“No, my friend.” Melchoro shook his head. “Their relatives would never have permitted that; the family was quite old and was related to the royal houses of Castilla, Le6n, Granada, and Navarre. Agents of the monarchs then reigning thoroughly investigated the sudden extinction of La Casa de Padilla and concluded that they all died along with not a few of their servants and retainers in the space of a bare fortnight of the effects of some rare and most deadly pest. For some year or more, the condado was administered for the King of Leon and Catalonia by a royal commissioner, then was added to the holdings of the ducado grande, which lands it abutted.
“Purely in the cause of sentiment, I had the ship that bore me and my party to Scotland enter the Port of Gij6n, and I spied much activity, even then, last year, though of course I did not know or guess its purpose.”
Walid Pasha, who still had somewhat less understandable English than did his captain of marines, spoke r lly in Arabic, and Sir Ali translated. “The Pasha would know just what sort of harbor defenses this Gijon-port mounts, my lord Baron.”
“At one time, years ago, under the rule of the condes” replied Melchoro, “they were muito formidable, they then had to be, when one is to consider the varieties of clientele entertained by the port, then. But I noted last year that the smaller forteleza is become little more than a crumbling and uncared-for ruin, bare of any ordnance, while the larger, the main castillo, though in fair repair, has been stripped of all save only the very largest pieces, mostly aged bombards not suitable for shipboard use, though very dangerous enough if one chances to sail within range of the stones they cast.
“I could not understand the decrepitude of the port defenses then, but I do now. If Gij6n is become no longer a trade port but rather a naval basin, marshaling port, and embarkation facility, then there is scant need to defend it with land fortifications, not with the intelligence abroad in Europe that all of the larger ships of the navy of England either were destroyed fighting each other in the early days of the civil war that preceded the crusade or were scuttled to prevent capture by one or the other side years agone.
“Naturally, his grace, the duque grande, lacks the current information of the numbers of galleons, carracks, flutes, and other larger ships now owned by or at the use of his majesty, King Arthur. And he, I take it, means to have Gij6n attacked and razed before any Crusade can from there be launched? Therefore, when, my good friend, your grace, do we to set sail?”
Of a dark and rainy night, some of Paul Bigod’s smaller vessels sailed into a tiny rockbound bay, holding their positions in the chop with sea anchors while the longboats they had towed ferried a well-armed party of three hundred galloglaiches onto the beach at the foot of the eroded cliffs.
The retainer who had drawn the chancy mission of awakening his grace, the most illustrious Don Esteban de Alcaboria, Duque Grande de Le6n, did so by voice alone and from a fair distance, for the grand duke had been known to strike out at those who awakened him on many past occasions with pillow sword or hanger, often following up the slashes with a thrown dagger . . . and ofttimes he did not miss.
When the nobleman had shoved and kicked away his bed mate—a plump young girl—and struggled more or less erect in the deep feather bed, to sit glaring out of bleary eyes at the man in the doorway, the retainer said, “Your grace, a coaster reports that a Papal fleet—five or six big galleons, at the least, with numerous smaller sail in company—are bearing in from the west, clearly bound for Gijon-port.” |
“Capital!” Don Esteban crowed, showing very bad teeth in a very broad smile that split his scarred, pox-ravaged face above his red-blond chin beard. “At last, the Holy See has recognized my efforts to enforce the will of his holiness upon the heretical ingltses. With even four galleons, I can forget repairing and refining that woebegone collection of hulks down in the harbor and get to the holy business of crusading on enemy soil.
“Fernando, notify my captains to get their troops ready to go aboard ships upon my imminent command. My gentlemen and my guards are to assemble in the courtyard in parade dress, immediately; we will be on the quay to meet and to greet and to render all due honors to these, our brothers in the Faith.”
“Uhhh . . . your grace, the castillo should long since have seen the fleet and at least signaled as much, but they have not.” Fernando sounded worried, fearing the certain violent outburst should the Papal ships bypass Gijon-port as he secretly suspected that they would.
But Don Esteban shrugged even as he threw off the down coverlet and swung his hairy legs over the edge of the high bedstead. “Fret not, my old, you know as well as do I how often Don Pedro strives to climb into a bottle of brandy of nights and how long it takes him to resume normal life on the mornings after. Have a galloper sent to the castillo with my orders to draw the stones from out the guns and replace them with thick wads. I want salutes fired as the Papal fleet enters my harbor. Every ship with mounted guns is to do the same, you hear? That is my order, Fernando.”
The entry channel to Gij6n-port was well marked with buoys and wide enough for two galleons to sail abreast safely, so that was how they headed in—Revenge to starboard and Bigod’s four-masted Royal Arthur to port, sails filled and drawing, embroidered, silken Papal ensigns and banners snapping in the stiff breeze, freshly painted and regilded upper works and hulls sparkling and gleaming brightly in the morning sun.
The leading pair were followed closely by another brace— the recently prized French four-master, now Thunderer, and another of Bigod’s royal galleons, Honor of Wales.
They had lain off the harbor mouth as long as they thought they could without arousing wonder or suspicion while vainly awaiting the prearranged signals that would reassure them that the squat castillo had fallen to the galloglaiches, but now they simply sailed into Gijon-port, leaving the other galleon and the carracks to guard their rear and perhaps keep the castillo gunners so busy dodging balls and stone shards that the four galleons might emerge intact after doing their work in the harbor basin.
Inside the harbor, it was immediately clear that there would be but precious little space for maneuver of the huge galleons. The right side of the almost circular basin was all old stone quays, new wooden wharfs, and ships of every conceivable size, age, type, and degree of decrepitude tied up to those quays and wharves. The left side was a newly expanded careening yard and dry docking facility, and between right and left sides lay a section of some score or more of temporary floating wharves, these as crowded with ancient, battered, rotting ships as any of the other, more permanent structures. Moreover, those ships for which there was as yet no room at quay or wharf or drydock, as well as the few either not needing extensive work or with repairs and refitting completed, lay anchored wherever space existed for them, most of them lashed gunwale to gunwale in order to conserve to the utmost that precious space.
Anxiously scanning, searching the shores to either side with the one pair of binoculars and several long-glasses, Bass and the sailing masters could spot no earthworks or any emplaced guns of any description. Apparently, the only, the sole fortification that Gij6n-port any longer owned was that afforded by the castillo. Not that that measure of menace to the invading ships should be underestimated or discounted, for it was real, within narrow limits, true, but real nonetheless, that menace.
Stripped as the castillo now lay of the smaller-caliber, more accurate long guns—probably by the present lord of Gij6n, the grand duke, so that he could mount them on his heterogenous fleet—the fortification could return nothing more than arquebus fire so long as the galleons stayed within the harbor basin. It was when they essayed the exit-entrance channel again that the danger of those yawning metal maws grinning down from out their emplacements in those ancient stone walls would become most real and pressing.
Large as those black muzzles seemed at the distance, they were assuredly mostly the bombards—archaic, large-bored, primitive guns antedating true cannon and heavy, clumsy to handle, with barrel walls and breeches too weak to throw iron balls. Even so, if they happened to be manned and commanded by gunners of sufficient competence to hold fire until the targets came to bear, they were quite capable of achieving horrific damage to a galleon with but a single hit of a stone ball that might weigh as much as a quarter ton and be a foot or more in diameter. And there were at least a score of these monstrosities emplaced on the three lowest levels so as to cover the channel to and from Gij6n-port, which fact stood to compensate partially for their slow rate of reloaded fire.