The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [183]
But the Spanish were not an easy prey. The Armada had entered the Channel in a single formation – a huge crescent seven miles across with the most heavily armed ships forming a protective screen all round its leading edge and the most vulnerable transports huddled in the centre. The English, harrying them from the rear, had scored some successes. On Sunday, three days before, they had inflicted horrible damage on some ships that had fallen behind and the next day they had taken several of these while the commander of one galleon, Don Pedro de Valdez, which had damaged its rigging by fouling another vessel, ignobly surrendered to Sir Francis Drake without even putting up a fight. But after that the Duke had ordered the wings of the great crescent to fold in behind and from then on the mighty fleet had proceeded up the Channel like a huge moving stockade.
In this new formation the Armada was almost impregnable. If the Spanish could not catch the English, the English could not dent the Spanish. Again and again they tried.
‘Take care,’ the Spanish captains had been warned. ‘The English gunners aim for the waterline.’ And on Tuesday, off the southern promontory of Portland, the English had given the Spanish everything they had. Yet although there had been a number of casualties, remarkably little damage had been done. This was partly because the English did not dare come too close. As a result, even the cannon balls from their largest cannon had lost much of their velocity before they struck the huge galleons and many of them just bounced off. The other reason, which would never be reported in the island kingdom, was plain. As Don Diego remarked to one of his companions: ‘I’m glad these English fellows aren’t terribly good shots.’
The Armada was almost impregnable, but not quite. And it was a minor success on the part of the English gunners that gave Don Diego his opportunity for glory now.
When Albion’s mother had told her son that his brother-in-law was an important captain in the Spanish army she had, as usual, overstated the case. What Catherine had actually written to her mother was that her husband Don Diego hoped to gain a command. Only in the celestial world of the Lady Albion’s imagination had this hope already been translated into a brilliant existence.
In truth, Don Diego had never had a career at all. He was a good man. He had elegant manners. He loved his wife, his children and his farms. And if, like every true aristocrat, he longed to add lustre to his family name, his happiness with his domestic life had always held him back. But now, in middle age, when a man knows that if he is ever to do anything with his existence he had better do it now, Don Diego had seen the prospect of the great expedition in England as a lifetime’s chance. His kinship with the Duke of Medina Sidonia, although distant, was real and had secured him a place on the flagship. And so this middle-aged man, whose marriage had saved his estate, and whose children loved him, went out to risk death so that he could bequeath them a little of the military glory that had so far been lacking in his homely life.
But what exactly was his position in this great enterprise? Why the same, exactly, as that of all the other gentlemen like him who were travelling with the Armada. There were scores of them in the fleet: rich gentlemen, poor nobles, royal princelings from all over Europe; there were bastard sons of Italian dukes in search of fame and plunder, plus, almost certainly, a natural son of the pious King of Spain himself. Some knew how to fight, some came to watch, some, like Don Diego, were vague about why they came. It was, after all, a crusade. But tonight, at last, Don Diego’s chance had