by J. D. Davies
‘That it should be you, Iles. A poet. A very bad poet. How God mocks me!’
He brought up his sword, and Iles levelled the primed pistol in his right hand. But then the Hungarian reversed the blade, and presented the hilt to me.
‘My Lady Ravensden,’ he said, inclining his head slightly.
I took the sword. Curiously, it was the first time I ever held such a weapon in my hand. It was heavier than I expected it to be.
Iles ordered two of the crew forward, and they bound the Hungarian’s hands in front of him.
‘Your orders, My Lady?’
‘As we discussed, Nicholas. Put him aboard the ship, take him south to await My Lord’s return from sea, then see if you can get passage in a pinnace or victualler going out to our fleet. Take the news to my husband in person, for none of this can be committed to letters.’
It was a somewhat fraught conversation, that day in Ravensden Abbey when Iles and I agreed upon what we would do if Horvath, as we still called him, was taken alive. Iles was all for striking him dead upon the spot and burying him without a trace. But I knew my husband would want the final reckoning with this man. We could not keep him at Alnburgh, a place so very remote, where – as Bell’s treachery proved – the loyalties of the people were uncertain. Taking him south held risks. It was possible that Secretary Cecil might learn of it, and seek to free the Hungarian for his own purposes; or else, he might insist on the case going to law, with all the tedium and uncertainty of that business. In any case, what capital crime had the man formerly known as Laszlo Horvath committed? The prospect of him walking free from an English court, that most unpredictable of entities, free to resume his campaign against my husband, a threat to the life of our daughter and any children yet unborn –
No. The Hungarian would be kept aboard the Constant Esperance in the remote haven of Pin Mill, there to await the Earl’s return from sea. And I was certain my husband would know what to do with him.
Nicholas Iles:
It was my fault. I was not then accustomed to pistols, and should have checked my match. I should have had another armed man covering us: a man rather more experienced in the use of such weapons. But as we marched the Hungarian out into the courtyard of Alnburgh Castle, my pistols were at my belt, and there was no other man with a gun anywhere in sight. All of the other Esperances were engaged in searching the buildings for any concealed followers of Steward Bell and the man I still called Laszlo Horvath.
We were half way across the courtyard when I heard a sound behind me, followed a moment later by My Lady’s cry of ‘Iles!’ from the steps of the Keep.
I turned to see one of the Esperances doubled up, seemingly struck in the stomach. Horvath was behind the other, pulling the rope which bound him ever tighter around the man’s neck. I drew the pistol on my right side, but the match was cold. I reached for that at my left –
Horvath discarded his victim and ran for one of the many breaches in the curtain wall. I levelled my pistol and fired, but my aim was false. I could see him scrambling over the rubble and fallen masonry.
My Lady screamed again.
‘Bastard!’ she cried. ‘Bâtard!’
I ran towards Horvath. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Avent appear at the doorway of the south tower, levelling a musket at the Hungarian. But Horvath was already over the crest of the fallen wall –
With nothing before him but air. For here, on the north side of the castle, the ground fell away immediately beneath the castle wall, a sheer cliff standing precipitate above the sea.
Avent fired. I did not know if Horvath was hit, or if he jumped. But in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
I ran to the cliff edge, but there was no sign of him in the churning waters beneath.
Could he swim? I did not know. But then I realised the other mistake I had made: I should have ordered the Hungarian’s hands tied behind his back, not before his front. If I had done the latter, the matter would be beyond all doubt.
The Countess came and stood beside me.
‘He might live, My Lady,’ I said.
‘So he might.’ She looked down at the sea, then at the ruinous walls of Alnburgh Castle. ‘This place has a curious effect upon Quintons, Iles – he and his father, both disappearing into thin air in the same spot. But I have a sense that, unlike his father, cousin Balthasar will return to haunt us yet.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Earl of Ravensden:
Sesimbra was a shallow south-facing bay, framed by the foothills of a mountain range. These, in turn, formed a peninsula separating the sea which Sesimbra village fronted from the great estuary of the Tagus and the city of Lisbon. An old Moorish castle stood upon a hill overlooking the village and the bay. Upon the beach was a modern fort flying the green and red colours of the King of Portugal; but the King of Portugal also happened to be Philip the Third, King of Spain, the Dons having obtained the entire kingdom and its great empire over twenty years earlier, when the last King of Portugal rode to his death in a needless battle without having had the good sense to father an heir first. So Portugal was England’s enemy, and Sesimbra was where our particular enemy lay this day.
A very particular enemy.
Leveson and I had come together off the Rock of Lisbon, with little but failure to report to each other after weeks of fruitless cruising. Indeed, it was the unspoken sense of what the Queen might do to such abject and irredeemable failures that caused us to take a glass of wine together in the great cabin of the Warspite. And then another glass. And then another: say what you may about Brick-Beard, he had the best taste in wine of any English admiral I ever knew. We were almost at the very moment of sharing confidences – of telling each other what we really thought of Her Majesty, of the matter of the succession, of the unfathomable nature of womankind in general, and so forth – when the lookout’s cry took us to the flagship’s quarterdeck, there to see a caravel wearing toward us to the south. A caravel bearing the tidings that the Nonpareil and Dreadnought, which were detached to cruise, had discovered a great carrack lying in the bay of Sesimbra. A great carrack from the Indies, with barely thirty men said to be alive from her crew of six hundred after a terrible two-year voyage and the ravages of disease. A great carrack said to be carrying a cargo worth two million pounds. A great carrack protected by eleven galleys.
‘Spinola,’ I said, the fog of wine evaporating from my mind like a morning mist.
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Leveson. ‘Last heard of sailing from Cadiz for Flanders, but not yet come past Lisbon. So the Dons must have ordered him to defend the Indiaman.’
‘We have few ships,’ I said, looking Brick-Beard straight in the eyes, ‘and they undermanned, leaky, and long overdue for repairs.’
‘That is true,’ he said. ‘But we have one thing the Dons do not have.’
‘Sir Richard?’
‘Why, we have the Earl of Ravensden, do we not?’
And that was how we came to be at Sesimbra Bay.
‘A pretty proposition, My Lord,’ said Tom Carver, as he surveyed the scene.
‘Indeed it is, Master Carver. It is difficult to tell which is the prettiest part. The carrack, there, three times our size. The great guns in the fort, there to starboard, directly covering it. The other guns up in the castle, there. The veritable army the Dons appear to have lining the shore, there. Ten thousand men at least, I reckon. And the small matter of the line of eleven galleys, there, sealing the western end of the bay between the carrack and the headland. Each one with a sixty-pounder cannon in its bows. Aye, most pretty, for sure.’
I surveyed the scene once again. And as I did so, I felt a strange emotion. I looked once more, screwing up my eyes, calculating distances in my head. The strange emotion became a growing certainty. Oh, it was a pretty scene all right, but not in the way I had imagined.
‘Master Carver,’ I said, ‘you would favour me by bringing forth a rutter. I intend to study the chart for this bay, and then I would have the boat made read
y to take me over to the Warspite for a conference with the admiral.’
Nicholas Iles:
While My Lord was aboard the flagship, I stood upon the poop of the Merhonour, surveying the scene and contemplating the prospect of battle. Once, not many months earlier, I would have cowered and run. Now I felt only anticipation: an eagerness to be at the Dons, the very same eagerness that had made me persuade a sometime shipmate of the Earl, now commanding a fast pinnace bound for the fleet with despatches, to carry me with him from Portsmouth, following my return from Alnburgh. And, of course, there was eagerness for the riches in the carrack, and the prospect of what my share of them might be. But even without such a tempting prize in sight, I would have relished the imminence of battle in any case. Some men, like My Lord, are born warriors, but others become warriors accidentally, without any intent or expectation to become so. Such was the case with me. One day, perhaps quite soon, the war would end, and if I could find no other vocation, I might have to return to the stage. Not, I prayed, to forgery, but if needs must –
No, it would have to be the stage. But I knew that if I did so, I would have one inestimable advantage over every other poet and actor in London. Who else, acting out a mock-fight between two Greek or Roman heroes, would actually have fought such duels to the death, against real enemies in real fights? And who else, writing plays of war and scenes of battle, could do so from experience? Certainly not Shakespeare, that overrated mountebank. How could he, who had never killed a man or fought in a battle, possibly conjure up convincing portrayals of Agincourt or Bosworth? It beggared belief. But in truth, Shakeshaft’s fantasy battles were just as convincing as the ones I had penned in my earlier works, which I now realised were but false confections, unreal beyond measure.
No, if ever I returned to my previous vocation, it would be as England’s war poet.
I looked over to the Warspite, and saw My Lord climbing down into the longboat. Now, truly, we would see a battle worthy of the stage.
The Earl of Ravensden:
‘What in God’s name is Leveson doing?’
‘His sailing master more like. This is a true seaman’s fault – begging pardon, My Lord.’
Tom Carver and I stood together on the quarterdeck of the Merhonour, watching incredulously as the Warspite’s sails flapped helplessly in the freshening north-easterly breeze. For whatever reason, the flagship had failed spectacularly to execute a simple turn into the wind. She had missed stays entirely and was being carried out of the bay by the twin forces of wind and tide.
‘There’s Leveson now, going down into the longboat,’ I said. ‘Shifting his flag to the Dreadnought, no doubt. But whatever his intent, there’s no doubt of ours, Master Carver. Hold our course, if you please!’
The Merhonour alone was sailing directly into the bay. The Dreadnought, Nonpareil and Adventure were sailing across its mouth, engaging the galleys and the fort at long range. The captains of the three ships had been adamant upon the matter at a rancorous council-of-war, the previous day. Attempting to take the carrack was folly, they said, for the position was too well defended. Besides, the Spanish were bound to have taken off her cargo. And thus we came to the strangest of passes: Matthew of Ravensden and Brick-Beard Leveson supporting each other’s arguments like true brothers-in-arms, both of us determined to take the carrack and defeat General Spinola in the process, finally conceding that the two flagships alone would make the attack. Except now, by misjudgement or craven cowardice, Leveson’s ship-master had let him down. Which left only the Merhonour, her crosses of Saint George streaming in the breeze as she entered Sesimbra Bay.
‘Helm amidships and steady!’ I commanded, as we steered directly for the position I sought. ‘And steady, boy.’
Young Ielden was at my side, ready to carry my orders wherever they were needed. His face was as white as a clean bedsheet.
The first Spanish gun fired: the sixty pounder in the bow of the headmost anchored galley, Spinola’s vice-admiral. A vast spout of water, far greater than any cannon of ours could make, erupted a fair way ahead of our larboard bow.
I felt myself grin. ‘Thank God for the Dons, young Ielden. One day they’ll learn not to fire before they’re in range, and one day they’ll use guns that don’t take an eternity to reload, rather than monsters like that, which are designed solely to frighten the timid. And when that day comes, England should tremble indeed. But thanks be to God, that day is yet a very long way off, as they have just amply demonstrated. Ho, Master Carver, there! Boatswain Fellowes, there!’
‘My Lord!’ the two men chorused as one.
‘At my order, if you please!’
I looked starboard, to the carrack and the fort. I looked larboard, to the line of galleys. Any moment now. A few more yards – just a few more –
‘Now!’ I bellowed.
Carver and Fellowes both blew on their whistles, the former’s a reedy tenor, the latter’s more of a bass. The men in the tops took in sail. And up forward, there was the unmistakeable sight and sound of anchor cables playing out.
‘Master gunner!’
‘My Lord!’ cried Skipworth, from the ship’s waist.
‘At my command, master gunner!’
‘Aye, aye, My Lord!’
The headway came off the ship. Again I looked starboard to the carrack and the fort, then larboard to the galleys. Very nearly perfect. Today God smiled upon England and Matthew Quinton.
I raised my sword.
‘Merhonours! For God, England, and Queen Bess! Give fire!’
I dropped my sword, and the gates of Hell opened. Culverins and demi-culverins, minions and sakers, spat forth a veritable hailstorm of death. Ielden gripped his ears. Even I was taken aback by the noise, the smoke and the shaking of the hull. But then, it was only the fourth or fifth time I had ever ordered a double broadside, both sides of the ship firing at once. And never in my life had I ordered an immediate repeat. And another. And another. And so on, my gun crews keeping up an exemplary rate of eight shots an hour of thereabouts, for hour upon hour.
Carver came back to the poop deck and smiled at me.
‘A pretty spectacle indeed, My Lord. As you planned.’
I nodded. There can have been no more than a few dozen yards of sea-room in the bay of Sesimbra that served the purpose, and between us, Tom Carver and I had taken the Merhonour there as unerringly as a gerfalcon returning to the glove. To larboard, the Spanish galleys were moored in such a way that they masked each other’s fire. Thus none of them could bring their guns to bear on us while we pounded the vice-admiral, at the head of the line – or at least, could not bring their guns to bear without breaking their formation, which in turn put them directly in the teeth of the broadsides of our other three galleons, or else left them rowing hopelessly from side to side, trying somehow to avoid the English fire coming at them from both sides. And the vice-admiral, barely able to fire one shot in reply to every five or six of ours, was soon a shattered and immobile hulk.
That was but the half of it. For as I had reckoned, from this particular position in the bay we could also fire to starboard upon the carrack, the fort and the town at one and the same time; but although we cared not which of those three targets we hit, the gunners in the town and the fort had to take care not to hit the impossibly high sides of the carrack, which largely masked the Merhonour from their fire.
‘Keep it up, my brave lads! Let’s make General Spinola dance, by Heaven!’
Truly, I cannot think of three or four hours in my life that were happier than those where the Merhonour lay at anchor in Sesimbra Bay, and I strode back and forth along our decks, sword in hand, encouraging the gun crews to ever greater efforts. Every ball we fired, every ball that struck home, erased one more part of the humiliation I had suffered at Calais, at Spinola’s hands.
‘See, Merhonours, the vice-admiral surrenders! See the galley slaves, swimming to their freedom! Today we do God’s work! Truly, we do!’
‘My Lord!’
> ‘Aye, Master Carver?’
‘Astern, My Lord! The Dreadnought, with the admiral!’
Silently, I cursed. Brick-Beard would somehow interfere with my triumph, would find a way of claiming all the credit for himself. Even before the Dreadnought anchored directly astern of us, in very nearly as propitious a position for wreaking havoc upon the Dons, Leveson’s long boat was casting off, bearing him toward the Merhonour.
I went up to the quarterdeck to await him, although I was aware that I was barely fit to beg in the streets, let alone to greet the admiral of one of Her Majesty’s fleets. I was begrimed with gunsmoke and sweat, bare footed and bare chested, hardly the image of an Earl of England. Indeed, Richard Leveson looked at me from head to toe, his face impassive. For a moment, I thought he was about to reprimand me for endangering the Merhonour, or for not having visited sufficient devastation upon the Dons. But then he flung open his arms and embraced me with an enthusiasm so effusive that it bordered on the French.
‘My Lord! My brother! May I call you my brother? Oh, you have won my heart today, Matthew of Ravensden! What a sight! What a triumph!’
‘Not yet won, Sir Richard,’ not a little disconcerted by this unexpected effusiveness. ‘General Spinola still resists. And we have still to take the carrack.’
Finally, he released me from his grip.
‘Fear not, My Lord. The Dreadnought is smaller, with a shallower draught. I’ll take her further into the bay, and then once her fire is joined to Merhonour’s, we shall have a perfect crossfire that the galleys cannot avoid. Spinola will be finished. And you will not be deprived of your prize this time. You have my word of honour upon the matter.’
Brick-Beard was right in one sense, but very wrong in another. He was right about the smaller Dreadnought creating a perfect crossfire once she had moved a little way ahead of us. But he was wrong, very wrong, about Spinola being finished. All through the afternoon, the Genoese general and his galleys kept up the fight, constantly weaving hither and thither, trying to avoid our blazing broadsides and to find the range for their sixty-pounders. A second galley surrendered. Three more, which I later learned came under a separate local command and were not part of Spinola’s fleet, bolted for Lisbon. But still the obdurate general and his six remaining galleys fought on.
