by Mary Hoffman
The Admiral himself taught Isabel his flag system and during the day she muttered it to herself – ‘Green means “Advance in formation”, blue and white means “Peel off and re-form”, red means “Retreat” . . .’
When she wasn’t travelling to Talia, she was dreaming about ships and sails and flags and cannons. She hadn’t seen Andrea again, nor expected to, but Filippo was back before the end of the week, looking happy and excited even though he was going to be on the flagship’s consort and in the thick of the battle.
The other Barnsbury Stravaganti were supporting Isabel through this time and she was only glad that they weren’t at school. She knew she was really only half in present-day London; so many of her thoughts were in Classe.
‘Are you nervous?’ Georgia asked her on Easter Saturday.
‘What do you think?’ Isabel replied. ‘People are going to be killed and I shall see it. But it’s not that I’m not afraid of dying myself. I figure that I wouldn’t have been “chosen” in order to be killed off.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Sky. ‘We’ve all been in dangerous situations and survived.’
‘Not Luciano,’ said Nick quietly.
‘But that was different,’ said Georgia. ‘He died here, not there.’
‘It’s still dying though, isn’t it?’ said Matt. He always felt uncomfortable when the talk turned to what had happened to Luciano. ‘Being “chosen” didn’t save him.’
‘So the worst that can happen to me is that I might get stuck for ever in Talia,’ said Isabel, trying to smile. ‘That wouldn’t be so bad.’
‘I’d come and visit you,’ said Sky.
But the joy of hearing him linking himself to her publicly in this way was offset by the thought of never seeing Charlie or their parents again. Isabel wondered, not for the first time, how Luciano could bear it. He must be very strong.
‘So, when’s the big day then?’ asked Matt.
‘Everyone seems to think it will be Monday,’ said Isabel. ‘That’s Andrea’s inside information.’
‘So you’d better stuff yourself with chocolate tomorrow,’ said Nick. He had got very used to the celebrations of his new world, especially ones involving tasty food. ‘You’ll need plenty of calories to keep you going.’
‘Will it be over in a day though?’ asked Georgia. ‘I mean, I don’t know anything about old sea battles but can it all be decided before you need to get back?’
‘Charlie will cover for me if I have to stay overnight,’ said Isabel. ‘It will be Tuesday here and the parents will be back at work, thank goodness, so it shouldn’t be so hard.’
‘Good thing they didn’t plan to take you away for Easter,’ said Sky, remembering the time he had been in Cornwall. But he had been with Alice then, so he pushed the memory away.
‘The Spanish Armada battle took only one day,’ said Matt helpfully. ‘I looked it up. But most of the Spanish ships were sunk by English storms after that.’
‘We’ll have to hope the Talian weather is on our side,’ said Isabel.
‘And the Battle of Lepanto was over in five hours,’ said Nick.
Isabel was grateful that her friends had taken such an interest in the coming fight but none of them had to be aboard ship in the midst of it. Even if Sky stravagated with her on Monday, he wouldn’t be allowed in the fleet.
And when Monday came, she was just relieved. She asked Sky to stay behind and went to bed early, still feeling slightly sick after the amount of chocolate she had consumed in the last two days.
Charlie knocked on her door. ‘Can I come in and say goodbye?’ he asked.
‘I’m planning to come back,’ said Isabel.
‘Au revoir, then’ said Charlie. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, arrivederci.’
‘Arrivederci,’ said Isabel, letting him give her an awkward hug. ‘That sounds the most Talian.’
‘And good luck,’ said Charlie seriously.
‘You will let the others know if I don’t wake up tomorrow morning, won’t you?’
Charlie held up his mobile phone. ‘They’re all on speed-dial,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ said Isabel. ‘Now go. I have to fight a battle.’
Arianna felt light-headed literally, with her shorn head under its metal-lined cap. She had bribed one of the arquebusiers on the Duchessa to let her take his place. He had been reluctant but she whispered that she was working as a spy for the real Duchessa and offered him so much silver that he couldn’t say no.
She had picked him out from a distance as being the closest in size to her and there was an awkward moment when they changed clothes, which she was reluctant to do on the quay of the Arsenale. Fortunately, there was an empty shed nearby and she had paid him enough to insist on his turning his back.
‘What is your name?’ she asked.
‘Mario Bailadora,’ he replied. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Adamo,’ she said. ‘Adamo da Bellezza. You must call yourself that until the battle is over.’
The young arquebusier shrugged. He had been quite looking forward to taking part in his first sea battle but ‘Adamo from Bellezza’ had given him enough silver to compensate him for the loss of that ambition; he would pass the battle drinking some of it away in the nearest tavern.
Arianna took his weapon and squared her shoulders and then made her way aboard the Duchessa. It was Admiral Gambone’s consort ship, the one that would stay beside him in the coming action. More importantly, it was the ship that Luciano would be on. And it pleased her that it bore her title, if not her name; it seemed like a good omen.
It felt less so after a day and a half at sea. She kept herself to herself, not sure that she could convince a bunch of Bellezzan fighting men of her masculinity. And she glimpsed Luciano only occasionally; as an aristocrat, he travelled in the Captain’s cabin, while she was squashed on the gun deck with no shelter.
She had been very relieved to see the harbour of Classe with the majestic fleet riding at anchor. But once the three Bellezzan ships had found a place for themselves, Gambone, the three captains and Luciano had gone in a small boat to meet Classe’s Admiral Borca and Filippo Nucci, while she and all the other fighting ‘men’ were left to cool their heels.
*
‘This is the worst thing she has done yet,’ fumed Silvia, as soon as Barbara’s impersonation was discovered.
‘I tend to agree,’ said Rodolfo, white-faced. ‘This is carrying devotion to Luciano too far.’
‘What exactly did she tell you?’ Silvia demanded of the maid.
‘Very little, Signora,’ said Barbara. ‘Only that if he were going to die, she wanted to die alongside him.’
Silvia snorted. ‘Ridiculously dramatic. And recklessly irresponsible as usual.’
‘But there is nothing we can do about it,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I’m sure she didn’t tell Barbara which ship she was going on, though I suspect it will be Luciano’s.’
‘The Duchessa,’ said Silvia. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’
‘The Duchessa wouldn’t take a woman on board,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I imagine she used her young man’s clothes again, Barbara?’
‘Yes, Signore,’ admitted Barbara. ‘And she made me cut her hair.’
‘Well, that’s it,’ said Silvia. ‘We can’t get a message to the Captain of the Duchessa demanding he strip and search all the men on his ship. What possible reason could we give?’
‘Arianna would evade him if we did,’ said Rodolfo. ‘No. I think we have to ask Barbara to go ahead with this impersonation – it shouldn’t be for more than a week, if Andrea was right about when the battle will begin. And after that we must hope Arianna will come back to us.’
‘I am happy to do it, if that is what the Signore wants,’ said Barbara.
‘Didn’t Flavia tell us that the Princess of Fishes was between the King of Serpents and the Eight of Birds when she read the cards?’ said Rodolfo to Silvia when Barbara had left them.
Silvia waved her hand wearily. ‘I can’t remember.
I’ve never understood that cartomancy of yours. What does that mean?’
‘The King of Serpents possibly means Flavia her- self – a merchant. And the Eight of Birds is self-defence.’
‘If you say so,’ said Silvia. ‘And then what?’
‘That Arianna is quite capable of looking after herself in Classe,’ said Rodolfo.
‘I hope you are right,’ said Silvia. ‘And I hope your cards will help her when she’s on the deck of a ship with a cannonball whistling through the air towards her.’
*
When Isabel arrived in Classe early on the morning of 17th April, it was like a ghost town. All the people must have been at the harbour or out by the walls. She hurried down to the quay, worrying that she might be too late for the battle. A small boat should be waiting to take her out to the Admiral’s flagship. But when she got down to the seafront, the harbour was in confusion: wreckage from several ships was bobbing in the water, while a thick pall of smoke hung over everything, leaving an acrid smell in the air. Isabel saw to her horror a severed leg float up against the harbour wall, bumping into the stones and then falling back again, only to be thrown back against the wall by the next small wave.
‘What happened?’ she asked a grim-faced bystander, who was watching some small fishing boats trying to sift through the gruesome wreckage in the water. Isabel was trying hard not to be sick.
‘Fireships,’ said the man. ‘Two of them.’
‘What are they?’ asked Isabel.
‘Empty ships packed with gunpowder,’ said the man. ‘The Gate people sent them into our line of battle in the night.’
‘So the battle has begun?’ said Isabel. There was a heavy lump in her chest that felt like a solid iron cannonball. She was too late.
‘Not really,’ said the man. ‘When the fireships exploded in the night, they took down four of our ships from the middle of the line.’
‘Four?’ said Isabel, horrified. She had seen how many men could fit on a fighting galley. ‘What happened to the men on board?’
Her informant looked at her as if she was mad and pointed silently to the leg she had been trying not to look at.
‘What do you think? The Admiral ordered the fireships sunk but it was too late by then. That’s why the Gate people sent them in the dark – so we wouldn’t be able to see them coming.’
‘The Admiral,’ said Isabel. She realised that his flagship, the Tiger, would be commanding the centre of the line. If the Gate people’s fireships had veered in a slightly different direction, that leg could have belonged to someone she knew.
‘Signorina Isabella,’ called a voice through the smoke.
She made out another small rowing boat amid the debris in the water; it was slowly making straight for her, the name TIGER just decipherable in white paint on its side.
This is it then, thought Isabel. I’m about to join in the battle.
And after what she had just seen and heard, she couldn’t believe she would survive it.
Chapter 23
The Battle of Classe
Admiral Borca was pacing the deck, smarting from the loss of his ships and men. Not only was the combined fleet now down to a hundred and forty-six against the Gate people’s two hundred, not only had he lost hundreds of fighting men and mariners, but his adversary had not played fair.
Borca had a distaste for fireships. He’d heard of the tactic but would not have deigned to use it himself; it seemed to him like cheating. But their use also meant that the Gate people knew the Talian fleet would be waiting. That put both sides back to square one: the Gate people had lost the element of surprise but the Talian fleet had lost the advantage of being prepared for the invasion.
The combined fleet of Classe and Bellezza had pulled out of harbour overnight and got into their three-squadron formation with great discipline and skill. The Admiral commanded the centre from the flagship Tiger, with Filippo on the consort ship, Sea Dragon, and forty-eight more Talian ships. Forty-four since the fireships had headed for the centre of the fleet in the dark.
The bulk of the Bellezzan ships were on the left flank, commanded by Admiral Gambone from the Goddess. His consort ship was the Duchessa. The ships on the right flank were led by the Santa Maddalena and the Silver Dolphin. The three squadrons had been roughly equal in number before the fireship attack.
And as dawn broke and the wind from the east that had swept the wreckage of ships and men into harbour blew the thick shroud of smoke into shreds, the Talian fleet saw what they were up against.
The Gate fleet had adopted a three-part formation too. They were near enough that Borca could see how many ships there were in each squadron. Sixty in the centre against his forty-six. Their right flank against his left were pretty evenly matched. But their left flank had at least thirty galliots as well as over fifty galleys.
It was at this moment that Isabel was rowed up to the Tiger and climbed the ladder to board the ship. A ragged cheer went up. The men of the Tiger had come to see ‘Isabella’ as a kind of mascot. They had no more idea than she did what help she could be in the coming battle but they believed they’d be better off with her on deck.
She tried to smile and wave back at them but it was hard to put aside what she had seen in the harbour. The air was clearer out here in the deep water and she could see oily patches on the surface, marking the spots where ships had sunk – Talian galleys and enemy decoy ships too.
And she could see the Gate people’s fleet.
The ships seemed to stretch for miles, fanned out into battle formation. Isabel’s only consolation was that the Talian fleet must look equally intimidating to the Gate people, even if with fewer ships. But of course the enemy had drawn first blood.
The two fleets were drawing closer to one another, each keeping as far as possible in line with their Admiral’s flagship. To Isabel it seemed as if the Talian fleet was moving more slowly but she felt a surge of pride to see how straight their line was, the ships separated one from another by about a hundred yards. She wondered how the men felt on board the ships that had closed the gaps where their comrades had been blown out of the water.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the man on the whipstaff, seeing her expression. ‘Old Borca has something more up his sleeve yet.’
And then Isabel saw why their galleys had been moving more slowly. They were waiting for four other light oared vessels that were towing massive sailing ships out in front of the fleet. These were the four galleasses, great merchant galleys that had been modified to carry heavy guns and had big wooden defensive bulwarks grafted on to them.
Soon they were in place, apparently becalmed vessels abandoned by their galleys in front of the Talian navy: the Hand of Fortune, the Swallow, the Mermaid and the Falcon’s Flight. They were really no more than floating gun platforms, full of gunners and other fighting men, with hardly any mariners aboard. They weren’t planning to go anywhere.
There was an eerie silence as the men aboard the Talian galleys stopped rowing. Nothing could be heard but the harsh breathing of the rowers who had halted, the creak of wood and the odd clink of sword against shield. It seemed as if both fleets held their breath.
*
The leader of the Gate people was Ay Adem, aboard the flagship Samira. He was commanding sixty galleys in the centre, with Andrea aboard the Raider’s Revenge as his consort. But Adem was beginning to suspect that all was not as it seemed with his Talian spy. For a start the Talian fleet was much larger than he had expected. And they had already been drawn up in battle order.
But he had been sending ships up and round the coast to Ladera for weeks, so any efficient spy network could have discovered the Gate people’s plans. Still, not many people had known the date that they planned to launch the attack.
The day before had not begun well: as soon as the Gate fleet had assembled in the deep water off Ladera, a flock of large black birds had blown from left to right across the path of the ships. The Gate people were if anything even more superstitious tha
n the Talians and the men saw this as a bad omen. Among the galley-slaves chained to the rowing benches were many captured Talians, and Adem knew that they silently exulted to see their masters cowed by a few birds.
He had ordered an extra ration of bread and water to be distributed to the rowers on their journey to Classe, and now he strode about the deck of the Samira, waiting for the right moment to give the battle signal, conspicuous in his peacock-blue robes with vermilion sash. It was a point of honour with the Gate people not to disguise their leaders. It showed their fearlessness to stand out as such obvious targets.
His left squadron was commanded by Adem Dolmay, whose skill with his galley, the Duha, was legendary; people said he could manoeuvre it as easily as if he were riding a horse. On the right was Ay Quana, who had a reputation as a fierce fighter. Ay Adem was lucky in his officers; they were as ready for the fight as he was.
Now all the fighting men were ready to raise their banners and all the oarsmen ready to strain their muscles for the advance. The gunners stood by the touch-holes with their tinderboxes in hand, primed to set light to the fuses.
It was nearly noon.
*
Fabrizio di Chimici looked every inch the warrior in his shiny new armour and plumed helmet. He rode up and down the lines of the Giglian army, on his grey stallion, encouraging his men. But the experienced military men of the line saw him differently. To them he was like a boy with a box of toy soldiers. They knew that their hope of victory and personal safety lay not with this glittering figure but with the army’s General, who was a grizzled man of fifty in armour that had been battered in many encounters and had no shine left on it.
The General knew that Classe’s defences were not in a good state of repair but it did not make him careless. Every siege and battle was different and the difference between victory and defeat could turn on a tiny mistake or defect.