SIX

1588

Mateo paused on the shore, waiting, as always, for Francisco to catch up, and gazed at the house. It seemed grim and forbidding, although he noticed two or three small and expensively glazed upper windows with their lower wooden shutters firmly closed against the weather. So there was a modicum of wealth here. It struck him that the young woman did not have the air of a peasant. There had been a certain confidence about the way she stood still, watching them for a while, the decisive way she strode off towards the house. She would have gone to raise the alarm, even though she hadn’t looked as if the sight of them had worried her very much. But then, he thought, with a wry smile, who would be thrown into any kind of panic by such warriors as they had become? Two more wretched, beaten souls it would be hard to imagine. No threat to anyone. Inadvertently, he found his hand reaching for the spot where the dagger still lay concealed at his breast, beneath the filthy linen shirt, the padded doublet and the battered jerkin, stiff with salt, noxious with the smell of damp leather and sweat. He found himself patting the spot gently. Perhaps some threat after all, if the need arose. He would not go quietly. But perhaps the need would not arise. He hoped not.

Mateo wondered, not for the first time, if he would be able to make himself understood sufficiently to explain their situation. He had managed it with McAllister, but he knew enough to realise that seasoned sailors often spoke foreign tongues. He himself spoke fluent English, better than Francisco certainly, whose skills all lay with music and painting. Scots was difficult but not beyond him. That being the case, he thought in passing, why were they here? Why in the name of God had he allowed his soft-hearted cousin to accompany him in such an enterprise? He had had some inkling of what lay ahead, but Francisco? None at all. He should not be here. They had been persuaded by Mateo’s father, who thought that Francisco needed ‘toughening up’.

‘It will make a man of him,’ he had said.

Instead, it had very nearly killed them both, and might yet prove fatal.

While Mateo was still very young, his father had engaged a tutor for him, a religious man of some learning who, displaced from the only life he had known in the monastery where he had lived for some twenty years, had fled England in 1540. He had then travelled bravely but perilously through France and Spain over many years, a pilgrim, and ultimately washed up like a piece of holy flotsam, like the sacred statue of the virgin herself, on the Guimar coast of Tenerife at Candelaria. The man had taught him Latin and Greek, English, a little French and more besides; something of philosophy and much more of his own great love: mathematics. He had inspired the same joy of numbers in Mateo. Following on from that, there had been the rudiments of navigation too, which Mateo had learned as much from a fascination with the underlying principles as from any great love of the sea. He had sailed between the islands many times with his uncle and his father, to La Gomera, where they had property, and to La Palma, where they had family. It had given him, he thought now, a false sense of his own capabilities. His father had taught him all he knew of warfare and fighting, not sparing him at all. He still had the scars to prove it. But he had been too inexperienced to know how little he really knew. What had seemed like an adventure in prospect had become a nightmare in reality. He wondered all the time if he had been responsible for persuading Francisco, who admired him enormously, to join in too. For all that his father had wished it, Mateo had exerted no real pressure, but he feared that his own restlessness may have infected his younger cousin. Francisco – Paco, they called him at home – had always followed him. And it would be true to say that Mateo had not actively deterred him. Had it been because he selfishly wanted company? A friend? Because he himself had not really wanted to go at all? The responsibility of that weighed heavily on him now, as it had done for the whole unhappy voyage.

In Ireland they had scarcely interacted with anyone, afraid of the inevitable consequences. The widow who had afforded them the convenience of her byre for a little while had spoken a mixture of Irish and the odd English word. It had struck him that it was much easier to make yourself understood when a tongue was foreign to both parties to the conversation. At last, when it became clear that only Mateo and Francisco were left alive, and when Mateo feared that his cousin might pre-empt the swords or nooses of the soldiers and die of fever or starvation or even terror, they had sought shelter from a night of driving rain in a remote graveyard. Did the rain never cease here? He remembered the white limestone slabs peeping through the turf, as though some massive skeleton were buried there, and the smaller human bones scattered on the surface of the graves, where the soil was too thin to cover them properly.

The building at the centre of the burial ground was small, plain and very strange, built of the same flat grey-white stones that littered the landscape, corbelled to form a roof. They took shelter inside, bedding down on the earth floor in front of a rudimentary altar consisting of a slab of limestone on two upright rocks. Well away from this altar was what looked as though it might have been a fireplace of some kind, although the smoke would only find its way out as best it could, there being no chimney. Looking at Francisco, shivering with the cold, Mateo thought he might have risked a fire, but having neither fuel nor flint, nor even a dry stick or two, the question did not arise. The place seemed more pagan than Christian, but it was the only shelter they could find in this remote and hostile landscape.

Surprisingly, they slept, and at the first light of day, were awoken by the unexpected arrival of a young man, riding on an elderly donkey. They had thought the place long abandoned. As though to avoid any antagonism from two ragged strangers, however travel worn and weary, the man immediately confessed himself to be a priest, Father Brendan, although his dark woollen hood and cloak were anonymous enough. He seemed more afraid of them than they were of him, but they communicated in a mixture of fractured English and Latin. It struck Mateo – and almost made him smile – that the gestures for a lack of aggression, for innocence, a spreading of open, weaponless hands, the act of backing away, a shrugging of shoulders, an ingratiating smile, were the same, even between such foreigners as they were. Like dogs intent on avoiding a fight, they understood this much, at least.

Peaceful intent established and the need to speak in English likewise, the priest told them that there was to be a burial in the graveyard the following day.

‘I have to make some preparations. A gravedigger will follow later, although the graves here are very shallow. The place is no longer really suitable for a good Christian burial, but an old woman of my parish has died, her husband is buried here and it was her dying wish to lie alongside him. Who am I to deny her? Besides, it will be easier to hold a Catholic requiem here, well away from prying eyes and ears.’

Mateo explained their situation as best he could, without going into too many of the dreadful details. He gave their names, Mateo and Francisco de Tegueste. The priest thought they were brothers, and he was tempted to agree, but then he remembered the word cousin. Father Brendan was clearly struggling with his own conscience. The tradition of his country and culture demanded a measure of hospitality to strangers, but how far should that hospitality extend when those strangers were most certainly the enemy, about whom so many dreadful tales had been told? Mateo had heard some of them himself, repeated and enlarged upon when he was aboard the Santa Maria de la Candelaria. Word had been put about that the Spanish carried whole torture chambers aboard their ships, specifically for the purpose of tormenting captured populations. That they murdered babies, raped women, branded the survivors in terrible ways. Tortures and mutilations on a previously unknown scale had been rumoured. Well, having witnessed what had happened in Ireland, it seemed to Mateo that both sides in this war were equally capable of hideous extremes of cruelty and depravity. But some of the tales had bordered on madness: that the Armada contained ships laden with pox-ridden whores, sent to infect fine upstanding Englishmen with deadly diseases. Some vessels were even said to be filled with wet nurses to suckle the hundreds of war-orphaned children. Any women at all would have been acceptable, wet nurses or whores alike, said some of the sailors, ruefully, but in the same breath they always acknowledged that there was little space even for the men themselves, never mind demanding mothers. People would believe the most incredible tales, and consequently their fear and hatred of any deemed ‘foreign’ grew, measure for measure.

It was clear that the priest had heard some of these stories himself, but could not reconcile them with the two half-drowned, starving rats taking shelter in his oratory. At last, he took bread from the panniers on his donkey’s back and a leather flask of ale, and encouraged them to eat and drink. They accepted gratefully, and watched while he made such meagre preparations as he deemed fit for his funeral service, sweeping away the white dust and accumulated dirt, the dead insects, the droppings of birds, mice and other small creatures, from the rudimentary altar, placing a couple of candles and a wooden cross there. Mateo offered to help, but he shook his head firmly. He found the grave that was to be redug, and left a marker there in the shape of a twisted hazel staff. Then he covered candles and cross with a shabby piece of linen, remounted his equally shabby donkey and beckoned to them to follow him.

‘I dare not give you any real shelter,’ he said, addressing his remarks to Mateo, who was managing to keep up with the very slow pace of the elderly beast, while Francisco followed in their wake, along a narrow track that wound away from the oratory and, if Mateo was not mistaken, towards the sea. This, the priest explained, was all that remained of an old ‘coffin road’ from a time many years ago when the oratory and the burial ground had been more used than now.

‘It was once the cell of a blessed anchorite,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you don’t know what that is? A holy woman. Her name was Niamh. People would come here and bring her food, drink, fuel, offerings of various kinds, and, in return, she would pray for the souls of the departed who were buried here.’

Mateo thought that it must have been a lonely and chilly existence, but a peaceful one. A peaceful existence seemed greatly to be desired at this moment, however lonely and chilly.

‘It would be more than my life was worth,’ Brendan continued, ‘if it were discovered that I had harboured Spaniards.’ He emphasised the word, as one might say ‘vermin’. ‘And the people of my parish have great need of me in these uncertain times. It is only because these remote lands are still under the sway of the great Gaelic chiefs that I have any measure of freedom to practise my religion, but even that seems to be under threat daily. It’s the only reason that such oratories as that one’ – he gestured back the way they had come – ‘are still in use from time to time. Nobody ventures out here who does not already know about it. But I have been asking the Good Lord what I am to do with you. For you.’ He corrected himself.

‘And has the Good Lord answered you?’ asked Mateo, solemnly. ‘We seem to be going towards the sea again.’

‘We are. My village is some miles farther on. But you say you came ashore on the west coast, and now we are heading more northerly as you can see by the position of the sun.’

Such as it is, thought Mateo, glancing at the pale circle in the sky, so shrouded in cloud that it might easily have been mistaken for the moon.

‘It seems to me,’ the man continued, ‘that you might meet with a more favourable reception in Scotland. There are many over there, especially in the west, who are no friends to Queen Elizabeth.’

‘No indeed.’

The Queen of Scotland had been executed by her cousin only the previous year. Long anticipated, the act – when news of it arrived – had nevertheless seemed extraordinarily brutal and unscrupulous. But kings and queens have their reasons and no doubt the shrewd Queen of England had hers. As to Mary of Scotland, Mateo knew only that she had once been very beautiful, a vain but soft-hearted and impulsive woman, who had been greatly wronged, cheated of her kingdom. His father had heard as much when news of these events travelled south. Mateo thought that he would never take anything at face value again, never believe anything but his own eyes. All the same, he had some stirring of interest at the thought of washing up on a Scottish shore. It had always seemed so utterly remote and unreal.

The priest drew his patient beast to a halt. ‘We’re very close to the coast of Scotland here, sir. I’ve never ventured forth from this island myself, but if you stand upon any high hill in these parts and look north-west on a clear day, you will see Scotland. I suspect that the sea holds few fears for you.’

‘Then you might suspect wrong, Father Brendan.’ Mateo permitted himself an anxious glance back at Francisco, who had barely been keeping up with them. ‘Paco?’ he called. Francisco smiled, and embarked on a shambling trot. It broke Mateo’s heart to see him. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Take your time.’ He turned back to the priest. ‘As you can see, Father, my young cousin is all but broken in body and spirit. He’s barely seventeen years old. The sea has been no friend to us these past months. But yes – I understand that Scotland might be our best hope of freedom. We might stand some small chance of beginning the long journey home from there.’

‘Then I may be able to help you. A mile from here, there is a decent enough harbour, with a few cottages, and an inn of sorts. I suggest you don’t venture in, but conceal yourselves somewhere and wait while I try to make some arrangements for you.’

‘What arrangements?’ Mateo asked suspiciously, though he saw no other way for it but to trust the priest.

Father Brendan sighed, as though reading his mind. ‘There is a Scotsman I know by the name of McAllister, and he captains a small merchantman. They call it a birlinn or galley in these parts. It is a ship that sails – as often as weather and tide permit – between here and some of the Scottish islands. He’s an unmarried man and when he’s not at sea, he frequents the inn.’

‘But if he’s not there?’

‘I have a fancy he is. I think I caught sight of him earlier today, as I passed by. He was drinking his ale and gazing at the sea. We exchanged a few words. Pleasantries. But of course, I didn’t know what was waiting for me at the oratory. The weather has been uncertain and I think he’s waiting only for wind and tide to suit him. These sailors rely on their pagan practices and superstitions when it comes to the sea,’ the priest added, regretfully. ‘They should be saying prayers to Our Lady! However, McAllister remarked that he would soon be sailing, since he smelled change in the air. The winds would be blowing from the right direction, he said, or some such observation. I don’t pretend to know much about the sea. But perhaps you do.’

‘I know something.’

‘I said that perhaps the sun might shine for old Brigid’s funeral, and he grinned at me and said he doubted that. He observed that it would be a rough passage to Scotland, but not impossible. He’s a man who is not averse to a risk here and there I fancy. The cargo changes with the seasons. And sometimes it is human cargo, I think. He could be persuaded to set you ashore on one of the more favourable islands. But he is not a generous man. I have to ask you, can you pay him anything? Do you have the wherewithal? For I would give you something if I could, but the truth is that I have little enough even for my own needs and those of my parishioners.’

The priest surveyed them doubtfully, clearly wondering if they had any resources at all and, if so, where they might be concealing them.

Mateo drew a deep breath. ‘I have a little money left. I’ve been saving it, hoarding it about my person, for desperate times.’ A few gold coins were stitched into the lining of his filthy undershirt. Along with another keepsake that he would, he thought, sooner die than have to sell. His talisman. His luck. But perhaps the coins would be enough. And if not enough, then the knife might suffice. One way or another. ‘Father Brendan, it seems to me that all times have been desperate for us, of late, and now I must spend what little I have left, for surely this is the only way in which I can hope to save my life – and his.’ He looked back at Francisco, who had managed to catch up with them, and was now seated on a stone, trying to pretend that all was well with him, when he was clearly exhausted. The priest looked thoughtfully at him, took a small leather flask from inside his cloak, and motioned him to drink. The spirit brought an unaccustomed flush to his cheek and a smile to his lips.

Brendan took the flask and handed it to Mateo in turn. ‘Drink. It will put heart into you.’

The spirit was rough and heady and did indeed put heart into him. Into them both. It gave them the strength they needed for a final push. They concealed themselves as best they could in a grove of thin hazels while Father Brendan rode on to see if he could arrange their passage at a price they could afford.