by Ann Swinfen
‘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.
Out at sea long columns of flame, like the tongues of gigantic dragons, shot down from the sky and seemed to link earth and heaven in some devilish bond. Moments after, deafening thunder rolled over us, so that I felt the beat of it deep in my chest, and my ears were numb. Then the rain
came, rain such as I had never seen before, hitting us like musket balls. As the bosun and I lifted the last of the injured men, to carry him below decks, the wind caught the awning we had erected for the soldiers, ripped it up till it stood on end and clapped and danced like the Dervishes of the Barbary Coast, then carried it away. It vanished into the solid wall of rain which was now so heavy we could no longer see the other ships of our dying fleet.
When we had deposited the last soldier down with the others on the gun deck, the bosun clambered hastily up the companionway to the main deck, and I followed after him, but I was not welcome there.
‘Get below!’ one of the officers shouted at me. ‘We want no landsmen on deck in a storm like this. Get out of our way!’
I did as I was told and retreated back down the companionway to the gun deck, then picked my way through the men lying there until I reached the companionway that led up to the poop and the cabins. I heard the faint sound of voices from Dom Antonio’s great cabin, but I did not want the company of my fellow Portuguese. Instead I let myself through Dr Nuñez’s empty cabin and into my cubbyhole. No larger than a clothes press, without porthole or any natural light, at least it was my own place. There I huddled on my bunk, weak now myself, and dizzy with lack of food for nearly a week, trying to blot out the memory, brought suddenly and vividly alive by the tempest, of my first journey north on these seas.
Chapter Eighteen
On Board the Santa Maria, 1582
When my parents and I were smuggled from the fishing boat aboard the merchant ship out of Porto, bound for London, I knew nothing more of Dr Hector Nuñez than his name, that he was the owner of the ship Santa Maria, and that he would help us when we reached England. I began to feel a little safer as we sailed west to gain sea room for rounding the Cape of Finisterre, and in the morning of the next day I ventured out of the cabin my family had been given, to explore the ship. During the few hours of the night that remained after we had come aboard, my parents had slept in the single bunk, and I had lain on the floor. After the months on the stone floor of the Inquisition prison it was no hardship.
My father had gone on deck before me. I followed him up the companionway and roamed about the ship, getting in the way of the sailors, and occasionally earning a cheerful cuff from one of them when I asked too many questions. I could hardly believe that my life was returning to some kind of normality. It was strange being at sea on this great ship. It was strange pretending to be a boy in the company of all these sailors. But we were free and alive, my mother, my father and I, with every hour taking us further from danger.
The previous evening, before we slept, I heard my father telling my mother what our plans should be. It would not be wise to travel on from England to Antwerp, as he had originally intended, for the Spanish King had turned his attention to his possessions in the Low Countries. Antwerp would not be safe for us. We would settle in England, where there was already a sizeable Marrano community, who would welcome us. I could not imagine what this place ‘England’ would be like, but I was beginning to feel hopeful. If only my sister Isabel were with us, I would almost feel happy.
After a time, the wind got up and a storm began to heave the seas about. Not a great storm, but enough to make me uncertain on my legs, so I went back down to the cabin.
I found a scene of chaos. My father’s medicines were scattered about, phials overturned and smashed, powders strewn over the small table. My mother was lying on the floor, writhing like a creature in agony. I cried out in horror and flung myself down beside her.
‘Mama! Mama!’ I cradled her in my arms. ‘What has happened?’
She looked at me with feverish eyes, and gasped. A little blood and saliva trickled from the corner of her mouth.
‘I took,’ she whispered, ‘I took . . . things to kill the baby.’
I picked up the bottles lying near her hand. Seeds of flos pavonis. Leaf of leonurus cardiaca. Root of the rare American cimicifuga racemosa. Tincture of stachys officinalis. All the bottles were empty. Even then, I knew what they signified.
She could speak no more, for her body arched and heaved, and suddenly a great bloody mass burst out between her legs. She screamed and retched.
Terror swept over me. I did not know what to do. I did not know what to do. I seized a bolster from the bunk and wedged it under her head, then ran for my father. I seemed to hunt for hours, running up and down companionways, along the decks, until I found him at last in the captain’s cabin.
‘Come,’ I gasped. ‘You must come. Mama.’ The words froze on my tongue.
I clutched my father’s sleeve in both hands. If I could hold on to him, perhaps the horror would stop. Time would slip back. Everything would be as it had been, only a few hours before.
When we reached my mother she was breathing still, but the floor was awash with blood and she could not speak.
‘What did she take, Caterina?’ My father took me by the shoulders and shook me so I could not speak.
‘Abortifacients,’ I managed to say at last, breaking away from his grasp and pointing at the empty bottles. Tears were running down my face and soaking the front of my tunic. Jaime’s tunic, ragged and filthy.
‘But why?’ His cry was terrible to hear. ‘Why?’
I hung my head. I could not meet his eyes. ‘She was raped,’ I whispered. ‘Over and over, they raped her in the prison. She told me she was with child. While we were still in the prison. And now, she said . . . now all she could say to me, was that she wanted to kill the baby.’
‘She has killed herself as well!’ he wailed, taking my mother in his arms.
We made her as comfortable as we could, but the blood flowed and flowed. My father helped her to drink an infusion of capsella bursa pastoris, which is believed to stop haemorrhage, but I guessed from his face that there was no hope. I know now that she had taken far too much of the drugs. A lethal dose. She was so desperate to kill that child which made her feel defiled.
By the next morning she was too weak even to lift her head to sip water. She asked our forgiveness, and died before noon. They slid her overboard, my mother who had disguised me as a boy and kept me safe all those months, in the prison of the Inquisition. Kept me safe by enduring all that they had made her suffer, to protect me. The sailors had wrapped a shroud about her, but not sewed it as close as they should, so that those cruel waves plucked it away and I saw her pale face looking up at me before her heavy skirts dragged her down and she was gone for ever.
Chapter Nineteen
On Board the Victory, 1589
The present storm lasted three days and three nights, and by the time it died away the Victory was off the Pointe de St. Mathieu in the west of Brittany. More men had died during the storm, but none of us had the strength any longer to heave them up on deck and tip them overboard, so they lay and rotted where they were. Towards the end of the next day, the ninth day since we had left Cascais – or was it the tenth? – I dragged myself up the companionway, one rung at a time. The last of the pewter-grey storm clouds lingered over France, but the Channel lay ahead of us, clear under the July sun, a kinder sun than we had known in Portugal.
The ship was making its way slowly northeast, slowly because we were under half sail, since many of the sailors lay dying of starvation and disease like the soldiers, and those who were still on their feet had barely strength to trim the sails. There were four men at the whipstaff to control the rudder, two on each side. One man alone had not the power left in his arms to move it an inch. Behind us, the remaining ships of our broken fleet straggled, unkempt, their sails sagging untrimmed, their yardarms kilted over at careless angles. Captain Oliver was on the forecastle deck, and I made my way slowly towards him, holding the rail, for I was unsteady on my feet.
‘Where are we now?’ I asked.
Without answering, he pointed to some jagged white rocks thrusting up out of the sea ahead, amidst a churning maelstrom of waves, while the ship, groaning as if her timbers had been wrenched in
the tempest, began to turn gradually to starboard.
I shook my head. ‘I’m no seaman. What are those?’
‘The Needles,’ he said, and his voice creaked as though the lack of water had caused rust to set in. ‘Off the tip of Cornwall. Did you not see them on our way out? Nay perhaps not. I remember, the rain was as thick as a heavy mist.’
He coughed, a dry hacking sound.
‘The men are too weary to sail as far as Plymouth tonight,’ he said, when he could speak again. ‘We’ll heave to when it gets dark, and reach port in the morning.’
I carried the good news to the soldiers down below, that we were in sight of the tip of England, but they looked at me with lacklustre eyes and made no response. When I found Dr Nuñez in his cabin, he was little better.
‘Plymouth?’ he said. ‘Well, at least let us hope there will be food in Plymouth.’
His face was pinched and grey, and his eyes sunk in dark hollows below his tangled eyebrows. Like all the men, he had neither shaved nor trimmed his beard for weeks. Apart from the young cabin boys, I was the only beardless person aboard. As for all our hair, it was matted and lice-ridden, and lately frosted with salt from the spray. And filthy, as our bodies were filthy. I sank down on a joint stool opposite him, where he sat on his bunk, slumped in despair. I was so tired I could not keep on my feet any longer.
‘Though there are few enough of us left to eat it,’ he said, picking up his thought again. ‘Any food. In Plymouth. And then the reckoning comes.’
‘What will happen to the men?’
He shrugged. ‘Given a meal and turned ashore, I suppose.’
‘Without pay?’ I stared at him. ‘After all they have suffered?’
‘Who has the wherewithal to pay them?’ He lifted his eyes to mine. They were full of despair. ‘The investors have sunk everything in this expedition, with nothing to show for it. None of the Dom’s glorious promises made good. I shall be near ruined myself. The men were to have been paid with the booty seized from the sack of Lisbon.’
