Day of Deliverance Read online

  “No mistake, Jack – this is war.”

  Jack and Angus were squashed into a wooden barrel that was open at the top. Above them was clear sky. Jack popped his head over the edge of the barrel and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were suspended forty metres in the air above a choppy, grey sea. Seconds ago, before the time transport, they had been in the safehouse. The barrel swung from side to side in a giddy arc. It felt like some sort of mad fairground attraction. In fact, they were in the crow’s nest of an English battleship. But this was no ordinary battleship – they were soaring high above the deck of The Revenge, Sir Francis Drake’s flagship, as it led the English line towards the Spanish Armada. The ship’s motion in the water was transmitted through the masts so that at the crow’s nest the movement was wildly accentuated. Jack’s response was to cling on to the edge of the barrel to avoid being flung into the abyss below. But his terror was replaced by goggle-eyed incredulity when he surveyed the scene beneath them.

  A scene from the battle of Gravelines

  The sea around them was thick with ships of all shapes and sizes – massive galleons, barges and hulks – some powered by sail, some by oars and some by both. Everywhere, they could see white canvas sails billowing in a freshening wind and a forest of masts, fighting tops and the complex tracery of rigging. The sails of the great Spanish galleons were emblazoned with giant red crosses. Behind them, the English ships were adorned with the St George cross, the royal standard and the rose of the House of Tudor.

  “Ships… everywhere…” Angus gasped in amazement.

  “Look…”

  Jack pointed to a very large Spanish galleon on which The Revenge was rapidly closing in. They could even make out the lettering on its side – San Martin – the Spanish flagship. With its raised castles, fore and aft, it towered over The Revenge, which by contrast was built for speed and agility. They were close enough to see men with muskets and arquebuses in the fighting tops of the San Martin and lines of close-packed soldiers along the rail of the decks ready to fire. Jack knew that the Spanish would try to grapple and board the English ship, but they had already learned from bitter, earlier experiences on the Armada campaign that the English would not allow them to do so. Instead, using their greater manoeuvrability, the English would keep just out of grappling distance and one by one they would use their superior gunnery to pick off and pulverise each lumbering Spanish galleon, like a pack of hungry wolves descending on a helpless, tethered cow.

  “Cling on. Looks like we’re going in,” Angus said.

  The Revenge was less than twenty metres from the San Martin when first her bow guns and then her broadside guns erupted in cannon fire. Although Jack and Angus were above the main action, they were still in danger, but the spectacle had a hypnotic momentum and they stared in wonder as they inched past the San Martin. Jack could see that there were holes in her sails already and some of her magnificent carpentry had been reduced to matchwood. They could hear screaming from the close-packed decks and upper works as chain-shot, hail-shot and cube-shot, each designed to maim, kill and destroy in its own unique and bloody way, took their terrible toll.

  Jack looked away and tried to focus on his feet and the inside of the barrel, but Angus continued to stare – his face lined in horror.

  “Those poor guys…”

  Finally, The Revenge drifted clear, but the plight of the San Martin was not over. Behind them, the rest of Drake’s squadron, followed by Frobisher’s squadron, headed by The Triumph and Hawkins’s squadron in The Victory, lined up in turn to pummel the San Martin. They now saw other ships of the Armada rallying to protect the San Martin, but the English cannons pounded relentlessly in a progressive rumble as the cannons fired successively along the length of each ship.

  Suddenly, a round of chain shot from a Spanish ship spun through the upper rigging of The Revenge. It hit the upper mast and sliced through the rope that tethered the crow’s nest. Jack and Angus felt the barrel lurch violently as the securing ropes fell away. The barrel inverted itself, although somehow it remained hanging by a single thread. Jack and Angus could do nothing to save themselves. Sliding out of the upturned barrel, Angus was propelled through empty space, but before he could reach any speed, he slammed into a cross-spar that broke his fall. He clawed desperately at a flapping rope secured from the mast above, which he finally managed to reach and cling on to. But then, a second shot shredded the cross-spar, which promptly collapsed, leaving Angus suspended in the rigging, twenty metres up, swinging from side to side like a human pendulum.

  Jack was only slightly luckier. As he was launched deckwards, the furious assault from the Spanish ship dislodged the upper gallant and its huge billowing sail floated seawards like a giant parachute. Jack, accelerating rapidly through the air, landed square on top of the rolling canvas as it floated down. The sail deposited him gracefully on the foredeck of The Revenge, before folding in on itself and floating gently into the sea. Jack had no time to reflect on his incredible escape. The deck of The Revenge was alive with men fighting for their lives. He craned his neck upwards, searching the rigging for any sign of Angus, but he could see nothing.

  “You there!” a man shouted. “Gun deck!”

  With no time to think, Jack found himself being bundled below. The gun deck was a single, low-ceilinged cavern. The massive trunks of the ship’s masts passed directly through it, rising from the floor and up through the roof. Inside the gun deck, Jack could see that every timber was black with spent powder. There were huge iron guns decorated with coats of arms, which rested on massive carriages held on wheels cut from whole sections of tree trunk. The oak planking around them was grooved where the guns had been run in and out time and again. Piles of shot and cartridges of black powder were stacked in the lockers by the guns alongside ramrods, powder scoops and match cord. Suddenly, a cannon ball from a Spanish ship ripped though the planking of the gun deck, unleashing a blizzard of splinters. Jack saw one man collapse, impaled by a shard of wood. But his comrades kept grimly to the routine of their work. As the men sweated, the master gunners barked orders. It was a scene from hell, and Jack knew that if he stayed he would die. Nobody noticed as he bolted back up on deck.

  But the deck of The Revenge was more nightmarish than the scene below. Jack gagged on the smell of gunpowder, which was heavy in the air. The smoke from the guns cloaked the water in great billows of dark mist causing ships to appear and disappear like hulking beasts. The bodies of the injured and dying lay across the deck of The Revenge, but it was nothing compared to the damage to the Spanish ships. Some ships were close and Jack could see that their sails were tattered and torn and their splintered decks strewn with the dead, blood pouring from the scuppers as they heeled in the wind.

  “Down here!”

  Jack swivelled round. “Angus!”

  “How did you…?”

  “Never mind about that. I found the others – come on!”

  Jack followed Angus into the aft-castle of The Revenge and down into the captain’s cabin. It was strewn with broken furniture, books and the half-emptied bags that Jack had seen at the safe house. Tony was near the shattered rear windows wrestling with some sort of large tubular device. To one side, Joplin knelt by Gordon, who groaned in pain.

  “What happened to him?” Jack asked.

  “Gun shot – got him in the shoulder,” Joplin said. “Keep your heads down – the cabin has already been hit twice.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Think so – if we can get him home quickly while we still have the time signal.” Joplin nodded towards Tony. “But you two need to help over there – we’ve got a problem.”

  Then Jack heard it. Over the sound of the cannon, gun fire and sailors’ cries, they could hear the shrill whine of an aircraft engine and a loud mechanical whirring. Jack and Angus peered gingerly through the windows at the rear of the captain’s cabin. Emerging from the billowing clouds of gun smoke, a black military helicopter appeared, hovering a mere te
n metres above the water. The machine was utterly incongruous with the great sailing ships of the Armada.

  Joplin had said that Pendelshape would require a ‘decisive military advantage’ to defeat the English fleet and give the Spanish the naval superiority they would need to stage the invasion of England. It was now clear how that advantage would be achieved and how the Armada would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In a final throw of the dice, Pendelshape was about to give Philip II his day of deliverance and change the course of history for ever.

  “What is that?” Jack said.

  “Helicopter gun-ship,” Tony answered. “Pendelshape and the Revisionists have transported it back on the time signal. We got here at the right time.”

  “It’s a what?”

  “A Westland WAH-64 Apache – the British army version. It’s got the Rolls-Royce engines, a chain gun that will fire over six hundred rounds a minute, and those pods on the side carry hellfire and CRV7 rockets. It’s a beast,” Angus said in admiration.

  “Never mind that – Pendelshape is inside with a co-pilot and God knows what else. We haven’t got much time before he takes out the whole of the English fleet – and us with it.”

  Jack and Angus looked at the strange device that Tony was wrestling with as he spoke. It was like a fat steel tube. There was a large sight attached to the top and a trigger underneath.

  “What is that thing? Looks like a bazooka.”

  “It’s a MANPAD,” Tony said.

  “Is that a real word?”

  “Does it really matter?” Tony replied in frustration. “It’s a Man Portable Air Defence System. One of the toys we brought back with us. There…” Tony said triumphantly, “we’re ready.”

  Angus nodded through the window. “Well, I hope so, because we have incoming.”

  The helicopter pirouetted on its vertical axis, sniffing out its first prey. The English flagship seemed a good place to start and the machine was directly level with the stern of The Revenge. Suddenly, the chain gun hanging from its belly exploded into life and bullets ripped into the upper part of the cabin unleashing a blizzard of splinters over the heads of Jack and Angus, who hugged the floor. Tony was not so lucky. One second he was holding the MANPAD by the window, the next he was gone – flung from one side of the cabin to the other by a single round from the helicopter gun. He lay on the floor, clutching his upper arm, cursing bitterly. The firing stopped and the helicopter hung in the air, gathering itself for a final assault. Jack and Angus rushed over to help Tony.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said through gritted teeth. “Get him before he kills us all.”

  Angus rushed back, grabbed the launcher and heaved it up onto his shoulder. He staggered towards the window, which had been completely obliterated by the storm of bullets. He aimed at the helicopter, closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Jack was now at his side and they could both see the helicopter inching forward for the final kill.

  “I think you need to switch it on.”

  Jack flicked a switch on the side of the launcher and it hummed into life.

  This time, Angus kept his eyes open and aimed. He fired and the rocket fizzed from the muzzle of the launcher and smashed into the housing beneath the rotor blades. There was an explosion, but then the smoke cleared and, incredibly, the helicopter was hanging in the air.

  In desperation, Jack turned to Tony at the back of the cabin. “He’s still there!”

  But then the tone of the engine changed and the rhythmic whirring of the blades seemed to falter and slow down. The machine hung for a moment longer and then dropped like a stone into the sea. Jack and Angus looked on as the two pilots struggled to free themselves from the water rising up inside the cockpit. As he looked down from the stern cabin of The Revenge, Jack clearly saw Pendelshape raging at them from the cockpit.

  Beneath his feet, Jack saw the shimmering eddies of electricity consolidate and then morph into the steel platform of the Taurus. The heavy metal struts that bounded the inner shell of the great machine gradually came into focus and the features of the control room beyond the thick green glass of the blast screen became clearer. The blast screen was lowered and a number of people in the control centre came forward – they were clapping and cheering. Jack blinked. He could see Inchquin, the Rector, Beattie and, right at the front, his mum, Carole, beaming from ear to ear. They were home.

  Jack could hear the hum from the generators powering down as he and Angus made their way down the gantry from the Taurus. The medical team rushed forward to help down the injured Tony and Gordon, who were immediately dispatched to the underground surgery. Carole Christie rushed forward to hug Jack and seconds later Inchquin and then the Rector were shaking their hands. It was over.

  *

  Following a medical examination and a meal, they decamped to VIGIL’s Situation Room to debrief. The team sat round the same table where Inchquin had chaired the first war council, on hearing the news leaked by Jack’s father following his bust-up with Pendelshape. They spent the next hour picking through their experiences in the sixteenth century – supported by analysis from the rest of the VIGIL team. Jack struggled to get his head round it all.

  “So how do you know that our mission was a success? Is it just because you know we don’t have to go back and, kind of, do any more ‘tidying up’?”

  Inchquin smiled. “I know it is difficult to understand, but it is self-evident. We are all still here and history as we remember it is the same before your mission as it is now – a very short time later.”

  “But, but – what if Pendelshape had succeeded?” Angus said.

  “If the Revisionist mission had been a success we would be living in a very different world. Perhaps we wouldn’t exist at all. We don’t really know for sure what the consequences would be – and for that reason alone it is extremely dangerous to meddle in history.”

  “When we met Pendelshape, he said that the Revisionists’ modelling techniques were now so sophisticated that they would somehow be able to ring-fence themselves from the changes they made. So they’d, you know, make changes to history so the future was better, but kind of keep themselves and their Taurus separate and in control.” Jack looked at Inchquin with a furrowed brow. “Is that possible?”

  Inchquin shook his head. “It’s called ‘lineage isolation’. They clearly think it’s possible – and it may be, perhaps with repeated interventions – but we think it would be utter madness.”

  Jack’s brain was working overtime. “By what you’re saying then… does that mean we kind of know that the Revisionists will never be successful, because, you know, if they had – history would already be different?”

  Inchquin smiled. “Very good, Jack. Indeed that is one theory – that history as we know it already reflects what has happened, including any interventions that the Revisionists have made, and, in fact, interventions we have made to stop them.”

  Angus moaned. “Sorry – I’m lost – this is a complete mindbender.”

  “The point is, Angus, much of this time theory is conjecture. However clever the scientists are, we just don’t understand it well enough. We are on the edge of the unknown, but our position is clear: the human race is not some sort of experiment in a petri dish to fiddle around with.”

  “Well one thing is for sure,” Joplin said breezily, “we now know much more about what did happen – including the plot to kill the queen.”

  “What do you mean, Theo?”

  “Well, as you know, the plot already exists in the historical archive; however, it’s practically a footnote. But we know from what we saw at Hampton Court that it was one of the most dramatic of the many plots against Elizabeth in the late sixteenth century. My theory now is that Walsingham suppressed much of the detail, including the death of Lady Sarah.”

  “Why?”

  “Although unearthing the plot and trapping the assassins so brilliantly at Hampton Court was a triumph for England,
and a personal triumph for Walsingham, on reflection he clearly decided that the whole thing was too close for comfort – particularly the narrow escape in the wilderness. The queen could have been killed and the kingdom could have been thrown into turmoil. Walsingham must have considered it much better to perpetuate the image of the Faerie Queene – untouchable, inviolate, supreme – rather than publicise the reality of the plot too enthusiastically.”

  “No decapitated heads were sent to Philip II?”

  “Far too unsubtle. And remember Elizabeth’s speech in the hall…”

  Jack nodded.

  “Well, that must have been quietly suppressed too. Later it was re-used, of course. It is now remembered as part of her famous speech at Tilbury, which was delivered more than a year later, actually as the threat of the Armada passed.”

  “Elizabeth – the first sultan of spin!” Joplin chortled at his own joke. “She’d do some of our own politicians proud.”

  “What happened to Marlowe?”

  “A bit of a mystery. We know that the Spanish took him into hiding following the incident in Cambridge. When the plot fell through, there was no evidence for the Spanish to really pin the blame on him. We think Walsingham continued to use him as a spy, but may have finally lost patience a few years later. Marlowe was murdered – a dagger above the right eye – some say it was a drunken brawl, but others believe it was an assassination, as all three of the other men who were with him when he died worked for Walsingham and his brother.”

  There was silence for a moment and for some reason the words from Marlowe’s portrait ghosted through Jack’s mind:

  What feeds me destroys me.

  “One thing, then…” Angus said, “what about a helicopter appearing in the middle of the Armada? I’ve never heard of that before – you’re not telling me that Walsingham hushed that up too.”

  Joplin laughed. “Good point. My theory is that there was such confusion during the battle – the smoke, the noise – you saw what it was like – that few eye witnesses recorded the event. Remember, it was only there for a few minutes. Those who did see it, and survived, referred, glassy-eyed, to a ‘fiery monster descending into the sea’ or ‘a lightning bolt from the finger of God’ – all explanations that historians readily put down to the religious hysteria of the time or post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the witnesses. Remember that many of the Spanish died and actually a lot of the English did too – but after the battle; there was no money to pay for their care. Anyway, the reports that existed were felt to be nonsense and were, rightly, treated as such later on by serious historians.”