'Well,' George said, surveying the wreck of the harbour, 'that won't help King Philip invade!'
‘Will it stop it?' asked Gresham. -
‘No,' said George, thinking for a moment. ‘Not if the King of Spain keeps his nerve. But it will delay it. For months.'
George was snoring loudly now, his arm thrown part over Gresham, giving him pins and needles. He gently removed George's arm, sat up. It was Mannion, shaking him.
'We're on the move. Thank God I can't smell Spaniards any more.'
'They can't smell worse, than you,' Gresham yawned. 'Why do you hate Spain so much?' he said, more to pass the time while his brain reconnected with his aching body than for any real interest in the answer. 'I know I ought to hate it. I'm English. But I can't believe total ill of a country that builds such beautiful buildings. And there's an appalling beauty in the Mass; just listen to Byrd's music. And they saved Europe from the Turks at Lepanto. It's not a country without honour. Why do you hate it so?
'I don't hate Spain as much as I hate that bloody Don Alvaro de Bazan, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz,' said Mannion. He spoke the name of Spain's High Admiral of the Seas perfectly, with what seemed to Gresham to be an excellent Spanish accent. There was a tone of venom in his servant's voice Gresham had never heard before.
'Why so much hatred of a man you've never even met?' asked Gresham his curiosity aroused now.
'Well, there you're wrong. I have met him, see.' Mannion was refusing eye contact, watching the sway of the rigging.
'Tell,' said Gresham, simply, sitting down with his back to the rail, knees clasped in his arms, boat cloak wrapped round him to ward off the chill of dawn. He knew if he pushed Mannion the man would retreat. Mannion did what he wanted, not what he was told. It was why he respected him and valued his friendship so much.
'Well,' said Mannion, after what was clearly for him some troubled thought, 'suppose there's no 'arm in your knowing. Particularly if it stops you sellin' out to Spain, not as you'll listen to anything I say, o' course. 'Cept for one thing. This stays between me and you, right? No blabbing of it to one of those fine girls you take to bed with you. No blabbing when you're in drink at College. If they ever let us back, that is.' Mannion looked at the prone figure of George, reassuring himself that he was truly asleep.
Who would I tell your secrets to, thought Gresham? I have no one else I trust, except this other lump of a man asleep by my side. Would I break your confidence, you, the oldest, the best and the only friend I have? ‘No blabbing,' he said simply. Mannion looked at him, nodded, and sat down beside him. All the action was up in the bow or at the stern, the waist of the vessel for once surprisingly deserted.
'You see, I were a ship's boy. Never known who me parents were. All I know was that the man who brought me up — a cobbler, he was, and a bloody bad one judging by the number of customers who came back to complain — told me that I were a bastard, and a charge on his good nature. That was in between thumpin' me, o' course. Thumping me was about the only fun 'e had. So as soon as I was big enough, and I always were big, he packed me off, sold me to a captain sailing out of Deptford.'
Ship's boys performed a variety of lowly jobs on board ships. If they survived they picked up enough knowledge to get a decent berth as a swabber, the lowest rating. From there was the path to becoming a seaman proper. It was a rough, dangerous way to learn a trade, and there were dark whispers in every port of sailors turning to the boys for sexual satisfaction, of boys who objected ending their lives as an anonymous splash overboard in a lonely sea.
‘ ‘E weren't a bad man, Captain Chicken, though it warn't the best name for a sea-going Captain.' Mannion's accent, never refined, was slipping back, Gresham noticed. Was he talking to Gresham, or talking to himself? 'Anyway, I stuck with 'im five or six years, 'til I were ready to take on a job as real seaman. Surprised, weren't you, when I knew so much about ships?' He turned to Gresham, who nodded, fascinated, gripped by the unfolding human drama. 'I know more than half these buggers 'ere,' said Mannion gesturing dismissively to the crew gathered fore and aft. 'Then the Captain, 'e got a new ship. Off to Cadiz we was, takin' fine cloth from England and bringin' back fine wine.'
'Cadiz?' Gresham sat up, turned to look Mannion in the face. 'Here? This port? Where we are now?'
'The very same,' said Mannion, 'fuckin' awful hole that it is. We'd arrived, taken the cargo off and were waitin' for the wine to be loaded. Some delay or other, don't know why. Crew went ashore — not me, I was waitin' on the Captain and his good wife — and the crew ashore got into a fight with some Spaniards. Next thing we know, fifty soldiers are clamberin' up the side o' the old Deptford Rose, and before we can think we're all of us ashore and clapped in a Spanish jail, God help us! They treat their animals better than they treated us!'
Mannion paused. Gresham sensed that the years had rolled back, and that he was, in his mind, actually back there, in the foul, stinking cell they had thrust him into.
'Any road, once they've roughed us up a bit, me and the crew, and 'ad their fun, we're hauled in front of what they call a court. Sir Francis Fucking Drake 'ad just knocked off a load of Spanish ships, so the English were really popular in Cadiz. And guess who the senior naval officer is, in charge of this Court and running the whole show?'
The Marquis of Santa Cruz,' whispered Gresham. 'Was it really him?'
'Oh, it was 'im alright. His bloody galleys had come out o' the Med for some reason, were staying in Cadiz — just like those bastard galleys that nearly did for us yesterday. They do it a lot, send the galleys out, just to prove they're sea-going vessels, not just right for the Med. Rarely get further north than Lisbon, tell the truth. They're not sea-going vessels, really, you see. Not North Sea vessels, at any rate.' Mannion paused.
'What happened? asked Gresham, caught up in the drama of the story.
'We were 'eathen pirates, apparently. Funny, I'd thought we were just God-fearing Englishmen trying to earn an honest living. The 'eathen pirate was Lord Fuckin' Drake, but they hadn't captured 'im. They'd captured us, so we were sentenced in 'is place.'
'Sentenced?'
'Sentenced. In the case of the Captain, to burn as a heretic. We were all mustered to watch it. Includin' his wife, of course. God wants good women to stand by and see their God-fearing 'usband burned to a crisp, apparently. Or at least, that's Spanish religion. After that, those of us with any muscle were sent to the galleys. It's the smell I'll never forget. That burnin' smell. That smell of a human bein' burned.'
'You were a galley slave?' asked Gresham, incredulous. 'But that's
… awful! It's unbelievable…' He was lost for words. Gresham knew that, incredibly, some of those working the oars in Spanish galleys were 'volunteers', forced by poverty and imminent starvation. Yet he also knew how many were common criminals, in effect condemned to death by their service.
'Not as unbelievable as it was for me,' said Mannion. 'Santa Cruz, 'e was eatin' his dinner when he sentenced us. Three types o' wine, I remember. They chain you to a bench,' he said bitterly, 'all the time you're at sea. You sit at the bench, you sleep at the bench, you eat what crap they give you at the bench, you piss and shit at the bench. And once you get chained there, you expect to die at the bench. 'Cept it's not all bad.' He turned, and grinned at Gresham. 'It's a padded bench, y'see. Otherwise you'd have the skin stripped off your arse in half an hour. Food's alright, really. Surprising. They need to keep you fit, you see. And all because of 'is Highness the Marquis of Santa Cruz. I'll never forget it. 'E couldn't give a shit. We was just dirt, flies to be stamped on by 'is fine leather boot! They called it a court but they'd made their minds up long before we was ever dragged before 'em. It were a farce. Men's lives at stake, and it bein' treated halfway between a joke and when a farmer decides to kill an' eat a chicken.'
'So how did you get out?'
'Luck. Pure luck. The bloody Spaniards talk about Lepanto as if it wiped the bloody Turks off the face of the water. Well, it didn't. We were sent — our boat, that is — to sort out some bloody Turkish corsairs, 'cept they sorted us out. Rams. These galleys have bloody great rams on their front, lined with brass. Our captain must 'ave got it wrong. Any road, we was rammed. Three benches in front o' me. I can see that brass end shinin' now, straight through the 'ull. Pulped those men. Then, as we were still movin' forward, their ram splintered the hull, like it were paper, crashin' on down to us. Man on the right o' me, caught by the ram, smashed to bits. Man on the left 'o me, bloody great splinter, straight into his gut.'
'And you?' said Gresham.
‘Not a mark on me. Ram broke the bench exactly where the ring was sunk to hold the chain. Result? I'm free — 'cept I've got half a ton of loose chain and a ring bolt round me knees, even if it ain't attached to the ship any more. And, of course, the galley's sinking, isn't she? Water flooding through the deck, already at me knees.'
