Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  Father Jerónimo did something the Duke had never seen him do before. He opened his tiny mouth a little wider than usual—wide enough to reveal his disturbing lack of normal teeth—and emitted a series of high-pitched hissing sounds. Had such a thing not been altogether unthinkable, the Duke would have sworn he was laughing.

  "Parma has no fly-boats, my son. His 'fleet' consists of river barges that can only cross the Channel in perfect weather under your protection. If they tried to come out and meet you, the fly-boats of the Dutch rebel Justin of Nassau would sink them in the shallows where your warships cannot go. After which Parma's soldiers would have to swim back to shore in armor."

  The Duke stared at him, aghast. "How can you know this, Father?"

  "I know many things, often by means you would find mysterious. But there is no mystery here. I know it because I am deep in the King's counsels . . . and he knew it four months ago."

  Medina Sidonia found himself without the power of speech.

  "Even last year," the Gray Monk continued, "Parma was sending messengers to the King, emphasizing the limitations of his barges. The King insists that all communications be channeled through him, in his office in the Escorial. So naturally Parma informed him rather than you. Finally, in April of this year, Parma sent Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, who spoke to the King as boldly as any man has ever dared, explaining to him that the junction of the Armada with Parma's barges, the crux of the whole plan, is impractical. From which the King should have drawn the conclusion that the entire enterprise was pointless. But he pressed ahead, not bothering to inform you. He always assumes that God will send convenient miracles to dissolve any difficulties. Also, he is a man incapable of admitting a mistake, even—no, especially—to himself."

  The Duke didn't even notice the Gray Monk's lèse majesté, which at any other time would have scandalized him. All he could think of was the pointlessness of all they had suffered already, and the even greater suffering that certainly lay in their future.

  "Father," he heard himself say, "if you've known this all along, even back in Lisbon before we sailed, then why didn't you tell me?"

  "Because from the beginning I have wanted us to come to this point." The dark eyes held absolutely no feeling. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, thought the Duke with a shudder, what sort of soul am I looking into now? "Shortly after the Lord High Admiral of England anchors off Calais, he will undoubtedly be joined by Lord Henry Seymour, who has been patrolling the Strait of Dover in case Parma should come out—even though the Dutch could have told him better. And I want them all together."

  "But then we'll be outnumbered as well as outgunned," protested the Duke.

  "It is of no moment." All at once, the mocking amusement was back. "You see, the King is quite right: a miracle is going to enable this Armada to succeed in spite of everything. I am going to provide that miracle, using the devices that came aboard with me."

  "What are these things? Holy relics?"

  "Far from it. They have been brought from Florida over the past year. My acolytes and I will assemble them in a few of your pinnaces, which will then destroy the English fleet. Afterwards they will destroy the Dutch as well, if necessary. Then you will have the leisure to obtain the pilots you need from Parma and proceed down the coast to a point where Parma can join you simply by bringing his barges out of harbor at high water and drifting down on the ebb. And England, defended only by a militia of yokels, will lie open to Europe's best professional army, led by its best general."

  "How will these pinnaces do what all my galleons have been unable to do?"

  "It is very difficult to explain in your language. The devices send forth a stream of . . . very tiny particles which are the opposite of the particles of which the world is made. But that doesn't mean anything to you, does it? Let us say that their presence in the world is a wrongness; when they meet the stuff of the world, they and it both die, and in their dying they release a . . . fire? No, that's not right. It will be as though bits of the sun have been brought to Earth."

  Medina Sidonia chose his words with care. "Father, my conscience compels me to say that I am . . . uncomfortable with this. I cannot but think that what you seem to be describing—destruction of the matter of Creation itself—is an impious tampering with God's works."

  "What you think is of no consequence." All at once, the amusement and the discursiveness were gone, replaced by a cold emptiness—the very negation of the soul. "Remember, we are not truly equals. You know the King's command. And remember also what happens to those who defy the Order of Saint Antony. Surely you have heard stories. Be assured that they are true."

  The Duke had indeed heard the stories, as the tentacles of fear had gradually spread across Spain and further into Europe. He held his tongue and looked into those enormous unblinking eyes, into bottomless darkness.

  But then the moment passed, and Father Jerónimo's mouth opened in that barely perceptible way. This time the amusement held an indulgent note. "Besides, my son, why should you of all people object? Were it not for me, the Armada would fail . . . and you would be the scapegoat for its failure. Indeed, humans being what they are, they might over the course of time convince themselves that you were a fool and a coward, and that the Armada would have succeeded if only someone else had been in command. Utter nonsense, of course, as you and I both know. You are an organizational genius, without whom the Armada would never have set sail within the King's deadline. And your courage is beyond reproach, as you've consistently shown. You have done as well as anyone could have, trying to make a fatally flawed plan work while giving the King wise advice that he was too pigheaded to follow. Well, I will see to it that there is no injustice to your memory. Posterity will remember you, along with Parma, as one of the conquerors of England!"

  "I lack all such ambitions, Father." The Duke's gaze strayed astern, toward the England he could no longer see. Family tradition held that the first Guzmáns had come to Spain six hundred years ago from England, of all places—Saxon adventurers who had plunged into the wars against the Moors and won a reputation as reliable and ruthless soldiers, wading through a sea of blood into the ranks of the nobility. He often wondered how that line of grim warriors could have produced himself, the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia. He had never wanted anything more than to live in the Andalusian sun as the beneficent landlord of his vast estates, amid the orange groves and the vineyards that yielded the wines of Jerez—sherry to the English drinkers who had never allowed such trivialities as war to stop them from buying it. "I am here, not from any lust for glory, but only out of duty to the King."

  "Well, then, if you prefer, I will enable you to succeed in doing your duty. And never forget your duty to God, as well. Must the English be consigned to eternal damnation as heretics because of your quibbles and qualms?"

  It was a familiar line of argument. And its force could not be denied—at least not publicly. Privately . . . the Duke thought back to the freakish June storm that had scattered the Armada and left him sitting in Corunna, wondering for the first time if it was really the will of God that King Phillip add the crown of England to his collection.

  He angrily thrust aside the insidious doubt. He had to believe that the Armada's cause was God's. Now, more than ever, he must believe it.

  Of course the English weren't caught by surprise when the Armada's anchor chains came thundering down. They anchored smartly, a culverin-shot astern. Three hours later, Lord Henry Seymour's squadron joined them, and the following morning the Lord High Admiral called a council of war. The captain's cabin of the flagship Ark Royal was barely large enough to accommodate all those who had been summoned, especially now that Sir William Wynter, Seymour's Vice Admiral, had arrived.

  At least we don't have to fit Martin Frobisher's big arse in, thought Sir Francis Drake. The boorish Yorkshireman would have been insufferable, having been knighted just two days ago. And there was the little matter of his having sworn to make him, Drake, "spend the best blood in hi
s belly" over Drake's perhaps slightly irregular taking of the galleon Rosario as a prize. All things considered, it was just as well he wasn't present. Indeed, Drake's own presence at the council just might have something to do with his absence.

  Drake dismissed Frobisher from his thoughts and focused his attention on Wynter, who was expounding what he thought was an original idea.

  "And so, my masters," the grizzled Wynter concluded, "the Dons have anchored all bunched together, to leeward of us in a tidal stream—just the target for an attack by fire."

  Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral of England, nodded solemnly, for all the world as though everyone in the main English fleet hadn't already thought of fireships. Letting Wynter think it was his own idea was a diplomatic gesture toward Lord Henry Seymour, to whom Wynter stood in the same relation as Drake did to Howard, that of well-salted seaman to lubberly aristocratic commander. Seymour's hot blood was near the boiling point after his enforced idleness guarding the Thames against an illusory threat while others won glory in battle, and he needed all the soothing he could get. Howard had grasped that, as he did so many things.

  God be thanked the Queen has such a kinsman, thought Drake, not for the first time. Howard wasn't getting any younger, and he might not have much more nautical experience than the seasick Spanish duke who commanded the Armada for the same reason of dazzlingly noble blood. But he did not lack decisiveness or good judgment—including the good judgment to listen to Drake. When Drake thought of some of the other blue bloods they might have gotten for Lord High Admiral, he shuddered.

  "Your suggestion has much merit, Master Wynter," Howard said graciously. "It's in my mind that the Spaniards may well be even more than usually panicked by fireships, after their recent experience with the Hellburner of Antwerp." A grim chuckle ran around the table at the mention of the super-fireship that had sent a thousand of Parma's throat-cutters to their reward.

  "All the more so," Captain Thomas Fenner put in, "because they know the Italian Giambelli, who built it, is now in England. What they don't know is that all he's doing for us is trying to put a boom across the Thames to keep them from coming upriver. They'll piss in their armor at the thought of fireships!"

  "And," Drake added, "they'll cut their cables in their haste to be off, and put out to sea. Then the wind as well as we will be against them if they try to turn back and join with Parma. And once they're in the North Sea, in the season that's coming on, lacking anchors . . . well, my masters, the Duke of Medina Sidonia will wish he were at home among his orange trees—if, indeed, he hasn't been wishing himself there all along!"

  There was general predatory laughter. The English had anchored off Calais in a subdued mood after the battles in the Channel. The long-range gunnery of which they'd had such high hopes had proven unable to do significant harm to the galleons' stout timbers, while the tight Spanish formation had prevented them from closing to short range. Now they saw a chance to break up that formation, and the close air of the cabin was thick with their eagerness.

  The council broke up, and Howard and Drake saw Wynter off with many expressions of mutual esteem. As Wynter's boat pulled away toward Seymour's flagship Vanguard, Drake turned to Howard with a grin.

  "If only he knew we've already begun to prepare fireships!"

  "Yes. A pity the ones we sent for can't possibly arrive from Dover in time. But there's been no lack of volunteers to provide ships—like the five you've offered from your own squadron."

  "It was the least I could do for God and Her Majesty!" Drake struck a noble pose.

  Howard gave him a sour look. Drake was really hopeless at this sort of thing, although like everyone else (except Frobisher) he could never stay annoyed at the irrepressible pirate for long. "And of course the fact that you can claim more than the fair market value of those rotting hulks in compensation had nothing to do with it."

  "My Lord! I am deeply hurt!"

  "Oh, never mind. It's all one to me, as long as this works. And it should work, even though we shall have to do without Signor Giambelli's infernal machines." Howard's gaze strayed to the dark mass of the anchored Spanish fleet. "Only . . ."

  Drake's expression abruptly hardened, and his eyes narrowed as they did when he sighted a threatening sail on the horizon " 'Only,' my Lord?"

  Howard did not meet his eyes. "It's said they have a Gray Monk with them."

  The August air seemed to get colder.

  "Well, what of it?" demanded Drake after a moment, in a voice that clanged with defiance a little too loudly. "He hasn't worked any sorcery so far. Or if he has, it hasn't sunk a single ship of ours. Why should we be afraid of papist mummery from some unnatural spawn of Hell?"

  "Of course, of course," Howard muttered. But he didn't sound convinced.

  "Well," said Drake after another uncomfortable silence, "I'd best be getting back to Revenge." They made their farewells, and it was almost as it had been before.

  But as he was rowed across the water to his ship, Drake could not rid himself of an oppressive feeling of foreboding. It made no sense. Everything he had said to the Lord High Admiral had been true and heartfelt. So whence came this vague sense of horrible and unknowable wrongness, as though something that had no business in the world was about to plunge the affairs of men out of the realm of reason and into that of madness?

  By the time Lord Henry Seymour's squadron rendezvoused with the English fleet as Father Jerónimo had foretold, the Duke had already dispatched yet another pinnace with a letter to Parma. The following day he sent two others, each more urgently phrased than the last. Toward the end of the day, a message finally arrived—but it was not the long-awaited reply from Parma. Instead, it was from the Duke's own secretary, whom he had sent ashore to report on Parma's preparations. He now reported that Parma's army would probably not be ready to embark within a fortnight.

  Father Jerónimo made light of it. "Parma has understandably lost faith in the plan. He has also grown disillusioned with a King who is niggardly with rewards. He is exerting the least possible effort. But when the news reaches him that the English fleet is destroyed, he will have no choice but to bestir himself. He will probably even regain his enthusiasm."

  "But we can't remain much longer in this exposed anchorage. The weather could change at any time. Already our ships have had to drop a second anchor because of the tides. And the English are in a perfect position to let the wind and the tide carry fireships down upon us." The Duke couldn't suppress a shudder at the worst nightmare of naval warfare. Wooden ships were hard to sink, but they burned like torches.

  "Of course. I'm sure they have already thought of it, and are preparing the fireships even now. But I have taken this into account. Under the circumstances, it would be natural for you to station pinnaces between the fleets, to grapple any fireships and tow them away."

  "Yes, Father," nodded the Duke. "I've already given the order."

  "Just so. The English will have no reason to suspect that those pinnaces are anything other than what they seem to be. But in fact they will be my pinnaces. So the surprise will be complete. And their shock, when they are eagerly anticipating putting us to flight, will be all the greater. So the appearance of their fireships—which I would expect late tonight or in the small hours of the morning—will be our signal for the unleashing of the . . . miracle." Again came the tiny, ironic smile. "Would you like to be aboard one of the pinnaces, so you can witness what God has in store for the heretics?"

  "My place is here on the flagship, Father." It was perfectly true, as far as it went. But in fact he wanted nothing to do with the engines the Gray Monk's acolytes had been assembling aboard the pinnaces. Engines? They seemed too light and flimsy for such a name, being largely constructed of the strange glass-that-was-not-glass he knew of from hearsay. He could not imagine how they could do anyone any harm.

  Each pinnace would carry one acolyte, to operate the device. The small crews were all volunteers, and had been warned to expect super
natural manifestations. Father Jerónimo expected them to be paralyzed by terror anyway, but he had assured the Duke that at that point it would scarcely matter.

  "I, too, should remain here," the Gray Monk agreed. "But we can watch from the quarterdeck. I think I can promise you rare entertainment!"

  It was midnight when they caught sight of the lights that appeared at the edge of the English fleet, across the moon-shimmering sea. Eight lights, that grew rapidly in brilliance to reveal blazing ships larger than expected, sweeping rapidly down the tide toward the Armada's anchorage.

  They watched from San Martín's quarterdeck in horrified fascination. Most of the team the Duke had gathered around him to command the Armada were there: Don Diego Flores de Valdés, the seaman; Don Francisco de Bovadillo, the senior general of the land troops; and Juan Martínez de Recalde, Spain's most respected admiral since the death of Santa Cruz and, at age sixty-two, like a father to the rest of them—especially to the Duke, who at thirty-seven was the youngest of them all.