sharply, and with a click he knew he could hear again. Knew because the sound of screaming men was cutting through to his brain. A man was bobbing on the water, one arm clutching ferociously at a baulk of timber, his eyes wide with terror. His other arm had gone at the elbow, and when the water bobbed him up and down only one leg appeared on the surface. Both limbs had been cauterised by the blast, and then sterilised in the salt water. He might even live, thought Gresham. If a man wanted to live with one arm and one leg. Then the stink hit him. Burning wood, of course. But above all a singed smell, like overdone pork on a fire. The smell of burning human flesh.
'There!' said Gresham. That boat! The one from the San Martin’ The vast Spanish fleet had hove to, boats scuttling over the water in a hurried rescue operation. The San Salvador lay dead in the water, her stern shot away, sails mere hanging tatters, smoke rising from her deck and an awful, low keening noise of deeply injured men. Weighed down by their clothes, Gresham and Mannion struggled to one of the boats sent from the flagship. As they struggled closer, a man in the water, burned black by some strange decay, was being pulled on board. The sailor hauling his body was suddenly, violently sick as the burned remnant of the man's arm came away in his hand, the rest of the body flopping back into the water.
'There must be easier ways to get on board the bloody flagship!' said Mannion, spitting sea water out of his mouth as he scorned help and hauled himself over the side of the rescue boat.
When they finally arrived, wet, cold and buffeted, aboard the Duke of Medina Sidonia's flagship, they had nothing except the clothes on their backs arid the handful of gold coins sewn into each of their jackets — the number was limited by their weight and the amount they could still swim with if they found themselves in the sea. Gresham rubbed his eyes, succeeding in making them sting even more from the salt water dripping down his forehead. From the deck of the San Martin he could see the drifting hulk of the San Salvador, but also another great ship in trouble. Something seemed to have snapped off her bowsprit and her mizzenmast had tumbled over. As they watched, the ship's mainmast shivered and fell forward in the driving wind. Someone was asking to note down their names, while a seaman offered them a rough blanket.
From the central position occupied by the flagship Gresham saw a group of English ships form up and follow them at a safe distance. There was shouting on the deck, and what looked like Sidonia's own personal barge was lowered.
'That's two great Spanish ships stumbling in our wake, crammed with God knows what in the way of treasure and booty,' Gresham whispered to Mannion.
'So?' Was Spain already losing this battle, Gresham thought, as he shivered in the cold wind?
'Do you think Drake will see them in his magic glass?'
Later that night Sir Francis Drake extinguished his stern light, stating that he had seen the shadows of ships pass him by, and headed off to capture the Rosario and make himself fifty thousand pounds. He had been tasked with following the Armada, his stern lantern the marker on which the whole of the rest of the English fleet was relying. The ships following him saw the light ahead of them in the dark flicker and fade, but then picked up another dimmer light. Thinking it to be Drake, they put on sail to catch up. When dawn broke, they found they had been marking the lantern of the rearmost vessel of the Armada all night, and were alone and in range of the greatest fleet on earth. The three English vessels heeled about, and withdrew to search for the remainder of the English fleet, thrown into disarray by Drake's action.
One of the greatest fleets the world had seen was separated from its enemies by only a few miles, and the fate of nations was being decided by the decisions of the warring commanders. And Gresham was almost terminally bored.
The men passed the time gambling, the dice carried in two locking cups, even though the authorities frowned on it. Mannion had carved dice out of a waste piece of wood, begged (or stolen) an earthenware cup from somewhere, and shown himself capable of mindlessly throwing dice for hours. It bored Gresham and he already owed Mannion ten thousand pounds. In the hierarchy of a Spanish galleon a traitorous English gentleman belonged nowhere. There were no cabins or beds on board for even the Spanish gentlemen, fifty or so who had clamoured to be taken aboard the prestigious flagship and who added to its already vastly overcrowded decks. Gresham was reduced to sitting on whatever bit of spare deck there was whenever he could resist Mannion's gambling fever, composing sonnets in his head. The rhyme scheme and the fourteen-line format was demanding and so took more time. He had forgotten what it was like to sleep without another man's body pressing against him on one or both sides. Or should he simply switch his mind off and be lulled by the routine of the ship? Night was marked by the saying of a simple prayer:
'The Watch is set, The glass runs yet, Safe on the seas If God decrees.'
The glass, or sand clock, was turned every half hour. A ship's boy, pathetically young and vulnerable, gave what Gresham had learned was the traditional lilt.
'One glass has gone, Another's a-filing, More sand shall run, If God is willing.'
Simple stuff, childish words recited by children, yet far more comforting than the tangled precision of his sonnets. Each watch lasted four hours, the new watch being called again by the boys with their shrill ' Al cuarto, al cuarto, senates marineros!' Yet it was the evening ceremony Gresham found most moving. It silenced even Mannion, as the pair of them, still shivering from their soaking, clutched the thin blankets round their bodies and chewed the last of the rations formally handed out to them a half hour earlier.
First a ship's boy brought the newly-lighted stern lantern on to the darkening deck, breaking out into the evening lilt. The thin, treble voice was feeble against the gusting of the wind, the rattle of intermittent raindrops on the bulging sails, the continual creak of timber and cordage, all the more moving because of its fragility. The words were mundane, given meaning only by the rolling deck and the sense of men drawn together in danger.
'Amen, and God give us goodnight,
May the ship make good passage and have a safe voyage,
Captain, Sir, Master, and all our company.'
The altar was set with candles and glittering images, the candles needing to be continually relit. The ship's Master called in a stentorian voice, 'Are we all present?' A muted roar of male voices greeted the question, 'God be with us!'. It was bad luck not to answer. The Master chanted a salve, strange because by now the light was flickering off his face and making him look more like a demon than Christ's representative, strange because of the deep, rhythmic tone of his voice.
'A salve let us say
To speed us on our way,
A salve let us sing,
A good voyage may it bring.'
The men chanted the salve then the Litany of Our Lady, then the Credo, their voices firm. For a few moments the rolling, sonorous familiarity of the words brought the men together, bonded them to the ocean and their common purpose. Then the Ave, and the usual evening lilt, sung by everyone, the stern lantern hoisted in its proper place.
It was the faces that Gresham could never forget. The smooth, clear complexion of the ship's boys, the hardened, wrinkled faces of the men, stained by sun and sea, gazing into the flickering lights, each one an island in himself. Hundreds of men and boys, each one holding themselves as the most important person in the world.
The next dawn came revealing a sea virtually clear of English ships. The summons came after he and Mannion had collected their morning rations.
Sidonia's cabin was sumptuously furnished, the table behind which he sat bizarrely inlaid with ivory. The Duke did not ask Gresham to sit. Two of the San Martin's officers stood beside him, glowering, and the choleric Diego Flores. The translator was the same man who had been with the Duke in Corunna.
'The San Salvador. What happened? The tone was neutral, the thin, tired eyes expressionless.
'My servant and I were at the bow. We saw a Dutchman manhandle a barrel of powder, place a slow match into it and dive overboard.'
'Just that? No more? A man blows up his own ship and trusts himself to the mercy of the sea?'
'My Lord,' Gresham moved uneasily, 'there were… rumours.'
'Rumours?
'Rumours that a Spanish captain had… interfered with the German wife of this same gunner.' In the tiny space of a sailing ship there were no secrets. The whole crew and the soldiers had heard the Dutchman vowing revenge. They had thought it likely to be a knife in the back, if the words were anything more than
