Текст книги "Portuguese Affair"
Автор книги: Ann Swinfen
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We watched in horror from the rail of the Victory, but there was nothing we could do. Dr Nuñez sat on a water cask with his head in his hands, groaning and muttering to himself. Dom Antonio strode angrily from one end of the ship to the other, his drawn sword in his hand, slapping it from time to time against his thigh, while Dr Lopez trotted behind him, with soothing, meaningless words. He had donned a bejewelled breastplate, an ornamental thing of little military value, but with it he still wore his square physician’s cap of purple velvet. Nothing could more clearly have spelled out our helplessness, our absurdity. This was an affair of Drake’s, not ours, just one more episode in his long personal war of attrition with Spain.
Sir John Norreys seemed helpless, for he had lost control of our untrained mob of men, his experienced soldiers far too few to marshal them into any kind of order. Drake, meanwhile, was sending fire parties in amongst the ships in the harbour, most of which were careened or laid alongside the quays under repair. Within a few hours smoke was drifting across the water toward us from those ships his sailors had managed to set on fire.
I tried speaking to Captain Oliver, who had retired to his cabin, as if to mark his wish to have no part in what was happening on shore.
‘Do you have any idea of how long we will be here, Captain?’ I asked. ‘If ever it is possible to get the men and the supplies back on board the ships?’
He gave me a bleak look. ‘I was concerned from the start that we were encumbered with this rabble. I would send my own crew ashore to secure provisions, but I dare not risk their lives amongst those drunken louts. We will never be able to reprovision until they drink themselves into a stupor and we can send reliable men to load up what we need.’ He grimaced. ‘That may take several days.’
‘But surely now Sir John will give up his plan of seizing the town,’ I said.
‘He has sent no signal to that effect.’
‘But these men are incapable–’
‘Aye, they are certainly incapable, but he has the experienced troops from the Low Countries.’
‘Only about eighteen hundred men,’ I said. ‘Enough to take possession of the undefended lower town, I suppose, but not the walled citadel, the old town up on the hill. We have no artillery.’
‘We have not,’ he agreed, ‘and the ships’ guns have not the range to reach so far. The garrison up there does have cannon. They have been firing down on our men.’
‘I have seen it. So what must we do?’
‘Await the first opportunity to reprovision, then hope we can persuade Sir John to abandon this unnecessary diversion of capturing the citadel of Coruña. Sir Francis is likely to want to do what damage he can, to both ships and town, but I doubt he will want to be held up here by a long siege.’
‘He would prefer to be at sea, hunting for the Spanish treasure ships.’ I smiled. Drake’s intentions were always easy to foresee.
He returned my smile, somewhat ruefully. ‘Aye, he would.’
Speaking to Oliver was a wasted effort. The captain himself was no better informed than I was. I returned to the foredeck and joined the other watchers there.
There was nothing for it, then, but to wait on events and hope that Sir John would change his mind or that Drake would persuade him to leave Coruña as soon as the fleet was reprovisioned. An early departure would benefit the whole expedition. As for Walsingham’s mission, in all this chaos, I could not see how I could make my way ashore and go in search of his agent Titus Allanby. I had been given very little information to guide me, apart from the fact that he was working as a tailor. I could see that it was a profession which might offer opportunities for gathering information.
Like most of the agents in the service, Allanby sent few details back to London about where he was living or even what he was calling himself, for fear that his reports might be intercepted. It was often necessary for agents to change addresses frequently and even to change their identity. Since Allanby had been working as a tailor, he was presumably living in the lower town and not up at the citadel, unless – it suddenly occurred to me – he had secured himself a position as a tailor to the military, which would have given him better access to the kind of information Walsingham would want him to seek out. It would be difficult enough for me to go ashore into the chaos of our soldiers’ wild rampage through the streets of the lower town. To gain access to the citadel would surely be impossible. The one thing which might work in favour of my going into the town, although it was damaging to our expedition, was the continuing west wind which Drake had feared would drive us ashore on to the French coast. As long as it continued to blow so fiercely, and until we could round up our drunken troops and load our provisions, here we would stay in the harbour at Coruña. The longer we stayed, the more chance I might have of going ashore.
I would need to think of some reason which would convince either the captain of our ship or one of the senior army officers to authorise such a venture. Sir John Norreys had met me briefly the previous year in Amsterdam, when Andrew Joplyn and I had discovered the conspiracy to supply arms and transport barges to Parma’s Spanish troops. I thought I had noticed a nod of recognition from Norreys when I had joined in the discussion about bypassing Santander and coming directly to Coruña. Perhaps, when he had managed to get the army under control, I should approach him. I could not tell him the details of my mission, for that must remain secret, but he knew I worked for Walsingham, and that might prove enough. Or I might think of some other reason for landing.
In the meantime, there was little I could do but wait and watch with the rest of the Portuguese party on deck. Norreys, in any case, had returned to his own ship before we reached Coruña and was probably now on shore himself, attempting to gain control over the rioting soldiers. He had been known for ruthlessness in his younger days, in particular against the Irish, but from all I had heard from discussions in Seething Lane, he conducted more orderly campaigns now. In any case, he would never sanction the kind of wild disorder we were witnessing in the town, which was a serious threat to his authority and that of his officers. I had seen some squadrons of the Low Countries troops disembarking and beginning to march through Coruña. I supposed they were attempting to round up such of the disorderly soldiers as were still on their feet and able to roll barrels to the quayside for ferrying out to the fleet. What the fate would be of the men lying insensible in the streets of the town, I could not imagine. Such flaunting of orders would normally call down the most severe of punishments, either flogging or even death, but so many of the soldiers were involved in the riotous behaviour that we could not afford to lose them all. Ever since the desertions at Plymouth, before ever we set sail, the number of our troops had been reduced below what had originally been planned.
Toward dusk some sort of order was beginning to be restored. A few barrels and sacks were loaded on to the vessels small enough to be able to moor at the quayside: skiffs and some of the smaller pinnaces. These then ferried the provisions out to the larger ships. A smell of cooking began to drift across the fleet. Either that, acting on hungry stomachs, or the actions of the professional soldiers, had brought some sort of discipline amongst a portion of the rabble. Others continued to roam the port. Soldiers from our own ship returned, dirty, smelling of drink and unsteady on their feet. Some, perhaps those caught in the worst acts on shore, were chained down below. The others were fed, harangued, but, for the moment, unpunished.
There was one fine Spanish galleon in the harbour, of the type Drake enjoyed sailing home to present to the Queen, laden with gold and silver from the Spanish conquests in the New World. I thought we should see Drake putting a crew aboard her, and sailing her across to join the rest of our fleet, once they had finished setting fire to the smaller, less desirable vessels in the harbour, but for some reason Drake had not acted swiftly to secure the galleon. I had been idly watching it, for it was less gruesome than watching the activities ashore, when I noticed half a dozen men leap from her to a skiff, row in haste to the quay, then run up the hill towards the citadel. Our soldiers paid them no heed.
Suddenly there was an explosion that seemed to rip the very air apart, and such a blast of wind did it make that I was knocked down and lay sprawling on the deck, unable to hear. For a few moments I was so dazed I did not know what had happened. One of the ship’s officers pulled me to my feet and pointed across the harbour.
‘That’s a grievous loss in booty for us,’ he said.
Where there had been a galleon there was now a mass of torn canvas, broken spars and burning timber. A vast cloud of dust and smoke and broken splinters of wood had risen up into the air from the wreck. It spread out over the whole harbour and fragments of debris began to rain down on us, amidst a choking smell of burnt tar and gunpowder. As I stood gaping, a forge-hot piece of metal landed on my left shoulder and I jumped about, shrieking, trying to shake it off, for it was burning right through my doublet and shirt to the skin beneath.
‘Jesu!’ I cried, ‘I’m branded like a slave!’
The officer grabbed a marlinespike and knocked the metal off my shoulder. Where it landed on the deck it began to burn the wood until he managed to lob it overboard. As it hit the water it hissed and a gout of steam rose briefly from the sea.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, his face pale with horror.
I gasped. I was shocked and frightened. But for his quick action I would have been seriously injured.
‘Not too badly.’ I managed to keep my voice fairly steady, though my heart was pounding and I felt dizzy. ‘It will be a nasty burn, but I’ll fetch some salve.’
‘You were fortunate it wasn’t your head.’
I nodded. ‘Aye.’ I managed a weak laugh. ‘Fortunate indeed.’
As I ran to fetch my satchel of medicines so that I could salve my shoulder quickly, I thought that ‘fortunate’ was an unfortunate choice of words. But I remembered Andrew, injured by a musket ball at the siege of Sluys, which had skimmed the side of his head, but killed the man standing behind him. He too had thought himself fortunate. Dame Fortune has sometimes an ironic touch when she spins her wheel. My clothes were charred in a round patch on my shoulder, and through the pain I could smell the very burn itself.
The stench of burnt human flesh is something you do not forget.
Chapter Six
Coimbra , Portugal, 1582
My mother and I had been in the prison in Coimbra several weeks and we thought the Inquisitors had forgotten us. Guards brought us food every day, enough to keep us alive, though we grew weak from the scanty diet and the lack of air and light. I realise now that they prefer their prisoners to remain alive, to make a greater spectacle at the auto-da-fè. If a prisoner dies while awaiting judgement, all that can be done is to throw his bones on the fire, which makes a poor show for the audiences, who flock in from miles around in the hope of gaining the great spiritual benefits they are promised from attending.
At last, however, they came for my mother. She had warned me that when it happened I must keep to the furthest and darkest part of the cell, in the hope that they had forgotten me. So when three guards came to take her for questioning, I did as I was bid, crouching down in the corner opposite Francesca, who blinked in the shaft of light which came in with the guards, weaving her head to and fro, trying to see if they brought Jaime with them.
The guards stripped my mother stark naked, and fondled her, and made lewd gestures. She crossed her hands over her breasts and hung her head so that her hair concealed her face. Then someone called from beyond the door and she was pushed out into the corridor. They did not take her far. The chamber for interrogation must have been close by, and they left the cell door ajar. Perhaps they thought Francesca too helpless to try to escape. Or perhaps they did remember that I was there and took pleasure in forcing me to listen.
They have taken my mother away.
Screaming.
Again and again.
I wrap my arms around myself, as if by clutching my body I can somehow hold my soul there intact. For it is struggling to escape. If it can break free, if I can lose myself in death, the sound of the screaming will stop.
I cover my ears, but the screaming goes on.
My mother. My mother’s voice pleading.
A horrible gurgling noise. Inhuman.
Chains rattling and the sound of water pouring.
I vomit into the refuse and the excrement that cover the floor.
I do not know what she said which eventually persuaded them to stop, for that day at least. Perhaps they had merely grown bored or tired. I had passed into a kind of coma myself, and I am sure hours had gone by before the same three guards dragged her back to the cell. She was too weak to stand and collapsed on the floor. They took it in turn, the three of them, two to hold her down while the third raped her. She tried to struggle, but she had no more strength than a cloth doll. When they finally left and barred the door at last, I rushed to her, weeping. I tried to dress her, but it was like trying to put clothes on a corpse. Francesca seemed to have returned for a time to her senses and watched with bright eyes.
‘Don’t worry, boy,’ she said indifferently. ‘She will grow used to it.’
Chapter Seven
Coruña, Spain, 1589
The landfall at Coruña, according to the original plan – or rather according to the second version of this plan – was for the sake of swift provisioning as well as firing the Spanish ships in the harbour, but we stayed there two interminable weeks. And for the first four days the new recruits continued to run riot. At last Norreys managed to muster the regular soldiers into some kind of order and set them to attacking the citadel. Drake, in overall command, had once again disobeyed the Queen’s orders, but he clearly knew that if he brought back enough treasure, then, as so often before, she would forgive him. He was already losing sight of the original mission.
Lisbon! That was our goal, and it was as far away as ever. The main strategy of the whole expedition, which our leaders seemed to be choosing to forget, had been to sail directly to Lisbon, immediately after burning the Spanish fleet, in order to surprise the occupying Spanish garrison there, while Dom Antonio’s loyal subjects would throw open the gates of the city, kneel at his feet, and welcome him with tears of gratitude. That was the plan, and as a result we carried no siege cannon, only light ordnance. There was nothing in the original plan about mounting a siege. So when the regular soldiers – those who had joined us from long experience against the Spanish in the Low Countries – when these soldiers were sent to take the citadel of Coruña, they had nothing but small arms.
They fought bravely, and paid for it. In the meantime, the gallant first-time volunteers were roaming the surrounding countryside, having wiped out most of the town of Coruña.
‘That rabble,’ Dr Nuñez told me, ‘they have already jeopardised our mission. Soon they will destroy it.’
‘What have they done now?’ I asked, even though I dreaded to hear.
‘They have triumphantly burned down a monastery and slaughtered those of the monks they could catch. And they have been feasting on the animals they’ve stolen from the nearby farms. They have been massacring peasants they have found hiding in the hedgerows.’
Even as he spoke, on the deck of the Victory we could watch the plumes of smoke from burning villages rising like vast umbrella pines to the heavens.
‘What will happen to our own countrymen when these butchers reach Portugal?’ I said. ‘And it will not take long for news of events here to reach the Spanish court.’
Dr Nuñez grimaced. ‘All hope of a surprise attack on Lisbon must have been lost by the end of our second day here at Coruña.’
The Dom and his master strategist, Ruy Lopez, were powerless. They had handed themselves over to Drake and Norreys, believing the agreed plan would be carried out. But Drake, as Sara Lopez had said on more than one occasion, was a pirate, and answered to no one when he was drunk on the prospect of looting. I was certain he did nothing to curb the behaviour of the rioting men, but used it as a cover for his hand-picked sailors to carry out more discriminating plunder on his own behalf. I believe Sir John Norreys gave his best endeavour, but not even he could mount an effective siege with his small number of trained but poorly armed soldiers, hampered by that much larger rioting crowd of vicious men.
And those trained soldiers were suffering injury and death in their futile attempt to attack the citadel with their inadequate weapons. In the end, after several days of desperate fighting, it was this which gave me the opportunity I was looking for. I sought out Dr Nuñez.
‘I want to go ashore,’ I said bluntly. ‘Norreys’s men are in need of medical care. I find it shameful to lurk here in safety aboard the ship, out of range of the Spanish cannon, when I could be relieving their suffering. Will you give me leave to go ashore and see what I can do to provide help?’
‘How is your own injury?’ he asked. ‘Your shoulder? Surely it still pains you.’
‘Aye, a little,’ I lied, my hand stealing involuntarily toward my left shoulder. ‘But it is healing.’ I had smothered the burn with a cooling salve and left it open to the air at night, when it kept me awake with acute pain. During the day I covered it with a soft pad under my patched shirt and doublet.
‘In truth, I should be glad of some occupation to distract me from thinking of it,’ I said. ‘There will be men amongst our besiegers who are suffering far worse, and we both know that the naval surgeons are much less skilled than we are, except in sawing off limbs. Let me go and see what I can do.’
He got up from the chair where he was sitting in the elegant cabin allotted to Dom Antonio. The Dom himself was presently relaxing under an awning on deck, reading, as if all that was happening on shore was of no concern to him.
‘First,’ Dr Nuñez said, ‘let me show you what I have arranged.’
He led me out of the Dom’s cabin to the slightly smaller cabin next to it, which he occupied, and opened the door. I had not been in here before, but I saw that it was fresh and airy, with a glass window open to the breeze, like a gentleman’s study. Everything was in immaculate order, a few books on a shelf, his satchel of medical supplies hanging on a hook next to his physician’s gown.
‘Here,’ he said, opening a door. ‘This was storage space for spare linen and tableware used in the captain’s and officers’ cabins. I have had everything removed and stored elsewhere, and the shelves taken down.’
It was a narrow, windowless space, though there was a small grill opening through into the cabin to allow air to circulate. Perhaps it was sometimes used to store food. A cot had been fitted inside, filling most of the floor, though there was a hanging cupboard over the foot of the cot and a pisspot under it.
‘It is a poor enough cabin for a gentleman physician,’ he said, ‘but perhaps you would be more comfortable here than in that fox’s den you have made for yourself on deck.’
He was smiling and I smiled back, full of gratitude.
‘I won’t inconvenience you?’
‘Not at all. I am more likely to inconvenience you, for Beatriz swears I snore like a pig.’
I laughed. ‘So does my father.’
It took very few minutes to move my few possessions and my blankets into this cubbyhole, my blankets on to the cot, my clothes and books into the cupboard, apart from my gown, which I hung from a nail on the back of the door. I felt almost overwhelmed with relief. Here I would be safe and private.
Once I had arranged everything to my satisfaction, I found Dr Nuñez on deck and tried to thank him, but he brushed my words aside.
‘Proper provision should have been made for you before, but I am afraid everyone has been caught up in other affairs,’ he said. ‘Now, about your request to help the soldiers attacking the citadel.’
‘I may go?’
‘Aye, but I shall come with you. Between us we should be able to offer some comfort to those poor fellows.’
I did not know whether to be glad or sorry. If he came with me, it would be much easier to go ashore and reach the men, but it would be difficult, or even impossible, for me to go looking for Titus Allanby in the town, or what was left of it. However, all I could do was go ashore and spy out the town as best I could. Later, I might be able to return alone.
We both equipped ourselves with our medical satchels and commandeered one of the Victory’s small attendant pinnaces to take us ashore. As we walked along the quay and stepped down on to the harbour paving, I realised that, for the first time in my life, I was walking on Spanish soil. It gave me a curious feeling, partly fear, partly a kind of exhilaration that I was nearer to fulfilling the first of my missions. Serving Walsingham had begun to work upon me once again and I was aware of a familiar sense of half-guilty excitement.
We had been given an escort of four trained soldiers, who led us a roundabout way through the cracked and broken streets to avoid the direct line of fire from the citadel’s cannon mounted in the walled upper town. The lower town and port appeared deserted, yet I was aware of watching eyes. When I turned my head to seek them out, there was nothing but a kind of quiver in the air, which sent a tremor along my spine. Most of the inhabitants were dead or escaped into the surrounding country, but I was sure there were others hiding amongst the damaged buildings, the very old and very young, and those who would not abandon them.
Everywhere, there were bodies, lying disregarded in the roadway or glimpsed through the broken doorways as we passed. Men, women, and even small children. A few mangy dogs were scavenging in the kennels of the streets through which we were making our way. A black and white cat watched us, slit-eyed, from a window where the shutters had been half torn away. Some of the damage to the buildings was too severe to have been inflicted by our drunken soldiers, even if they had been carrying muskets. This was artillery damage. In firing down on our besiegers, the Spanish garrison was wreaking havoc on their own civilian town.
The streets were pitted and strewn with abandoned possessions – clothes and cookpots and broken crockery. I saw a single child’s shoe, lying on its side next to a torn head veil. Somehow that shoe was more poignant than the derelict buildings. The air was thick with dust and the stench of gunpowder, trapped between the walls of the crowded houses by the heat. There had been a lull in the cannon fire when we came ashore, but now it started up again, so that instinctively we ducked and the soldiers hurried us on, past a church whose doors gaped open on a rubble-strewn interior, where the tower had collapsed into the nave. That was certainly not damage done by us. It could only be the result of heavy artillery.
At last, after a steep climb up through the rubble-strewn streets that left Dr Nuñez breathless, we reached the English outpost, securely placed close under an overhanging rock face, protected from the line of fire raining down from above. A group of soldiers came in just ahead of us, their faces patched with dirt, their clothes torn, and their eyes blank with exhaustion and a kind of dumb resignation. They knew that it was impossible for them to take the citadel by force against such superior fire power. All they could do was to try to wear down the garrison by making constant attacks and cutting off their supplies of food. Some of the soldiers carried muskets, the rest crossbows, and I saw that in one corner of their makeshift camp fletchers and smiths were at work making more arrows, quarrels and musket balls. Otherwise, their only attack artillery was some small ordnance the soldiers had sweated to carry up the hill to within the necessary close range of the citadel. Too close for safety. To be sent to man these guns was a death sentence, for the Spaniards could easily pick off the gun crews.
As we had expected, there were wounded men here who had not been able to return to the ships and Dr Nuñez and I were soon at work dealing with direct injuries from arrows and shot, and the many indirect, peripheral wounds from shattered stone flying from the impacts of cannon fire. There were several broken limbs as well, mostly caused by rocks falling from the walls, dislodged by shot, which we were not equipped to treat here in this makeshift camp. Dr Nuñez organised a relay of men to carry the more seriously injured to the harbour, though they would have a hazardous time of it, exposed in places, as we had been, to the guns of the citadel, and not easily able to dart out of the way.
The injuries I dealt with in the camp were similar to those of the soldiers brought back from the fall of Sluys, though, kneeling on the stony ground, with the sound of the cannon overhead, I felt that the crowded ward at St Bartholomew’s was a haven of peace compared with this. My head rang with the constant explosions of cannon fire, so I understood how the sheer unremitting noise must exhaust men in battle and leave them without the will to carry on fighting. At least the wounds we found here were fresh and had not had time to become infected or gangrenous.
When we were done, and had passed the less seriously injured men as being able to continue on duty, Dr Nuñez and I started down through the shattered streets of the town again, accompanying the last stretcher carrying a man with a broken leg. As we drew near the harbour, I stopped. I had caught the sound of sobbing from one of the few quayside cottages which was still partly intact. I laid my hand on Dr Nuñez’s arm.
‘There is someone in trouble there,’ I said. ‘It sounds like a child. I am going to see.’
‘Nay, Kit! You must not! It could be a trap.’
‘There are no Spanish soldiers here,’ I said. ‘They took care to flee to safety. And very few people. How can I come to any harm? When our soldiers have delivered the injured man to the boats, they can come back and protect me.’
He hesitated, uncertain. We could all hear the desolate crying. It was certainly a child.
One of the soldiers, one of the trained men from the Low Countries, said, ‘We’re not barbarians, like that rabble who wrecked the town. We don’t make war on children.’ He turned to me. ‘We’ll be back with you in no time, Doctor.’
Dr Nuñez was persuaded at last and they moved off to the quays where the boats and smaller ships were moored. I did not wait for the soldiers to return, but went to the doorway of the cottage. The door itself had been ripped from its hinges and lay on the ground at my feet.
‘Is someone there?’ I called out softly in Spanish. ‘Do you need help?’
It was a fisherman’s cottage, for there were traps and nets bundled up just outside the door. I could make out little in the gloom within, for we had spent a long time up at the camp and the evening was drawing in. Though I could see not see much, I could still hear the sound of a child crying, though an attempt had been made to suppress it, and it came to my ears now in spasms of gulps and gasps of drawn breath. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I made out three figures. In front of me crouched a girl in a torn dress, perhaps eight or nine years old, rubbing her face with the back of a dirty hand. In a corner a boy of about three sat on the ground staring vacantly into space, his mouth hanging open like an idiot child. There was another figure lying on the dirt floor behind the girl, and it was clear that she was trying to shield it from view.
I stepped inside the cottage and crouched down until I was in front of the girl, close to her, but not touching. I could see now that it was a woman lying behind her. At first I thought she was dead, but then she gave a low moan and began to writhe. The child uttered a low cry and spread out her arms as if to bar the way to the woman.
‘Is it your Mama?’ I said gently. ‘Is she ill? I am a doctor. I’d like to help you if I can.’
She looked at me with eyes full of mistrust and did not answer.
‘My name is Christoval. What’s yours?’
‘Teresa,’ she whispered at last, reluctantly.
‘And is that your brother?’
She nodded.
‘What’s his name?’ It was like trying to gentle a frightened horse.
‘Carlos.’
‘And Mama is ill?’
Her eyes welled up with tears again. ‘The baby won’t come,’ she said. ‘And they killed Señora Perez, who makes the babies come. I don’t know what to do. I think Mama is dying.’
I slipped the strap of my satchel off my shoulder and unbuckled the flaps.
‘I’m sure I can help.’
Even as I spoke, she shrank away with a cry. Something had darkened the doorway. I glance over my shoulder and saw that the soldiers had returned.
‘No need for you to stay,’ I said in English. ‘It is a woman in labour and two small children. You are frightening them. Go back to the camp.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Aye, there’s nothing to fear here.’
I did not watch them leave, but the shadows vanished from the doorway and I saw the child Teresa relax a little. The boy continued to sit without moving.
‘Do you have a lamp?’ I asked. ‘Or a candle? I need to see what Mama needs.’
‘There is a lamp.’ She got to her feet and fumbled about on a small table near the little boy. I heard her struggling with the flint and tinder but did not interfere. It was better for her to have something to do. At last she had the lamp lit, a rough pottery cruse with a wick floating in cheap oil, but it would serve. She handed it to me and I found a ledge for it above where the woman lay. I saw she was not directly on the floor but lay on a thin palliasse, not much more than two fingers thick.
