The galleon's grave hg-3

by Martin Stephen

  They completed the remainder of their search. Most of the other cabins were empty of people, crammed high with extra cargo of spices and, in one room, case upon case of ivory. Trade goods paid better than people on the Indies route, it would appear. Their manifest complete, they returned to the upper deck. Drake appeared a short while later, slapping the Spanish captain on the back and laughing uproariously with him. The Spanish captain climbed over the side with his officers, into the boat that would take him to the island. Any of the seamen who offered to change allegiance would be allowed to stay on board. Illness was starting to take its toll on board the English ships, and seamen were valuable commodities. The passengers would be put ashore to await the next Spanish ship. It would not be a long wait. Many ships from the south headed for the Azores, to catch the westerlies that blew so helpfully towards Europe and the mainland.

  Drake was in great good humour, Gresham could see. Now seemed as good a time as any to approach him. George needed little prompting. 'My Lord,' he said, bowing to Drake. 'May I ask to intercede on behalf of a passenger on board this vessel?' Which of Sir Francis Drake's numerous personalities was running the man's head today? Before Drake could answer, George briefly explained their find below decks. 'The lady is English, and her daughter, I presume, half-English. I think the daughter is the girl who bombarded us earlier today. The mother is clearly a gentlewoman.'

  'Is the woman able to come on deck?' asked Drake. Well, at least he had not simply thrown George overboard. In fact, he was striking a pose, chest puffed out, one foot firmly in front of the other. He had donned his best doublet for the handover, richly bejewelled with fantastically slashed sleeves.

  George looked at Gresham and Mannion. Both recalled the sweating woman and the closeness, the stink of the ship all around them. It was probably healthier for the mother to be here in the sunshine and fresh air of the Azores. But they also remembered the jolt of pain that had visibly gone through her as she tried to sit up, her sense of a mind held together only by determination.

  'Sadly, my Lord,' said George, 'we fear it could kill her. We suspect she has only a thin hold on life as it is.'

  A cloud of emotion flickered over Drake's face, but he was too pumped up by his own triumph to allow his mood to evaporate. And well he might be. It cost around fourteen shillings a month to feed and pay a seaman on board the Elizabeth Bonaventure. You could hire the ship for twenty-eight pounds a month, pay and feed its whole crew for less than a hundred and seventy-five pounds a month. You could build a new version of her for two thousand six hundred pounds. And the value of San Felipe and her cargo? 'One hundred and ten thousand pounds,' Captain Fenner had whispered to Drake when the first inventory was complete. 'Perhaps even as high as one hundred and twenty, even forty thousand pounds… and that does not include the value of the vessel itself!' No wonder Drake was happy.

  The strangely assorted party went down to the cabin: Drake, Fenner, Drake's Secretary, sniffing disapprovingly, George, Gresham, and Mannion of course, who had the capacity to become indivisible from Gresham.

  'Sir Francis. Thank you for your graciousness in coming to see me.'

  There was active dislike in Drake's expression as he gazed at Gresham, for the first time. And something else? A nervousness, almost? As for the mother, she was conserving her strength, Gresham saw, not even trying to rise, saving her sparse energy.'

  'Madam,' said Drake, bowing low, 'I am truly sorry to hear of your indisposition. As I believe you know, your daughter and yourself have my guarantee as to your safety.'

  'I am grateful to you, Sir Francis. Might I request that my daughter be present here with us now?' Anna had been in constant attendance on her mother. The faint smell of her carefully-hoarded perfume still in the cabin suggested she had only left as the footfalls of the male visiting party had been heard on the deck.

  Drake nodded, and Captain Fenner called out to the guard at the cabin door to request the presence of the girl. There was an awkward silence, broken only when a few minutes later Anna appeared. Her eyes were downcast this time, Gresham saw, her curtsey deep and formal.

  'Sir,' was all she said, in a low voice. A stool was brought, and she sat decorously, eyes still downcast, by the bed-head and her mother.

  'Sir Francis.' The mother had swallowed several times before speaking. Would she last the course, thought Gresham? 'Though I have married one of your enemies, I am as English as any person here.'

  'Madam,' said Drake, 'I do not doubt-'

  'Please!' Her tone was so desperate that it defused the rudeness of her interruption. More than words could ever do, it said. I am dying, I feel my consciousness slipping away from me at any moment and I must have leave to say what I need to say without interruption. All present sensed that this woman was shortening her life with the effort of making this final plea.

  'My husband is dead. I will shortly be so too.' There was a sob from the corner where the girl sat, her head down. Then a snap of pride thrilled through her. There were no more noises, no snuffling. 'My husband's family and my own are impoverished. If they accept my daughter at all, it would be at little less than the status of a servant. My daughter has only one champion left in the world. Her fiancй, a Frenchman at present travelling.'

  A fat pig travelling through Europe for trade! thought Anna to herself, the rush of hatred and anger for a brief moment over-whelming her grief.

  'I have no power, no wealth, no great ships at my disposal. I have only the request of a poor woman, an English woman, that I be allowed to name a guardian for my only child, a protector who like a champion of old will guard, protect and keep her, and deliver her to her fiance’

  There was an appalling dignity in the simplicity of the woman's words. Drake stuck his chest out even more.

  'Madam, I am happy to accept the charge which you-'

  'In which case…' For a moment the woman's voice was strong, riddled with authority, and those in the cabin saw what she had once been. 'I nominate as guardian of my daughter the man I believe is known as Henry Gresham.'

  George! Surely if it was anyone it should have been George, Gresham thought! It was a mistake! It had to be a mistake!

  The silence in the cabin was as painful as a kick in the stomach. It was madness, all there could see it. How long before the young man with the blood in him did what all young men do, succumbed to the demands of his flesh? How long before the wild spirit of the girl succumbed to the man, as God had dictated all women should do from the time of Eve? Madness! What man wanted used goods? What use would her fiance be when he realised his virgin bride had been deflowered, and that any child might not be of his blood line?

  Gresham had spent years learning to control the reaction of his body — the sweat on the brow, the pulsing in the neck, the flickering gaze, the hand pulling at the beard, stroking the side of the nose or the chin. The give-away reactions that told an enemy the workings of one's mind. But totally out of his control, he felt the red flush rising from his neck, suffusing his whole face. Then he looked at the mother's face. All her breeding was in it. All her beauty. And also the lines of pain, drawn so finely round her eyes these past few months. And the neck beginning to sag, that sagging that soon would turn the proud swell of her breasts into drooping dugs. Yet on that face was the slightest of smiles. A smile for Henry Gresham, he knew. For him alone. For a fleeting moment Gresham wished that he had had a mother, such as her.

  'Do you accept this charge?' she asked, her voice a tiny one now, as though receding from life.

  The girl had looked up. Her face showed only hatred and anger. He made the mistake of returning her gaze. Those eyes! Huge, dark pools, the colour of fine amethyst, fathomless, endlessly mysterious… He tried to shake himself out of this spell, praying to God he had made no gesture visible to the outside world. I would rather be facing a Spanish galley at night with little more than a longboat and luck beside me, he thought. He drew a deep breath. Let them see that. He no longer cared.

  'Madam,'
he bowed towards her, 'I'm no fit person for such a charge. I'm young, I'm foolish, I've yet to learn to cope with my own life, never mind be responsible for someone else's life.' Her smile was unwavering. Was she in some sort of trance, or did she know in her heart what was coming? 'Yet you, clearly, you are a fit person for such a charge. You have experience. You are wise. You prepare to leave your own life with a dignity that no man can but envy.'

  A ripple went round the room from the assembled men. They lived close enough to death to know how much that proximity Cost in courage.

  'If you trust in me to perform this… duty, then perhaps I may grow in stature and prove worthy of your trust in time enough to honour it. With a heavy heart, then, my answer is yes.'

  'Thank you,' said the woman, simply. Then she turned her gaze, wavering now as if she was having difficulty in focussing her eyes, to Drake. 'This is the wish of a dying woman, Sir Francis. If you are a gentleman, then you will honour it.'

  A shrewd blow, all things considered. Drake was, above all, not a gentleman. He was a commoner whose daring and luck had brought him enough wealth to make him look as if he were a gentleman. Those who had the status through birth to call themselves gentlemen hated him for his jumped-up success, sought continually to humiliate him. A true gentleman might have rejected the woman's charge. One who was forever having to justify his claim to be a gentleman could not refuse it. For a brief moment Sir Francis Drake stood before a dying woman as himself. The ferocious ambition, the paranoia, the trappings of wealth, the endless complexities, hypocrisies and charades of command, the acting and the playing of roles, all suddenly dropped off. 'I will honour it,' he said, simply.

  There was a crash at the door, and Robert Leng, gentleman adventurer and self-professed historian of Sir Francis Drake's triumphant expedition to Cadiz, broke into the cabin. Perhaps it was fortunate that all eyes went to Leng's flushed countenance, because at that precise moment, the compact with Gresham and Drake having been sealed with their eyes, Anna's mother allowed herself to die. The true dignity of death is to die alone. After all, we are born alone for the most part, and we are never more alone than when we die. Yet she was not truly alone. The only eyes that had not swivelled round to Leng as he crashed in were those of her daughter. When the curtain of death closed over her eyes, the last thing they saw was the startling, tear-stained blue orbs of her daughter.

  'Sir!' Leng was clearly confused by the sight before him. 'I am… most… most sorry to interrupt… I had no idea… Yet I beg to inform you, I have news of treason. Darkest treason.'

  Well, he had their attention now. And no one except the daughter had marked the passing from this earth of the mother.

  'Treason, sir,' he said, warming to his part now, 'directed and engineered by the bastard Henry Gresham!'

  Something dark, dull and leaden settled into Gresham's mind. He had never liked Leng, who had managed to ignore him throughout the voyage, while managing to emanate at the same time a distant sense of scorn. Yet this was not about dislike. As Gresham looked at Leng's sweating, pock-marked face, a cruel certainty formed in the cold, analytical part of his mind that he could not control but only read.

  'These were found in Gresham's belongings. A rosary. A prayer book for the Roman Catholic faith.' Leng paused. He was clearly saving the best for last. 'And a letter from the Court of King Philip of Spain, authorising Henry Gresham as His Catholic Majesty's agent, and advising all to give him loyalty and support!'

  Theatrically, he waved the letter in the air. Drake took it, with a leaden brow. Unseen by all present the girl closed her mother's eyes, whose face in death was still smiling, calm now. Drake glanced at the letter, directing a single glance at Gresham. He dropped it on the table. Leng picked it up. He was really enjoying this, thought Gresham. He paused, triumphant. Then he saw the dead woman in the bed.

  'Dear God!' he muttered, and sat down on the deck.

  The others looked towards the bed, their hearts aghast. The girl had placed her head on her mother's breast, and was sobbing, silently. There was no drama this time. Indeed, it was clear that for the girl the audience did not exist. There is no more powerful grief than private grief. The men present felt shamed, as if they had defiled the primal act of a child's sorrow for the death of its parent. Drake moved first towards the girl.

  'We will bury her,' he said, a kindness in his tone that none present had ever seen or heard before, 'even according to your rituals. Roman Catholic rituals. For all that I could be hung on my return for recognising such rituals exist. Not-at sea, either, so the fish can chew her flesh and bones. Not so she drifts where the tide drives. She wasn't one of our strange breed of sailor. We'll bury her on land, on San Miguel, where she can always be known and recorded, and where her children and her grandchildren can visit her grave. In God's good earth, on God's good ground.'

  How can a man with so much cruelty in him be so kind, thought Gresham?

  'Take the body to the Captain's cabin. Lay her out there,' said

  Drake. Laying out bodies was not a skill in short supply among Drake's fleet. 'Follow her,' he said gently to the girl, 'so that you may see that all things are seemly.'

  The sailors brought a rough dignity to their job, the body of the woman wrapped in the sheets in which she had lain. The girl followed, still in her private world of grief. The men remained in the cabin.

  'I understood you were a spy for England. It seems you are a spy for Spain,' said Drake.

  'Will you believe me if I say I've never seen that letter before, nor the rosary and prayer book?' said Gresham. 'I think not. Yet it's the truth.'

  'It was found in his belongings, I swear, my Lord!' said Leng.

  Drake snorted, moved away. Gresham spoke.

  'If Sir Francis Drake of the Elizabeth Bonaventure will not hear me, yet will the Captain of the Judith listen to his past?'

  Drake stopped in his tracks. Gresham bore on. He knew it was his last chance.

  'As a young man you captained the Judith. A tiny vessel, but yours. You sailed into a Spanish harbour needing rest and succour, with the other ships with whom you had sailed. There was no war between Spain and England, you were simply sailors, cast upon the same waters, facing the same dangers, fearing the same death. You asked for help, were given help, given safe conduct.'

  Drake had not moved.

  'Then the Spanish decided to take the English vessels, capture them and imprison or burn their crew. You were the bottom of the pile, the smallest vessel, the most insignificant prize. So you slipped out from under their treachery, fought your way home against all odds. You were betrayed.'

  Now came the real gamble.

  'And you were called a coward, for leaving your fellow sailors.' Suddenly the air in the cabin froze. All eyes turned to Drake. 'So am I the smallest vessel, the least valuable, the disposable commodity, and so have I been betrayed, by whom I know not. So have I been called a coward, despite my reaction under fire, as you were called a coward, in the face of your courage. Will you believe me, as captain of the Judith and the man who brought her home? Or will you believe that there are men trying to deceive you, seeking to use you, to make you my executioner?'

  The analytical part of Gresham's mind kept working, thinking, detached from that part of a young man's brain telling him that he was shortly to die. He had to inflame Drake's paranoia, the belief this man had of a world set permanently to betray him. But what a situation for Drake. He had just given his word to allow Gresham to act as guardian to the girl, and it would be far easier for a real gentleman to break his word; far harder for someone desperate to be a gentleman to break it. The nouveaux were always the most willing to believe the old lies. Yet here, clearly was treachery, the likelihood that Gresham had lied to him. It was not the letter that would make Drake want to kill Gresham, he thought. It was the fact that Drake had been taken in by a lie, fooled by a young upstart.

  'Ask yourself this, Sir Francis,' continued Gresham. 'Any fool can plant any item they want in
the baggage aboard this vessel. Our belongings are strewn about the deck, open to the elements. Do I seem to you fool enough to carry a letter that condemns me, a letter so easily found? What man leaves his death warrant openly on board the deck of a ship?'

  They could hear the lapping of the water against the hull as Gresham paused.

  'You've not landed me on enemy shore,' he said. It was his final play, he knew. 'Yet you were instructed to do so. Has whoever countermanded Walsingham's orders also demanded my death? Doesn't a man deserve to know who it is that kills him? And how certain are you that this same person will not turn and do to you what you have been commanded to do to me?' *No one commands me, Henry Gresham,' said Drake. 'They may suggest, if they choose. And no one has commanded me to kill you. I hold the power of life and death aboard my ships. I delegate it and give it up to no man.'

  Yet to be found with such a letter is as good as killing me, thought Gresham. Did you know that I was to be killed? Or were your orders simply to keep me on board? And who gave you the instructions not to land me ashore?

  Drake reached his decision with surprising speed. It was clear that he did not like Gresham. Gresham's only hope was that he disliked those who were seeking to pull the strings on board his flagship just as much.

  'How good is your knowledge of history?' Drake asked. Gresham was learning, eventually, to cope with the wild swings and tangents of a dialogue with Drake. But was he going to let him live, or die?

  'As bad as any College Fellow's,' answered Gresham, struggling to stay outwardly calm.

  'You will know that in Anglo-Saxon times justice was rough and ready. Yet effective, for all its crudeness. You are aware of trial by ordeal?'