The Portuguese Affair

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘If I can find him, or help him, I will do so,’ he said, and smile reassuringly.

  ‘I am grateful, Father,’ I said.

  Before we parted, I wished him success in his courageous attempt, and he blessed me, saying over my head a Catholic prayer.

  My fears proved right. The following morning Father Hernandez’s head appeared on a spike, hoisted high above the walls of Lisbon so that everyone in our army could see it and take note. As indeed all the inhabitants of the countryside might have done also, and taken the lesson to heart, had there been any left to see. For we found, in searching the houses which had spread beyond the city walls as Lisbon had grown outside them, that none were left but the sick and the lame and ancient men and women babbling in terror and confusion. We promised to do them no harm, but they could no more help us than they could feed us. Every able-bodied man, woman and child had fled south over the Tejo, as far from us as they could.

  As for myself, I turned from the sight of that terrible object above the wall, sickened and appalled at what had been done, not only to a man but to a priest. However much I tried to keep it out of my sight, it was always there, at the corner of my vision, and his voice speaking in my ear, blessing me. The dead face wore an expression of unspeakable horror, which I think will stay with me as long as I live.

  The Dom soon began to grow impatient of living in the open fields under a sun which broiled us like a bread oven and whose heat even rose from the parched earth at night. Our Portuguese party (those of us who had come from London, with the half dozen Portuguese who had joined us) rode in the evening of the next day part-way along the road to Cascais, in search of the solar belonging to a local nobleman, whom the Dom had known in his youth. Here he would demand accommodation for us, while the common soldiers of Norreys’s army remained behind, camping outside Lisbon. He would return in triumph once Lisbon was taken. I confess, I was as eager as anyone when we rode up to the long, low building, with its thick white walls promising cool rooms and shadowy rest. The memory of the young priest’s head bloodily spiked over Lisbon haunted me. I wanted to put Lisbon behind me. The doors of the manor house were closed and the windows shuttered. Perhaps none were at home. Or perhaps the Senhor was one of those already taken by the Spaniards.

  One of the Dom’s few servants rode up to the door, banging on it with the butt end of his whip and crying out, ‘Open there, in the name of Dom Antonio of the House of Aviz, rightful king of Portugal!’

  The response was swift. Men rose up on the flat roof and began firing at us with crossbows and muskets. The servant, wounded in the leg, with blood running over his boot and down his horse’s side, wheeled around and galloped back to us as fast as his frightened horse would carry him. The shutters on the upper storey of the house were flung open and the muzzles of muskets poked out. From round by the stables, a group of young men, also armed, rode out and made for us. They were shouting, not in Spanish, but in Portuguese.

  We scrambled to turn our horses in the narrow lane and rode hard for the high road back to Lisbon, with Dom Antonio in the lead. So this, I thought, is the Dom’s warm reception from his own people. They may have hated the Spanish, but they feared them even more, and with great good sense they saw that there was no hope of release from the Spanish occupiers through the actions of our dwindling, makeshift army. Even then, Drake might have turned the tide, had he sailed the short distance up the river to Lisbon, but Drake sat counting his gold crowns in Cascais, and did not come.

  At the end of the next day, Norreys strode up to our silent huddle of Portuguese, followed by half a dozen of his captains. Since his attempt to find better quarters, the Dom had not dared to stray outside the safety of the English camp. Norreys’s face was grim and I suppose we all knew what he would say.

  ‘There is no profit, Dom Antonio,’ he said, ‘in continuing to sit in this slaughtering heat before the walls of Lisbon. We have no siege engines or cannon. We have not even men enough to cut off their supplies. The longer we wait, the greater the risk that Philip’s main army will march on us from Spain and we will be butchered like beasts in a shambles. My men are wounded and sick and starving. We must make for the ships at Cascais while we still can.’

  The night was coming on, in that sudden way it does in southern Portugal, so different from the long lingering twilights of an English summer evening. A sliver of moon had already risen in the sky and the birds, silent through the numbing heat of the day, were murmuring sleepily in the broken branches of the olive trees, which the men had ravaged for wood to put on their cooking fires. There were no fires this evening, for there was nothing left to cook, the very last of the stores the Dom had wheedled from the peasants having been exhausted that morning.

  ‘We cannot leave now!’ The Dom’s voice choked with desperation. This was a different man from the preening peacock we had known in London. To do him justice, he was courageous, in his way, for he was not a young man, and the last weeks had been a severe trial.

  ‘This is the key to the kingdom,’ he said. ‘Lisbon was our goal, and had we come here at once, as ordered by the Queen,’ (he emphasised this, for Norreys was almost as guilty as Drake) ‘aye, as ordered by the Queen, then we would have secured Lisbon weeks since and be sitting in the palace now, with food and drink enough for all.’

  Norreys shrugged.

  ‘We cannot talk of what might have been. We must talk of what is.’ He spoke as if teaching a schoolboy a lesson, tapping Dom Antonio familiarly on the arm. The Dom jerked away from Norreys’s touch, with a flare of anger in his eyes.

  ‘We cannot take Lisbon,’ Norreys said flatly, with finality. ‘No Portuguese have come to join you. The men are dying. We must march to the ships. We will start at once.’

  Ruy Lopez, ever the one to believe in the impossible, pleaded with him.

  ‘We must have more time!’ His tone was peremptory. ‘Word has been sent out around the country since we reached Lisbon. Our supporters will come, and bring weapons and supplies.’

  Norreys gave an angry sigh. Then he looked about him and saw, as I did, that it would soon be night, with little moon. It was only that, I am sure, that made him say:

  ‘Twelve hours more. You may have twelve hours more. Then I move the army to Cascais. You may come with us or stay here in your country, as you will.’

  He turned on his heel and stamped away, followed by his officers.

  The senior men of the Portuguese party drew together in conference then, but I walked away from them. I knew that Norreys was right. The expedition had been lost from the time we stayed more than a day at Coruña. There was nothing left for us now but to retreat to the ships and save as many of the men as we could. All hope was dead. I rolled myself in my cloak and slept on the ground that night, but my sleep was troubled. From hour to hour I woke and saw, huddled together in the thin moonlight, the three old men, Dom Antonio, Dr Lopez, and Dr Nuñez, sitting with their eyes open and their ears straining for the Dom’s ghost army, which did not come.

  I woke again as the sky was growing light, but before the sun had risen. The three old men had gone, but their horses remained. All around me, men were crawling from the hollows and ditches they had scratched out of the hard-baked soil, to provide themselves with some illusory protection from the merciless sun and the occasional cannon fire loosed off from the city walls, which mostly fell short of the camp, established at a discreet distance from the city. The soldiers stumbled around, gathering up their pitiful possessions and hoisting their packs on their backs. There would be nothing to eat until we reached Drake, so they were in a hurry to be on their way. I was not sure that the full twelve hours Norreys had promised were yet passed, but I strapped my gear on to my horse and brought him water in my helmet, which was not likely to see any better use that day. Before long I was joined by the others of our party. We did not speak.

  Before we left, Norreys sent a troop of his few experienced men to set fire to the buildings lying outside the city wall. By now eve
n the old and infirm had departed, but in sheer frustration he wanted to wreak what little destruction he could. The smoke of the fires rose lazily into the windless sky, wreathing Lisbon with this petty gesture of spite. At least, I thought, the city will not be sacked and the innocent slaughtered.

  As the army moved off, I saw that there were men who had not climbed out of their pits this morning, but there was no time and no strength to bury them. Like those who had died on the way from Peniche, they would be left to the scavenging birds and beasts, and their English bones would bleach under the hostile Portuguese sun.

  I mounted and rode alongside the weary men, who did not march so much as grope their way westwards, towards the estuary of the Tejo and the promised ships waiting at Cascais. Behind me I heard a clamour – shouting and a sort of jeering laughter. Wondering what could have roused the men, I reined in and twisted round in the saddle. Essex, magnificent, ablaze once more in his full gilded armour, caught by the sun as it lifted clear of the land, was riding up to the gates of the city. He cast his lance at the gates, where it stuck in the wood, quivering.

  ‘Come then,’ he shouted, ‘you cowardly Spanish! I challenge any one of you to meet me in single combat for the honour of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth!’

  From behind the walls there came no answer, unless it was the faint sound of echoing laughter. Satisfied with his show of bravado, Essex galloped up to join us, flourishing his sword with its jewelled hilt, as though he had won a great victory.

  It was twenty miles to Cascais. That seemed nothing, compared to what we had already endured. Yet to the men it must have seemed more like the sixty-five from Peniche to Lisbon, so exhausted were they, but they kept on doggedly. It was the thought of food that kept them moving, I am sure, that and the safety of the ships which would take them away from the hateful soil of Portugal on the homeward journey. When the roofs of the Atlantic port came in sight at last, late that evening, a feeble shout went up from the men, not a cheer, for they were too weakened for that, but an acknowledgement that their ordeal was nearly over. I had ridden all day in a kind of despair. I had never really hoped that we could take Lisbon, after all the mistakes and folly of our mission, but to turn our backs on it was to concede, finally and totally, that we had failed, and the taste of failure is bitter on the tongue.

  Drake and his sailors looked well and cheerful. Cascais had surrendered to them at once, without a shot fired, and they had captured a flotilla of Spanish merchant ships, providing plenty of booty, although of a somewhat workaday kind, not to be compared with the treasures to be seized on the ships returning from the New World, laden with gold and silver. One of these Drake had managed to capture, while on the way from Peniche to Cascais, and he was holding the valuables under secure locks. All the time that we had starved and laboured, Drake and his men had spent in counting their loot, feasting royally, and enjoying the prostitutes in the port. I think the sight of us must have shocked them. That evening the soldiers ate well. As men will at such times, they gorged themselves, despite our warnings of the dangers to a starved belly. The next day there were a few more deaths from its effects. Now that we were gathered together in relative safety, it was possible to hold a muster of our men, and count our losses. After the fighting and looting in Plymouth, the original army had shrunk from the numbers first gathered there, but some nineteen thousand soldiers had embarked on the ships for Portugal, not taking into account the sailors. Only eighteen hundred of the soldiers had been veterans from the Low Countries. Of those nineteen thousand soldiers, barely four thousand men remained alive. And of those four thousand, at least half were sick or wounded.

  As soon as Drake and Norreys met, they began to argue violently, each blaming the other for the failure of the expedition. Drake blamed Norreys for choosing to march overland, instead of travelling by ship round the coast. Norreys blamed Drake for going in pursuit of the treasure ship and then lingering in Cascais, instead of coming to our aid at Lisbon, for which Drake appeared to have no excuse. Their anger was heightened further by the arrival of a pinnace with mails from the Queen, who was furious that Essex had been allowed to join the expedition, against her express wish. I suppose Drake and Norreys were thankful that, despite all his empty heroics, her favourite Essex was still without a scratch.

  The next morning, Dr Nuñez and I watched Essex’s ship, the Swiftsure, depart for England.

  ‘They have sent him ahead,’ said Dr Nuñez, ‘with letters of apology and explanation to the Queen, in the hope that he can charm her into a sweet temper before we arrive with news of our complete failure.’

  ‘What explanation could the despatches give, for Essex coming with us?’ I said. ‘He has done us little enough good, caused the death by drowning of many at Peniche, and his men have helped to consume the provisions.’

  ‘Oh, I believe the excuse will be that the winds have been constantly strong from the north-east, making it impossible for him to set sail for home.’

  ‘And now the wind has changed?’ I asked disbelievingly.

  He gave a wry smile. ‘And now, conveniently, the wind has changed.’

  ‘When do we sail?’

  ‘Drake and Norreys are making their final plans now. You will remember, Kit, that the expedition was sent to carry out three tasks for the Queen’s Majesty.’

  I cast my mind back. It was a long time since I had thought about those plans, made so eagerly back in the spring. Three tasks? I had had three tasks myself. I had rescued Titus Allanby from Coruña. I had never been able to come near Hunter. As for Isabel . . .

  ‘Three tasks for the Portuguese expedition?’ I said. ‘Above all, to capture Lisbon and so regain Portugal for Dom Antonio,’ I said, ‘as a province of England.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘As a province of England.’

  ‘To burn King Philip’s fleets at Santander, Coruña and Lisbon.’

  ‘Neither of these two tasks we have accomplished, apart from a few ships at Coruña.’

  ‘Nay.’ I thought again. What was the third task to have been? Then I remembered. ‘And to capture the Azores.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We are not,’ I said incredulously, ‘we are not going to attempt the Azores? With ships full of sick and dying men?’

  ‘Drake is to attempt the Azores. He will take the most able men, and all the provisions, and make an attack on the Azores. Norreys and the rest of us will load the ships with those sick and dying men you speak of, and sail directly to Plymouth.’

  At first I did not quite grasp what he was saying.

  ‘Did you say that Drake is to take all the provisions? Do you mean all the armour and weaponry?’

  ‘That too. But he is to take all the food and drink as well.’

  ‘But with the gold he has seized, we can surely provision the whole fleet!’

  ‘There is little left in Cascais after Drake and his sailors have fed on it like locusts all this time, but, yes, I expect if we used some of the gold, we could purchase stores from the villages round about. But Drake will not part with a single coin of it. He says it belongs to the Queen. It is not his to spend.’

  ‘This is murder,’ I said slowly. ‘These men of ours will not survive the voyage back to England, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink.’

  ‘Nay, they will not. And you may salve your conscience, Kit, for we shall starve along with them.’

  The men were not told of Drake’s arrangement, or we would have had a mutiny on our hands. Shortly before we left Cascais, there was a brief naval skirmish. Two of our armed merchantmen were attacked unexpectedly by nine Spanish galleys. One, the William, was sunk, the other set on fire. Most of the men escaped to other ships, but one of the boats carrying survivors from the William was attacked and sunk by the enemy warships, a brutal, unprincipled action against unarmed men. The next morning, Drake, with twenty ships but barely two thousand men, set sail westwards for the Azores. We watched them out of sight, wondering whether the two fleets would ever b
e reunited. I noticed that one of those embarked with Drake was the big soldier who had pulled me to safety the night of the Spanish attack on our camp. I never knew his name.

  Shortly afterwards, Norreys’s fleet, a kind of floating hospital, as it seemed, turned northwards, with those suddenly favourable winds. The men chosen to sail to England were pathetic in their gratitude, for they believed themselves the fortunate ones, taken home to be cared for, and spared any further fighting. They did not realise that our fleet was not a hospital, but a morgue.

  As we sailed out into the Atlantic I stood, not at the bow rail of the Victory – how ironically she now seemed to be named – but at the stern rail. I watched as the coastline of Portugal dwindled and sank into the sea. I was certain now that I would never see my sister Isabel again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Every detail of that voyage back from Portugal is burned into my memory as a slave’s brand is burned into his skin for life, yet at the same time it has also a strange quality of unreality. How could that ship of skeletons ever have made that journey and reached England? To call it a nightmare is to belittle the horror. We talk of nightmares when we mean no more than bad dreams, troublesome the next morning, but soon vanishing away. Those of us who survived that voyage were marked by it for the rest of our lives as if we had passed through the torments of Hell itself.

  By noon on the very first day of the voyage, barely out of Cascais, the men began to realise the desperate state of affairs. No food was distributed to them for a midday meal, and when they called frantically for water, it was rationed out by the ship’s bosun. When Dr Nuñez had spoken to me of there being nothing to drink, he meant that there was no wine or ale. There was a little water. A very little. We had ten barrels of brackish water aboard the Victory, and I suppose the other ships must have had the same. It was brackish because first our sailors and then the rest of our expedition had made such demands on the water supply of Cascais in the terrible heat of midsummer that every sweet well had been drunk dry. All that remained were those that were near the shore and from time to time became tainted with sea water. It was not so salt as to make us ill, but it barely satisfied thirst, even aggravating it.