To augment our sea power, every private ship, merchantman or privateer, was commandeered into the navy. All the fishermen in England were bidden to join our navy, even the trinkermen who fished the Thames. Many did not wait to be summoned, but volunteered as a patriotic fervour swept the country. So many wherrymen pledged their service to the Queen that it was a problem to find a boat to transport you across the Thames.
It was more difficult to create an army out of nothing. Apart from the local militia bands, which were made up of citizen volunteers who enjoyed parading and ordering their fellow townsmen about, the only soldiers we possessed in England were the garrison at Berwick, to keep out the Scots, the garrison at the Tower, to protect London and the Queen, and the garrison at Dover, to guard the coast from attack across the Channel. For any of these soldiers to be deployed against the Spanish would be to risk attack elsewhere. The soldiers stationed at Dover would at least be in position to face an invasion. Our soldiers in the Low Countries were a poor match for the Spaniards when it came to battles – poorly commanded, underpaid and disaffected – they could hardly be relied on even if they could be returned to England, leaving our flank to the northeast exposed.
There was little I could do to show my loyalty to my adopted country, other than sit at my desk in that cramped back room and rack my brains over the coded despatches and intercepted letters, but I was happier now than I had been nearly two years before, when I had taken an unwilling part in the entrapment of Babington and the Scottish queen. I had no scruples about the Spaniards, my people’s ancient enemies.
I sat back on my stool one day, flexing my cramped fingers.
‘I wish I could take a more active part against the Spaniards,’ I said to Phelippes. ‘They raped and burned my country. I would I could join the fleet when we sail out to meet them. Thrust my sword into one of those misbegotten scoundrels.’
It was bravado, but I was restless. I am not quite sure how serious I was in this masculine, bellicose talk. Perhaps I had become infected by the general mood on the streets. I had not, after all, enjoyed our skirmish with the traitorous Dutch peasants near the Spanish army a few months earlier.
Phelippes looked up from his work, then set aside his quill and polished his spectacles on a silk handkerchief.
‘Do not underrate the work you are doing, Kit. Perhaps you might kill a Spaniard or two, should it come to hand-to-hand fighting. But one day’s work of yours here will save more English lives and end more Spanish ones than you could ever hope to do as a simple soldier on board ship.’
‘Do you truly believe so?’ I had always felt there was something of a barrier between Phelippes and myself, but now that our mutual enemy was drawing so near, I needed reassurance, even if it meant revealing a glimpse of weakness in myself.
He put on his spectacles again and directed a sharp glance at me across the room. ‘I do. And you should believe it too.’ He gave me one of his rare brief smiles. ‘You are of value to England, Kit.’
I would never love this work as I loved my physician’s calling, but in that moment I did feel a burst of pride. So that he might not read it in my face, I leaned down and made much of scratching Rikki behind his ears. Of course I could never wield a sword on one of England’s ships – I had no skill in swordsmanship in any case. I would have been cut down at once. It merely seemed that, after my journey into the Low Countries with Berden, my life now was very dull, especially when I knew that Walsingham’s agents were spread out all over Europe, from Spain and Portugal to the Holy Roman Empire, from the bleak Russian steppes to the mysterious streets of Constantinople, and from Cairo to Jerusalem. I had never thought I would envy them, and my experiences in the Low Countries had given me an understanding of the danger and discomfort their missions involved, but I was tired of my work of code-breaking, however important Phelippes might claim that it was.
Then one evening in early summer, when I had spent the day in Phelippes’s work, a servant arrived from Dr Nuñez asking if I might be released to dine with him, as he was awaiting a packet of letters on one of his ships, due on the evening tide, and he expected some of them to be in code. I knew by now just how closely both he and Dr Lopez worked with Walsingham, supplying him with intelligence and arranging the carrying of letters and the transport of couriers and intelligencers all over Europe, even as far as the Sultan’s empire.
Phelippes agreed that I might go, so I ran down the backstairs and out into the soft spring sunshine, taking Rikki with me and glad to be free of the close air in the small office. I walked along Seething Lane and around the corner to Mark Lane. Dr Nuñez greeted me kindly, as he always did, and we sat down alone to dine, for his wife was visiting an aged aunt, who was ailing.
‘You think important matters will arrive on this ship?’ I asked.
‘Word from Spain,’ he said.
I shivered. I could not help it.
‘The Spanish . . . they’re so powerful,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I remember how they marched into Portugal and we made no resistance. I was a child and did not understand how it could happen, how our Portuguese soldiers could vanish into the mist and leave us to face the Spanish. We stood in the street and watched the ranks of Spanish soldiers marching by, their faces full of contempt, their banners so arrogant, and we so humiliated. How can England withstand them? It will all begin again: the occupying army, the persecutions, the Inquisition.’
I could hear the panic in my voice. There are some memories that never leave you.
‘They will find us out and destroy us,’ I said.
Dr Nuñez ran his hand down his beard, which was turning white.
‘I know your family suffered, Kit. And my wife and I had come here to England before Spain invaded Portugal. But we too saw what the Inquisition could do, although my own family managed to escape it.’
He patted my hand, then poured me another glass of wine, and I drank it down without tasting it.
‘As for England withstanding the Spanish fleet . . . do you remember your Greek history? The battle of Salamis?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The Persians had bigger and stronger ships, but the Greeks out-manoeuvred them in their smaller, faster vessels.’
‘Exactly. I think you will find that Drake and Howard have also read their Greek history.’
There was a knock on the door and one of the servants came in, carrying a packet of papers secured with thin ribbon. Rikki sat up from his place beside the small summer fire and looked at me expectantly. Dr Nuñez untied the ribbon and began to sort through the papers.
‘Many of these are of no interest to us tonight. Dockets for cargo, personal letters we carry for friends and fellow merchants.’
He stiffened suddenly and laid his hand on one thin folded sheet of paper. I saw that his hand shook as he lifted the seal with a knife.
‘This will be the one. Bring the candle closer.’
I moved the candlestick between us and took the sheet from him. It held a bland, meaningless message about supplies of Rhenish wine, but the lines of ink were widely spaced. Another message would be contained in those spaces, written in lemon juice or milk or urine. I held it close to the candle to warm and the letters emerged, browned by the heat, hastily written. The code was the one used normally by Dr Nuñez’s agents. He could have deciphered it himself, but he was slow and his eyesight was failing.
A few minutes later we were back in Seething Lane, which I had left barely an hour before. I had to slow my impatient steps, for the old man’s knees were arthritic and he could not keep up my pace, while Rikki followed us soberly, as if he sensed that something was afoot. This time we went to the front door and were shown at once into the dining parlour where Walsingham was at meat. He started up from the table and looked from one to the other of us. Dr Nuñez pushed me forward and I held out the sheet of paper with my transcription at the bottom of it.