Amanda McCabe - The Queen's Christmas Summons

‘To England, of course. They are there. I think—yes, it must be...’ His words faded into muttered incoherence, a mix of English and Spanish.

‘Who in England? How shall you deliver it?’ He studied the paper over Peter’s shoulder again. The words were scribbled, smudged with salt water, with strange drawings in the margins. A code?

‘It will find its way. It always does.’ He looked up into John’s eyes, his face taut with longing and fear, his eyes burning bright. ‘You must deliver it.’

John was shocked. Peter knew naught of his true work aboard the Concepción, no one could. But Peter was nodding confidently. ‘Me, Peter? Why?’

‘Because you are the strongest man left. You can make it ashore. You can carry this for me when we are all in the grave.’

‘Where shall I deliver it?’

‘They will know.’

‘Who will know?’

‘They know all.’

There was no time to say more. A peal of thunder, louder than any of the guns of battle, cracked overhead and there was a splintering crash. The mast that still stood had been split by lightning and a dagger-sharp spear of it drove into the deck below. The sea rushed in, a cold, killing wave that overwhelmed everything and swept wounded, weakly crying men out to sea.

‘Take it!’ Peter screamed, and stuffed his crumpled paper into John’s hand.

John tucked it inside his doublet and shirt with the other papers he carried and grabbed Peter’s arm just as the ship tilted on a wild roll. There was a massive creaking noise, as if something strained past the breaking point, and the ship split in two. More water rushed in, as cold as hundreds of needles driving into bare skin. John swam upward, dragging Peter with him.

The freezing water stole his breath and numbed his whole body. He could barely feel his legs as he forced himself to keep kicking, keep moving. A wild animal instinct to live drove him ever forward and he dug deep within himself to find a raw, powerful strength he didn’t realise he possessed. A sharp splinter drove itself into his shoulder, but he pulled it out and kept moving.

He surfaced to find a world gone insane, filled with the howl of the wind, rain beating down on the churning waves. The great Concepción was breaking into pieces behind him and he could see men’s heads bobbing in the sea all around.

John’s shoulder crashed into something, sending sharp pain through his whole body, and he realised it was a wooden plank from the deck. He shoved Peter up on to it and clung to its splintered side as he kept kicking. He could see little in the driving silver sheets of rain, but he thought he glimpsed dots of light somewhere in the distance, a bobbing line like torches on shore. He feared it could be merely a mirage, the cold and hunger making him see such things, but he kicked towards it. There seemed no choice.

* * *

At last, after swimming until his legs felt they would fall off, his feet felt something beneath them, the shift of sand and rocks. The tide tried to push him back away from that tiny security, but he fought to regain it. With a great surge of a wave, they washed on to a rocky beach.

John collapsed on to his back, staring up into the boiling, stormy sky. He had never felt such pain in his life, even when he was stabbed through the thigh at Leiden or hit over the head with a chamber pot in a public-house brawl in Madrid, but mostly he felt—alive. The wind was cold on his face, as if giving him new breath, and even the pain sustained him because it meant he was still on earth.

‘Peter,’ he gasped. ‘We’re on land.’ He turned his head and saw what he had feared all along—making land would not help poor, idealistic Peter now, for he was dead.

Dead, as John himself would surely be soon if he did not find a way out of the storm. He forced himself to stagger to his feet, even as stabbing, dagger-like pains shot through his body. He gritted his teeth, ignored it and kept moving forward. Always forward.

He came to a stand of boulders, which blocked the small spit of rocky land where he had washed up from a larger beachhead. He peered around the rocks to see a scene out of a poem. Towering cliffs, pale in the storm, rose to meet a castle at its crest, a strong, fortified crenelated building of dark grey stone, surrounded by tiny whitewashed cottages. That was where he had seen the light, a bobbing line of torches making their way down a steep set of stairs cut in the cliffs.

He opened his mouth to shout out, but some instinct held back his words. He could not know who these people were, friends or foes. They could not know who he was, either. If they were loyal Englishmen, they would consider him a Spanish enemy.

For a few moments, he watched as they moved closer and he glimpsed the gleam of torchlight on armoured breastplates. Soldiers, then.

He pushed back the waves of pain and managed to stagger up a sloping hill to a stand of boulders, half-hidden in reeds. He collapsed to his knees just as he heard the first screams, the first clash of blades.

‘Nay...’ he gasped, but the pain had dug its claws into him again. He collapsed and darkness closed in around him.

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