The Heretics (26 page)

Towards the south, plumes of dense black smoke were visible for many miles around. Sir Francis Godolphin raised his hand to call a halt to his troop. They looked down from the higher ground above Penzance, and saw four galleys at anchor, close to the shoreline on the south-western coast of Mount’s Bay.

‘In God’s name, that’s the village of Mousehole ablaze,’ the deputy Lord Lieutenant said, horror in his voice. ‘So it is true.’

At his side, Shakespeare’s hand went to his sword hilt. All along the coastal path, he could see streams of people hurrying away from the fires, northwards in the direction of Penzance. He could see no Spanish soldiers, but he could hear explosions as they mined houses with gunpowder.

Suddenly he realised the date. It was the twenty-third day of July. The letter found aboard
The Ruth
had mentioned the twenty-third, though there had been no month.
Yours, in the love of Christ our only saviour and Gregory, great England’s truest friend, this twenty-third day.
Was this the start? Was the long-feared invasion to start this day?

The commander summoned his two closest lieutenants. ‘Ride ahead, ensure that men are gathering at the green. There must be no panic, no retreating. Tell them there are only four galleys. There cannot be that many enemy soldiers; surely no more than seventy or eighty. Instil courage in our men. Tell them they will be reinforced soon, by sea and by land.’

The lieutenants kicked on.

Shakespeare had doubts. His main fear was that there could be many more troops than Godolphin estimated. Large galleys, such as the ones in the bay, equipped with both sails and oars – galleasses – could hold a hundred soldiers each with room to spare.

Worse than that was the knowledge that the Spanish already had a beachhead. The only point at which this ragtag force of Godolphin’s could have stopped seasoned fighting men in their tracks was when they were wading ashore, burdened with armour and arms. Now, it was too late. And who knew how many other ships were stood out to sea, protecting the galleys should Drake’s fleet arrive. Indeed, the horrible thought struck home that this could all be a trap, a means to lure the ships at Plymouth out of their safe harbour.

The scene on the greensward to the west of Penzance was one of utter chaos. Men in fishermen’s smocks and hats were clutching any weapon that came to hand. Some had mooring rods from their boats; others had old billhooks and bows and arrows.

They surged forward as Godolphin’s wagon of weapons and armour arrived. His men tried to bring order to the throng. ‘What skill have you? Have you used pike or halberd? Are you well trained in bowmanship?’ Each man was handed a weapon dependent upon his answer.

Women and children milled around among their menfolk. Some carried packs of hastily snatched belongings and food. Godolphin drew one of his pistols from his belt and fired it in the air. Some people began to scatter, thinking they were under attack, but their din of clattering arms and wild talking died down enough for Godolphin’s booming voice to be heard.

‘I will have order! Line up in ranks, from west to east. The chief man of each village is to come to me.’ He nodded to the men who had accompanied him from Godolphin Hall. ‘Line them into squadrons of a dozen men. Anyone between the ages of twelve and sixty. None are to move away on pain of death. Women and younger children to carry on without their men and seek refuge where they may, in Penzance or beyond.’

Two men trudged towards him.

‘Who are you?’ Godolphin demanded of the older of the two, a thickset fisher with little hair and hands like frying pans.

‘Jacob Keigwin of Mousehole.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘They came out of the morning mist. We did not see them until they were upon us. They drove ashore in shallops, which are still on the beach. Three hundred or more soldiers, mostly with hagbuts and pikes, all in heavy armour. They strode into Mousehole as if they owned the place. Turned us out of our houses and began to fire them with pitch and powder.’

‘Did they kill villagers?’

‘My brother Jenken. He would not let them take his house, so they shot him dead where he stood. We had nothing to fight them with and came away, thinking to raise the trainband at Penzance.’

Shakespeare listened with dismay. If this was happening here, were there simultaneous attacks elsewhere along the coast? And where did this group of raiders plan to go next? Would they march eastwards towards the heart of England?

‘I am sorry to hear about your brother,’ Shakespeare said, ‘but I must ask you, where are the Spaniards now?’

Another man stepped forward. ‘Some of them marched up to Paul village and set fire to the church, which is the most ungodly act I ever heard of.’

‘How many of them? What are their arms?’ Godolphin pressed.

‘I would say a thousand. They are like men built of steel with guns the manner of which I have not seen.’

‘Well, return to your squadrons and help keep them in good order. I am relying on men such as you. Stout men with hearts of Cornwall and England.’

Godolphin looked at Shakespeare. They were not going to get an accurate view of the Spanish invaders from these villagers. The two men shuffled off, back to their friends.

‘We need sound intelligence,’ said Shakespeare. ‘A scout to bring back definite numbers, movements and armaments of the enemy. I will go.’

Chapter 26

H
E
TOOK
TWO
wheel-lock pistols, both primed with powder and loaded with shot, and a map drawn by Godolphin, and rode towards the little fishing village of Newlyn. There he tethered the horse and began the long steep climb inland on foot.

A black dog loped past him downhill. Otherwise the dusty path was deserted and the fishers’ houses were empty. Acrid fumes from the burning dwellings in the nearby villages of Mousehole and Paul blew across the sky in a black cloud. At the top of the hill, he stopped in the shade of a windblown tree and consulted his sketchy chart. He could see Paul less than half a mile away, ablaze, the flames leaping and roaring. As he got closer, the smoke thinned and he ducked down behind a grass-covered knoll. He could see Spanish soldiers on the northern fringe of the village. Some were lined up in order, defensively. Others sat and smoked pipes or drank from clay jugs, refreshing themselves from the hot work of destroying other men’s homes and possessions. None looked in his direction.

Shakespeare moved in short bursts, from cover to cover, behind hedgerows and trees, going around the village’s western margins. Finally, as he came closer to open ground, he dropped to his belly and crawled. He spotted a sentry, some two hundred yards from the village, standing nonchalantly, his pike resting over his shoulder. Shakespeare pulled out his dagger and wondered about taking him, but he was too close to the village. He let him live, and skirted around him.

On the south-western edge of the village, he came across two men, standing by a cottage some distance from the rest of the troops. One wore the clothes of a workman: hide jerkin and hose. The other looked like a senior Spanish officer. Shakespeare moved on through the woods, keeping them in view. When he was close enough, he dashed at a crouch to the shelter of a wagon, laden with crates of fish, not more than twenty yards from the two men. Above them, the roof of the house crackled and burnt, but they paid it no heed.

Looking out from between the wheels of the heavy oak cart, Shakespeare strained to hear what the two men were saying. Suddenly, they both laughed, and the officer slapped the workman on the back. As the man turned, Shakespeare got a good view of his features. The jerkin might be that of a labourer or a blacksmith, but the smooth, tanned skin, the handsome face and the long, well-kept brown hair were those of a gentleman. The officer said something in Spanish, which Shakespeare could not quite catch, and his companion drew his sword from its scabbard. He ran his finger along the razor-sharp edge and drew blood.

‘See how my sword weeps . . .’

Shakespeare froze. He had spoken in perfect English.

The man licked the blood from his finger and grinned at the Spanish officer, then they turned and walked back into the village.

For the next hour, Shakespeare hid in undergrowth and in whatever cover he could find, watching the soldiers’ movements, counting their strength and assessing their armaments. Finally, when he had learnt as much as he could, he began to descend the hill towards Mousehole, keeping to the woods that shrouded the steep, narrow pathway.

From a vantage point just above the little fishing port, he saw that thirty shallops – longboats for transporting men ashore from large vessels – were beached, just as Jacob Keigwin had indicated. He concealed himself in undergrowth where he could watch and wait. Spanish soldiers were everywhere – above and below him – destroying everything they found.

In the middle of the afternoon, the soldiers in Paul suddenly began to move. They were lined up by their officers and marched downhill to Mousehole. They passed within twenty yards of his hiding place, their arms shouldered. He counted them: three hundred in all. And he reckoned a hundred more had stayed at Mousehole to protect the boats. That meant a total strength of four hundred.

Within half an hour, they had embarked on the shallops. And then they were gone, leaving only fire and ashes in their wake.

As the longboat rowers hauled across the still seas of Mount’s Bay to the galleys, Shakespeare watched them from the shade of a tree on the hillside. In the distance, across the bay, stood the fortress of St Michael’s Mount, its heavy cannon too far away to attack the vessels. He could not see the green where Godolphin was attempting to raise a defence force. Would it be needed, though? Had the Spaniards gone for good, or was this return to their vessel merely the prelude to another attack, somewhere further along the coast? Was this all a test of defences? Or was it, as he had already wondered, something more: a ruse to lure Drake’s ships from safe harbour at Plymouth, or even the first shots in an invasion?

He turned and strode downhill between the burning, blackened ruins of family homes and outhouses. At the harbour shore all the fishing boats had been coated in pitch and set ablaze. In a scene of desolation, only one house remained unburnt. A man’s body was sprawled, half in, half out of the doorway, surrounded by a dark stain of blood in the dust. Shakespeare turned him over. This must be Jenken Keigwin, who had refused to leave his house to the fire. Shakespeare felt sick; if he had ever doubted the rightness of the war of secrets that he and Sir Robert Cecil fought, those qualms had gone for ever.

Shakespeare looked out to sea once more and realised with dismay that the longboats were not returning to the galleasses after all, but were heading north towards Newlyn and Penzance. And in their wake came the main ships, their ranks of slave oarsmen rowing hard, their big guns already rolled out. For Godolphin’s band of defenders it would be a deadly onslaught.

Encumbered by his sword and pistols, Shakespeare ran along the cliff path until his lungs burnt from exertion and the choking smoke.

He reached Newlyn in about ten minutes, to find his horse still there. He pulled himself up into the saddle just as the first of the longboats reached the shore. The galleasses, meanwhile, had moved on north towards the green where the defenders were preparing to make their stand. As he kicked on, he saw that the four vessels were stopping, ready to stand off, no more than a hundred yards from the English militia.

The first bombardment came as he rode towards the green. A shattering blast of powder, the guns belching fire and smoke as they hurled their iron balls and stones at human flesh.

And then he spotted Lucia Trevail. She sat astride her horse like a man, at the side of Sir Francis Godolphin. She had a pistol in her hand. It was pointing out to sea, towards the galleys. She pulled the trigger, the steel wheel spun, the spark lit the touchpowder. Smoke and fire spewed forth and the shot was hurled harmlessly into the water.

She looked across at him with a curious smile. ‘Ah, Mr Shakespeare, I thought you had run away.’

He rode forward and came alongside her. ‘What in the name of God are you doing here, my lady?’

‘Shooting at Spaniards. What else should I be doing? How many would you like me to kill to prove that I am no traitor to England?’

‘You must return to the safety of Trevail Hall.’ He turned to Godolphin. ‘Sir Francis—’

Godolphin shrugged his shoulders helplessly. ‘She is beyond my reckoning, Mr Shakespeare. Always has been.’

‘My lady, this is no place for you. Hundreds of heavily armed enemy soldiers are presently coming ashore no more than half a mile from here. They are in murderous mood.’

‘Mr Shakespeare, did you learn nothing when you came to our little gathering at Susan’s house in Barbican Street? Do you think the ladies you met there are fainthearts who would be ruled by men or would miss the spectacle of a Spanish invasion? Anyway, I have brought three of my retainers. They will soon learn to be fighting men if they wish to remain in my employ.’

She tilted her head in the direction of three serving men standing beside packhorses. They bowed at her gaze and, thought Shakespeare, looked mighty disconsolate.

‘You are not practised in the art of war. Look around you at the damage being wrought. At least one man has already been killed. Others are fleeing for their lives.’

‘I know how to shoot a pistol as well as any man. And you must know that when I return to court, the first thing Her Royal Majesty will demand of me is a full account of this day’s events. How, I beseech you, will I provide her with the detail she requires, unless I witness whatever befalls? I would not miss it, sir. Come, allow me some courage. Does not Elizabeth herself have the heart of a king?’

Shakespeare sighed. He looked to Godolphin for support, but he was preoccupied with sending messengers to collect arms and men. Well, so be it. For the moment, he had other things to do, the first of which was to move the English militia to a better defensive position. He rode to Godolphin’s side and interrupted him.