Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

There was no one aboard the freighter.

Barney’s first mate, Jonathan Greenland, went down into the hold to investigate the cargo.

He came back looking woebegone, carrying strips of wood in one arm and metal hoops in the other. ‘Barrel staves,’ he explained disgustedly. ‘And iron reinforcement rings.’

Barney was disappointed. As plunder this was not worth much. On the other hand, destroying this cargo would impair the invasion by creating a shortage of barrels for the armada’s provisions. ‘Fire the ship,’ he said.

The crew brought turpentine from the Alice and splashed the inflammable liquid over the freighter’s deck and below. Then they set fire to it in several places and hastily jumped back to their own vessel.

It was dark, but the blazing freighter lit up the ships nearby, and Barney chose a second target. Once again the Alice approached to find that the watchmen had fled. The crew of the Alice boarded, and this time Jonathan Greenland came up from the hold looking happy. ‘Wine,’ he said. ‘From Jerez. Lakes and oceans of sack.’

English sailors were given beer to drink, but the lucky Spaniards got wine, and the invasion fleet would need thousands of gallons of it. But here was a cargo the armada would never receive. ‘Take it all,’ Barney said.

The crew lit torches and began the heavy work of bringing the barrels up from the hold and transferring them across to the Alice . They worked cheerfully, knowing that each of them would get a share from the sale of this costly cargo.

The enemy ship was fully stocked for a voyage, and Barney’s crew also took all its salted meat, cheese, and ship’s biscuit for the stores of the Alice . It was armed, and Barney took its gunpowder. The shot was the wrong size for his guns, so he had the crew throw the cannonballs into the water, so that they would never be fired at English sailors.

When the hold was empty, he set fire to the ship.

Looking around the harbour, he could see another five or six vessels blazing. On shore, torches had been lit along the waterfront, and he saw guns from the fortress being towed, by teams of horses, to the dockside. The English raiders would still be out of range, but Barney figured the purpose was to discourage the attackers from coming ashore. He thought he could see troops being mustered in the square. He guessed that the townspeople presumed the attack on ships was only a prelude to an invasion, and had shrewdly decided to look to their landside defences. They could not know that Drake’s orders were to destroy Spanish shipping, not to conquer Spanish cities.

But the upshot was that there was almost no resistance. Barney could see a massive ship firing back at several attacking English vessels, but it was exceptional: there was otherwise little gunfire, and mostly the raiders were able to loot and burn unhindered.

Barney looked around for another ship to destroy.

England rejoiced at the news of Drake’s sneak attack on Cádiz, but Margery’s husband, Earl Bart, did not join in the celebrations.

Reports varied, but all said that around twenty-five major ships had been destroyed, and thousands of tons of supplies stolen or sent to the bottom. The Spanish armada had been crippled before it had even set out. No English sailors had been killed and only one wounded, by a lucky shot from a galley. Queen Elizabeth had even made a profit on the expedition.

‘It was a day of infamy,’ Bart raged at the dinner table in New Castle. ‘No warning, no declaration of war, just outright murder and theft by a group of barefaced pirates.’

Bart at fifty reminded Margery painfully of the father-in-law who had raped her, except only that Bart was more red-faced and even fatter than his father had been. Now she said waspishly: ‘Those ships were on their way here to kill us all — including both my sons. I’m glad they were sunk.’

Young Bartlet took his father’s side, as usual. At twenty-three, Bartlet bore a resemblance to Margery’s father, being tall and freckled, but he had all Bart’s attitudes, unfortunately. She loved him, but he was hard to like, and that made her feel guilty. ‘King Felipe only wants to return England to Catholicism,’ Bartlet said. ‘Most English people would welcome that.’

‘Many would, but not at the price of being conquered by a foreign country,’ Margery countered.

Stephen Lincoln was shocked. ‘My lady, how can you say such a thing? The Pope approved the plan of the Spanish king.’

Stephen had proved a poor friend to Margery, but all the same she had some sympathy for him. He had spent thirty years as a secret priest, holding furtive services after dark and keeping the sacramentals in undignified hidey-holes as if they were shameful. He had dedicated his life to God but had spent it as a criminal, and that had left his face lined and gaunt and his soul bitter. But he was wrong about this, and so was the Pope. ‘I think it’s a mistake,’ she said crisply. ‘An invasion would actually turn people away from Catholicism, by linking it with foreign domination.’

‘How can you know that?’ Stephen meant you, a mere woman , but he did not dare to say it.

Margery replied: ‘I know because it’s what has happened in the Netherlands. Patriotic Dutch people fight for Protestantism, not because they care about doctrine, but because they want independence from Spain.’

Roger joined in. He had been such a pretty baby, Margery thought, but now he was seventeen, with a rapidly growing curly dark beard. Margery’s impish look was reinterpreted, in her son, as a lively bantam confidence that made people smile. He had the golden-brown eyes of his biological father, Ned. It was fortunate that Bart, like most men of his type, never noticed the colour of people’s eyes, and that anyone else who suspected Roger’s parentage would never say it for fear of being run through by Bart’s sword. Roger said: ‘So, Mother, how do you think we could return our country to Catholicism?’

She was proud to have a son who could ask such a thoughtful and challenging question. He had a lively intellect, and was planning to go to Kingsbridge College, Oxford. Roger was a staunch Catholic and took an active part in the smuggling of the priests. All the same, Stephen, who was his tutor, had been unable to suppress the independence the boy had inherited from Ned.

She answered him: ‘Left alone, English people will slowly and quietly make their way back to the old faith.’

However, the English were not destined to be left alone.

There was no Spanish armada in 1587 but, as summer turned to autumn, Margery and everyone else realized that they had celebrated too soon. They had imagined that Drake had prevented the invasion. But the raid on Cádiz had only postponed it. King Felipe was so rich that, to the consternation of the English, he simply started building new ships and buying replacement supplies.

Queen Elizabeth and her government began to prepare for a fight to the death.

All along the coast, defences were repaired that winter. Castles were reinforced, and new earth ramparts were thrown up around towns that had not seen battle for centuries. The walls of Kingsbridge were rebuilt, the old ones having long ago disappeared into a suburban sprawl. The rusting old cannons at Combe Harbour were cleaned and test-fired. Chains of hilltop beacons were built, from the coast to London, ready to transmit the dreadful news that the galleons had been sighted.

Margery was aghast. Catholics were going to slaughter Protestants, and vice versa. But being a follower of Jesus Christ was not supposed to be about cannons and swords, killing and maiming. In the gospel story only the enemies of Jesus shed blood.

Margery could not help brooding over the fact that Ned believed as she did, that Christians should not kill one another over doctrine. He claimed that Queen Elizabeth believed it too, even though he admitted that she had not always been true to her ideals.