‘Sargento,’ Eliska said, smiling, ‘if I might be permitted to go first to my chamber. A lady has requirements …’
Gomez looked doubtful, but Eliska touched his arm and her voice was as sweet as ripe Mediterranean figs. He nodded briskly and marched them towards the officers’ quarters.
She opened the door to her room, then hesitated. Gomez was standing behind her, his sword sheathed, but his hand on the hilt. Shakespeare was at his side.
There was a screech. The monkey bounded across the floor from the other side of the room in welcome. Gomez turned his head towards the animal in surprise.
Just then the English and French siege battery opened up again. Fourteen guns roared with scarce a second’s delay between each one. The cannonballs smashed like a hellish hail into the counterscarp, and some overtopped it and hit the curtain wall. The thunderous sound allied to the screeching and jumping of Doda disoriented Gomez. He turned this way and that, a small lapse of concentration, but it was enough for Shakespeare.
He pushed the guard and moved across him in a single, seamless movement.
Gomez stumbled forward. Shakespeare’s knee came up sharply into his belly. The Spaniard lurched and toppled headlong. He grunted, then cried out, but his voice was lost in the roar of cannon and the shooting of hundreds of muskets and rampart guns. Shakespeare clutched his hands together and brought his forearms down on to the back of Gomez’s neck, pummelling him to the ground.
He lay there, face down, moving feebly. Shakespeare relieved him of his sword, dagger and pistol, then stripped him of his soldier’s cassock and mail. He hit his head another crushing blow with the haft of his own dagger. Gomez lay still, his breathing weak. Shakespeare stepped further into the room and took a linen sheet from Eliska’s bed. Using Gomez’s dagger, he cut it into shreds.
Eliska closed the door behind her. ‘What are you doing, Mr Shakespeare?’
‘Making twine to bind and gag him.’
‘We do not have time for this. Kill him. Put the dagger to his throat.’
Shakespeare ignored her and wound a gag around Gomez’s mouth, then tied his arms behind his back. He pulled up the guard’s legs and bound his ankles to his wrists. Tight.
Eliska shook her head in dismay. She was undoing the stays on her gold-thread bodice and sleeves. She removed the garment, then took off her undershirt, a bright, corn-yellow chemise. She put the bodice back on, then began attaching the chemise to Gomez’s sword.
Shakespeare picked up the guard’s dagger and pistol. ‘We move as soon as we hear the mine. Is that your understanding?’
‘Yes.’ She moved closer to him. ‘And the attack starts as soon as the rockets go up. If we fail – if you fail – the English will all be slaughtered, Mr Shakespeare.’
‘Then let us not fail.’
She looked at him with a kind of sadness. ‘We are, indeed, a long way from the inn on the moor.’
Shakespeare thrust Gomez’s dagger into his belt and began to check that the pistol was properly primed and loaded.
‘John …’
He glanced at her. There was a light in her eye, glistening. He put down the gun and took her in his arms. He kissed her.
‘Surely you must trust me now?’ she asked him.
He kissed her again. Her slender body moulded itself to his. He recalled the night they had made love at the inn in Lancashire. Perhaps there would be other times for them, when this was over. He could not entertain such thoughts; their lives hung by the lightest of gossamer threads.
‘Why did you weep?’ he was about to say, but then stopped himself. He had no right to ask such a thing. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I trust you.’
Trusting her was one thing. Trusting the plan was another. Could all the elements of this great, preposterous scheme be in place?
The Vanguard was riding at anchor, a little too close to the Fort El Léon battery. Lieutenant Morgan Millwater was in command of the ship. All the marines were ashore with Frobisher at their head.
Millwater stood on the quarterdeck, gazing across to the fort. He listened to the skirmishing. This was the moment. Languidly, he called over to Boltfoot.
‘Mr Cooper, I would see you in the captain’s cabin.’
Boltfoot was half the length of the ship away, looking up into the rigging. Very little in life frightened him, but this was a task that would test his mettle to the full. In truth he would rather face a dozen Spaniards single-handed than climb this confounded mess of tarred ropes. He turned around at the sound of Lieutenant Millwater’s voice.
‘Yes, master?’ he called.
‘I have a matter to discuss with you. Come, Mr Cooper.’
Boltfoot was very clear that he was to go to the main-top now.
‘Sir, I am under strict orders from Admiral Frobisher to take this watch. There is to be no delay.’
‘God’s blood, Mr Cooper. It is the admiral himself who has commanded me to discuss this certain matter with you. There has been a change of plan. Now come with me, sir, or do I have to bring you by force?’
Boltfoot looked up into the shrouds once more and shuddered. The mast-top had to be a hundred feet or more above the deck. He glanced across at William Ivory, slumped against the bulwark.
Ivory shook his head. ‘Go up, Cooper. Don’t listen to him.’ Ivory’s words came out from the side of his mouth like a dribbled stream. ‘Go up – or for ever remain the craven dog that you are.’
‘Aye. I’ll do your work for you yet again. Even without your supposed sharpness of sight, Ivory.’
‘Don’t be a horse’s arse, Cooper. The perspective glass will give any man the eye of a hawk. You don’t need my blue eye.’
‘Mr Cooper!’ Millwater was striding towards them now.
Ivory was frowning. ‘Bloody Millwater. Ignore him. I recall him from the Dainty. Didn’t think much to him then and I don’t now. There’s only one man to obey here – Frobisher. If you’re not up there in short order, you’ll miss the signal.’
Boltfoot began to climb. First one step with his good right foot into the lowest of the sagging ratlines. He pulled up his left leg and clumsily placed it into position. He would have to move like this: right foot first, get a firm hold in the swaying ropes, then bring up the left. Same thing, every ungainly step of the way through the stinking ladder of ropes. The sea was choppy and the great ship rocked violently. The air for miles around was filled with the sound of cannonfire and musket-shot. On the headland, smoke billowed above the fort and beyond.
‘Mr Cooper!’ Millwater bellowed. ‘Come here this instant or face the damned consequences.’
William Ivory’s body might have been half wrecked by the stroke, but his mind was untouched. He was thinking about Millwater and the bark Dainty. Had Millwater known about the perspective glass back then? Captain Thompson certainly knew about it when they took the Madre de Dios off the Azores. Had he told Millwater about it after an evening drinking brandy? Or had Millwater merely looked up and guessed what Ivory was about?
The concept of a spyglass was certainly no secret. Mariners in Spain and the Low Countries, even Italy, had talked for years of the possibility that it might one day be created. It was simply a matter of finding the right conformation of glass roundels and the men expert enough to make it.
Saliva dripped from Ivory’s mouth. He scrabbled about, trying to move, suddenly horrified, because it was all beginning to make sense. That was why Trayne didn’t have the fake glass in his possession, because Millwater had it. Millwater was the confederate.
Boltfoot raised his right foot on to the next tarred rope. He could not bear to look up. Millwater was halfway from the quarterdeck now. He had a pistol in his hand. Boltfoot climbed another rung, then another. Millwater was below him, pointing his pistol.
‘Come down now! Else I will bring you down dead.’
A gunshot rent the air, so close that it cut through the thunder of cannon. Boltfoot looked down again. Lieutenant Millwater was clutching his side. Blo
od was pouring from a wound, washing through his fingers. His face was bemused, as though he didn’t realise he had been shot. Boltfoot glanced across at Ivory. A pistol smoked in his right hand. He was grinning, lopsidedly, with the half of his face that still functioned.
‘Don’t stop, Cooper! Carry on with your bastard climbing or you’ll miss the signal.’
Chapter 45
GOMEZ’S UNIFORM WAS not much of a disguise. Shakespeare’s tall figure and pale skin would give him away to any soldier who took a second look. He was relying on them all being too busy, too focused on shooting at the enemy without the walls to note the enemy within.
He nodded to Eliska. She was watching him from the door to her quarters. Behind her back, concealed in her black velvet cloak, she held Gomez’s sword, her corn-yellow chemise tied to it like a pennant.
The day was cool, but Shakespeare was dripping with sweat. He had to find a way to create a breach, or the fort would never be conquered. The walls were unbreakable by cannon alone.
Suddenly, a huge explosion shook the ground and the air. He knew instantly what it was. The besieging pioneers had detonated a mine beneath the western bastion wall. For a moment there was silence, then a shouting of orders in Spanish, and men ran towards the scene of the blast. Shakespeare carried on along the course he had set, towards the eastern end of the interior trenchworks.
Shakespeare was relieved. There seemed to be only two Spanish guards at the picket door, inside the arch of the gatehouse. Both of them wore steel breastplates, brigantines and morions. They carried crossbows, one with bowstring drawn and bolt set in place, the other unloaded. The man with the drawn bow held it loosely in his hand, the other had it perched over his right shoulder. They were both smoking pipes, casually, as if a battle wasn’t raging. With the swagger of a senior officer, Shakespeare strode up to them. They looked at him questioningly, as though trying to place him, though they must have seen the inglés about the fort. Shakespeare smiled, raised his pistol and shot the guard whose bow was drawn.
The deadly ball hit him in the face, just beneath the lip of his steel helmet. The guard’s head snapped back and he fell against the wall, his knees buckling beneath him, dying as he slid to the ground. The second guard dropped his pipe and reached for his sword, but Shakespeare hammered the spent pistol against his head. The man lurched sideways, but did not lose his footing.
Shakespeare had Gomez’s curved fighting knife in his left hand. It was a terrible weapon, more like a butcher’s blade than a man’s dagger. With a backward sweep of the hand, he slashed out with all his strength, catching the man’s throat on the left side, cutting deep into his windpipe. Blood leapt from the wound as if it were an underground spring.
Quickly, Shakespeare looked around. No one had seen him. They were either above him on the ramparts, or ferrying munitions. Everyone had a task, hunched over rampart guns or feeding cannon with ball and powder and tamping it home. The only person who could see him was Eliska, huddled inside the lee of the central passageway into the compound. She had seen what he had done and nodded to him. He nodded back and she turned away, walking towards the stable block, the sword-pennant concealed beneath her black velvet cloak. Shakespeare gasped as a guard stopped her. He could see her smiling, then the guard nodded and she walked on. At the stables, she suddenly vanished behind a wall. Shakespeare breathed again.
Their fate was sealed. And the fate of hundreds of English and French soldiers and marines. If they attacked now, at her signal, and there was no breach, then they would be massacred by the defenders on the ramparts above. It would be bloody butchery.
Shakespeare opened the door into the picket house, set into the wall. He pulled the dead guards away from immediate sight. The main gates would resist any battering ram or shot. They were held shut by two heavy bars, slotted into steel fittings driven deep into the thick stone walls at either end. One of the bars was at a height of eight feet, the other at ground level. Opening them was a task for more than one man.
He stepped through the picket door, which was no more than five feet high, its base about a foot from the ground. Inside the little guardroom, there were more weapons, a table, a chair, a ledger. Most importantly, there was another small, heavy door – an iron door to the world outside the fort. It was secured by two bolts. He pulled them back, then cursed. There was a padlock, too. He looked out of the inner door at the bodies of the guards. One of them had a large ring at his belt, with three keys. Shakespeare cut the belt with the man’s own dagger, then returned to the padlock and tried a key. It fitted, and turned.
He pulled it open, and prayed that the breach would hold and be enough. He prayed, too, that Eliska had managed to make her way to the unmanned southern ramparts. And that he would see her again.
Boltfoot squinted through the perspective glass. He knew what to expect, but it still astonished him that things in the distance could seem so close. High on the cliffs, above the fortress parapet, through the belching smoke of burning gunpowder, he was almost certain he could see a figure. Was that a woman? She seemed to be dancing in the air, like a tiny sprite, visible one moment, gone into the acrid mist the next. For a few seconds, he just watched, amazed at what he saw, and almost forgot his discomfort at being so high in this swaying mast-top.
He looked harder. His eyesight was good, very good, but not as keen as a falcon-eyed man like Ivory. Boltfoot screwed up his eyes again. He was almost certain. Against the grey-dark sky and smoke, there was a splash of yellow, a summer butterfly, just discernible.
He shouted down to the deck, ‘Fire away, Mr Ivory. Fire away.’
Ivory blew on the glowing match in his right hand and touched it to the fuses of the three enormous firework rockets supplied by the Queen’s firemaster and, until this day, kept in Admiral Frobisher’s own cabin.
‘That’s the signal, lads. We’re moving forward. Do not rush, keep your bucklers raised and your helmets on.’
Pinkney held a pistol in one hand and a short sword in the other. Ranged alongside him were the men he had brought from England along with as many men again, all assigned to him by Norreys.
‘If in doubt, follow me. And if I’m dead, follow Admiral Frobisher: he’s the devil with the pirates over yonder, at the right flank. Be tigers for Elizabeth and England! Trumpeter Baylie, blow your horn. Advance! Advance!’
As the trumpet sounded and the company moved forward with the marines, a withering fire from muskets and calivers rained down on them. The ramparts were lined with Spanish soldiers throwing everything at them – bullets, stones, bolts, arrows, like lethal hailstones. Andrew gritted his teeth and ran through the mud and storm of lead until he had scaled the counterscarp and jumped into the mud-thick ditch. All around him men were falling. The only thing that separated the quick from the dead was chance, or the will of God.
Three Spanish soldiers were crossing the compound with petronels hard against their mail-clad chests. One let off a shot. Shakespeare ducked, instinctively. The shot smashed into the solid oak behind him and sent splinters flying.
To the north of the fort, brilliant against the glowering sky, the three rockets of fire seemed to hang in the air, raining showers of golden specks. Shakespeare felt a surge of hope. He grabbed one of the crossbows, the loaded one. He was breathing heavily, but his hand was steady. He pulled the trigger and loosed the bolt. He aimed for one of the attackers, high for the body, but the bowstring was not drawn tight enough and the bolt fell short. Damn the guard for his laziness. He scrabbled around for another weapon. He found a bolt in the dead guard’s quiver and tried to slot it in place. Another gunshot smacked into the ground, close at his side.
He was cornered here. He could not get through the gate for there was no way of knowing what or who he would meet on the other side. There would be no time to explain to an English soldier that he was one of them, a friend, not an enemy, before the bullet took him or the falchion cleaved his skull. Besides, he had to hold this door as long as possible. He glanc
ed up, wishing he could see the seaward ramparts and Eliska. The powder smoke swirled and eddied.
He wound the bowstring taut and released the bolt. This time it sped true with almost point-blank trajectory, catching the first of the Spaniards in the shoulder, then shearing away. The soldier twisted sideways, his arm savagely cut, even with the protection of chain-mail. But it was too little, too late. They were almost on him now; he was at their mercy and he knew none would be given.
And then the first of the English soldiers pushed through the open picket door …
Shakespeare immediately put his hands in the air and shouted, ‘English, I am English!’
The first man had a wheel-lock pistol in each hand and two more thrust in his belt. Shakespeare recognised him immediately as Martin Frobisher. He pointed the guns at Shakespeare and his finger seemed about to pull the trigger, then suddenly relaxed.
‘So you are. God’s teeth, it is you, Mr Shakespeare. Well done!’
A shot cracked and Frobisher spun around. He had been hit. Blood spilt from a wound at his hip. Immediately behind him, three, four, then more marines poured through the gate and shot at the advancing Spaniards, who stopped in their tracks and dived for the shelter of the fort’s inner earthworks.
As the English marines burst through the picket door, so more Spaniards raced to the trenches to reinforce their brothers-in-arms and hold the invaders at bay. The English held the gatehouse now and quickly lifted the bars, to throw wide the main gates.
‘Get a surgeon, get a stretcher!’ Shakespeare shouted. ‘Your admiral is wounded.’
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