The Queen's Christmas Summons
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‘Lady Alys!’ one of the men cried. ‘You shouldn’t be out here in such cold.’
‘I won’t stay long,’ she said. ‘I just—I couldn’t stay inside. I thought if I could just see...’
He gave an understanding nod. ‘I know, my lady. Imagining can be worse than anything. My wife is sure we will be stabbed through in our beds with Spanish swords, she hasn’t slept in days.’
Alys shivered. ‘And shall we?’
He frowned fiercely. ‘Not tonight, my lady. ʼTis quiet out there. Only a fool would brave the sea on a night like this.’
A fool—or a poor devil with no choice, whose wounded ship had been blown far off course. Alys did have fears, aye, just like this soldier’s wife. Terrible things had happened in other lands conquered by the Spanish. But they were defeated now, beaten down and far from home. And how many of the men in those ships had been there of their own free will? Her fear warred with her pity.
She saw her father’s spyglass abandoned on a parapet, and took it up to peer out at the night. She could see nothing but the dark sea, the moonlight struggling to break through. Then, for an instant, she thought she saw a pinprick of light bobbing far out to sea. She gasped and peered closer. Perhaps it was there, but then it vanished again.
Alys sighed. Now she was imaging things, just like everyone else at Dunboyton. She tucked the spyglass into the folds of her cloak and made her way back inside to try to sleep again.
* * *
The Concepción had become a floating hell, carrying its cargo of the damned farther from any hope at every moment.
John felt strangely dispassionate and numb as he studied the scene around him, as if he looked at it through a dream.
The Concepción had sustained a few blows at Gravelines, wounds that had been hastily patched, and her mainsail was shredded in the storm that blew them off course and pushed them far to the north of the Irish coast, out of sight of the other ships. But she had managed to limp along, praying that a clear course would open up and push them up and over the tip of the island and on a course for Scotland, where friendly Frenchmen might be found.
Yet the weather had only grown worse and worse, a howling gale that blew the vessel around haplessly, destroying what sails they had left and battering her decks with constant rain that leaked to the decks below. There were too many weak men and too few to raise the sails or steer. Salt was caked on the masts like frost.
Even if the skies did clear, the men were too ill to do much about it. They were like a ghost ship, tossed around by the towering waves.
John propped himself up by his elbow on his bunk to study the scene around him. The partitions that had been put up in Lisbon to separate the noble officers from the mere sailors had been torn down, leaving everyone in the same half-gloom, the same reeking mess. Everything was sodden, clothes, blankets, water seeping up from the floorboards and dripping on to their heads, but not a drop to drink except what rain could be caught. The ship’s stores were long gone, except for a bit of crumbling, wormy biscuit. The smells of so many people packed into so small a space were overwhelming.
So many were starving, ill of ship’s fever and scurvy, and could only lie in their bunks, moaning softly.
John wanted to shout with it all, but he feared he too lacked the energy to even say a word. There was little sleep to be had, with the constant pounding of the waves against the wounded hull, the whine of the pumps that couldn’t keep up with the rising water, the groans of the men, the occasional sudden cries of ladies’ names, ladies who would probably never be seen again.
John spent much time thinking over every minute that had happened since he left Lisbon, since he left England, really. All he had done to try to redeem his family’s name, his own honour, all he had done thinking it would keep England safe. Surely he had given all he could, all his strength? What waited now? Perhaps the ease of death. But something told him he was not yet done with his earthly mission. More awaited him beyond these hellish decks.
He felt the press of his papers tucked beneath his shirt, carefully wrapped in oilskin to protect them. Would he ever have the chance to deliver them, to see the green fields of England he had fought so hard to protect? He could barely remember what Huntleyburg looked like. Perhaps he had lived a lie for too long now—it would be better if he died in it, too.
He heard a deep, rasping cough and looked to the next bunk where Peter de Vargas lay. Peter’s greatest desire was to see England Catholic again; he spoke of it all the time. John found him innocent, if very foolish and fanatical, and willing to spill any secrets he had.
But now Peter burned with fever, as he had for days, and was too weakened to fight it away. At night, John heard him cry out to someone in his nightmares, his voice full of yearning. John gave him what water and food could be found, but he feared little could be done for the young man now.
Yet it seemed now Peter had summoned up a burst of strength and he sat up writing frantically with a stub of pencil. His golden hair, matted with salt, clung to his damp brow, and his eyes burned brightly.
‘Peter, you should be resting,’ John said. He climbed out of his own bunk, wincing as the salt sludge of the floor washed over his bare, bleeding feet. He was trying to save what was left of his boots, though he was not quite sure why now. He pulled them on. He wrapped the ragged edges of his blanket around Peter’s thin shoulders.
‘Nay, nay,’ Peter muttered, still writing. ‘I haven’t much time. I must finish this. They must see...’
‘See what?’ John asked. He glanced at the slip of paper and could only glimpse a word or two, but mayhap it was of some import? Maybe Peter wrote to English relatives meant to help him, or secrets to send back to Spain. Even in the midst of floating hell, John’s mind turned on what information could be useful to Walsingham and the Queen.
‘The truth, of course. The truth of what I did. Love will come then. It must. It was promised.’
‘Love?’ John asked, puzzled. ‘Who do you write to, Peter?’
‘To England, of course. They are there. I think—yes, it must be...’ His words faded into muttered incoherence, a mix of English and Spanish.
‘Who in England? How shall you deliver it?’ He studied the paper over Peter’s shoulder again. The words were scribbled, smudged with salt water, with strange drawings in the margins. A code?
‘It will find its way. It always does.’ He looked up into John’s eyes, his face taut with longing and fear, his eyes burning bright. ‘You must deliver it.’
John was shocked. Peter knew naught of his true work aboard the Concepción, no one could. But Peter was nodding confidently. ‘Me, Peter? Why?’
‘Because you are the strongest man left. You can make it ashore. You can carry this for me when we are all in the grave.’
‘Where shall I deliver it?’
‘They will know.’
‘Who will know?’
‘They know all.’
There was no time to say more. A peal of thunder, louder than any of the guns of battle, cracked overhead and there was a splintering crash. The mast that still stood had been split by lightning and a dagger-sharp spear of it drove into the deck below. The sea rushed in, a cold, killing wave that overwhelmed everything and swept wounded, weakly crying men out to sea.
‘Take it!’ Peter screamed, and stuffed his crumpled paper into John’s hand.
John tucked it inside his doublet and shirt with the other papers he carried and grabbed Peter’s arm just as the ship tilted on a wild roll. There was a massive creaking noise, as if something strained past the breaking point, and the ship split in two. More water rushed in, as cold as hundreds of needles driving into bare skin. John swam upward, dragging Peter with him.
The freezing water stole his breath and numbed his whole body. He could barely feel his legs as he forced himself to keep kicking, keep moving. A wild animal instinct to live drove him ever forward and he dug deep within himself to find a raw, powerful strength he didn’t realise he possessed. A sharp splinter drove itself into his shoulder, but he pulled it out and kept moving.
He surfaced to find a world gone insane, filled with the howl of the wind, rain beating down on the churning waves. The great Concepción was breaking into pieces behind him and he could see men’s heads bobbing in the sea all around.
John’s shoulder crashed into something, sending sharp pain through his whole body, and he realised it was a wooden plank from the deck. He shoved Peter up on to it and clung to its splintered side as he kept kicking. He could see little in the driving silver sheets of rain, but he thought he glimpsed dots of light somewhere in the distance, a bobbing line like torches on shore. He feared it could be merely a mirage, the cold and hunger making him see such things, but he kicked towards it. There seemed no choice.
* * *
At last, after swimming until his legs felt they would fall off, his feet felt something beneath them, the shift of sand and rocks. The tide tried to push him back away from that tiny security, but he fought to regain it. With a great surge of a wave, they washed on to a rocky beach.
John collapsed on to his back, staring up into the boiling, stormy sky. He had never felt such pain in his life, even when he was stabbed through the thigh at Leiden or hit over the head with a chamber pot in a public-house brawl in Madrid, but mostly he felt—alive. The wind was cold on his face, as if giving him new breath, and even the pain sustained him because it meant he was still on earth.
‘Peter,’ he gasped. ‘We’re on land.’ He turned his head and saw what he had feared all along—making land would not help poor, idealistic Peter now, for he was dead.
Dead, as John himself would surely be soon if he did not find a way out of the storm. He forced himself to stagger to his feet, even as stabbing, dagger-like pains shot through his body. He gritted his teeth, ignored it and kept moving forward. Always forward.
He came to a stand of boulders, which blocked the small spit of rocky land where he had washed up from a larger beachhead. He peered around the rocks to see a scene out of a poem. Towering cliffs, pale in the storm, rose to meet a castle at its crest, a strong, fortified crenelated building of dark grey stone, surrounded by tiny whitewashed cottages. That was where he had seen the light, a bobbing line of torches making their way down a steep set of stairs cut in the cliffs.
He opened his mouth to shout out, but some instinct held back his words. He could not know who these people were, friends or foes. They could not know who he was, either. If they were loyal Englishmen, they would consider him a Spanish enemy.
For a few moments, he watched as they moved closer and he glimpsed the gleam of torchlight on armoured breastplates. Soldiers, then.
He pushed back the waves of pain and managed to stagger up a sloping hill to a stand of boulders, half-hidden in reeds. He collapsed to his knees just as he heard the first screams, the first clash of blades.
‘Nay...’ he gasped, but the pain had dug its claws into him again. He collapsed and darkness closed in around him.
Chapter Five
Alys couldn’t bear the shouting another minute.
She sat very still on the edge of her bed, trying to breathe, to turn her thoughts away from what she knew was happening outside, to pretend she was somewhere, anywhere else. When she was a child and her father often rode out to track down rebels and criminals, her mother would hold her all night and whisper tales of faraway Spain into her ear, tales of sunshine and strange music, to calm her and distract them both.
It wasn’t working now.
It had come at dinner, when the household was eating their tense, silent meal in the great hall. Her father had tried to smile at her, to pretend naught was amiss. But she had seen the mud-splashed messengers hurrying in and out of the castle, had glimpsed rows of soldiers marching out from Galway City and the fort. Rumours had flown like sparks that Sir Richard Bingham, the lieutenant of Fitzwilliam who had so brutally put down the chieftains’ rebellion, had been marching up the coast towards them, hunting for the shipwrecks. He had already taken and summarily executed dozens of shipwrecked Spanish sailors, and was marching now towards Galway.
Alys’s father had sent her to her chamber, but she could still hear the panic of the castle outside. The servants were rushing around the corridors and stairs of Dunboyton, panic-stricken, and the great storm that had swept suddenly over the skies only added to the confusion and terror. The thunder pounded overhead and icy rain beat at her window.
Alys jumped down from her bed, unable to sit still any longer and let the not knowing sow fear in her mind. Facing a danger and fighting it was always better than endless waiting.
The corridor outside her chamber was empty, but she could still hear voices, fierce, low murmurs and high-pitched shrieks, coming from below. She followed the sound down the stairs to the great hall.
There she found a few of the servants gathered around the fire, whispering and talking together, their faces white with fear. A few soldiers who had already been out patrolling the ramparts were slumped on the benches in their wet clothes, gulping down hot spiced cider. Their unfinished supper still littered the tables, with her father’s dogs fighting over a few bits of chicken and pork pies.
Alys caught a pageboy who was rushing past. ‘Have you seen my father?’
He shook his head frantically, his eyes wide. ‘Nay, Lady Alys. They say his lordship rode out hours ago.’
‘Did they say where?’
‘Nay, my lady.’ The boy practically trembled with fear and excitement.
Alys knew he could tell her nothing. Likely no one could—or would. Not if Bingham was abroad. They said he enjoyed torturing his prisoners before he killed them, making them die slowly after he had robbed them of whatever they had. She hoped her father had not been summoned to his regiments.
She spun around and ran up the twisting stairs to the ramparts of the tower. She caught up her cloak from its hook and wrapped it over her woollen gown. The freezing rain beat at her hood and the howling, whipping wind caught at her skirts, but she barely noticed. She took up the spyglass and turned it on to the beach below.
What she saw made a cry escape her lips. Surely it was a nightmare. She was asleep in her bed, seeing phantoms conjured by all the fear around her.
She lowered the spyglass, closed her eyes, and shook her head.
But when she looked again, it was still there.
Out to sea, vanishing and reappearing in the surging waves, were two ships, breaking apart in the storm. Chunks of wood and furls of sail bobbed in the foaming waves. And on the beach was a straggling group of men, thin, barely clothed in rages, swaying on their feet, collapsing to the sand.
It seemed Bingham had already arrived, for soldiers in helmets and breastplates that gleamed in the glow of the lightning moved among the prisoners. As they passed them, the captives would collapse to the ground. As Alys watched, frozen and horror-stricken, a sword flashed out and one of the sailors fell to the rocky sand, his head rolling free. Weak screams were carried to her on the wind.
The Spanish had come to Galway, but certainly not as the maids had feared, as conquerors. They were now pitiful victims.
‘Nay,’ she cried out. This could not be happening, not here at her own home. She had heard the terrible tales of the rebellions, the murders and pillaging, but this was the first time she had seen such things and she found she could not bear it. Those men down there were obviously defeated and beaten, and they were her mother’s fellow Spaniards.
She whirled around and ran as fast as she could back to the great hall. She had no clear thought now; she moved on pure instinct. No one seemed to pay her any attention as she ran out the door and across the bridge that led from the castle to the gardens and the cliff steps. It was meant to be guarded, but she saw no one there now. No doubt they had run to the beach for their share of the excitement and of any Spanish treasure that could wash ashore.
The steps cut into the cliffside, steps she had run up and down ever since she was a child, were slippery and perilous in the storm. Alys almost fell several times, but she pushed herself up and struggled onward. She didn’t know where she was going, or what she would do once she got there, she only knew she had to try to stop some of that horror.
Once she reached the beach, the straggling group of half-drowned sailors was still far away, but she could see more. And she wished she could not. One of the starving sailors dropped to his knees, snatches of a prayer in Spanish carried to her on the wind. A soldier drove his sword through the man, then yanked a gold chain from his neck.
A surge of bitter sickness rose up at the back of Alys’s throat, choking her. She clapped her hand over her mouth to hold it back. She didn’t even like to see a cook kill a chicken for the pie pot. How could she bear such wanton cruelty?
She took a blind, lunging step forward and a hard hand caught her arm. She screamed at the cold jolt of surprise and spun around to find a soldier standing there. She could see little of his face beneath his helmet, just the hard set of his jaw.
‘You should not be here, my lady,’ he said. ‘’Tis not safe.’
‘I see that.’ She glanced back at the beach to see a clutch of people in cloaks and mantles, villagers, searching the beach for anything that might have washed ashore. ‘Those men are no better than scarecrows now! Surely they are no threat. Perhaps they have information, or could be ransomed...’
‘They are rabid Spanish dogs, my lady, and would have slaughtered us all if they could,’ the man answered. ‘This is war.’
Alys looked back to the beach and felt that bitter tang of sickness at the back of her throat again. ‘This does not look like war.’ It looked like wanton slaughter.
‘Go back to the safety of the castle, my lady—now,’ the soldier said, as implacable as stone.
‘My father shall hear of this,’ Alys said, though she feared he must already know. She marched away, leaving those horrors behind her, but she did not go back to the cliff steps. She made her way around through the sand dunes and the sodden reeds, hoping the rain would wash away her fury over what she had seen, her rage at her own helplessness.
Suddenly, above the whine of the wind, she heard a groan. She stopped, her senses on alert, half-fearful, half-hoping she was not alone. Yet it seemed it had been her imagination.
She started forward again. ‘Please!’ a hoarse voice called from the reeds. ‘Please.’
She knew she had not imagined that. It was definitely a person, someone in trouble. She ran to the reeds, which were higher than her waist, and searched through them.
‘Please,’ the voice came again, weaker this time, fading.
In the blinding curtain of rain, Alys tripped over him before she saw him. She stumbled over a booted foot and nearly tumbled to the marshy ground.
Cautiously, she leaned closer to study him. He was a tall man, probably once with powerfully broad shoulders and long, muscled legs. He wore what she could tell had once been very fine clothes, a velvet-and-leather doublet with gold embroidery on the high collar and expensive, well-wrought soft leather boots. But they were sodden and caked in mud and sea salt now, hanging loose off his thin figure.
Alys glanced up at his face. His hair, over-long and trailing like seaweed, and his beard were dark, his skin brown from the sun and weather of a long sea voyage. She could make out little of his features, but suddenly his eyes opened and focused directly on her. They were the brightest, clearest emerald green and they seemed to see deep into her very heart. She felt sure she knew those eyes.
‘Please, mistress,’ he said hoarsely, slowly, as if each letter was dragged painfully from a raw throat. ‘I must go—I have messages...’
He had no hint of a Spanish accent, but then Alys’s mother’s words had not either. Was he Spanish, a noble soldier, or mayhap one of the English exiles they said sailed with the Armada, hoping to regain their lost estates? Either way, his life was in the gravest danger from that barbarity on the beach.
‘Help me,’ he said. ‘I must deliver these.’ He reached for her hand. His fingers, roughened, torn and bloodied, barely touched her, but she felt a jolt of heat from his skin to hers, something that startled her and made her draw back. She saw a glint of gold on his hand, a ring on his smallest finger.
She glanced back frantically over her shoulder. She could see nothing from the reeds that closed around them, but she could hear the screams from the beach. She thought of her mother, of her dark Spanish eyes, her wistful smile, and Alys was completely torn.
Aye, this man could be the enemy and if she helped him she could find herself in much trouble. But as she looked into this man’s eyes, practicality and danger gave way to human feeling. He was a person, a human being, and deserved a chance to tell his tale before he died, to deliver these messages that seemed so important to him. She thought of the men being killed so wantonly on the beach and she shuddered.
How could she ever face her mother in heaven if she did not help him?
She thought quickly and prayed she had enough strength to carry out such a wild plan. ‘It is well now,’ she said soothingly. ‘I know where we can go. You can trust me. Confia en mi, señor.’
His eyes widened in surprise at her words in Spanish, and he nodded. ‘Gracias.’
‘Can you stand at all? We must hurry.’ The screams on the beach were growing louder and soon the looters would spread out in their search.
He nodded again, but Alys wasn’t sure. He did look very pale, almost grey beneath his sun-brown. She slid her arm around his shoulders and helped him to sit. He was very lean, but she could feel the strength of his muscles beneath his sodden clothes. He must have been no idle nobleman. His jaw set in a grim line, and his skin went even paler, but he was able to push himself to his feet. He swayed there precariously and Alys braced her shoulder against his ribs to help hold him up.
She was not a tall woman and had inherited her mother’s small-boned, delicate build, but carrying around baskets of laundry and digging in the kitchen garden had not been in vain. Between the two of them, he soon had his balance again.
‘We must hurry,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’
They made their way through the sand dunes, crouching low to avoid being seen. The rain had slowed down and the clouds slid back and away from the moon, which was good and bad. She could see her way a bit clearer, but that meant so could the soldiers on the beach. She found the second set of stairs etched into the cliff, around the curve of the beach and more hidden. The steps went only up to the old abbey and were seldom used.
‘Can you climb here?’ she said. She looked up at him and saw that his face, starkly carved like an old Roman statue, was set in lines of determination. He nodded and closely followed her as she climbed the stairs. He swayed dangerously at one point, almost falling backward, and Alys caught his arm and pulled him up with her.
At last they reached their destination, the ruins of the ancient abbey. Alys had gone there often when she was a child, sneaking away from her nursemaids to pick flowers and just lie in the grass, staring up at the sky through the crumbling old stone arches. Sometimes her mother would take here there, too, for picnics and games.
It felt like another world to her from that of the crowded castle, a world of peace and beauty. But sometimes the sight of the abandoned cloisters seemed to make her mother sad. What had once been a grand and glorious place, with a soaring church and dozens of monks and priests, was abandoned and silent.