“And did you move forward?”
Robin could make neither head nor tail of it.
“When Diego announced you?” Santa Cruz continued impatiently.
“I moved forward three paces.”
“Move again! Stand in front of me!”
Robin’s heart turned to water. But he moved forward, nonetheless, and stood respectfully before the marquis.
“He’s trying to frighten me,” Robin reflected, and added, “Yes, but he’s succeeding.”
Santa Cruz growled in his throat, and Robin thought: “Another minute of this and I shall be on my knees confessing all. He can see that I’ve stained my skin.”
But again Santa Cruz surprised him.
“Get my shoes! Take off my boots!”
A pair of light shoes was lying by the hearth. Robin fetched them. The marquis was wearing brown boots of untanned leather which reached above his knees. Robin knelt in front of him, drew off the boots carefully and tenderly and slipped on the shoes. Then he stood up again.
“Giuseppe Marino?” the marquis asked.
“Your Excellency, that is my name.”
“An Italian?”
“Of Leghorn.”
It was going to come now, Robin said to himself — the accusing finger, the one word “liar,” and the dungeon at the bottom of the tower afterwards. But a third surprise awaited him.
“Diego, you will explain to this boy his duties,” and so the old man turned back to his figures, and Robin got himself out of the room as quickly as he could.
On the stair outside Diego turned Robin over to Giacomo Ferranti, who was waiting with a white face to hear how the interview had gone.
“I am hired,” Robin explained, “and with few words. But what persuaded His Excellency, heaven knows.”
Nor could Giacomo Ferranti help him to a better knowledge — nor anyone, indeed, except Santa Cruz himself had he been so minded. For none but Santa Cruz knew in how desperate a sickness Santa Cruz was caught. The Enterprise of England — if he could live to sail up the Channel and burn Elizabeth at St Paul’s cross! That was all he asked. If he died now, would the Enterprise ever be brought to its proper godly result? Medina-Sidonia, now in the south at Cadiz, was an ass, a reluctant, plodding, uninspired ass. Recalde, a good wary sailor of the puritanical kind and a veteran like Santa Cruz himself, was not the man for so vast an authority. Alonzo de Leyva, his own second in command here at Lisbon, was a cavalry officer and a hothead. Miguel de Oquendo, who was fitting out the Guipuscoan squadron up at Passages, he, Spain’s Philip Sidney, was the only man with the spirit and the wisdom for so tremendous an undertaking; and his youth and a joyousness he found in living were not the qualities which would commend him to Philip. He himself, therefore, must live and hide his maladies as best he could from as many as he could, but most of all from himself.
There was the rub. He had to play the old man’s game of pretending that he was young, else would Philip never be master of the world. But it was a difficult business, and Giuseppe Marino was likely to help him.
“I who could sleep like the dead with sailors scouring the deck a foot above my head, am tormented if a heavy foot shakes the floor,” he acknowledged in a rare moment of self-confession. “The jar of a rough hand, and I’m in pain. Mother of God, a vibration of the air and I’m jangled like an ill-tuned fiddle!”
Thus the light-footed Giuseppe, who could remove a boot so deftly that a swollen leg was not aware of it and yet lend the support of a shoulder of steel, became with every day more and more of a necessity to the old admiral. Giuseppe got the rough edge of his tongue often enough, but so did everyone else. The old man lived at the top of the Torre Sao Juliao, and it was his banner which Robin had seen floating on the high flagstaff when the Regazzona sailed over the bar of the Tagus.
The expedition was to sail in the summer of 1587, but nothing was ready at its time. Medina-Sidonia tarried at Cadiz with the squadron of Andalucía; there were no tidings of the galleons from the Levant and Naples; the San Felipe, King Philip’s own East Indiaman, had not yet come to harbour with its treasure; the gold fleet from the west was behind its time. And then in March Drake struck Cadiz, anchored a few weeks later off Cascaes, flaunting his English flag in the sight of Santa Cruz’s windows and, realizing that the harbour was not to be forced, was off again to the west.
“Look at that man!” cried Santa Cruz. “And there’s my good master in his oratory making out a list of rations for me between prayer and prayer. So many aves for San Lorenzo, so much dried fish for each soldier, and more aves than dried fish! Drake’ll have the gold fleet next.”
He pushed out in pursuit with what ships he had ready, and coming to the Azores found that Drake had picked up the San Felipe with a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of treasure on board and was out of reach bound homewards for Plymouth.
Robin sailed on that wild-goose chase with Santa Cruz, and by the month of July, when he returned, the year was too late for the Enterprise of England.
“The astrologers were right,” thought Robin. “It will be 1588, after the conjunction of the planets, when the great ordeal of the world will come.”
Through the rest of the year the work went faster at Lisbon, and out of the confusion a sort of order began to emerge. The gold fleet came safely to port, Oquendo brought his fleet from Passages into the Tagus, the galleons from Naples joined the Armada, and Santa Cruz’s great bureau grew fuller and fuller with lists of ships and their captains, their armament and their complements of men, their barrels of water, their stocks of powder.
Robin used to slip out of the tower when he had a few hours free and make his way to the eastern quarter of the town. By the side of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Graça a steep narrow flight of steps led up into a network of small streets, where little houses painted a dark red and roofed with green tiles climbed one upon the shoulders of the other as though each hoped to get a clearer view of the harbour. In the midst of them a tavern was kept by a kinsman of the Ferrantis. There Robin met Andrea, and after drinking a bottle of wine the two men would move away into the darkness, and Robin would pass to him a letter which Andrea would take away with him to Figliazzi’s house.
They were bulky letters now, and Figliazzi began to wonder about them. He weighed one of them in his hand thoughtfully.
“How does Giuseppe get these details?” he asked.
“Your Excellency,” Andrea replied, “it might be that he had a key.”
Figliazzi remembered that he had had some keys made for some new boxes of his own. A duplicate key from an impression upon wax might have been cut at the same time. It was on the whole better not to enquire.
“He runs a great risk,” Figliazzi continued as he locked the letter away.
“He is in a great hurry,” said Andrea. “He gave me news for your ear. The Marquis de Santa Cruz will never sail with the Armada.”
It was now the month of January 1588, the preparations far advanced and the whole navy assembled except the Andalusian fleet, or rather that part which Drake had left of it that still loitered at Cadiz. Figliazzi was startled. Here was news indeed to rejoice the heart of his good friend Walsingham.
“Giuseppe is sure of that?”
Andrea bowed solemnly.
“His Excellency is dying. He is seventy-three, he was stricken to death by the burning of Cadiz and Drake’s flag waving within sight of St Julian’s Castle. His legs are swollen. His blood beats in his veins till it seems they must burst. He rages, sparing neither God, nor man, nor Drake.”
And in this classification Andrea was only echoing the general opinion. There were four species of existence recognizable: God, the Devil, Man, Drake. Giovanni Figliazzi sent Robin’s letter on with all the speed at his disposal, and day by day the fleet of England grew.
CHAPTER XVI. Dangerous Moments
THE WORST DAYS to Robin of all that long ordeal occurred in the first week of February of the year 1588, the year of prophecy. The accumulat
ion of the months brought a certain habit and ease in the performance of his task, but counterbalanced that with a fear that with habit might come carelessness. The fear was all the more real because he wanted youth’s large share of sleep. He found himself falling asleep upon his feet as he waited at a door; for a fraction of a second he would lose his senses whilst he bent over his master’s gouty leg and get a cut across the shoulders for his indifference. It is right to say that the menial character of his duties no more troubled him than it troubled in later days a good soldier in the trenches. The fastidious are bad servants when great causes are at stake. But under the stress of the long dangerous days and the yet more dangerous nights, the steps of the great church in Madrid were growing dim, his own country with its honest friendly people, as Walsingham had described it, was becoming a fabulous island set in seas which never were, and even the face of the maid he loved was receding amongst the stars. So far he had plodded on, care at his elbow, in his eyes, in his steps. But how long would it be before in some moment of fatigue he would cease to care what happened to him, to the queen in her garden at Whitehall, even to Cynthia and Abbot’s Gap, so long as oblivion came, and sleep?
The first of these worst days was Tuesday the fourth day of the month. All that morning Santa Cruz, tormented by his pain, was rating his commanders. First it was Medina-Sidonia’s turn, a poor dull man of middle age who loved to idle away his days in his orange groves at St Mary Port and found himself tossed by the favour of his king into great duties for which he had neither capacity nor will. He had travelled overland from Cadiz and climbed the stairs to the high lodging in St Julian’s tower where Santa Cruz sat over his papers at his big table. Robin showed him in and closed the door, but the old man’s voice roared out with so much violence that hardly a word was lost to the valet on guard outside.
“Look!” he cried. “We are to carry a hundred and eighty long-frocked priests and eighty-five surgeons! Eighty-five surgeons to twenty thousand men and the English to fight! God save us but we’ve tasted of those men!”
Medina-Sidonia smiled complacently.
“There’ll be little fight in them when they behold the Armada.”
“They’ll go down on their bellies, I suppose, at the wind of our coming, as Drake did when he ran under your guns at Cadiz and burnt your ships to give him an appetite for his dinner. And you command the Andalusian squadron! Mother of God, but for His Majesty’s most remarkable good will you’d command no ship at all in my fleet. I wouldn’t buy my bedpans from you if you were a tinker, nor a pair of galligaskins if you were a tailor. Well — what are you short of besides seamanship?”
Medina-Sidonia was short of five guns for each ship.
“And you’ve powder for a day. What are we going to England for? The fireworks?”
“We shall grapple and board,” said Medina-Sidonia.
“Ho! ho!” cried the marquis in a fury of derision. “They’ll come into your parlour, will they? Just simple tarry sailormen, the English! And Elizabeth? She’ll crumble like the walls of Jericho, I suppose, when you blow your penny trumpet! Ouch!”
For he had stamped with his swollen foot. Medina-Sidonia left the note of his requirements on the table and got himself away out of the range of the old man’s voice. But Miguel de Oquendo went next into that high room and met with a different reception. The bellowing voice sank to a murmur, and an hour passed before Santa Cruz struck his gong. Robin entered the room. Santa Cruz was writing. Oquendo was standing in front of the hearth with his back to a log fire. His fame stood next to the grand admiral’s in all but Philip’s esteem. He was then a young man in the early thirties, of a high courage and a cool mind, a good sailor, a great gentleman, and with such good looks as few are blessed with. Robin was careful not to look towards him.
“You will fetch some papers from His Excellency’s ship, the Señora de la Rosa, Giuseppe. Here is an order.”
Robin took the paper and, turning so that he showed his back to Oquendo, walked towards the door. But he had not taken more than two steps before a strong hand was laid upon his shoulder and swung him round.
“Stop! You!”
For the first time Robin stood face to face with Oquendo, and his heart sank. Very slowly the Spaniard looked him over from his feet to his face. They were of a size, and it seemed to Robin that he had never seen eyes so piercing. His heart went down into his shoes, would have sunk lower if it could, so watchfully did those keen eyes survey him. Worse than his glance, however, was Oquendo’s silence. He twisted the ends of his moustache. Then he lifted himself once or twice up on his toes. But still he said not a word. And turning about in his chair, old Santa Cruz looked on with a grin.
Robin knew that the marquis had a tenderness for Oquendo; he recognized in him a mate, a man of his own quality, and allowed him a liberty which he vouchsafed to no one else. But Robin was strung to such a tension of his nerves that he saw disaster in the smallest anomaly. He was in the condition of Santa Cruz himself: a sharp sound and he was tormented, a vibration and he shook.
“Giuseppe . . . ?” said Oquendo, twirling his moustaches.
“Marino,” added Robin.
“You’re of the seaboard?”
“Of Leghorn.”
Oquendo’s eyes brightened.
“Can you handle a rope?”
Robin’s heart began to climb again into its proper place.
“Your Excellency, I sailed in my father’s fishing boat when I was a boy.”
“And yet you can spend your life between the pantry and the parlour when there’s the ocean at your feet and riches to be gained.”
Oquendo laughed contemptuously, and Santa Cruz broke in:
“Miguel, leave that boy alone. Mother of God, am I to have my servants filched from me? Go and pick up a galley slave, Miguel. If Giuseppe sails with the Armada, he sails on my flagship and nowhere else. Off with you, Giuseppe, upon your business.”
Robin ran out of the range of Oquendo’s keen eyes as quickly as he could. He made haste to the Lady of the Rose, which was lying against the easternmost quay, delivered his order and was given the packet of forms and requisitions, and made off homewards. But he had not reached the tower when he saw Oquendo coming towards him. That would not have troubled him, but Oquendo saw him and hailed him.
“Giuseppe! Giuseppe Marino!”
Robin perforce stopped.
“Your Excellency, I have the papers.”
Oquendo waved them aside.
“Have you no wish to make your fortune, lad? There’s treasure in England. A man might take that trip with me and go back to Italy with his pockets lined with gold, and his soul saved into the bargain. What say you?”
Robin murmured a few words of his duty to his master. Oquendo stroked his moustache and laughed.
“You can keep that pap for the old man when you put him to bed. A tall lad like you nursed on the sea should be thrusting a boarding pike, not holding up a cripple. The Lady of the Rose — remember that name! I’ll hide you on board where the old curmudgeon’ll never find you.”
And with a nod he sauntered on along the clanging quays. The great admiral’s day was done. Out with him! Brutal days wanted brutal ways. Not that Oquendo bothered his head about his brutality. He was in the pride of his strength, and old men are for the dust heap, as all the world knows. He left behind, however, a very troubled Giuseppe. Not troubled about the vanity of past triumphs or the disconsolate tragedies of age — such speculations could be left to the philosophers — but about his own affairs. The odd apathy which had been creeping over him was dissolved.
“Santa Cruz won’t let me go. Oquendo wants me. All very flattering but most damnably inconvenient,” he reflected. “Figliazzi’s off to Madrid in a month. His work here is done, mine almost done. One night more and every detail of every ship down to the last barrel of water will be written down for Mr Gregory of Lyme. But then? How am I to get away?”
He could find no answer to that question, but the night
of Thursday answered it for him. It was a dark clear night. From the guardroom in the foot of St Julian’s Castle a few lights shone out upon the water, but above it the great tower was lost in darkness. Not a lamp shone at any window. There was no sound of any movement. Yet in the blackness of a corridor something did move. There was a vibration in the air, swift and faint as though someone far away unlatched a window silently and as silently closed it. But no window was opened and closed; someone had passed. That was all. And in a little while at the end of the corridor a pale glimmer modified the darkness. Someone had opened a door upon a slatted shutter. Almost at once the door closed again, the corridor was once more black. Inside the office of Santa Cruz, however, Robin Aubrey was standing. From his feet to his chin he was sheathed in black, and a black visor masked the whiteness of his face. Only his breathing showed that he was there.
He stood like an image until the shape of the room, the bulk of the table, the massive bureau, the frame of the long window swam into his vision. The floor was covered with thick matting. Mats, too, were laid at the foot of the door and of the window, for on days of gale the wind stormed at every cranny of this high lodging like a fierce enemy. Robin lifted the edge of the mat at the door and covered the crack between the door and the floor. He had no shoes upon his feet and he moved silently as a wraith. He glided from the door to the window. He was wearing long black hose and a doublet of black velvet fastened with black buttons, and without a tag or a point to catch upon the edge of a table or the back of a chair. He set the doors of the window open upon the room and unlatched the shutters. Outside the shutters a balcony of carved and ornamental stone overhung the rocks a hundred and fifty feet below. He looked out towards Cascaes and that open sea where he had dreamed once to light a funeral pyre which would redden the water with its glow and confuse the heavens with its smoke. A boy’s dream, but even now, after this long year lived under the outspread hand of death, he could not smile at it except wistfully. He shut the vision of it from his eyes. His work lay here in the room behind him. His last night’s work. He stepped back into the room, closed the shutters but left them unlatched, and left the doors wide open. Then he crossed to the table. From the pocket of his doublet he took a candle, and placing it on the table struck a light and lit it, and the room became a den peopled with huge distorted shadows. Two thick wax candles stood in heavy candlesticks of silver upon the table. Robin removed one of the candles and set his own in its place. Robin’s candle was of wax too, with a cotton wick so that it should give out no smell.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 674