Day of Deliverance (19 page)

The Last Act

Jack knew what he had to do. Clutching his chest to stem the bleeding, he staggered across to where his uncle sat cowering behind the long banqueting table. The food and drink was still laid out, untouched. Jack mounted the table and fixed his eyes menacingly on his uncle, who sank back into his chair, shaking. There was to be no mercy and Jack did not hesitate – he thrust the sword into his uncle’s heart.

The first performance of
Hamlet
at Soonhope High was over. The audience of parents and local worthies gave the tired but happy cast a well-deserved standing ovation. As rehearsed, Jack held out his hand to the wings and Miss Beattie came onto the stage, blushing slightly. She gave a little bow and received a bunch of flowers from one of the cast. There were calls of “Bravo!” from the audience. After a few more bows, the curtains closed.

Jack and Angus joined the backstage party to celebrate the success of the opening night.

“We’ll make an actor of you yet, Angus,” Jack said.

“Think it was watching the Henslowe Players for all those hours.”

“Nice of Beattie to give you a chance…” Jack looked round the room. “Here she is now – looks pleased.”

“And here come the Rector and Inchquin…”

“They’re out in force tonight.”

“And your mum.”

In a minute Jack and Angus were surrounded by the Rector,
Inchquin and Beattie.

“Congratulations!” The Rector put out his hand. “A fine performance… you’ve done the school proud.”

“We’ve had a bit of a crash course over the last week,” Jack replied.

Inchquin smiled, “So I hear, Jack, so I hear.” He lowered his voice, to ensure that they were not overheard, “Which brings me onto another matter. You should know. Our salvage team finally found the wreck of Pendelshape’s helicopter in the English Channel.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Apparently it was all silted up and badly corroded. It’s been lying there for four hundred years, after all.”

“What about the bodies – any, er, remains of the people inside… Pendelshape?” Jack asked.

There was a flash of concern on the Rector’s face. “No, Jack. We found nobody – nobody at all.”

The Taurus and Time Travel – Some Notes

The Taurus and its energy source always stay in one place. In order to move through time and space, the traveller needs to have physical contact with a time phone, which is controlled and tracked through a set of codes connected with the Taurus. Time travel is only possible, however, when the Taurus has enough energy and when there is a strong carrier signal. As Jack and Angus have discovered, the signal can be as unpredictable as the weather. The time signals are also highly variable – periods of time open up and then close, like shifting sands, so that no location is constantly accessible. Deep time is a specific constraint, which means that the traveller cannot visit a time period less than thirty years in the past. Anything more recent is a no-go zone. Finally, there is the ‘Armageddon Scenario', which suggests that, if you revisit the same point of space–time more than once, you dramatically increase the risk of a continuum meltdown. Imagine space-time as a piece of tissue paper – each visit makes a hole in that tissue paper, as if you had pushed through the tissue with your finger. The tissue would hold together for a while, but with too many holes, it would disintegrate. It is dangerous, therefore, to repeat trips to the same point. The precise parameters of this constraint are not known and have not, of course, been tested.

In
Day of Deliverance
, Jack and Angus travel back in time to one of the most extraordinary periods of history – Elizabethan England. This was a time when Spain was England’s greatest rival, when a glamorous queen called Elizabeth ruled the nation, and when colourful characters such as Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and Mary, Queen of Scots made their mark on history. The notes below give a little more information on the places that Jack and Angus go and the people they encounter on their adventure.

Who was Elizabeth I?

Elizabeth I was born in 1533 and died in 1603, ruling as the Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death. Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and was the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth became queen in turbulent times – when England was racked by religious turmoil, and threatened by civil war and invasion. Despite this, Elizabeth had a clear agenda, and one of her first campaigns as queen was to establish an English Protestant church, which has evolved into what we know today as the Church of England.

Although she was a queen with many admirers and courtiers, Elizabeth never married, despite pressure from advisers.
She was headstrong and proud, and would not let her heart rule her head. In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father, and was not always vocal in foreign affairs. The defeat of the Spanish Armada, however, connected her with one of the greatest victories in world military history.

What was the Renaissance?

The Renaissance was a cultural revolution that spread from Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This period of change began with a rediscovery of Greek and Roman ideas, and from it some of the world’s finest art and architecture was conceived. The influence was slow to spread to England, partly due to the effect of the Wars of the Roses – a series of civil wars fought between the rival houses of Lancaster and York for the throne of England. All this began to change when Elizabeth was at the height of her power in the late sixteenth century.

During Elizabeth’s reign, a number of gifted Dutch painters sought asylum from Spanish persecution and were supported by the queen who was herself enthusiastic about education, poetry, plays and theatre. In architecture, new ‘Prodigy’ houses were built – beautiful buildings like Hardwick Hall, Montacute, Longleat, Wollaton Hall and Burghley House. In literature, there was an explosion of creative energy – John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney in poetry, and Marlowe, Kyd and Jonson in theatre. In the years to come, of course, Shakespeare would become the most celebrated playwright, and the man who changed the face of the English language forever.

Song and dance also developed during Elizabeth’s reign. Like her father, Henry VIII, Elizabeth was a talented musician. A favourite dance of the queen’s was the
volta
, in which the man lifted his partner high in the air.

What was the speech at Tilbury?

Elizabeth’s speech in
Day of Deliverance
is delivered at Hampton Court. This scene, of course, is fictitious, but the words are real. It was first thought that Elizabeth gave this speech as the Armada fleet approached, but historians now believe that it was carefully refined after the attack and published widely.

Did Mary, Queen of Scots really have her head cut off? If so, why?

Mary, Queen of Scots was born in 1542 and was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on 8th February 1587. Mary was the cousin of Elizabeth I, and reigned as Queen of Scotland from 1542 to 1567. Unlike Elizabeth, Mary had many husbands in her lifetime – in 1558, she married Francis, Dauphin of France, and following his death she married her first cousin, Lord Darnley. When Darnley also died, she married James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, who was generally believed to be Darnley’s murderer. During an uprising, Mary abdicated the throne in favour of her son, James VI, and fled to England seeking the protection of her cousin, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, however, did not open her arms to her cousin. Mary was widely thought to be the legitimate sovereign of England, and, therefore, a great threat to Elizabeth’s throne. In the end, Walsingham implicated Mary in the Babington Plot and she was finally tried and executed for treason.

Does Hampton Court still exist today?

Yes – Hampton Court Palace is one of the most famous buildings in the UK and is situated on the river near Kingston upon Thames. The palace was the centre of court and political life
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was built to host monarchs, their courtiers and hundreds of servants. It has over a thousand rooms and is set within stunning gardens and parkland.

Did people really drink beer instead of water in Elizabethan England?
Water was not clean in Elizabethan England, so Jack and Angus would not have looked out of place drinking beer or ale.

Did people really climb up the Colleges in Cambridge?

When Jack and Angus found themselves on top of the spires of King’s College Chapel, they were partaking in the old and dangerous tradition of free climbing on the roofs, colleges and chapels of Cambridge. Students and fellows of Cambridge have since indulged in many other activities and pranks; in 1958, Cambridge awoke to see an Austin Seven motor car perched on the roof of the seventy-foot-high Senate House.

What was the Armada Campaign and what led to it?

Following a period of unrest between England and Spain, the Armada Campaign began when a large Spanish fleet set sail to attack England in 1588. The conflict first started when Philip II of Spain came to the defence of his Roman Catholic religion, believing that Protestant Elizabeth I was a heretic and an illegitimate ruler of England. Elizabeth supported Protestant interests elsewhere in Europe – particularly in the Netherlands, where she encouraged a Protestant Dutch revolt against the Spanish who ruled there. Philip supported the various plots to
overthrow Elizabeth, and her execution of Mary, Queen of Scots only strengthened his desire to defeat England.

What did the Spanish hope to achieve during the Armada Campaign, and what actually happened?

Led by Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Spanish had planned to make their way up the English Channel and rendezvous near Calais. With an experienced army in tow, the Spanish hoped to cross the English Channel in barges and make their invasion of England.

The outcome, however, was very different. The Spanish fleet set off with about twenty warships, one hundred merchant vessels, and about thirty thousand soldiers and sailors. Sailing up the English Channel, they created a defensive crescent with their fleet, pushing back the English line of around two hundred ships. The Armada made good ground very quickly, anchoring their ships off Calais. As the Spanish waited for orders, the English launched an attack, causing panic; many of the Armada fleet had to cut their anchors. The following day, England and Spain met at the naval battle of Gravelines. Five Spanish ships were lost and the remainder headed north up the east coast of England. By this point, many of the Spanish ships were badly damaged. After this, the fleet was caught up in a series of storms around the north and west of the British Isles.

Around twenty-six of the Armada’s ships were wrecked off the coast of Ireland, another off the coast of England and two more off the coast of Scotland. Just two ships remained relatively unharmed. Around two-thirds of the Spanish army died – for every one killed in battle a further six to eight were executed, drowned or died of thirst, hunger and disease. Furthermore, many Spanish wrecks were plundered by locals and the survivors were robbed and murdered. In comparison, English losses were minimal, but even after the victory, disease and hunger killed many English sailors and troops.

Why did the Armada Campaign fail?

There were many reasons why the Armada failed:

Poor leadership, planning and communication between Philip II and his leaders.
In contrast, the English fleet was headed by seamen with great experience.

Tactics and technology.
The Spanish preference, and traditional naval fighting technique, was to use the ship as a platform to grapple or ram the opposing ships, which they would then board. In contrast, the English used guns to attack the opposition without boarding. English guns were more accurate, had a longer range and were fired many times more often than the equivalent Spanish guns. Moreover, in the years leading up to the Armada Campaign, English ships had been significantly redesigned by John Hawkins and the first master shipwright, Matthew Baker. They were ‘race’ (meaning ‘razed’) built – longer in the keel, which meant that they sat lower in the water. This made them faster and more manoeuvreable. In the thirty years of naval warfare during this period, no English ship was sunk by Spanish gunnery.

Home advantage.
The English fought in waters they knew well and the Spanish ships, when wrecked, found themselves in hostile countries.

The weather.
As the Armada retreated from the naval battle of Gravelines, the Spanish still posed a significant threat. However, as many of the fleet were badly damaged and the Spanish army were suffering from injury, disease and shortage of provisions, they were poorly prepared to survive the storms that awaited them as they made their way back to Spain.

What happened after the Armada Campaign?

After its defeat, the Spanish navy was reformed and managed to keep control of its home waters and ocean routes well into the next century. In England, the legend of Elizabeth and the Protestant cause lasted for years. Some believed that God was behind the Protestants during the Armada Campaign, and war medals were printed bearing the inscription ‘He blew with His winds, and they were scattered’.

Was the naval battle of Gravelines a turning point?

The Armada’s attack at Gravelines was just one major event in a succession of conflicts during the Anglo-Spanish wars that occurred between 1585 and 1604. In reality, Gravelines was not as significant as portrayed in
Day of Deliverance
, but the defeat of the Armada certainly boosted England’s confidence and naval power.

Who was William Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, and is regarded as the greatest writer and playwright in the English language. Born in 1564, Shakespeare wrote thirty-eight plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets and several poems before his death in 1616. His plays have been performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Who was Christopher Marlowe?

Christopher Marlowe was an English playwright who attended King’s School, Canterbury, and Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, on a scholarship. There has been speculation that Marlowe was a secret agent working for Sir Francis Walsingham. Marlowe’s work includes
Dido, Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.
Although he does not carry the prestige of Shakespeare, his plays were very successful. It is thought that Marlowe may have been assassinated. His only portrait hangs at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, and beneath it is an inscription in Latin that means ‘What feeds me destroys me’.

Are the characters in the Fanshawe Players and the Henslowe Players real?

Some of the characters are real, yes:

• Edward Alleyn was a famous English actor who was born 1566 and died in 1626. He played the title roles in three of Marlowe’s major plays:
  Faustus, Tamburlaine
  , and Barabas in
  The Jew of Malta
  .
  

• Thomas Kyd was a playwright who was born in 1558 and died in 1594. He wrote
  The Spanish Tragedy
  in the 1580s.
  

• Philip Henslowe was a theatrical impresario, who lived from 1550 to 1616. He produced a diary that is an interesting source of information about the theatrical world of the time. Henslowe had extensive business interests including starch-making, pawnbroking, money-lending, brothel-keeping, animal shows and bear-baiting, as well as running theatres. He established the Rose Theatre in Bankside, south London, and commissioned and produced plays by Marlowe, Ben Johnson and many other playwrights. There is no record of him working with Shakespeare.
  

• Although there were many theatrical companies in Elizabethan times, the ‘Fanshawe Players’ and the ‘Henslowe Players’ are 
  fictitious acting groups, as are the characters of Harry Fanshawe, Trinculo, Monk and Christo. Trinculo is a character in Shakespeare’s play
  The Tempest
  .
  

Who was Sir Francis Walsingham?

Sir Francis Walsingham was appointed Principal Secretary of State and Privy Councillor in 1573. He was born around 1532 and died in 1590. He developed the nation’s first secret service, building up a network of more than one hundred secret agents across Europe. The operation penetrated Spanish military preparation and disrupted plots against the queen – including the Babington Plot, which resulted in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.