‘I learnt the laws of the land of war.’
‘And?’
‘Why, at the age of sixteen I killed my first man, in a little skirmish somewhere in the Wicklow hills and puked my guts up for half an hour after. By the time I came home, I had lost count of the number of men I had killed, though I could remember every one of their faces, especially the six hundred Spanish prisoners I helped to massacre.’
She winced. His deep Devon burr was quite passionless as he spoke. ‘Why did you kill them if they had surrendered?’
He showed his teeth. ‘Because we could neither feed them nor guard them safely. I would do it again tomorrow.’
She waited.
‘Your Majesty, there are no half-measures in war. If we fight the Spaniard, we must fight him until we win, no matter how much it costs or what is destroyed. If Whitehall burns, we can rebuild it. When men die, there will be others willing to fight. But only if we fight to win.’
‘Water, answer me truthfully. Can we win, against Parma and his tercios, now?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty, we can. He’s a man like any other. But only if you will lead us, only if you will do as you said at Tilbury and again yesterday at St Paul’s and be our Warrior Queen. If you have not the stomach for it, Madam, then let us save time and much blood and surrender. I myself will ride down to Parma with your terms, if you order it. I am your liegeman and I will do it.’
He was staring at her, not boldly, more than that. As if she were a man and he had just challenged her to a duel. Mind, it had pleased her to be called a Warrior Queen. Which, she knew, was why he had used the phrase. He understood her and she understood him.
Yesterday, or the day before, she thought it was, she had spoken just as Ralegh had. She had gone on horseback, wearing the white velvet and the silver gorget of Tilbury, her father’s ruby-studded poniard on her belt, surrounded by her young men in red. The criers had announced her, the people of London had flocked to the place, terrified by rumour, by the panic at the Royal Exchange. For the King of Spain had now released the gift of a million gold ducats promised by the Pope, to be paid when Spanish troops set foot in England. Elizabeth’s credit was gone to nothing. The rich merchants of London had been fleeing down to their ships with as much wealth as they could carry.
She had stood in the pulpit at the St Paul’s preaching place, where no woman had stood before, and she had spoken to her people ex tempore, her voice lent wings by pure rage. She had told them the bald truth: Parma had landed, the trained bands under her beloved Earl would set out to stop them and with God’s will, would do it. But if he lost the battle, then London would fall.
Never would she forget the sucked-in breath, the visceral groan. Only the fact that they knew her and knew she loved them had kept them quiet, still standing there.
She could not rightly remember what she had said: she had called for anything they could give her, their plate, their jewels, their money. Keep your weapons, she said, you shall need them. I have given Mr David Becket the Captainship of the Rearguard and as you love me, you shall do as he says. Those who would leave and have a place to go, gather up every horse, every cart, every bale of hay, every peck of flour, every herd from the fields, take everything north and west. She had paused for a beat, taken breath, words came to her from somewhere.
‘Be sure that God is watching us and will be with us. Be sure that we will fight the Spaniard, I, Elizabeth, shall be your Captain and I myself shall fight him. We shall fight him wherever he goes. We shall fight him in the noonday and at midnight. When he lies down to sleep, we shall fight him and when he wakes to march, we shall fight him. Never ever will we give in.’
They had growled and the growl had turned into a cheer. She waited since there was more to say, and they fell silent. She had said, ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King and a King of England too…’ They had interrupted her with another cheer at that and she had held up her hand so she could continue, fury lifting the words into her mouth. ‘Proud Parma shall most bitterly rue the day he entered upon this my realm of England. This shall be his grave and all his soldiers with him. For I am Queen under God of a mighty and valiant people and we shall prevail!’
By God, how they had roared and cheered for her, she had shaken with the power of their love and anger for her, so she had almost been lifted up by it. The ordinary people brought her cartloads of plate, barrels full of jewels, their sons to fight. And die.
But that was the day before yesterday and now she looked down the hill onto ruin and disaster. Parma was raping her land.
The red-clad men of her guard were close around her, so few, and starting to look nervous. After all, she knew she might have left it too late, that for all Mr Becket’s soldierly skill, Parma would have sent the fastest riders he could find up the road to capture her. In the past three days she had sent her women by boat to Oxford with her older courtiers, all the treasure that was left and, God help her, Lord Treasurer Burghley to command them in her absence, in the certain knowledge that he would do absolutely nothing. He seemed a broken man, blinking and staring, quite abstracted. As well he might be, the treacherous bastard.
Ralegh was still staring at her. ‘What of it, Your Majesty?’ he asked softly. ‘Shall we surrender?’
‘I never thought to hear you say that.’
Ralegh did an extraordinary thing. He moved his horse close enough to put his hand on her arm. She felt the weight of it, heavy, more intimate than she was used to, bringing back memories of her youth.
‘I wish to God I had been born twenty years earlier,’ whispered Ralegh, ‘for then … then I might have been your King and Parma would never have landed.’
She smiled at this outrageous insolence. ‘Are you so sure you would have been my King?’
‘Oh yes. Very sure.’ Ralegh had bowled over her maids of honour like so many overdressed ninepins, perhaps he had a right to be sure. He smiled, more like a wolf than a lover. ‘As for Leicester, I would have called him out over you, if need be, and killed him too. But you, Elizabeth, you I would have taken to my bed.’
He went too far, much, much too far, as he often did. Once she would have had him in the Tower for less.
But both of the other two men who had ever called her Elizabeth were dead: one by execution when she was fifteen; the other, Leicester, now lay on a field near Dartford, perhaps the crows had had his eyes already. Unless Parma had put his head on a pole to frighten her with. They said he had died well, after a disastrously stupid piece of generalship had trapped his men between the Spaniards and the River Dart. She had heard that when the trained bands of London ran in horror from the musketry and ordnance of the tercios of Lombardy, he had roared and thrashed about him with his sword, trying to get them to stand, until a better aimed ball knocked him off his horse and completed the rout.
Leicester, unlike Ralegh, had been a stupid man.
Elizabeth smiled at the Captain of her Guard. I am fifty-five and will never have a child. ‘Water,’ she said, still softly, ‘why do you think I sent my lord of Leicester out to fight Parma?’
‘I had believed it was because you did not like my advice.’
‘Your military advice was the best. But I know more than that. I sent Leicester to fight and die to get him safely martyred and to wake the English up. And he did gain us an extra day. Do you think I wanted him as my General in Chief? Good God, man, I had rather have Will Kemp. Now, will you be my General?’
His eyes darkened and his hand on her arm gripped tight enough to hurt. ‘Yes, Elizabeth.’
‘I too understand the laws of the land of war,’ she said as she disengaged him and turned her horse away from the lost world of London. Then she checked and turned again, to look one more time.
God knows, I will have Parma’s guts. He shall be defeated by a mere heretic woman and every last Spaniard in this my blessed land shall die.
Ralegh watched, concerned. The men of her guard als
o looked, their eyes whitened by a fear that none of them could admit. Ah, they were worried because her lips had drawn back from her teeth in a visceral and unbecoming snarl.
Elizabeth stripped off her left glove and held it up so they could see it, then flung it down the hill towards London. The defiance made them blink.
* * *
In the morning, Becket sat by the window holding his head and staring out at the flood of people walking up Gray’s Inn Lane to the farms and fields and market gardens where they worked. It was certain sure he was mad. To be having such dreams, to believe in his sleep that he was the Queen – well, he supposed some might find it funny but he did not. He wished he could talk to his friend Simon about it, who might have some ingenious explanation for him, composed of Cabbala and Euclid, no doubt, with a sprinkling of Lucretius.
Thank God, some of it was fading now. He could return to his more familiar worries about the repercussions from the various reports he had made and delivered: Burghley’s idiocy and perfidy in still selling ordnance abroad; Piers Lammett’s information; the death of Van Groenig the mapmaker. Dread sat in the pit of his belly like a squat ugly toad, refusing to leave. Everything he did required double effort, not just against weariness and aqua vitae, but against the feeling that it was all completely hopeless. To become a prophet, to see the world as it would be in fire and blood when Parma had landed … Why? Why should he have such dreams and not the Queen herself, for Christ’s sake, why couldn’t she have the bloody things and not him? He had enough to contend with in just living. The last thing he wanted was to live another nocturnal life as the Queen of England, nor yet her bloody Captain. Although he did think he would make a good fist at such an office, but still …
He rubbed his eyes, groaned and gulped his first drink of the day. Half an hour later he sat at table with his brother, munching tasteless manchet bread and cheese for breakfast. A boy came with a letter for him. Philip was trying to make light conversation about the prospects for planting apricots along the south-facing wall of the house and how Eleanor was set upon it if he could but get the plants and he had heard that my lord Burghley …
Dr Nunez had invited them to dinner. Like most things, the invitation filled him with forboding, but Philip was interested and honoured at being bidden to the table of the Earl of Leicester’s own physician. They spent the morning viewing Becket’s property in Hanging Sword Court and Philip’s lawyer, Peregrine Howard, murmured that he had heard that one of the Queen’s greatest courtiers might be interested in making a purchase if the right price could be agreed … Then they strolled sightseeing along Cheapside, past the goldsmiths’ windows, while Becket fought his ghostly impressions of Spanish troops marching in triumph down the centre of it. Philip was delighted with all of it, as ever.
They both knew there had been some kind of catastrophe as soon as they entered the Nunez house in Poor Jewry. Leonora Nunez had clearly been crying, the servants were scurrying about looking grim and when Dr Nunez came to welcome them, his face was drawn as if he had not had a good night’s sleep for a week.
Becket took his hand. ‘What’s happened, Doctor?’ he asked, low and urgent.
‘It’s Simon,’ said Nunez simply. ‘We have had news of him at last.’
‘Not shipwrecked?’
Nunez shook his head. ‘Worse than shipwrecked,’ he said.
What was worse than that? Becket was about to ask when Nunez noticed Philip and collected himself, was introduced, they made their bows and Philip continued looking about himself with wonder at the richness of the house and its indefinable air of foreignness. It was not only from the complex Turkey rugs on the walls and the plate on display and the finely tiled floors with not a trace of rushes, but even the smell was somehow foreign. He tried to hide his wonder as best he could, almost as impressed at the way Becket seemed to know the reverend doctor.
Nunez showed them into a parlour where a woman sat all in black, her face hidden by a black veil, and next to her stood the most extraordinary large Negress, looming as tall as Becket himself, wearing a man’s tawny suit with the doublet straining open under the pressure from her magnificent breasts, a man’s hat with a feather on her woolly head and a very businesslike shortsword on her belt. Her arms were folded and she gave back stare for stare as if she were very amused by them. Philip felt his mouth drop open and was a little comforted that Becket was staring too.
‘Gentlemen, may I present Mrs Rebecca Anriques, my nephew’s wife.’
Becket set his jaw and sat down heavily at the parlour table, rested his forearms on the finely worked pink and grey silk rug laid on it, clasped his hands. Simon’s wife was clearly in mourning. Nunez sighed and sat opposite, Philipp drew up one of the stools.
‘Mr Becket … I shall begin at the beginning,’ said Dr Nunez sadly. ‘Late last summer my nephew Simon went to the Slave Coast with iron, cloth and some guns and there bought slaves.’
No movement from the Negress at all, though presumably this was where she had come from. Philip was having terrible trouble keeping his eyes from a woman wearing breeches like a man, but Becket was intent on the doctor.
‘From there he went to Cartagena in New Spain and loaded sugar. Thence, after Christmas, he travelled to Lisbon. And at Lisbon—’
‘He was taken by the Inquisition?’ interrupted Becket hollowly. The doctor nodded.
There was a short, flat silence while Philip looked from one to another, trying to be as serious as they were and all the time thinking how strange to be only a few days from Middleton and speaking of the Inquisition, of New Spain, looking at a Negress in breeches …
‘Is there anything we can do?’ Becket asked. ‘Can he be bought out?’
‘In normal times, yes,’ said Nunez, ‘with the Queen’s help, which she would give, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s possible that if they have finished interrogating him, they might relax him to the secular arm and in these times of war, he might then be sentenced to hard labour and then we might be able…’
Becket sat back, utterly appalled. Unconsciously he was rubbing the scars on his wrists. Simon, with his arms like reeds and his legs like willow twigs, put to the question, sentenced to hard labour? Impossible. It would kill him for certain. Probably already had.
‘Oh Doctor. Mrs Ames … um … Anriques.’ He didn’t know what to say, how to tell them of the sorrow filling his heart. Poor Simon. He was brave, a great deal tougher then he looked, Jesus, it would be so hard for him. He turned to the veiled woman. ‘Mistress, if there is anything I can … if I may serve…’ He paused, swallowed hard, spoke more firmly. ‘If it were not for your husband, Mrs Anriques, I would have died last year. I am sure Dr Nunez is far more able than I am in anything of this kind, but if there is any service I may do you, please only say so.’
Mrs Anriques tilted her head graciously. ‘Thank you, Mr Becket,” she said and her voice was quite calm. ‘My husband spoke often of you and his respect for your courage and abilities and his pleasure in your friendship. I am sure that you will be able to help me.’
‘How?’
‘Perhaps we should wait,’ said Nunez with a warning sound in his voice.
‘What do you have in mind, Doctor?’
‘Not I, it is none of my devising, indeed, I think very little of the scheme, but … no. I will wait to hear your decision. Mistress de Paris will be here to conduct you to a … meeting.’
‘Thomasina?’ Becket smiled. ‘And how is she?’
‘Much as usual. She seems not to age at all. I would give a great deal to know if she has ever had her menses, but…’
It was a determined change of subject and Becket went with it. Philip could hardly believe his ears at such talk. The whole thing was too strange to imagine. He would spend two pennies on paper and write a very long letter to Eleanor tonight. Good Lord, he had never even seen a Negro before and now here was one standing near enough to touch, and a woman wearing men’s clothes as well.
Were the blacks reversed? Perhaps their men were the weak and gentle ones and their women the ones who fought? Certainly, looking her over, Philip felt he would prefer not to fight the Negress. Did she speak English? Could she talk? Did she have a tail? What was she thinking as she stood there impassively by her mistress with her arms folded?
He stared as frankly as a boy without the least idea of what he was doing, until the Negress caught his eye and winked at him.
He blushed beetroot colour and looked away. Mistress Nunez came to join them, followed by servants carrying silver dishes full of delicious-smelling food, lamb in saffron, salt beef with mustard sauce, potherbs and little pasties full of new cheese. The wine was excellent too. Philip concentrated on drinking and eating as much as he could while the conversation passed to the likely composition of the Spanish Enterprise against England and the ladies spoke quietly in a foreign language Philip supposed to be Portuguese.
Nunez had a new book that he invited Becket to look at and when Philip looked as well, he realised it was in foreign. Becket could read it and said that it was published by the King of Spain for to frighten the English. It was an account of the composition of the Invincible Armada; lists of ships and their tonnage along with armaments and men.
Becket turned the pages quickly, grunting to himself. ‘One hundred and fifty ships including the galleys, which will sink. They must have scraped up every hulk in Spain and Portugal. They are short of ordnance like us, it seems,’ he said. ‘And look at all the soldiers they’re boasting of. They’ll have trouble watering that lot.’
‘We had word recently that the Duke of Parma has taken the mouth of the Rhine and it’s true that Admiral Santa Cruz died last month.’
‘It’s true?’ Becket boomed a grim laugh. ‘Why, that’s wonderful. Best news I’ve heard for a long time. Who will command instead?’
‘I would imagine that the Duke of Medina Sidonia is the only grandee senior enough with the right experience, if he can be got to take the office. He is said to be very timid.’
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