Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  ‘I told you, Padron, I can’t see very well at a distance.’

  Inspiration occurred to Suleiman then.

  ‘Perhaps keeping a look-out would interest you if you had spectacles? Last night I won spectacles off a fool who could not play dice. Would you like them?’ Suleiman knew the clerk’s squinting eyes were resting on his face, cautious, not optimistic. Suleiman smiled down at him, enjoying the blankness and caution, relishing the fact of his power over the clerk. ‘Of course, you must earn them from me.’

  He squeezed the clerk’s shoulder so there could be no mistake, saw the man’s eyes shut, saw his adam’s apple bob. Suleiman knew that that meant in the end, at last, he would get what he wanted from the clerk because in the end, he had something the clerk wanted more than his virginity. His sight.

  At last they had reasonable winds still blowing from the south and west to fill the mainsail and give them some way to ride the swell. Suleiman decided he would have them rowing with the sails at least twice a day, even if de Moncada did not order it, to get them strengthened. He had the Captain of the Oardeck well under his thumb now.

  Suleiman went to lie down next to his junior Padron. Thanks to the Christians’ stupid fetish for purity, he dared do nothing with the clerk yet. It would have to wait until they were in a storm of some kind, perhaps even when the English were shooting at them with cannon and they were shooting back so the noise and smoke would be a distraction. If the clerk was already having a love affair with the black he had chosen to row next to him, well then Suleiman would kill the black and take the clerk anyway. Allah had clearly put the clerk on Suleiman’s bench and kept him alive for Suleiman’s benefit. It was intended, it was right, and one way or another, Suleiman knew he would prevail.

  The anticipation put wine in his limbs. He spent his seed that night on a dream where the little whispering clerk came to him as his Padron, holding a whip in his hands, whispering of desire.

  Señor Josef Pasquale

  Lisbon, Early Summer 1588

  Pasquale wrote two letters to his cousin and got no answer, then decided to go to the Ordnance office and try to find the man directly. At the office, clerks were busy at their desks, and in the courtyard workmen were loading barrels of ill-smelling powder onto a cart. Don Juan de Acuna Vela was at the docks, Señor, but Señor could wait and he might be back in the evening.

  So Pasquale hurried down to the docks and enquired over and over and finally found Don Juan de Acuna Vela, a short peppery man, with a black scar on his cheek and bristling eyebrows. He was swearing at a sullen man who stood by the open door of a warehouse.

  ‘So the Angel Gabriel and his seraphim came with a true docket from the King and took the guns away, eh?’ he said to the sullen man, who shrugged.

  ‘They were here last time I looked.’

  Don Juan de Acuna Vela grabbed the man’s beard and brought his head round so he could look into the warehouse. There were piles of round metal balls, cannon shot, Pasquale supposed, and some wooden trucks, but as for guns … None at all.

  ‘So when did the Angel Gabriel come for the guns?’

  ‘I was ill last week, Señor,’ sniffed the man. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Did they at least go to one of His Majesty’s ships? Please at least tell me that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure, sir,’ said the man and de Acuna Vela spat and marched away from him towards a fat pony.

  ‘Señor, Señor cousin,’ said Pasquale urgently. ‘Sir, may I speak with you?’

  ‘If you can keep up.’ De Acuna Vela jumped onto the fat pony’s back and dug his heels in, so Pasquale had to trot alongside, his soutane flying behind him. It was undignified, but what would he not do to be there, helping, when the English were brought back to Christ? Still trotting he stammered out something about his mother and his desire to be part of the great Enterprise.

  ‘You’re Josef at the Holy Office,’ said de Acuna Vela. ‘I know, you picked up a nice little pair of properties for my mother last year.’

  The owner of them had died suddenly on the table and Josef had not wanted to keep the property since he was well provided for. Thank God that he had been inspired to be generous to his mother’s aunt.

  ‘Yes, cousin.’

  ‘Holy Office … hmm. So you can write. Can you speak Portuguese?’

  ‘Both Spanish and Portuguese fluently, some Italian of course and a little French. And Latin. I can write both the new and the old hands and I can cast up accounts.’

  ‘Priest?’

  ‘No, sir, only minor orders.’

  ‘Wonderful. My clerk died yesterday of some kind of jail fever. God must have sent you to help me find guns and powder for the King’s Holy Enterprise. Come along.’

  And for five bewildering hours, Pasquale trotted after de Acuna Vela, who seemed to him to be more a fleshly tornado than a man, as he rode about the docks and shouted at men who could not tell him how many barrels were coming and made lists and sent Pasquale to fetch languid young noblemen, who were supposed to be supervising the arrival of more guns by ship …

  The languid young men were clearly terrified of de Acuna Vela, who shouted at them in language well-larded with honorifics and polite terms and made it very clear how deeply he despised every single one of them. They scurried to do his bidding, as Pasquale did. De Acuna Vela told him brusquely that if he was hoping to be paid a wage or make anything from perks, he might as well go now. What de Acuna Vela did was for the honour of the King and the saving of England, that was all. Medina Sidonia would have every gun that could be scraped up, or bought from England itself. There was absolutely nothing spare for anyone who thought he could make money from ordnance contracts.

  Pasquale stammered that he had never thought he would, that he had served the Holy Office for very little gain but still had enough that he did not want materially and the honour of the Holy Enterprise was good enough for him too.

  Don Juan de Acuna Vela gripped his upper arm, stared into his eyes, nodded once and told him to be back an hour before dawn so they could supervise the lading of the San Salvador, one of the great store ships for munitions.

  The days passed in a glorious, excited flurry. The ordained Dominican for whom Pasquale had done his work at the Holy Office was lugubrious to lose so fine an inquisitor, so objective and ungreedy a man, and wrote him a glowing letter of recommendation. Three days before the Enterprise left Lisbon harbour, Pasquale rode with his mother on her litter to the quiet, golden-stoned convent just north of Lisbon, where nuns who wore the sails of ships on their heads, received her gently and kindly and tucked her up in bed. The woman who had looked after his mother he let go in the teeth of wailing and recriminations, and most astonishing of all, a direct proposal of marriage, which he turned down coldly. He closed up the household, gave money to the other servants, and went to his cot in de Acuna Vela’s cabin, with only a bag and the clothes he stood up in. Never in his whole life had he felt so happy.

  The day before they sailed, he went to church with de Acuna Vela and the other clerks serving him, all gathered about the fiery, restless, little man to enter the Church of the Holy Virgin and hear Mass sung most beautifully by Dominicans, to kneel and bow his head as the Blessed Sacrament was raised above them, their Captain and their Lord, their leader into battle against the heretic English. All about him shone the light filtered by glass, the reds and golds of vestments, and the presence of Our Lord, right there, on the altar, raised before him, present as if he were sitting there at table with all of them. The glory of it brought him near to fainting.

  He utterly pitied the cold and dank English for being deprived of Christ so cruelly by their Queen. No effort of his could be too great to bring them the happiness of hearing Mass and kneeling in the presence of God.

  He looked covertly sideways as he knelt with his bent head and saw tears standing in the eyes of de Acuna Vela, and at that moment felt that in his cousin he had found a true elder brother.

&n
bsp; Tears sprang into his eyes again as he watched the magnificent procession of the Holy Banner. The joy was something he could hold to himself as they sailed out into the Bay of Biscay, following the galleases into the choppy waves, which did not agree with him. By the time the storm struck, he was already in his cot, dry-heaving into a bucket and the new rolling from side to side just added a twist to his guts. But he kept in his mind’s eye the Blessed Sacrament, raised into his sight like a battle standard, and once or twice, when he felt worst, he thought that Christ’s mother, the Blessed Virgin herself was sitting next to him, stroking his sweat-stuck hair back from his face while his own belly tried to escape out of his mouth.

  Since he had never sailed anywhere before, he had not realised just how weak his stomach was. But it didn’t matter. De Acuna Vela came to visit him and reassured him with the smug jocularity of those immune to seasickness, that like all mortal pains, it would pass soon.

  In fact, it was already gone by the time the ships struggled into harbour at Corunna to recover from the storm, straggling out across the grey restless seas and beating back and forth against the wind to get into the harbour’s peace. He was as disorientated by the stillness once they were moored safely on the quay as he had been by the ship’s rolling, which he told to de Acuna Vela who roared with laughter.

  He spent a day sitting quietly on the quay watching as some barrels that were already rotten were heaved out of the ship by galley-slaves working the crane-wheels, drinking well-watered wine and eating soft manchet bread.

  He rejoined de Acuna Vela’s train, his belt a little loose but his mind sharp, and was immediately caught up in the inventorying and inspecting of a new load of munitions. It was on a ship they had been waiting for, which had finally joined them from England, with the last order of guns and shot and powder bought direct from the Witch-Queen’s own Lord Treasurer. The little ship sailed cheekily into Corunna with her Flemish Hapsburg flag flying. De Acuna Vela said Pasquale had been lazing around for long enough and now he could go and see just how much the dishonest, scheming heretics had cheated them.

  Among the munitions of war was a tall, thin Dutchman with only one arm and with him somebody else … Pasquale at first did not quite understand why the man was wearing skirts, and then his brain caught up with his eyes and he realised that the Dutchman had brought his wife. He had actually brought a woman on the Holy Enterprise, which had been dedicated to God and on which there were no other women at all, not sailors’ drabs, not soldiers’ whores, not courtiers’ ladyloves and not officers’ wives.

  Stiff with anger, Pasquale went up to the gunner as he stood watching a gun being winched up out of the hold. ‘Señor,’ said Pasquale, coldly, ‘I am afraid it is not permitted for your wife to be present.’

  The Dutchman answered him in Dutch. Pasquale tried Portugese and the gunner answered him in Dutch. He tried French and Italian and got no further, even Latin, but no – this gunner was clearly not an educated man.

  ‘Perhaps I can help, Señor?’ said the woman, who had stood patiently by her husband throughout and whom Pasquale had studiously ignored.

  Pasquale turned his face to her with great reluctance and then stopped. She was quite small, quite thin-boned and had a kind of fragility that you sometimes saw in the birds sold in cages at the market. The small wave of hair peeking out under her white cap was dark brown, her skin ivory, and her face was adorned with magnificent, brown eyes under winged brows, a small pink mouth and quite a pointed chin. There was a fleeting sense of familiarity and then Pasquale blinked and tried to stop staring because of the heat that began to rise in him at the sight of her. Of course. The woman at the Moorish Paradise, above her veil, had exactly such almond-shaped eyes. A very different body, of course, and Pasquale felt the sweat start on his skin as he suddenly remembered the veiled woman’s gloriously ample hips turning and billowing, shining with sweat and oil as she slowly lowered herself onto his …

  He coughed hard, desperately clutched at his rosary under his gown, gripped the beads so hard they hurt his knuckles and muttered an Ave Maria to himself against concupiscence.

  The gunner’s wife continued looking at him, quite candidly, and he looked at the deck, feeling his face prickling.

  ‘Señora … it is not permitted … It is impossible for … I have to tell your husband that…’ She waited for him to untangle his words. ‘Señora, His Grace the Admiral has sworn a mighty oath that the Holy Enterprise shall be spotless and sinless to do God’s work and so … So there can be no … no … um…’ Why was his mouth dry and why could he not say the word ‘women’? It was only a word for the weaker half of creation. What was wrong with him?

  ‘No women?’ she asked him, brazenly, her head tilted to one side. ‘Do you speak Dutch, Señor?’

  ‘No.’ God above, why would he want to speak a barbaric tongue like that? It was almost as ugly as the obscure Dutch dialect spoken by the English themselves.

  ‘Do you have anyone here who would be able to translate for my husband, Mijnheer van den Berg?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Certainly there were Flemings and Dutchmen in the service of the King, but they were all in Flanders. ‘Can he not do his work without translation?’

  ‘Certainly, Señor, if you will explain how he can order the correct weights of powder for the shot and instruct the carpenters and riggers on how to mount the guns and inform the gunners that Señor de Acuna Vela has placed under his command how he wishes them to serve and lay the guns.’

  Pasquale had listened to de Acuna Vela complain for an hour over supper the night before that it was all very well buying in guns from the English, but what he needed above all were the English gunners to shoot the damned things off, because none of his Spanish gunners had much notion of the matter and most of them were too afraid of the guns themselves to get near enough to fire them.

  Still he turned on his heel and went immediately to de Acuna Vela to remonstrate. The man heard him out, then shook his head. ‘Well, Pasquale, it’s a good thing you’re from the Holy Office with so much virtue in you. Find me an interpreter who knows Dutch and I’ll have the man leave his wife here in a respectable nunnery until we return.’

  Pasquale stayed silent. He had made some enquiries, drawn a blank. De Acuna Vela nodded. ‘Of course, you’re right, my dear cousin, but although this is a Holy Enterprise, it must be accomplished by practical means. Very unfortunately, Mijnheer van den Berg is an expert gunner, certainly compared to our own pathetic creatures. He has served in the Netherlands and he can even tell us something of the English ships’ guns, since apparently he has traded into England. But he has no other language bar Dutch. If we want to speak to him, we need an interpreter. And as he explained to me, through his delightful wife, he has taken a vow of chastity out of respect for His Grace the Admiral and he and his wife will be as sister and brother for the duration of the Enterprise. They even have separate cots in different cabins.’

  ‘Oh.’ Pasquale felt embarrassed, ‘Well, that’s different. I had no idea they were … um…’

  ‘Naturally,’ said de Acuna Vela. ‘And they volunteered to do it as well, they didn’t need telling. I think they are both respectable people and God knows, we need that man’s advice. They won’t be here on the Duke’s flagship like us, of course.’

  Pasquale went back to the deck of the ship. ‘My lord has explained the matter to me,’ he said, trying to concentrate on speaking to the man. ‘It seems that for the furtherance of the noble cause and since you have made your vow of chastity, this may be allowed.’

  The woman curtseyed to him, her eyes lowered under lids so heavy with black lashes it seemed surprising they could be opened. ‘I am honoured,’ she said quite deep in her throat, ‘to be allowed to be part of so great and wonderful an enterprise.’

  Pasquale bowed back to her, thinking that he was still debilitated by the seasickness to be so breathless.

  * * *

  While the Holy Enterprise of England refitted a
t desperate speed so as not to miss any more of the summer than they had to, de Acuna Vela ordered Pasquale to accompany the Dutch gunner and his wife and make sure he had everything he needed. Perforce then, Pasquale found himself spending much of the day with the woman and speaking through her to her husband. They comported themselves very properly, indulging in no unseemly sensuality that he ever saw and they did indeed have separate cots in different cabins. The woman had brought a maidservant who was at first sight a child, but turned out to be a dwarf, such as the King’s Majesty had at court, who was clever enough at climbing and did her mistress’s bidding willingly enough but turned out to be a mute with no understanding more than a dog when Pasquale tried to speak with her. It was all perfectly respectable because of course, Mevrouw van den Berg must have a woman to be with her, but as her maidservant was not properly a woman there was no risk of any lewdness to her from the sailors.

  The Dutch gunner, Mijnheer van den Berg, was full of excellent advice, which Pasquale passed on to de Acuna Vela. He recommended that the guns be well bolted down to the decks so that they could not roll about in rough weather – and there had been some losses of galley slaves in the galleases when that happened during the storms after their first setting out. De Acuna Vela asked if the English had truly found a way of controlling the recoil of the guns so that they could be loaded from within the ship, rather than having to put the gunners out onto the gallery to reload. Mijnheer van den Berg agreed that the English had made some experiments that way, but they had decided that there was too much risk of a loose cannon during a battle and, of course, there was the added danger of fire.

  Mijnheer van den Berg had also given invaluable advice to Pasquale, who found that he had to organise the transport of hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, hundreds of nets of shot. What should he do? Have them spread all about the ships of the Armada, or perhaps gather them into one or two ships where they could be carefully guarded?