‘Aye,’ Andrew said slowly. ‘Now you ask, the flashes do come an hour or two before the headaches. And I do feel sick sometimes.’
‘You have vomited at least once,’ I reminded him. I looked at my father. ‘Feverfew?’
‘Aye. See whether Peter can find you some fresh in the stillroom or the herb garden.’
‘There should be some still growing at this time of year,’ I agreed. ‘It is better fresh than the dried.’
I turned back to Andrew. ‘You can eat it like a salad herb. Slightly bitter, but not unpleasant.’
He looked at my father. ‘Will they get better? The headaches, and the other troubles to my sight?’
‘Aye. It may take time, but they will get better, if you give yourself a chance to recover. No returning to army duties yet a while.’
So Andrew stayed on until we were satisfied that the headaches were no longer so severe and he had no further spells of dizziness. He left the same day as William.
‘Well, Kit,’ he said, as we stood under the gatehouse. ‘We part again. I’ll make my way back to Dover and report for duty.’ He patted the front of his army tunic, washed and mended by our sewing women. ‘I’m glad to have this letter from your father to give the commander, else I’d probably be in irons on bread and water for staying away so long.’
‘Don’t let him set you to anything too strenuous at first,’ I said, without much hope.
He laughed. ‘You don’t know our commander. And next summer we will all be on very active service, I fear, when the Spanish dogs come.’
‘Good luck to you,’ I said.
‘And to you, Kit.’ He clapped me on the shoulder, swung his pack on to his back, and went off toward Newgate, striding out energetically and not looking back.
Twice during the time we were caring for the wounded soldiers from Sluys I had received messages from Phelippes, brought by Thomas Cassie, that he needed my help, but both times I had written back saying firmly that I could not be spared at the hospital. I reminded him of his own words, that it was essential that we patch up all our soldiers as best we could, for they would be needed when the invasion came. In November, however, a more urgent message arrived, saying that Sir Francis himself wished to see me. I no longer had the excuse of the soldiers and indeed matters were quiet at the hospital, the usual bouts of winter illness not having started yet.
‘Very well,’ I said to Cassie. ‘I will come back with you.’ As often before, he had come to our house at midday, knowing that it was our practice to go home for dinner on days when the work at the hospital was not too demanding.
‘You will not need me this afternoon?’ I looked at my father.
He shook his head. ‘Best see what it is that Sir Francis wants.’
The weather had already turned colder, so I threw a cloak over my doublet, and put an apple in my pocket, hoping I might have a chance to call in to Walsingham’s stables and see Hector. I tucked a pair of gloves into my belt. If Phelippes or Sir Francis kept me late, it would be even colder walking home. I was wearing the new belt made by William Baker, which he had insisted on giving me. It was made of a fine, supple leather and he had tooled it all over with Tudor roses, intertwined with ivy. Jake Winterly had not made a bad bargain, taking in his brother-in-law. And it was work William could do sitting down. He had flatly refused payment.
‘I know I am alive now because you fetched a surgeon so quickly.’ He gave me a pallid smile. ‘I didn’t think so at the time. In fact I hated you for it, putting me through all that pain, when all I wanted to do was die. But you were right and I was wrong. So I’d like you to have the belt, by way of apology.’
As Cassie and I walked along Eastcheap now, we passed the sign of the Black Bull and Scissors, where young Will waved to me from the doorway. I told Cassie the story of William Baker.
He shook his head. ‘I wonder just how many more William Bakers there are, over there in the Low Countries. Those men from Sluys, they were lucky to be brought home. Most of our men fighting there have little care, only what an army surgeon can give, and I doubt that’s much.’
‘You are right,’ I said. ‘If Sir Philip Sidney had been brought home, we might have been able to save him, but perhaps he was too gravely injured to survive the journey.’
‘Have you heard that the commander at Sluys, Sir Roger Williams, was himself wounded in the arm? He came home destitute, not even able to buy a horse. And because the town was surrendered, he is deemed to have failed, though the failure was Leicester’s, who stayed offshore and did not come to his aid.’
‘So I suppose,’ I said, ‘there will be no pension for Sir Roger from the Queen, or any recognition that they held out for nearly two months, waiting for reinforcements to come, until they had nothing left to eat and no gunpowder to fight with.’
He shook his head, then gave a wry smile. ‘My lady Walsingham advised Sir Roger to marry a rich merchant’s widow instead, and he says he may take her advice.’
I laughed ruefully. ‘Well, I wish there were enough rich widows to go round all the lads we treated. Otherwise most of them have no future but to go back and fight again. Next time they may not survive.’
Going up the backstairs at Seething Lane, I met Nicholas Berden coming down. One of Walsingham’s most experienced agents, he was a man I had worked with in the final days of rounding up the Babington conspirators, more than a year ago now.
‘Good day to you, Kit,’ he said, pausing briefly in his rapid descent. ‘Busy times. Phelippes will be glad to see you.’
‘Busy?’ I said.
‘The pace is quickening. The Spanish shipwrights are working night and day, and the king’s emissaries are buying up most of Europe in provisions and weapons.’ He shook his head. ‘What it is, to have a bottomless purse!’
‘Aye,’ I said, ‘not something we are familiar with in England. Is Sir Francis in his office?’
‘He is. I believe he has some project for you.’ With that he sketched a quick bow and hurried on down the stairs.
My heart sank. Some project? I did not care for the sound of that. If Phelippes needed me for code-breaking and translating, Berden would not have called it a project. The previous year Sir Francis had used me in a few spying missions, but I hoped he was not planning to do so again. I had heard nothing more of the Catholic Fitzgerald family, after he had placed me to spy on them. The mission with Phelippes to Sussex, however, where I had first met Andrew amongst our accompanying escort of troopers, had led to the discovery of two enemies of the Queen entering the country illegally. Afterwards, Walsingham had disguised me as a messenger from one of them to Sir Anthony Babington himself. To my sorrow, I had found I liked Babington, as I had liked most of the Fitzgeralds, so I dreaded being employed as a spy again. The word project was loaded with uncomfortable possibilities.
‘Enter!’ Sir Francis called when I knocked on his door.
‘Ah, Kit! Come in, come in.’ Sir Francis rose from the chair behind his desk and came round to where two chairs were drawn near the fire.
I did not like the signs. If it had been a brief instruction, he would have stayed behind his desk. Sitting in this friendly fashion beside the fire betokened something worse.
‘Hang your cloak on the peg over there,’ he said. ‘You’ll take a glass of wine?’
‘Thank you.’ It was rare for me to taste anything but small ale or occasionally beer. If this was going to be a difficult interview I would at least wash it down with a glass of Sir Francis’s excellent wine, which he probably obtained through the trading links of Dr Nuñez or Dunstan Añez. I took my seat and accepted the glass he handed to me. As I held it up to the firelight it glowed as rich red as one of the Queen’s rubies.