The Rebel's Mark (eBook)

2

The dawn has arrived – and, with it, God’s mercy. Like a disappointed matador faced with a cowardly bull, the storm has departed without bothering to stay around for the final, fatal thrust. The black night of terror they have endured was nothing but an auto-da-fé, a test of faith. It is a test Don Rodriquez believes he has passed. His abiding memory of the trial is not the raging of the tempest, the fear, the stench of his daughter’s vomit on his doublet, but of Cachorra’s touch against his cheek.

Beneath the cabin door a pale, narrow blade of grey light sweeps back and forth, as if searching for survivors within. We’re here! he wants to shout at the sliver of probing dawn. We’re alive! Instructing Constanza and Cachorra to offer prayers for their deliverance, he unbolts the door and goes out into morning to assess the damage.

What he sees astounds him. The wave tops are as high as the sides of the ship, rolling the San Juan like dice cupped in the hand of a desperate gambler on a losing streak. As the waves break, sheets of dazzling white foam stream across the deck, borne on the still-wicked wind. As the first low rays of sunlight pierce the fleeing black clouds, he braces himself against a tangled thicket of cordage, the ropes icy wet to his grasp, and shakes his head in wonder.

Only the lower part of the mainmast still stands, the noble Galician pine shredded at the break as if it were nothing but common kindling. The quarterdeck rail on the leeward side has been torn away, the posts – crowned with finely carved Castilian lions’ heads – now so much driftwood lost somewhere in the night behind them. Not a single lantern has survived. Several of the deck cannon have gone, their rope tackles sheared. Many of the others are jumbled and overturned like nursery toys. If the English come across the San Juan now, Don Rodriquez thinks, they would have nothing in their hearts but pity. But not even the English would be so foolish as to venture out in seas like this.

On the main deck the sailors whom the sea has not taken in the night ignore the courtier’s sudden appearance. They are too busy wielding axes and knives, trying to cut away the tangle of ropes that coil across the deck like the snakes on a gorgon’s head. Their bodies seem bound by invisible bands of exhaustion, their movements laboured and dispirited. They remind Don Rodriquez of the native slaves who toil in the gold and silver mines of New Spain, barely human at all.

Turning to look up at the poop-deck, he sees the captain leaning over the side, observing the huge mat of tangled rigging and shattered yards that clings to the San Juan de Berrocal like a beard, rising and falling as the sea breaks against her. Noticing the newcomer on deck, the captain turns his head. Gaunt and red-eyed, he wears the expression of a man who has already stared into the burning eyes of far too many demons to care much about what awaits him in hell.

Don Rodriquez climbs what is left of the ladder to the poop-deck. From here he can see – between the surging wave crests – two small, jagged islands on the horizon. The captain points to a pair of inverted Vs on the portolan chart, about a finger’s width from the Irish coast.

‘We call the larger one Isla Santa,’ he says, his voice a mere croak after a night of bellowing commands against the noise of the storm. ‘There’s a monastery on the peak. In their own language the heathens call it Sceilg Mhichíl. Ireland is but two leagues on. We won’t see it yet, because of the waves.’

‘Perhaps the monks will offer us sanctuary,’ Don Rodriquez says. Even a tiny rock two leagues out into the ocean would be preferable to a minute more of this, he thinks.

‘There are no monks,’ the captain tells him with a disturbingly wild laugh. ‘It’s deserted. And even if there were, we cannot make a safe landfall there.’

‘What hope do we have of reaching Roaringwater Bay?’ Don Rodriquez asks.

The captain stares at him as though he’s speaking Cachorra’s native Carib.

‘I understand you are used to the comforts of court, Señor, and therefore unaccustomed to my firmament,’ he says. ‘But even you must have realized by now that we’re drifting at the mercy of wind and current.’

Señor. Don Rodriquez cannot help but notice this is the first time the master has called him anything less deferential than ‘my lord’.

The captain looks out towards the rolling, pitching horizon. ‘I’ll order the anchors dropped when we reach shallower water,’ he says. ‘You’d best pray to Almighty God they hold.’

‘And if God doesn’t hear me?’

The captain looks at Don Rodriquez with something bordering on contempt.

‘Then pray to the Devil instead. All will depend on where we get blown ashore.’

I’ll order the anchors dropped… You’d best pray to Almighty God they hold.

But the anchors have not held.

Now that the last of the ripped canvas had gone overboard, a fatal lassitude has fallen upon the San Juan. Isla Santa has long since disappeared astern. Now the only sounds to be heard are the funereal drumbeats of the waves pounding against the hull, the keening of the wind and the murmured praying of the crew. Everyone is praying now. Prayers are all they have left.

Don Rodriquez kneels on the quarterdeck and claps his hands together as though making a last confession before going into battle.

‘Holy Father, have mercy on a poor sinner. Make your eyes to shine upon us and your grace to bear us up above these trials… You’ve done it once. You can do it again. Spain needs me…’

He knows the chances are slim. Most of the coastline here is unforgiving rock that towers above the breaking surf. He can see it drawing relentlessly nearer every time a wave crest breaks. It will smash to pieces what is left of the San Juan. Human flesh and bone won’t last a minute. Better to drown than be flayed alive.

But if, by God’s great fortune, they do survive the inevitable wreck, what then? wonders Don Rodriquez. Can a way be found to the meeting place? Will the Englishman wait for him? Can the enterprise upon which he is embarked be rescued, even in the face of disaster? All will depend upon whose hands – besides God’s – are waiting to catch them.

If they find themselves amongst the Irish who have risen in revolt against the heretical English queen, then all will be well. Spain is a long-standing ally of all who would see the Protestant heretics chased out of the island ahead. He will be feted by their chieftains, perhaps even by the rebel leader himself, the Earl of Tyrone. It will take a while, but there is every reason to expect that these good Catholics will help him find another vessel to carry his daughter and Cachorra on to Antwerp, though with the trousseau and the dowry at the bottom of the sea, her exquisitely noble groom might think somewhat less of the match and tear up the contract. So be it. Constanza will sulk for a month or two, but he’s used to that.

But what if there are other hands waiting to catch him? If he falls amongst the English settlers who think they hold this island for their ageing queen, what then?

In that event, Constanza herself will be his cover. A Spanish nobleman and his daughter shipwrecked on a voyage to her marriage is a tale that should play well enough with a nation that loves the frivolity of the playhouse. Constanza will speak for him. She has good English, taught to her by Padre Robert of the Jesuit seminary at Valladolid. It was Robert Persons himself who, on the quay at Coruña the day they departed, had wished them God’s fair winds.

There is bound to be a period of confinement and interrogation in some draughty castle. But why should any minister of the English queen consider his appearance in Ireland to be anything more than what he will say it is: an unfortunate shipwreck on the way to a wedding? The food is likely to be unbearable and the company vulgar. A little of the family plate and jewels back in Castile may have to be sold to raise a ransom. But it has happened before. Who knows, in Antwerp the lucky groom may even wait, poor sap. Yes, Don Rodriquez thinks, if we fall into English hands, Constanza will be the saving of us.

The rocky cliffs are much closer now. The roar of the ocean breaking against them grows louder with every passing moment. The end cannot be long in coming. Don Rodriquez is not afraid. He has faced danger often in the service of Spain. He wonders if the dying King Philip will learn of his fate before his reign ends. A king’s prayers should count for something in the ledger of a man’s life.

Sensing movement at his shoulder, he turns – to find himself staring at a plump Madonna in a green satin gown, a black lace mantilla covering her features. For a moment he is speechless. His exhaustion must be playing tricks on his mind. Then the Madonna speaks, her voice muffled by the folds of the mantilla.

‘If I am to die, Father, I shall die as the bride of José de Vallfogona y Figaro-Madroñera!’

Constanza pulls aside the black lace veil. The full lips that have never quite decided if poise or petulance should be their lodestar are trembling. Her eyes dart from the rocks ahead to her father’s face, accusing both. Behind her, Cachorra gives a resigned...