Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

The men stiffened, drawing themselves unwittingly to attention.

Their General was suggesting a smashing, final blow to end the war, that endless haemorrhage of Spanish money and blood in the Netherlands. Parma held out his hand to his Secretary, clicking his finger to demand the letter from the King of Spain back. Parma did not open it again. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, away from his body.

'I will have time to think over these matters. I will not be visiting Parma. The King has suggested my duties lie here.'

So permission had been refused for the Duke to visit the Dukedom he had only inherited that year! He had formally requested leave of absence. Leave of absence in the winter, when campaigning was impossible and the opposing armies settled into quarters.

It had been refused. But evidently he was too valuable in the Netherlands, Philip too concerned perhaps that if he left there for his ancestral homeland, changed the mist-clinging, cold and damp Netherlands for the hot beauty of Parma, he might never return. The men gathered round the Duke gave a collective sigh. They, the privileged inner cabinet, knew more than any their General's yearning to see his homeland. He had not even been educated there, sent instead to be brought up and educated in Spain.

'Well,' said Parma, We have one country still to conquer, here in Flanders. Now let us set about conquering another.'

Gresham could not sleep. They had been becalmed in Cadiz just as Drake was preparing to leave. Miraculously, Drake's luck had held. The two vast cannon hauled on to the beach by the Spaniards had missed the English fleet with virtually every shot, and no Spanish vessels had arrived to block them in the harbour. The Spanish troops marshalled in good order in the town, had no way of reaching the English ships. The Spaniards had tried to send fireships down on the English fleet at night, but the absence of wind meant that they had been easily hauled aside by small boats. Drake strode the quarterdeck, appearing to be in high spirits despite the perilous nature of his position. His Secretary, lugubrious as ever, was trying to run through figures of captured goods. Drake was clearly bored.

The Secretary sighed and looked out over the bay to ten or fifteen flaring points, burning or burned-out Spanish fireships.

‘Well, my Lord,' he said, 'at least the Spanish seem to be doing your job for you.'

Drake stopped his pacing, looked down at his Secretary, and then went to the front rail.

'Look you there, boys!' he shouted at the top of his voice. Most of the crew had gathered in the cool of the night on the open deck, few were asleep. Drake waved his hand to point at the burning ships. 'The Spaniards are doing our job for us!' There was a great cheer and wave of laughter from the men. In no time a boat was being launched to check if any of the fireships still posed a danger. Or was the real reason to take the joke around the fleet, Gresham wondered?

It was stalemate, until a fine wind blew up in the morning and sent Drake out to sea a significantly richer man than when he had first sailed into Cadiz harbour.

'Well,' George said, surveying the wreck of the harbour, 'that won't help King Philip invade!'

‘Will it stop it?' asked Gresham. -

‘No,' said George, thinking for a moment. ‘Not if the King of Spain keeps his nerve. But it will delay it. For months.'

George was snoring loudly now, his arm thrown part over Gresham, giving him pins and needles. He gently removed George's arm, sat up. It was Mannion, shaking him.

'We're on the move. Thank God I can't smell Spaniards any more.'

'They can't smell worse, than you,' Gresham yawned. 'Why do you hate Spain so much?' he said, more to pass the time while his brain reconnected with his aching body than for any real interest in the answer. 'I know I ought to hate it. I'm English. But I can't believe total ill of a country that builds such beautiful buildings. And there's an appalling beauty in the Mass; just listen to Byrd's music. And they saved Europe from the Turks at Lepanto. It's not a country without honour. Why do you hate it so?

'I don't hate Spain as much as I hate that bloody Don Alvaro de Bazan, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz,' said Mannion. He spoke the name of Spain's High Admiral of the Seas perfectly, with what seemed to Gresham to be an excellent Spanish accent. There was a tone of venom in his servant's voice Gresham had never heard before.

'Why so much hatred of a man you've never even met?' asked Gresham his curiosity aroused now.

'Well, there you're wrong. I have met him, see.' Mannion was refusing eye contact, watching the sway of the rigging.

'Tell,' said Gresham, simply, sitting down with his back to the rail, knees clasped in his arms, boat cloak wrapped round him to ward off the chill of dawn. He knew if he pushed Mannion the man would retreat. Mannion did what he wanted, not what he was told. It was why he respected him and valued his friendship so much.

'Well,' said Mannion, after what was clearly for him some troubled thought, 'suppose there's no 'arm in your knowing. Particularly if it stops you sellin' out to Spain, not as you'll listen to anything I say, o' course. 'Cept for one thing. This stays between me and you, right? No blabbing of it to one of those fine girls you take to bed with you. No blabbing when you're in drink at College. If they ever let us back, that is.' Mannion looked at the prone figure of George, reassuring himself that he was truly asleep.

Who would I tell your secrets to, thought Gresham? I have no one else I trust, except this other lump of a man asleep by my side. Would I break your confidence, you, the oldest, the best and the only friend I have? ‘No blabbing,' he said simply. Mannion looked at him, nodded, and sat down beside him. All the action was up in the bow or at the stern, the waist of the vessel for once surprisingly deserted.

'You see, I were a ship's boy. Never known who me parents were. All I know was that the man who brought me up — a cobbler, he was, and a bloody bad one judging by the number of customers who came back to complain — told me that I were a bastard, and a charge on his good nature. That was in between thumpin' me, o' course. Thumping me was about the only fun 'e had. So as soon as I was big enough, and I always were big, he packed me off, sold me to a captain sailing out of Deptford.'

Ship's boys performed a variety of lowly jobs on board ships. If they survived they picked up enough knowledge to get a decent berth as a swabber, the lowest rating. From there was the path to becoming a seaman proper. It was a rough, dangerous way to learn a trade, and there were dark whispers in every port of sailors turning to the boys for sexual satisfaction, of boys who objected ending their lives as an anonymous splash overboard in a lonely sea.

‘ ‘E weren't a bad man, Captain Chicken, though it warn't the best name for a sea-going Captain.' Mannion's accent, never refined, was slipping back, Gresham noticed. Was he talking to Gresham, or talking to himself? 'Anyway, I stuck with 'im five or six years, 'til I were ready to take on a job as real seaman. Surprised, weren't you, when I knew so much about ships?' He turned to Gresham, who nodded, fascinated, gripped by the unfolding human drama. 'I know more than half these buggers 'ere,' said Mannion gesturing dismissively to the crew gathered fore and aft. 'Then the Captain, 'e got a new ship. Off to Cadiz we was, takin' fine cloth from England and bringin' back fine wine.'

'Cadiz?' Gresham sat up, turned to look Mannion in the face. 'Here? This port? Where we are now?'

'The very same,' said Mannion, 'fuckin' awful hole that it is. We'd arrived, taken the cargo off and were waitin' for the wine to be loaded. Some delay or other, don't know why. Crew went ashore — not me, I was waitin' on the Captain and his good wife — and the crew ashore got into a fight with some Spaniards. Next thing we know, fifty soldiers are clamberin' up the side o' the old Deptford Rose, and before we can think we're all of us ashore and clapped in a Spanish jail, God help us! They treat their animals better than they treated us!'