The Enterprise of England (33 page)

Something troubled me. There had been an unmistakable stench over by the barrels. I realised that I had been half aware of it before, ever since climbing in, but had been too caught up in examining the guns to attend to it. My eyes had grown accustomed to the near dark of the room and while we had been here the quarter moon had climbed a little higher, throwing an oblique shaft of silver light through the window, just catching the edge of something in the corner beside the barrels. Torn between the need to escape and the anxiety to put to rest the fear that stench had awakened, I crossed quickly to the far wall and looked down.

I had not been wrong. A man lay there, huddled into the corner, where he must have been flung some days before. I crouched down and lifted his flaccid arm, although I already had my answer. He wore a simple signet ring on his hand, which his killers had not troubled to remove. I recognised the design, like the ring I wore on a chain round my neck. I slid it off the unresisting finger and dropped it down the neck of my shirt. Then panic seized me and I scuttled toward the window and escape. As I climbed on to the barrel and threw myself on my stomach over the window ledge, I could hear a key scraping in the lock on the other side of the room.

Andrew grabbed me by the back of my doublet and dragged me down on the other side. I fell into the yard, scraping the palms of my hands and jabbing my side with the hilt of my sword. As I scrambled to my feet, I could just make him out in the gloom, pushing the shutters back into place.

Without speaking, we each caught hold of an end of the bundle of muskets and were stepping over the threshold into Hans’s cottage when I remembered.

‘My cloak!’ I whispered.

I darted across to get it, and as I did so a line of light appeared between the shutters. The men had a lantern. Any minute now they might notice that I had moved the barrel.

I was back at the cottage in a moment and picked up my end of the bundle, tucking my cloak under my arm.

‘I have the lantern,’ Andrew said, barely above a breath. ‘Don’t want to leave anything to draw attention.’

Then we were out of the cottage and stumbling as fast as we could up the alleyway.

When we reached the church, Andrew stopped suddenly, so that the muskets hit me smartly in the belly.

‘Careful!’ I said. ‘That hurt.’

‘I’m sorry. But look, we can’t go through the streets of Amsterdam carrying this. I don’t want to have to stop and explain to the Watch.’

I sat down suddenly on the church steps. My legs had begun to shake and I realised I was drenched with sweat.

‘I found Mark Weber,’ I said. ‘He’s dead.’

Andrew gasped. ‘He was in there?’

‘Aye. Thrown into a corner like a pile of old rags. Dead at least a week, I’d say. Probably longer.’

He shook his head. ‘They must have found him out,’ he said soberly. ‘So you have done what you came for.’

‘Not as I had hoped. What shall we do? Go to Willoughby?’

‘From what you’ve said, he isn’t likely to receive us or take any action in the middle of the night, or even tomorrow. Those men are probably planning to ship another load out by barge during the night. Time must be running out for them. No, I think the only thing to do is for me to ride back to the camp and inform my commanding officer. He will listen, I
’m sure. We can send out a squadron to round up these men before they get very far, and even if we miss them, we have these as evidence.’

He poked the canvas with his toe.

‘But what shall we do with these,’ I said, ‘if we aren’t to carry them through the streets?’

I was happy for him to make the decisions now. I felt weak and my heart was still racing.

‘We could push them in behind those pillars.’ He indicated the shallow portico between the steps and the door of the church. ‘But I think you should stay here and guard them. You have your sword, haven’t you?’

I had indeed. All it had done was to hamper me climbing in and out of the window. The thought of standing guard over illegal guns in the dark, in a foreign town, was terrifying, but what could I do? I could hardly reveal my identity to Andrew. I gulped and nodded.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But I’m a poor swordsman, if it should come to a fight.’

‘Lie hidden and it isn’t likely to.’

We thrust the bundle of muskets into the narrow space between the pillars of the portico and the front wall of the church, then Andrew was off, running lightly down the street in the direction of the inn.

I shook out my cloak and wrapped it around me, for, in the stillness after the stealth and fear, I was suddenly cold. There was just room for me behind the pillars next to the guns, if I sat with my back braced against the wall and my knees drawn up. I was cramped and cold, still shivering from the aftermath of our break-in. Mark Weber, a decent man, so I had been told, left to rot in a corner like a dead rat – my fingers still felt the touch of that limp hand, and my nostrils were full of the stench.

If I had not managed to climb on to the barrel, if I had taken a few more moments to throw myself through the window . . . I felt bile rising in my throat and tried to swallow, but suddenly found myself vomiting. I had eaten little all day and I managed to avoid staining the precious evidence, but my throat burned with the acid of my stomach and I longed for water.

I am not sure how long I crouched there, cold and miserable, before I heard the footsteps. One person, a heavy man, was coming up the alleyway toward the church. I curled up like a hunted animal, burying my face in my knees and praying that no part of me or my dangerous charge could be seen in this dark corner. The footsteps stopped. I swear I could hear him breathing, just yards from where I was concealed, holding my own breath. The moment seemed to stretch out for ever.

‘Nee.’ The man’s voice was as clear as if he stood within arm’s reach. ‘Nee.’ Then a string of Dutch I could not understand. But I knew that ‘nee’ meant ‘no’. They must have realised someone had been in their locked building, either because the barrel was moved or one of the bundles of muskets missing. Or because the hook which secured the shutters was broken. If they had investigated further, they would have found the smashed door at the back of Hans’s cottage.

My lungs were bursting. I would have to breath soon. Another voice, further away, impatient. The man beside the church called something, then I heard him turn and make his way back down the alleyway. I let my breath out as carefully as if he were still there. Minutes passed. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of oars from the direction of the canal.

I had no idea how far away the English army camp lay, or how long it would take for Andrew to ride there, rouse an officer, rouse a squadron of soldiers, and return, but there was comfort in the fact that it was a windless night. The men on the barge would not be able to sail, they could travel no faster than they could row. Nor could they turn aside. Sooner or later, the mounted soldiers would overtake them.

They caught the men in the early hours less than ten miles from Amsterdam. When the men and barges had been secured, an armed guard posted around their storehouse, the town authorities roused from their beds and Cornelius Parker’s house raided, someone remembered me. By then I was so stiff and cramped I could barely stand, but a cheerful young trooper loaned me his horse and walked beside me back to the Prins Willem, where an exultant gathering of English and Dutch soldiers was just sitting down to a huge breakfast prepared by Marta.

‘This is Dr Christoval Alvarez,’ Andrew said, presenting me to a saturnine man with a long, clever face, ‘who discovered the treachery of this group of traitors. Kit, this is Sir John Norreys.’

I bowed deeply, to conceal my surprise. I had not expected Norreys himself to take part in the operation. He bowed in return.

‘We are in your debt, Dr Alvarez,’ he said. ‘Through your actions you have prevented a substantial shipment of arms from reaching the enemy.’

By neither Andrew nor Norreys was Sir Francis’s name mentioned, but it hung in the air between us. I was certain that Norreys knew, or had guessed, why I was in Amsterdam and on whose orders.

When Andrew and I had drawn aside, I asked, ‘What will happen to Mark’s body?’

‘They will send it back to England, to his family. A ship is leaving today and will take him, but the Dutch authorities will not give us leave to go until Parker and van Leyden have been questioned and we have given our evidence.’

‘You found van Leyden?’

‘Aye, he was in Parker’s house, both of them sleeping the sleep of the just while their men carried out their traitorous business. I expect they would have left soon for the Spanish Netherlands themselves, had we not caught them in time. A good night’s work, Kit.’

‘Aye.’

I was glad they had caught the men and saved the arms from reaching Parma, but I could not rid my mind of the tragedy of Mark Weber, a man I had never known. It was not an uncommon fate for one of Walsingham’s agents, but that did not make it any easier to bear.

In the event, Andrew and I were kept chafing in Amsterdam for days, while the slow processes of the law ground on. I managed to despatch a coded report to Walsingham, detailing all that had happened, by the good offices of Ettore Añez, who was able to send one last ship across the Channel as the Spanish fleet drew nearer. I also entrusted to Ettore’s courier the signet ring I had taken from Mark Weber’s hand.

At last we were free to go. All this time the
Good Venture
had waited in the Amsterdam docks and Andrew’s recruits had kicked their heels in camp. When we were not being questioned or writing out our accounts of what had happened for the Dutch lawyers, Andrew put in a few hours of training with the men. It was hardly enough to turn them into troopers, but they might prove useful as mounted messengers. I also persuaded him to teach me how to mount by vaulting on to a horse from the rear. It was not difficult with one of the quiet pack ponies and I even tried it once or twice with a larger horse, but I was uncertain how Hector would respond to the shock if I ever attempted it with him. Someday I would need to train him, if I ever had the opportunity to ride him again. It would overcome my need to find a mounting block whenever I rode him.

On the day we left Amsterdam Andrew marched his men down to the
Good Venture
, while I followed some way behind, reading a quickly scribbled letter from Ettore Añez, whose ship had just returned from England.

The two fleets engaged
off Plymouth near the Eddystone rocks on the twenty-first, with no great losses on either side. The English ships kept their distance, bombarding the Spanish with their guns and manoeuvring around the larger enemy ships. Medina Sidonia tried and failed to get close enough to grapple and board. Then all was thrown into confusion. Drake, whose ship was meant to be leading the fleet, went off on a raiding expedition for plunder, leaving the English fleet in disarray. There was a further skirmish off Portland two days later. The Armada is now said to be making for Calais, ready to escort the barges of infantry across the Channel. If your ship leaves immediately, you should reach Dover clear of the fighting.

Ettore, however, was to be proved wrong.

Chapter Fourteen

W
e were somewhat crowded aboard the
Good Venture
, with the addition of Andrew’s twenty recruits as well as a full ship’s crew, but I cared little for that. I was on my way home to England at last, on the twenty-ninth of July, and that was all that mattered. I smiled to myself at the thought, leaning on the stern rail and watching Amsterdam disappearing as we set off down the waterways that would take us to the German Ocean and the Channel. It was true. I did indeed feel as though I was going home. Although I had lived in England for more than six years now, I had never before thought of it as my home. Amongst my fellow Londoners I was still viewed as one of those they dubbed ‘Strangers’ – foreign immigrants and refugees who were not full-blooded Englishmen. We had fewer rights than true citizens, were restricted in our businesses and ownership of property. Those with wealth enough could, like Ruy Lopez, compound for a form of limited citizenship by making a substantial payment, but I could not envisage such a thing for my father or myself. Nonetheless, as I turned my back on Amsterdam and watched the sailors plying their oars, my heart lifted at the thought of London and even poor, dirty Duck Lane. Soon I would sleep in my own bed and take up my rightful work in the hospital.

‘You are looking very cheerful, Kit.’ Andrew leaned on the rail beside me, watching the dip and thrust of the oars. We were making good time, though the wind was not in our favour at the moment.

‘It’s good to be going home,’ I said simply.

‘Aye. I’ve had my fill of
Amsterdam.’

‘I liked the Hollanders.’ I wanted to be fair. ‘Apart from van Leyden and Parker. They are not so different from the English.’

‘Perhaps. But you cannot say you liked that gaggle of lawyers, picking over the evidence like crows over a dead cow.’

I laughed. ‘I suspect lawyers are the same the world over. The longer time they can take over their business, the higher the fees they can charge! At least Norreys outwitted them in the matter of the muskets.’

‘Aye.’ Andrew grinned. Norreys had firmly taken possession of all the muskets, gunpowder and shot, carrying everything off with him as he returned to England, well ahead of us.

‘If we have to row all the way,’ Andrew said, with a jerk of his head toward the sailors, ‘we won’t be home for a week.’

‘I expect they’ll hoist sail once we reach the sea. It’s so narrow here that there’s no room to tack. They can move faster under oars.’

‘You sound very knowledgeable in the ways of ships.’

‘I made a long voyage by sea from Portugal to England. I came to understand a little then.’

‘Why do you never speak of
Portugal, Kit?’

He asked without any intention of probing unkindly, I was sure, but I stiffened.

‘Because I do not choose to. That part of my life is over. I choose to forget it.’

I knew that I sounded rude and ungracious, but what else could I be? It was impossible for me to say to him, truthfully, ‘I was the daughter of a distinguished professor, and lived a privileged life amongst the Portuguese aristocracy and intelligentsia. My grandfather is one of the greatest landowners in the country. I did not even dress myself or brush my hair in those days – my every need was met by servants. Despite being a girl, I was taught by some of the great scholars of our country. Until it all ended in blood, fire and horror.’

No, I could say none of these things, but I was sorry that Andrew looked offended, for he had been a good and trustworthy ally on more than one occasion now, and I did not want to lose his friendship. Let him think of me only as a young man like himself, an assistant physician and a code-breaker for Walsingham, and forget my Portuguese past. I began to talk of the
Good Venture
, its sleek lines and manoeuvrability., and the difficult moment passed.

We had been unable to set out from
Amsterdam until late afternoon, but Captain Faulconer was confident we would reach the coast in time to catch the tide, though it would mean night sailing in order to reach Dover. Before we left, a message had reached him that the Spanish fleet was now anchored off Gravelines, not far from the French border and the nearest point in the Spanish Netherlands to the English coast. Thanks to Admiral Justin’s squadron of
vlieboten
, the fleet could not – for the moment, at least – move further along the coast of Flanders to rendezvous with Parma and his barge-borne troops, for these were the shallow waters where the great warships could not venture, unless the shoals were clearly indicated, and the Dutch sailors (who knew the waters intimately) had removed all the sea marks.

As we drew nearer the coast, the wind began to rise, blowing strongly from the southwest. Clouds were building up and the sky grew dark. It would be a rough crossing to
Dover and as we met the first waves offshore, several of the soldiers turned pale and one began to puke. A sailor took him roughly by the shoulders with a curse and thrust his head over the starboard gunwale of the ship, so that the wind carried the vomit away into the sea. The ship began to dance and pitch, but the sails were soon raised and she heeled over and began to cut through the waves like a dagger through silk. I drew a deep breath of the salt-laden air. It was wonderful to be moving swiftly at last, and the
Good Venture
stood out into the open sea with her starboard side low in the water. I saw that Andrew, solidly confident on shore, wore a look of some alarm.

‘We shall need to give the shoals off
Flanders a wide berth,’ Captain Faulconer said in my ear. He had come to stand in the stern beside the helmsman, keeping a sharp eye on the course he was steering. ‘The Hollanders may know those waters without marks, but I am not so confident. They shift constantly. They may not be quite as much of a death-trap as our Goodwin Sands, but I should not like to find myself amongst them with the dark coming up as fast as it is.’

It was indeed growing dark. We must have taken longer to navigate the canal than I had realised. We were more than a month past the summer solstice now, and it must be nearly ten of the clock. In our haste to make the crossing before the Spanish fleet moved nearer, we had not taken a meal sitting in the captain’s cabin, but had eaten, like the sailors, on the wing, helping ourselves to rough chunks of bread and some sort of meat pasty, brought out on deck in buckets. For a moment, a chill finger of fear touched me, so that I shivered. I should not like to navigate these waters in the dark, between an armed enemy fleet and the dead hand of the Goodwins.

We had been sailing, I suppose, a couple of hours south along Flanders, but standing off from the coast, when I noticed a flickering light ahead of us. Although we seemed to be moving fast, the wind was almost head-on, so that the sails were close hauled. And although we had caught the last of the ebb tide as we left the Low Countries, the tide had turned now and was against us. So that, though we appeared to be moving rapidly through the sea, we were probably not making nearly as much headway relative to the land.

The captain, who had gone forward for a time to see to the close adjusting of the sails, was coming back to the stern, where I had found myself a seat on a water barrel. I had not seen Andrew for some time and wondered whether he too was feeling the effects of sea sickness.

‘Captain,’ I said, pointing ahead and slightly to port, ‘what is that bright glow over there? It looks like the lights of a great city, but I thought there were only small towns along this coast.’

He came to stand beside me and raised his hand above his eyes to cut out the small amount of moonlight breaking through the racing clouds. For a long moment he said nothing.

‘Fire. It is fire.’

‘Fire? Would the Spanish have set fire to a town? I thought they were well within their own territory.’

‘No. I think not. It looks like fireships to me.’

Fireships! I knew what that meant. Floating infernos that could wreak terrible destruction. Loaded with gunpowder, they would be set alight, their sails trimmed to carry them down on an enemy fleet, while their emergency crews leapt into boats and escaped. Only a few years before, the Dutch had used fireships in an attempt to break the siege of
Antwerp by the Spanish, but they had failed and the city, one of the great cities of Europe, had been lost. Leicester had made an ill-judged attempt to send fireships down on to the Spanish besiegers off Sluys – his one effort to aid the garrison – only to have them turned back against him. Were the Spanish now using fireships against our English fleet?

‘Ours or theirs?’ I asked.

‘No way to tell, from this distance. We must go nearer.’

‘Nearer to the Spanish fleet?’ My voice shook with alarm.

‘We must.’ He was brusque. ‘If the Spaniards are sending fireships into our fleet, there will be men in the water. We cannot sail past and leave them to drown.’

‘They may be English fireships, sent against the Spaniards.’

‘They may.’

He turned away, shouting for his second in command.

‘This ship was commandeered by Sir Francis Walsingham,’ I said, ashamed of my fear even as I spoke. ‘Your orders were to sail directly to Dover.’

He barely glanced at me.

‘You are the only civilian on board this ship, Dr Alvarez. I have a crew trained in gunnery. Captain Joplyn has a squadron of men who can handle muskets or engage in hand-to-hand fighting, if it should come to that. Our duty now is to investigate and, if necessary, join our fleet to rescue survivors or engage the enemy.’

‘Well,’ I said with resignation, ‘at least I can patch up the wounded.’ I tried to appear calm, but the thought of sailing straight into battle made my stomach clench with fear.

‘Aye. That you can do.’ Faulconer turned away.

The fireships, if that was what they were, must have been farther away than I realised. With the wind and the tide largely against us as we headed even more south-westwards, dawn had broken by the time we came within sight of Gravelines, where the Spanish fleet had been anchored. Even before we could see anything clearly, we could hear the boom of cannon. The pall of black smoke cast by the fireships had been augmented by clouds of paler smoke from the ships’ guns. We could see the flashes as the cannon fired, followed by the ear-splitting crack of the explosions, like lightning in a storm, followed moments later by the crack of thunder.

As we had run south, the sailors not occupied in handling the ship prepared our own six cannon, and I found myself playing the part of one of those young boys, such as Captain Thoms had been, carrying gunpowder and shot up from the hold to place in readiness for the gunners on the gundeck. Andrew’s men had primed their muskets and stood watching expectantly as we drew nearer the battle. Even those who had been prone with sea sickness were on their feet, alert, looking eagerly ahead.

As I passed Andrew amidships, I said accusingly, ‘You and your men look as though you are enjoying this.’

He laughed. There was a gleam of wild delight in his eye. ‘This is what we are trained for, Kit.’

‘Well, I am not,’ I said dourly. ‘I am trained to save lives, not to take them.’

When we were at last close enough to make out something of what had happened, we could see the burnt-out hulks of eight ships and even to my untrained eyes it was clear that the fireships had been launched downwind from the English fleet on to the anchored Spanish ships as they lay, apparently securely, at anchor in the night. Now the Armada fleet was scattered across a wide expanse of ocean in disarray.

‘Our fireships have caused them to panic,’ one of the ship’s officers said in satisfaction. ‘By the looks of things they have cut loose from their anchors and fled in all directions. Medina Sidonia will have a fine time of it, trying to call them to order now.’

I thought with a shudder how terrifying it must have been to be roused from sleep to see a monster of fire bearing down on you, with nowhere to escape except by a leap into the midnight sea. And I knew that most sailors, superstitiously, refused to learn to swim, for they believed that, if you fell or were cast overboard, it was better to drown quickly than to struggle against death, only to drown in the end.

I saw the captain coming toward me and caught him by the sleeve.

‘The fireships were certainly ours, then?’

‘Aye.’ He grinned mercilessly, rubbing his hands together in glee. I had not seen him so animated before. But I thought of those men, leaping into the Channel, their clothes perhaps on fire, weighed down by their breastplates and helmets.

‘Will any still be alive, the men from the ships? You said you would come to try to save them.’ I knew it was a poor chance, after the time it had taken us to arrive, but a few might still be struggling to stay alive, or stranded on sandbanks amid the rising tide.

‘Save them? I came to save Englishmen.’

‘What will happen to them?’ I asked.

‘Who?’ He stared at me blankly.

‘The men in the water.’

‘They will drown, of course. Do you expect us to rescue them? Spaniards?’ He laughed incredulously and I was silenced.

Yes, they were Spaniards. But. . . the stench of burning flesh, the breastplate pressed to the chest like a branding iron, the drag down, down into the green depths of the sea. Fire and water. Lungs struggling for air. No kindly landfall now, only the dark hell of the ocean bed.