Battle’s Flood

by J. D. Davies

  They had little time for such thoughts. The storm blew relentlessly for three days and three nights, the sea an unremitting cauldron of ferocious waves. Not an inch of the Jennet above decks was dry, and precious few inches below. With no work to be done on the sails, nor upon the upper deck, the men huddled below, trying but usually failing to find a relatively dry corner and to snatch a few moments of sleep until their next shift on the pumps came around. Jack and Tom took turns on deck, but in truth, there was little a ship’s captain could do, either. There were no stars visible to navigate by, no other ships to avoid, no course to order other than that dictated by the screaming wind, but also, thankfully, no ship-killing coast within hundreds of miles. There was nothing for it but to run with the wind, praying that the storm would soon blow itself out.

  Bruno Cabral came up on deck from time to time, and by the middle of the second day, the two Stannards were confident enough in him to let him stand watch alone, giving them both slightly longer sojourns below, in the relatively large cabin at the stern that the three of them shared. They developed a pattern: while one was on deck, a second attempted to sleep, while the third oversaw, and often assisted in, the back-breaking work at the pumps.

  In the middle of the second night, Jack climbed to the upper deck, took a firm hold of the sodden lifeline, and made his way aft to relieve Cabral. There was no lessening of the storm. All around, thunder growled viciously. The ship still moved insanely in several directions at once, the masts creaking ominously, and the hull groaning in protest at the constant assault from the evil, white-crested waves, so much more frightening at night, like a mighty army of the dead ceaselessly battering at the walls of a castle.

  Cabral greeted him with no more than a nod.

  ‘No break?’ shouted Jack, into the wind.

  Looking about, he already knew the answer, but some part of him hoped that Cabral, who had sailed far more distant seas than any Stannard, might have detected just a hint of a change.

  ‘None,’ said the Portuguese.

  ‘So be it. When you go below, say a prayer for us, Bruno Cabral.’

  The taciturn Cabral nodded again, untied himself, took hold of the lifeline, and made to go forward. Then, he seemed to have a thought, and turned back to face Jack, leaning close to ensure he could be heard.

  ‘You talk in your sleep, Jack Stannard,’ he said. ‘You say a name often – Alice. Now, I know Alice is not your wife. The ship is named for your wife, Jennet. But men in the crew have told me who Alice was, and I see how things stand. I had a wife, once. She died. You are a braver man than me, or a stronger, to take a second.’

  ‘You choose a strange time and place to talk to me of my wives, Senhor Cabral,’ bellowed Jack.

  ‘Not strange,’ said Cabral, who seemed not to need to raise his voice so much to be heard above the wind. ‘Where else, and when else, can we know for certain we are not overheard? So I tell you this now, that you may think upon it. Minha amigo, it is not only Alice you name as you sleep. You mumble prayers – Maria stella maris, and others. Prayers in Latin. And I have seen you take out a paternoster and finger it when you think no man is looking. So I know that we share a faith, Jack Stannard. You may sail with heretics, and you may pretend to be a heretic, but in your heart, you are still loyal to Rome.’

  Jack felt as though he had been struck down by one of the lightning flashes that lit the horizon. In that moment, the wind, rain and spray stinging his face meant nothing. He could say nothing. He thought he was so careful, that this was so secret…

  Cabral looked at him steadily.

  ‘You are safe, Jack Stannard. Bruno Cabral does not betray others. He certainly does not betray one of his own. Dominus tecum.’

  He turned, and made his way below decks, leaving Jack to the storm and his thoughts.

  You talk in your sleep, Jack Stannard.

  Walsingham had known, or at least suspected, that Jack was still a Catholic at heart. But Jack was convinced that, before Bruno Cabral, only three living people could know that. Two were his son and his daughter; that was, his oldest son and firstborn daughter, Alice’s children. But the third was the woman who had shared his bed in Dunwich until she became too vast to do so.

  * * *

  Just after midnight during the third night, Jack and Tom were on deck together. For an hour, they had been looking at each other, not daring to say a word, not daring to hope. Instead, they watched and listened, turning one way and then another, looking aloft and then astern. The sea was still a foaming swell, the ship still rolling and pitching as if set to overturn at any instant, but there was a difference.

  It was Tom, younger and thus by nature more hopeful, who gave voice to both their thoughts.

  ‘Easing, for certain, and backing northerly,’ was all he said.

  Jack made no reply, although he knew his son was right. Another hour, and every man on the ship knew it. For the first time in many hours, there were smiles below decks, and good humour. Men who had not eaten for days devoured a hearty repast of lyngs cod, poor john and stale bread, washed down with Plymouth beer. The Jennet moved just a little less violently, the wind blew a little less hard, the rain became gentler and then, praise God, intermittent. Cabral came up on deck, then a few of the bolder men from below, with Hal Ashby the first of them. Another turn of the glass followed before Cabral hesitantly and wordlessly pointed to the heavens. Jack and Tom followed the direction his finger pointed to, and the younger man actually grinned.

  It was a star.

  A little after dawn, with the blessed sun rising and starting to warm the larboard side, the Jennet became a true ship again, rather than a mere wooden ark wholly at the mercy of the wind and waves. Hal Ashby’s whistle blew, men clambered up the standing rigging with a rare eagerness, the foresail was properly unfurled, and the other sails were set. The English ensign was broken out at the stern, although there was no ship within sight to see it. Lookouts went into the tops, but made no report. A clear and empty sea surrounded the Jennet all the way to the horizon.

  The Stannards and Bruno Cabral held an impromptu conference on deck. Their view of the stars during the small hours had been too broken by the last clouds of the storm to enable clear fixes with their cross-staffs, but the general situation was clear enough: they were being blown southward upon a favourable breeze, and God willing, they would make landfall at the rendezvous set by Hawkins when the fleet was last assembled. Whether that fleet still existed was known only by—

  ‘Sail ho!’

  Ned Ashby, the young lookout in the crow’s nest upon the main, had the keenest eyes on the ship.

  ‘Where away?’ cried Jack.

  ‘Starboard quarter, ten leagues, maybe fifteen!’

  The three men went to the ship’s rail and strained their eyes toward the horizon. At first, the only thing apparent was a tiny shape in the very far distance. Slowly, though, it became clear that it was a ship, with distinguishable masts and sails.

  ‘A Portingal or a Spaniard?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Too large to be a caravel,’ said Cabral. ‘Maybe a Spaniard, although she’s too lofty for a galleon.’

  ‘High-sided, for certain,’ said Jack.

  The courses of the two ships closed, and all the while, the Stannards’ confidence rose. But it was young Ned Ashby, high in the maintop, who settled matters.

  ‘She’s breaking out her colours! It’s… it’s… aye, no doubt of it, it’s the cross of St George!’

  Cheering began on the deck of the Jennet. Tom Stannard punched the air, his father smiled, and Bruno Cabral remained impassive, looking out intently at the vast, battered but fast-approaching hull of the Jesus.

  Ten

  ‘Tenerife,’ said John Hawkins, standing at the highest point of the aftercastle of the Jesus. ‘You know it?’

  ‘I sailed here once, in sixty-two,’ said Tom Stannard, standing beside him. ‘I’ve been no further south nor west than this.’

  ‘Aye, well, you’ll better
that by some way this time, cousin. If we survived that storm, and if we can find our other ships, then I think we can truthfully say that God smiles upon us, eh? They’re not in Santa Cruz, though. I thought they would be. No matter. There are several good anchorages in these islands, so God willing, they’ll have run into one of the others. Time, then, to think of hailing our friendly and generous hosts, Tom Stannard.’

  The island ahead was mountainous, its highest peak topped with what looked to be a thick coat of snow. Cliffs and steep grey-green slopes rose from the sea to harsh black hills a little way inland. Other islands were in sight – Palma to the west and Grand Canary to the south-east, according to Bruno Cabral’s charts – but it was for Tenerife that Hawkins conned the three ships of his fleet that had found each other thus far, the Judith having appeared three days before.

  Before the fleet entered the bay of Santa Cruz, in the north-east corner of the island, Tom returned to the Jennet and found Cabral, who had been sailing these seas since childhood, with the watch on deck. Jack stood alongside him. Tom conveyed to his father Hawkins’ instructions for anchoring, and Jack smiled.

  ‘Our admiral is short on trust, then,’ he said.

  ‘He is right to be,’ said Cabral. ‘Spaniards. Never trust one of them, I say.’

  As the English ships entered the bay of Santa Cruz, they dipped their ensigns and fired guns in salute to the red and yellow flag of Philip, King of Castile, Aragon, Mallorca, Sardinia, Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, erstwhile King of England, duke and count of more territories than most men could enumerate. It was all perfectly correct, perfectly innocent, yet when the three vessels dropped anchor, they did so in positions where – entirely coincidentally, of course – they were masked from the fire of the Spanish gun batteries ashore by local merchant ships lying inshore of them.

  The familiar process of sending boats ashore to replenish the fleet’s water casks got under way immediately, and one of the boats from the Jesus also bore letters from Hawkins informing the governor of his entirely peaceable intentions and inviting old friends among the local merchants aboard for supper that evening; this became known to the Stannards on the Jennet because a boat also came across to them, requesting their presence. Thus it was that, a little after the bell was rung to mark the end of the second dog watch, Jack and Tom Stannard, attired in their best shirts and tunics, were rowed over to the flagship, leaving Cabral on watch in the Jennet.

  Hawkins, it seemed, was already among friends, laughing uproariously in the midst of a half dozen Spaniards on the upper deck. The Stannards moved on in search of company, and found it with Robert Barrett, the sailing master of the Jesus, a stocky, red-bearded young Cornishman with a face marked from smallpox. Sailors from the flagship’s crew and Hawkins’ young pages, all liveried like court flunkeys, moved about the deck charging and recharging the fine Venetian wine glasses that Hawkins must have unstowed from the hold. The admiral’s band provided constant music; verily, the flagship was a floating English manor house, with its lord lavishly entertaining his guests.

  ‘Our admiral seems to be in easy company,’ said Jack.

  Robert Barrett nodded. ‘He has been here before, remember, more than once.’ Barrett had a strong but easily intelligible accent. ‘Men don’t forget John Hawkins. He’s also markedly generous with his gifts, so they have even more cause to remember him. See those two? The older man, Pedro de Pontes, is father to that one, Nicolas. When Hawkins first sailed to the Indies, they supplied him with a pilot and letters of introduction. Some Spaniards have no difficulty with the notion of trading with the English. Would that their king and his ministers thought the same way.’

  There was a disturbance near them. Edward Dudley pushed his way through a gaggle of gentlemen volunteers from the Judith, making his way directly for Tom Stannard. The old soldier, so out of place among the loud young men all around him, was sweating and agitated.

  ‘Stannard,’ he said, ‘Thomas Stannard. I must speak with you. Alone, if you will.’

  Tom exchanged a glance with his father, who nodded, and the two men went up to the highest part of the poop deck, which was deserted.

  ‘What’s the issue, Captain Dudley?’ said Tom.

  The older man was clearly fighting to restrain a considerable inner rage.

  ‘I’ve no right to ask it,’ he said. ‘But there’s no other – all the rest are Hawkins’ choices, Hawkins’ men…’

  ‘No other what?’

  ‘No other candidate, Tom Stannard. To be my second. In a duel.’

  * * *

  Tom paced the sun-baked beach below a great cliff, and wondered why he had agreed to participate in such utter folly. That was what his father had called it, and he was undoubtedly right. But when Tom had learned the cause from Edward Dudley’s lips, and heard the names of those involved, a mist had come over his eyes, much as it had in the days when he would take on far larger and more experienced fighters in the Suffolk fairs, simply to prove a point to his older sister.

  Dudley was a few yards away, swinging and thrusting with his sword, practising his steps and his feints. It seemed that since sailing from Plymouth, he had become involved in a running argument with a certain George Fitzwilliam, a great favourite of Hawkins. The cause of the argument was obscure. Fitzwilliam seemed to have cast some aspersions on the name of Dudley, of which the old captain was inordinately proud. There was a suggestion that he had reminded Dudley of the executions for treason of two men to whom he claimed kinship – King Harry the Seventh’s tax-gatherer and Edward the Sixth’s Lord Protector – but the final straw seemed to have been a drunken, ribald suggestion from Fitzwilliam that the current great Dudley of their time, the queen’s favourite, the Earl of Leicester, had not only taken Her Majesty’s much-vaunted virginity, but had fathered several secret bastards upon her. That, it seemed, was the moment when Edward Dudley had issued his challenge.

  Tom had encountered George Fitzwilliam on a few occasions, and entirely disliked him, so none of what Dudley said came as a surprise. Fitzwilliam was the sort of arrogant young man who was unjustifiably proud of what was, in truth, a mediocre lineage, and who bragged much of the admiral’s confidence in him. It was hardly surprising – and, in Tom’s opinion, the final nail in his coffin – that Fitzwilliam should be a boon companion of Francis Drake.

  ‘Boat coming in from the Jesus!’ cried Dudley. ‘At last, the damn rogue’s coming to pay for his insults. Coming to meet his fate, by God!’

  But as the boat neared the shore, it was clear that it did not contain Fitzwilliam. Its passenger jumped out into the shallow water and strode up the beach, punctiliously offering a salute to Dudley.

  It was Francis Drake.

  ‘Captain Dudley, sir,’ he said. ‘The admiral’s compliments, but he would have you attend him in his cabin aboard the flagship.’

  ‘My compliments to the admiral, but I have an appointment. I shall gladly attend him after it is concluded.’

  Drake smiled. ‘The appointment has been cancelled, Captain. But it is precisely that of which the admiral wishes to speak.’

  * * *

  Later, aboard the Jesus, Hawkins insisted on speaking to Dudley alone. But he indicated that Tom and Drake, together with his servants, should wait immediately outside the door to the flagship’s great cabin, so it was easy to hear every word spoken within.

  ‘Now, Captain Dudley—’ said Hawkins in a conciliatory tone. But he was given no chance to finish the sentence.

  ‘An affair of honour, Hawkins!’ bawled Dudley, who had spent the boat trip back from Tenerife growing angrier with every stroke of the blades. ‘By what right do you interfere?’

  ‘By my right as admiral,’ said Hawkins, a little more loudly, ‘acting with the authority of the queen’s majesty. I laid down instructions just after we sailed from Plymouth, Captain, as you may recall. No quarrelling between us, and no disobedience to the admiral’s command. You have served for many years, Dudley, and fought in wars. You know the i
mportance of obedience to commands, and to higher authority.’

  ‘If I saw any authority worthy of the name, Hawkins, I’d defer to it.’

  ‘Careful what you say, Captain. Remember who I am, and what office I hold.’

  ‘Aye, of which you don’t waste a second of any day reminding us.’

  There was a pause, which caused Tom and Drake to glance coldly at each other, then Hawkins tried a different tack.

  ‘We can’t appear disunited before the Spaniards, Captain, least of all on their own soil. Wait for the shore of Africa, man, then you can have your affair of honour, and I’ll act as the judge.’

  Dudley began to yell. ‘Oh, you the judge? And what a fair and neutral judge you’d be, John Hawkins! Why don’t you just show your true colours and act as second for your bumboy Fitzwilliam?’

  Those outside the door of the great cabin heard the unmistakable sound of a hand slapping a cheek. Tom stepped toward the door, but Drake laid a hand on his arm and shook his head. But the next sound from within was that of a sword being drawn from a scabbard, followed by a cry from Hawkins.

  ‘Murder! In God’s name, murder!’

  Now it was Drake who made for the door and burst through it, followed immediately by Tom and two of Hawkins’ servants.

  The sight before them was astonishing. England’s admiral was bleeding from a gash in the right side of his face, above the eye, but he was parrying a furious attack from Dudley, who seemed utterly oblivious to the others who had now entered the room. Dudley was so enraged that he made no attempt to keep up a guard, and as the horrified onlookers watched, Hawkins wounded his assailant in the arm. Tom and Drake then sprang forward, pinned Dudley’s arms behind his back, and disarmed him.