Elizabeth (42 page)

“Not quite, Robert. But if I faltered now, we could certainly lose. And I am not going to falter, and nor is anyone else.—Go and find Burleigh and tell him that I shall go by barge to Whitehall this evening. I shall want you with me, and a proper escort, my musicians and torch bearers. I will write my proclamation there. But first the people of London are going to see me and they are going to see that nothing has changed. I am not afraid and I have not left them. Go now.”

At nine that evening the Queen's barge sailed up the Thames, and the crowds lining the river banks and rowing their boats close to the procession saw the Queen sitting in the poop under a crimson canopy, torches blazing beside her, dressed in bright yellow and shining with jewels, with her musicians playing and a brilliant escort of ladies and gentlemen surrounding her. She smiled and waved vigorously, and wiped away tears at the warmth of the cheers. The Earl of Leicester was behind her chair, accompanied by his young stepson, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, who had come to Court under his patronage. It was the same brilliant pageant which Elizabeth presented for her people every time she made a journey, however short, and the approaches to the river banks were packed with an excited crowd. With an invasion fleet sailing within sight of the English coast, her appearance seemed of special significance to them at that moment. The Queen was still in London, she was not panicking or moving to the Tower or further inland for safety, she was painted and jewelled as brightly as usual and she seemed as confident and good-humoured as if they had just won a signal victory. The rumour circulated that the battle had already taken place and the whole Armada had gone to the bottom of the sea.

When she landed at Whitehall Elizabeth went straight to her apartments, stripped off her cumbersome clothes, changed into a loose robe, and sat down with Burleigh to draft her proclamation and a speech she would make to the Army at Tilbury. By midnight she received a message from the west coast that the Armada had ignored the English fleet in Plymouth harbour and was sailing round the south coast up the English Channel.

The two fleets had been engaged in a running fight for seven days. Howard of Effingham and his captains, Drake and Hawkins, brought their ships up behind the Armada after leaving Plymouth and the first encounter damaged several of the heavier galleons, reducing their speed. The English were so superbly manoeuvred that they suffered no loss, and when they attacked again and again the following days, they never engaged closely enough to run the risk of being grappled and boarded. Their gunnery was deadly; it had to be because the harassed commanders were already short of shot, but the Armada's pace was slackening and there were more stragglers, partly crippled and drifting helplessly on the tide. This was not war as the Spanish commanders understood it; the enemy harried the main fleet and picked off the casualties but refused to sail round and face them in a major battle in spite of their superior speed. They were small ships, slightly built with tapering lines and concentrated armaments; they chased in and out of the massive galleons, driven by oar and sail, like a pack of terriers.

Admiral Recalde was second in command to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and he was an experienced seaman who had already begged his Commander to attack the English fleet in Plymouth harbour. His advice was ignored; when he signalled to the Duke on the second day that they should stand to and attack the Isle of Wight and force the enemy to engage at close quarters, his request was again refused. The Duke had received his orders from the King and those orders were to sail to Dunkirk and embark Alva's army of sixteen thousand veterans. He had been entrusted with a fleet of one hundred and thirty-one ships, and a force of seventeen thousand troops. These were to be joined with Alva's forces and landed on the English coast. He respected the Admiral's judgment, but he did not share his anxiety over their present rate of loss. And he did not even consider disobeying his instructions from King Philip.

On the evening of the 27th of July, 1588, the Armada anchored between Calais and Gravelines. It was noted that the pursuing enemy had been reduced; a number of Howard's ships had been forced to return to port for ammunition. As Medina Sidonia pointed out, when his captains came to the flagship
Santa Maria
to dine with him that night, they were now ready to take on Alva's soldiers and return to England.

The next day the crews were busy repairing holes and damaged rigging and burying their dead. There was no time to rest until the fleet was properly seaworthy. In the rare interval the officers relaxed. They had been at sea since May 19th, and they had been fighting for a week without much satisfaction. The night of the 28th was very dark and a strong wind came up, ruffling the banners and rocking the heavy ships in a deep swell.

The first of the English fire-ships sailed into the middle of them at two in the morning. There were eight such ships, and they were blazing from stem to stern with pitch and faggots, and the rising wind drove them along the water, shedding sparks and flame and smoke as if they were toys upon a pond. The stretch of sea became an inferno lit by the glare of the burning wrecks and of those galleons which had caught fire from them. The rest of the Spanish fleet were struggling to cut their cables and drift out to safety. Lines were fouled; there were collisions and explosions as the ammunition in the burning ships went up; the sea was full of charred wreckage and dead bodies and men swimming, screaming for help. Some of the rammed ships began to list so violently that the thousands of troops trapped in them went to the bottom of the sea without even reaching the decks. From the flagship, Medina Sidonia ordered the rest of the fleet to hoist anchor and pull out into the open sea; he had just seen Admiral Recalde's galleon blow up like a monstrous firework after being covered by a shower of flaming timber from a fallen mast. There was no time to save survivors; the fire-ships had sunk by then, but everywhere he looked his own ships were burning. He had been a distinguished soldier and a devoted servant of his King. But Philip had not told him how to provide for this, and as the
Santa Maria
moved through the smoke and the wreckage, he knew that the English fleet was waiting for him outside the radius of the fires.

The dawn was breaking and Howard of Effingham's ships were now joined by another force under the command of Lord Henry Seymour; the units who had returned for ammunition had made contact again, and as he watched the outline of the Armada sailing out against that frightful background, the English Admiral gave the order to attack. He attacked in the same manner as before, at a safe distance from the heavier ships with their large boarding parties and massive guns. He manoeuvred his light ships at speed among the crippled galleons wallowing in the increasingly high seas, and he sank them easily. The Spanish ships were separated and disorganized, many of them had damaged gear as a result of the panicked dispersal and were unable to bring about after a broadside. The English cannon smashed through wood and plating into the holds packed with soldiers, and one of the toughest of the English captains blenched at the sight of a Spanish galleon slowly heeling over, while blood poured from her decks like water. The Armada was dying like some great wounded animal in the waters of the English Channel; there was a strong southwest wind blowing up, and the few ships that were left were driven before it. By the end of the day there was no more firing; there was a strange silence. The English fleet stood off and then turned for home; its ammunition was exhausted and there was no more in reserve in the English arsenals. What was left of their enemy was driven up into the North Sea by a wind which was growing into a storm. Alva's army was still intact in the Netherlands but it would never cross to England now. Two thirds of the Armada of Spain were sunk round the English coastline and in the English Channel. The reefs and rocks of Scotland and Ireland later claimed most of those that were left.

The streets of the City of London were packed with a dense crowd of cheering, shouting, waving people, pressed back behind wooden barriers which were draped with brightly coloured cloths. Silks and velvets and tapestries were strung overhead between the buildings, and there were triumphal arches and tableaux depicting the defeat of the Armada. Even the roads were strewn with herbs and flowers. The August sun was shining and Elizabeth thanked God for a light breeze. She was sitting in an open litter hung with cloth of gold and drawn by four pure white horses, and she was the centre of a long, brilliant procession which was returning from St. Paul's in the City after a service of thanksgiving for the defeat of the Armada. The service had lasted for three hours, and her progress from Whitehall Palace had taken nearly as long as it moved slowly through the narrow streets, between crowds of people shrieking with enthusiasm and joy. There had never been a spectacle like this one within living memory; she could hear the cheers within the Cathedral, competing with the choirs and the music and the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon which the Queen thought went on far too long. She had already been tired when she entered the church; she wore a heavy gold crown, covered with diamonds and emeralds, and her scarlet train had to be carried by four pages. The dress she wore was white, sewn all over with pearls and diamonds, with more emeralds blazing round her neck and her wrists; she carried the sceptre in one hand and the orb in the other, and she had been glad to lay them aside during the service. Her head and arms were aching again as she rode back through the City, but she was still smiling and turning from side to side to acknowledge the tumultuous reception of her people. It was thirty years since her accession, thirty years since she had made her first triumphant appearance on her way to the Tower as Queen of England, and she felt as she listened to the crowds and the salvoes of cannon and the pealing of every church bell in London, that her life had completed its full circle. They had defeated Spain. Of the ships sent against her, a handful had returned to port, and of the full complement of troops and seamen who had set out from Spain to conquer England, less than ten thousand were disembarked in their own country, starving and wounded and ravaged with disease. She had ordered a medal to be struck, commemorating the victory with the simple inscription in Latin: “
God Blew and they were Scattered
”.

She could feel the warmth, the admiration and love of the rough, smelly Londoners enveloping her; there were faces wet with tears among them, young faces and old faces, and the same expression of fondness was on them all. For their sake she had dressed in her magnificent, stifling robes and carried the orb and sceptre, refusing to ease her own burden and put them down, refusing to travel by barge for part of the journey and spare herself the slow, jolting ride through the uneven streets. She wanted them to see her and enjoy every moment of the spectacle, she wanted to re-live the scenes of her accession and her Coronation and remind them that she had fulfilled all their hopes in her when she had come out among them as a young woman at the beginning of her reign. In spite of her tiredness, in spite of the heat and the ache in her neck muscles from the heavy crown, Elizabeth sat as erect as if she were twenty-five again, and the smile never left her face.

It was the moment of her supreme triumph, the moment of vindication for anything she had ever done that was bloody and deceitful and ruthless in order to preserve her power. She was alone in her state and magnificence; no husband rode beside her, no child followed her chariot and was cheered as the heir to her throne. She was surrounded by men who had supported her, fought for her, and governed with her, but it was her victory and her triumph, and like all moments of ultimate success, it was already tainted with sadness. She was happy, and yet her heart was sinking a little, because she knew that she was taking part in the end of a long and incredible era in the history of her country and the course of her own life. Full circle. The phrase chased in and out of her thoughts. Her country was safe and so was she, but after the peak comes the decline. For the first time since she had heard of the defeat of the Armada, since reviewing her troops at Tilbury and making what everyone considered to be the most masterly speech of her reign, the Queen felt drained, as if all her energy and much of her spirit had been dissipated in that desperate time of anxiety and struggle. But they had won and whatever happened, she would leave the country she had ruled in a position of strength and power and wealth which it had never known.

The dynasty would die with her; she was the last of the Tudors, and she did not regret it. She had given England more than any of them and she would leave England when the time came with a sense of achievement which was close to vainglory. One day, the son of her dead enemy Mary Stuart would inherit all this. As she looked round at her capital, she almost smiled at the irony of the circumstances which made James I of Scotland the future King of England. She had been told that he bore no resemblance to his beautiful mother; he was short and badly made, with an over-large tongue which made his speech a gabble, and a marked preference for handsome young men. He was sly and treacherous, but there was nothing she could do but live as long as possible and delay his inheritance. She dismissed the thought from her mind; it irritated her and reminded her of her own mortality.

It was becoming inconceivable to her that she would really die; even her mirrors were distorted to hide the ravages of time and worry and show her an image of herself which was false. She was tired and she was more often bad tempered than not; trifles annoyed her and her temper flamed at the guilty and the innocent without distinction. She was omnipotent and indispensable and she saw no reason to check her own tyranny; she was entitled to it. She was entitled to be flattered and humoured and glorified because this day's rejoicing was due to her. She had staved off Spain for thirty years and then beaten Spain when the war came.

If the young men rising in her service and the simpering women who had taken the place of her old friends did not appreciate that and show a proper sense of gratitude and awe, then she taught them to be afraid of her instead. She did not mind fear from the majority because she still had the love she needed to support her. She had only to glance to the right and see Robert riding slowly beside her and catch his eye and smile at him, and she felt she had seized the best of everything and relinquished nothing of importance. She was alone in her triumph and she wanted that loneliness, but he would be with her that evening in her Palace while the crowds got drunk and danced outside in the streets. And for every evening, as far ahead as she could see.