The galleon's grave

Chapter 5

June, 1587 Flanders; the Azores; the Escorial

They were hardened soldiers, the usual mixture of nationalities, the usual blaspheming, hard-drinking whoring sons of the Devil. Yet they fought like the Devil too, as they had proved in campaign after campaign. They hardly paid attention to the man in their midst, caked with mud, swearing too as he stumbled waist-high through the water. All were holding their firearms high above their heads, though in the pouring rain God knew what was happening to the powder. Then the man's foot sank into even deeper, invisible mud, and he seemed set to fall forward.

'Careful, my Lord.' A soldier leaped forward and caught the man's arm, halting his fall.

'Thank you,' said the Duke of Parma. 'Whose bloody idea was this?'

A ripple of laughter went round the soaked and exhausted men.

'I think you'll find it was yours, my Lord,' the soldier grinned.

They struggled up out of the channel, a boiling inferno of water at high tide, only just fordable at low tide. Cadzand. What a Godforsaken spit of land. Sand with not a building nor even a tree in sight, yet crucial for guarding the channel that gave access to Sluys, crucial for capturing the port of Sluys itself.

He had rather it had been Ostend, Parma thought, if he was to find a deep-water port for the fleet his King was insisting on sending. But Ostend was too well defended, the English troops he had brushed against the best he or his men had ever fought. Good! If they were in Ostend they could not fight him in England, where he knew there were no soldiers of any standing. Sluys it had to be. No deep-water port, for sure, but at the heart of the system of canals and waterways that would allow him the only battle plan that he believed might work.

He had the army here in Flanders, a mere forty miles off" the English coast. Once in England his men would cut through the English like a hot knife through butter. Yokels, militia armed with pitchforks were all the English could muster against him. Spain could and would send the ships, now that her conquest of Portugal had given her a proper, ocean-going Navy. But what about the damned Dutch fleet under the thrice cursed Justin of Nassau? It was that fleet that haunted the dreams of the Duke of Parma. Using their shallow-bottomed yet heavily armed fly-boats, they could bottle up his men, pounding them in their fragile barges as they came out from the canals and before they reached the open sea. The great Armada of his master's dreams could only wait off shore in deep water, and witness the tragedy, unable to sail into the shoals where the Dutch had mastery. If only he could capture a deep-water port. Allow Philip's Armada to sail in, embark his troops and blast the English navy out of their way in the Channel. Yet he had no time!

No. It was cunning that would bring him victory, the same cunning that had won him all his victories, made men talk about the Duke of Parma's army in the same breath as the all-conquering Roman legions. If he held Sluys, he held power over a spider's web of canals and waterways. It was clear in his mind. He would send out barges to the north, allow them to be seen, draw the damned Dutch off. Then he would flood the southern canals at night with his men, when the darkness would confuse the Dutch sailors, if they were there and if they were mad enough to sail at night. Shielded lanterns would guide his invasion barges, invisible from the seaward side, and guide them out and over the shoals before the Dutch would see or know what was happening. If the Dutch followed the barges out to sea the guns of the huge galleons would blast them to pieces before they could blink. And if enough ships were sent by Spain, then they could stand as an impenetrable barrier between the frail barges and the English fleet. But first he had to capture Sluys.

He climbed over the sand to what amounted to Cadzand's highest point. Where were the barges bringing his supplies and the heavy guns he needed to set up over the channel? The Duke of Parma sighed. War was never certain. They had known the barges could be, were likely to be, delayed by enemy interference. They faced a cold few hours while they waited, praying their enemy would not mount an assault from the seaward side, knowing if they did with wet powder and priming all they had to resist with was cold steel, praying the barges would get through. Meanwhile, trenches had to be dug, the emplacements formed for the big guns.

The soldier proffered something to his commander. It was a lump of biscuit, soaked through and with the pattern of the man's fingers embedded in its surface where he had clutched the sodden mass. Damn! Why did he always forget to order his servants to pack food when he went out to battle? You would think they'd have learned by now. Yet he was hungry, surprisingly hungry. He looked up at the man, nodded, and grasped the biscuit, cramming it into his mouth. It tasted good.

True to his word, Drake mounted an armed guard outside the door to Anna's cabin. 'Is it to keep us out? Or to keep 'er in?' joked the sailor to his mates as he took up position.

George had been sent off to reconnoitre the cabins at the stern. Since no one had told Gresham not to join him he followed. Their instructions were clear, given to them by Captain Fenner while Drake entertained the captain of the San Felipe in what had once been the man's own cabin.

'Anything of value in those cabins, I want it detailed, written down here, immediately.' He tossed a scrap of paper to Gresham, turned to give him the pen and ink, looked at him and thought better of it. He handed them instead to George. 'I don't want things going walking the minute the prize crew get on board, you understand. And I don't want anything walking in either of your pockets, either!'

They had opened the door to find the woman in bed, and drawn back instinctively, embarrassed. So much for conquering heroes, thought Gresham, ruefully. In the heat of battle, the red-blood excitement, such a woman might have been raped or simply had her skull smashed in. Now it was all over, decorum had returned, and manners too.

'Come in! Please come in!' The voice was faint, but the accent perfectly English. Exchanging a glance, Gresham and then Mannion pushed through the cabin door.

They knew she was the girl's mother immediately. The lustrous fair hair, now rather lank and thin in the older woman but clearly once a matter of great glory; the high cheekbones, the full lips, the beautiful blue of the eyes. God had starved the rest of the world when he handed out the good looks — to this pair. Yet the older woman was clearly ill. The face was pale beyond the demands of beauty, drawn and with fine lines of pain etched on to it. The voice was faint, the spirit of the woman obviously ebbing and flowing as alternate tides of weakness and of pain flushed through her body.

'Tell me… tell me what has happened, please. My servant ran away when the first gun was fired…' The woman was too weak to raise her head from the pillow. She was bathed in sweat now, not the healthy glistening that covered a man's brow in hot weather or after intense work, but rather something that seemed to have boiled up within her and tainted the surface of her smooth, beautiful skin.

'The ship has been captured, madam,' said Gresham, with a low bow. He felt confused. He had always been as uncertain with mature women as he was certain with the younger oneself he had known a mother it might have been different 'By Sir Francis Drake and a squadron of his ships. The battle, such as it was, is over.'

'My daughter! Have you seen my daughter? Is she safe?' A frantic energy crept into the woman's voice, and she struggled to raise herself.

'Calm yourself, Madam, please,' said Gresham, feeling out of his depth. 'If your daughter is that extraordinary… young girl, who stood up in front of our Captain, then yes, she is more than safe.' Why are men so weak in the face of women, he thought? 'In fact she's done more to defeat the English navy than anyone else today,' George added, clearly concerned by the woman's state and wanting to reassure her.

'That will be my daughter,' she said, catching the irony, hearing the good humour in the powerful voice and choosing to ignore the youthful irony. There had been no screams, no wild shrieks, no yells of men. She knew what happened after battle. All women did, and prepared themselves each in their own way. But it appeared that at least some semblance of humanity was present in this capture. Surprised, she felt a coolness at her brow. The other man, the brute of a servant, had looked around the cabin, seen the flannel and bucket of water on the deck, dipped it and with extraordinary gentleness had lain it across her brow, stepping back to make it clear that he intended no offence. The tears came then, flowing rivulets down her cheeks. The act of simple kindness had broken through her defences as no act of violence would ever have done.

The tears embarrassed the younger man, she could see. He could not decide whether to stay and comfort her, or respect her grief and leave. She decided to save him his pains. A gentleman, clearly, she noted, from his appearance. Even the seagoing clothes he wore were clearly of the highest quality. She felt herself yearning for the son she had never had. Would he have been like this young man, perfectly formed, the glint of intelligence in his eyes? And something else. A darkness. A sense of something hidden, something… She decided to sit up, preparing herself for the ripping, tearing pain that she knew would cut across her stomach as she did so. It took her a few moments to compose herself, hold up her hand as both the servant and the gentleman moved towards her, seeing her pain.

'Thank you, thank you,' she said breathlessly, but with pride. One always had pride, she thought. Sometimes it was all one had. 'To save your questions, I am English. A daughter of the Rea family.'

Recognition dawned in Gresham's eyes. The Rea's were an ancient lineage, original supporters of King Henry VII, and richly rewarded for that support. Then the bad seed had struck, and much of their land was lost in Mary's reign. They were, it was said, the only Catholic family to have failed to make good under Queen Mary. Then they had tried to strike riches in Ireland, but lost most of what little they had left. The male heirs were elderly now, the occasional one hanging round the fringe of Court in threadbare clothes that had been fashionable fifteen years earlier.

'When our fortunes turned, I married a Spaniard. A noble Spaniard.'

A handsome and kind man, for all his lack of even basic financial skills, his family were nearly as impoverished as the Rea's, and they had married against all advice. Now he was dead, dead of a fever in Goa, a sad end for a man destined for far greater things.

Her strength was failing again, she could feel it. 'Please… please find my servant and send her back here. But more important…' How could she take such a risk with this young Englishman, who for all she knew could be the son of a pirate and a philanderer himself? She looked into his strong eyes, and made up her mind. 'I am dying.' It was said flatly, with no melodrama.

There are all sorts of courage, thought Gresham. This woman, whoever she claims to be, has strong store of at least one of them. He began to; understand where the daughter came from, imagining a headstrong, proud Spaniard joining his blood with the lady dying in front of him.

'My daughter has no one. It is essential that she reach Europe to marry her fiance. Here… here….' she fumbled in a small case lined with pearls that lay on the bed. Opening it, she produced a small piece of paper, a name and address written on it. 'This is his name. Please keep it,' she said to Gresham. 'I may fall asleep, into a coma, at any time. It would be folly on my part to think I could guard this against a thief.' I must meet this Drake. I must talk to him! I must persuade him to protect and deliver my Anna, she thought in her desperation.

The effort had exhausted her. With a last despairing look she sank back on the stained pillows. Her eyes closed. Her lips could be seen moving, silently framing the word 'Anna'. Gresham sent Mannion to ferret out the servant she had spoken of, standing guard until the mulatto girl, frightened out of her wits, was ushered in by Mannion for all the world like a vast cow-herd driving a frightened heifer back into the field.

They completed the remainder of their search. Most of the other cabins were empty of people, crammed high with extra cargo of spices and, in one room, case upon case of ivory. Trade goods paid better than people on the Indies route, it would appear. Their manifest complete, they returned to the upper deck. Drake appeared a short while later, slapping the Spanish captain on the back and laughing uproariously with him. The Spanish captain climbed over the side with his officers, into the boat that would take him to the island. Any of the seamen who offered to change allegiance would be allowed to stay on board. Illness was starting to take its toll on board the English ships, and seamen were valuable commodities. The passengers would be put ashore to await the next Spanish ship. It would not be a long wait. Many ships from the south headed for the Azores, to catch the westerlies that blew so helpfully towards Europe and the mainland.

Drake was in great good humour, Gresham could see. Now seemed as good a time as any to approach him. George needed little prompting. 'My Lord,' he said, bowing to Drake. 'May I ask to intercede on behalf of a passenger on board this vessel?' Which of Sir Francis Drake's numerous personalities was running the man's head today? Before Drake could answer, George briefly explained their find below decks. 'The lady is English, and her daughter, I presume, half-English. I think the daughter is the girl who bombarded us earlier today. The mother is clearly a gentlewoman.'

'Is the woman able to come on deck?' asked Drake. Well, at least he had not simply thrown George overboard. In fact, he was striking a pose, chest puffed out, one foot firmly in front of the other. He had donned his best doublet for the handover, richly bejewelled with fantastically slashed sleeves.

George looked at Gresham and Mannion. Both recalled the sweating woman and the closeness, the stink of the ship all around them. It was probably healthier for the mother to be here in the sunshine and fresh air of the Azores. But they also remembered the jolt of pain that had visibly gone through her as she tried to sit up, her sense of a mind held together only by determination.

'Sadly, my Lord,' said George, 'we fear it could kill her. We suspect she has only a thin hold on life as it is.'

A cloud of emotion flickered over Drake's face, but he was too pumped up by his own triumph to allow his mood to evaporate. And well he might be. It cost around fourteen shillings a month to feed and pay a seaman on board the Elizabeth Bonaventure. You could hire the ship for twenty-eight pounds a month, pay and feed its whole crew for less than a hundred and seventy-five pounds a month. You could build a new version of her for two thousand six hundred pounds. And the value of San Felipe and her cargo? 'One hundred and ten thousand pounds,' Captain Fenner had whispered to Drake when the first inventory was complete. 'Perhaps even as high as one hundred and twenty, even forty thousand pounds… and that does not include the value of the vessel itself!' No wonder Drake was happy.

The strangely assorted party went down to the cabin: Drake, Fenner, Drake's Secretary, sniffing disapprovingly, George, Gresham, and Mannion of course, who had the capacity to become indivisible from Gresham.

'Sir Francis. Thank you for your graciousness in coming to see me.'

There was active dislike in Drake's expression as he gazed at Gresham, for the first time. And something else? A nervousness, almost? As for the mother, she was conserving her strength, Gresham saw, not even trying to rise, saving her sparse energy.'

'Madam,' said Drake, bowing low, 'I am truly sorry to hear of your indisposition. As I believe you know, your daughter and yourself have my guarantee as to your safety.'

'I am grateful to you, Sir Francis. Might I request that my daughter be present here with us now?' Anna had been in constant attendance on her mother. The faint smell of her carefully-hoarded perfume still in the cabin suggested she had only left as the footfalls of the male visiting party had been heard on the deck.

Drake nodded, and Captain Fenner called out to the guard at the cabin door to request the presence of the girl. There was an awkward silence, broken only when a few minutes later Anna appeared. Her eyes were downcast this time, Gresham saw, her curtsey deep and formal.

'Sir,' was all she said, in a low voice. A stool was brought, and she sat decorously, eyes still downcast, by the bed-head and her mother.

'Sir Francis.' The mother had swallowed several times before speaking. Would she last the course, thought Gresham? 'Though I have married one of your enemies, I am as English as any person here.'

'Madam,' said Drake, 'I do not doubt-'

'Please!' Her tone was so desperate that it defused the rudeness of her interruption. More than words could ever do, it said. I am dying, I feel my consciousness slipping away from me at any moment and I must have leave to say what I need to say without interruption. All present sensed that this woman was shortening her life with the effort of making this final plea.

'My husband is dead. I will shortly be so too.' There was a sob from the corner where the girl sat, her head down. Then a snap of pride thrilled through her. There were no more noises, no snuffling. 'My husband's family and my own are impoverished. If they accept my daughter at all, it would be at little less than the status of a servant. My daughter has only one champion left in the world. Her fiancй, a Frenchman at present travelling.'

A fat pig travelling through Europe for trade! thought Anna to herself, the rush of hatred and anger for a brief moment over-whelming her grief.

'I have no power, no wealth, no great ships at my disposal. I have only the request of a poor woman, an English woman, that I be allowed to name a guardian for my only child, a protector who like a champion of old will guard, protect and keep her, and deliver her to her fiance’

There was an appalling dignity in the simplicity of the woman's words. Drake stuck his chest out even more.

'Madam, I am happy to accept the charge which you-'

'In which case…' For a moment the woman's voice was strong, riddled with authority, and those in the cabin saw what she had once been. 'I nominate as guardian of my daughter the man I believe is known as Henry Gresham.'

George! Surely if it was anyone it should have been George, Gresham thought! It was a mistake! It had to be a mistake!

The silence in the cabin was as painful as a kick in the stomach. It was madness, all there could see it. How long before the young man with the blood in him did what all young men do, succumbed to the demands of his flesh? How long before the wild spirit of the girl succumbed to the man, as God had dictated all women should do from the time of Eve? Madness! What man wanted used goods? What use would her fiance be when he realised his virgin bride had been deflowered, and that any child might not be of his blood line?

Gresham had spent years learning to control the reaction of his body — the sweat on the brow, the pulsing in the neck, the flickering gaze, the hand pulling at the beard, stroking the side of the nose or the chin. The give-away reactions that told an enemy the workings of one's mind. But totally out of his control, he felt the red flush rising from his neck, suffusing his whole face. Then he looked at the mother's face. All her breeding was in it. All her beauty. And also the lines of pain, drawn so finely round her eyes these past few months. And the neck beginning to sag, that sagging that soon would turn the proud swell of her breasts into drooping dugs. Yet on that face was the slightest of smiles. A smile for Henry Gresham, he knew. For him alone. For a fleeting moment Gresham wished that he had had a mother, such as her.

'Do you accept this charge?' she asked, her voice a tiny one now, as though receding from life.

The girl had looked up. Her face showed only hatred and anger. He made the mistake of returning her gaze. Those eyes! Huge, dark pools, the colour of fine amethyst, fathomless, endlessly mysterious… He tried to shake himself out of this spell, praying to God he had made no gesture visible to the outside world. I would rather be facing a Spanish galley at night with little more than a longboat and luck beside me, he thought. He drew a deep breath. Let them see that. He no longer cared.

'Madam,' he bowed towards her, 'I'm no fit person for such a charge. I'm young, I'm foolish, I've yet to learn to cope with my own life, never mind be responsible for someone else's life.' Her smile was unwavering. Was she in some sort of trance, or did she know in her heart what was coming? 'Yet you, clearly, you are a fit person for such a charge. You have experience. You are wise. You prepare to leave your own life with a dignity that no man can but envy.'

A ripple went round the room from the assembled men. They lived close enough to death to know how much that proximity Cost in courage.

'If you trust in me to perform this… duty, then perhaps I may grow in stature and prove worthy of your trust in time enough to honour it. With a heavy heart, then, my answer is yes.'

'Thank you,' said the woman, simply. Then she turned her gaze, wavering now as if she was having difficulty in focussing her eyes, to Drake. 'This is the wish of a dying woman, Sir Francis. If you are a gentleman, then you will honour it.'

A shrewd blow, all things considered. Drake was, above all, not a gentleman. He was a commoner whose daring and luck had brought him enough wealth to make him look as if he were a gentleman. Those who had the status through birth to call themselves gentlemen hated him for his jumped-up success, sought continually to humiliate him. A true gentleman might have rejected the woman's charge. One who was forever having to justify his claim to be a gentleman could not refuse it. For a brief moment Sir Francis Drake stood before a dying woman as himself. The ferocious ambition, the paranoia, the trappings of wealth, the endless complexities, hypocrisies and charades of command, the acting and the playing of roles, all suddenly dropped off. 'I will honour it,' he said, simply.

There was a crash at the door, and Robert Leng, gentleman adventurer and self-professed historian of Sir Francis Drake's triumphant expedition to Cadiz, broke into the cabin. Perhaps it was fortunate that all eyes went to Leng's flushed countenance, because at that precise moment, the compact with Gresham and Drake having been sealed with their eyes, Anna's mother allowed herself to die. The true dignity of death is to die alone. After all, we are born alone for the most part, and we are never more alone than when we die. Yet she was not truly alone. The only eyes that had not swivelled round to Leng as he crashed in were those of her daughter. When the curtain of death closed over her eyes, the last thing they saw was the startling, tear-stained blue orbs of her daughter.

'Sir!' Leng was clearly confused by the sight before him. 'I am… most… most sorry to interrupt… I had no idea… Yet I beg to inform you, I have news of treason. Darkest treason.'

Well, he had their attention now. And no one except the daughter had marked the passing from this earth of the mother.

'Treason, sir,' he said, warming to his part now, 'directed and engineered by the bastard Henry Gresham!'

Something dark, dull and leaden settled into Gresham's mind. He had never liked Leng, who had managed to ignore him throughout the voyage, while managing to emanate at the same time a distant sense of scorn. Yet this was not about dislike. As Gresham looked at Leng's sweating, pock-marked face, a cruel certainty formed in the cold, analytical part of his mind that he could not control but only read.

'These were found in Gresham's belongings. A rosary. A prayer book for the Roman Catholic faith.' Leng paused. He was clearly saving the best for last. 'And a letter from the Court of King Philip of Spain, authorising Henry Gresham as His Catholic Majesty's agent, and advising all to give him loyalty and support!'

Theatrically, he waved the letter in the air. Drake took it, with a leaden brow. Unseen by all present the girl closed her mother's eyes, whose face in death was still smiling, calm now. Drake glanced at the letter, directing a single glance at Gresham. He dropped it on the table. Leng picked it up. He was really enjoying this, thought Gresham. He paused, triumphant. Then he saw the dead woman in the bed.

'Dear God!' he muttered, and sat down on the deck.

The others looked towards the bed, their hearts aghast. The girl had placed her head on her mother's breast, and was sobbing, silently. There was no drama this time. Indeed, it was clear that for the girl the audience did not exist. There is no more powerful grief than private grief. The men present felt shamed, as if they had defiled the primal act of a child's sorrow for the death of its parent. Drake moved first towards the girl.

'We will bury her,' he said, a kindness in his tone that none present had ever seen or heard before, 'even according to your rituals. Roman Catholic rituals. For all that I could be hung on my return for recognising such rituals exist. Not-at sea, either, so the fish can chew her flesh and bones. Not so she drifts where the tide drives. She wasn't one of our strange breed of sailor. We'll bury her on land, on San Miguel, where she can always be known and recorded, and where her children and her grandchildren can visit her grave. In God's good earth, on God's good ground.'

How can a man with so much cruelty in him be so kind, thought Gresham?

'Take the body to the Captain's cabin. Lay her out there,' said

Drake. Laying out bodies was not a skill in short supply among Drake's fleet. 'Follow her,' he said gently to the girl, 'so that you may see that all things are seemly.'

The sailors brought a rough dignity to their job, the body of the woman wrapped in the sheets in which she had lain. The girl followed, still in her private world of grief. The men remained in the cabin.

'I understood you were a spy for England. It seems you are a spy for Spain,' said Drake.

'Will you believe me if I say I've never seen that letter before, nor the rosary and prayer book?' said Gresham. 'I think not. Yet it's the truth.'

'It was found in his belongings, I swear, my Lord!' said Leng.

Drake snorted, moved away. Gresham spoke.

'If Sir Francis Drake of the Elizabeth Bonaventure will not hear me, yet will the Captain of the Judith listen to his past?'

Drake stopped in his tracks. Gresham bore on. He knew it was his last chance.

'As a young man you captained the Judith. A tiny vessel, but yours. You sailed into a Spanish harbour needing rest and succour, with the other ships with whom you had sailed. There was no war between Spain and England, you were simply sailors, cast upon the same waters, facing the same dangers, fearing the same death. You asked for help, were given help, given safe conduct.'

Drake had not moved.

'Then the Spanish decided to take the English vessels, capture them and imprison or burn their crew. You were the bottom of the pile, the smallest vessel, the most insignificant prize. So you slipped out from under their treachery, fought your way home against all odds. You were betrayed.'

Now came the real gamble.

'And you were called a coward, for leaving your fellow sailors.' Suddenly the air in the cabin froze. All eyes turned to Drake. 'So am I the smallest vessel, the least valuable, the disposable commodity, and so have I been betrayed, by whom I know not. So have I been called a coward, despite my reaction under fire, as you were called a coward, in the face of your courage. Will you believe me, as captain of the Judith and the man who brought her home? Or will you believe that there are men trying to deceive you, seeking to use you, to make you my executioner?'

The analytical part of Gresham's mind kept working, thinking, detached from that part of a young man's brain telling him that he was shortly to die. He had to inflame Drake's paranoia, the belief this man had of a world set permanently to betray him. But what a situation for Drake. He had just given his word to allow Gresham to act as guardian to the girl, and it would be far easier for a real gentleman to break his word; far harder for someone desperate to be a gentleman to break it. The nouveaux were always the most willing to believe the old lies. Yet here, clearly was treachery, the likelihood that Gresham had lied to him. It was not the letter that would make Drake want to kill Gresham, he thought. It was the fact that Drake had been taken in by a lie, fooled by a young upstart.

'Ask yourself this, Sir Francis,' continued Gresham. 'Any fool can plant any item they want in the baggage aboard this vessel. Our belongings are strewn about the deck, open to the elements. Do I seem to you fool enough to carry a letter that condemns me, a letter so easily found? What man leaves his death warrant openly on board the deck of a ship?'

They could hear the lapping of the water against the hull as Gresham paused.

'You've not landed me on enemy shore,' he said. It was his final play, he knew. 'Yet you were instructed to do so. Has whoever countermanded Walsingham's orders also demanded my death? Doesn't a man deserve to know who it is that kills him? And how certain are you that this same person will not turn and do to you what you have been commanded to do to me?' *No one commands me, Henry Gresham,' said Drake. 'They may suggest, if they choose. And no one has commanded me to kill you. I hold the power of life and death aboard my ships. I delegate it and give it up to no man.'

Yet to be found with such a letter is as good as killing me, thought Gresham. Did you know that I was to be killed? Or were your orders simply to keep me on board? And who gave you the instructions not to land me ashore?

Drake reached his decision with surprising speed. It was clear that he did not like Gresham. Gresham's only hope was that he disliked those who were seeking to pull the strings on board his flagship just as much.

'How good is your knowledge of history?' Drake asked. Gresham was learning, eventually, to cope with the wild swings and tangents of a dialogue with Drake. But was he going to let him live, or die?

'As bad as any College Fellow's,' answered Gresham, struggling to stay outwardly calm.

'You will know that in Anglo-Saxon times justice was rough and ready. Yet effective, for all its crudeness. You are aware of trial by ordeal?'

Good God! Gresham was aware. It was the system whereby a man had to grasp a red hot bar and walk with it a number of paces. If the wound healed clean, he was deemed innocent. If it festered, guilty. Was Drake going to brand him?

'The theory is that man decides the action,' Drake continued, 'God decides the outcome. So I will place you in God's hands. One of my pinnaces has sprung some of her seams. She has been patched up on the island, but one of the many decisions of command facing me was to decide whether to destroy her, or risk trying to take her home. I had decided to destroy her.' Drake looked to his second in command. 'Captain Fenner. You will ready the Daisy for the voyage back to England. Starting tomorrow. Provision her as best you can. And choose me a crew for her. Start with that mutinous dog from Dreadnought the one we had decided to hang. I think her present Captain will do very well.' He stood up. 'You will go to the Daisy, now. I will send men to pick up whatever belongings you have on board the Bonaventure. If you make it home, God will have declared you innocent. As He will have declared you guilty if you do not.'

'The girl?' Gresham asked.

'I said I would honour the mother's wishes. They were that her daughter be protected. She will be. And that you were her guardian. I am happy for that to be the case. It is merely that for a few weeks you will be aboard the Daisy, while I act in your place here on the San Felipe. You will be reunited in England, God willing.'

If I return, thought Gresham. He felt a wild stirring in his heart. A leaking ship, a mutinous crew — Drake was clearly taking the opportunity to scour his decks of all human filth — and a perilous journey home. Well, it was a chance. A real chance. Better than choking to death, swinging from a yard arm.

Yet Drake had not finished. He turned to Robert Leng.

'Have you finished your account?' asked Drake.

'I have just this moment finished my account of your glorious capture of the San Felipe,' said Leng. 'The full copy is with your Secretary.' He looked sideways at Gresham, nervous, half expecting Gresham to leap at him.

Then your job is done, is it not.?' said Drake. 'You may leave your manuscript with me. You will be keen to get back home. I have decided to provide you with a fast passage. On board the Daisy. You can act as guard to this young man.'

'Sir! This is unjust! I have merely carried out my duty…'

The knife moved so fast through the air that it seemed just a shimmering flicker of silver metal. It bit deep into the bulkhead, quivering, half an inch from Leng's ear.

'I smell treachery!' said Drake bitterly. 'My own vanity. It was my own vanity, the need to have this voyage recorded that overlaid my sense of smell. But now I smell it in my nostrils. So shall it be between you and my young friend here. Guilty? Innocent? Let God decide. And the Daisy.’

With that Drake let out a roar of laughter, continuing it as he left the cabin and mounted the quarterdeck. Leng had time to grab the letter before half running to catch Drake up.

They could have spent all day comforting a stricken George, to no avail. He pleaded to be allowed to come with them. After one look at the Daisy, Gresham flatly refused. Their last sight of the Elizabeth Bonaventure was the mournful half-moon of George's face, watching them as they bobbed away and out of sight. Would Gresham ever see that cheerful face again? They had managed only a few snatched moments of conversation.

Tm sure someone asked or ordered Drake to keep me on board, not to land me ashore. No skin off Drake's nose, if the price was right. He could always give some tissue of lies to Walsingham to explain why. I think what surprised him was when someone quite clearly tried to get him to kill me as well — he hadn't bargained for that.'

'You're lucky Drake felt sorry for you,' said George.

'Sorry? Don't be stupid!' said Gresham. 'Drake isn't giving me this chance because he feels sorry for me. He's giving a reprimand to whoever he takes his orders from, sending a signal that you don't deal with Drake unless you tell him the whole story. If whoever's working with Drake had told him to kill me, and paid the right price, Drake'd have me executed quicker than a blink.'

The Daisy was a depressing prospect. Her Captain was a notorious drunkard, and had this last voyage not beckoned he would certainly have been relieved of any command. There were only fifteen crew members now, all minor criminals and one of them suspected of murder, and too small-a crew to properly handle and set even the paltry sail area the Daisy carried. The pinnaces were often much smaller versions of the great galleons that bobbed over the waves instead of ploughing through them, but with three tiny masts and some popguns on the side. The Daisy's third mast had snapped in the recent storm, and all that remained of it was the stump embedded in the deck. Even though it only carried a small lanteen sail, its absence threw the whole delicate balance of the ship out of true, forcing her bow lower in the water than seemed safe. Gresham knew that the masts on their own could not support the weight of the sail they were required to bear, and that the rigging tensioned them crucially. Was the rigging interdependent, Gresham asked himself? Were the three masts linked together in any significant way? If so, the balance of the other two masts must be out of kilter, subject to unusual strains and stresses… He decided there were some aspects of knowledge that were best not pursued.

They found the Captain snoring, drunk in his tiny cabin aft, florid face flat on the table, outflung hand still grasping a pewter mug. A thin dribble of saliva hung from his mouth, staining the crude chart on the table.

'Falmouth,' said Mannion, looking down at it. 'Chart o' the entrance to Falmouth. Bloody load of good in the Azores.'

There were four really quite decent, high-backed chairs in the cabin — loot from some earlier escapade? — and Gresham sat down on one of them, motioning Mannion to sit as well. It was close in the small room, but it was private. The four sailors Drake had set to guard them were happy enough to wait outside. There was only one door into the cabin, and no window big enough to take Gresham, never mind Mannion. Gresham did not think the drunken Captain counted as a listener.

'Well?' he asked Mannion.

'I've 'ad better odds,' said Mannion. 'I've been 'aving a chat with the carpenter. The hull's shot some seams, but they've recaulked 'em. In decent weather they'll hold up long enough, probably. Losing the mast's a bugger; it'll make her sail like a crab. But they're fast these pinnaces. The real problem's rot. Carpenter reckons some of the timbers below the bilge 'ave got rot in 'em. Difficult to say 'ow many.'

Some sailors feared it more than drowning. Rot was inevitable in a wooden ship, giving a natural limit to any vessel's life. The English used gravel as ballast, whilst the Spanish and Portuguese tended to go more for large rocks or even scrap metal. The gravel tended to shift less in bad weather, but it made it impossible to pump water out and increased the incidence of rot, as well as making it more difficult to spot. It tended to affect the central members, well below the water line, and particularly the crucial keel timbers under the bilges. Taking out the ballast to get at these timbers was a filthy, stinking job, and took time as well as energy. On the smaller vessels there came a time when repair was simply not cost-effective, particularly as even a tiny piece of rotten timber could infect any new, sound timber placed by it. The fear of rot came from the stealth with which it tore out the heart of a vessel. Every sailor knew stories of ships that had simply come apart in a storm without warning, crucial and hidden load-bearing timbers with the texture of crumbling clay suddenly giving up the ghost.

'Why have the crew agreed to come?' asked Gresham. 'They must know what the odds are.'

'They didn't exactly agree. They was told. By Drake. The choice was sail with the Daisy, or be put ashore.' Putting ashore would in all probability have meant the galleys, or even facing the Inquisition.

'They're either all troublemakers or they ain't made themselves popular with 'is 'Ighness,' said Mannion. 'Apparently half of 'em were set to bugger off with the Golden Lion, but bumped into the Dreadnought who threatened to blow 'em out of the water unless they turned round and stuck with us. It's a toss-up whether Drake hangs a few of them as an example and sticks the rest in jail, or whether he says good riddance to bad rubbish and packs 'em off home. We come along. Makes it easier to pack every one off 'ome.'

There was a particularly loud snort from the Captain. Something yellow was dribbling from his nose now.

'What about stores?' asked Gresham.

'Good, as far as I can see,' said Mannion. 'Picked up a lot of stuff in Cadiz, didn't they, so they can afford to be generous. Problem is, you never really know what you're going to get until you broach the barrel.' He was to remember that phrase a short while later.

They had gone to the funeral, conducted with dignity and as much ceremony as they could muster, burying some of their own dead a few hundred yards off. Unusual for sailors, whose final resting place was a roll of canvas weighted with lead shot and fathoms of sea water above their heads for eternity. Afterwards, on board the San Felipe, Gresham had talked to the girl. Drake had allowed them a few minutes, though he had not dismissed the guard — She looked thinner than when he had first set eyes on her, but seemed even more beautiful. Her suffering had deepened her cheek bones, given her eyes an even greater intensity and depth. None of that intensity reflected affection. The girl's modest gown was designed to cover rather than accentuate the charms of the wearer, yet she moved like an athlete. Gresham could not banish the image of her naked body from his mind. Damn! This was not what the mother had wanted when she made him pledge his honour.

'I'm sorry that I can't remain with you on San Felipe for your voyage home,' he said to her, trying to appear calm. 'I've been banished, in effect, by Sir Francis. But immediately you land in England I'll be there. I propose to house you at my home in London,' the vast Gresham property on the Strand, known simply as The House, stood largely empty, 'where there are some excellent female servants.' Dear Lord! He was sounding like the most pompous type of father. 'I'll also attempt to find a suitable lady to act as your chaperone.' And how the hell did a young man with no family left alive and a scorn for the Court do that, he wondered? He suspected his guardianship would require that he acquire rather too many new skills. God, she was beautiful!

She looked up at him, fire in her eyes. 'Do you know what it is like to be treated as a packages?'

'Pardon?' said Gresham, startled.

'To be packed up, despatched, sent here and sent there. Treated like a packages!'

'It's "package", actually…' said Gresham.

'Something with no mind, no will of its own, no desires.' She ignored Gresham. 'Just an object. Well, do you?' Her voice was soft, husky, surprisingly low-pitched, but with a hint of steel in it.

'Er… well, no. Actually.'

'It would seem that God has a strange sense of humour.' This conversation was rapidly going away from Gresham. 'He gives His creation the capacity to love, and then rips the people we love out of our lives for his amusement.' There was no sign of excessive moisture in her eyes. 'But at least he has a sense of humour, and he recognises that we care. Men, it appears, simply think women are a packages. I am to be delivered to you. You will deliver me on.' She stood up. 'I hate you!' she said. The quiet control of her voice was more frightening than it would have been had she shouted. 'I hate you and all your kind. You who treat people like objects, who take away their freedom and their right to exist as themselves.'

I think I could very easily hate you, thought Gresham. I really do not need you as a complication in my life at this present time.

'Yeah, well,' said Mannion, picking his hollow tooth, 'you're not alone in that. Most people hate him, actually.'

The girl gave a slight tremor. Was it the comment or perhaps the fact that it was a servant who uttered them? Such freedom was not afforded servants in the best-run Spanish households. Nor, now Gresham came to think of it, in the best English ones either.

'Let's see…' Mannion poised for a moment's theatrical thought. 'Drake hates him. His bosses at home hates him. Both of those are trying to kill him, actually. The Spaniards had a good attempt at killing him, so they must hate him. The son of the Queen's Chief Secretary hates him. If you believe everything he says — and I tries to, 'cos I'm a good servant — the Queen, the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex could all be trying to get 'im killed. Oh, and I forgot. His College in Cambridge, England, they all hates him as well.'

Mannion gave up excavating his tooth. He had carried on throughout his little speech, causing some problems with comprehensibility.

'And now it turns out you hates him as well. Fancy that, join the club. Funny thing, now as it comes to mind, I've had nothing but trouble since I met him. I hate the bugger too. Shall we all take turns in trying to kill 'im?'

Anna looked from Mannion to Gresham, and back again. Gresham was looking at Mannion with an expression which intimated that he thought Mannion's colliding with a very heavy object would be a good thing.

'Why did God give you a mouth to match your belly!' he thundered. 'Why did he put your brain somewhere lower down and feeing aft than your belly! I swear…'

He turned. The girl had left, silently.

'That could 'ave been better,' said Mannion. 'If you'd left it to me…'

'If I leave a girl like that to you I'd be like a shepherd giving the flock over to a lion while he has a rest.'

'Me?' said Mannion incredulously. 'Me a lion? Give over! I'm the donkey. Problem is, sometimes a donkey 'as more common sense than a lion!'

Gresham had become used to the easy motion of the Elizabeth Bonaventure. The Daisy seemed to fight the water instead of working with it, recoiling when the light waves slapped her thin hull, seeing them as an insult rather than a caress. They left harbour with no fanfares, skulking out at sunset in the hope that the gathering gloom would mean that no one would notice. But even a crew such as this could set sail with a kind westerly directly behind them.

God knew how good a navigator the Captain was, in the rare moments when he was awake that is, but Gresham was gambling on his survival instinct. And if they headed west, they were sure to hit the coast of Europe, he comforted himself. Surely the coast of Europe was too big for even the Daisy to miss? Then all they would have to do was coast-hop back to England. Dodging angry Spanish ships, of course, bent on revenge for Cadiz. And supposing the beer and biscuit in their barrels was sound. And hoping the rot did not break the hull open at the first sign of a real sea, or the jerry-rigging collapse the masts. But of all the problems Gresham had anticipated, the one that first arose, barely half a day into their voyage, was one he had not dreamed of.

The Daisy had a planked-over waist, unlike many of the pinnaces which left their apology for a gun deck open to the elements. Because it was covered, they put stores there. It was Mannion who heard the tapping. A frail noise, coming from one of the barrels, marked as containing beer. Mannion patrolled the tiny ship as if haunted by the Devil, two throwing knives stuffed openly into his belt, a dagger there as well as a prohibited sword. Not the rapier of gentlemen, more the cutlass of a pirate. Mannion emanated threat, though this did not stop him from calling Gresham to witness the act as he broached the barrel. By then, the tappings had ceased.

So, nearly, had Anna's life. Half an hour more and she would not have been gagging her life up on the deck of the Daisy, but communing with her mother. The tiny portion of stores assembled for the Daisy had been put on the main deck of the San Felipe before they were lugged over to their final destination and left overnight. She had spotted them, seen the barrel of beer left by the chute designed to take sea water from the deck and back into the ocean. Somehow, using the last of the coin her mother had given her, she had persuaded her servant and the sailor she was sleeping with to knock two holes in the barrel so the beer leaked gently over the side and into the sea. Then, with more coin and the last of the wine in her mother's store, she had persuaded them to broach the barrel, replace its cover and nail her into it. Unfortunately, the holes that were sufficient to drain the beer were insufficient to let enough air in. The stench inside the barrel and the heat were beyond belief. For a moment they thought the pathetic, bedraggled, stinking and limp thing they hauled out of the barrel was dead. There was a mutter from the group of sailors as a long, slim leg emerged from under a tattered dress as they lay her body on the deck. Vulnerable. Defenceless. A strange compassion and pity filled Gresham's heart as he watched Mannion cradle the girl's head, turning it to one side to allow her to vomit.

'I will not leave this boat!' she declared firmly as soon as she came to, despite her voice being little more than a harsh croak.

'But this is madness!' said Gresham. 'Madness! We have no room on this sinking hulk for a… woman! And what could have prompted you to leave everything behind, your clothes, your jewels, your mother's jewels?'

'The San Felipe was a prize of war, was it not? Since when do passengers on a prize of war keep their jewels?'

She had a point, Gresham had to admit. A very small point.

'But I'm sure if you had approached Sir Francis Drake he would have listened to your pleadings…'

'I will not be brought back to England in triumph as a prize,' she declared, 'displayed like a Roman Emperor displays his captives.'

So it was pride that this was all about, thought Gresham. 'I must turn the boat around,' he muttered, deeply worried.

'You will not turn this boat round!' she hissed at him.

'And why not? You must understand one thing. Your beauty holds no allure for me. There are many beautiful women. Your hiding aboard will infuriate Drake and bring down even more trouble on my head. If you stay you are the only woman on board a ship whose crew think rape no more special than drinking off the contents of a mug. We have no clothes for you, except that ruined article you now wear. Your bodily functions will have to be performed behind locked doors…'

She gazed at him with scorn.

'You are my guardian. You will just have to protect me. I repeat, you will not turn this boat round.'

'And what is there to stop me?' he said, finding himself almost shouting at her. He suspected quite a lot of people ended up shouting at this particular young lady. He got control of himself.

'Because if you do I shall throw myself overboard,' she said, simply.

Something like despair clutched at Gresham. Was it a bluff? No, he decided, looking her up and down. She was daft enough to do it. 'But you will be so much more comfortable on board the San Felipe

'I am comfortable here, thank you very much.' She was sitting primly now, hands in her lap, in one of the only two, tiny cabins on the boat. 'I'm sure you've much to do with… winching sails or… heaving ballasts.' Clearly her grasp of matters nautical was hazy. 'You have my leaves to go and do whatever it is you have to do.'

'It's "leave", not "leaves", and thank you, my ladyship,' said Gresham sarcastically. 'I'm most honoured that your gracious majesty in her infinite wisdom and mercy grants me her permission to do what no one can stop me doing anyway.'

The Ice Queen said nothing. Gresham had clearly been dismissed the presence. In the final count God took the decision for them, as Drake might have said. The steady wind allowed no turning back towards Drake's fleet and the San Felipe, and seemed determined to blow them away from it as fast as possible.

'Could be worse,' muttered Mannion.

'How?' said Gresham. 'Just tell me how.' One of the sailors, a huge raspberry birthmark on the side of his face, who had just hurled a coil of rope in Gresham's path, stood there. Gresham looked at him. The smile faded from the sailor's face, and slowly he bent to move the coils.

'Just think, if Drake 'ad gone and got her pregnant. Any child from that pair'd be Anti-Christ.'

They left the captain to sleep in his noisome hole of a cabin, both men standing watch in turn, sleeping on a mattress outside Anna's door.

'This lot'd as soon cut our throats as look at us,' said Mannion. It was not simply that the crew seemed to blame Gresham and Mannion for their exile on to this leaking graveyard. They must have guessed that a man of Gresham's obvious wealth would have at least some gold stitched into his clothing. Robert Leng had clung pathetically to Gresham's side. Let him, thought Gresham. I have questions to ask of you, but later.

The crisis came three days into the voyage. The sky started to take on a hard, metallic sheen on the second day, though the wind stayed steady, and the heat was electric. 'Storm,' said Mannion. 'And she's letting in water faster than we can pump it out.' Two men had been permanently manning the Daisy's battered pump. It was numbing work, but the water level in the bilges was rising and the ship was riding heavily, the bow more happy to drive into the bottom of the waves than to rise up on their crests. Soon they could hear the thump and splash of the water as it surged backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards in the hold.

Then the wind dropped. There was an hour, a fearful hour in which the sailors looked always towards the far horizon, an hour of clammy stillness and heat. They saw the black clouds rolling towards them before they heard their thunder. Within the hour all light was gone, and the sea was a roaring, heaving maelstrom, the Daisy plunging down huge walk of water, the careering bow burying itself up to a third of the hull, before dragging itself reluctantly up for the ship to rear stomach-sickeningly high on the crest of the next huge wave. With a snap as of a broken limb, the mains'l split into two halves, and within seconds was mere loose strips of canvas blowing from the yards. The Captain, all alcohol bleached from him by terror, was screaming orders, but the men were refusing to climb the yards, seeing only death aloft. Gresham and Mannion were clinging on for dear life to the guardrail, all pride cast away, kneeling on the deck. Mannion yelled in Gresham's ear.

'He wants them to take in sail! Trying to haul to, ride out the storm with bare yards! 'Cept he's probably wrong!'

The two tops'ls, one on the main and the other on the foremast, were holding, God only knew how, driving the Daisy forwards. At times the effect was almost as if the ship was surfing, clinging on the edge of massive waves and driving forward with them. She was almost impossible to hold on the tiller, with three men on it. It gave vicious kicks as the waves slapped and boiled over the stern. Yet now she felt like a lead-filled barrel on the waves, water over the maindeck half the time.

'Pump!' yelled Mannion above the roar of the storm. The two men manning the pump were enfeebled, flapping at the handle. The rest of the crew were cowering under the forecastle. One was screaming a prayer, mouth agape. A great wave passed over the whole bunch, green fury laced with delicate white foam, and when it finally receded there were two fewer men. The one praying was retching, coughing up the bitter salt water from his mouth where he had inhaled it. Gresham and Mannion grabbed the pump handle, and swung themselves into working the antiquated mechanism. They had been soaked through within minutes of the storm's onset. Gresham could feel his skin red-raw where the salt-encrusted fabric was rubbing on his shoulder and elbows, yet where the pain of salt on open flesh should have been there was only a dull, numbing hurt.

They had been driving before the wind for hours when a huge, green boiling sea reared up over the stern and slammed into it. With a wail two men were hurled away from the tiller, crashed into the bulwark and sucked over the side, hands held up beseechingly as if in prayer. The tiller kicked viciously back, flinging the helmsman away from it. What was left of the Daisy above the surface started to swing sluggishly round. To be side-on to these gargantuan seas was to be dead, rolled right over and swamped. With a massive leap the helmsman hurled himself back at the wildly flailing tiller, managed somehow to grab and with superhuman strength forced it over. The next vast wave was already towering over them. Slowly, so slowly as to torture every sense, the waterlogged stern swung round. With effortless power, it was as if the tower of water gave the ship the tiniest of little kicks, swooping and streaming under instead of over the stern.

A wave crashed down into the well of the boat. There was a scream from Gresham's side. Robert Leng had been plucked from the deck as if he was weightless, stretched out over the side, his only claim on life one white-knuckled hand clinging with the ferocity of a new-born child to Gresham's upper arm. Gresham looked into the eyes of the man who had betrayed him, wanted to deliver him up to a drum-head court-martial and a hanging. With a shrug of his arm Gresham could have sent him to the bottom of the sea. Instead, with a surging lunge that threatened his own hold on the boat, Gresham reached forward and hauled Leng back on board by the scruff of his neck.

'And would you do the same for me?' he yelled in the teeth of the storm.

But Robert Leng was sobbing, his arms wrapped round the stump of the lanteen mast, clinging to it as if it were his mother, father, wife, brother, sister and child.

The storm stopped without warning. The howl and shriek of the wind through the torn rigging was no longer a constant, but a rising and falling crescendo. Then it lost any rhythm, occasional gusts whipping through the air, snarling at the impudence man had built like an animal circling a beaten foe, unwilling to give up the fight. For hours a huge, rolling sea of mountainous wave after mountainous wave picked the Daisy like a sodden cork, flinging her this way and that.

It was a desperate sight that met the salt-scarred eyes of the survivors. The Daisy was riding with scarcely two feet of freeboard, the water in the hold nearly up to the level of the hatch. If she had had gun ports cut into her side she would have sunk by now, the water above them and the ports undoubtedly stove in, but her few cannon were placed high on the maindeck, firing through the rail. Three of the guns had smashed through the thin wood, the fourth they had cut free and sent after its companions to lighten the ship. Rigging was streaming from the main and the foremast, and the main mast was swinging ominously.

There were ten of the crew left alive, not including Gresham, Mannion, the gibbering Leng, the man still at the tiller and Anna. The Captain had been swept overboard, as had two crew. Two others lay crumpled, lifeless, on the deck. One had been crushed by a cannon as it careered across the deck, another flung against the bulkhead, the impact smashing his head in as effectively as a blow from a mallet. The survivors were huddled by the forecastle, the position they had taken up for most of the storm.

It was exhaustion that did it. Gresham had gone aft to check that Anna was still alive. She emerged, swinging the wooden door wide open, still somehow composed. Then her eyes opened wide in terror, and Gresham sensed rather than saw a rush of men. He turned, to see that the crew had risen as one, and brought a smashing blow down on Mannion's head with a baulk of timber as he had bent over, struggling to remove the hatch cover. With a sickening thud he collapsed over the half-open hatch, and the men roared their approval, turning like a pack of hyenas on to Gresham.

He did not know what came over him, had no control. It was as if another dark figure stepped up from the deepest recesses of his mind, pushed him to one side and took over his life for the allotted time, the time in which it could and probably should have ended.

Drake had not barred Gresham from claiming his sword from the Elizabeth Bonaventure. Stupidly, he had kept the beautiful weapon strapped to his side throughout the storm. Madness of course. Its length threatened to trip him at any time as he was hurled about the tiny deck, and no steel could be a weapon against the ferocious hatred of nature.

The sailors were a vision of Hell. Most had the clothes half-ripped off their backs, most had lost their teeth and the involuntary snarls on their faces revealed gaping black holes. Yet of all things it was the slap, slap of their bare feet on the sodden deck that Gresham remembered most vividly.

The sword flickered once. A backswing to give it momentum, right to left, and then a sweeping curve across the path of the advancing mutineers. He caught the first man in the side of the cheek, and the force of the swinging blow was so great that the metal blade slit through the skin, ran across his tongue and flew out of the other side of his face with a jet-like explosion of blood and particles of flesh. Gresham had cut his face in half, the flap of his lower cheek on both sides hanging down dripping red blood, the man's eyes wide open in shock and horror. There was still force in the blow. The men faltered, stumbled, their primeval instinct seeing the glitter of the blade before their conscious minds registered it. It was not enough for one of them to stop in time. The blade collided with the side of his head, Gresham at full stretch, angling it upwards with a flick of his wrists just before impact. As clean as a surgeon's knife, the man's ear leapt out from the side of his head, flying obscenely through the air like a ball kicked by a child.

The men's eyes swivelled upwards to follow the ludicrous piece of flesh and heard a soft thud as it hit the deck. The man whose face Gresham had opened had been pushed forward by his momentum. As from nowhere, the long, cruel blade of an ornate Italian dagger had appeared in Gresham's other hand. Curling his sword arm, at the end of its swing now, round the back of the man's head he drew him almost lovingly on to the blade, driving it hard under and up through his rib-cage. Blood was streaming from the man's ruined face. His eyes opened wide, a soundless scream in them. In an instant his life flickered out. Gresham stood for a moment, cradling the man as if he were a lover, holding him upright on the blade. Then he flung his sword arm back and savagely withdrew the dagger, at the same time flinging the corpse backwards. Like a wet rag doll it flew through the air, collapsing like a sodden sack of rubbish on to the deck.

The other men fell back. One stumbled over the prostrate form of Mannion, who moaned and stirred. Gresham made two quick paces forward, his sword a lightning bolt pointed at the souls of the mutineers. They fell back, leaving Mannion halfway between them. Suddenly Gresham felt a presence, half turned. The girl was there, clutching the snapped-off half of the pole used for sponging out the cannon. Mannion drew himself groggily to his feet. A line of blood streaked his face, from what was clearly a fearsome gash on his skull. The man must have a skull of iron, thought Gresham. The blow he had been given would have killed any other man.

'Longboat!' he croaked, swaying but staying upright. 'Put the buggers in the longboat. Let 'em row home!'

The longboat was stowed in the middle of the deck though to call it a longboat was a misdirection. It was a stumpy little rowing boat, capable of taking six men at a pinch. What was remarkable was that it appeared to be undamaged, alone of anything on board the Daisy. Its lashings had remained firmly secured, and somehow the careering cannons had scraped by instead of into it.

What was Mannion thinking? Was he thinking at all, and had the blow addled his brains? The longboat looked about the only thing on board the Daisy that should be floating, that was seaworthy. Wasn't it their only chance? As if reading his mind, Mannion turned to Gresham. Turned his back on his attackers, in an act of supreme arrogance.

'Do what I says’ he hissed. 'Just this once, do it without arguing!'

Gresham looked at Mannion, sword arm still outstretched, looked at the men, huddling back now, courage replaced by stark fear.

'In the boat,' he said, 'and off this ship.'

The men turned to each other, startled. Was this man mad? This was why they had attacked him, to get the longboat, the only chance of survival! The officers and that bloody woman were bound to get it, weren't they? That was how it worked.

Shuffling, they started to free the longboat from its moorings. It should have been hoisted overboard, with a line rigged from the main mast, but that piece of rigging had long gone. Instead, freed of its ropes, the men manhandled the boat to the side and simply tipped it into the water. The surface was so close to the top of the Daisy's hull that the boat hardly splashed as it hit. The one who seemed to be their leader looked enquiringly to where four barrels of water had been lashed to the deck. Two had gone, two were left. God knows if the water inside them had been penetrated by the sea, but the water was fresh enough, loaded off one of the tiny islands by San Miguel. Gresham gave a quick nod. Three men manhandled the barrel into the boat, which sank dangerously under their combined weight, but righted itself again. Without a word, the men pushed off, fumbling for the oars stowed in the bottom of their craft, rowing in an ungainly fashion. Only when long out of sword range did they cry back over the water to them. 'Bastards!'they screamed. *Why did you give them the boat?' asked Gresham.

' "Are you alright?" might've been a nicer thing to ask me first,' said Mannion, ruefully touching his head where a large hole the size of a salt mine seemed to have been opened up.

"You're talking, so you must be alright. Stupid bloody idiot to get caught out like that anyway. Serves you right. But answer the question! That boat's our only chance of survival.'

'No it ain't,' said Mannion. 'We needed them off here. Ten to three still isn't good odds. And anyway, watch that boat. I should think it'll happen before we lose sight of them.' *What will happen?' *You just wait.'

The boat was almost on the horizon when it happened. The mutineers had rigged the tiny sail the boat carried, and suddenly Gresham saw it topple, fall over the side. Men were standing up in the boat, dark silhouettes against the sky. One of them suddenly vanished, as if he had fallen through the deck.

'Rot,' said Mannion, 'the whole boat's riddled with rot. It was one of the first things I checked for. Someone's put a coat of paint over it all, but there's hardly a sound bit of timber in the whole bloody lot. Worst o' the lot round where they seat the mast. Once they put a sail up, they'll tear the heart out of her.'

The men were frantically stumbling and scrambling, arms and legs increasing the speed with which the rotten wood disintegrated. Soon heads were bobbing in the water.

'Don't imagine as any of them can swim,' said Mannion. 'Usually can't, sailors. And they'll panic, of course. Flail out, drive the good bits of timber away instead of grabbing on to them. Couple of them might grab something big enough to keep 'em afloat. Could take, two, three maybe even four days to die, if the weather stays good.'

Across the sea from them men were praying, screaming, not going gently into the good night but fighting for every scrap of life, and losing. Men with thoughts, with feelings, some with wives, all with lovers, men with children, men whose mothers had wept and laughed over them. Bad men, probably, the sweepings of God's earth, but men with the same capacity to feel pain and the same desire to hold on to existence as all of us, life being the only gift they had been given free of charge. Men brought crying into the world, leaving it crying their pain. Until the waters finally closed over their heads. And from the sinking deck of the Daisy — how odd that word sounded, redolent of English meadows, the smell of Spring and good solid earth, here on this rolling, oily expanse of grey water where no roots could ever take hold and everything was impermanent, fluid — these little dramas were being played out without sound, the figures in the water mere marionettes, detached, somehow not real.

Except they were real for Mannion.

'Bastards,' said Mannion, with total sincerity. 'Remember not to creep up on me again.'

Gresham had just killed a man, face to face. He was watching six men die. Yet he felt almost light-headed. Nothing mattered any more. It was all Fate. Man decided nothing. It was all decided for him. It felt very different from the time in Grantchester meadows. Was it maturity? Or was he simply becoming even more callous?

They turned away from the pathetic frail figures struggling in the water. Soon they were lost to view as Gresham and the others found a barrel of water, broached it, and drank until the taste of salt was no longer quite so strong in their mouths. The olives and the biscuit they found in other barrels were the best thing they had ever tasted. Was it the food they were tasting, or was it simply the taste of being alive? Anna ate with them. She had said virtually nothing, except to confirm that she had no lasting injuries. The tattered dress no longer concealed the girl's ankles, and Gresham found his eyes drawn unstoppably towards them, a different hunger surprising him now that he had taken the edge off the hunger for food and clean water. Suddenly the feet swirled away, and the girl was back to her cabin. God knew what terrors she had gone through there in the storm. She had seen a man killed in front of her, must have known her fate had Gresham and Mannion been overcome. She had not seen fit to share her fears with them. Perhaps they had had enough of their own.

An overwhelming desire to sleep came over Gresham. He had heard about this, from soldiers who had been in battle. The dreadful tiredness, the total imperative to sleep. The Daisy groaned as another wave lifted her water-filled belly up out of the sea. 1 must not sleep. We must somehow claim back the boat from the elements, must somehow get back to England, Gresham repeated to himself.

'We're sinking.' It was Anna. She had emerged from the cabin. How could a young girl's voice be so commanding? Somehow she had managed to comb her hair. 'I'm pleased to say I know nothing about the sea except that it is wet and unpleasant in ways I had never dreamed of,' she said to Gresham. 'Yet even I can see this boat is settling deeper and deeper into the water, not least of all because there is a foot of waters in my cabin that was not there an hour ago.'

'Water,' mumbled Gresham.

Mannion took over. 'Wooden ships, they're funny. You see, the wood really wants to float. It's what it was designed to do. Seen ships like this stay afloat for days. There's another thing, both bad news and good news. Load of them barrels they gave us when we set off. They're empty. Found that out too, soon after we set off. 'Bout half of them. That's what you can hear now.'

There was a constant bumping and crashing from within the hold as the ship rose and fell uneasily in the swell.

'They're helping us keep afloat, I reckon.'

'Raft,' said Gresham. 'Build a raft.'

They were dead in the water. Miraculously the two tops'ls were still largely intact, but flapping uselessly as the last savage swing of the storm had severed the ropes that hung at their foot, tensioning them and holding the wind. Leng had crept out from whatever corner he had been gibbering in, calmer now, just looking as if someone had held him underwater for half an hour.

'We have to build a raft,' said Gresham. 'Got some water left, got some food not spoilt. Use the empty barrels to build a raft, while the old Daisy's still got some life in her. Rig a sail as a shelter. Keep Anna out of the sun. You can survive for weeks, if you can keep out of the water. That's what kills you, staying in the water.' He was almost raving, feeling his control leaving him.

'Can I ask just one question?' asked Anna.

'You just have. Now will you shut up and let us get on with it?'

Why had he rounded on the girl, thought Gresham? Because he was exhausted, because crisis after crisis was piling up in his life, and most of all because he had not asked for her to be there as an extra burden, a burden demanding he think about someone other than himself. He liked being selfish, he had decided. It was safer, simpler, far less complicated. And deep in his soul, he was beginning to think that he would never set foot on land again.

The girl ignored him.

'Why are you going to build a raft?'

Gresham sighed, deeply and long.

'Because this ship is sinking. And because unless we're to sink along with it, we need something on which we can float. Can we carry on now?'

'Certainly,' she said. 'But it would be easier, would it not, to go to wherever we're going on that very big boat that's been in sight for nearly ten minutes now?'

The men turned, their jaws dropping. The Merchant Royal, one of the London ships that had separated from Drake's fleet what seemed a lifetime earlier. Scouring the ocean for Drake, blown off course in the same storm that had nearly killed them. The wonderful sight of the ship bore down on them, the two little flapping sails having let her see them before even Anna's sharp young eyes had picked out her bulk on the ocean.