Текст книги "Portuguese Affair"

Автор книги: Ann Swinfen

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If we could take Lisbon.

I looked around. Like me, the soldiers had simply sunk to the ground. Their faces were pinched and grey with hunger and thirst and suffering and disease. Gone was the bravado which had had them looting the provisions in Plymouth and running wild in Coruña. They looked like a company of ghosts, like the flitting wraiths that Aeneas encountered in the Underworld. They did not even raise their eyes to our goal. They lay upon the ground and slept.

 

Chapter Sixteen

The siege of Lisbon was doomed from the outset. It had been no part of the plan, in those days of hectic excitement in London during the early spring, that Lisbon should be besieged. Dom Antonio had even been forced to concede to the Queen that the volunteer army should be allowed to loot his capital city for the first ten days. There was no other means of paying them. I never understood how this appalling concession was to be reconciled with a longed-for monarch returning to his jubilant people. I only learned of this arrangement to permit the looting of Lisbon the day we reached the city, when Dr Nuñez told me sorrowfully what had been agreed with the Queen. It seemed that the plan, so carefully devised in London, was that the authorised looting was to occur after the gates of the city were voluntarily opened to Dom Antonio by those same adoring subjects. It was assumed that there might be a little skirmishing in the streets with the occupying Spaniards, but they would soon be rounded up and despatched.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said to Dr Nuñez, when he told me this. I knew already that Portugal was to become some sort of dependency of England, encumbered by debt, shackled by trade concessions to English merchants, with Dom Antonio no more than a puppet king, but I did not see how the plundering of the country’s capital could be reconciled with a peaceful transition of power from Spain to an Anglo-Portuguese alliance.

Perhaps I was ignorant about how warfare and the affairs of kings should be conducted, but I could not comprehend how Dom Antonio – King Antonio – could hope to sit securely upon his throne by popular acclamation if he had first agreed to allow his capital city to be looted for ten days – ten days! – by an invading foreign Protestant army, and above all after the inhabitants had welcomed that army joyfully. There is no way to control an army set loose on an alien city with permission to loot. There would be not merely theft. There would be widespread destruction, rape, and murder. I did not want to be here when this happened. On the other hand, it would never happen unless the city surrendered. There was no intention on the part of our leaders to sit down to a siege.

Dr Nuñez shrugged. ‘I was not party to this agreement, Kit. It was drawn up between Her Majesty, the Privy Council and Dom Antonio. If Lisbon were to fall as the result of a siege, then of course there would be looting.’

‘But surely if a city is voluntarily handed over–’ I said. ‘And of course we are not proposing to besiege Lisbon. The city is supposed to open its doors to us.’

As a result of the original plan, we had brought with us no siege cannon, as we had been reminded again and again. We had no heavy artillery, no cannon save those that were the armaments of the fleet, and the fleet was twenty miles away at Cascais, busy about Drake’s affairs. Some small-bore artillery had originally been carried on the soldiers’ backs from Peniche. One by one, as the men died on the march, the weaponry they carried was left behind, for none of those poor shambling creatures could have carried two men’s loads. And even those who had managed to stumble as far as Lisbon had been shedding their own burdens, piece by piece, at the side of the road. There were men with half a suit of body armour, but no weapons for attack, and men with perhaps a musket and a dagger, but no breastplate to protect them from enemy fire. Our route across the countryside of Portugal was marked by a trail of dead men and scattered arms and armour and personal possessions, a smear, a slug track, across the map which spoke all too loudly of the true outcome of this Portuguese affair.

‘If the city does not surrender, then we can only take it by siege,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘And we can only take it by siege if Drake sails up the river, bringing his naval cannon.’

‘Those are the only alternatives.’

‘And we cannot sit down and starve them out.’ I remembered what the soldier had said to me, the night of the attack. The city would be well provisioned, while we were starving. ‘So the only possible outcomes are the willing surrender of the city or the arrival of Drake.’

‘Norreys has sent a messenger to Drake,’ he said, ‘urging him to move upriver at once.’

‘I, for one,’ I said, ‘will not be counting on it.’

In fact, at first we thought the city might surrender through sheer terror. Around midnight of that first night I was summoned to Dom Antonio’s tent, where I found all the English Portuguese party gathered, together with Sir John Norreys, several of his captains, and – to my astonishment – seated on a gilded stool which must have been carried here by one of those sumpter mules, the Earl of Essex himself.

I slipped behind Dr Nuñez and Dr Lopez, wondering what could be so urgent that I had been summoned like this in the middle of the night. Facing Dom Antonio and the Earl was a thin, dark-haired young man, who looked both frightened and queerly elated. He was standing before the two nobles, twisting his hands together. There were beads of sweat gathering on his temples and running down his cheeks, although the night was relatively cool after the heat of the day.

‘A deserter from Lisbon,’ Dr Nuñez whispered in my ear, ‘or a patriot, depending on your point of view. He managed to creep out through a postern gate to bring us news of what is happening inside the city walls.’

The sweating, then, was from fear or excitement.

‘Senhores,’ the man said, making a bow vaguely intended to include us all. ‘The garrison in the city has been reinforced by six thousand troops sent by King Philip from Madrid as soon as he heard of the attack on Coruña.’ He wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘You have heard of the executions? Of those believed to be supporters of the Dom?’

‘We have heard.’ It was Essex who spoke. He seemed to think he ranked first here and could take command of the discussion, although Dom Antonio, already proclaimed king in Peniche, far outranked him, while Sir John Norreys was indisputably in command of the army, whatever Essex might assume.

‘The killings have frightened many who would have been prepared to come over to Your Majesty.’ The man directed his words to Dom Antonio, and I saw Essex give an irritable jerk of his head.

‘Then, after the English fleet was sighted off Cascais, a rumour has spread that El Dracque is roaming the country with a thousand man-eating Irish wolfhounds, trained to cut down and kill anyone of Iberian blood.’

He looked around nervously, as if he expected to see a slavering beast at his heels. Someone gave a snort of laughter, quickly suppressed.

‘It is no laughing matter.’ Dr Nuñez had the courage to speak up, in the face of Essex and Dom Antonio. ‘Such a rumour, if indeed it is believed, might keep our Spanish enemies cowering behind the walls, unwilling to give battle. However, it also means that our Portuguese friends, if we have any, will be too terrified to leave the city to join us.’

He turned to the man. ‘Is it believed?’

He nodded. ‘By enough people to affect how they will behave. There are others who perhaps do not quite believe, but will find it more expedient to pretend they believe, so they need do nothing.’ He swallowed. ‘Is it true?’

‘Nay, my friend.’ Dr Nuñez smiled at him gently. ‘It is not true. Drake has a pet Irish wolfhound at home. I have seen it myself and it is as gentle as a babe. There are no wolfhounds, trained or otherwise, with us on the expedition. You may return and scotch the rumour.’

The young man’s eyes widened, showing the white, like those of a frightened horse. ‘I am not going back.’ His voice rose to a squeak. ‘I should be caught and killed at once. As it is, I have risked my life to come to you.’

‘Of course we welcome your good service.’ Clearly the Dom felt it was time he took charge of the meeting. ‘You will be rewarded for your courage, and amply too.’

I wondered at such self-deception. Dom Antonio had no money to reward anyone, nor overlordship of lands to be given away. I doubted whether, at this moment in Portugal, he owned much more than the clothes he stood up in.

‘Either way,’ said Dr Nuñez, ‘whether such a wild rumour is believed or not, Spanish and Portuguese alike will soon see that Drake is nowhere near Lisbon, but twenty miles away with his fleet as Cascais. Whether that will help or hinder us is any man’s guess.’

What had Drake been doing, all the time we had been labouring overland? I suspected that he might have been indulging in a little privateering to fill in the time. There was certainly no sign of him sailing up river to join us, despite Norreys demand.

The man from Lisbon also brought word that public executions were continuing to take place all day long.

‘Any who are suspected of supporting Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘are killed without trial. Men are being dragged to the gallows or garrotted in the street, merely on some anonymous informer’s whisper.’

The meeting in the royal tent went on for some while longer, but the man could tell us little more, save the number of the troops and the vast quantities of arms, gunpowder and food which had been stockpiled in the city while we lingered at Coruña, then made our slow way to Peniche and overland to Lisbon. It was nearing dawn by the time the meeting broke up.

‘I have heard,’ I said to Dr Nuñez the following day, ‘that the Dom has persuaded the local priests to slip into the houses round about and tell the people that he is God’s chosen ruler of Portugal, that they must come to his aid, and they will be richly rewarded, in this world and hereafter.’

We were sitting on the ground, leaning against our saddles, while our horses grazed nearby and we tore lumps out of a loaf of bread his servant had somehow managed to find for him. The bread was coarse, and I felt my teeth grate on fragments of grit, but it was fresh and I was too hungry to care.

‘Well enough,’ said Dr Nuñez, ‘but I have never heard that priests made good recruiting officers, except in the days of the Crusades, and then they were of a more fiery disposition than those we have seen here.’

I was aware all at once how tired and old he looked. When we had first set out from London, he had been so buoyed up, with hope and joy at returning to his native Portugal, that he seemed to have shed his age. Now it weighed down on him, the whole burden of his seventy years.

‘I also heard there was one priest,’ I said, in the hope of cheering him, ‘who has promised to find a way into the city and open the gates to us.’

‘Aye, I heard it too. But can one man alone accomplish such a thing? I doubt it, Kit, I doubt it.’

Later that day I met the priest, Father Hernandez. I was checking the wounds of the men who had been injured during the night attack by the Spanish. There was a risk, even with the lesser injuries, that they might still fester, for the men were so weakened and the conditions in which we had lived since Peniche so poor that there was a risk of serious inflammation or even gangrene. To my relief, there was no sign of gangrene, though all the wounds were slow in healing. There being no better place to treat them, my patients came one by one to lie on the ground under a single sheet of canvas, providing a makeshift shelter. When at last I was done, I sat back on my heels and wiped my face with a wet cloth. At least here we had water from the river.

‘You are over young to be serving as an army physician, my son.’

It was a priest, not more than thirty, who sat down cross-legged beside me on the ground. He had addressed me in English, but I replied in Portuguese.

‘No younger than many of the soldiers,’ I said. ‘Or not much. Though I think many of us have aged during the march here from Peniche.’

‘You are Portuguese? This march overland does not seem a wise course to have taken. Why were you not brought by ship?’

I shrugged. ‘It was the decision of those in charge of the expedition. I believe they chose that course because they believed that the local people would flock to King Antonio’s banner.’

‘But they did not.’

‘Nay.’

He held out his hand to me. ‘I am Dinis Hernandez.’

‘Christoval Alvarez.’ I shook his hand, where we sat, side by side on the ground, the last of my patients having left. In this ramshackle camp, there was no formality, except perhaps in Essex’s tents.

‘Are you not the priest who–’ I broke off.

‘Aye,’ he said quietly. ‘I have volunteered to make my way into the city and recruit good friends of King Antonio’s to help me open the city gates to his army.’

‘It is a very dangerous thing to attempt.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘Such times require desperate measures. I have little love for the Spanish. They killed my parents when they first invaded Portugal nearly ten years ago. My brother and my brother-in-law were amongst those executed without trial within the last two weeks. My sister and her children were in Lisbon, but there has been no word of them. They disappeared about the same time as my brother-in-law was killed. I want the Spanish driven out of Portugal.’

‘Do you think you will be allowed into the city?’

‘I am a priest. Why should they refuse me?’

‘If indeed you succeed in entering the city,’ I said slowly, ‘I know that there is an Englishman held prisoner there. His name is Hunter. I have no other name for him. Before I left London, I was asked to make sure that he was brought safely out of Lisbon, once we took the city. I do not know whether that will happen, or whether I shall be able to enter the city, but if you–’ I was uncertain how to continue. It seemed best not to mention Walsingham, or what manner of man Hunter was.

‘If I can find him, or help him, I will do so,’ he said, and smile reassuringly.

‘I am grateful, Father,’ I said.

Before we parted, I wished him success in his courageous attempt, and he blessed me, saying over my head a Catholic prayer.

My fears proved right. The following morning Father Hernandez’s head appeared on a spike, hoisted high above the walls of Lisbon so that everyone in our army could see it and take note. As indeed all the inhabitants of the countryside might have done also, and taken the lesson to heart, had there been any left to see. For we found, in searching the houses which had spread beyond the city walls as Lisbon had grown outside them, that none were left but the sick and the lame and ancient men and women babbling in terror and confusion. We promised to do them no harm, but they could no more help us than they could feed us. Every able-bodied man, woman and child had fled south over the Tejo, as far from us as they could.

As for myself, I turned from the sight of that terrible object above the wall, sickened and appalled at what had been done, not only to a man but to a priest. However much I tried to keep it out of my sight, it was always there, at the corner of my vision, and his voice speaking in my ear, blessing me. The dead face wore an expression of unspeakable horror, which I think will stay with me as long as I live.

The Dom soon began to grow impatient of living in the open fields under a sun which broiled us like a bread oven and whose heat even rose from the parched earth at night. Our Portuguese party (those of us who had come from London, with the half dozen Portuguese who had joined us) rode in the evening of the next day part-way along the road to Cascais, in search of the solar belonging to a local nobleman, whom the Dom had known in his youth. Here he would demand accommodation for us, while the common soldiers of Norreys’s army remained behind, camping outside Lisbon. He would return in triumph once Lisbon was taken. I confess, I was as eager as anyone when we rode up to the long, low building, with its thick white walls promising cool rooms and shadowy rest. The memory of the young priest’s head bloodily spiked over Lisbon haunted me. I wanted to put Lisbon behind me. The doors of the manor house were closed and the windows shuttered. Perhaps none were at home. Or perhaps the Senhor was one of those already taken by the Spaniards.

One of the Dom’s few servants rode up to the door, banging on it with the butt end of his whip and crying out, ‘Open there, in the name of Dom Antonio of the House of Aviz, rightful king of Portugal!’

The response was swift. Men rose up on the flat roof and began firing at us with crossbows and muskets. The servant, wounded in the leg, with blood running over his boot and down his horse’s side, wheeled around and galloped back to us as fast as his frightened horse would carry him. The shutters on the upper storey of the house were flung open and the muzzles of muskets poked out. From round by the stables, a group of young men, also armed, rode out and made for us. They were shouting, not in Spanish, but in Portuguese.

We scrambled to turn our horses in the narrow lane and rode hard for the high road back to Lisbon, with Dom Antonio in the lead. So this, I thought, is the Dom’s warm reception from his own people. They may have hated the Spanish, but they feared them even more, and with great good sense they saw that there was no hope of release from the Spanish occupiers through the actions of our dwindling, makeshift army. Even then, Drake might have turned the tide, had he sailed the short distance up the river to Lisbon, but Drake sat counting his gold crowns in Cascais, and did not come.

At the end of the next day, Norreys strode up to our silent huddle of Portuguese, followed by half a dozen of his captains. Since his attempt to find better quarters, the Dom had not dared to stray outside the safety of the English camp. Norreys’s face was grim and I suppose we all knew what he would say.

‘There is no profit, Dom Antonio,’ he said, ‘in continuing to sit in this slaughtering heat before the walls of Lisbon. We have no siege engines or cannon. We have not even men enough to cut off their supplies. The longer we wait, the greater the risk that Philip’s main army will march on us from Spain and we will be butchered like beasts in a shambles. My men are wounded and sick and starving. We must make for the ships at Cascais while we still can.’

The night was coming on, in that sudden way it does in southern Portugal, so different from the long lingering twilights of an English summer evening. A sliver of moon had already risen in the sky and the birds, silent through the numbing heat of the day, were murmuring sleepily in the broken branches of the olive trees, which the men had ravaged for wood to put on their cooking fires. There were no fires this evening, for there was nothing left to cook, the very last of the stores the Dom had wheedled from the peasants having been exhausted that morning.

‘We cannot leave now!’ The Dom’s voice choked with desperation. This was a different man from the preening peacock we had known in London. To do him justice, he was courageous, in his way, for he was not a young man, and the last weeks had been a severe trial.

‘This is the key to the kingdom,’ he said. ‘Lisbon was our goal, and had we come here at once, as ordered by the Queen,’ (he emphasised this, for Norreys was almost as guilty as Drake) ‘aye, as ordered by the Queen, then we would have secured Lisbon weeks since and be sitting in the palace now, with food and drink enough for all.’

Norreys shrugged.

‘We cannot talk of what might have been. We must talk of what is.’ He spoke as if teaching a schoolboy a lesson, tapping Dom Antonio familiarly on the arm. The Dom jerked away from Norreys’s touch, with a flare of anger in his eyes.

‘We cannot take Lisbon,’ Norreys said flatly, with finality. ‘No Portuguese have come to join you. The men are dying. We must march to the ships. We will start at once.’

Ruy Lopez, ever the one to believe in the impossible, pleaded with him.

‘We must have more time!’ His tone was peremptory. ‘Word has been sent out around the country since we reached Lisbon. Our supporters will come, and bring weapons and supplies.’

Norreys gave an angry sigh. Then he looked about him and saw, as I did, that it would soon be night, with little moon. It was only that, I am sure, that made him say:

‘Twelve hours more. You may have twelve hours more. Then I move the army to Cascais. You may come with us or stay here in your country, as you will.’

He turned on his heel and stamped away, followed by his officers.

The senior men of the Portuguese party drew together in conference then, but I walked away from them. I knew that Norreys was right. The expedition had been lost from the time we stayed more than a day at Coruña. There was nothing left for us now but to retreat to the ships and save as many of the men as we could. All hope was dead. I rolled myself in my cloak and slept on the ground that night, but my sleep was troubled. From hour to hour I woke and saw, huddled together in the thin moonlight, the three old men, Dom Antonio, Dr Lopez, and Dr Nuñez, sitting with their eyes open and their ears straining for the Dom’s ghost army, which did not come.

I woke again as the sky was growing light, but before the sun had risen. The three old men had gone, but their horses remained. All around me, men were crawling from the hollows and ditches they had scratched out of the hard-baked soil, to provide themselves with some illusory protection from the merciless sun and the occasional cannon fire loosed off from the city walls, which mostly fell short of the camp, established at a discreet distance from the city. The soldiers stumbled around, gathering up their pitiful possessions and hoisting their packs on their backs. There would be nothing to eat until we reached Drake, so they were in a hurry to be on their way. I was not sure that the full twelve hours Norreys had promised were yet passed, but I strapped my gear on to my horse and brought him water in my helmet, which was not likely to see any better use that day. Before long I was joined by the others of our party. We did not speak.

Before we left, Norreys sent a troop of his few experienced men to set fire to the buildings lying outside the city wall. By now even the old and infirm had departed, but in sheer frustration he wanted to wreak what little destruction he could. The smoke of the fires rose lazily into the windless sky, wreathing Lisbon with this petty gesture of spite. At least, I thought, the city will not be sacked and the innocent slaughtered.

As the army moved off, I saw that there were men who had not climbed out of their pits this morning, but there was no time and no strength to bury them. Like those who had died on the way from Peniche, they would be left to the scavenging birds and beasts, and their English bones would bleach under the hostile Portuguese sun.

I mounted and rode alongside the weary men, who did not march so much as grope their way westwards, towards the estuary of the Tejo and the promised ships waiting at Cascais. Behind me I heard a clamour – shouting and a sort of jeering laughter. Wondering what could have roused the men, I reined in and twisted round in the saddle. Essex, magnificent, ablaze once more in his full gilded armour, caught by the sun as it lifted clear of the land, was riding up to the gates of the city. He cast his lance at the gates, where it stuck in the wood, quivering.

‘Come then,’ he shouted, ‘you cowardly Spanish! I challenge any one of you to meet me in single combat for the honour of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth!’

From behind the walls there came no answer, unless it was the faint sound of echoing laughter. Satisfied with his show of bravado, Essex galloped up to join us, flourishing his sword with its jewelled hilt, as though he had won a great victory.

It was twenty miles to Cascais. That seemed nothing, compared to what we had already endured. Yet to the men it must have seemed more like the sixty-five from Peniche to Lisbon, so exhausted were they, but they kept on doggedly. It was the thought of food that kept them moving, I am sure, that and the safety of the ships which would take them away from the hateful soil of Portugal on the homeward journey. When the roofs of the Atlantic port came in sight at last, late that evening, a feeble shout went up from the men, not a cheer, for they were too weakened for that, but an acknowledgement that their ordeal was nearly over. I had ridden all day in a kind of despair. I had never really hoped that we could take Lisbon, after all the mistakes and folly of our mission, but to turn our backs on it was to concede, finally and totally, that we had failed, and the taste of failure is bitter on the tongue.

Drake and his sailors looked well and cheerful. Cascais had surrendered to them at once, without a shot fired, and they had captured a flotilla of Spanish merchant ships, providing plenty of booty, although of a somewhat workaday kind, not to be compared with the treasures to be seized on the ships returning from the New World, laden with gold and silver. One of these Drake had managed to capture, while on the way from Peniche to Cascais, and he was holding the valuables under secure locks. All the time that we had starved and laboured, Drake and his men had spent in counting their loot, feasting royally, and enjoying the prostitutes in the port. I think the sight of us must have shocked them. That evening the soldiers ate well. As men will at such times, they gorged themselves, despite our warnings of the dangers to a starved belly. The next day there were a few more deaths from its effects. Now that we were gathered together in relative safety, it was possible to hold a muster of our men, and count our losses. After the fighting and looting in Plymouth, the original army had shrunk from the numbers first gathered there, but some nineteen thousand soldiers had embarked on the ships for Portugal, not taking into account the sailors. Only eighteen hundred of the soldiers had been veterans from the Low Countries. Of those nineteen thousand soldiers, barely four thousand men remained alive. And of those four thousand, at least half were sick or wounded.

As soon as Drake and Norreys met, they began to argue violently, each blaming the other for the failure of the expedition. Drake blamed Norreys for choosing to march overland, instead of travelling by ship round the coast. Norreys blamed Drake for going in pursuit of the treasure ship and then lingering in Cascais, instead of coming to our aid at Lisbon, for which Drake appeared to have no excuse. Their anger was heightened further by the arrival of a pinnace with mails from the Queen, who was furious that Essex had been allowed to join the expedition, against her express wish. I suppose Drake and Norreys were thankful that, despite all his empty heroics, her favourite Essex was still without a scratch.

The next morning, Dr Nuñez and I watched Essex’s ship, the Swiftsure, depart for England.

‘They have sent him ahead,’ said Dr Nuñez, ‘with letters of apology and explanation to the Queen, in the hope that he can charm her into a sweet temper before we arrive with news of our complete failure.’

‘What explanation could the despatches give, for Essex coming with us?’ I said. ‘He has done us little enough good, caused the death by drowning of many at Peniche, and his men have helped to consume the provisions.’

‘Oh, I believe the excuse will be that the winds have been constantly strong from the north-east, making it impossible for him to set sail for home.’

‘And now the wind has changed?’ I asked disbelievingly.

He gave a wry smile. ‘And now, conveniently, the wind has changed.’

‘When do we sail?’

‘Drake and Norreys are making their final plans now. You will remember, Kit, that the expedition was sent to carry out three tasks for the Queen’s Majesty.’

I cast my mind back. It was a long time since I had thought about those plans, made so eagerly back in the spring. Three tasks? I had had three tasks myself. I had rescued Titus Allanby from Coruña. I had never been able to come near Hunter. As for Isabel . . .

‘Three tasks for the Portuguese expedition?’ I said. ‘Above all, to capture Lisbon and so regain Portugal for Dom Antonio,’ I said, ‘as a province of England.’

‘Yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘As a province of England.’

‘To burn King Philip’s fleets at Santander, Coruña and Lisbon.’

‘Neither of these two tasks we have accomplished, apart from a few ships at Coruña.’

‘Nay.’ I thought again. What was the third task to have been? Then I remembered. ‘And to capture the Azores.’

‘Yes.’

‘We are not,’ I said incredulously, ‘we are not going to attempt the Azores? With ships full of sick and dying men?’

‘Drake is to attempt the Azores. He will take the most able men, and all the provisions, and make an attack on the Azores. Norreys and the rest of us will load the ships with those sick and dying men you speak of, and sail directly to Plymouth.’

At first I did not quite grasp what he was saying.

‘Did you say that Drake is to take all the provisions? Do you mean all the armour and weaponry?’

‘That too. But he is to take all the food and drink as well.’

‘But with the gold he has seized, we can surely provision the whole fleet!’

‘There is little left in Cascais after Drake and his sailors have fed on it like locusts all this time, but, yes, I expect if we used some of the gold, we could purchase stores from the villages round about. But Drake will not part with a single coin of it. He says it belongs to the Queen. It is not his to spend.’

‘This is murder,’ I said slowly. ‘These men of ours will not survive the voyage back to England, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink.’