Текст книги "The Enterprise of England"

Автор книги: Ann Swinfen

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‘It is from Gilbert Gifford.’

‘Aye.’

I had worked with Gifford the previous year, when we had been unravelling the plot by Babington and his fellow conspirators. Gifford had posed as a Catholic sympathiser, though he worked for Walsingham. When the conspirators were rounded up, he was so afraid for his safety that he had fled to France and had been working there ever since. To maintain his disguise, Walsingham and Phelippes continued to pretend that they believed him to be one of the conspirators. He lived a dangerous life, threatened on all sides. I ran my eye quickly over the report.

‘He says he has followed Mendoza and seen him entering Stafford’s house secretly by night.’

‘Aye, and staying for some considerable time. Long, secret discussions by night.’

‘Stafford is a traitor?’

‘He is.’

‘But why does the Queen not recall him?’

Phelippes shrugged. ‘She has been warned. She refuses to recall him. Sir Francis is not sure why. Perhaps she does not believe Stafford is a traitor. Perhaps it is because he is the stepson of her aunt, Mary Boleyn.’

‘That has never stopped the Tudors in the past,’ I muttered.

‘You may think such thoughts, Kit. It were better you did not voice them.’

Even so, I found it hard to believe that the Queen would allow a man known to be a traitor to continue as her ambassador in such an important posting as Paris. Sir Francis himself had been ambassador there many years before, at the time of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The horrors he had witnessed then had marked him for life. After such a distinguished predecessor in the post, why was the traitor Stafford not summoned home to answer for his conduct? Yet Walsingham, knowing Stafford for what he was, could now make use of him.

Having taken Ruy Lopez’s plan in hand, Walsingham controlled exactly what misleading information was leaked to da Vega, and through him to Mendoza. I am not sure how he approached Ruy or let it be known that he knew about da Vega. Certainly he cannot have mentioned my name, for Ruy never gave any indication that I had passed on the information to Sir Francis.

That flood of gossip, instructions, secret briefings and military plans which found their way to Mendoza must have had him scratching his head in confusion. Though, given his known arrogance, he may merely have assumed that it was all the result of his own cleverness. I felt no pity for him. While he was the Spanish ambassador in London he was dyed to the elbows in various plots to invade England, assassinate the Queen, and put the Scottish woman on the throne, all of which had been followed closely from Phelippes’s office. Mendoza had been expelled from England, but his skin remained intact, unlike those gallant if ill-judging boys like Babington. I hoped his Spanish master would eventually roast him alive for his false intelligence.

Amid these flying rumours, on the twelfth day of April, Drake’s flagship, the aptly named Elizabeth Bonaventura, followed by his fleet, slipped away from Plymouth.

‘Sir Francis has had da Vega arrested,’ Phelippes told me, as we worked on a batch of papers sent to da Vega from Mendoza, intercepted at Dover. Ever since the increased concern about a Spanish invasion, I had been summoned to assist him for more hours in the day, despite my attempts to plead my hospital work.

‘What will happen to him?’ I asked. ‘To da Vega?’

‘Oh, nothing will happen to him. He was arrested before Drake sailed. And then he was questioned cunningly, as if we were not quite sure whether he was an honest follower of Dom Antonio or not. Sir Francis released him when he calculated that it was too late for da Vega to inform King Philip that Drake had sailed not for the New World but for Spain.’

‘But won’t he be a danger to us?’

‘Oh, no. The spy you know is not a danger. It is the hidden spy you must fear. Sir Francis wants da Vega to think he has fooled us. That way he can be used in future to channel false information to the Spanish king.’

I nodded. The longer I worked in Walsingham’s service, the better I understood how these affairs were conducted.

Sir Francis’s sense of timing was accurate, but a close-run thing, for some weeks later, Dr Nuñez told me that his agent in Cadiz had sent word that the Spanish king had received da Vega’s letter warning of Drake’s intention to attack Spain on the last day of April, that is, on the very day when Drake began burning the ships in the confined quarters of Cadiz harbour.

‘Before he set sail for home,’ Dr Nuñez said, ‘Drake destroyed half the Spanish fleet. He has bought us a precious year longer to prepare for invasion. Although,’ he added, with a wry smile, ‘he burnt my ship along with the rest.’

Chapter Three

Drake sailed home to a hero’s triumphant welcome. Drake the hero. Drake the pirate. Drake the Dragon, El Draque, as the Spanish called him. He hated the Spanish as much as I did, though for different reasons. And he had the means to avenge himself on them, which I had not. Soon the story of his attack on Cadiz was being told on every street in London, growing in extravagance with every retelling. The truth itself was astonishing, and I suppose what we knew at Seething Lane was as near as anyone would ever come to an honest account of one of Drake’s expeditions.

Just before sailing from Plymouth, Drake had written to Sir Francis, mentioning his fears that nervous counsellors might yet persuade the Queen to forbid the expedition – men who would ‘keep their finger out of the fire’, though he believed God was with him. His letter, scribbled on board ship, ended:

‘The wind commands me away, our ships are under sail. God grant we may so live in His fear that the enemy may have cause to say that God fights for Her Majesty as well abroad as at home. Haste.’

Drake was right to fear the Queen’s notorious ability to change her mind. A messenger was despatched post haste to Plymouth with orders to rein back the attack to a minor privateering expedition, forbidding a direct attack on the Spanish mainland, for she still clung – so Walsingham said – to a forlorn hope of peace with Spain. Burghley too was cautious, but Walsingham was convinced that the only thing that could withstand Spain was military action. The Queen’s messenger arrived too late in Plymouth. Drake’s fleet had already sailed. The Queen’s order was sent on by fast pinnace, but it was driven back by bad weather and returned to England.

‘Drake may well believe that God is with him,’ Phelippes said, with a grim smile. ‘For the storms of Heaven meant he never received the Queen’s message. Just how hard the various bearers tried to catch him we will never know, but most Englishmen are with him, heart and soul.’

Soon Drake was being praised for singeing the King of Spain’s beard, a vivid picture particularly pleasing to every true-blooded Englishman. On the way home he seized a treasure ship packed with spices, silks and ivory, so the Queen herself profited from the expedition in money as well as strategy. No doubt she forgave him for not obeying her last minute order. She could always claim that she had been against it, if ever it came to peace negotiations with Spain. The attack on Cadiz had destroyed not only a large number of the ships in the harbour but most of the provisions and armaments stored in the warehouses of the port. The town itself had suffered, and not only through Drake’s activities.

Two weeks after Drake returned, I was transcribing a report from one of our agents in Lisbon. As I reached the end, I could not stop myself crying out in horror.

Phelippes looked up. ‘What is it, Kit? Not bad news, I hope.’

‘Despicable news,’ I said. ‘Most of the report simply confirms what we already knew about the attack on Cadiz, but this is new. It seems that when the mayor of Cadiz realised Drake was attacking, he ordered all the women and children to take shelter in Matagorda Castle. They rushed there in great numbers, but the captain in command of the castle slammed the gates in their faces. Nearly thirty of them, mostly children, were suffocated or crushed to death.’

I could see the frightened and screaming children falling under the press of bodies, kicked, trampled and dying, the women panicking, the sound of the heavy door crashing against its frame, the terror of being trapped between the invading forces and the callous indifference of their own soldiers.

‘In war it is often the innocent who suffer,’ Phelippes said.

‘But we aren’t at war,’ I objected.

‘Are we not?’

The Queen and her more cautious counsellors like Burghley might attempt to keep up the pretence of peace with Spain, and many citizens must have hoped for it in their hearts, but their heads would have told them that Walsingham and Drake and Admiral Howard were right. As soon as King Philip could repair his losses, he would once again undertake his Enterprise of England. War would come eventually, despite all efforts to stave it off.

In midsummer I transcribed a despatch from our agent in Rome which contained disquieting news. We had known, since his earlier reports, that Philip’s emissaries had been seeking the support of the Pope, both ecclesiastical and financial.

‘Well,’ I said, laying down my transcription on Phelippes’s desk, ‘it seems Philip has got what he wants. The Pope is to give him a million ducats and grants him the right to bestow the crown of England on whomsoever he chooses. The Infanta is mentioned.’

Phelippes grabbed the despatch and ran his eye over it.

‘So, the Bishop of Rome thinks he has the disposal of our crown, does he?’ He spat the words out.

‘It seems so. But look at the end.’ I pointed with the tip of my quill.

When he had read the last few lines, he laughed.

‘Oh, very clever! His Roman Holiness is a shrewd fellow indeed. So Philip will not receive the Pope’s money in advance to finance the invasion. He gets half the money only after Spanish boots are on English soil, the rest of the money to be dribbled in, bit by bit.’

‘All we have to do is ensure they do not land,’ I said. ‘No doubt the Pope will thank us for saving his money.’

‘Indeed. That is all we have to do. Well, thanks to Drake’s fire party at Cadiz, we have until next summer to create a navy strong enough to withstand what Philip has been building up for years.’

‘If the Spanish troops do manage to land,’ I said quietly, ‘we have no hope, have we?’

‘None at all. They are a trained and battle-hardened professional army. We have nothing but the amateur militias and the Trained Bands, who are trained for nothing but keeping the citizens in order.’

‘So we must make sure they don’t land,’ I said.

‘That is all we have to do.’

Although despatches continued to come in from our own agents, and letters passing between Philip and his various emissaries were regularly intercepted, the volume of work in Phelippes’s office diminished and I was able to spend far more of my time at the hospital, working at Seething Lane no more than once or twice a week.

For the last year I had had little opportunity to continue my studies with my mathematics tutor, Thomas Harriot, but he still called in from time to time at Duck Lane, to make music with my father and me, and we had once supped with him, when I had a chance to play his beautiful virginals. Now in midsummer, he took me for the first time to Durham House, to one of the meetings of the group that gathered about Raleigh to discuss mathematics and astronomy and navigation, and also to consider the prospects offered by the new world of Virginia, the riches in both plants and minerals to be found in that country, and the customs and beliefs of its strange people.

I had seen Raleigh in the distance, riding in procession with the Queen, but never met him or found myself in the same room before that evening. As well as Raleigh there was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, him they called ‘the wizard Earl’. Both Northumberland and Raleigh were patrons of my tutor and were eager to learn from him. There were others there – that strange man Dr Dee, necromancer and alchemist and the Queen’s own astrologer, amongst them – all gathered in a turret room overlooking the City and the river, so that I was frozen into awkwardness, tongue-tied by the presence of so many famous gentlemen.

Northumberland did have something of the wizardly about him, his hair unkempt and his doublet buttoned awry, but he was eager and friendly. Raleigh was the quieter man, less interested in astrology and demonology, but passionate for his New World exploration. His second Roanoke venture had just departed, which was to plant a permanent colony in Virginia, but the Queen had forbidden him to accompany it. It was plain to see from his restlessness how much he longed to be on the high seas at that very moment. While Raleigh was not averse to a little privateering himself, he was not cast in the same mould as Drake. Instead of foreseeing an England living off plunder from the Spanish ships returning from the New World, he was urging the establishment of our own colonies there, so that we could benefit from such riches ourselves.

I sat on a stool somewhat withdrawn and merely listened, feeling it was not my place to join in the discussions, although Harriot had told me he was taking me to Durham House because Raleigh liked to draw clever young men into his circle and open up new ideas and new worlds to them. We had been there about half an hour when we heard footsteps leaping up the turret stairs and the door burst open, without a knock. It was a young man in his early twenties with a high forehead and hair of a gingerish brown. He wore a young man’s small moustache and tiny streak of beard below the lower lip – the sort of beard and moustache which look as though the wearer has dipped his face too deep in a pot of brown beer and forgotten to wipe it afterwards. He was somewhat lavishly dressed and did not apologise either for his late arrival or his impolite entry. I thought him arrogant. His eyes swept over me and dismissed me as of no account. He was followed by another young man, and to my surprise I saw that it was Simon. He gave me one startled look, then smiled. I returned his smile reluctantly, wondering who his brash companion might be. Simon himself looked embarrassed and a little defiant.

‘Ah, here at last,’ said Raleigh tolerantly, motioning the two of them to chairs across the room from me. ‘You know most people here, except . . .’ he indicated me, ‘another Kit. Kit Marlowe, this is Kit Alvarez. And your friend?’

‘Simon Hetherington,’ said the other Kit, ignoring me and waving a careless hand. ‘Another man of the theatre. Or rather boy.’

I saw Simon flush and pitied him. His skin was so fair it always betrayed him. The debate resumed. They were discussing some of the latest discoveries in celestial navigation, and before the evening was out I had the satisfaction of being asked by Harriot to explain some of the mathematical calculations, which Marlowe was compelled to attend to. As we began to take our leave at the end of the evening, Marlowe approached me, followed by Simon. He looked me up and down.

‘Quite the clever lad, isn’t he, Simon?’ He smiled maliciously and flicked me painfully on the cheek with a long fingernail.

‘A beardless boy, and invited to lecture grown men of learning. We shall have dancing dogs next, and apes from the Indies dressed in doublets and lace.’

He looked me over again, and I was conscious of my drab physician’s clothes compared with the finery he and Simon wore.

‘A Portingall, are you? A Jew? We all know what should be done with the Jews, bloodsuckers and heretics.’

Bile rose in my throat and I clenched my fists, but dared not challenge him.

At that he gave a mocking laugh, flung his arm around Simon’s shoulders, and propelled him out of the room and down the stairs, their feet clattering on the stone.

I found this encounter deeply unsettling. I had never before seen this fellow Marlowe amongst Burbage’s company, yet he and Simon seemed to be on terms of very close friendship. Perhaps I had only myself to blame. Since we had watched Sidney’s funeral procession back in February, I had hardly seen Simon, my time being so caught up in the work of Walsingham’s service. Although I now had more freedom, I found myself reluctant, after meeting Marlowe, to seek out my friends amongst the players. Until that evening at Raleigh’s house I had been intending to visit them again at the Theatre out beyond Bishopsgate, perhaps to make music again with Guy Bingham, their chief musician and comic actor. Over the twelve days of Christmas last winter I had seen them nearly every day and felt myself at ease amongst their motley company. Like me, many of them concealed their past, living only for the moment. The playhouse was their home, the company of players their family. They lived in a variety of lodgings, ate and dressed well when they were in funds, went hungry and pledged their costumes to Marrano pawnbrokers in Bishopsgate Without when times were hard. They were apt to give little thought for the future. Money slipped through their fingers like water. Yet they were the most easy-going company of men and boys I had ever known.

That is not to say they did not squabble, if one player was given a part that another coveted, or James Burbage tried to force them to play a part in one fashion, when they thought it should be played quite differently. But their squabbles flared up with great noise and drama, then were over in a moment.

Now, however, I was afraid to visit them. Afraid I might meet the despicable Marlowe and suffer more of his taunting. So at first I was at a loss what to say when I met Guy buying oranges at a stall in Cheapside. Since the troubles with Spain, oranges were expensive and hard to come by.

‘You must be in the chinks, Guy!’ I said. ‘Best quality oranges.’

He grinned at me. ‘I never can resist them. These are the first I’ve seen for months.’

He paid the stallholder, then began to juggle the oranges, to the great entertainment of the passersby. Soon quite a crowd had gathered, but he pocketed the oranges, bowed, and led me away by the elbow. We found a seat on a table tomb in Paul’s churchyard, near the booksellers and not far from where Simon and I had stood on that cold February day to watch Sidney’s funeral procession. Guy handed me an orange and would not listen to my protests.

‘I am in the chinks, Kit,’ he said. ‘After a performance last week, a gracious lady sent for me to entertain her dinner guests by playing my lute and singing. I was well paid for it, though the lady wanted rather more of me than I was prepared to give, so I barely escaped with my virtue intact.’

He winked at me and I grinned back, through my orange. Guy had a face like a friendly monkey and I did not believe a word of it. Not the last part, at any rate.

‘And where have you been hiding, Dr Alvarez?’ he said. ‘You are as elusive as fresh oranges.’ He only called me ‘Dr Alvarez’ when he wanted to tease me. At first the players had not believed I was a physician, but after giving a performance at the hospital last Christmas, they knew it was true.

‘Walsingham sent for me again,’ I said. ‘I have been working at Seething Lane as well as the hospital for weeks.’

‘So why are you let out now?’

‘Oh, since Drake returned, matters have been quieter.’

‘Then why have you not come to see us?’

I did not answer at once, making much of wiping my face and fingers on my handkerchief and tossing my orange skin into the long grass.

‘Who is this Kit Marlowe?’ I burst out. ‘He seems to be a great friend of Simon’s.’ I had not meant to say it, and once the words were out of my mouth, I could not look Guy in the eye.

‘Ah, so you have met the great Kit Marlowe, have you? The golden son of Cambridge, poet extraordinary, would-be play maker. Was that at Walsingham’s?’

I stared at him. ‘No. Certainly not. Why should I meet him at Walsingham’s?’

‘He is something of a protégé of Walsingham’s cousin Thomas. And I’ve heard it hinted that he sometimes works for Sir Francis himself.’

‘I’ve never seen him at Seething Lane.’ I felt my heart sink. Was this fellow likely to appear where I worked?

I turned to Guy and studied him. ‘You don’t like him,’ I said.

‘I do not. He is arrogant, thinks too well of himself and too poorly of others. He also has a violent temper and has been in trouble for it. How did you come to meet him?’

‘It was at Sir Walter Raleigh’s house. Harriot took me there for one of Raleigh’s discussion evenings and Marlowe turned up there, very late, with no apologies, dragging Simon after him. He insulted me.’

‘That is no surprise.’

‘Is he a member of Master Burbage’s company, then?’

‘No, no. He’s much too fine a gentleman to join a ragbag of wastrels like us. Though I have heard tell he sometimes mixes with very low company indeed, thieves and ruffians. He’s only a cobbler’s son, but he gives himself airs, having been a scholar at Cambridge. No, he hangs about our company, hoping to sell us a play. And he’s taken lodgings with Thomas Kyd, perhaps in the hope of a recommendation.’

‘So why was Simon with him? They seemed very close.’ I tried to remember what I had seen. ‘At least, he was making much of Simon and wanted him to join in insulting me, though Simon looked embarrassed.’

Guy grinned, and wiped his sticky fingers on his breeches.

‘Well, you have to admit that Simon is a very pretty boy, and Marlowe has a liking for pretty boys.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh, indeed. But do not worry, I am sure Simon does not return the feeling.’

‘I do not worry. What is it to me what Simon feels?’

‘What indeed? And I am sure Marlowe will not hurt your friendship with Simon. He did not join in the insults, did he?’

‘He did not.’

Guy got up and brushed fragments of moss and lichen from his clothes. ‘Come back with me now and see the company. We have missed you.’

Here was another surprise. It seemed that the players also missed me. I had not realised that I had made so many friends, both at Seething Lane and at the Theatre. After years of hiding away, keeping to my father’s shadow, the last two years had changed my life.

‘Will Marlowe be there?’ I asked.

Guy drew himself up to his full height, which was slightly less than mine, and struck himself on the chest with a grand gesture.

‘If he is, I will protect you with my life!’

I laughed and followed him out of the churchyard.

When we reached the Theatre, outside the north wall of the city, past the Curtain playhouse and near Finsbury Fields, we found most of the company there but, happily, no Marlowe. They were about to start a rehearsal of some new comic piece, one of those full of jokes of the moment, which would be stale in six months’ time. It would please the groundlings and earn the players enough coin to live, but it was the kind of trivial thing my father looked down on. Despite my urging, he had still not come to see any of the newer, more serious plays the company performed, like those of Thomas Kyd. I wondered what sort of play Marlowe was writing. Probably as full of bombast as he was.

In the rehearsal Guy capered and tumbled, Simon simpered as a love-lorn maiden, and Christopher Haigh (who played the young lover parts) postured as a noble shepherd who was really a long-lost prince. There were a great many jeers at King Philip and his admiral Santa Cruz and some clumsy double entendres concerning burning ships. Burbage stopped the players from time to time in order to rearrange them on the stage or change some of the words. A young boy, who was playing one of the minor women’s parts, was told off for striding about the stage like a man and looked as though he would burst into tears. Afterwards, I saw Simon take him aside and show him how to walk, taking small steps and keeping his hands clasped in front of his, so that he would not be tempted to let his arms swing loosely at his sides.

‘It will be easier once you are in costume,’ Simon said. ‘In a farthingale and skirt you will find that your legs are so hampered you are forced to take small steps, just to avoid tripping up.’

I smiled to myself. I knew he was quite right. When I had first changed into boy’s attire at the age of twelve, I had discovered how much easier it was to move than when I had worn skirts, especially those for evening or festive wear, which were heavy and stiff with embroidery and pearls. I could not imagine ever abandoning my breeches for skirts again.

‘Kit!’ Simon had just noticed me, sitting in the lowest tier of seats and watching the rehearsal. He climbed up and sat down next to me.

‘You are a stranger here in the playhouse.’

There was a note of reproof in his voice, so I repeated my explanation to Guy of how busy I had been.

‘Though it is not so long since we met,’ I said. ‘You will recall an evening at Sir Walter Raleigh’s. You were there in company with your new friend – what was it he was called?’ I spoke with all the indifference I could muster.

‘Kit Marlowe,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘He knows Raleigh. He knows many great men.’

‘Indeed?’

‘And he thought I would be interested to accompany him.’

‘Oh? Was that it? I thought perhaps he wanted you there to witness how he vaunted himself before those same great men. To applaud his performance.’

‘He was abominably rude to you. I’m sorry.’ He was now looking even more shame-faced. ‘And I thought your explanation of the mathematics of celestial navigation most impressive.’

‘Not too much like a performing ape from the Indies? Or a blood-sucking Jew?’

‘It was unforgivable, what he said.’

‘You said nothing to chide him at the time. Nothing in my defence.’

‘I was taken aback. And before I could think of anything to say, he had hustled me away.’

‘Hmph.’ I was not quite ready to forgive him, but before we could say more we were summoned to join the others for supper at Burbage’s lodgings in Holywell Lane, which it seemed was his practice on the evening before the first performance of a new play. I was invited to eat with them. I did so readily, something I would never have dreamt of before last year.

It was a good evening. Burbage’s wife Ellen sat down to eat with us, though she retired early. The players were in high spirits, for they were sure the comic piece would do well for the next few weeks. Full houses in the playhouse meant full bellies for players. Burbage’s landlady was an excellent cook and served up a substantial meal of fish in a sauce of capers, followed by roast beef and roast mutton, dressed with leeks and carrots, then a lemon syllabub garnished with candied peel. Afterwards we cracked nuts and Guy performed a ridiculous parody of a sentimental song with new words which would have been unrepeatable in polite company.

It was growing dark as I walked home, but I was accustomed to that after my many late sessions working with Phelippes. Simon and Guy walked with me as far as their lodgings in Three Needle Street, and we parted on amiable terms. I walked the rest of the way in a happier frame of mind than I had known since that encounter with Marlowe.

Although my own life had taken a turn for the better, there was disquieting news from the Low Countries. By the beginning of August the English garrison of the port of Sluys, an important strategic foothold on the coast, had been under siege for nearly two months. The Duke of Parma, King Philip’s brilliant military commander in the Spanish Netherlands, had kept them in a stranglehold, starving and worn down by constant bombardment. On the fourth of August they could hold out no longer and surrendered. News reached London a few days later. After the jubilation of Drake’s raid on Cadiz, it was dismaying news indeed.

Initially Sluys had been defended by local men, but when Parma surrounded it, they had sent out an appeal to England and four companies of foot soldiers had courageously fought their way through the Spanish lines to their relief. It was clear that Parma was no longer directing his attention merely to suppressing the Dutch Protestants. He was aiming to seize ports which could be used as bases to attack England. Elizabeth sent Leicester with a large body of troops and ships to relieve Sluys but, characteristically, he failed to act. Despite enormous courage on the part of the garrison and the appeals to Leicester by their commander, Sir Roger Williams, no help came. A thousand men died. The garrison ran out of food and gunpowder, until in the end they were forced to surrender. The few remaining men were almost all wounded or maimed and Sir Roger himself left destitute.

‘You see how the Spaniard’s plans advance,’ Phelippes said to me, after recounting the sorry fate of Sluys. ‘With Sluys and Dunkerque Parma now has access to deep water harbours, eminently suitable for launching an attack on England. He will try to seize Flushing next – or Vlissingen, as the Hollanders call it.’

‘I was thinking more of the men who died there,’ I said sharply. ‘And of the few who survived. Dr Stephens says we will see many of them in the hospital when they reach London, if they do not perish on the way.’

‘Well, you must do your best to patch them up,’ he said, ‘for we shall need every able-bodied soldier we can scrape together to fight on board the ships of our navy.’

‘I thought we had no navy. Or little enough to match the Spanish.’

Sir Francis must have overheard my last remark, for he came through the door as I was speaking.

‘Our royal navy is small, Kit, but the ships of the privateers are armed and well crewed, and we are busy requisitioning every merchant ship that can be adapted for fighting.’

‘I don’t suppose the merchants will be glad of it,’ I said, thinking of Dr Nuñez, whose ship had brought us from Portugal and who had recently lost another to Drake’s festival of fire.

‘No, they will not be glad of it and they will lose trade for all the time that the ships are in our hands, but a far worse future awaits them if we cannot assemble a navy of some sort. Our cannon foundries are working all day and all night, and gunsmiths, bowyers and fletchers are all at full stretch.’