Traitor's Storm (22 page)

‘That, gentlemen,’ Medina Sidonia said, ‘is God’s miracle.’ He turned to Pedro de Valdez. ‘Now, Pedro,’ he smiled. ‘
Now
we can go to war.’

The impetuous commander laughed and leaned far out of the window as the flagship of the Levant Squadron,
La Regazona
, butted its way into the harbour, her sailors hauling on ropes and little boats scattering out of her way.

‘Hola, de Bertendona,’ he shouted to the ship’s commander, although he knew his voice could not carry remotely that far. ‘Nice of you to drop in!’

And the hidalgos of Spain laughed.

H
oward had at last given Drake his head. The Lord Admiral had one of the most brilliant and the most insubordinate officers of Her Majesty’s Navy as his second in command and the fiery West Country man had been badgering his master to let him out of Plymouth for weeks.

The latest missive from the Queen had reminded her cousin that he ought to be aware of an attack launched from Ireland. On that occasion the Lord Admiral had lost his patience altogether. He had slapped the luckless messenger around the head and did not bother to send the usual courteous written reply. ‘Tell Her Majesty,’ he bellowed after the retreating lackey, his ears still ringing, ‘that there is no such place as Ireland!’

So Drake, with the wind turned, had hoisted sail and led his ninety ships, still only half-stocked, out into the Channel and on to a raid against Spain. One of the letters the Lord Admiral had been pleased to receive, this time from Francis Walsingham, was that a storm had pinned the Armada into La Coru
ň
a and could Sir Francis Drake be sent with his hellburners. The Spaniards could not believe that El Draque’s lightning could strike twice in the same place. And in any case, it was not the same place. Last year Drake had singed the King of Spain’s beard at Cadiz. This time he’d burn the rest of him at La Coru
ň
a.

An exhausted trio threw themselves down in the captain’s quarters on the
Bowe
late that morning. Since darkness had fallen on the previous night, all three of them had been at Mead Hole, sounding the alarm and emptying the place of contraband. The tide was with them so those smugglers who could get away did so, striking east along the Hampshire coast, making for the inlets of the Itchen,
anywhere
away from the wrath of the Captain of the Wight. Denny’s
Rat
was safely moored in the creek at Wootton and Vaughan and Page had commandeered every wagon and pack horse they could find to bring the goods back to Vaughan’s wharves and warehouses, locking doors and stashing valuables under piles of sacking.

One or two of the livelier inhabitants of the Hole had refused to budge at first. Men like that did not frighten easily and they were no strangers to the insides of gaols from there to the Indies. Let George Carey come calling; they would give him a bloody nose for his pains. John Vaughan had pointed out that there was always a time to cut and run. Now was that time. Give him a week, he said; ten days at most. After that they could all get back together again and it would be business as usual. Governors of the Wight had other things to worry about than a little smuggling and piracy.

Edmund Denny poured them all a large Bastard and sank back on the
Bowe
’s cushions, grateful for their softness. For the last two hours, he and Vaughan had been rushing around the town, having various casual words with the shopkeepers, assuring them that whatever they heard in the coming days, it would be business as usual as soon as humanly possible. Most of them had taken it well, but Hallett the butcher stood outside his stall and yelled at Vaughan, ‘You rascal, you rogue, you knave, you thief.’ Vaughan had been too tired to remonstrate with the man. He just swung back his fist and knocked him out.

‘We’ve got a little problem.’ Thomas Page clinked his cup against the other two.

Vaughan groaned. ‘I thought we had covered our backs pretty well,’ he said.

‘Marlowe’s been sniffing around. Asking after you.’

‘Oh?’

‘And that’s not all. He found a body.’

Vaughan and Denny paused in mid-swig. ‘A body?’ Denny said. ‘Where?’

‘Just out there,’ Page said, nodding towards the stern. ‘In the water.’

‘Anyone we know?’ Vaughan asked.

‘Old Sculpe.’

‘Drunk, was he?’ Vaughan continued to sip his wine, looking around for his pipe. ‘It’s been a long time coming, if you ask me.’

‘No, he was murdered,’ Page said.

Vaughan looked at the others. ‘And Marlowe found him?’

‘So my man Edwards says.’ Page shrugged.

‘Sirs!’ a panicky voice sounded from up on deck. ‘You should come and see this. You won’t believe it.’

All three got to their feet, aching and tired. Vaughan led the way up the steep steps and out on to the quarter deck. Edwards was pointing wordlessly now up the river. People were hurrying to the bank, chattering excitedly. Sailors, fishermen and bargees were standing in their boats or on the jetties as though frozen in some Ice Sea, unable to move. A Spanish pinnace was churning its way towards them, the men on board furiously shortening sail and throwing a heavy anchor over the bows and another from the stern. The rattle of the chain was deafening and coming closer at an alarming rate. Standing on the shattered bowsprit and holding on with only a casual regard for his safety, his hand on his hip and his head held high, was Sir George Carey, the Captain of the Wight. The Captain of
El Comendador
.

‘Oh, and by the way,’ Page said quietly, ‘I forgot to tell you. There are twenty dagos in the Bridewell. Makes you proud to be an Englishman, don’t it?’

‘Edwards,’ Vaughan snapped, ‘can you write?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the man told him.

‘Come with me. I want you to take some letters to some gentlemen of the Wight.’ He scowled at the crowds cheering and clapping as the pinnace came to a stop on the bend of the river. ‘It’s time we all did something about Georgie Carey.’

‘What the bloody ’ell’s been going on ’ere?’

Nobody could miss the arrival of Martin Frobisher. He swept in to the Lord Admiral’s quarters at Plymouth like a hurricane, throwing his sword to one lackey, his pistol to another.

‘Good evening, Sir Martin,’ Howard of Effingham sighed. He had been dreading this moment for weeks and it came as no surprise at all that Francis Drake was on his feet already, scowling at the bluff Yorkshireman and taking the man’s mere presence as a personal insult.

‘Drake.’ Frobisher ignored the Lord Admiral completely. ‘I’ve just heard you’ve been on a damn fool reconnaissance. Have a nice sail out to Biscay, did you? Got some fresh air, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Drake crossed to the man and they stood almost nose to nose, the man from the north and the man from the west. ‘What’s your point?’ Drake asked.

‘My point,’ Frobisher said, as though to the fleet idiot, ‘is that you risked losing ninety ships of the line for no bloody purpose whatever.’

‘I could have sunk their Armada in Corunna,’ Drake grated, his Devon vowels more obvious the more annoyed he got.

‘Yes, and I could ’ave flown t’moon if I’d got wings!’ Frobisher bellowed. He was becoming more Yorkshire too. The pair were almost speaking different languages.

‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ Howard thought it time to assert his authority. ‘We are not engaged in privateer work here. We are Englishmen all and we must pull together. Sir Francis, will you shake Sir Martin’s hand?’

‘I will not!’ Drake was adamant.

‘I’d rather eat my own shit!’ Frobisher snapped.

‘Well.’ Howard’s smile was frozen. ‘I think I have the ethos of the meeting.’

‘You ’ave what you like,’ Frobisher growled. He snatched his wheel-lock and his sword and strode for the door. ‘I’ll be on board the
Triumph
,’ he said. ‘When the dons are sighted, let me know.’ And, as suddenly as he had swept in, he swept out again.

‘And I’ll be on the
Revenge
.’ Drake followed suit.

The other commanders watched them go and there was an awkward silence. John Hawkins cleared his throat. ‘I was very pleased, my lord,’ he said to Howard, ‘with the performance of Francis’s expedition. The ships held up well, despite the weather. I have the figures here, if you’re interested. Leaks, repairs and so on.’

‘Later, John,’ Howard said, still looking at the door and listening for the clash of steel in the passageway outside. Nothing. ‘Our priority now is to get the fever cases off the ships. I have sent letters to the local Justices of the Peace asking for more men. I don’t know how much good it will do.’

‘I’m not sure it matters that much,’ Hawkins said. Everybody looked at him. The man was a legend. He had designed the race-built ships that were all that stood between England and Spanish servitude. He had fought the Spaniards all over the world and seen shores no one around that table had. He was not a blusterer like Frobisher. He was not a pirate like Drake. When Hawkins spoke, men listened.

‘How so?’ Howard asked him.

‘Look at the weather, my lord,’ Hawkins said, jerking his head towards the window against which the rain lashed. ‘The Armada has already had a drubbing at its hands off Corunna. I think Philip the Wise will wait until next year. I’m not sure we’re needed just yet.’

They came in open rowing boats to the island of San Anton in the harbour of La Coru
ň
a, all the thousands of the Armada; the arquebusiers and petronels, the lancers and hargulatiers, the calivermen, the bill and pikemen. Every man came unarmed. Every man came bareheaded. Their commanders stood on the platform: the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the High Admiral Diego de Valdez and the others, glittering in their gold finery, shining in their blued steel. The bishop of La Coru
ň
a blessed every man, the censors swinging in the morning and the Te Deum echoing across the harbour. The great embroidered standards shifted in the wind – the flags of Castile and Leon, of Asturias and Galicia, the banners of Portugal and Aragon and Andalusia.

Each man knelt before the bishop, who made the sign of the cross over him, and a priest gave each crusader a pewter medallion with Christ on one face and His Holy Mother on the other. ‘God keep you,’ the bishop intoned.

Diego de Valdez whispered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘God keep us all.’ Earlier that day he had sent home four hundred new recruits from Galicia. They had brought their women and children with them, crying and whimpering. The men did not know one end of an arquebus from another and he had sent them home. Desertion was in the wind, but the wind was vital.

And now it would blow them all to England.

‘So Drake went off to burn the Spaniards out,’ Nicholas Faunt told Kit Marlowe, ‘but it didn’t quite work out that way. Halfway into Biscay the wind changed and Drake’s squadron was obliged to turn back. They’re in Plymouth now, twiddling their thumbs.’

‘That’s to the good, surely?’ Marlowe asked, passing the goatskin of wine to his fellow projectioner.

‘If you want to fight a defensive war.’ Faunt took a swig. ‘What’s the mood here?’

‘Here’ was Newtown, a wild and desolate place beyond Hamstead Ledge where the sea kissed the pebbles. There were reeds swaying and whispering above the salt marshes and moorhens fought and bickered with the bitterns over their old nesting grounds.

‘Funny you should ask that,’ Marlowe said. ‘There was a town here once, before the harbour silted up. The French sacked it, I’m told.’

Faunt looked at the fields, curiously straight and narrow where the old streets had run. ‘Before my time.’ He shrugged. ‘And I didn’t come all the way over to this arse-end of the universe to talk over ancient history. What news of Hasler?’

‘There are no further worries on that score.’

‘Oh?’ Faunt raised an eyebrow. He knew his Marlowe only too well. And yet he did not know him at all. The man was Machiavel; the Devil incarnate, some said. ‘No further worries’ to him might mean a wagonload of woe to someone else.

‘If he was on your payroll, take him off it.’

‘Dead?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Don’t press me further on this, Master Faunt. We have other fish to fry.’

‘Do we?’ Faunt said. What he
did
know about Kit Marlowe was that the man was like an ox in the furrow. He doubted whether even Richard Topcliffe’s rack in the Tower would get much out of him. He hoped it would never be put to the test.

‘Murders,’ Marlowe said. ‘Three of them, to be precise. But they’re my problem too.’

‘Marlowe!’ Faunt bellowed at him. A pair of moorhen rose flapping noisily from the water and Faunt checked to make sure that his waiting boatman was out of earshot. ‘I have come here, at considerable difficulty and not a little expense, largely, I agree at the bidding of the Lord Admiral, but I have come to find out what the Hell is going on. Your task was to find Hasler.’

‘And I’ve found him.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Forgive me, Master Faunt, if I remark that this conversation is going round in circles.’

‘The murders,’ Faunt persisted. ‘Tell me about them.’

Marlowe looked at the man and produced papers from his doublet. ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked.

Faunt looked at the documents. Not a hand he knew, certainly. He held them up to the sky where the weak July sun hit them. ‘No lemon juice,’ he said, sniffing the parchment for good measure. ‘Where did you get these?’

‘They were hidden, rather too obviously if you understand my meaning, in books in my chamber at Carisbrooke.’

‘What books?’

‘George Carey’s. I’d borrowed them from his library. Specifically, they were tucked inside a copy of Ralph Holinshed’s
Chronicles
. Does any of it make sense?’

‘Lord Thomas,’ Faunt murmured, reading the lines again more carefully and looking at the meaning of the words themselves rather than for some hidden cipher hidden within them
.
‘
And Lord Thomas delighted in the girl’s body and would chase her through the knot garden and slap her backside bare. She would howl withal but seemed to enjoy it and never more than when the Lady Catherine held her down
.’ It had been a long time since Nicholas Faunt had been able to read a piece of writing without looking for the other meaning, the one that lay beneath. ‘Lord Thomas … hmm. That narrows the field but it still gives us upwards of four hundred people. But this … this poem, if that’s what it is.
Three steps back and three steps fore
. Can I take these with me?’