The galleon's grave

Chapter 3

April, 1587 Goa; Plymouth; The Attack on Cadiz

Her childhood in Spain had been idyllic, and she was too young to notice the increasing signs of poverty on their estate. The first blow had come with the news that her feckless father had been forced to take up a posting in God-forsaken Goa, India, and rent out what few lands they had remaining, taking his wife and daughter into a prison of prickly heat and alien people. Fortunes were being made in Goa. His breeding could help gain him a post, but nothing could compensate for his lack of basic ability. She had been deeply disturbed by the need to move, though no misery could equal that of life in Goa itself. Then the second blow had come — the death of her father from some nameless, wasting fever that had used up more of their precious money uselessly in medical fees. She had not realised how much she had loved the vain, ineffectual man until she faced life without him. Then came the third blow, the news from her mother, whom she adored, that she was to rescue the family fortune by marrying the French merchant Jacques Henri, a sweating lard-of-a-man she had met only once in Spain, and who had not even lifted his heavy-lidded eyes to meet her own.

The ship upon which she and her mother were to travel aboard, the great carrack San Felipe, was vast, crammed to the hilt with enough produce of the Indies to make a sizeable dent even in the debts of King Philip. Normally the prospect of such a great voyage, with all its dangers, would have excited her, and her natural high spirits would have lifted at the sight of the wonderful bustle on the dockside. But now she hardly cared, hardly cared even if the vessel sank and took her along with it. Death looked attractive compared to life with an old, fat merchant. Her nurse had described what men did to women, and she had gagged and felt sick, even as a strange part of her had felt excitement. It seemed terrifying to have this done to her even by a young, handsome man. To be… entered in this way, by an old, fat man astride of her… it was filthy.

Anna Maria Lucille Rea de Santando showed none of her feelings. She stood by the quayside waiting to board, impossibly aloof and cool, in control. The tantrums were over now. She had decided. Emotion was weakness, a betrayal of the armour needed to protect one's mind. Let the fat merchant labour over her body. He would find it motionless, as cold as ice. And she would fuel her hatred of her husband with her hatred of Spain, where the real betrayal was. Her family had lived and ruled there for generations, and now it had thrown them out without hesitation, punishing her Spanish father for daring to marry an English woman.

Her mother called to her in a low voice. As they turned to mount the ornate gangplank she stumbled, falling down on Anna's arm so hard that for a moment it was as if both women would topple over. Anna looked at her mother. She had tried so hard to hate her too these past few weeks. Her strong face was starting to line now, Anna noticed, the flesh hanging in wrinkles on her neck, always the give-away of age in a woman. Yet there was also a new pallor on her mother's brow, an unhealthy tinge on her normally strong face.

'Are you alright?' Anna asked, almost unwilling to show concern. 'Can I get you some waters?' Anna's English would occasionally slip in to eccentricity, revealing it as her second language.

Her mother said nothing, just nodding. She had not bothered to correct the use of the plural, was still leaning very heavily on her arm. Anna noticed the pressure increasing as they entered the hull that would be their world for weeks ahead. The gloom closed over them. The smell was overwhelming: wood, tar, cordage, stale sweat, a multi-layered taint of spices acting like a fine sauce laid over rotten meat to hide its stench. The sudden move from the bright sunlight into the darkness seemed to her symbolic of her life, Anna thought. From sunshine to darkness. Would the darkness ever end?

'Are you strong enough to support me?' asked her mother, breathless now. Anna smiled up at the person she loved most in the world.

"Me? Of course!! have millions of energies!'

The mistake brought a smile to the tired face of her mother. Anna flushed. She was not willing to appear weak in front of anyone, even her mother. You will need those energies, my dearest girl, her mother thought. You will need them more than ever. And how I wish you could give some of them to me, to fight a battle I know I am losing.

It was the masts that first struck him. Taller than trees, they festooned the sky, scoring it with the dark lines of their rigging. The waterfront at Plymouth was chaotic, the Elizabeth Bonaventure an asylum gone mad. Hordes of sweating men were heaving barrels of biscuit, beer and gunpowder off the waiting carts in a haphazard manner and bundling them on board the ships drawn up by the quay. Untidy masses of stores were swinging aboard wildly in nets, threatening to smack indiscriminately into masts and men. To wild shouts one such load, the net bulging under the weight of a pallet of cannonballs, swung against rigging and wrapped itself round the arm-thick ropes tensioning the main mast. A succession of boats were scudding across the waves like so many beetles, taking yet more stores to the other great ships anchored out in the sound. Cordage littered the quayside and a spare foresail that had somehow broken free of its binding ropes was flapping forlornly on the cobbles, like a lobster kicking out the last moments of its life on the fish-seller's stall. Like all waterfronts, it stank of the sea, the rotting smell of fish and seaweed, the tang of salt and the earthy, dark smells of rope, tar and canvas.

'Damn them and their cowardice!' ranted Sir Francis Drake, appearing on the side of his flagship with a voice that could cut through a gale rising above even the clamour on the dockside.*Who do these scum think they are, deserting their country and their captain in their hour of need! More lackeys in the pay of Spain!'

Drake was a short man, barrel-chested and round-faced, brown bearded, with ruddy cheeks like the babies Devon farmers' wives brought with them to market. He was extraordinarily expensively dressed, the ruff as proud as a peacock's tail, his doublet all of slashed silk in a deep, dark green and ostentatious gold buckles on his fine leather shoes. In total contrast, Drake's Secretary was a thin, lugubrious figure with a balding pate, white face and an expression of very long suffering. His clothing looked as if someone had taken a used sail, dyed it black and turned it into an ill-fitting cloak for human nakedness. His scarecrow figure held a strange dignity. He had a slate in his hand, with a piece of chalk, like a rather tired schoolmaster.

'The sailors have run off,' the Secretary intoned in a voice one might otherwise have expected to find coming from the pulpit at evensong in a tiny, freezing village church, 'because they thought they were going off to rob Spanish treasure ships. Now they hear they're going off to attack the Spaniards in their home ports. This is much more dangerous and far less remunerative. It is-'

'Fuck what it is!' roared Drake, his colour now the highest red and his face looking set to explode. 'Fuck what they are! Fuck what you are! Fuck all cowards and traitors!'

The Secretary showed no sign of wishing to fuck anyone as he stood by his master's side impassively. His eyes were perhaps looking rather more towards Heaven than might be deemed customary, but whatever he was saying was being kept private between him and his God.

It had not been a good day for Henry Gresham. Nor a good week. The doubts about this mission had grown and buzzed in his head like flies. Why should he risk his life to tell Walsingham how many barrel staves were being landed in Cadiz? The weather had been foul when they set out from London, and now he was soaked to the skin. His great riding cloak was wet, weighing five times its normal weight, and had the dank stink of damp wool. Uncontrollable shivers passed through him without warning. Yet it was more than his shivering cold that bothered him. A deep dread had settled over Gresham at the prospect of taking to sea. Seafaring was something about which he knew nothing. He hated being an innocent abroad, hated his own ignorance, sensed that his carefully cultivated front of superiority and control would be smashed. He had been made to look the fool often enough as a child. An aching heart and a nagging headache told him that he was on course for neither Lisbon nor Cadiz, but rather on course for humiliation. Or a lonely, wet death beneath the greasy rolling waves of the Atlantic.

Gresham also hated the filth of seafaring. He was obsessive about cleanliness, and his usual daily routine was to stand in the iron bath, scrubbing his skin with the cold water as if it would cleanse him of all sin as well as of dirt. At sea, the fine velvet and silk-covered bodies stank more with each day that passed. No soap would work up a lather in sea water, which left salt stains on any flesh and cloth it touched, as well as something of the stink of the sea. That strange odour, of sharp salt water tainted by an unidentifiable corruption just beneath the surface.

Therank smell and clutter of the quayside did nothing to reassure him. Even Mannion's usual banter had deserted him and he had descended into an unprecedented black mood of his own from the moment they left London. For years Gresham had often prayed for Mannion to shut up. Now he found himself praying that he would speak. And to cap it all, if this ranting maniac before him was indeed Sir Francis Drake, it would not be a good time for Henry Gresham to introduce himself. Drake saved him the bother. Drake caught sight of the young man and his servant on the quayside.

'You need not mention your miserable name. I know it,' said Drake with extreme rudeness. Gresham's hand itched to clutch his sword. 'It was a condition of the voyage that I take you on board. It is not a condition that I otherwise acknowledge your existence.'

Gresham bowed his head respectfully. It seemed the only thing to do. Clearly Drake did not like spies.

‘Are we loaded? Are we prepared for our voyage? Is there any meaning in this chaos?' Drake was roaring again.

'If you keep distracting me every other minute with requests for information that I cannot supply, my admittedly feeble attempts to keep track of what is being loaded aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure will die in tatters.' The Secretary placed his slate on a nearby barrel. Clearly, he alone on the waterfront had no fear of Drake. The barrel was almost immediately grabbed by two burly seamen, and the Secretary grabbed his slate back just in time. 'To be frank, Sir Francis,' said the Secretary, ‘I do not know if twenty tons of gunpowder has just been taken ort board, or twenty tons of dried peas.'

Drake looked at his Secretary, with that same speculative glance. Then he rounded, without warning, on the sailors and workmen filling the slippery quayside. 'To Spain! To death and to glory!'

The men on the waterfront heard his words, stopped their work and started to cheer. The sailors caught the mood. Suddenly the whole quay was a feast of cheering. Drake opened his arms, welcoming the cheers. He turned and set off through yelling crowds, mounting the gangplank. Once aboard the Bonaventure he vanished below decks.

‘Now that one,' said Mannion glumly, following Drake up the gangplank, 'he's a real bastard.'

There was a clatter of hoofs behind them, yells and curses and the noise of a pile of barrels being knocked over. Several sailors and half the women waiting to say farewell to their menfolk had run for their lives as the heavy barrels rolled down the quayside.

'Sorry! Sorry!' a booming voice called out. 'Any damage paid for, of course. Truly sorry!' George Willoughby had arrived, plastered with the rain and looking like a drenched mammoth.

'What in God's name are you doing here?' asked an astounded Gresham, his heart lifting already.

'My father's got contacts with Drake. Helped fund one of his voyages five years ago. I asked him to call in some favours. Plus, no doubt the old man'll have landed the bill for half of Drake's powder! Who cares? It's only money, and it worked.'

'But why?' asked Gresham, grinning at his friend. 'Why choose to come?'

'Too much theoretical politics, dear boy!' boomed George. 'The fate of the nation's being decided here.' There was a sense of excitement in his voice, a burning in his eyes. 'Do I want to be one of those who comments on what's happened? Or do I want to be the one who tells the girls of my first-hand acts of derring-do against a horde of Spaniards?'

He had a point, Gresham thought. Every young man with fire in his belly had sought to sail with Drake, the eternal rite of passage where men have to prove their courage. And George Willoughby was no coward.

'Will you shout as loudly at them as you're shouting at me?' asked Gresham, noticing an increasing number of the rabble gathering round for this free show.

'Sorry!' George clamped a hand theatrically over his mouth. Well, thought Gresham, the Elizabeth Bonaventure was going to seem a lot smaller with this man's bulk on it, but somehow he sensed the horizons would seem a lot wider.

The twenty English vessels were strung out over a vast expanse of ocean so blue that its glittering surface bit into the eyes, white sails looking like dainty seagulls dipping in and out of the waves. So peaceful, so calm in the mild wind driving them to Cadiz. So deceptive. Each patch of white on the blue of the sea was a heaving, straining, iron-fastened box of wood entombing the men who crawled like so many maggots on their deck and up their masts. Fragile things, for all the serenity they showed from afar, built from tension. The tension of straight wood forced to curve and hug a hull. The tension of the huge pressure of sail pitted against a thin wooden mast and the taut pull of infinitely complex rigging, checking and balancing all to keep that sail full of the ferocious and fickle power of the wind. And those tensions broke easily. The savage, ripping, tearing noise of a sail suddenly shredding itself as a tiny weakness opened up into shreds. The crack as a rope snapped, whipping viciously across the deck and then through the body of any man unlucky enough to stand in its way. The seam between planking forced open as the ship plunged and drove time and time again into a heavy sea, the caulking being driven out in what the sailors called a boat spewing its oakum, burying its prow in the» water and only after what seemed like minutes rising up and shaking the water from its bow. Those picturesque dots on the ocean were a fragile challenge to the power of the elements.

Gresham and Mannion were munching their midday meal companionably in the waist of the ship, George alongside. All three were now used to the easy rise and fall of the deck. Gresham was surprised at how he felt. Three or four days of dreadful sickness and intense misery had passed, to be replaced by a life confined, simplified. There was hardly room to move on board the Elizabeth Bonaventure, crammed to the hilt as it was with 'gentlemen adventurers' such as George, and the extra crew needed to replace those lost by sickness and combat. Luxury was to find room to stretch out to the full on the deck at night, huddled under one's cloak, the rough timbers cutting in to each toss and turn of the body. Even the longing for his bath in the morning was a dull ache rather than an active stab of pain. He had become accustomed to his own rancid smell and that of those alongside him. Seafaring, he was finding, was largely about fighting the elements. It left him with far less time to fight himself.

On English ships even a commander such as Drake would lend a hand with a rope when the need arose. So Gresham had offered himself for some of the simpler tasks on board. It was strangely soothing. There was a task before him — a rope to be secured just so. Barrels and stores to be moved from here to there as they were emptied and the balance of the ship needed to be kept. And at the end of the task, there was a simple measure of achievement. The line no longer flapped in the wind, the stores were in the right place. He felt inordinately proud when he tied his first knot and it held, and a seaman clapped him on the back. The challenges of this world were clear, success easily measured. Was he in danger of relaxing too much?

Sir George Willoughby had bought most of Drake's wine as well as most of his powder for the voyage, as the price for the carriage of his son, and as a result George had been invited to Drake's cabin to share some of that wine.

Too many ships in Lisbon,' George had reported back to Gresham excitedly. Too many even for Drake to take on board, and strong harbour defences. So it's off to Cadiz, Bursting with ships apparently, and far more weakly defended. We'll have our battle after all!'

Gresham had asked to see Drake. 'Sir Francis,' he had asked with a deference he did not feel, as Drake pored over a chart of Cadiz harbour and ignored him. 'The rumour is that we're leaving Lisbon, yet I need to be put ashore there. Will you grant me a small boat to take me ashore?'

Drake gave him the merest of glances. 'We're already too far away. I doubt a boat would find its way back to me in time. And it's not in my interests for you to be captured at this time, as might well be the case if I granted your demand.'

It had been a request, thought Gresham, not a demand.

'It's essential for this expedition's success that the Spaniards do not know I'm at sea until I've got them by the throat.'

'Sir,' said Gresham, trying and failing to hide his impatience, 'my only reason for being here is to land where I can report on the Spanish fleet.'

'If I have my way you'll land in Cadiz on this vessel,' said Drake flatly, 'and get a very close view indeed of some Spanish vessels. Or will that view be too close for your comfort? Do you wish to be taken ashore before to avoid the battle that might take place there?'

The accusation of cowardice was clear, the insult sufficient for a gentleman to fight and die for. Yet Gresham sensed he was almost being tested.

‘I’m not sure, Sir Francis,' said Gresham with a calmness at total odds with his fast-beating heart, 'whether your comment was a challenge to my honour or an insult to my intelligence.' Now came the risk. Yet the blood was hot in Gresham, and would not be resisted. 'As it is,' Gresham continued, 'I propose to reject both propositions, and interpret your words as an insult to your intelligence.'

It was a standard rhetorical procedure as taught in the University, the first two comments comprising the defence and the third the attack. Suddenly Gresham realised how silly the intellectual gymnastics of the University seemed here, at sea, in the face of a man who could order his death in an instant Drake looked at him then, without the angry outburst Gresham had expected and with dark, expressionless eyes.

'I care less than a fart for your interpretation of anything,' Drake said. 'I'll let you ashore in Cadiz, where I have no doubt they will find you and hang you from a tree within hours, if it pleases me to do so. Your masters on shore may control what happens there. At sea, I am in command. Now you may leave.'

Gresham could not think of a riposte. He left. A stink of sewage hit him as he left the great cabin. Strange. He was used to no longer smelling the stench of life at sea. Those who wanted to piss and shit were meant to go to the bow of the ship, where there were crude facilities for them to deposit their waste matter hanging over the side. Many did not bother to make the journey, particularly in rough or cold weather or if they woke in the middle of the night. A bucket, or a barrel cut down to half its height, stood at each end of the deck and in the middle of the main deck, slopping over even in decent sea conditions. In time everything gathered in the bilges of the ship where the stone and gravel ballast was stored, the lowest level of all. Just as the piss descended, so its stench ascended after a long voyage, filling the decks with its sulphurous tang, and the rank smell of solid waste.

In the end there was no plan. No order. Drake simply led a mad, frontal assault on the Spaniards. It was pure folly. And it caught Spain completely by surprise.

The sun was shining from a cloudless sky over Cadiz. A decent wind kicked over the surface of the sea, making it seem busy and useful. The heat of midday had passed, and the better folk were emerging in the late afternoon to take the air and to be seen. Down at the waterfront a troop of actors were playing to a large crowd whose hoots, cheers and jeers were faintly audible on the wind. The wine shops were busy servicing the needs of the sailors, but it was too early for them to have become troublesome.

In the town there was music, laughter. 'Look!' said the pretty wife of a Cadiz merchant, 'More ships!' Then she giggled, as if ashamed that a woman should notice such things. The merchant turned his gaze out to sea. Ships, indeed. A line of ships, fourteen or fifteen great ships standing in for the harbour, the spread white sails of galleons with smaller vessels in front and behind, like so many hounds after the hunt. Every day new vessels for the King's great enterprise came to Cadiz, yet no convoy was due to land. The best bet was that it was Juan Martinez de Recalde, one of Spain's bravest admirals, returning to port with his squadron. Well, if was all good for trade, even if the King was taking over a year to pay some of his bills. There was a shout from one of a group of sailors who had been standing by a jetty, waving and shouting at the men of their round little merchant ship to send a boat out to them and save them the cost of a ferry. What was it? The merchant craned his head? Dark? Duke?

Drake. DRAKE!

The sailor had recognised the fine, sheer bow at the front, hardly any stern castle. English ships. Lean ships, sharp like greyhounds in comparison to high-sided Spanish galleons. The word cut through the crowds like a river of acid; people were turning, running, scattering as the terrible word reached their ears.

There were officials of the town shouting orders now. 'To the castle! Take refuge in the fortress!' Some soldiers were bellowing back trying to shout down the officials, turn the crowds round, but it was pointless. A river of humanity fled up to the fortress, screaming, jostling, half blinded by the dust kicked up in their maddened rush. The street that led to the main gate was little more than a passageway, the seething mass of people funnelled into it. Screams, yells. A mother was caught, trampled, her little girl knocked out of her arms, sent bowling along the ground in a pathetic little flurry of lace and linen, howling until the noise cut off, suddenly, ominously. A man was spun round by the pressure of the flesh and bone of bodies forced against him, and cannoned into the rough stone wall, crushing his head. The press was so great that he could not even reach his hands up to grasp his wound. His head was visible, distinctive with the great red gash against the white of his skin. It spun round and round, like a top whipped by a child, as the mob roared their fear, until it dropped below the level of vision, dashed to its death on the rough cobbles.

'Open the gate! Let them in!' screamed the guard.

'Idiots!' the fortress commander screamed back. 'Fools! How can I fight a battle over a carpet of babies, old men and women! How am I to despatch my messenger to call for help when these people are in my way?' he cried in desperation. 'A message must be sent to Don Pedro de Acuna. Get out of the way!'

The fortress commander's actions had at least reduced the number of civilians he had to worry about. When he finally opened the gate, bowing to the inevitable, twenty-five pathetically still bodies lay at odd angles, crumpled flotsam in the street. Don Pedro de Acuna, captain of the galleys, was indeed their only hope. He was to be addressed by the brave messenger that set forth through the throng of desperate townsfolk only by his full title. Would his six galleys, powerful ships with twin banks of oars and able to manoeuvre even in the flattest of calms, which had arrived from Gibralter only a few days earlier, be able to defend the harbour? How much help could the town's soldiers be in covering the Puental, the rock-strewn area of wasteland that divided the outer and inner harbour, the most likely place for the pagans to land?

The English boats swept in to Cadiz harbour with as much confidence and bravado as if they were a squadron of ships under the command of the King of Spain. The galleys, apparently the only warships in Cadiz, came out to meet them, the water sparkling in the sun as it cascaded off the rising and falling oars. The English guns belched iron, and the galleys turned away, oars smashed. Like predators with no natural enemy, the buzzing hordes of English boarded, burned and moved cargo. Waste, thought Gresham, war was about waste. Terrible, dreadful, maniacal waste. They had boarded a fine merchantman, no more than five years out of the dock by the look of her. Men with skills that had taken decades to learn had built her, and in a sane world she would have plied the trade routes of Europe for years, doing no harm to man or beast, and feeding the blood of trade through the arteries of Europe's growing population. Wood and oil, salt and wines, olives and cloth would have filled her ample hold, her needs would have kept a fine captain and his crew in work and their wives and children with their bellies filled and made even more fortunes to rich, fat merchants. And now?

The fire took hold immediately. A wooden ship, kept alive by tar and hemp, was a fire waiting to happen. It was getting dark now, and the bay was filled with the hellish glitter and roar of ships aflame. Everywhere small boats were rowing frantically, transferring cargo and in a few cases taking prize crews from the great English galleons back to the vessels Drake had decided to send home. The shadows flickering on the dark waters looked like demented gods of war dancing to the music of destruction. Few of Drake's men slept. There was too much to do.

'You! You there!' Drake was barking hoarsely at Gresham. It was the first contact they had had since the counsel in Drake's cabin. 'Let's see your mettle. Let's see if you can fight! There's a bridge links Cadiz with the mainland. Take two boats and secure it for me. Earn your keep!'

The inactivity, the waiting to be shot at had cauterised Gresham and George. They both leapt into the waiting boat, the sailors accepting their authority simply because they were dressed as gentlemen. 'Action at last!' breathed George, his craggy features lighting up with excitement. If he had any fear in him it failed to show. Probably there was none, reflected Gresham. His friend was not a complicated creature, and above all not a deceiver, for all he relished trying to understand the deceptions of others.

Why not a bigger force?' gasped Gresham. 'Isn't the bridge the only link with the mainland? It's crucial if he wants to capture Cadiz.'

'He doesn't want to capture Cadiz,' said George excitedly. Even in a relatively large boat his weight was making it slew over to one side. 'What would he do with it if he had it? Send an army he hasn't got to hold it indefinitely against every soldier in Spain? Think, ninny! He wants to raid and burn the ships in the harbour. That's all he wants, the ships and their cargo! If he puts token force on the bridge all it does is disrupt the Spanish communications, make them think twice about sending reinforcements from the mainland until dawn. He only needs until dawn.'

They threw caution to the wind, heading straight for the bridge. As a result of their headstrong, uselessly youthful courage, there was no way they could hide when their nemeses appeared from behind a sand bank. The galleys leaped out at them from the flickering gloom, heading straight for them like an arrow. They had been hiding in the shallows, waiting for just such an assault. Mannion clutched Gresham's arm. Alarming. This was a display of emotion, a revelation of feeling. Even a sense of panic. Mannion never panicked. Mannion was a rock.

'Master!' That word. Mannion hardly ever called him that. After all, Mannion was his father. His brother. His friend. He turned to him, pushing down the new feeling of seasickness that the motion of the small boat caused him, intending to tell him to stop fawning. Mannion's expression stopped him dead.

'Master!' Mannion repeated. 'We're dead meat. D'ye hear me? Dead meat. Those galleys…' he motioned to the shadows bearing down on them, 'they ain't got ship-killing guns. They've got man-killing guns! They'll carve us dead. Get us out of here!’

Gresham had never heard that pleading tone from Mannion before. But he suddenly saw that the galleys were even nearer than Mannion had thought. George was gaping, open-mouthed at them, realising even before Gresham that to all intents and purposes they were dead. As if on cue, the leading galley opened fire on the English boats. A gout of angry red and orange flame shot out from the bow. The twenty-five-pounder hit lucky. Appalled Gresham-saw the second boat dissolve in a welter of timber, blood, flesh and bone, all fragmented into nothingness by the massive impact of the iron ball. Cries, screams from the water.

'Out of here!' barked Gresham, and the tiller swung round and the oars bit desperately into the water. A fighting madness seemed to overcome Gresham, a dizzy excitement at the prospect of death. 'We're dead!' he said to his astonished crew, and saw the oars fumble, fall out of time. 'We're dead by all accounts, because a feeble little boat like ours can't match the oars of that beast!' He motioned backwards with his head to the second galley, which he could hear and feel bearing down on them. 'Or to be more exact,' he propounded, holding himself upright in the bow of the boat as if he was delivering a lecture to his Cambridge students, 'we're dead unless we can row like devils and fuck these Spanish bastards back to Hell!'

There was a cheer from the men, and the boat leaped forward as if it had been struck by lightning. They could smell the galley now, that same raw stench of human defecation that he had caught on the wind earlier. How did those on these ships survive this stench? Or did they simply become inured to it? Gresham turned. It was possible for an intelligent man to admire Spain. It was difficult for him to do at this particular moment. The second galley had pulled round, was heading away from them, chasing two pinnaces who had come too close. The first galley was bearing down on them, like an evil, dark gull, its wings the outspread oars lifting and falling to the rhythm of the drumbeat that Gresham could now hear on the night air. Their relatively small longboat had started faster, being the more nimble. Yet the galley was picking up speed all the time. Would they fire again? Of course they would. Gresham remembered how long it had taken the men aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure to reload their cannon. An equivalent time for the Spaniards? The galleys were crack vessels, front-line ships. What had Mannion said? The bow guns were on brass rails, easily slung back for reloading. So knock seconds off the time for the English crew. His brain was computing loose mathematics at a frantic pace, figures of timing that started from conjecture and vague memory and whose ending could be complete fantasy. From somewhere in his brain came a count-down, a vision of the Spanish seamen heaving their gun back, flushed with pride and excitement at a direct hit on the first boat, and with their first shot! Scour the barrel. Sponge out the gun. Ram the powder charge down the barrel. Pack it tight. Choose the ball, the one that looked most round and perfectly formed — a bad gunner might force the ball through the iron circles he was issued with to test its calibre, a good one would simply judge with his eye — ram it down the barrel, forcing it snug against the powder charge. Prime the pan with loose powder now, or wait 'til the gun was run forward? Wait, of course, in case hurling the gun forward on its brass rails dislodged the fragile powder base in the priming pan. Settle the gun. Aim it, yanking out the iron pins crudely positioned under the brass barrel, lowering the muzzle so that it bore down on the insolent longboat full of men with the impudence to think that they could capture and sack Cadiz. Then, wait for the roll of the ship to bring the gun to bear, guess the exact timing of that roll, allow for the time it takes to apply the burning fuse to the priming powder the time it takes for the powder to ignite and send its flaring message into the barrel of the cannon and its major powder charge…

Now, his brain said. At this very moment the Spanish gunner would be applying the slow match to the priming powder in his great cannon. Gresham lunged for the tiller and yanked it round to starboard. The oarsmen on that side found their blades digging deeper into the water, throwing them off balance. It helped the boat slew round even faster. A second later, the burning flare of the cannon was followed by the bellow of its rabid rage. The ball skipped into the water no more than three feet from their side, three feet from where they would have been if Gresham had not instinctively hurled his craft round when he did. A great spout of water drenched the boat, soaking the men. They cheered! The idiots cheered, as if escaping death by seconds was a matter for celebration!

Gresham was counting down the loading process in his mind again. He was too far from shore to beach the boat and run. He could jink to left or right, of course, but his tighter turning circle would bring him inside the range of the Spaniards and their massed ranks of marksmen. He felt a tap on his arm. 'There!' said one of the crew. 'Captain! There!' Captain? Where had Gresham earned his commission, he thought? Ninety. Ninety seconds before the gun fired again. Why hadn't they opened fire with the other two bow guns? Because the target was so derisory? Because they were concentrating the best gunners on the main weapon? Eighty-five. The crewman was pointing to a line of water rippling in the reflected light from the burning ships in the harbour. Rippling? That must mean the water dragging over shallow ground. Too shallow for their boat? Too shallow for the pursuing galley? Would the galley's helmsman see the shoal from the height of his post, the slight ripples so much clearer the lower down and closer the watcher was? Seventy-five.

Life was a gamble. Death was a gamble. Gresham half closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Sixty. He commandeered the boat again, this time hurling it round to run over the shallows. If they grounded they were all dead. Would the galley follow them? Perhaps it would just stand off, try to get close enough to rake them with musket fire or send two, three of its own boats to board their own. Fifty-five. A musket ball smashed into the side of their boat, sending fine splinters into the nearest crew. Gresham stumbled, regained his balance and touched his shoulder briefly. The crew cursed, but left the tiny spears of wood sticking from their flesh, keeping rowing, rowing, rowing. Lucky shot, Gresham registered. They were fifty or sixty feet out of range still. A musketeer or two risking a double charge of powder? Forty-five.

The galley was turning to follow them! The graceful beat and slap of the oars in the water could now be heard clearly, the sheer beauty of the lithe creature pursuing them at total odds with its threat of death. Twenty. Something in Gresham's brain rang a warning, some dark and buried instinct. Now! His brain told him. They were going to fire now!

The sharp crack of the cannon came just as the tiller bit into his hand. He saw the flash before he heard the noise, half turned round to check his dread instinct. He would swear for the rest of his days that he felt the passing of the ball above his head, smelled its hot breath as it brushed over them, landing beyond with a great splash of water. The gunner had fired too much on the up-roll, sent the ball high. And it was off-line too, some eight or nine feet to port. The galley's turn had foxed the gunner.

Something scraped, a noise of wood on gravel. Gresham looked over the side. Little wavelets skittled over the surface of the dark water, yet even in that dark Gresham could sense a difference in the texture of light reflecting back from the waves. The shoal! They were over it! The noise had been an oar suddenly hitting shingle, only a foot or two below the surface. He felt the slightest of drags on the hull, and then their boat shot forward, as an arrow released from a bow. Gresham turned to look at the Spanish ship, bearing down on them, now almost within musket range. As if on cue, pinpricks of light started to show from its side galleys, and the air was full of tiny whistlings and the plop of musket balls falling into water. A man cried out, flung an arm away from the double-manned oar as if the wood had suddenly caught flame. Musket ball, on or near his elbow.

Out in the bay several hulks were still burning fiercely, the fierce yellow and orange of the flames clouded by the thick black smoke.

The rising, falling flickering light revealed ships moving, frantic activity. Ashore, the port commander had ordered barrels of pitch to be set at strategic points, and these were adding to the light and the smoke, some trick of the wind taking the smoke from the burning ships and that from the shore to a point in the middle of the bay, and sending a huge column spiralling up towards the moon, as if all the devils in Hell were cooking a mighty meal with damp wood. Gresham stood at the stern of the boat, not scorning to drop to the deck to avoid the musket fire but simply not realising it as a danger. Head flung back, an expression of total concentration on his face, not a muscle moving without it being ordered to do so, he looked like a dark, young god manning a vessel on the Styx. In the boat, in front of him, fifteen men were flinging themselves at their oars, sweat glistening on their filthy brows, breath hoarse and gasping. The wounded man was writhing in agony in the belly of the boat, clutching his arm, the wet, sticky flow of blood staining his tunic and tingeing the water swilling around in the bottom.

There was a gasp from two or three of the men, staring aft over Gresham's shoulder, and with no order given they stopped rowing, the boat rapidly losing way and starting to bob in the slight waves. They sensed the galley shiver as her keel brushed over the shoal. The captain must have realised the danger only at the last minute, ordered the helm hard over, because she was swinging round even as she struck. It was not a dramatic thing. Rather the graceful length of the galley heeled over as it started to turn, but instead of righting itself once the new course had been set, the heel became more and more extreme, the bow and then the whole hull rising up as it was pushed onto and over the shoal. The oars on her starboard side, so beautiful in the rigid orchestration of their movement, started to flail pathetically in the air as the side rose up too high for them to bite into the water. Soon the great, long timbers began to bang and crash into each other, dropping tiredly to smash against the hull like flopping fish too long out of water. With a grinding, wrenching noise the galley finally came to a halt, slewed round on its side, stranded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How strange it was that Spain demanded two things of its leading nobles, other than faith in the true God, thought the Duke of Medina Sidonia. The first was to know how to service and run an estate, to be a glorified farmer whose responsibility was with the people who grew the crops as well as with the crops themselves. The second was to be a soldier, to know how to kill those very same men and women, to destroy rather than to make anything grow. Well, the Duke's beloved orange groves were in no danger of destruction, and the men tending them looked well enough. He enjoyed it here more than anywhere else. In the great house he could never be alone. Here in the peace of the groves the men had work to do, and knew enough of their master's habits to carry on about their business, seeming to ignore him and speak only when spoken to, allowing him his only moments of relaxation from the inexorable duties his rank and his household forced upon him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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