Gloriana's Torch by Patricia Finney

Author:Patricia Finney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Señor Josef Pasquale

Lisbon, Early Summer 1588

Pasquale wrote two letters to his cousin and got no answer, then decided to go to the Ordnance office and try to find the man directly. At the office, clerks were busy at their desks, and in the courtyard workmen were loading barrels of ill-smelling powder onto a cart. Don Juan de Acuna Vela was at the docks, Señor, but Señor could wait and he might be back in the evening.

So Pasquale hurried down to the docks and enquired over and over and finally found Don Juan de Acuna Vela, a short peppery man, with a black scar on his cheek and bristling eyebrows. He was swearing at a sullen man who stood by the open door of a warehouse.

‘So the Angel Gabriel and his seraphim came with a true docket from the King and took the guns away, eh?’ he said to the sullen man, who shrugged.

‘They were here last time I looked.’

Don Juan de Acuna Vela grabbed the man’s beard and brought his head round so he could look into the warehouse. There were piles of round metal balls, cannon shot, Pasquale supposed, and some wooden trucks, but as for guns … None at all.

‘So when did the Angel Gabriel come for the guns?’

‘I was ill last week, Señor,’ sniffed the man. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘Did they at least go to one of His Majesty’s ships? Please at least tell me that?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure, sir,’ said the man and de Acuna Vela spat and marched away from him towards a fat pony.

‘Señor, Señor cousin,’ said Pasquale urgently. ‘Sir, may I speak with you?’

‘If you can keep up.’ De Acuna Vela jumped onto the fat pony’s back and dug his heels in, so Pasquale had to trot alongside, his soutane flying behind him. It was undignified, but what would he not do to be there, helping, when the English were brought back to Christ? Still trotting he stammered out something about his mother and his desire to be part of the great Enterprise.

‘You’re Josef at the Holy Office,’ said de Acuna Vela. ‘I know, you picked up a nice little pair of properties for my mother last year.’

The owner of them had died suddenly on the table and Josef had not wanted to keep the property since he was well provided for. Thank God that he had been inspired to be generous to his mother’s aunt.

‘Yes, cousin.’

‘Holy Office … hmm. So you can write. Can you speak Portuguese?’

‘Both Spanish and Portuguese fluently, some Italian of course and a little French. And Latin. I can write both the new and the old hands and I can cast up accounts.’

‘Priest?’

‘No, sir, only minor orders.’

‘Wonderful. My clerk died yesterday of some kind of jail fever. God must have sent you to help me find guns and powder for the King’s Holy Enterprise. Come along.’

And for five bewildering hours, Pasquale trotted after de Acuna Vela, who seemed to him to be more a fleshly tornado

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