Day of Deliverance

cleaner.”

“You and the crossbow men were ready,” Angus said. “Brilliant.”

“Losing Pendelshape was not so brilliant, though. Unless we can nail him, we’re done for.”

Joplin looked at Jack, concentrating hard. “Jack, after Pendelshape took you prisoner, was there anything, anything at all, that he said about his plans to change history?”

“It was pretty amazing. He showed us a kind of game where Spain conquers England and then all of the Americas and that becomes a basis for some sort of global domination. He said there was a way of measuring how it would be better than our present history — real history, if you like. Called it ‘UI’ or something.”

“Utility Index?” Joplin looked at his colleagues with ashen-faced incredulity. “They must have developed the causal modelling to a very sophisticated degree. That is very worrying.”

“Er, sorry?” Angus said.

Joplin explained. “If this software can really model intended changes into the future with such precision, that is a truly powerful ability. It is a capability that we in VIGIL certainly never thought possible. Basically, they can play God.”

“Sometimes I reckon Pendelshape thinks he is God,” Jack said.

Joplin rubbed the back of his neck. “This is very serious, Jack. Did Pendelshape say anything else — was he more specific?”

Jack thought for a moment about what Pendelshape had told them. “He said ideally he needed to do two things. First, he said Elizabeth must die to create disorder across the country — a sort of power vacuum. Then he said the Spanish Armada needed to succeed. The Spanish troops under the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands could then just walk in and take control. In fact, he seemed to think even if they didn’t manage to kill the queen, the second part of the plan could still work, as long as the Armada succeeded.”

“The Armada — did he say anything more about that?”

Angus piped up, “He mentioned a battle… Grave — something.”

Joplin banged the table. “Gravelines! I knew it. That confirms it.” Joplin jumped to his feet and started to pace the room. “I have been piecing together a theory based on the information your father gave us and our knowledge of history. Gravelines was a sea battle that took place in the east of the English Channel. The defeat of the Armada was down to many things… but if there was one point where you wanted to make a decisive change in favour of the Spanish fleet, Gravelines would be it. Gravelines was the point where the English ships engaged and damaged the great ships of the Armada. After Gravelines, the Armada fled up the English coast, badly battered but still intact. After that point though, the storms got them. Those that did survive the wrecks and struggled ashore were often murdered and robbed. If you wanted to change the outcome of events for Phillip II and Spain and allow a Spanish victory, the history of England, Spain and the world would be dramatically different. It would be Spain’s day of deliverance.”

“How would you do it, though? I mean, how can Pendelshape take on all those English ships on his own?” Jack asked.

Joplin shook his head. “I don’t know. But you’re right Jack, you would need some way to destroy the English fleet. Quickly and easily. Some form of military superiority. With the fleet at the bottom of the Channel, London and England would be open for the Armada to transport the Duke of Parma’s Spanish troops from the Netherlands into England, just as they planned. England had no army that could resist them. It would only be a matter of weeks before all of England was in Phillip II’s hands. Your information confirms my theory: Gravelines is the critical event. I am convinced the Revisionists will use this time signal to stage an intervention. Pendelshape will want to get on with it.” Joplin gestured at the bags of equipment arranged along one wall of the room. “We need to get going — let’s take what we need from that lot and Tony, you need to code the time phones for the battle of Gravelines — 8th August 1588.”

“Okay.” Tony opened a thin briefcase on the table and took out two time phones. He handed one to Jack and one to Angus. “Yours — and don’t lose them this time.”

Jack picked up the time phone. “Hold on, you’re not expecting us to come as well?”

“Of course. It’s like Inchquin said — you two are fully paid-up members of VIGIL now — part of the team, and where we’re going, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“What — you’re taking us into a war zone?”

“No mistake, Jack — this is war.”

Gravelines Graveyard

Jack and Angus were squashed into a wooden barrel that was open at the top. Above them was clear sky. Jack popped his head over the edge of the barrel and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were suspended forty metres in the air above a choppy, grey sea. Seconds ago, before the time transport, they had been in the safehouse. The barrel swung from side to side in a giddy arc. It felt like some sort of mad fairground attraction. In fact, they were in the crow’s nest of an English battleship. But this was no ordinary battleship — they were soaring high above the deck of The Revenge, Sir Francis Drake’s flagship, as it led the English line towards the Spanish Armada. The ship’s motion in the water was transmitted through the masts so that at the crow’s nest the movement was wildly accentuated. Jack’s response was to cling on to the edge of the barrel to avoid being flung into the abyss below. But his terror was replaced by goggle-eyed incredulity when he surveyed the scene beneath them.

The sea around them was thick with ships of all shapes and sizes — massive galleons, barges and hulks — some powered by sail, some by oars and some by both. Everywhere, they could see white canvas sails billowing in a freshening wind and a forest of masts, fighting tops and the complex tracery of rigging. The sails of the great Spanish galleons were emblazoned with giant red crosses. Behind them, the English ships were adorned with the St George cross, the royal standard and the rose of the House of Tudor.

“Ships… everywhere…” Angus gasped in amazement.

“Look…”

Jack pointed to a very large Spanish galleon on which The Revenge was rapidly closing in. They could even make out the lettering on its side — San Martin — the Spanish flagship. With its raised castles, fore and aft, it towered over The Revenge, which by contrast was built for speed and agility. They were close enough to see men with muskets and arquebuses in the fighting tops of the San Martin and lines of close-packed soldiers along the rail of the decks ready to fire. Jack knew that the Spanish would try to grapple and board the English ship, but they had already learned from bitter, earlier experiences on the Armada campaign that the English would not allow them to do so. Instead, using their greater manoeuvrability, the English would keep just out of grappling distance and one by one they would use their superior gunnery to pick off and pulverise each lumbering Spanish galleon, like a pack of hungry wolves descending on a helpless, tethered cow.

“Cling on. Looks like we’re going in,” Angus said.

The Revenge was less than twenty metres from the San Martin when first her bow guns and then her broadside guns erupted in cannon fire. Although Jack and Angus were above the main action, they were still in danger, but the spectacle had a hypnotic momentum and they stared in wonder as they inched past the San Martin. Jack could see that there were holes in her sails already and some of her magnificent carpentry had been reduced to matchwood. They could hear screaming from the close-packed decks and upper works as chain-shot, hail-shot and cube-shot, each designed to maim, kill and destroy in its own unique and bloody way, took their terrible toll.

Jack looked away and tried to focus on his feet and the inside of the barrel, but Angus continued to stare — his face lined in horror.

“Those poor guys…”

Finally, The Revenge drifted clear, but the plight of the San Martin was not over. Behind them, the rest of Drake’s squadron, followed by Frobisher’s squadron, headed by The Triumph and Hawkins’s squadron in The Victory,