I shuddered.
‘I’m going to see for myself.’
I thought, if we were likely to go aground, I wanted to be out there to see it coming.
The sailor groaned and raised his head.
‘Go if you must,’ Andrew said. ‘I’m staying here. There’s rain coming down now. I’ll give the man his food. You’ll not stay long, I’ll warrant you!’
I opened the cabin door, and the wind thrust it against me so that I nearly lost my balance. I had to lower my head like a charging bull to make my way into it, and I struggled to close the door behind me. After the lantern light in the cabin, it took time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness on deck, for the high-riding ship’s lamps cast little light down here. A small stinging rain smarted my face like flung sand, so that I screwed up my eyes as I picked my way carefully forward. The ship climbed each oncoming wave as if it were a mountain, balanced on the top, so that it seemed it must slip backwards. Then it tilted and plunged downwards so that the bows were buried in the trough of sea between one wave and the next. For a painful moment it felt as though the ship would plough directly into the next wave, drowning us all, then slowly it tilted and began to climb again. I was thankful that I had been spared the sight of this while I had been in the cabin. For hours now the ship had ploughed on against these great seas and the wind that tore at her canvas, but steadily she was making her way forward. If we were indeed off the Goodwin Sands, we had not much further to go.
Clutching the railing at the side of the short companionway that led down into the cabin, I turned slowly to look behind. The change in position made my head swim for a moment, as the ship pitched forward and at the same time rolled over to starboard then back again. A bout of queasiness stirred in my stomach, and I thought I was going to succumb to the pervasive sea sickness, but I closed my eyes and it passed.
When I opened them again, I tried to make out where the Sands were, but I could see nothing. Astern, however, on the far horizon, there was a lightening in the blackness of sky and sea. A band of paler darkness was forming, dividing the two. Dawn was coming.
I turned back to look along the deck, where I could now make out the figures of sailors, some trimming the sails, some passing buckets up from below decks in a chain of men, baling out the seas as they washed over the gunwales and poured down below decks.
‘Well, Dr Alvarez, not long now.’
The captain came to stand beside me. He looked exhausted, but calm. ‘See that glow over there?’ He raised his arm and pointed over the starboard bow. ‘That’s the old Roman lighthouse at Dover. They keep a brazier burning there as a signal. We’ll be there in an hour. Two at most. And the wind is slackening. It often does at dawn.’
To me the wind seemed to blow as fiercely as ever, and the rain was falling more heavily, but I fixed my eyes on that distant watch-fire. We had come through battle, storm, and sea. We were nearly home.
Chapter Fifteen
I stayed at Dover only long enough to change into dry clothes, eat a hearty soldier’s breakfast and bespeak a post horse. Andrew and his men had already received their orders. As soon as they were equipped and mounted, they were to ride to the Essex coast and stand guard in case the Spaniards, moving north, attempted a landing at one of the ports there. I could have waited to have their company on the way to London, but using post horses I would travel faster and I was anxious both to report to Sir Francis and to go home to my father.
Andrew and I parted in the castle stables.
‘Next time you plan one of your dangerous ventures,’ he said, ‘give me fair warning, so that I can ride in the opposite direction.’
I laughed. ‘I do not choose them.’
He gave me a wry smile. ‘They seem to seek you out.’
‘I am going back to the quiet, calm work I am trained for. Mending the bodies of the sick and injured.’
‘Aye, I have reason enough to be grateful for that. How is our injured sailor?’
‘Well enough. I have left him in the hands of the army physicians. They think no harm has come to the limb, for all the tossing we took on the way home.’
‘I hope I never have to make a sea journey like that again.’
He groaned and shook his head. ‘I thought the ship would break in half.’
Secretly I’d had much the same thought myself, but I mocked his fears and we parted with laughter.
I stopped about ten miles south of London for the night and reached Seething Lane early the next morning, where I was called immediately into Sir Francis’s office together with Phelippes, to give an account of all that had happened in Amsterdam and of my small part in the sea battle off Gravelines. They had already received the report I had sent ahead from Amsterdam, and Sir Francis had spoken to Sir John Norreys about the treason of Parker and van Leyden, but I was able to answer their questions about such details as were unknown to Sir John.
When at last I was free to go, I decided to take a wherry upriver, to save time. There was the usual cluster of boats at the Custom quays, and I picked a wherryman I knew to be a speedy oarsman, who kept his boat upstream of the Bridge. As he rowed, we spoke of the Armada. He was one of those wherrymen who had volunteered to serve in our scratch navy and had been at Gravelines, but his ship had lost its mainmast and returned to Gravesend for repairs.
‘I’m not sorry to be back in London,’ he said. ‘Those sailors live like pigs. If our ship hadn’t been damaged, I’d still be sleeping on some gundeck out in the German Ocean, eating pig swill. And never a farthing of pay yet.’
The London wherrymen are known for their gloom and grumbles, but I had some sympathy with this.
‘Surely they will pay you soon,’ I said, ‘once the Spanish ships are finally seen off and the ships stood down.’
He gave a sarcastic snort and made a few pithy comments about fine gentlemen who used their ships to plunder and make their fortunes, while others endured enemy fire – a remark aimed at Drake’s latest exploits.
After landing at Blackfriars Stairs, I made my way quickly to Duck Lane. The sun beat down on the nearby shambles in Smithfield, sending the stench of blood and ordure wafting over this whole part of London, even smothering the more delectable odours from Pie Corner of fresh-baked pastry and good beef gravy.
The door of our house stood open to admit a little air, for it could become very close at the height of summer, and I was still some yards away when a tawny shape of fur and solid muscle flew down the steps and hurled itself at me so hard I fell backwards onto the packed dirt of the street. Before I could stop him, Rikki had bathed my face with a loving and very wet tongue.
‘Get down, you mad creature!’ I said, struggling with some difficulty to my feet.
My father was standing in the doorway, his face alight with laughter.
‘He has missed you.’
‘As I have missed all of you. Over a month it has been.’
‘Aye.’ He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me inside, Rikki weaving about our legs and nearly tripping me up again.
I took up once again my divided life between the hospital and Phelippes’s office. It was as though I was two completely different people – the quiet physician, going about a worthy calling, and the ambiguous agent in Walsingham’s service. Even in the office I could hardly reconcile either persona with a reckless house-breaker and adventurer. The events in the Low Countries began to take on the atmosphere of a dream. At Seething Lane we were the first to receive all the intelligence relating to the Spanish fleet, as the scattered ships hobbled northwards. The Spaniards made no attempt to land in Essex or elsewhere along the east coast.