in his movements.'
Well, thought Gresham, it's good to know other people had the same problem as we did on our visit.
'The vessels I saw in both places were paltry things, few in number, rotten in construction. They had no stores loaded, not even sails or oars.' He paused, not for effect, but because the enormity of what he had seen he had only now allowed to hit him. 'My Lord, the troops are not ready! The boats, if they exist, are not ready. It is as if my Lord the Duke of Parma had only today received notice that your vessels were leaving Lisbon.'
'How long?' asked the Duke quietly, gently.
Rodrigo looked around the cabin walls, almost in despair, hating what he knew he had to say. 'For the troops to embark… My Lord, it can only be my opinion. I may be wrong. A fortnight. Two weeks. At least Possibly more. Even if the transports exist, will bear the weight of men. A fortnight to gather the men and load the stores. I say nothing about crossing the shallows, reaching us in the face of the damned Dutch and their fly-boats.'
'Thank you,' said the Duke. 'You have done well.' He smiled at Don Rodrigo, reaching forward for the package that he now knew would contain the fulsome welcome of the Duke of Parma and a meaningless promise to assemble an army. An army that should already have been assembled and waiting. The smile was addressed to all those in the cabin now, understanding, forgiving. 'Leave me now. And you, Rodrigo, report to my steward and claim from him some of my very best wine. And then offer it to my friends and fellow officers here. We shall reassemble in the turning of a glass. Please leave me to consider the Duke of Parma's letter.'
The Duke's eyes paused on Gresham's, commanding him to remain. The Spanish officers and nobles bowed formally, unconcerned about who remained, not realising the figure and his manservant who remained behind. There was a strange glint in their eyes, Gresham realised. These were not fools, these men. They knew. The Duke broke the ornate seal on the letter, as if Gresham was not there. He read quietly, occasionally holding the paper up to the light coming through the stern windows where he found a particular line hard to decipher. Then he turned to Gresham.
'I have waited so long for these words, and now I have them, that is all they are. Words.'
'The words are not… helpful?' asked Gresham.
‘I need an army, an army of trained men to take over England. I need powder, and shot. And I have… words.'
The Duke placed the letter from Parma on the ornate table, and stood up, stiff, clearly in pain. He turned to gaze out of the stern windows, onto the ornately decorated stern walk.
'A fortnight? Perhaps. If I could sail up the Scheldt, sail up even to Dunkirk, present my fleet before that army and shame them into embarkation. Yet with no pilots, and no promise of pilots, my ocean-going fleet can make no such inland journey. I must await the Duke's army here, in a treacherous anchorage off a neutral country. And I know that the army will not come, as I know my fleet's survival in this place will be lucky to last one night.' The Duke's face seemed to have sunk in on itself, his eyes hollows in his face, the tightness of his skin almost a death mask. 'Well, my dreaming young Englishman? Am I right?'
All the horror, all the pathos, all the stupid idiocy of the world seemed to come together in that cabin.
'You are right,' said Gresham, as an extraordinary, unprecedented and burning hot tear welled up in both his eyes. He dare not blink, in case it scalded his cheek. 'You have lost.'
Around him, hundreds of men went about their business: mending, making, living, filling the hours with the tasks that stop us thinking; talking to God, pleading with God or hoping with all their hearts that God heard what their poor brains could never put into words. Trusting in God, and the Duke of Medina Sidonia and perhaps even in the memory of the kiss their wife or sweetheart had given them as they set out, trusting in all of these or maybe even just in luck to see them through. Using the one thing God had given them, the belief in each man we are immortal, that death will not really come to us and the hope that we alone will be saved. Unaware that men and events hugely beyond their power to control or influence had condemned so many of them to a lottery of death.
'You'll be blown out of this harbour by storm, or by the English,' said Gresham inexorably. This time the tears would accept no boundary, betraying him by cascading from his eyes down his face. 'And you will fight, won't you, my Lord?'
The exhausted face of the Duke of Medina Sidonia was incredulous. 'Fight? But of course I will fight!' There was emphasis in his voice, but the tone was kind. Almost paternal. 'For hundreds of years my country has stood between the rule of Christ and the Ottomans. When Rome and then Constantinople fell to the infidel, did we measure the odds? Did we count the numbers against us? No! We fought. And we won. And saved Europe for Christianity.'
'But now you'll lose,' said Gresham.
'Sometimes, young man,' said the Duke, 'men must believe in miracles. And sometimes, those older and wiser men who doubt miracles recognise a truth of human history. Men may have to lose now in order for their children to win later. Men who are willing to die become stronger because they lose all fear. It is the fear of death, not death itself, that weakens us.'
'And your… reputation?' Gresham hated himself for asking the question but some Devil within him could not refuse to do so.
'They will blame me for this, of course. My family, my children will suffer. So I come to the ultimate problem for a true man. The problem I have faced many times now in my life. And the problem I am amused to see you are struggling to face for the first time.'
How could this man adopt this lightness of tone when at any moment the most important military mission his country had ever mounted could be smashed apart and he be held responsible? 'What problem is that?' Gresham found himself saying.
'Of course the reputation the world affords me matters greatly. But I learned long ago that for all its importance such a reputation is fickle, perhaps even false. When all else fails, and all seems dark and bleak, it is not the judgement of the world I believe will matter to me when I pass into the vale of death. It is my judgement of myself. Do I believe I did everything in my power to make things right? Did I dirty my actions by cowardice, by self- interest, by vanity, greed, lust or avarice? I would love the world to judge my actions as worthy. Yet when all else is done, the judgement that must matter most to me, the crucial, the most scrupulous, the testing judgement must stand as my own judgement on myself.'
'And what will that judgement be?' asked Gresham, fascinated.
'Ask me when I know if I met my death fighting. We cannot control how we are born. We have some control over how we die.'
Gresham spoke softly,
'' Go you gently unto death? Is what you are so little worth? We enter screaming into life, And death hurts more than birth.''
'What is that?' asked the Duke.
'Childish verse,' said Gresham. He made a massive effort to pull himself together. ‘My Lord,' he said, 'I hope you don't die. I hope justice prevails.'
'I am not such a fool as to hope to die,' responded the Duke, an ironic smile on the edge of his lips. 'It is merely that I fear I have little control over it, and even less control over justice. You may leave. It would not be good to have an Englishman here for the conference 1 must hold now.'
'That's it, then,' said Mannion once back outside. 'Fine mess you've got us into. Tonight there's a spring tide right near its top, and the wind's been freshening all day. If our lads can get enough fireships together, they'll come down on this anchorage like shit off a shovel.'
'The Spanish fireships did nothing at Cadiz,' said Gresham. 'That's 'cos there was no wind to speak of, and hardly any tide. And there was three times as much space as there is 'ere.' 'So what should the Duke do?' asked Gresham. 'Piss off and go 'ome,' said Mannion. 'Like us.' 'But he'll fight,'said Gresham
'Then 'e's a stupid bastard,' said Mannion, 'who ought to know better. If he wants to do it for his honour, let him. I've given serious thought as to whether I want to do it for mine, and I don't. But I bet you he won't let us piss off and go home. So it's the same old place, isn't it? The one people like me 'ave been in for centuries. I have to pop me clogs so fie can keep his honour.'
They stood watching the small boats scuttle between the ships of the Armada, the deliveries of food from shore to ship which the essentially friendly, one-legged Governor of Calais had allowed.
He had lost the leg in retaking Calais from the English fifty years earlier and felt no love for Queen Elizabeth.
