The Portuguese Affair

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘That was a shameful pact,’ I said. Exhausted as I was, I still spoke vehemently.

  ‘It was. It should never have been countenanced.’

  ‘There was the gold Drake took at Cascais.’ I ventured this suggestion without much hope, for I had a good idea what the answer would be.

  ‘The Queen’s gold?’ He shrugged. ‘Aye, well, she may grant them a little of it, when Drake returns from the Azores. Perhaps he will have increased his bounty there.’

  I could not sleep that night for the gnawing hunger in my belly, as the ship yawed to and fro, as if she was uneasy, hove to. To my haunted mind it seemed that the ship herself was starving and dying, here on the last few miles of the sea. The pains in every one of my joints had grown even more acute. The thought that food was only hours away made it all the harder to endure, this final agonising wait. I was dizzy with hunger and thirst. From the gaunt faces I had seen around me in the ship, I could imagine how I myself must look. My doublet and breeches hung on me. They stank of sweat and dirt and sickness. Once I was home I would burn them, for they were so full of rents and tears that even a pauper would scorn them. My stockings gaped with as many holes as a fisherman’s net and my shirt barely reached my waist, for all the lower part had been ripped off to make bandages. Even my precious physician’s gown had suffered the same fate. The stuff was too thick for bandages, but in the end, no one cared. We used what we could.

  I wondered whether Simon would recognise the ragged sunburnt skeleton I had become, but realised bitterly how little it mattered. I was nothing to him but a passing acquaintance, a male companion to share a meal or a visit to the playhouse. Why did I torment myself with foolish thoughts? I found myself longing to break out of my disguise, to become a girl again, Caterina, my father’s daughter, dependent, handing myself over to the guardianship of others. It would be nothing but joy to lay aside the burden of my manhood, my responsibilities and cares. I was nineteen years old, and I longed to abandon my travesty of a life.

  All through that last night on board, I wrestled with my crowding thoughts, with the flashes of memory that ambushed me. Isabel, laying her cheek briefly against mine. The fires in the citadel of Coruña and the drunken soldiers lying in the streets below. Teresa holding the new babe. The snake and the taste of its venom on my tongue. The men dying and dying and dying on the march. The severed head of Father Hernandez on the walls of Lisbon. The heat. The thirst. The hunger. The wounded soldier dying in my arms on deck. And Isabel, Isabel. I felt such black despair I wanted to howl, and yet even to utter a sound would have cost me too much effort. In the morning we would see England. What did I care? My wits were so dulled that it no longer had any meaning for me. All through that last terrible night, I lay awake.

  By first light I had crawled my way up on deck. It was our tenth day – or was it the eleventh? – out from Cascais. The second of July, Captain Oliver said. At least that was what he thought, for like all of us he was confused and weak from hunger and sleeplessness. The sailors were making sail, going about their tasks with maddening slowness, as if they were sleep-walking, yet they must have been as eager as any of us to quit the Victory and find themselves on dry land again. As we made our way slowly along the coast of Cornwall to Devon, one of the sailors pointed to a tiny village that seemed to climb vertically up the cliff and hang suspended over the water.

  ‘That’s Polperro,’ he said. ‘That’s my village, and I never want to leave it.’ Like the captain he gave a dry, rasping cough. ‘I’ll never set foot in a ship again. Once I get my feet on English soil, you never see me step off it.’

  ‘How far to Plymouth?’ I asked.

  ‘You see that break in the coast? Ahead, a little further along? That’s the mouth of Plymouth Sound. Not far now, God be thanked.’

  And I noticed that he crossed himself furtively, as the Catholics do.

  Plymouth Sound is a large and complex body of water, all inlets and small islands, and what look like the mouths of many rivers, but which may perhaps be deeper inlets running into the land. As usual it was crowded with huge galleons and smaller ships, which apart from their size all looked much the same as one another, for I do not have an eye for a ship. I could not have named any of them.

  Dr Nuñez had come on deck to stand beside me, and the soldiers had limped and crawled their way into the light and air, looking anxiously around, as if they feared that England were no more than a mirage, sent to torment them. Even Dom Antonio and Dr Lopez had come on deck, and the Dom had insisted that his standard should be flown, which was unwise of him.

  ‘The harbour is very crowded,’ I said, to no one in particular. It seemed we would have difficulty finding anchor room. The Victory was too large to be able to berth at most quays, but I realised that we were feeling our way slowly towards the principal quay, where it seemed there was deep water, instead of dropping anchor out in mid harbour, as I had expected. All the sails had been furled but one foresail and the lateen sail on the mizzen. A pinnace with a towline had its oars out, though I do not know how any of the sailors found the strength to wield them. I saw that there was space enough for one large ship, beside another galleon, already trimly moored. We were gliding slowly toward it, without the need for the pinnace.

  Suddenly Captain Oliver gave a cry, so agonised that I wondered for a moment if he had run mad in these last hours of our ordeal. He pointed to the other galleon moored at the quay and shouted. It was taken up in fury by the sailors.

  ‘The Revenge! It’s the Revenge! Drake never sailed for the Azores at all! He’s here!’

  Drake had betrayed us once again. He had taken all the food and drink and sailed straight home to Plymouth, leaving us to starve and die on the high seas behind him.

  Our reception in Plymouth was furious and frightening. The families coming to welcome home their husbands and sons had learned the truth of the expedition when Drake arrived the day before us. Instead of men with their pockets full of gold they found men weary and penniless, and news of many deaths. The men on Drake’s ships, however, were those in better health. The hopes of the families that their men had survived were kept alive until Norreys’s fleet made port. When the poor remains of our army stumbled or were carried ashore from our last ships, deathlike in their gaunt pallor, a terrible cry arose from the women and children crowding round the quays. I hope I shall never hear the like again. Then the despair turned to anger, and the anger to fury. Dom Antonio, trying to make a dignified descent of the gangplank in the tattered remnants of his finery, suddenly caught their attention. They recognised him from our triumphant departure in April.

  ‘Dog!’ they screamed. ‘Cur! Jewish thief! Liar! Bastard king!’ (Which last was true enough, though rarely mentioned.)

  They picked up stones from the ground and hurled them at the never-to-be king of Portugal. He escaped unhurt, for their aim was poor, but one caught Dr Nuñez on the left cheek, and it bled a little. Luckily for me, I was no more than some unknown youth of the company, probably a midshipman, or someone else of no account. They did not recognise me as one of the hated Portingalls. As unobtrusively as possible, I made my way ashore with Dr Nuñez. Both of us, without exchanging a word, chose to avoid the company of Ruy Lopez and Dom Antonio.

  In Plymouth I stayed at an inn (none of us could endure another moment aboard the Victory), where I ate and washed, but I still wore my threadbare clothes, for I had nothing else. I owed my lodging to Dr Nuñez, for I had no more than two Spanish reals left in my purse. He urged me to keep them in case I needed money on my journey home, so I changed them at the inn for good English coin, which jingled thinly in my purse with the handful of pennies and groats he had managed to give me.

  Someone, somewhere, found a paltry dole for the men. I do not know whether Drake had loosened his grip on the gold, which he proposed to share with the Queen. Perhaps it was the City investors, who had hastened to Plymouth when they learned of Drake’s arrival, and who met us with grim faces and their account books un
der their arms. They would have been unwilling to part with yet more money, but if the troops were not dispersed quickly, there would be trouble.

  There was a small amount of booty aboard the ships, the booty taken at Coruña, which was to be auctioned off and used to repay some of the creditors. In the event, the aftermath of the expedition proved to be months of legal wrangling between the investors, the leaders of the expedition, the ships’ captains, and the Mayor of Plymouth. Bitter accusations flew between them, but it was nothing to me. I knew my father’s thousand pounds would never be repaid.

  Nevertheless, someone, somehow, did find that dole for the men. They were given one meal when they stepped ashore at Plymouth, handed five shillings each, and told to disperse to their homes, those who were fit enough to walk. This was their reward at the end of the glorious expedition which they had been promised. Norreys spent an evening writing licences for them to beg their way home. It did not take him long, there were so few men left.

  ‘Five shillings!’ I cried to Dr Nuñez, when I heard of it. ‘Five shillings for so many months of suffering! How can they be so unjust?’

  He shrugged. His eyes were dull and the skin on his face sagged like soft old linen, washed till it has barely any substance.

  ‘It is more than you will have, young Kit.’

  ‘Oh, I have my memories,’ I said bitterly. ‘That is payment for this venture, and more than enough.’

  My work with the expedition was not quite finished. The men who were too sick to be moved were quartered in one of the warehouses which had held the provisions for the fleet before our departure. One of those very warehouses, indeed, which had been broken open and looted by the raw recruits, some of whom now lay here in such a pitiful state. There were plentiful medical supplies to be had in Plymouth, so that Dr Nuñez and I were able to make our patients more comfortable. With careful feeding and further nursing, those who had survived the horrors of the death march and the voyage home would probably recover. Dr Nuñez managed to arrange for two local physicians to take over the work from us, for it was clear from our own physical state that we could not continue much longer.

  He chose to remain for a time in Plymouth. As one of the major investors in the expedition, he would have meetings to attend. Certainly, there would be acrimonious discussions about how matters were to be resolved. Already we had heard muttered rumours about seizing certain of the largest ships in lieu of payment of debts. Dr Nuñez would try to see fair play, though I knew he would have preferred to return home to London with me.

  ‘Nay, I shall stay a little longer, Kit,’ he told me wearily. ‘I have written letters to Beatriz and to the manager of my spice business in London, if you will be kind enough to carry them for me.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Though I still wish I could prevail on you to come with me. I fear you will be able to do little here.’

  He shook his head, and would not be persuaded. I do not think he believed he could do much good, but felt it his duty to try his utmost. For myself, I could not cast the dirt of Plymouth from my heels fast enough. Three days after we had landed, I set out to ride back to London. I might, indeed, have travelled in more comfort by ship, for some of the smaller ships were sailing to Chatham for repairs, but I could not stomach a single day more at sea.

  The green and lush countryside of southern England looked inexpressibly beautiful after the wasteland of our overland march and the grey wilderness of the Atlantic. The full heat of an English summer seemed no more than balmy to my skin, parched and peeling as it was from the Iberian sun, and even that mild warmth was tempered by soft breezes that lifted my unkempt hair and rippled through my horse’s mane. All around me as I rode eastwards the land looked rich and bountiful. The air was filled with birdsong and the sweet scent of new mown hay. The fields of wheat and barley and oats were well grown and the crops plump and healthy. In the meadows half-grown lambs followed their freshly sheared dams. As I rode along lanes and high roads through Devon and Dorset and Hampshire, before heading north, cows gazed at me over hedgerows, placidly chewing the cud. In the villages, women nodded their greetings while small children hid behind their skirts and the bolder lads followed me, firing questions, guessing perhaps from my appearance that I came from the expedition. It seemed that word of our return had travelled ahead of me, reaching even the smallest villages.

  Had I hurried, I could probably have covered the distance in three or four days, but in my weakened state I could not ride for long hours, as I had done in the past when on a mission for Sir Francis. He would have to wait for my report. News had already gone ahead of me by fast messenger from Plymouth to London, sent by the leaders of the expedition. How truthful it was, I could not say. And of course Essex’s ship Swiftsure would have reached London some days ago. There was no need for me to hurry. Each day I stopped before I was too exhausted and spent the night in some modest village inn. I owed my post horses, like my lodging in Plymouth, to Dr Nuñez, but the small purse of coin I carried would not lodge me at any great expense, and I feared it would barely last me all the way to London.

  As I neared the end of my journey, I began to hear gossip in the inn parlours about the heroic deeds achieved by the Earl of Essex in Portugal. It seemed that, single-handed, he had captured the city of Peniche and driven out the Spanish garrison there, before personally crowning King Antonio. He had then led a victorious march south to Lisbon, where he had instituted a siege. The Spanish garrison quartered there had been too cowardly to meet him in single combat for the Queen’s honour, nor would they emerge from the city to settle the affair in pitched battle, like honest men. Nay, they had cowered behind their defences like silly girls and Essex had only been persuaded to abandon the siege because of the English army’s lack of supplies and the failure of the Dom’s Portuguese supporters to appear. Reluctantly he had returned to England, but he was ready, at a day’s notice, to set out once more and fight the Spanish hand-to-hand.

  Had these stories not concealed the tragic truth of the Portuguese affair, I would have laughed. As it was, I came near to weeping.

  Soon it began to be whispered that Drake had returned from Portugal with fifteen Spanish galleons, each and all loaded from bilge to deck with gold, silver and precious gems. Even the ballast had been replaced with weighty treasure. Men’s eyes gleamed.

  It was more than a week after leaving Plymouth that I found the roads more crowded, busy with those on foot or on horseback, carts of produce heading north, empty carts returning, packmen with their laden ponies, and from time to time a gentleman’s cavalcade, before which all men must give way.

  It was beginning to grow dusk as the crowds on the road drew together and slowed, forced together like a flock of sheep through a gate. A slow, gentle English summer dusk. There ahead of me was the Bridge. The gold of the setting sun flashed off the Thames, turning it to molten metal. The first lights winked out in houses and taverns, both in Southwark on this side of the river, and in the city itself on the far side. St Paul’s tower, which had once been topped by a spire, stood on the rising ground almost opposite me.

  London. Home. The Portuguese affair was over.

  When I had crossed the Bridge and reached the city, I left my post horse at an inn in Gracechurch Street and walked the rest of the way to Smithfield. London seemed curiously unchanged, as though it had been asleep during the long weeks of our travails, but the cobbles under the worn-out soles of my boots were real and painful enough, and I found myself limping before I reached Duck Lane. I was ravenous with hunger and hoped Joan would have a meal on the fire, for I had eaten little on my way from Plymouth, guarding the handful of silver Dr Nuñez had given me. My father and I would need to live even more frugally in the future, now that all our savings were lost.

  As I rounded the corner into the lane, something hurled itself at me, a dark shape exploding from a dark corner so that instinctively I threw up my arms to protect myself. The next minute I was flat on my back in the dirt and a shaggy,
smelly creature was half on top of me, alternately whining and licking me.

  ‘Rikki!’ I said, trying to sit up. I put my arms around his warm familiar shape. Unaccountably I found myself crying into his shoulder. His rough tongue set to work again.

  ‘Good lad,’ I said, managing at last to lift myself part way off the ground.

  I ran my hands over his sides and back. His fur was matted and beneath it he was thinner than I remembered. I could feel the knobs of his backbone.

  ‘Rikki! Why are you so thin?’

  His only response was to sit on my feet and pant lovingly into my face. He was still wearing his collar, but otherwise, as far as I could judge in the growing dusk, he was in poor shape.

  ‘Has Joan been ill-treating you?’ I frowned. Joan had been annoyed when I had brought the dog back from the Low Countries and tried to throw him out into the street, but my father and I had always insisted that she must treat him with kindness.

  ‘Come on, lad.’ I managed to heave him off my feet and scramble up. ‘We both need a good meal and a wash. And I can see that I’ll have to spend hours combing the tangles from your fur.’

  He leaned against my leg and pressed a wet nose into my palm. I rubbed my damp face with my ragged sleeve. My heart ached with the joy of seeing him again, the dog who had followed me halfway across the Low Countries from love and loyalty, at a time when I had barely known him. I owed my life to him.

  We started up the lane together. Outside our house, a woman I had never seen before was sweeping the front step and scolding a boy of five or six back indoors. She was lit from behind by the light from the doorway, and I could see clearly that it was not Joan. Had my father taken on a new servant? But the woman looked too well dressed to be a servant. I approached her cautiously, for the past months had taught me to be even more distrustful of strangers than I had been before.

  ‘Is Dr Alvarez at home?’ I asked her.