The Forest (51 page)

But what exactly was his position in this great enterprise? Why the same, exactly, as that of all the other gentlemen like him who were travelling with the Armada. There were scores of them in the fleet: rich gentlemen, poor nobles, royal princelings from all over Europe; there were bastard sons of Italian dukes in search of fame and plunder, plus, almost certainly, a natural son of the pious King of Spain himself. Some knew how to fight, some came to watch, some, like Don Diego, were vague about why they came. It was, after all, a crusade. But tonight, at last, Don Diego’s chance had come.

It was in the nature of the defensive formation the Armada had adopted that the great convoy could only move at the speed of its slowest vessel. If one of the ships were disabled, then every ship would have to slow down – and they were moving slowly enough already. Crippled vessels, therefore, had to be ruthlessly left behind.

The ship that had been damaged was a common hulk – a slow, blundering vessel with only a few guns but a contingent of troops and a hold full of ammunition and supplies. Yesterday’s pounding from the English had damaged one of her masts and holed her, as well as killing the captain. All day today the hulk had limped along, but by evening it was clear she couldn’t keep up. And it was in early evening that the duke, who had been wondering if he could find something for his harmless kinsman to do, suddenly summoned him and enquired whether he could deal with it.

Don Diego had been working, now, for hours. He had laboured hard and intelligently. The first thing he had done was to get the troops off on to other vessels. Next he had turned his attention to the all-important ammunition. Unlike the English, the Spanish ships had no means of getting fresh supplies. Everything they needed had to be carried with them. They had been returning the English fire for four days now and some of the ships were getting short of powder. Using what smaller boats he could, Don Diego and the remains of the hulk’s crew had unloaded barrel after barrel of powder and conveyed them to other ships. Then he had done the same with the cannon balls. That had been a slow and difficult process. Half a dozen had fallen into the water. One had almost gone through the bottom of the boat they were loading. Darkness had fallen and they were still at it. The crew were beginning to get a little grumpy, but he gave them no rest. Towards eleven o’clock the job was done.

As he had been awake since before dawn that day and had taken no siesta, Don Diego was starting to get very tired. Despite the fact that they had been lightening the hulk for hours, she was going slower and settling in the water all the time. A message came from the duke: he thanked Diego for his good work, but now the hulk must be left behind. The crew, it was clear, were ready to leave.

Yet Don Diego hesitated. There was still one thing he wanted to do.

He had made the discovery when he went down to check the hold. Although there were still all sorts of things down there, the gunpowder, which had been in the upper part, and the shot below had all been cleared. In the lowest part of the hold, against the bottom of the ship, he could hear the water sloshing about as the hulk wallowed lower. Holding the lantern over the water, he had peered down to see how deep it was. And then he had seen a faint, silvery glow and realized.

The entire bottom of the hulk was lined with bullion: silver bars; thousands of them. They gleamed mysteriously under the watery light as he gazed at them.

Such treasure, of course, was of no great importance to the Armada, for the fleet as a whole was carrying a prodigious quantity of gold and silver. In the present circumstances the powder and shot was of far more value. But if the hulk was just left to drift, the English would have the silver and this idea irked him. It’s my operation, he thought, and it’s going to be perfect.

The solution was quite easily arranged. Half the crew he put off straight away. The rest, just enough to do what was needed, he ordered to remain. He also kept two pinnaces, one on each side.

‘We shall allow this ship to fall behind,’ he told them, ‘taking care not to foul any others as we do so. Then we shall scuttle her.’

The men looked at him sullenly. They had to obey this gentleman, who knew nothing of ships and who had been foisted upon them; but they didn’t like it.

‘What do we do after that?’ one of the men asked, with a hint of insolence in his voice.

‘Get into the pinnaces,’ Don Diego replied. ‘No doubt,’ he added coolly, ‘if you row hard we can catch up.’

The night was dark. Clouds covered the moon. Very slowly, yard by yard, the hulk was falling back through the fleet. To right and left, as the minutes passed, great shapes loomed up at them, hovered, showing lights here and there, then drew mysteriously away. The process of falling back might take half an hour, he guessed.

He went down into the captain’s big cabin in the stern. There was a large chair there and he sat in it. He was tired, but he felt a sense of satisfaction at what he had done. Well, nearly done. He was exhausted, but he smiled. For a moment, a wave of sleepiness almost overcame him, but he shook his head to drive it off. It would be time, he thought, in a little while, he’d go back on deck again.

Don Diego’s head sank on to his chest.

Albion inwardly groaned. It was the middle of the night and still, God help them, his mother had not gone to bed.

The oak-panelled parlour was brightly lit: she had ordered fresh candles an hour ago. And now, for perhaps the fourth time – he had lost the will to keep count – she had worked herself up to a climax of fervour again.

‘Now is the time, Clement. Now. Saddle your horse. The game’s afoot. Summon your men.’

‘It is the middle of the night, Mother.’

‘Go up to Malwood,’ she cried. ‘Light the beacon. Call the muster.’

‘All I have asked, Mother,’ he said patiently, ‘is that we wait until dawn. Then we shall know.’

‘Know? Know what?’ Her voice rose now to a pitch that might have pleased any preacher. ‘Have we not seen, Clement? Have we not
seen
them coming?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said flatly.

‘Oh!’ She threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘You are weak. Weak. All of you. If only I were a man.’

If you were a man, thought Albion privately, you would have been locked up long ago.

It had been late afternoon when the Armada had been sighted. The two of them, with a party of other gentlemen and ladies, had gathered at the top of the ridge by Lymington from which there was a fine view over Pennington Marshes down the English Channel. As soon as the distant ships had come in sight his mother had started to become highly agitated and he had been forced to take her horse’s bridle, pull her to one side and whisper urgently: ‘You must dissemble, Mother. If you cry for the Spanish now, you will ruin everything.’

‘Dissemble. Yes. Ha-ha,’ she had cried. Then, in a whisper which, surely, must have reached well beyond Hurst Castle. ‘You are right. We must be wise. We shall be cunning.
God save the queen!
’ she had suddenly shouted, so that the ladies and gentlemen turned in surprise. ‘The heretic,’ she hissed with delighted venom.

For three nerve-wracking hours they had continued to watch as the Armada came eastwards. The wind had been dropping and its progress seemed slower and slower. The English fleet, drawn up in tidy squadrons now, was visible not far behind. Before long, several small, swift vessels could be seen detaching themselves from their squadrons and making their way swiftly across the waters towards the Solent entrance. In less than an hour, two had navigated the entrance and anchored in the lee of Hurst Castle, while two more had pressed on towards Southampton. Soon they could see the men from Hurst Castle going out in lighters laden with powder and shot, and as soon as the two vessels had taken on all that could be spared they sped off again towards the fleet, from which tiny puffs of smoke and fire could be seen from time to time, accompanied, after a long pause, by a faint roar like receding thunder.

The Armada, so far, showed no sign of making towards the English shore. The ships remained in silhouette, a mass of tiny spikes like cut-outs, inching along the horizon line. On the Isle of Wight the garrison still had not lit the second or third beacons. But as darkness began to fall and the distant show resolved itself into a few sporadic flashes, Albion’s mother remained as committed as ever to her former belief. ‘They will turn and approach us under cover of darkness, Clement,’ she assured him confidently. ‘They’ll be in the Solent by morning.’ And so she had been saying ever since.

Albion glanced across at his wife. She was dressed in her nightclothes, prepared for bed. Her fair hair, only lightly streaked with silver, hung loose. She had gathered a shawl around her and was sitting quietly in a corner, saying nothing. If she took no part in the conversation, however, Albion knew quite well what she was doing. She was watching. As long as he could control his mother, well and good. But if not, she had already warned him she had given the servants their orders, which even he did not dare to countermand.

‘We shall lose our inheritance,’ he had cautioned.

‘And keep our lives. If she commits us to treason we shall lock her up.’

He did not blame her. She was probably right; but the thought of losing all that money was very hard for him; which was why even now – for his children’s sake, he told himself – he was temporizing with his mother, playing for time. ‘I sent a servant up to Malwood, Mother,’ he pointed out for the third time. ‘If the beacons signal any approach, I shall be told at once.’

‘The beacons.’ She said it with disgust.

‘They work very well, Mother,’ he said firmly. ‘Where do you think I should be? Down at the coast with my men already? Ready to silence the guns at Hurst Castle?’ He regretted it even before he finished speaking.

Her face lit up. ‘Yes, Clement. Yes. Do that, I beg you. Be ready, at least, to strike quickly. Why do you hesitate? Go at once.’

Albion stared thoughtfully at the gleaming candles. If he went out upon this errand, would it pacify her? Was that the sensible thing to do? Perhaps. But at the same time, another idea was in his mind. He was quite sure the Armada was not heading into the western Solent. They had been too far out to sea. But what if they came in at Portsmouth, just past the Isle of Wight? Or at any of the havens along the southern coast? There was Parma to consider, too. What about his great army in the Netherlands? That could be landing by the Thames even as they spoke. His mother might be dangerous; she might be mad. But was she wrong? It was the calculation he had never shared even with his wife. The time was very close. If the Spanish landed they might win. If they won, shouldn’t he be on their side? How could he discover who was winning? There were probably not a few Englishmen who were thinking such thoughts that night.

And surely, he considered, when there was a strong chance his mother’s cause might triumph it would be foolish indeed to make of her, his greatest advocate, an enemy.

‘Very well, Mother. You may be right.’ He turned to his wife. ‘You and my mother should remain here and tell no one I have gone. There are some good men I can trust.’ This was pure invention. ‘I shall gather them now and we shall go down to the shore. If the Spanish show signs of landing …’ He hadn’t, in truth, any idea what he would do, but his mother was beaming.

‘Thank God, Clement. At last. God will reward you.’

Not long afterwards Albion rode out of his house in the wood and made his way southwards towards Lymington. If he was going to stay out all night, he considered, he might as well be down at the shore. Who knew? Something might happen.

Behind him his wife and his mother sat quietly in the parlour. Some of the candles had been snuffed. The room was bathed in a soft, pleasant glow.

After a while the older woman yawned. ‘I think’, she said, ‘I may rest for a little while. Will you promise to wake me as soon as there is any news?’

‘Of course.’

The Lady Albion went over, kissed her daughter-in-law on the forehead and yawned again. ‘Very well, then,’ she said and, taking a candle, left the room. A few moments later Albion’s wife heard her enter her chamber. Then there was silence. She waited, snuffing out all but one of the candles, after which she went up to her own bed, got in as quickly as she could and laid down her head. As far as she was concerned her mother-in-law could sleep until doomsday.

And she was fast asleep herself, half an hour later, when the Lady Albion quietly stole out of the house.

Everything was pitch-black when Don Diego awoke. For a few moments he stared about him, trying to remember where he was. Then, feeling the arms of the chair and dimly seeing the big cabin around him, he remembered. He rose with a start. How long had he been sleeping? He staggered out and went up on to the deck, calling to his men.

Silence. He ran to the side to look for the pinnace. It had gone. He crossed to the other. That had vanished too. He was alone. He stared forward into the darkness. The sky was cloudy; only a few stars peeped through, but he could see the waters all around. And he saw no ships. He frowned. How was it possible? If so much time had passed the hulk should have sunk. What had happened?

Had he known the sailors better he might have guessed quite easily. Anxious to lose as little time as possible, they had made only the smallest attempt to scuttle the ship, then taken to the pinnaces as soon as they could. Afterwards the men on each pinnace, having gone to different ships, would claim they thought Don Diego was in the other. As for the hulk, it had continued to sail slowly forward but, one of the departing sailors having thoughtfully turned its rudder, it had peeled off to port. By the time the English boats saw it distantly in the darkness they had mistaken it for a ship of their own. And so for several hours, the hulk had been wallowing gracelessly forward, on an increasingly north-easterly course.

It was now, peering forward, that Don Diego suddenly realized something else. Ahead of him in the blackness, perhaps two miles off, was a faint, pale shape. At first he had thought it was a cloud, but it wasn’t. He realized it was part of a larger, darker shape. It was a line of white cliffs. He could make them out, now. He looked to port. Yes. There was a low, dark coastline there, running for many miles. His mind was working clearly. He realized where he must be. The dark line must be the south coast of England. The white cliffs must belong to the Isle of Wight.