The Forest (53 page)

‘Did my mother tell you that too?’

‘Oh, most certainly.’ But now Don Diego brightened. ‘However, my dear brother, we must never forget one all-important thing.’

‘Which is?’

‘That God is with us. It is His will that we should succeed. Of this we are certain.’ He smiled. ‘So all will be well. And of course, the moment the English know we are on land, even if only half Parma’s men get across …’

‘What then?’

‘They will rise.’ He beamed. ‘They will understand that we have come to liberate them from the witch Elizabeth, that murderess who has them in thrall.’

Albion thought of the simple men of the musters, who had just been told that the main cargo of the Spanish galleons was the torture instruments of the Spanish Inquisition. ‘They may not all rise,’ he said cautiously.

‘Oh, a handful of Protestants. I know.’

Albion did not reply. One thing was becoming clear to him. If his brother-in-law was even half correct about the Spanish strategy the dreaded invasion was unlikely to succeed. And he was considering this, and its implications for him personally, when he realized that his brother-in-law was speaking excitedly.

‘… such an opportunity. You and I together. The moment Parma lands we can lead the trained bands from here and sweep up to London to join him.’

‘You want us to put ourselves at the head of a great rising?’

‘It will bring you even further glory, brother. And as for me.’ Don Diego shrugged. ‘Even to ride with you would be a great thing for me.’

Albion nodded slowly. It was a piece of glorious insanity worthy even of his mother. ‘Raising a great force’, he said tactfully, ‘is not so easy in England. Even if the Faith were stronger …’

‘Ah.’ Don Diego looked at him gleefully. ‘That is just the wonder of what has occurred. That is where God’s providence is so clearly seen. Our own Spanish troops’, he added reassuringly, ‘are no better. They have all been promised huge plunder in England. But this, my brother, is just the point. God has placed in our hands all that is needed to do His will. We can pay the troops.’ And seeing Albion’s look of astonishment he waved towards the sea. ‘When I was shipwrecked, all alone, I supposed it was a punishment. But it was not. That ship out there. Under the waterline, the whole hull is filled with silver!’ And he laughed with joy at the wonder of the thing.

‘You had no companions at all?’

‘No. You and I alone, brother, are in possession of this silver. It has been placed in our hands.’

Albion became very thoughtful again.

Motioning the Spaniard to remain where he was, he stood up and moved to the edge of the cliff. The ship had settled down. It would not budge. Not even the high tide would float it off now. As he gazed at the stranded hulk the silver morning sun started to break over the Forest horizon in the east.

He turned to look down at Don Diego. What a strange thing fate was. That he should have encountered the Spaniard in such circumstances, after so many years, and find, moreover, that he liked him. For there was not the least question: this well-meaning, middle-aged Spaniard was a very nice man. Albion sighed.

His mind was going over the ground carefully. He thought of his sister, he thought of himself; he thought of Don Diego with his belief in the Catholic cause and of his mother. He thought of the council, of Gorges, of their suspicions about him. And he thought, very carefully, about the silver. That, he realized, made the situation very interesting. After a while he began to form a plan. As he considered its several aspects it seemed to him that it would work. Meditatively he glanced back, towards the rising sun.

Then he saw her. She was riding alone across the ridge by Lymington. Her cloak was flapping behind her, black and crimson. Her hat was at a mad angle. She looked like some wild apparition, a mounted witch who might canter clean off the ridge and sail up into the air. At the same instant the thought struck him, with a sudden, cold panic: what if she saw him and found Don Diego now?

He threw himself to the ground in terror, realized that the Spaniard was looking at him in astonishment, waved him to be silent and peeped over the tussock in front of him. The Lady Albion was still up there. She had not seen him. She had halted and was staring out to sea. He continued to observe her for a moment or two, then slid back into the hollow to join the Spaniard.

‘Is everything all right?’ Don Diego asked, puzzled.

‘Yes. All is well.’ Albion looked at his new-found brother-in-law with affection. It really was an infernal pity that things could not have been otherwise. ‘There is something I must show you, brother,’ he said quietly and drew his sword. ‘On the blade. See.’

Don Diego leaned forward to look.

Then, very suddenly, Albion ran him through.

Or nearly. For the sword point struck the golden chain under the Spaniard’s shirt. And while Don Diego offered a cry and stared in wide-eyed astonishment, Albion, wincing, had to lunge again, several times, until he was successful. It was a messy business.

He waited until the body had finished shuddering, then removed the gold chain, which weighed nearly four pounds, and covered Don Diego as well as he could with sandy soil, before going to his horse. Mercifully his mother had vanished again. She’s probably trying to raise a rebellion in Lymington, he thought grimly.

He glanced back at the place where Don Diego lay. He felt guilt, of course. But sometimes, it seemed to him, you could hardly say whether a thing was good or bad. It was a question of survival.

But now he must hurry. There were things to do.

‘Silver? You are sure?’

Gorges and Helena were alone with him in the big chamber in Hurst Castle. They had kept him waiting there some time while he gazed over the Solent, but now they had both come to join him.

‘I questioned him closely. At sword point. I think he was telling the truth.’

‘And this Spaniard – he was alone?’ Gorges enquired.

‘He said he was. He was trying to scuttle the vessel and got left on board by mistake. I saw no others,’ Albion continued, ‘so I think he was. No one’, he said carefully, ‘knows about this silver except ourselves. I came straight to you.’

‘But you killed the Spaniard.’ Gorges was looking thoughtful.

‘He suddenly drew on me. I had no choice.’

‘Shouldn’t we get the body?’ Helena asked.

There was a long pause. Gorges looked carefully at Albion and Albion looked back.

‘Perhaps not,’ said Albion helpfully.

‘The wreck’, Gorges said firmly, ‘belongs to the queen. There’s no question about that. I shall hold it in her name.’

‘I was wondering,’ Albion suggested. ‘The queen is very fond of you, Helena. She might grant you the wreck. I mean, she’s granted prizes to Drake and Hawkins, and Thomas has held Hurst for her even if he hasn’t been to sea.’

‘But Clement.’ Helena looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think she’d part with all that silver.’

Gorges was looking at her silently.

‘What silver?’ said Albion very softly.

‘Oh.’ She got the point at last. ‘I see.’

‘I shall report the wreck to her at once. You could write a letter too. Ask her if we may have the salvage. Say it’s only a hulk. Any ammunition will go to the fort, but if there’s anything else of value, may we have it. You know the sort of thing. She knows’, Gorges confessed drily, ‘that I am somewhat in need at present.’

‘But what’ll she say when we find all the silver?’ Helena asked.

‘Luck,’ said Gorges firmly.

‘We don’t
know
that there is any silver,’ Albion added. ‘Even my information may be incorrect. Your conscience should be quite clear. There
may
be something, that’s all.’

‘And the Spaniard?’

‘What Spaniard?’

‘I will go and write the letter at once, Clement.’ She gave her husband a glance. ‘We are grateful.’

There was silence in the room for a few moments after she had gone.

Then Gorges spoke. ‘Did you know that just before you arrived here your mother was arrested in Lymington?’

‘No.’

‘We had a message from the mayor. It seems she was trying to persuade the people there to rise. For the Spanish.’

Albion went pale, but kept his composure. ‘I wish I could say I was surprised. She went mad last night. But I didn’t know she’d got out.’

‘That’s rather what I thought. She said that you would lead the rising, Clement.’

‘Really?’ Albion shook his head. ‘Last night she told me that since I didn’t seem to want to, she’d do it herself.’ He smiled ironically. ‘I’m grateful for her new faith in me.’

‘She said you always planned to join the Spanish.’

‘Is that so? The only Spaniard I’ve seen so far I killed.’

‘Quite.’ Gorges nodded slowly.

‘You know,’ Albion proceeded quietly, ‘even if my mother were not entirely out of her wits – and she has been talking like this for years – it would have been completely impossible for me to do any of these things she speaks of. I have heard it all a hundred times. She dreams of risings every day. She places me at their head whatever I tell her.’ He sighed. ‘What can I do?’

Gorges was silent. ‘It’s quite true,’ he said after a few moments. ‘You couldn’t have anyway.’

‘I wouldn’t have, Thomas. I am loyal.’ He looked Gorges in the eye. ‘I hope you know that, Thomas. Don’t you?’

Gorges stared straight back. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I know.’

From dawn until ten that morning, in a near calm, out on the horizon behind the Isle of Wight the English ships pounded the Armada. By afternoon both fleets were on their way again up the English Channel and for two days they continued, until the Duke of Medina Sidonia anchored off Calais and sent urgent messages to the Duke of Parma asking that general to come at once and cross to England.

Parma said: ‘No.’ With irritation he explained that a crossing in his flat-bottomed boats was quite impossible if enemy ships were anywhere in sight. Unless the Armada could come and fetch him – which, in the shallow waters off the Netherlands, they couldn’t – he wasn’t coming. All this, it turned out, he had been telling the King of Spain for weeks – a fact which the king, preferring to trust in providence, had not seen fit to tell the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

So the Spanish Armada lay off Calais, sending ever more baffled messages to Parma, and Parma stayed in the Netherlands, a day’s journey away, despatching even crosser messages back. And the English waited by the Thames, expecting an invasion at any moment because the one thing that had never occurred to them was that the King of Spain had sent his Armada without any co-ordinated battle plan at all.

The Armada spent two fruitless days like this. Then, in the dead of night, the English sent in eight fire ships, coated with tar, blazing as brightly as a thousand beacons and the Spanish captains, in panic, cut their cables and scattered. The next day the English fell upon them. The Spanish were driven towards the shore, some wrecked, some taken; but the majority were still intact.

Then, on the following day came God’s wind.

The Protestant wind, they called it. Nobody, on either side could ever deny that, whatever their valour or their piety, it was the weather that truly destroyed the mighty Armada. Day after day, week after week it blew, turning the seas to heaving froth. Ships lost sight of each other; galleons were scattered all over the northern waters, some were driven on to the rocks in northern Scotland or even Ireland. Less than half reached home. And whether it was to reward the Protestants for their faith or punish the Catholics for their shortcomings, both Queen Elizabeth of England and King Philip of Spain could agree that such winds could only come from God.

For the Lady Albion the weeks of gales were a time of trial indeed. For a start, she was kept, on Gorges’s strict instructions, in the tiny gaol in Lymington. And although the mayor of Lymington petitioned many times for her to be taken to another place – or beheaded, or set free, or anything so long as the indefatigable lady could be removed from
his
charge – it was not until October that the council agreed that, although a traitor, the lady represented no actual danger to the state. After her release, while Albion had never ceased to profess his personal loyalty to her, she never felt quite the same about him. And the following year she had taken ship and gone to visit her daughter Catherine whose husband Don Diego had been lost – no one knew exactly how – in the great disaster of the Armada. That poor Don Diego had been safely buried by her son, the first night she had been in gaol, deep in the Forest where he would never be found, was something she never imagined.

It was hardly surprising that she remained with her daughter in Spain; and if, after failing to answer her summons that he join her there, Clement Albion forfeited any hope of inheriting her fortune, he was philosophical about it. ‘I really think’, he once confessed, ‘that I’d give up one of my coppices just to make sure she never returned.’

Albion’s own fortune remained modest, however, but that of his friends Thomas and Helena Gorges enjoyed a spectacular increase. For Queen Elizabeth looked kindly upon their request and granted them the hulk. By the time they had quietly emptied its contents, Sir Thomas Gorges and his wife the marchioness realized that they had one of the greatest fortunes in the south of England.

‘And now’, Helena joyfully declared, ‘you can build your house at Longford, Thomas.’

It was not until nearly two years later that Albion was invited to accompany them up to the big estate below Sarum. ‘The house isn’t quite finished yet, Clement,’ his host told him, ‘but I’d like you to see it.’

They had certainly chosen a beautiful site, Albion thought, as they came to the lush parkland down by the Avon. But what no one had prepared him for, and which caused him first to gasp and then to burst out laughing, was the design.

For there, in the tranquil peace of an inland Wiltshire valley, built on a huge scale, with handsome windows instead of embrasures, was a massive triangular fortress. ‘By all the saints, Thomas,’ he cried, ‘it’s Hurst!’

It was indeed. The great country house, which Gorges called Longford Castle, was an almost exact replica of the triangular coastal fortress by the Forest. In memory of the Spanish hulk and its cargo of silver he had even had carved, high over the entrance, a depiction of Neptune reclining cheerfully in a ship with his trident sloped over his shoulder, on each side of which was a caryatid, one with his face and the other with his wife’s carved upon them. You had to admire his cheerful humour.