The Portuguese Affair (28 page)

I could, however, give him something to ease the pain a little. In my cabin I checked my few remaining supplies. Over the flame of a candle I made an infusion of
spiraea ulmaria
,
matricaria recutita
, and
humulus lupulus
in my own morning cup of water, which I had not yet drunk, lacing it with nearly the last of my poppy syrup, then I returned to the deck and sat down beside the soldier.

He roused himself again and tried to sit up, so I slid my arm under his shoulders and helped him drink the medicine.

‘This will ease the pain,’ I said, and he nodded.

Then he lay there with his head on my shoulder, looking towards the ship’s bow.

‘Don’t suppose I’ll never see England again, Doctor.’

‘You must keep your spirits up,’ I said. ‘A stout heart is better medicine than any I can give you.’ I knew that I lied, and so did he.

‘Ah, but you’re a brave lad, Doctor, young as you are. Once I was in my right mind again, I never thanked you for the way you sucked that snake’s poison out of my leg. That was a brave thing you done, braver than any soldier.’

I looked down at him. In all the weariness and dirt I had not recognised him.

He nestled closer against me, and murmured, so quietly I could barely hear him, ‘You hold me soft as my Molly. And I won’t never see her neither. She warned me.’ His voice had almost faded away. ‘She warned me . . . not to come.’

He died within the hour, and all the while I held him. I never knew his name, or where he came from, whether Molly was his wife, whether there were more orphans made by this death. When we dropped him overboard I wept, and I shut myself in my cabin for the rest of the night. I do not know why I wept, for this one man out of so many. Perhaps it was because I had saved him once before from death, but could not save him this time. Perhaps it was because he had died in my arms, like a lover. Perhaps it was because, in his wasted, filthy, wounded body, he stood for all those other poor creatures who had died shamefully, caught between their own greed and the insubstantial dreams of old men, who were exiles from a country that no longer existed, had never existed as they imagined it.

The following day I was sitting slumped on the foredeck, partially shaded from the sun by the foresails. Captain Oliver had ordered every last scrap of canvas to be hoisted, for there was so little breeze you could have carried a candle from one end of the deck to the other and it would not have been blown out. I had spent the morning doing what I could for the sick soldiers, but we had reached a point now when I had few medicines left, even after begging all Dr Nuñez’s supplies and – through a message carried by a cabin boy – those of Dr Lopez. I had cleaned and salved what I could, but there was nothing more I could do for them. If the wind did not come soon, we would all die, becalmed here, not many nautical miles from Coruña, where the whole invasion had begun.

I was sick at heart and found I could not endure the presence of those wasted men any more. Instead I had escaped up here to the raised foredeck, where I sat on the hot planks of the deck, leaning back against a coil of rope with my eyes shut and pretending that I could feel an increase in the movement of the wind. Behind me I heard footsteps approach, then pause as whoever it was caught sight of me. I opened my eyes.

‘Dr Nuñez,’ I said, drawing in my knees to get to my feet.

‘I don’t mean to disturb you,’ he said. ‘Please, do not move. I’ll leave you to enjoy some rest. You have been overtaxing what little strength you have left.’

‘Please don’t go,’ I said. ‘It is cooler here than almost anywhere. Or at any rate, not quite as hot.’ I patted the boards beside me.

With some difficulty he lowered himself to sit next to me on the deck. I could not imagine what pains he must be enduring at his age. Intense hunger brings on excruciating pain in all the joints. It had been a courageous undertaking to come on this expedition at all, given his advanced years. He had been so full of those dreams of his youth that he must have thought it within his capability. And had things gone as planned, it would have been. A swift voyage to Lisbon as a gentleman adventurer, luxuriously accommodated about the
Victory
, a ship which would take no part in Drake’s firing of the Spanish fleet; a pleasant journey along the coast of Portugal and up the Tejo to Lisbon; a joyous reception in the city, followed by the crowning of the exiled king. Feasting and celebration. All of this would have made no demands even on a man of seventy.

For a time, neither of us said anything.

‘It will be good to come home,’ he said at last.

I smiled at him. Like me, he was now thinking of
England as home. Those dreams of the past had been blown away, probably some time during the march from Peniche.

‘Mistress Beatriz will be so glad to see you,’ I said. ‘And your children and grandchildren too.’

‘Aye.’ He sighed.

I knew that he suspected, like me, that we would never reach
England. And indeed we would not, unless the wind came soon. The
Victory
could be propelled, slowly, by towing her with an oared pinnace, though she was not designed to travel far that way. She could not be rowed herself, as a galley is. This method of towing the ship was intended only for manoeuvring in the close quarters of a harbour, or to extricate her from possible danger, if the wind failed or else blew her on shore. It could never be used to move the ship for any distance at sea. Besides, our sailors, though not yet as weak as the soldiers, could never summon the strength now to row even a pinnace.

‘Your father will be glad to see you safe home as well, Kit,’ Dr Nuñez said.

I nodded. ‘I am worried that he has had to carry the burden of my work at St Bartholomew’s, as well as his own, all this time. I should have returned long before this, weeks ago, had the expedition been conducted as it was planned. He has never been strong, not since the Inquisition.’

‘Nay
.’

He sighed again, and leaned back, like me, against the great coil of rope.

‘I wish I had never allowed myself to be persuaded into this affair,’ he said. ‘Unless Drake manages to take the Azores, we have failed of every goal.’

‘Aye,’ I said, and could not keep the bitterness out of my voice. ‘The one goal I achieved was to rescue Titus Allanby from the citadel at Coruña.’

‘Walsingham’s instructions, was it? Allanby is one of his men?’

I nodded. ‘Aye. He had sent word that he was under suspicion.’

I had told Dr Nuñez very little before I went into the citadel at Coruña, but there was no harm in his knowing the full story of my missions from Walsingham. He often aided Walsingham himself.

‘I was also supposed to see that no
hurt befell the man Hunter,’ I said, ‘who is being held in prison in Lisbon. If we had gained the city, I was to make sure he was brought safely out of prison and sailed home with us. Father Hernandez–’ I swallowed. I could not erase the memory of that dead face, spiked up on the walls of Lisbon. ‘Father Hernandez promised to try to help him.’

‘That was a terrible business.’ Dr Nuñez patted my arm, but did not look at me.

‘I know that when you rode off from Peniche,’ he said quietly, ‘you had some hope of finding members of your family near Coimbra, but when you returned you were distraught. Was that another goal in which you feel you failed?’ He paused and smiled at me, a little tentatively. ‘Do not speak of it if you do not wish.’

Nay
, I had not spoken of it, but perhaps to speak of it now, to this man who had always been good to me, would be a kind of relief to the turmoil that the memory of that ride caused inside me. I had said no word of my intentions to my father, to anyone at all, except to Dr Nuñez just before I left Peniche, yet I would have to tell my father what I had discovered. Talking to Dr Nuñez might help.

‘I rode to my grandfather’s
solar
,’ I began slowly. ‘That was where we left my sister Isabel and my brother Felipe, with my grandparents, when my mother and I travelled to Coimbra to join my father for a few days. Seven years ago.’

Looking out over the oily sea, I drew a deep breath, remembering the four of them standing on the steps and waving goodbye as the carriage bore us away. I had hung out of the window for the last sight of the house and of my grandfather’s prize stallion in the meadow.

‘Later,’ I said, ‘while we were waiting to make our escape from Ilhavo, to join your ship, we heard that my grandfather had sent my brother and sister to tenants of his, the da Rocas, Old Christians, so they would be safe if the soldiers of the Inquisition came hunting for them. They both became ill with a high fever. We heard that my brother Felipe had died before we left Portugal. My sister was too ill to come with us, but they thought she would recover.’

I realised that Dr Nuñez was patting my arm again, but spared me a direct look.

‘I thought I would find them there, you see, all three, at the
solar
. My grandparents and Isabel.’

‘But you did not?’ he said gently.

‘The servant who came to the door was suspicious, because I did not know that my grandmother had died in a prison of the Inquisition at about the same time as we were taken. All that time ago.’ My voice shook, and I paused, trying to steady it. ‘I had to pretend I was a cousin, come from Amsterdam.’

At that moment I nearly let slip why I had needed to conceal who I was. Dr Nuñez must not be told that I was another sister who had fled from
Portugal, not a brother.

‘Then the servant told me that my grandfather was still alive three weeks before. He had gone to
Lisbon on business. When I arrived, the household had just received word that he was one of the first of the nobles executed in the city by the Spanish, suspected of supporting Dom Antonio, though he knew nothing of this affair of ours.’

I turned suddenly, ablaze with anger, which I had not been able to express before. ‘That madness in Coruña! If we had not delayed there, the Spanish would not have killed my grandfather!’

If I had not been so weak, my words would have come out as a shout. Instead they were no louder than a vicious whisper. Tears were running down my face. I realised that I would have liked to kill Drake and Norreys at that moment. I had never felt such hatred and it frightened me.

‘If my grandfather had still been alive–’ I gasped. I must be careful what I said. I dashed the tears away angrily with the heel of my hand.

‘What of your sister Isabel?’ he asked quietly.

‘I found her,’ I said. ‘Oh, aye, I found her. Taken as a whore by the da Rocas’ loutish son,’ I spat out. ‘The parents, who were decent people, were dead. He got her with child when she was only twelve. Now, at barely seventeen, she has two children and another on the way. She would not come away with me, she would not leave the children. And he was violent, threatening me with the Inquisition. He tried to attack me with a knife. He beats her. She was terrified of him and begged me to leave. I had to ride away, like a coward.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why was she not with your grandfather?’

‘I don’t know!’ I cried. ‘And now I will never know. Perhaps the man threatened to betray her to the Inquisition. Perhaps my grandfather did not know what had happened, thinking that she was safe in hiding, until it was too late and she feared for the children.’

I ran my fingers through my hair and sat clutching my head between my hands.

‘She had been very ill when we left, and developed brain fever, so the man said. She is very frightened of him, intimidated. He beats her,’ I said again. ‘I saw the signs. He struck her, and the little boy, while I was there.’

He said nothing for some time, but at last he spoke.

‘If our expedition had succeeded, and Dom Antonio had been made king indeed, he might have been able to help you.’

‘Aye, I said, ‘I had thought of that.’

He sighed. ‘I feel your grief, Kit, and I know there is nothing I can say to ease it.’

‘It will kill my father,’ I said in despair. ‘He thought at least the three of them had survived.’

‘Did you tell him what you planned to do?’

‘Nay. I feared I might not be able to make the journey to the
solar
.’

‘Then I think you should not tell him. What good will it do, except to ease your own mind by sharing the burden of the truth? I think this is a burden you must bear alone, Kit, to spare your father.’

He was wise, Dr Nuñez. I realised that it was the right advice. I would keep all these painful truths to myself and say nothing to my father, however much it hurt.

At the end of the fifth day out from Cascais, urged on with a slightly stronger wind, we finally reached Cape Finisterre, the last west tip of Spain. That was when the weather changed suddenly and the tempest caught us. As we rounded the cape and aimed north and east across the Bay of Biscay, the winds came howling down upon us and seized the ship and threw it almost over at the first blast, as if some giant’s hand had grabbed the
Victory
like a fragile toy. It seemed as though we might be crushed to splinters by that giant hand. I could not tell which direction the wind came from, for it seemed to come from all directions at once. A sailor up on the yardarms, trying to gather in one of the topsails and tie it down, was struck by the beating canvas and thrown out in an arc like a stone from a boy’s slingshot. We barely heard his cry before he plunged into the sea far in our wake and was lost at once to sight as the ship rushed first one way and then the other, at the mercy of the storm. Those of us who were still, almost, on our feet tried to drag and carry the sick men below decks, but despite our efforts three were washed, screaming, overboard in the first few minutes.