Armada

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, her shoulders shuddering with each breath she tried to draw. ‘They took everything. That antichrist Philip, and Mary, I pray her soul burns forever in hellfire. They left your father with nothing … and now we … we live …’ Tears overwhelmed her.

Seeley tightened his grip on her forearm, trying to reach her through her grief. He knew he could not. It was a scene he had witnessed too many times, from his youngest days, and the dormant anger within him reared its head once more.

He had never known the life his mother remembered, the life she had enjoyed in her youth and for the brief years after she married Seeley’s father. That social status and wealth had been seared from their grasp by the flames of execution. They had emerged from hiding with the death of Mary Tudor and the ascension of Elizabeth but the lives they had known before were lost forever. Privilege had become strife and over the years their pride was slowly consumed by supplication and labour.

Now his mother was a broken spirit, a shell of a woman, forced to watch her family scatter to the four winds in order to survive. Her loneliness and despair were palpable and Seeley fed off them, using them to fuel the fire of his hatred for the Roman Catholic foe. His thoughts went to the faceless traitor on board the Retribution and how he had slipped through his fingers. It was a bitter failure, one he could not dismiss. Despite Captain Varian’s suggestion that the traitor might be dead, Seeley was more convinced than ever that he was not.

Seeley had stood squarely with his countrymen and taken the fight to the Spaniards. They had destroyed the fleet at Cadiz, sacked the town of Sagres and cleansed its church, and taken dozens of supply ships, severely wounding the Armada. But it was not enough, not while even one Roman Catholic breathed English air. He would cleanse the realm of their heresy. He would do it for his faith, for his Queen, and finally, his other hand reaching forth to draw his mother into an embrace, for his family.

Robert stood in the middle of the street and slowly rubbed his leg. It was throbbing again after the horseback ride from Plymouth over sun-baked roads and he tentatively scratched the tingling skin above and below the wound. He straightened up to look down the length of the hill to the enclosed harbour of Brixham. All manner of fishing craft were moored there, many of them beached in the low tide. Robert tried to pick out his father’s boat from among the larger ones. He could not but he smiled as he thought of the craft in which he had first learned to sail.

Robert had never seen the sea before he came to Brixham when he was twelve. He could still remember the moment when he crested the hill on which the town was built and looked down over the expanse of water. It was a sight he had found both fascinating and fearsome. He vividly recalled the terror he had felt when his adopted father had first taken him to sea to learn his trade. Since that day Robert had come to know and appreciate every facet of the sea, its treachery and power, its beauty and endless opportunity. He had long since come to respect it – although he would never love it as he knew William Varian did.

Robert crossed the street and knocked on the door of the town house. It was one of the larger houses in the town, built in the more affluent area near the top of the hill. Robert looked over the roofs of the smaller houses and hovels beyond. The on-shore breeze carried the stench of habitation and Robert tracked the line of the open sewer running down the centre of the street to the sea. The houses of the poor were miserable hovels but the people were fortunate in their trade. As many as one summer in five could be bad in England, causing widespread crop failure and famine. For the people of Brixham an early winter might curb the fishing season, but it was rare they felt the full wrath of starvation.

The door opened and Robert was greeted by one of the servants who immediately turned on his heel and ran to tell the family that Robert was home. Robert moved into the parlour and smiled as he heard the raised voices of his parents. They rushed into the room together and after Robert managed to disengage himself from his mother’s embrace he heartily shook his father’s hand. His gaze lingered on William for a moment, wondering as always whether his real mother had looked anything like her brother William. She had died in childbirth delivering her firstborn and Robert had never known her.