by Steve White
"Now," Winslow told his passengers, "we'll make more sail and stand further out to sea, close-hauled on the starboard tack—" Seeing the familiar glazed look, he cleared his throat. "Ahem! I meant to say that we'll proceed southward, still beating against the wind, further from the coast than I guess the Dons will be, but just barely within sight of it. When we sight them, we'll come around and be in perfect position to win the weather gauge."
"I've heard you speak of 'the weather gauge' before, Captain," said the Queen. "I used to hear Drake speak of it. What, exactly, does it mean?"
Winslow opened his mouth, then closed it. After a second or two he opened it again . . . and closed it again. Some things are so obvious they are difficult to adequately put into words.
"It means to be upwind of the enemy, Your Majesty," he finally managed.
"Is that all?" she frowned.
"All? But . . . but Your Majesty, a captain in that position has the initiative. He can choose his moment to bear down. He can force engagement, and maneuver with the wind, which is easier than against it. Furthermore, the smoke of the guns drifts downwind into the enemy's face. And in this case, the Dons will be between us and a lee shore, so they'll have the added worry of running aground. And—"
"Yes. Of course. Thank you, Captain. I see that I can safely leave matters in your capable hands." The Queen gave a gesture of gracious dismissal and turned to peer at the coastline that was little more than a dark line on the horizon. Aboard Heron she had been reunited with her ladies-in-waiting and her wardrobe. Now she was restored to a semblance of the Virgin Queen of memory, complete with farthingale, white makeup, and dyed and crimped hair with a fringe of pearls. Winslow, who had seen her without all that dross, preferred her that way. But he was forced to admit that not everyone had so seen her, and that without it they might have difficulty recognizing her for who and what she was.
Presently, she departed to discuss something with John Dee. Winslow, who on this voyage had long since given up trying to uphold traditional restrictions on access to the quarterdeck, found himself sharing it with Walsingham and Virginia Dare. For a time, they shared it in silence, as Virginia Dare gazed intently at the distant coast. Then Walsingham cleared his throat.
"Mistress Dare," he began, in a voice so unlike him that Winslow worried for his always problematical health.
"Yes, your Lordship?"
"I'm no lord. Call me 'Mr. Secretary,' please. It's what everyone calls me."
"Very well, Mr. Secretary. But in that case, please call me 'Virginia.' I imagine people in England would be scandalized, but we're a long way from there."
"So we are. We are far away indeed, and about to go into a battle in which we may die. I will not run the risk of going before my Maker without having first unburdened myself to you, Mistress—Virginia."
"To me, Mr. Secretary?"
"Yes." Walsingham drew a deep breath. "It was I, working through my cat's-paw Simon Fernandez, who arranged for your parents, and all the others, to be stranded on Roanoke Island. Thomas, here, already knows why: I was playing a game of chess with the King of Spain, and Raleigh's colony was a piece that had to be sacrificed. Only . . . I had been playing chess too long. I had forgotten that my pieces were not unfeeling bits of carved ivory, but human beings and God's children." For an instant, Walsingham hardened into sternness. "Make no mistake: I have sent many to the rack and the scaffold—and some, like Anthony Babington, to be cut open and disemboweled while still alive and conscious—and I have no regrets. They were traitors who sought the death of Her Majesty and the rape of England, and I feel no pity for them. But in this instance, I knowingly condemned innocent people, including women and children, to their doom. And by so doing I exposed them to a fate never imagined even in our worst visualizations of Hell—the kind of unnatural repeated deaths your parents suffered."
For a long moment the only sounds were the wind in the rigging and the unending creaking of a wooden ship under sail. Both seemed unnaturally loud. Winslow held his breath, not knowing what to expect from Virginia Dare—and not knowing how he should or would behave in response. For now, he merely kept a wary eye on the sword strapped to her back.
When she finally spoke, her voice could barely be heard. "You could not possibly have known of the shadow-Earth of the Eilonwë or of the dangers it held, Mr. Secretary."
"That, Virginia, is a lawyer's quibble. As a lawyer myself, I need have no respect for it. A robber may not intend to commit murder, but if the master of the house he robs dies defending it—or merely breaks his neck coming down the stairs to investigate the commotion—he will hang for murder. Likewise, my lack of intent cannot alter my responsibility for all that has befallen you and your people for the past twenty years, as you have experienced time. I know I cannot expect your forgiveness. I ask only that you believe this: what I did was done not out of malice or self-interest but only out of duty to England."
"If you hadn't done as you did, Mr. Secretary, the colony probably would have been founded as Sir Walter intended. A toddler named Virginia Dare would this day be living by the shores of the Chesapeake Bay . . . and facing a life that held nothing except death or enslavement at the hands of the Spaniards, in a world ruled by the Grella from behind the curtains of the Vatican and the Escorial, in their role as 'Gray Monks.' Instead, we passed through the veil between worlds that is the Deep Void, and you followed us. For that reason, mankind now has a fighting chance to free itself." She flashed a crooked smile. "That, too, was not what you intended. But intentionally or not, that is what you have given us. And for that, I like to think my parents would have forgiven you. I may do no less."
Sir Francis Walsingham, Privy Counselor and Principal Secretary, bowed his head to the common-born young woman in plain Eilonwë garb. "Thank you, madam," he barely whispered, and waved aside her demurral at the honorific. "I had no right to expect the absolution you have granted me. But now I can face that which lies before us with a blithe heart and a clear mind."
"For which," Winslow told her dryly, "you've done us all a favor."
At that moment, a lookout's cry of "Sail ho!" shattered the stillness.
In fact, it was almost twenty sails. That became appallingly apparent as they drew closer and the Spanish fleet came into focus against the backdrop of the coastline of Wococon Island, still further to westward.
"You know what this is, don't you?" Winslow asked no one in particular. "It's the core of the Armada—the twenty or so galleons that were built from the keel up as fighting ships. They must have come here from England as quickly as they could be refitted and reprovisioned, before hurricane season was even further advanced. I see none of the forty 'great ships'—lumbering Mediterranean cargo carriers that had been loaded down with guns too heavy for them to fire without shaking themselves apart. And none of the merchant ships they were using as troop carriers. And none of the galleys and galleasses that could never have survived an Atlantic crossing. No, they don't need any of that when they're not mounting a full-scale invasion. There's no fat here—only muscle."
"Why would they have thought it necessary to bring so much . . . muscle?" wondered Walsingham. "As you said, they must have thought they would only have to deal with a few colonists and fugitives."
"I imagine the Gray Monks insisted on it, Mr. Secretary," Winslow replied absently, never taking his eyes off that array of sails. "They weren't about to risk this venture without the full fighting force of their human servitors arrayed around them."
The Queen peered at the ships, whose hulls were growing more distinct. "They do appear rather . . . formidable, don't they, Captain?"
Winslow grinned wolfishly. "The more I hear you say that, Your Majesty, the less I'm worried about them." He turned to her and explained the seeming paradox. "Remember what I explained earlier about the towering fore- and after-castles the Spaniards still build on their ships? It makes them look bigger than they are—and so, I suppose, serves a purpose by frightening their enemies. But it a
lso ruins the ship's sailing qualities. Heron can sail circles around them. And even Greyhound, old as she is, has been cut down so she has almost as low a freeboard as a newer race-built ship. Our ships never could take full advantage of this when fighting the Armada in the Channel. They weren't dealing with individual ships, but with a rigid, closely spaced formation which they didn't dare penetrate lest they be boarded from both sides." He gazed westward again. "Here, they're not trying to maintain any such defensive mass of ships. They never thought to need it off this desolate coast. That's another advantage for us."
"One advantage you forgot to mention, Thomas," said Dee with a kind of nervous levity. "Their sheer, dumbfounded surprise at two ships daring to challenge them. But of course our real advantage is our possession of the Grella anti-matter weapons."
"Actually, Doctor, I plan to withhold those as long as possible." Winslow's eyes never left the Spanish fleet. "Ah, yes. I see they're detaching three ships to deal with the impudent intruders." He could barely keep from his voice his disdain at the sluggishness with which the Spanish galleons changed course to windward.
"Ah . . . what was that about withholding the Grella weapons, Thomas?" inquired Walsingham. He didn't exactly sound nervous—imagination failed at the idea of him sounding that way—but he kept casting glances at the converging Spanish ships.
"That's right, Mr. Secretary. I don't want to use them until I can use them decisively. I want to penetrate to the core of the Spanish fleet—what our ships were never given the chance to do in the Channel." Winslow had no idea how chilling his expression seemed to the others. "I want to get within range of their flagship and shove one of those weapons up their—" At the last instant, he remembered the Queen's presence and concluded by clearing his throat.
"But, er, Thomas," said Dee, "what about . . . ?" He indicated the approaching Spanish ships, and unlike Walsingham he sounded indisputably jittery.
"Besides," Winslow continued as though he hadn't heard, "I don't think those weapons will be needed just yet. You see, we have a couple of other advantages which I haven't mentioned yet." As he spoke, his eyes remained fixed on the pattern of ships. Greyhound was ahead and off the starboard bow; she would encounter the leading galleon, slightly later than Heron would meet the other two, which were more or less abeam of each other as they struggled to windward.
Winslow shouted a series of commands, and Heron swooped in from upwind, drawing alongside her closer opponent—a twenty-gun galleon, he saw. Her gunwales and castles were agleam with the sun's reflection off breastplates, morions and burganets.
"Overcrowded with soldiers, as usual," he remarked disdainfully. "They still think we're going to let them board us." He turned to his companions, who looked uneasy at their unexpected closeness to the enemy. But the English had learned in the Channel fighting that the long-range gunnery on which they had originally pinned their hopes was a waste of powder and shot; they must close practically to within pistol range for their guns to be effective. He considered suggesting that the Queen seek the relative safety of the cabin, where the ladies-in-waiting now cowered, but then thought better of it. "Prepare yourselves," was all he said.
"What 'other advantages,' are these, Captain?" asked the Queen in a steady voice.
At that moment, the Spaniard's guns fired with a deafening series of crashes. The three landlubbers involuntarily ducked as cannonballs screamed overhead. One of those balls punched a hole in Heron's mainsail, and a few lines were cut, but the broadside had no other effect.
"That's one, Your Majesty," Winslow explained. "It, too, results from our having the weather gauge. The cannons of the lee ship—that's them—are tilted upward, and are apt to completely miss a race-built ship like ours, with its low freeboard. For the same reason, ours are angled down, so . . ." He paused with unconscious drama, studied angles and distances, and bellowed, "Fire!"
Heron shuddered as her port battery belched forth an ear-bruising broadside that crashed into the Spaniard's hull, smashing timbers and visibly rocking her back. Winslow roared another series of orders, sails were luffed, and the shaken Spaniard glided on past.
"Hard a-port!" Winslow shouted to the steersman. With a suddenness that almost threw the Queen and the two elderly landsmen off their feet, Heron swung to port. Her bowsprit barely missed scraping the Spaniard's poop as she crossed her opponent's vulnerable stern.
Heron only had enough gun crews to man one side's battery at a time—the usual case. Now they ran across the decks to the unfired starboard battery.
"Fire as your guns bear!" Winslow called out. As the first gun belched fire and thunder, the Spanish captain's cabin seemed to explode outward in a shower of wood and glass. Then ball after ball smashed home, and Winslow visualized them roaring down the Spaniard's length from stern to stem, smashing everything and everyone in their path. One of them brought the mizzenmast down, and it fell slowly over the starboard side, fouling the mainmast's rigging. Then they were past, and as the wind blew the rotten eggs-smelling clouds of smoke downwind they could see that the galleon was adrift, seemingly out of control.
"We got their rudder, or I'm a Turkish pimp!" exulted Martin Gorham.
"Now hard a-starboard!" Winslow ordered, and the steersman hauled the whipstaff in the opposite direction with all his strength. As Heron came about and began to draw down on the second galleon, the gun crews crossed the deck again and began to reload the port guns.
"Another advantage," Winslow resumed conversationally, ignoring his listeners' stunned looks, "is our gun carriages, which roll back with the guns' recoil until their cables halt them, allowing the crews to reload. The Spaniards, who think only in terms of a single broadside to soften their enemy up before boarding, can't do this. Actually, we couldn't have done it if we'd had to fight a battle on our voyage from England to Virginia, because all the clutter on the gun deck left no room for recoil. But now I've had that cleared away. And this Spaniard—who thinks our port battery has shot its bolt—is about to get a surprise."
As they drew alongside, the wind picked up a bit and both ships heeled more sharply. So this time the Spanish cannonballs flew even further overhead, while Heron's smashed home at or below the waterline. They left their second opponent listing alarmingly to starboard as they turned to port, crossing her bow—unfortunately, there was no time to reload the port battery for another broadside—and leaving her behind, taking on water.
The Queen, Walsingham, Dee and Virginia Dare gazed aft, where the wrecks of two larger ships lay wallowing helplessly in Heron's wake. Then they turned to Winslow and simply stared, openmouthed.
He barely noticed, as he scanned the scene revealed by the dissipating smoke. Ahead, Greyhound was pulling away from the Spanish ship she had raked across the bows, and was converging on the main Spanish body. She would close with that main body slightly sooner than Heron, even though the Spanish were now much closer. Only one of them was in a position to interpose herself between Heron and what Winslow was certain was the flagship.
"Yes," Walsingham nodded when asked for confirmation. "That is the San Martín, the great Portuguese galleon that was the Armada's flagship. I see she is still flying the flag King Phillip had presented to his admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, before he sailed from Lisbon—I received a report of the ceremony." He gazed through squinted eyes at the huge flag. "Yes: the royal Spanish arms with the Virgin Mary on one side and the crucified Christ on the other, over a scroll with the words Exurge Domine et Vindica Causam Tuam—'Arise O Lord and Vindicate Thy Cause.' " Walsingham looked like he wanted to spit.
"Well," said Winslow, "we'll make for her—although Greyhound will be in range first. And I think it's time to reveal our Grella weapons by using one of them on that galleon that's moving to protect the flagship." Heron mounted two of the anti-matter weapons, one forward and one aft. Winslow looked at the fragile, harmless-seeming object that was so obviously out of place on the poop. "Dr. Dee, you'll oblige me by telling me when, in your judgment,
we're in range of her."
"I believe, Thomas, that we will be close enough soon . . . soon . . . now!"
Winslow signaled to the crew on the poop, and a tracery of evil energies wavered up and down that translucent tube. In the sunlight the beam it projected was barely visible or audible—nothing more than a flickering, crackling line. But it speared the approaching galleon like a needle, and at its touch her side simply exploded into white-hot flame with a noise like the crack of doom, followed by a shock wave that caused Heron's timbers to shudder.
But at appreciably the same instant another narrow line of unnatural light shot out from San Martín's forecastle, and Greyhound's entire waist boiled into seething flame, breaking her in two. Her mainmast flew cartwheeling through the air, trailing flame, until it splashed into the sea.
"Steersman!" Winslow bellowed while everyone else stood marbled in shock. "Make for their flagship—two points to port."
Heron, with every inch of canvas laid on, sailed past the flaming wreck of the screening galleon, and approached the Spanish flagship. Winslow could see figures on her quarterdeck, including one very richly dressed one and another that was tiny and gray-robed. He also saw the Grella weapon on the forecastle swinging toward him.