The Palace of the Seas

The Palace of the Seas is a historical novel and the fifth volume in the hit Waringham saga by Rebecca Gablé . The novel was published by Verlag Lübbe Ehrenwirth in September 2015. It deals with England under the reign of Elizabeth I. Unlike in the previous volumes, there are two main characters of equal value in this novel, who allow two completely different perspectives on this period. In the last volume of the series, Rebecca Gablé also uses other fictional families that are not fundamentally connected to Waringham, such as the Durham and the Helmsby .

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Reconciliation

The fourth volume of the Waringham saga ends with Nicholas of Waringham, the current Earl, helping the Catholic Princess Mary to ascend the English throne. But when Mary begins to take increasingly radical action against the Protestants in her country, Nick turns away from her. A little later he and his wife Janis died of the flu in Waringham . His daughter Eleanor and his son Isaac are in charge of the rest of the plot, but since their lives are two different storylines that only overlap on occasion, they are also listed separately below.

First part 1560-1563

Isaac

Isaac is the second son of Nicholas of Waringham, who lives with his uncle Philipp Durham and his aunt Laura in London after the early death of his parents . At the age of fourteen he was already regularly visiting harbor taverns and whore houses, driving his uncle insane with his disobedience, and was well on his way to becoming a good-for-nothing. When he receives the news that his six-year-old nephew Lappidot has contracted smallpox and is blind, and that his brother Francis has named him, Isaac, heir to Waringham for this reason, he flees the looming responsibility and climbs into the Plymouth as a stowaway first ship intending to disembark in France or the Netherlands . Not knowing that the ship belongs to the privateer and slave trader John Hawkins , who left for Tenerife to do business with the Spaniards who live there. After his discovery in the hold, Isaac becomes the protégé of the young sailor Francis Drake . But despite his relationship with Hawkins, the latter cannot prevent the captain Isaac from doing part of his business and selling it as a slave to the Spanish planter Pedro Soler on Tenerife . At first Isaac is only supposed to teach his son Fernando English, but after an unforgivable faux pas with his fiancé sister Clara he spends the following years on a sugar plantation. There Isaac goes through a period of privation, humiliation and forced submission during which he learns to hate the Spaniards for their slavery. Isaac is already seventeen when Hawkins reappears and ransacked him because he learned of his noble origins in England. Isaac also manages to buy one of his fellow sufferers ransom, but he has to commit himself to Hawkins for five years and go to sea under him.

On his first voyage, he was forced to illegally smuggle African slaves into the New World and sell them to the Spanish settlers. On this occasion he meets Clara again, who now lives with her husband on the West Indies . His friend Tomás from Tenerife decides to stay in the New World, make his way to Panamá and join the Cimarrones there. Three years after the smallpox epidemic, Isaac returns to Waringham on time for his sister Isabella's wedding.

Eleanor

Eleanor, Nick's eldest child, grew up with Queen Elizabeth and now takes on the role of her "eye", has made it her business to know all the secrets of all the powerful men of England and to spy for the crown. So it doesn't take long to find out that her unloved brother Isaac left England by sea, and she no longer seriously expects to see him again. After two years she writes him off for good.

She also has more pressing concerns: Elizabeth and her longtime boyfriend Robin Dudley are placed under a liaison, and when Robin's wife, Amy Robsart , mysteriously dies, Eleanor must find out the real reason for her death in order to avert suspicion from Elizabeth and Robin. During her investigation, she comes into contact with Gabriel Durham, another failed nephew of her uncle Philip, King of the London Thieves, but despite his help, Eleanor's investigation cannot save Robin and the Queen from defamation. In the meantime, the political situation is also coming to a head: while Elizabeth is being forced into marriage, a war has broken out in France between the Papists and the Protestant Huguenots , so that England , as a Protestant country, is forced to act. The Catholic Mary Stewart is now widowed in France, takes her Scottish throne and lays claim to the English crown. In addition, Eleanor finds herself in a violent conflict of conscience, because she has fallen in love with the king of thieves, and now has to teach her queen that she is pregnant with the bastard of the most wanted man in all of London. But Elizabeth, usually extremely strict and unyielding on such issues, lets her get away with the liaison while Robin tries to hide his love affair with Lettice Knollys , a lady-in-waiting and cousin of the Queen, who - like Amy before - looks strikingly similar.

In Waringham Lappidot has overcome the despair of his sudden blindness and discovered his great passion: music. With enthusiasm, the boy throws himself into the completely new challenge of learning to play the violin. Meanwhile, the youngest of Nick's children, Isabella, plans to marry William Stanley shortly after Eleanor's son Samuel is born.

Second part 1566-1569

Isaac

John Hawkins wants to undertake another triangular voyage (England → Africa → New World) and needs his own fleet to be able to defy the Spanish sea patrols. Among other things, he has the "Jesus of Lübeck" in mind, one of the largest but also oldest ships in the Royal Fleet. He entrusted Isaac with the task of getting him the "Jesus".

Isaac spends the winter in Waringham, where he meets Abigail Wheeler, a former student of his father and brother's boarding school, who is now taking care of the current school children as a maid. Isaac immediately feels drawn to her, but she is brisk, cool, dismissive and insolent to him. When Isaac brings Lappidot, who is supposed to play for the Queen for the first time, to Whitehall , he takes the opportunity to talk to Robin Dudley about the "Jesus of Lübeck". Robin promises to do what he can to help Hawkins get the ship. A little later, Isaac meets Marian Edmundson, a distant cousin and seafarer, in a London whore house that he already frequented when he was twelve. In search of a new captain, Marian decides to go to the New World with Isaac and Hawkins. Shortly before the fleet leaves Plymouth, the "Jesus of Lübeck" arrives, and Hawkins assigns the ships in his fleet to different captains. Francis Drake is also given a command and chooses Isaac as his first officer. However, both Isaac himself and Hawkins have major concerns about the correctness of this decision.

During the stopover in Tenerife, Hawkins' fleet already gets a foretaste of the hostility that the English are now showing from the Spanish side, so that they can sail on to Africa as soon as possible. Since it is now difficult to get to slaves, they have to ship a whole tribe to the New World with the help of natives. Most of the Africans were captured in the storming of the village, but some Englishmen were also killed or injured, including Isaac, who was thrown from arrow poisoning in the next two months. After his recovery, Drake and several other captains head for Rio de la Hacha to find out how well the Spanish people there respond to the slaves of English privateers . The mood is rather charged, however, and the small landing party under Drake takes some Spanish soldiers hostage, including Fernando Soler, for whose release Hawkins later demands his weight in pearls. The decrepit "Jesus" is damaged in the storms of the Caribbean , and the fleet calls at the port of San Juan de Ulúa to carry out repairs. The English reach an agreement with the Spanish governor and later also the Spanish viceroy , who reaches the port with the silver fleet , whereupon they occupy the fortress island in front of the port. Despite the tension between their two countries, the English and Spanish sailors spend a carefree week together on the beach in San Juan de Ulúa. The idyll comes to an abrupt end when Spanish troops ambush the English from a nearby military base. In the following battle, John Hawkins loses all ships, except for the "Minion", which was also leaked and on which Isaac and Marian are stranded. Francis Drake, who is supposed to take cargo and men from the "Minion", flies with his undamaged ship from the scene to escape to England.

The Minion's voyage home becomes a test and, ultimately, torture for every two hundred sailors. For most it ends in fatality. The ship's belly full of captured gold and unsold slaves they have neither provisions nor drinking water on board. Half of the team finally pulls away and tries their luck on the New Spanish mainland. Of the remaining sailors, over eighty die, and so Hawkins brings back fifteen alive from his triangular voyage of four hundred men.

Eleanor

Mary Stewart has married Lord Darnley , who is related to both Elizabeth and Mary and is said to ensure a fragile peace between England and Scotland. But instead of beguiling his queen, the young Darnley prefers to spend his time with whores and drinking buddies and has Mary's Italian secretary and trusted advisor murdered in front of her eyes shortly before the birth of her son James . Elizabeth sends Eleanor, who is now pregnant with a second child, to Scotland, where Gabriel accompanies her to find out whether Darnley really is the father of little Prince James or not the stabbed Italian. This worry turns out to be unfounded, as James Darnley is cut out of the face. Instead, Eleanor made the acquaintance of the Earl of Bothwell , the queen's watchdog and extremely influential man in Scotland. She also wants to use the time to bring Darnley back to his senses so that he can save his marriage to Mary. To this end, Eleanor visits him at night in the old mayor's house in Kirk o'Field , but only moments after she has left the house, several powder kegs explode in the basement, causing it to collapse and kill Darnley. Eleanor immediately suspects Bothwell, for whom the Queen has a weakness and who sees in her the last key to power in Scotland. But when Bothwell threatens to attach Darnley's murder to Eleanor and thus Elizabeth, she and Gabriel have to flee Scotland.

Four years after Samuel was born, Eleanor gives birth to a girl she and Gabriel call Anne. Meanwhile, Bothwell locks Mary Stewart up at Dunbar Castle and forces her there to marry him - a move that immediately robs her of all the Scots' sympathy and recognition. She is forced to abdicate by the Scottish earls, so that the throne goes to her Protestant half-brother Moray , who is also responsible for raising his little nephew James. But Mary manages to escape to England, where she is kept safe and any request for an audience with Elizabeth is refused. At the same time, Moray demands the extradition of his half-sister, which would mean certain death, and Elizabeth refuses to shed the blood of her cousin, an anointed queen and papist. Especially since the Spanish general Alba invaded the Netherlands, threatened England at close range and is only waiting for an excuse to attack. In this tricky position, Eleanor and Francis Walsingham , also a Crown spy, begin to work together.

Lappidot, who was very fond of Queen Elizabeth, is accepted into the Chapel Royal , where he can devote himself entirely to music. In the meantime, his father Fracis arranged a marriage between the stable master David Pembroke and Abigail Wheeler, and the relationship between Robin Dudley and Lettice Knollys also revived . When Eleanor gets wind of this, Lettice locates her sore spot: her children, especially little Anne, who grows up with Francis and his wife Millicent in Waringham, and sets Richard Topcliffe , Elizabeth's husband for the rough, on her. He should find out who the little ones' father is. In fact, it is precisely her children who lead to a dispute between Eleanor and Gabriel. Samuel, now five years old, only seems to be happy in his father's house in London and is learning the thieving trade with ardor, because Gabriel wants nothing more than that his son will follow him as King of Thieves. Eleanor, however, dreads the idea that Samuel could end up on the gallows, and there is a quarrel and what appears to be a final break between her and her lover.

Meanwhile, a tribunal is to be convened, chaired by Millicent's brother Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk , to prove that Mary Stewart was responsible for the murder of her husband, as Moray claims. As the tribunal turns more and more into a trial, Gabriel lures Eleanor over to beg her forgiveness and propose that Samuel be sent to school in Waringham.

Third part 1577-1579

Isaac

Through horse racing and betting, Isaac raised the money to build his own ship. With the "Nemesis", on which Marian Edmundson is his first mate, he haunts the Spanish seafarers, frees row by row oar convicts and makes big booty on each of his raids. Francis Drake, now also quite rich, is his fierce competitor. Over Easter and the fair, Isaac is in Waringham, where he finds out that his sister Eleanor has two children, a fifteen-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl, whose father is none other than the King of Thieves. Abigail finds him after a riding accident several miles from Waringham, from which Isaac sustained several broken bones. Despite ten years of marriage, she has not yet had a single child, which bothers her very much. Isaac, who has long since had to accept that it is more than the usual crush he feels for her, is delighted when Abigail treats his wounds. During his recovery, he had a series of conversations with Eleanor so that they could finally get a little closer, and he reported extensively on the New World. The day before he left for Plymouth, he went to Abigail and gave her an Italian version of Romeo and Juliet that belonged to his mother to thank her for her care . Although she always tried to be as brusque to him as possible and to get rid of him, she not only accepts his gift, but also lets herself be seduced by him.

A little later, Isaac is in Greenwich and presents the Queen with the plan for his next raid. The Spanish governor of Panamá is exploiting a gold mine without King Felipe's knowledge. Isaac plans to ambush the gold caravan on its way through Panama and to sail the treasures from the high-yielding gold mine to England. Elizabeth blesses his plan, and a little later the "Nemesis" breaks out from Plymouth.

It takes three days for them to spot the stowaway in the hold. Samuel, about whose future his parents are constantly arguing, sought his salvation in flight. Impressed by his uncle's stories about the New World, he made a quick decision to sneak out of Waringham and aboard the "Nemesis". Isaac, who doesn't believe that Samuel was born to be a sailor, makes him his personal boy, but makes sure that his nephew will soon be part of the crew. Arriving in the New World, Isaac sets off with Samuel and his third officer, Peter Westbury, a prisoner of San Juan de Ulúa and long-time rowing slave, to see an accomplice of the governor, a Spanish sugar planter, to learn more about gold smuggling. Disguised as cloth merchants, they gain access to his property, but the lady of the house is none other than Doña Clara Soler, with whom Isaac was in love when he was fifteen. So it happens that after he has learned everything he needs, he does not retreat as quickly as possible, but tries to twist some of his handkerchief on her, so that it is easy for Clara's brother Fernando to surprise his former friend and teacher from an ambush . Fights break out in which Fernando and Westbury are killed. Isaac and Samuel are captured and sent to the governor of Panama, who asks Isaac how he found out about the gold smuggling. When Samuel is able to free himself from his chains during interrogation and fatally injure an officer with a poison spider, the governor decides to leave the interrogation to the Inquisition in Mexico and then to send King Felipe the head of the dreaded privateer Isaac Fitzgervais. On the way north, Isaac and Samuel's escort is killed by a group of Cimarrones, including Isaac's friend Tomás from Tenerife. With the help of the Cimarrones, Isaac manages to get back on board the "Nemesis" and arrives just in time to snatch the governor's gold. When he returns to England, he notices that some things have changed: Lappidot, the new Earl of Waringham, has married, and Abigail is now his sister's maid. And he himself became the father of a daughter in absentia.

Eleanor

Millicent Howard, the Countess of Waringham, is dead. Francis, struggling to get over the death of his beloved wife, believes she died of shame over her brother Norfolk's betrayal. Norfolk, who presided over the tribunal against Mary Stuart, took part in a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth because it saw his chance to become king. The plot was exposed and Thomas Howard was beheaded. And Francis' rejection of the papists has turned into fanatical contempt. When Lappidot announces that he wants to marry the Catholic lady-in-waiting Mahalath of Helmsby, Francis forbids his son to return to court. After all, he is already engaged. Since Elizabeth can hardly do without her Master of the Chapel Royal, she sends Mahalth temporarily to the household of Mary Stuart. Basically she is not averse to a marriage between her and Lappidot, but Mahalath should first convert to Protestantism , and at Mary's court she should learn how papism is abused for political purposes.

But not only Lappidot has plans to marry. Robin Dudley married his long-time and now pregnant mistress Lettice Knollys behind the queen's back. Elizabeth, as shocked and stunned as she is angry, turns to the Count of Anjou, a young hot spur. She does not seriously intend to marry him, but does give the impression of being credible, and the prospect of a papist prince consort terrifies the English diplomats. Eleanor, too, has to let go of their relationships when Abigail Wheeler shows up in Greenwich asking for help, beaten up and cast off by her husband, a bastard who bears the name of his grandmother Janis. Eleanor gives her a job as a maid and takes care of her divorce from David Pembroke. However, this incident stirs up her anger at Isaac, who not only aborted her son, but also managed to put a decent woman into an impossible situation. At the same time, Elizabeth gives her official permission to marry Lappidot of Waringham and Mahalath of Helmsby. It falls to Francis to deliver the news to Lappidot's fiancé, Rosalind FitzAlan, that their engagement has been broken and that what he would no longer have believed possible happens: he falls in love. And although Rosalind is twenty years younger than him, she accepts his proposal. Francis comes to court to ask Elizabeth for permission to marry, which she promptly grants him.

On the same day, a papist zealot tries to murder Elizabeth to make room for Mary Stuart on the English throne, but instead of the Queen he kills Francis, who throws himself between Elizabeth and the striking blade. The papist, who claims to have acted on his own, dies as a result of his interrogation. Despite his blindness, Lappidot becomes the next Earl of Waringham. When the Count of Anjou realizes that Elizabeth will not marry him, he returns to France, while Robin and Lettice meanwhile have a son. And then suddenly a young man with a duffel bag knocks on the door of the house of the thief king, his pockets full of gold and giant spiders, and turns out to be Samuel Durham.

Fourth part 1585-1588

Isaac

Isaac married Abigail and lives with her and their four children at Cattedown Manor, outside of Plymouth, where he mainly hired black servants. Abigail has become friends with Drake's wife, Eliza, and their husbands spend a lot of time together when they are at sea, so Isaac's and Drake's families are closer than Isaac would like. In addition, he currently has no ship: The shipworm has the "Nemesis" on its conscience, and his new ship, the "Liberty", is still in the works. With his cousin Marian, he is experimenting with the production of artificial pitch to protect ships from worm infestation in the future. Meanwhile the situation in England is getting more and more difficult, because King Felipe, who is getting more powerful by the day, has had his plan to overthrow the English Queen from the throne, approved by the Pope and begins to find ships for his Armada , while Mary Stuart also kept trying to overthrow Elizabeth.

Isaac, Francis Drake and a few other captains are sent to Cádiz , where they destroy many Spanish ships and thus delay the armada's advance. The English use the time gained in this way to prepare as well as possible for the attack by the Spaniards. Armed forces are rounded up, beacons are erected and a fleet commander is appointed. Elizabeth sends all the sailors in the fleet to the port cities to hold positions, and Plymouth is literally overrun by sailors. When the Armada is finally sighted, a game of cat and mouse begins on the water. The Spaniards, not prepared for a real naval battle, want the English to use up all their ammunition before they can defeat them in a face-to-face fight. Before Calais , the decision is finally made when the English fleet can blow up the battle formation of the Armada with lightships and drive the Spanish ships away.

Eleanor

Felipe of Spain has now also become King of Portugal and Mary has awarded him the Scottish crown. Together with the Duke of Parma , he besieged and captured Antwerp , whereupon Robin Dudley moved to the Netherlands only a few months after the death of his son Robert, where he was later proclaimed Supreme Governor of the Netherlands.

Mary Stuart tries doggedly to forge ever new plots against Elizabeth, and for this purpose lets her laundresses smuggle messages from her domicile, Tutbury Castle . In order to block her this way, she is moved to Chartley . Eleanor and her accomplice Walsingham shortly afterwards in the port town of Rye after a man named Gilbert Gifford , who is supposed to smuggle messages from Chartley and replies into wine barrels, and get him to work for them. Gifford faithfully hands over every letter to Walsingham, and so he and Eleanor are able to uncover another plot: The Jesuit John Ballard , along with seven other gentlemen, including a special admirer of Mary Stuart, Anthony Babington , plans to murder Elizabeth. Ballard, Babington and all of the co-conspirators are convicted and executed in Tyburn as treason. And although Elizabeth is strongly reluctant, the death sentence is also passed on Mary Stuart. She was finally beheaded on February 8, 1587 in the hall of Fotheringhay Castle .

Meanwhile, Eleanor's and Gabriel's daughter Anne Lancelot, the young master of the Brotherhood of the Seven Sisters, marries, because, unlike her older brother Samuel, who is now an actor with the Queen's Men and friends with the insignificant young artist Will Shakespeare , Anne has not shied away from in to follow in her father's footsteps. And like Lancelot, she is extremely ambitious. When her uncle Lewis, Gabriel's half-brother, is captured on one of his villain pieces, her father refuses to help him, although everyone knows that this time Lewis will hang. Together with Lancelot and Samuel, Anne can thwart the execution of her uncle and thus earns the respect of the brotherhoods. On the same day, Gabriel announced his resignation from the office of King of Thieves. The choice of the new king falls unanimously on his son-in-law Lancelot, and thus also on Anne. Gabriel asks Eleanor to marry him now that he is no longer king and can put her in immediate danger. The wedding takes place in Waringham after defeating the Armada.

characters

• * stands for historical personality

Waringham

• Isaac of Waringham
• Eleanor of Waringham, his older sister, the "Queen's Eye"
• Isabella of Waringham, his younger sister
• Francis, Earl of Waringham, his older brother
• Millicent Howard, Francis' wife
• Lappidot, Adah and Zillah, their children
• Abigail Wheeler, a maid addicted to books
• John Harrison, a distant cousin and doctor in London
• Marian Edmundson, still a distant cousin, sea adventurer

Court and nobility

• Elizabeth I *, Queen of England
• Robert "Robin" Dudley *, Earl of Leicester
• William Cecil *, Secretary of State , Baron Burghley
• Katherine Knollys *, officially Elizabeth's cousin, but probably her half-sister, lady-in-waiting
• Francis Knollys *, her husband
• Laetitia "Lettice" Knollys *, her daughter
• Henry Carey *, Lady Katherine's brother
• Mary Sidney *, Robin Dudley's sister, lady-in-waiting
• Katherine Gray *, Elizabeth's cousin, a fallen lady-in-waiting
• Burchard Kranich *, alias Doctor Burcot, alchemist, deceiver and healer
• Thomas Tallis *, musician of the Chapel Royal
• Francis Walsingham *, diplomat, master spy, Secretary of State
• Mahalath of Helmsby, a papist court lady
• Jeremy and Jethro Andrews, Gentlemen Pensioners and Eleanor's Shadows
• Richard Topcliffe *, a monster
• Sir Amyas Paulet *, diplomat and depositary to the Queen of Scotland
• Sir Walter Raleigh *, Queen's favorite, soldier, explorer, and poet
• Gilbert Gifford *, double agent
• Anthony Babington *, conspirator and potential queen killer
• John Ballard *, Jesuit and co-conspirator

London underworld

• Gabriel Durham, the king of thieves
• Lewis Draper, his brother
• Rosalin Durham, his mother
• Ben Ruby "the gravedigger", Gabriel's governor
• Lancelot, Master of the "Seven Sisters"
• Andrew Basset, Master of the "Merry Minstrels"
• Ned Willcox, Master of the "Red Slayers"
• Samuel and Anne, Gabriel's children

Bulkheads

• Mary Stewart *, Queen of Scotland
• Henry Stewart *, Lord Darnley, her 2nd husband
• James Hepburn *, Lord of Bothwell, her 3rd husband
• Sir Graham Douglas, a highlander

Seafarers and pirates

• John Hawkins *, privateer, Treasurer of the Admiralty
• Francis Drake * a cousin, privateer and circumnavigator
• Robert Barrett *, Commander of the "Jesus of Lübeck"
• William Boroughs *, Commander of the "Golden Lion"
• Charles Howard of Effingham *, Lord High Admiral
• Martin Frobisher *, privateer and vice admiral

Spaniards

• Álvaro de la Quadra *, Bishop of Aquila, the Spanish ambassador to the English court
• Pedro Soler *, sugar planter in Tenerife
• Padre Pedro Soler *, his son
• Fernando, his less holy son
• Clara, his daughter
• Tomás, a Guanche who is actually called Arafo and is not a Spaniard at all
• Miguel de Castellanos *, commander of Rio de la Hacha
• Martín Enríquez de Almanza *, Viceroy of New Spain
• Baltasar de Escobar, sugar planter and gold smuggler
• José de Velasco, corrupt governor of Panamá
• Alejandro Farnesio *, Duke of Parma , Governor of the Spanish Netherlands
• Alonso Pérez de Guzmán , Duke of Medina Sidonia , commandant of the Spanish Armada

expenditure

• Rebecca Gablé : The Palace of the Seas . Lübbe Ehrenwirth, 2015, ISBN 978-3-431-03926-9

Web links

• Content at lovelybooks.de
• Content at histo-couch.de