Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

'Walsingham told me nothing of you,' she said, her voice cold, the eyes unfeeling. 'You had a miraculous escape from the hands of the Spanish galleys, Drake tells me. Escape? Or free passage when they realised they were firing on a spy? You were in Lisbon before the Armada sailed. You were welcomed aboard the Spanish ships that fought my fleet. And you have been consorting with the daughter of a Spanish nobleman. There seems more in favour of Spain in your actions than of England!'

'The girl was an accident,' Gresham said, repeating himself. She would love being called that. It would confirm everything she had ever thought of him. Well, there would be little for her to admire after the rack had done its work. Was there another man alive — albeit barely — who had said the same words to Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Queen of England? At least he would carry that small distinction to his painful grave. 'I went to Lisbon with my credentials as a spy already established, sent ahead of me. I knew I would be allowed to roam free, or nearly so, and the Spanish girl was a simple bonus. Yet at all times I was under Walsingham's orders.'

'And what were those orders?' the Queen barked.

'To suborn the head of the Lisbon armouries. To bribe him to miscast his cannon, to bring his shot too early out of the heat so that his guns would shatter when they were fired, his shot also shatter when it emerged from the barrel.'

'What evidence have you of this?' Cecil was barking now, dangerously close to ignoring the presence of his Queen.

'I left the San Martin, flagship of the Armada and of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a battered hulk with barely a whole plank of timber to its name. I was bundled aboard the Revenge, one of the San Martin's main attackers, which in comparison was fresh out of the builder's yard.'

'You claim the credit for this!' exclaimed Cecil.

'No,' said Gresham. His heart was beginning to strain against his chest now, hurting as did his arms and legs. Was it too about to burst, before a real ratchet had been tightened on the rack? If this was the pain now, what would it be when the torture started? ‘Not all of it. Perhaps not even most of it. The Spanish guns were clumsy, slow to load, their command structures all wrong. Yet I swear as the San Martin fired on the English ships coming up in line to fire on her, not once did I see a shot of hers hit the enemy… the English ships. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the San Martin had shared her load of shot through the Armada, taken on a new load from the Lisbon armouries.' Gresham stopped, looked up, said nothing. The jailer brought the water again. This time he was nervous, spilling some on to Gresham's chest. His skin seemed on fire, the water scalding his skin with cold. 'And there was more. In Lisbon.'

'More?' Cecil was scathing. 'More lies.'

'The Marquis of Santa Cruz was a bad administrator, the worst man to keep the Armada fed and maintained over winter. So we… Walsingham wanted him there. Yet he could have been a perilous commander, might have done what Medina Sidonia's caution stopped him from doing and attack the English fleet in its base, make a landing in the Solent. So we killed him. We knew his replacement would be more cautious.' Gresham was amazed by how calmly he said the last words.

'You killed the Marquis of Santa Cruz?' Was there, for the first time, the slightest sense of fear in Cecil's voice?

'I didn't kill him. Mannion did. My servant. He'd been sent by Santa Cruz to the galleys as a captured English sailor. He had a reason. More than anyone else. He got into dalliance with one of the Marquis's cooks, became used to visiting her in the kitchens and waited until the Marquis's favourite food was to be served before sprinkling it with an odourless and taste-free poison. We were surprised at how easy it was, though he was an ill man anyway.' The pain was now affecting Gresham's brain, sending sharp lances of red-hot iron into his head, splintering his thoughts like a sharp stone shattering the flat reflections of a pond.

'So you say!' snarled Cecil. 'Yet again there is no evidence, except from a hulk of a man who would say that Satan was his rather to save his life. You cannot explain your defection from our mission to Flanders, to the Duke of Parma. You deserted your English compatriots. You broke my trust, the trust I had offered you by allowing you passage with my party.'

The Queen's party, actually, thought Gresham, but Her Majesty could read that nuance as well as he.

'To sail to Spain. To join the Armada. On the flagship. To stand by its commander.'

'I didn't just stand by him,' said Gresham weakly. 'I saved his ships. From the shoals. Warned him, when his own pilots couldn't see what was happening.'

‘You saved the ships of the Armada!' said Cecil, incredulous. He was shocked at the prospect, shocked that Gresham would own up to it.

'Helped save them,' said Gresham through his pain. ‘Why should more men die? More fine ships be sunk? The Armada wasn't the point. It never was.' As he paused for the breath he really did need, he realised how feeble it sounded.

'Wasn't the point?' said Cecil, again in what seemed to be genuine disbelief. Perhaps he was sorry that his victim had gone mad before the rack had done its work. 'If the Armada wasn't the point, what was?'

'The Armada itself, the ships, could only have made a difference if it'd landed its troops, taken the Isle of Wight, gone into Plymouth. Then it might have achieved something. I had to make sure it didn't stop. That's why I saved it. If they'd lost half their ships on shoals they'd have had to be defensive, cut their losses, might well have landed, stopped their advance. They only kept on to Calais because they were more or less intact.' Gresham stopped again. His breath was coming in rasping grunts now, and he was having to pause in mid-sentence to fill his lungs. It was as if the potential of the rack was squeezing them to half, a quarter of their capacity. 'The ships weren't important, as long as they didn't land the troops they had on board. The ships were only ever half of what might happen. It was the army, Parma's army, that was all that mattered. Without Parma's army, the whole thing was useless. Wouldn't work.' Gresham saw Cecil's throat move, saw him about to speak. Mustering all his strength, he cut in. 'I went to talk to the Duke of Parma,' said Gresham. 'That was all it was about. That was all it was ever about. To meet with Parma. To stop him sending his troops to join the Armada..'

'I know you met with Parma. One of my men heard you confess yourself to him as a Spanish spy! Hid under the floor! You were greeted by him as a long-lost friend!'

A wave of exhaustion had appeared on his horizon, rolling on to the beach where some enemy had pegged him out. There were no flowers on a sailor's grave. He would die shouting his pain under the water, unheard even by the fish. When would this farce end? He had done what he had to do. Now it would end in a tearing and wrenching of limbs. Make it now, dear God, let it start now so that it might end the sooner. 'I've told you,' said Gresham, 'Parma thought I was a spy working for Spain.'

'And all this on Walsingham's orders, of course!' said Cecil scornfully.

'Talking to Parma was Walsingham's idea,' said Gresham dreamily, a strange peace starting to settle over him, anaesthetising his limbs. 'That was the whole point of my being set up as a Spanish spy. So I could talk to Parma. I think the Spaniards surrounding Parma must have got wind of what I was being sent to do. They tried to kill me. Just before we met Parma.'

'How can that be? You tell us that the Spanish think you are a spy for them, and then that they tried to kill you?'

'Very few people in Spain knew that I was meant to be a spy on their side. You don't broadcast these things. Other Spaniards, the ones keeping watch on Parma, didn't know. They must have suspected the truth. That I was one of Walsingham's men, smuggled in with a diplomatic mission. To suborn Parma. You see, I didn't obey Walsingham's orders. I was only meant to tell Parma about the fly-boats. But I had an idea. What I said to him was my idea.' He heard himself give a strange giggle.