“You did your best.”
“Best is not enough if it fails … Now Essex and the Howards hold princely court in the city. Tomorrow there’s to be a state dinner to celebrate the victory …”
“Have you news of the galleys, sir?”
“Portocarrero retired his squadron into the narrow neck by the Suazo Bridge and by some mechanical means dragged them through the shallows and the mud. When the water deepened they were refloated and so made their way back to the sea at San Petri. They are thought to have gone north towards Faro.”
Sir Walter fanned himself. The heat in this harbour in the middle of the day was stifling and the stench from the dead bodies rotting in the mud made it impossible to keep the windows open. Victor groaned and *led to turn over.
“Anthony Ashley is to be sent back to England with despatches for the Queen,” Sir Walter said, “requesting her permission for a permanent occupation of the city. Crosse will carry him in Swiftsure, a dozen other vessels will go taking some of the treasure and most of the sick and wounded. I shall send you both home on that convoy.”
“Oh, no ~ … Victor, perhaps, for he’s sorely ill; but another week and I shall be on my feet again.”
“Wood thinks otherwise. This fever which has persisted leaves you in no state for campaigning.”
“What of your own wound, sir?”
“I suspect my leg will always be in need of a little aid. Too much of the muscle was shot away. But I cannot go yet. Tell me, young Killigrew …” He paused.
“Yes?”
“Did you gain any booty that first night?”
I looked at his face, which had narrowed. “Some few pieces of jewellery. If it is still in my pockets.”
“It will be there: only Bell has attended on you. And Victor? “
“I think not. He was looking for some books when two priests attacked him.”
“That’s like him. Well, take care of your gleanings. Every one else is, so far as they can hide them. It’s not a savoury spectacle.”
“If I go home,” I said, “it will be to look after Victor. Having survived all the worst of the fighting unscratched, he came to his wounds through following me in search of plunder.”
“Ah,” he sighed and got up. “Don’t let it trouble your conscience. If I thought of all those who for one reason or another I had led to their death I should not sleep of nights.”
Swiftsure left three days later. With her went 14 other vessels, carrying horses, booty and wounded men. Victor and I were to have travelled on Swiftsure, but at the last Sir Gelly Meyricke with special private despatches from the Earl of Essex to the Queen, and the Earl of Sussex, who was sick with measles, took our places and we were moved to a flyboat, the Peter of Anchusen. So are fates decided.
We left a city still held in complete subjection by the English but a council of the Lords Generals in no way more decided what to do with it. Ralegh came to see us off. He was on the edge of melancholia; the excitement of battle which had transformed him had long since been lost in the drearier battles of the council chamber.
“For my part,” he said, “I believe we waste time here. Our crews sicken in the heat, our victuals rot, our army wastes its strength on futile skirmishes. To retain the city would put a breaking burden on armament and supply. We have done what we came for. Staying will only fritter away the victory.”
He was smoking his pipe, more perhaps to keep away the flies than for pleasure. Victor was propped up on his pillows, able now to eat light foods. As soon as he had known what was planned he had protested vigorously; in the end he had accepted his fate but was still displeased by it.
‘A believe, Cousin Walter, you’re waiting to see us sail so that you can be assured we’re safely gone. If I’d a thought more use in my legs I’d dive overboard and swim in again as soon as your back was turned … Even now you cannot be sure of Maugant”
Ralegh looked at me sourly. “We are all under discipline, and he has received his orders. Which are to see you home. He’ll do so.”
“I’ll do so,” I said.
Cadiz looked unreal in the hot shimmering light as we put out on the ebb-tide. Mottled clouds clustered like a flock of sheep in a sky the colour of a fatten plate. Wisps of smoke still rose from the burned fleet in Port Royal road. Our own ships clustered in the main harbour, pennants lifting in the hot breeze. The Oueen’s Standard fluttered from the citadel, Essex’s from Fort San Felipe. Outside the harbour a halfdozen frigates cruised as a guard against surprise.
“Well ” I said to Victor, “we have not conquered the world, but we live to try again, and as I saw you a week ago I would not have thought that likely.”
“Blood-letting did no one any harm. I haven’t coughed since we left England. It’s all part of the cure.”
“Look,” I said. “You got no spoils from your efforts. I have a little hoard which will do for two. When we get to England we’ll sell the jewels and split the proceeds.”
“Split nothing. You got them; I didn’t; that’s all. But I would have liked those books.”
“But for me you’d never have gone into that accursed church, and so no doubt you’d have got your plunder somewhere else and unscathed. Deny that.”
“You got me in without compulsion. You brought me out on your back. Deny that.”
We wrangled amiably until it was time to sleep through the hottest hours of the day. By the time we woke the city was a dark blun-on the distant coastline. Peter of Anchusen was a large flyboat, smarter and faster than most of her kind, she carried a crew of 40, with a blackbearded Captain Smith in command, and there were about 60 wounded and sick aboard, not to mention divers others returning in charge of plunder and horses, so that the whole complement was around 120, about a third Dutch. Besides ourselves there were only eight wounded officers, and we shared a cabin with a Lieutenant Fraser who had lost a leg and a Major George who had been blinded in one eye and much disfigured by a flaming spar.
As well as the powerful but cumbersome Swiftsure we had two frigates for protection, and every transport was armed, so there was little risk of our being challenged on the way home.
The wind that had got us out of harbour and safely away from the coast hesitated with the setting sun, and the lateen sails of a halfdozen Portuguese feluccas standing well away from the land as they fled south were suddenly flushed with the afterglow so that they looked like flamingoes rising off the surface of the sea. I left Victor and sat for an hour or two on deck in the cooler air of evening talking to Major George, who was a veteran of the Dutch wars and in no way cast down by his injuries. While the stars grew ever brighter till they lamp-lit the sky, George told me of bloody encounters at Zutphen and Gertruydenberg. Below I could hear Victor playing, almost for the first time since his wounding.
“Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”
Around us were the lights of the other ships, closest so close that we could see aboard being Maybird, a very small man o’ war belonging to Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Plymouth; and behind her, like a sheep-dog central to her flock, the high decks of Swiftsure, commanded by Captain Robert Crosse, now Sir Robert, knighted by Essex after the celebrations last Sunday. (The one thing in all this, said Sir Walter, that would have pleased Drake.)
A swell got up later in the night but no wind with it, and by morning our fleet was somewhat scattered. During the following day we crawled slowly west-north-west, wallowing more than we advanced, the land still visible as we made across the great gulf. The second night was hazy but the light airs were just enough to keep way on; the third day brought a return of dead calm.