by J. D. Davies
‘Give fire!’ I shouted.
The quarterdeck shook, and I felt as though I were being launched into the air. Two monstrous blasts sundered the heavens. The entire ship seemed to move backwards. A cloud of thick smoke blanketed all, blinding me for a moment. Then I saw the dark shape of Lord Ravensden leap down from the rail into the ship’s waist. I went after him, running into the midst of our men, who were rising from the deck, screaming defiance at the Spanish and charging toward the smoke-shrouded enemy.
‘For God, the Queen and England!’ the Earl cried.
‘For Ravensden!’ I shouted. ‘For—’
I stopped, and said no more. We all stopped, the Earl and every man of Merhonour’s crew with me. The smoke was clearing, and we could see that we had no enemy to charge. What had been a proud regiment of Castile was now a mass of limbs, brains and blood. The deck was an ocean of black-red gore, studded with islands of flesh and armour. A few horrible remnants of shattered men still lived, particularly in the back ranks. Blinded men clasped at where their eyes had been. Four or five legless men heaved themselves piteously along the deck, as though still attempting to charge the English heretics. One fellow struggled frantically to staunch the blood spouting over the sides of his breastplate.
I was close to one with half a head, who was mumbling some Papist prayer.
‘Despatch him, lad,’ said the Earl.
‘I cannot, My Lord—’
Lord Ravensden shrugged, lifted his pistol and fired, blowing out the remaining part of the Spaniard’s brains.
‘Best not write this after all, Master Iles. Too indelicate for the ladies in a Southwark audience, eh? Too grim for most of the men, come to that.’ He looked up, at our men who were moving methodically through the ranks of mangled Spaniards, finishing off the wounded with daggers or pistols. ‘Not much glory or honour in it, eh, poet? Having the men pretend to cower in a huddle while the gun crews turned the stern culverins and brought them forward, hidden from sight, then blowing the Dons to hell with grape, chain and bar shot – an old trick, by God, but I’ve never seen it work so well. And look yonder. The galley has had enough, especially as the wind’s getting up and he thinks that’ll give us the advantage. Thank the dear Lord in Heaven he doesn’t realise that he’s holed us beneath the waterline. Time for us all to man the pumps, Master Iles. Aye, lad, earls and poets alike are included in that dispensation!’
*
Paper written by the man named Laszlo Horvath, undated but evidently 23 November 1598
It is my first sight of how the English execute their traitors, and I hope it will not be my last. It is at a place called Tyburn, to the west of London. It is a cold, wet day. Although I have been in England but a month, thus far I have known only cold, wet days.
They have hanged the man until he is nearly dead, and now they have cut him down. They have laid him upon a pallet, and the executioner carves open his belly. The man screams – a terrible, unending scream. This seems to delight the crowd, for many of them laugh, especially the women and children. The entrails are pulled out, also to a great cheer. A youth faints, and there is more merry laughter at his expense. Still the condemned man screams, especially when his own guts are shown to him.
So I turn to my neighbour in the crowd, who is eating a pie that seems to be filled with blood. I ask him who this man is, and what he has done.
‘You talk strange,’ my neighbour says.
‘I am from Hungary,’ I say.
‘Hungry? What you hungry for, then? This pie? Or are you a Spanish spy, perchance?’
There is a loud murmuring among the crowd. I see fear and hatred in dozens of eyes. Women whisper, and children point at me. I see men’s hands going to the hilts of swords and daggers. I grip my own sword-hilt. The odds will not be good, but I sense there are few able swordsmen here. I have faith in my blade. And yet – perhaps in England, the slaughter of a dozen or so peasants might be considered a crime? I should confirm this before running a few men through, but with the angry growls of the mob getting louder, I have no time to do so.
A better dressed man steps forward. He is a small man, a little older than myself; thus I reckon him to be of perhaps thirty-five years or so. He has a thin, pointed beard of black, well mingled with grey.
‘Hungarian? Subject to the Emperor Rudolf, or to the Voyevode?’
‘To the Voyevode – the Prince of Transylvania. My name is Laszlo Horvath.’
And so it is: for today.
I am surprised to find an Englishman who is aware of the difference between the two Hungarys. Indeed, I have learned that very few Englishmen even know the name of Hungary. I often have to describe myself as German, else drunken men in taverns take me for a Frenchman. Or, as with this mob at Tyburn, a Spaniard. I have observed that in this strange kingdom, being of either nation is a sure way to an early grave.
The small man turns and addresses the crowd.
‘The subjects of the Voyevode of Transylvania are good Protestants,’ he says. ‘This man is a friend to England.’
More murmuring, little of it friendly. I sense it does not matter if a man from another land is a friend of England or not: for these people, the very fact he is from another land is sufficient to damn him.
The small man hears the cries demanding to know who he is. There are whispers against him, too, although I do not understand why. I wonder what the term ‘Welsh rampallion’ can mean.
The small man waits for the murmuring to subside.
‘I am John Trevor,’ he says, ‘the Surveyor of Her Majesty’s Navy Royal. Lately secretary to the Lord Admiral. Is there a man here who will gainsay me?’
More murmuring: the English seem much addicted to this pastime. Then there is a shout – ‘God bless Lord Admiral Howard, that put King Philip’s Armada to flight! God bless the Navy Royal! God bless Her Majesty!’
With their eyes on us, few in the crowd see who it is who shouts. But I do. It is the hangman.
‘Aye,’ shouts John Trevor, ‘God save the Queen!’
‘God save the Queen!’ cries the crowd, almost in unison.
I see the eyes of men and women on each other. Are they looking to see if there are some who do not acclaim, or if others are judging their own acclamation to be suspiciously unenthusiastic? I have witnessed this in London many times already. The shout of ‘God save the Queen!’ ends all discourse. Those who do not shout loudly and long are either swiftly arrested, or else are dead within the minute. Such was the fate of a man I witnessed being stabbed to death in a tavern, having responded to the shout with a drunken ‘Damn the barren old Queen and all like tyrants to Hell!’
But this crowd turns back toward the spectacle before them, and the guards surrounding the scaffold stand easy.
‘I give you my thanks, sir,’ I say, and bow, for I have observed that the English are much taken with bowing.
‘It is nothing, Master Horvath,’ he says. ‘The English, there, can be a querulous race.’ I am confused: how is it that this Englishman claims not to be English? ‘Ah, but look yonder,’ says John Trevor, ‘the right leg is severed. I believe that is the part destined for the gates of Warwick, whence the traitor hailed.’
I turn back to look at the scaffold. It seems that during the course of my squabble with the peasants around me, and my discourse with Master Trevor, I have somehow missed the moment of the man’s death. This is a disappointment to me. The cutting of a dead man’s corpse into quarters is a tedious affair, little different to a butcher carving a cow. One of the few good things that can be said for Popery is that burning at the stake is a so much more satisfying means of execution.
‘What was this man’s treason, Master Trevor?’ I ask.
‘His name was Edward Squire,’ says my new friend; for I have decided that my friend he will be, by virtue of the remarkably convenient office that he holds. Convenient for my purposes, that is. And he seems equally keen to be my friend, for the age-old reason that I swiftly divine, his hand clasping m
y shoulder a little too tightly, and for too long.
John Trevor nods toward the scaffold, where this Squire is still being hacked into pieces, each cut being cheered to the heavens. ‘Tried to kill the Queen, in the name of the Jesuits.’
‘Indeed? I did not hear of any attempted shooting, as with the dead Prince of Orange, or stabbing, as with the dead King of France. I am surprised. News of an attempt on the life of the great and famous Queen Elizabeth would certainly have reached even Hungary.’
‘He poisoned the pommel of her horse,’ my friend says.
‘This is a normal English way of murder?’
‘Not normal. But the times are not normal.’
‘Then he was a Jesuit, Master Trevor? We in Hungary have learned to hate the Jesuits. And even in the short time I have been in England, I have seen how their very name terrifies the people here.’
‘He was not, although they made him into the vile regicide that he aspired to be. He was a mere scrivener – ah, you do not know the word? A scribe, Mister Horvath, a man who reads and writes documents for those who cannot do so. Then he served in the royal stables and afterwards at sea, under our greatest captains – Drake, Essex, Ravensden. That was how the Spaniards captured him, when he was at sea in one of our ships. And then, after the Inquisition had broken him, the English Jesuits in Spain turned him, and sent him back to the royal stables to carry out his heinous attempt upon Her Majesty’s life.’
‘Interesting, Master Trevor,’ I say, ‘most interesting. But you named the most noble and famous sailor, the Earl of Ravensden, whose fame has reached even the remotest villages in the mountains of Carpathia. Tell me more of him, sir, for it is his name that has brought me to England. Indeed, I think God must have ordained our meeting this day, Master Trevor, for perhaps you, a great man in this kingdom’s Navy Royal, can help me to achieve my aim. I am a warrior, sir, and I am of a mind to go to sea. I wish to fight against the Popish enemy of both our peoples, and for the valiant Queen and navy that put the mighty Armada to flight. In short, sir, I wish to volunteer to serve under the noble Lord Ravensden.’
There is a cheer, and I see the traitor Squire’s head and torso being skewered onto a pike, which is held up and shown to the crowd.
It is strange that I should utter the name of Ravensden in that very same moment.
Perfectly strange.
*
Fragments of a Journal kept by Matthew Quinton, eighth Earl of Ravensden, November and December 1598
I hate it when the Dons put up a fight. I hate it even more when they have a galley – a fucking galley, of all things – in the chops of the Channel in November. Even in the Mediterranean, those precious, fragile hulls are always safe in their covered docks by the time the first storms of autumn come along. But this one hadn’t been fragile. This one had been out in one of the worst seas in the world. In November. Not skulking. Not running for port. She was there by design, and she was ready to fight anything that came her way. Even the stout Merhonour, a fine race-built galleon, deep in the water and narrow in the beam, which was built for those seas. And even in the heat of the battle, as I crossed swords with a particularly stubborn officer sporting one of those silly little waxed beards the Dons like so much – just before we blew most of his men to the world below – just then, I thought to myself, ‘So why are you here, Diego? What the hell is it that brings you, and a mighty galley of Galicia, to be in this place, at this moment, when you should be no further north than the Tagus?’
I hate those: mysteries, I mean. I hate them in the theatre, where I prefer plays that have clowns and dogs. And I hate them at sea, especially when they bring my ship to within an ace of foundering with all hands.
So there we were, holed below the waterline, carpenter’s crew desperately trying to patch the holes in the hull with canvas, men on the pumps until they dropped like knackered donkeys, even the captain and his hired scribbler joining in. Iles and I stood side by side, and I told him then that he should write more scenes with clowns and dogs, especially in the play I’m paying him to write about me. He gave me the look, that one which poets put on when they’re whining about how much they suffer for their art, so I went back to heaving upon the pump and thinking about Spanish galleys.
I thought back ten years, to the feast we had in the great cabin of the Ark Royal, when the fleet was at an anchor in the Downs after returning from the Armada fight.
Only Drake was miserable. Usually, I would have been unutterably delighted to see the vile old shit in such a condition, but for him to be miserable at this time of all times, when we had just saved England and put the supposedly invincible Spanish to flight, beggared belief. So I asked what ailed him.
‘We were doubly fortunate,’ he said. ‘The wind blew, and they were scattered. But more fortunate still, the Dons didn’t bring their galleys. If they’d had them in the fight off Portland, or at Calais, or in the battle off Gravelines, Parma would be sitting in Richmond Palace at this very moment, and you and I would be in the Tower, My Lord of Ravensden. For is that not the truth of it? Out in the open sea, ships will triumph over galleys nine times out of ten, Quinton. You and I know that well enough. But the galleys only need one time. In sheltered, shallow water, like the Thames mouth, they’re invincible. If the Spanish ever mass enough galleys in the North Sea, they’ll pose a greater threat to England than this Armada ever did. They will rule all, and you and I will have to bow our knees to King Philip.’
‘Bow them in that last moment before the Most Catholic King orders our heads cut off, Drake. But come, man! The Dons didn’t bring their galleys. Who’s to say that they’ll ever bring them into these seas? We won, and we command the ocean wave. So in the name of God, Frank Drake, raise your glass for England, Saint George and Good Queen Bess!’
‘As you say, My Lord Ravensden. As you say.’
I was still thinking of Drake and his discourse upon galleys when I was relieved at the pumps, and went off to my cabin to confer with my officers.
‘We’ve secured the hull, My Lord,’ said Gregory, the carpenter, ‘but she won’t hold too long. Damage is too bad, both from Spanish hits and from firing our own guns so much. Several of the frames and carlings are near shot through or else shaken nearly to pieces, and that’s as well as the ones that are decayed from the ship not having had a refit for so long. Some of the futtocks are in as bad a state as any I’ve ever seen. The whole hull’s in danger of hogging if we hit even a moderate sea. We need weeks in a dry dock to even begin to put her right, My Lord.’
‘So what think you to our prospects of making Plymouth, Mister Carver?’
Tom Carver, the sailing master of the Merhonour, was a dour, long-faced old Puritan from Dover. I hated his godly cant, he hated my profanity, but we respected each other. Indeed, such was my confidence in Carver that I refused to have aboard my ship an example of that new-fangled office which had lately crept into the navy, the ‘lieutenant’; a post that seemed to have been created solely to satisfy the ambitions of beardless sprigs of noble families, and whose only purpose aboard a ship was to wait and hope that the captain was killed or else died of drink or gluttony. No, I was perfectly content with the old way, with the captain as God, the sailing master as John the Baptist, none being betwixt them. But I knew I could only justify my stance to the Lord Admiral because of the excellent qualities of Tom Carver, as able and businesslike a man as one might find. Unlike many of his kind, he was open to the new thinking about mathematical navigation espoused by the likes of Doctor Dee; as, indeed, was I. Above all, Tom Carver could sail the ship as well as I could fight it, and in the relations between a captain and a ship-master, nought else matters.
‘Wind’s been strengthening and coming more nor-easterly with every turn of the glass, My Lord. Even if the ship was sound, we’d have a struggle to tack our way up to Plymouth, or even to Falmouth, with the wind in this quarter. And if Master Gregory’s right about the hull, and if this wind brings a storm down from the Pole, only the
Lord’s mercy will stand between us and the bottom of the sea.’
I nodded and looked down at the charts upon the table.
‘Well, good sirs,’ I said to my officers, ‘the way I see it is this. We have two choices. The first choice, we can sink, for I think the balance of what Mister Carver and Mister Gregory have told us weighs heavily in favour of our sinking. The second choice, we can run for France. Myself, seeing as I can swim, I’d prefer to take my chances with the sea than with the French. But I expect you and the rest of the two hundred and forty-nine men aboard this ship who aren’t named Quinton will think differently.’
They looked at me, but remained steadfastly silent. Perhaps they did not know whether I was joking or not? But then, perhaps neither did I.
‘Very well, then. Master Carver. We may not have a fair wind for Plymouth, but the charts suggest that with it being in this quarter, we do have one for the mouth of the Loire, and thus for Nantes. Steer us hither, if you please. Then pray that the frogs don’t bankrupt the Queen for the cost of our repair, or else she’ll have all our necks.’
In the days that followed, as the shattered Merhonour was slowly sailed, towed or warped up the Loire to Nantes, I stood upon the quarterdeck, waving my hat at the curious peasants upon the banks. I smiled and laughed and toasted them in wine, for I had a reputation to keep up. But all the time, I was thinking that one same thought.
One Spanish galley, in the chops of the Channel, in November.
Why?
*
Commentary dictated by Louise-Marie, Dowager Countess of Ravensden, September and October 1651
And that was how I met your grandfather.
The court was at Chambord, in the Val-de-Loire, not too far from my family’s home near Saumur. You must go to Chambord one day, young Matthew, for it is truly a vision. A great palace of white that rises, shimmering, from the waters: ah, reading Iles’ words has quite brought out the poet in me. You see, the Louvre is ruined by the stench of Paris all around it and by all the mean lawyers and merchants that throng its corridors. As for Fontainebleau, it is a rambling warren, full of parasites, nothing more and nothing less. But Chambord is exquisite, full of light, with ceilings adorned with the salamander of François Premier and an astonishing double staircase where those ascending and those descending never see each other. Such wonders!
