Martin Stephen: The galleon's grave

'She's going to marry that Jacques bloke, ain't she? said Mannion.

'Well, yes, she is,' said Gresham, hating the sound of the words yet feeling that fleeting sense of relief at the same time.

'Damn it,' said Mannion. 'I'd 'alf 'oped she might have settled you down. 'Cept she's probably right, I suppose. You ain't ready for marriage yet, more's the pity.'

'Why is it a pity?'asked Gresham lightly.

'Because I've got this 'ope that when you does get wed we might not be spending quite so much time being shot at, tortured or threatened.'

'Sorry,' said Gresham, 'but I thought I was the only one about to be tortured.'

'Where the master leads the servant follows,' said Mannion.

Why did he keep getting involved in arguments with Mannion? And losing them. The picture of Anna floated across his mind.

'She's the body of a woman…' said Gresham.

'You can say that again,' said Mannion appreciatively.

'… but the heart and stomach of a man,' he finished. Rather like Queen Elizabeth, he thought, though they were very different bodies. Maybe he would use the phrase to the Queen as a compliment. He had been summoned to Court that evening.

'Why did you stick with me?' asked Gresham unexpectedly. Everything else in his world was fickle, poisonous or destined never to last. 'You hate Spain. You hated it when I agreed to pretend to be a Spanish spy for Walsingham. You were convinced I'd end up being hung either as a Spanish spy in England or an English spy in Spain, and never see England again. And I made you go to sea, when you'd vowed never to do it. Why did you stick with me?'

Mannion was silent for a few moments. I love you, thought Henry Gresham. I'll never tell you, because it would embarrass us both beyond belief, and God knows for once it's got nothing to do with sex. And it doesn't say anything for my taste, does it? He looked at the great, muscled bulk of the man he had first met in his father's gardens as the lowliest of servants and thought that he didn't really want a place in Heaven if it ranked people on the basis of class or breeding.

'Why?' said Mannion. 'We're all goin' to die, ain't we? I reckon as 'ow with you around at least I won't die bored.' And that was all he proposed to say.

He got rid of Mannion eventually, who was spending far too much time grinning from ear to ear when anyone called him 'Sir

Henry'. It was quiet now in the library, but he did not feel like reading. Soon they would announce the engagement between Jacques Henri and Anna. The couple would stay a day or two, until Anna's belongings were packed, and then she and Mary the maid — Gresham had offered her the girl and Mary had wept at the thought of losing Anna as her mistress — would depart for France, this time, hopefully, without being intercepted by Drake. He felt a tearing ache of loneliness at the prospect. So what? That ache had been there most of his life. It was almost his oldest friend. He would see Anna again, he knew that. The bond was too close, forged in fear and against common enemies, for it to be allowed to die. And when they met he would be scrupulously correct. He had thought he might make her his wife. He would have to be content with making her the sister he had never had. And he would always have his memory.

He stood, in his magnificent house in one of the most brilliant cities in the world, a man with four of the five great blessings of the world. He had almost obscene good health. He had brains. He had wealth beyond the dreams of most men. Above all, he had luck. There were few men who walked whole out of that chamber in the Tower of London. The one, the fifth blessing he did not have, was to be loved by someone, always excluding a hulk of a servant and a woman who had decided that his love could not be her priority for life. You can buy sex. You cannot buy love. And he stood here, in his splendour and the magnificence of being a young man whose ship had come home. He was here, with his feet on dry land.

Yet in his mind, he was with a man on the quaking waters of the sea. He could not banish from his mind the figure of a proud, lonely man, standing on the stern of a torn and battered ship that had hurled itself so often at an enemy determined not to be caught. A man who might die off the rocky shore of Ireland, who would be reviled by his peers and by history if by some miracle he survived. A man of honour, and a man of courage, in his own way the bravest man Gresham had ever known. It is easy to win. It takes more courage to face defeat and keep fighting, he thought to himself. No man could contrql his reputation. When the time came for the Duke of Medina Sidonia to die, Gresham hoped with all his heart that he would feel he had done so with his dignity intact.

There was an immense noise in the courtyard, the sound of a booming voice. George had come to offer his congratulations.