by J. D. Davies
‘Six,’ came the reply.
‘Six? Hundred?’
Cabral asked for clarification, and King Yhoma said something in his own language, which the Portuguese pilot evidently had difficulty with. King Sheri said something else, and Cabral turned to his English companions with a curious expression upon his face.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Six thousand.’
Tom was taken aback, but Robert Barrett merely nodded.
‘Stubble to our swords,’ he said, ‘and more than enough captives to fill our decks ten times over. A mighty windfall indeed for our investors and for England, thanks be to God.’
‘As you say, Captain Barrett,’ said Tom, ‘but if we do capture the town and take that many prisoners, how do we ninety men guard them for the passage back to the fleet?’
Robert Barrett was a devout man, of the sort who fervently believed that God would provide in all eventualities, but the expression on his face suggested that he knew at once that Tom Stannard was right, and that something other than divine intervention would be required.
‘In that event,’ he said, ‘we’ll send to the admiral for reinforcements. In the meantime, I say we should test the defences of this place for ourselves. These are heathen savages, Stannard – what sort of fortress could they build that would hold for even an hour against godly Englishmen, eh?’
* * *
Tom’s experiences in the next two days proved incontrovertibly that the answer to Barrett’s rhetorical question was not that which the shipmaster of the Jesus had anticipated. Conga was vast, even by English standards, and its defences would not have been discreditable if they had surrounded one of Queen Elizabeth’s greatest fortresses. When they first approached the town, King Yhoma arranged a demonstration, ordering forth a cohort of a hundred of his men. These obeyed without the slightest hesitation, even though they must have known the fate that awaited them. As the group ran toward the defences, the ground suddenly gave way, and a dozen of them vanished. Tom could hear terrible screams, and Cabral commented casually that the defenders would have placed sharpened stakes in the bottoms of countless hidden pits. More stakes, bristling like some vast hedgehog, lay between the attackers and the wall, and the few who got as far as that final barrier were mown down by arrows fired from the top of a wall more than ten feet high, assembled from huge tree trunks lashed together. Behind the wall, the drums of the defenders beat out a constant rumble of defiance, while the men on the rampart gave strange, piercing yells that unnerved the English attackers.
Robert Barrett now ordered his arquebusiers into position, and a score of Englishmen let loose a half-dozen volleys. But these struck the enormous wooden wall and did no harm; the tops of the heads of the defenders, all that could be seen at that range, were far too small and distant to be realistic targets. Tom could hear the falconets from their boats in the river firing on the far side of the town, but within an hour, word came from these, reporting that their shot had had no effect at all on the defences or the defenders on that side.
For the rest of that day, and all of the next, Barrett persevered. The English probed at every stretch of Conga’s defences, at every corner and quarter, but the upshot remained the same, and finally he admitted defeat. He did so with considerable reluctance; he had known John Hawkins rather longer than Tom Stannard, and knew exactly how the admiral would react to yet another summons for help.
* * *
Barrett’s concerns were borne out. When he arrived before the walls of Conga that evening, with Dudley, Drake, several gentlemen volunteers and another hundred men – the most that could be spared without compromising the safety of the fleet – Hawkins was in a foul temper, and spared little time in taking out his frustrations on the officers of his vanward.
‘Sweet Jesu, Rob,’ he snapped at Barrett, ‘we are Englishmen! We follow the true reformed faith! These fellows do not even wear clothes, and they worship stones and skulls!’
‘Cousin,’ said Tom, in as mollifying a tone as he could manage, ‘the position is very strong.’
‘The defences are of wood,’ said Drake, loftily. ‘Now, that might still be what you use in Suffolk, but in Devon, we have long been accustomed to stone. Are you seriously saying that we Englishmen cannot overcome walls of wood and naked savages?’
‘Captain Stannard is right,’ said Barrett, but Hawkins was evidently in no mood to listen, Drake even less.
‘No,’ said Hawkins. ‘Damnation, we can spare no more time, and must be away from this coast! This place will fall, and it will fall tomorrow, as God is my judge! You, there! Cabral!’
The Portuguese stepped forward, and bowed his head slowly in a gesture that Tom considered a perfect blend of respect and contempt.
‘Admiral.’
‘Go to our allies, these jumped-up little kings! Tell them to deploy all their forces on the morrow, for we attack at noon!’
‘As you say, Admiral.’
* * *
As dawn broke, and the two armies of their allies prepared for the attack, even Drake could not disguise his admiration. The thousands of warriors oiled their skin, then danced and chanted to the rhythm of their drums. Tom thought of his father, the sometime choirboy of Cardinal College, Ipswich, downstream aboard the Jennet. Without doubt, he would have been impressed by the singing of these heathen natives.
When the sun was high enough in the sky, the native regiments moved forward to the edge of the bow’s range from the wall. A trumpet sounded, the boats in the river opened fire with their falconets, the attacking army charged forward, and the English contingent landed on the tiny area of riverbank available to them. Tom walked forward in the van of the English contingent, close to Hawkins, who was urging his men to ever greater efforts. The admiral, seemingly ignoring the heat, was dressed incongruously in his best armour, including a splendidly decorated and immaculately polished breastplate. The defenders responded furiously, sending down a hail of arrows, but these were very different from the bolts that had slaughtered the French at Agincourt. No more than light darts, they bounced off the men’s leather jerkins and did no greater damage than inflicting wounds akin to insect bites; having seen men struck by them more than two days earlier, Tom was confident that these arrows were not poisoned, and thus were little more than inconveniences. Within an hour, he had taken perhaps half a dozen hits, but continued to fight his way forward.
At Hawkins’ command, the English assault was concentrated on one small part of the defences on the river side of the town. Barrett’s boats had already weakened this during the previous days, and with more craft, and thus more guns, at his disposal, Hawkins could now mount a sterner and more persistent attack. When a trumpet blew, the boats ceased fire and the English ashore stormed forward. The natives on the ramparts howled and shot off their arrows, but the bombardment from the boats and the steady fire from the arquebuses slowly weakened their resolve. Soon, the men at the front of the English formation reached the rampart itself, and Tom found himself hacking at it with his sword, slashing through the ropes that held the great tree trunks together.
Another blast of the trumpet, and the English attack withdrew slightly. The guns on the boats in the river fell silent.
Tom returned to Hawkins’ position on the riverbank, joining Drake, who was casually pulling an arrow out of his arm, and Dudley, whose cheek was bloody.
‘All right, lads,’ said Hawkins, ‘all right. We have our breach. Time for God’s righteous flame, the fire of England itself!’
A ragged cheer greeted his words. The arquebusiers, their work done for the moment, moved to the rear on Dudley’s command, and their place was taken by the crossbowmen, who had been held back deliberately. Behind them, the pikemen formed up, their weapons lowered for an adjustment to their usual method. Several blazing cauldrons had been set up on the riverbank, making the place even more hellish, and from these the crossbowmen lit fire arrows.
‘For God, Elizabeth and old England!’ cried Hawkins, raising his sword and the
n sweeping it downward with a shout of ‘Loose!’
The crossbowmen fired high. Their arrows cleared the rampart easily, landing in the dry palm-leaf roofs of the mud huts within Conga. Tom clearly heard the screams of women and children, but the crossbowmen had already reloaded, and without waiting for a fresh command from Hawkins, they fired at will.
Another three volleys followed, by which time much of the nearest part of Conga was well ablaze. Now the pikemen advanced. But their weapons were not capped by the usual deadly spearhead; instead, they bore flaming bell-shaped containers filled with pitch. The trumpet sounded, and the English advanced into the breach, supplemented by several files of the native kings’ armies. Still the defenders of Conga resisted ferociously, but without the rampart to shelter them, they were easy targets for the arquebuses and swords of the English, as well as the throwing spears and arrows of the attacking army. Worse for them, the pikemen now fanned out, and began to fire more and more of the huts that the crossbowmen had not been able to reach.
For a moment, perhaps even an entire minute, Tom found himself shoulder to shoulder with Francis Drake as two or three dozen defenders rushed them. He cut and thrust, but took no pleasure in the business. His foes had no strategy, no guile, and no answer to a sword wielded by a man who knew how to use it. His blade sliced easily into native flesh, severing limbs, hacking through ribs and collarbones, taking off heads. He felt as though every inch of him was drenched in blood, and he could see that Drake was the same.
‘A Suffolk man who can use a blade as well as a Devonian,’ said Drake, panting for breath in a brief lull as their assailants fell back to regroup. ‘So you know how to fight and kill after all, Tom Stannard.’
‘I learned from my father,’ gasped Tom, ‘and he learned in turn from a man who was at Flodden, Marignano and Pavia. A man who went down with the Mary Rose.’
‘That so? Well, then. We must talk of it one day. Take your guard, though, Stannard of Dunwich, for here they come again!’
So it went on. More and more it seemed to Tom as though he were fighting through Hell itself, for the flames from the burning huts made the day even hotter, and the smoke stung his eyes. Now, too, there were unearthly screams from the far side of the town, as though the dead themselves were wailing from the depths of their eternal torment. It took him a moment to realise that this could only be the war cries of their allies’ main army, which must have finally breached the rampart on the other side of Conga. It was the age-old story in sieges: make one breach, and no matter how many defenders remained, they were doomed nine times out of ten. He caught a glimpse of Hawkins, but heard him more readily than he saw him.
‘Stay together, my lads! Keep formation, damn you! No looting now! God is with us! To God and the queen be the glory! The day is ours!’
As he heard those words, Tom Stannard watched one of the allied natives chase a naked boy of about Adam’s age out of one of the burning huts, then skewer the hysterical child upon the point of his spear, exulting as he did so.
So this, it seemed, was victory.
Fifteen
It was a hard winter in Dunwich. Blizzard followed blizzard, and thick snow often carpeted the heath for days on end, making it impossible for Meg to leave her isolated home, let alone reach the town, even to attend the pale imitation of Christmas Mass that the law now enjoined. But she had learned from her late aunt Agatha, who had possessed the cottage before her, so there was always enough food in the building for two or three weeks, and enough wood for the fire for just as long. One snowstorm confined her to the cottage for six days, but at the end of that time, and although it was still bitterly cold, there was enough of a break in the weather for her to set out upon the path to Dunwich, and for traffic to begin to move more freely on the roads around the Sandlings.
Unknown to her, it was the very day, and the very time, when, four thousand miles to the south, her brother was attacking the walls of Conga.
Meg followed her usual route toward the Palesdyke, but as she neared it, she saw a curious sight. A lone rider upon a large, sleek black mare was turning in through the barely discernible gap that had once been the south gate. The man appeared well dressed, with a sword at his side, but he was hooded, and she could not see his face. Curious, she thought: there was no road to the south gate, and had not been for very many years, if not centuries. All travellers from outside the town entered by Middlegate or St James Gate, and it was inconceivable that anyone could have ridden through the thick gorse on the heath, especially with so much snow lying upon it. So whoever this rider was, he must have deliberately chosen to skirt round the town, avoiding the usual entrances, so as to enter unobserved. It was very unlikely that any citizens of Dunwich had yet ventured out of their houses, and if any had, they would almost certainly be going in the opposite direction of this, either to the churches or the harbour.
She followed the rider.
A little further on, he turned off the path and coaxed his reluctant horse through the thick snow toward the ruins of Blackfriars. He seemed not to be aware of Meg’s presence behind him. Close by the monastic remains, he dismounted, tethered his horse, then walked into what had once been the refectory building. Meg followed, giving the horse a wide berth in case it should alert the rider to her presence. She pressed herself against the refectory wall, then edged along it until she came to a former doorway. Slowly, silently, she looked through the doorway.
Empty.
Very carefully, she stepped through into the roofless building—
A man’s arm hooked around her neck, squeezing the breath out of her. She punched out, but he was pressed up behind her, and she could muster no force. Instead, her hands went up to his arm, to try to break his grip, but he was relentless, threatening to choke the very life out of her. She could feel his breath upon her neck, and could even see it as little clouds upon the icy air. Then his other arm came around, and his hand fondled her breasts. She screamed, but she knew the vast old walls of Blackfriars would deaden the sound long before it reached the houses of Duck Street.
The man’s hand moved down, across her stomach. Then he suddenly thrust it between her legs and grabbed at her. She screamed again.
‘I could have you, here and now,’ said the man, whispering coldly into her ear. ‘And oh, there would be such pleasure in being inside Jack Stannard’s daughter, every which way I pleased. So very much pleasure.’
As suddenly as he had gripped her, he released her. She stepped forward and turned toward him, but she already knew who he was.
‘But I am a God-fearing man,’ he said, ‘and as such, mindful of canon law. So I will not commit incest upon you, niece.’
Stephen Raker pulled back the hood from his head. His grey hair was close-cropped and little more than stubble, but he also sported a large and well-groomed grey beard. He was fleshier than her father.
‘I will not call you uncle,’ said Meg, trying to conceal the fact that she was shaking.
Raker laughed. ‘I am grateful, Margaret Stannard – no, your pardon, Widow de Andrade. You see, there are already more than enough chinless youths and mewling brats in Southwold who call me that. Families, eh?’
She stared hard at the man’s face. It was difficult to see any resemblance to her father, his brother, but there was something about him that reminded her of her grandfather, even though she could not remember him before the leprosy ruined his features.
‘You are bold to ride into Dunwich,’ she said as her breath steadied and her heart grew calmer. ‘There are many in this town who blame you for the deaths of loved ones, and would gladly see you dead. Many who would gladly kill you themselves. I am of that number.’
Raker shrugged. ‘Times change,’ he said, simply. ‘But I have no interest in being in the heart of your precious town, niece, which is why I took the route I did. My interest is here, and here alone.’
‘Blackfriars? What interest can you have in a ruin?’
‘Your stepmother hasn’t told you
? Christ’s holy wounds, she’s more discreet than I imagined. Why, niece, we are set to become neighbours, you and I, for I have a mind to buy this place.’
‘Buy it? Buy Blackfriars?’
‘Just that. Curious, how it has remained unsold all these years – ah, but then I suppose a buyer might be deterred by the notion that it might fall into the sea before their son could inherit. I have no sons, so I have a mind to build a house here, niece. What think you to that?’
Meg had no reply. After all, the notion of Stephen Raker building a house at Dunwich Blackfriars was precisely as unlikely as that of her standing there engaged in a superficially civil conversation with the man who had once tried to kill her father.
Raker began to walk around, his boots crunching through the virgin snow, inspecting the ruinous building with a proprietorial air. Meg, though, remained rooted to the spot, trying to take in what she had heard.
Finally, she managed one question.
‘What part does my stepmother play in this?’
‘She really hasn’t told you? What a curious family you Stannards are. If I’m to acquire this place, I need an intermediary in Dunwich, someone with knowledge of the town, and there are precious few who’d be willing to undertake such a role for any man of Southwold, let alone any named Raker. Your stepmother, though, is an incomer, and thus has little prejudice against either.’
‘You would not dare to even think of such a thing if my father and brother were here,’ said Meg. ‘And whatever else she might say or do, my stepmother swore at the altar to obey my father in all things.’
Stephen Raker smiled. ‘As well, then, that your father and brother are upon such a distant and lengthy voyage, is it not?’
Something was very wrong, but Meg could not quite grasp it. She watched Raker poke his head into dark corners and push aside piles of rubble so he could see what lay behind. Something was very wrong. Not even Jennet Stannard would do something so certain to enrage her husband and stepson – to ensure that when they finally returned from sea, there would be a reckoning that could not possibly end well for her.