The Rage of Fortune Read online

  The walking joke bridled at my insult, as I hoped he would.

  ‘Damn you, Ravensden, I will have satisfaction for that—’

  His hand went to his sword hilt, and I responded in kind.

  ‘Gladly, Leveson! Aye, gladly!’

  Tom Howard raised his hands in despair. ‘Sir Richard – My Lord – we will have no discord between us! None, do you hear? Do either of you wish to account to the Queen for warring with each other when the enemy might be on our shore at any moment?’

  I held my tongue. Tom Howard was a good man, but if it came to it, we both knew that blood would out; Leveson was married to his cousin, the Lord Admiral’s daughter. And whatever I thought of Brick-Beard, I respected the Earl of Nottingham, our commander-in-chief against the Invincible Armada in the days when he was plain Howard of Effingham. Besides, he was now the Lord Lieutenant-General of All England, the man in charge of our defence against this new threat, and I did not doubt that his powers would include summarily executing the man who impaled his son-in-law like a suckling pig.

  ‘It cannot harm to send Sir Richard west,’ said Raleigh, acting the conciliator. ‘After all, it is just as likely that the Spanish intend to land in Ireland, to assist the rebels there. Thus adding quite notably to My Lord Essex’s present troubles.’

  ‘Must be difficult for you, Walt,’ I said, ‘caught between wishing Essex ill and hoping he doesn’t fare so ill that it imperils your Irish estates. Your very extensive Irish estates.’

  ‘I wish merely for the success of the Queen’s arms, Ravensden, whosever might command them,’ said Walt, uncomfortably. ‘But come, My Lord Earl, you are clearly in a mighty peevish mood today. Tell us, then, what you think we, your admirals, should do.’

  What you think we, your admirals, should do.

  Oh, there was the rub. I had more experience of fighting at sea than any of them, but because I would not bend to every fashion and faction of the court – and because the Queen did not like me – I was doomed to have other men promoted over my head. Yet my rank as an Earl of England meant that they had to give me a place in their councils.

  I walked to the stern windows of the great cabin of Elizabeth Jonas and looked out over the fleet, the ships swinging at single anchors upon the flooding tide.

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘Sir Richard to sail west once more – yes, that is for the best.’ It also meant the removal of Brick-Beard from my company for at least a few blessed weeks, but I suppose one should not decide the movements of navies in wartime upon such base considerations. ‘The rest of the fleet to remain here, in the Downs, to await more certain intelligence of the enemy.’

  Tom Howard frowned. ‘You would not move the whole fleet west, to Portsmouth or Plymouth? If we remain here, we leave the entire south coast undefended – the Spanish could easily land at Falmouth, or Milford Haven, or else seize the Isle of Wight—’

  ‘True, My Lord, they could. But those places are remote, and easily isolated from the rest of the country. Taking them would gain the Spaniards nothing. No, two destinations, and two only, matter to the Don. The one is Ireland, where there is already a war, a large army ready to ally with their own, and a fine general commanding it, namely the Earl of Tyrone. The other is London, and the Queen. We cannot defend both London and Ireland, so if it comes to a choice, as it always does, then our duty is to protect Her Majesty.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Walt Raleigh, ever the consummate courtier.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Tom Howard. ‘God save the Queen.’

  ‘God save the Queen,’ said the other three of us, in unison.

  ‘Very well, My Lord, we shall adopt your advice—’

  ‘One more thing, My Lord Howard,’ I said. ‘We should send a small squadron to the opposite coast, to co-ordinate matters with our Dutch allies, to watch for signs of the Armada of Flanders moving out of its ports to join the fleet coming up the Channel, and to trap the Dons in a pincer if they try to break through the Straits of Dover.’

  ‘With yourself as the commander of this squadron, Lord Ravensden?’

  ‘If I am thought worthy of such an honour.’

  ‘Raleigh, Leveson – you concur?’

  My two rivals nodded their agreement; no doubt they were as enthusiastic to be rid of me as I was of them.

  ‘So be it,’ said Howard. ‘Take the Merhonour and whichever four of the London ships you find fittest.’

  London ships, not royal ones. That was the price to be paid for an independent command, then: trying to cajole a bunch of timorous Wapping skippers into taking the slightest risk that might imperil their owners’ precious hulls. But it was better than the alternative, and I believe I feigned gratitude effusively enough.

  And thus, with our resolutions taken, we waited for the new Armada to come against us.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Nicholas Iles:

  A forest of masts, vengeful in its wrath, sailing up the Channel to –

  No. A forest cannot be vengeful.

  The ocean carpeted with hulls of Castilian oak, bearing the grim-visaged legions of King Philip –

  A carpet of oak? Dreadful, Iles: not even Shakespeare would strike such a jarring note.

  Mighty floating fortresses, come upon the west wind to ravage England’s sacred seas –

  No, no, no.

  As I look back over the rough notes I scribbled in those strange days at the end of the summer of Ninety-Nine, I can recall exactly the moods we went through aboard the Merhonour, lying principally off Dunkirk with our consorts from London and our allies, the Dutch.

  First, there were the days when we expected the Armada at any moment. Prayers were said four, sometimes five, times a day. The men drilled with pikes and cutlasses, grim determination in their eyes. My Lord slept on the deck, the seamen at their guns. And I began to write the great battle scene that would conclude with My Lord’s triumph over the enemy. Best to begin it in advance, I reasoned, lest I be wounded during the fight, or else forgot some of the details afterwards.

  After perhaps a week of this, the murmuring began. The frequency of prayers decreased. The drills were carried out half-heartedly, if at all. Men crept back into their sea-beds or mattresses upon the decks. I began to write some stanzas about the love of Paris and Helen.

  After a few more days, we had daily floggings to suppress mutiny. And one morning, two of the London ships were gone. I expected My Lord to rage against their cowardice, and to issue orders for their arrest to every port in the land. But he did not. He simply shrugged his shoulders.

  Throughout this time, My Lord was receiving letters. We knew when he held in his hand a letter from France, because he smiled like a youth smitten by first love. Thus we knew that My Lady was approaching her full term, and all was well. But the letters from England caused his brow to furrow. He refused to discuss the contents with any of us, but their purport was all too obvious.

  There was no sign of the great Armada we had all seen with our own eyes. It had simply vanished into thin air.

  The Earl of Ravensden:

  The worst thing was the smug look on the face of the Bastard Orange.

  Bugger all had been stirring out of Dunkirk. I was praying for a chance to fight and kill van der Waecken, the boldest of the Dunkirk privateers, whose depredations in the English Seas had made him feared on every inch of Queen Elizabeth’s shores. Only a triumph like that, I reckoned, would provide sufficient redemption for me now. But the devious Flemish knave was said to be on a lengthy cruise, laying up in neutral Scots or Danish harbours, with no likelihood of him returning in the foreseeable future. So I gave orders for us to sail down the coast to Calais, where we could anchor for a few days and take on fresh victuals brought by hoys from Dover. I dared not give leave, not even to the loyal men who would not attempt to desert, but at least the officers could take turns at going ashore. I made sure I took the first turn, too, because the mails that came aboard us in Calais Roads meant that I needed to get mightily drunk, and in as sho
rt a time as possible, even though it was only a little after dawn. What I did not need was to walk into the most notorious inn of old Calais, La Chat Gris, the one place where I ought to have been certain of encountering no man of rank whatsoever who might witness me drinking myself into oblivion – especially at that time of day – and seeing before me the familiar round face, bald pate and bushy grey beard of the Lieutenant-Admiral of Zeeland, Justinus of Nassau.

  ‘Ho, My Lord of Ravensden!’ he cried. His English was atrocious – in truth, his greeting came out as Whore, Moy Lort off Rahffensdin – but that was not the reason why my heart sank at the prospect of a morning in his company.

  ‘My Lord of Nassau,’ I said, inclining my head slightly.

  The man was the son of a prince, after all, albeit from the wrong side of the blanket. Europe’s most famous prince, too, in his day: William of Orange, no less, the leader of the Dutch revolt against their erstwhile Spanish overlords. Leader, that is, until some papist Frog blew his chest apart at point-blank range, after which he really did live up to his nickname of William the Silent.

  ‘Ho, then, My Lord,’ said Justinus, the Bastard Orange, ‘where is your Armada? Your invisible Armada? That is what they are calling it in London, is it not?’

  He laughed aloud, although his laugh consisted of a volley of loud croaks somewhat akin to those of a frightened pheasant.

  Lieutenant-Admiral he might have been. Half-brother of the ruler of the self-proclaimed United Provinces of the Netherlands he might have been, too. But, there and then, I would happily have pummelled his head, so much like an orange if truth be told, had it not been for the knowledge that we both shared. The knowledge that had come with the mails to both the English and Dutch squadrons that lay off the port of Calais.

  ‘The Armada has gone to the Canary Islands, Lord Justinus.’

  ‘Ho, that is right, Lord Ravensden! To save them from falling into the hands of our Dutch fleet, under my good friend Van der Does. So King Philip considers the little Canary Islands more important than great England!’

  The pheasant croaked again, and his companions, Dutch captains to a man, laughed with him. In my mind, I ran him through there and then; but striking dead the admiral of our ally was unlikely to stand me in good stead with the Queen, who already looked askance upon me.

  ‘As you say, Lord Justinus,’ I said feebly.

  But the Bastard Orange was clearly in no mood to let matters rest there.

  ‘Why, poor Lord Ravensden! Ho, here you are in Calais, that was England’s entire empire in the world until you lost it, and it is here you learn that your kingdom is no longer worth a Canary! Truly, how are the mighty fallen!’

  Nassau’s captains laughed even more uproariously. But I could not argue, for it was only the truth. To prove it, Jacques Liebart, the ancient innkeeper, came over in that moment.

  ‘Good morrow, My Lord of Ravensden,’ he said in perfect English. ‘Will it be beer, ale or wine today? And some Cheshire cheese, perhaps?’

  Liebart spoke with a still noticeable accent, somewhat akin to Kentish. For he was born an Englishman, along with every one of the oldest citizens of Calais. He had lived there through the first twenty years of his life, when it was still as English a town as Windsor, even returning two members to Parliament. Then, forty-one years ago, the French took it. My new wife had discomfited me somewhat by revealing that her grandfather rode alongside its conqueror, the Duke of Guise, as he made his triumphant entry into the town.

  ‘Ale and wine, Liebart. And fast, man!’

  ‘Ho,’ cried the Bastard Orange, ‘the noble Earl has many sorrows to drown!’

  I prayed as I had not prayed for many a year, and my prayer was that something, anything, would wipe the smiles from the faces of Justinus of Nassau and his Dutchmen.

  The door of the inn burst open, and Iles ran into the room. My heart lifted for a moment – perhaps he had news from Louise-Marie of the birth of my son, which had to be due.

  But then he screamed, ‘The Spanish! The Spanish are in sight!’

  No, dear Lord in Heaven.

  Upon reflection – anything except that.

  Laszlo Horvath:

  He comes aboard in a rage, bellowing orders. Men go aloft, the sails are unfurled, ropes are pulled taut. There is much shouting, and the blowing of whistles.

  ‘Cut the cables!’ he cries.

  Men with axes run to the anchor-ropes and hack at them. Across the water, the Dutchmen do the same. But it avails us little. The severed ropes run out of their holes, our anchors are gone, and I feel the now-familiar creaking and swaying of the hull as it begins to move. Above our heads, though, the sails hang limply in the morning haze. The gales of the last few days are gone, and in their place we have near calm. The English and Dutch ships barely move.

  He goes up onto the forecastle and pulls himself up onto the ship’s rail, staring out to sea. Now, at last, we can all see what the lookout on our southernmost ship reported.

  ‘Six galleys,’ he cries. ‘Six fucking Spanish galleys, and they’re running the Straits!’

  It is my first sight of galleys. They are very different to the high-hulled English and Dutch ships struggling to get clear of the Road of Calais. They have long, low hulls, with pronounced beaks in the bows. They have single masts, which carry the triangular sails that the sailors call ‘lateens’. At the sterns, they have curious structures which resemble half-upturned sea-shells. Half way along their decks are squarer upperworks that resemble small castles. From these protrude several large guns, only a little smaller than the great guns mounted in their bows.

  They are a glorious sight. Their banks of oars move in unison, propelling them swiftly through the calm waters. Even in Calais, amidst all the noise of our own activity, we can just make out the sound of their drums, beating out the rhythm for the rowers. We can see the morning sun glinting on the armour of the hundreds of soldiers lining their decks. And we can see the red and gold banners of Spain spilling out as the galleys create their own breeze, while our ensigns of Saint George hang limply.

  ‘God’s blood,’ he cries –

  The Earl of Ravensden:

  ‘God’s blood, send us a fair wind!’ But we had not a whiff of one. Not one fucking whiff. ‘Master Carver! Can you not but find us a breath or two of breeze, man?’

  Even as I uttered the words, I knew they were hopeless. Carver had men adjusting the top sails every few minutes, the main courses nearly as often, but no matter what he did, there was no wind. We caught no breeze off the land. We found no hint of a westerly even when we were out beyond the shelter of Grease Ness.

  My ships, and those of the Bastard Orange, were making a knot or two, if that, as we struggled to make any way at all. Even the Dutch cromsters, trim little war-craft with lateen sails at their mizzens, could make but poor progress. And out at sea, in the very centre of the Strait of Dover, the six great galleys were doing a good twelve knots. I’d served with enough men who’d been slaves in the galleys, and knew from them that to keep up this sort of speed, the rowing masters would be pushing the oarsmen to the very limit. I could imagine the whips cracking on flesh, the blood and sweat of the men as the sweeps cut the water. They could not maintain such a tempo for long. But then, they did not need to. The night and the mist had given them the advantage of surprise, the calm now gave them the advantage of speed, and in truth, the Straits of Dover form but a very small stretch of sea. The galleys’ bow waves of white foam were all too visible to we slugs becalmed at Calais, a sure sign that they would soon be past us. But as I clung on to the foremast shrouds, waving my fist at the distant enemy, I knew it was even worse than that. For if we had no wind, then neither did Leveson, Raleigh and Tom Howard over in the Downs. They would be doing the same as us, trying somehow to find a decent breeze and sea-room, but like us, they would be failing. The Spanish admiral, whoever he might be, was both bold and lucky, and in fighting at sea, those are the only qualities an admiral needs.

 
But as I watched the impressive sight of the galleys, rowing through England’s private lake as though they owned it, a suspicion grew upon me that the Spanish admiral had more qualities than those alone. This was not some chance raid, not some hare-brained mission dreamed up on the spur of the moment like so many of the expeditions of, say, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. Or Matthew of Ravensden, come to that, if I am honest. A voyage so daring, with such high stakes and high risks, required meticulous planning and preparation. It required careful rehearsal of different options: for instance, the possibility of sending galleys into the English Channel in winter. Suddenly, the fight that had nearly done for my Merhonour, and forced us into Nantes to repair, made perfect sense, although the thought was not a pleasant one. God alone knew what a Spanish admiral so efficient and so ruthless – for sending a galley full of several hundred men into northern waters in November, when it would most likely be swamped by the sea, was ruthless beyond measure – yes, God alone knew what such an admiral might achieve.

  There was only one consolation. I looked over to the Dutch flagship, and could see Justinus of Nassau clearly, standing there on his quarterdeck. He had buckled on his breastplate, but he wasn’t laughing now, by Christ. He was as still as a statue, staring at the huge galleys as they moved away inexorably, out into the North Sea. Oh, they’d be a threat to England, all right – Drake hit that particular nail well and truly on its head – but they were ten times the threat to the Bastard Orange’s upstart rebel republic, with its entire economy dependent on sea-trade and all its main ports standing on shallow waterways where galleys were in their element. If the Spanish admiral got safely into Sluys, as he was now nearly bound to do, the Dutch were in more shit than the gong-farmers of Cheapside.

  The balance of the war had just changed, there was no doubt of that.

  Laszlo Horvath:

  I go into the bows to stand beside him.

  ‘My Lord,’ I say, ‘it is not your fault.’

  ‘Fuck me, Horvath,’ he says, looking out all the time at the fast-receding galleys, ‘I know it’s not my fault. It’s the fault of Leveson for going back to the Downs and not staying on station. It’s the fault of Secretary Cecil’s intelligencers, for not giving us word that the Dons were sending six galleys through the Channel. Above all, it’s the fault of God for deciding today should have perfect weather for them and the worst possible weather for us. But you know what, friend Horvath? None of that will matter a damn. Leveson’s the darling of the court and can do no fucking wrong. Cecil decides what truth is in England, so you can be certain it’s not going to reflect badly on him, either. And the entire country has spent the last eleven years believing the wind is Protestant and on our side, so it’s not going to change its mind now. Which means the country needs somebody else to blame, friend Horvath.’