Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

'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.