The Portuguese Affair (9 page)

Suddenly there was an explosion that seemed to rip the very air apart, and such a blast of wind did it make that I was knocked down and lay sprawling on the deck, unable to hear. For a few moments I was so dazed I did not know what had happened. One of the ship’s officers pulled me to my feet and pointed across the harbour.

‘That’s a grievous loss in booty for us,’ he said.

Where there had been a galleon there was now a mass of torn canvas, broken spars and burning timber. A vast cloud of dust and smoke and broken splinters of wood had risen up into the air from the wreck. It spread out over the whole harbour and fragments of debris began to rain down on us, amidst a choking smell of burnt tar and gunpowder. As I stood gaping, a forge-hot piece of metal landed on my left shoulder and I jumped about, shrieking, trying to shake it off, for it was burning right through my doublet and shirt to the skin beneath.

‘Jesu!’ I cried, ‘I’m branded like a slave!’

The officer grabbed a marlinespike and knocked the metal off my shoulder. Where it landed on the deck it began to burn the wood until he managed to lob it overboard. As it hit the water it hissed and a gout of steam rose briefly from the sea.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, his face pale with horror.

I gasped. I was shocked and frightened. But for his quick action I would have been seriously injured.

‘Not too badly.’ I managed to keep my voice fairly steady, though my heart was pounding and I felt dizzy. ‘It will be a nasty burn, but I’ll fetch some salve.’

‘You were fortunate it wasn’t your head.’

I nodded. ‘Aye.’ I managed a weak laugh. ‘Fortunate indeed.’

As I ran to fetch my satchel of medicines so that I could salve my shoulder quickly, I thought that ‘fortunate’ was an unfortunate choice of words. But I remembered Andrew, injured by a musket ball at the siege of Sluys, which had skimmed the side of his head, but killed the man standing behind him. He too had thought himself fortunate. Dame Fortune has sometimes an ironic touch when she spins her wheel. My clothes were charred in a round patch on my shoulder, and through the pain I could smell the very burn itself.

The stench of burnt human flesh is something you do not forget.

Chapter Six

Coimbra
, Portugal, 1582

M
y mother and I had been in the prison in Coimbra several weeks and we thought the Inquisitors had forgotten us. Guards brought us food every day, enough to keep us alive, though we grew weak from the scanty diet and the lack of air and light. I realise now that they prefer their prisoners to remain alive, to make a greater spectacle at the auto-da-fè. If a prisoner dies while awaiting judgement, all that can be done is to throw his bones on the fire, which makes a poor show for the audiences, who flock in from miles around in the hope of gaining the great spiritual benefits they are promised from attending.

At last, however, they came for my mother. She had warned me that when it happened I must keep to the furthest and darkest part of the cell, in the hope that they had forgotten me. So when three guards came to take her for questioning, I did as I was bid, crouching down in the corner opposite Francesca, who blinked in the shaft of light which came in with the guards, weaving her head to and fro, trying to see if they brought Jaime with them.

The guards stripped my mother stark naked, and fondled her, and made lewd gestures. She crossed her hands over her breasts and hung her head so that her hair concealed her face. Then someone called from beyond the door and she was pushed out into the corridor. They did not take her far. The chamber for interrogation must have been close by, and they left the cell door ajar. Perhaps they thought Francesca too helpless to try to escape. Or perhaps they did remember that I was there and took pleasure in forcing me to listen.

They have taken my mother away.

Screaming.

Again and again.

I wrap my arms around myself, as if by clutching my body I can somehow hold my soul there intact. For it is struggling to escape. If it can break free, if I can lose myself in death, the sound of the screaming will stop.

I cover my ears, but the screaming goes on.

My mother. My mother’s voice pleading.

A horrible gurgling noise. Inhuman.

Chains rattling and the sound of water pouring.

I vomit into the refuse and the excrement that cover the floor.

I do not know what she said which eventually persuaded them to stop, for that day at least. Perhaps they had merely grown bored or tired. I had passed into a kind of coma myself, and I am sure hours had gone by before the same three guards dragged her back to the cell. She was too weak to stand and collapsed on the floor. They took it in turn, the three of them, two to hold her down while the third raped her. She tried to struggle, but she had no more strength than a cloth doll. When they finally left and barred the door at last, I rushed to her, weeping. I tried to dress her, but it was like trying to put clothes on a corpse. Francesca seemed to have returned for a time to her senses and watched with bright eyes.

‘Don’t worry, boy,’ she said indifferently. ‘She will grow used to it.’

Chapter Seven

Coruña, Spain, 1589

T
he landfall at Coruña, according to the original plan – or rather according to the second version of this plan – was for the sake of swift provisioning as well as firing the Spanish ships in the harbour, but we stayed there two interminable weeks. And for the first four days the new recruits continued to run riot. At last Norreys managed to muster the regular soldiers into some kind of order and set them to attacking the citadel. Drake, in overall command, had once again disobeyed the Queen’s orders, but he clearly knew that if he brought back enough treasure, then, as so often before, she would forgive him. He was already losing sight of the original mission.

Lisbon
!
That was our goal, and it was as far away as ever. The main strategy of the whole expedition, which our leaders seemed to be choosing to forget, had been to sail
directly
to Lisbon, immediately after burning the Spanish fleet, in order to surprise the occupying Spanish garrison there, while Dom Antonio’s loyal subjects would throw open the gates of the city, kneel at his feet, and welcome him with tears of gratitude. That was the plan, and as a result we carried no siege cannon, only light ordnance. There was nothing in the original plan about mounting a siege. So when the regular soldiers – those who had joined us from long experience against the Spanish in the Low Countries – when these soldiers were sent to take the citadel of Coruña, they had nothing but small arms.

They fought bravely, and paid for it. In the meantime, the gallant first-time volunteers were roaming the surrounding countryside, having wiped out most of the town of
Coruña.

‘That rabble,’ Dr Nuñez told me, ‘they have already jeopardised our mission. Soon they will destroy it.’

‘What have they done now?’ I asked, even though I dreaded to hear.

‘They have triumphantly burned down a monastery and slaughtered those of the monks they could catch. And they have been feasting on the animals they’ve stolen from the nearby farms. They have been massacring peasants they have found hiding in the hedgerows.’

Even as he spoke, on the deck of the
Victory
we could watch the plumes of smoke from burning villages rising like vast umbrella pines to the heavens.

‘What will happen to our own countrymen when these butchers reach
Portugal?’ I said. ‘And it will not take long for news of events here to reach the Spanish court.’

Dr Nuñez grimaced. ‘All hope of a surprise attack on
Lisbon must have been lost by the end of our second day here at Coruña.’

The Dom and his master strategist, Ruy Lopez, were powerless. They had handed themselves over to Drake and Norreys, believing the agreed plan would be carried out. But Drake, as Sara Lopez had said on more than one occasion, was a pirate, and answered to no one when he was drunk on the prospect of looting. I was certain he did nothing to curb the behaviour of the rioting men, but used it as a cover for his hand-picked sailors to carry out more discriminating plunder on his own behalf. I believe Sir John Norreys gave his best endeavour, but not even he could mount an effective siege with his small number of trained but poorly armed soldiers, hampered by that much larger rioting crowd of vicious men.

And those trained soldiers were suffering injury and death in their futile attempt to attack the citadel with their inadequate weapons. In the end, after several days of desperate fighting, it was this which gave me the opportunity I was looking for. I sought out Dr Nuñez.

‘I want to go ashore,’ I said bluntly. ‘Norreys’s men are in need of medical care. I find it shameful to lurk here in safety aboard the ship, out of range of the Spanish cannon, when I could be relieving their suffering. Will you give me leave to go ashore and see what I can do to provide help?’

‘How is your own injury?’ he asked. ‘Your shoulder? Surely it still pains you.’

‘Aye, a little,’ I lied, my hand stealing involuntarily toward my left shoulder. ‘But it is healing.’ I had smothered the burn with a cooling salve and left it open to the air at night, when it kept me awake with acute pain. During the day I covered it with a soft pad under my patched shirt and doublet.

‘In truth, I should be glad of some occupation to distract me from thinking of it,’ I said. ‘There will be men amongst our besiegers who are suffering far worse, and we both know that the naval surgeons are much less skilled than we are, except in sawing off limbs. Let me go and see what I can do.’

He got up from the chair where he was sitting in the elegant cabin allotted to Dom Antonio. The Dom himself was presently relaxing under an awning on deck, reading, as if all that was happening on shore was of no concern to him.

‘First,’ Dr Nuñez said, ‘let me show you what I have arranged.’

He led me out of the Dom’s cabin to the slightly smaller cabin next to it, which he occupied, and opened the door. I had not been in here before, but I saw that it was fresh and airy, with a glass window open to the breeze, like a gentleman’s study. Everything was in immaculate order, a few books on a shelf, his satchel of medical supplies hanging on a hook next to his physician’s gown.

‘Here,’ he said, opening a door. ‘This was storage space for spare linen and tableware used in the captain’s and officers’ cabins. I have had everything removed and stored elsewhere, and the shelves taken down.’

It was a narrow, windowless space, though there was a small grill opening through into the cabin to allow air to circulate. Perhaps it was sometimes used to store food. A cot had been fitted inside, filling most of the floor, though there was a hanging cupboard over the foot of the cot and a pisspot under it.

‘It is a poor enough cabin for a gentleman physician,’ he said, ‘but perhaps you would be more comfortable here than in that fox’s den you have made for yourself on deck.’

He was smiling and I smiled back, full of gratitude.

‘I won’t inconvenience you?’

‘Not at all. I am more likely to inconvenience you, for Beatriz swears I snore like a pig.’

I laughed. ‘So does my father.’

It took very few minutes to move my few possessions and my blankets into this cubbyhole, my blankets on to the cot, my clothes and books into the cupboard, apart from my gown, which I hung from a nail on the back of the door. I felt almost overwhelmed with relief. Here I would be safe and private.

Once I had arranged everything to my satisfaction, I found Dr Nuñez on deck and tried to thank him, but he brushed my words aside.

‘Proper provision should have been made for you before, but I am afraid everyone has been caught up in other affairs,’ he said. ‘Now, about your request to help the soldiers attacking the citadel.’

‘I may go?’

‘Aye, but I shall come with you. Between us we should be able to offer some comfort to those poor fellows.’

I did not know whether to be glad or sorry. If he came with me, it would be much easier to go ashore and reach the men, but it would be difficult, or even impossible, for me to go looking for Titus Allanby in the town, or what was left of it. However, all I could do was go ashore and spy out the town as best I could. Later, I might be able to return alone.

We both equipped ourselves with our medical satchels and commandeered one of the
Victory
’s small attendant pinnaces to take us ashore. As we walked along the quay and stepped down on to the harbour paving, I realised that, for the first time in my life, I was walking on Spanish soil. It gave me a curious feeling, partly fear, partly a kind of exhilaration that I was nearer to fulfilling the first of my missions. Serving Walsingham had begun to work upon me once again and I was aware of a familiar sense of half-guilty excitement.

We had been given an escort of four trained soldiers, who led us a roundabout way through the cracked and broken streets to avoid the direct line of fire from the citadel’s cannon mounted in the walled upper town. The lower town and port appeared deserted, yet I was aware of watching eyes. When I turned my head to seek them out, there was nothing but a kind of quiver in the air, which sent a tremor along my spine. Most of the inhabitants were dead or escaped into the surrounding country, but I was sure there were others hiding amongst the damaged buildings, the very old and very young, and those who would not abandon them.

Everywhere, there were bodies, lying disregarded in the roadway or glimpsed through the broken doorways as we passed. Men, women, and even small children. A few mangy dogs were scavenging in the kennels of the streets through which we were making our way. A black and white cat watched us, slit-eyed, from a window where the shutters had been half torn away. Some of the damage to the buildings was too severe to have been inflicted by our drunken soldiers, even if they had been carrying muskets. This was artillery damage. In firing down on our besiegers, the Spanish garrison was wreaking havoc on their own civilian town.

The streets were pitted and strewn with abandoned possessions – clothes and cookpots and broken crockery. I saw a single child’s shoe, lying on its side next to a torn head veil. Somehow that shoe was more poignant than the derelict buildings. The air was thick with dust and the stench of gunpowder, trapped between the walls of the crowded houses by the heat. There had been a lull in the cannon fire when we came ashore, but now it started up again, so that instinctively we ducked and the soldiers hurried us on, past a church whose doors gaped open on a rubble-strewn interior, where the tower had collapsed into the nave. That was certainly not damage done by us. It could only be the result of heavy artillery.

At last, after a steep climb up through the rubble-strewn streets that left Dr Nuñez breathless, we reached the English outpost, securely placed close under an overhanging rock face, protected from the line of fire raining down from above.
A group of soldiers came in just ahead of us, their faces patched with dirt, their clothes torn, and their eyes blank with exhaustion and a kind of dumb resignation. They knew that it was impossible for them to take the citadel by force against such superior fire power. All they could do was to try to wear down the garrison by making constant attacks and cutting off their supplies of food. Some of the soldiers carried muskets, the rest crossbows, and I saw that in one corner of their makeshift camp fletchers and smiths were at work making more arrows, quarrels and musket balls. Otherwise, their only attack artillery was some small ordnance the soldiers had sweated to carry up the hill to within the necessary close range of the citadel. Too close for safety. To be sent to man these guns was a death sentence, for the Spaniards could easily pick off the gun crews.

As we had expected, there were wounded men here who had not been able to return to the ships and Dr Nuñez and I were soon at work dealing with direct injuries from arrows and shot, and the many indirect, peripheral wounds from shattered stone flying from the impacts of cannon fire. There were several broken limbs as well, mostly caused by rocks falling from the walls, dislodged by shot, which we were not equipped to treat here in this makeshift camp. Dr Nuñez organised a relay of men to carry the more seriously injured to the harbour, though they would have a hazardous time of it, exposed in places, as we had been, to the guns of the citadel, and not easily able to dart out of the way.

The injuries I dealt with in the camp were similar to those of the soldiers brought back from the fall of Sluys, though, kneeling on the stony ground, with the sound of the cannon overhead, I felt that the crowded ward at St Bartholomew’s was a haven of peace compared with this. My head rang with the constant explosions of cannon fire, so I understood how the sheer unremitting noise must exhaust men in battle and leave them without the will to carry on fighting. At least the wounds we found here were fresh and had not had time to become infected or gangrenous.

When we were done, and had passed the less seriously injured men as being able to continue on duty, Dr Nuñez and I started down through the shattered streets of the town again, accompanying the last stretcher carrying a man with a broken leg. As we drew near the harbour, I stopped. I had caught the sound of sobbing from one of the few quayside cottages which was still partly intact. I laid my hand on Dr Nuñez’s arm.

‘There is someone in trouble there,’ I said. ‘It sounds like a child. I am going to see.’

‘Nay
, Kit! You must not! It could be a trap.’

‘There are no Spanish soldiers here,’ I said. ‘They took care to flee to safety. And very few people. How can I come to any harm? When our soldiers have delivered the injured man to the boats, they can come back and protect me.’

He hesitated, uncertain. We could all hear the desolate crying. It was certainly a child.

One of the soldiers, one of the trained men from the
Low Countries, said, ‘We’re not barbarians, like that rabble who wrecked the town. We don’t make war on children.’ He turned to me. ‘We’ll be back with you in no time, Doctor.’

Dr Nuñez was persuaded at last and they moved off to the quays where the boats and smaller ships were moored. I did not wait for the soldiers to return, but went to the doorway of the cottage. The door itself had been ripped from its hinges and lay on the ground at my feet.

‘Is someone there?’ I called out softly in Spanish. ‘Do you need help?’

It was a fisherman’s cottage, for there were traps and nets bundled up just outside the door. I could make out little in the gloom within, for we had spent a long time up at the camp and the evening was drawing in. Though I could see not see much, I could still hear the sound of a child crying, though an attempt had been made to suppress it, and it came to my ears now in spasms of gulps and gasps of drawn breath. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I made out three figures. In front of me crouched a girl in a torn dress, perhaps eight or nine years old, rubbing her face with the back of a dirty hand. In a corner a boy of about three sat on the ground staring vacantly into space, his mouth hanging open like an idiot child. There was another figure lying on the dirt floor behind the girl, and it was clear that she was trying to shield it from view.