The Portuguese Affair (7 page)

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.

‘However,’ said Dr Nuñez, ‘the Earl of Essex has disobeyed Her Majesty and fled
London. It seems he was traced to Falmouth, and there he took ship on the
Swiftsure
, which had been ready provisioned and armed and waiting for him. He made his escape from Falmouth, with winds more favourable than those we encountered.’

‘Her Majesty will be furious,’ I said. ‘And so soon after the death of the Earl of Leicester, she will not want his stepson to run into danger.’

‘Nay. But he is headstrong and accustomed to getting his own way. Drake and Norreys have received instructions from Her Majesty to send Essex directly back to London, but he has slipped past everyone, not only the men she sent after him but our own expedition, what with his more favourable winds. He set sail while we were kicking our heels, waiting for the troops from the Low Countries.’

For another twelve days we continued to kick our heels at
Plymouth, with the provisions and the water dwindling away, until only a few days’ supply was left. And then, at last, the head wind abated, and under a threatening storm sky, which was as ill-omened as all that had gone before, Drake’s aptly named
Revenge
led us out to sea, and the
Victory
followed. Despite all the oaths I had sworn to myself, I was returning to Portugal, but nothing could drive away the memories of my final weeks there. As the fleet passed down the Channel and Plymouth Sound disappeared behind us, fear rose like vomit in my throat.

Chapter Four

Coimbra
, Portugal, 1582

T
he darkness closed over me and I was blind. I groped for my mother’s hand and found it, as cold and clammy as my own. Somewhere, someone was whimpering. I could not tell if it was my mother or myself, or someone else in the blackness which stretched out ahead, where we huddled by the iron-bound door which had slammed behind us. My mother put her arms around me and we clung together, not daring yet to speak, straining for any sound which might penetrate from beyond that door.

‘Where are we?’ I whispered at last.

‘In the prison of the Inquisition.’

‘But where is Father?’

‘They will have confined him in a separate cell, so we cannot confer together about how we should answer their questions.’

‘Questions?’

‘You must be brave, Caterina. Your father and I have always known this might happen. Ever since the Spanish came two years ago, and the Cardinal-Archduke Albrecht was made both governor of Portugal and Inquisitor General. He is most zealous against New Christians.’

‘What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do?’ I wailed.

She held me tighter and put her lips to my ear. ‘Hush, Caterina. We will not choose martyrdom. We will swear our undying faith to the Pope and the Catholic Church. We will admit some small transgressions, that we donned clean linen on Friday evenings and forbore to eat pork, but we shall say that these were simply old customs in our families, and we do not know the reasons for them.’

‘But, Mama . . . ‘

‘Listen to me, Caterina.’ She took hold of my shoulders and shook me. ‘I do not know if they will put you to the question, but you must know what to say. You know that you are a baptised Christian.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘We regularly attend the church of San Piero, do we not?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Caterina!’

‘Yes, Mama. We
do
attend church every Sunday, and make confession, and take communion. I took my first communion last Easter.’

‘As you did.’

‘Yes.’

She relaxed a little.

‘Good.’

I looked about me, for I found that my eyes had grown a little accustomed to the dark, and a ghost of grey light, no more than a strip half an inch wide, filtered under the door. The cell was about fifteen feet square, with a deep litter of dirty straw and rubbish on the floor and a heap of old rags in the far corner.

‘Come as close to the light as you can.’ My mother was fumbling in the purse she wore under her outer skirt, which the Inquisition’s men had not noticed in their haste to drag us from home and through the night-time streets.

‘It’s so cold,’ I said, rubbing my arms, for I was barefoot and wearing nothing but my night shift. ‘How can it be so cold in the summer?’

‘We’re deep underground here,’ she said absently. She had found what she was looking for and now seized a handful of my hair.

‘What are you doing?’ I tried to pull away.

‘I’m going to cut off your hair.’

‘My hair!’ I clutched my head with both hands and tried to pull away from her.

‘Keep still, Caterina. You are flat-chested still. In that shift you could be a boy, but for your hair. I’m going to cut it off.’

‘Why, why?’ I tried to push her away and she gave my hair a jerk.

‘Caterina, as a girl you are in far more danger here than a boy would be. Your hair will grow back.’

I stood still at last as she began to hack at my hair with the tiny pair of scissors she carried with her. I kept silent then, but I could not stop the silent tears rolling down my face as she threw handfuls of my hair into the litter on the floor and stirred it in with the toe of her shoe.

‘That’s the best I can do,’ she said. ‘Take off your earrings and put them in here.’ she held out her purse and I dropped into it the small gold pendants I had put back in my ears after I had taken off the heavy pearls I had worn at dinner last night. My mother took off her own earrings, still her jewelled ones, and added them to the purse.

‘We must find somewhere to hide this,’ she said, ‘for we may need to bribe the guards.’

She felt her way across the floor to the far corner, groping along the wall as she went, trying to find some hollow or loose stone where she could conceal the purse. As she trod on the pile of rags there was a sudden shriek and a curse, and she jumped back, her hand to her heart.

‘Leave me be,’ a whining voice came from within the rags. ‘Let me sleep, let me sleep.’

I crept up behind my mother and peered down. As far as I could make out, an old woman, her thin wisps of hair the colour of curdled milk, was curled up there, her arms clutched protectively around her head.

‘I’m sorry, Senhora,’ said my mother. ‘I did not see you in the dark.’

‘Jaime will come soon,’ said the woman in a voice as flat and dull as the stones of the prison. She nodded her head, up and down, jerky as a marionette. ‘Yes, Jaime will come. Then I will cook his dinner and we will go to my sister. He said we would go to my sister.’ She gave a strange shrill laugh and strained up towards my mother. ‘Have you brought Jaime? He has been gone so long, so long.’

Then she started muttering to herself and rocking there on the floor, clutching a bundle of clothes to her. We stepped back to the door.

‘Poor creature,’ said my mother. ‘Her wits are wandering. I think they must have taken Jaime away for ever. Come over here, Caterina, away from the draught. We’ll gather some of this straw together and sit on it.’

‘It’s horrible,’ I said, ‘filthy. We can’t sit on that.’

‘It is better than cold stone,’ she said brusquely. ‘If you have nothing worse to suffer than dirty straw, God will truly have spared you.’

Reluctantly I did as I was bid. The straw was infested with lice and fleas which were soon crawling over my shuddering flesh, but my earlier tiredness suddenly rolled over me again as I sat there amongst the stinking straw. I found myself lying with my head in my mother’s lap, and slept.

I suppose it was morning, or some time the next day, when they brought us a bowl of slops, some stale bread, and a jug of muddy water. The old woman seemed not to want anything, but my mother persuaded her to take a little. Her name, she said, was Francesca, and she did not know how long she had been in the prison. It was certainly months, perhaps even years. Her talk rambled still, but she did not seem as crazed as she had in the night. She had been brought here with her son, who was thirteen, accused of Judaizing, and put to the question. They had taken Jaime away and she was still waiting for him to return. They had stripped him first, and it was his clothes she kept always beside her. I saw my mother take note of this, and I realised what she was thinking, for I was shivering in my thin shift. I did not want to wear a dead boy’s clothes, which had mouldered here perhaps for years, but I was very cold.

They left us alone for several days. I could not be sure, but it must have been nearly a week. By then my mother had broached the subject of the clothes to Francesca, who became frantic and refused.

‘But Jaime can have them again when he returns,’ my mother pleaded. ‘You see how cold my son is. Look, I will give you this gold earring for the use of them until then.’ She held up one of my gold tear-drops.

Francesca laughed wildly. ‘What use is gold to me? Keep your gold.’

She would not part with the clothes, for which I was partly grateful and partly regretful.

When next a guard brought our food, I heard my mother whispering to him, and the following day he brought cheese and figs and new bread and wind-dried ham and a small flask of wine. I saw my mother hand him one of my earrings, and I started forward, my stomach groaning in expectation of the food, but my mother batted my hand away.

‘Now, Francesca,’ she said winningly. ‘You see all this good food? It shall all be yours, in exchange for the loan of Jaime’s clothes to my son here.’

Francesca fought with herself and her hunger for an hour at least before at last she agreed, handing over the rancid, sweat-stained garments, and huddled in the corner, muttering over the food. Curling my lip with distaste, I pulled on a pair of breeches the colour of horse dung and a grey tunic whose frayed sleeves hung down past my hands. At least my own shift protected me from contact with them about my body. Our long confinement in the dark cell had caused my eyes to adjust to the scant light, and I could see that I might be able to pass for a boy.

‘We must choose a name for you,’ said my mother, ‘and use it even when we are alone. Something pious and Christian.’

‘Christoval,’ I said. It was the first boy’s name that came into my head.

‘Christoval Alvarez.’ She tried it on her tongue. ‘Yes, that will do very well.’

I looked enviously to the dark corner where Francesca was mumbling over the food. She did not appear to be eating it. Instead she had made it into a pile and was crooning to herself.

It became obvious in the next few days that she was keeping the food for Jaime. I tried to steal a little of it before it grew mouldy in the damp which clung to the stone walls of the cell, but my mother caught me and made me put it back.

‘The food is not yours,’ she said. ‘If Senhora
Francesca chooses not to eat it, that does not mean it is yours to steal.’

I complained bitterly, for I was hungry and could not bear to see the food rotting away, but my mother would not relent.

It is strange how need will drive a creature. I would swear that the gap under the door was no more than half an inch, but before the week was out the rats had smelled the food and found their way somehow into the cell. Whenever she was awake, Francesca mounted guard over the food, though the rats became bold in their hunger and bit her. When at last she fell asleep they ran about the cell, squeaking for joy over their booty, or fighting each other viciously over a fragment of ham. I sat pressed against the wall, my knees drawn up and my arms about them in an attempt to make myself as small as possible so they would not come near me. Before three days had passed, the rats had devoured every crumb, but I still wore Jaime’s clothes, which clung to me with the dead boy’s smell.

Chapter Five

English Fleet, 1589

F
or two days, out in mid Channel, our ships had fought against cross-winds that blew us first back east, up towards Dover, then down, out past Cornwall, as if determined to blast us all the way to Virginia. By the time we had finally reached the tip of Cornwall and then the Atlantic, the fleet was scattered over several miles of sea, unable to keep together, the driving rain and mist so thick the
Victory
might have been alone on the deserted ocean. Our rag-tail army spent the time hanging over the side of the ship, emptying into the sea the little they had been given to eat. I felt queasy myself, as much from the sight of them as from the motion of the ship, but I managed to keep on my feet and attend to the occasional patient, although my nights were wretched, huddled in my corner between the water cask and the ropes, under a piece of patched sail I had found and draped over the top of my hideaway to provide some protection against the rain. Dr Lopez – and even, to my disappointment, Dr Nuñez – had metamorphosed into Portuguese aristocrats, and were too busy discussing affairs of state with Dom Antonio to exercise their medical skills. Besides, tending the men kept my mind off what lay ahead.

I had other more immediate concerns. Living with my father but otherwise keeping myself at a distance from others, even those in Phelippes’s office, I had not found it difficult to hide my sex. I was still slender and flat-chested, I was still young enough to be beardless, even had I been a young man, and the thick padded doublet I wore, sometimes further covered by my physician’s gown, helped to disguise my shape. When I had travelled abroad with Nicholas Berden to the
Low Countries, we sometimes shared a room, but slept in what we wore by day, all but our boots. However, in the close proximity of the ship, it was far more difficult to conceal my personal and private needs, so during those first days at sea I hardly slept, snatching brief moments of rest sitting in my partially sheltered corner of the deck. I began to grow frightened at what would happen to me if it should be discovered that I was a girl. I had known this before ever we set out, but I had pushed this particular difficulty to the back of my mind. Now it confronted me every day. Would it be possible even for my father’s friends to protect me, if my deceit became known? They might turn against me, horrified that they had been tricked all these years.

On the fourth day out from
Plymouth, the rain eased off, the wind swung round to a steady north-east, and the scattered fleet started to draw together. We sailed on, rounding the Brest peninsula, the westernmost tip of Brittany, and began to head south across the Bay of Biscay, keeping well offshore, so that we should not be spied from the French coast and word sent to warn Spain. As the sun came out, the whole ship began to steam, as canvas, ropes and planks dried in the heat. The sailors were kept on the run, adjusting the set of the sails and the tensions on the rigging as the ship started to recover from the strains of the previous days. All of us on board responded to the passing of the storm and the return of the sun. After so much wet misery, the outlook began to seem more hopeful.

Although we wanted to avoid encountering any French ships, clearly our leaders were also reluctant to veer too far west into the wider
Atlantic, so as we sailed south I was able to watch the French coast in the distance. My eyes had always been sharp, so from time to time I could make out a cluster of cottages in a village, or a small group of fishing boats. The rocky coast of Brittany held dangers, clearly marked by huge waves that crashed on to the shore, sending fountains of spume as high in the air as the tower of St Paul’s. Further south the coast looked more tranquil, with here and there a small harbour.

One of the sailors explained why we were keeping out from the coast. The
Victory
was furthest inshore of the fleet, most of which stood more to the west of us.

‘An’t no danger of attack along here,’ he said. ‘The froggies are so busy cutting each other’s throats, they won’t bother us. Protestant against Catholic. Fighting for the crown, I heard.’

I nodded. ‘So I’ve heard too.’ I would not admit how many despatches on the subject I had decoded. ‘So why keep away?’

‘Captains don’t want the froggies passing word to
Spain that we’re coming.’

‘The French and the Spanish are not the best of friends,’ I objected.

‘Aye, but Philip of Spain will have spies along the coast.’ He was shrewder than I realised.

‘Then surely we should move still further out. If we can see their villages, they must be able to see that.’ I jerked my chin up, indicating Dom Antonio’s banner at our masthead, with its golden castles on a crimson border and its five blue shields forming a central cross. It was as large as a wall covering.

‘Not our job to point that out,’ he said.

For the whole of the fifth day we made steady progress southwards, but the wind was not the most favourable. Although strong enough to fill the sails, it kept veering round from the northeast to the north and then to the northwest, which would tend to push us in toward the coast of
France, and also toward the shallower waters where the southeast corner of the Bay lay. The whistles of the officers were forever sending the sailors to trim the sails to keep the ship on course. That night we had to heave to, until daylight should show us our best route.

By the sixth day we could make out the line of Cape Finisterre dimly on the horizon, the westernmost tip of
Spain. Beyond, not many miles further south, the coast of Portugal began.

I recalled the map Walsingham had shown me, when he had explained the three goals of the expedition. Our first, to destroy
Spain’s Atlantic fleet, would mean attacking Santander, where the damaged ships from last year’s Armada fleet were being repaired and refitted. As we sailed further south that morning Dr Nuñez came to stand beside me on the forecastle, where I leaned on the rail, watching the lands of Iberia draw perceptibly nearer.

‘I saw you sleeping on deck this morning, Kit. Have you not been given any accommodation?’

I avoided his glance. ‘I was told I could have a hammock on the gundeck. But–’ I hesitated, ‘I did not like the idea.’

With an angry snort he said, ‘That is no place for one of the ship’s physicians. I will see whether I can find you somewhere more
suitable.’ He looked at me sideways, a curiously knowing look.

I gave him a grateful smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll find somewhere.’ He turned to look again towards the loom of the coast. ‘Not long now, till you see your homeland again.’

‘Nay
.’ I kept to myself that I did not feel the affection for the place that lit up his eyes and made him stride about the deck like a much younger man. Portugal. Not my homeland. Never that. A place of nightmare. My stomach churned and I clenched my fists to hide the shaking of my hands.

‘Are we not heading too far to the west?’ I said, anxious to change the subject. ‘I thought we were ordered to attack the Spanish fleet where it is being repaired at
Santander.’ I gestured towards the port bow, roughly in the direction where I thought, from my sight of Walsingham’s map, that Santander must lie. ‘Should we not be aiming more in that direction?’

He looked somewhat startled. ‘I did not know you were privy to that plan.’

‘Sir Francis told me. First to Santander, then to Coruña, firing as many of the Spanish ships as possible, to cripple their Atlantic navy. Then on southward to besiege Lisbon. Though I would have thought,’ I added, ‘that it would have been wiser to attack Lisbon first, to retain some element of surprise, even if the Spaniards spot our fleet as we sail down the coast.’

‘Perhaps. Though there would also be some merit in putting the Spanish fleet out of action first,’ he said, ‘so that
Lisbon would require a land battle alone and not a naval one. It is for our military and naval leaders to make these decisions.’

‘A land battle with our amateur army?’ I laughed. ‘Besides, the ships under repair at Santander and Coruña are not seaworthy. They could not engage us at sea. But,’ I said, sticking to my point, ‘we do not seem to be making for
Santander.’

‘There is a problem,’ he said.

I looked at him enquiringly.

‘Two problems, in fact. First, you must have noticed the strong on-shore wind. Drake is worried that we might become embayed in Biscay and vulnerable to attack either by the French or the Spanish. Trapped, with no way out. He has decided that it will be safer to bypass
Santander and make directly for Coruña. Part of the Spanish fleet is there, so we should be able to inflict considerable damage.’

‘Though surely not as much as we could have done if we had attacked
Santander as well,’ I said. ‘I suppose we must defer to Drake’s judgement in naval matters.’

Though I recalled how Drake had sailed off on a private plundering action in the middle of the Armada battle. How much was he to be trusted?

‘You said there were two problems,’ I reminded him.

‘You recall how that riffraff consumed our stores in
Plymouth?’

‘Dr Nuñez,’ I said, ‘I don’t suppose any of us will ever forget those disgraceful scenes.’

‘It has left us very short of provisions. The money invested in the venture by the joint stock company was all spent in providing those original stores and the small amount of arms we carry. Drake and Norreys were unable to purchase more to replace what was lost.’

‘You mean we are going to run out of
food
?’ I was incredulous, that these men, with all their experience of mounting armed expeditions and voyages of exploration, could prove so inept in the most fundamental of preparations.

‘Food and drink. You see all these flags they are running up on the yardarms?’ He pointed over our heads, where lines of brightly coloured flags flapped against the heavy canvas of the sails. I had no idea of their purpose.

‘They are signalling from ship to ship,’ he said, ‘trying to decide what best to do. On some of the ships the men are rioting already, for lack of food. Our captain says we will have consumed all our own food by this evening. The ale will be finished by tomorrow. We cannot reach Lisbon in our present state.’

‘But . . .’ I stared at him. ‘We cannot turn back. It would take as long to sail back to
England as to sail on to Lisbon.’ For a moment I had hoped the whole wild scheme would be abandoned, until I saw this flaw.

He nodded, and motioned me to follow him.

‘Come. You might as well listen to the discussion, though I do not think anything either of us can say will have any influence on the decision.’

When we reached the main deck, Sir John Norreys, Ruy Lopez, Dom Antonio and the captain of our ship were huddled together. Captain Oliver held a chart in his hand. He looked up as we approached.

‘Directly to Coruña, then?’ he said, addressing Sir John.

Norreys, who had joined us by pinnace from his own ship, the
Nonpareil
, nodded his agreement. ‘We must reprovision. The harbour is large enough to accommodate the fleet, and the garrison will be taken by surprise. From reports we received before leaving England, Spain has been stockpiling provisions there. We will attack and seize enough stores to take us on to Lisbon, as well as eliminating as many of the Spanish warships as possible. We will also take the town.’

Those reports about stockpiling provisions, I thought, were probably sent to Walsingham by Titus Allanby, the man I must try, somehow, to rescue from Coruña. How, I could not imagine.

‘But . . .’ I said, emboldened by this alarming turn of events to speak out amongst such high company, ‘but won’t that give warning to the Spaniards? If we made a swift attack on the ships, as was intended, then sailed quickly on our way, there would be little time for word to reach the Spanish military command and allow them to marshal their forces. If we stay longer, not just to load with provisions but to attack and take possession of the town, won’t they realise this is no mere raiding expedition, but we are heading for Portugal?’

Even as I spoke, I was torn two ways. For the main purpose of our mission to succeed, we needed to make the greatest possible speed to
Lisbon. Yet if I were to find Titus Allanby, a delay at Coruña would help.

Norreys shrugged. ‘The men must be fed. Otherwise we will have a full-scale mutiny on our hands.’

‘But we do not need to make an attack on the town with a view to taking it.’

He gave me a quelling look and turned to Captain Oliver.

‘Run up the signal,’ he said. ‘We make for Coruña as swiftly as possible.’

I was silenced. From the very start the plans for the expedition had begun to fall apart. First the wholesale looting of the provisions in Plymouth by the new recruits, then the delayed arrival of the troops from the Low Countries and the contrary winds which had kept us held up for days at Plymouth, then the storm in the Channel, then the abandonment of the raid on the main part of the Spanish fleet at Santander, and now, instead of a swift attack on the ships at Coruña and an equally swift departure, we would be delayed here, not only seizing and loading provisions but attacking the town. For what purpose? What was the strategy? Who could guess how long we would be held up there? Our goal was in southern
Portugal, not northern Spain.