The Coming of the King: Henry Gresham and James I (The Henry Gresham Series Book 3)

by Martin Stephen

  There was no surprise when Travis burst in one evening, flushed and over-excited.

  ‘It’s five nights from now!’ Travis almost shouted.

  ‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’ said Gresham.

  ‘How so?’ said Travis.

  ‘My guess is that the Spanish either assumed that their first batch of soldiers would be delayed by weather, or possible even drowned, sailing as they were in winter. I’ll guess they thought they might have to have two, even three, goes at it. As it is, the first lot got through. They’ve been hiding over two months in the Channel Islands, and every day risks discovery. Add in the fact that familiarity breeds acceptance, and every week that goes by England gets more used to its King, and every argument is to get the business going as soon as possible.’

  ‘The bad news ...’ Travis said, ‘the bad news is that it’s only five hundred Spanish troops, not the thousand we were promised.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ said Gresham.

  ‘Well ... yes, frankly,’ said Travis. For once there was no irony. He looked like a little boy who had been promised a treat by his father, and then denied it.

  ‘So many attempted Spanish invasions have been destroyed by the weather in the Channel that, as I said, I’ll bet the Spanish thought the first attempt to send troops would end in storm, as so many others have. So they’d keep the numbers small, down to levels they could afford. And it’s automatic that they’ll lie to you about the number of men, to lure you on board.’

  ‘You make me feel very naive. Will you … help me in all this?’ asked Travis, trying not to look shamefaced.

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘You’ve so much more experience than I have. And, frankly, I’m feeling out of my depth. The little shit from the Livery Company tells me and my men to be ready to be off, and then tells me casually that I’m in command of the mercenary forces. It’s my job to decide how to get a thousand men – a thousand, by the way, not the two thousand I’d been promised – to The Tower without alarming anyone. So in a moment the number of Spaniards has been halved, as have the number of English troops. And, just to be helpful, I can’t communicate with the other mercenary commanders directly. I have to do it through shit face.’

  ‘Your first problem is how to assemble a thousand men round the Tower without causing a panic,’ said Gresham.

  Travis looked like a puppy asking for its food.

  ‘The issue isn’t so much the men: tell the Livery man to pass on the word for the men to go in dribs and drabs, parties no bigger than five men, heavy cloaks to cover any weapons or a breast plate. Gather the men in inns – strict words about drink, and get them to start filtering over to The Tower after nightfall; they’ll need dividing up into groups, and each one given a time to set out. Does your Livery man have the wit about him to do that? In any event, you need to be strict with him. Explain you simply cannot take command of a thousand men on the night. You’ve got to meet with the commanders, go with him to meet with each on, explain the plan to each one – and that’s when you can allocate a leaving time to each one, and leave each commander to split his men up.’

  ‘What if he refuses? He seems to want to keep all the knowledge and control in his hands.’

  ‘Tell him unless he agrees you’ll walk out. You’re clearly his choice as commander, and he’ll soon realise at this time he needs you more than you need him. And one other thing more…’

  ‘Yes?’ said Travis.

  ‘Hopefully this business will not need hand-to-hand fighting. The muskets are the crucial weapons, and it’s very difficult to walk unnoticed through London carrying a musket, however big your cloak is. Get the commander’s to deliver their men’s muskets to The House in the evening, a third of the force on each of the next three evenings.’

  ‘What will you do with the muskets?’

  ‘Load them into barrels made to look like powder barrels, hire a load of carts and put a tarpaulin over them. Drive them off to The Tower as if it was a powder delivery for the armoury.’

  The Tower was London’s armoury. It took frequent deliveries of gunpowder, and sent back powder that had decayed. After time, gun powder separated out and thereafter merely burned rather than exploding. Barrels being taken to The Tower would excite no interest.

  ‘There’s an inn nearby with a particularly large backyard. I’ll hire it for the night, say it’s to park a delivery for The Tower early the next morning.’

  ‘But you’ll somehow forget to tell the landlord it’s gunpowder stopping overnight in his yard?’ Travis grinned. Few people he knew would willingly agree to sleep the night with a powder store outside their bedroom.

  ‘Quite,’ said Gresham. ‘Make sure the commanders know to tell their men to stagger their arrival at The House. I expect the men not to start arriving until two hours after darkness, and for the last bunch on each night to arrive an hour before dawn.’

  ‘What about those who won’t want to part with their weapon?’

  Experienced soldiers were bonded to their weapons for the obvious reason that their lives depended on those weapons. Gresham had seen excellent marksmen forced to acquire a new musket that was identical from the outside, but fail to hit anything for weeks. Good weapons were also expensive, particularly as the highest calibre troops would buy the best wheel-lock or snaphaunce muskets, the mechanism protecting the priming charge from damp far better than the old matchlock guns.

  ‘It’s a test of your leadership,’ said Gresham. ‘That, and their need to know that if they don’t play ball they’ll get no money. That usually works.’

  Gresham thought for a moment.

  ‘Do you know anything about the Spanish troops? Can you contact them?’

  ‘No, sadly,’ said Travis. ‘Shit face said even he couldn’t reach them, once the first message reached him they’d landed. The smuggler’s made it a condition of hiding them that they’d be no to-ing and fro-ing of messengers. They were obviously worried that any messenger might be captured. There’s a guarantee that we’ll be told if there’s a disaster, such as them being discovered or some illness sweeps through them. The only exception was the word about which night they would come, which came yesterday, apparently; presumably there’s reason to feel confident about the weather.’

  ‘It may be fine for security. It’s not such good news for you.’

  ‘Why?’ Travis asked.

  ‘I’d worry what state of mind those troops are in. Over two months away from home, no messages from home; cooped up with each other, probably not told the full story of what they’re doing, and waking one morning to find they’re meant to take England for Spain … my guess is it’ll be some potentially very trigger-happy soldiers being rowed ashore. Your men need to be told to lie low, give the Spanish time to assemble, feel the ground under their feet. Any one of your men appearing out of the dark is likely to be shot. We need them in one group. Do you know where they’re landing?’

  ‘The Queen’s Stairs. The signal for them to disembark will be six flashes from a lantern, repeated until they make it ashore. We’ve ... made arrangements for Thomas’s Tower to be vacated for the night.’

  Thomas’s Tower commanded the river. Once palatial royal accommodation it was now neglected and largely empty.

  ‘How sure are we that the men in The Tower have truly been bought?’ asked Gresham.

  ‘That I am happy about,’ said Travis. ‘You know Raleigh’s ability to charm?’ Gresham did indeed. When he chose to direct all the power of his charm on to someone, male or female, very few could resist. He had worked his charm on various of his jailers, and even on the son of the Keeper of The Tower, who had delivered secret letters for him. ‘Certainly money has changed hands in The Tower, but I believe Raleigh has won over several of The Tower guards, and told them that all they need to do to free Raleigh is to look t
he other way that particular night, and leave two doors unlocked. He’s even told them that the attackers, once they’ve been let in and taken The Tower, will blow down both the doors to cover the fact that they were unlocked. And he’s suggested the men in question are given light wounds and knocked out, to suggest they fought the attackers.’

  ‘And no suggestion that all this is to let Spanish troops unseat the King of England?’ asked Gresham. Raleigh was a congenital liar, whose most dangerous ability was to make his lies utterly credible.

  ‘Of course not. As far as the men are concerned, this is simply to release Raleigh from captivity. And they’ve been promised a whole load of money Raleigh hasn’t got.’

  Raleigh would use any man to obtain his ends. Affection for Raleigh was like an addiction to a dangerous drug; the person affected knew the danger, but could not stop.

  ‘My suggestion is that you go alone to the stairs with the lantern. I assume they’ll send one advance boat in, just to check the ground. Your job is to persuade them to gather in as tight a group as possible on the Wharf. And then find an excuse to leave them.’

  ‘Have you any ideas?’ asked Travis.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ said Gresham. He had made a major addition to the plan. Gresham had learnt to keep a ship strong enough to cross the Channel on permanent stand-by, in case his permanently dangerous world caved in. The Anna 2 was named after an extraordinary girl he had thought he had truly loved. She had realised it was infatuation on his part, not love, and gently rejected him. She had nevertheless first surrendered her virginity to him, sending a signal, had he but realised it, that she loved him more than she sensed he loved her. The second ship he had named after her would have taken Gresham, Mannion and Jane over to France when it seemed he had fallen out of favour with James. It was now moored opposite The Tower, ready to slip its anchor and drop sail, its six brass cannon and four swivel-guns loaded with grape shot to blast the Spaniards out of the water if early action was needed. If the Spaniards landed without opposition, the Anna 2 would launch the massacre by firing its gun into the Spaniards, assembled on The Wharf, that being the signal for Travis’s thousand men to hurl a musket volley into what was left of the Spaniards.

  ‘The signal for Anna 2 to fire is three musket shots, three seconds apart. I won’t give the order until you’re back with me. Have you thought out what you’ll do if anything goes wrong?’ asked Gresham.

  ‘I doubt anyone will raise the alarm,’ said Travis, ‘but I understand the plan is indeed to send one boat only in at first. If it’s fired on, I’m assured the men on our side – or Raleigh’s side – in Thomas’s Tower will operate the mechanism to open Traitor’s Gate, so the rest of the boats can make a rush for it and get inside quickly. That’s what we don’t want. I’m told we’ve bought and Raleigh’s won over all the relevant people in The Tower. But if things do start to kick off, that’s where your boat comes into its own. It can blow the boats out of the water before they reach land.’

  ‘It’s a ship, not a ‘boat’’ said Gresham. ‘And never, ever go into a battle thinking it’s easy, or that it’ll go to plan. It’s dark, and though the gunners will have some night sight there’ll still be an element of guess work. And what night sight they have will go after the first broadside.’

  ‘But surely,’ said Travis, ‘the odds are on our side? A thousand trained men and a load of cannon ranged against five hundred men? And who won a battle going into it thinking it was already lost?’

  Travis could have been Gresham ten years ago. And if someone had told the much younger Henry Gresham the truth, would he have listened?

  ‘You’d be wise to remember that The Tower, for all that it’s been neglected as a fortress, is still immensely strong. An outer wall and an inner wall, with the inner wall higher than the outer, so if the outer wall is taken the inner wall can fire down on to the outer wall, and even over the wall on to the river. We need to get through two walls to take The Tower – and we can only do it if the garrison co-operate. We don’t have enough men to take The Tower. We can only be given it. So I hope your Livery Company sponsors have well and truly paid up.’

  ‘Is that all your cheerful news?’

  ‘Not quite all,’ said Gresham. ‘Just remember that every commander in history has known what he thinks. The problem is that every commander in history has failed to acknowledge that he does not know what his enemy thinks.’

  Travis thought about this.

  ‘But we have no enemy. That’s the point. The Tower isn’t managed for defence. The Spaniards are expecting to be welcomed, not blasted to Hell.’

  Beware the unexpected, Gresham might have said from experience, but refrained from doing so. It was a lost cause. Travis was young. Gresham had traded on that youth, persuaded it that things would work according to his plan. Youth was optimistic. Youth always thought it would win. And all the while Gresham’s plan had worked away, like a secret cancer eating at Travis’s plans. Travis had no feel for what had passed through Gresham’s mind. He had thought too much about his own vision for the future, been too trusting. Would he learn to put himself in his enemy’s mind? Perhaps. But Gresham feared that the price of his understanding might be Travis’s life.

  *

  Gresham sensed the tightness in his stomach that came before action. He forced some food down, knowing what a long night lay ahead. Jane picked at a plate, dark-eyed from nights without sleep. She was silent, until Gresham rose to leave.

  ‘Come back, please,’ she said.

  All the plotting, all the intrigue, boiled down to this one simple plea. At this moment, Jane was not concerned about England and its fate. She just wanted her man back.

  He could have made some reply, but it would have been meaningless. Instead he grasped her round the waist more roughly that he had intended, and kissed her.

  As the door closed, she slumped down on to the floor, head in hands, her heart in despair. Damn! Why had she become so dependent on this one man? A stray bullet and he would be brought home, cold, on a pallet. A miscalculation and he would be horribly executed. Strangely, the fact that it would leave her disgraced did not form part of her misery. It was the abyss of loneliness facing her that was so terrifying. And know all she could do was wait, wait for the clattering of hooves in the yard and the news it might bring.

  Gresham had decided to ride on the musket carts to The Tower. If there was any trouble, it would come with them, and if the soldiers had no muskets the fight was over before it had started. He was confident as they set out. He had thrown on a worn out cloak, and replaced his hat with a workman’s cap. The streets were clear after night fell, strangely silent after the hubbub of the day. In daylight it seemed that everyone in London had something to sell, and to add to the normal noise of humanity and traffic crammed together were the cries of the street vendors. They were not entirely alone on the darkened streets. Traffic frequently ground to a halt in the day time, and many carters bringing food or supplies into London would wait outside and come in at the last minute to the empty city. It meant spending more money on two or three men to act as guards – only a fool went out alone at night in London – and a man to go ahead with a torch, but it was often worth it.

  It was a cloudy but dry night, with a light westerly wind – ideal for the Spanish ships, and ideal for Travis’s men to hide in the gloom. The first the Spaniards would know of their fate would be the flash of cannon from the river, followed by the pin-point flickers of light from the muzzles of a thousand muskets.

  The cart ride was eventless. No shed wheel, no broken trace, just the ponderous lumbering of the laden carts. As they pulled into the yard of the inn Travis was exultant.

  ‘It’s an omen!’ he said.

  Gresham looked at him.

  ‘You’re very happy,’ he said, ‘for a man who’s about to give an order to
kill five hundred men who’ll be caught by surprise and won’t have a chance to defend themselves.’

  Travis was undisturbed. ‘It could just as easily be me on their side,’ he said. ‘And if I don’t get away from the Wharf fast or far enough to avoid the grape shot or my own men’s fire … if I don’t value my own life very much, forgive me for not shedding too many tears for other people’s lives.’

  They walked casually from the inn to the river side. There were at least five ships, with their yards slung and sails fixed, moored in the Pool, dark shapes just visible against the skyline, and the Anna 2 moored just upstream.

  Things started to go wrong for Travis after about an hour.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said, frowning. ‘Only about half the men who should’ve been here have turned up. But no alarm’s been sounded, no messenger come to me. If groups had been taken, surely the bells would be ringing and the Watch turned out? Or surely at least one person would have got away and warned us if the men were somehow being rounded up?’

  ‘There’s two hours to go,’ said Gresham. ‘And even if it’s only half, it’s enough. The guns of the Anna 2 are worth five hundred men alone.’

  ‘I still don’t like it,’ said Travis. ‘I’ve met the commanders, remember?’ Travis had won his battle to see the commanders with the Livery company flunkey. ‘They’re good men, and some of the best are those who should’ve turned up. Something’s wrong, I sense it.

  Where’s Mannion?’ added Travis suspiciously. ‘I thought the great hulk never left your side, particularly in action.’

  ‘He’s gone to check out the other end of the Wharf, beyond Thomas’s Tower,’ Gresham replied. ‘If it’s clear he’ll stay there, with a party of my men from The House. We should kill most of the Spanish in the first salvo. Those left’ll run away from the fire, hopefully straight into Mannion and my men. We only need to capture two or three alive, to prove conclusively that they are Spaniards and that you – and I – saved the country.’