The Royal Navy man exhaled a long, contemplative breath.
“Is that your intention?”
“No, dammit!”
“What about this Gravina fellow?”
“You and your men are no more than political bargaining chips to these people.” Von Reuter collapsed back into his chair.
Very carefully, his guest resumed his seat.
The two men exchanged quizzical looks.
Neither spoke until there was a rap at the bulkhead.
“Come! Von Reuter called.
A steward entered bearing a silver tray bearing two, unlikely, chipped mugs.
“A six-inch round demolished the Wardroom galley,” the German explained, “and much of the crockery. Fortunately, the drinks cupboard survived more or less intact. He looked to the steward as he placed the mugs on the table between the men. “Schnapps, I think.”
The scent of fresh coffee made Cowdrey-Singh momentarily light-headed.
“Leave it, please,” his host instructed as a half-filled bottle of Austrian liquor was placed before him. Von Reuter unscrewed the top. “Whatever our differences, we should drink to the memory and the valour of our dead friends, no?”
Anglo-Indian nodded grimly.
Both mugs were topped up.
“Absent friends,” they chorused, raising their drinks to their lips.
“Achilles fought like a lion at bay,” von Reuter said very quietly. Resignedly, he asked: “Why on earth did you not run to the north at your best speed when your reconnaissance plane encountered the Karlsruhe?”
Peter Cowdrey-Singh let the Schnapps-endowed coffee warm his chilled soul for a moment. Then, for several seconds he looked to the other man as if he had not understood the question.
“My ships are twelve months out of dry dock,” von Reuter remarked, “six months on tropical service. Their bottoms are variously fouled, had you run to the north you might easily have stretched away to safety?”
Another mouthful of the brew from his chipped mug gave the former second-in-command of His Majesty’s Ship Achilles time to consider his reply.
“Fighting Instructions still say, if you’ll permit me to quote the spirit rather than the letter of the actual text, something along the lines of: in battle no captain can do wrong if he lays his ship against an enemy. Captain Jackson could do no less than engage the enemy more closely, sir!”
“Those sentiments belong to the age of sail.”
“No, sir,” Peter Cowdrey-Singh retorted, resisting the seductive arms of drowsy exhaustion. “If you believe that then you really do not understand us at all, sir.”
His anger had evaporated now.
“I have no idea what happened to your other ship, the Karlsruhe. The chaps in those Sea Foxes would have crashed into her deck if they had half-a-chance. But from what I’ve seen of your big ships,” he shrugged. “They aren’t going to be in tip top shape any time soon. It looks like we shot away your flagship’s ELDAR. This ship is leaking oil, I can hear the pumps working hard to keep her damaged compartments from flooding.”
This latter was a guess, Peter Cowdrey-Singh’s hearing was still somewhat deafened from standing too close to the Achilles’s aft main battery turrets during the battle. What he could sense was the distant ‘working’ of the pumps, the subtle vibration of the engine room blowers that told him that even in this supposedly ‘safe’ harbour von Reuter had kept two boilers on line. The hits must have torn up a heck of a lot of the electrical cabling above the armoured deck level…
“And you know you can’t stay here at Guantanamo. Either somebody makes peace in a day or two or the hounds of Hell will fall on this place in no time flat. I know it, you know it, even the Spanish will work it out eventually.” He had drained his cup. “What happened at Jamaica?”
“I cannot speak of that.” Von Reuter looked away, guiltily. “As a young man I was honoured to serve with Captain Jackson. With the Naval Brigade at Shanghai…”
The Anglo-Indian Executive Officer of HMS Achilles was suddenly hard-eyed.
“Captain Jackson was mortally wounded shortly before the ship was torpedoed. He ordered the men standing by him to abandon ship. So far as I know he was still alive when Achilles sank.”
He got to his feet.
“I respectfully request that you return me to the Weser. I need to be with my people at a time like this, sir.”
Chapter 7
Friday 7th April
Castel de Puente de Congosto, Castile and León, Spain
The crumbling fortifications had been neglected for generations. The need for such castles, small outposts never manned by more than a score of bored retainers, had waned in the century or so after the Reconquista was completed in 1492. Thereafter, the land of castles – Castile – had had no need of them to repel the Moors. Such monuments had for a while, been symbols of baronial status, allowed to rot, to begin to crumble to dust, their silhouettes on the hilltops marking the course of ancient, now long supplanted medieval roads.
The fugitives had no idea if they were prisoners or in hiding, just that they were, once again, totally in the hands of strangers. The castle’s well was dry, even had it not been they had no way of drawing water from its depths. All they had to drink was the brackish water in the jars placed in the yawning, open gateway, and to eat, a couple of small, hard loaves of gritty bread.
And all they could do was wait.
They were too exhausted, too worn down to go any further and on this, now their second day of waiting beneath a tattered awning in the corner of the castle yard, they had reason to despair.
The women drew a little comfort from having persuaded Pedro to nibble and then, gulp at some of the bread, soaked and softened in water, otherwise time passed and they became weaker, a little listless while their companion, Albert Stanton paced, kept watch, visibly tormented to have failed the two women.
Brother Mariano had led them up the valley side to the castle.
‘I do not know who you are; only that the agents of the Inquisition of Salamanca search for two Englishwomen. We have no love of the Inquisition. We receive little from the great men of the cities. We have no need of such people to question our faith, or who dare to stand between us and our Mother Church. The Lord watches over us all.’
He had explained that he was the village’s ‘man of holy orders’, not a priest, he was a humble farmer who had accepted the mantel of holiness from his brothers and sisters in Puente de Congosto, and that he could do nothing to help pilgrims such as them, without first speaking to his communion.
‘Food is scarce…’
Brother Mariano finally returned as the afternoon shadows were folding across the yard. He was accompanied by a smiling woman and a girl carrying a cooking pot and two large earthenware jars. The girl had a bundle of what looked like blankets but turned out to be coarse, peasant dresses.
“We must assist pilgrims,” the man declared, loudly, throwing back his hood, “that is the will of the village. Even in such times as these. We have brought you food.” He studied Melody and Henrietta, attired as men. “You cannot travel in this country dressed so immodestly. When darkness falls, you must dress as our women dress and come down into Congosto to sleep.” He glanced to Albert Stanton. “You will stay overnight with me, Senor. In the morning you must go on your way.”
The Manhattan Globe man looked imploringly to Melody.
She guessed he still felt dutybound to honour whatever stupid promise he had made to Paul Nash back in Navalperal de Tormes about ‘looking after’ the ‘womenfolk’.