This patio was empty and we could only hear the fighting like clamour from another world. Victor caught us up, and with him were two musketeers who had got detached from their fellows.
“We’ll be short o’ powder soon, sir,” said one of them to Bagnal.
“Then use your butts,” he answered, and walked into the patio towards the door at the other side.
At once he was fired on and wounded again in the shoulder. Doors opened and a dozen Spaniards fell on us with rare ferocity; the musketeers could only fire their guns once and then it was dagger work.
I killed a second man. My side was hurting and I felt sick and Katherine Footmarker was telling me there was blood on my hands. Bagnal was down and both musketeers; and then Captain Carey appeared with two extra men and fought his way in among the retreating Spaniards, slashing like a madman.
Two of our first group were dead and all the rest wounded except Victor. Why there was blood round my waist I did not know, for I did not remember being stabbed.
Bagnal was up again, though now five times wounded and dripping with blood. He and Carey and a pikeman broke down the door, and this led us into another alley. There was a church here, squat-towered, built on to the houses of the street. The pikeman, thoughts on plunder, raised his pike to smash down the church door, but Carey knocked up the pike and we went on.
We had climbed and were near the main square of the city. I felt better now, inspirited by the tattered indomitable man leading us. Some women were hurling tiles at us from a rooftop. A tiny Jew, black-robed and white-slippered, stood in a doorway hands clasped, having come out to put up his shutters, caught now between two fires; it was a Spanish ball that killed him; his skull cap rolled at my feet.
We rushed the defenders here, Bagnal as usual in the lead; soon too close for guns, it was bloody knives again. Essex and a gang of ten more gentlemen appeared to our left and the defenders fled leaving bodies all about, Bagnal in pursuit.
Suddenly we came out upon the Plaza, a square with chu~ches and public buildings, shaded by planes and palm trees, some deserted stalls down the centre. Here for lack of opposition there was a pause. It looked as if the main city was almost won, though the Citadel and the Fort would no doubt hold out for some time.
Bagnal’s face was a mask of blood, but he seemed in no way weakened. Essex, seeing him so, took out his sword. “One knee, Captain.”
The tall soldier looked surprised.
“You shall be the first knight created on this triumphant 347
day on Spanish soil. Few have deserved better of our nation. Sir John Wingfieldis dead, with many others, but it is a great victory.”
Victor put his arm round me. “Hold up, boy, is your hurt serious? “
“I think not.”
“I trust not, for it would spoil my day if you were to fan out now.”
“I’ll do my best not to. I want plunder, Victor.”
The square was filling with English. Among them were a group about the body of Wingfield, who had fallen at the edge of the Plaza. Then I saw that Captain Ashley and Captain Monson were back, talking to Essex, and I struggled up from the stone wall. Too late to hear the message, I plucked Monson’s arm; he looked scowling at me and then remembered.
He said shortly: “The Lord Admiral considers the capture of the Iota must be delayed until tomorrow and orders ad forces to concentrate on the taking of Cadiz.”
“You delivered that message to the Rear Admiral?”
“Yes, and it was in received. For once I agree with your master, and that must indeed be a rarity.”
“Where is the Lord Admiral, sir?”
“Landing with the second division. I have no doubt Sir Walter win be ashore too before the night is outl”
Firing was beginning again in the square. Some of the buildings around the Plaza were well armed and intended to contest our presence.
At the end of the Plaza beside a church was the town hall. A group of soldiers moved to attack this, and among them were Bagnal and Carey. I saw them meet with resistance at the door and then force it and go in. Victor said:
“Let me see this wound.”
“No, I’ll do.” Remembering my last meeting with Sue, “I want plunder, Victor.”
When we got to the town hall the ground floor had already been cleared. Pictures and furniture lay wrecked everywhere, books and parchments scattered, one or two wounded lying about. But when we came to the broad central stairs we saw that the whole of the first flight was littered with dead men, and most of them were English. Blood made the steps slippery, broken banisters stood out like raw stumps; at the top an enormous Franciscan friar lay clutching a pike that protruded from his stomach; like the rest he was dead. The only live one was an English soldier tying up a deep gash on his leg.
“‘E stood athwart the stairs,” he said, thumbing towards the friar. “Wi’ a great axe in ‘is ‘ends. Nine of us ‘e killed afore we cotched ‘im. Nine good men gone for one shaven monk. Two o’ my friends, devil take ‘im. Reckon ‘e ‘ad the strength of the devil too!“
We climbed across the piled bodies. On this floor you could hear the fighting still in progress. I stayed Victor, who was for pushing forward.
“We’ll find nothing here that’s not broken up or already bespoke. There’s a church next door.”
“Essex ordered no desecration.”
“What he does not see he’ll not complain of. Look out of this window. It’s no sort of drop compared to the city wall, and I’d guess that door leads into the church.”
Victor still hesitated, so I said: “Let me go ahead and I’ll tell you what I find.”
“No … if you go, I’ll come.”
The church was as dark as the churches I remembered in Madrid. The sun was setting, and only a few coloured shafts came from it high up in the nave; if it had not been for the candles at the High Altar and before the Virgin in the side chapel we should have been unable to see our way.
The place was empty, heavy only with the smell of incense and flowers. I knew the orders: no desecration of churches, no women to be molested, discipline even to be preserved in the sacking of the town. The penalty for a breach, at least for the common soldier, was death. But death from either side had in a few short hours become a commonplace.
I went up to the High Altar and seized the cross. The whole was too heavy to carry away and was gilt on some common metal, but there were jewels in it, and having lifted it to the floor I began to prise these out with the point of my dagger. Victor after some more hesitation disappeared into the darkness behind the altar, and I heard him hacking at something, but his heart was not in it.
I got eight jewels; five were big stones of a semi-precious nature, but the other three were rubies. There were four silver candlesticks beside the altar, and behind these two angels holding jewelled wreaths. These I also stripped, but after lifting the candlesticks down I left them on the altar steps, knowing them too heavy to carry.
Because of having snuffed four of the candles, the church was even darker. Shots and commotion echoed outside. We were as if in a dark pool while the strife of the world eddied to the brim.
I went over to the lady chapel because sometimes these are as richly ornamented as the main altars. Here about twenty candles burned, some tall like a young man’s life, others old and “uttering. A few simple posies lay at the Virgin’s feet and a ring had been hung on an outstretched finger. She looked out, glazed and dumb, at the corners of her waxen lips a fixed half smile of compassion, but no understanding.
At that moment I thought my loss of blood had overcome me and I was losing my senses, for I seemed to see suddenly not one Virgin but upwards of a dozen, all peering out of the darkness behind her, all with fixed stares and not a half-smile among them. But whereas the first Virgin gazed across the church in contemplation of the polished marble pillars of the lady chapel, all the other stares were fixed on me.