Across a Moonlit Sea (34 page)

“He will undoubtedly rejoice to hear of your return from the dead,” Carleill said, matching Dante’s bland tone.

“As will Bess, I warrant,” Drake interjected. “’Twill be like Mary Stuart’s head rolling out of the basket and reattaching itself to her neck!”

“Mary Stuart’s head?” Pitt asked, in the process of having his own hand pumped and his shoulder clapped.

“Aye, the Stuart bitch. Of course—you could not know. Her head parted company with her shoulders oh … six weeks ago now. Nearing seven. Walsingham caught her red handed, packing secret notes in wine casks and dispatching them to a band of fellow conspirators who were—on her specific written orders—to hire assassins to kill the Queen. When he showed these to Bess, she had no choice but to brand it treason and put the witch to the axe.”

“Christ Jesus,” said Spence. “Has Spain heard the news?”

“We did not dally to wait until they did. Nor could the Queen afford to err on the side of caution any longer. To that end she has … unleashed us, as you say … to distress Spanish ships where we find them, capture their seaborne supplies, and to do all we can to impeach the gathering together of the King’s so-called
Grande Armada Felicissima.”

“Those were your orders?” Dante asked, intrigued. “Freely given?”

“Freely on the Monday, aye. With penance on Tuesday and no doubt regret on Wednesday. But by Thursday I was already vacating Plymouth and did not look back over my shoulder to see if there were any couriers trying to catch me up. The wind commanded me away and I obeyed.”

Dante exchanged a glance with Jonas Spence, for if it was true, then the captain had nothing to fear in the way of fines or rebukes for having attacked and plundered the
San Pedro de Marcos.

“The wind appears to have commanded a good many ships to sail in your wake.”

“Not so hastily as it may appear.” Drake smiled. “Each ship, each captain, was chosen by me for their stoutness of heart and quickness on the guns. Among us we have nearly three hundred and fifty muzzles searching to make havoc where we may.”

“You have a strike in mind?”

“Asked with such a lascivious glint in the eye, it leaves me to suspect you have somehow stumbled across the King’s own itinerary.”

“Not the complete plan, no. But we may have something that might interest you.”

Drake’s eyes narrowed. “As always, my cryptic friend, you leave me foaming with curiosity. Do I beg now or can
it wait until I moisten my throat with some of this famed Indies Gold the lieutenant has been telling me about?”

Spit had anticipated needing something to wet Spence’s throat and he waved a crewman forward, who bore plain pewter goblets and a jug of rum. When each man had a cup and each cup was filled, Drake offered a toast to the Queen and took a long, slow swallow, his hand on his hip, his eyes rising with the heat in his belly, until he found himself staring up at the forecastle deck.

Lucifer was standing there, his enormous black body gleaming in the sunlight.

Drake lowered his cup and dabbed a cuff across his lips. “I see you still keep company with cannibals. I am surprised he has not made a meal of you yet.”

“I keep him well fed with Spaniards.”

Drake’s gaze wandered slightly to the left of the tattooed giant. “And that … must be the captain’s infamous daughter? The one who signs her charts with a black swan and makes eunuchs of men who trifle with her?”

All eyes within hearing distance turned toward Beau, and she would have shrunk back against the wall of sailors behind her if Spence had not ordered her sharply down to the main deck.

“Aye! This is my daughter, Isabeau. Isabeau … have the honor and pleasure of making the acquaintance of Sir Francis Drake.”

Beau was not certain if she should attempt a curtsy in canvas breeches or tug a forelock. She settled for doing as the men had done and thrust out her hand, first to a startled dragon, then to a smiling Christopher Carleill.

“A pleasure, my lord, Mister Carleill.”

Drake pursed his lips and eyed her with renewed interest. “I am told I have one of your charts in my possession— which did you say, Mister Carleill?”

“Grand Canaria, sir. You were admiring it only the other day.”

“So I was, so I was. Excellent work, Mistress Spence. You have a fine eye for detail.”

“I was remarking on that very thing not an hour ago,” Dante said, and looked at Spence. “She broke the King’s code. It was not in the letters, after all, it was in the paintings. I could have searched for a year and not found it; Beau took one leisurely glance and made sense of it all.”

“Paintings?” Drake looked askance. “You have paintings … of what, may I ask?”

“The King’s Most Happy Fleet. The
Armada Felicissima.”

Drake leaned back in his chair, his hands betraying a slight tremor of excitement as they closed around his goblet, filled now with ale to keep his head clear. They had adjourned to Spence’s cabin and were crowded around the table. The morning sun was streaming through the gallery windows, causing Sir Francis’s hair to glow beyond orange. The air in the cabin was hazed with dust, thickest where the beams of sunlight poured onto the tabletop.

Drake had insisted on seeing the paintings and the documents. He had studied every last detail, and because Dante had been adamant about recognizing Beau’s part in identifying the Spanish galleons, she sat by Drake’s side as they went through all three pictures and made a list of the ships they decoded.

“You believe this to be the
Girona?”
he asked. “But she is a galleass and I see no evidence of oars.”

“The
Girona’s
captain is the Duke of Alicante. His family crest consists of a lion, a cross, and”—Beau touched a fingertip to the carved grotesque worked into the ship’s stern—“a ram’s head.”

Drake stared and Spence grinned.

“My father appreciates good wine,” she explained. “Some of the best burgundy is produced on the Duke of Alicante’s estates. His bottles bear his crest.”

Sir Francis nodded slowly and looked back at the list of ships they had compiled. He himself had contributed the
San Marin
, the
Saragoza
, the
Magdalena.

“By Christ, it is all here,” he muttered. “A complete inventory of the ships gathering in Spanish ports. And for what other reason than war? Moreover, if the ‘harvest’ dates are correct, the King is intending a June launch.” He lifted his head and scowled. “We are not sailing into these waters a day too soon. Hopefully, not a day too late either.”

Dante was standing, lounging against the cabin wall. “You have the firepower, all you need do is pick your first strike with care and purpose. Do enough damage, you can set all of Spain back on its heels.”

Drake looked at him expectantly. “I suppose you have the perfect target in mind?”

The pirate wolf grinned. “Cadiz.”

“Cadiz? Spain’s principle seaport?” Drake arched an eyebrow. “Why would you not just suggest we sail up the Tagus and attack Madrid … after first laying waste to Lisbon, of course?”

“Because, if they are in any way anticipating an attack, they will be anticipating it in Lisbon. Cadiz, on the other hand, is deep in their own waters.” He paused and his gaze touched on Beau’s golden eyes. “They will be as lax with their guard in Cadiz as they were in Veracruz.”

Drake frowned and tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “An intriguing suggestion, Simon, and audacious, as usual, but we have no clear idea what defenses we would be up against.”

Dante pushed aside the paintings and leaned over the table, sketching an invisible map on the wood.

“The port is shaped thus, like a funnel, with a wide outer harbor and a smaller, rounded inner harbor. The city itself straddles a detached spit of land joined to the main by a stone bridge. The defenses in the outer harbor are reasonably strong, for in order to breach the inner, a ship must first pass through this channel”—he drew a line through the neck of his invisble funnel—“and challenge the guns of the castle fortifications.

“The castle itself overlooks the channel. It was built nearly a century ago to defend the city against repeated sackings from Algerian corsairs. While not to be lightly dismissed, I suspect with this many ships in port, we would not even have to risk the guns or the shoals to make short work of the King’s fleet.”

“Shoals?”

“Aye, they run along the leeward side of the channel, like teeth waiting to snap at an unsuspecting keel. If I were to try to penetrate the inner harbor, I would send the pinnaces in first to sound the shoals and test the wind and currents—both of which have a tendency to lose spirit inside the harbor.”

Drake was staring hard at Dante’s squared jaw, the tightly compressed lips, the sudden blaze of blue in his eyes. “You never mentioned where it was you were taken,” he said quietly, “when you were subjected to the auto-da-fe. May I presume it was Cadiz?”

“There was not much to do between beatings but stare out a crack in the wall of my cell and watch the harbor. I attacked it a hundred times in my mind, and each was a success.”

“We need to attack it only once,” Drake said. “And it would
have
to be a success.”

“Given the fact you are almost as audacious as I, I cannot see how it would fail.”

Drake weathered the challenge with a slow smile, but it was apparant the bait was already half taken. His eyes sparkled and his complexion was ruddy with excitement, and he stared down at the invisible map Dante had drawn as if he could already see the harbor burning, the ships in flame.

Restless now, he stood up and paced to the windows. His black satin shirt was stiff with jeweled embroidery, the sleeves of his velvet doublet were puffed and slashed, the doublet itself was padded generously to add bulk to his shoulders and dipped low in front to form a stylishly aggrandized peasecod belly. His hose, while doing little to flatter the bow in his legs, were worth more than a year’s wages to a common sailor.

“Walsingham,” he said, thinking aloud as he continued to contemplate the possibilities, “has suggested we concentrate our efforts on the smaller coastal ports. He thought a blockade off Cape Saint Vincent would seriously hamper the provisioning of Lisbon. He has made his suggestion in the expectations of the Spanish king choosing Alvaro de Bazan, Marquis of Santa Cruz, to admiral his fleet, despite the old warrior’s age and reports of ill health.

“On the other hand, there is the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the current court favorite. Richer than Croesus, he owns half of Andalusia and covets the rest. He is neither a soldier nor a sailor, however. He spears bulls with lancets and teaches horses to caper through the air. I doubt he has even been on the deck of a ship, save once, years ago, when he went to fetch his child bride from Navarre. His duchess is more of a sailor than he, having made several voyages to the Indies to visit her father—a governor, I believe, of one of the islands. I heard some mention she was there now, for he was ailing. Or that she was on her way back, for he was dead.”

Dante’s face remained impassive but Pitt’s turned a strangled shade of red and Spence swallowed loud enough for the sound to reverberate around the cabin. Drake was too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice the subtle increase in tension, but Carleill passed a curious eye from Pitt to Spence to Beau, who was also, suddenly, preoccupied with a scrap of paper she was folding and unfolding into a tiny square.

“Medina Sidonia would be the people’s favorite,” Drake decided curtly, searching for agreement from his audience, “for he would only have to snap his fingers to have fifty thousand men eager to follow him into the bowels of hell. His
palacio
, as it happens, is in Cadiz.”

“In which case,” Carleill observed on cue, “it would not enhance his reputation any to be defeated in his own province.”

“No more than it would enhance mine,” Drake countered, “to be seen acting too rashly with the Queen’s ships.”

“Rashness, sir, is what is demanded. The Queen will know this when it comes time to choose her admiral to champion the defense of England.”

Drake smirked. “The Queen, bless her soul, has a great deal of Old Henry in her and thinks like a man when it comes to the strategies of warfare. But she is also the Queen and must think of her own position when it comes to the strategies of politics. Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham is Lord High Admiral of England, and will no doubt satisfy the needs of the Privy Council. I am, alas, only the son of a common preacher and to put me in command of men with noble blood would offend every law of nature and seigniory. On the other hand”—his smile turned conspiratorial—“we can always hope for common sense to prevail,
and if I should shew the boldness to sail into Cadiz and singe the King’s beard, well…”

“She will have no choice but to appoint you,” Carleill insisted. “Noble blood be damned.”

Drake bowed slightly to acknowledge Carle ill’s astute perception—one he shared wholeheartedly—and not by chance his gaze settled on Beau. His small, close-set eyes narrowed as he gave her doublet and breeches, her ill-fixed braid, a bemused inspection.

“I have it in my mind Bess would take to you at once, child. I half believe there are times she would forfeit her crown if she could but once fling her farthingale into the wind and climb the rigging of a ship.”

Beau was not sure how to respond. Luckily she was spared the need as Drake walked brusquely back to the table.

“Mister Carleill—we shall have to call a council of war with all of the captains. If Cadiz sits well with them—and I cannot see them arguing overlong, since I have already made the decision—we shall lay in our course and sail close-hauled to the wind. A fortnight, I estimate, and we should be smelling the olive groves and camel dung.”

“The, er, question of the other captains, sir…?”

“Not now, Carleill.”

The lieutenant glanced at Dante. “But, sir—”

“Not
now.”
Drake fixed a smile in place and offered a casual explanation to his audience. “Borough. He likes his opinions to mean something. He also likes his pomp and ceremony and takes every care to see his enemy has a gallant opportunity to defend himself, even if it means knocking on the door and announcing our arrival. He holds no favor with surprise and stealth, the very qualities the Spaniards least expect. The very ones I admire most, unless, of course”—the bright blue eyes went to Spence—“they are
meant to impugn my own character. Did you really expect, Captain, I would be so churlish as to confiscate whatever goods you have in your holds? Goods other than Indies Gold, that is.”