The rest of us spent time in the stables admiring a white gelding Sir Walter had bought, and a sorrel mare which had foaled last week. Little Wat, having received no encouragement from his father, toddled with us. Lady Ralegh stayed indoors and helped Mrs Hull, her sempstress, line a stomacher with grey cony’s skin.
Ralegh’s depression bred restlessness in me, and I had a return of the acute malaise of last August. I felt that wherever I went I was an animal in a cage and the cage was my love and desire for Sue Reskymer. Somewhere in the world there must be escape for me. Before supper I went a walk with Victor Hardwicke but strode along so violently that he ran out of breath and had to call a halt.
“One would think the devil was after you, friend. Remember my age and infirmity! “
I stared at him moodily. “If you cannot walk a mile across a park you’re not in good state for a campaign at sea, Victor.”
“Oh, pooh to that.” He coughed. “Who ever had to walk a mile on a battleship? That is the beauty of the form; superior to soldiering; one is conveyed into the fight. Much to be preferred.”
“There may be soldiering in this too. De Vere’s men are not coming with us for the pleasures of a sea voyage.”
“Well, then, they can fight on land. I’m to keep a diary of the trip. Tell me I shall need breath to writer That’s what Cousin Bess would argue!”
“Who? Lady Ralegh? She doesn’t want you to go?”
“No, she’s superstitious. She’s a mixture, is Bess. To her Sir Walter can do no wrong; but all the same she considers him unlucky. She says on each voyage he loses some splendid youth. John Grenville last time. Who this? She doesn’t want it to be me.”
“I wouldn’t call you a splendid youth,” I said.
“Agreed! The dangers which threaten don’t threaten me. Tell her so.” He linked his arm in mine. “Let us walk back at a more endurable pace.”
That evening we supped frugally. Sir Walter came down but his presence cast a blight on the table. At the end of the meal he said, well, tomorrow, unless he heard to the contrary, he would return to the Thames-side to continue his recruitment. It was, he said despondently, a task like gathering sand in the fingers; no man had stomach for the job; as fast as crews were brought together they slipped through his grasp and ran away.
He was about to go upstairs to his study when Bell, one of the servants, brought in a dripping rider with a message from Essex. It contained only four words. “Her Majesty has signed.”
In the melancholic mood that still hung over me like some miasma I had caught from my master I watched and listened to the rejoicing and the toasts that followed without ever becoming a part of them. Much wine was drunk and everyone was joyful. Victor Hardwicke brought out his lute and they sang songs. The victory might already have been won. In fact this was only the preliminary victory over a monarch’s indecision. Whatever the project, I had already seen enough of the Spanish to know that the expedition was not likely to bring an easy or a cheap victory. Sir Walter himself must have known that, for he it was who was constantly warning his countrymen against underestimating the strength and courage and determination of the enemy. Yet tonight he was transformed and as happy at the news, it seemed, as any heedless boy.
All thought of retiring to his study was gone, and instead maps were brought and he watched smiling while the others pored over the charts and speculated as to the destination of the fleet. Their first objective, he said, would be to cover Drake’s and Hawkins’s triumphant return. Afterwards they would sail to seek glory of their own.
“It’s clear, Cousin,” Victor Hardwicke said, “that you know exactly where we are bound and will not tell.”
“I am Rear Admiral only of the White. Lord Admiral Howard will command the first squadron, the Earl of Essex the second, the Lord Thomas Howard the third. It will be for them in conference to decide the movements of the fleet and what the crews and officers shall be informed of and when.”
“What is your flagship to be?” Arthur Throgmorton asked.
“Warspite. Our newest.”
“And Ark Royal?”
“The Lord Admiral’s.”
Voices crossed and re-crossed. Victor picked up his lute again and smiled at me. His angled, hollow-checked face was haloed by the candles. He began to pluck gently at the strings.
“If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor? For love is warm, and courage listeth cold. If love were mine “
“Victor,” said Sir Walter.-“D’you know the song ‘Weep not, my wanton’ which was all the rage last summer? Here, let me have your lute. It goes so...”
He took the instrument and began to play with nearly as accomplished a touch as the young man. Carew Ralegh, the cool and cynical, of all people, took up the refrain and sang in a fine clear voice, and soon the rest of us were joining in. I saw Lady Ralegh,her small determined head a little on one side, her lips moving but no sound coming from them as she watched her husband, her brother, her brotherin-law, her cousin, all men close to her. Then her eyes suddenly lifted towards the door. Sir Walter stopped in mid-chord.
Bell stood there with another messenger, he even wetter and more mud be-spattered than the first.
I think it was in all our minds that perhaps between church and dinner the Queen had veered away from her early resolution and had sent to countermand the first order. Sir Walter tore open the second message which was much longer. One could see as he read it that it was unwelcome news, but he said nothing as he read.
“What is it, Walter?” Carew Ralegh asked. “More from Essex? “
“No … No, it is from John … Sir John Gilbert, my stepbrother. He writes from Plymouth. A picket boat, he says, has just come in bringing news of Drake and Hawkins. The ” he stopped and cleared his throat. “The report of their having captured Havana is false. In all their enterprises they were heavily defeated. And Drake is dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
In April the remnants of Drake’s fleet began to arrive in Falmouth. In this disastrous expedition the great Hawkins had died too, and the remaining officers and men of whom only 400 were left, were in much sickness and want. (My father said bitterly that the failures always put straight into his haven like the survivors of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s last voyage in ‘83 if a success the captains sailed straight for Plymouth or Dartmouth, and those towns got the spoils.)
In April too occurred another event of great consequence. The Spanish in Picardy abruptly changed their front of attack and with a brilliant and unexpected thrust invested Calais and then took it, massacring the entire garrison. By these thunderbolts the face of the war was changed. More than had ever been admitted had been expected of Drake’s being at sea again; now he was gone and there was a Spanish port at our throat. It was the one thing the Armada of ‘88 had lacked.
Twice in the month I rode with Ralegh to London. By exertion and exhortation the naval expedition was kept in being, though none knew if it would ever leave our shores. In early May I sailed with Captain Crosse in Swiftsure to join the fleet assembling at Plymouth. Sir Walter was to follow with the main body almost at once. At Plymouth the bay was alive with warships. Lord Admiral Howard had arrived with Ark Royal and Lion and six other battleships the day before us. His kinsman, Lord Thomas Howard, was expected later in the week aboard Mere Honour and with a squadron in his wake; the Earl of Essex in Due Repulse had been the first to arrive and kept princely state aboard her. He was also, it was said, feeding the whole fleet out of his own pocket in order to save the sea stores.