heard clearly, the sheer beauty of the lithe creature pursuing them at total odds with its threat of death. Twenty. Something in Gresham's brain rang a warning, some dark and buried instinct. Now! His brain told him. They were going to fire now!
The sharp crack of the cannon came just as the tiller bit into his hand. He saw the flash before he heard the noise, half turned round to check his dread instinct. He would swear for the rest of his days that he felt the passing of the ball above his head, smelled its hot breath as it brushed over them, landing beyond with a great splash of water. The gunner had fired too much on the up-roll, sent the ball high. And it was off-line too, some eight or nine feet to port. The galley's turn had foxed the gunner.
Something scraped, a noise of wood on gravel. Gresham looked over the side. Little wavelets skittled over the surface of the dark water, yet even in that dark Gresham could sense a difference in the texture of light reflecting back from the waves. The shoal! They were over it! The noise had been an oar suddenly hitting shingle, only a foot or two below the surface. He felt the slightest of drags on the hull, and then their boat shot forward, as an arrow released from a bow. Gresham turned to look at the Spanish ship, bearing down on them, now almost within musket range. As if on cue, pinpricks of light started to show from its side galleys, and the air was full of tiny whistlings and the plop of musket balls falling into water. A man cried out, flung an arm away from the double- manned oar as if the wood had suddenly caught flame. Musket ball, on or near his elbow.
Out in the bay several hulks were still burning fiercely, the fierce yellow and orange of the flames clouded by the thick black smoke.
The rising, falling flickering light revealed ships moving, frantic activity. Ashore, the port commander had ordered barrels of pitch to be set at strategic points, and these were adding to the light and the smoke, some trick of the wind taking the smoke from the burning ships and that from the shore to a point in the middle of the bay, and sending a huge column spiralling up towards the moon, as if all the devils in Hell were cooking a mighty meal with damp wood. Gresham stood at the stern of the boat, not scorning to drop to the deck to avoid the musket fire but simply not realising it as a danger. Head flung back, an expression of total concentration on his face, not a muscle moving without it being ordered to do so, he looked like a dark, young god manning a vessel on the Styx. In the boat, in front of him, fifteen men were flinging themselves at their oars, sweat glistening on their filthy brows, breath hoarse and gasping. The wounded man was writhing in agony in the belly of the boat, clutching his arm, the wet, sticky flow of blood staining his tunic and tingeing the water swilling around in the bottom.
There was a gasp from two or three of the men, staring aft over Gresham's shoulder, and with no order given they stopped rowing, the boat rapidly losing way and starting to bob in the slight waves. They sensed the galley shiver as her keel brushed over the shoal. The captain must have realised the danger only at the last minute, ordered the helm hard over, because she was swinging round even as she struck. It was not a dramatic thing. Rather the graceful length of the galley heeled over as it started to turn, but instead of righting itself once the new course had been set, the heel became more and more extreme, the bow and then the whole hull rising up as it was pushed onto and over the shoal. The oars on her starboard side, so beautiful in the rigid orchestration of their movement, started to flail pathetically in the air as the side rose up too high for them to bite into the water. Soon the great, long timbers began to bang and crash into each other, dropping tiredly to smash against the hull like flopping fish too long out of water. With a grinding, wrenching noise the galley finally came to a halt, slewed round on its side, stranded.
Fourteen men stood up and cheered, three of the sailors hurled their hats up into the air, threatening to roll the boat right over and do the Spaniards' job for them. Gresham nearly lost his footing, stumbled and had to fling a hand out to grab the side. 'Sit down you stupid bastards!' yelled Mannion. He had taken an oar right at the back, placing himself closest to Gresham, 'unless you want to swim home!' The men grinned at him, touched their foreheads mockingly, and sat down. Mannion bellowed at George.
'And sit in the middle of the bloody boat, will you? Unless you want to sink us after the bloody Spaniards couldn't!' George roared with laughter, and moved his body. The boat lost its list. Trumpets sounded from way behind the galley, and even this far away the clattering sound of mounted men could be heard from the bridge. The Spaniards had seen a great ship run itself aground. A sentry had assumed it was one of the great English galleons come to land men and cut off' Cadiz from reinforcements.. Gresham looked at the men in the boat. He spoke with a quiet authority that belied his age. And the men listened. How strange that the men did not seem to see his fear, the dread of the ball smashing to his body, and the even worse fear of being maimed and crippled.
They found two whole men alive from the other boat, another one clutching a broken arm and a fourth with a splinter in his gut that was like half a spear and would take a day to kill him, agonisingly. And it could just as easily have been any one of us, Gresham was thinking, had the chief gunner on the galley decided to make their boat his first target. A lottery. The role of a dice. It was bad to place too much value on life, thought Gresham, when its chances were so random.
Hands reached down from the deck of Elizabeth Bonaventure to haul the wounded men aboard. The Boat was deep in the water, Gresham noticed, riding more sluggishly than he had ever seen her, every corner crammed with looted cargo. There would be even less space to sleep on the decks now. He stepped up, reaching for the ladder but stopped abruptly as he sensed the bulk of Mannion beside him. In the near pitch-black, with the boat heaving and tugging beneath them, Gresham turned to Mannion.
'Did Drake know those galleys were there? Did he even know it was me he was ordering to the bridge? Or was it just another gentleman adventurer he saw in the dark?'
Mannion shrugged. 'Who knows what Drake knows? They say he uses magic to know where enemy ships are.'
'If he knew those galleys were there, then I think he just tried to murder me.'
'But it won't help his case with Burghley if you pop your clogs, will it?' Mannion replied.
There was a cry from above, a tired, impatient seaman wanting the boat for yet another journey, wanting it empty before he and his men climbed down on board.
'What better way to cover a death than that? Hot-headed young man desperate to prove himself, charges off into the dark not knowing two Spanish galleys are waiting for him. Fortunes of war. Perfect.'
'But if that were true, it means Drake was willing to kill fifteen, thirty of his own men as well.'
'Yes,' said Gresham, 'it does, doesn't it? If it were true…'
'It's just doesn't make sense!' said George. He was standing on the deck, leaning over with his hand out to help Gresham aboard. 'Be honest. You may have been sent to spy on Drake, but so what? You're a fly, a pin-prick in his scheme of things! Let's be blunt, you're not important enough for Drake to risk offending anyone important in London.'
'Or I'm so unimportant as for it not to matter,' said Gresham, drowning in the confusions of his life.
There was another yell from topside, and the three men clambered up, George leading Gresham. Their limbs were tired now, dragging, aching with delayed shock. Mannion always insisted Gresham went first, reckoning he would at least have a chance to grab his young charge if he slipped and fell.
Drake may have used magic to find Spanish ships. He seemed to need no magic to find Gresham. If he was surprised to see the return, his exhausted, drawn face did not show it. 'AND WHY ARE YOU HERE AND NOT ON MY BRIDGE?' he roared. 'I sent you to guard a bridge, not to run home with your tail between your legs at the sight of a few miserable Spaniards!'
It was a gross accusation of cowardice. Gresham stared calmly at him, the only light the dull flicker of a lantern with the creaking rigging acting as a night chorus. He reached up to his left shoulder, where there was a ragged tear in the Jack of Plate. Gresham fumbled in the tear, enlarging it slightly, and drew out a flattened lump of lead. Mannion had seen him stagger as the galleon had been at its closest to them, but thought it merely a response to the boat dipping into a wave. Gresham's eyes did not leave Drake's. He tossed the fragment of spent musket ball towards Drake, who made no movement to catch it. It fell softly against Drake's doublet, rattled to the deck and rolled away. Gresham was angry now, as angry as he had ever been.
'I'm willing to prove my bravery, Sir Francis,' he said calmly, eyes still locked with Drake's. And for once he felt calm, not having to hide the tremors of his heart, the uncertainties of his mind. 'Prove it in the accepted fashion, if so be your will, and on this deck. But I'm not prepared to be a fool. Eleven of your men are dead, one more likely to be so within days. Only a fool would take a longboat of men armed with swords and muskets against a fully- armed galley. But if you wish me to do so, I'll step back into that boat, with my servant here, and row down the throat of the galley that's still patrolling out there. It won't get you your bridge. Thirty men in small boats will never get you that. But it will get you a death, if that's what you want. And it will give me my honour.'
