The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [185]
He went down into the captain’s big cabin in the stern. There was a large chair there and he sat in it. He was tired, but he felt a sense of satisfaction at what he had done. Well, nearly done. He was exhausted, but he smiled. For a moment, a wave of sleepiness almost overcame him, but he shook his head to drive it off. It would be time, he thought, in a little while, he’d go back on deck again.
Don Diego’s head sank on to his chest.
Albion inwardly groaned. It was the middle of the night and still, God help them, his mother had not gone to bed.
The oak-panelled parlour was brightly lit: she had ordered fresh candles an hour ago. And now, for perhaps the fourth time – he had lost the will to keep count – she had worked herself up to a climax of fervour again.
‘Now is the time, Clement. Now. Saddle your horse. The game’s afoot. Summon your men.’
‘It is the middle of the night, Mother.’
‘Go up to Malwood,’ she cried. ‘Light the beacon. Call the muster.’
‘All I have asked, Mother,’ he said patiently, ‘is that we wait until dawn. Then we shall know.’
‘Know? Know what?’ Her voice rose now to a pitch that might have pleased any preacher. ‘Have we not seen, Clement? Have we not seen them coming?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said flatly.
‘Oh!’ She threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘You are weak. Weak. All of you. If only I were a man.’
If you were a man, thought Albion privately, you would have been locked up long ago.
It had been late afternoon when the Armada had been sighted. The two of them, with a party of other gentlemen and ladies, had gathered at the top of the ridge by Lymington from which there was a fine view over Pennington Marshes down the English Channel. As soon as the distant ships had come in sight his mother had started to become highly agitated and he had been forced to take her horse’s bridle, pull her to one side and whisper urgently: ‘You must dissemble, Mother. If you cry for the Spanish now, you will ruin everything.’
‘Dissemble. Yes. Ha-ha,’ she had cried. Then, in a whisper which, surely, must have reached well beyond Hurst Castle. ‘You are right. We must be wise. We shall be cunning. God save the queen!’ she had suddenly shouted, so that the ladies and gentlemen turned in surprise. ‘The heretic,’ she hissed with delighted venom.
For three nerve-wracking hours they had continued to watch as the Armada came eastwards. The wind had been dropping and its progress seemed slower and slower. The English fleet, drawn up in tidy squadrons now, was visible not far behind. Before long, several small, swift vessels could be seen detaching themselves from their squadrons and making their way swiftly across the waters towards the Solent entrance. In less than an hour, two had navigated the entrance and anchored in the lee of Hurst Castle, while two more had pressed on towards Southampton. Soon they could see the men from Hurst Castle going out in lighters laden with powder and shot, and as soon as the two vessels had taken on all that could be spared they sped off again towards the fleet, from which tiny puffs of smoke and fire could be seen from time to time, accompanied, after a long pause, by a faint roar like receding thunder.
The Armada, so far, showed no sign of making towards the English shore. The ships remained in silhouette, a mass of tiny spikes like cut-outs, inching along the horizon line. On the Isle of Wight the garrison still had not lit the second or third beacons. But as darkness began to fall and the distant show resolved itself into a few sporadic flashes, Albion’s mother remained as committed as ever to her former belief. ‘They will turn and approach us under cover of darkness, Clement,’ she assured him confidently. ‘They’ll be in the Solent by morning.’ And so she had been saying ever since.
Albion glanced across at