Because of his foolishness, they would probably both die, leaving Simon still chained to his oar where she could not get to him. She had tried everything she could at Corunna to free him, offered three times his worth to the Captain of the Oardeck of San Lorenzo, and nearly got herself arrested for it. They were so short of men to row, they certainly would not free him, certainly not.
It had shocked her to see him naked, amongst so many naked men. Although heavily veiled, she had still been able to see … too much. It had sickened her in fact, more than she could say, the animal stench of the oardeck, the hungry staring of the men, the hostility of the officers, the tension and ugliness of the whole place. But then Simon had lifted up the hatch so light could come in and turned and bowed to her courteously. They could strip him of all the things that men valued, chain him like a dog, and yet he could not help his instinctive civility. She had risked both their lives in curtseying back, then made it look like a faint of horror. She had been mute with the … the awful pain in her chest from her longing, from being so close to Simon and still not able to help him.
She had to haul her mind back to the present. There was the sound of boots. She pulled in her skirts, left the cartridge room door closed, burrowed under the piles of cartridges, making herself as small as possible.
A man wearing a morion opened the door, leaned in, blinked about. He was holding a candle, which made her guts freeze in fright. Getting blown up with the gunpowder … Somebody roared at him and he pulled back, shut the door immediately, said that there was nobody there.
She huddled up in the cartridges, shifted position so her hand wouldn’t go to sleep, and dozed off, watching the door and the grill above, which would give light during the day for the filling of cartridges.
Light dawned and with it a hollow booming in the distance. Was it thunder? Ships crashing into each other to board? Perhaps cannon fire? She didn’t know and San Salvador sailed slowly on, well away from any fighting in the centre of the defensive formation with ships close about her.
And then Thomasina was back with the dag in its case, whispering breathlessly of Pasquale’s searching of the ship for her. Rebecca took it, the heavy thing that had bruised her every time she fired it in the past, and worked carefully and conscientiously to follow the recipe that would load it, first the powder, then the wad, then the ball, then another wad and tamp it down, then the priming powder in the pan and to be sure there was a clear path and then to wind it and lock it. She held it in her lap and then told Thomasina that she must get away.
Thomasina spat on the deck. ‘Do you want that long streak of misery that hurt Mr Fant?’ she asked. ‘For he’s leading the search and frantic to find you. If you can give him a cuddle, I’ll get behind him.’
‘A what?’
‘Didn’t you know? He wants your cunny, not your confession.’
It was extremely strange to hear such obscenity from so small a face and Rebecca had to suppress the impulse to scold her for it. Thomasina was neither a child nor a servant and must be treated carefully, she had learned that.
The men had banged on the door then and Thomasina had whisked herself into the gunpowder chute, just the tip of her head poking out to watch.
Rebecca winced at the memory of what happened next. Pasquale had indeed wanted her cunny, as Thomasina had said, seemed to have convinced himself that he was in love with her after the shy conversation with him when she had discovered who he was and had to hold her hands together as tight as she could to stop herself from attacking him.
It had sickened her but also obscurely pleased her to feel her power over him, his desperate urgency to believe her innocent and frightened, his desire for her. She had acted the part, yes, of course, but it had been easy for her. And then when Thomasina had stuck her knife in Pasquale’s kidneys …
The words Rebecca had hissed then had come scalding out of her soul, unpremeditated, designed to hurt, to bewilder. Never had she kicked or hit anyone with intent to destroy, not a servant, not even an animal. But she had enjoyed the crunch of her boot in his mouth, gasped with laughter at the wonderful irony of the manacles to chain him there, and lit the fuse with the sparks from her dag by moving the powderpan out of the way.
Once the slowmatch was hissing on its journey, she had left him there, and with Thomasina to guide her, threaded her way between decks, bent almost double in places, sweating with the expectation of the explosion, before climbing a ladder and finding herself forward, near the prow of the ship, where the ordinary crewmen lived, to be greeted with ironic cheers and half a dozen pairs of arms out to catch hold of her. They were ignorant sea-peasants, they knew nothing but rumours about her.
And that was when the ship had blown up. Not all of it, just the after part, with the captain and most of the officers, setting light to the main mast and the mizzen, breaking the deck, a great roaring boom that had made both Thomasina and herself deaf for an hour and showered them with splinters that wounded and shredded the men around them and yet Thomasina had pulled them both under a tarpaulin and they had been safe.
She had killed Pasquale, killed whatever was left of Anthony Fant, killed about fifty sailors who had done her no harm at all, and in fact treated her with rough courtesy when she need have dealings with them.
She had killed for Simon, for the Queen, for herself to revenge herself on Pasquale, for policy. She had killed like a soldier, although she was no such thing. The thought sickened her, she had sat shaking by the rail while the remaining sailors tried to put out the fires and do something about the shattered steerage, while the San Lorenzo had put a line aboard and the muscles of Simon and the slaves strained to tow the destroyed hulk. She had sat there, cold and sick and staring while the singing came to her across the water, and with it her husband’s answer to the riddle that had taken him to Lisbon and into the jaws of the Inquisition in the first place. With Thomasina’s help she had taken it to him, and now he was sending it back to her with the voices of his fellow slaves.
She could understand it. Once she knew that ‘meer a kul’ was miracle, she knew that the second half meant ‘is Calais’.
Even she knew enough geography to understand it, her last gift from her husband. She explained it to Thomasina who was horrified at the perfidy of the plan, at how easily it might succeed. She knew she should be shocked as well but was not. She was inside a glass case, she decided, safely sealed away like one of the Spaniards’ superstitious reliquaries. Yes, she thought, I am like a saint’s bone, looking out of my glass box at the wild activities of men.
The Spanish were clearing the ship of everyone who could still walk, of everything they could carry. Four men heaved the great paychest of bullion over the side into a gig. The officer came and appealed to her, she had no idea what she said to him. Evening came and Thomasina tucked her up where she was in a cloak and a tarpaulin.
It was only a matter of waiting until the greedy English snapped up the prize of San Salvador. But they were frightened to do it, she realised as the long night passed, as the fire at the aft end gradually burnt itself out. They had seen the explosion and were afraid of another one. They didn’t know she had made sure all the barrels of powder were stored between other things so the fire couldn’t reach them. Nothing catches fire less willingly than a barrel of wet-cured salt beef or pickled herrings, despite the saltpetre in it. She couldn’t tell them, only sit immobile by the rail, staring at the English ships as San Salvador wallowed. She was mercifully locked behind her glass walls, while Thomasina brought her cups of watered wine and chafed her hands and talked to her gently in her rough voice and called her ma’am and in general seemed most concerned about her, of which there was no need.
It’s the screaming, poor Anthony Fant’s screaming, I have to keep it out of my head, she wanted to say, but didn’t. And also Pasquale’s screaming, which mixed with it. And the weak moaning and wailing of the men she had killed. Her fault. All of them children of mothers like her, all of them dying because of he
r.
All she wanted was Simon to hold her, but she couldn’t have him for he was rowing busily away from her in the galleas, had rowed, was long gone. Dead, probably. Only she and Thomasina were still alive.
The gulls were swooping and shrieking at the stern now, where it was all broken and blackened and stinking. What were they squabbling over, she wondered, guts? Broken store-barrels? Anthony Fant’s eyes? Who knows?
At last there was the scraping of a boathook, the creak as men came up the side of the ship. They popped their heads over the side, looking nervous, behind a loaded and lit caliver.
She sat still with Thomasina, watching them climb over. They spread out through the ship, searching for loot of course, and found none for there had been plenty of time for the Spaniards to take off even the table plate and candlesticks. Nor would they know about the treasure of powder and shot below. She watched them, still locked behind the glass. Perhaps someone should tell them about it. One of them, the leader looked slightly familiar. She wasn’t sure.
‘Scuttle her,’ said the older man. ‘She’m barely worth the work of taking her in.’
Thomasina nudged her and as she sat, still locked behind glass, Thomasina marched forwards, curtseyed as the men stared and blinked at her, and lifted her voice.
What was she saying? Rebecca shook her head. She was not still deaf but something was wrong with her hearing. She could barely move, for stiffness, she could not make out perfectly plain English words.
The men came forward, staring. Thomasina held up a ring she had carried around her neck on a chain, a very fine emerald ring carved with an elaborate E.
‘Be gentle with her, sirs,’ came Thomasina’s piping voice, ‘she is a most brave lady but it has been hard for her, so hard. Sirs, please, you must take me to my Lord Admiral, I have intelligence for him that this lady has paid dear to get and her husband too. I am Thomasina de Paris, the Queen’s most private servant in these matters.’
What was that, now? wondered Rebecca. Anything interesting? She picked at a seam on her kirtle where it was coming unpicked, poor sewing by someone, she thought, not double-stitched at all but single.
The gentlemen wanted her to come with them but she was very disinclined to move, very unhappy. There was something she needed to tell them, something very important about the San Salvador. What was it? Oh yes.
‘Be sure to salvage the ship, sirs,’ she murmured. ‘Her hold is full of gunpowder and shot.’
They stopped again as they eased her towards the rail, exchanged glances.
‘It’s true,’ said Thomasina, ‘she came for to get it, you know, amongst other things. Here, I’ll show you.’
She took the younger of the two leaders by the hand, led him towards a hatchway and they disappeared from sight, while Rebecca stared at her boot toes and wondered how they had become so scuffed and stained with brown.
The younger man came up the ladder again at the run, ‘It’s true, Mr Hawkins,’ he shouted, his face alight. ‘Barrels and barrels of the best Venetian powder.’
They waited while John Hawkins investigated and when he came back the thing was all changed. He left three men to help with the prize, and clambered back down the side to his skiff, laughing like a boy.
Rebecca looked down and could not bring herself to do it. She had climbed up and down ladders to get to different decks, but was no monkey like Thomasina to run about the rigging. She had been brought aboard the San Salvador in a sling, which had been uncomfortable and undignified but better than climbing a slippery wooden ladder.
Thomasina had already shinned down to the skiff, was staring up at her. She couldn’t find the words to say anything more, only shook her head and clutched tight at the rail, shuddering.
‘Your pardon, Mrs Anriques,’ said the younger man, caught her sore wrist, put his shoulder against her stomach and lifted her up. She yelped and went rigid with terror. ‘Please be still, lady, and you’ll get down safe.’
And the insane boy climbed over the rail and went down the creaking steps and into the skiff where there were hands outstretched to catch her as he slid her off his shoulder and sat down looking pleased with himself.
It had all been done so quickly, she was dizzy and gasping with it.
‘How … how dare you…’ she stuttered and Thomasina elbowed her and grinned. She shut her lips and scowled at the waves while the sailors rowed them over the sea and the younger man introduced himself as Captain Thomas Howard and the older man as Mr John Hawkins, Secretary of the Navy.
But as the great black flank of the English flagship, Ark Royal, rose above her, she gulped hard and caught the ladder and with the young men pushing her up from behind and other men ready to pull her from above, she managed to climb aboard the English flagship, followed in an impudent scamper by Thomasina.
At which point, of course, very inconveniently, she fainted.
* * *
Thomasina was trapped in a nightmare while still wide awake. She and Rebecca had been all the way to Lisbon (never again, she swore to herself) and back, had suffered days and days of stuffy tedium in the wallowing hulk that was San Salvador, nights of agonising seasickness in the tiny odd-shaped cabin that was entirely filled by a cot they had to share, the tension of the fear of discovery, the increasingly stinking food and worse water, the dangerous stupidity of Anthony Fant, all in order to get the precious nugget of information that the Spanish planned to take Calais.
And now they could get no one to listen to them. They were on Ark Royal, certainly, in one of the better cabins in fact, where Rebecca had been solicitously laid in a cot, attended by the ship’s barber surgeon, who had bled her, in Thomasina’s opinion, far too much. They were in the same ship as the Lord Admiral of Elizabeth’s fleet, and yet they could not come to him.
He sent a young officer to attend on them and find out who they were. Thomasina told him and found herself being stared at and laughed at by a boy who simply reported that one was a German woman, sick with jail fever, and the other a mad midget. Nobody would carry a message for her.
Thomasina tried to use Elizabeth’s ring to get herself past the officers who surrounded the Lord Admiral and had it stolen by an impudent man who had claimed to be a clerk. She had even tried the expedient of climbing the ratlines and using the rigging to reach the poopdeck where the Admiral was watching the Spanish crescent with a Dutch spyglass. Only to be scooped off a rope by one of the soldiers and carried squawking back to Rebecca in her cabin, Rebecca who lay white and silent and half-conscious thanks to the bleeding.
The only good thing about it was that the Armada was travelling so slowly east across the glassy sea they were still not past the Isle of Wight. San Salvador had been towed into Weymouth and the next day, pinnaces and fishing smacks came with barrels of Venetian powder and shot to resupply all the English ships that were short. By herself, Rebecca had given the English the means to fight for an extra day.
Now there was fighting again. Over in the distance the ships gathered slowly, fired guns, parted slowly, leaving great feathers of smoke that faded slowly in the still airs. The Admiral called a council of war and the captains came climbing aboard from their skiffs, Drake himself at the head of them, his round face full of good humour and frustration mixed. There was a guard on the door of their cabin now, so Thomasina only saw him from the porthole.
She busied herself with caring for Rebecca and writing furious letters to the Queen as her report, though with no expectation of being able to find anyone to carry them for her. When she slept, she found Rebecca still and cold, breathing very slowly, and was terrified she might die. She dared not call the idiot of a ship’s surgeon again in case he bled her again. All that had been wrong with her was exhaustion and her nerves being overwrought by the terrible result of the explosion. Even so, Thomasina thought that without that fool Anthony Fant to be with them and give them a man’s voice to carry weight, none of the overgrown boys delighting in their stern adventure would pay any attention to
either of them.
She kicked the door of the cabin and hurt her toes, then contented herself with another furious letter and staring from the little porthole.
A two-master was bearing up as close to the Ark Royal as it could get, every sail spread, before it hove to. The ship’s boat was launched. As it rowed into sight Thomasina could see a brightly clothed group of men sitting in it, and muttered sourly to herself of yet more idiotic court gallants coming aboard to be treated with all courtesy when she and her mistress were slighted … And then she heard a voice she thought she recognised, leaned out as far as she could to see none other than Mr Robert Carey, handsome courtier, unofficial cousin to the Queen and rackety youngest son of the Lord Chamberlain, hopping across the gap between the boat and the side of the Ark Royal, laughing when he nearly fell in.
‘Mr Carey!’ she shrieked. ‘Mr Carey, here!’
Carey carried on up the ladder, then paused. Had he seen her? Yes, he had, he lifted his hat to her, a very dangerous thing to do in view of the slippery rope he was holding and his sword threatening to tangle itself between his legs. There was a reason why experienced seamen used short-swords.
‘Come and see me!’ she shouted. ‘Quickly!’
And then she had nothing to do but pace up and down gnawing her fingernails, hoping that he would do it, but he didn’t. Nothing happened. He must have forgotten who she was, he wouldn’t come, damn him. If they ever got back to court, by God she would make his life a misery for him. Misery? She’d see to it he never so much as came near the Queen, the half-witted, salf-satisfied, glory-hunting, money-grubbing …
There was a knock at the cabin door. She called ‘Come,’ expecting the young soldier who would not let her out bringing the usual cheese and biscuits.
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