‘Pity they didn’t anticipate it sooner,’ mutters Edmund Spenser from a little way back.
Even at this distance Nicholas can see the bright banners signifying the different companies. Small pinnaces shuttle between the ships and the shore, landing men and supplies. The whinnying of horses drifts across the loch as they are lowered onto wooden barges to bring them ashore. It will take hours, if not days, to land the reinforcements aboard these ships, Nicholas reckons. By then Tyrone could be arraying his forces beneath the walls of Cork, if he’s half the general that rumour would have him be. He lets his eye wander over the scene.
On the far headland, where the River Lee gives onto the loch, a newly built fort stands watch, with a circular tower clad in wooden scaffolding.
‘Blackrock Castle,’ Spenser tells him, seeing the direction of Nicholas’s gaze. ‘Another enterprise that was too long in the making. Pity those fools on the Privy Council didn’t understand that the queen’s rebellious Irish subjects were as much a danger to the peace of her realm as any enemy that might come at her by sea.’
‘How far now to Cork, Master Piers?’ Nicholas asks.
‘Within the hour,’ Gardener replies.
The group is smaller now than when they left Kilcolman: only Nicholas and Bianca, Spenser, his son Sylvanus, and Gardener. The others – including Spenser’s wife, Elizabeth, daughter Katherine and young Peregrine – are with David Nagle and his household and the rest of the people from Kilcolman. The third group, the herdsmen and the cattle, are far, far behind. For Nicholas, the decision to allow each person to attach themselves to a group best fitting their own pace had been a hard but necessary one. The sooner the lead element reached Cork, the quicker help – in the shape of an armed escort – could be dispatched to the aid of the stragglers.
Resuming its journey, the party follows the north bank of the Lee towards the town, keeping company with a line of pinnaces carrying colourfully arrayed pikemen, halberdiers, musketeers and harquebusiers, all loudly confident after their voyages from Holyhead, Chester or Bristol.
‘At least they’re eager to be ashore,’ Nicholas says.
‘I pray they’ve brought their own victuals,’ Gardener replies. ‘Feeding this lot will take more than just Master Nagle’s herd. And where to put them all? There’s barely a patch of land around Cork that isn’t a temporary refuge for a settler and his family. If you want my view, it would be best if soldiers and settlers alike sailed back to England.’
‘All will change when the Earl of Essex comes,’ Spenser calls out. ‘He’ll know how to pacify this land.’
‘First he must convince the queen to appoint him to command,’ Gardener says. ‘His father almost bankrupted himself financing settlements in Ireland. If Her Majesty is wise, she’ll not let Robert Devereux anywhere near this island. It’s seen off one Essex already. It can chase away another.’
‘You’re a defeatist,’ calls Spenser.
‘No, sir. I merely state what I know.’
They ride onwards along the riverbank. A cold, salty wind begins to blow in off the loch. But within the hour, just as Gardener had forecast, they look out over the marshes to the high, turreted walls of Cork.
Riding across a wooden bridge and into the town through the North Gate, they enter what is – when left to its own devices – a prosperous community of some four thousand souls, mostly merchants, their families, the folk who labour for their comfort, and the men who load and unload the ships that carry their wares in and out of the Watergate. But today Cork is bursting at the seams. Nicholas takes in the packed alleyways, the graveyards with their bands of refugees from the countryside huddled between the headstones, the houses packed with people who’ve sought shelter from the dangers of the countryside with friends and relatives. Here and there, he sees bands of soldiers in groups of ten or twenty. They look up as he passes by, their eyes deep and wary, because even with reinforcements on the way, they know there aren’t enough of them to mount a proper defence of the walls. The sleety air is heavy with the stink of human and animal waste. To Nicholas, it looks like a town waiting for the arrival of pestilence.
The men who matter in Cork are to be found on Tuckey’s Quay, down by the Watergate, housed in one of the two stone towers that guard the entrance to the town’s mercantile centre. Here, Spenser presents Nicholas and Bianca to the mayor and members of the Council of Munster.
‘God be praised you’re safe, Master Edmund,’ says the mayor, John Skiddy, a pudding of civic rectitude tied at the neck with a starched ruff. ‘We had feared the verminous traitors had strung you up from a tree.’
‘Has the Council appointed me sheriff yet?’ Spenser asks in reply.
‘I fear we’ve been a little busy,’ the mayor says with a wince of regret.
Nicholas listens while Skiddy reveals the extent of the misfortune that has engulfed Munster. The list of villages and settlements sacked by the rebels seems endless. The number of cattle, sheep and horses taken runs into the thousands. Too many fields despoiled to even count. Kilcolman, it appears, is but one of many tower houses ransacked or burned. There are reports of settlers hacked down trying to defend their lands, or having their noses and their ears cut off and sent away to instil terror in their neighbours.
The rebels’ successes have taken everyone by surprise. Even the imminent arrival of the Earl of Ormonde and his troops from Dublin cannot, it seems, raise a smile on the frightened faces of the councillors.
‘If Essex were here,’ says Spenser, ‘all would be different.’
But Robert Devereux is not here. And even if he were, from what Nicholas can judge by listening to Skiddy and the councillors, he’d need a much greater force than is currently disembarking in Loch Machan. It occurs to him that Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, Ireland and France, is in imminent danger of having her regal title unceremoniously trimmed a little.
The port cuts into Cork from the east, like a thumb thrust into a ball of dough. Protected on the side facing the marshes and the loch by the town walls and the barrier that gives Watergate its name, the channel is flanked by extensive wharves and warehouses.
An atmosphere of anxious uncertainty hangs over the docks like a sea fog. Ships of every size cram the inlet, from small pinnaces to barques of two hundred tons or more. But there is no one to unload them. Every stevedore or waterman in Cork is helping the army to disembark. Piles of deer pelts, barrels of tallow, sacks of grain and flax, baskets of salted fish lie unattended on the quayside. In the customs house and the surrounding taverns the merchants sit gloomily at their ale or their dice, muttering amongst themselves about how much they’ll lose if the rebels take the town before Ormonde comes to their rescue.
‘Bristol?’ queries the harbourmaster when Nicholas has made his request. ‘You want passage for three people, to Bristol?’
‘Or Holyhead. Chester or Minehead would be equally suitable. Any English harbour, really.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘Privy Council purpose,’ says Nicholas.
The harbourmaster slaps the flanks of his jerkin with his hands and laughs. ‘Good try. You’ll have to be more specific.’
‘I am the queen’s physician. I need to return to England.’
‘The queen’s physician, eh? Ill, is she? No quacks in London to look after her?’
‘That’s not the point. I must have passage to England.’
‘But you won’t tell me why?’
‘Am I required to?’
The harbourmaster gives him a mocking smile. ‘In the present circumstances, yes, I fear you are. You might not have noticed, but there’s rather a lot of people who would prefer to be anywhere in the queen’s realm at the moment than Munster. And I’ve heard every excuse you can imagine; though before today I hadn’t heard the one about being the queen’s physician.’