Battle’s Flood

by J. D. Davies

  Hawkins leaned heavily on his chart table, panting for breath and wiping blood out of his right eye. But he was still the commander, and still able to give the orders that had to be given.

  ‘Take Captain Dudley away, and place him in irons on the orlop deck. Two guards to keep watch over him. A trial to be convened this afternoon. Make it so.’

  * * *

  The scene on the upper deck of the Jesus was solemn, as befitted a court of law. All hands of the flagship, and representatives of the crews of the other two ships in the company, had been mustered to witness the proceedings. Jack had come across from the Jennet, and now stood alongside his son, who had given him a summary of the proceedings thus far. A gaggle of the gentlemen volunteers stood a little way from them. Drake was there, and so was George Fitzwilliam, looking ashen-faced.

  There was an audible gasp as Dudley was led onto the deck, in chains and still wearing his torn, bloodstained garments from the morning. Then Hawkins appeared, attired in a fresh outfit and wearing a bandage across his forehead and right eye. He nodded to Robert Barrett, who read the charge.

  ‘You, Captain Edward Dudley, are charged that on this day, the twenty-fifth day of October in the ninth year of the reign of our sovereign lady Elizabeth, whom God preserve, you did mutinously attempt the unlawful killing of John Hawkins, esquire, admiral of this fleet set forth with Her Majesty’s authority for an expedition unto the shores of Guinea and the Indies.’

  Barrett stood aside, and Hawkins stepped forward to stand directly in front of Dudley.

  ‘How do you justify yourself, Captain Dudley?’ he demanded.

  Tom caught Dudley’s eye, and saw at once that all the confidence and bravado had gone. Something very different had taken their place.

  Dudley looked away, and suddenly slumped to his knees before Hawkins, weeping profusely.

  ‘Sir, it is very true,’ he said. ‘I have had time to think upon it, and know that what I did was wrong. I am truly ashamed of it, sir, but I know that this proceeding, this court, is nothing but what I deserve. I have had command of men, and if any had ever drawn a blade on me and wounded me, I would have ordered them hanged. It is the right punishment, and it is entirely your right to inflict it, Admiral Hawkins. I did what I did. I am guilty as charged. All I can do, sir, is throw myself upon your most gracious mercy.’

  With that, he prostrated himself upon the deck, and touched Hawkins’ feet.

  Tom and Jack exchanged a glance. The younger Stannard had expected Dudley to remain unrepentant, but his frank admission of guilt had clearly won over many of the men on deck. Two or three were even in tears, while George Fitzwilliam looked away, out across the sea toward the mountains of Tenerife.

  ‘John Hawkins, the man, forgives you in an instant,’ said Hawkins. ‘But I am not merely John Hawkins the man. I am admiral of this fleet, and thus an ambassador of the queen’s most excellent majesty. By attacking me, you have endangered this fleet, and these men. Worse, you have done it under the very guns and flags of a foreign power. There are those who would call such an act treasonable. You are a knowledgeable man, Captain, and thus you know the fate that has always befallen those who commit such affronts to the laws of God and England.’

  ‘My life is in your hands,’ said Dudley, simply.

  ‘Bosun!’ cried Hawkins. The boatswain of the Jesus stepped forward. ‘Fetch an arquebus. Two balls, if you please.’

  The boatswain saluted with two fingers to his forehead, then ran below to the armoury. Hawkins turned once again to Dudley.

  ‘Make your peace with God, Edward Dudley,’ he said, ‘for you are about to look upon His face.’

  The words finally broke Dudley entirely. The old soldier’s body was racked with sobs, and his collapse affected many of those on the deck of the Jesus. Men fell to their knees weeping, raised their hands in supplication to their admiral, and called out for mercy.

  ‘Aye, mercy!’ cried Tom Stannard.

  ‘Mercy, in God’s name!’ added Jack. Tom knew that, in his pocket, his father would be thumbing the beads of his paternoster.

  Francis Drake, a little way away, merely smiled, and murmured words that few but the Stannards heard.

  ‘Just shoot the old bastard,’ he said.

  The boatswain returned from below decks. Solemnly he loaded and primed the instrument of execution, then handed it to Hawkins.

  The admiral addressed Dudley once again.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am done with the world,’ replied the old captain, ‘and I am ready to receive the punishment that you have appointed for me.’

  John Hawkins steadied the gun’s rest upon the deck, then pressed the arquebus to Dudley’s temple.

  He put his finger to the trigger.

  Eleven

  No man breathed.

  Hawkins’ gaze, looking down the barrel of the arquebus, was fixed upon the prone figure of Dudley, whose brains were about to be shattered and spread across the deck of the Jesus.

  Tom Stannard bowed his head, not wanting to look upon the horror. Jack, though, kept his eyes on Hawkins. Thus he saw the admiral look across to the carpenter of the Jesus and utter a simple command.

  ‘Free him.’

  As the carpenter stooped to remove Dudley’s chains, Hawkins took the old soldier by the hand and raised him to his feet.

  There was a gasp of disbelief from the men mustered on deck. Then wild cheering erupted, caps were thrown into the air, and men slapped each other on the back.

  ‘Hurrah for the admiral! God bless the admiral! Hurrah!’

  Jack and Tom were among the few close enough to Dudley and Hawkins to hear what passed between them.

  ‘But I must die for what I have done,’ said Dudley, sobbing. ‘I wish to die, unless you can help me to forget the memory of my deed. Release me only if you forgive me, Admiral.’

  Hawkins’ response was gentle.

  ‘It is done, my friend. I forgive you gladly. All record of what has passed this day will be expunged. Now, come. We shall drink and talk.’

  At that, Hawkins led Dudley toward the great cabin of the flagship, passing close to the Stannards. Jack nodded approvingly to the admiral; this, he thought, was a good and godly act, and the wild, seemingly endless cheering of the crew bore witness to it. By showing mercy, by turning their anger at Dudley into pity, Hawkins had united the crew, and reinforced their loyalty to him. There was a stamp of greatness about it, thought Jack.

  Tom, though, was noticing the expression on the face of Francis Drake. It was furious.

  * * *

  The Jennet’s pinnace lay upon the beach before Santa Cruz. Tom had command of the shore party tasked with replenishing the ship’s water casks; men were rolling the empty casks up to the watering place, next to a small chapel, then rolling the full ones back down to the boat. It was hard, sapping work, even though the sun was not fully up, and the men of the Jennet were all stripped as far as decency would permit. A small gaggle of young girls and older matrons stood under the shade of some trees at the head of the beach, their whispered asides and laughter suggesting that they were frankly appraising the bodies of the Englishmen. Tom waved at them, and a few blushed. Others, though, called out brazenly, and some of the Dunwich men posed provocatively before them. One such was Hal Ashby. He had a firm, brown body, Tom thought, which reminded him of Hugh Ebbes back at Dunwich, apart from the large old scar across Hal’s belly—

  No.

  Tom chided himself, and turned to look out to sea, to where the English fleet lay beyond the Spanish merchantmen. Such thoughts only made him feel ashamed. He was a happily married man, and every day he thanked God that being in that blessed state, and his delight in his wife and sons, kept him from the thoughts and dreams that had plagued him since he was young. When the Reverend James at St Peter’s preached upon Leviticus 18 or 20, the young Thomas Stannard used to shift uncomfortably upon his stool. So when it was proposed that he should marry Catherine Trelawny, h
e rejoiced that his soul stood at least some chance of avoiding eternal damnation.

  ‘Idling, Stannard of Suffolk?’

  Drake’s unwelcome, insinuating voice made him turn abruptly. The man could not have been in his thoughts, and yet his appearance at that precise moment seemed more than a coincidence.

  ‘Don’t you have the casks for the Jesus to attend to, Drake?’

  Drake smiled. ‘All in hand. Remember the Jesus is a proper man-of-war of the Navy Royal, and my cousin runs her as such, so men know their places. Unlike that shabby excuse for a hull that you and your father cherish so much, and your crew that does what it pleases.’

  Tom took an angry step forward, but then saw that the eyes of most of the men from the Jesus and the Jennet were upon him. So soon after the admiral’s very public treatment of Edward Dudley, it would be unutterable folly for Tom to fight with Francis Drake in front of the crews.

  ‘Shabby she may be, Drake, but she rode the storm better than the great wreck you call the Jesus.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tom could see some of his men moving closer to those from the flagship. Whatever his own feelings in the matter, neither he nor Drake could afford a repeat of the fight in the Plymouth alehouse. That being so, he essayed a broad smile, although he suspected the effect might be ghastly.

  ‘But come, Frank Drake,’ he said, as merrily as he could, ‘we’re Englishmen ashore in a foreign land. The admiral, kin to both of us, has made clear that he won’t tolerate any disunity in our fleet. For my part, I intend to complete the lading of our casks, then to try my Spanish on some of the ladies yonder. What say you?’

  The Devon man’s face changed, the mischievous, baiting mask giving way to profound disapproval.

  ‘Fornication, Stannard? Fornication with papists?’

  Drake looked around, saw the two parties of men waiting for the slightest excuse to lay about each other, then shook his head and turned away, gesturing for the men of the Jesus to accompany him. Tom watched him go. He had no intention of committing fornication with anyone, that day or any other, but he had often heard it said in Plymouth that when it came to matters of the flesh, Francis Drake was as rigid as an Old Testament prophet. Better, then, for him to regard Tom as one kind of sinner rather than another.

  * * *

  ‘It’s happening,’ said Tom. ‘Hawkins said it would, and he was right.’

  Jack screwed up his eyes, and peered into the darkness. It was an hour or so after dusk, and all had seemed quiet in the harbour of Santa Cruz. But then he saw what he thought was a movement…

  Yes, there could be no doubt of it. For a bare minute, no more, the light from the candles, lanterns and fires of the town was hidden as some dark mass moved in front of them. The mass could only be the hull of a ship, and the ship could only be one of the vessels that had lain between the English fleet and the guns of the Spanish batteries. Forewarned by his friends among the merchants of Tenerife, Hawkins, and thus the captains of his ships, knew that at dawn, the governor of the island would give orders to his gun batteries to blow Queen Elizabeth’s ships out of the water.

  But Hawkins was ready, and the Stannards and their men aboard the Jennet were ready. The watch on deck was already crowded around the foot of the shrouds, eager to get aloft. Jack left the command to Tom, at whose signal the men climbed up to the yards to ready the sails. Others hauled upon the capstan, pulling up the Jennet’s anchor from the depths. Once the anchor was clear of the water, the sails were unfurled and sheeted home. The breeze was not a strong one, but it was good enough. Through the darkness, they saw the white sails of the Jesus ahead crack and then fill sufficiently to move the great ship forward, the lantern at Hawkins’ stern showing the way for the Jennet and the Judith. Jack studied the trim of their own sails, thought of ordering a slight change to the foretopsail, then held his tongue. This was his son’s command, and Tom, standing at the rail shouting clear, crisp orders to the men, had become a more than capable shipmaster. Jack felt a surge of pride that this should be so.

  * * *

  The fleet moved only a very short distance down the coast, then dropped anchor again. When dawn broke, they were well out of range of the guns of Santa Cruz. The Stannards watched with some amusement as a boat bearing the oversized ensign of the governor of Tenerife went out to the Jesus, no doubt to deliver a protest about the English fleet’s inexplicable snub to Spanish hospitality. They learned later that Hawkins had been equally polite, and equally disingenuous, in his reply. Nevertheless, the lesson was clear. When, a few days later, the entire fleet sailed for the coast of Africa, the other ships separated by the great storm having been discovered at the neighbouring island of Gomera, it did so with a clear understanding that henceforward, it should assume itself to be in a state of war with Spain.

  That assumption loomed large in the next letter that Jack Stannard wrote to Francis Walsingham, ready to be forwarded in any friendly vessel the Jennet encountered that might be returning to European waters.

  Twelve

  His first sight of the fabled continent of Africa should have thrilled Jack Stannard. In childhood, his teacher and later friend, Thomas Ryman, had told him tales of Prester John, King Solomon’s mines and the Queen of Sheba. He had dreamed of it as a land of mysteries, giants and monsters, of riches beyond measure and dangers beyond imagination. There should have been towering cliffs topped by vast statues erected by ancient empires, and waterfalls emerging from forests of trees taller and greener than any in England.

  But there was none of this. Instead, Africa was a dull, flat, grey shore, the surf breaking upon the interminable beach just as it did in more familiar waters. Thus Jack Stannard’s first impression of Africa was that, as a coast, it seemed somewhat less interesting than Essex.

  Bruno Cabral now had charge of the ship’s navigation, and had laid out a portolan chart upon the barrel of a saker to explain their location to Tom.

  ‘We have made landfall to the north of Cabo Blanco, Thomas Stannard, so we will be somewhere in this vicinity. An empty shore, with no harbours of refuge. Little trade. Hawkins knows this; he has been here before. So we will coast southward until we reach the cape, then strike south for the Senegal river and Cabo Verde. That is where he expects to take his slaves.’

  Jack knew full well the principal purpose of the voyage; that was, its revised purpose, since the two Portuguese merchants had vanished from Plymouth and Hawkins had obtained the queen’s permission to continue the expedition with a revised and, arguably, rather more dangerous objective. But Tom, who had not travelled southward as far or as often as his father had, still seemed convinced that they would engage principally in the familiar sort of trades, the selling of cloth and the like, and found it difficult to comprehend the notion of a cargo that breathed and spoke.

  ‘There is profit in this – the taking of slaves?’

  ‘Great profit,’ said Cabral. ‘Why do you think the French, and now you English, seek to take some of the trade from we Portuguese? The Spanish colonies in the Indies need men to work their fields and their mines. Great numbers of men. Where can they get them in the numbers they need? Africa is the only place. So the Spanish permit the Portuguese, and only us, to ship slaves across the sea, but if a ship of any other nation comes to the Indies, the Spanish there will gladly ignore their king’s prohibition and buy from its captain, so great is the need for men. Hawkins knows this. He has made two voyages to this coast, and made great profit. This time, he hopes for even more.’

  Tom nodded, but he was still thoughtful. His father, watching the exchange, knew that expression of old.

  ‘But Master Cabral,’ said Tom. He seemed to think better of his question, but then asked it anyway. ‘Master Cabral, are these not your people?’

  By this time, Jack Stannard had known Bruno Cabral for a period that could be measured in months, and he had never seen the Portingal angry. Now, though, Cabral stood upright, puffed out his chest and leaned forward towards Tom, his eye
s blazing.

  ‘Are you like a Turk or a Muscovite, Tom Stannard?’ he said, coldly. ‘Or are you like a Frenchman or a Spaniard? No, you are not. Do you claim kinship to them? No, you do not. Do you speak their languages? No, you do not. Likewise, I do not claim kinship to those fellows ashore – the fellows that we seek. I was born in Lisbon, as was my father, and his father before him, and so on back to the time of Sancho the Pious. I am a Christian, with hope of salvation through Our Lord, while they are brute beasts who worship false gods, so they are damned to hellfire by their ignorance. In that, my Catholic bishops and your heretical prelates are as one. So just because my skin is the same colour as theirs does not mean I am like the people ashore, just as you are not like any of those I have named.’

  He sniffed. ‘And let me tell you this: even if that were not so, they are losers in war. In Europe, we pride ourselves that our wars have rules, do we not? We pride ourselves that we have honour, and all that accompanies it. We have heralds in fine tabards reading proclamations. We have trumpeters to accompany them. But at the end of a battle, what do you see? Thousands of throats being cut to spare the trouble and expense of prisoners. I witnessed this myself at Muscat and in Ethiopia, in my country’s wars with the Grand Turk. On the shore yonder, too, many of those defeated in war are slaughtered. But others are enslaved, just as they would be if there were no Portuguese, French or English at all upon this coast. I swear upon the grave of my mother that this is true. So they still live, Thomas Stannard, and if they are taken by people like us, they have a chance to become Christians and attain salvation. Where, then, is the greater honour, and the lesser hipocrisia – what is your English word? Ah, sim, cant. Where is the lesser cant, Thomas Stannard?’