Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

Sour beer! Of course! Water was a dangerous drink, and the brewing process seemed to take the badness out of water. Even Gresham knew what happened on board ship if a barrel was broached and the contents poisoned through unseasoned timber. Such timber also bent and shrank, letting out the contents. Mind you, so few hops were used in brewing the beer for the Queen's ships that the stuff was rumoured to be rotten before it got into the barrels. Cecil continued, as if lecturing a child.

'Because the wood for staves has to season and, because Spain needs far more barrels than are currently available, the order has gone out for suitable wood across Europe. Small boats, mainly, in their hundreds. Heading for Lisbon. Walsingham believes if we can sink or capture enough of these vessels, we will give the Spaniards gut rot for food and poison for their drink. Drake's instructions are to patrol off Lisbon or Cadiz, attack if he can. If not, he should pick up all the coastal trade, sink most of it.'

'While this is fascinating,' said Gresham, 'I'm slightly at a loss to see its relevance’

'It is very simple,' said Cecil. 'Sir Francis needs not only information on the great ships that Philip is gathering — their cannon, their shot and their powder — but he wishes you to ascertain the state of the lesser shipping, the state of those unglamorous supplies that will underpin Spain's fleet.'

An unglamorous mission then, thought Gresham, seeking to find out unglamorous facts. 'Is there enmity between your father and Walsingham?' he asked Cecil. It was almost a random thought, allied to a desire to unsettle him. Why did Gresham dislike him so much?

‘Not at all,' replied Cecil. Gresham had chosen the wrong question. Or Cecil was hard to unsettle. 'If there were, it would hardly be likely that I would be running errands for Sir Francis.'

I cannot see why you should run such errands, thought Gresham, and it worries me. More layers of intrigue. Yet as far as Gresham could judge, Cecil had not told him a single lie. Who could hope to disentangle the truth from the lies?

The usual permissions have been given to the College, I understand,' said Cecil. The 'usual permissions' were letters from the Privy Council requesting that 'no hindrance' be given to one Henry Gresham for absence 'required in the service of Her Majesty'. It would, of course, lead to the usual resentments, as if Gresham did not have enough trouble in College already. And he would need to pay someone to cover his lectures.

Some instinct had drawn Mannion back. He stepped into Gresham's rooms as Cecil brushed past him.

‘We're going to sea to fight the Spanish, then spy in Lisbon,' said Gresham.

For a moment a strange expression flickered across the face of the normally phlegmatic Mannion. Then it was gone. 'Fight the Spanish?' he said. 'I thought all you wanted to do was to get into bed with them.'

Gresham sighed, and chose to ignore the sally. He relayed his conversation with Cecil.

'I don't like it, not one bit,' said Mannion. 'That Cecil's on the ladder right enough, and 'e don't mind who 'e treads on to get up it. The way these bastards work at Court, I bet 'e 'asn't given you half the story.'

'There'll be battles at sea that'll decide the fate of England. Maybe set the map of Europe for hundreds of years to come. And I've been offered a ringside seat. What man could turn that down?' asked Gresham. Well, it would make a story for the girls, and there was some excitement in it.

'One with more sense than you,' responded Mannion. 'Well, I'm glad I taught you to swim.' He had indeed done so in Gresham's youth. Gresham's hatred of the sea did not extend to swimming in the cool clear waters of his father's lake, or the upper reaches of the Cam before Cambridge's sewage stained its waters.

'Let's hope we don't have to,' said Gresham, with feeling.

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?