Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

The sound of the water lapping against the hull was gentle, the ringing in Gresham's ears after the day's combat nearly gone.

'You will have no place in the new England,' said the Duke after a while, 'if indeed that conquest ever happens. However well it is exercised, power will be in the hands of those with Spanish blood flowing in their veins. You will be thanked, and forgotten. Sidelined. Is that the word?'

'I think so, my Lord,' said Gresham. 'That it is the word, and that it is what will happen. But I've never valued life much, and I value its honours even less.'

'I have an estate in Andalusia,' said the Duke, dreamily. 'A fine estate, with a grand house and peasants who have worked the land for centuries, and think of me and my family as God if they think of God at all. It is pure Spain, sun-drenched yet harsh, proud, certain of its history. It loses me money, every year, despite its fields bursting with growth, its orange groves so full of the smell of fruit that a man might die drawing it into his lungs. The man I pay to run my estate is corrupt and clever in his corruption.' The Duke of Medina Sidonia sat on the stern rail, the gesture revealing a decade of exhaustion. 'Would you run such an estate for me? In time, there would be access to the Court, introductions. Oh, they would deny you access to the top tiers, of course. Yet you would live in a country at peace, an ancient country, be able to rise in the morning and hold rich earth between your fingers.'

Across the boundaries of race and culture, of age, of warring humanity and a flawed creation, something of elemental, simple humanity had been said.

Why were there tears in Gresham's eyes? Why did his body continually try to let him down? 'I thank you, my Lord,' Gresham responded, finally. 'With all my heart. But before I allow myself to think of the Heaven of Andalusia I cannot help but wish to deal first with the Hell of the English Channel.'

The Duke laughed, a full, strong laugh that showed Gresham yet another side of this most complex man. 'You are right to correct me, right for youth to stop an old man dreaming impossible dreams.' The Duke stood up from the stern rail, rubbing his ungloved hands to warm them in the chill of the night.*We cannot beat your English ships, can we?' he asked blankly.

‘No, My Lord,' said Gresham bluntly. 'You cannot. They are faster and nimbler before the wind. You can only win if you close with them, and they have the power not to let you do so, however courageously you pursue them. Yet you can meet with the Duke of Parma, and stand between his transports and the English fleet,' said Gresham.

'I hope to God that we may,' said the Duke bitterly, turning away to look astern. 'Yet why has he not responded to my messages.’

One hundred and sixty-seven men killed, two hundred and forty-one wounded, the manifest stated to the Duke the next morning. A mere pinprick in the Armada's strength. Only two vessels lost, neither of them disabled as a result of enemy action. The Spanish ships had survived four assaults, their discipline holding, the damage even to the heavily-engaged San Martin quite minimal. So why did Gresham have such an overwhelming sense of defeat?

On the Friday morning the Duke despatched yet another pinnace to Dunkirk, begging Parma to send him heavy shot and some shallow draft vessels to get in close among the English. Begging him most of all to name a rendezvous, a meeting point for the Armada and his army. At five o'clock on the Saturday evening, in a strengthening wind, the Armada sighted Calais. The Pilot hastily brought over from one of the great Portuguese galleons demanded that they anchor in the broad, open roadstead outside the Calais breakwater. If they kept on, the Pilot swore, the currents would carry the Armada through the strait and out into the North Sea, sweeping them away from England. The Armada dropped its anchors, the metal flukes seeking to bite into the shallow holding ground.

The English fleet took station, just out of range, reinforced by another thirty vessels from the Channel, lurking, watching, threatening.

August 7th — August 9th, 1588 The Battle of Gravelines

Was Anna in Calais? Gresham hoped so. The Duke had made it quite clear that neither he nor Mannion could leave the San Martin, though the Duke had consented to him sending a messenger to enquire after her safety and whereabouts. 'Was she always part of your plans to cover up your allegiance?' the Duke had asked. 'No, my Lord,' Gresham had answered. 'She was… an accident.' Which was one way to describe her, he thought.

'Well,' said Gresham, holding a by now habitual dawn council of war with Mannion, the both of them gazing from the bow towards the distant port of Calais, 'what're the odds now?'

'Difficult,' said Mannion, "cos it all depends on Parma, don't it? As far as your Duke's concerned this is shit creek and we're moored in it.' Mannion had taken to referring to Medina Sidonia as "your Duke" as Gresham's comments on the man had become increasingly full of admiration for the Spanish Commander's quiet courage and dignity. 'Currents here are terrible, and if you wants my opinion this bloody place 'as got "fireship" written all over it. But if I've got it right,' said Mannion, 'Parma could get loads of boats with his troops down through those canals, with the Dutch able to do sod all about it. Or he could get 'em to Dunkirk and give us pilots to take enough of the smaller ships up into the harbour to protect the transports. Or, best of all, you say Parma's got Antwerp?'

'He's got enough of it to shelter a fleet in the approaches to Antwerp, on the Scheldt,' said Gresham.

'So all it needs is for 'im to send a few pilots over here, and get enough of this lot moored off Antwerp. Nothing I've seen of that lot,' Mannion motioned dismissively out to the English ships, 'is telling me they can stop 'em.'

A cold wind came at dawn, from the south, dragging sharp showers in its trail. If the Armada was flushed out of Calais, it would have to drive north and leave England behind.

Gresham's body shuddered involuntarily, and once again he cursed it for its refusal to obey orders. Something terrible was going to happen here, he knew. A deep instinct in him sensed that somehow in this place and in this time the fate of nations would be decided, the prophecy of Regiomontanus come to pass. Or was it simply the cold, the hunger of a young stomach and the insatiable desire, like a terrible itch always just out of reach, to drink gallons of cold, clear water and let it rinse the salt off his red-raw skin?

The translator had to descend into the gloom to find Gresham. For want of anything to do, he had gone to watch the carpenters plugging the holes in the side of the San Martin. To their amusement he had got himself holding a block of wood against a wooden plug, with a huge Spaniard ramming the plug home with savage blows of a mallet.

'Don Rodrigo Tello de Guzman's pinnace will be alongside in minutes,' was the whispered message. It was he who had been sent with messages to Parma a fortnight ago. 'You have met the Duke of Parma more recently than any except Don Rodrigo. The Duke wishes you to hear his report.'

From the moment Don Rodrigo stepped on board they knew something was wrong. He was both excited and flustered, a sweat on his brow, a nervousness in his manner, almost an irritation. Then it happened, only briefly, for a moment. As it had happened once before to Gresham. The world and time froze, yet there was still movement and sound in it. Don Rodrigo was poised, fixed in a clumsy half-bow as he leaned forward, his startled eyes fixed on the fractured and smashed upperworks of the flagship. The Duke stood on the deck where he had seemed to take root since they had sighted England, frozen also in a stiff, formal greeting. The rigging flapped and slapped against the tall masts, the suck and plop of the waves still soothed. The rhythmic blow of the mallet suddenly took on the timbre of a funereal bell, and all the while the soggy clanking and tired hiss of the pumps reached the upper decks. Then the people and their surroundings became synchronised again, and moved in harmony. Don Rodrigo was troubled, his eyes shifting to Gresham, Sidonia's advisers, those on the deck. The news he brought could not be communicated on the open deck. It took an age for the Duke to realise the problem.