The Portuguese Affair (22 page)

He shrugged. ‘But we would have travelled faster had we gone by ship. And this amateur army has no experience of long marches, certainly not across difficult terrain and in such heat. There are not provisions enough here in Peniche to carry with us for an army. We cannot strip a Portuguese town as we stripped Coruña, so we will have to march some sixty-five miles on empty stomachs and the hope that the peasants can feed us, for we cannot pillage.’

‘Drake has not abandoned us?’ I asked, nervously, for I could never quite trust Drake.

‘He is to meet us at Cascais, on the Tejo,’ Dr Nuñez said. ‘The gold from the treasure ship will help us reprovision there.’

‘And help Drake buy his way back into the Queen’s favour?’ I shook my head. ‘Will he even agree to spend some of the treasure on food for the soldiers?’

His only reply was a grunt.

‘And the army must march all that way in this heat? An untrained English army? They will never survive it.’

‘They must, if ever they wish to see their homes again.’ He got up and struggled into his doublet. ‘At least Norreys does not intend any fighting, at any rate not until we reach
Lisbon. It is almost certain Philip will have strengthened the garrison there.’

‘We may not intend to fight,’ I said, ‘but should we encounter any Spanish troops, they may not see it in the same way. We will need to defend ourselves if we are attacked.’

‘That is very true.’ He sounded tired and I realised that this trek of more than sixty miles across the barren Portuguese terrain would be very hard on him – a man as old as my lost grandfather – even if he was on horseback.

‘When do we leave?’ I asked. I realised I would have to stuff my feet back into my boots, if they had not swollen too much. It would be painful.

‘At once. Or as soon as Black Jack Norreys can muster that rabble into some kind of marching order.’

He nodded to his servant to carry away his belongings and turned to me.

‘You had best pack your own knapsack. Did you not leave it here when you rode off? And have you eaten?’ He peered at me. ‘I think your mission has brought you no happiness, but we will not speak of it now. Fetch your knapsack and I will send for some food. You look as if you have not eaten for days.’

I did not admit that he was right, and I knew that somehow I must force down some food or I would be unfit for the journey. When I had collected my few belongings and returned to his room, there was a plate of cold meats and bread waiting for me, and a tankard of thin local wine, which I drank gratefully. I managed to eat the food, washing it down with the wine. Although I could barely taste it, I knew that it would sustain me. With a great deal of difficulty and considerable pain, I managed to force my feet into the unyielding leather of my boots, muttering curses under my breath.

When I was ready, we made our way out to the main courtyard, where I was relieved to learn that there were horses enough for the gentlemen and officers. Since I was exhausted from riding most of the nights as well as the days since leaving the farm, stopping only long enough to rest my gallant horse, I certainly did not think my own legs would have carried me to Lisbon. The common soldiers, however, would have to walk, and at the same time they would have to carry every piece of armour, every item of weaponry, for there were no pack mules or donkeys or carts to be had. All beasts of burden seemed mysteriously to have disappeared, spirited away by the people of Peniche. The soldiers would not, however, be burdened with food. There was none. In the short time Dom Antonio had housed his court at Peniche, our army had stripped the town of everything edible. I understood now why the few people I had seen in the streets had given me a chilly reception. The inhabitants of the town had welcomed us rapturously, indeed with cries of joy, but I am sure they waved us off with even greater rapture.

During the last week while I had made my journey to the
solar
the weather had turned from merely hot to a blistering heat. A few hours out of Peniche and across the isthmus, our makeshift army quickly began to fail, for they had never yet marched further than the distance between the taverns in Plymouth, Coruña, and Peniche (apart from their scavenging forays into the countryside around Coruña). Some men complained unnecessarily, but within the first few hours there were cases of real need. I found that I was constantly dismounting to tend to one who had fainted with heatstroke or another whose bare feet were lacerated by the stony ground. There were, of course, no spare boots.

‘Cover your head against the sun,’ I would say to one man. ‘Not with your metal helmet. Carry that. Contrive something cool, with a handkerchief.’

However, there were few handkerchiefs amongst the men, who thought them an unnecessary item, fit only for women, when any fool could blow his nose between his finger and thumb, so I showed them how to fastened three or four palm leaves together to make a comical kind of hat, as we had done as children. There was a good deal of ribaldry at this, when they looked at one another, but they soon appreciated the protection from the sun.

To another man, I would say, ‘You are not on ship-board now, to go barefoot. All the way from here to
Lisbon the ground will be stony. If you do not have shoes, bind your feet with cloth.’

This presented more of a problem, as did the continued lack of handkerchiefs. Palm leaves could not provide protection for the men’s feet. I wished I had some of that shirt cloth I had used in the citadel of Coruña. In the end, some of the barefoot men resorted to tearing the bottoms off their shirts and binding their feet with these, while others continued to go barefoot, as they had been accustomed to do at home in England. But this was not
England.

Late in the afternoon of the first day, I heard a piercing shriek from amongst the plodding soldiers behind me, and looking over my shoulder I could see a knot of men milling about, and all the column of soldiers behind them halted.

‘Doctor!’ The cry was passed along the line. ‘Dr Alvarez, come quick!’

I wheeled my horse about and cantered back to where I could see a man writhing on the path, his face contorted with terror and pain. I slid to the ground, unbuckling my satchel.

‘What is it?’ I demanded. ‘What has happened?’

‘A snake.’ They were all talking at once. ‘A great long snake, six feet at least. He’s bitten on the leg.’

‘Describe the snake,’ I said, as I knelt in the dirt beside the man and turned back his ragged breeches. He was one of those who wore no shoes, and the puncture marks were easy to see, just above the ankle.

But no one had seen the snake clearly, or if they had, lacked the language to describe it. Not that it would have helped, for I knew little about the snakes of my native land, except that some could kill a man. I cupped my hand beneath the man’s heel and raised his filthy foot to my mouth. However disgusting it was, I must not waste any time. I pressed my mouth against his ankle and sucked. Something foul filled my mouth and I spat it into the withered weeds beside the path. Again I sucked and spat, until it seemed there was no more venom to be drawn out. My lips and tongue tingled, as if I had bitten on a wasp.

The other soldiers had fallen silent, watching me with mouths agape. I heard one man mutter a hasty prayer. Several crossed themselves, in the old way. They stared at me with something like awe. I lowered the foot to the ground and sat back on my heels, feeling dizzy. The man moaned.

‘There is no reason to be afraid,’ I said as briskly as I could manage. When a patient has received such a shock, his very terror may stop his heart. ‘I have removed all the poison.’ I hoped I spoke the truth.

I salved the bite with
echium vulgare
,
borago officinalis
, and
eupatorium cannabium
, and gave the soldier an infusion to drink, of
avena sativa
, which strengthens the heart, and
achillea millefolium
, which is antispasmodic. I drank some myself, in case I had inadvertently swallowed some of the poison. This treatment was usually efficacious in the case of a viper’s bite, but I was uncertain whether it would prove powerful enough to counter the poison of this Portuguese serpent. The other men watched me with increasing respect. The injured soldier left off his moaning and hysterical cries and I told two of his companions to get him to his feet and keep him walking between them. The leg was showing some signs of swelling, but he had no other pain, his heart had steadied, and he did not lose consciousness.

‘You saved my life, doctor,’ he said pathetically. He was not much older than I, and tears had made channels through the dirt on his cheeks. I patted him on the shoulder.

‘Keep moving, and look where you put your feet in future. I will keep a watch on you, to see that you take no harm.

Most of the straggling column had overtaken and passed us while I worked, so that we were now nearly at the rear of the army. I remounted my horse and stayed near the group. Although the man was pale with shock and stumbled as he walked, two of his companions helped him along. He seemed likely to take no permanent hurt. I could not be sure, of course. Sometimes a snake’s venom acts so quickly that there is no time to take any action to help a patient. Sometimes it is slow and insidious. A patient will appear to have taken no harm and then, little by little, his limbs are paralysed, and then his heart and lungs. His tongue may turn black and his eyes roll back in his head as the deadly poison seizes his whole body. I would need to keep an eye on the man, in case he suffered any of these slow-burning symptoms.

The only food the people of Peniche had been able to give us was bread and a small supply of salted fish, which was all consumed by the morning of the second day, and little wonder, for the men were sorely tried by the blazing sun and their heavy loads. The salted fish was almost worse than no food, for it increased the terrible thirst brought on by the sun and the weary marching. Those of us in the group of Portuguese gentlemen ate no better than the men did. I felt myself growing giddy in the saddle by mid-day. However, I observed that the group surrounding the Earl of Essex, who kept themselves apart from the rest of us, appeared to have a supply of both food and wine.

Sir John Norreys rode up to Dom Antonio and put to him a blunt choice.

‘You must provide food for the soldiers, or I will not be able to stop them looting. Men will not willingly starve when they can see farms around them in the countryside.’

Dom Antonio conferred with Dr Lopez. It seemed they had no funds left with which to buy provisions. They had expected by now that the nobles and peasants rushing to join our army would bring food with them. In the end they decided that the Dom would have to beg the peasants to provide us with food on credit. Once Lisbon was seized, he would pay them back, and generously too.

Our whole Portuguese party accompanied him as he rode up to the largest house in the next village we approached. We had just crossed an area of barren, tussocky ground and reached a small valley watered by a stream – nearly dried up now, in the heat. It was a farming village, with fields and olive orchards surrounding the clustered houses. We Portuguese went in a body to show that this was not a foreign invasion, but a mission to restore to
Portugal her ancient freedoms.

‘So you understand, Senhor,’ the Dom said, in a somewhat patronising tone, ‘by supplying our army, you will be contributing to the success of our campaign to expel the hated Spanish from our land.’

He was addressing the man who seemed to be some kind of village leader, but most of the men of the village were grouped around him, listening intently. From their expressions I fancied that they were calculating, not how soon the Spanish would be driven out, but what profit they could make from selling food to the army. When it became clear that supplies would be bought not for cash but for promissory notes, they drew apart in whispering groups. In the end they agreed to supply what they could, though it was hardly an abundance. As I watched the promissory notes signed with a flourish by Dom Antonio, I wondered when these people would ever be able to convert them to coin.

This brought us a supply of the kind of food which forms the diet of peasants in the southern part of
Portugal: salted fish, dried peppers and figs, strips of dried mutton, a kind of cold porridge made of rice, flat disks of unleavened rye bread, and wine so rough it stripped the lining from the roof of your mouth. I ate cautiously – some figs and dried mutton, but mostly bread, and clear spring water when I could find it. The men ate ravenously, complaining all the while and demanding hot beef and onions, pies and pottage.

Dysentery broke out.

I do not believe – as some of the soldiers believed – that the villagers had sold us tainted food. The outbreak of the bloody flux was due to a number of causes: an unfamiliar diet, polluted drinking water, unauthorised food stolen along the march, and the weakness of the untrained, ramshackle soldiers who had never been strengthened by regular army service. For on the whole it was the first-time recruits, not the regular soldiers who had served in the Low Countries, who gave way to illness and exhaustion.

All the way from Peniche, men fell by the roadside and died. Some had wounds from Coruña or from the landing at Peniche or from their own drunken brawls. With the heat and the lack of food, their wounds festered and carried them off. Some grew so weak with dysentery they could march no further. They sat down beside the road and refused to go any further. Some died. Others, I suspect, simply melted away into the countryside. Whether they were taken in by local people and survived, or died alone and unmourned, no one will ever know.