ever see that cheerful face again? They had managed only a few snatched moments of conversation.
Tm sure someone asked or ordered Drake to keep me on board, not to land me ashore. No skin off Drake's nose, if the price was right. He could always give some tissue of lies to Walsingham to explain why. I think what surprised him was when someone quite clearly tried to get him to kill me as well — he hadn't bargained for that.'
'You're lucky Drake felt sorry for you,' said George.
'Sorry? Don't be stupid!' said Gresham. 'Drake isn't giving me this chance because he feels sorry for me. He's giving a reprimand to whoever he takes his orders from, sending a signal that you don't deal with Drake unless you tell him the whole story. If whoever's working with Drake had told him to kill me, and paid the right price, Drake'd have me executed quicker than a blink.'
The Daisy was a depressing prospect. Her Captain was a notorious drunkard, and had this last voyage not beckoned he would certainly have been relieved of any command. There were only fifteen crew members now, all minor criminals and one of them suspected of murder, and too small-a crew to properly handle and set even the paltry sail area the Daisy carried. The pinnaces were often much smaller versions of the great galleons that bobbed over the waves instead of ploughing through them, but with three tiny masts and some popguns on the side. The Daisy's third mast had snapped in the recent storm, and all that remained of it was the stump embedded in the deck. Even though it only carried a small lanteen sail, its absence threw the whole delicate balance of the ship out of true, forcing her bow lower in the water than seemed safe. Gresham knew that the masts on their own could not support the weight of the sail they were required to bear, and that the rigging tensioned them crucially. Was the rigging interdependent, Gresham asked himself? Were the three masts linked together in any significant way? If so, the balance of the other two masts must be out of kilter, subject to unusual strains and stresses… He decided there were some aspects of knowledge that were best not pursued.
They found the Captain snoring, drunk in his tiny cabin aft, florid face flat on the table, outflung hand still grasping a pewter mug. A thin dribble of saliva hung from his mouth, staining the crude chart on the table.
'Falmouth,' said Mannion, looking down at it. 'Chart o' the entrance to Falmouth. Bloody load of good in the Azores.'
There were four really quite decent, high-backed chairs in the cabin — loot from some earlier escapade? — and Gresham sat down on one of them, motioning Mannion to sit as well. It was close in the small room, but it was private. The four sailors Drake had set to guard them were happy enough to wait outside. There was only one door into the cabin, and no window big enough to take Gresham, never mind Mannion. Gresham did not think the drunken Captain counted as a listener.
'Well?' he asked Mannion.
'I've 'ad better odds,' said Mannion. 'I've been 'aving a chat with the carpenter. The hull's shot some seams, but they've recaulked 'em. In decent weather they'll hold up long enough, probably. Losing the mast's a bugger; it'll make her sail like a crab. But they're fast these pinnaces. The real problem's rot. Carpenter reckons some of the timbers below the bilge 'ave got rot in 'em. Difficult to say 'ow many.'
Some sailors feared it more than drowning. Rot was inevitable in a wooden ship, giving a natural limit to any vessel's life. The English used gravel as ballast, whilst the Spanish and Portuguese tended to go more for large rocks or even scrap metal. The gravel tended to shift less in bad weather, but it made it impossible to pump water out and increased the incidence of rot, as well as making it more difficult to spot. It tended to affect the central members, well below the water line, and particularly the crucial keel timbers under the bilges. Taking out the ballast to get at these timbers was a filthy, stinking job, and took time as well as energy. On the smaller vessels there came a time when repair was simply not cost-effective, particularly as even a tiny piece of rotten timber could infect any new, sound timber placed by it. The fear of rot came from the stealth with which it tore out the heart of a vessel. Every sailor knew stories of ships that had simply come apart in a storm without warning, crucial and hidden load-bearing timbers with the texture of crumbling clay suddenly giving up the ghost.
'Why have the crew agreed to come?' asked Gresham. 'They must know what the odds are.'
'They didn't exactly agree. They was told. By Drake. The choice was sail with the Daisy, or be put ashore.' Putting ashore would in all probability have meant the galleys, or even facing the Inquisition.
'They're either all troublemakers or they ain't made themselves popular with 'is 'Ighness,' said Mannion. 'Apparently half of 'em were set to bugger off with the Golden Lion, but bumped into the Dreadnought who threatened to blow 'em out of the water unless they turned round and stuck with us. It's a toss-up whether Drake hangs a few of them as an example and sticks the rest in jail, or whether he says good riddance to bad rubbish and packs 'em off home. We come along. Makes it easier to pack every one off 'ome.'
There was a particularly loud snort from the Captain. Something yellow was dribbling from his nose now.
'What about stores?' asked Gresham.
'Good, as far as I can see,' said Mannion. 'Picked up a lot of stuff in Cadiz, didn't they, so they can afford to be generous. Problem is, you never really know what you're going to get until you broach the barrel.' He was to remember that phrase a short while later.
They had gone to the funeral, conducted with dignity and as much ceremony as they could muster, burying some of their own dead a few hundred yards off. Unusual for sailors, whose final resting place was a roll of canvas weighted with lead shot and fathoms of sea water above their heads for eternity. Afterwards, on board the San Felipe, Gresham had talked to the girl. Drake had allowed them a few minutes, though he had not dismissed the guard — She looked thinner than when he had first set eyes on her, but seemed even more beautiful. Her suffering had deepened her cheek bones, given her eyes an even greater intensity and depth. None of that intensity reflected affection. The girl's modest gown was designed to cover rather than accentuate the charms of the wearer, yet she moved like an athlete. Gresham could not banish the image of her naked body from his mind. Damn! This was not what the mother had wanted when she made him pledge his honour.
'I'm sorry that I can't remain with you on San Felipe for your voyage home,' he said to her, trying to appear calm. 'I've been banished, in effect, by Sir Francis. But immediately you land in England I'll be there. I propose to house you at my home in London,' the vast Gresham property on the Strand, known simply as The House, stood largely empty, 'where there are some excellent female servants.' Dear Lord! He was sounding like the most pompous type of father. 'I'll also attempt to find a suitable lady to act as your chaperone.' And how the hell did a young man with no family left alive and a scorn for the Court do that, he wondered? He suspected his guardianship would require that he acquire rather too many new skills. God, she was beautiful!
She looked up at him, fire in her eyes. 'Do you know what it is like to be treated as a packages?'
'Pardon?' said Gresham, startled.
'To be packed up, despatched, sent here and sent there. Treated like a packages!'
'It's 'package', actually…' said Gresham.
'Something with no mind, no will of its own, no desires.' She ignored Gresham. 'Just an object. Well, do you?' Her voice was soft, husky, surprisingly low-pitched, but with a hint of steel in it.
'Er… well, no. Actually.'
'It would seem that God has a strange sense of humour.' This conversation was rapidly going away from Gresham. 'He gives His creation the capacity to love, and then rips the people we love out of our lives for his amusement.' There was no sign of excessive moisture in her eyes. 'But at least he has a sense of humour, and he recognises that we care. Men, it appears, simply think women are a packages. I am to be delivered to you. You will deliver me on.' She stood up. 'I hate you!' she said. The quiet control of her voice was more frightening than it would have been had she shouted. 'I hate you and all your kind. You who treat people like objects, who take away their freedom and their right to exist as themselves.'
I think I could very easily hate you, thought Gresham. I really do not need you as a complication in my life at this present time.
'Yeah, well,' said Mannion, picking his hollow tooth, 'you're not alone in that. Most people hate him, actually.'
The girl gave a slight tremor. Was it the comment or perhaps the fact that it was a servant who uttered them? Such freedom was not afforded servants in the best-run Spanish households. Nor, now Gresham came to think of it, in the best English ones either.
'Let's see…' Mannion poised for a moment's theatrical thought. 'Drake hates him. His bosses at home hates him. Both of those are trying to kill him, actually. The Spaniards had a good attempt at killing him, so they must
