braggadocio.
'Would these two men take a dispute on land to sea? Destroy a ship, and half its crew?' The Duke was grappling with drives and motivations that were alien to his whole upbringing and culture.
'It was not on land, my Lord,' said Gresham reluctantly. 'The offence took place… at sea. The gunner's wife was aboard the San Salvador. 1
'How can this be?' There was a cold fury in the Duke's voice now. He is a prude, thought Gresham. His innate refinement shrinks at the thought of carnality. 'I ordered all women to be removed from ships in Lisbon. Over thirty were found and put ashore. To have women on board this holy mission would be sacrilege!'
Make or break time, thought Gresham. He would not tell the Commander what every sailor knew, that one of the urcas was crammed to the gunnels with women, the wives and camp followers of the sailors and, in the main, the soldiers. That for the thirty or so women disguised as men that his marines had ferreted out on board a variety of ships there were two or three times as many on board by the time the fleet sailed. Sailors were used to months at sea without women. The soldiers were used to taking their women with them. These were not the refined, wilting Court ladies that the Duke knew. Many of them were common-law wives. No priest had ever said words over their union with their man, yet with a stubborn determination that defied both the Duke and his interpretation of God's will they stuck with their man.
'My Lord, for one woman to remain hidden in a hundred and thirty ships is no cause for recrimination. Rather it is a matter of wonder that only she remained.'
The officers of the San Martin shuffled uneasily. They understood why he hid the truth from their Duke. They also knew the story of the explosion before he told it to them, Gresham realised. It had been a test — you are a spy, you find out things. So did you find out what blew you overboard and near lost you your life? He had passed the first test. Sidonia motioned Gresham to sit in front of him, on a plain, three-legged stool.
'So, my young English, can you tell me why the sea is bare of English ships this morning, those same ships that pecked in such numbers at our heels yesterday? Is this some strange English stratagem a true Spaniard is not meant to understand?'
'We left two great ships in our wake. It's my belief that Sir Francis Drake couldn't resist such a prize. I would guess that he's taken off after one or both of your abandoned vessels, and either many ships have gone with him in hope of plunder, or he's just confused the English fleet.'
One of the younger commanders leaned forward, looked into the eyes of his master for permission to speak. 'You are saying that your countrymen are pirates, more interested in plunder than in defending their land?' This man seemed permanently angry.
'I do not think of them as my countrymen anymore, and yes, that is exactly what they are. Brilliant sailors, brave and tenacious. But at heart, pirates,' Gresham replied.
'Tell me about the Isle of Wight,' said the Duke.
'It's a large, fertile area, and a potential death trap for your fleet.'
One of the other men shuffled, drawing in his breath with a sharp hiss. This was not the way one spoke to the Duke of Medina Sidonia. If the Duke took offence he did not show it.
'Why?' the Duke asked. 'Why is it a death trap?'
Clever, thought Gresham, adding the description to the catalogue of features he was building in his mind of this man. Possibly so clever as to be over-sensitive, and to have retreated behind a wall of courtesy and good manners to protect that sensitivity. Yet with steel, plentiful steel. And lonely. Above all Gresham sensed an immense loneliness, here in this gorgeously furnished cabin with all the trappings of vast wealth.
'It has no strategic significance. As close as it is to the good port of Portsmouth, you could be subject to blockade with relatively little effort. Its anchorages cry out for fireships. The English would bring you to no great battle there. Yet they would whittle away at your fleet piece by piece, waiting for winter and the storms to do their job for them.'
'And you who know so much about the English and England, you who have met the Duke of Parma, can you tell me why he does not answer my letters?'
Now Gresham saw how this man was using him. On board the San Martin, the turncoat English spy Gresham had no friends and no allies. And so he could talk to no one, not refine the Duke's words for his own advantage, not play off the confidences for political favour. In talking to Gresham the Duke of Medina Sidonia had a sounding board who could talk to no one else. Carefull
'The Duke must know that you're coming, from your own messengers and from the King. The country he rules over is vast, his centres of governance widely separated, the country war-torn and difficult to travel. Wolves gnaw the bodies of women and children as well as their fathers, within sight of the city walk of Ostend. He'll assume automatically that you expect him to mobilise his troops, prepare his invasion barges. He'll only put final plans into progress when you and your fleet are close enough to meet with him, in person.'
'And how do you find the hospitality of the San Martin, after your experience on board one of Drake's ships?'
The Duke of Medina Sidonia had some way to go before he matched Sir Francis Drake for sudden changes of topic, but was clearly a contender.
'Strange. Disturbing. Comforting. There are no rituals aboard English ships. If they acknowledge God, it is as a fellow sailor, almost an equal. Yet what I have seen aboard your ships concerns me.'
The other Spaniards stiffened. We take offence, their bodies told Gresham.
'You may speak freely,' said the Duke. He raised a hand, and a two beautiful golden goblets appeared on the table, the deep red of the wine taking on a lustrous tinge from the metal. Mannion would be driven to despair at what he was missing, thought Gresham, as he raised the stunning bouquet of the wine to his lips.
‘Your gun carriages are huge, long, tailing back into the body of the ship, cumbersome to handle. You lash the gun to the side of the ship for firing, and need to untie it every time you reload. Your company are united when they hear the divine service, but are three separate groups in action — officers, sailors and soldiers. The soldiers are tasked to load a gun, under the command of a sailor. When it is done, they must return to their battle station and prepare to board an enemy. So the gunner has to call them back after each round is fired. It must take a full fifteen minutes for one of your great guns to reload and fire again.' Unless it was on a galley, set on a rail and chasing a longboat, thought Gresham.
'And your English ships?' asked the Duke. The commanders and the officers of the San Martin had been motioned to sit. 'How do they differ?'
'Their English ships.' The bitterness in Gresham's voice would etch steel. 'I'm a traitor, if you remember. The cannon are placed on short, four-wheeled carriages. The lashings allow the gun to be run back for reloading, hauled forward for firing. Each gun has a crew of seamen, dedicated to just that gun. They think five minutes to reload and fire a long time.'
The silence must have been seconds, seemed minutes.
'Call for the others,' the Duke ordered. 'Get them aboard.' He turned to Gresham. ‘You may leave,' he said. 'Understand me. You are either a very honourable man, or a self-serving traitor of a type who offends me deeply. Events will develop, the weighty matters of which I have charge, and in time I will decide your future and your status.'
'Well,' said Mannion, on the deck, 'we're back where we usually are. Everyone hates us.'
The shock of hearing the truth from Gresham had changed something inside Anna, something she was hardly aware of herself but which at the same time left her knowing that her life had altered for her in a way that could never be reversed. Suddenly the candle-lit masques and the overheated, fetid evenings at Court and nobleman's house seemed frivolous, cheap, the glittering jewels little more than baubles, the conversation that had once been so amusing thin and shallow.
The scrupulous travel arrangements made by Gresham would get her to Dover and thence by ship to Calais well before it was likely that he would be unmasked as a Spanish spy. Operating on the basis that the best hiding place was in the open, Gresham had spread it widely around that he was returning from the Netherlands to Calais, there to meet her and start again the search for her fiancй. She felt a growing disquiet in the days before her departure, as what pathetic few belongings she had were packed into wooden chests, a disquiet over and above the appalling confusion she had been thrown into by the death of her mother and Gresham's strange revelations. Nor was it sadness at leaving London and England, where she had hardly had the time to feel at home. It was as if a beacon of danger had been set alight inside her head where only she could feel it, yet with no hint as to where the
