The Enterprise of England

by Ann Swinfen

  Chapter Eight

  By the time the Silver Swan was anchored within the quieter waters of the harbour it had grown so dark that nothing could be seen of the land save an even denser darkness, apart from the lantern which still shone out from the church tower. We were aware of other ships or fishing boats nearby from the faint sound of voices carried over water, and the aroma of cooking which drifted past in snatches. The ship’s crew went below for a well-deserved meal, while we took a light supper with the captain and three other officers, a fish pottage with more of the fresh bread, followed by four different kinds of cheese and washed down with more of the captain’s fine red wine.

  I allowed myself two glasses of the wine, for there was no need for me to stay alert now we were in harbour and I was looking ahead to how I might discreetly spend the night. The captain offered us his cabin, saying he would share with the officers.

  ‘I plan to sleep with the horses,’ I said, in as offhand a manner as I could manage. ‘It will help to settle them in their strange surroundings, and it will be warm enough, with the heat of their bodies.’ I was by far the youngest of the company, so perhaps it did not seem out of place that I should take this upon myself.

  ‘Are you sure, Master Alvarez?’ Captain Thoms said. ‘I cannot think you will be very comfortable.’ He did not sound, however, as though he would be particularly difficult to persuade.

  ‘And I will leave your cabin to you,’ Berden said, ‘since there is a spare bunk in one of the officers’ cabins.’

  I saw that he was prepared to accept the arrangement, to my relief.

  ‘Kit thinks more of the comfort and safety of those horses than of his own.’ Berden turned to Thoms with an indulgent smile. ‘He will be happiest if he can keep an eye on them.’

  I gave them all a cheerful look. Let them think what they would, even that, as long as it meant I had somewhere private to bed down for the night.

  When I came out of the captain’s cabin, carrying a candle lantern to light my way along the deck, I found that it was snowing again. The wind had dropped, but the snow fell relentlessly, as though the clouds had just been waiting for this lull in the wind to empty their burden on the land. Already it was beginning to settle on the deck and when I had felt my way forward over the slippery boards to the temporary stable, I saw that the dips in its canvas were filling up with snow. Once inside I spoke quietly to Hector and Redknoll, then knocked the sagging areas of canvas from below, to send the loose snow cascading down the side of the tent. It was a fruitless task. They would soon fill up again, for the snow was coming down ever harder.

  I hung the lantern from a nail in one of the uprights supporting the canvas, then set about making myself a bed. There was a space of about six or eight feet between the two horses, partly filled by the bales of straw Berden and I had piled up to protect them from knocks. I dragged these to form two sides of a sort of bed space for myself, and filled the centre with loose straw, placing my knapsack at one end to serve as a pillow. The captain had given me two blankets, which I spread over the straw. Sitting back on my heels, I decided that I would have as comfortable a night as anyone on board, and probably as warm. The horses had watched my preparations with interest, lowering their heads and blowing encouragingly at me as I worked. When I had arranged everything to my satisfaction, I took off my boots, blew out the lantern and wriggled down under the blankets.

  As anyone will tell you, who has ever slept on straw, it provides a springy, sweet-smelling bed, but there are always a few sharp ends which prick and tease you until you have sought them out and banished them. It was probably half an hour before I had rid myself of these irritants, and then I found that my knapsack was lumpy and uncomfortable. Poking around inside it in the dark, I realised that it was my spare boots that were pressing against my ear, so I pulled them out and laid them beside my bed.

  After that I was comfortable enough, but had thoroughly woken myself up. Even the effects of the heavy wine had worn off, so that I found myself lying and staring open-eyed into the dark, until shapes emerged – the two horses who stamped and snorted from time to time, a glimmer of light from the far end of the ship, where a lantern hung beside the sailor on watch. Through a gap in the canvas flaps I could see the snow falling, driven slantwise like silver rods against the lantern light. The ship rocked gently with the movement of the confined waves here within the harbour, barely noticeable after our wild tossing out in mid Channel.

  I had hoped to fall asleep quickly, but now thoughts of the mission ahead chased themselves around in my unwilling brain. The first part, I told myself, would be easy. We would sail up the canal to Amsterdam tomorrow. I was not sure how long that would take. Either tomorrow evening or the next morning we would seek out the Earl of Leicester and deliver the despatches and personal letters. We each carried a set, the duplicates given us by Phelippes, as a precaution in case something befell one of us before we reached Leicester. Then what would happen? Leicester might wish to write replies to some of the documents, but he could not send them back by us. Not immediately, at any rate. Either he would have to wait until we returned to England, or he would have to send a courier of his own. I hadn’t thought of this before and hoped Walsingham had made it clear to him that we had other work to do.

  One thing was puzzling about this mission. Walsingham had never quite made clear to us whether we were to inform Leicester of our real purpose in coming to the Low Countries, to spy out any of the traitors he suspected. I found this strange and somewhat worrying. Did Walsingham assume we would discuss it with the Earl? He had said something about asking the Earl to tell us of his suspicions. Or were we to proceed, as so often in Walsingham’s affairs, in secrecy? If we did not tell the Earl, he might find our own activities suspicious and have us arrested. I turned over restlessly, with a great rustling of straw. Hector stooped his head and blew in my face. Rather wetly. I rubbed my face on my sleeve and turned back again.

  Perhaps Walsingham had instructed Berden what we were to do and he had forgotten to tell me. Or chosen not to. In the morning I would ask him outright, when I could have speech with him alone, not easy on board ship. I turned over again, more quietly this time and Hector did not stir. Perhaps he was asleep. I closed my eyes. And after we had seen the Earl? What then?

  At some point I must have slept at last, for the next thing I knew was the sound of feet passing the stable. It was filled with a bright reflected light, which meant that the snow had stopped falling but was lying thickly enough to create the magical brilliance of a world under a blanket of white.

  I pulled on my boots and laced them tightly, stowed my spare boots back in my knapsack, and folded my blankets to return them to the captain. My bed of straw had been comfortably warm, so that I hesitated to venture out into the snow, but I could not laze here any longer.

  As I made my way back to the stern of the ship, with the blankets over my arm, I saw the sailor who had served us yesterday coming out of the captain’s cabin. He raised his hand to his woollen cap and held the door open for me.

  ‘Good morning to you, Doctor Alvarez,’ Captain Thoms said. ‘Come and eat. I regret I did not give you your proper title yesterday. Master Berden told me, after you left, how you work as a physician at St Bartholomew’s. I should have realised when we spoke of the survivors of Sluys, but . . . that is a painful memory. Forgive me.’

  Embarrassed by this apologetic speech, I smiled, with a wave of my hand, indicating that it did not matter. My title of ‘Doctor’ was purely an honorary one, for without university training I could not become a member of the Royal College of Physicians. Thoms clearly understood my unspoken acceptance of his apology and invited me to sit down.

  ‘They have provided us with porridge this morning, I see,’ he said. ‘I hope you have no objection to such humble food.’

  ‘It is excellent on such a cold day.’ I said with a smile. ‘Just what I was thinking in the middle of the blizzard at Dover.’

  As he was serving
me a large bowl of porridge, Berden and the other officers came in and soon the cabin was filled with the steam from our bowls and from our breath. The captain brought out a large pot of honey from one of his cupboards and passed it round for us to stir into the porridge.

  ‘My sister and her husband have a farm in Kent,’ he explained. ‘Orchards, mostly, and some cows and sheep. They also keep bees, so whenever I am in Dover harbour, they send me over several pots of honey.’

  ‘It is excellent for your health,’ I said, ‘and also a sovereign treatment for wounds, should one of your men be injured.’

  ‘I will remember that,’ he said with a smile, ‘when we come to fight the Spanish. Good for you inside and outside, then?’

  ‘Aye.’ I ate several spoonfuls of the porridge, which was smoother than Joan’s and all the better for the addition of the honey. ‘Do you carry cochlearia officinalis for your men?’

  He gave me a puzzled look. ‘Cochlearia officinalis?’

  ‘Aye, scurvy grass. If you regularly give your men scurvy grass infused in ale, it will prevent all the unpleasant effects of scurvy, which so often afflict sailors. Bleeding gums. Loosened teeth. Swollen and painful joints. All unnecessary. Or you may eat the leaves like a salad.’

  ‘I thought lemons were the preventative.’

  ‘Oh they are, but expensive and not always easy to obtain. Scurvy grass is plentiful and grows abundantly in coastal areas. You would find it everywhere around the shore in Kent.’

  ‘I will take note of that then, and see that we obtain a supply when we return to England. As you say, scurvy is a foul affliction. In my young days with Drake I remember many men suffering from it on our long voyages to the New World.’

  ‘Many illnesses can be avoided by a careful diet,’ I said ruefully, ‘but sadly, as physicians we mostly see the results of a poor one.’

  Our discussion was interrupted by one of the sailors coming in to say that the tide had turned and was set fair for heading up the canal to Amsterdam. We all went out on deck, where the captain and officers were soon occupied in directing the preparation of the ship for the next stage of the journey. The anchor was raised and the oars run out to manoeuvre the ship from the harbour into the mouth of the canal.

  ‘Do you think they intend to row all the way?’ I asked Berden in a low voice. ‘It would be quicker to ride.’

  ‘I suppose it must depend on the direction of the wind.’

  There was not much wind at the moment, but what there was blew from behind us as we entered the canal. The question was settled when we saw the mainsail hoisted, then the staysail, and finally the foresail. Captain Thoms was taking advantage of every scrap of wind that would help us on our way. Once the sails filled and the ship stirred with that innate life that sails engender, the oars were shipped. Much to the relief of the sailors, I imagined.

  The darkness of the previous day had prevented our understanding of the true manoeuvrability of the pinnace, but today was clear and bright, the winter sun sparkling on the snow-covered fields on either side of the canal, and it was soon obvious how well the small ship handled. She slipped up the canal as gracefully as a swan, her sails held in taut curves like the wings of a soaring bird. The waters creamed under her forefoot, spreading out to the banks of the canal and marking our path into the low, marshy country which stretched ahead of us, dotted with pumping mills to drain water from the fields and here and there a neat village of a few houses encircled by pastures. Once he was satisfied with the ship’s trim, the captain came to stand beside us in the bows.

  ‘I thought the Dutch canals were straight,’ I said, ‘but this one winds like a river.’

  ‘That is because it is a river,’ he said, ‘or at least it was. It connects the German Ocean with the Zuiderzee, and the Hollanders have widened it and straightened it in places, but it silts up constantly as new sand banks form. And that causes it to freeze all the more readily in winter. When it’s navigable, it provides a much shorter access to the town, instead of sailing a good way north, then turning east round the islands and coming in to Amsterdam that way. You will see that when we reach the Zuiderzee. It looks as calm as a giant’s duck pond on a quiet day, but it’s a treacherous stretch of water.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Again, shifting sand banks, which are the greatest danger to ships, but also it is notorious for terrible floods which rush in and break down the banks the Hollanders have built to try to hold it back. Thousands of people have died in the floods, but the farmland round about is so rich and profitable that they keep moving back. It is a strange country. Water and land constantly changing every year, sometimes every month.’

  I soon realised that what both Captain Thoms and Sir Edward Walgrave had called a canal was far from what I understood by the term. It was in fact a series of interconnected waterways, some of them natural rivers which had been widened in places or reinforced by raised banks, others short lengths of straight canal dug through spits of land to connect the rivers. At times we seemed to wander aimlessly through a flat landscape where reed beds towered as high as the ship’s deck. How the captain found his way through this maze, I could not imagine. A larger ship than our pinnace could never have followed this route. Three or four times we encountered bridges, which forced the crew to furl the sails and lower the mast on to a kind of wooden crutch, so that we could pass under them, using our oars. In some places the canal wound so sharply that it was impossible to use our sails.

  We were not the only vessel on the water, though by far the largest. We met barges moving both inland and down to the sea, loaded with boxes and barrels. Some had a single sail on a stumpy mast, some were rowed. There were others, flat as punts, which the captain said were called ‘trekschuiten’ and were pulled by men or horses walking along the path which followed the line of the waterway.

  ‘They call that the “jaagpad”,’ he said, pointing to the path, where a man and woman were plodding along, heads down, towing a flat barge loaded with piles of huge round cheeses. It had a tiny cabin in the stern, while perched on the very tip of the bow, in front of the cheeses, a small terrier barked encouragement to the labouring couple.

  ‘Hard work,’ I said.

  ‘Aye. But they are a strong and independent people, the Hollanders. They will not easily allow themselves to be crushed by Spain, however many victories Parma may win on the battlefield.’

  At length we passed a small town, which Captain Thoms said was called Leiden, and after that the waterway opened out. Our sails were hoisted and we moved ahead with the water foaming under our bows. Ahead lay an area even flatter than the countryside we had already traversed, a wide area of inland lakes interspersed with marshes, half water, half tussocky muddy land.

  ‘Is this the Zuiderzee?’ I asked.

  Captain Thoms laughed. ‘Not this. No, this is the Haarlemmermeer, one of the most treacherous areas in the Low Countries.’

  ‘Treacherous!’

  ‘More treacherous to the people who dwell round its margins than to us. It is a victim of what they call the “wolfwater”, the water which rises in these low-lying inland lakes – fast, unpredictable – and devours whole villages.’

  I shivered. ‘But not treacherous for us?’

  ‘Treacherous enough. We must pick our way through it, where the water is deep enough. Shifting mudbanks here, not sandbanks. Easy enough for us to become stranded.’

  He walked away to supervise the lowering of the sails. We would have to make our way again under oars. The wide marshland seemed almost deserted, except by birds, for there were flocks of ducks and moorhens, solitary herons standing in the shallows like sentinels, a flight of gulls screaming raucously overhead. The very smell of the place was different, a reek of mud and rotting vegetation. Over on the eastern edge of the deceptively quiet waters I saw a few small fishing boats, and beyond them smoke rising from a cluster of cottages. Otherwise, desolation.

  At length we came to the end of the Haarlemmerme
er, passing through a short canal into what the captain said was the Oude Meer. The sails were hoisted again and the ship picked up more speed, heading northeast.

  ‘We are nearly at the Zuiderzee now,’ Captain Thoms said.

  Even as he was speaking I could see the wider waters ahead and soon we had sailed out on to what seemed to be a vast inland lake, though Thoms assured us it was salt. The ship came about and veered to starboard. The foresail was lowered, and then the mainsail, so that we made our way more slowly under staysail alone. Captain Thoms climbed out on to the base of the bowsprit, holding on to the rigging with one hand and leaning far out over the water, swinging the lead himself. As he checked the lead line, he signalled to the steersman to guide the ship first to port and then to starboard, to avoid the sandbanks.

  I was so absorbed in watching him that it was only when Berden tapped my arm that I looked up and saw the buildings of Amsterdam drawing near. There were ships everywhere, some clearly warships, some merchant vessels, while dodging in amongst them were round-bellied fishing boats, small pinnaces, and open rowing boats. Satisfied that he had found the main channel into the town, Captain Thoms climbed back on to the deck, nodded to us as he passed, then gave the order to lower the staysail and run out the oars.

  As the Silver Swan was brought neatly in, between the anchored and moored vessels, I could appreciate the captain’s skill. He had found a space beside the quay and himself took over the steering to lay the ship alongside without a bump. While the sailors were busy mooring the ship and running out the ramp, Berden and I saddled the horses and strapped on our luggage. This time I led the way across the ramp on to the quay, Hector following me with blithe unconcern. Berden had not put the blinkers on Redknoll and when the chestnut saw how calmly Hector crossed the ramp, he followed us, after only a slight hesitation. The captain stepped ashore behind us.