Текст книги "Portuguese Affair"
Автор книги: Ann Swinfen
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Chapter Three
Next morning, very early, I took leave of my father. He gave me his blessing, his eyes shining with hope at the prospect of all this expedition might gain for us. If it had done nothing else, the Counter Armada, as it was beginning to be called, had restored to him something of his old strength of body and mind. His movements were vigorous and in the last few weeks there had been no signs of those wandering wits which had so frightened me in recent months. My dog Rikki, accidentally acquired last year in the Low Countries, sensed that something was wrong and howled mournfully as I closed the door on them.
The previous evening I had packed my knapsack with two changes of light-weight clothes, recalling as I did so the thick garments I had taken with me on my first mission for Sir Francis to the Low Countries in the winter of 1587. Then I had been warned of the bitter cold. Now I was returning to a country I knew well, where the heat of summer would have overtaken us before the expedition returned, and I hardly had clothes thin enough for the weather we would encounter on shore. Aboard ship there would be some hope of a cooling breeze, but even the lightest of my English clothes would be hard to bear in the full heat of a Portuguese summer. The cool cotton fabrics we had known there, a legacy of Arab days, were unknown in London, where the thinnest materials were the silks and fine linens, too costly for me to afford.
As well as clothes I packed a pair of summer shoes that I wore normally at the hospital, my physician’s gown, and two books. One was the volume of Sidney’s poetry which Simon had given me for my seventeenth birthday. I was never sure how he had managed to obtain it, for it had been privately printed and circulated simply amongst the circle of Sidney’s friends. There was talk of a public edition being printed, but nothing had come of it yet. The other book had been given me the previous Sunday by the rector of St Bartholomew’s church, the Reverend David Dee. It was a small, rather badly printed copy of the four gospels, produced in Geneva. He was not himself a Genevan, deploring their extreme Protestantism, but they were very active in producing inexpensive books of piety.
‘I am sure you will have many tedious and idle hours at sea, Kit,’ he said, with a slightly repressive smile. ‘This may help to pass them. You have told me that you wish to read the Bible for yourself, and this is the most important part, the life and works of Our Lord. It may also be a consolation for you, in the difficult times which lie ahead, for I fear there will be fighting.’
‘Aye, Father,’ I said. ‘I fear there will.’
The Reverend Dee was a somewhat difficult man. My father, amongst those of higher rank in the parish, respected him for his learning and certainly his sermons were models of well-argued prose, straight from the Oxford Schools. However, he had one over-riding passion, and those afflicted by this particular passion are rarely loved by their neighbours. He was a builder. I was not privy to the details of his vision, but I knew – for he often dwelt on it in his sermons – that he fervently deplored the destruction of so much of the ancient and beautiful priory of St Bartholomew’s and dreamt of restoring it. After so many of the monastic buildings had been pulled down in the time of King Henry, a huddle of cottages had been built on the glebe land, mainly from the broken stone and timber of the priory buildings. They were an unlovely collection, but they provided housing in the parish for a number of families. The Reverend Dee wanted to eject the tenants, pull down the cottages and replace them with an extension to the church and other parochial buildings. As a result, he was regularly at loggerheads with the tenants, who had countered by laying charges of lewd behaviour against him.
I believed none of it, for he was an upright man, even if obsessed and prepared to drive a carriage and four through other people’s lives in pursuit of his dreams. The dispute, if taken to the law courts, could drag on for years. He had never been other than courteous to my father and myself, so I thanked him for his gift, wondering the while whether he had any idea of the extent of danger and fighting which lay ahead of me. Privately, I felt that Sidney’s poetry might bring me more consolation than these dense, almost indecipherable pages, but it was kindly meant of him.
In addition to my knapsack, I carried my satchel of medicines. This was crammed as full as it would hold, until the seams strained and I could barely buckle it shut. I retained the special compartment at the bottom, which the leatherworker Jake Winterly had made for me, and into this I placed my most precious items – ground pearls and unicorn horn, calabar beans against poisoning, and the rarest of our herbs. The rest of the satchel was filled with every sort of wound salve, febrifuge herbs, extract of poppy, vomitives, senna, and binding tinctures against the flux. I took few instruments, just a scalpel, a probe, tweezers large and small, needles and thread for stitching wounds. Dr Nuñez and I had consulted over the medical supplies which should be carried by the fleet. Our own ship would be better provided than the rest, with the two of us and Dr Ruy Lopez on board. We advised the captains of the other ships, but they had their own naval surgeons and whether they would listen to us was doubtful. We were regarded as civilians, with no experience in warfare, at sea or on land. The fact that I had cared for the wounded soldiers who had survived the siege of Sluys counted for little, as did my brief encounter with a naval battle the previous summer.
It was a beautiful morning when I left home, soft with the pearly light of early spring, and the whole of London was aflutter with courting and nesting birds. In muddy corners primroses raised faces as shiny as butter and in a patch of waste ground, where a house had collapsed and not been rebuilt, there was a patch of bluebells as gloriously bright amongst the rubble as the southern skies we would soon be seeing. There was a tightness in my chest, part fear, part – I suppose – excitement, for although I was apprehensive, there was something gallant and defiant in this whole undertaking. We might have won the great sea battle in the previous year, but we all knew in our hearts that we had come near to defeat, confronted by that fleet, the largest the world had ever seen. Had the great wind not come to our aid, scattering the Spanish ships and preventing the rendezvous with their army in the Low Countries, we must surely have been defeated and would now be living under the iron heel of the Spanish conqueror.
I shivered, despite the bright morning. It had come very close, that defeat. And now we were to sail south to Spain, into the mouth of the lion, and attempt to turn the tables on them, by destroying their fleet, landing on soil they held, defeating their army. Could we possibly achieve such a victory, unless God were once again on our side? We would have a fleet of nearly a hundred and fifty ships and an army of thirty thousand soldiers, but the Spaniards had but to hold fast where they had fortified towns and harbours. Moreover, of these ships of ours, eighty were pinnaces or Dutch vlieboten, small and manoeuvrable, but carrying limited fire-power. There were only six war galleons. The rest were armed merchantmen, built for trade rather than warfare. And our soldiers would mostly be untrained recruits, with just a small leavening of experienced troops drawn from our forces who had been supporting the Dutch rebels in the Low Countries. If the two armies should ever meet in pitched battle on land, there was little doubt what the outcome would be, in the face of Spain’s professional army. Ours was the greater task and could not be accomplished unless the people of Portugal – my own people, I reminded myself – rose up in support of the invasion and fought side by side with us.
When I reached the Legal Quays near the Tower, there was a great bustle and shouting. Only the smallest part of the fleet was here, for most was in harbour at Plymouth, or on the way there. Nevertheless the cranes on the dockside were hard at work loading provisions and weapons on to the ships moored here, or on to the supply boats ferrying goods out to the largest ships anchored off shore. The cranesmen were stripped to the waist and sweating profusely. Sailors crowded the decks of the ships, catching hold of the awkward bundles which spun dizzily at the ends of the cranes’ hawsers and guiding them down through the hatches into the holds below deck.
I scanned the ships, searching for the Victory, the ship which had been allocated to the Portuguese party. Amongst this busy throng I could not see her, but then caught sight of Dr Hector Nuñez, standing on the quayside, a little behind Ruy Lopez, who was attending obsequiously on Dom Antonio. All three were splendidly dressed, as were the men in the Dom’s livery, marshalling what appeared to be an immense amount of personal baggage. I might be one of this Portuguese party, but I could hardly compare with all this sartorial splendour, despite the fact that I was wearing my best doublet, a shirt topped with a small but elegant ruff, and a pair of woollen stocking finer than any I had ever possessed before, a parting gift from Sara Lopez. I would keep my distance.
Skulking half hidden behind a massive barrel which, from the smell, contained stock fish, I thought I would watch where they went and follow at a distance. However, Dr Nuñez, glancing round, spotted me and motioned me to join them. Reluctantly, I did so.
Dr Nuñez clasped both my hands in his. He was glowing with excitement. ‘Well, Kit, so we are on our way at last! I never believed this day would come. Soon we will walk again on the soil of our motherland.’
I tried to smile. At the same time, I wondered. For had not Dr Nuñez and his wife left Portugal to come to London long before Spain had invaded? They had chosen to leave, to make their home in England. They were not enforced exiles like my father and me, driven out by the terror of the Inquisition. I could not quite understand his enthusiasm. Instead, I turned to practical matters.
‘Which is our ship?’ I asked. ‘I can see none called the Victory.’
‘There.’ He pointed to one of the galleons anchored off shore, too large to tie up beside the quay. ‘We are just waiting for a boat to take us on board.’
She was certainly a fine ship, I had to admit. Of course I should I have realised that the ship which would convey the new king to his kingdom would be one of the finest in the fleet. He could not be expected to travel in one of the merchantmen, however comfortable. One consolation, I supposed, was that she carried a full complement of forty-two guns.
The first boat took off Dom Antonio, Ruy Lopez and some of what I imagined must be their most precious possessions. I went in the second with Hector Nuñez and more of the luggage, carrying my own knapsack and satchel myself. It needed a third and fourth boat to convey the remaining servants and bundles. The Thames was at the slack of the tide, so that it was easy enough to climb the sturdy ladder lowered for us, not like a frightening experience I had had when joining Dr Nuñez’s ship the Santa Maria off the coast of Portugal when I was twelve. That was past, I told myself firmly, jumping down on to the deck. I would not let myself think of the past, but only of the future, of the three missions I must accomplish, two for Walsingham and one for myself.
It was some time before we sailed. While the older members of our Portuguese party were being received graciously by the captain and his senior officers, I kept out of the way and found a place by the railings of the poop deck where I could watch all the activity of the loading. Most of the Victory must have been loaded already, but there were still goods coming aboard, besides the Dom’s possessions. The ship had its own crane for lifting goods from the supply boats inboard. When I grew tired of watching that, I strolled about the decks, making myself familiar with the layout of the ship which would be my home for all the weeks ahead. Apart from that first journey from Portugal I had never been on such a large ship, for those which had taken me twice to the Low Countries were pinnaces, as small by comparison as a terrier beside the mythical oliphants that are said to inhabit the inner lands of Africa, or like a herring beside a whale.
The size of the ship reminded me of that first ship I had travelled in, although that had been a merchantman, not a ship of war, and despite my determination to banish all thoughts of that voyage seven years ago, I knew a moment of panic. We would be travelling back over those same waters, in a ship not so very different. I tried to concentrate on immediate and urgent problems. I needed to know where I would sleep. Here I could not offer to sleep with the horses, as I had done when Nicholas Berden and I had travelled together on Walsingham’s business. Would I be expected to sleep with the crew? It would be impossible, and still conceal my sex. To share a cabin with the distinguished members of our party, or with the ship’s officers would be just as dangerous.
I investigated the ship from bow to stern as unobtrusively as possible, keeping out of the way of the sailors, and at last found what I was looking for. There was a corner on the foredeck, behind a massive water cask and between two huge coils of thick rope, where I reckoned I could bed down unseen, if I could make my way here without being forestalled. It would be uncomfortable, but not cold, even while we were in English coastal waters, and it would be far better and safer than sleeping hugger-mugger in a hammock amongst the crew. I stowed my knapsack here, but kept my satchel on my shoulder.
That was one problem solved, I hoped, but as the last of the supply boats drew away and the swirling river waters showed that the tide was turning to the ebb, I felt a terrible lurch of fear in my stomach. It caught me so suddenly that it stopped my breath. A single topsail was hoisted on the mainmast. The anchor chain rattled up as six of the crew trudged round the capstan with a rhythmic chant to help their efforts. The great anchor rose, dripping weed and Thames mud. The signals from officers to crew on this huge ship were conveyed by whistles or trumpets, unlike the friendly shouts I had known on the pinnaces. I saw a ship’s boy climbing the main mast, nimble as a monkey, with something gripped in his teeth. The mainsail and the lateen sail on the mizzen mast were hoisted, but not yet the rest of the canvas, for the ship would need to manoeuvre slowly down river until we were clear of London’s water traffic. All around us, other ships in the fleet were making ready to sail down the Thames on the ebb tide, bound for Plymouth.
The boy had reached the masthead and seemed to be busy up there, then I saw what he was about. As he shinnied down again, the wind caught the standard fixed there, and it broke out fully in view: Dom Antonio’s standard, bearing the coat of arms of the Portuguese royal dynasty, the Aviz. There could be no going back now. The sight of that flag, the increasing speed of the ship, the diminishing view of the Tower and the Bridge behind us was like the stuff of nightmares, as though some hidden, malevolent force were sucking me back the way I had come, making a mockery of my escape from Portugal.
Plymouth, where we were to take on supplies and recruits to the expedition’s army, was the first place I had seen in my new country, all those years ago. Now it would be the last place we would see in England. My life seemed to be rolling in reverse. Although it had been the scheme of those three influential men in my life – Dr Nuñez, Dr Lopez and my father – that I should take my father’s place on the expedition, yet I also clung to my own reasons for returning to Portugal, despite these moments of panic. I could not tell whether my half-formed plans would even be possible. I had said nothing of them to anyone, not even my father, not even Walsingham, who might have been able to help me.
More signals were sounded on the whistles and more canvas was broken out, until we were under a full complement of sail. I had loved the sleek lines and beauty of the two pinnaces, Silver Swan and Good Venture, but there is no denying that a great galleon – however huge and seemingly top-heavy compared with the smaller ships – is a magnificent sight. The modern race-built English galleons look more elegant and graceful than the heavier Spanish galleons I had seen at sea last year. Even as I was, sick with nerves and apprehension, I could appreciate the splendour of the Victory. Around and behind us the rest of the fleet filled me with a grudging pride. We were a fine sight, even this small part of the fleet. The only time I had seen an English fleet before had been amidst the confusion of battle. Now we sailed bravely in formation down the spreading waters of the Thames, flags and pennants flying, the polished wood of the hulls gleaming, the new canvas of the sails a warm cream, every scrap of brass reflecting the spring sunshine. The shores on either side of the river, even when we reached the lower, muddy reaches, were lined with people on both the Kent and Essex banks, waving and cheering us on our way. I wondered whether any of the players I knew had come to see us off from London. I had not thought to look, and now it was too late. We were past Greenwich and moving with tide and wind down towards the estuary and the open sea.
The journey itself as far as Plymouth was uneventful. The weather was calm, but with enough of a breeze to take us out into the German Sea and around the easternmost nose of Kent. As we stood out into mid Channel, I remembered what both Captain Thoms and Captain Faulconer had told me last year about the dangers of the Goodwin Sands. For a vessel of this size, the danger must be all the greater, for she needed deeper water than the pinnaces and even had they grounded they could probably have rowed away, provided they were quick about it. Or they could have lowered a skiff, so it could tow them off, always supposing it was daylight and the tide was not ebbing fast.
A vast ship like the Victory could take neither of these measures to extricate herself from the shoals, so I was relieved to see that our helmsman was steering a wide course over to towards the French coast. We were not far from Gravelines, where I had been caught up in the battle aboard the Good Venture last year. It was hard to imagine it now, the explosions and smoke, the glare of the burning fire ships, the screams of injured men, and the air choking with dust and the reek of gunpowder. Now there was nothing to be seen but our well-ordered fleet and a few fishing boats closer to land on the calm waters.
Dr Nuñez came to stand beside me, where I was leaning on the starboard rail, looking toward Kent.
‘Will that be Dover?’ he asked, pointing to where we could now make out the castle high on its promontory. I realised that, although his ships traded regularly throughout the known world, he had probably never travelled this way except on his original voyage to England.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘That’s the castle up there, and, down below, the harbour I sailed from when I went to Amsterdam. ‘They light a signal fire on the old Roman lighthouse after dark, as a guide to ships.’
‘We’ll see that, no doubt,’ he said. ‘We are to put in to the harbour for the night. Some of the ships are to embark a contingent of soldiers from the garrison.’
‘Are they?’ I wondered whether Andrew Joplyn would be amongst them. ‘Their commander will not be pleased. He does not care for anyone to interfere with his running of the Dover garrison.’
‘Ah, of course, you met him.’
‘Aye. A pompous, rude man. We should be thankful he is not part of this expedition.’
He laughed. ‘I think Sir John Norreys would soon lick him into shape.’
We stood in silence as the Victory furled some of her canvas and turned slowly to make her way into the harbour. Flights of gulls shrieked from the nearby cliffs, skimming over the sea around us and plucking fish effortlessly from the water. I could see untidy nests being built on the ledges of the cliff face, which was streaked with their droppings, a dirty cream against the gleaming white of the limestone.
‘The birds will be nesting in Portugal too,’ Dr Nuñez said dreamily. ‘When I was a boy, we used to go to spend the hot weather in our summer home on a headland overlooking the sea, to escape the heat of Lisbon. It is one of my earliest memories, travelling there in a coach with my mother and brothers and sisters, with my father riding beside us. We used to listen for the cry of the gulls and try to be the first to catch sight of the sea. Later, when I was older, I rode with my father, so I always saw the sea first, having a better view.’
I thought, This is why he is here. It has nothing to do with driving out the Spanish and putting Dom Antonio on the throne. He is in search of his lost childhood.
I turned away. Perhaps that was partly why I was here as well.
We spent the night at anchor in Dover harbour. The leaders of our party went ashore to attend a banquet given by the mayor and councillors of the town. Although Dr Nuñez tried to persuade me to accompany them, I had no wish for a long evening of eating and drinking too much and listening to too many worthy speeches. As dusk fell, after taking supper with the junior officers, I made my way to my corner behind the water barrel. No one paid any particular attention to me. I was no part of the working crew, nor was I one of the distinguished passengers, the leaders of the gentlemen adventurers. Grateful for the anonymity given me by my ambivalent position amongst the people aboard the Victory, I did my best to bed down on deck. Earlier I had managed to filch a couple of blankets from one of the hammocks below decks, but I could not pretend I was going to be comfortable. Sleeping on straw with the horses on the Silver Swan had been luxury compared with this. By the time we reached Portugal I should be black and blue all over.
It was well past dark when I heard the shore party returning, well wined and dined by the sound of them, Dom Antonio’s voice overriding them all, strident and assertive. I had had little chance to observe him so far, but what I had seen did not impress me with a sense of his royalty and dignity. He seemed inflated and boastful, full of pride at the moment, yet I sensed he would become querulous and ill-tempered if matters should fail to go his way.
My bed proved uncomfortable but private, as I managed to keep out of sight of the crew while they went about their duties. I felt secure, though I hoped the weather would remain fine. That first night I slept in fitful snatches. We remained at anchor in Dover harbour; the night was still and full of stars. Without even a thin palliasse or a layer of straw beneath me, every position I took hurt my shoulders, my hips or my back. Before dawn I was sitting propped up against the barrel, wondering how I could make my hidden bed more comfortable.
After we had broken our fast, we watched a troop of soldiers marched down from the castle to the harbour, then ferried out to two of the other galleons, not our own ship. I counted just twenty men. Either Dover could spare no more or else Sir Anthony Torrington, the commander of the garrison, had beaten Sir John Norreys down to this paltry number. Apart from the experienced soldiers due to be sent over from the Low Countries to meet us in Plymouth, these were the only trained soldiers we would be carrying. I screwed up my eyes, trying to make out whether Andrew Joplyn was amongst them. If he was, I did not see him.
Once the soldiers from Dover were aboard, we weighed anchor and with the rest of the fleet made our way out of the harbour and into the English Channel. In the early summer the Channel was calm, and we proceeded along the south coast of England with a moderate following wind. Before last year’s battle we would have feared attack from Spanish ships plying back and forth along these waters to the lands they occupied in the Low Countries, but the Spanish navy was still at home, licking its wounds. Not even the French were to be seen, apart from a few fishing boats, busy about their own affairs close to their own coast. We dropped anchor in Plymouth harbour three days after leaving Dover without any incident to trouble us. Here, as off Gravelines, it was hard to imagine the bloody conflict which had taken place over these waters so few months earlier, when ears were deafened with the thunder of artillery and nostrils choked with the bitter stench of gunpowder. If all went according to plan, we would experience our own share of naval artillery in Portugal, but the plan was for a quick campaign, catching the Spanish forces in Portugal unawares, with capitulation and peace negotiations to follow.
‘These houses must have witnessed the battle,’ I said to Dr Nuñez as we leaned on the rail, looked over at the peaceful activity in the harbour.
‘Perhaps, but probably not. They would have seen the fleet depart, but I think the fighting in this part of the Channel was further off. The people of Plymouth should be glad we are taking the fight across the seas,’ he said. ‘They came very near finding Spanish soldiers marching up their streets.’
‘I wonder how many of those Spanish soldiers found their way home again.’
‘Not many. All through the final months of last year despatches arrived from my agents handling the Spanish and Portuguese trade. Broken ships trailing in, manned by skeleton crews. Their losses were terrible.’
I did not answer, torn two ways. Part of me was fiercely glad that so many of the invaders had died, yet I could not forget what I had seen at Gravelines, men slaughtered on deck or drowning in the unforgiving sea.
The plan set forth in London before we departed was that we would remain in Plymouth no more than a week or so. We had brought some of the new ‘army’ with us from London; others had been gathered at Plymouth from all parts of the country, drawn by the prospects of looting which Dom Antonio had been forced to concede to the Queen in order to gain her support for the invasion. They were not to loot just in Spain, for – as I was to learn much later – once the soldiers had seized Lisbon, they were to be allowed to loot the city, as payment for their services. Thereafter the Dom had pledged such vast sums to Elizabeth that he would sit a beggar on his throne. Portugal was to become a province of England, her precious trade in the hands of English merchants, her castles manned by English garrisons. When I had heard this, I could not understand how the old men like Lopez and Nuñez and Dunstan Añez could consent to such terms. How could Portugal be free, loaded with such chains? But perhaps, like me, they were too entangled to escape the inexorable current of fate which was carrying us all onwards.
This ‘army’ which had been mustered was as vile, dirty, vicious, and ungovernable a rout of men as you have ever seen – beggars and thieves, wastrels and men fresh out of prison. When we reached Plymouth, those recruits we had on board scrambled ashore (they had puked all the way down the Channel) and joined their fellows who had been gathering here on land. This landward group had already discovered the warehouses where the provisions for the voyage were stored. Now more than doubled in their numbers, this army of gallant men set to, besieged the warehouses and took them in a matter of hours.
Over the next days, while we awaited the arrival of a trained contingent of soldiers who were to join us from the Low Countries, all the provisions – meat, drink, flour, salted fish, ship’s biscuit, dried fruit and vegetables – found their way down the gullets of these starving wretches. When they had devoured our substance, like a biblical plague of locusts, they descended upon the taverns and inns of Plymouth and the surrounding villages. Boasting that they were the Queen’s army and must be fed, they told the frightened innkeepers to send their bills to London, where they would be paid by the Privy Council or the Queen herself. When the inns ran out of food, they broke into houses and ransacked them. The terrified people of Plymouth cowered behind bolted doors and prayed for the arrival of the ships from the Netherlands, hoping to see the last of us. When a Flemish boat put into port, our gallant men stripped it of its entire cargo of dried herrings, after beating the crew half to death.
At last, to our great relief, the professional soldiers arrived from the Low Countries, long after they were due, and with their help Sir John Norreys rounded up such of the rioting men as could be found (some had grown tired of waiting and gone home). Once they were herded, most unwillingly, on board, we were able finally to set sail. I was still living aboard the Victory, with the rest of the Portuguese party, where I had remained all the time we were in harbour, scarcely setting foot on shore. We were relieved at last to be on our way, for we were already three weeks past our planned departure date. Yet once out of harbour and in the Channel our ships were met by head winds and could make no way against them. They blew us straight back into Plymouth Sound.
And back at Plymouth, anchored in the harbour, we found there was more bad news. It was Dr Nuñez who told me the story. I think he had grown a little tired of the company of Ruy Lopez and the Dom, sitting in state in their fine suite of cabins, for I often found him on deck like me.
The Queen’s favourite, the wayward Earl of Essex, had been forbidden to come on the Portuguese venture. This was common knowledge before we left London.
