Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  ‘You have woman?’ asked Snake and Simon told him about Rebecca, had to admit that he only had the one wife so far, told of his children and found that Snake intended to marry at least five different women and keep them well-fed so they could be soft and fat and delightful to bury oneself in. When he was King. For Snake intended to be King, he would get free of this cold northland, he would go south until he found his tribelands and he would kill the King who had drugged him and sold him last summer and take his wives. With or without his upside-down mother’s help, he would do this. And when he was a King, Simon could come and be his advisor and cunning-man. It was clearly either destiny and the world-snake’s favour that had brought them together, or possibly Snake’s strange and powerful mother had persuaded a couple of gods to do the work. But one way or another, Snake would be King. It was quite certain. The only question was how would he escape from the temporary hindrance of the galleas so he could begin his journey south.

  Simon had not the heart to douse Snake’s hopefulness in cold reality. He found it warming to be next to the young man, as if his soul could blink in Snake’s light.

  Snake had not the faintest idea where they were going or why and didn’t care. When Simon tried haltingly to explain about Catholicism and Protestantism, Snake just laughed and shook his head at the barbarism of the northern ghost-peoples, to think that anyone knew all there was to know about any god. Surely there was a better reason for so much effort and war? Was England a fair country? Were the women there plump and beautiful? Were the men hard workers? Simon said that it was a fair country, even if the place was a bit cold and wet, the women were certainly sometimes beautiful and some of the men could work hard. Snake nodded wisely and said that it was a perfectly sensible war if you could take a rich farmland and some strong slaves, why not? He would do the same when he was King, if his adviser said he was strong enough and had enough guns and magic powder to make it easy. And he clapped Simon on the back and laughed.

  * * *

  In Corunna port, time passed slowly, the food was scanty, the water better because not from a half-rotten cask. There was work being done above by riggers, they could hear the shouts and hammering.

  And then … And then it happened.

  There had been the tramping up and down, the creaking, the shouts, that spoke of more people coming aboard from the quay. Padron’s voice had been among them. Then the hatch was unbolted, and Padron came down the companionway, his whip curled snake-like around his great fist. Behind him were skirts first, moving uncertainly, then a tight bodice, then a veil draped around a woman’s head.

  Simon stared at her, not breathing. She was exactly Rebecca’s size, exactly Rebecca’s build. Her face … he couldn’t see her face. Unaware of himself, he snuffed in air, actually sniffed for her like a dog. Yes. He thought it might be … Behind her came a tall, one-armed man who seemed familiar, couldn’t quite place him …

  He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t bear it. He stood up, caught the Padron’s expression of complete disapproval, and reached for the hatch, to lift it up and bolt it out of the way, to get more air and light into the oardeck, perhaps penetrate that cursed veil. Just in time he remembered his nakedness, hid himself coyly with his hand.

  She had one hand on the one-armed man’s good arm. It was small, fine-boned, a little brown, the nails round, the rings on it … One was her mother’s. One was his own ring, given to him from his mother’s inheritance by his father when he got married. Given by him to Rebecca under the marriage-tent, when they were still strangers to each other.

  Without even realising it, he bowed formally, as he would naturally do when seeing his wife after a long separation. She curtseyed to him.

  It was ridiculous. It was outrageous. What in the name of Sheol was she doing here? How could she put herself in danger after her miraculous escape? He was hot with anger and shame. Almighty help him, his own wife was deliberately putting herself in the gaze of two hundred and fifty-two naked men to find him … Simon sat down again, shaking all over.

  Snake gripped his shoulder and looked from Rebecca to him and back again. ‘Is it…?’ he whispered.

  ‘Shut up,’ hissed Simon desperately. ‘Shh.’

  There was a grave conference about the gun that had escaped. The one-armed man spoke Dutch with an accent … He was … damn it, who was he? They had met years ago, back in the days when a quite different Simon had been Rackmaster Norton’s most effective inquisitor. They had looked out from the Tower walls and spoken of the fall of Haarlem … Anthony Fant? But where was Becket? Surely, it was Becket who had brought Rebecca to find him … No, Becket would never be such a fool. And where was Merula?

  ‘Your mother…’ he whispered. ‘Your mother serves m … her, that woman.’

  Rebecca was translating fluently from Dutch to Spanish and back again, though he could see how she herself was trembling under the concealment of her veil and heavy gown. You could see it in the glitter of the jewel on her breast, in the way her hands gripped and let go of each other. Her voice was soft and a little textured, as if cobblestones were in it.

  Simon couldn’t look anymore, he couldn’t bear to see Rebecca there, surrounded by the galley-slaves, some of them were so dead to shame they were showing their desire for her, they pointed at her with their ugly, naked members and leered …

  Simon wanted to throttle each of them for disrespect, he was sick with rage, his hands clamped together and he put his face on his knees so he wouldn’t see the disrespect, the ugly desire made manifest. Even he was feeling it, the shock of a woman’s presence, Rebecca who could make him helpless with desire for her just by walking past him … He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his palm and writhed with it all.

  Snake’s voice was in his ear. ‘Look up,’ said the man, face casual, eyes sharp and intent. ‘Watch. You want Padron to know?’

  Heart hammering with fear for Rebecca again, metal in the back of his mouth, Simon looked up, tried not to be there, tried to keep his face blank. They were there for hours, aeons, and Simon stared at her, looking away, felt sweat actually trickling down his back with the sheer effort of keeping still and acting like all the other men. The soldier was muttering lewdness about her to his benchmates who guffawed stupidly. I may not punch him, said Simon to himself, who had never been troubled by such rage in his life. I may not punch him. Thank the Almighty, not all of the men were as entranced by Rebecca as he was – Padron in particular was frowning with heavy disapproval.

  At last the two of them went away and Simon sagged against Snake’s solid back. Almighty help him, he had tears standing in his eyes. He stared at the deck, let them fall. If you didn’t rub tears away, your eyes didn’t get red and so no one would know. Snake’s hand was on his shoulder, gripping hard enough to hurt.

  ‘Good,’ said Snake. ‘Good.’

  ‘Why is she here?’ Simon whispered to him. ‘Why take such a risk? Oh God…’ His stomach started churning again. What if she was discovered? What if she was captured? His mind began restlessly bringing up horrible possibilities, more and more of them, each mutually exclusive of course, but still … It was like a fever in his blood, seeing Rebecca, actually seeing her with his eyes, not imagining her, as if the beams of light from his eyes that helped him to see took small particles of her flesh back into him and made him mad.

  ‘She come find you,’ said Snake simply. ‘As my mother come find me. You come find her? No? If she taken by Arabs, you find her, no?’

  Simon nodded, wondering if he would be able to do it, and then thinking that yes, damn it, he would. If Rebecca was in such a case, of course he would come after her.

  ‘All the slaves we take,’ he said to Snake, forgetting he hadn’t explained about his slave-trading. ‘Why don’t their families come for them?’

  Snake laughed. ‘All dead, of course,’ he said.

  * * *

  The next day brought great entertainment. From dawn the riggers and the carpenters were busy, and after th
e oardeck had been flushed out in the morning, the hatch at the amidships was raised as the slaves below were squinting and blinking at the sunlight coming through the square hole in the deck. Soldiers with calivers stood at the corners, ostentatiously coughing and gasping at the smell. Snake cheered at the sight of direct sunlight after so long, even Simon was entranced by the buttery yellow light lying on the stained deck, even though he was not directly under it. To see the blue sky and clouds above, even filtered through the busy tracery of rope and the extra rigging being built, to see gulls flying made his heart ache. It could have been heartburn, of course, there had been no food that morning.

  The carpenters came to bolt down the guns and make them fast against recoil. Two more heavy guns were being added on both sides. Anthony Fant came down the companionway to supervise the matter and Simon craned his neck just like all the others to see if he had brought his wife with him. No, he hadn’t. Thank the Almighty.

  He heard a hiss and looked sideways to the oarport, and saw another face he knew: small, round, childlike but not childish … Thomasina!

  He was so shocked to see her, he nearly gasped her name. She stared at him blankly, winked once and then stuck her tongue out, before pulling back. He forced himself to count to twenty before he moved casually to blink out of the oarport at the gunner’s gallery. It was a little higher than the oarports because the gunners had to be able to move unobstructed along it, but if he craned his neck he could just see …

  Only the edge of her skirts, only her feet in their small boots, a tiny peep of petticoat … Once she looked down at him, once, over the edge of the gallery and the shock of their eyes meeting was like a mallet on his chest-bone. She said nothing, only her face became ferocious and when he smiled from the sheer joy of seeing her, she simply nodded to him.

  Other men’s heads were sticking out of the oarports as far as they could: word had gone round that the woman was on the gunner’s gallery. Simon saw Thomasina swinging from the gallery on a rope and throwing water onto the stubbled bald heads from a dripping swabber’s rag. They tried to grab her but she shrieked with laughter and swung herself back up to the gallery, singing something nonsensical at the top of her voice.

  All that day the carpenters hammered and sawed and drove bolts. One at a time the sakers were lowered into the oardeck by the heavy cranes, shifted across to their trucks at the gunports, hauled into place with a couple of benches of the slaves ordered to heave on lines to help, and carefully made fast there. Rebecca stayed on the gunners’ gallery, calling out translations as needed, with Thomasina running up and down, climbing ratlines and generally making a nuisance of herself.

  Simon was glad. The Padrons beat the slaves away from the oarports when they craned to look at her. Mostly his wife was hidden away from evil thoughts and worse bodies. He didn’t think he could bear to look at her all day again and not touch her, not embrace her.

  At the end of the day, they all had to stand by the bench, legs apart, hands held out and mouth wide open. The Padrons came along the lines of men looking in mouths, occasionally rummaging in crotches. Only one man had been stupid enough to think he could steal something – a file, found by their own Padron, who grinned wolfishly and gave the shaking slave the choice of no front teeth or a lashing.

  They were ordered to watch while the blacksmith came to put manacles on the man’s wrists, while Padron hooked the chain up high and beat the man all around his upper body, so it looked as if he was wearing a doublet of red and blue welts. Simon watched in sick fascination, every blow making his own skin twitch, and the Padron’s careful aim and thoroughness as frightening as his clear enjoyment of it.

  The Padron came to talk to him afterwards, and Simon was bold enough to ask him why he had taken such care to make it impossible for the man to sleep. He got a lecture on how hard it was to kill a man and how they would all listen to his groans and remember not to try to escape. It made perfect sense to Simon, who had himself used the groans of one man to gain a confession from another, but of course he could not say this nor commend the Padron for his attention to detail. He could only nod. Padron left him with a big smile and a knowing look, which anyone could see and which frightened Simon again. He felt sick again with relief when the Padron took himself off up the steps and away from the oardeck. Perhaps he had gone to spend his pay ashore.

  It was when he shut and bolted the oarport that it happened. As he pushed the bolt across, something fell down, clattered into the gulley. At first he thought it was only a stone or a bit of wood from the carpentry earlier, but when he squinted at the thing, it was a tube, not very big, smooth-ended …

  Simon kept his face blank, didn’t even dare swallow. In any case his mouth was dry. It must have been there all day, since Thomasina peeked in … He squatted over the gulley, strained as if constipated, palmed the small metal thing. Not in his mouth, not after it had been in that gulley … He simply kept it palmed in his left hand, sick and sweaty with fright. Thank the Almighty that the Padron was not there, only his junior was keeping an eye on them. There had been some black bread and olives at noon and there would be nothing more until the next noon, so everyone was constipated. Nobody was bothering to look at him.

  He curled up next to Snake, turned to the hull, where the planks of wood in all their dullness climbed up the side, every one more familiar to him than his own bed at home. He waited, vibrating with tension, until night had fallen, when the oardeck was dark and as full of noise as usual, whispers, farts, snoring, the dry sobbing of the man who had been beaten and his constant changes of position as he tried to find a comfortable way of sleeping, the coarse rumbling of the soldier having some kind of dirty argument with the peasant.

  When his eyes had adjusted, Simon cupped the metal thing in his hands, brought it close to his face, found that it unscrewed. A bit of paper wrapped around the metal dropped out. The metal was a knife: sharp on one side, saw-edged on the other, it could screw deeply into the tube so it had a hilt. It was a gift … priceless, too high-priced. What would Padron do to him if he was found with it?

  Fingers trembling, Simon unrolled the paper. He had to screw up his eyes to make out the tiny letters:

  Beloved

  I am on San Salvador. The words Francis wanted to tell you are: the third part of the Armada is the Miracle of Beauty. Becket had a message about it too. Nobody understands this. I will try to make sure San Lorenzo is taken by the English. Stay alive. I love you.

  She had signed it only with their crest, a unicorn goring a book, in itself an ambiguous symbol, intended to give the Queen pause. As quickly as he could, Simon put the blade back inside its tube, screwed it together, chewed and swallowed the paper …

  ‘What do you say, little clerk?’ The soldier was laughing at him again. The soldier often did so, made no secret of his opinion that the Padron would soon have his way with Simon. There were in fact bets of individual olives being placed on how long it would take, by the soldier, the peasant and the black who had replaced the skinny young man.

  Simon wedged the little knife in a gap between bench and deck, lifted himself up again. ‘What?’ he whispered irritably.

  ‘We were wondering which would squeal louder, marrano? You or the gunner’s tight little cunt of a wife.’

  ‘What?’ The word came out as a hiss because rage was constricting his throat. Snake heard the tone and sat up too. By her message, Rebecca had brought herself here, invisibly, into the oardeck again. Irrationally, it felt to him as if the soldier was calling his wife ‘cunt’ to her face.

  ‘When Padron finally gets his prick up you, marrano, and gives you a new and silent fart. Which will squeal louder, you or the gunner’s cunt?’

  It was as if some invisible wall came down between him and the world, between his usual sensible self and a part of himself he had never met before. He launched himself at the soldier, fists flailing, the chain not quite short enough to stop him. He got one punch in with his left hand, before Snake was in the w
ay, pushing him back, saying soothing things to him in broken Portuguese, which he couldn’t understand because his brain was boiling with black anger that any stinking galley-slave should call his wife by that word.

  The soldier had his fists up now, laughing at him, inviting him to try again.

  Simon was in the grip of something totally new: his mind was cold, there were no longer any rules or fears. The soldier had to die. He found he could move very fast, the world around him was slow and unimportant. He brought his knee up and cracked Snake with his elbow, pushed past him. Something hit him in the eye, making sparks, somebody gripped him around the chest and quite calmly he cupped his hands, clapped them hard on the soldier’s ears. When the grip loosened he dug with his elbow again and then turned, ignoring the flailing fists, reached up and grabbed the back of the man’s bald head and his nose, shoved him down at the bench, shoved again, and finally got what he was aiming at the third time, he cracked the man’s gullet on the edge of the bench and heard the satisfying crunch.

  The soldier dropped to the deck. Snake pulled him back again and Simon found he was gasping, sweating, his face hurt. But now the Padrons were gathering, flailing with their whips, shouting at each other to bring water to throw. The end of a whip stung his flank, he hardly noticed it, shuddering in breath and staring as the soldier jack-knifed and clutched his throat and rattled and flopped like a fish and fought to die while he slowly drowned in his own blood. His benchmates were staring at him, muttering to each other, frightened of him now. They had liked and respected the soldier, the man who called him marrano, who laughed at him. Who was dead.

  I killed him, Simon thought. Me, I killed him, myself. Intentionally. Because he insulted my wife. How did I do that? he wondered, bewildered, thinking of himself still as the skinny, scholarly code-breaker and student of Cabbala, not the sinewy, blank-faced clerk that the other slaves knew.

  Still partly entranced, he stood and watched and when Padron came back and throttled him until he answered with his reasons, he answered steadily and quite forgot what he had hidden under the bench, the thing that would certainly cause Padron to kill him.