Beatrice and Benedick (29 page)

The answering roar near put wind in the sails. ‘In the name of God, the king and Santiago!'

I shouted louder than most and applauded louder than any, and felt a thickening in my throat. Don Pedro leapt up on to the foredeck, lithe as a leopard. In a moment I was at his side. ‘My lord, you were …' I had no words.

He embraced me, and said, as he broke away: ‘I have something for you, in return for your loyal service. You once gave me this. Now I think it is time to return it to you, for tomorrow, we must wear our livery.'

He clasped my hand, and when he pulled his away there was a cool little disc in my palm. My medal of St James. ‘Our livery?' I asked, a break in my voice.

‘Yes,' he said, low voiced. And smiled. ‘Once a Knight of Saint James, always a Knight of Saint James.'

From the time of Don Pedro's speech onwards Santiago was with us on the ship. His name was invoked that evening more than the Lord's, and I formed a habit of clasping the medal at my throat, to assure myself that it was there. I was a Knight of St James once more, but now not just in name; tomorrow I would do honour to that name. I wished, for a moment, that Lady Beatrice could see us, could see me, about to fulfil my soldier's destiny. Would she regret her choice if she could see what I had become?

We had the most raucous dinner of all that evening in Don Pedro's luxurious night cabin. We drank a keg dry toasting our special saint, as if our libations could bribe him to save our skins.

In the morning we had clammy skin, slack cods and hollow eyes. We did no credit to the livery of St James, which we all donned for the first time since shore. The ship's bell roused us at dawn, and by first light we were all assembled on deck. As if to reflect the mood the weather had changed completely. It was cold enough for us to be grateful for Santiago's velvets and boiled leather, the sea was a leaden grey and the ship pitched alarmingly. There was no knowing whether the sun had survived the night, for a thick white fog blocked out the light like a funeral pall. Spain, Sicily and the summer seemed worlds away. It felt as if we were in different, darker waters; as if dreary, damp England had dominion over the weather here.

We waited in near-silence, until the lookout's shout sent our hearts speeding; but he only heralded a harbinger from Medina Sidonia, who rowed to larboard in a fast pinnace. An officer wearing the duke's colours scrambled aboard to issue final orders, and give us the fleet's watchwords.

‘Sunday is Jesus,' he began in a lisping monotone. ‘Monday, Holy Ghost. Tuesday, Most Holy Trinity. Wednesday, Santiago. Thursday, The Angels. Friday, All Saints. Saturday, Our Lady.'

I had lost track of the days upon our adventure. ‘What's today?' I asked.

‘Wednesday,' supplied Captain Battoli curtly. ‘Santiago.'

‘There,' I said to the prince, ‘an omen.'

Don Pedro did not return my smile. He looked a different man to the one we'd seen at the forecastle last night. He was grey and fidgety, his olive-black eyes darting about if he was hunted. He seemed to have shrunk overnight, his clothes visibly loose upon his frame. I hoped he was not sick, for I knew how anxious he was to get into the fray and prove his steel. I expected that he was suffering from the wine, as we all were.

We watched the harbinger rowing his pinnace away and the fog swallowed him almost at once – I hoped he would find his way back to the flagship once his messages were given. Once he was safely clear, we weighed anchor and hoisted the sails. This was always an exciting happening, and never more so than today, when we were sailing to join battle. The whistles blew and the bells rang and the sail crew swarmed over the ratlines like so many Barbary monkeys, lifting creamy sheets into the force of the wind. Today the breeze was strong, and the canvas snapped and cracked as the sails bellied and filled, and the ship lurched forth at a brisk speed. But because of the fog we could not see above a man's length before us; even the figurehead disappeared. Ship's bells rang all around us out of the fog like plague tolls.

For three days we sailed, blindly, into the fog. There was no knowing where we went, for there were no stars at night, and no instruments nor charts aboard that would help us, having been declared heretical by His Catholic Majesty. We knew of the passage of the days only because we would near another ship of the fleet, narrowly avoiding collision, and the boatswains would exchange watchwords from helm to helm. The Angels, All Saints and Our Lady passed, with the English dancing around us, refusing to engage, leading us God knew where.

We did not sail with quiet minds. There were ghosts in the darkness. From time to time, in ragged holes torn in the fog, we
would glimpse, in a moment of clarity, angles and fragments of enormous and dreadful shapes. A mast as tall as an oak. The corner of a vast sail. An English ensign. Sometimes it seemed that we were surrounded, and the enemy forces would fall upon us. At other times these ghost fleets entirely disappeared. We were constantly upon the watch, with crew stationed all around the bulwarks from larboard to starboard, fore to aft. The officers' nerves were shredded and the crew were all of a jitter.

The hours of darkness were worse. Then there would be a great clamour from the fog, as if pots and pans were beaten, at the hour of darkest night and deepest sleep; or a ghostly English carol, sung in plainsong, would sound out of the dark, so near us as to make the most seasoned sailor jump out of his skin and begin babbling about mermaids. In the grey dawn we might see tantalising glances of a hellish coastline, black rocks standing upright like needles, treacherous cliffs and steely lakes and inlets of dead water. At such times we steered as hard away from the coastline, and the very real risk of running aground, as we could. Sometimes we had no such warnings, but the ship's stem would grate along the rocks of the shallows, with such a groaning and screaming of timbers that we thought we were lost. These incidents rudely woke the sleeping and unnerved the wakeful.

After a day of such tribulations Don Pedro went to his cabin and did not come out again. ‘Shall we keep you informed, Highness?' called the captain, as the prince left the helm. Don Pedro did not reply, but disappeared into the fog like a spirit.

One by one the grandees followed him; until all that were left on deck were myself, Captain Bartoli and the regular crew, and, to my surprise, Claudio. The young Florentine took paper and charcoal and began to record such glimpses of coastline as we could make out, designing a putative sea chart, so that at least we could see if we repeated our navigational errors.

In those three days I learned more about shipboard than in
the three weeks previous. With our vision robbed from us our eyes turned inwards – maintaining the ship became of the upmost importance. I began to understand the terminology, to know my jib from my flying jib, my topmast from my topgallant, my mizzen from my mainsail. The universe had shrunk down to this ship, and the
Florencia
was now our little world. We could see nothing else, so our vessel was our east and our west, our north and south.

On the dank morning of the third day the insubstantial fear crystallised into terror. It was Claudio, at the end of two watches, who first spotted the glow. The fog had ignited somewhere in its murky centre like a coal at the heart of a fire, and a flickering golden sprite could be seen, frosted and dispersed, like a flame under ice.

Claudio shouted. In a trice I was with him. Captain Bartoli, who moved fast for a burly man, was at my shoulder. Now I could hear a crackling like a midsummer bonfire, and the golden sprite was joined by another, and another. I would have thought that I imagined these fire sprites of the ocean, that this was some legend of the high seas that I had failed to read about in the schoolroom. But now I could see sails and masts burning, the crosstrees afire like a forest of flame. I sensed now what the Moors of Asturias must have felt when they saw the burning cross of St James – they knew they were dead men.

‘Fire ships,' said the captain. In an icy sweat, we counted eight of them. They were either sailing inexorably toward us, or we were sailing towards them. In this nightmarish, topsy-turvy universe I could not tell.

I set my chin, and laid my hand on my sword. If this was death, it had to be faced. ‘Should we engage?' I asked the captain.

‘No one to engage with,' he said bluntly. ‘These ships are not manned. They are old hulls, smeared with wildfire pitch and rosin, and set alight.'

‘What devilry,' Claudio breathed.

‘Devilry is right,' said Bartoli grimly. ‘They are full of brimstone. If you boarded, you would be in Hell indeed.'

‘What is to be done?'

‘Fire ships can be diverted using smaller oared vessels, and the
Florencia
has two such, lashed to the gunwales. We would need two pilots for them.'

‘I'll make one,' I said.

‘And I another,' volunteered Claudio.

‘Medina Sidonia may also launch some such, but we have had no signal. My last orders from the flagship were that the vessels of the Portugal fleet should hold to our crescent formation at all costs.'

‘Then we will fry like pancetta,' said I. The eight crosses were getting ever closer. ‘Captain, what do you suggest?'

‘I suggest you ask the prince to sanction the launch of our pinnaces with all possible speed,' he barked, his Genoese accent much more marked in these testing times. ‘Only he can amend an existing order from High Command.'

I ran for Don Pedro, and hammered on the door of his day cabin. ‘Prince! There is danger ahead; we need your orders.'

No reply. I hammered louder. ‘For God's sake, sire, we must have your orders.'

I could hear him moving around within – shuffling footsteps, the scrape of a chair leg. ‘Prince, open up here.' I tried a last desperate appeal. ‘In Santiago's name.'

The door opened a crack and his royal eye appeared. I put my foot in the door and took the prince's arm. ‘There is something you must see.' I could feel him pulling back with reluctance. I looked at him hard, for whatever ailed him he must not shame himself in front of the crew. I marched Don Pedro to the larboard side where Claudio and the captain were waiting, and showed him the eight burning crosses.

He sank to his knees. ‘God be praised!' he cried. ‘We are
saved. The burning crosses of Saint James! Santiago has come to our aid.'

I looked at him with horror – had the prince lost his wits? I helped him to his feet, gently, as if he were an invalid. ‘They are English fire ships, sire,' I said. ‘The captain here wants to know what your orders are.'

Don Pedro looked at each of us with eyes wide, his full lips working. His skin had a grey sheen of fear. I could see the captain was disconcerted by the prince's reaction.

‘In order to maintain our formation in the fleet as we were ordered,' Bartoli said, clearly but urgently, ‘we must launch the pinnaces and try to divert the fire ships.' I was already undoing my buckles, belts and baldrics, and removing my doublet in expectation of some hard rowing. Claudio did likewise, also anticipating the mere formality of the order. But the order never came; Don Pedro was silent, staring, with crosses of fire in his eyes.

‘Sire,' barked the captain. ‘Do we have your permission to launch the pinnaces?'

‘No.' It was almost a whisper. ‘I think it better that we sail away as fast as we may, and return to Spain.'

My mouth fell open as wide as Claudio's. Contempt fought with deference in Bartoli's weathered face. It was down to me to question the prince, for the captain could not.

‘But what of our formation? And the rest of the fleet?'

‘To Hell with the rest of the fleet! Turn about,' he spat.

I told the prince what I'd learned in the last three days. ‘We cannot turn about, sire,' I said patiently, ‘for we have sails, not oars. We go where the wind tells us.'

‘Besides,' put in Claudio, ‘my charts tell me that we are close to the coast – it could be the English coast. The fire fleet may push us into the shallows.'

Don Pedro looked hunted – he looked from Claudio to myself, to the captain, trapped. ‘Then what do we do?' His voice
was a pleading bleat, so different to the smooth and low tones in which he'd addressed the crew just the other night.

‘Can we outrun them?' I asked Bartoli.

‘Yes,' said the captain. ‘If we act
now.
Our best chance is to hoist all sails and ditch any ballast we can spare.'

‘What of the horses?' I said, dreading the answer. The hold was full of horseflesh, from my dear destrier Babieca to the humblest mule; but if we were not to go ashore, what need had we of them? The captain thought for no longer than a heartbeat. ‘No,' he said. ‘The horses stay. Our rations are depleted. We may need food.' Bartoli followed this dreadful statement with another; he looked to Claudio, for the
Florencia
was his uncle's ship. ‘We must ditch the guns, though. The battle is over.'

This was a dreadful sacrifice, for the newly cast guns had never fired a shot. Claudio nodded. ‘I'll see to it,' he said, and I admired him very much at that moment.

‘Not until the prince gives the order, Count,' said the captain, every word paining him, for now, I could see, he had his measure of Don Pedro. He turned to the prince. ‘Sire, I beg you, we have little time. Give the order. Our anchor is dragging us, and the fire ships are faster for they do not have crew or cargo. They may catch us whatever we try.'

‘Give the order,' I said, quietly.

Don Pedro was now visibly shaking. ‘We run,' he said. ‘See it done.'

‘Aye-aye,' said the captain, those two syllables communicating a world of scorn.

There was little time to reflect on what had passed. Claudio and I ran with the captain and crew, all rank abandoned as the order was given to raise the sails. I tugged on a slippery rope till my muscles screamed, not knowing what I did, fighting the wind at all times for the rope ragged and snapped like a whip. Agonisingly slowly I felt the ship answer and we pulled away, gradually, from the dreadful burning crosses. I could see Claudio
calmly supervising the ditching of the guns, as the wheeled carriages were untethered and two-and-fifty of the brass beauties rolled into the sea. I lost sight of the prince and knew, with a sinking heart, that he had gone back to skulk in his cabin.