Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

'And your… reputation?' Gresham hated himself for asking the question but some Devil within him could not refuse to do so.

'They will blame me for this, of course. My family, my children will suffer. So I come to the ultimate problem for a true man. The problem I have faced many times now in my life. And the problem I am amused to see you are struggling to face for the first time.'

How could this man adopt this lightness of tone when at any moment the most important military mission his country had ever mounted could be smashed apart and he be held responsible? 'What problem is that?' Gresham found himself saying.

'Of course the reputation the world affords me matters greatly. But I learned long ago that for all its importance such a reputation is fickle, perhaps even false. When all else fails, and all seems dark and bleak, it is not the judgement of the world I believe will matter to me when I pass into the vale of death. It is my judgement of myself. Do I believe I did everything in my power to make things right? Did I dirty my actions by cowardice, by self-interest, by vanity, greed, lust or avarice? I would love the world to judge my actions as worthy. Yet when all else is done, the judgement that must matter most to me, the crucial, the most scrupulous, the testing judgement must stand as my own judgement on myself.'

'And what will that judgement be?' asked Gresham, fascinated.

'Ask me when I know if I met my death fighting. We cannot control how we are born. We have some control over how we die.'

Gresham spoke softly,

'" Go you gently unto death? Is what you are so little worth? We enter screaming into life, And death hurts more than birth.'"

'What is that?' asked the Duke.

'Childish verse,' said Gresham. He made a massive effort to pull himself together. ‘My Lord,' he said, 'I hope you don't die. I hope justice prevails.'

'I am not such a fool as to hope to die,' responded the Duke, an ironic smile on the edge of his lips. 'It is merely that I fear I have little control over it, and even less control over justice. You may leave. It would not be good to have an Englishman here for the conference 1 must hold now.'

'That's it, then,' said Mannion once back outside. 'Fine mess you've got us into. Tonight there's a spring tide right near its top, and the wind's been freshening all day. If our lads can get enough fireships together, they'll come down on this anchorage like shit off a shovel.'

'The Spanish fireships did nothing at Cadiz,' said Gresham. 'That's 'cos there was no wind to speak of, and hardly any tide. And there was three times as much space as there is 'ere.' 'So what should the Duke do?' asked Gresham. 'Piss off and go 'ome,' said Mannion. 'Like us.' 'But he'll fight,'said Gresham

'Then 'e's a stupid bastard,' said Mannion, 'who ought to know better. If he wants to do it for his honour, let him. I've given serious thought as to whether I want to do it for mine, and I don't. But I bet you he won't let us piss off and go home. So it's the same old place, isn't it? The one people like me 'ave been in for centuries. I have to pop me clogs so fie can keep his honour.'

They stood watching the small boats scuttle between the ships of the Armada, the deliveries of food from shore to ship which the essentially friendly, one-legged Governor of Calais had allowed.

He had lost the leg in retaking Calais from the English fifty years earlier and felt no love for Queen Elizabeth. The tension was tangible. Every sailor on board could sense the tide and wind, and even now, well before sunset, they were looking out to sea and towards the English. That tension had spread to the soldiers, dispirited now, convinced that they had no role in this campaign except to die. For the first time that morning Gresham had seen spots of rust on three or four breastplates, spots that the soldiers concerned had not ferociously rubbed away at the first sign. Somehow everyone on board San Martin was moving more slowly, as if there was a deep ache in their bones and a heavy pack on their back. Gresham had caught one of the gentleman adventurers, a young, fresh-faced lad no more than seventeen years old, standing by the bow, crying. He had turned, horrified, determined to hide his face. Gresham had put out a hand, then dropped it helplessly to his side.

'It's a cruel thing, facing your death, when you're that age,' said Mannion drily. Over these past few weeks his master had taken on an extraordinary strength and inner resilience. Only a few years in age separated the young Englishman and the young Spaniard before them, yet there was a decade between them in experience.

Devil ships. That was the fear of every sailor on board the Armada. Three years earlier the Dutch had sent specially-constructed fireships down the Scheldt to try and lift the Spanish siege of Antwerp. Three tons of explosive had been crammed into brick chambers on board. One had fetched up against a fortified bridge, killed eight hundred men in the explosion and inflicted horrific injuries on thousands of others. Of the bridge nothing remained. Federigo Gambelli was the name of the designer. He was known to be in London, working for the English.

'Your job's done, now, you know that, don't you?' Mannion prompted. 'This 'as gone beyond advice. If our lads… sorry, if the English do their jobs, this lot's going to be burned to buggery, whether you want it to 'appen or not. You ain't going to influence anything any more. That girl's waiting for you in Calais, more as like, and half the girls in England are waiting for me in London…'

'So why not swim ashore?' Gresham finished Mannion's words. 'You go,' he said suddenly. He reached out, grasped Mannion's arm, looked into his eyes. 'This has never been your fight, only mine. You've done enough, lost enough. Go on. Leave me. It's only right.'

'Why ain't you coming?'

'Because… because I can't.' Gresham knew how feeble it sounded. 'I respect this man, respect him more than any other I've ever met. They'll damn him for what happened here, yet I've seen him, talked to him. I think he knew where it would all end, knew he would die all along, yet he still did what he was asked to do, still carried on fighting for his cause against all the odds, knowing it was hopeless. It's not just courage, it's true dignity.'

'So?' said Mannion. 'Write him a letter, get all that off your chest. And then jump overboard.'

'I just can't do it,' said Greshanv 'I have to be here at the end. I want to stay with him.'

'Sleep now,' said Mannion. 'I'll get us up when it's dark. Then we'll slip back and get as close to the stem as we can.'

'What?' said Gresham, startled.

'Not going to get much bloody sleep tonight, are we? And odds on a fireship hits the bow first. Though if it's one of those bloody Devil ships it won't make a blind bit of difference.'

'Then you're staying,' said Gresham. This tears-in-his-eyes business had just got to stop, he said to himself, not realising just how deep down into his reserves of mental energy the past months had forced him to dig and how exhausted he was.

"Course I'm bloody staying, aren't 1?' said Mannion. 'There's got to be somebody with brains looking after you.'

For all that the lead-up to Calais was largely a confused blur in his memory, Gresham remembered that night and day for the rest of his life, could recreate its every moment with total vividness. As he remembered another day. A bald, decapitated head rolling across a hastily erected scaffold, the comic expression of startlement on the executioner's face as he held not a head but a red wig in his hand. And now, thousands of men gripped by a superb discipline fighting a lost cause to the bitter end, fighting a cause that no man should have asked them to sail on, a cause so profligate of human life as to make a mockery of a kind creation. Fighting with simple courage. Why in the depths of his and this life's idiocy did mankind reveal itself as so brave and wonderful?