The Portuguese Affair (14 page)

The first we knew of what had happened that day under the ramparts of the citadel was when we caught sight of a party of men proceeding slowly along the harbour road which
led down from our army camp, located on the highest ground of the lower town.

Dr Nuñez called me over. ‘It looks as though someone is seriously injured, Kit.’

I shaded my eyes against the glare of the sun.

‘That is Sir John himself in the party,’ I said. ‘He is carrying someone. But – I can’t see very well – there are so many of them.’

The group of men all seemed to be moving together, step by step. As they reached the water’s edge, it became clearer why. Sir John was carrying the wounded man in his arms, but two other men walking close beside him also seemed to be holding something. More men were right behind them. The men with the injured soldier had great difficulty, clustered together, climbing down into the skiff. Even from a distance it was obvious that there was something seriously wrong. The skiff began to row slowly toward Sir John’s
Nonpareil
.

‘Someone is certainly badly hurt,’ I said. ‘Should we row over and offer our services?’

‘Aye,’ Dr Nuñez said. ‘Fetch our satchels.’

I limped to our cabin. With firm strapping around my ankle, I could now manage without a stick.

We reached the
Nonpareil
while they were still lifting the wounded man on board, and I could see now why the burden was so awkward. The blade of a pike was embedded in his skull and the two soldiers helping Sir John had been taking the weight of the shaft, to try to prevent its doing further damage. At least they had shown the sense not to try to drag it out until there was a physician at hand to stem the bleeding. And I saw now that the man was Sir John’s younger brother, Sir Edward Norreys.

Sir Edward was carried at once to the main cabin, and we followed closely behind. Sir John was wide-eyed with shock, for the wound looked mortal, but his brother was not dead yet. His eyelids fluttered and he moaned. He seemed barely conscious as he was laid carefully on Norreys’s own bed so we could examine him.

The next hour was a desperate time.

‘You will need to hold the patient’s head rigid for me, Kit,’ Dr Nuñez said, in the calm, impersonal tone he used when dealing with a medical crisis. There was no hint in his voice that this was a friend and a valued officer, as well as being Norreys’s much loved younger brother.

Two of the soldiers who were not supporting the handle of the pike lifted the bed and its occupant out into the middle of the cabin, so that there was room for me to stand at the top of the bed and grip Sir Edward’s head tightly on either side. It was difficult to hold it rigid as Dr Nuñez required, for on the side with the injury his hair was soaked with blood and more blood poured over my hand as I held him. Everything was slippery. I bit down on my lip, trying to keep my hands firm.

‘Now,’ Dr Nuñez said to the two soldiers holding the pike handle, ‘I want you, you nearest the patient’s head, to release the handle when I tell you – very gently, careful! – and take hold of the back of the blade. Whatever you do, you must not move it back and forth. That will enlarge the wound. And you,’ to the other man, ‘you must take all the weight of the pike as he moves his hands.’

The first man did as he was told, but he was sweating with the fear that he might cause further injury. The other soldier’s eyes bulged with the strain of holding the pike steady.

‘Good.’ Dr Nuñez took a deep breath.

‘Now you must both pull the pike blade straight out, along the same angle at which it entered. Do you understand? Not yet! I will count to three. On three you will do it. Straight and careful. Understood?’

They nodded. I am not sure which of us in that confined space was the most worried. Certainly I feared I would lose my grip as they pulled.

‘One. Steady now. Two. Three.’

They pulled the blade out of the skull. I managed to hold it firmly, but the blade did not come out easily, for it was buried deep in the bone. As soon as it came free, I laid Sir Edward’s head gently down and seized a handful of dried moss and the bandage cloth we had set ready and pressed it against the wound, for the blood spurted out like a fountain. If we did not act quickly, the man would bleed to death. Then Dr Nuñez took over with fresh cloths as I dug in my satchel for the salve of
agrimonia eupatoria
and
achillea millefolium
. These are the most efficacious coagulants. Even our troops call
achillea
‘soldier’s woundwort’, for it has been used to staunch wounds since ancient times. Achilles was said to have used it during the Trojan War, which gave it the name of
achillea
. Country folk call it ‘yarrow’.

Still, despite the known properties of the two herbs, I wondered whether anything could possibly stop the bleeding from this terrible head wound. There was a great loss of blood. Examining the injury I could see that the skull bone itself had been cleft. It was a clean cut, without the shattering and fragments of bone that occur from shot, but it went deep and there might be damage to the brain itself. It was a fearful sight.

The soldiers were thanked and dismissed and went away in gloomy silence, for Sir Edward was a popular man with the troops, less severe in discipline than his brother. Sir John himself stayed, handing us what we asked for like an assistant apothecary, saying never a word until we had done all we could – salved and bound the injury and laid the patient down on his bed. The gash could not be stitched, for there is little enough skin and flesh on that part of the skull and that little had been torn and damaged.

‘Will he live?’ Norreys’s voice was harsh and I realised that he cared deeply for this younger brother of his, despite the rigid control of his face.

Dr Nuñez was washing the blood from his hands in a basin that a servant had brought. We were both blood-bespattered.

‘At this stage, I cannot tell,’ he said gravely. ‘The wound has been treated as soon as possible, that is in his favour. But it is very deep. He may live, but still suffer from its effects.’

It was his way of avoiding the issue. Sir John was not misled.

‘You mean he may be mad or childish hereafter? His mind affected?’

Dr Nuñez winced. ‘We will pray not, Sir John. The next few days will be crucial. If he does not take a fever . . . he is a strong healthy man.’

Norreys did not look reassured, but he thanked us both warmly and saw us on to his private pinnace to be taken back to the
Victory.

We visited Sir Edward several times a day after this. He regained consciousness on the second day and gradually began to recover, although he suffered acute pain. It was so severe we could only partially relieve it with poppy juice. Had we given him enough to defeat the pain, it would have ended all his pain for ever. He was very weak, but his brain did not appear to be impaired. However, he had no memory of how the accident had happened. It was only from those who had been nearby that we heard how, in scrambling amongst the rocks and fallen masonry below the citadel walls, he had tripped over the pike he was carrying. Like Sir John he did not order his men to go where he would not go himself. He faced the same dangers and had suffered for it. Perhaps now, I thought, Norreys would abandon this pointless siege.

‘It seems a kind of emblem of our whole venture,’ I said to Dr Nuñez. ‘It is descending into disaster and farce. Sir Edward’s injury came not from the enemy but from his own weapon.’

He shrugged. There was no need to answer. More and more, events spoke for themselves. As matters had become more
catastrophic, he had begun to spend more time in my company and to avoid Dr Lopez and the Dom.

‘We can do nothing but endure in patience, Kit,’ he said.

Another tragedy soon followed. Our troops had finally succeeded in making a major breach in the walls of the citadel, and continued to throw themselves at it with immense courage, in the face of the defenders’ cannon fire. During one of these charges a mass of loosened masonry fell outwards, crushing Captain Sydenham. He was not killed outright, but was pinned to the ground by four huge boulders lying on top of his legs and lower body.

I heard the story later from one of the soldiers on our ship. Originally, he had been amongst the new recruits, but, different from so many of the others, he was a responsible man, prepared to do his duty as a soldier, as faithfully as the regular troops from the
Low Countries. Unlike some of the men who were present at the disaster, he had survived, although he had been shot through the shoulder with a crossbow and I dressed it.

Afterwards he sat wearily on the deck, too exhausted even to drink the ale which stood in a tankard at his side.

‘He was a decent man,’ he said, ‘Captain Sydenham. He knew it was hopeless, what we was trying to do, up there, take their damned citadel. Still he had his orders. And he always led the lads from the front.’

‘Drink your ale,’ I said. ‘You’ve had a bad time.’

He looked at the ale as if he had not seen it before, swallowed a mouthful, then put it down again.

‘We went in where there’s a partial breach, see. Getting bigger. The wall is broken. God’s bones, I don’t know how we done it without cannon. Torn half the stones down with out own bleeding hands.’

I could see that he meant this literally.

‘Anyways, the wall was beginning to collapse, see, then suddenly a whole section came away when we wasn’t expecting it. Came down like a landslide, and there was Captain Syndenham underneath it. All of him, from the waist down, pinned under these b’yer lady great rocks.’

He wiped his face with both hands.

‘We wasn’t going to desert him. Most of the lads there was the troops who fought the Spanish under him in the Low Countries and they wasn’t going to leave him to die under the rocks and that sun like a firebrand, on some stinking Spanish hillside. Nor was I. He treated me decent, even if I wasn’t one of his regular lads.’

He looked vaguely at the ale, then drank the rest of it down.

‘Over and over w
e made sorties under cannon shot and crossbow fire to try to rescue him. The Spanish just sat up there and picked us off. Would they stop long enough for us to rescue an injured man? Like Hell they would. Over and over they picked us off, them filthy misbegotten Spaniards. Before he died this morning, a dozen more of the lads was killed trying to save him. Dunno how many was injured like me. Jesu, I hate the bastards!’

Alone in my dark cubbyhole that night I wept for Captain Sydenham and a dozen other men and all the useless slaughter of this terrible futile siege of Coruña.

Chapter Ten

A
t last, after two weeks of unnecessary death and injury, it became clear even to the leaders of the expedition that we had not the means to overpower the citadel with our puny artillery. Their minds were further persuaded by a fortunate change in the wind, which began to blow in our favour from the northeast, the very wind to carry us down the coast of Portugal. The soldiers were ordered back to the ships, loading what provisions they could and destroying what little was left in the town. It would be a long time before Coruña recovered. There were a good many wounded men amongst those who had served in the attacks against the citadel, including even some of the recruits who had finally been forced into service. Along with the provisions, the injured were loaded on to the ships, to survive or die while we sailed south, as Fate should decree.

Before we left, I paid a final visit to Teresa and her family, and to Paolo, whom I had kept supplied with food all the while we had remained in the harbour.

‘You are leaving, Dr Kit?’ Teresa asked. She was a different child now from the terrified creature I had first seen. The cottage was kept as clean and neat as anyone could contrive, given its dirt floor and the sand that blew in from the foreshore. Probably Teresa had been hard at work. I had persuaded one of the ship’s carpenters to replace the door and to make some repairs to Paolo’s house.

‘Aye, we are leaving,’ I said, ‘and you will be glad to see us go.’

‘Nay,’ she protested, ‘you have been kind. Without you the baby would have died, and Mama too. And we would have had nothing to eat.’

Her mother was still weak, but she was growing stronger. Nevertheless, it was always Teresa who was in charge and who did most of the talking.

‘I shall be sorry to say goodbye to you all, Teresa, but you will be better off when we are gone. Paolo will be recovered soon and says he will fish for you.’

I had learned from Paolo that Teresa’s father had been lost at sea just two months before our arrival at Coruña. The little family would have been destitute but for the kindness of neighbours, for the mother had never been strong and the little boy was simple-minded.

‘I will look after them,’ Paolo had said to me in his gruff voice, giving nothing away. It would not surprise me if he moved in with them and they became one family.

‘May I see the baby?’ I asked now.

Teresa’s mother smiled and held the baby out to me. She rarely spoke, but on my second or third visit she had asked me if I would give the child a name, so that I should always be remembered. I was embarrassed and could say nothing at first.

‘Caterina,’ I suggested at last, ‘if that pleases you.’

‘Caterina.’ She tried it on her tongue. ‘She will be baptised Caterina, as soon as we can hold a service.’

As soon, in other words, as the priests who had abandoned their flock returned. Well, although Caterina Alvarez was no longer, this little Caterina should take her place. She promised to be a fine healthy child like her sister. She was warm and soft in my arms, long eyelashes lying quietly on plump cheeks. She, at least, would have no memory of what had happened here.

When I bade them farewell, Teresa hugged me about the waist, pressing her face against my doublet, and I kissed the top of her head. I would not let them see the tears in my eyes, for their suffering at our hands far outweighed any good I had done them.

Paolo was standing in his doorway, leaning on his stick, as I went out into the street.

‘So you are leaving, then.’

‘Aye.’

He spat juicily, but had the grace to turn to one side.

‘I wish you well, Paolo. The town will recover, in the end. I have nothing but sorrow and regret for what has happened here.’

He grunted.

‘They will be glad of your help.’ I nodded toward the other house.

‘Aye, well, there will be none from
them
.’ As once before, he jerked his head up, indicating the upper town.

‘You’ll be glad to see us leave,’ I said.

‘We will.’

There was nothing else to say, but as I was starting to move away, he cleared his throat and, surprisingly, looked slightly ashamed.

‘This is for you.’

He thrust a grubby fist toward me and something small dropped into my outstretched hand. Then he turned his back on me and limped back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

It was a model of a seal, about four inches long, beautifully carved from some glossy wood. The eyes were filled with a look of innocent curiosity. Even the whiskers betrayed inquisitiveness. I closed my fingers over it, then I too turned my back and walked away.

Drake and Norreys sent despatches home to London, and with them I sent a coded report to Walsingham on all that had happened, including such information as I had been able to glean about Coruña and the surrounding countryside. It was carried by Titus Allanby, returning to London on one of the fast pinnaces, who would make his own report in person. Before he left, he shook my hand, and thanked me again for extricating him from the besieged town.

‘You would probably have contrived an escape yourself,’ I said, ‘even without my help.’

He shook his head. ‘I was too closely watched. And even had I done so, the English fleet might already have left. I owe you a good deal, Kit.’

Awkwardly, I tried to brush aside his thanks, but did ask that he would take my greetings to my father.

‘Tell him I am well,’ I said, ‘and please do not mention the burn or the ankle. Both are nearly recovered now.’

‘Very well, but I
shall
mention them to Sir Francis. Those who sit comfortably in Seething Lane do not always understand what we endure, who are out in the world, following their orders. I will also tell him all that we have discussed concerning Robert Poley.’

‘Aye, do that,’ I said. ‘Though we have no proof.’

‘It may plant a seed of doubt.’

He grinned and stretched, as he shouldered his pack before climbing down the rope ladder to the pinnace.

‘I am growing too old for this game,’ he called up to me, from where he stood on the deck of the smaller ship. ‘I think I shall buy a small farm and grow pigs and cabbages.’

I laughed, and raised my hand as the pinnace rowed clear of us and hoisted her sails. Part of me – nay, much of me – longed to be going home with her.

The next morning we set sail on that strong north-easterly, which carried us round the rest of Cape Finisterre and on towards Portugal at last. Away from Spain and Coruña, I began to breathe more easily. Looking around, however, I saw that the fleet seemed to have shrunk. I stopped one of the sailors.

‘Where are the rest of the ships?’ I said. ‘Have they fallen behind?’

He grimaced. ‘Not they. Most of the sixty Dutch
vlieboten
have abandoned the expedition and turned for home. And taken some three thousand men with them.’

I caught my breath. The
vlieboten
were small ships, like the pinnaces, not great warships, and they carried only light-weight armaments, but they were very useful, moving between the larger ships and able to navigate the shallower waters along parts of the Portuguese shore or in river estuaries. The three thousand men were also a substantial cost to the expedition, on top of the hundreds left buried in Spanish soil at Coruña.

Despite the loss of the Dutch ships and all those men, it was good to be on the move at last. The weather was hot, but tempered by the wind, and the rest of the fleet sailed smartly out round Finisterre and then south along the coast, although on the second day the wind dropped somewhat, so that although it continued to blow from a favourable quarter, it was not strong enough for us to make much speed. The soldiers, however, welcomed the respite as the fleet sailed on slowly. The provisions which had finally been procured meant that food and drink were in plentiful supply, although the ship’s officers ensured that there should be no gorging and no drunkenness. There had been far too much of that already. For the most part the injured soldiers made good progress toward recovery, so my duties as physician were light.

Four days out from Coruña, on the thirteenth day of May, I was standing once again with Dr Nuñez in the bow of the ship.

‘Is that a galleon, Kit?’ he said. ‘Further out to sea but heading on a slanting course to intercept us? Your eyes are keener than mine.’

I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked where he pointed.

‘Aye. It seems to be one ship on its own, not a Spanish fleet.’

A man on the masthead was calling something down to the captain, and pointing.

‘Is it English?’ Dr Nuñez asked.

‘Too far away to tell.’

I kept my eye on the approaching ship, so I did not at first notice the brightly painted fishing boat which had come alongside the
Victory
. Then, just before it dropped astern, I saw that Ruy Lopez was leaning over the rail and talking to the fishermen. Dr Nuñez went aft to see what news it had brought, for a fishing boat in these waters must be Portuguese. We were not far now from Ilhavo, where I had once hidden long ago amongst the fishnets.

As the fishing boat turned away, I saw that Dr Nuñez and Ruy Lopez were talking to Norreys, who had joined our ship that morning to discuss our strategy when we reached
Portugal. It seemed they were reluctant to impart whatever news the fisherman had brought.

‘Has something happened?’ I asked Dr Nuñez when he returned to the foredeck, looking gloomy.

‘A treasure ship has put in to the harbour at Peniche.’

I was puzzled. Why was this such bad news? A single treasure ship, laden with spoils from
Mexico and Peru, would not trouble our fleet of warships.

‘Why does that worry you?’ I said.

‘They are signalling the news now to Drake,’ he said, pointing up towards the string of flags that a sailor was hoisting. ‘And as soon as Drake hears of a treasure ship, to Peniche we will go.’ He banged a fist against his forehead.

‘Peniche cannot be much more than sixty miles from
Lisbon,’ he said, ‘but it might as well be a thousand. By the time we come there, King Philip will have had warning enough to move his entire army from Spain to garrison Lisbon!’

I had taken my eye off the approaching ship while we had been talking, but now I saw that it was much nearer.

‘That’s an English ship,’ I said. ‘There is the flag, clear enough now, and another standard. I’m not sure . . . ‘

‘Can you see her name?’

I screwed up my eyes. ‘
Swiftsure
.’

‘
Essex,’ said Dr Nuñez. ‘The Queen’s errant golden boy. That rash idiot. He will want to go galloping about the countryside, imagining himself one of King Arthur’s knights, and lose us the war in the process.’

He stamped off below decks and shut himself in his cabin.

Our commanders did not exactly welcome Essex, for they were carrying furious letters from the Queen demanding that he should be sent home at once. If they allowed him to join the expedition – and it would be difficult to say him nay – they would themselves incur a share of her wrath. On the other hand, he had a sound ship, provisions and arms, and well-trained regular soldiers. It was not difficult to foresee what decision they would make after our severe losses at Coruña.

Essex
did join us, and demanded that he be put in charge of the next landing party. Dr Nuñez, as so often before, had been right.

I had never encountered
Essex myself, but all that I had heard about him made me dread his addition to the leaders of the expedition. The spoiled and indulged favourite of the Queen – arrogant, wilful, accustomed always to grabbing whatever he wanted no matter at what cost to others – he was the last person to be given a part in the councils of the expedition. The Queen had forbidden him to come, yet he had defied even the Queen herself, no doubt envisaging some glorious heroic role for himself. He seemed to have no grasp of reality, but to live in an imaginary world of chivalry which bore no relationship to the nature of war as I had experienced it, both at first hand and through the suffering of men I had cared for. It was this mindless, hare-brained glory-seeking which had brought about such disasters when he had served in the Low Countries. I was full of dread at what further blight might be cast on our affairs by his presence.

Although it was not yet full summer, the southern sun soon became much stronger than Englishmen are accustomed to, particularly as in recent years our summers had been cold and wet, the winters bitter. The makeshift army, which had nothing to do while the seamen handled the ship, took to hanging about on deck, instead of staying cooped up below in the suffocating quarters they had been allocated. Most of the soldiers had overcome their seasickness by now, and they lay about, getting under the feet of the sailors, who tripped over them and kicked them and swore at them to move. Now that the food supplies had been augmented at Coruña, the soldiers were less apt to break out in open riot, but the quarrels between soldiers and sailors never ceased.

The soldiers stripped to the waist in the heat and – unlike the sailors, whose skin was permanently darkened by years at sea – their white English shoulders and noses turned the red of
London bricks, then began to blister and peel. I found myself with some serious cases of sunburn to treat, and one or two of sunstroke. The worst of the raw red patches of skin I bathed with a cool infusion of
urtica dioica
and
stellaria media
, then I applied a salve of made from a strong decoction of
calendula officinalis
,
stellaria media
, and
coriandrum sativum
, blended with purified lard.