The Stranger House (33 page)

There followed a selection of what Molloy obviously regarded as juicy samples of Tyrwhitt’s torturing technique, with explanatory notes to ensure the reader knew what was going on. Names were mentioned, but nowhere did Father Simeon’s name appear.

The piece ended with an enjoinder to readers on their next family outing to Jolley Castle to remember as they ate their cream teas in the café what had once gone on not very far beneath their feet, the implication being that it would put an edge on their appetites.

A final note gave the information that Liam Molloy was currently working on a book called
Topcliffe and Friends, An Illustrated History of Torture in the Age of Elizabeth,
with a tentative publication date the following year.

Man proposes, God disposes, thought Madero with more satisfaction than piety, for which he reproved himself.

He deleted the article, brought up the e-mail he’d already written to Max and added a postscript:

Back upstairs in his room he leaned on the low sill and peered out through the tiny window. Above the sun-gilt fells he could see a sky as blue as any he’d seen in Andalusia. He lowered his gaze till he picked out the twisted chimneypots of Illthwaite Hall. Frek was up there. And maybe the answer to his questions was up there too, but getting close to either wasn’t going to be easy.

He turned to look down at the fragile sheets containing the neat ciphers of Simeon Woollass, so very different from the crazed and crazy scribblings through which he’d first encountered the man.

The longer he kept quiet about his removal of the coded journal, the harder it was going to be to reestablish relations with the Woollasses.

It was no good telling himself he’d only done what any other scholar worth his salt would have done.

This wasn’t just a question of scholarly standards and historical research. This was personal, this was where God had been directing him for months, years, perhaps all his life. Max had called it a red herring. He was wrong. Mig felt he knew all about red herrings. Hadn’t he spent many years of his life following one?

And no matter what the cost, he wasn’t about to risk going astray a second time.

He sat on the bed with his laptop and settled down once more to read what he feared were the last words of his namesake and distant ancestor.

My name is Miguel Madero son and heir of Miguel Madero of … no, not heir, for he is dead … I saw him die, most foully slain … oh my father, my father.

On my sixteenth birthday my father (whose soul now flies high over the treacherous oceans with the angels) let me sail with him in our lovely ship,
La Gaviota
, for the first time. To Cyprus we voyaged and Crete and beyond. Our trade went well, our fine wine was much appreciated and highly valued, we took payment in gold and goods, and the sky was blue, the wind fair, the hold richly laden, and dolphins danced beneath our bow as
La
G
av
io
ta
flew homeward across that friendly sea. Everyone said I had quitted myself well and I could hardly wait for landfall so that I could show my mother and my sisters that I was a boy no longer. Never in my short life had I felt so perfectly happy. The world lay before me, a sunlit happy place. I sang a joyous hymn of thanks to the Blessed Virgin for the goodness and mercy she had poured upon me with such a generous and unstinting hand. There was nowhere in the most hidden corner of my being for even the shadow of a dream of such a terrible place as this northern wilderness, with its cold rain, its biting gales, its vile customs and its cruel and savage people …

Father, I know I should forgive—I pray you, show me how.

When we landed at our home port of Cadiz, there were soldiers waiting for us on the quay under the command of a boy not much older than myself, who waved a scented handkerchief to keep the smell of unwashed sailors from his nostrils and told my father he was Bernardo de Bellvis, nephew of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander by His Majesty’s command of the great fleet which was soon to set sail for England and bring that errant nation back to the fold of the True Church. Merchant ships were being commandeered for service in the Armada. My father had thought himself lucky in the spring of the previous year when
La Gaviota
had put to sea only days before the foul pirate Drake so treacherously attacked Cadiz, sinking many vessels and making off with much good wine. But now he felt he was paying for his luck when de Bellvis produced papers giving him authority to take over the ship and sail her to Lisbon to join the others.

He seemed to think he could step aboard instantly and be on his way in a minute, but happily there were more seasoned officers in his force who listened to my father when he protested that the ship would need to be refitted and provisioned before they could think of sailing. These same officers, though obliged to acknowledge this Bernardo as their military chief, had no desire to put their lives in his hands as navigator, and were pleased when my father volunteered to retain sailing command of
La Gaviota.
I begged to be allowed to accompany him. My mother, however, was loud in opposition, too loud, for if she had worked at my father in private he might have agreed with her, but he could not let himself be seen to be ruled by his wife, and so I was admitted to the crew.

My friends were all envious, but my mother wept, and so did Maria, my affianced bride, the daughter of Benito Perez
Montalvo. We had been pledged in marriage when she was five and I was seven, and so used were her chaperones to seeing us together as children that even though we were now no longer children, they saw no harm to let us roam alone out of their sight. And when I saw how she wept, I comforted her and she lay soft in my arms, and, Father forgive me, I scarce know how it happened, but I took her, meaning no harm as our wedding was planned within a twelvemonth anyway. Yet I know that it is the devil’s voice which urges us to sin because we mean no harm.

God spare Maria that no evil has come out of my ill-using, for I fear that I may never see her again in this life.

No, my friend, my namesake, thought Madero. No evil came of it. Only
El Bastardo
who preserved our line and on whom all our family fortunes are based. It was God at work when you took your fiancée in your arms, not the devil’s. But you do not need me to tell you that now.

We sailed to Lisbon, where there was further fitting of armament, then at the end of May the command was given for the Great Armada to set forth to destroy the infidel queen.

Our first port of call was Corunna to take on fresh provision. It was an ill-omened voyage from the start with storms blowing up to scatter us far and wide before the expedition was yet properly begun. But
Gaviota
came to no harm, no thanks to de Bellvis who, if he had his way, would have run us aground on the Galician coast, so fearful was he of the tempest and eager to be back on land.

Towards the end of July we were all gathered together once more and sailed for England. I know not what our Commander planned. Perhaps it was to lure all the English ships into one place; if so, his plan worked too well, for soon after
a battle in which we lost the
Rosario
and the
San Salvador
we were pursued along the foot of England towards the narrow straits of Calais where more of the enemy lay in wait.

Here we anchored, all men disputing what course to follow. And while we argued, our foes acted, putting fire to some of their own ships in the night and sending them drifting among us.

There was no time even to raise anchor. We took axes to our cables and scattered.

This was not how I had imagined a sea battle. I had thought of ships grappling close, brave men fighting hand to hand, driving each other from deck to deck till one party gave way. Instead we seemed to drift aimlessly, till suddenly we came in range of an enemy ship and for a short while the air would burn with ball and shot. Men died, ships foundered, but no one knew who was winning, who losing. Many times my father’s commands took us out of danger, though usually de Bellvis was screaming opposite orders. Happily the men ignored him. Finally a ball took him through the chest and he fell over the side, still ranting, which was the only good sight I saw all day.

Now a storm blew up, driving us first towards the Flemish sandbanks, then, as the wind changed, north with the enemy in pursuit. Soon they abandoned the chase, perhaps deciding we were no longer a danger, in which they were right for when our depleted forces once more came together, orders were received from the Commander to continue north and make our return to Spain by sailing right round the head of the isle of Britain.

The season was summer, yet the further north we went, the wilder grew the seas. With my father in command we still had hope and when at last we turned south with a strong wind at our backs, our hearts rose. Alas for our hopes. Soon the wind became a gale before which we sped with little
control. Then the wind shifted from the north to the west and the coast which had till now been but a thin line of darkness far to port began to loom large till at last we could see the waves crashing on the shore.

And then we struck. Water came pouring into poor
Gaviota
from beneath as well as above. What boats we had were long since carried away. My father gave the order, “Save yourself who can!’ Then, seizing a barrel with one hand and me with the other, he leapt into the arms of the ocean which flung us around at her own sweet will. I felt darkness descending on me and scarce had time to say a prayer before I lost all sense.

When I opened my eyes again, all was calm. I lay on my back. My body felt cold and wet but above the sky was blue and there was sunlight on my face.

I moved my head and saw I was lying in a shallow rock pool on a broad beach close to where a narrow river found its way into the sea.

Giving thanks to God, I turned my head further, and the thanks choked in my throat.

About twenty yards away I saw my father. He lay on his back. Over him stooped two men, not offering succour, but trying to drag the jewelled rings off his finger. My father awoke. I doubt if he knew what was happening to him but he raised his head and spoke. And without hesitation or thought, one of the men took a broad dagger from his waist and slit his throat, and then started chopping at his fingers with the same weapon.

I must have cried out in anguish and protest, for they both looked my way.

The ruffian with the dagger straightened up, freed the ring from my father’s severed finger, wiped the blood negligently against his breeches, then came towards me.

His intent was clear. I tried to rise and flee but had no strength. He did not trouble to hurry, so certain was he of my
defencelessness. Now he towered over me, now he stooped to bring the knife to my throat. I felt the steel against my skin and tried to gabble some prayer commending my soul to my maker.

But it was not yet my appointed time. Suddenly I saw him seized from behind by a woman who dragged him backward, screaming words I could not understand.

He hit her with the back of his hand. She fell to the ground but still kept yelling at him. He looked from her to me as if assessing what she was saying. Then he shrugged, snarled at her and, pausing only to remove from my person what small ornament I carried, he returned to plundering my father’s corpse.

This was my first view of the man I came to know as Thomas Gowder. The woman was his wife, Jenny. And the other man was Gowder’s brother, Andrew, as like to him as grapes on a vine, and equal also in evil.

They took me with them from the beach to which they had come, I learned later, in search of freshwater pearls at the mouth of the river. They had a small cart pulled by a skinny pony in which the two men travelled while the woman walked behind, which was shame to them but life to me, for without her help I would surely have stumbled and fallen, upon which I do not doubt they would have murdered me without compunction.

We came eventually after some hours of travel to the house I now know as Foulgate Farm. Here I was thrust into a byre with two cows and the door was locked. Later the woman came to me with some bread and water and spoke to me in a low voice. I did not understand her words but guessed from the way she spoke and some fearful glances she sent to the door that she was here without knowledge or consent of the men.

With food in my stomach, my young body soon regained its strength, but my mind and spirit, thrown down by my father’s death and the dreadful manner of it, were not so easily salved. Here too without the aid of Mistress Jenny I might have given
myself over so completely to despair that either I would have choked my heart with grief or damned my soul with self-destruction. But she held me to her like a mother and whispered words which, though I did not understand them, contained messages of comfort.