The galleon's grave

Chapter 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

'More than this bloody ship!' muttered Mannion. 'She knows where she has to be and when. Her passage's booked on the vessel, and it's a good one. She's got money. She knows where to go and who to go to when she gets to Calais.'

He had hated telling her the truth, before they left for Flanders. 'You'll be compromised when I'm revealed as a Spanish spy,' he had said to her.

'But why do people need to know? Why can you not continue in hidings?' Anna had said, looking round almost in desperation at the newly-won world and lifestyle about to be wrenched from her, lost in this world of double and treble betrayal.

'If I'm to do my duty I must get close to Medina Sidonia, be allowed to advise him. After that I'll never be able to hide as a Spanish agent again.'

'First you ask me to betray Spain, then you ask me to betray England! Is this fair?' She was close to tears.

'No,' he had said, 'not fair. Not fair at all. But I have a duty. I gave my word. I want you to survive. That's all.' He could not remember ever having had a heavier heart. In all probability he would never see London again, never dive into Excalibur's pool. The Fellowship of Granville College would gloat over his disgrace. He had made Mannion arrange for Anna to take ship to Calais, booked lodgings, appointed an agent for her before embarking with Cecil to the Netherlands. He had given her enough money to buy a small estate in France, set herself up as an independent person. It would only be a matter of time before someone as beautiful as her found a good husband, he reasoned to himself. They would be panting at her door.

They had left the party in Flanders, saying they were following a lead to the increasingly mythical Jacques Henri. They had boarded the ship for Spain and fought vicious, wintery contrary winds. Gresham had become frantic with worry at the delay forced upon them, and it had taken a second ship to get them into Lisbon in the face of even more foul weather, arriving the day before the Armada sailed.

'This is a bit different’ Mannion had said, on their arrival in Lisbon. Medina Sidonia had worked a miracle. The sense of purpose, of efficiency was in stark contrast to their earlier visit. The greatest fleet the world had ever seen lay out there in the harbour, weighing down the ocean with its power.

The final irony was that it had been almost impossible to get on board one of the Armada's ships. The vessels were ringed by guard-boats, to stop desertion. They had finally begged and bribed passage on the only available boat, taking a parcel of fruit and additional wine out to the Captain of the San Salvador from his wife, and then bribing their way to a place on her decks. The passport Gresham carried from the Duke of Parma was a potent weapon on board one of the Spanish ships. It had been useless with the illiterate and ignorant guards. So it was they had sailed with the Armada.

If God was smiling on King Philip's Enterprise of England it was at best an ironic gesture. Within hours the fleet was facing weather that would not have disgraced a December storm. Then, when more and more stores were opened the water was found to be nothing more than green slime, and the cheese and dried meat infested with rot whose stench made men gag. Drake's rampaging on the Spanish coast had borne a dividend, but so had a fleet kept too long in harbour. Soon the seas were dotted with discarded, rotting foodstuffs, the trail left by the Armada, such sea birds as were brave enough to venture out feeding frenziedly. Three weeks out of Lisbon several ships had been battered to such an extent that they could not dream of entering a battle, sickness was soaring and the fleet had hardly reached Corunna, still just off Spanish land.

"E'll 'ave to take us into Corunna,' said Mannion, continuing his uncanny ability to predict the actions of the Spanish. It was inevitable: Sidonia ordered the fleet into Corunna for repairs and to take on new supplies, sending the sick ashore so as not to infect the healthy. As if in final revenge, a savage gale scattered two-thirds of the ships through the length and breadth of the Bay of Biscay.

'Bugger this for a lark!' said Mannion, with religious intensity, gazing longingly at the shore line as they were blasted by the ferocious wind out to sea, every rope and spar complaining, water cascading along the length of the deck, jagged splinters where the top tier of the after-castle had once been.

He was more cheerful when the San Salvador finally made it into Corunna and for the first time in weeks he could set foot not only on shore but in a tavern. "Bout bloody time!' he muttered darkly. 'Thought you wanted to get on the flagship?' he asked Gresham, back against a rock as they looked out at the mass of shipping. A full wineskin was clutched firmly in both hands, like a mother hanging on to its newborn baby.

'I've got to meet Sidonia first,' said Gresham. 'Spanish nobility make the English look like democrats. He's a proud man, and he won't like speaking to an Englishman of no real birth, and I don't imagine he's much time for spies either. Yet I've got to persuade him to let me advise him, use my special knowledge.'

'So what if he doesn't want to come out to play?' asked Mannion, who was starting to let the wine talk for him.

'Then I've risked losing everything I love for nothing,' said Gresham bleakly.

'Spaniards could give you a bit more help in all this,' said Mannion, eyelids starting to droop in the welcome sun. 'After all you're meant to have done for them.'

'I get about as much help from them as I did when I was meant to be working for England,' replied Gresham. 'No one loves a spy.'

Yet meeting Medina Sidonia was easier than expected. Gresham presented the Duke of Parma's warrant to the servants guarding the door of the villa the Duke had taken ashore. A day later the summons came.

The room was cool and dark, the wine excellent, and the Duke courteous. Of medium build, the Duke's compact figure exuded authority, and a sense of calm. Gresham imagined that people would instinctively lower their voices when talking to him. A secretary sat in a corner before a small lectern, ready to record or write as instructed. A sallow, thin-faced man in a cheap doublet waited respectfully at the Duke's side.

'I am His Grace's English translator,' the man said proudly.

'The Duke of Parma writes well of you,' said Sidonia, his voice low. The man had an aura of dignity, in part due to his having come from a long line of men for whom the obedience of others was automatic, no doubt, but also emanating from his personality. 'He states that you have been fighting our cause with courage and guile these three years past, at great risk to yourself. As is confirmed by letters from the Escorial. You have met with the Duke of Parma? Recently?’ The Duke was speaking in Spanish, the translator speaking fluently and with almost no accent.

'As recently as March, my Lord,' answered Gresham.

'And his view of matters?'

How strange and worrying for Spain, thought Gresham, that in the tangled hierarchy of King Philip's Spain the Commander of the Armada and the Commander of Philip's army had not corresponded directly, but only indirectly through the person of the King.

'It is as you gathered, my Lord. He has assembled boats and transports in the canals. He has no deep-water port, but expects to be able to slip his troops out from the canals through Dunkirk under cover of darkness and with a feint to the north. There are two key issues. Firstly, the Dutch fly-boats are heavily armed and can navigate the shallowest of waters. Yet they are relatively few in number and the Dutch are disaffected. Also there is a faction among the Dutch that wishes him to invade England, believing the rebels' chance of victory is greater if the Duke is away in England. The Duke believes he can deceive the Dutch, that indeed they may wish to be deceived, particularly if Your Lordship would agree to detach some of your lighter and smaller craft to assist him.'

'That would seem hopeful’ said Sidonia. 'And the second key issue?'

'If you can place yourself between his transports and the English fleet for the crossing, the Duke of Parma believes all that's necessary is for your ships to block the English from his ships, not even to sink or defeat them.'

The Duke paused for thought, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. 'And you say that you sailed with Drake to Cadiz?'

Gresham gave a brief summary of his part in the raid.*No one knows the English fleet, its commanders and its operating procedures better than I,' said Gresham. 'I offer that knowledge to your Lordship, as and when you may care to use it.'

'Should I trust a man who betrays the land of his birth?' asked Sidonia. There was sudden steel in the voice, a sharp snap of authority. This was a man who lived his life by a strict moral as well as religious code, Gresham realised.

'No,' said Gresham, honestly. 'Probably not. Yet I've never done what I do for money, of which. I have no need. I've done it in part for my faith, which I've carried as a secret for many years, a secret that could have burned my flesh and ruined me at any time.'

'And why else have you done it? Why else have you served Spain?'

Gresham paused. This man would accept no easy answers. There were no easy answers for Gresham to give. 'Because the land of my birth has never accepted me, the bastard son of a rich man. For years it reviled me as a cast-off. Now it pays me lip service because of my wealth yet reviles me still. The land of my birth is defended by pirates who plead patriotism, led by a Queen who preaches service to England but is incapable of serving any except herself, a woman so selfish as to deny her country an heir and therefore condemn it to civil war on her death. Taking their colour from her, its ^leaders are men such as Robert Cecil, whose God and morality revolve around his own self-interest. Cecil, the Queen, Walsingham, Burghley… these people expect me to die for them. They would never live for me.'

‘You are very young,' said Sidonia, 'to harbour such bitterness. And when you find in your adopted country of Spain that leaders are not selfless, that the true faith has men observing and sometimes leading its worship who are truly corrupt, then will you become as bitter towards Spain as you are to England?'

'I didn't choose England,' said Gresham. 'It was a choice made for me. I chose Spain.'

There was a long silence, Sidonia's eyes resting on Gresham's, Gresham's startling blue eyes returning the gaze without flinching.

'I may call on your advice,' said Sidonia, 'but not yet. God willing, it will be a week or more before we sight England, and the San Martin is grievously overcrowded.'

That was true. Apart from the sailors and soldiers crammed on board, there were the forty men of Sidonia's retinue and the hordes of young Spanish noblemen desperate for glory.

'1 may call for you nearer the time of our conflict. Or I may not. Yet there is a tension, a conflict in you I sense but do not understand.'

There was a splutter from Mannion, understanding the Spanish before translation. *You are impertinent!' said Sidonia, the colour rising in his face.

'I apologise, my Lord,' said Mannion in Spanish. 'I've known him since he was this high.' Mannion held out a hand halfway down his own body. 'He was tense then, and at war with himself. That won't ever change. Asking your pardon for my impertinence.'

'I suspect he is not lucky in life,' said Sidonia, 'but may have been lucky in you. You are dismissed. Both of you.'

'Was that helpful?' hissed Gresham as they left.

'It was bloody true,' said Mannion.

They left Corunna on 21st July and made their first sighting of English soil, the Lizard, eight days later. An aching sense of regret drove through Gresham as he saw England again.

"What d'you think they're discussing?' asked Mannion.

The flagship had hoisted a huge flag bearing the image of the

Virgin Mary and a cross, and called the various commanders aboard. Gresham and Mannion had just heard Mass with the rest of the crew of the San Salvador. They did not consecrate the Host, of course, in case the rolling of the ship caused the body and blood of Christ to be swept or knocked overboard.

'I know what I would do,' said Gresham, eyes clenched in worry, his whole body showing the tension inside him. *What?' said Mannion, 'Sign up as a spy for France and Holland, so every country in Europe hates you instead of just half of 'em?'

'No,' said Gresham, hardly listening. 'I'd head straight for Plymouth. With this wind the English fleet is bottled up, can't get out. The advantage the English have is their speed. If Sidonia sailed pell-mell into Plymouth harbour the English couldn't manoeuvre, and he could board and take half the English fleet, maybe more.' Gresham waved a hand around. The huge wooden castles at the bow and stern of the San Salvador were there to contain soldiers who could pour down fire on an enemy deck from a great height, grapple and sweep a mass of men down.

'Might lose some ships,' said Mannion. 'Difficult entrance, Plymouth.'

'What would a few ships matter if you sank or boarded half the English fleet?' asked Gresham. What would Sidonia decide?

Gathered in the great cabin of the San Martin, Medina Sidonia's commanders were pressing him hard.

'We must detach a portion of our fleet and attack Plymouth! We have the chance to halve the numbers facing us and take this campaign by the throat! It is our golden opportunity!'

Sidonia sat impassively, his mind racing beneath the quiet and dignified face he presented to his senior commanders. Who was he, a land-locked noble, to take decisions on behalf of these men with their infinite knowledge of the sea? Why had Parma not responded to his increasingly urgent letters? It was two months since he had received his last communication. The fast pinnaces could take and return messages within days. Soon he would have no option but to halt the Armada, perhaps off the Isle of Wight, until he could ensure that Parma's army was ready and waiting to embark.

It was not the risk that scared him. Warfare was all about risk. It was the fear that a simple change of wind, or finding that Plymouth was better defended than they believed, could mean he had thrown some of his best ships away almost before the campaign had started.

'The entrance to Plymouth is narrow and dangerous,' he said finally. 'We have the strictest orders from the King to sail to meet the Duke's army and not simply to seek a sea battle. Our prime task, our only task, is to rendezvous with the Duke of Parma's army.'

True, except he was already proposing to disobey the King's orders by stopping off the Isle of Wight.

'We will proceed in defensive formation to the Isle of Wight and, if needs be, await communication with the Duke of Parma.' He turned to one of his admirals, who bore the scars of sixty years of fighting, with a half smile, if we have to halt our fleet there, then you will have your sea battle. With that possibility in mind, I cannot risk depleting our strength so early on in our campaign.'

The Admiral grunted his agreement, grudgingly recognising the logic. Others were tight-lipped, edgy. Yet they were good men, thought Sidonia, good and brave men who had proved themselves as soldiers and as patriots time and time again. Surely God in whose name they fought would recognise what they were? Surely He would recognise the justice of their cause?

From half a mile away, Gresham's eyes strained to see through the rain squalls that sent needles of spray into his eyes. There! The boats were leaving the San Martin. Slowly the bobbing dots crept across the sea, back to their own ships, and slowly the Armada began to adopt a new formation. A half-moon shape, the best fighting ships on each wing, and in the centre guarding the pathetically slow urcas and a vanguard of the swiftest and most heavily-armed vessels, ready to race in support of any endangered vessel. A defensive formation! Sidonia had decided not to take the gamble on Plymouth but to keep the Armada together.

'Are you rememberin' Cadiz?' asked Mannion drily. The mad-cap dash into a harbour Drake had hardly scouted, the throwing of caution to the winds, captains huffing and puffing and desperately trying to catch up with their commander. 'Bit different, innit? Maybe the Duke does need your advice after all. Or maybe the Spanish need Drake on their side.'

The captain of the barque Golden Hinde did not know whether his excitement at sighting the vast fleet of Spanish ships was greater than his terror at the sheer size of their enemy. Flushed and badly out of breath, he poured out his news to Drake. He had finally tracked him down on the bowling green.

Drake turned away, looking out to sea. From land there was no sight of the Spanish as yet. Shit! Shit! The wind was pinning the English in harbour, the tide pushing them further in. What if the Spanish were even now sending ten or fifteen of their best galleons to crush the English fleet before it could move? Shit! They would have to start warping as many vessels as possible out of harbour, a laborious, back-breaking job of cables and longboats. And a job that took time. Time they didn't have. He turned, ready to give the orders, run down to the quayside to supervise the business himself, praying every minute that the horizon would not darken with Spanish sails.

His Secretary came up beside him, whispered in his ear. 'My Lord, they will act as quickly without your presence.' Even quicker, thought the Secretary privately, without you yelling and bawling at everyone. 'You have the chance to go down in history, to establish the morale of your men, if you show you have time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards. Because, in truth, there is nothing you can usefully do.'

Drake's brow darkened. He turned to the gathering crowd of men. 'Warp the ships out of harbour. Pull in every able-bodied man on shore if you have to. As for myself,' he raised the volume of his voice to a near-shout, 'There's time enough to finish the game and beat the Spaniards!'

The roar of approval was the first good thing he had heard all day.

'Good God!' said the young English sailor as the mist and driving spray parted for a moment and he saw a sight that took his breath away. A hundred, two hundred sails, spread out across the ocean as if they owned every single drop of water. 'Holy Mary Mother of God!' He crossed himself, the unsure cockiness he had professed to his mates replaced by a sick feeling of fear.

The explosion was the most terrible thing Gresham had ever seen. They had sighted the Lizard through heavy squalls and scudding cloud, the Armada's desperately slow pace set by the unwieldy freighters. Then they saw the English sails, a: small squadron to their left, between the Armada and the shore, the main fleet behind them. Damn! The English had the wind-gauge. There was a gasp from a Spanish seaman as an English ship skidded across the waves, appearing to be sailing almost directly into the wind. A tiny English boat was sent to within extreme range, fired a popgun and turned away.

'Bloody stupid officers!' grunted Mannion. 'Makin' heroic gestures and risking good men's lives.'

'What's he doing?' asked Gresham, incredulously. A group of seven or so English ships had approached one wing of the Armada. The Spanish had immediately tried to lay alongside the English ships and grapple, the English intent on ducking and weaving, firing ragged cannonades all the while. A faint popping noise came to them over the waves, the wind whipping the smoke away. It was a skirmish, like wrestlers dancing round each other, trying to get the measure of their opponent before going in for the throw. Yet whoever was in command seemed to have taken his ship directly into the English fleet, allowed himself to become surrounded, cut off, only one other vessel in support.

'I reckon he's doing it on purpose,' said Mannion, sucking at a hollow tooth. 'If the English think they've got 'im, they'll come in close and maybe he can board one. If that happens, the other ships'll have no choice but to try and board him, and he'll get a melee — just what the Spanish want!'

The incessant cannonade the Spanish ship was receiving seemed to be doing remarkably little damage. Once, twice Gresham gasped as it seemed as if she might get close enough to an English ship for its grappling irons to bite, but each time the vessel ducked away. Finally Sidonia took his own great flagship heeling out of line to join the embattled galleon, drawing it back into the main body of the fleet as the English retreated. By late afternoon it was over.

'So who won that one?' asked Gresham, confused. Mannion shrugged.

'It's a draw. The Spanish can't get at the English, but the English can't get near most of the Spanish.' The bulk of the Armada was sailing with no more than fifty metres between each ship. Any English vessel getting in between them would face overwhelming fire and the certainty of being boarded. 'Bit like a hedgehog,' said Mannion. 'Clever way to fight, you've got to grant them. Though you can flip a hedgehog over and I can't see 'ow you'd flip this bloody fleet over.'

They both turned at the sound of the bell calling the crew to prayer. Both men saw the Dutchman grapple with the powder barrel, heaving it down from the stern where it was parked with three others, a gunner going about his job, ignored by the others. They witnessed the quick look round, the slow match smoking gently stuck to the side of the barrel, watched the man duck over the rail and into the water. An officer caught the motion, turned round with his mouth open to yell… what? A query? An order? No one would ever know, because in that precise moment Hell came to the after-deck of the Spanish galleon San Salvador. There were three separate flashes, half a second between. The first, fiery-orange explosion of the single powder barrel, followed in the flicker of an eyelid by the deep red and yellow of the three other barrels parked on the stern castle and then the brilliant, eyeball-piercing explosion of the powder stored in the deck below. Gresham was looking back, he and Mannion right at the ship's forecastle. The split second warning the sight of the Dutchman had given them forced them instinctively to hurl themselves over the side. As if in slow motion Gresham felt the sinking in the pit of his stomach as they started their plunge into the sea, caught a vast flash of red and yellow even through his tightly-closed lids and then, extraordinarily, felt as if a giant had shoved hugely at his feet and legs, spinning him over and over and over before they hit the sea. His eyes forced open in shock, Gresham felt a savage pain in his eardrums as they were pushed in to implosion, and saw tiny little fountains of white water spring up out of the sea as fragments of debris and men were flung out by the power of the explosion.

For too long the green water passed upwards in front of his eyes. Kicking out and up, he finally surfaced, spluttering. Momentary panic. He could hear nothing. He placed a thumb and forefinger over his nose, swallowed sharply, and with a click he knew he could hear again. Knew because the sound of screaming men was cutting through to his brain. A man was bobbing on the water, one arm clutching ferociously at a baulk of timber, his eyes wide with terror. His other arm had gone at the elbow, and when the water bobbed him up and down only one leg appeared on the surface. Both limbs had been cauterised by the blast, and then sterilised in the salt water. He might even live, thought Gresham. If a man wanted to live with one arm and one leg. Then the stink hit him. Burning wood, of course. But above all a singed smell, like overdone pork on a fire. The smell of burning human flesh.

'There!' said Gresham. That boat! The one from the San Martin’ The vast Spanish fleet had hove to, boats scuttling over the water in a hurried rescue operation. The San Salvador lay dead in the water, her stern shot away, sails mere hanging tatters, smoke rising from her deck and an awful, low keening noise of deeply injured men. Weighed down by their clothes, Gresham and Mannion struggled to one of the boats sent from the flagship. As they struggled closer, a man in the water, burned black by some strange decay, was being pulled on board. The sailor hauling his body was suddenly, violently sick as the burned remnant of the man's arm came away in his hand, the rest of the body flopping back into the water.

'There must be easier ways to get on board the bloody flagship!' said Mannion, spitting sea water out of his mouth as he scorned help and hauled himself over the side of the rescue boat.

When they finally arrived, wet, cold and buffeted, aboard the Duke of Medina Sidonia's flagship, they had nothing except the clothes on their backs arid the handful of gold coins sewn into each of their jackets — the number was limited by their weight and the amount they could still swim with if they found themselves in the sea. Gresham rubbed his eyes, succeeding in making them sting even more from the salt water dripping down his forehead. From the deck of the San Martin he could see the drifting hulk of the San Salvador, but also another great ship in trouble. Something seemed to have snapped off her bowsprit and her mizzenmast had tumbled over. As they watched, the ship's mainmast shivered and fell forward in the driving wind. Someone was asking to note down their names, while a seaman offered them a rough blanket.

From the central position occupied by the flagship Gresham saw a group of English ships form up and follow them at a safe distance. There was shouting on the deck, and what looked like Sidonia's own personal barge was lowered.

'That's two great Spanish ships stumbling in our wake, crammed with God knows what in the way of treasure and booty,' Gresham whispered to Mannion.

'So?' Was Spain already losing this battle, Gresham thought, as he shivered in the cold wind?

'Do you think Drake will see them in his magic glass?'

Later that night Sir Francis Drake extinguished his stern light, stating that he had seen the shadows of ships pass him by, and headed off to capture the Rosario and make himself fifty thousand pounds. He had been tasked with following the Armada, his stern lantern the marker on which the whole of the rest of the English fleet was relying. The ships following him saw the light ahead of them in the dark flicker and fade, but then picked up another dimmer light. Thinking it to be Drake, they put on sail to catch up. When dawn broke, they found they had been marking the lantern of the rearmost vessel of the Armada all night, and were alone and in range of the greatest fleet on earth. The three English vessels heeled about, and withdrew to search for the remainder of the English fleet, thrown into disarray by Drake's action.

One of the greatest fleets the world had seen was separated from its enemies by only a few miles, and the fate of nations was being decided by the decisions of the warring commanders. And Gresham was almost terminally bored.

The men passed the time gambling, the dice carried in two locking cups, even though the authorities frowned on it. Mannion had carved dice out of a waste piece of wood, begged (or stolen) an earthenware cup from somewhere, and shown himself capable of mindlessly throwing dice for hours. It bored Gresham and he already owed Mannion ten thousand pounds. In the hierarchy of a Spanish galleon a traitorous English gentleman belonged nowhere. There were no cabins or beds on board for even the Spanish gentlemen, fifty or so who had clamoured to be taken aboard the prestigious flagship and who added to its already vastly overcrowded decks. Gresham was reduced to sitting on whatever bit of spare deck there was whenever he could resist Mannion's gambling fever, composing sonnets in his head. The rhyme scheme and the fourteen-line format was demanding and so took more time. He had forgotten what it was like to sleep without another man's body pressing against him on one or both sides. Or should he simply switch his mind off and be lulled by the routine of the ship? Night was marked by the saying of a simple prayer:

'The Watch is set, The glass runs yet, Safe on the seas If God decrees.'

The glass, or sand clock, was turned every half hour. A ship's boy, pathetically young and vulnerable, gave what Gresham had learned was the traditional lilt.

'One glass has gone, Another's a-filing, More sand shall run, If God is willing.'

Simple stuff, childish words recited by children, yet far more comforting than the tangled precision of his sonnets. Each watch lasted four hours, the new watch being called again by the boys with their shrill ' Al cuarto, al cuarto, senates marineros!' Yet it was the evening ceremony Gresham found most moving. It silenced even Mannion, as the pair of them, still shivering from their soaking, clutched the thin blankets round their bodies and chewed the last of the rations formally handed out to them a half hour earlier.

First a ship's boy brought the newly-lighted stern lantern on to the darkening deck, breaking out into the evening lilt. The thin, treble voice was feeble against the gusting of the wind, the rattle of intermittent raindrops on the bulging sails, the continual creak of timber and cordage, all the more moving because of its fragility. The words were mundane, given meaning only by the rolling deck and the sense of men drawn together in danger.

'Amen, and God give us goodnight,

May the ship make good passage and have a safe voyage,

Captain, Sir, Master, and all our company.'

The altar was set with candles and glittering images, the candles needing to be continually relit. The ship's Master called in a stentorian voice, 'Are we all present?' A muted roar of male voices greeted the question, 'God be with us!'. It was bad luck not to answer. The Master chanted a salve, strange because by now the light was flickering off his face and making him look more like a demon than Christ's representative, strange because of the deep, rhythmic tone of his voice.

'A salve let us say

To speed us on our way,

A salve let us sing,

A good voyage may it bring.'

The men chanted the salve then the Litany of Our Lady, then the Credo, their voices firm. For a few moments the rolling, sonorous familiarity of the words brought the men together, bonded them to the ocean and their common purpose. Then the Ave, and the usual evening lilt, sung by everyone, the stern lantern hoisted in its proper place.

It was the faces that Gresham could never forget. The smooth, clear complexion of the ship's boys, the hardened, wrinkled faces of the men, stained by sun and sea, gazing into the flickering lights, each one an island in himself. Hundreds of men and boys, each one holding themselves as the most important person in the world.

The next dawn came revealing a sea virtually clear of English ships. The summons came after he and Mannion had collected their morning rations.

Sidonia's cabin was sumptuously furnished, the table behind which he sat bizarrely inlaid with ivory. The Duke did not ask Gresham to sit. Two of the San Martin's officers stood beside him, glowering, and the choleric Diego Flores. The translator was the same man who had been with the Duke in Corunna.

'The San Salvador. What happened? The tone was neutral, the thin, tired eyes expressionless.

'My servant and I were at the bow. We saw a Dutchman manhandle a barrel of powder, place a slow match into it and dive overboard.'

'Just that? No more? A man blows up his own ship and trusts himself to the mercy of the sea?'

'My Lord,' Gresham moved uneasily, 'there were… rumours.'

'Rumours?

'Rumours that a Spanish captain had… interfered with the German wife of this same gunner.' In the tiny space of a sailing ship there were no secrets. The whole crew and the soldiers had heard the Dutchman vowing revenge. They had thought it likely to be a knife in the back, if the words were anything more than braggadocio.

'Would these two men take a dispute on land to sea? Destroy a ship, and half its crew?' The Duke was grappling with drives and motivations that were alien to his whole upbringing and culture.

'It was not on land, my Lord,' said Gresham reluctantly. 'The offence took place… at sea. The gunner's wife was aboard the San Salvador. 1

'How can this be?' There was a cold fury in the Duke's voice now. He is a prude, thought Gresham. His innate refinement shrinks at the thought of carnality. 'I ordered all women to be removed from ships in Lisbon. Over thirty were found and put ashore. To have women on board this holy mission would be sacrilege!'

Make or break time, thought Gresham. He would not tell the Commander what every sailor knew, that one of the urcas was crammed to the gunnels with women, the wives and camp followers of the sailors and, in the main, the soldiers. That for the thirty or so women disguised as men that his marines had ferreted out on board a variety of ships there were two or three times as many on board by the time the fleet sailed. Sailors were used to months at sea without women. The soldiers were used to taking their women with them. These were not the refined, wilting Court ladies that the Duke knew. Many of them were common-law wives. No priest had ever said words over their union with their man, yet with a stubborn determination that defied both the Duke and his interpretation of God's will they stuck with their man.

'My Lord, for one woman to remain hidden in a hundred and thirty ships is no cause for recrimination. Rather it is a matter of wonder that only she remained.'

The officers of the San Martin shuffled uneasily. They understood why he hid the truth from their Duke. They also knew the story of the explosion before he told it to them, Gresham realised. It had been a test — you are a spy, you find out things. So did you find out what blew you overboard and near lost you your life? He had passed the first test. Sidonia motioned Gresham to sit in front of him, on a plain, three-legged stool.

'So, my young English, can you tell me why the sea is bare of English ships this morning, those same ships that pecked in such numbers at our heels yesterday? Is this some strange English stratagem a true Spaniard is not meant to understand?'

'We left two great ships in our wake. It's my belief that Sir Francis Drake couldn't resist such a prize. I would guess that he's taken off after one or both of your abandoned vessels, and either many ships have gone with him in hope of plunder, or he's just confused the English fleet.'

One of the younger commanders leaned forward, looked into the eyes of his master for permission to speak. 'You are saying that your countrymen are pirates, more interested in plunder than in defending their land?' This man seemed permanently angry.

'I do not think of them as my countrymen anymore, and yes, that is exactly what they are. Brilliant sailors, brave and tenacious. But at heart, pirates,' Gresham replied.

'Tell me about the Isle of Wight,' said the Duke.

'It's a large, fertile area, and a potential death trap for your fleet.'

One of the other men shuffled, drawing in his breath with a sharp hiss. This was not the way one spoke to the Duke of Medina Sidonia. If the Duke took offence he did not show it.

'Why?' the Duke asked. 'Why is it a death trap?'

Clever, thought Gresham, adding the description to the catalogue of features he was building in his mind of this man. Possibly so clever as to be over-sensitive, and to have retreated behind a wall of courtesy and good manners to protect that sensitivity. Yet with steel, plentiful steel. And lonely. Above all Gresham sensed an immense loneliness, here in this gorgeously furnished cabin with all the trappings of vast wealth.

'It has no strategic significance. As close as it is to the good port of Portsmouth, you could be subject to blockade with relatively little effort. Its anchorages cry out for fireships. The English would bring you to no great battle there. Yet they would whittle away at your fleet piece by piece, waiting for winter and the storms to do their job for them.'

'And you who know so much about the English and England, you who have met the Duke of Parma, can you tell me why he does not answer my letters?'

Now Gresham saw how this man was using him. On board the San Martin, the turncoat English spy Gresham had no friends and no allies. And so he could talk to no one, not refine the Duke's words for his own advantage, not play off the confidences for political favour. In talking to Gresham the Duke of Medina Sidonia had a sounding board who could talk to no one else. Carefull

'The Duke must know that you're coming, from your own messengers and from the King. The country he rules over is vast, his centres of governance widely separated, the country war-torn and difficult to travel. Wolves gnaw the bodies of women and children as well as their fathers, within sight of the city walk of Ostend. He'll assume automatically that you expect him to mobilise his troops, prepare his invasion barges. He'll only put final plans into progress when you and your fleet are close enough to meet with him, in person.'

'And how do you find the hospitality of the San Martin, after your experience on board one of Drake's ships?'

The Duke of Medina Sidonia had some way to go before he matched Sir Francis Drake for sudden changes of topic, but was clearly a contender.

'Strange. Disturbing. Comforting. There are no rituals aboard English ships. If they acknowledge God, it is as a fellow sailor, almost an equal. Yet what I have seen aboard your ships concerns me.'

The other Spaniards stiffened. We take offence, their bodies told Gresham.

'You may speak freely,' said the Duke. He raised a hand, and a two beautiful golden goblets appeared on the table, the deep red of the wine taking on a lustrous tinge from the metal. Mannion would be driven to despair at what he was missing, thought Gresham, as he raised the stunning bouquet of the wine to his lips.

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

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

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

The silence must have been seconds, seemed minutes.

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

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

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

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

The chaperone.

It had to be her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'That's it!' said Mannion in total exasperation. 'Let the buggers line up and take turns at blowing us to bits! We'll just sit 'ere and be awfully brave…'.

The Duke's face on the quarterdeck was impassive. The English Commander had refused his challenge for combat, preferring instead to stand off and batter the San Martin to pieces.

The Duke had not dismissed Gresham. He stood, exposed, a yard or two away from the man who would be the target of every sharpshooter on board an English vessel, a man who had taken his flagship into combat with five or six of the enemy's best galleons.

He is still challenging the English Commander, Gresham realised. Was it Drake? Hawkins? Frobisher? Challenging him to take advantage of overwhelming odds and lay alongside the San Martin, trusting in God and his own men to turn the battle in their favour, to start the grappling melee that was the only way the Spanish could win this hopeless fight.

It was the longest hour in Gresham's life. Feeling like the target in an archery butt, Gresham found his fear vanishing to be replaced by an analytical calm. He saw the soldiers, straining in the tops and on the decks to find a target, firing hopefully as the English refused to come within range. Every now and then a figure would drop from the masts or collapse on the deck, a sudden rag-doll of silent stillness among the running men.

He watched the process of the men working the guns. Take the powder charge brought up from the magazine by the smoke-stained ship's boy, ram it down the barrel. Shove wadding home with the rammer. Roll the ball from the rack on the deck into the barrel, ram it home. Prick the touchhole clean, smear a powder charge from horn of flask over. Train the carriage to the left or right with the great metal lever, raise or lower the barrel by banging the iron quoins underneath it or ripping them out. Roll the carriage forward, secure it against the recoil with the thick, greasy ropes that were sometimes like snakes with a life of their own, rubbing at even the hardened hands of the sailors and soldiers. Then the gunner, with his glowing linstock, the end holding the slow-match forged in the shape of dragon's jaws or even a hand, bringing the flame down on to the touchhole. And then the monstrous anger of the gun… it became a ritual, almost soothing. And the whole thing in silence. It was as if the body saw no need for it to receive the smashing roar of the guns, the screams of men, almost rejected them and simply cut out hearing as a sense. The San Martin's sails were shredded now, rigging flailing across the heavens. There was only intermits tent noise from the carpenters' mallets. They left the holes in the great after-castle and anything which posed no. threat to a central member of the great hull or which was not letting in water. The winds had been light, the ship not heeling heavily, and so hardly a shot had landed below the waterline.

Eventually — an hour? Hour and a half? — a body of Spanish ships finally managed to come up alongside the San Martin and take her back to the main body of the fleet. The Duke offered no complaint. The battle was declining now, the noise of carnage being replaced by the familiar noises of the sea. The Duke turned to Gresham.

'They will not fight us,' he said simply, revealing for the briefest of moments in his face a depth of tiredness Gresham had never before believed could happen in a man. And speaking in English! Broken English, to be sure, but readily comprehensible. So he had understood all along… 'They seek only to delay us. I cannot fight and I cannot stand, and must drive on to my… rendezvous.'

'I am sure the Duke of Parma will await you there,' said Gresham, conscious how weak his riposte sounded.

‘It may be so,' said the Duke. 'Yet fifty men will not be alive to see it.' Fifty had died on board the San Martin in the day's engagements. The Duke's desire to be at the centre of the fighting, to grapple with the English, meant the brave, tough Portuguese-built ship had been by far the most fiercely engaged of the Spanish ships. The transports and their escort had taken a pounding but the English had been driven off. The Spanish had shown extraordinary discipline throughout the day, keeping their formation despite the ferocity of the cannonade they had been subjected to. The reports coming in suggested remarkably little damage to the Spanish ships.

'You may sleep on the deck here,' said the Duke. It was an honour. The command deck was kept clear, even gentlemen allowed on it were there only through direct command of the Duke. For the first time in weeks Gresham might be able to stretch out on the deck. 'The galleasses and my other vessels confirm your warning. Had we sent more ships they would have been dragged on to the shoals.'

The Duke nodded to Gresham and walked off, presumably to his great cabin. Ten minutes later a fine linen shirt and a boat cloak appeared in the hands of a servant, who mouthed something at Gresham.

'What did he say?' Mannion asked Gresham. 'He said, 'From the Duke. From his own private store of clothing.'

Would Cecil have sent a boat cloak to an underling? There were some commanders men would die for, Gresham reflected, and others they would simply wish to kill.

Wednesday 3rd August. Had Gresham slept at all? It felt as if he had been awake all night. His eyes were glued together, his feet felt like lead and there was an ominous ache in his gut. Was his stomach responding to the near-rotten food which was all they had to chew on?

Gresham supposed that there were men who did not feel fear. He had known from an early age that he was not one of them. For him, true courage lay in defeating fear, not pretending it did not exist And this morning he felt real fear. Could he bear another day of standing on a deck waiting to feel the crushing weight of cannon or musket ball tear into his flesh, maiming before it killed? It was different when one fought a man. It took far greater courage to stand and be shot at, and he was beginning to fear that it was courage he did not have.

He would have prayed then, for courage, if he had not felt so hypocritical. What God could respect a man who only prayed when he needed something? In any event, the prayer that lay fallow in his heart was answered that day. The English ships seemed unwilling now to close with the Spaniards and loose off shot, staying out of cannon range. Yet clearly they had been little damaged by the fire they had received from the Spaniards. What an irony it would be if the entire stock of cannon balls on the San Martin had come newly-foundered from the Lisbon armoury. Perhaps God did have a sense of humour.

"Near out of powder, that'd Be my guess,' said Mannion. He had rapidly become Gresham's military interpreter. 'Government's too stingy to give 'em enough, or always used to be, and these towns along the coast, they want to hang on to their powder and shot in case it's them as gets invaded. Problem with the English firing so fast,' he added, 'they-use up too much powder and shot.'

Then the wind died. The two fleets lay within sight of each, motionless, useless, the entrance to the Solent and the Isle of Wight creeping up with paralysing slowness as the current moved both fleets at perhaps half a mile an hour.

Thursday 4th August. An English squadron had been placed by the entrance to the Solent, to resist any attempt at a landing. A few puffs of wind off the shore were enough to send it moving down on the northern wing of the tightly-huddled Spanish ships. More firing broke out, and with so little wind the smoke hung ghost-like in the rigging, seeming sometimes to ripple and re-settle as two or three guns fired together.

'Oh God,' said Mannion. 'Here we go again.' Was he feeling the same strain? Was even Gresham's rock starting to shake and quiver?

The wind was fitful, playing with them, teasing one minute with its strength and then dying away to nothing. Somehow the San Martin was standing opposite a great English ship, the largest in their fleet. For a moment the Spaniards thought they had cut her off. Cheering broke out from the masts, mocking laughter as the English ship broke out her boats and tried to haul herself past the Spanish. A hail of musket fire swept from the Spanish ships, and down below the Gun Captains were hoarse at shrieking to their men to reload. Yet the great cannon spoke with tantalising infrequency, for all that the men's hands were slipping with the sweat that poured off their bodies. Men fell in the boats, but none gave in, and suddenly the English ship let her full panoply of sails fall from her yards and swept ahead of the Spanish ships, whose pursuit in the face of her speed was derisory.

The fighting was now sporadic, across the whole front, an engagement here, an engagement there, the sullen thunder of guns insistent, unrelenting.

'Is it planned?' Gresham yelled to Mannion. They had both acquired an arquebus from a pair of dead soldiers, though they could have been firing into a vacuum for all that they had been able to see amid the smoke. 'Look, we're being pushed past the Solent, past any chance of mooring.'

'Next stop Calais!' grinned Mannion. There was nowhere else for the Armada to rest and anchor past the Solent except Calais, and that was a French port whose outer roads were notorious for currents, shoals and freak storms. 'I reckon it's accident as much as anything else. If there'd been a half decent wind he could have sailed in there and stuck regardless. It's the bloody wind that's done for the Spaniards. For Christ's sake, look 'ow much damage we haven't had after half an hour up opposite a bloody great English ship.'

It was extraordinary how much punishment a ship such as the San Martin could take. Her main timbers were immensely thick, and the lighter cannon simply failed to penetrate. The upperworks were splintered and smashed, and a cannon had been upturned when an English ball had gone through a gun port, but as a fighting vessel the San Martin was still highly effective, despite having stood off and traded fire with a series of great English ships.

"Ere,' said Mannion, 'Do you want history to repeat itself? Or do we really want these bastards sunk?' Mannion yelled into Gresham's ear, and he went to the side, straining his eyes to look ahead. What Gresham saw made him leap up onto the command deck, bow low before the Duke, who was standing without a cloak, his face revealing nothing. There were tiny, thin lines over it now, Gresham noticed, lines that had not been there before. Between his feet the deck planking was gouged, white splinters sticking up. A musket ball must have missed the Duke by inches. Had he flinched? Or hadn't he even noticed? Had the Duke taken any sleep? Was the slight swaying the motion of the sea, Gresham wondered? Or was it tiredness? *We're drifting east, my Lord,' said Gresham. 'In front of us is what the English call the Owers, hidden rocks and shoals that can rip the heart out of a boat. The English are shepherding us towards them.'

The Duke went to the side, strained to look ahead. There, to leeward, was a stretch of water of an angry green, its surface troubled with sharp, choppy waves unlike those around it.

Their pilot had been hit in the engagement with the San Martin. As Pilot on the flagship he would have been experienced, and have his own routier, a collection of compass courses, landmarks for entering various harbours and danger points, compiled from what other mariners had written. Many pilots scorned routiers, their scorn a cover for the fact that they could not read. Would the pilot have known about the Owers? Realised their proximity? Would another pilot have spotted the danger? Even if they had communication between ships, it was so slow and primitive that they might never have got warning out.

The Duke nodded, a strangely formal gesture, to Gresham. He ordered a gun sounded to attract the attention of the fleet, and the San Martin pulled round, leading the fleet to the south and away from the danger.

'Do you wish to become our pilot?' he asked Gresham. Was the man making a joke? Could he have even a vestigial sense of humour left after the pounding, the incessant strain? 'After all, this is the second time you have performed this service.'

'My Lord, the knowledge isn't mine. My servant here sailed these waters as a child. Alas, his knowledge ceases with this stretch of the south coast.'

The engagement had virtually ceased now, but boats were flocking to the flagship. Yet there had been no summons from the Duke. Two men were led up on to the deck, bowed low and spoke volubly to the Duke.

'They're out of shot,' Mannion translated to Gresham.

'It needn't be a real problem yet,' thought Gresham out loud. 'Some ships have been heavily engaged, others haven't fired a shot. If they distribute what's left they'll be alright for two or three days. After that…'

'Three more days,' said Mannion, 'and this shirt'll be so hard you could fire it at the Ark Royal and blow 'er apart.' Gresham had taken the Duke's shirt for himself, telling Mannion that it would be wrong for such a refined piece of clothing to go to a mere peasant From somewhere Mannion had acquired a rough tunic to replace his salt-hardened one, but it was made out of hard canvas and had rubbed parts of his back raw. He bore the pain, aggravated by salt water, phlegmatically.

There is a survival mode for combatants. Broken sleep, periods of intense boredom enlivened by moments of sheet terror, unhealthy food grabbed whenever possible all become normal. For the lucky ones, the mind learns to concentrate simply on the essentials, cutting or filtering fear, pain and worry. For those less lucky, the trembling hands, the haunted eyes, the endless threshing of the body in sleep told their own story. Such, men died in their minds several times every hour, each new dawn leaving them like a leaking ship, sinking inexorably deeper and deeper into the water.

'Funny,' said Mannion as the darkness settled over the San Martin, 'I didn't know which way you'd go, you bein' a thinker and such like. Wondered if you'd tip over the edge.'

'The only thing that might make me tip over the edge,' said Gresham, 'is smelling you for longer than I have to.' He turned over, his body used to the hard deck, offering the other half of the cloak for Mannion to climb under. 'It was bad enough in Cadiz. Now it's even worse. And try not to breathe on me until I'm asleep.'

Friday 5th August and Saturday 6th August Men had been working all night, and already a new sail had been hoisted on the mainmast of the San Martin. The divers, thin, shivering creatures with immense reserves of strength, had been over the side, plugging holes beneath the waterline, securing the ship. The ceaseless squeak and heave of the pumps was their litany now. Gresham had been woken in the small hours by Mannion's stentorian snoring. He had walked to the bow to relieve himself, then back down the deck where the sailmakers were at their work, eerily silent. There was a tap on his shoulder. It was one of the Duke's servants, motioning him to follow.

There were four or five officers on the deck with the helmsman, and the Duke was standing directly by the stern, gazing back to where he knew the English fleet was shadowing him. Did he ever sleep?

'You possibly saved this ship today,' said the Duke quietly. He had an extraordinary manner. He rarely raised his voice, yet it carried a massive authority, and even the most surly seaman seemed genuine in the bow he offered the Duke. Would Gresham ever command such respect, he wondered, respect that was offered without it ever seeming to be asked for?

‘I am grateful you think so,' said Gresham, 'but not sure it is so.' He was too tired to prevaricate. ‘I suspect your watchman at the bow or the masthead would have seen the Owers in time, or another ship read its routier properly.'

'Your modesty does you credit. I do not trust you, you realise?' The tone was soft.

'No one trusts a spy, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'and you cannot know if all this while I am working out who will win this battle, keeping my options open for a return to England, seeking to give you ill advice the moment I think your cause is lost.'

'And are you?' asked the Duke.

'I believe I'm working neither for England nor for Spain,' said Gresham. 'I believe I'm working for peace.'

'A grand claim,' remarked the Duke. 'And even if it were true, on what grounds do you claim peace as our right? Do we not scream when we are first brought into this world? Does not the plague, unrequited love, the pain of a foul tooth, the sickness at the loss of a wife or a son affect rich and poor alike? Surely God in His wisdom placed us in a world where to live is to suffer pain? And the only measure of a true man is to be willing to risk death for a just cause?'

'I'm sure that's true, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'for those of us with a brain between bur ears, for whom starvation is not an issue, those of us who have the luxury of time to think about why we are here on earth. And we reach, perhaps, for the sanctity of Christ, the purity and meaning that His vision offers.'

'You talk of "us",' said the Duke, not outwardly alarmed at his ancient lineage being grouped with that of the bastard son of a London merchant.

'Because as a bastard I was left to wander the streets of London and mix with those who do not have the luxury of time for thought, and because I've spent time on my father's country estates, sometimes even been asked into the filthy hovels of those my father deemed peasants, a sub-human species to be worked and used, but never known.'

The Duke of Medina Sidonia had no problem with recognising that not all humankind were born equal. 'God did not make all his creatures equal in their sight. He made them equal only in the sight of God,' said the Duke with finality. 'It is easy to be sentimental about the poor.'

The thousands of peasants under the Duke's command were not necessarily people, to him, thought Gresham. They were souls. Souls demanded respect, to be treated to a certain code, but not to be treated necessarily as people, as fellow humans, it is easy to forget that the poor wish to live as much as we do, that if you prick them they bleed as much as any human. Even easier to use them as pawns in monstrous games of power. I've lied to my Spanish masters. I've told them that I've acted for my faith. It's not true. I do not really care that Queen Elizabeth is a heretic'

He saw the Duke draw back slightly. Had he revealed too much?

‘I care that she has no heir, will have no heir. The Virgin Queen knows that while she is all that stands between England and civil war her advisers will do everything in their power to keep her alive. Elizabeth has opted to preserve herself while she lives, and doesn't care for what happens to her country when she dies.' He paused for a moment, ‘I think there'll be civil war when she dies. The contenders for her throne? A clutch of rapacious nobles with a pinch of royal blood and an overweening ambition. The warped King of Scotland, son of the Mary Queen of Scots we executed…' He had almost said I instead of 'we’. 'Scotland is, of course, England's oldest enemy. A stupid, vapid woman called Arabella Stuart whose blood gives her a claim and whose brains do not exist. And the King of Spain, our oldest enemy of all.' Gresham turned to look back to where the English ships were gathered in the dark. 'So I chose Spain. I chose Spain because I believe that Spain has the power to conquer those rapacious nobles, to conquer the impoverished King of Scotland, the pathetic Arabella Stuart. That it is so powerful that its success is inevitable. Spain will win. And will it matter to the peasant in the field and the woman striving to fill her children's bellies whether it is a Protestant Queen or a Catholic King who holds the final authority over them? I think not. I think what matters to them is that they are left in peace to scrape a bare living out of the earth, left without soldiers trampling down their crops and sticking their babies on the end of pikes as trophies of war. I decided Spain would win that war. And when I had decided that, the other decision was inevitable. Why go through with the war in the first place? Why not work to achieve the inevitable and cut out the need for war? Why not work to install Spain in England without the ritual of yet more senseless death? That is why I chose Spain, my Lord.' He bowed to the Duke. 'I did not choose my path for religion. I chose my path, I always choose my path, because I thought that in so doing fewer people would die.'

The sound of the water lapping against the hull was gentle, the ringing in Gresham's ears after the day's combat nearly gone.

'You will have no place in the new England,' said the Duke after a while, 'if indeed that conquest ever happens. However well it is exercised, power will be in the hands of those with Spanish blood flowing in their veins. You will be thanked, and forgotten. Sidelined. Is that the word?'

'I think so, my Lord,' said Gresham. 'That it is the word, and that it is what will happen. But I've never valued life much, and I value its honours even less.'

'I have an estate in Andalusia,' said the Duke, dreamily. 'A fine estate, with a grand house and peasants who have worked the land for centuries, and think of me and my family as God if they think of God at all. It is pure Spain, sun-drenched yet harsh, proud, certain of its history. It loses me money, every year, despite its fields bursting with growth, its orange groves so full of the smell of fruit that a man might die drawing it into his lungs. The man I pay to run my estate is corrupt and clever in his corruption.' The Duke of Medina Sidonia sat on the stern rail, the gesture revealing a decade of exhaustion. 'Would you run such an estate for me? In time, there would be access to the Court, introductions. Oh, they would deny you access to the top tiers, of course. Yet you would live in a country at peace, an ancient country, be able to rise in the morning and hold rich earth between your fingers.'

Across the boundaries of race and culture, of age, of warring humanity and a flawed creation, something of elemental, simple humanity had been said.

Why were there tears in Gresham's eyes? Why did his body continually try to let him down? 'I thank you, my Lord,' Gresham responded, finally. 'With all my heart. But before I allow myself to think of the Heaven of Andalusia I cannot help but wish to deal first with the Hell of the English Channel.'

The Duke laughed, a full, strong laugh that showed Gresham yet another side of this most complex man. 'You are right to correct me, right for youth to stop an old man dreaming impossible dreams.' The Duke stood up from the stern rail, rubbing his ungloved hands to warm them in the chill of the night.*We cannot beat your English ships, can we?' he asked blankly.

‘No, My Lord,' said Gresham bluntly. 'You cannot. They are faster and nimbler before the wind. You can only win if you close with them, and they have the power not to let you do so, however courageously you pursue them. Yet you can meet with the Duke of Parma, and stand between his transports and the English fleet,' said Gresham.

'I hope to God that we may,' said the Duke bitterly, turning away to look astern. 'Yet why has he not responded to my messages.’

One hundred and sixty-seven men killed, two hundred and forty-one wounded, the manifest stated to the Duke the next morning. A mere pinprick in the Armada's strength. Only two vessels lost, neither of them disabled as a result of enemy action. The Spanish ships had survived four assaults, their discipline holding, the damage even to the heavily-engaged San Martin quite minimal. So why did Gresham have such an overwhelming sense of defeat?

On the Friday morning the Duke despatched yet another pinnace to Dunkirk, begging Parma to send him heavy shot and some shallow draft vessels to get in close among the English. Begging him most of all to name a rendezvous, a meeting point for the Armada and his army. At five o'clock on the Saturday evening, in a strengthening wind, the Armada sighted Calais. The Pilot hastily brought over from one of the great Portuguese galleons demanded that they anchor in the broad, open roadstead outside the Calais breakwater. If they kept on, the Pilot swore, the currents would carry the Armada through the strait and out into the North Sea, sweeping them away from England. The Armada dropped its anchors, the metal flukes seeking to bite into the shallow holding ground.

The English fleet took station, just out of range, reinforced by another thirty vessels from the Channel, lurking, watching, threatening.