Black Air

He was in such perpetual haste that in the middle of a furious engagement he nearly ran into his patroness, Saint A

“Grandmother!” he cried. “You shouldn’t be here, it’s dangerous.”

“As you have helped others, I am here to help you,” she replied. She pointed across the purplish chop to one of the English ships. Manuel saw a puff of smoke appear from its side, and out of the puff came a ca

A night or two later — Manuel himself was not sure, as the passage of time had become for him something plastic and elusive and, more than anything else, meaningless — the Armada anchored at Calais Roads, just off the Flemish coast. For the first time since they had left Coru

Laeghr was limping up and down amidships, detouring from his usual path to avoid a bit of shattered decking.

“Are you hurt, Laeghr?” Manuel inquired.

For answer Laeghr growled. Manuel walked beside him. After a bit Laeghr stopped and said, “They’re saying you’re a holy man now because you were ru

Manuel watched Laeghr’s stride. “Your foot?”

Laeghr shrugged. “I don’t know what will happen to it.”

Under a lantern Manuel stopped and looked Laeghr in the eye. “Saint A

“No.” Laeghr thumped his cane on the deck. “Your fever has made you mad, boy.”

“I can show you the shot!” Manuel said. “It stuck in the hull!” Laeghr stumped away.

Manuel looked across the water at Flanders, distressed by Laeghr’s words, and by his hobbled walk. He saw something he didn’t comprehend.

“Laeghr?”

“What?” came Laeghr’s voice from across midships.

“Something bright… the souls of all the English at once, maybe…” His voice shook.

“What?”

“Something coming at us. Come here, master.”

Thump, thump, thump. Manuel heard the hiss of Laeghr’s indrawn breath, the muttered curse.

“Fireships,” Laeghr bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Fireships! Awake!”

In a minute the ship was bedlam, soldiers ru

“But master, we’ll lose the anchor.”

“Those fireships are too big to stop, and if they’re hellburners they’ll explode and kill us all. Cut it.”

Manuel began chopping at the thick hawser, which was very like the trunk of a small tree. He chopped and chopped, but only one strand of the huge rope was cut when Laeghr seized the halberd and began chopping himself, awkwardly to avoid putting his weight on his bad foot. They heard the voice of the ship’s captain — “Cut the anchor cable!” And Laeghr laughed.

The rope snapped, and they were floating free. But the fireships were right behind them. In the hellish light Manuel could see English sailors walking about on their burning decks, passing through the flames like salamanders or demons. No doubt they were devils. The fires towering above the eight fireships shared the demonic life of the English; each tongue of yellow flame contained an English demon eye looking for the Armada, and some of these leaped free of the blaze that twisted above the fireships, in vain attempts to float onto La Lavia and incinerate it. Manuel held off these embers with his wooden medallion, and the gesture that in his boyhood in Sicily had warded off the evil eye. Meanwhile, the ships of the fleet were cut loose and drifting on the tide, colliding in the rush to avoid the fireships. Captains and officers screamed furiously at their colleagues on other ships, but to no avail. In the dark and without anchors the ships could not be regathered, and as the night progressed most were blown out into the North Sea. For the first time the neat phalanxes of the Armada were broken, and they were never to be reformed again.

When it was all over La Lavia held its position in the North Sea by sail, while the officers attempted to identify the ships around them, and find out what Medina Sidonia’s orders were. Manuel and Juan stood amidships with the rest of their berthmates. Juan shook his head. “I used to make corks in Portugal. We were like a cork back there in the Cha

“Not through the neck, anyway,” one of the others agreed.

“Not any way.”

“God will see us home,” Manuel said.

Juan shook his head.

Rather than try to force the Cha

The battered fleet headed away from the sun, ever higher into the cold North Sea. After the night of the fireships Medina Sidonia had restored discipline with a vengeance. One day the survivors of the many Cha