Free Elizabeth I by Margaret George Page A

meats, cakes, and flagons with unbridled gusto.
    While the men were busy eating, the Earl of Cumberland sought me out. But at the sight of him, people flocked to hear the latest.
    â€œAt the height of your address, Your Majesty, I received a dispatch. The Armada succeeded in reassembling itself—”
    A groan went up.
    â€œâ€”but they were shaken by the experience with the fireships the night before, and the fiercest battle of the war so far is even now being fought at Gravelines, off the Flanders coast. Word is that we have the upper hand and are pressing them hard. The main problem we have is the very real possibility of running out of ammunition. Some of the Spanish ships have already been blown into the North Sea and out of the Channel altogether. The rest are still fighting but drifting closer to the sandbanks. It looks as if they are a spent force.”
    â€œIs it too soon to declare victory?” asked Henry Norris.
    â€œYes. They might regroup and return. It depends on the wind. If it continues blowing north, they cannot.”
    â€œWhat of Parma?”
    Cumberland shook his head. “I was told that, even if the Armada has passed him by, he plans to embark his army on the flat-bottomed transports he already has and float them over to England on the coming high tide. He can’t get out of the estuaries in low water, but a high tide will answer that problem.”
    Walsingham hung over me. “You must return immediately to London,” he said. “You must not be here when he arrives with his fifty thousand men!”
    Did the man not understand? I fixed him with a sharp look. “My dear secretary, how can I leave? Did I not just promise, less than two hours ago, that I would lay down my life in the dust? Did I not claim to have the courage and resolve of a king of England? What would it say of my word if I turned tail and ran at even a hint of danger? I think foul scorn of you , sir!”
    I meant it. Better to die here, standing firm, than to run away, than to betray my own words almost as soon as I had uttered them. The world respected the Trojans, the Spartans at Thermopylae, the Jews at Masada, Cleopatra facing the Romans. It did not respect cowards.
    His sallow face grew even darker and, muttering to himself, he turned back to the food table.
    â€œWe stand here with you,” said Leicester, and Essex, who had joined him.
    â€œAs do we,” said the Norrises, father and son.
    â€œWe do, too,” said Marjorie and Catherine. “We women are no cowards.”

9
    W e watched. We waited. A thousand rumors flew over the whole of Europe. The Armada had won. Parma had landed. Drake was dead—or captured, or had his leg blown off. Hawkins and the Victory had gone to the bottom of the sea. Across England, too, the rumors flew. But Parma never rode over on that spring tide; it came and went without him.
    No one knew what had happened to the Armada. Admiral Howard and the English fleet had chased it as far north as the Firth of Forth in Scotland, near Edinburgh. When it kept going, our ships turned back. They knew what awaited the Armada when it attempted to loop over the top of Scotland and then head south to Spain, skirting Ireland. The fierce seas and rocks in that inhospitable sea would destroy it. It destroyed even ships whose captains knew the waters, and these did not.
    That is exactly what happened. While the Spanish were ordering Masses of thanksgiving in their cathedrals for the glorious victory of the Armada, it was being wrecked, ship by ship, on the rocky western coast of Ireland. Almost thirty ships met their doom there, and the few sailors who managed to struggle ashore were killed by either native Irish or English agents. All told, seventy or so ships did not return to Spain, and those that did were in such ruinous state they were worthless. By contrast, we did not lose a single ship.
    It was September before the first bits of this information reached