Fighting a very ill-bred urge to laugh, Simon put his hand on what was no doubt a lightly toasted pig-joint inside a very fancy box, and intoned, ‘By this sacred relic of San Lorenzo I swear that what I have written is the truth.’
Don Hugo looked a little relieved. He wrote his own short note to go with Simon’s and sent the sealed package off with a junior officer who presented himself at the door. A soldier presented himself a moment later, backed by five men, saluted.
‘Hang both of them,’ said Don Hugo, gesturing negligently at Simon and Snake, ‘for impurity.’
‘My lord,’ shouted Simon, furiously. ‘I trusted you.’
Don Hugo’s face was shut. ‘The Padron said that the black is your catamite.’
‘He lied,’ said Simon through his teeth, knees banging to the deck again. ‘He lied because that is the only way he can imagine friendship. I have had impure thoughts about women, certainly, I make no claim to special virtue. But I have never committed that sin, never! Or do you think I would have taken the risk of reporting him to you?’
‘Then hang them for treason to the Queen of England,’ said Don Hugo with a certain lift to his lip. ‘At least that is a fair accusation.’
And it was, in a way. Simon looked down, thought faster than he had ever thought in his life. This was a trap. It would test whether he believed what he said to be true: if it was a lie, Don Hugo was calculating that he would say so to try to save his life. ‘At least let my friend Snake go free, my lord. He has done nothing wrong, he is a prince in his own land, he was tricked and drugged and taken by his enemies and sold into slavery, and in all this time of rowing, he has suffered for being my friend. You are right that I deserve to hang for betraying my Queen, but he does not and you will be doing a great injustice.’
Don Hugo looked genuinely shocked. ‘You are pleading for the life of a black?’ he said.
‘Yes, my lord,’ whispered Simon. ‘I am.’
‘But he isn’t … He bears the mark of Cain. He is a heathen. He has no soul. Why?’
Pointless to argue about souls with a Spanish grandee. ‘For friendship’s sake, my lord. When I was hungry, he gave me food, when Padron beat me he looked after me. Even if he is a heathen, he has acted as a true Christian would act.’ Which in Simon’s own opinion, traduced Snake appallingly, but never mind. ‘And only the Almighty, blessed be He, knows who has souls and who has not.’
Don Hugo was watching Simon carefully. ‘You are saying that you will not argue for your own life, but you want the black saved.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ What did it matter? When de Moncada found out that the English did not in fact have hellburners and that Giambelli had in fact been employed to fortify London, when he realised that neither the Queen nor any of her advisors had the least idea what the Miracle of Beauty meant, then he would hang Simon anyway.
‘Very well. Take the black to the hold, he can be a replacement when we lose more men. Take the Jew out to the mainmast and hang him from the yardarm.’
Snake knew enough Spanish to follow this. He shouted and lunged at de Moncada and it took all five of the soldiers to hold him and drag him still shouting in his own language down to the hold. Simon stayed kneeling where he was, looking down at the deck, suddenly very taken by the arrangement of the woodgrain and the knotholes in it, the wax polish on it. Despite the wash under the pump, his knees were still filthy. He wished he could have a proper bath with soap before he died, eat good food again, sleep with his wife again …
All the things he had done without realising they were the last time he would do them, things he had done without even noticing them, thinking of other matters, finding fault. He was going to lose his life on the end of the rope and he had barely lived it, being so busy in his head for so much of it. The last intense memory of food he had before the Seville orange at the oar had been of eating goat’s cheese with marmelada quince paste at a wineshop in Lisbon and being briefly fascinated by the way the salty and sharp and scented and sweet married together like man and wife. And then he had gone to his worries about Rebecca, his brothers and the galleases and so could not say what else he had eaten or what the wine had tasted like.
Two more soldiers came, picked him up under the armpits and marched him out of the great cabin and out onto the maindeck. They had him kneeling there by the mainmast while one of them pointed a caliver at his head, which was a very poor weapon for the purpose and he turned over in his mind the possibility of taking his chances with the soldier’s aim and making a run for the side of the ship, jumping over the side … sinking like a stone to the bottom of the sea from the weight of his chains. Anyway, his knees felt soft, his belly heavy as if he had eaten raw dough, he was suddenly utterly weary. At least the Padron would be pleased.
The sun was setting on what was nearly a flat calm, the water ruffled by the lightest of breezes, turned to molten bronze with a blackwork of English ships, all their sails set to catch the teasing little cats’ paws of wind, waiting behind them in the eye of the sun. After the close quarters of the oardeck, after the boredom and misery and drudgery of the oardeck, here was the Almighty, negligently spreading His cloak to show its beauty. For Simon alone? It was a sort of kindness, from an ineffable, cruel and unknowable god.
Tears prickled his eyes to see the light on the water. He disdained to pray for rescue. The Almighty knew he wanted to live and embrace his wife, kiss his children and eat spiced lamb pasties with proper attention, instead of reading a scholarly book at the same time. The Almighty knew this and the Almighty knew what would happen to him and it was up to the Almighty to save his servant, Simon. Frankly, Simon felt it was well past time for the Almighty to make amends with him, rather than the other way about. But the sea gone to molten metal and the ships in the sunset, that was a kind of gift, and Simon would graciously accept it and allow his heart to be lifted by it.
They had the noose rigged, a soldier was coming towards him with a hood. Simon’s throat closed up. Don’t take the sky from me again.
‘Sir, I do not fear to die, you don’t need to—’
‘It’s for us,’ said the soldier, quite kindly, ‘so we don’t have to see your face go blue and your tongue and eyes stick out.’
‘You are afraid of seeing something nasty?’
The soldier, who was too young to have more than a fluffy sprinkling of beard, looked down.
‘Be careful,’ Simon advised. ‘What if His Excellency the Grand Admiral Medina Sidonia wants to question me and he finds you have hanged me?’
Now the boy was looking from side to side and twisting his precious hood between his hands.
‘Why don’t you ask Don Hugo about it?’
Simon considered it quite possible that Don Hugo was bluffing in any case. But the soldier didn’t understand that, he wanted to do the job he had been given.
Simon looked up at the noose from where he knelt. Unpleasantness. Like a river. Now he was on this side of it. Soon he would be on the other side. He would be able to make his case directly to the Almighty.
The soldier did what panicking boys often do, he decided on action. He grabbed Simon, shoved the hood over his head and pinned his manacled arms to his side with a few turns of rope.
Suffocating inside the canvas, deprived of the sky once more, trying not to cry or fall or do anything except stand patiently, Simon eventually heard the yammering of a priest nearby, smelled incense. He began to sing in defiance, something they had probably never heard, something he had only learned quite recently from a Dutch rabbi. ‘Shema Yisrael…’ Hear O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one … They moved him forward, put the noose round his neck. He was standing on the deck, so they were going to hoist him up. Oh this was going to be bad, it would take him half an hour to die. Almighty spare me this … He stopped singing because his throat had locked and he couldn’t breathe properly.
There was a pause. A long pause. Sweat tickled his nose, his eyes, he was breathing hard from suffocation, yes, fro
m fear. There was talking nearby, he couldn’t make it out because of the hood. Damn it. Get this over with.
Rebecca Anriques
San Salvador, near Plymouth, 20 July 1588
Thomasina hung in the rigging like a monkey, her kirtle pulled up between her sturdy white legs and through her belt. The light was fading, the sound of crackling and burning from the back end of the ship too, counterpointed by a chorus of groans and moans from the poor creatures who had been exploded and burned in it.
San Lorenzo still strained away at the towing cables but was losing ground. She thought of Mr Anriques as she had seen him when she peeked through the oarport, shockingly naked, bony and scabby, with his bald head uglier than any beggar she had ever seen. She tried not to think of him sweating to haul a crippled ship through the water. Ahead the great crescent of the Spanish fleet was pulling away from them, even in the feeble wind. And what would happen to them all now?
Thomasina swore, her voice straight from the gutters of London. Never again would she venture on the ocean, nor cross the sea nor venture into any foreign parts, never again.
Rebecca Anriques, the main cause of the trouble, sat quietly by the rail, watching San Lorenzo, her head tilted as if she was listening. Thomasina listened too, the sound of the men at the oars, singing a rhythmic worksong … The words were hard to make out but sounded familiar, as if they might be English.
Thomasina climbed hand over hand to the foremast ratlines near where Rebecca sat, her feet curled under her, and every part of her neat like a cat, as if she had never been taken prisoner by the terrifying skinny man with the burning eyes. There were some smuts of gunpowder and soot on the hem of her dark red woollen dress and her white cap, which hid her dark brown hair, was certainly not as white as it should have been, but otherwise she looked calm and respectable. Thomasina hung on the ratlines and called down to her, ‘Are you well, mistress?’
It was a real relief to be able to talk English normally, without fear. She had learned enough Dutch from the men of the Steelyard in her days as a tumbler in Paris Garden to obey Rebecca’s orders in Dutch, but that was all. It was a pity she knew no Spanish. But she had been only a clever pet to most of the men Rebecca had dealt with, including the bloody inquisitor, whom she hoped was dead or dying.
‘Shh,’ said Rebecca. ‘Listen. What are they singing?’
Thomasina cupped her ear with one hand, held on tight. ‘Da meer a kul is kall lay,’ she said finally.
Rebecca nodded. ‘I thought so.’ She smiled, her pale pointed face lit up by it. ‘I thought so.’ She stood up, kissed Thomasina most unexpectedly on her nose, and blew a kiss at the galleas.
The singing went on, repetitive, swinging. At last, it ceased and the oars lifted, all at once together, how did they manage it? The rope fell slack and was cut. Poor crippled San Salvador seemed to stand still as the wings of the galleas dipped again and the ship moved away towards the now distant fleet.
Thomasina grunted, and started climbing, up to the foremast fighting top, up and backwards to get up the futtock shrouds, then scramble over amongst the heavily tarred ropes and blocks that steadied the topmast. It was high enough. Across the smooth darkening waters, she could see the sleek English ships, like a pack of wolves watching a wounded deer. San Salvador was a wreck, drifting, most of her mainmast in a heap where the aftdeck had been, completely at the mercy of wind and tide.
To be fair to them, Spaniards had come to take off the living as well as the big chest of bullion. The survivors were mostly sailors as nearly all the officers were dead. They spoke gently to Mevrouw van den Berg. They had found a bloody piece of her husband’s doublet, he was certainly dead. She should come with them to the safety of the fleet.
Rebecca had replied in Spanish, at length. The officer who had asked her bowed most lavishly to her, spoken urgently and then shrugged at her answer, bowed again and climbed down the ladder to the waiting skiff.
Abstractedly Rebecca had explained what he said: he had been reminding Mevrouw van den Berg of the frightful savagery of the English heretics, who were uncontrollable when hopeful of loot. But she had said she would stay and try to find her husband.
Thomasina grinned again, and stared out at the waiting English heretics, waved. ‘Come and get us, boys.’
Rebecca stood looking out at the English as well, balancing as the ship wallowed with the soft waves. If there had been the smallest amount of swell, San Salvador would have been sinking, but the weather was on their side with a miraculous flat calm.
Silently Rebecca walked amongst the slippery stinking carnage she had made, the men she had condemned to an agonising death. She had intended to blow up the inquisitor, had been full of glee at the thought of such revenge, but she had been forced to blow up poor Anthony Fant as well because the brig was directly below the powder magazine. She was less regretful than she should have been about it because she thought the man stupid and, when it came down to it, cowardly as well. So what if the inquisitor broke his remaining hand? Did he think he was going to be allowed to live once they knew he was English?
When the stocky blond soldier had stared at Fant so strangely and then spoken to him in English, she had told Anthony that it was time to make their move. But Anthony Fant had been determined to wait until battle was properly joined. He was sure he had fooled the man, whoever it was. The cartridge filling room was all prepared, he only needed to enter it to fill cartridges and charges he had set could be lit … But they should wait for the right moment, when it would do the Spanish the most damage.
She had wept and raged, and he had reassured her, clasped her hand in his and told her that he was a man experienced in the ways of foreigners and there was no danger yet, not to worry her pretty little head, he would make sure she was safe.
Finally he had shouted her down, ordered her to be silent, told her she was nothing but a foolish woman who knew nothing and must do as she was told by the wiser, stronger sex who were not made hysterical by their wandering wombs. Then he had stalked out, leaving her trembling with fury.
Knowing the ways of foreigners much better than he did, she had told Thomasina to be sure she was well up the rigging when the soldiers came to take them. She had gambled that no one would be interested in the midget maid servant who scampered about the rigging like a child but never spoke. But never had she imagined such terrible hours, for the soldiers had clamped heavy metal chains on her wrists so she could hardly lift her hands, and they had been shut in the dark, stinking brig with Anthony Fant praying rather audibly for strength. She had said nothing to him, no reproaches, nothing. He was the wiser, stronger one, let him rescue them.
And Señor Pasquale had come, no longer a hesitant clerkly figure, but a man full of black certainty and cold efficiency, who had wasted no time in doing the worst that Anthony Fant feared and more, so she couldn’t bear it, she had hidden her eyes and wept with fear and horror. He had grabbed her and pushed her out the door where the ship’s carpenter was holding his fingers in his ears and praying busily, but blocking her path when she tried to go past him to escape.
And then he had suddenly gasped. Somebody was behind him, had hamstrung him with a sharp knife, so he went down and before Rebecca could say anything, Thomasina was on him with her knife. He flailed her off, crawled desperately backwards along the passage and fell down an open companionway where he was immediately silent.
Thomasina had pulled Rebecca’s skirts, took her to the ladder that led up, and then up again and as they rounded a narrow corner, she had recognised the door to the cartridge room next to the magazine.
There should have been a soldier guarding it, it should have been locked. But Rebecca remembered Anthony’s preparations and decided he must have bribed someone. Anyway, it was open. She whisked in, sank down behind a pile of white canvas cartridge bags and watched from far away while Thomasina used a couple of little tools to open the manacles bruising her wrists. Anthony’s screams and prayers for mercy could be heard, echoing
through the wood, straight up from the brig.
This is not what I am used to, she suddenly thought to herself. I am really not the kind of person who can do this. I am an excellent housewife and a good woman for business, all my husband’s enterprises have prospered under my direction, I have always chosen the best nurses to take care of my children and spent much ill-afforded time to be with them myself … this is simply not what I can do.
You escaped from Lisbon, came the internal voice that had bullied her into coming to find Simon, you gave the Inquisition the slip.
That was Merula’s doing, not mine, said Rebecca to herself, and I left Merula in Flanders.
You have Thomasina, said herself. Look how small she is, yet she tackled the carpenter for you.
They will find us, Rebecca thought, shaking at the sobs coming from below, they will most certainly find us and then Pasquale will come and then …
Thomasina put the manacles behind a beam and plumped down on her knees, staring at her. ‘Mr Fant showed me where the fuses are, in case I should need to do this,’ she said in her high, firm London voice. ‘Now the cramp-rings are off, you can do it.’
There was slowmatch cunningly laid to travel sideways into the magazine and down into the barrels of powder below.
But they had no fire, nor any means of making one in a cartridge room, where the men must wear soft list-slippers in case the nails in their boots caused a spark.
In her seachest was hidden her small pistol, the wheel-lock dag of German make she had pointed at Becket. It was still there, left behind in her cabin, never used. Thomasina nodded when she mentioned it.
‘Pasquale will search the ship soon enough, when he sees you’re gone. I’ll run and fetch it, but I may not be able to bring it to you soon. Can you stay here and wait?’
The smell of gunpowder caught in her throat and the sounds of Anthony’s pain were still coming up to her. Why had she listened to him? Why had she let him … Well, Becket had been determined to leave her behind in Flanders, that was clear. As Fant had warned her. Once a coat-changer, always a coat-changer, he had said. And Anthony was the perfect answer to the problem of a man to give her countenance, since he was not only willing but insistent on coming with her. But Anthony Fant had been … still was a fool.
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