Suddenly there was an explosion that seemed to rip the very air apart, and such a blast of wind did it make that I was knocked down and lay sprawling on the deck, unable to hear. For a few moments I was so dazed I did not know what had happened. One of the ship’s officers pulled me to my feet and pointed across the harbour.

‘That’s a grievous loss in booty for us,’ he said.

Where there had been a galleon there was now a mass of torn canvas, broken spars and burning timber. A vast cloud of dust and smoke and broken splinters of wood had risen up into the air from the wreck. It spread out over the whole harbour and fragments of debris began to rain down on us, amidst a choking smell of burnt tar and gunpowder. As I stood gaping, a forge-hot piece of metal landed on my left shoulder and I jumped about, shrieking, trying to shake it off, for it was burning right through my doublet and shirt to the skin beneath.

‘Jesu!’ I cried, ‘I’m branded like a slave!’

The officer grabbed a marlinespike and knocked the metal off my shoulder. Where it landed on the deck it began to burn the wood until he managed to lob it overboard. As it hit the water it hissed and a gout of steam rose briefly from the sea.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, his face pale with horror.

I gasped. I was shocked and frightened. But for his quick action I would have been seriously injured.

‘Not too badly.’ I managed to keep my voice fairly steady, though my heart was pounding and I felt dizzy. ‘It will be a nasty burn, but I’ll fetch some salve.’

‘You were fortunate it wasn’t your head.’

I nodded. ‘Aye.’ I managed a weak laugh. ‘Fortunate indeed.’

As I ran to fetch my satchel of medicines so that I could salve my shoulder quickly, I thought that ‘fortunate’ was an unfortunate choice of words. But I remembered Andrew, injured by a musket ball at the siege of Sluys, which had skimmed the side of his head, but killed the man standing behind him. He too had thought himself fortunate. Dame Fortune has sometimes an ironic touch when she spins her wheel. My clothes were charred in a round patch on my shoulder, and through the pain I could smell the very burn itself.

The stench of burnt human flesh is something you do not forget.

 

Chapter Six

Coimbra , Portugal, 1582

My mother and I had been in the prison in Coimbra several weeks and we thought the Inquisitors had forgotten us. Guards brought us food every day, enough to keep us alive, though we grew weak from the scanty diet and the lack of air and light. I realise now that they prefer their prisoners to remain alive, to make a greater spectacle at the auto-da-fè. If a prisoner dies while awaiting judgement, all that can be done is to throw his bones on the fire, which makes a poor show for the audiences, who flock in from miles around in the hope of gaining the great spiritual benefits they are promised from attending.

At last, however, they came for my mother. She had warned me that when it happened I must keep to the furthest and darkest part of the cell, in the hope that they had forgotten me. So when three guards came to take her for questioning, I did as I was bid, crouching down in the corner opposite Francesca, who blinked in the shaft of light which came in with the guards, weaving her head to and fro, trying to see if they brought Jaime with them.

The guards stripped my mother stark naked, and fondled her, and made lewd gestures. She crossed her hands over her breasts and hung her head so that her hair concealed her face. Then someone called from beyond the door and she was pushed out into the corridor. They did not take her far. The chamber for interrogation must have been close by, and they left the cell door ajar. Perhaps they thought Francesca too helpless to try to escape. Or perhaps they did remember that I was there and took pleasure in forcing me to listen.

They have taken my mother away.

Screaming.

Again and again.

I wrap my arms around myself, as if by clutching my body I can somehow hold my soul there intact. For it is struggling to escape. If it can break free, if I can lose myself in death, the sound of the screaming will stop.

I cover my ears, but the screaming goes on.

My mother. My mother’s voice pleading.

A horrible gurgling noise. Inhuman.

Chains rattling and the sound of water pouring.

I vomit into the refuse and the excrement that cover the floor.

I do not know what she said which eventually persuaded them to stop, for that day at least. Perhaps they had merely grown bored or tired. I had passed into a kind of coma myself, and I am sure hours had gone by before the same three guards dragged her back to the cell. She was too weak to stand and collapsed on the floor. They took it in turn, the three of them, two to hold her down while the third raped her. She tried to struggle, but she had no more strength than a cloth doll. When they finally left and barred the door at last, I rushed to her, weeping. I tried to dress her, but it was like trying to put clothes on a corpse. Francesca seemed to have returned for a time to her senses and watched with bright eyes.

‘Don’t worry, boy,’ she said indifferently. ‘She will grow used to it.’

Chapter Seven

Coruña, Spain, 1589

The landfall at Coruña, according to the original plan – or rather according to the second version of this plan – was for the sake of swift provisioning as well as firing the Spanish ships in the harbour, but we stayed there two interminable weeks. And for the first four days the new recruits continued to run riot. At last Norreys managed to muster the regular soldiers into some kind of order and set them to attacking the citadel. Drake, in overall command, had once again disobeyed the Queen’s orders, but he clearly knew that if he brought back enough treasure, then, as so often before, she would forgive him. He was already losing sight of the original mission.

Lisbon! That was our goal, and it was as far away as ever. The main strategy of the whole expedition, which our leaders seemed to be choosing to forget, had been to sail directly to Lisbon, immediately after burning the Spanish fleet, in order to surprise the occupying Spanish garrison there, while Dom Antonio’s loyal subjects would throw open the gates of the city, kneel at his feet, and welcome him with tears of gratitude. That was the plan, and as a result we carried no siege cannon, only light ordnance. There was nothing in the original plan about mounting a siege. So when the regular soldiers – those who had joined us from long experience against the Spanish in the Low Countries – when these soldiers were sent to take the citadel of Coruña, they had nothing but small arms.

They fought bravely, and paid for it. In the meantime, the gallant first-time volunteers were roaming the surrounding countryside, having wiped out most of the town of Coruña.