The Queen's Christmas Summons. Amanda McCabe

As Alys turned to leave, she heard the whispers rustle up again. Whips and brands...

      The stone walls felt as if they were pressing down on her. The fear and uncertainty all around her for so many days was making her feel ill. She—who prided herself on a sturdy spirit and practicality! A person had to be sturdy to live in such a place as Dunboyton. The cold winds that always swept off the sea, the monotony of seeing the same faces every day, the strangeness of the land itself, it had all surely driven many people mad.

      Alys didn’t mind the life of Dunboyton now. Even if she sometimes dreamed of seeing other lands, the sparkle of a royal court or the sunshine of her mother’s Granada, she knew she had to be content with her father and her duties at the castle. It was her life and dreaming could not change it.

      But now—now she felt as if she was caught in a confusing, upside-down nightmare she couldn’t wake from at all.

      She had other tasks waiting, but she had to get away for just a few moments, to breathe some fresh air and clear away the miasma of fear the maids’ gossip had woven. She snatched a woollen cloak from the hook by the kitchen door and made her way outside.

      A cold wind whipped around the castle walls, catching at her hair and her skirts. She hurried through the kitchen garden and scrambled over the rough stone wall into the wilder fields beyond, as she had done so often ever since she was a child. After her mother died, she would often escape for long rambles along the shore and up to the ruins of the abbey, and she would see no one at all for hours.

      That was not true today. She followed the narrow path that led down from Dunboyton’s perch on the cliffs down to the bay. The spots that were usually deserted were today filled with people, hurrying on errands that she couldn’t identify, but which they seemed to think were quite vital. Soldiers both from her father’s castle regiment and sent from Galway City and the fort swarmed in a mass of blue-and-grey wool over the rocky beach.

      Alys paused halfway along the path to peer down at them as they marched back and forth. Everyone said the Spanish were sweeping ever closer to England in their invincible ships and would never come this far north, but obviously precautions were still being taken, enough to frighten the maids. They said the Spanish had come here before, to try to help the chieftains defeat the English rulers, but they had been driven away then. Why would now be any different?

      Whips and brands...hangings. Alys shivered and pulled her cloak closer around her. She remembered her mother’s tales of Spain, the way the candied lemons and oranges sent from her uncles in Andalusia would melt on her tongue like sunshine, and she could not reconcile the two images at all. Could the same people who had produced her lovely, gentle mother be so barbarous? And if so, what lay deep inside herself?

      Her father was banished from the royal court, sent to be governor in this distant place because of her mother’s birthplace. What would happen to them now?

      ‘Alys!’ she heard her father call. ‘It is much too cold today for you to be here.’

      She turned to see him hurrying up the pathway, the wind catching at his cloak and cap, a spyglass in his hand. He looked so much older suddenly, his beard turned grey, lines etched on his face, as if this new worry had aged him.

      ‘I won’t stay out long,’ she said. ‘I just couldn’t listen to the maids a moment longer.’

      He nodded grimly. ‘I can imagine. Spreading panic now will help no one.’

      ‘Is there any word yet from England?’

      ‘Only that the ships have been gathering in Portsmouth and Plymouth, and militias organised along the coast. Nothing established as of yet. There have been no signal fires from Dublin.’

      Alys gestured towards the activity on the beach. ‘Bingham is taking no chances, I see.’

      ‘Aye, the man does love a fight. He has been idle too long, since the rebellions were put down. I fear he will be in for a sharp disappointment when no Spaniard shows up for battle.’

      Or if England was overrun and conquered before Ireland even had a chance to fight. But she could not say that aloud. She would start to wail like the maids.

      Alys borrowed her father’s spyglass and used it to scan the horizon. The water was dark grey, choppy as the wind whipped up, and she could see no vessels but a few local fishing boats. It had been thus for weeks, the weather unseasonably cold, storm-ridden and unpredictable. This was usually the best time of the year to set sail, but not now. The Spanish would be foolhardy to try to land in such an inhospitable place, for so many reasons.

      But faint hearts had not conquered the New World, or overrun and mastered the Low Countries. Anything could happen in such a world.

      ‘They say Medina-Sidonia is ordered to bring Parma’s land forces from the coast of the Netherlands to overrun England,’ her father said. ‘Why would they come here?’

      ‘They won’t,’ Alys said with more confidence than she felt. ‘This shall be a tale you tell your grandchildren by the fire one day, Father. The salvation of England by a great miracle.’ She handed him the spyglass and took his arm to go back up the path towards the castle.

      ‘If I have a grandchild,’ he said in a teasing grumble. They had bantered about such things many times before, his need for a grandchild to dandle on his lap. ‘I fear there are no proper gentlemen for you to marry here, my Alys, unless you take one of Bingham’s men down there.’

      Alys glanced back at the soldiers, all of them alike in their helmets. ‘Nay, I thank you. If that is my choice, I shall end a spinster, keeping house here for you.’

      Her father frowned. ‘My poor Alys. ʼTis true no one here is worthy of you. If you could but go to court...’

      Alys had heard such things before, but she had long ago given up hope of such a grand adventure. ‘I admit I should like the fine gowns I would have to wear at court and learning the newest dances and songs, but I fear I should be the veriest country mouse and bring shame to you,’ she said lightly. ‘Besides, surely I am safer here.’

      He patted her hand. ‘For now, mayhap. But not for ever.’

      They made their way back into the castle, into the midst of the bustle and noise of everyday life. Nothing ever seemed to change at Dunboyton. Yet she could still hear the clang of battle preparations just outside her door.

       Chapter Three

      Lisbon—April 1588

      ‘King Philip will hear Mass at St Paul’s by October, I vow,’ Lord Westmoreland, an English Catholic exile who had lived under King Philip’s sponsorship for many months, declared stoutly. He waved towards the grand procession making its way past his rented window, through the old, winding cobblestone streets of Lisbon. ‘And I have been promised the return of my estates as soon as he does.’

      His friend and fellow English exile Lord Paget gave a wry smile. ‘He will have to get there first.’ And that was the challenge. The Armada was now assembled, hundreds of ships strong, but after much delay, bad weather, spoiled provisions and a rash of desertions.

      ‘How can you doubt he will? Look at the might of his kingdom!’ Lord Westmoreland cried.

      John Huntley joined the others in peering out Lord Westmoreland’s window. It was an impressive sight, he had to admit. King Philip’s commander of his great Armada, the mighty Duke of Medina-Sidonia, rode at the head of a great procession from the royal palace to the cathedral, resplendent in a polished silver breastplate etched with his family seal and a blue-satin cloak lined with glossy sable. Beside him rode the Cardinal Archduke, his robes as red as blood against the whitewashed houses, and behind them was a long, winding train of sparkling nobility, riding four abreast. The colours of their family banners snapped in the wind, golds and reds and blues. The sun gleamed on polished armour and turned the bright satins and silks into a rippling rainbow.

      There followed ladies