‘Where are all the men?’ I said. ‘They are not at sea in this fog.’
‘Skulking in the back rooms,’ said Phelippes. ‘This coast is known for smuggling. They will be keeping out of the way of anyone in authority. I don’t care two farthings if they have been smuggling in French wine under their barrels of fish. We can leave that to the customs men in Rye. But they would not believe us if we signed a declaration in our own blood.’
He was becoming quite poetic in his frustration.
The second village, though slightly larger than the first, was much the same, although here there was one boat larger and newer than the rest. That boat I could imagine braving the trip to France.
Once again we were met with blank or frowning faces and negative answers. Yet I felt the declaration of ignorance was less convincing here.
Winchelsea had its own customs officer and searchers, who had answered Phelippes’s summons to Rye the previous day, so we rode through the town without stopping and went on to the next village. Once again the same poverty, the same sullen looks, the same denials. There were two more villages before Hastings, but by now the fog was lifting and the waterfront was suddenly busy. Nets were being folded carefully and stowed aboard the fishing boats, empty barrels loaded, women coming down from the cottages with bundles of food. Men and boys, and sometimes the younger women too, put their shoulders to the boats to heave them down the sloping shore into the sea.
All were barefoot, their prehensile toes digging into the shingle for a better grip. They made it seem easy, yet the boats were heavy and unwieldy on shore. Once in the sea, however, they righted themselves and floated with a kind of sturdy elegance amid the flicking of the waves, which were now taking on a pewter gleam as the sun peered through the thinning fog. The men scrambled over the gunwales, the women waded ashore, watching us warily from the corners of their eyes.
With the men taking to the sea, the women seemed less nervous, but their answers were still negative and unfriendly. The officials in Rye had suggested just these five villages, reckoning that Winchelsea and Hastings were too well guarded nowadays for anyone to be smuggled ashore there. If our information was correct, that the men were to be brought to Sussex, it would be somewhere along this stretch of the coast.
We began the ride back to Rye under a thin sun.
‘One or two men might be brought ashore in any of those villages,’ I ventured, ‘but none of them would serve for landing troops. You could not bring a large ship close enough, with those shallow waters and sloping beaches.’
‘No,’ Phelippes agreed. ‘No, they plan to land their invading troops in larger ports like Rye and Dover and Rochester. We are quietly building up garrisons wherever the conspirators have written that there are suitable harbours. You have transcribed some of those letters yourself.’
‘Yes.’
We rode on in silence for a while, half of our guard now visible in front of us and half behind. As we reached Rye, I said, ‘What will you do now?’
‘Well, clearly they would not make the attempt in today’s fog. Those fishermen know the Channel. Even for a substantial bribe they would not do anything so foolhardy.’
He looked towards the sea, where the lingering traces of mist reflected the sun like the glow of an opal.
‘We must wait a few more days, keeping our eyes and ears open. If nothing has happened by the end of the week, I must return to London. They may have changed their plans. It was worth the attempt.’
I wondered why Phelippes had wanted to come himself this time. Spies and traitors were constantly being slipped into the country. What was particular about this occasion? Neither he nor Sir Francis had explained the mission to me in any detail, only giving me that rather vague reason that they wanted to train me in some way. Yet now that I thought about it, it was indeed curious that Phelippes chose to come himself, when there were a number of Walsingham’s men already in the area.
For what was left of the day I explored the narrow cobbled streets of Rye, finding it, despite its prettiness, a slightly sad place, like a great lady who was sinking into obscurity. There were some very grand houses, which told of the wealth of great merchants in the past, but many of them were a little decayed, some of their paint peeling, some of the plasterwork pitted from the sea air. There was no air of poverty, not like the desolate fishing villages, just a sense of gentle, almost imperceptible decline. I recalled what the customs official had said about the port silting up. Even someone as ignorant of the ways of the sea as I was could see how the marshes on the other side of the estuary were reaching out green fingers towards the town. And the merchant ships of today were being built ever larger. Whereas the largest merchant vessels of a hundred or two hundred years ago could sail into coastal estuaries, these big new merchantmen needed the great harbours of Plymouth and Portsmouth and London. As our navigators opened up the seaways to the spice islands and Indies in the East and to the New World in the West, bigger and bigger ships would be needed to confront the dangers of the wild oceans. They would pass by the smaller ports like Rye, and who, then, would trouble to dredge the port?
By late afternoon the morning’s fog had cleared completely and a bright summer sun shone down from a clear sky, promising a night of stars and a full moon. We dined early and afterwards sat outside on the inn’s terrace overlooking the port, sharing a flagon of fine French wine with the captain of our guard. I wondered whether this excellent wine had come ashore in one of the fishing boats we had seen today.
‘A fruitless morning,’ the captain said.
Phelippes shrugged. ‘We cannot always be successful. The weather was against us. We will try again tomorrow.’
Hesitantly, for I was not sure they would welcome my opinion, I said, ‘Surely if we go with the same questions to the same villages we will be met in the same way, with stubborn silence. Only now they will be even more prepared for us.’
They looked at me tolerantly, but did not contradict me.
‘And do you want to scare them, so that they call off the attempt to smuggle the men in? Or do you want to wait and catch them?’
‘The lad has a point,’ the captain said. ‘Which is it?’
‘Oh, I should prefer to catch them.’
It came to me then that, although Phelippes was a man of exceptional skill in laying his secret plots to entrap the enemies of the state, he was not experienced in this kind of work. And being a man whose work was solitary, he might not read people well when confronted with common humanity. Even I, with my experience at the hospital, probably understood ordinary people better than he did.
As we sat there and the sun declined, I could not rid myself of a feeling I had had in the second village we had visited that morning. On our return journey we had followed the inland road from Winchelsea to Rye, so we had not passed through those first villages again. We had not seen whether the men there had also put to sea. That one boat, larger and more sturdy than the rest – I was sure that it could make the trip to France. At about midday the fog had started to clear and the fishermen we had seen began to launch their boats.
‘How long would it take a fishing boat to cross from here to France?’ I asked now.
The captain and Phelippes looked at each other. It was clear neither of them had any knowledge of the sea.
‘Six hours?’ the captain guessed. ‘Eight hours? I suppose it would depend on the direction and speed of the wind. And the condition of the sea.’ He brought this last out with a confident air, as if suddenly on firm ground, as it were.