He died within the hour, and all the while I held him. I never knew his name, or where he came from, whether Molly was his wife, whether there were more orphans made by this death. When we dropped him overboard I wept, and I shut myself in my cabin for the rest of the night. I do not know why I wept, for this one man out of so many. Perhaps it was because I had saved him once before from death, but could not save him this time. Perhaps it was because he had died in my arms, like a lover. Perhaps it was because, in his wasted, filthy, wounded body, he stood for all those other poor creatures who had died shamefully, caught between their own greed and the insubstantial dreams of old men, who were exiles from a country that no longer existed, had never existed as they imagined it.
The following day I was sitting slumped on the foredeck, partially shaded from the sun by the foresails. Captain Oliver had ordered every last scrap of canvas to be hoisted, for there was so little breeze you could have carried a candle from one end of the deck to the other and it would not have been blown out. I had spent the morning doing what I could for the sick soldiers, but we had reached a point now when I had few medicines left, even after begging all Dr Nuñez’s supplies and – through a message carried by a cabin boy – those of Dr Lopez. I had cleaned and salved what I could, but there was nothing more I could do for them. If the wind did not come soon, we would all die, becalmed here, not many nautical miles from Coruña, where the whole invasion had begun.
I was sick at heart and found I could not endure the presence of those wasted men any more. Instead I had escaped up here to the raised foredeck, where I sat on the hot planks of the deck, leaning back against a coil of rope with my eyes shut and pretending that I could feel an increase in the movement of the wind. Behind me I heard footsteps approach, then pause as whoever it was caught sight of me. I opened my eyes.
‘Dr Nuñez,’ I said, drawing in my knees to get to my feet.
‘I don’t mean to disturb you,’ he said. ‘Please, do not move. I’ll leave you to enjoy some rest. You have been overtaxing what little strength you have left.’
‘Please don’t go,’ I said. ‘It is cooler here than almost anywhere. Or at any rate, not quite as hot.’ I patted the boards beside me.
With some difficulty he lowered himself to sit next to me on the deck. I could not imagine what pains he must be enduring at his age. Intense hunger brings on excruciating pain in all the joints. It had been a courageous undertaking to come on this expedition at all, given his advanced years. He had been so full of those dreams of his youth that he must have thought it within his capability. And had things gone as planned, it would have been. A swift voyage to Lisbon as a gentleman adventurer, luxuriously accommodated about the Victory, a ship which would take no part in Drake’s firing of the Spanish fleet; a pleasant journey along the coast of Portugal and up the Tejo to Lisbon; a joyous reception in the city, followed by the crowning of the exiled king. Feasting and celebration. All of this would have made no demands even on a man of seventy.
For a time, neither of us said anything.
‘It will be good to come home,’ he said at last.
I smiled at him. Like me, he was now thinking of England as home. Those dreams of the past had been blown away, probably some time during the march from Peniche.
‘Mistress Beatriz will be so glad to see you,’ I said. ‘And your children and grandchildren too.’
‘Aye.’ He sighed.
I knew that he suspected, like me, that we would never reach England. And indeed we would not, unless the wind came soon. The Victory could be propelled, slowly, by towing her with an oared pinnace, though she was not designed to travel far that way. She could not be rowed herself, as a galley is. This method of towing the ship was intended only for manoeuvring in the close quarters of a harbour, or to extricate her from possible danger, if the wind failed or else blew her on shore. It could never be used to move the ship for any distance at sea. Besides, our sailors, though not yet as weak as the soldiers, could never summon the strength now to row even a pinnace.
‘Your father will be glad to see you safe home as well, Kit,’ Dr Nuñez said.
I nodded. ‘I am worried that he has had to carry the burden of my work at St Bartholomew’s, as well as his own, all this time. I should have returned long before this, weeks ago, had the expedition been conducted as it was planned. He has never been strong, not since the Inquisition.’
‘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.’