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 be 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.