De Soto came back from Madrid well pleased with his visit. It became known soon after his return that the Armada would not sail for at least two weeks more. It was puzzling that this delay should satisfy him.
Pennell was lodged in the house where I slept, which was distasteful to me, for the presence of a genuine traitor made me more ashamed of my own position. He would have made a friend of me, but I could not stand the sight of his thin pitted face, the bloodshot blue eyes, the unsteady hands. I knew that the Spaniards, for all they had to make use of such creatures, despised them. Had he been placed here to spy upon me?
The weather had been less settled for some time, and now it set in blustery and wet. Ships putting in from Biscayreported storm conditions and unseasonable cold for early August.
One day when being rowed out to San Bartolorneo we passed a pinnace which was being re-painted. Some alterations were taking place aboard and her name Cabagua painted out. As we re-passed on the way home the name Mark of Gloucester was being painted in. I asked one of the Spanish sailors, who shrugged and said: “She was a prize, captured in the spring. She is English built, señor.”
“But why is she being given her English name again?”
“The ways of man are inscrutable, señor.”
“That is an English style of rigging she is being fitted with, surely.”
“Yes, surely, señor.”
The harbour and docks of El Ferrol had now become a sea of masts. There were 150 large ships besides the many small ones. The bad weather brought in coasters and fishing vessels for shelter, and there were collisions and damage in the roads. A powder vessel sank at her moorings and a Portuguese galleon went ashore on the shoals above the town. Fever had broken out both in the ships and ashore. I avoided it, but Enrico Caldes was gravely ill, and some hundred men died before the middle of August. Many men still continued to desert, and the severest measures Admiral Brochero could apply did not prevent them. I thought of Ralegh’s trouble pressing crews in the Thames. Many of the conferences to which the foreign captains were invited which were not conferences dealing with grand strategy but with ordinary details of supply broke up in disagreement and frustration.
The Spanish had one advantage over the English: a supreme commander who had absolute authority; but from what I saw of events it became clear that Brochero, always pressing his forward policy, was at loggerheads with His Excellency Don Martin and in this he was abetted by de Soto, Antonio de Urquiola, and several of the other influential captains.
A few days after first seeing the Mark of Gloucester I saw Pennell aboard her, and that night, swallowing my dislike, I sat down with him over a mug of burnt wine and encouraged him to talk.
“What?” he said. “Mark of Gloucester? Yes, well, I have been useful to them, my friend. You understand? I have brought them the latest news, so in reward they’re giving me back a little ship of my own. Of course it’s a small and illfound craft compared to what I commanded in my prime, but I shall be able to eke out a living carrying between one port and another.”
“They will release you?” I said.
“Release me? I was never in captivity, my friend. They are giving me this ship for myself in payment of services rendered.”
“With what crew?”
“Crew? Oh, that offers no problem, my friend. I need ten, that’s all. I have already an Irish master’s mate, two Flemish seamen, a Dane and a Frenchman.”
“And the Spanish are willing that these men should go?”
“Why not? A dozen more or less, what is that?”
While he drank I watched him. He was a drunkard, but drunkards like madmen are astute enough outside the area of their particular weakness. What if I said to him, Take me? Would he betray me to the Spanish?
The following day I was called off San Bartolomeo to help again in the Commissariat and Captain de Soto was there.
“So Killigrew, you have escaped the fever. Look at this establishment: decimated! I want you to copy out this order for requisitions three times. They must be ready within the hour. When they are done come aboard San Pablo, I have work for you there.”
That night I supped with junior officers aboard the galleon and listened to their lively talk. They were a handsome friendly group. For them the present delay was outrageous. They wanted only to sail and challenge the enemy in his home waters. To them, proud and brave as they were, it was humiliating and frustrating to wait, as one put it, until the English were “knocking on their front gate”.
“It is not quite that,” said an older lieutenant. “Wars are not won by gestures, they are won by preparation, by strategy, and only at the last by fighting.”
“Oh, hark at Rodrigo!” another said. “This is not to be a joust such as you went on nine years ago! We no longer have wax in our ears. We’ll fight the English fleets and defeat them before ever we get sight of their coasts. It’s said they will sail this week.”
“Even so I doubt we shall meet them.”
They pressed him then, but he glanced in my direction, so I got up.
“You can speak more freely if I leave?”
“No, no. You are with us, I know that. I can only say that I have heard that efforts are to be made to lure the English fleet away from our shores so that we may sail to England without battle first. If it can be done I’ll tell you it will be worth doing. We should not defeat them in straight battle without grievous loss on both sides, and if it can be avoided I have no fancy to continue into northern waters with our sails in ribbons and our bows holed at the waterline. However great the victory might be, the weather could be the final victor. It was last time.”
There was silence then. My mind flew over the information and found it instantly true: it explained De Soto’s willingness to wait.
Next day I again worked on board San Pablo to which De Soto had temporarily transferred. At length I could be in ignorance no longer.
“Sir, I see efforts are being made to decoy the English fleet when it enters these waters. Can I not help in some manner? I know my countrymen and their ways.”
De Soto finished reading the letter his scrivener had written and took up the wax to seal it.
“Who told you anything of this? Captain Pennell in his cups?“
“No. But Mark of Gloucester is not being renamed for nothing.”
De Soto pressed the wax down with the naval seal. “So you think I should explain it to you?“
“I hoped I could help.”
“You cannot help. There will perhaps be other duties for you; who knows? I cannot tell you, for I am not told.”
The scrivener returned then but went out again almost at once.
“But since you have observed this piece of strategy, no greater harm will come of your knowing the rest. As the weather moderates we shall throw out a screen of small vessels to await the arrival of the English. They will be foreign vessels, manned by English, Irish, Flemish, and in due course some of them will be captured. They will all report that the Adelantado has sailed with his fleet to the Azores to protect the new treasure flota coming from the Indies. It is hoped and believed that your Admirals will ‘follow’ him.”
Again we were interrupted but it was impossible to keep what he had said out of my mind.
“But, senor, if you succeed in this this plan, who is to say the English will not take the opportunity of attacking Cadiz or Lisbon instead?”