great spread of dead sail like a mirage floating on still air. Sounds carried far and echoed and were distorted. A gentleman soldier playing a lute on a transport two furlongs away might have been beside us. After dark, for safety’s sake, an instruction against music and singing was issued, and even shouting was discouraged except for the issue of orders.

This edict bore fruit just after dawn on Friday when, the mist clearing suddenly, a strange ship was discovered among us, between Swiftsure and Alcedo. She was as unaware of us as we had been of her, and instantly tried to acquit herself out of it. However, two shots caused her to change her mind, and her captain was taken aboard Swiftsure and later Ark Royal. This was an Irish ship from Waterford, but one day out of Cadiz, and they were able to assure us that the fleet in the harbour was still as the Flemings had described it.

But the Waterford captain had one other item of news that a rich argosy of ten ships had left Cadiz at the same time as himself, bound for Lisbon. Ralegh came back from the next council in a doubtful temper having been commanded to take Warspite. with Mary Rose, Quittance, Lioness, Truelove, and twelve smaller ships towards the coast in the hope of cutting off this argosy. It was not hard to see how his feelings turned. Here was a chance of early and rich plunder which might be as good as anything to be found later; but, with the wind now picking up again, we had just come round Cape Santa Maria and should be off Cadiz by nightfall. The attack might even be at dawn tomorrow, and in that event we should miss it.

However, nothing offered but to obey. All that day, in fitful easterly breezes catching the great sails and then letting them hang again, we tacked and luffed towards the coast, towards Huelva and the long sandy stretches of the Playa de Castilla. With the wind thus fitful, visibility not above a mile and all crews on the alert for instant action, the dominant sound through the rest of that day and the following night was the creak of timber, the living movements of seasoned oak under varying stress, the plash of water rippling and lapping at the bows, the flap of a sail as it partly filled, the thin whisper of the wind in the shrouds.

Saturday dawn broke much as Friday had darkened, though the wind was a trifle more steady. Then at 9, when we must have been almost at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, Lioness signalledshehad sighted 14 sail on her larboard bow, and all canvas was bent to give chase.

We knew we were close inshore but the coast was not visible. About midday we saw a handsome ship some two miles ahead of us a carrack of five decks and a sitting target for a powerful vessel like Warspite if ever we got within range. But this was almost the last break in an overcast sky and a choppy sea, and only Lioness, fitfully seen ahead of us, reported she was keeping the quarry in view.

About three Sir George Carew came aboard from Mary Rose, with Captain Gyfford of Quittance, and Gfflord said he felt it his duty to report, from his knowledge of this coast, that we were hazarding our ships by sailing so close inshore. Sir Walter replied that where the Portuguese led we could follow, but it was clear that Gyfford’s words weighed with him. As commander of this squadron he would be held responsible for any loss or damage. Capturing a convoy of rich prizes in normal weather was one thing; risking shipwreck in a fog to catch them was another. After some little while longer he called off the chase.

The two officers were leaving in Sir Walter’s troy when the curtain of cloud and mist briefly lifted and five foreign vessels were to be seen barely a league away. One was the carrack, the others were all sizeable vessels. We stared at the ships: they were clearly outlined; but before Ralegh could issue an order, the cloud came down and blotted them out. We stood and peered and Sir Walter paced and muttered, but there was no second view. The fog grew thicker every minute. Sir George Carew made a move to leave Warspite, but Sir Walter stayed them hoping for a clearance.

None came. Carew said: “If I do not leave now I shall be here until dawn, Walter. Mary Rose is lost to sight, and I shall only regain her by good fortune.”

“Stay willingly,” Ralegh said. “I’d not have you go. This may lift around sunset. What d’you think, Gyfford?”

“I doubt we shall see more today, sir. These fogs come up and cling around the foot of Spain: I believe it is something to do with the Straits and the nearness of Africa. If it thicken more, no one will dare move, so we shall be no worse off when dawn comes.”

“I’m not so sure. Fear is a great spur. They’ve seen us as surely as we’ve seen them.”

Our nearest neighbourwas Gyfford’s Quittance, a sister ship of Crane which Belemus had visited in Falmouth Haven; she was scarcely more than a cable’s length astern but by now she could only be seen fitfully as the fog swirled round.

“I’m not for giving up,” Sir Walter said sharply. “Go back to your ships if you can still find them. We’ll ride it out here until dark. If there’s no improvement by then I have a mind to go and seek out this carrack. She if any will be loth to hazard herself upon the rocks.”

“How seek her out without greater risk at night?” Gyfford asked.

“I’ll take a few men and look for her in my troy. Daylight fog defeats us all. In the night lights show.”

Sir George glanced at his kinsman. “I don’t at all like that. It is no advantage to preserve the ships and hazard the Admiral. Besides if you found her, what could you do?”

“Your troy won’t carry much upwards of a dozen men. You’d be slaughtered, sir,” said Gyfford.

“That I’d try to avert. You, Captain Gyfford, must keep in sight of Warspite till dark. We’ll signal you when we start and we’ll show a double lantern on the troy. You shall follow. Quittance has a shallow draught and is unlikely to run on the rocks if she keeps close to our light. Lioness shall follow Quittance in a like manner, and Truelove can come after. Warspite will remain here with Mary Rose and the rest of the fleet.”

“Ah, now ~

“No, George, we risk no galleons. Three lighter vessels can accomplish all we need.”

My friendship with Victor Hardwicke had become a singularly affectionate one, but we came near to blows over this adventure. In the end Ralegh, staring coldly at us both and telling us this was no childish game, said we might both go with him.

It was a small party. Ourselves, a ship’s bosun called Warnett, Gunner Johns, and four of a crew. Captain Oakes did his best to prevent the expedition, but Sir Walter would have no truck with objections.

When we left the breeze had steadied from the south-east. We had to rely on it for direction and hope it did not change, for otherwise we should fall far off course.

We went slow for fear of losing our followers. We could not see Quittance, only her light winking like a widow’s lantern behind a curtain. Ahead all was dark.

And it stayed dark. Our course we reckoned was almost due north, following the line of the land. Sir Walter sat in the bows of the tiny boat, his velvet cloak wrapped round him; he spoke little and we followed his example, only staring. The sea was slight but occasionally choppy as if disturbed by shallows. Behind us, we knew, Quittance and the others were taking soundings. Once or twice sea-birds fluttered across our path.

It grew cold. The sea mist cloyed and clung. We began to lose touch with the light behind and took another reef in our sail. About four Victor opened a bag he had brought and passed round food and ale. Then we saw a light ahead. Food and drink were forgotten.

Gunner Johns made the agreed signal to the ship behind, but in the thick conditions it seemed unlikely they had seen it. The light ahead blinked and wavered and became two. Warnett put the helm over. We were closing rapidly, but then it seemed the look-out on the other ships must have seen us, for we heard distant cries, and both lights went out.

“Keep her steady as she goes.”

Victor fidgeted with the hilt of his sword.

“We’re a sitting target with this light.”

Now for some minutes there was no more talk. For all we knew we were passing between the vessels we had sighted; or we might be leading Quittance and the others into a trap.

Sir Walter signalled Warnett to have the sail lowered. We coasted gently along and lost way and began to wallow in the lightly lapping waves. Behind us Quittance’s misty light flickered and disappeared.

The fog thinned, and with eyes long accustomed to the dark we saw a vessel on our lee. She was high pooped and foreign, a darker shape in a grey wilderness of water.

Almost at once a shot was fired at us. It was from a light gun, and the splash of the ball was not above 20 yards short. At the same time the vessel turned away and began to disappear into the mist.

Warnett put over his helm to follow, and there was a scramble to raise the sail. Victor waved into the darkness behind him, but there was nothing there.

“We’ve lost touch with Quittance ‘

“Hark!” said Ralegh.

We listened in silence.

“I can hear the breaking of waves,” he said.

“Aye, that’s true,” said a sailor. “Over there.”

We listened again. There was silence for a minute or two and then out of the drab waste ahead came a strange sound like a tree crashing to the ground, like a load of slate being tipped.

Warnett said: “She’s struck, sir.” Without being instructed he told the sailor to lower sail.

Victor said again: “We’ve lost touch with Quittance.”

Out of the darkness ahead we now heard clearly the breaking waves. And then the cries and shouts of men. They sounded like sea birds circling a cliff face.

“Go about,” said Sir Walter, “or we shall be ashore ourselves.”

Till dawn we stayed in the vicinity, cold and blind. Then as day came we made out through the lifting mists a dark, tall coast and a ship fast upon the rocks near the mouth of an inlet. As the sun broke through the fog we descried Quittance standing far out. Captain Gyfford told us he had followed until the lead showed 3 fathoms under his keel. Lioness and Truelove had lost contact and were nowhere to be seen. There were three dark blurs to the north, but they were others of the Portuguese fleet. By the time we had been picked up they were out of sight.

On the deck of Quittance there was a hurried council of war. If we followed we might catch them, but a single crompster had hardly the mettle to take on three or more armed merchantmen; and a chase extending over a whole day would keep the rest of the squadron immobilised and out of the main attack. Sir Walter decided we should seek out Warspite and the rest.

We gained contact about nine, and the whole squadron turned south. That day we made slow progress and through the night. At six the following morning we sighted Cadiz floating like a white ghost city in a pool of blue mist. As we drew nearer the white domes and turrets solidified, the high Moorish walls rooted themselves in shelving rock and sea. And we saw that the attack on the great port had just begun.

CHAPTER FIVE

The city of Cadiz is situated on a long thin strip of land like a tongue in the mouth of a dog. It lolls a little out of the mouth as if panting in the sun.

Before this tongue our fleet was assembled, a hundred odd ships from galleons down to caravels, a sight not to be forgotten, tall ship behind tall ship; a first line of them, interspersed with the transports, from which soldiers in full armour were being loaded into boats to make a landing on the beach at the tip of the tongue, opposite a heavily guarded fort, San Sebastian. Drawn up in the shallow water beneath the fort were six Spanish galleys waiting to dispute the landing.

As the sun climbed the wind was freshening from the southwest, and I think Ralegh could not quite believe his eyes at what he saw.

“This this is madness! ” he shouted vehemently to Carew, who had rejoined him from Mary Rose. “If it had been begun at four, before dawn broke, it might have had a prospect of success. But this is not a surprise attack ~ They have been warned, they’re ready! A frontal assault in this sea … Do they relish sending troops to certain death?”

Carew seemed surprised at the outburst and frowned shorewards. “It will be a hard fight, but no doubt we shall prevail.”

“I had heard nothing of this t We were going in by seal It cannot be sense to make a frontal attack with troops on a well defended shore … By the living God, I’ll wager they have fallen out between themselves, Essex and the Howards, and some question of prestige is involved!”

“It would not be surprising,” Carew muttered.

“No, it would not be surprising. But if we can intervene we may yet stop this bloody sacrifice.” intervened Nonsense.

~ It’s too late. No one will listen. Essex is the best of them, and he’s stubborn as a mule “

“Well, the mule must be moved! I’ll go at once, and you shall come with me … Lookl Look therel What did I tell you!”

One of the boats leaving the protection of Due Repulse and crowded with men had been hit by the rising swell and had capsized. Many of the men in it, weighted down as they were with armour, sank like stones. Others clung desperately to the upturned keel or floundered for a moment or two before disappearing for ever. A dozen or more swam to the next boat and clambered aboard it. That, pulled violently down and swung off its course by the swimmers, turned broadside on to the waves and likewise capsized.

But Ralegh was already gone. I was after him to the side, but Victor and Sir George were before me and the boat was pushed off before I could argue. So I did not see what followed and only heard it from Victor after.

“He went aboard Due Repulse and bearded Essex in front of all his officers. Walter can truly look like the devil when he chooses. He demanded to know what change of plan this was which had come of a sudden while he was away and how it could be justified since its nature jeopardised the success of the expedition. Essex replied angrily that it was all the fault of the Lord Admiral, who insisted that the town must be taken before he risked his ships in the narrow waters of the harbour. Walter said Drake had disproved such timidity. Essex said, ah, yes, but Drake was dead and none like him commanded here. Thereupon they continued arguing but in a gradually more friendly frame, and while they argued Essex sent word that the landings might be stayed.

“Then Walter stormed out and went to see the Lord Admiral. I was not with him there but remained in the boat. In forty minutes he was out and we were rowing back to Due Repulse. Somehow I know not how by violence of manner, by force of character, by cogency of argument, he has got his way. We are going in by sea, as first arranged.”

“But we have not yet gone in.”

“No; we’ve missed the tide, and next will see us in only an hour before nightfall. Walter himself advised against a night attack.”

“So we force the harbour tomorrow at dawn?”

“At dawn.”

“In what order?”

“I have forgotten. All I know is that we lead.”

I slept fitfully. During the night there was cannon fire from time to time between the Spanish galleons in the mouth of the harbour and the leading English ships, notably Mary Rose which under Carew’s urging had edged nearest to them and to the shore batteries. All night there was a subtle movement and manoeuvring of the English ships, like men jostling at the start of a race, each captain trying to gain the best position for the assault on the morrow.

I woke a dozen times staring at the stars and waiting for them to wane. At last a faint blueing of the sky was enough and I was up and had buckled on my breastplate before Victor woke. We only just reached the deck as Warspite weighed anchor. It was done slyly, in silence, without fanfare or command; we slipped away as if to some lover’s tryst. But the silent ships around us had been silently watching; they were not to be left that way and we were by only some three minutes the first to slip off. The sails of Carew’s Mary Rose came rattling down, and as he moved close after us he was followed by Robert Southwel1 in Lion, he by Clifford in Dreadnought, then Crosse in Swiftsure and Lord Thomas Howard in Nonpareil.

During the night the Spanish fleet, which first had been drawn up opposite Fort St Philip which fort formed the north-easterly bastion of the town of Cadiz had withdrawn a mile or more and were still withdrawing. Soon they would reach the narrow mouth of the inner harbour. Behind them the rich treasure fleet was retiring towards the Port Royal pool, beyond which there was no further retreat.

To reach the Spanish galleons therefore the English ships had first to run the gauntlet of shore fire from Fort St Philip and Cadiz. As the sun came up the wind almost dropped, so that even with all sail set we only drifted gently forward with the tide.

The first ship to draw a concentrated fire upon herself was not ours but a smaller one, Rainbow, under Sir Francis Vere, who, aware no doubt of his shallower draught, was making along in the shoal waters nearer the shore in an attempt to be first in action. At this Sir Walter bit at his gloves in anger and curtly demanded of Captain Oakes if he had no studsails he could set, else we should be leading the attack from behind.

It was clear now that the Spanish were going to stand and fight at the narrowest point of the harbour entrance, between Puntal and Matagorda. Here the water was in apparent width perhaps six or seven cable lengths, but the fair channel was very narrow and almost spanned by the length of four ships. Here the four great galleons, San Andrea, San Felipe, San Tomaso and San Mateo, were coming head to stern athwart our passage. Behind were the two big Portuguese galleons and the three powerful Italian armed merchantmen; and in their rear a cluster of smaller ships. Three frigates were taking up their station to our left, while a cluster of galleys lurking under the shelter of Fort St Philip were also retreating, firing at Rainbow and keeping pace with her.

Sir Walter need not have gnawed his glove. Rainbow had her sails shot to ribbons, and as soon as the majestic Warspite came within likely range the galleys and the shore batteries concentrated on us instead. This pleased Ralegh greatly. He stood on the high poop in his purple cloak, staring across at the shore and presently called buglers to him. The shore fire was just falling short of us, the shot sending up spouts of water twenty to thirty yards away.

“We must not waste our powder, so let us use breath instead. Blow us a fanfare each time they fire.”

So the four buglers stood on the poop in line beside him, and each time the shore batteries fired they blew a blast. The sailors and gunners, who had not liked our refusal to answer back, were heartened by this and their cheers followed the bugle notes. Even so, they still winced and ducked when the shore cannon fired, for any moment we might drift within range.

Meantime three galleys, more mobile with their shallow draught and spidery oars, had crept out of the shelter of the shore and trained their sakers on us. At the first blast a shot tore the rigging above our heads; a dozen thumped into the iron-hard oak of the ship’s side; one landed between two of our largest cannon, missing their crews and skidding the eighteen paces into the sea at the other side.

“We must look to these wasps,” Sir Walter said. “Give them a benediction, Mr Johns.”

At once the gunners were busy, loading their cannon, priming them, waiting the order to fire. It came, and the ship shuddered and veered; the rattling explosions hurt one’s ears.

The shots straddled one of the galleys. Their return fire was less accurate, though splinters flew from our fore-yard. We fired again, and one of the heavy 32 lb. balls from a demi-cannon hit the central galley amidships. A halfdozen oars speared upwards like splinters. The galleys turned away.

Amid the cheers and shouts from our men I heard Captain Oakes shout: “In five minutes we’ll be in range of the San FeRpe, sir. We draw more water than she does. I’m not sure of the shoal here.”

“Hold on your course. It was she who first boarded the Revenge.”

“Have we leave to board her?”

“No, by God, no, that irks me. Explicit command not to hazard a Queen’s ship. Boarding’s for the flyboats. But we have shot.”

Over to our right l~ssex’s ship, Due Repulse, having gone to the succour of Rainbow, had now overrun her and was in furious conflict with the shore batteries. The ships behind us were no longer in line but had spread out so that at the moment of conflict Warspite was like the point of a spear, Nonpareil and Lion on our starboard quarter and Mary Rose and Dreadnought on our left.

San Felipe fired. Flames and smoke belched from her decks as twenty guns exploded in succession across the narrowing strip of water. A half-dozen of the culverin shot hit us above the waterline, the bigger shot fell short. We were now about 500 yards away.

“We’re in danger of taking the ground, sir! ” shouted Oakes. “Best anchor and wait for the flood.”

“If we run aground the flood will float us. We must use our major armament.”

A half-dozen balls aimed high and at random flew over our heads. Some desultory fire was also coming from the frigates, and Mary Rose engaged them.

“If we take the ground, sir, we’ll lose our place and fall out of the fight!”

“By the living God we must make another cable’s length! They’re higher built than we are why should we draw more water?”

Our bow chasers went into action. Another discharge from San Felipe: this time more than half the shots struck us.

“Very good,” said Ralegh. “Anchor now if you must.”

Captain Oakes at once bellowed orders, the men on the yards began hauling up the sails, chains rattled. The other battleships were not slow to follow our example; they seemed in no way more anxious than ourselves to risk a murderous small arms fire without the ultimate sanction of a boarding to follow.

An artist in imagination and perception of danger, Ralegh could yet steel his nerves to accept and even welcome peril: the very drama of the battle seemed to appeal to him. While men fired guns and worked furiously loading and fusing them and while sailors ran ducking for cover about the decks, he stood on the high poop with Captain Oakes who would gladly have moved, I could see watching the course of the fight. Sometimes he would turn away from the belching guns of San Felipe and scan the sea and landscape to make sure that no other English ship would steal a march on him by slipping along in the shoal water nearer shore.

Warspite was suffering. Her main yard had been splintered and two of her guns were out of action. There had also been heavy damage to the captain’s cabin and the poop windows. We could not see what we had done in return, for the whole of the super-structure of the San Felipe was fringed with drifting white smoke from the cannon fire. Amidships our guns had scored many hits and some of their main armament had stopped firing.

The channel was here so narrow that Warspite remained the spearhead of the attack on the big galleons while our four battleship escort clustered closely on our larboard and starboard quarters, exchanging fire with the other galleons and themselves being raked by the lighter fire of the enemy frigates and eight galleys. All the English ships suffered in some degree by being almost bows on to the enemy and not able to deploy all their heavy guns as the Spaniards were doing.

No English flyboats laden with soldiers were yet to be seen; but a new situation was developing away to our right. The remaining galleys under Puntal had stood and fought Rainbow and Due Repulse for best part of an hour; but the arrival of Vanguard with a halfdozen ships of London had overborne them and the last of the galleys broke and fled for the protection of the Apostle galleons. Now Rainbow and Due Repulse, with some eddying shore current of air to help, were following them and coming into the area of the main battle. Rainbow, still well inshore, was clearly intent on outflanking the Apostles and thus taking over the leadership of the attack: Due Repulse was heading straight for us.

“So ~ ” said Ralegh. “This is not to be borne! We’ll see what Essex has to say.”

He spoke to me, and I went with him gladly. Movement now helped to keep thought in check, to relieve tightened muscles, sweat on hands, the griping of fear.

Sir Walter went quickly down the rope ladder to his troy, his cloak billowing like an opening flower. Four men sat waiting to row. As I joined him a heavy ball struck the sea and drenched us with water.

Due Repulse looked enormous as we neared her. Fortunately the wind had left her sails and she was only drifting forward under her own momentum; Sir Walter clutched a dangling ladder as we went past and climbed rapidly up it. I was too late for the ladder but caught a rope which bruised me against the side of the ship.

When I got on deck hot words had already been exchanged: Essex had taken my master to task for anchoring at a distance from the enemy; Ralegh was saying in a biting voice: “I am a soldier, my lord, and do not like these long bowls any better than you; but since I’m debarred from boarding I’d more consideration for my men than to subject them to an endless small arms fire at close quarters while we wait for the flyboats. Where are the flyboats? My Lord Admiral was lavish with his promises.”

The Earl of Essex was in white satin under his armour. “The boarding parties were promised when the main guns were silenced. As yet they’re not silenced.”

“They will be; but not before Warspite is holed and sunk, as things go now. I ask your Lordship’s leave to board if the flyboats are not here within twenty minutes. Better to lose a Queen’s ship that way than the other.”

Essex stared through the forest of rigging towards the combat he was approaching. “I cannot give you leave, Sir Walter, but I’ll not stop you. Indeed, I’m tempted to join you when the time comes.”

Ralegh laughed. There was no mirth in it but a sudden release of tension. “In that I’d be greatly honoured. Give me leave to return to the fight.”

“We shall be there as soon as you.”

We clambered down the ladder again, while the guns of the Due Repulse opened fire at one of the frigates. In our tiny troy we danced away from the side of the battleship and four strong oars took us ahead of her and back to Warspite. In the interval of our being away a cannon ball had struck the high poop where we had been standing and had taken the leg off the sailor who had been there to relay the captain’s orders to the helmsman. Also Lord Thomas Howard, seeing Sir Walter absent, had ordered Nonpareil to weigh anchor and had edged ahead of Warspite into the position of honour.

Before Sir Walter, feverish with anger at this, could rail at Oakes for his negligence, Due Repulse came sliding into the line, swinging her stern with the tide. She narrowly missed Mary Rose, who was in combat with San Andrea, but could not right herself in time and crashed into the larboard quarter of Dreadnought. This broke the line and for ten minutes neither of the great ships concerned was able to concentrate its fire on the enemy.

Rainbow, with Sir Francis Vere, was now coming swiftly up from the right. Sir Walter ordered Oakes to weigh anchor and at all costs to get ahead of Non pareil. We began to drift nearer the enemy.

As we did so a heavy cannon ball split our foremast just above the main yard, and the shrouds fell over the forward chasers putting them out of action.

Drifting with the tide, we came up with Nonpareil; then, to the wolfish satisfaction of my master, dropped anchor only by the bows so that we swung broadside on to the Spanish, facing them at close quarters and almost blocking the rest of our fleet from direct contact with the enemy. Rainbow had now come up alongside Nonpareil and thrown a rope aboard her to warp herself into position for the fight. A hail of shot swept across the deck of Warspite, killing men and disabling guns.

Sir Walter was looking back. Some small vessels, a part of the Dutch squadron were advancing, but not the flyboats. Then Victor drew his cousin’s attention to the fact that Rainbow had thrown out another hawser, this time to Warspite and by means of it was stealthily hauling herself into the leading position.

Sir Walter shouted in his high angry voice: “Cut that line!” And it was cut, so that Rainbow fell away and drifted off.

It was we three who bore the brunt: Warspite, Nonpareil and Rainbow; all the others behind. The Queen’s flag was in ribbons; men lay about our decks groaning; half our guns were disabled, others fired through the fallen shrouds. Acrid smoke clouded out the sun.

San Felipe had suffered worse than we. Only two demi-cannon still fired; there were great holes in her sides and her upper decks had been swept clear of men.

“Loose that anchor!” Ralegh shouted. “Get a warp aboard her!“

He climbed on the rail and waved his sword as a signal to Essex and Vere. A thin cheer sounded above the noise of the guns. Both the other vessels answered his signal and began to drift forward with Warspite to collide with the enemy.

A great rushing and thunder-clap of noise; Ralegh was no longer standing but was lying with his purple cloak spreadeagled like a broken flower; Victor was down too but was crawling to his knees.

I went to Sir Walter. He was conscious but there was blood welling down one leg.

“Lie still!” I shouted.

“Out of my way!” He tried to get to his feet.

“Let me see!“

“It will wait. Prepare to board!”

“You must stop the blood “

“Damn you!” He was on his feet again. “Out of my way! Prepare to board ~ “

The Spaniards, seeing our advance and having suffered much, were giving up the fight. San Felipe was the first to slip her cable, the others followed. Some sort of sail was let go on such masts as remained and the four great galleons began to drift into the port, while the Portuguese and the Levanters retreated behind them.

Then it was seen that Oakes’s concern for Perspire was not mistaken, for within two minutes San Felipe and San Mateo had both grounded. Then San Andrea in a desperate effort to avoid a similar fate, collided with San Tomaso, and they both took the ground. Firing at the guns ceased and sailors abandoned their posts; dead and wounded men were left lying on the decks; San Felipe had taken on a dangerous list towards us so that all that happened could be seen. Pieces of ordnance slid across the decks, and some out of their ports into the water; men fell with them and others jumped.

Ralegh was holding his leg trying to staunch the blood and at the same time shouting:“Boarding parties away! Boarding parties awayI”

I snatched at the shirt of the dead sailor beside me and ripped it up; I went to Sir Walter and bound his leg above the knee where the wound was; he could barely suffer to be held; Nonpareil behind us was putting out small boats, some laden with soldiers, some to pick up the struggling men in the water.

A flicker of flames showed amidships of San Felipe, either a chance spark or the Spanish Admiral had resolved his ship should not be taken. By the time I had tied the knot with a stick to wind it tighter, one deck was blazing.

Now all were abandoning her for fear of an explosion; men leaped into the water in scores, some wounded, some already alight; a few tried to get down by rope ladder; dozens jumped into the water and broke their legs or arms on the scarcely hidden mud-bank; they fell from all quarters.

San Tomaso was also alight and the horror repeated; the other two galleons still kept up some resistance but half their crews were in flight. Many boats the English had put out to capture the galleons were given over to succour.

Sailors from Rainbow and from our ship were swarming up San Andrea to try to capture her unburned, but so far none had been able to board San Felipe. Just then a pinnace from Nonpareil shot through a gap in the struggling swarming sea and threw a line aboard. Men swarmed up, intent to put out the fire; but the feared explosion took place on the main gun deck of the flagship and one of the masts blazing like a firebrand fell and hit the pinnace square amidships, killing five and burning others. In seconds the pinnace herself was aflame and sinking; men plunged in the water and swam beside their Spanish enemies towards the nearest boat.

Now a group of Dutch flyboats came on the scene, darting into the swarming channel, and with pistols, hatchets and knives began to slaughter the Spanish soldiers and sailors as they swam and struggled in the water. Too many years of cruelty in the Lowlands, too many memories of suffering and massacre, too many relatives helplessly murdered in Antwerp and elsewhere, were bearing their grim fruit. Nor did the Dutch take kindly to opposition from their allies, and ugly scenes grew in the melee.

It looked as if San Andrea and San Tomaso would be ours unburned; boarding parties were already on the enemy decks. Essex, standing plain on the top deck of Due Repulse had been joined by Sir Francis Vere; they were turning their thoughts to an assault on the town. Soldiers were being mustered in flyboats and transports. The admiral and the general went down to join them, and themselves embarked on Essex’s barge. No signal came to Warspite to assist or to participate, but Ralegh ordered the two regiments aboard Warspite to join the landing fleet, and then collapsed in the chair Bell had brought up for him.

“The treasure ships … Force our way through now and take them. Nothing to stop us a few frigates all in disorder. We should strike now.”

“Well, they cannot get away, sir,” Captain Oakes said, “except through this narrow channel which we command.”

“These canals beyond Carraca? They are deep enough?”

“Oh, by no means. No ship of any draught could attempt it.”

“They’re moving offs” said Victor, pointing to the transports. “Hark at them.”

The landing flotilla was leaving the ships and rowing towards the beach. In the van was Essex’s barge with his banner flying, and a dozen gentlemen in armour escorting him. Sir Francis Vere as head of the land forces stood at his side. Behind came a group of boats in three lines abreast in the most orderly manner. All was silence, no cheering, no trumpets, no firing, nothing but the regular roll and beat of drums. Oars kept pace with the beat, and at minute intervals the drums stopped and the oars stopped; with a preliminary roll they would begin again. There must have been 2,000 men in the boats.

This was a discipline quite different from the individual bravery of the naval commanders; this strange ominous advance was the stranger in contrast with the wild indiscriminate sea battle.

Ralegh said suddenly: “Victor, go at once and see my Lord of Essex. Ask him to grant me permission to send forces to capture the treasure pota while the army mounts its attack on Cadiz … Take Maugan with you.”

“What of yourself?” I said. “This wound …”

“It’s nothing mortal. The surgeon will see to it. Go. I want the answer.”

The water we were rowed through was littered with burning fragments; rags and spars and corpses drifted past. A hand clasped a wooden staff but the owner of the hand was gone. A hat with its soaked feather trailing; bloodstained sailcloth; bubbles of vomit.

The army had a start on us; they were making for a sandy bay just below Fort Puntal, but no fire was coming from the fort. As we caught up the last line of transports Essex had already jumped ashore and his standard bearer was beside him; regiments began to disembark and quickly assembled in rigid lines on the sand. We had to swing wide to avoid the transports, and by the time we were ashore most of the troops had landed.

We ran towards Essex, who was surrounded by a group of officers, and it was several minutes before we could gain his attention.

Victor saluted. “Your Lordship, Sir Walter Ralegh presents his respectful compliments and asks permission to dispatch a force to capture the treasure pota while it is still undefended.”

Essex was flushed, his eyes a-glitter with success. “We do not yet know what number shall be needed to capture the city. That must be our first thought.”

“My lord,” said a captain, “I submit that a force be detached nevertheless. Seizure of the city may take days.”

“It may or it may not, Monson. Splitting our power now may just mean a failure on both fronts.”

“Let Raleghtake it on, sir. He and Crosse and two other ships could overcome the resistance and put skeleton crews aboard.”

Essex glanced along the lines of soldiers, standing in their breastplates and helmets and waiting for the next order. “Where is the Lord Admiral? He should be here soon with the rest of the troops. I cannot grant anyone permission to override our original instructions.”

Sir Francis Vere said: “He came up in his pinnace just before I left. I think he’ll be with Lord Thomas Howard.”

“Very well. You go, Monson and you, Ashley. Convey the Rear Admiral’s request and mine also that a sufficient force be dispatched to deal with the Rota. Tell the Lord Admiral also that we wait his reinforcements minute by minute.”

“Have we your permission to stay with you, my Lord?” Victor asked.

“What? Yes, yes. Monson, send a man to warspite with this message. But remember, I give no sanction to Ralegh. Let it come from the Lord Admiral or not at all! “

Orders rapped out along the lines and the soldiers began to advance towards the city of Cadiz, led by the Earl of Essex with his guant tireless stride. It was grim going. The sun was still high and the day at its hottest; the sand dunes that confronted us gave back one step for every two we climbed our armour became insufferable, our muscles leaden, sweat soaked us and soaked us again, men stumbled and all but fell from the heat.

But we got to the top of the last ridge unchallenged. Before us to our right some half-mile away were the walls of Cadiz. A regiment of the enemy was assembled outside the walls, flags waving, horsemen on their flanks and infantry posted ahead to delay our advance.

I could see Vere urging some plan on Essex. What little I had seen of this dark-faced, sardonic man gave me already to understand why he had been a force in the Netherlands.

We began to advance, first over the soft fiery sand, then athwart the shore road to the city. A battalion of 200 men under Sir John Wingfield was thrown out ahead of us while the rest paused and waited. It seemed that Wingfield’s task was to drive in the advance infantry so that a full-scale battle could develop; but he far exceeded his orders and burst right through to the main body of the enemy. Then realisinghis mistake, and finding himself in danger of being surrounded, he ordered a hasty and undisciplined retreat.

The Spanish, encouraged beyond themselves by their success, counter-attacked with vigour, driving Wingfield’s men in a rabble before them. But after a while at a bugle note Wingfield’s forlorn 200 suddenly rallied again, falling into line with a discipline strange in routed men, and another battalion under Sir Matthew Morgan violently attacked the enemy flanks, now themselves exposed. Then Vere sounded the advance for the rest of his army.

It was one of the oldest stratagems in the world of war, but once again it succeeded. The Spanish line broke and fled, horse and foot together, towards the city gates. Here true panic took hold, for the wave of men first to reach the gates crowded in, and then, seeing us so close on the heels of this cavalry, ordered the gates shut, so that some four or five hundred of their own men were left outside. These, abandoning their equipment and their horses, began to swarm up ropes lowered for them. However, the gates were again opened to admit the flood and slammed shut just before the first English reached them.

Panting, swooning from the heat and the fatigue of battle, the group of leading officers paused within musket shot of the gates.

“All but successful, Vere ~ ” Essex shouted. “In another minute we’d have had ‘em! By God, I had no thought to attempt the city yet …”

“It’s too strong to attempt here,” Sir Francis said. “But I’ll wager it’s not so well guarded all the way; I suggest we take a battalion each, you to the right, my lord, I to the left. These fortifications are part new and part old. They’ll have their weak points.”

“It would be splendid to capture the place before Howard comes,” Essex muttered.

“Have a care for yourself, my lord. The Queen will not be pleased with us if we return without you.”

So they parted. We attached ourselves to the battalion led by Essex. Some twenty gaily-armoured gentlemen surrounded him, but he topped them all, impulsive, ardent, arrogant.

The fortifications of Cadiz consisted of a deep ditch with a high wall behind punctuated by defence towers. As we made our progress round, the defendants were firing at us.

After five minutes Essex stopped. Part of the city wall was ruinous here, and the earth thrown up from the ditch made a mountable slope to reach the top of the wall. But knowing the weakness, the Spaniards were guarding it with a line of musketeers, and one of the defence towers overlooked it.

Essex said: “I think we shall find nothing more enticing than this, gentlemen. When I give the word, follow me.”

“No, sir!” said Captain Savage. “With respect it is not a place for your Lordship to lead. As your Captain-Lieutenant I claim that privilege.”

Essex hesitated, while the officers and gentlemen crowded round him, claiming his attention. “So be it, then. Savage and you, Evans and you, Bagnal take five men each. But we’ll follow on your heels. Wait. Musketeers ! prepare to fire! “

Shots from the tower were already peppering round us. Eighteen soldiers gathered in three groups. Then the musketeers discharged three volleys at the defenders. Savage shouted and the men rushed forward, first down into the ditch, then clambering wildly up the broken earth towards the city wall. Two men fell but the others gained the wall. Savage at the parapet killed a man and stood with sword raised defying the fire of the city.

Essex and twenty more followed, and we were in that number; behind came a platoon of pikemen, and then the musketeers. It was a hard and anxious scramble: had I been alone I should have been much more afraid.

I gained the city wall ahead of Victor and just behind Essex himself: in the street below us a man driving a water cart stared up open-mouthed; a line of washing hung from the balcony opposite; on a further rooftop two children played beside a wooden cradle; a mangy dog was eating some refuse in the alley below.

We were in no good place here: the Spaniards had been driven from this part of the wall, but our position was still dominated by the tower to our right; also there was another tower, invisible from below, set back but within musket range. There was no way down to the street except by jumping, and that little short of 20 feet.

Two more of our men had been wounded. Captain Bagnal, one of Vere’s veterans, now assembled the musketeers into two lines, one firing through the other, and ordered them to concentrate on the tower. This they did with such accuracy that the tower ceased to fire.

“I do not like this drop,” Essex said. “Carrying this armour, one is certain to break a leg.”

“I’ll try,” I said, and began to unbuckle my breastplate, but Lieutenant Evans sat on the edge of the wall, threw down his sword, and slithered and fell into the street. For a moment after the clatter of his armour he lay still, but before two Spaniards could seize him he got to his knees and reached for his sword. Another English officer with a whoop followed, and then three more. I went over the edge, breastplate and all, and the ground hit me a great blow.

By the time two dozen were down the street was clear of the enemy. There was still some desultory fire from the other tower; Essex remained hesitating on the wall, though only one of those who had jumped was rolling over in pain. Victor landed almost in my arms and collapsed in a heap.

Then I heard cheering farther along, unmistakably English in character. Essex raised his head and thereafter made no attempt to jump. Vere and his veterans had forced the gate.

CHAPTER SIX

The streets were narrow as slits, and the Spanish were fighting for each house. In some cases the women had carried boulders up on to the flat roofs and toppled these down as we advanced. It was murderous work, sometimes by musket but more often hand to hand.

There were about sixty of us to begin, led by Essex, but in no time the narrow streets split us up, like water trickling through a honeycomb; we were all making towards the centre of the city but in different channels and at different speeds.

Victor and I found ourselves with Captain Samuel Bagnal and a Captain Carey and six others. In the streets to our left Sir John Wingfield had appeared with a dozen men. To our right was Evans. In our second street three Spanish pikemen had overturned a vegetable cart; behind them were eight civilians armed with staves and axes. We only had one musketeer in our band, and as he raised his gun it was knocked from his hand by a great earthenware pot dropped from a window.

Bagnal bent down and picked up one of the big oranges tying in the gutter. He bit into it, spat out the peel and took a mouthful of juice and sweet pulp. Then he leaped at the barrier, pulling at the cart’s end to swing it round. A pikeman lunged and wounded Bagnal in the shoulder; Bagnal stabbed the man through the throat and sat astride the upturned cart. Three other soldiers joined him and I followed. The civilians did not run but charged us as we climbed, a soldier had his helmet and head cleft open. I thrust at a civilian with my sword; it went in and my wrist jarred as the steel struck some bone. The man’s eyes went white and he collapsed, pulling me with him. In a welter of arms and legs I dragged my sword out; we were over the barrier. Carey was driving two men back and the rest fled.

Bagnal smeared the blood down his doublet sleeve, and sword in hand stalked to the end of the alley. Three men attacked him. He was stabbed again in the side, but Carey was up with him and Victor and others, and the three men were killed. One of our men was shot through the head from a window.

Another street like the last, except for some acacia trees at the end. Spanish soldiers at windows had it under a cross-fire. Bagnal ducked into a doorway, smashed the lattice with his elbow to get a view, and then fired his pistol at one of the windows while two of his own men crept up in the shadow of the opposite wall. They broke in the doors with their pikes and disappeared inside.

There was much firing down a cross alley where Wingfield was engaging a group of Spaniards. A donkey came trotting riderless along this alley, its little knockkneed legs rubbing against each other; as it turned the corner it spilled its burden of dried palmetto leaves and stopped to sniff at something in the gutter.

Bagnal beckoned to me and we moved on down the street followed by three of the others. At the trees the street split left and right. Since Wingfield was in a pitched battle to our left we turned right and came into a tiny patio with awnings still out, a well in the middle with pink geraniums, two mules tethered and a dog barking. The heat everywhere was overpowering, and even shade brought no relief.

This patio was empty and we could only hear the fighting like clamour from another world. Victor caught us up, and with him were two musketeers who had got detached from their fellows.

“We’ll be short o’ powder soon, sir,” said one of them to Bagnal.

“Then use your butts,” he answered, and walked into the patio towards the door at the other side.

At once he was fired on and wounded again in the shoulder. Doors opened and a dozen Spaniards fell on us with rare ferocity; the musketeers could only fire their guns once and then it was dagger work.

I killed a second man. My side was hurting and I felt sick and Katherine Footmarker was telling me there was blood on my hands. Bagnal was down and both musketeers; and then Captain Carey appeared with two extra men and fought his way in among the retreating Spaniards, slashing like a madman.

Two of our first group were dead and all the rest wounded except Victor. Why there was blood round my waist I did not know, for I did not remember being stabbed.

Bagnal was up again, though now five times wounded and dripping with blood. He and Carey and a pikeman broke down the door, and this led us into another alley. There was a church here, squat-towered, built on to the houses of the street. The pikeman, thoughts on plunder, raised his pike to smash down the church door, but Carey knocked up the pike and we went on.

We had climbed and were near the main square of the city. I felt better now, inspirited by the tattered indomitable man leading us. Some women were hurling tiles at us from a rooftop. A tiny Jew, black-robed and white-slippered, stood in a doorway hands clasped, having come out to put up his shutters, caught now between two fires; it was a Spanish ball that killed him; his skull cap rolled at my feet.

We rushed the defenders here, Bagnal as usual in the lead; soon too close for guns, it was bloody knives again. Essex and a gang of ten more gentlemen appeared to our left and the defenders fled leaving bodies all about, Bagnal in pursuit.

Suddenly we came out upon the Plaza, a square with chu~ches and public buildings, shaded by planes and palm trees, some deserted stalls down the centre. Here for lack of opposition there was a pause. It looked as if the main city was almost won, though the Citadel and the Fort would no doubt hold out for some time.

Bagnal’s face was a mask of blood, but he seemed in no way weakened. Essex, seeing him so, took out his sword. “One knee, Captain.”

The tall soldier looked surprised.

“You shall be the first knight created on this triumphant 347

day on Spanish soil. Few have deserved better of our nation. Sir John Wingfieldis dead, with many others, but it is a great victory.”

Victor put his arm round me. “Hold up, boy, is your hurt serious? “

“I think not.”

“I trust not, for it would spoil my day if you were to fan out now.”

“I’ll do my best not to. I want plunder, Victor.”

The square was filling with English. Among them were a group about the body of Wingfield, who had fallen at the edge of the Plaza. Then I saw that Captain Ashley and Captain Monson were back, talking to Essex, and I struggled up from the stone wall. Too late to hear the message, I plucked Monson’s arm; he looked scowling at me and then remembered.

He said shortly: “The Lord Admiral considers the capture of the Iota must be delayed until tomorrow and orders ad forces to concentrate on the taking of Cadiz.”

“You delivered that message to the Rear Admiral?”

“Yes, and it was in received. For once I agree with your master, and that must indeed be a rarity.”

“Where is the Lord Admiral, sir?”

“Landing with the second division. I have no doubt Sir Walter win be ashore too before the night is outl”

Firing was beginning again in the square. Some of the buildings around the Plaza were well armed and intended to contest our presence.

At the end of the Plaza beside a church was the town hall. A group of soldiers moved to attack this, and among them were Bagnal and Carey. I saw them meet with resistance at the door and then force it and go in. Victor said:

“Let me see this wound.”

“No, I’ll do.” Remembering my last meeting with Sue, “I want plunder, Victor.”

When we got to the town hall the ground floor had already been cleared. Pictures and furniture lay wrecked everywhere, books and parchments scattered, one or two wounded lying about. But when we came to the broad central stairs we saw that the whole of the first flight was littered with dead men, and most of them were English. Blood made the steps slippery, broken banisters stood out like raw stumps; at the top an enormous Franciscan friar lay clutching a pike that protruded from his stomach; like the rest he was dead. The only live one was an English soldier tying up a deep gash on his leg.

“‘E stood athwart the stairs,” he said, thumbing towards the friar. “Wi’ a great axe in ‘is ‘ends. Nine of us ‘e killed afore we cotched ‘im. Nine good men gone for one shaven monk. Two o’ my friends, devil take ‘im. Reckon ‘e ‘ad the strength of the devil too!“

We climbed across the piled bodies. On this floor you could hear the fighting still in progress. I stayed Victor, who was for pushing forward.

“We’ll find nothing here that’s not broken up or already bespoke. There’s a church next door.”

“Essex ordered no desecration.”

“What he does not see he’ll not complain of. Look out of this window. It’s no sort of drop compared to the city wall, and I’d guess that door leads into the church.”

Victor still hesitated, so I said: “Let me go ahead and I’ll tell you what I find.”

“No … if you go, I’ll come.”

The church was as dark as the churches I remembered in Madrid. The sun was setting, and only a few coloured shafts came from it high up in the nave; if it had not been for the candles at the High Altar and before the Virgin in the side chapel we should have been unable to see our way.

The place was empty, heavy only with the smell of incense and flowers. I knew the orders: no desecration of churches, no women to be molested, discipline even to be preserved in the sacking of the town. The penalty for a breach, at least for the common soldier, was death. But death from either side had in a few short hours become a commonplace.

I went up to the High Altar and seized the cross. The whole was too heavy to carry away and was gilt on some common metal, but there were jewels in it, and having lifted it to the floor I began to prise these out with the point of my dagger. Victor after some more hesitation disappeared into the darkness behind the altar, and I heard him hacking at something, but his heart was not in it.

I got eight jewels; five were big stones of a semi-precious nature, but the other three were rubies. There were four silver candlesticks beside the altar, and behind these two angels holding jewelled wreaths. These I also stripped, but after lifting the candlesticks down I left them on the altar steps, knowing them too heavy to carry.

Because of having snuffed four of the candles, the church was even darker. Shots and commotion echoed outside. We were as if in a dark pool while the strife of the world eddied to the brim.

I went over to the lady chapel because sometimes these are as richly ornamented as the main altars. Here about twenty candles burned, some tall like a young man’s life, others old and “uttering. A few simple posies lay at the Virgin’s feet and a ring had been hung on an outstretched finger. She looked out, glazed and dumb, at the corners of her waxen lips a fixed half smile of compassion, but no understanding.

At that moment I thought my loss of blood had overcome me and I was losing my senses, for I seemed to see suddenly not one Virgin but upwards of a dozen, all peering out of the darkness behind her, all with fixed stares and not a half-smile among them. But whereas the first Virgin gazed across the church in contemplation of the polished marble pillars of the lady chapel, all the other stares were fixed on me.

Then I saw what it was. They had come here for sanctuary, hoping they might be overlooked. They were mainly high-born, richly dressed in fine cloaks and lace mantillas, some wearing jewels; but a few were working women in drab black who had fled here to join their sisters. At any other time such women would not have stood together in a group, huddled close as if for protection; now the prospect of violation and murder overrode the long distinctions of birth.

I took the ring off the Virgin’s finger but could not bring myself to touch the jewel on the Child. There were two small crosses finely wrought in gold, and I pocketed these. No one had moved or spoken.

In halting Spanish I said “Ladies, we come as conquerors but we shall do you no ill. The Earl of Essex has commanded this, and he will be obeyed. There are always dangers when a city is taken, so you do well to stay here. But unlike your own menfolk, we do not make war on women and children.”

I turned away and went back to the main altar. Still no one had stirred, but walking across the empty nave I had an unpleasant sensation that I might be shot in the back.

At the side of the altar behind the row of saints was a fine painted screen with some jewels glistening in it, and I went up to see if they were real. They were only painted glass. Then I heard a cry for help from the darkness behind the altar. “Maugan!“

I ran, stumbling over some chairs, groped along the back of the altar. “Where are you?”

No answer but the sound of a struggle. As I got further in there was a glimmer of light from a half open door: inside was a round library, candle-lit, two monks struggling with Victor. As I ran forward one of them stabbed him deep in the shoulder where his armour ended.

I sliced at the man’s neck, his head wobbled like a stone plinth dislodged; he was dead before he fell. Victor was falling too. The other monk stabbed him as he sank, then raised his dagger to take my sword sweep. Blood spurted from his hand. He brought forward his other hand and with a second knife stabbed me under the arm. I swung again and he was down.

Room was unsteady. The candles flickered as if in a draught. but the draught was in my head. Must not fall now. Must not faint. Second monk was dying; only his hand opened and shut. Victor lying on floor groaning. Get him out of here, back to ship. Beautiful books, illuminated manuscripts: that’s what he’d been after; the monks had surprised him. And more of them? If another came he could finish us off at leisure.

With the deliberation of a drunken man I looked round. Only one other door and that shut. No one else in the room. I sank to my knees.

“Victor …”

His eyes were glazing. “Go on, Maugan. Take your … I’m very … comfortable here.”

“No; let me see.’,

I tried to get his breastplate off, fingers fumbling; he was breathing hard; I prayed the dagger had not gone into his lungs. Off it came, pull at the cloth of his shirt, soaked first in sweat; blood welling under. I tore his sleeve up. Knife had gone in through the shoulder-blade downwards. Might be mortal. No blood on his lips. Roll the sleeve into a pad, press it hard on the wound, bind it with a piece of the other sleeve. “Kathy,” he kept saying. “Kathy.” Then once he looked at me and said: “Go to war in a ship. No marching,” and smiled. His head fell forward.

More blood inside the breastplate; I tore open the front of his shirt. The second monk’s dagger had glanced off the armour but had entered over the hip bone.

On the only table not overturned was some wine on a silver tray, and a chalice. I crawled to it, gulped some down, brought it to Victor, but he could not swallow; another red stain on his shirt.

I did not like to take off my own breastplate while there was a possibility of further fighting. So now the supreme effort. The wine was warming, brought life and a little stamina; gulped more of it down. Now … But it was as much as I could do to stand upright. Never get Victor on my shoulder. I began to drag him towards the door.

The great stone-dark church: cold after the vestry and silent. Sun had set and twilight was over. Only the candles in the lady chapel and the few left on the High Altar. Round the dark corridor behind the altar, into the nave. Rest there. He was still breathing but very faintly. Leave him to die, I thought; save yourself.

I dragged him down the great nave. If the women saw us they made no move to help or hinder. There was still shooting outside but it had moved away. ‘Animal nature is not kind,’ said Katherine Footmarker,‘but it d’killonly for food. Human kind kill for pleasure or from an evil motive called principle.’ ‘I can’t bear the thought of being old,’ said Sue. ‘Soon we shall all be old.’

The great door at last; I propped Victor against it and groped for the small door which must somewhere be let in to the larger. ‘You are Celts, are you not,’ said King Philip, ‘and have affinities with the Irish. A sturdy stock among whom fidelity to the religion of Christ dies hard.’

Bolts. I shot them back; pulled at the door. Dark outside but light from glaring torches. Wide steps down to the square. A house at the end in flames. A mass of soldiery of an sorts. At the foot of the steps two platoons of English troops were encamped. Other troops rounding up mules and carrying kegs from a captured house.

I clutched Victor and pulled him out on the steps. His face was ashen in the flickering torchlight. In one corner of the square were some two dozen wounded; a surgeon and his man looking to their hurts. I staggered down the steps and went towards them, but soldiers carrying a battering ram for a door swept me away, and I ended up sitting on a stone well-edge. People were milling everywhere. The officers were doing their utmost to maintain order, but here and there pillaging was breaking out, and I heard a soldier shout that.the Dutch troops were running amok.

Men were drinking from a wine barrel that a sailor was holding for them. I plucked a man’s sleeve and asked him where Essex was and he thumbed his hand up the hill towards the citadel. I began to move in that direction and then gave up realising that, once out of this crowded square, one would be in the narrow alleys where the crush and the fighting and the confusion would be far worse. Better get back to Victor.

I staggered along, pushed this way and that by the press of people; then I saw a man on a horse attended by two servants. He had just come down one of the alleys and was urging his horse through the square.

“Sir Walter!”

Bell heard me and drew his master’s attention. Ralegh’s face was white with pain.

“Killigrew, you still live? Where is Victor?”

“On the steps of that church, serious wounded.”

“We’ll go that way. You’re hurt yourself?”

“Nothing bad. But Victor is … If we could make some sort of litter and get him back to the ship.”

“You’d not get a litter down these damned alleys if the town were empty. Tonight you could easier fly.”

With the help of Bell and Myers we came to the church steps. Victor’s dark shape showed unstirring. They carried him down.

“He breathes, sir,” Myers said. “But he d’ look near his end.”

“Put him astride this nag. We’ll walk him down “

“Your own leg …”

“Is stiffening on me like a crutch. Perhaps use will free it.”

We began a laborious way out of the city. I was in a dream state, half bordering on sleep-walking; Sir Walter was in great pain and had to pause at every sixth or seventh step; Victor lay across the saddle like a sack. Men rushed up and down the alleys, pushed and jostled us, some with booty already, struggling to carry down bolts of velvet and satin to the ships, others fought and argued among themselves in the shops and houses, wounded lay in our path.

Sir Walter said: “I.came ashore to urge once more on the Lord Admiral that the flota be taken at once. He is unheeding … It is there to be had at will, he says. They will have to treat with him in the morning...”

Great efforts were being made by the English officers to get their men under control, and for the most part the soldiers, although already at the wine, were good tempered and amenable.

“I came too to see the city. So have come all the captains all except Crosse who stays on Swiftsure. Vere has sent part of his army to the Bridge of Suazo to guard against a surprise counter-attack. It is as well some of us preserve a sense of discipline.”

Fighting broke out on a wrought-iron balcony above our heads. Two Spaniards had retreated on to it and were beseeching their attackers for mercy. They did not get it, but had their throats cut and in a few moments the blood was dripping off the balcony’s edge as if from the scarlet geraniums growing there.

“Dutch … I don’t like their ferocity, but how can you blame them? You stumble, Maugan.”

We got down into a lower square. Two English soldiers were disputing over a Spanish woman, one tugging at each arm, but an officer came rapidly towards them with drawn sword, and resentfully they freed her and she fled back into the house behind. There was fighting on a roof, and a body fell with a great thud upon the cobbles; our horse shied away and nearly trod on me; BeH tugged at the bridle and we went on.

At the city gates a new company of English soldiers was marching in. They walked in good order, taking no heed of the fire that raged in a house built beside the gate or of sporadic shooting that was still going on from a nearby tower. Beside the gate was a heap of some twenty dead, limbs sprawling grotesquely; they seemed to have no kinship with us. In the flickering torchlight a few faces peered upwards, mummers’ masks without blood or hope; they might have been Spanish or our own comrades; death had robbed them not merely of nationality but of humanity too.

It was a brilliant night, and lights winked here and there on the surrounding hills. We stopped and lifted Victor down; I moistened his lips and bathed his face. Bell and Myers broke and tied some wood and made a rough litter and put Victor on it. Ralegh could just mount the horse. We ploughed across the soft yielding sand.

We rounded the wall that had hidden us from the harbour. The two great galleons were still aglow but the fire was now within them; ribs showed; they were like brasero bowls burning in the mud. The halfdozen smaller ships which had been afire had sunk and the flames put out. Beyond, our own ships showed like a line of forts built too close together, their clustered masts fenced the skyline.

Ralegh said: “I’m told that Admiral Portocarrero commanded the galley squadron. I would like to feel they too were accounted for. They are a spiteful breed of ship and could do some harm to us if prepared to risk loss.”

We reached the water. A few rowboats and barges were fringing the muddy edge. Guards had been posted. Victor was lifted into a boat and Sir Walter helped from his horse. I struggled in the mud, put one foot to the gunnel; Bell took my arm. Pain was throbbing now. It had always been there but a secondary sensation while other urgencies dominated.

As we pushed off an old woman came along the edge angrily screaming at us. We steered among the dead, some floating, some stuck in the mud. Burning smoke drifted about; broken spars, charred sailcloth, casks of wine, kegs of biscuit lay under festoons of rigging like netted fish; here and there a voice still shouted and groaned. The water was black and billy as if itself charred by the fire.

There were lights on Warspite; someone was playing a lute and a few unsteady voices were singing, but the men at the ladder sprang to attention when they saw who was back. Somehow we got Victor into the long cabin abaft the mainmast. Surgeon Wood was sent for. Bell at last unbuckled my breastplate and it came away with a clack of half dried blood. He slit the shirt up and the tired blood began welling up again.

Ralegh came in, his face dark. “Well?”

“He’s far gone,” said Wood, looking up from Victor. “I can do little.”

“And this lad?”

Wood came over and began to thumb my wounds. Then he looked at my arm which had a knife thrust through the muscle. “This is nothing. But the other wound’s deep. There may be laceration of the abdominal wall. Bind him tight to keep the lips of the wound closed, Bell. If he lives till morning he may well mend.”

“What of Victor?” I said, struggling to sit up.

“Lie quiet, sur, I beg,” said Bell who was trying to draw a rough cotton bandage round my waist.

“Katherine Footmarker would sometimes mix a cordial “

“I have my own cordial,” said Sir Walter, “but we shall not get it down him, I think …”

An officer who had lost a leg was groaning in his corner.

“Over this way, sur,” said Bell; and I turned on my side. The servant had a rough but handy way with him that showed I was not the first he had dealt with.

Lying on my shoulder away from the room I could look out of the porthole across the harbour, not towards the town but towards the dark hills. Just out of the corner of my view was a flickering glow, and I edged an inch or two farther up the board to see what it was. Bell’s remonstrance was cut short.

“Sir,” I said to Ralegh. “There’s a new fire.”

He came at once and peered through the open porthole. Flames were flickering up in the distance.

“By the living God,” he said, “the Spaniards have fired their own flota. We are too late now.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cadiz was occupied, and the Fort and Citadel capitulated. No woman was molested, no church burned. The richest and noblest of the captors were held for ransom, the rest allowed to go.

But the flota was lost. With suicidal pride the Spaniards had set fire to every ship stuck in the mud of the inner harbour, and the whole of the great treasure fleet was sacrificed. I lay and watched it burning. It burned for three days. The flames seemed at times to get into my head. The Generals held constant conferences in the city, argument was rife as to whether the port should be held in permanent occupation or evacuated, whether we should instead seize Cape St Vincent and then blockade the Spanish coast, as Drake had once done. But only Ralegh, I think, from the start perceived that we had missed the greatest prize. Essex and the Howards were conscious of the great feat of arms we had performed in thus capturing the first port in Spain, a richer port than London, of the glory and the honour of it. Sir Walter, perhaps because he had once been a poor man, or perhaps because his nature was most similar to the Queen’s, thought more of all the wealth of the Indies lost in the flames and perceived what her feelings would be.

One afternoon, returning briefly to the ship for some documents, he came to sit beside me and to peer at Victor, who still lived and was conscious from time to time.

“There’s much to be seized in the city much already has been: at least the half of it as private spoils. But it will bring no fortune to England such as was contained in those forty fine ships. They say the value was twelve million ducats. Spain has deprived us of the fruits of victory and almost bankrupted herself. Most of the merchants will never recover “

“It was not they who fired it?”

“Oh dear, no. They would have treated with us, as Howard expected. It was the royal officers, to whom any sort of composition is a disgrace. If we had moved earlier …”

“You did your best.”

“Best is not enough if it fails … Now Essex and the Howards hold princely court in the city. Tomorrow there’s to be a state dinner to celebrate the victory …”

“Have you news of the galleys, sir?”

“Portocarrero retired his squadron into the narrow neck by the Suazo Bridge and by some mechanical means dragged them through the shallows and the mud. When the water deepened they were refloated and so made their way back to the sea at San Petri. They are thought to have gone north towards Faro.”

Sir Walter fanned himself. The heat in this harbour in the middle of the day was stifling and the stench from the dead bodies rotting in the mud made it impossible to keep the windows open. Victor groaned and *led to turn over.

“Anthony Ashley is to be sent back to England with despatches for the Queen,” Sir Walter said, “requesting her permission for a permanent occupation of the city. Crosse will carry him in Swiftsure, a dozen other vessels will go taking some of the treasure and most of the sick and wounded. I shall send you both home on that convoy.”

“Oh, no ~ … Victor, perhaps, for he’s sorely ill; but another week and I shall be on my feet again.”

“Wood thinks otherwise. This fever which has persisted leaves you in no state for campaigning.”

“What of your own wound, sir?”

“I suspect my leg will always be in need of a little aid. Too much of the muscle was shot away. But I cannot go yet. Tell me, young Killigrew …” He paused.

“Yes?”

“Did you gain any booty that first night?”

I looked at his face, which had narrowed. “Some few pieces of jewellery. If it is still in my pockets.”

“It will be there: only Bell has attended on you. And Victor? “

“I think not. He was looking for some books when two priests attacked him.”

“That’s like him. Well, take care of your gleanings. Every one else is, so far as they can hide them. It’s not a savoury spectacle.”

“If I go home,” I said, “it will be to look after Victor. Having survived all the worst of the fighting unscratched, he came to his wounds through following me in search of plunder.”

“Ah,” he sighed and got up. “Don’t let it trouble your conscience. If I thought of all those who for one reason or another I had led to their death I should not sleep of nights.”

Swiftsure left three days later. With her went 14 other vessels, carrying horses, booty and wounded men. Victor and I were to have travelled on Swiftsure, but at the last Sir Gelly Meyricke with special private despatches from the Earl of Essex to the Queen, and the Earl of Sussex, who was sick with measles, took our places and we were moved to a flyboat, the Peter of Anchusen. So are fates decided.

We left a city still held in complete subjection by the English but a council of the Lords Generals in no way more decided what to do with it. Ralegh came to see us off. He was on the edge of melancholia; the excitement of battle which had transformed him had long since been lost in the drearier battles of the council chamber.

“For my part,” he said, “I believe we waste time here. Our crews sicken in the heat, our victuals rot, our army wastes its strength on futile skirmishes. To retain the city would put a breaking burden on armament and supply. We have done what we came for. Staying will only fritter away the victory.”

He was smoking his pipe, more perhaps to keep away the flies than for pleasure. Victor was propped up on his pillows, able now to eat light foods. As soon as he had known what was planned he had protested vigorously; in the end he had accepted his fate but was still displeased by it.

‘A believe, Cousin Walter, you’re waiting to see us sail so that you can be assured we’re safely gone. If I’d a thought more use in my legs I’d dive overboard and swim in again as soon as your back was turned … Even now you cannot be sure of Maugant”

Ralegh looked at me sourly. “We are all under discipline, and he has received his orders. Which are to see you home. He’ll do so.”

“I’ll do so,” I said.

Cadiz looked unreal in the hot shimmering light as we put out on the ebb-tide. Mottled clouds clustered like a flock of sheep in a sky the colour of a fatten plate. Wisps of smoke still rose from the burned fleet in Port Royal road. Our own ships clustered in the main harbour, pennants lifting in the hot breeze. The Oueen’s Standard fluttered from the citadel, Essex’s from Fort San Felipe. Outside the harbour a halfdozen frigates cruised as a guard against surprise.

“Well ” I said to Victor, “we have not conquered the world, but we live to try again, and as I saw you a week ago I would not have thought that likely.”

“Blood-letting did no one any harm. I haven’t coughed since we left England. It’s all part of the cure.”

“Look,” I said. “You got no spoils from your efforts. I have a little hoard which will do for two. When we get to England we’ll sell the jewels and split the proceeds.”

“Split nothing. You got them; I didn’t; that’s all. But I would have liked those books.”

“But for me you’d never have gone into that accursed church, and so no doubt you’d have got your plunder somewhere else and unscathed. Deny that.”

“You got me in without compulsion. You brought me out on your back. Deny that.”

We wrangled amiably until it was time to sleep through the hottest hours of the day. By the time we woke the city was a dark blun-on the distant coastline. Peter of Anchusen was a large flyboat, smarter and faster than most of her kind, she carried a crew of 40, with a blackbearded Captain Smith in command, and there were about 60 wounded and sick aboard, not to mention divers others returning in charge of plunder and horses, so that the whole complement was around 120, about a third Dutch. Besides ourselves there were only eight wounded officers, and we shared a cabin with a Lieutenant Fraser who had lost a leg and a Major George who had been blinded in one eye and much disfigured by a flaming spar.

As well as the powerful but cumbersome Swiftsure we had two frigates for protection, and every transport was armed, so there was little risk of our being challenged on the way home.

The wind that had got us out of harbour and safely away from the coast hesitated with the setting sun, and the lateen sails of a halfdozen Portuguese feluccas standing well away from the land as they fled south were suddenly flushed with the afterglow so that they looked like flamingoes rising off the surface of the sea. I left Victor and sat for an hour or two on deck in the cooler air of evening talking to Major George, who was a veteran of the Dutch wars and in no way cast down by his injuries. While the stars grew ever brighter till they lamp-lit the sky, George told me of bloody encounters at Zutphen and Gertruydenberg. Below I could hear Victor playing, almost for the first time since his wounding.

“Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;

When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”

Around us were the lights of the other ships, closest so close that we could see aboard being Maybird, a very small man o’ war belonging to Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Plymouth; and behind her, like a sheep-dog central to her flock, the high decks of Swiftsure, commanded by Captain Robert Crosse, now Sir Robert, knighted by Essex after the celebrations last Sunday. (The one thing in all this, said Sir Walter, that would have pleased Drake.)

A swell got up later in the night but no wind with it, and by morning our fleet was somewhat scattered. During the following day we crawled slowly west-north-west, wallowing more than we advanced, the land still visible as we made across the great gulf. The second night was hazy but the light airs were just enough to keep way on; the third day brought a return of dead calm.

It was a breathless dawn, the sky like pale stretched silk, its limits hardly separate from the sky. The sun came up like a red button which, being constantly polished, at last glittered so brightly one could no longer look. In the night the land had receded. The sails of every ship hung like damp washing.

Although we had drawn together yesterday the scattering this night had been more complete, and the only vessel within hail was Maybird. Swiftsure was a mile or more away on our larboard beam, with two transports near by, the frigates and the rest of the fleet being strung out behind. I did not always wake so early, but without helm way the ship had swung so that~the rising sun came full on my face, and I got up at once and put a cloak over my bandages and went out on deck to get some cool air while it lasted.

There was a great peace such as sometimes comes at dawn, and the few sailors on deck did not disturb it. I stood there feeling completely at rest. My soul was calmed by the silence and the space, it yearned for the unreachable but without ambition or regret, in part disembodied yet seeming to find a new joy in the senses. I had been in battle and wounded, my wounds were mending, I was young and I was going home. The chief officer, a man called Lumsden, was on watch with a Flemish seaman at the helm. I went over to them. Three seagulls stood on our main yard but even they gave no cry.

I said to Lumsden: “Do you think we shall double Cape St Vincent today?”

He yawned. “Not a chance while this weather lasts, sun I doubt if we’ve made 10 miles in the dark hours.”

The man aloft in the cross-trees shouted something: it was a long singsong call in Flemish.

“What did he say?” Lumsden asked the helmsman.

“He says three ships to landward. He think they be Spanish.”

“Well, a lot of harm they’ll do us or we them while this calm lasts,” Lumsden said. “You couldn’t sail a skiff.”

I peered towards the land but could see nothing. The silk stretched taut and unbroken. One of the seagulls dropped off the yard and planed in delicate semicircles towards some refuse floating near, but without alighting saw that it was nothing edible and rose again with a lazy motion to resume his position on the ship.

“Was you on this trek to Suazo Bridge? ” Lumsden asked me.

“No.”

“Oh … Reckoned perhaps that was where you was wounded. They say we lost nigh on 200 men on the homeward way, most of ‘em drunk and fallen on so soon as they was separate from the rest. A nasty piece of “

The blackbearded Captain Smith was suddenly beside us. “What sort of Spanish ships?” he demanded of the helmsman. “Ask him that, and whither away.”

The sailor called a guttural question up to the sailor at the fighting top. There was a pause then, for the man on look-out seemed uncertain. Then he shouted.

“Five or six of them,” said the helmsman. “East by nor’-east; four miles or a thought more. In line astern.”

Smith shaded his eyes into the rising sun. “I fancy there’s something to be seen … Here, Gruyt, tell your man we want the type of ship as soon as ever Nay, I’ll go up myself.”

He jumped quickly onto the bulwark and swung himself into the shrouds. But before he could go far the look-out shouted again. It was one word and we all understood it well.

“Galleys …”

They came up rapidly. First they were like part of the land, then like islands, then in no time their insect shapes were clear.

I wondered how many English prisoners sweated at the glinting oars.

All the English ships had seen them now. Swiffsure fired her bow chasers; whether to try to ward off the enemy or as a signal to her flock to group around her we never knew. In any event we were helpless to group at all. Like trees planted on the blue silk we had no power either to challenge or to flee.

Smith sent a halfdozen of his crew leaping with orders to rouse the rest of the ship. Major George came up, the unbandaged side of his face bristling with the night’s beard.

“So Portocarrero escaped to some purpose. Where’s he making for d’you think?”

“Us,” said Captain Smith.

It looked as if he was right. We and Maybird were far ahead of the rest and were the obvious prey. Swiftsure continued to fire intermittently, being the only ship in the convoy with guns of sufficient range to make it worth a try, but the galleys held on. Soon the first of them was within two miles of us.

Peter of Anchusen had for armament two 5 lb. sakers with a range of 1500 paces, and three small breech-load ‘man killers’ of very short range. Maybird, though so much smaller, carried about the same. Both ships were now in great commotion, sailors and such of the wounded as could defend themselves milling about, priming muskets, handing out cutlasses. As soon as I was sure the leading galley was heading straight for us I went below. Lieutenant Fraser, still in much pain from his leg, was lying flat on his bunk and taking little heed of the alarm; Victor was sitting in a chair loading an old pistol someone had given him.

“Well, so it’s an ill wind that blows from no direction, Maugan. Move me closer to the porthole, will you.”

I pushed his chair forward. “Victor, I suggest you confine yourself to this place until we have beaten them off. I shall be just above you and no one will come down.”

“You were ever one for a bold front, dear Maugan. Confess we have as much chance as a duck among foxes. Then pray for wind.”

“I will.” I finished struggling painfully into my breastplate and patted his shoulder. “Good luck and shoot straight.”

I climbed up the companion ladder to the capstan deck. Of a sudden I felt terribly tired of fighting and killing, and fearful of injury and death. Weakness creeps on us unawares.

It had come now out of the happiness and content of half an hour ago. I prayed for some miracle to intervene: this sudden unfair attack when we were home-bound, and an attack on wounded men, had come at the wrong moment for courage and endurance.

The leading galley was now no more than-a mile off. I turned and saw that Maybird’s captain in a forlorn effort to escape had put down his two ship’s boats and they were manned with sailors breaking their backs to tow the little warship towards the safety of Swiftsure’s guns.

Lumsden came past me carrying a keg of powder, and following him was Major George. George’s cask was broken and spilling powder. I caught his arm.

“Take care! “

The side of his mouth clear of bandages creased in an angry grin. “A little surprise for ‘em, lad. We want to welcome ‘em aboard, lad “

“But the wounded below decks.”

“Would you have ‘em captives of Spain?”

Both our sakers spoke, and then two from Maybird. The shot fell short. The leading galley had slowed to allow two of her sisters to catch up; then together in line they came forward again, not firing, but not presenting any good target with their sweeping oars and narrow bows. Swiftsure fired again, but was far out of range. Slowly Maybird began to draw away from us, as the ship’s boats got her under way. As they neared us the two outside galleys turned in a slow arc to come on us from either side. This gave our armament plenty to do. In the distance I noticed one of the English frigates had adopted Maybird’s tactics and was trying to row towards us. I looked at the sun. It was beating down out of a sky leaden and silent with heat. Wind. Where is the wind? Wind only will save us. God send us wind.

As they came up the bow chasers of the galleys opened fire and two or three balls came aboard doing light damage. On our ship I suppose there were now seventy men waiting, crouching behind the bulwarks, lying prone on the quarter deck, up in the fighting tops, waiting.

At almost point blank range our sakers began to score; one ball ploughed through a group of Spaniards; then the first galley swung against us, drawing in her oars and jarring along our side. Grappling irons were thrown and at once hacked away, thrown again; the second galley shivered against our helm; the whole ship reeled and soon the enemy was swarming over the side.

Thereafter followed a bloody fight such as outweighed the capture of Cadiz.There was room for no manocuvre, scarcely could we move back and forth a yard. On the quarter deck above the main cabins there was besides myself, Captain Smith, Major George, Lumsden and twelve others. Onto this deck leaped upwards of a score of Spaniards in armour attacking with a fury that seemed to stem from the defeat at Cadiz. Above our heads men fired and were fired on and then were attacked in hand to hand combat by climbing Spaniards.

I stood almost touching shoulders with Major George and we beat off the first wave of men. All the time as he thrust and killed he was grinning like a wolf. Lumsden was the first to go, stabbed through the throat; the sailor beside me was then killed by a musket ball; but I wounded the man who had killed Lumsden. Four others died and the deck was slippery. Two Spaniards attacked Captain Smith and his black beard ran red before he disappeared among the trampling feet. Major George seeing the end near snatched up the harquebus he had laid beside the mast, and by firing the wheel-lock close against a pyramid of powder he set off an explosion which scorched the bandages on his face. Bangs like fire-crackers followed as the powder blew along the fine of the fuse. A dozen English sailors leapt into the sea, but no others could move before a giant explosion blew all the middle of the ship away. A fountain of bodies and spars and burning sails spewed over the sky …

I was lying beside the dead Captain Smith. Blood was still trickling gently from under his black beard. A weight was across my legs. Men were shouting, crying, cursing in three languages. Major George miraculously still stood upright, his right arm hung useless; his left he held up in a token of surrender. Three Spanish officers climbing over the side were in time to accept it and prevent him from being cut down. I lifted my head: the quarter deck was a shambles, a score dead and half as many grievously wounded; but it was not aslant; the great explosion while blowing the heart out of Peter of Anchusen had not yet begun to sink her.

A Spanish sailor bent over me with his cutlass; it dripped spots of blood on my cheek before an officer called him away. I dragged myself from under a fallen body, putting my hand on Captain Jones’s shoulder to lever a sitting position; then I scrambled up and stood beside George.

The whole centre of the ship was a mass of twisted wreckage and mangled corpses, more than half of them Spanish where they had been caught swarming into the hatches. All three galleys were around us and further fight was hopeless. The other three galleys were pursuing the little Maybird, but I saw her sails flapping, and then looking beyond you could just see movement from the rest of our fleet. But for us the wind had come too late.

We were taken below; Victor and Lieutenant Fraser were unhurt. Twenty English were packed into the one cabin, some of them seriously wounded, and the door slammed. We crowded to the two portholes watching for sign of smoke or flame, wondering if we were to be burned alive in the ship. Presently we felt her begin to move, but it was not the movement of a vessel under sail. A slight pulse to the motion told us that one of the galleys had taken us in tow.

As Peter of Anchllsen swung round our view swung too and we could see Maybird, her sails billowing fitfully, still moving away; as far as could be seen only one galley was now pursuing her, and all the English fleet was converging from the other quarter.

Running feet overhead and Spanish voices shouting; an older man by the door was dying; we dragged him towards the window to get more air. Major George’s right hand had lost two fingers and was badly lacerated; I tried to bandage it.

So in the stifling heat of the small cabin we spent the rest of the morning. Although now under sail as well, we were still being towed for extra speed. It meant the English were in pursuit. Maybird, Victor reported from the other porthole, had evaded her pursuers at the last, but he could no longer see any other vessel except one galley keeping us silent company a cable’s length away. By the position of the sun we were steering west-nor’-west. I glanced out at this consort of ours and watched the regular unrelenting sweep of the oars. The future as I could see it now held no hope. The hideous improbable mischance by which we had been captured when sailing home after a famous victory and escorted by powerful warships was too much to bear.

In the afternoon the wind freshened, and the galleys proceeded under sail only. Towards evening we altered course to north, and soon the land closed in.

Another man died, and the two corpses were laid against the bulkhead. No one had brought us water yet, and the wounded were pressed for lack of it.

When it was dark we could see the lights of a village quite close; we had entered a river or creek. We began to move more slowly and then came to a stop, with the rattle of our anchor— chain and shouts from shore.

At last the door was flung open. We blinked in the torchlight as we were led out for examination.

I went into the room with Major George. Three officers sat at a table. The centre one, who was smooth-skinned and dark as a Moor, I later knew to be Admiral Don Juan Portocarrero himself. He looked an angry and a worried man.

“Please to tell your name, your office, your nationality,” said the man on his left in an English spoken with so guttural an accent that unless one attended carefully the words were lost.

“George. Major of Vere’s Own. English.”

With a fan Portocarrero was stirring the air before his face. Insects droned endlessly round the flickering candles. There was a smell of cooking; we had had nothing to eat since yesterday.

“You have a wife?”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

“Two sons.”

“You have rich relations? Friends?” “‘No.”

The questioning went on for perhaps another three minutes, then the English-speaking one translated what he had learned. The three officers conferred together in undertones.

Portocarrero said something in Spanish which I understood. “For exchange.”

As he was led away George glanced back at me out of his one bloodshot eye. “So long, lad. If you’re in England before me, take a swill of good beer and swallow it for me.”

I wondered what had happened to Victor.

“Please to tell your name, your office, your nationality.”

“Killigrew, secretary, English.”

“You are married?”

“No.”

“Who is your father?”

“John Killigrew.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Cornwall.”

“You have rich relatives?”

“No.”

There were horses moving in the stables under this room. The man on Portocarrero’s right had a scar from lip to eye which gave him a perpetual stare. Portocarrero, who had not taken his gaze from me since I gave my name, began to question me through the other officer.

“What is your first name?”

“Maugan.”

“Have you been in Spain before?”

I hesitated briefly. “Yes.”

“For what purpose?”

“I was brought here by force.”

“When was this?”

“Two and a half years ago.”

“Were you exchanged or did you escape?”

“I was … exchanged in the summer of ‘94.”

They discussed me in undertones.

“If you are a scrivener for Sir Walter Ralegh, why are you sent back to England now?”

“I was wounded.”

“But not seriously. You are the least wounded of them all.” “I was to escort back Mr Hardwicke, who is a cousin of Sir Walter Ralegh’s.”

“And where are the messages you carry?”

“I have none.”

“Come, you must bear some report.”

“No. Sir Anthony Ashley has the official report on Swiftsure.’

“And you have an unofficial one.”

“No, sir. None.”

They talked again, then Portocarrero motioned to the guards. “Aside for further consideration.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The cell was twenty-four feet long by half as broad with two high-barred windows through which a man could only see by standing on another’s shoulders. The floor was of beaten earth, the walls of a sort of moor-stone which was as hard as granite.

Ten of us shared it. Besides myself there was Major George reunited with me in spite of his farewells Victor, Lieutenant Fraser, a Lieutenant Harris and five others. We were not illused, indeed often received small concessions from our jailers; nor at first was food lacking: dried codfish, maize bread, meal and rice. All that was amiss was that we were all in greater or lesser degree in need of medical care, and living in mephitic conditions and great heat. And we were the gentlemen; I never knew how many of the crew or the wounded soldiers survived.

Sometimes it occurred to me to wonder if all this had come on me, this capture and all the suffering that followed, as a judgment for the desecration I had wrought to the altar in Cadiz. In spite of the influences under which I have lived my life I have never quite been able to escape from a sense that in the end Divine justice is meted out in this world. The sensation comes and goes with circumstance and event, but the old feeling, like a childhood scar, remains.

The first man in our cell died after two weeks. He had been wounded a second time by the explosion and his wound turned gangrenous. The stench in the cell in that hot weather made life for the rest of us unbearable. Victor’s recovery was checked but he kept cheerful and, thanks to his lute which he was permitted to retain, we passed many an insupportable hour. My old wound remained open and festering and I had a return of the fever at nights. Major George, like the iron man he was, tidied up the ends of his two lost fingers and the stumps healed. Then he began at night to work on one of the bars of the window. It was exhausting work holding him up, but there was something in the spirit of the man that compelled the rest to help him.

To my surprise I had been able to cheat the searchers of the jewels I carried by passing them to Victor and then recovering them back again before they turned to him. Both the Portuguese soldiers who searched us were suffering from the prevalent fever and had little interest in their task.

News from the outer world scarcely reached us until I became friendly with one of the guards, a cheerful soul called Cabecas, and when he found I spoke halting Spanish he talked freely.

He was a Portuguese, and we were in fact in southern Portugal, a country which had lost its independence to Spain a decade ago. Though in name an ally and a part of the Spanish Empire, the country still had about it an air of occupation: the military governor and his officers were Spanish, the soldiers Portuguese.

Cabecas told me that soon after our capture an attempt had been made by the Spanish to exchange us for prisoners taken at Cadiz; but Lord Admiral Howard did not trust Portocarrero and rejected the overture. Cadiz had at last been evacuated and instead a force landed south of Faro to attack that city. The Spaniards concentrated their main defence at Lagos, forty miles to the west, where we languished in prison. Our forces had marched overland and captured and burned Faro almost without resistance; had they then come on those last few miles we should have been set free; but they did not follow up their success and re-embarked and sailed away. No one had seen them since, but it was thought they were returning to England.

One day I asked permission to write a letter home suggesting that ransom be paid to set me free; and I was given paper and pen and ink. I had no hopes of any sum whatever being forthcoming, but if the letter reached its destination it would at least tell them I was alive, then Sue might hear and would know I could yet return.

While the opportunity existed I also wrote to Mariana de Prada, telling her I was again a prisoner. With Victor so frail any device was worth trying.

So for a time life went on. Nine men living in a small cell at the height of a Spanish summer. Few complained. Individual suffering had to be borne in silence for the common good. All things must come to an end in time. We were hoping for ransom or exchange. At the worst, the weather would soon cool. Victor tried to teach the lute to a young man called Crocker, and often one heard the tune

“Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;

When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”

I instructed a Lieutenant Mabe in the rudiments of Latin. One man re-knitted his jersey with two old sticks of wood. Major George worked on his window.

In the middle of August the food grew suddenly almost uneatable: the fish was rancid, the bread full of weevil, the water foul. Three men fell ill with dysentery. I complained to Cabecas; he shrugged, and said he could do nothing about it. I asked him for an interview with Don Juan Portocarrero; he shrugged again and said Portocarrero had left Lagos and we were now in the charge of Manuel Buarcos, military governor of the town, who it seemed was the scarred man at our first interview. I asked to see him. Cabecas blew through his teeth and said better not, he was a hard one, better leave him alone or worse might befall.

Two days later Lieutenant Fraser died. Since he lost his leg I think he had little taste for life, and it is hard to blame him. Major George and I now wrote a formal letter asking for an interview with Buarcos. It was refused. Lieutenant Harris, who had been sick with a scorbutic condition, became worse, his swollen gums having so grown about his teeth that he could chew nothing. We pestered Cabegas again, but he said it was as much as his life was worth to pass our message through. When we asked if Portocarrero was returning, he said the admiral was now with many others arraigned before a court martial for the loss of Cadiz.

At the end of August Victor caught the dysentery and began to lose ground. By giving a small ruby to Cabegas I was able to have some food smuggled in. My own wound had become an open place that wept pus and lacked the most elementary cloths. Lieutenant Harris died. Major George, working away at his prison bar, said grimly that this gave more room and a better chance for the others, but there were only three of us now strong enough to support him at the window, and soon he turned to being the support himself and leaving us to pick and scratch at the mortar around the bar. Some progress had been made, and each morning before dawn the broken stone was filled in with dampened bread; but the bar went farther down into the wall than expected, and now we had come up against a piece of stone which would not yield. We could not be noisy, for the cell windows looked out on an alley much frequented by the guards when off duty.

Victor now gave up playing his lute. He was often racked with colic, and afterwards seemed too weak to care. Sometimes I would see him lying with his hands clasped over his abdomen and his head rolling slowly from side to side. I did what I could for him, bathing his face with water, though we did not have enough of it and it rapidly grew warm and foul from use. I gave Cabecas another ruby to buy some extract of poppy seed and some starch, and this when it came helped Victor. The pain was eased and the fever lighter. Cabegas was sympathetic and brought an amulet stone from his mother which was good for all distemper of the bowel. He bound us to secrecy in all this: it would go hard for him if anything were known.

So September came in with blazing skies and unrelenting heat. I wrote again to Manuel Buarcos, asking for the favour of an interview. After a week’s wait he granted it.

We were taken across, Major George and I, the following evening to the officers’ quarters at the other side of the square. It was the same room upstairs where we had been first interviewed; but this time except for our escort Buarcos saw us alone.

As the only one with Spanish I had to be spokesman. George spoke a halting word or two, but by now I was fluent.

This was the moment when I needed all my fluency. Buarcos sprawled behind the table sweating and picking his nose. Tonight the scar looked like a shoe-lace drawn taut across the wet brown surface of his skin.

I told him the conditions under which we were living, and said that if nothing were done to ease them the rest of us would soon die. We had all, I said, been put aside for ransom; even the poorest had been adjudged of some value. But one of the first to die now would be Victor Hardwicke who was a close kinsman of the great Sir Walter Ralegh. His would be a big ransom and it would all be lost. The Spanish Government and the Court would not look approvingly on his treatment of us if by it they became the losers.

Buarcos waited until I had finished. Then absentmindedly, one eye staring more than the other, he said that in his view war was not waged thus. In his view war was a matter of blood, not of gold. If he had had his way when we first came here he would have impaled us all together on one long pike and left us for the crows to pick. Portocarrero and his like were weaklings and were now paying the penalty. Had he made his feelings clear?

Perhaps then I should have gone, but I was fighting for Victor’s life as well as my own. So I swallowed and began again. I said it was accepted and praised in Spain even we in prison had heard the praise how the English in Cadiz had been considerate to the sick and the wounded. If war were a matter of blood it could yet be conducted with dignity. Could we not as prisoners ask for fair treatment? If a doctor were unavailable, could I not be given permission to beg herbs in the town? And perhaps one or two of our most serious sick might be granted some milk and eggs, which might just make the difference between life and death to them.

Buarcos yawned. “Killigrew, you affect my appetite. The mere stink of you is an insult. Do you know that in the fight to capture your miserable ship over forty of my countrymen died? Near on thirty of those were killed by an explosion set off treacherously at the moment of surrender. Another twenty are maimed or grievously injured. Why should I care what happens to you? I am in the confident hope that very soon Madrid will forget. Then such of you as are left can be put to death for sport. It is a dull place, Lagos, and there is too little sport.”

Horses stirred in the stables underneath. Tonight the table was set for supper; silver on good white linen; one brown manicured hand toyed with the salt-cellar.

I said: “There speaks a Spanish gentleman. After this a return to the cell will be sweet.”

I turned to go, but Captain Buarcos shouted a word to the guards and they seized me. They thrust me round to face him, and he stared at me while thoughtfully picking his nose.

“Killigrew, Madrid knows there are captives here, but one more or less will not concern them. It is St Matthew’s day next week, and we will have you out of your cell then and will grill you over a slow fire. It will give you something to think of until then besides the tribulations of a poor diet. Remember, in eight days you will be free! You may rely on that on the word of a Spanish gentleman!“

Now I was thrust out, along with George, but as we left Buarcos bawled after us: “And until then you will all be on a half supply of food and water. You’ve been living too well in captivity!“

On the way back we tramped in silence. George said at last: “I think we should kill that man.”

“I cannot keep my tongue quiet! God, I should not imagine he could deprive us of such water as we’ve had! It’s little enough for bare existence in this weather! … So we are back where we were but worse off! ” I was so angry I could scarcely swallow. There was no room yet to consider his threat against me. The anger drummed in my ears like lust.

Major George said again: “I think we should kill that man.”

It was a hot night, as hot as any I remember, and the smell in the cell was sickening. The narrow windows should have allowed in some air, but the air was too still to circulate. All that entered were the mosquitoes which swarmed everywhere. We had no light, so I could not see Victor’s face while I told him. Perhaps he had expected nothing, for he took the disappointment very calmly. All he said was: “I wish Crocker would learn to play in tune.”

Cracker was trying to play:

“If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor? For love is warm, and courage listeth cold …”

In a corner Mabe, my pupil, was near his end. Unlike Victor, he did not bear his pains quietly. I sat up all that night with Victor, wafting a cloth before his face to give him the air he so much needed and trying to keep away the mosquitoes which were constantly settling on his face. My own fever had returned, and I shivered and fretted in company with him. In the morning he looked very grey and drawn, much as he had on the first day after his wounds at Cadiz.

“Maugan, if you see Sherborne again, go, please, to the house of Mistress Katherine Churcher, and tell her that in my last hours I thought only of her. Will you do that?”

“NOW, now, I don’t like this way of saucing. May I ask you, if you reach England first “

“NO, Maugan, let us be practical. For eight weeks I’ve walked on a thread, and the thread is wearing thin. If the worst befalls I ask you to go to Mistress Katherine Churcher of Cerne Abbas, some ten miles south of the castle. You’ll find her married to a man for whom she has neither love nor respect take her aside and in private tell her that I have always loved her, and, if at death there be any flame in me that does not puff out, that I shall do so for all eternity …”

“Quiet, now, drink this. It will ease the pain …”

On the Sunday Mabe died. That left six of us. On the same night Major George dislodged the stone which had been holding up his efforts to move the bar. NOW he could make progress again. But I was too sick and sad to aid him. I sat with Victor an day, he now being barely conscious. His face was changing under the strain; the daylight seemed to make his lank fair hair gray and he might have been sixty. Once I got blood on my hand, and it was in just the place Katherine Footmarker had traced it with a long finger that day in the clearing by the mill above Penryn. I thought, if it had not been for me none of this need have happened. Victor would not have gone into the church and we should not have been wounded; so we should not have been sent home thus and captured. Already, I had killed a half-score men in my life, but it was not the blood of my enemies Katherine Footmarker had seen, it was the blood of my friends …

On the Monday and Tuesday, with that tenacity which marked his seemingly frail constitution, Victor rallied and was able to take a little of the precious mink I had bought from Cabecas with another jewel. The coming Friday was St Matthew’s day, but so far I had not believed in it: anger and remorse were so great that it cut my mind away from the future. I tended Victor constantly, and visions of the auto de fe seen in Madrid only crept in each day with the brazen light of dawn.

On the Wednesday there was a big change in Victor. He seemed no longer to be in pain, and only his breathing was difficult, as if there were phlegm at the back of his throat. His face lost its tensions and the aged look disappeared as if a sponge more cooling than mine had wiped it away. Even his hair and month-old beard became smooth and silky instead of bedraggled and unkempt.

So about two in the afternoon he died.

They took his body away that evening, and left the door of the cell open for a few minutes to create a draught of air through.

There were only five of us now: Crocker, George, Stevens, Fletcher and myself. I had stared for the last time at features clear-cut and thin but already beginning to lose their familiar outlines in the great heat and with the first touch of corruption. George was working away at his window; Crocker was supporting him; Fletcher and Stevens were too ill to help; I sat and fingered the lute.

This was the only symbol of him left, and its strings were silent. It was like the corroding body which had just been carried out, an empty thing without the animating spirit to give it sentience and purpose.

And where was that animating spirit? Not here. Not ever again here.

I seemed to hear Victor’s voice in my ear, echoing from three months back: ‘She’s superstitious. She considers him unlucky. She says on each voyage he loses some splendid youth. John Grenville last time. Who this?’

Somewhere a lamb was bleating, and it set a mule off whinnying and snorting. Today had been the day of the market in the square, and some peasants were still clearing up. You could hear the sound of earthenware pots knocking together, and sometimes the rattle of a cart. Presently there was another sound much nearer at hand, metal falling, but I gave it no attention until Major George spoke.

“Killigrew! We’re through! Killigrewl By the bowels of Christ, we’re through I “

‘I would not want it to be me,’ Victor had said. ‘I would not call you a splendid youth,’ I said. ‘Agreed!’ he said. ‘The dangers which threaten don’t threaten me. Tell her so.’

“Killigrew,” said George. “Do you hear me? We’re through I “

I got up. “I hear you.”

Did a young woman in Cerne Abbas turn and twist that night beside her sleeping husband? ‘Kathy! Kathy!’ That was what he had muttered when I had dragged him half conscious out of the Cadiz church. So life and love are lost, and the lute is silent . . O

“Killigrew! “

“It’s too lafe.”

George slipped off Crocker’s shoulders and came up. One side of his face was like a riven tree, the eye puckered and sightless.

“It’s never too late to get out of here, boy. Remember what you’re threatened with on Friday.”

“It’s too late! ” I shouted angrily. “Victor is gone … And these …” I gestured at Fletcher and Stevens. “They can scarcely stand.”

Crocker came over to us. “Well? Are we making a dash tonight? Are you with us, Killigrew? Say Yes or No. The moon’ll be gone in an hour. I say, go now. Who knows what may happen tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said George, “there’s nothing to delay for.” He patted my arm. “Come, Killigrew, you can help your friend no more. He would not want to hinder you.”

Tears blinded my eyes. “D’you remember, George,” I said, “what you said on your way back from our talk with Buarcos? “

“Yes … I said I thought we must kill that man.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

We left about eleven. George, as the originator of the escape went first, then I, then Crocker, who was the fittest of the three. We could do nothing for Fletcher and Stevens; to have taken them would have been to set the attempt at nothing from the start. They wished us God speed and a safe journey through a hostile and barren land. Fletcher was able to stand only long enough to support Cracker his shoulders; then we were gone.

The guard house was beside the jail, separated by a dusty quadrangle perhaps designed for drilling and the exercise of prisoners. Beyond the guard house at the corner of the square stood the house where we had had our interviews.

All the stalls had been moved and the last of the peasants were gone. A wind was blowing through the town, a dry off-land wind full of dust and heat. It was gusty; whirlwinds rose like ghosts conjured from the arid earth, dipping and swirling in baleful rhythms, then collapsing among the shadows or exploding into the upper air as the wind tired of them.

He dined at ten in the upstairs room this much I knew because last week his servant had been waiting with the tray to go up as we came out. It was now eleven by the town clock. He should be down to the dregs of his wine.

In a town in an occupied but quiescent country far from any real enemy or risk of surprise, it was unlikely that a guard would be posted at his door; but one could not take the risk. A window into a passage; we climbed in and came to a wide hall. It was empty and in darkness, but there was a candle burning on the stairs, and light came ‘from the kitchens and the ante-room where we had once waited. Major George grabbed up a pike leaning beside the door.

I peered through the hinge slit into the kitchens. A pot was bubbling on the fire, unwashed pans lay on the table and mosquitoes and flies swarmed round them. The place was empty. I heard voices outside and saw through the farther door three men, the cook and two servants, squatting in the yard playing dice where they had gone for coolness.

On the table, still greasy with the young lamb it had carved, was a long serving knife which through the years had been honed down for sharpness until it was like a stiletto. George was in the doorway, but I motioned him back as I picked up the knife. Captain Buarcos’s room was not over the kitchens but over the stables and separated from the kitchens by the width of the hall. We could not tackle three servants in an open yard.

Over the door were two bells. The knife cut the cords working these. I latched the door behind me.

We went up the stairs. A light shone out from his illfitting door. In that moment before action I remember the smell of bay leaves, of vinegar and of quinces, the creak of George’s military boot on the stairs, the heavy, hesitant breathing of Crocker. A great death’s head moth was beating against one of the slits of the door. We let him in.

Perhaps when the body is sick it narrows the mind’s preparedness for surprise; one pursues an object with only one’s own choices in view. Since we made this plan an hour ago we had concluded without reason that Buarcos always dined alone. Tonight sitting with him was a thin small-featured young officer we had sometimes seen about, a young man who wore his hair long and walked with an affected step.

We brought in a draught, and the candles dipped and guttered; shadows curtsied on the yellow plaster walls. &rprise should have been on our side only, instead it was on two; but we recovered first. Buarcos’s goblet was overturned as he moved to get up his sword-belt was on a chair four paces away.

“Stay!” said George, lowering his pike. “One word ~

Fine muscatel dripped on the floor. The young officer could reach his sword: he did so as George charged him. At the same moment Buarcos kicked over the table and leaped for the bell push. I went after him. He pulled the bell and shouted and got to his sword, but before he could draw it I was on him. It would have been good to talk but there was no time to talk. We rolled over, clawing. His nails reached my eyes as my knife went deep into his belly. Then I ripped him up. Blood spurted two feet; he got to his knees and his entrails were pushing through his tunic as he fell.

I got up trembling. George had killed the young man by running him through with the pike. It was all over in two minutes. I stood there trembling. One of the overturned candles had set fire to the table-cloth; it flickered and sizzled as Crocker beat it out. A decent darkness fell on the scene; one candle only burned on the mantelshelf. Crocker was at the door listening. I trembled like a man in a late state of St Vitus’s dance.

George put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, lad, you opened him like a ripe musk-melon. There’s nothing more to do here.”

It was as if I could not move my feet, as if they adhered to the floor.

I still held the knife; I dropped it.

“We’d best go,” said Crocker. “There’s no alarm.”

George was on his knees groping for the skin of wine. Being of narrow neck it had not all spilled. He slopped some in one of the cups and gave it to me to drink.

“We’d best go,” said Crocker. “I shouldn’t fancy if they found us now.”

I tried desperately to recover myself. It was not at all horror at killing Buarcos: it was the release of a great anger which now, acting on weak nerves and a sick body, left me as if I had myself been stabbed.

“There’s horses below,” said George. “Think you we could get ‘em?”

“No,” I said. “They’re too precious too precious not to be locked in.”

George took a swig of wine himself, passed it to Crocker. Crocker took it as if it was red-hot, drained the rest in a gulp.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We heard a frightened neighing.

The blood from the two men must by now be dripping through the boards. George took off Buarcos’s sword and buckled it round him.

“Par better,” I said. “Mules. We may be able at the edge of the town we might get them.”

“Come, lad,” said George. “I’ll help you down the stairs.

We turned to go. When we entered, not 300 seconds since two men had been finishing a good dinner, replete, healthy well wined, at ease. When we left, not 300 seconds later, they were dead, blood dripping faster than the wine, processes stayed for ever; two corpses spilled among the remnants of the meal. I was sorry I had not had time to talk to Buarcos. I wondered if he had realised it was for Victor.

We got to the top step, my feet halting. George with his arm round me; Crocker was already at the foot of the stairs I limped down. The kitchen door was still shut. The horses now were neighing and stamping their feet. It. was they who would raise the alarm.

The window was still open. It seemed darker outside now. Somehow I got over the sill. Some people were walking across the square: a whole family out late; the father in his black hat, cloak billowing in the wind, the mother in her shawl, five children fantailed behind. They took no notice of us.

We left the town.

CHAPTER NINE

It was Major George’s plan to strike south. He thought the Spanish would expect us to go north and so would pursue us that way. South lay the narrow Gibraltar Straits and the Sultanate of Morocco; Ahmed the Golden was on friendly terms with England. It was a long way; but little compared to any trek north.

We found no mules to steal in Lagos; but five miles south on the road to Faro, from an old house which had a halfdozen in the stables, we were able to take three without challenge. I do not know quite how we managed to walk that first five miles, since we were all exhausted by privation before ever we began; but fear of what is following and the lure of freedom ahead are the greatest spurs even to sickly men.

Although I was the sickliest of the three in part because my mind was ailing with grief and anger on that first march I kept up with them unaided. On the mules we made a few more miles before dawn and hid in a coppice of gorse and scrub that reminded me of Cornwall. We lay there all through that hot morning, and it was not until the first hour of the siesta that we moved again into a village called Lagoa.

There by good fortune we were able to raid a barn and steal leeks and lentils and a few grapes. A mongrel dog woke the village round us and we had to flee into the hips and look down at the peasants milling about as in a disturbed ant-hill.

It was poor food for men long deprived, and during the afternoon while we lay in the shade of a scrub oak I began to be tormented by visions of the food we had left untasted on Buarcos’s table. We had been too precipitate: five minutes more would have enabled us to fling the stuff into a bag and carry it away; it would have lasted us two days. The thought was a pain in the stomach, genuinely felt.

As soon as the sun set we were off again, but cut inland away from the coastal track. One could toss a coin as to whether it was the best choice and only hope we did not get hopelessly lost. This was rough barren country, with little cover but little sign of human life.

Towards dawn we descended a long hillside to a giant riverbed, dry and strewn with boulders and the trunks of rotted trees. Halfway across we found a tiny rivulet of water slipping downhill and gratefully watered the mules and refilled our own skins. We were able to get up into the bushes at the other side before day broke.

There we lay and discussed for a time the question as to whether, if we moved far enough away to escape capture, we might yet remain in Portugal, slip down to the coast in a week or two and persuade some fisherman, on the promise of a reward, to carry us back to England. As George pointed out, there was some advantage in staying in a country compulsorily annexed by Spain. Many Portuguese today were the orphans of those massacred fifteen or so years ago, when it was said so many corpses were thrown in the sea that the fishermen would not go out again until the archbishop had come in solemn procession to purify the waters. For my part I had no preference as to what we did and little expectation as to the outcome, for it was while we were so talking that I knew the pain I had was not hunger after all.

I said nothing then, but about midday had to cry off the search for food and let the others go on alone. They were lucky and came back with a tiny hen. This, cooked and eaten with the fingers, was the first fresh meat we had tasted since capture, but I could not savour it. They looked at me sym-pathetically and I tried to make light of the trouble. We started off again at dusk, and I travelled until the first streaks of dawn were in the sky. Then I had to give up and lie writhing in the dust.

That I should be attacked at this stage with the dysentery we alone had avoided seemed the harshest turn of fate. It made nonsense of any hope of escape. I knew from watching others that this was only the beginning of an attack. It would get worse until I was prostrate and perhaps unconscious. In five or six days I would die or get better. But five or six days was too long to survive under present conditions.

We moved on again for two hours before the heat was great and then took refuge in a coppice on the north side of a ridge. We had found no water yesterday and the mules badly needed it. The problem of water in this barren land was that such springs as might exist were likely to be the sites of hamlets or villages. We would not probably find another riverbed.

I tried to persuade George and Cracker to leave me and go on. This was the clear and logical thing to do. They would not, as I think I should not have. It is when human beings are above human logic that they perhaps show their affinity with God.

They made me a rough shelter from the fierce rays of the sun, put the last of their water beside me, and then split, Crocker to go towards the sea and Major George inland. Whether they found food or not they were to meet here again at dusk.

Sometimes an illness can just consciously be kept at bay while there are others about and while there are decisions to be taken. When the others are gone and the decisions made there is no barrier left. So within an hour I was in a high fever, my belly dissolved into pain and blood.

I thought I was back at Arwenack at the great hall, but it was no pleasant homecoming. A huge log fire was blazing and one could not get away from the heat. All about the room were Dominican monks in the long black robes of the Inquisition. They were staring at the fire and at the pile of logs waiting to be burned in the hearth. Suddenly the one next to me threw back the hood and cloak showing the white woollen garment underneath. It was Katherine Footmarker. She smiled at me, and her teeth had been filed down to points; her eyes held little blazing fires of their own.

‘Well, Maugan,’ she said, ‘so you are back. Now that this is a Catholic country you must conform or die.’ ‘The Spanish have conquered?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes. They are dragging the women through the streets by the hair.’ ‘But where is my family? Where are the Killigrews?’ ‘They would not conform, Maugan, so they are in there, in there, in there, where all heretics go…’

I looked across at the fire and saw that at the back of it was a heap of skulls and that the logs in the hearth were in fact a pile of dismembered human limbs. I struggled to get towards them in the hope that I might yet save one of them but was held back by the monks, who came to cluster around me, chattering in Spanish and other alien tongues. I shouted and screamed and swore but nothing availed. Then one of the monks came across with a piece of the fire and thrust it into my belly.

The old woman who found me fetched her friends but would not let them cut my throat; instead she had me carried to her hut and laid on her own straw pallet. She disregarded warnings that I had the plague and washed me and dressed the festering sore in my side. Then she squatted down to wait for me either to recover or to die.

It was perhaps forty-eight hours before I began to disentangle her round cautious inquiring face from the faces of fever and delusion. By then she was feeding me on lentil soup which she put into my mouth with a thick wooden ladle. Slowly the phantoms returned less often and I knew where I was and that the disease was on the wane.

The hut we were in was on a hill slope a little removed from the hamlet below. It appeared to be partly built into the rock of the hill, for the roof was of natural stone. On it for a long time I watched a spider in a strange semi-warfare with a colony of ants. And I watched the flies scavengers rubbing their legs and heads, buzzing around the other insects, privileged by the dimension of flight. Sometimes a lazy bee would bump against the wall, lost and clumsy.

For a long time I lay in this way, gaining slowly in strength but thinking very little, content in utter weakness to let the time drift by, watching day come to the window of the hut, blaze and fade and grow dark again. The woman, whose name was Carla, would come and go during the day, working in the old olive grove beside the hut which provided her with subsistence. Once a day, it seemed, she went down to the hamlet for water; sometimes in the evening curious neighbours would come to peer and question, but she drove them away.

She had grey hair tied tight back under a black cloth scarf, and cheeks like an onion, the skin high-coloured and loose; black eyes deep-set and changeless. At first we could understand nothing of each other her country Portuguese was too much for me, but after a time we began to understand words and simple phrases.

One day I was able to sit up, the next to move to the door of the hut and stare out. I could only speculate on what might have happened to George and Crocker. Thoughts of my own predicament came nearer to disturb and frighten. Although there might be little direct communication between these peasants and the Spanish, some rumour would be likely to reach them sooner or later. It was not as if we had merely escaped. The sooner I was on my way the better. But where would that way be? The mules had disappeared. The few precious stones I had left had also gone; I only hoped Carla had them. The best one could look for now was some quiet hamlet such as this where one could gradually pick up strength and the protective clothes and manners of the countryside. But much, much farther from Lagos.

While I was so ill I had slept on Carla’s pallet and she on the floor. I wanted to change this round but she would have none of it. With an ancient smile she indicated that I was her guest and so must have the place of honour.

She had never asked me who I was, how I had come to be alone and sick under a canopy of thin sacking in a cleft on a bare hillside. I had nothing about me to help her guess my nationality or business, but she seemed incurious. I was somebody who had come into her life and she had cared for me as she would have a sick animal.

I told her that I must be off soon; I could not trespass on her any longer; but she shook her head emphatically; I was not yet well enough, another week perhaps, there was no hurry. I questioned her about the countryside around. We were, she said, about two days by mule from Faro. She had never been that far, but she had heard it had recently been burned by the English and life was not resumed there yet. Much farther east, perhaps three more days, was a big river which divided Portugal from Spain. Between was country such as this, she thought; her nephew had once told her so.

About this time the weather at last broke; a dawn brought ink-blue skies and then thunder. Rain fell all day drumming like a military attack on roof and trees and cracked earth. The hillside changed into rivulets of yellow mud; dust-dry walls within the hut began to sweat, the olive trees bent under the weight. Then the storm cleared away and the following day was blue and sparkling. For the first time I felt a return of full vigour, and was ready to be off.

I asked Carla if she could find me any sort of peasant’s cloak and rough breeches, and she said she would try. A skin of water, a belt with some food, a pair of shoes, a stout stick and a knife; it was as much as one could expect, and more. I tried to thank her for what she had done, but she only grinned politely and shrugged it off. I said I wanted to leave on the following day, but she said there were signs against it. The new moon would be a better time, and that would be in two days.

The day before I was due to leave I spent out of doors, chopping and sawing wood for her and stacking it for the winter. From this hut you could see the hamlet just below and then across the shallow valley to the hillside beyond. As I recovered I had fallen into the habit of standing each night at the door of the hut to watch the sun set, then, as all the hills and valleys flushed with light, shadows would begin to creep along the fissures and up the clefts in the rock. The light would become more vivid as it was sucked up into the sky, the land more purple and then grey. There would be a moment or two of final splendour before the shadows rushed in like a sea and it was dark.

Tonight I was at the door when I saw five men on horseback coming down the pewter-coloured track on the opposite hill. I at once called Carla, who came and peered, but then said there was no cause for alarm; sometimes men went through this way on journeys west; they seldom visited the hamlet and never her hut. My supper was ready, it would go cold.

So after watching them out of sight round a corner of the hill I squatted beside her and took the soup cup in my hands and sipped it. Twice more I went to the door; the first time they were farther down the valley, the second time they had disappeared.

That day she had brought me an old cloak from the village and had turned out a grey shirt, worn but serviceable. With these I would have to do; I was grateful to her and told her so; she grinned and shrugged and sipped. Night fell and she stirred the wood fire to new cheerfulness.

I said when I left on the morrow, could she spare some bread to take with me, a few olives, water and perhaps a skin of wine? She said she had it all ready.

At the end of supper she muttered her evening prayers. As she was finishing a horse neighed.

I reached for my knife, slid away from the fire and crept on hands and knees to the door. Stars and a still night, two lights winking in the hamlet, a night bird crying. She was beside me, clutching my sleeve. I drew away and out of the hut. Nothing. Then the clink of a hoof.

Shadows and men loomed up. The old woman was in my way. As I raised the knife it was knocked out of my hand. I was dragged into the hut.

An officer, two soldiers and a peasant. As they tied me up the old woman began to talk in a whining tone. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not understood her, for she was arguing with them, saying she had sent her nephew all the way to the Spanish frontier to fetch them, she an old widow woman with no money and scarcely food for her belly. Surely she was entitled to a fair reward?

CHAPTER TEN

The dungeon at Seville was much different from the one at Lagos. It was solitary and underground and dark. There were three adjoining cells at the end of a long low tunnel, and the grill in mine looked out upon another passage running crosswise at a higher level. The other two cells were unoccupied.

It was very silent. Almost the only sounds were occasional footfalls ringing on the hard stone of the upper passage and the prison bell audible in the high distance.

For a while being alone did not matter. I had plenty to think about, most of it unpleasant, but food enough of a sort for an unquiet mind. The guards would tell me nothing. It is difficult when young to wait patiently for one’s end, but as time went by the mere loneliness became a danger of another sort and almost as much to be dreaded.

I marked off the days with a wooden spoon that was daily brought and daily taken away. I scratched the wall over my bunk. There was no means of knowing the date when this imprisonment began but it seemed important that time in general should be kept track of.

I asked for pen and paper but this was refused. I asked for books or something to make or do. Nothing came. The guards said the commandant of the prison had no instructions. This struck a familiar note. I wondered what fiesta I was being saved for. Yet it seemed certain that there must be some form of trial first. The Spanish strongly believe in the processes of law even the Inquisition does and in this case the law was on their side.

To provide some occupation I began to work on a bar of the grill window looking out on the upper passage. I had two rusty nails out of the bunk, which made little impression. But one went on in deference to the spirit of Major George.

Ten scratches became twenty. I tried hard to keep the guards in conversation when they brought food, but nothing would induce them to stay. It seemed likely that they were acting under orders. Stolidly they brought in the dishes of unsavoury mash, stolidly they took them away. The silence of the prison was oppressive. I would have welcomed the shouts of other prisoners. Sometimes I made a noise to reassure myself that I could still hear.

There was a difference between the boots of the guards and the sandal slop of priests. If I ran to the back of the cell it was possible to see the feet passing. Sometimes there would be other footsteps accompanied by the rattle of chains.

Twenty scratches became thirty. Time hung like its own chain about my neck. I recited the Colloquies of Erasmus and such Ovid and Juvenal as I could recollect. I sang and tried to compose new ditties or a poem. But it was hard to remember the lines next day. I tried to recall Victor’s songs:

“My love in her attire cloth show her wit,

It cloth SQ well become her.” and

“Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee:

When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”

Sometimes I banged at the door demanding to be let out. I wrote letters to people in my head and kept a diary of the capture of Cadiz. The cell, at first stuffy, became cold. The wall on which the days were marked grew damp and water ran down it; I worried that it might wash the scratches away and re-indented them every meal-time.

Thirty scratches became forty, and I reckoned it must be December. I kept free from dysentery but my wound would not heal. Victor’s are healed, I thought; death is the perfect cure; maybe he’s the lucky one.

Little progress with the cell window. Perhaps one had not the dedicated perseverance of George; or it was the knowledge that if I ever got out of the grill it only led to another part of the prison.

One day when the older of the two tailors came to take away the midday meal he dropped a letter on the bunk as he retreated. I snatched it 11p and stared at it, for it was addressed to me in my father’s writing.

I stared at it for some moments, hands trembling. This could only be some ruse. But how could it profit them? I fingered the letter and turned it round and weighed it in the hand.

“Mastr. Maugan Kyllygrewe, Espana. For delivery.” That was all. I turned it again and the seal fell off.

23rd November, 1596.

“Son Maugan,

Your letter came one week ago this a.m. It is hard news

for us that you are a prisoner again. We had already had this word by note from Westminster in August month. The Spanish asked ransom money for the release of all prisoners of birth, and you were named as so captured; so since then we have known you alive.

There is nothing I can do to bring you to a releasement; that is hard but as God’s my judge I could as easy raise the dead as œ100 in gold at this moment.

Ruin in its harshest form stares me in the face. By you receive this I am more likely than not to be in Exeter or the Fleet and my ancestor’s home ransacked by savage creditors. This is the reward that comes to me from twentyodd years attendance at Court, and in the service of the lady our Queen. For the defence of England I have spent money from my own depleted purse, receiving as thanks only calumny and neglect. I have travelled far and laboured much in my country’s interests, but now even my relatives in the Queen’s very bedchamber ignore my pleas for help.

You may by now have expected that an easement of our plight would come by the marriage of young John to Jane Fermor. Well, by evil contrivance it has not. Oh, they were wed as designed on October 8. Sir George came down with a fine band of friends, fifteen in all, a gay, hard-visaged crew all with voices like preachers, in a noisy square. They feasted and drank my last œ100, by Christ, they did. Little Jane came with two personal attendants who were to stay here and have stayed not maids as you’d suppose but men-servants, army veterans, daggers in belts and the rest as nasty a pair as woman ever dropped. They bore between them a heavy box the dowry they could scarcely carry it, it seemed.

Well, the ceremony was done, a part by Merther, a part by Garrock, a part by some lackey cleric they brought themselves: it was all too long drawn for me: I say stand in the church door and dispatch the business quick. Well, it was done and the gay crew deep gone in my drink and the young couple bedded with all manner of lewd jokes, and the night wore on, many now seeing no more than the table legs where they sprawled on the floor. But Sir George, he drinks with the best and takes no heed of it. And I, being mindful of my purpose, take care to take care. So around three of the clock I suggest to him we go to my chamber where the dowry can be counted and checked.

You can have a notion of all I felt, Maugan, that day: the junketing and the shouting and the lewdness and the ran-tan; while all the time my mind was on things particular to my finances. Here at last was the happy outcome. Well, we went off to my chamber, I and Rosewarne and Sir George and that bent-legged attorney of his who had drawn up the settlement; and after a little preamble in came the two soldier-servants carrying the box. And the box was opened, and inside was a small bag of gold, no more large than the bag Belemus carried aboard the Crane.

So I looked into the box and merciful Christ, it was empty of all else, so I said, What was the meaning of this? So Sir George said, It is my daughter’s yearly allowance as agreed in the terms of the marriage settlement. œ200 a year I pay her so that she is no burden in your house. So I said, but as to the dowry, where is that? And he said, Oh, but that is not due yet under the terms of the settlement. So I said, Not due? But it was agreed to be paid on marriage. All such dowries are. So he said, Not this one. It is payable when your son comes of age.

God’s virtue, can you guess the scene, Maugan? Can you imagine how it happened? Of course I grew angry and hard words were exchanged. But then Sir George said to this attorney: Produce the settlement for Mr Killigrew to see. And we pored over the parchment, Rosewarne and I, and we saw what in my misfortune I missed at Easton Neston when the contract was drawn. Since Rosewarne was not with me, he being always at my elbow in legal matters, I had permitted all unknowing this evil trickery, this matter of seven words, to be slipped in. On her husband’s attaining his 21st year.

I have not the time to write all that flew between us, between Sir George and me. I fancy he had not been dealt with so blunt since his school days. But it availed nothing. He told me he had never had the intention of allowing his daughter’s dowry to be utilised for my debts, that he knew I should dominate over my own son to this end, and that she’d come to no harm for four years on the allowance of œ200 a year which he would send her.

Well, so as you see, any ransom I might have hoped to pay for your enlargement is in the clouds. I trust you’ll have the good fortune to be exchanged some time. There were many more Spanish taken than English so you may yet hope.

For myself there is little hope indeed. I do not think I can prevail upon Jane to ask her father for substantial aid for that is what he has done his evil utmost to avoid and she is a hard little thing with a mind and a will like granite. Since her father left she has exerted her temper on several occasions, and, since I feel the only deliverance can come through her good will, she has been given way to. Her two creatures follow her everywhere more bodyguards than servants. I only pray and believe that Sir George will be unwilling to allow the home of-which his daughter will one day be mistress to be broken up or sold for lack of a few thousand pounds. But that does not protect me. He will see me in prison without a qualm and as good as told me so. That I am his daughter’s father-in-law and a man of ancient lineage and great personal distinction moves him not at all.

Mrs Killigrew is in foal again, and is much distressed by the danger in which I now stand. Your grandmother, being frailer, more so; her night phlegms grow worse. Young Thomas fell out of a tree last month and broke his leg: we sent for Glapthorne. I hope he has put it to a good setting, for a young man with a limp is much hindered making his way in the world. We have lost more sheep with rot, and are likely to have less ground eared next spring than ever before. God help us.

I send this letter by Captain Elliot, who says he’ll deliver it. I have my doubts of its reaching you, though I know he is as much in and out of Spanish ports as English. I pray that Almighty Christ will sustain you in your captivity and lead you to a happy outcome.

Your affect. father, J. Killigrew.”

During the next week I read that letter ten times daily. In the end I came to know it by heart, and even after all these years can repeat it word for word. It was a shaft from home, a lifeline to which I clung in this utter isolation. There might be no comfort in it but it was the connection that counted, a tangible recognition that I was still alive and in touch with the outside world. I felt I had almost spoken to my father every phrase seemed to come from him, was like a breath of home. I saw it all and knew it all existed and was continuing to exist, and the knowledge steadied and kept me sane.

All the same in January I gave up work on the cell grating. The stone was too hard to make any progress: I was defeated. For some time now I had regularly talked to myself; it seemed to provide a form of company and a means of ridding oneself of certain insupportable thoughts and fears. But now I began to grow short of breath in the night. Sometimes in spite of the cold I would wake in a sweat, not from fever but from a mind-induced panic. The walls seemed to be closing in so that the cell became a box no bigger than a stone coffin. I would leap up and shout myself hoarse and then beat on the door until my hands were bruised and sore. Then I would collapse on the bed seeking for breath.

One night I could not stop and tore the straw out of the bunk and ripped into pieces the rough flannel covering. I screamed like an animal and knew I was going mad. I wept into bleeding hands and presently fainted or fell asleep asprawl with face pressed against the stone floor.

This happened for six or seven nights. It went dark at this time about six o’clock in the evening and I knew I had at least twelve hours of blinding silent darkness before the next faintest glimmer of light. For half an hour then I would pray aloud: for strength, for patience, for deliverance; for Sue and my father and Mrs Killigrew and the Raleghs; and in so doing a sense of repose would come and some faint breath of hope. The war might soon be over; I was yet alive; I would sleep and tomorrow would be another day. But this feeling would not endure beyond the middle of the night when, with perhaps six hours’ sleep behind me, I would wake in a dreadful panic. I was blind and deaf and suffocating in a world of unutterable horror. The thick clay was in my mouth and choking me. I had been overlooked; the commandant had received no instructions; presently he too would lose interest and the jailers would no longer come down the narrow passage to the three cells and the door would never be opened again. I was alone and alone and alone for ever.

Each day I pestered the guards; I demanded an interview with the governor; I must know what was intended. Even death on a grid-iron seemed less horrible than death from living burial.

One day I found myself sitting on the floor after the midday meal and realised I had not been marking the passage of days. I had no memory as to how many had gone since last the wall was scratched, two or ten or twenty. It no longer mattered. Nothing any longer mattered. I had just the initiative to eat what was put before me. My guards perhaps were relieved when they were no longer pestered. I no longer talked to myself except sometimes in a muttered undertone. I no longer had any thoughts.

Then I did the one thing which I had not thought of to secure a temporary release. I fell ill. A doctor was brought. He bled me and administered a clyster.Three days later I was moved to a cell with three other men and stayed there a week.

A young man’s body will put up a fight even when he is himself past fighting. In a few days I could walk. On the Sunday, which could be distinguished because of the church bells~two guards came and led me along a narrow stone passage and into a room decorated with tapestries and tables and chairs. Two men were talking. One of them I had seen before, though I was too tired to put a name to the face: a young man with coppery red hair and fierce, intent eyes. The other was a stranger. The guards left.

“Sit down, Killigrew,” said the younger man in halting English. “But you speak Spanish now, is it?”

I sat down and stared at him.

“You are Maugan Killigrew whom I met in Madrid? But yes, of course. You have changed. You are much older.”

I was much older. The other man was wearing a suit of black velvet gone slightly green with the years. The sun was shining in the courtyard outside.

“You wrote to Señorita Prada. She told her uncle and the message was passed on. This preserved you when you were recaptured in Portugal. But for that you would have been executed at once.”

De Soto, that was the name.

“My time has been occupied, otherwise I should have seen you before. Well, speak up! Have you lost your tongue?”

I swallowed and looked at him. I ran my fingers through my beard and blinked again, feeling the light too strong.

The other man said: “His confinement has been close, captain. After what happened at Lagos I had no choice.” He spoke with the gutteral accent of a southern Spaniard.

De Soto said: “You seem to have stolen his wits. Well, Killigrew, I have little to say to you at this stage. Many decisions as to policy await His Majesty; others await lesser men. Until these are taken you will be preserved. I can offer you two choices a return to the cell where you have spent the winter, or a less rigorous life of house confinement only. The last I can give you only on your oath not to escape. If you wish you may have twenty-four hours to decide.”

Pedro Lopez de Soto, that was it, secretary to-the highest admiral in Spain.

I found myself being led out. I tried to struggle. “No!”

“No what?” asked De Soto.

“I do not need the time. I will take the oath.”

“Very well, you will be put in the house of Captain Caldes here as a garden servant for the time. I can promise nothing more.”

I moistened my lips.

“You appreciate, Killigrew, that your escape from Lagos has still to come for reckoning. But the wicked murderers of Captain Buarcos and Lieutenant Claudia have been brought to justice and no more need be made of that.”

“Brought to … But I it was “

“Say nothing at this stage which win make your case worse. The corpses of the two English soldiers who committed the murder have been found on the Sierra Pelada, north of Huelva. Captain Buarcos’s sword was about the skeleton of one of them. Their guilt is established. There for the moment it should rest.” ~

I stared at him. Three years later T was to come across Major George in London. He and Crocker had changed clothes with two peasants whom they had fought and killed for their mules, and, altering course, they had eventually made the Biscay coast and a fishing vessel home. But now I felt as if I had lost my two last friends.

“There is one word of advice I would give you at this stage. young man that is if you wish to take the best advantage of your time. Are you listening?”

“Yes …”

“Amend your religion,” said Captain de Soto. “Embrace the old religion of Christ. Without that no one may save you.”

The trees were coming out. The long winter was over and with the suddenness of a woman throwing off a cloak, blossom burst in the garden. The cold winds lingered, and there was still snow on the low hills behind the town, but the sun seeped into my bones and warmed them and gave them new life. The dark purple sore in my side began to look less angry and the last stiffness went. I was 19 years old.

I lived the life of a servant, but this was comfortable and mind-restoring after the solitary imprisonment of the winter. I wrote to my father again, and to Mariana to thank her and finally a long letter to Sue.

There were five servants in the house of Captain Caldes, two of them negroes, but they showed no hostility and very little curiosity. Perhaps they had learned better; but for me they were human company, and that was what was needed most. The only member of the household to show resentment and suspicion was Father Lorenzo, who was a Dominican, and he had in some way to be won over. I did not at first seriously think of taking De Soto’s advice, but it was good whatever the motive behind it. If Father Lorenzo were to make one complaint to the Inquisition, no protection from Madrid, however derived, was likely to save me.

Time passed and his hostility did not change. I thought it all over with care. The heroics of openly defying a Roman Catholic monk no longer entered my head; the practical terrors of the dungeons of Seville had cured all that. So one day I decided to play for time.

He was “fudging and did not relax his suspicion, but after some sharp questioning and after hearing there had been some preliminary instruction in Madrid, he agreed to lend me books and to supervise my reading.

This was far from uninteresting, indeed it was a stimulus for an atrophied brain; but I soon saw I walked upon a narrow edge, for the monk was not a man of intellect and he assumed all questions to be heretical unless they could be put down to ignorance. It would have been a much more stimulating discussion with Godfrey Brett.

March and April came, with still no explanation of this treatment. De Soto had seemed to wish to clear me of the killing of Buarcos; this new detention on a favoured basis was nearer in manner to the time in Madrid. They seemed all to be waiting for instructions.

Easter passed with the streets thronged and the bells pealing. The King, they said, had been ill but was recovered; in Spain all things waited on him. For a governor of a prison, Captain Caldes was a humane man, and mostly his visitors and friends were of a like mind. They all went in fear of the church. The activities of the Holy Office were like the visitation of the plague, something not to be spoken of above a whisper and then only to a trusted friend.

I saw nothing of Seville outside the walls of the house, for the house adjoined the prison and was a part of it. Sometimes I would wake in the night with the stifling fear that I was back in that solitary cell. Then the breathing of the negro on the next pallet would be a salvation and a balm.

In late April Father Lorenzo began to grow impatient. I had read the books and had run out of questions or questions

393

that could be safely asked. There seemed no way of delaying. One day he asked me when I was prepared to embrace the true church instituted by Christ.

I promised to give him an answer the following week. This had become a cleft stick and one partly of my own making. As a heretic Englishman just released from prison and waiting decisions from Madrid, I might just have been tolerated in the household by being unobtrusive and easily overlooked. Now, however, having received instruction from a priest, I could not be overlooked by him. Either I became a Roman Catholic or I rejected his teaching. In the latter case he would inevitably report to the Inquisition.

Well, was I prepared to die for my faith, as I had been in Madrid two years ago? Much had changed since then. I had heard the emancipating arguments at Sherborne.

But what of those men who had spoken so brilliantly over the dinner table at Sherborne; Harlot, Northumberland and the rest; when it came to an absolute decision such as this, how would they choose? How would Ralegh himself choose, a man who for all his openness of mind was a convinced Protestant? Would he be willing to trim his sails and compromise when his soul was concerned? It did not seem likely. But what was the alternative for me?

One morning I was planting out some clove~gilly-flowers when Captain Caldes came into the garden with a younger cousin of his, Enrico Caldes. They did not see me. Enrico Caldes, a handsome, open-featured man in his late twenties, was protesting vehemently against the Holy Office.

“Let them lay a finger on you, John, let them but lay a finger on you, and all is lost. No one dare ask what has become of you, or write to you, or ask mercy on your behalf. To call and intercede would be to sign one’s own death order. As to the poor wretch “

“I know. I know it all “

“Yes, but you do not know that Felipe has been freed “

“Freed! Well, he is a lucky man l “

“Listen. He was arrested as you know in the dark of the night. He tells me there was no accusation. Someone laid false information about him, he will never know who. So he lies in a loathsome dungeon for six weeks fix weeks protesting his innocence, demanding to know what is his crime, asking for a fair and open hearing of his case while outside all his property is seized and his family pauperised. Then at last when he has asked for the tenth time to be told the cause of his arrest he is taken out of his cell and brought before his judges …

“Three of them sit there. When he comes in they say nothing. They wait for him to speak, then when he does speak they ask him who he is as if they don’t know his name, as if he is intruding on them. What is his business with them, they say. When he asks what offence he has committed to be so used, they tell him first to confess the faults he is aware of. When he says he knows no faults, they order him back to his cell. Knowing what that means at best another six weeks in a dungeon he stays there and offers to confess his sins. So in silence they sit and listen while he stumbles over a few irregularities which he has contrived to please them: he has lit candles on a Friday evening, he has changed his linen on the Sabbath that sort of thing. It does not please them. Now for six hours he is examined before them, promised mark you promised pardon if he confesses. So he has confessed to his judges, knowing there is no other way, he has repented and recanted of crimes he has never committed! “

“Well, it is the only way you know that. Once you are accused … I imagine his penalties will not be light “

“Light! … On three Sunday festivals he is to be stripped and scourged from the city gate to San Clemente. He is to abjure the eating of flesh meat, eggs, cheese and wine for ever. He must take a vow of chastity, though only 33. He must hear Mass every day of his life. And on one day in every month for a year he must walk barefoot in penance from his house to his parish priest in San Clemente. This is what we have come to “

“Hush, man, keep your voice down. Lorenzo is out, but one does not know who “

“Ah, who may be his creature! Who may not! A child is encouraged to betray its father, a wife her husband; no one is safe …”

“Well, that’s the way of it. I am no more happy about it than you.”

“There is a new torture now, practiced in Toledo. Have you heard, it is called Tormento di Toca. A thin cloth is thrown over the victim’s mouth and nostrils so that he is scarcely able to breathe, and then...”

That night I lay awake for a long time. Did not Henry of Navarre turn Catholic to preserve and consolidate his kingdom; was I more at fault to try to preserve my life? What was my great-grandfather but a Catholic? Was he condemned to everlasting torment for that, when the new religion did not exist? So Ralegh had argued once at Arwenack.

That week I said I was ready, and went with Father Lorenzo to the church of San Pedro and met two other priests who questioned me for four hours.

First I had to say in Latin Our Father and the Creed and the Salve Regina. Then I was examined closely on matters of the new religion. What were my parents and how had I been brought up? How had I been told to regard the Roman Catholic faith? What had I first been taught of the Mass and what did I now believe? What of sacramental confession? What concerning the orders of friars and nuns such as I saw about me in Spain? What of the intercession of saints? What of Purgatory? What of the eating of meat on prohibited days? What of fasts and disciplines? What of the salvation of the soul? So it went on all through a shining spring morning. At noon a glass of water was brought and then all began again.

At the last I was asked to take a solemn oath, and here almost threw off the whole thing. Yet at the end I dared not.

“I, Maugan Killigre,w, on the 29th April in the Year of our Lord, 1597, being in sound mind and body and under no duress, do solemnly declare that the church of England is not a church but rather the synagogue of the Devil, and that neither in her, her creed, or matters pertaining to her, can one be saved; and that I, Maugan Killigrew, as a person now received in the Catholic truth of the Roman church, confess that the said new religion of my country is bad, and in her and all her opinions and ceremonies lies the soul’s perdition; and I detest and abominate them and sever myself from them and from the said religion and recognise that the true faith and the Catholic religion is that of the Roman Church in which I have now been instructed, and in which I promise to live and die, never severing myself from her. And I ask with great humility, submission, and obedience and fear of God, to be received by this my conversion into the holy Catholic Church. In the name of the Father …”

On the morning following, in company with the other servants, I took the sacrament in the old faith.

May came and with it the first heat. We watered the garden each morning but the searing sun sucked up the moisture within the hour. Plants wilted, eddies of dust moved with the least breeze. We rose at four instead of five but took three hours siesta in the afternoon heat. With my acceptance of the old faith came some enlargement, and I was allowed to wander about the house. From the upper windows one could see over the town, and in those first hot days the domes and Moorish towers and arches became part of a mirage shimmering and unreal, some imagined city on a river’s edge existing only in the spray of a waterfall’s rainbow.

Nothing more was seen of de Soto, and I scarcely ever saw Captain Caldes; but one evening Enrico Caldes came into the garden with another naval captain. As I left the garden the newcomer said he was just back from Brest, so when it grew dark I made an excuse of needing easement and stole out again.

They were still talking, and about England. A spy had just come to Brest from the Court with the latest news. Ralegh was back in favour at last; it was thought he would soon be allowed to resume his old position as Captain of the Guard. He and Essex and Cecil were now working together in great amity. This meant, they agreed, that Cecil’s peace party had been overborne and that for the time he had thrown in his lot with the advocates of an intensified war. Another raid on Spain was therefore likely. Much more now depended on the Armada at present being prepared at Ferrol. It was essential that England should be conquered this year.

The naval captain was convinced that both countries were nearing exhaustion in this long drawn out war, and that the one which struck hardest this year was likely to win. Conditions were far more favourable now than in ‘88 for an Armada; it remained only to prepare it and send it at the right time. He was himself returning to Brest next week with big reinforcements.

He had served under the Adelantado at Lepanto and had a great admiration for him; a cautious but determined veteran, he said. It would be a very different story from last time.

Just then the bell in the prison clanged, and I shrank into the shadows and picked a stealthy way back to the house.

On the twentieth of May some decision was at last come to regarding my future.

Captain Caldes said: “You are still on oath not to escape, Killigrew. You have sworn that you will keep this city as a prison and not leave it either on foot or otherwise in any manner whatsoever. That is understood?”

“That is understood.’,

“Then within those limits you may go where you wish. I have arranged for you to have a room of your own in this house until you move to Cadiz.”

I stared at him, wondering if peace had come.

“You will be given money, sufficient to live and to buy yourself new clothes. My cousin will see to your needs. Please tell him what you want.”

I think I must have looked as stupid as when first brought before this man. “Thank you … I should like a barber … And some soap.”

Enrico Caldesgot up with a friendly smile. “Come, Killigrew, I’ll show you the city.”

He showed me the city.

We went to a bull-fight: a wild and noisy pageant in which the leading aristocrats of the city took part, played out under a blazing sky the colour of unpolished steel; we saw the great cathedral of Santa Maria de la Sede and watched the solemn dance of the choir boys performed with castanets before the High Altar; we were shown over the Jesuit college, we attended the Eucharist together at San Pedro; we walked the city walls; we sat at night gatherings where guitarists sang and danced the sad trembling songs of Spain.

From being a captive one had become a guest. With all the grace and courtesy which came natural to him Enrico Caldes was making me welcome. I was quite bathed, and though I tried to get him to talk, on that subject he would not.

On the second of June Enrico said: “Can you be ready to leave for Cadiz tomorrow?”

“Does this mean I’m to be sent back to England!”

“I know no more than you, my friend. Let us go together and see.”

We left at six in the morning and reached Cadiz the following night. Even by the quickly fading light one could see that much of the town was in ruins. Enrico said that although it had apparently been the intention of the English to spare the churches, when they left they had fired the houses and most of the churches had gone up in the blaze.

The harbour had more quickly recovered, and all signs of the struggle for the Puntal narrows had disappeared. Some blackened hulks remained in the mud below Port Royal where the treasure fleet had burned.

We stayed at an inn on the edge of the town, and at seven breakfasted off fresh flounders and spiced mutton and small beer. At eight we went on foot to Fort St Philip and there were led to a room overlooking the bay. In the room were three men. One was Andres Prada, Mariana’s uncle, another was Don Juan de Idiaquez, that high dignitary of the junta de Noche who had been present when I was charged with the message at the palace in Madrid. The third was Captain Elliot.

I knew then almost instantly whose decision it had been which had so drastically altered the attitude of the Spaniards towards me. And what that decision was.

I hardly needed to see the ring Captain Elliot was wearing and to recognise it as the one with the Spanish royal arms upon it which had been sent to my father to be given in due course to the bearer of his reply.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Within a week I sailed for El Ferrol.

Expediency I have heard described as a consideration of what is politic as a rule of action as distinct from what is just and right. It is a word with which the idealist has small patience. My idealism tarnished young.

Or perhaps it was all involved in some complex manner with the twoheaded eagle of the Killigrews which could look both ways.

In any event I found that the acceptance of Catholicism could not be made as an empty gesture and left there. I had been too deeply probed by the priests in the church of San Pedro. And this went with me into the confessional. It was impossible to confer with these solemn, patient, understanding priests and speak of petty sins tongue in cheek; it was impossible not to feel that in withholding from them the fundamental lie one was in a sense giving God the lie too.

The deception was no more palatable on the material plane; for it seemed to stem from the spiritual. The welcome the men gave me in the fort of St Philip was far more open because of this change of religion: it marched with Mr Killigrew’s change of allegiance and made my concurrence in it so much more plausible.

Here I had had three courses open. One, to have rejected my father and all that his betrayal stood for. Two, to have accepted it but with amazement and lack of understanding and unspoken hostility. Three to have welcomed it as if already half expected and to have offered to further his and their plans in any way possible. The first course would have rendered the change of religion pointless and would at best have seen a return to the dungeon. The second was a compromise which might have saved my life but done no other good. The third was a hypocrisy no greater than the greatest already undertaken, and it meant a likely freedom within Spain and perhaps some future chance of escape.

When I did go to sleep I would often wake sweating sometimes for myself and sometimes for what my father, to save himself from a debtors’ prison, was prepared to do.

One could see the scene so well: Mr Killigrew in his study in despair after bringing himself to do what he would so seldom do, add up the extent of his debts. Always before there had been another manor to sell or mortgage, or some rich person he could turn to for a helping hand. Always there had been tomorrow to look forward to; there would be a windfall from Elliot or Burley, or some old bond would be extended at the last moment: it always had happened before, and meantime it was a pity to miss such good hawking weather … But not today. A debtors’ prison is not a pretty place; my father had already sampled it.

But Captain Elliot was there. “Ten thousand pounds, Mr Killigrew. Not more than your deserts, Mr Killigrew, but where will you get them else? Not from the Privy Council. Not from the Queen. From her you have not even received the knighthood which all the eldest sons of your house have been given as they reached suitable age. Every man’s hand is against you, Mr Killigrew: Godolphin, Trefusis, Trelawny, Mohun, they will be the first to trample you down. But there is a way, quite handy to your hand, by which you may triumph over them, and thereby come by your knighthood, together with the ownership of Godolphin, Trelowarren, Erisey, Enys and Trefusis. It is not as if you had to organise an army, lead a revolt, go out in war. No, no. You need do nothing except perhaps rid yourself of one or two of your followers who might be difficult in a crisis. Then wait that is all just wait until these ships appear off your coast. All this is a trifle better than a debtors’ prison, which is all you will get otherwise. And what does the war really mean to you? Don’t tell me you have very strong feelings on religion. And Philip has already once been virtually King of England. There will be a little trouble, of course, some adjustments. But they will come in any case when Elizabeth dies, and she is old and not likely to last overmuch longer. This is your great chance of fame and fortune.

It is really only what Stanley and others did when Elizabeth’s grandfather landed … Think it over, Mr Killigrew. But don’t think it over too long. I leave on tomorrow’s tide …”

It was a strange meeting, that one in the gun room of the castle of St Philip. With my father’s answer in their hand they were sounding out Mr Killigrew’s base son. He already showed signs of being of the same mind as his father. He had been in Spain before, he spoke the language, he had borne the original message, he had recently become a Catholic: it all pointed one way, and Mr Killigrew’s base son had the quickness of wit or the baseness to see how their thoughts were leading them and to follow.

It was a strange meeting in other ways because, although by the end of it I had been examined thoroughly and much was implied, the speakers had been both secretive and vague. I could see that Enrico Caldes had no clear idea as to the object of the meeting; he knew far more than I about a gathering fleet, but he knew nothing of the offer to my father.

Enrico Caldes sailed to Ferrol with me. Captain Elliot had already left for Cartagena, and Don Juan de Idiaquez was returning to Madrid. Prada still had business to conclude in Cadiz; but before I left he sent for me.

“Sehor,” I said, “I have to thank you and Mariana for consideration last autumn when I was retaken after escaping.”

He smiled his tight walnut-brown smile. “Your escape is a matter we have forgotten, for reasons of state … I have a final word or two I wish to say to you, Killigrew, now that we are alone. It is in fact a warning.”

I waited.

“When we invade England we are assured of the support of many people in all walks of life. But your father’s help, as you’ll need no telling, will be of great value to our cause. He was worth buying. However, I like to believe his adherence to us is not solely a matter of gold. Nor, I trust, is yours solely a matter of preserving your life.”

“No, it is not.”

“So when the time comes you too will help. You speak our language. You will be a sign of our own good will towards those of your kinsfolk who do not oppose us. In all this, when all this is finished, you will not be the loser.”

I moistened my lips.

He said: “But there is one great danger. The essence of naval or military success is surprise. As our Armada grows here, its presence cannot be concealed from English spies. What can be concealed is its objective.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“So far in all Spain only four people, apart from the King, know of the destination of this fleet. None of our senior admirals yet knows it. You will readily see that if this secret were to be allowed to leak out, preparations to meet it in England would at once be made.”

“Yes.”

“When your father replied favourably to our invitation, it was first intended to keep you in prison. However, you can be useful, and you cannot fail to see that if this information which you possess leaks away to England before we are ready, it will sign your father’s death warrant. That must be clear to you.”

“It is.”

“You are fond of your father?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. Then we will leave it at that. Remember, a single unguarded word may ensure his death.”

“I understand.”

“Good-bye, and may we some day meet again.”

I had spent a week at Coruna when storm-bound two years ago, but had never crossed to E1 Ferrol, which is twelve miles away by sea and perhaps forty by road. Now we sailed in through a long and well guarded and narrow channel, and saw the town and dockyard sheltering behind the shoulder of rock which made the harbour, in such a way that they were not to be seen from the sea. It was a perfect natural harbour, far better protected than Cadiz, and one could understand the reluctance of English admirals to attack it.

Eighty-four sail were there when we arrived, about a quarter of them galleons but clearly not yet in a state of preparedness to sail. San Pedro, San Pablo and San Juan were three more of the ‘Apostles’ of which we had destroyed four at.Cadiz. San Pablo was the largest galleon of them all, being of 1,200 tons burden.

I was housed with Enrico Caldes, and shared a room with him and two other men in a hostellerie in the middle of the town where officers of the fleet had taken rooms. I was allowed to wander about the little town at will, though there was nothing to it except what had grown from the demands of the dockyard. A big fleet had in fact set sail for England last autumn but had been driven back with much damage by foul weather.

One night Captain Lopez de Soto arrived aboard the Espiritu Santo, a smaller galleon which he was to command in the Armada, and the next morning I was summoned to see him.

He was sitting in his cabin in a loose shirt under a green silk morning gown, the remnants of his breakfast on the table, a servant combing his coppery hair. He dismissed the servant.

“So, Killigrew, you are well housed? Caldes is looking after you?” He did not wait for an answer. “His Excellency Don Martin de Padilla is in Madrid, so I am dealing with all the administration while he is away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Caldes is to be specially responsible for you, but both of you will come under my supervision. I understand you are to sail with us when the time comes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No doubt on duties which will later be assigned to you … ?”

He waited. There was a faint questioning note in his voice which I did not respond to.

“All orders come in their proper time,” he went on. “We shall not, of course, sail yet. There is much still to do here, as you can see. It will be August. I think, before we leave.”

“Sir,” I said, “I am a good penman and speak both languages. Whatever duties may be assigned to me later, can I not be given something in the meantime? Could I not be of assistance to you or to some other officer?”

“That might be. I will give it some thought.”

As I got to the door he said: “Killigrew.”

“Yes.”

“You sailed from England on a great project with a great fleet, bent on the destruction of Cadiz.”

“Yes.”

“It will be a strange turn of fate to return to England with another fleet but larger, bent on another project but larger.”

I said: “May it have the same success.”

I do not think it was a wise remark for I noticed a glint in his eyes; I had seen the double edge only as I spoke. But that is the risk of hypocrisy; one must watch one’s tongue at every word.

For a month I worked as an under-secretary in the Naval Commissariat adjoining the dockyard. The hours were seven to twelve and three to eight; yet sometimes all I did if better organised could have been concentrated into two hours a day. There were twenty clerks and a like number of secretaries and a dozen senior officials dealing with the commissioning of the fleet, but delay and duplication and lack of system set much of their effort at nought. Underneath the high efficiency and devotion to duty of men like de Soto there was laxness and confusion. Every directive had had for so long to be referred to the top almost always to Madrid that underlings had become incapable of decision.

And El Ferrol, though supremely secure against outside attack, lacked much for the preparation of a great Armada. It was too far from the centres of Spanish power. The road from Madrid was mountainous and, one gathered, in places scarcely existent; the sea communications were long; the chief centres of population were far away. Small attempt had been made to equip the little town for so great an undertaking. The army lived in tents on the bare hillside, too many of the navy lived aboard ship too soon, consuming naval supplies and falling sick of disease while still in harbour. Streets were unpaved so that no vehicle could move without sending up clouds of dust, and many of the lanes were impassable because of the deep ruts. Ditches were clogged with refuse and alive with flies. At almost every corner cookshops had been set up with great kettles on trivets to supply the needs of the shipworkers and the sailors and the clerks. Often at midday I would have a leek broth at one of them and listen to the chatter of the men standing around. There were Portuguese, Italians, French and Germans among them, for many of the ships were foreign.

After midday some of the narrow shady streets would be impassable for sleeping men, and others diced in groups or gambled cross-legged over greasy cards. At nights there were noisy scenes and much crime and vice. Militia patrolled the main streets at certain hours, but their times were known and they were easily avoided. Priests were everywhere and kept the churches open for constant masses.

Over all and above everything was the white dust. It covered the world with a fine film; one’s hands were coarse with it, one’s teeth gritted, one’s hair was powdered. It lay on food and wine and book and seat and bed.

During the month I came to know by sight many of the Spanish admirals and captains who were to command the fleet. Don Diego Brochero, who was to be Vice-Admiral of the expedition, a fiery and vivid man; Bertendona, who had borne the brunt of the great fight with Revenge when Sir Richard Grenville died; Oliste, Urquiola and Villaviciosa were all men of great sea-going experience, none of them amateurs elevated to command because of their birth. The Spanish, as Ralegh often pointed out, did not make the same mistake twice.

The Adelantado himself was a tall and austere man of fifty or so with a concern for detail, and one could imagine him having little patience with inefficiency; but it was Brochero who had the passion and the fire. Whenever he came through the Commissariat it was as if a vitalising wind had blown. He it was who was in charge of discipline, and every day a new body would dangle from the gallows on the quay. A soldier had deserted, a sailor had been guilty of indiscipline, a dockyard worker had been caught stealing. Yet no punishment seemed to stop the abuses.

I thought often of writing to my father, but could not find the words. I could not beg him to change his mind without betraying my own. I could not write that I had thrown in my lot with Spain and was glad he had done the same. I could not write without mentioning these terrible decisions, for such a letter would have been without meaning and content. Nor could I bring myself to write to Sue: the main issue was impossible to speak of yet too great to ignore.

Gradually in settling down one came to appreciate currents of opinion which made themselves felt in the town. The foreign captains were in no hurry to sail. Memories still existed of the battle in the Channel nine years ago; and there were fresher memories of the storm which had defeated them last autumn; they had not so much to gain from a Spanish victory; their own countries lived in uneasy alliance with, or subjugation to, Spain. They would gladly see the Catholic faith triumphant but would have preferred others to play the leading role.

Then there were the fanatics like de Soto who lived only for the day, who smarted everlastingly under the defeat of ‘88, and the sacking of Cadiz last year, and knew that their destiny and their only fulfilment was to launch another Armada at Eingland’s throat. Such men predominated in the leadership. But His Excellency Don Martin de Padilla, Conte de Gadea, supreme Adelantado of Castille, steered a middle course. A sober general with the weight of the whole campaign on his shoulders, he was not to be hurried. Not for him the obloquy which was heaped on the name of Medina Sidonia. He did not underestimate England or the hazards ahead. So every preparation must be made down to the last detail. Then and only then, when the time came, whether it be August or even September, he would issue the orders and the great Armada would sail.

In that first month it built gradually. Three more of the ‘Apostle’ galleons arrived: San Bartolomeo, and the smaller San Marcosand San Lucar; Almirante from Ivella, the biggest of all; Misericordia, the flagship of Portugal; ten German and Flemish ureas; and a dozen other galleons of various sizes. By now the fleet was more powerful than the English one which had taken Cadiz; and in the next week another 3,000 infantry arrived, with some 500 cavalry and field artillery, and mules and oxen and a great quantity of ammunition and stores. Here I perceived the Adelantado to be in a dilemma. Such great forces as he now possessed were self-consuming. If he waited for even greater forces, what he had would likely eat itself away.

That week it was the last in July and the summer at its greatest heat several important councils were held and there was dissension at them. De Soto came away from the last of them in a towering rage. That day an English fleet was sighted off Coruffa.

If any testimony had been needed to the impression made by last year’s capture of Cadiz, it was manifested now in the consternation which ruled in El Ferrol. Orders and counter-orders flew about, ships were manned, batteries mounted, regiments assembled. A screen of flyboats was thrown out to report on the imminence of attack. On the second morning from a high rock above the biscuit manufactory I could count a dozen sail. I stood in the hot morning sun talking quietly to Enrico Caldes and silently praying to my Protestant God.

He did not ~hear. The flyboats reported twenty ships: five royal galleons,‘including Due Repulse and Hope, thirteen other big vessels and two flyboats. Due Repulse had been Essex’s flagship at Cadiz but the Spanish said she was not flying his pennant. The fleet was sailing provocatively backwards and forwards between El Ferrol and the Sisargas Islands, west of Coruffa, as if challenging the Spanish to come out. Already half a dozen small vessels had been captured as they came unsuspectingly round Cape San Adrien.

The Adelantado had received orders ~ from the King that week to prepare his Armada for immediate sailing; to this he had replied that his fleet was as yet far from complete stores, further military reinforcements, more ships, had all been promised; in particular the thirty-two ships of the Seville squadron under Admiral Don Marcos de Arumburu, another veteran of the battle with Grenville, with the division of the Andalusian guard aboard; and Prince Andrea Doria was making his way round from Italy with a fleet of galleys and a strong force of seasoned Italian soldiery; it would be madness to move without all these.

So the Adelantado had argued. Now with the appearance of an English fleet at his very door he might change his mind. Would he be right to do so? Hrochero urged an immediate attack, as did most of the captains. But Bertendona was against it, and so in the end was Don Martin. His view was that the English fleet was not big enough. To sail out of harbour at this stage, losing perhaps ten ships in destroying or disabling twenty, giving a fair picture of one’s strength and wasting valuable stores and ammunition, would be playing the English game …

So for nearly a week we waited in great tension. Once or twice in every day the look-outs reported the English fleet in sight off Betanzos Bay. Then the alarm would abate as they bore away again. On the sixth day they did not appear. They had left us in peace. El Ferrol began to return to its normal routine of unorganised preparation.

In the first week of August Captain de Soto left for Madrid. On the same date I was transferred to the galleon San Bartolomeo, which I was rowed out to daily. There fifty Irish were working on alterations and repairs. None of them spoke Spanish; they had come over in a shallop from Cork as volunteers for Spain, and I was used as a go-between translating the overseer’s orders. In the same week Captain Pedro de Zubiaur, perhaps the greatest living expert on galley warfare, was dispatched for Blavet with seven galleys, two supply ships and 2,000 infantry, where they could wait for the coming of the Armada. It helped in a small way to ease the supply problems of El Ferrol. That week a Spanish spy, an Englishman called Pennell, arrived in Coruna aboard a Danish ship and came to report to the Naval Council in El Ferrol. He spoke little Spanish, and I was told to be present to interpret. There were four other men at this interview: Don Martin himself, Father Sicilia his confessor, Admiral Brochero and General de Guavara.

Pennell had been in Plymouth a week ago, and knew all that had been happening there. The English fleet which had cruised off Betanzos Bay for five days had been commanded by Lord Thomas Howard, and had been part of a much larger expedition as great as the one of last year which had been scattered by a terrible storm off Ushant. Sir Walter Ralegh had turned back to Plymouth with his squadron badly damaged. The Earl of Essex, with his flagship Mere Honour almost sinking under him, had put in to Falmouth with some thirty or forty other of his fleet in like trouble. (Merciful God, that gave me a twinge!) The Dutch admiral had also given up. Only Howard’s squadron, missing the greatest intensity of the storm, had ridden it out and made for the arranged rendezvous. There he had stayed, as we had seen, sailing up and down waiting for the others and daring the Spanish fleet to emerge. Now he was back in Plymouth again, refitting with the rest.

Did they intend another expedition this year? Assuredly, Pennell replied, if the Queen continued her permission. Their intention when they came? It was to attack El Ferrol, possibly with fire ships, and then go on to the Azores to await and capture the Treasure Fleet. One result of the Spanish non-emergence to fight, Pennell said, had been to give the impression that they were still far from ready to sail and indeed would not come out this summer.

Pennell was a well-spoken man who had been a seaman all his life and at some time must have commanded a craft. But his hands trembled now, and one could watch how only the drink steadied him. The questions came near home and I dreaded to hear the name Killigrew mentioned. Once or twice I was tempted to give some wrong emphasis to a reply, for Pennell’s information had a ring of truth about it, but I decided it was not a justifiable risk. This was as well, for the next time I saw Father Sicilia he was talking a passable English to the Irish priest who had come over with the volunteers…

De Soto came back from Madrid well pleased with his visit. It became known soon after his return that the Armada would not sail for at least two weeks more. It was puzzling that this delay should satisfy him.

Pennell was lodged in the house where I slept, which was distasteful to me, for the presence of a genuine traitor made me more ashamed of my own position. He would have made a friend of me, but I could not stand the sight of his thin pitted face, the bloodshot blue eyes, the unsteady hands. I knew that the Spaniards, for all they had to make use of such creatures, despised them. Had he been placed here to spy upon me?

The weather had been less settled for some time, and now it set in blustery and wet. Ships putting in from Biscayreported storm conditions and unseasonable cold for early August.

One day when being rowed out to San Bartolorneo we passed a pinnace which was being re-painted. Some alterations were taking place aboard and her name Cabagua painted out. As we re-passed on the way home the name Mark of Gloucester was being painted in. I asked one of the Spanish sailors, who shrugged and said: “She was a prize, captured in the spring. She is English built, señor.”

“But why is she being given her English name again?”

“The ways of man are inscrutable, señor.”

“That is an English style of rigging she is being fitted with, surely.”

“Yes, surely, señor.”

The harbour and docks of El Ferrol had now become a sea of masts. There were 150 large ships besides the many small ones. The bad weather brought in coasters and fishing vessels for shelter, and there were collisions and damage in the roads. A powder vessel sank at her moorings and a Portuguese galleon went ashore on the shoals above the town. Fever had broken out both in the ships and ashore. I avoided it, but Enrico Caldes was gravely ill, and some hundred men died before the middle of August. Many men still continued to desert, and the severest measures Admiral Brochero could apply did not prevent them. I thought of Ralegh’s trouble pressing crews in the Thames. Many of the conferences to which the foreign captains were invited which were not conferences dealing with grand strategy but with ordinary details of supply broke up in disagreement and frustration.

The Spanish had one advantage over the English: a supreme commander who had absolute authority; but from what I saw of events it became clear that Brochero, always pressing his forward policy, was at loggerheads with His Excellency Don Martin and in this he was abetted by de Soto, Antonio de Urquiola, and several of the other influential captains.

A few days after first seeing the Mark of Gloucester I saw Pennell aboard her, and that night, swallowing my dislike, I sat down with him over a mug of burnt wine and encouraged him to talk.

“What?” he said. “Mark of Gloucester? Yes, well, I have been useful to them, my friend. You understand? I have brought them the latest news, so in reward they’re giving me back a little ship of my own. Of course it’s a small and illfound craft compared to what I commanded in my prime, but I shall be able to eke out a living carrying between one port and another.”

“They will release you?” I said.

“Release me? I was never in captivity, my friend. They are giving me this ship for myself in payment of services rendered.”

“With what crew?”

“Crew? Oh, that offers no problem, my friend. I need ten, that’s all. I have already an Irish master’s mate, two Flemish seamen, a Dane and a Frenchman.”

“And the Spanish are willing that these men should go?”

“Why not? A dozen more or less, what is that?”

While he drank I watched him. He was a drunkard, but drunkards like madmen are astute enough outside the area of their particular weakness. What if I said to him, Take me? Would he betray me to the Spanish?

The following day I was called off San Bartolomeo to help again in the Commissariat and Captain de Soto was there.

“So Killigrew, you have escaped the fever. Look at this establishment: decimated! I want you to copy out this order for requisitions three times. They must be ready within the hour. When they are done come aboard San Pablo, I have work for you there.”

That night I supped with junior officers aboard the galleon and listened to their lively talk. They were a handsome friendly group. For them the present delay was outrageous. They wanted only to sail and challenge the enemy in his home waters. To them, proud and brave as they were, it was humiliating and frustrating to wait, as one put it, until the English were “knocking on their front gate”.

“It is not quite that,” said an older lieutenant. “Wars are not won by gestures, they are won by preparation, by strategy, and only at the last by fighting.”

“Oh, hark at Rodrigo!” another said. “This is not to be a joust such as you went on nine years ago! We no longer have wax in our ears. We’ll fight the English fleets and defeat them before ever we get sight of their coasts. It’s said they will sail this week.”

“Even so I doubt we shall meet them.”

They pressed him then, but he glanced in my direction, so I got up.

“You can speak more freely if I leave?”

“No, no. You are with us, I know that. I can only say that I have heard that efforts are to be made to lure the English fleet away from our shores so that we may sail to England without battle first. If it can be done I’ll tell you it will be worth doing. We should not defeat them in straight battle without grievous loss on both sides, and if it can be avoided I have no fancy to continue into northern waters with our sails in ribbons and our bows holed at the waterline. However great the victory might be, the weather could be the final victor. It was last time.”

There was silence then. My mind flew over the information and found it instantly true: it explained De Soto’s willingness to wait.

Next day I again worked on board San Pablo to which De Soto had temporarily transferred. At length I could be in ignorance no longer.

“Sir, I see efforts are being made to decoy the English fleet when it enters these waters. Can I not help in some manner? I know my countrymen and their ways.”

De Soto finished reading the letter his scrivener had written and took up the wax to seal it.

“Who told you anything of this? Captain Pennell in his cups?“

“No. But Mark of Gloucester is not being renamed for nothing.”

De Soto pressed the wax down with the naval seal. “So you think I should explain it to you?“

“I hoped I could help.”

“You cannot help. There will perhaps be other duties for you; who knows? I cannot tell you, for I am not told.”

The scrivener returned then but went out again almost at once.

“But since you have observed this piece of strategy, no greater harm will come of your knowing the rest. As the weather moderates we shall throw out a screen of small vessels to await the arrival of the English. They will be foreign vessels, manned by English, Irish, Flemish, and in due course some of them will be captured. They will all report that the Adelantado has sailed with his fleet to the Azores to protect the new treasure flota coming from the Indies. It is hoped and believed that your Admirals will ‘follow’ him.”

Again we were interrupted but it was impossible to keep what he had said out of my mind.

“But, senor, if you succeed in this this plan, who is to say the English will not take the opportunity of attacking Cadiz or Lisbon instead?”

“Two things, Killigrew. One, naval success and greed of gain have always been uppermost in the minds of your English admirals. Two, their evacuation of Cadiz after they had captured it last year proves that the conquest of Spain territorially is quite beyond their resources or their desires … So we believe they will sail for the Azores and leave England open for our invasion.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Looking back on that momentous time with the after-sight of the years, it is sometimes hard to untangle the sensations and apprehensions of each day from the knowledge that came later.

I did not at first think there was any likelihood of the Spanish manoeuvre being successful; Ralegh or Essex would sail into the very jaws of El Ferrol harbour to establish the whereabouts of the Spanish fleet for themselves. It was not until the ruse had already succeeded that I began to believe it.

One day I met Richard Burley in the street. It was an unpleasant shock, for though he greeted me in a friendly way and without apparent surprise, the presence of this man always seemed an ill omen in my life. He told me he had slipped away from Cawsand near Plymouth on the 18th August and at that time the English fleet was ready to sail and waiting for the first breaks in the weather.

Soon after this, Mark of Gloucester left commanded by Captain Pennell of Bristol, and manned by a mixed crew. She carried a cargo of wine and salt from Oporto and Coruna for Weymouth. Other small vessels left at the same time.

That week I was given a broadsheet to read written in English, and was asked to go carefully over it for printing mistakes. The pamphlet was addressed to the English people offering mercy and advancement to all who turned Catholic, but threatening the sword to all Protestants. That week also I entered a room at the Cornmissariat and found it piled with English flags … they were to be distributed throughout the fleet.

News came that the King was gravely ill. Temporarily this disrupted everything, for though he was old he held all decisions in his own hands. It was as if a sudden palsy had struck the town. What if he died? Would his son, who must now be about nineteen, in any way alter the urgent command to sail and conquer England? Prince Philip was spoken of everywhere and openly as a weakling and dissolute.

Unknown to me at this time, the English fleet under the supreme command of Essex, was not 100 miles off the Spanish coast. So far they had progressed well but now they were struck by another of the great storms of that vindictive summer. The two Spanish galleons captured at Cadiz and adapted to English designs were totally disabled and forced to make for Biscayan ports. Sir Walter’s Warspite was part dismasted and Lord Essex’s Due Repulse sprang a dangerous leak. The rest of the fleet was scattered, and Ralegh, missing the other ships at the agreed meeting point, and unable in his damaged state to do more than run before the wind, made off south for the second rendezvous above Lisbon. Near Finisterre a frigate of his squadron captured one of the small vessels sent out from Ferrol with the false news.

In El Ferrol, de Soto more and more dropped his guard in my presence. I was competent, discreet and always willing. So I learned of many decisions almost as soon as they were come to.

Once or twice he tried to sound me as to my exact purpose with the invading fleet, as if he sensed a plan he was not entirely aware of, but, mindful of Andres Prada’s warning, I would not be drawn.

News arrived that once more the King was recovering, and all began to move again. But there had been a full week’s delay, and the grinding machinery of preparation took time to gather pace.

The painful decision was reached that bare supplies on all vessels should be cut from ten weeks to five. For a voyage of conquest this seemed ample but everyone knew the hazards of that reasoning.

Daily flyboats which patrolled the seas from Cape Finisterre to Cape Ortegal came in to report on what they had seen, and presently we heard that a large English fleet had been sighted off Finisterre. (This was the main English fleet under Essex gathering after the storm.)

For a time we did not know what success, if any, the decoy ships with their false tales had had. Then the news broke in a flood among the senior officers: three different flyboats reported that Essex and the rest of the fleet had been sighted off Muros heading south.

They were gone and the way was open. It was the 9th September.

At once embarkation began. Final stores were brought aboard, messages to the King sent, troops and equipment and ammunition ferried to the transports and the galleons, mules and horses and cattle shipped. To my disappointment I was put aboard San Bartolomeo with Enrico Caldes. The fifty Irish were to travel in her as combatants and I was needed as interpreter. Another company of 1.00 Irish soldiers under their own captain travelled in the urea San Juan Bautista.

Capitan de Mar of San Bartolomeo was Ferdinando Quesada, a thin ascetic man, wealthy in his own right, who kept two pages by him to play music in the evenings. The Capitan de Guerra, or general commanding the soldiers aboard, was Diego Bonifaz, his rank being equal to that of Quesada; and he had absolute control of his own forces as if army and navy were travelling together only by accident.

Richard Burley sailed aboard San Mateo, a galleon just delivered from the new shipyards of Renteria to replace the one of the same name destroyed at Cadiz. Captain Elliot joined the fleet with Dolphin, his own crew and his own arms, as an independent privateer.

Embarkation took two days; it was the morning of the 12th before the first galleon shook down her sails and began to make a way out of the long narrow jaws of the harbour.

Orders were to assemble in Betanzos Bay to await a favourable wind. The great fleet took thirty hours to assemble in the bay fifteen miles from Ferrol on the western side of the rocky cape. The weather was still rough and the wind gusty and treacherous when I went up on deck on the morning of the first inspection. The ships were anchored in six lines, each line consisting of ten galleons and fourteen other ships from Easterlings to transports. This made 144 major warships. There were another sixty caravels, flyboats, supply boats and frigates. In all these vessels, as I well knew from going over details, there were 5,000 sailors, masses of field artillery, mules, horses, oxen, siege trains and over 10,000 trained soldiers.

The Adelantado conducted his inspection from a decorated barge rowed by twenty-four picked oarsmen. From the maintop of San Pablo, the galleon next to ours, the Adelantado’s own pendant fluttered, a bread swallow-tailed flag in green, so long that when the gusty wind faltered the ends of the standard dipped in the water. The whole fleet was dressed with flags and standards. Men stood in lines and cheered, guns were fired, the galleons dipped and nodded in the swell, the wind clutched viciously at mast and rigging, and the Adelantado’s barge lurched and rolled with flecks of salt water glinting off the oars and fine mists of spray lifting and breaking across the bows.

I slept that night in my usual sickly unease of a first night at sea. The Spanish galleon is a much more comfortable vessel than the English fighting ship, there being more accommodation for the men and greater spaces between decks. Of course, San Bartolomeo was half as big again as Warspite. No one in our galleon yet knew our destination in England. I heard the officers speculating at supper and Falmouth was never mentioned. Some thought the Isle of Wight, some Scotland, some Milford Haven; others thought we should sail right up the Thames and capture London.

The next morning it was known that we would wait a few more days for Admiral Arumburu and the Seville squadron.

We waited until the 18th. Instead of the great Sevillian fleet, attended by Prince Andrea Doria’s galleys, came a single frigate. It reported that only ten days ago an English fleet under Sir Walter Ralegh had appeared off the Tagus and appeared likely to attempt to capture Lisbon. In the circumstances Admiral de Arumburu had been commanded to remain patrolling the river above Lisbon in case of such a raid. Doria’s galleys also, which had in face of severe weather made their way round from Genoa, had been instructed to await the English attack. There was also some danger from the Turks with whom it was rumoured Elizabeth was negotiating an alliance.

I could picture de Soto’s fury. The splendid situation of an England stripped of her fleet and open to the most powerful attack the most powerful nation in the world could muster was slipping away from lack of courage and lack of a single directive mind. It could not be Philip II who had faltered; but in some way during his recent illness his authority had been usurped, and weakness and indecision had crept in.

There were many conferences aboard San Pablo. To the last of these Captain Quesada was summoned, and when he returned he announced that the fleet was to sail without its Sevillian reinforcements. It would weigh anchor at dawn on the 20th, being still equal in force to the Armada of ‘88, and still a fleet bigger than any other in the world. No more time must be wasted except one day in which to take on fresh water and supplies and to deposit the sick ashore.

The 19th was a fine day. It seemed that the westerly winds had blown themselves out and we should have a period of quiet autumnal weather exactly suited to the expedition. That evening Captain Quesada invited two Italian captains and a Portuguese and a Biscayan to sup with him and Captain Bonifaz. The Frenchman and one of the Italians spoke no Spanish but could understand English, so I was commanded to be present.

All day I had been restless, full of a sensation of impotence and defeat. Though I knew all it was necessary to know of the Spanish plans, I had been completely unable to do anything to thwart them. One pictured this fleet reaching England and, remembering the destruction wrought by only four galleys two summers ago, multiplied that by 200 to bring this invasion into comparison. In ‘95 the Cornish had been in panic, a few good men like Godolphin standing firm and some hundreds of reinforcements arriving from Plymouth to support the local musters at a time when the Spanish had already re-embarked. What of the result now a great invasion force permitted to land at Falmouth without opposition? Half Cornwall would be theirs in a night. Plymouth, unguarded now by Drake and Hawkins, would fall within two or three days. With the English fleet far away the command of the Channel would be in Spanish hands without a fight. Troops could be ferried across from Brittany at will. When Essex and Ralegh and their fleet returned they would be faced with a strongly entrenched invasion force operating from occupied ports in England and more able than the returning English fleet to re-victual and call in fresh ammunition.

For a time at supper they talked of music: one of the Italians played the viol and cornet, and he and Quesada carried the conversation. But presently the other Italian motioned to me that he wished to ask Quesada a question. Did the Spanish naval command know that French Protestant forces had invaded Catalonia? If so, in what way would it affect their own plans?

Quesada, recalled from pleasanter fancies, frowned and said he had heard nothing of this; rumours were always rampant, they meant little. Whatever was happening in France, it could not affect the major strategy of the war. Once England had collapsed, the main centre of Calvinistic and godless resistance would be gone and all other resistance would collapse too.

“Yes,” said the Portuguese, spreading his hands. “Once England has collapsed. But how long will she resist and with what bloodshed win our victory be bought? Her raid upon Spain last year was not the act of a weak and divided country.”

“She is not weak,” interrupted Bonifaz, “but she is divided. All our spies say so. This is our great chance while she is without her fleet. We sail tomorrow.”

A silence fell. They were all in their different ways considering what lay ahead. Then Conti looked at me and said:

“You are English. You must know your country wed. How do you see the prospects of this great expedition?”

I stared back at him, hypnotised by the opportunities his question offered. These responsible captains might pay no heed to what I had to say in reply. And yet …

“I hope sir, that we shall triumph on this expedition. But there is one matter which concerns me …”

I paused and said no more, groping for the right words, praying for cunning and judgment and subtlety.

“And that is?”

“As you know, sir, I was a junior secretary under Sir Walter Ralegh in the Cadiz expedition of last year...”

“No, I did not know.”

This conversation was in English, and Quesada and two of the others listened uncomprehending.

“Well, there was a thing much spoken of at the time of Cadiz, and that was that our fleet must be back in England before the equinox. At that time every year great gales and seas lash our coasts. It is the expected thing. It was the argument much used against our remaining in occupation of Cadiz. There was bound to be a month when no supplies could get through.”

“The equinox?” said Conti. “That is it begins on the 22nd or 23rd of this month, sir. In two days’ time. That is why I do not believe the English fleet has gone on to the Azores. It is too late in the year. I believe they have turned away from this coast and returned home. I think they are safe in port again; though no doubt they will come out when we reach the English coast if the weather permits.” Conti turned to the Biscayan captain.

The Frenchman shrugged. “I am used to stormy seas: they come at any time. Equinox, yes more and stronger tides. But seas are always treacherous, even your Mediterranean, capitaine.”

Conti said to me: “Have you told Captain Quesada what you have just said?”

“He has never asked.”

“Then kindly tell him.”

I told him.

Quesada said: “Tell Captain Conti that we are not children to be afraid of every shadow.”

Conti said: “Tell Captain Quesada that it was not a shadow which struck us last year and wrecked seven galleons and cost the lives of 2,000 men.”

Quesada said: “Tell Captain Conti that was November: we sailed unsound and unready at the command of a King who does not understand these things. This is September: we are well prepared and this boy is no judge of what we may expect. I have sailed off Ushant in September seas as calm as a lake.”

“Well prepared! ” said Conti. “I have complained to the Adelantado that my provisions are faulty and inadequate and my crew brought up to strength with raw youths. He pays no heed. We sail tomorrow it may be to victory but it may be to destruction!”

The Frenchman leaned across the table. “Do you not know, boy, that a flyboat reported this English fleet six days ago already approaching the Azores?”

“Then I am wrong.”

“Then what makes you say it?”

“Only Sir Walter Ralegh’s words last year when conferring with my Lord of Essex.”

“Which were?”

“The plan was talked of then, before the Cadiz expedition was mounted that a fleet should sail from England late in the year and then turn away for the Azores in order to lure an Armada to attack England while she was seemingly undefended. Then the English were to return in secret to England and wait for the weather to disable or damage your ships before they attacked …”

I concluded lamely: “Of course, it may not be so now. It may be true that England is undefended and that we can take her easily. But it makes me uneasy, that this should all be falling out according to a plan the English were discussing last year.”

The morning of the 20th was brilliant and clear, but before midday a strong north-west wind sprang up. It blew straight in to Betanzos Bay. I thought, another day gone. For much that I had said about the weather though exaggerated was true: there was at best a month’s sailing weather ahead. No English captain kept his fleet at sea beyond the end of October. That evening there was another conference aboard San Pablo to which all senior captains were summoned. On the following morning the wind had somewhat abated but we did not sail.

I had an unwelcome visitor. Across a choppy wind-flecked cable’s length of sea six dark-haired Spanish sailors rowed Captain Richard Burley from San Mateo to San Bartolomeo. He had a meeting with Captain Quesada and then I was sent for.

Burley’s narrow savage face moved in a sneer of welcome. “Well, fellow countryman, I rowed across for a word with you. We’ve been having a little trouble this last day or so, as you may guess.”

“Trouble? “

“Yes, with our foreign captains. Else we’d have sailed.”

I looked through the lantern-shaped window. “We were well advised not. The wind has sprung up again.”

“Once we was out we could have stood clear of the land and made some small headway. Leastwise we should have begun.”

“Why did we not, then?”

His blue suit was as shabby as ever; there was a split in his sleeve and the cuffs were frayed; he always looked a pirate. “Well might you ask, fellow countryman, since it seems you have been doing your best to prevent it by spreading lies and rumour.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not for instance giving it as your considered opinion that instead of us cheating the English, the English are cheating us? “

“I did not say that, Captain Burley. But it was Ralegh’s plan last year and I thought there was a risk.”

Burley spat on the floor of the cabin and then, seeing Quesada’s fastidious frown, rubbed it in with his foot. “You on our side, Killigrew? Or are you trying to make delay worse’n worse until it is too late?”

“I wish no delay. I only want to get home.”

“That’s what you say. And there’s those at the top as believe you. Me for my part, now I’d string you up and have done. Better to be sure now than sorry later, I’d say. What do you think?”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“Ah … Ah well, maybe. They’ve plans at top that I know nothing of. Where we’re bound for f’rinstance. But if so be as it was your idea to put doubts in men’s heads, maybe now you think you’ve succeeded. But I’d not like you to be carried away at the success. The doubts was there before ever you spoke. What you said was a straw on a hay-load.”

I glanced at Captain Quesada, who I saw was catching a word here and there.

“What is wrong?” I asked. “These foreign captains …”

“They’re cautious, see? Jumping at their own shadows, like. Yesterday morning early, two Portuguese fishing smacks came in reporting Ralegh was still cruising off Lisbon with 150 sail. Stuff and nonsense. Lying nonsense. There’s not 150 sail in the whole English fleet, nor 100. We know that. And threequarters of it is in the Azores, if not all. If Ralegh’s not followed the rest he’s disobeyed orders and commands not twenty sail anyhow.”

“Why did we not leave, then?”

“They want to be sure. And you and your sort don’t help. There’s rumour flying through the fleet quicker than fever. Back and forth it go and multiplying all the while. So the Adelantado, to calm them, agrees to wait his next despatch from the Azores, due tomorrow. Meantime he’s sent word to the King and waits that also.”

“So when do we sail now?”

“Tomorrow or the next day. We can’t afford to wait longer. De Soto and Brochero are fuming. Twas de Soto sent me here to see you today; he’s too busy himself. He said I was to see you and tell him what I think. What am I to take back, eh? Are you just craven or a turncoat?”

“I spoke out of turn. But I only answered the questions put to me.”

Captain Burley rubbed his boot which he had crossed on his knee. Hair fell over his forehead. “Well, if you’ll take the advice of a fellow countryman, answer no more. Else you’ll be on that yard-arm. Understand? I’ll string you up meself.”

He got awkwardly to his feet. He was a big man and seemed to occupy the room. “Right. I’ll be going. See you in England if you’re still alive by then. Adios, captain.”

We saw him over the side. The sun was sinking into a smear of white cloud. The heat had gone from the day. Captain Quesada grimaced at me.

“Ill-mannered and a knave. What was his business?”

I gave him an altered account, aware that I should have been the knave in Quesada’s eyes and not Burley. But sometimes I suspected that, with a Spaniard such as this captain, even treachery could be borne before ill-manners.

The next two days were fine and warm; there was a strong breeze from the east but that would not have prevented our sailing. On the second day the expected despatch came from the Azores. Ralegh had rejoined the rest of the fleet, which had reached Flores and was making in full strength towards Fayal. So they were some 1,200 miles from Spain. There could be no doubt about this; the commander of the flyboat was a Spanish officer of the greatest reliability: he had seen the squadron himself. At Admiral Brochero’s suggestion all the captains in the fleet were assembled on San Pablo and heard the dispatch read by the officer himself. While they were assembled there a communication came to the Adelantado from the King, now fully recovered.

This also Don Martin read out to the assembled company. It promised that Admiral Don Marcos de Arumburu would leave Lisbon at once and sail with his Andalusian squadron for England. The Adelantado, though commanding the entire fleet, was not to wait for Arumburu but was to sail without any further delay. The King added that any captain who created difficulties in the way of sailing at once, whether of supply, navigation or command, was to be summarily hanged from his own yard-arm.

Nothing could be said, no more objections could be raised now, but on San Bartolomeo I knew that the delays had consumed a substantial part of the supplies, some of the rest as always had gone rotten, and we had no more than three weeks’ food and water to begin this voyage.

That night when at last we got to bed I lay awake thinking of home and listening to the wind. Enrico Caldes was asleep in the next hamaca; beyond him two young officers and then the Irish priest, Father Donald. The creak and groan of the timbers, the whisper of the water, the whine of the wind, these had all once again become part of every moment and as such were accepted and almost unheard. But there was still the thud of feet overhead as some of the sailors worked on. It would soon be dawn, for we had not retired until four.

Last evening at dusk every member of the ship’s complement had assembled on deck and we had celebrated a solemn mass. Afterwards the company of 356 sang a plain chant together. The blessing of Almighty God was humbly asked for the success of this great mission, and my lips had moved with the rest in saying ‘Amen’. Months now in the company of these men had given me a respect for them. Their friendship and generosity towards me was at odds with their behaviour in battle, the fury and cruelty of their reputation. Storm and shipwreck were the only hope now. The only hope, said the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, the only hope. Delay, delay, autumn was coming. Equinox and the high tides and gales. And perhaps in another week or so the English fleet would turn for home. Delay, delay...

The gun woke us at dawn. The first squadron, I thought, under Don Martin de Padilla was already moving off. Still half asleep, I dragged on my clothes and went on deck. The sky was grey and the sea heaving; clouds scurried before a howling westerly wind. It was true that two of the smaller galleons had beaten their way out of the bay, but their frantic pitching and lurching, the small area of sail they could safely carry, was proof enough that, whatever King Philip said, we could not sail today.

It was a week before the gale abated. Twice in that time attempts were made to leave, but on the fourth day the wind veered north-west and that, blowing directly into the mouth of the bay, made exit impossible. Every attempt was made to keep the fleet at readiness to leave at an hour’s notice. Efforts were even bent towards improving our depleted supplies. Transports which had stood by in readiness with the rest were sent back into Coruna and Ferrol to pick up more biscuits from the ovens of Neda, and supplies requisitioned from Santiago, Lugo, and the surrounding countryside. Soldiers and sailors, who were still going down in numbers with sick ness and fever, were taken ashore and six new companies em barked. The strictest discipline was maintained aboard, not an easy task amid great numbers of idle men; no day passed with out a hanging, and floggings were the commonplace. Perhaps the large number of priests helped to maintain order. I had by chance been present at the Council aboard Ark.Royal when Essex had laid down orders for prayers on the Cadiz expedition and emphasised that ours was in essence a religious undertaking; but that was a light dedication compared to the holy crusade on which this Armada was bent. This was truly a following of the fiery cross, as fervent as those to recapture Jerusalem from the infidel.

Seven days to the day the wind dropped. It dropped in midmorning, and within the hour San Pablo, dressed over all and with its swallow-tailed green pendant fluttering, weighed anchor and left the bay, one ship after another of its squadron following in line. By dusk we were all away.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

So began my journey home.

As we came out of the bay and took a nor’-easterly course the whole great Armada spread out around us. Don Martin led the first squadron flying his green pennant. Close behind him on his larboard quarter always closer than need be, as if pressing him on was Don Diego Brochero flying a yellow flag. Admiral Bertendona with a red pennant commanded the third.

At sunset all the ships of the fleet were ordered to pass before the Admiral’s galleon. As they did so the crew of each ship shouted three times and sounded their trumpets. Then the master asked the watchword for the night and the course he must steer. This done, each vessel fell behind the flagship into its appointed line, and was informed it must not pass ahead of San Pablo again until morning.

It was a wild sunset, and the sea was still rough with the remnants of the storm. I remember looking out and seeing all the galleons about us plunging and tossing to the swell of the sea: their high-coloured hulls and ornamental bows lit and flushed by the sunset, while each wave as it lifted them showed their streaming sides and white underbellies. As the light faded an iron cresses with a flaming combustible inside was lit on the high poop of San Pablo so that all might know the admiral’s ship and follow. Then on each ship the crews assembled and sang a hymn to the Virgin before a painted image of her amidships.

All lights were put out except in the cabins of the officers and gentlemen who were allowed small lamps trimmed with water covered with oil to combat the lurching of the ship; but no candles were permitted for fear of fire.

So I slept wondering if the morrow would bring a return of storm. It did not, and the dawn was kindly and clear. Sunrise brought a fanfare of trumpets, and the whole Armada again came up to salute the Adelantado, San Pablo keeping under easy sail until this was done. Then on every vessel was said a Missa Sicca or dry Mass, with no consecration. The day passed easily and without incident.

But the sealed orders had at last been opened and their message communicated to the rest of the fleet. Destination was Falmouth. If bad weather or battle should separate them, each vessel was to rendezvous in Falmouth Bay. Strict instructions were issued to the soldiers that when they landed, all people in Falmouth Haven must be used well, in all other places the inhabitants would be-put to the sword. Caldes told me San Bartolomeo alone carried 100,000 ducats in treasure, much of it for use in~England for bribery and reward.

A second night at sea, and we had made great progress. All day yesterday we had sighted no vessel. I knew this weather from boyhood; often after the storms of September, October would bring in two or three weeks of golden autumn, light westerly breezes, quiet seas, drifting golden leaves, cows lowing and the smell of wood smoke. From a Spanish point of view all the delays had been worth while.

And my father in his castle must be daily expecting this fleet. Dunned by creditors, cheated by his daughter-in-law, surrounded by a young and numerous family, a renegade and a traitor … what would others in the house do? What would Foster think as deputy keeper of the fort when this fleet began to anchor in the bay? What would Carminow the gunner do when commanded not to fire? On how many people would my father be able to rely to obey his orders? Henry Knyvett of course. And my grandmother, if still alive, would be in this. If the fleet arrived flying English flags and my father pretended to know all about them, his commands to welcome the landing parties would be obeyed out of habit until too late. No one really would have the initiative and the courage to defy him. Hannibal Vyvyan in the other castle might open fire, but he too might be deceived by some false message from Pendennis, and in any event the St Mawes fort could not alone dispute a landing.

I could speculate as to what might happen in a few days from now off the Cornish coast. I could not know and did not know what was happening at that time outside the narrow circle of the invading fleet. I did not know that failure all the way had attended the English adventure to the Azores, so that Essex, disappointed and disheartened, had turned his fleet homewards on the same day as the Adelantado set sail for England and that the two fleets were now on converging courses, though by the nature of the distance involved the English fleet was a week behind. Nor, perhaps, if I had known all this, would I have realised the difference in the conditions of the two fleets: the Spanish for all its many shortcomings fresh in manpower and seaworthiness, eager and alert and ready to fight; the English disappointed and losing discipline, full of sickness after two months at sea, unprepared for battle and only anxious to get home.

I remember my great uncle Henry saying that on one occasion a journey from Dover to Dieppe had taken him eight days.

By the morning of the third day the whole Armada undamaged and unscattered was off Blavat, in Brittany, which meant that in that time we had sailed a full 300 miles. And the weather continued fine and favourable. It had been hoped that Arumburu might have arrived ahead of us, but there was no sign of him.

But conscious that all other things were favourable and that time must be seized, the Adelantado would allow no close communication with the shore. Five pinnaces were sent off, one to summon Admiral Zubiaur with his eight galleys and his 2,000 infantry, the others to bring fresh water and such extra stores as had been gathered against our arrival.

That evening the sun set into a puckered brown scar of cloud. The wind was freshening offshore and the sun was swollen to near double its size. An easterly sky. More often than not it signified continuing fine weather. After prayers Captain Quesada sent for me. With him was Captain Diego Bonifaz, and it was he who addressed me. Now at last the cat was out of the bag.

“All orders are issued. Killigrew. San Bartolomeo supported by San Marcos and twelve lesser ships, win make the initial landing. This should occur on the morning of Thursday next at dawn, if the winds still favour us. Captain Elliot will go ahead of us and should drop anchor off your house in the night of Wednesday after the moon has set. Thus the castle will know when to expect us. Details of the landing will be governed by the state of the wind; but if it continue fair both galleons will anchor in the bay under the castle and I shall land with 600 arquebusiers and musketeers on the sand beach there. To begin, only flyboatswill enter the harbour because I gather there is another castle which may resist. That is correct?”

Captain Bonifaz was a tight-lipped soldier whose manner was formal and his discipline harsh. I felt some other military man would better have been chosen to lead the invasion if diplomacy must come before conquest.

“St Mawes fort could hardly do more than throw an occasional shot at a landing inside the river-mouth, but it could make entry up the river difficult.. What action will you take against it?”

“A second force guided by your Captain Burley will land on the sand beach to the east of the river-mouth and cross the isthmus to silence this other castle. If it is done by surprise it will soon be over.”

“And my part?”

“Your part will be to go in the first landing boat launched from this ship. With you will go a sergeant and twenty soldiers. Your business will be to establish contact with your father and to arrange that he should formally surrender the castle to me.”

“And then?”

Captain Bonifaz looked me over contemptuously. “Then when the first operation is complete, your part and the part of your father will be over. But I understand you will both be employed in pacifying the country after its conquest.”

“What is your plan for the conquest?”

“It is not my plan, Killigrew; I accept and obey orders, and I would advise you to do the same. That is what you are here for. That is what I presume you have been preserved and cherished for.”

Bonifaz got up and went to the looking-glass to put on his muffler; for him the interview was ended. But Captain Quesada said: “As soon as all military and equipment are landed and the landing consolidated, a screen of flyboats will be thrown out to give warning in case the English fleet should return. It is an axiom of conquest by sea, which Don Martin well grasps, that an enemy fleet must not be left undestroyed. As soon therefore as we have news, our fleet under Admiral Brochero will sail from Falmouth to intercept and defeat it. In the meantime the Adelantado will advance on Plymouth overland.”

When I got back to the cabin Enrico Caldes was strumrning on his lute, and for the first time for weeks my mind went back to Victor Hardwicke, his body long since rotten in its prison grave.

Enrico clearly wanted to talk about what he had heard. “What do you feel, Maugan, to be so near your home again?”

“I persuade myself against it, but some inner knowledge tells me the air smells different.”

“I find it hard to understand what you feel, looking forward to being home but yet coming in company with a conqueror.”

I bent to untie my shoes; the Irish priest, Father Donald, was listening, but I was glad he could not understand.

“I think I know you moderate well by now,” Enrico said, “and I would have said you are not of the stuff of which traitors are made.”

I kicked off a shoe. “It depends how you define a traitor.”

“Oh, yes, that’s true. I ask your pardon if I have offended by using that name. I mean that it is hard to envisage myself as leading in an English force against Spain. I have hard things to say of my own country you have heard me say them; against the obstinacy of the King, against the corruption of the army and navy commissioners, against the tyranny of the Holy Office all complaints it is not safe to air as I air them. But when it comes to the point, I would sooner die than fight against my own country. And, knowing you, I should have thought you were much the same.”

I put my shoes in a corner. The ship was lurching more tonight.

“A hundred years ago,” I said, “that or a little more, a king of England had usurped the throne in place of his own nephews, and later he murdered them. His rule when established was an enlightened one, but men’s hearts were against him. They could not forget. So another man with a much poorer claim, our present Queen’s grandfather, landed at Milford Haven to dethrone the other. Men flocked to his standard and the King was killed in battle and Henry was crowned in his place. I feel maybe no better and no worse than those who landed with Henry. They did not look on it as treason for they believed their cause just.”

“Ah yes,” said Enrico. “No doubt in Spain’s history there would be something the same, but I am no historian and judge only by the day before yesterday.” He sighed and stretched. “Now we are all taking part in history does that weigh heavy with you? On the success of this Armada will depend the future of generations.”

Father Donald crossed himself and began to intone a prayer in Latin for the preservation and success of the soldiers of Christ. He was a hairy man, hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears and sitting like a black halo around his tonsure. He hated the English passionately and utterly, and only spoke to me when forced by occasion. Yet I had seen him joking with his own men and kind and fatherly to the sick. There was something in his attitude towards England that I had only seen in a Dutchman towards Spain.

Enrico’s talk of treason had disturbed me, for though I had long since fought all this out, now it was in the open and there was no going back. I still had no plan to meet the situation. Co-operation such as I had accepted so far was like boarding a coach that did not stop when one wanted to get out. There was nothing to do until we landed, and by then I was stamped for ever before my own people as a traitor along with my father. To throw away my life in a gesture would benefit no one. Yet to die usefully would need enterprise and resource.

Dawn, and we broke our fast with a mug of wine, some crumbling biscuit and salt fish. The fanfare of trumpets was late today. No parade of ships but a grim preparation for the last lap. Stumble on deck shivering and feeling sick. Dry Mass.

“Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, DominusDeus Sabaoth, Pleni sent caeli et terra gloria tua.”

Wind had shifted a point since yesterday; from a guess it was now north by east. By noon tomorrow we should be off the Scillies, but it would make beating up the Channel more difficult.

“Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.”

We were kneeling on the quarter-deck, just abaft the mainmast, below us in the galleon’s waist were the soldiers in tight ranks, behind them the sailors and the gunners, then, back of all, the fifty Irish volunteers under a corporal and a masterat-arms. Two frigates close by were waving their masts out of unison.

“Quondam tusolus. Sanctus tu soles, Dominus tu solus, Altissimus lesu Christe …”

Men’s voices chanting across the ring of ships; they rose above the wind; 20,000 at prayer.

We rose, still sleepy, stiff with the night, cold and damp with sea wind. The last conference aboard San Pablo; I was to go, and when I climbed up the side of the flagship Captain Elliot and Captain Burley were already there. With them were a dozen other Englishmen; some red-eyed, shifty and shabby, sweepings of the sea come to help the Spanish and reconquer England for gain; others plainly gentlemen exiled for their faith and hoping to return to a Catholic England; I looked for Thomas Arundel1 but he was not there.

We did not go below but were addressed by Richard Burley who seemed for all his uncouthness most inward of us all with the Spaniards. After it was over we stood about eyeing each other, one or two speaking but for the main part distrustful, more suspicious of each other than if we had been of different race.

While we were waiting the sky clouded over, and by the time the conference in the Adelantado’s cabin had broken up it was blowing hard. With the peculiarly unstable nature of an easterly wind, it had whipped up the sea into small whiteflecked waves which broke as they moved among the ships and cast a drifting spray before them. San Pablo was not so much wallowing as leaning over.

We were rowed back to San Bartolomeo and clambered wetly aboard, but I could see that other captains going to galleons in more exposed positions were having hard work to make headway. At once sails were let go, and we dipped towards the open sea. Our two galleons led the way, followed by the galleass Santiago, four of Zubiaur’s galleys, two ureas, Aguila and Grifo, six large flyboats and seven supply ships. We were officially the advance guard of Diego Brochero’s squadron but had instructions to consider ourselves selfcontained and to wait for no one.

As we made away from the lee of the land our ship heeled over, tucking her high bows into the water and throwing out great fans of spray. We were now passing the last ships of the Armada, near the island of Groix.

We were carrying too much sail, and from the quarter-deck Enrico and I watched the sailors swarming up through the ratlines to the main topsail yard to take in the sail and then to unclamp the yard itself and lower it to the deck. Others were trimming the foresail, so that presently the galleon settled more comfortably on a northerly course, reaching across the wind. San Marcos was behind us, but Santiago and the two ureas were well up.

Towards noon a cold rain fell. Later the clouds broke and, although the wind persisted strong and cold, it was not gusty and we were making rapid progress. As the horizon cleared we saw the rest of our squadron on the sky line with Admiral Brochero’s yellow flag streaming like a snake.

There was much sickness between decks: the soldiers lay about vomiting, and the swabbers soon gave up their task. By now the whole ship was damp; sea had leaked in through the scuppers and the ports, and the lower gun-decks were running with water that had come down the hatchways. It had been the same on the way out in Warspite, but then the weather had been consistently warm; now the damp struck a heavy chill. As soon as we left the shelter of the coast the galley fires had been doused, so there was no warm food or drink.

About four I went below: there was nothing to do on deck, but the tiny cabin was already almost dark, and Father Donald was lying in his hamaca telling his beads and being sick. Enrico came in to say that evening hymns would be in half an hour, but I made an excuse of feeling unwell and remained below. Then I prayed to my own God to increase the wind and scatter and destroy this fleet and if necessary me with it. Twentyfour hours more would be too late. By then the conquest would have begun and at least a part of the invading force landed. Also the act of treason would have been committed. Prom there on there was no retreat.

An uneasy night. Of the five of us in the tiny cabin three were sick, and it was not possible because of the sea to have the porthole open, so the air grew ever more stuffy and foetid. The big ship lurched and plunged, its timbers groaning, ropes and locks creaking and straining, water slopping in the bilges, and above all the high scream of the wind. I dreamed I was in Captain Buarcos’s chamber and that he was alive and sitting across the table from me and I had to kill him over again.

Morning broke in low cloud. The wind had eased but there was a short-pitched smoking sea and San Bartolomeo lurched and ducked and trembled like a wild horse tied three ways by ropes. I made a bruised and unsteady way up to the main gun-deck and looked out on a grey waste, with no land in sight anywhere. Three of our ships only had kept with us, the galleass Santiago, one of the ureas, Grifo, and a flyboat. We were under storm canvas, a reefed foresail and clewed mainsail only.

I climbed up the four ladders to the poop and found Captain Quesada there while a sailor studied the skyline. Another sailor moved to cut me off, but Quesada motioned him to allow me through.

I bade him good morning. “We have been scattered, sir.”

“It is not to be wondered at. We shad re-assemble in due time.”

For all his calm words he did not look as if he had slept; he was wearing a skull-cap instead of his usual high black hat; his beard was grey from the salt in it.

“Has the wind changed?”

“Yes, it is south and therefore more to our advantage.”

“Where are we, sir?”

“Our calculations put us at ten or fifteen leagues south of the Scilly Islands. If we need the shelter of the Islands we shall wait there until the others come up.”

“When did we lose touch with San Marcos?”

“Early in the night. Captain Chagres was falling behind at dusk: his ship was never fleet.”

“So we should perhaps reach Falmouth tonight?”

“Not tonight, Killigrew. Have patience. At dawn tomorrow.”

We made the Scillies at noon, but as by then the weather had moderated Captain Quesada decided his ships did not need the shelter of the roads. One would not hazard one’s ship among the many small rocky islets if the need for shelter were not pressing. By four the whole of our advance squadron had caught us up, with the exception of one transport. Before this we had been passed by Dolphin who stayed to exchange a shouted word and then moved on to carry secret news of our coming.

At five we supped, on oatmeal, salt beef, biscuits and a can of sack. As the light was fading Admiral Brochero with the rest of his ships came up through the evening clouds, and the squadron spent half an hour in chanting and in prayer. In the afterlight, when ship and sail and spar and gun took on a brief flush of colour, the fifty ships in that tossing sea were like some new vision of creation, seed cast by a hand upon the waters to be swept along by the wind to carry a new life to an alien shore.

We sailed at seven, Brochero allowing a lapse of four hours to the advance squadron before he followed.

As I lay in the pitching cabin one more night the last night I thought that by now surely some news of the invasion would have reached England. We had likely been seen from the Scillies: they could send a fast pinnace to rouse the country. Even if no one knew where the Armada would strike they must by now know it was coming.

I thought and hoped quite wrongly. No one throughout the length of England had yet any idea at all.

… The land slept in complete security. It was accepted everywhere that a part of the Adelantado’s fleet was in the Azores and the rest skulked in El Ferrol unable to make any move before the spring. All information from Essex downwards confirmed this. The last despatch from him had told that he was still seeking the Spanish ships and the treasure fleet. By now some great and glorious victory was likely to have been won and only waited the telling. Indeed, orders were then on the way to Essex not to hurry home if advantage could be gained by staying.

The day that Admiral Don Diego Brochero with his great fleet joined his advance squadron in the Scillies, the old Lord Admiral Howard at the age of 61, having crowned an illustrious career with the capture of Cadiz, was receiving his patent as Earl of Nottingham; and our Queen had just summoned Parliament to discuss what measures might be taken to meet the threat of next spring. The battleships not in the Azores were out of commission at Chatham; Sir Henry Palmer commanding the Channel squadron was ill; Sir Ferdinando Gorges ruled at Plymouth with a small garrison of trained soldiers; the other western ports were undefended.

In the Atlantic in stormy weather a disorganized English fleet, leaking, full of sickness and preoccupied with its own failure, was steadily gaining on the Spanish. Most of the battleships had stowed away their big guns in the hold to ease their strained timbers after all the storms.

And at Falmouth John Killigrew added up his debts.

Towards midnight the plunging and yawing of the galleon grew worse, yet there was no increase in wind. In after years I have sailed these waters again, and I know how, off the Land’s End, seas can build up. Conflicting tides and currents meet here and lurch together as if compelled by submarine upheavals. In the cabin we could feel the galleon climbing up and up as if on a mountain-side, and then, as the rudder came out of the water, the whole ship twisted and strained and she lurched down into the trough in a panic slide that seemed to have no end.

I endured it until three and then crawled out past the crowded huddled figures of sleeping men. The decks were surprisingly dry: the waves were not breaking and they were too big to be split by the ship in her course. A broken ragged sky showed a few stars and the sickly light of an obscured half moon. Behind us our escort of twenty ships was in close attendance, where they could be seen among the lunatic waves. The wind was abeam and the waves going at twice our speed, so that we were constantly being overtaken by them and sailing like a helpless cork along their ridges before falling into the following trough. It was this which was straining the ship’s timbers past endurance; three men hung on to the helm struggling to keep her on course; Captain Quesada was beside them.

I did not go up to join them but went for’ard, slipping and sliding along her low waist, past a group of exhausted sailors hauling on a rope, climbed over the wooden bulkhead and mounted to the high square forecastle, slithered past the foremast as we yawed down into the next chasm, and fetched up against the rail beside the bowsprit.

From here the scene was a terrifying one, and I stayed fascinated until dawn, shivering and misted with spray, watching each climb and plunge.

As the sky reluctantly lightened I saw land six or seven miles off on our larboard bow. It was England, the long dark line of the Lizard Peninsula. If the wind held in its present quarter there was danger that we should not clear the head: in which case there would be little shelter or comfort for us in Mount’s Bay. But the wind was freshening with the prospect of dawn and seemed to be shifting a point or two north. If this continued and we rounded the cape we should in four hours be in the protection of Falmouth Haven. I looked back and counted fifteen of our twenty ships in sight. A substantial part of this force could be put ashore before dark: veteran soldiers, supplies, cannon, horses. Brochero would arrive during the night, and his troops, sure of their landing, could be brought in and fully deployed before dawn. By the time the Adelantado dropped anchor the whole of the first stage would be complete.

I looked up at the sky. It was a wild and ghostly dawn. Inkblack clouds mounted one on another in the north-west. The moon had set, but there was a metallic slash of light where the sun would rise and some stars winking in a patch of clear sky. The Spanish must have read the signs more accurate than I did for I saw a group of sailors swarming up the shrouds to shorten sail. They had hardly done so before the wind struck us like the blow of a fist.

I have heard it claimed by Puritan preachers that the winds which scattered the Armada of 1588 were the work of Divine Providence moving to the aid of a godly and righteous cause; if that were so they did not come to sweep the Armada away until it had been damaged and disabled in battle. Fewer have claimed the great gale of October 1597. A menace seen and an ensuing battle make so much more impress on the mind and the memory than a greater menace that is struck down just as the battle is about to begin.

San Bartolomeo had stripped her yards just in time. One of the clouds coming up out of the north-west burst over us, streaming hail before it in a stinging horizontal cloud, leaping and rattling where it struck, cutting out view of sea and sky so that the ship heeled over as if under the impact of a load of fine shingle flung in a gale. When we came through it the only sail we had carried was in cracking ribbons, one of the yards had snapped, men clung to rail and bulwark and stay, while a livid sun just risen cast a sinister light of brilliance and shadow among the mountains of the sea.

Thereafter in the space of an hour we were struck by three such storms. By then our mainmast was aslant and we were leaking fortard. Through glimpses of torn cloud we could see twelve of our escort in like straits. Santiago, which had stayed close with us all through, being not so high charged as ourselves, had not suffered so severely, but both ureas were in trouble and one of the supply ships was low in the water and green seas were breaking over her.

Many of the soldiers had tried to struggle on deck for fear of drowning; bugles were blowing between decks; Captain Bonifaz and three other officers were on the poop with Captain Quesada; groups of men clustered in the lee of bulkheads, now knee-deep in water, now drenched with angry spray. Once or twice men lost hold and slithered across the decks to fetch up against some other obstacle and cling for life.

By now we had cleared the Lizard and its dangerous reefs, but were likely to be driven ever deeper into the Channel. Our mainmast had torn away part of the shrouds and the main yard pointed half to the sky. Quesada ordered some sailors to cut all away that they could, and men with axes in a lull in the wind, slithered for’ard and began to climb. It was a wickedly gusty gale, and as they climbed they were sometimes unable to stir, pinned like flies against the ropes, then a step at a time they’d go.

Once the sun shone brightly on them through a rent in the storm wrack, and their wet clothes glistened against the abysmal darkness of the clouds.

They cut through a mass of rigging, and the main yard swung wide, knocking one of the sailors with it. He writhed on deck before the tangled rigging netted him, then all were caught by a wave and crashed overboard; other figures leaped forward in a smother of sea and hacked at the ropes to free them and let them go.

I was stiff with cold, fingers freezing, stomach contracting. About twelve sailors were huddled on the forecastle near by. Father Donald and another priest had made their way to the poop and were trying to get the men to pray with them.

The supply ship was going. She was filling by the head, and the rolling combing seas toppled over her, burying her ever deeper. Once too often the water held her down; poop high in the air she plunged, masts and rigging lying sideways on the water for a few seconds; then she was gone, men swimming, scattered debris bobbing with them. The flyboats did their best, but were themselves concerned with survival. I saw a few men swarming up ropes but the rest were left. One rope had five men on it when it was overtaken by the sea; after the wave had passed the rope was clean.

In another hour there were only four of our squadron in sight. The wind had backed more westerly again, so that between squalls the land was still in sight. I thought, there’s Arwenack, somewhere on that low dark land, perhaps I shall never see it now, and I ought to thank God if I drowned. (But what if the Adelantado and his main fleet escaped the worst of the storm and still arrived?)

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” said a voice beside me. It was a big Irishman, his teeth chattering with fright. “Holy Mary, we’re sinking. In the name of the Father and of the Son …” His words were whipped away by the gale.

A mountain range of sea came out of a cloud which was already lying on the water. It foamed and bubbled and lifted us, but partly broke aboard; there was a rending sound and I thought we had gone the way of the supply ship. Between the forecastle and the poop there was no deck, only a few spars and struggling screaming men. The galleon heeled and dipped as if her back were broken, then heavily shook the water off her so that the main deck reappeared like a rock in a waterfall.

But mortal damage was done: the weight of sea had broached the hatchways, and the galleon was half full of water which was drained slowly from gun ports and scuppers.

As soon as she began to lift, men who had been kept below decks fought their way out through the hatchways, many of them making for the forecastle to lash themselves to the foremast or any other part of the ship which might survive. From the noise and the behaviour of the galleon it was clear that some of the guns had broken loose between decks. The Irishman beside me who had been so terrified left his place of vantage and struggled to drag three of his injured friends to the rail beside me. I helped him tie them to the yard which had been taken down and lashed to the rail when the storm began.

The coast had gone except for a glimpse now and then of the Lizard far astern. Santiago still kept us company, but having suffered in the same sea as had mortally injured us she was looking to herself and gradually being blown ahead. One flyboat appeared and disappeared like a piece of flotsam a mile or so on our starboard bow.

The wind was still backing. A tiny rag of sail on the foremast was holding our head up and giving the four helmsmen a chance of control. But we could see the squalls coming up one after another, and each one left us in poorer case to meet the next. Men still worked in relays of ten at each of the pumps, but every wave that came aboard undid the little they could do.

As the day progressed we lost both our last escorts, Santiago drew ahead, and the flyboat sank, disabled by one crested wave and swamped by the next.

It was not long before we followed. By now the galleon was so low in the water that her waist was never clear of it: we existed as two separate ships, the forecastle and the poop, both crowded with men. I was isolated from all the men I knew: Quesada, Bonifaz, Enrico Caldes; by coming to the forecastle I was with sailors and some Irish and half a hundred soldiers.

About noon the sun leered out at us from behind a ragged mass of clouds that darkened half the sky; then the light was gone and the last squall broke.

It fell on us. Wind tore at everything: the last trysail went; the foremast collapsed, a double lashed anchor broke loose. As the sea came aboard it was as if the forecastle were an island about to be submerged in a smother of white foam. The Irishman and his mates beside me were clinging to the yard and were slowly tipped into the sea; I clutched my broken spar, determined not to go, and saw the poop raised high, water and men pouring off it as San Bartolomeo plunged Hatches and wooden blocks and chains slithered past, and then the water swirled round and I held tight to the spar as ship and men went down.

The water was no colder than the air had been; perhaps that saved me, for I could hold breath that a sharp chill would have taken. I went deep and only came to the surface after long seconds, among wreckage and cries and the grey wind-angered sea. I saw two sailors trying to hold up Quesada who had been struck by something as the ship sank. The Irishman and his friends clung to their yard near by. Twenty men struggling to get on a hatch that would support five. Two others tried to grasp my spar but I kicked them away. On the crest of a new wave I saw Enrico Caldes swimming away from a mat of twisted rigging. I shouted and tried to make towards him, but the waves hid him and when next I rose to the top of one of them he was nowhere to be seen.

The sea was black with bobbing heads; fully half the complement had survived the plunge, but some were injured, some could not swim, some were already half-drowned. It began to rain, a heavy continuous downpour so that cloud and sea became one. Small waves splashed in my mouth, but the rain had the effect of slowly flattening the sea, and in time when it eased the violence of the gale had eased too.

When the rain cleared many of the survivors had sunk. Near by were still the four Irishmen and about eight Spaniards clinging precariously to a raft. Within sight were another forty or fifty, but well scattered.

Nothing else was to be seen but the heaving sea.

Late in the afternoon I was picked up together with two of the Irishmen and one Spaniard by a fishing boat, the Angel of Fowey, and landed that same evening. Sixteen men were saved out of the 356 aboard San Bartolomeo.