by J. D. Davies
I stepped into the room, deep within the heart of the Palace of Whitehall. A surprisingly small room: bare of tapestries or other forms of decoration to conceal the stone walls of a previous century, and bare of furniture, but for one oak desk and one chair. Upon the latter sat a small, red-bearded man with narrow eyes, a long face and a pronounced lump upon his back. He was intent on some papers, which he was annotating with furious strokes of a quill.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
I handed over My Lord’s despatches. Robert Cecil, Principal Secretary to Her Majesty, son and successor to the late chief minister of the kingdom, William, Lord Burghley – this Robert Cecil broke open the wax seals with some patience, and read rapidly.
As a writer, of course, I had played over his likely reactions many times in my head, during the long ride from Falmouth. At the very least, I expected tears, perhaps even uncontrollable sobbing. I had considered the possibility of him pacing the room, wringing his hands. The true artist in me hoped that he would slit his wrists in despair before me. Instead, he merely laid the papers down upon the desk and rubbed his eyes.
‘You saw them yourself?’ he said. ‘The Spanish ships, in the harbour of Coruna?’
‘I saw them, sir.’
He nodded. Slowly, like a priest delivering a benediction, he waved his hand over the papers on the desk.
‘You see all these? Letters from Bruges, from Paris, from Brest, from our agents in the Escorial itself. All of them providing me with pieces of the intelligence that you and My Lord of Ravensden have now confirmed in full. Until this moment, I prayed that all of this intelligence was false. But here you stand, before me, and you have seen it with your own eyes. Your master, the noble Earl, says that we face a new Spanish Armada. You concur with his judgement?’
‘I am no seaman, sir. But I saw what I saw, and I can read a map. If there is a Spanish fleet on the north coast of their kingdom, they can only be bound for England.’
‘Or Ireland,’ said the Principal Secretary. ‘In which case they are the Earl of Essex’s affair. And woe betide if any calamity should befall him, of course.’ He smiled; but it was the smile of a serpent. Every man knew of the bitter rivalry between Secretary Cecil and the Earl of Essex. And in every town I had ridden through, the talk was of little else but the manifold calamities that had already befallen the noble Earl during his disastrous campaign in Ireland. ‘But yes, in the wider sense you are correct. There is a new Armada, it is bound for these islands, and we are not prepared for it in the slightest.’
He seemed lost in thought, and I was at a loss for something to say. What does one say to England’s chief minister, when he might well be contemplating his neck beneath a Spanish headsman’s axe, or his flesh burning in an auto-da-fé? But, at last, he looked up; and it was as though he were seeing me for the first time.
‘Master Iles, is it not?’ said Robert Cecil, wearily. ‘I believe there is still a warrant out for your arrest.’
How did he know who he was? How could he possibly know –
‘It – it was an unfair judgement, Master Secretary. A misunderstanding, that was all. A dispute over a contract.’
‘That is the sort of thing you writers tend to say, in my experience. A troublesome crew, all of you – impertinent and scurrilous. And I know the contents of the contract in question. Of the commission you failed to carry out. A commission that was illegal in any case.’ I felt myself trembling; the actor could no longer control his limbs, or his expression. ‘But it would not do for England to imprison the man who has brought such news as you have this day, Master Iles. It would not do at all. No, not even to a man who serves Lord Ravensden, who is certainly no friend of mine, as I expect you know entirely well. So let me say this as plain Rob Cecil, if you catch my meaning. Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary is a very different beast, who ought by rights to have you arrested on the spot. But plain Rob Cecil…well, he might advise a man in your position to make for one of the Liberties, say the Savoy, lie low for a few days, and then to slip over London Bridge in the morning throng before taking the Dover road.’
‘Dover, Master Secretary?’
‘Indeed. That is where My Lord Ravensden, the Merhonour, and the rest of the fleet have been ordered – to the Downs. We have to arm England, Master Iles – arm her against a most dreadful threat to her very survival. Well, man, what are you gawping at? Go, playwright, or I will have you arrested after all. Or, perhaps, I should subject you to an even worse fate than that.’
‘Master Secretary?’
‘Taking you with me to tell all of this to the Queen, Master Iles. So get out, man. Be on your way!’
I was gone from the Palace before a fifth minute had passed.
The Dowager Countess:
Even on a country estate in the Val-de-Loire, we knew that a new Spanish Armada was on its way to invade England. Anne-Catherine’s husband, the Marquis de Lavelle, was one of the deputies to the nominal Governor of Brittany, the Duc de Vendome, a five-year-old bastard of King Henry’s. From him, we learned that the Spanish had sought permission to use the anchorage of Brest for the rendezvous of over a hundred great ships and galleys, expected there in the middle of August. I wrote to my husband, and fretted by day and by night, although my term drew ever nearer. One day, though, I was reading de Montreux’s Les Amours de Cleandre et Domiphille in one of the bower seats within the wooded part of my father’s garden. I overheard two of the servants talking nearby, and knew they could not be aware that I was there.
‘The old whore Elizabeth’s finished this time, mark my words’, said Saupin, an ancient soldier who had lost an arm at Ivry, and now served as our wine steward.
‘How’s that, then, old man?’ said a younger voice I recognised as that of Bessat, one of the grooms. ‘She and her navy fought off the Spanish before.’
‘By luck, lad – luck and a fair wind. And that time, the rosbifs had ample warning that the Spanish were coming. Years’ worth of warning. Not now. Taken them by surprise, the Dons have. The English will never be able to call together their army and navy in time, and even if they do, the same will hold true as it did in the year Eighty-Eight. All the Spanish have to do is land. I’ve seen the might of the tercios at first hand, Bessat, my lad – where do you think my fucking arm went, eh? The finest army in all the world. Invincible, they are. Put the English militia up against ’em, mere ploughboys who don’t know one end of a pike from another, and it’ll be a slaughter.’
‘Then what of Milady Louise-Marie?’ demanded Bessat. Like most of the servants, he ignored my new English title. Unlike most of them, though, young Bessat had always been more than a little in love with me.
‘Widow in waiting if ever I saw one, lad. You mark my words. Widow in waiting.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Nicholas Iles:
I rode for Dover through a land making ready for invasion. The streets of London were full of soldiers. It was said that an army of thirty thousand was in position to defend the capital, to save it from the dire fate that had befallen Antwerp not so many years before, sacked and burned by the fury of the Spaniards, women and children slaughtered in the streets. But of course, the army was not there just to defend London: it was also there to defend the Queen, the personification of Protestant England. All across the land, men were taking up arms on behalf of Gloriana. Outside Dartford, I saw the militia exercising with pikes and muskets upon the common. At the outskirts of Strood, I had to dismount for an hour as two regiments marched past, making for Sheppey, which was one of the places where the Spanish were deemed likely to land. Crossing Rochester Bridge, I saw great ships being made ready for sea, carpenters hammering furiously at their timbers. In every town, drums were beating to attract volunteers to the colours. At Canterbury, where I spent a night at an inn, the townspeople lined the road to watch an artillery train pass through. Some shouted for joy, others cried ‘God save the Queen!’ with the same fervour they would once have expended on Ave Marias. But both in the cr
owd on the road, and among the customers of the inn, other words were being spoken, often in hushed tones and accompanied by sideways glances toward me and the other strangers in the place. Naturally, a writer has an ear for such things.
‘The Spanish are coming this time, all right. England’s been sold to them by that traitor Cecil. He’s a secret Jesuit, the hunchback, mark my words.’
‘The Dons have already landed in the Isle of Wight, I tell you. Cecil and all the Parliament-men, they’re hiding the truth from us. All the Papists in the north are just waiting for the Dons to come across the Solent and set one foot on the mainland, then they’ll rise and slaughter the honest godly folk. But the great men of the kingdom, they don’t want you to know that.’
‘Where’s My Lord of Essex? He’s the only man who can save the country, and he’s stuck in some Irish bog.’
‘They say the Queen will behead him for treason. They say he wants her throne, and she knows it. You know his great-grandmother was descended from King Edward the Third? So she’s sent him to Ireland knowing he’d fail, to give her the excuse to be rid of him.’
‘No, it’s the Jesuits’ doing! They know Essex’s a good Protestant, and the only man we can trust to stop Popery!’
‘It’s all a feint, I tell you, this business of the Spanish. Move all our arms to the south coast, then what’ll happen? James of Scotland’ll be over the border in a trice, with nothing between him and London, and once he’s in England, he’ll drop all the pretence of being a Protestant and will declare for Rome, just as Henry of France did. Tom Oldry of Chartham, he knows a man whose brother was at the great cattle-fair in Falkirk a month back. Says he saw fifty thousand blood-crazed Highlanders in kilts on the plain below Stirling Castle—’
‘Hush, lads! Hush, in the name of God. His spies could be anywhere.’
‘Whose spies? The King of Scots’?’
‘The King of Spain’s?’
‘Cecil’s?’
‘Tom Oldry’s?’
I was careful to write down what I saw and heard only when I was in private. This was a lesson I had learned in bitter fashion, having been beaten to a bloody pulp and losing two teeth when a tavern gang in Bristol took exception to my noting their words when we of Lord Sundon’s Men were performing there a few years before. But it seemed to me that these rough country-folk’s words cried out to be recorded. A kingdom arming for war, and torn with bitter dissension between rival factions. A kingdom brimming with suspicion of the enemy within. Truly, this was ideal material for my Tragical History of King Stephen, or else perhaps it could form the basis of Act One of my play about My Lord. Or possibly Act Four. In either event, it would be a prelude to the inevitable last Act, which was surely about to be played out: My Lord’s triumph over the second Spanish Armada, making him the saviour of the nation and the recipient of the limitless bounty of a grateful Queen and her people. Some of which bounty he, in turn, would bestow upon his attendant poet.
Yes, indeed. There was no doubt of it.
Laszlo Horvath:
In the great bay called Fal Mouth, we take on fresh stores and pull the ship over onto its side upon the beach. The seamen call this ‘careening’, and it seems to mean a cleaning of the ship’s bottom, to enable it to move faster through the water. Then we sail upon a fair wind, going east up the sea that they call the English Channel, passing headlands, harbours, and a large island that they call White. Eventually we pass the famous castle of Dover, with which we exchange salutes, and come into the broad anchorage called the Downs. Here we find the Queen’s great ships that have come about from a place called Medway, where the English keep most of their navy.
I stand with him upon the quarterdeck, and do not need to feign enthusiasm for what I see.
‘I have seen the army of the Sultan, My Lord,’ I say. ‘I have seen the massed horde of the Crimean Khanate, and the siege-trains of the King of Poland and the Holy Roman Emperor. But truly, I have never seen such a sight as this.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen greater, Horvath. The fleet we set out in the year Eighty-Eight was much larger. But England has put this one to sea in a fortnight, and assembled a great army in the same time. No country has ever done the like.’
‘As you say, My Lord.’
‘Now, see there, Master Horvath. That great ship with the pennants streaming from her mastheads is the Elizabeth Jonas, the largest man-of-war in all England. She flies the flag of Lord Thomas Howard, the Lord Admiral’s cousin, who commands the fleet. A good man, Tom Howard, capable and loyal. He’d be Duke of Norfolk now, if only his father had been both of those things too and thus avoided having his head chopped off for treason. The title was attainted, although Tom spends every waking hour plotting to get it restored.’
‘Attainted, My Lord? That is an interesting word. I have heard it before, I think. Will you explain it to me?’
‘An Act of Attainder – ah, that’s a fearsome business indeed, my friend. If a peer of the realm commits treason, as Tom Howard’s father did, then his title can be stricken from the record, his estates confiscated by the Crown, his children disinherited. Some of England’s most famous titles have fallen in that way – Norfolk, Buckingham, and others. But God in Heaven—’
The Earl of Ravensden:
‘– but God in Heaven, man, I’m not explaining points of law when the entire navy of England lies in sight! Now, Master Horvath, there is the Ark Royal, our flagship against the previous Armada. The Vice-Admiral’s ship, this time. Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh. Of him, the less said, the better. There, Nonpareil. There, Defiance. There, Triumph—’
‘Your memory is formidable, My Lord. I still cannot tell one ship from another.’
‘You come from a land very far from the sea, my friend. We English are born to it – the sea is in our blood.’
I saw old Carver look at me askance, and knew what was in his mind: you are a man of Bedfordshire, My Lord Ravensden, which is as far inland as one can be in England, yet now you set up as a salt-bred tarpaulin? I returned his stare with interest, and he returned to his duties.
‘Those other ships yonder, My Lord?’ said Horvath.
‘They are the Queen’s private ships – the ones she has paid for and armed herself. And behind them, the squadron set out by the City of London. At anchor yonder, Sir Richard Leveson’s fleet, which has been cruising to the westward. Let the Don come, Master Horvath, and we will destroy him as we did in Eighty-Eight!’
But even as I uttered the words, I knew they were hollow. I had seen what lay in The Groyne. The combination of royal and private ships that lay before us mustered no more than three dozen hulls. The Spanish ships alone outnumbered us two to one, and that was before one reckoned with their galleys – dozens of them.
An hour or two later, I was rowed over to Elizabeth Jonas for a council of war.
‘What is an admiral to do?’ cried Tom Howard, pacing his great cabin in despair. He held up a piece of paper. ‘Here, firm intelligence that the Armada has already rendezvoused at Brest and is sailing into the Channel as we speak.’ He put it down, and held up a second piece. ‘Here, equally firm intelligence that they have not been at Brest at all, and that their whereabouts are unknown.’
‘Wouldn’t have happened in old Walsingham’s day,’ said Raleigh in his lazy Devon drawl. ‘This new Cecil—’
The Dowager Countess:
Yes, grandson, this was indeed the famous Sir Walter Raleigh. He of the potato, and the cloak over the puddle. My husband was always hostile to him, and it was easy to see why: they were alike as peas in a pod. For my part, I always found him charming. Quite delightful, in fact – a perfect gentleman, as the English say. And handsome, so very handsome. So I shed more than a few tears when, years later, I saw him beheaded.
Needless to say, your grandfather cheered.
The Earl of Ravensden:
‘This new Cecil—’
‘Careful, Walter,’ said Howard.
‘What?’ cried Raleigh. ‘Are we not a
ll friends here? Are we not all brethren of the sea? Can we not now speak freely to each other?’
He looked at me, for he and I were certainly no friends at all; but I was no friend to Robert Cecil either, and Walter Raleigh knew that. Yes, we were brethren of the sea, and if it came to it, I would rather stand by a vain braggart like Walt than with a devious time-serving pen-pushing arsehole of a hunchback. Raleigh was a few years older than me, but he still made every effort imaginable to look younger, blackening his silly little beard and his long eyebrows in the most ludicrously obvious manner imaginable. Perhaps he still hoped to win back the Queen’s heart, but he had disgraced himself by marrying without her approval –
It was a hot August day, but I shivered at the recollection.
‘So, gentlemen, your advice,’ said Tom Howard.
‘I should go west again, My Lord,’ said Sir Richard Leveson in his simpering middle shire tones. ‘If they are already in the Channel, I can meet them in the west and try to delay their passage, as Drake did in Eighty-Eight.’
‘In Eighty-Eight, Sir Richard,’ I said, ‘we knew exactly where they were, we knew exactly where they were going, we had a strong squadron at Plymouth – and with respect, Sir Richard, you’re no Drake.’
Jesus, Judas and all the Apostles, that this day should have dawned – Matthew Quinton siding with Walter Raleigh and speaking up for Francis Drake. Come, lightning bolts, and strike me down.
God forgive me, but that was what I thought at that moment: for just as if I had to choose between Raleigh and Robert Cecil, I would stand by the former every time, so it was in a choice between Sir Richard Leveson and my old adversary. In extremis, true-born warrior shall always side with true-born warrior, no matter how obnoxious he may be, and that’s an end of it. Admittedly, Frank Drake had been dead three years, but in a battle, I would still rather fight alongside his fish-eaten bones than with this walking joke of a preening courtier, ten years younger than me. A man who thought it fashionable to square off his great red beard, making it look as though he had a brick hanging from his chin.