Simon put his face in his hands and tried very hard not to sob. He knew his shoulders were shaking. One part of him said, what does it matter, it’s only my arse he wants, not my soul. I need food. Another part, the devil, said, kill him next time he comes near, he won’t expect it and it will be easy, and another part wrung its hands like a child and wanted to know, why me? Almighty, why me?
Snake patted his shoulder, said nothing reproachful about losing his own ration.
In the night Simon lay unsleeping, wrapped around the knot of his belly, alternating between dreaming of food and trying not to think at all. There was a stir and clinking further along the bench, all along it, stealthy covert movement. A moment later, Snake sat up on his elbow, then turned over to face Simon. His face was lit up by his smile.
‘Look,’ he said, and gave Simon a handful of figs and raisins.
Simon crammed them into his mouth quickly, his mouth aching with the flood of spit. ‘Where…?’ he asked. Snake pointed his thumb over his shoulder where the peasant and the other black, the cavernous cougher and the replacement for the willowy boy peered back at him. Simon wanted to thank them, but could think of no way of doing it except by knuckling his forehead and lying down to chew and swallow. It was not enough, it was never enough, but it was better than nothing at all.
He still couldn’t sleep though. He had to revise his plans for escape. He couldn’t leave all of them when him and Snake broke free, they would be killed for it.
His mind chewed away on the problem, dipping in and out of sleep like a swallow snatching flies from the surface of a pond. Calais, the Miracle was Calais.
* * *
The next day they did a little rowing, just enough to stop them stiffening up as Padron explained. There was only biscuit to eat and only at midday. Simon thought that he and Snake would go without again, but Padron came up to them and told Snake to put his hands out. Snake got the same double handful of biscuit that the others on the bench had got. Simon stared stonily past Padron’s left ear as Padron stood in front of him with his bag of biscuit.
‘Do you want to eat, clerk?’ asked Padron.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Simon haughtily.
‘Kneel down.’
Simon stared into his eyes, incredulous. Padron took the whip he had under his arm as always and shook it out. ‘Kneel.’
Simon knelt, slowly, clearing the chain out of the way, legs on either side of the bolt he had been working on.
‘Open your mouth.’
Simon stared up at Padron, rippling muscles at a strange angle, moustache like an animal hanging on Padron’s hooked nose.
‘Don’t be afraid, clerk.’ It was impossible not to be afraid at that contemptuous tone.
Simon opened his mouth, ready to bite hard if need be.
Padron put a piece of biscuit in, popping it in like a priest giving communion. Simon chewed, swallowed, a very small part of him demanding that he proudly spit it out and a much larger, more practical part of him insisting that this was food and why waste it? Padron gave him all the ration like that, occasionally teasing by holding the biscuit just a little out of reach, as you might tease a dog. Like a dog, Simon drooled because he couldn’t help it. The silence, broken by nervous giggles from the peasant, made the ceremony worse. At last it was finished.
‘Did you enjoy your meal, clerk?’ asked the Padron.
‘The biscuit was good,’ said Simon after a moment, with a lawyerly care. The Padron snorted, stepped back and brought the whip slashing across Simon’s face, whiting out the oardeck.
He found himself already on his feet, his fists bunched, Snake’s shoulder blocking him from going after the Padron.
‘No,’ said Snake, quite quietly, in a voice that broke through Simon’s rage. ‘Later.’
‘You are too stiff-necked to live, clerk,’ said Padron.
‘Quiet,’ hissed Snake still blocking him, until Padron had turned on his heel and walked back up the bench, past the other slaves who were silent.
Simon’s rage faded, leaving him sweating and shaking and wrung out, with a long burning pain in his chest. The biscuit lay on his stomach, making him feel sick for hours. As the slow warm day passed and the Armada wallowed its way past the English coast at the pace of the slowest hulk in this lightest of airs, he sat on the bench, or curled up under it, silent. Snake examined the long whip cut that marked his face on the diagonal and tutted.
‘Now is not good time for become a warrior,’ he said.
The next day, it was still half light when Simon woke again, knowing from the brighter heel and lift of the deck under him that there was wind. Only a little time later, he heard the banging and crashing of fighting, lifted the oarport hatch a little way and peered out at the toy ships blowing smoke puffs at each other. He couldn’t see well enough to know who they were. Only the speed of the banging told him that the English were fighting.
There was a scurry on deck: the heavy hatches were being lifted, gunners came down the ladders, cloths over their faces, and boarding nets laid over the openings, the sailors were manning the yards to set the sails to catch the easterly breeze.
Simon looked out of the oarport again. More smoke blew in from the battle over the southern horn of the Armada crescent.
A trumpet blew. Simon turned to find Padron already bringing biscuit and a water skin to his rowers, waited his turn. He expected no water either this morning, but Padron put a double handful of biscuit into his hands, let him gulp his fill of the flat slightly sour water. It was as if the past few days had not happened. Simon kept his expression cold. Padron said, ‘We will be in battle soon, Don Hugo announced it. Here, take these, look out the port for me and tell me what you see.’
A pair of pince-nez spectacles were pressed into Simon’s hands and, with his hands trembling, he put them on. They weren’t as good as his own, but they were better than nothing at all. He looked again at the battle to the south and saw the individual sails, the low race-built galleons frisking about the rearguard Spaniards.
‘I see the English fighting the Spaniards,’ he said. ‘The English are better sailors and faster with their guns.’
Padron brushed his moustache. ‘We will be attacking some English ships that have got stuck near the headland over there.’
Simon barely had time to gulp down his biscuit before the order came to put out the oars, and take hold. He took hold, already lightheaded, his chest already tight in anticipation of the gunsmoke.
Using sails and oars, the four galleases of Hugo de Moncada’s squadron bore down on the five English ships that had dropped anchor to avoid going aground on Portland Bill in the light easterly breeze of the morning. For the first time, the Armada had the weather gauge on the English. San Lorenzo was in the van, the other three in line abreast.
Simon stared at the oar, the pattern of the wood and knotholes that he knew as intimately as his wife’s skin, that he suspected he would be able to remember on his deathbed – assuming this oar was not to be where he died.
Snake was singing again beside him, very softly, a slow chant that lifted the stubbly hairs on Simon’s neck. The snake on his right arm pulsed with his muscles and Simon settled into the rhythm of it, let his body become a thing with a will of its own. Which it had. It wasn’t different from himself, no matter how separated his thoughts felt.
Simon was too intent on rowing to realise that the larboard row of oars had been ordered to back water, they were swinging round. As they did the fore guns roared, and then one after another the upperdeck guns fired, and the fifty-pounders between the banks of oars fired. Once again the oardeck was full of smoke, once again he was rowing with all his might in a fog of grey stink and air starvation, his muscles cramping into knots and sweat dripping from his face. They rowed forwards, backed. The galleas was being twirled around the English ships like a dancer. So far, no answering fire.
They rowed again, one stroke, two strokes.
‘Clerk, what do you see? Can we
board?’
Simon looked past the flank of the oar through the oarport and saw the English ship, near enough to see the guns pointing through the gun ports, the men on the rigging.
‘No, too far…’
His hoarse voice was lost in the roar of the English guns, one after another. There was a crash, another crash, shrieking towards the aft of the ship. Simon looked over his shoulder and saw that an oarport had been broken by a cannon ball, splinters sticking out of the nearest rowers making them look like bloody hedgehogs. Another roar, more crashing, more shrieking. Simon stared open-mouthed at one of the rowers behind him, who had a splinter sticking out of his eye and was still rowing.
‘Stroke!’ shouted Padron. ‘Back water.’ They couldn’t fire in return yet because the gunners had to go out on the gallery to reload the guns. First they had to get out of range of caliver and arquebus shot. Above them there was a peppery clatter of handgun-fire. Simon was looking directly into the mouth of a gun, almost on a level. Smoke was coming from it, thank the Almighty it had fired without harming him … He bent to back water with the others, looking again. Some kind of flurry was going on behind the English oarport. There was a name written on the ship … Triumph. Suddenly there was another sequence of bangs, and the same row of guns spouted smoke again, there were crashes. More screams behind him, another cannon ball had splintered the oar two banks behind and one man was staring stupidly at his arm, which had been somehow ripped off.
Simon turned away, metal in his mouth, bent to gag and puke, then felt the sting of Padron’s lash.
‘Stroke.’ Padron was handling the oar almost alone, one-handed, he broke the rowers around him out of their horror-struck trances, the ship backed water, twirled, more of its guns fired, the fifty-pounders on the other side fired and then they rowed for their lives out of small arms range while the gunners ran for the steps to get out on the gallery and reload.
Simon was standing, still holding the rail, still sick at the stink of butchery around him. Padron was suddenly beside him and his heart lurched again.
‘How many guns have the English ships? How can they fit them all in?’
‘The English ships fire three times for our once,’ Simon told him.
‘How? Is it witchcraft?’
‘No … Yes, it’s witchcraft. By their magic they can reload the guns without need for a gunner’s gallery. Look for yourself.’
Padron pushed past him, peered out. He chewed the moustache that Simon was beginning to think of giving a separate name. ‘Hmph. We must row quicker.’
Padron disappeared, they listened to the shouting and booming as the other galleases went into action against the English who did not seem to be in any particular hurry to up their anchors. Behind him the Padrons were sorting amongst the rowers, the one without an arm was already dead, but the one with the splinter in his eye had it pulled out while he screamed, roughly bandaged. Simon heard the Padron tell him he could row with both his eyes out, if necessary, and not to make such a fuss.
Then the guns were ready and they went into action again, rowing double speed, heavier going now there were fewer whole rowers to do it and smoke still swirling amongst the benches, air soup made of bad eggs.
It became a terrible fever dream, full of crashing and sour spit at the back of the throat and aching arms and legs and movements that went on and on and on, unrelenting, and more crashing and more smoke and more screaming and Simon gazing stupidly at a long gouge in the top of the oar, inches from his hands, made by a bit of flying metal, and he had no memory of it happening and he counted his fingers, looked for bloody stumps, but they were still there. The order came to stop and the whole oardeck hung, sobbing for breath, then the blessed order to draw up the oars, which they did, some having to unpeel their hands finger by finger, and Simon unlocked the ring and made the rope fast and coiled it and then dropped under the bench still in a trance. His head was ringing so badly from the noise of the guns that Snake had to shout at him.
There was food, the same double handfuls of biscuit that everyone else got, there was water, poured stone-faced by Padron into Simon’s gasping, foam-rimmed mouth so he could eat the salty hardtack, not enough, never ever enough.
That was a while after they stopped rowing though, for the wind had changed in the morning, from easterly to south south-westerly, which had somehow changed the battle, for more quick-firing English ships had sailed across Simon’s limited view, before disappearing behind the smoke again. That was after the galleases had been ordered to disengage by Hugo de Moncada himself, apparently, seeing the terrible execution done by the English cannon on the rowers and the easy targets of the oars. They were having to replace some of the oars with new ones from the hold and mend others with long staves bolted on. And shortly after, the five English ships, supposedly trapped behind the headland of Portland Bill, had upped their anchors, filled their sails with the new southwesterly breeze and impudently sailed away. Simon had laughed.
He finished his biscuit, barely noticed that Padron again took the waterskin away before he had finished drinking, and plunged headfirst into exhausted sleep. Morning came with the knowledge that the ship was sluggish again but that there was some kind of way on her from the breeze. He felt hungover, as if he had spent the night drinking aqua vitae with David Becket, which was unjust. His stomach was queasy, his head sore, his eyes and mouth felt sandy.
After morning biscuit, this time again a half ration for both him and Snake, Padron gave him one gulp of water to drink but stopped him before he had drunk any more. Simon said nothing, suddenly understanding what was going on. He looked stonily past Padron’s neck again.
Padron grinned. ‘You’re a fool, clerk,’ he said.
They rowed again, more smoke, more noise. At one time they were towing another ship, singing in short gasps, hotter and hotter. Sweat poured down Simon’s face as he fought the oar in a daze until the order came to draw in the oars and rest.
Simon sat on the bench for a while, shaking, his mouth utterly dry and his head pounding. It was cruel to give him salt biscuit without water, he thought, cruel to ask him to row without water or food, cruel. His head hurt so badly he could hardly see. Padron came along the bench with the waterskin, gave some to Snake, missed him out completely, leaving him staring. Padron was going to break him by drought, since famine took too long. Drought would work, his mouth was already a desert and he couldn’t think straight.
Ironically, he had to make water. He watched the stream playing on the ring bolt, and wondered if it tasted as bad as it smelled. But his piss looked less like water than sherry sack, dark coloured and stinking of fish. He couldn’t do it. The salt sea clopping and splashing on the wood, on the other side of the ship’s hull so near was laughing at him.
At least when I am this thirsty, I don’t feel hungry, he thought to himself as he huddled up under the bench and tried not to shiver any more, I feel sick. His head was the worst thing. He looked around for Padron, wondering if he agreed to Padron’s will, if he gave in now, would he at least get a drink? Padron was nowhere to be seen, but the junior Padron saw him and suddenly jumped up, brought the waterskin and very carefully poured water into Simon’s mouth. He gulped and swallowed and gulped and the water made a glorious track, slimy, sour and bad-tasting as it was, it cleared the dried spittle and cleared his head until his belly was full with it.
Junior Padron said nothing to him, only took the waterskin away again. Not being thirsty was wonderful and Simon could look out at the soft cloudy sunlight through the oarport and realise that there was only the very lightest of wind, that the sea was calm again, and that they were moving with utter slowness past the English coast, while the English ships stayed dourly behind them. And for that moment, he was happy. He would eat nothing more so the salt wouldn’t make him so thirsty, and he would be able to hold Padron off for another day at least …
* * *
He was peacefully taking on Snake in a game of draughts played with light and
dark stones on a board scratched on the deck, when there was a flurry and tension among the other men of the bench. He looked up, at the Padron with his whip and his striped breeches, and next to him the tall, high-nosed, white-ruffed dignity of the black-damask-clad Admiral of the Galleases.
Quite slowly, as he realised Padron might have thought of a way to take a most complex revenge, his blood froze inside him. He blinked up stupidly for a while, and then when Padron twitched the end of his whip, scrambled to his feet.
‘I told my lord Hugo what you said to me the other day,’ said Padron, ‘that you have been an inquisitor for the English. He wishes to know if you were taken as a spy?’
To be ambushed by it now, here, and as a result of his own carelessness. Simon swallowed hard.
‘No, my lord,’ he said, gesturing at himself. ‘As a Jew.’
Don Hugo was surrounded by bad smells but now looked as if something even worse was under his nose.
‘My lord wishes to know what you can tell us about the English navy and about El Draco in particular.’
‘Nothing, my lord. I know very little of Her Majesty’s navy and have never even met Sir Francis Drake although I have heard—’
The whip had to be lifted up to come down across his face and this time, Simon had time to duck, put his arms up. It wrapped round his arm, leaving a burning weal. Here it came. He was done for and it was his own stupid fault, boasting about his knowledge to Padron.
Don Hugo stopped Padron as he lifted his arm again, spoke quietly into his ear. Padron grinned and turned, cracked the whip across Snake’s head and shoulders.
Don Hugo took out a stiletto knife, handed it to Padron, spoke softly again. He was not an ugly or an evil man, Simon thought, as he stared, imagining his heart leaning to its oar inside his chest. He just needs information desperately.
‘You can row if you’re blind,’ said Padron. ‘In fact it’s better if you’re blind for you obey orders better. Don Hugo wants information. If you answer well, he might let you keep your eyes. And your black catamite too will keep his eyes.’
Gloriana's Torch Page 43