Nevertheless, once out of sight, he dug his golden spurs into the side of his horse, feeling it rear up and surge forward like the fine beast it was. Not even the great Duke was safe from the wrath of King Philip if he arrived to find Cadiz a smouldering ruin. Involuntarily, he looked to the skyline, damning himself immediately for a fool, knowing the distance was much too far to see any smoke, unless Drake had set the whole world alight.
Chapter 4
May-June 18th, 1587 The Netherlands; The Capture of the San Felipe
Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Governor of the Netherlands, read the letter from his kinsman Philip II of Spain with total concentration. His aides waited silently by his side. He was a handsome figure. He had been called from sitting for his portrait. As a result he was extravagantly dressed, with no bonnet or cap but a vast, fashionable ruff angled forward so that its back was halfway up the back of his head. The doublet was picked out with gold lace inlays, the puffed sleeves of a different colour. Yet despite all the finery it was his face that commanded attention: angular, the nose straight,' the fine head of close-cropped dark hair, the beard and moustache perfect of their kind. It was the eyes that drew one to him: dark, yet with a mysterious depth to them, the eyes of a man who had seen and felt too much. Strange, newcomers thought. Here was a man, a grandson of King Charles V of Spain, a nephew of King Philip II, born not so much with a golden spoon in his mouth as born with the world at his feet. To add to his birth came striking good looks, a high intelligence and the body of a fine, wild animal. Why did his eyes speak of such sadness? The head of the House of Farnese commanded respect in Europe, not just in Italy. Yet from the start the Duke of Parma had chosen the military life. At twenty-six years of age he had been an aide-decamp at the Battle of Lepanto. Many young men had died in that epic battle. Those who had survived had an honour no man could ever take away from them and no man equal. Was it not at Lepanto that the infidel hordes had been stopped in their tracks, a victory won not for man but for God?
And then at the ridiculous age of thirty-eight years he had been placed in command of the King of Spain's Army of Flanders, that most troubled of provinces where the local Dutch were not only fighting Spain, their temporal master, but fighting God with their Protestant heresy. He had recaptured most of Flanders by his wits, his unconventional tactics and by his capacity to command the fierce loyalty of his soldiers. They had said Antwerp was a general's grave, crowed in advance at the humiliation the young Duke of Parma would meet there. They had swallowed their words when Antwerp had fallen. If Drake was a god of evil to many Spaniards, a man whose success could only have been achieved by the sale of his soul to the Dark Lord, then Parma was the equivalent to the English.
He finished reading the letter, carefully folding it and handing it back to his secretary. 'We are to invade England,' he announced to his men. They looked at each other, questions on their brows. 'The King will send a great Armada, is assembling it even now. It will occupy the English fleet while we sail over the Channel to England.' His tone was flat, giving nothing away. He had thirty thousand men under his command, the finest army in Europe, in the world. No one doubted that if they could be landed in England they would cut through its heart like a crossbow bolt through paper. There was silence. Finally, one of his aides found the courage to speak. He had served the Duke from the days of Lepanto, was the most trusted of all. He often acted as spokesman for the others.
'We have no deep water port,' he said. 'The Dutch have shallow-draft vessels that can patrol the coast, vessels that can come inshore in a manner that no great Portuguese galleon can.' It was no secret that the recent conquest of Portugal meant that the core of any Spanish navy would be the fine seagoing vessels of Portugal. Spanish galleys were designed for the calm waters of the Mediterranean. Portugal's empire, now subsumed to Spain, had been built on ocean-going galleons, some said the strongest and most durable in the world.
Silence. Parma gazed at the man, but said nothing.
'Those Dutch fly-boats could blast our shallow barges out of the water before we came within sight of a Spanish armada,' the aide continued.
'And we would never take Antwerp,' Parma said, after another long pause. Yet they had taken Antwerp. The implication was clear. They did the impossible.
'How?' It was a senior officer, another man Parma had total trust in. He had been stranded with him for hours behind enemy lines — Parma shared the dangers and rigours of his men. He was as often in the front line with his men as he was found at base. It was one reason why they loved him so much.
'How did we take Antwerp?' Parma replied. 'I thought you knew. Actually, I thought you planned most of it.' There was laughter round the table, an easing of the tension.
‘Not Antwerp, my Lord,' said the man with a smile and a deferential bow 'of his head, acknowledging the joke. 'How to get our soldiers over to England and past the Dutch?'
'There are canals, old and new,' said Parma dreamily. He had shown a savage capacity to cut new canals through the flat lands of the Netherlands in days, getting his men where no one had expected them to be. 'There are empty boats to be sent to the coast, drawing off the damned Dutch in the face of their real enemy. There are embarkations at night-time when not even the Dutch can see what is happening, if it happens fast enough.' He stood up, unexpectedly. His men bowed their heads. 'But most of all, we have an army. What say we take Sluys? Ostend? All of Flanders? Even Walcheren?'
The men stiffened, drawing themselves unwittingly to attention.
Their General was suggesting a smashing, final blow to end the war, that endless haemorrhage of Spanish money and blood in the Netherlands. Parma held out his hand to his Secretary, clicking his finger to demand the letter from the King of Spain back. Parma did not open it again. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, away from his body.
'I will have time to think over these matters. I will not be visiting Parma. The King has suggested my duties lie here.'
So permission had been refused for the Duke to visit the Dukedom he had only inherited that year! He had formally requested leave of absence. Leave of absence in the winter, when campaigning was impossible and the opposing armies settled into quarters.
It had been refused. But evidently he was too valuable in the Netherlands, Philip too concerned perhaps that if he left there for his ancestral homeland, changed the mist-clinging, cold and damp Netherlands for the hot beauty of Parma, he might never return. The men gathered round the Duke gave a collective sigh. They, the privileged inner cabinet, knew more than any their General's yearning to see his homeland. He had not even been educated there, sent instead to be brought up and educated in Spain.
'Well,' said Parma, We have one country still to conquer, here in Flanders. Now let us set about conquering another.'
Gresham could not sleep. They had been becalmed in Cadiz just as Drake was preparing to leave. Miraculously, Drake's luck had held. The two vast cannon hauled on to the beach by the Spaniards had missed the English fleet with virtually every shot, and no Spanish vessels had arrived to block them in the harbour. The Spanish troops marshalled in good order in the town, had no way of reaching the English ships. The Spaniards had tried to send fireships down on the English fleet at night, but the absence of wind meant that they had been easily hauled aside by small boats. Drake strode the quarterdeck, appearing to be in high spirits despite the perilous nature of his position. His Secretary, lugubrious as ever, was trying to run through figures of captured goods. Drake was clearly bored.
The Secretary sighed and looked out over the bay to ten or fifteen flaring points, burning or burned-out Spanish fireships.
‘Well, my Lord,' he said, 'at least the Spanish seem to be doing your job for you.'
Drake stopped his pacing, looked down at his Secretary, and then went to the front rail.
'Look you there, boys!' he shouted at the top of his voice. Most of the crew had gathered in the cool of the night on the open deck, few were asleep. Drake waved his hand to point at the burning ships. 'The Spaniards are doing our job for us!' There was a great cheer and wave of laughter from the men. In no time a boat was being launched to check if any of the fireships still posed a danger. Or was the real reason to take the joke around the fleet, Gresham wondered?
It was stalemate, until a fine wind blew up in the morning and sent Drake out to sea a significantly richer man than when he had first sailed into Cadiz harbour.
