The Enterprise of England (17 page)

‘Do you make this crossing often?’ Berden asked. ‘Over to the
Low Countries?’

‘Aye,’ said Thoms. ‘Ever since we have been helping the Dutchmen against the Spanish we have been back and forth, carrying supplies and men. And bringing the casualties home. I was second officer on the warship that brought
Sidney’s body home.’ He shook his head. ‘Less than a year ago now, though it seems like a lifetime. Poor Lady Sidney, she was wild with grief, and her not much more than a girl herself.’

‘And carrying a child,’ I said. ‘I saw her at her father’s house not long afterwards.’

‘They say the child was born delicate,’ Berden said.

‘It is not to be wondered at,’ I said. ‘And the other little girl fatherless now.’ I had a sudden vivid picture in my head of the child being led into
St Paul’s for the funeral.

‘Were you on one of the ships that evacuated the survivors of Sluys in the summer?’ I looked at Thoms, whose calm demeanour was reassuring on this storm-driven ship. I could imagine Andrew and the others in his care.

‘I was. By then I was in command of the
Silver Swan
and we carried thirty of them back from Sluys and up the Thames to London.’

‘Thirty!’ Berden looked about him, as if he could see the prostrate forms of the injured soldiers heaped up.

‘Aye. We pressed into service every ship we had nearby, to fetch the men away before Parma changed his mind. We had to lay them out in rows on the deck, like cargo, and run them home. Fortunately the weather was good, else I don’t think we could have brought them home alive in rain.’

‘Kit here is a physician.’ Berden inclined his head towards me, ‘as well as working for Walsingham. He tended some of them at St Bartholomew’s.’

‘Four hundred, there were,’ I said. ‘We also had to lay them out in rows.’

‘I never want to carry out such an evacuation again,’ Thoms said, refilling our glasses. ‘It might never have been needed, if we had gone in sooner and broken the siege, saved Sluys and driven
Parma away. He wouldn’t now be in possession of the good harbour there at Sluys.’

I realised what he had said. ‘You mean you were sent to Sluys with
Leicester’s fleet?’

‘I was.’ He smiled grimly. ‘It was not a pleasant experience, sitting idle just offshore, watching until the guns inside Sluys fell silent. We knew they were running short of gunpowder. And we made a pathetic little sortie with fireships, that was turned against us, so we had to retreat with our tails between our legs. Drake would have gone straight in, as soon as he reached the
Low Countries.’ He gave an impatient sigh. ‘Well, ’tis all over and done now. After I carried the wounded back from Sluys I was ordered to join the squadron at Dover. We are building up the naval defences for when the Spanish come in the new year.’

He rose to his feet. ‘Please feel free to use my cabin as your own. I must go back on deck. We will dine later.’

When he had left and closed the door of the cabin behind him, I studied Berden, sitting across from me. He had not touched his second glass of wine.

‘Best if you don’t drink that.’ I nodded toward his glass. ‘If you are feeling nausea, you had better lie down.’

‘Ha, coming the physician, are you, Kit?’

I shrugged. ‘Take my advice or not, as you please, but you will feel it less if you lie down and close your eyes.’

‘On the captain’s bunk?’

‘Why not? He is not using it.’

He shook his head, then clearly regretted it. ‘Perhaps you are right.’ He stood up, staggering a little, and made his way carefully over to the bunk, where he pulled off his boots and lay down. I unfolded one of the blankets and spread it over him.

‘Close you eyes and try to sleep,’ I said. ‘It will help.’

He did close them and muttered, ‘Never have been able to endure the sea, and this is worse than usual.’

I did not answer, but left him quiet and went back out on deck.

Although no snow was falling, the heavy clouds sagged overhead as though they would sink down and smother us with the weight of their unshed burden. The captain had still not given the order to hoist the foresail, but even without it we were speeding along. There was no land to be seen in this murk of night darkness in the daytime, so it was impossible to judge how quickly we were moving relative to land, but the bow wave rolled and creamed along the sides of the ship, then streamed out behind in a double ribbon of foam as far as the eye could see, which was not far before it vanished into the gloom. How fast we were really going would depend on the movement of the tides, which I had no way of judging.

I went into the canvas stable to see how the horses were faring. They were stirring uneasily but both turned their heads as though grateful that they were not alone on this fearful ship. We had left them some hay, which was nearly finished, and their water bucket had fallen over, spilling what was left of its contents and rolling away into a corner. I decided against fetching more water, which would certainly spill again as the ship rolled. Instead I felt in my saddlebag for the apples and gave each horse one, then sat on the upturned bucket and ate a piece of the cheese. Anxiety had robbed me of my appetite in the morning, but now fighting my way across the deck against the wind had made me hungry. Besides, two glasses of wine on an almost empty stomach was beginning to go to my head.

The apples and my companionship seemed to calm the horses, so I stayed where I was for a long time, leaning my back against Hector’s forequarters and even dozing a little. One of the sailors found me there, come to summon me to the captain’s cabin to dine.

I followed him along the deck and saw that the foresail had now been raised, which explained the busy sounds I had heard outside the stable as I was drifting in and out of sleep.

‘Has the wind dropped?’ I asked the sailor. ‘I see you have put up the foresail.’ It did not feel to me as though the wind was any less.

He shook his head. ‘Nay, there’s no slackening of the wind, but t’captain wants our best speed till we’re near land. We’ll furl it soon as land comes in sight.’

I peered around. The ship seemed to move inside a dark bubble, with nothing to be seen beyond a hundred yards or so all around. ‘How can we see the land? It’s almost as dark as night.’

‘Captain knows this coast. He can feel it, like a cat with its whiskers.’ He grinned and lowered his voice. ‘Thom Cat, we call him. He’ll feel the land before we see it. Cunning as a cat too. Best sort of captain to serve under.’

I was prepared to take him at his word, and stepped into the captain’s cabin when he opened the door for me. Berden was up, sitting in one of the bolted chairs. He had lost some of his earlier pallor. The captain was studying a chart he had laid open on the table.

‘We thought you must have gone overboard,’ Berden said, but not as if he meant it.

‘I was with the horses. They seem to be taking it better than we might have expected. How are you feeling?’

‘Much better. I’ve apologised to Captain Thoms for lying on his bed.’

The captain looked up. ‘No need for apology. I used to get sick myself when I first joined the navy, but I soon found my sea legs.’

I sat down on one of the other chairs.

‘How old were you when you joined?’

‘Ten. I was a boy on one of Drake’s ships, the year
he and Hawkins made their first voyage to the Americas. Rose up from that to this.’ He waved his hand, indicating the comfort that surrounded us. I had heard of the small boys who fetched and carried below decks, bringing gunpowder and cannon balls and wadding to the gunners. They led a grim life.

‘Where did you go with Drake? Berden asked.

‘The Isles of the Spanish Main, mostly. Chasing treasure ships and sometimes overpowering them. I was with him in San Juan when the Spanish broke the agreed truce and attacked our fleet of ships, trapping us in the harbour, where we had gone in for water and repairs. Only two ships escaped and dozens of our men were taken prisoner, then tortured and murdered most cruelly by the Spanish. Luckily I was on Drake’s ship which managed to break out and sail home. He has hated and mistrusted the Spanish ever since.’

‘He’s right to do so,’ I muttered. I knew of this episode in Drake’s past. Probably everyone in
England did, for there had been broadsheets and ballads a-plenty about it, which had helped to fire up the general English hatred of Spain.

Before we could question the captain further about his adventures in the
New World, a sailor came in carrying a tray. He wore a dirty apron wrapped around him and tied in front, bringing with him a kind of radiated warmth from the ship’s kitchen and the rich smell of mutton pottage. I realised that I had become very cold sitting with the horses. When he handed me an elegantly fluted pewter bowl filled to the brim, I cupped my hands around it at first for the benefit of the heat. The bread was fresh, perhaps brought from Dover. But perhaps not. There is no end to the ingenuity of sailors. Perhaps they had baked it on board. I refused more of the captain’s excellent – but very strong – French wine and confined myself to small ale. I noticed that Berden did the same, though he managed to eat both some bread and some pottage, with no visible ill effects. Maybe he too was finding his sea legs.

Berden and the captain talked of the many countries they had visited while we ate. I kept silent. Partly because I was familiar with only
Portugal and England, countries they both knew well, but partly because I was growing sleepy. I had slept somewhat fitfully the previous night, anxious about our mission, and now that I had no responsibilities but to sit still and be conveyed in this ship on to the next stage in our journey, fatigue was beginning to creep over me.

By the time we had finished our pottage and sampled the bowls of fruit and nuts the sailor brought us, there were sounds of running footsteps out on deck and the captain was sent for. I could feel the change in the ship’s motion when the foresail was lowered, so I decided to go out on to the deck to see whether I could gain any sight of land and to try to chase away sleep, for despite the early November dark it could not be later than perhaps five of the clock. We had finished our meal by candlelight, so when I went outside I could see nothing at first but a surrounding snow-filled darkness, which seemed to have thickened while I was in the cabin. Gradually my eyes adjusted themselves to the lesser light.

The foresail had indeed been lowered and the two remaining sails were trimmed to a different angle. I sensed that the wind was now striking my right cheek instead of coming from the stern of the ship, so either the wind had changed direction or the ship had. The sailor I had spoken to before came past and I put out a hand to stop him.

‘I can see nothing, but you said the captain would take in the foresail when he spied land?’

‘Aye, it’s over there.’ He gestured ahead and to starboard.

‘I still cannot see anything.’

‘Look. Follow my arm. There, where the darkness thickens. That’s land. The Low Countries. And that’s what they are. Low. They don’t rise up like our white cliffs at Dover. Hardly more than a hillock of mud a few feet above the sea.’

I squinted along his arm. Now that he had pointed out where to look, I could just make out a slightly thicker, darker smudge amidst the surrounding grey of the day. And perhaps, just faintly, a light.

‘Is that a light I can see? To the left of where you are pointing?’

‘You’ve found it now? Aye, there’s
a church there where the minister puts a lantern in the tower every night to guide the fishermen in to shore. We’ll anchor near there and carry on up to Amsterdam in the morning.’

He hurried on toward the main mast, where several of the sailors were adjusting ropes. A young boy had been sent up the mast as a lookout. He scrambled up as if he were climbing a small tree in his father’s garden, but I had to look away, dizzy at the very thought of it.

I fixed my eyes on that tiny glint of light which marked the shore. I no longer felt sleepy. The closer we drew to land, the closer I came to my uneasy mission. It was the ship that had changed direction, I realised, not the wind, and the result was that waves were striking it crossways, causing it to pitch and twist, so that I had to seize hold of the railing that ran along the ship’s side to avoid being thrown across the deck.

Gradually the light in the church tower grew larger and clearer, the loom of the land more substantial, though, as the sailor had said, the land was so low it barely rose above the level of the sea. As the ship dipped and rose, fighting against the sideways slap of the waves, it seemed as though we would be driven away from land, out into the trackless sea again. But Captain Thoms knew his ship and knew the ways of wind and sea. After what seemed like hours, as my fingers stiffened with cold on the railing, our ship slipped at last into the lea of a curved harbour wall and stopped bucking, like a horse suddenly tamed. Even the voice of the wind, which I realised had been booming in the sails all day, was suddenly quiet. There was a flurry of activity as the sailors lowered the sails and bundled them together. The anchor rattled out on its chain. The boy slid down from the mast. We had arrived.

Chapter Eight

B
y the time the
Silver Swan
was anchored within the quieter waters of the harbour it had grown so dark that nothing could be seen of the land save an even denser darkness, apart from the lantern which still shone out from the church tower. We were aware of other ships or fishing boats nearby from the faint sound of voices carried over water, and the aroma of cooking which drifted past in snatches. The ship’s crew went below for a well-deserved meal, while we took a light supper with the captain and three other officers, a fish pottage with more of the fresh bread, followed by four different kinds of cheese and washed down with more of the captain’s fine red wine.

I allowed myself two glasses of the wine, for there was no need for me to stay alert now we were in harbour and I was looking ahead to how I might discreetly spend the night. The captain offered us his cabin, saying he would share with the officers.

‘I plan to sleep with the horses,’ I said, in as offhand a manner as I could manage. ‘It will help to settle them in their strange surroundings, and it will be warm enough, with the heat of their bodies.’ I was by far the youngest of the company, so perhaps it did not seem out of place that I should take this upon myself.

‘Are you sure, Master Alvarez?’ Captain Thoms said. ‘I cannot think you will be very comfortable.’ He did not sound, however, as though he would be particularly difficult to persuade.

‘And I will leave your cabin to you,’ Berden said, ‘since there is a spare bunk in one of the officers’ cabins.’

I saw that he was prepared to accept the arrangement, to my relief.

‘Kit thinks more of the comfort and safety of those horses than of his own.’ Berden turned to Thoms with an indulgent smile. ‘He will be happiest if he can keep an eye on them.’

I gave them all a cheerful look. Let them think what they would, even that, as long as it meant I had somewhere private to bed down for the night.

When I came out of the captain’s cabin, carrying a candle lantern to light my way along the deck, I found that it was snowing again. The wind had dropped, but the snow fell relentlessly, as though the clouds had just been waiting for this lull in the wind to empty their burden on the land. Already it was beginning to settle on the deck and when I had felt my way forward over the slippery boards to the temporary stable, I saw that the dips in its canvas were filling up with snow. Once inside I spoke quietly to Hector and Redknoll, then knocked the sagging areas of canvas from below, to send the loose snow cascading down the side of the tent. It was a fruitless task. They would soon fill up again, for the snow was coming down ever harder.

I hung the lantern from a nail in one of the uprights supporting the canvas, then set about making myself a bed. There was a space of about six or eight feet between the two horses, partly filled by the bales of straw Berden and I had piled up to protect them from knocks. I dragged these to form two sides of a sort of bed space for myself, and filled the centre with loose straw, placing my knapsack at one end to serve as a pillow. The captain had given me two blankets, which I spread over the straw. Sitting back on my heels, I decided that I would have as comfortable a night as anyone on board, and probably as warm. The horses had watched my preparations with interest, lowering their heads and blowing encouragingly at me as I worked. When I had arranged everything to my satisfaction, I took off my boots, blew out the lantern and wriggled down under the blankets.

As anyone will tell you, who has ever slept on straw, it provides a springy, sweet-smelling bed, but there are always a few sharp ends which prick and tease you until you have sought them out and banished them. It was probably half an hour before I had rid myself of these irritants, and then I found that my knapsack was lumpy and uncomfortable. Poking around inside it in the dark, I realised that it was my spare boots that were pressing against my ear, so I pulled them out and laid them beside my bed.

After that I was comfortable enough, but had thoroughly woken myself up. Even the effects of the heavy wine had worn off, so that I found myself lying and staring open-eyed into the dark, until shapes emerged – the two horses who stamped and snorted from time to time, a glimmer of light from the far end of the ship, where a lantern hung beside the sailor on watch. Through a gap in the canvas flaps I could see the snow falling, driven slantwise like silver rods against the lantern light. The ship rocked gently with the movement of the confined waves here within the harbour, barely noticeable after our wild tossing out in mid Channel.

I had hoped to fall asleep quickly, but now thoughts of the mission ahead chased themselves around in my unwilling brain. The first part, I told myself, would be easy. We would sail up the canal to Amsterdam tomorrow. I was not sure how long that would take. Either tomorrow evening or the next morning we would seek out the Earl of Leicester and deliver the despatches and personal letters. We each carried a set, the duplicates given us by Phelippes, as a precaution in case something befell one of us before we reached Leicester. Then what would happen? Leicester might wish to write replies to some of the documents, but he could not send them back by us. Not immediately, at any rate. Either he would have to wait until we returned to England, or he would have to send a courier of his own. I hadn’t thought of this before and hoped Walsingham had made it clear to him that we had other work to do.

One thing was puzzling about this mission. Walsingham had never quite made clear to us whether we were to inform Leicester of our real purpose in coming to the
Low Countries, to spy out any of the traitors he suspected. I found this strange and somewhat worrying. Did Walsingham assume we would discuss it with the Earl? He had said something about asking the Earl to tell us of his suspicions. Or were we to proceed, as so often in Walsingham’s affairs, in secrecy? If we did not tell the Earl, he might find our own activities suspicious and have us arrested. I turned over restlessly, with a great rustling of straw. Hector stooped his head and blew in my face. Rather wetly. I rubbed my face on my sleeve and turned back again.

Perhaps Walsingham had instructed Berden what we were to do and he had forgotten to tell me. Or chosen not to. In the morning I would ask him outright, when I could have speech with him alone, not easy on board ship. I turned over again, more quietly this time and Hector did not stir. Perhaps he was asleep. I closed my eyes. And after we had seen the Earl? What then?

At some point I must have slept at last, for the next thing I knew was the sound of feet passing the stable. It was filled with a bright reflected light, which meant that the snow had stopped falling but was lying thickly enough to create the magical brilliance of a world under a blanket of white.

I pulled on my boots and laced them tightly, stowed my spare boots back in my knapsack, and folded my blankets to return them to the captain. My bed of straw had been comfortably warm, so that I hesitated to venture out into the snow, but I could not laze here any longer.

As I made my way back to the stern of the ship, with the blankets over my arm, I saw the sailor who had served us yesterday coming out of the captain’s cabin. He raised his hand to his woollen cap and held the door open for me.

‘Good morning to you, Doctor Alvarez,’ Captain Thoms said. ‘Come and eat. I regret I did not give you your proper title yesterday. Master Berden told me, after you left, how you work as a physician at St Bartholomew’s. I should have realised when we spoke of the survivors of Sluys, but . . . that is a painful memory. Forgive me.’

Embarrassed by this apologetic speech, I smiled, with a wave of my hand, indicating that it did not matter. My title of ‘Doctor’ was purely an honorary one, for without university training I could not become a member of the Royal College of Physicians. Thoms clearly understood my unspoken acceptance of his apology and invited me to sit down.

‘They have provided us with porridge this morning, I see,’ he said. ‘I hope you have no objection to such humble food.’

‘It is excellent on such a cold day.’ I said with a smile. ‘Just what I was thinking in the middle of the blizzard at Dover.’

As he was serving me a large bowl of porridge, Berden and the other officers came in and soon the cabin was filled with the steam from our bowls and from our breath. The captain brought out a large pot of honey from one of his cupboards and passed it round for us to stir into the porridge.

‘My sister and her husband have a farm in Kent,’ he explained. ‘Orchards, mostly, and some cows and sheep. They also keep bees, so whenever I am in Dover harbour, they send me over several pots of honey.’

‘It is excellent for your health,’ I said, ‘and also a sovereign treatment for wounds, should one of your men be injured.’

‘I will remember that,’ he said with a smile, ‘when we come to fight the Spanish. Good for you inside and outside, then?’

‘Aye.’ I ate several spoonfuls of the porridge, which was smoother than Joan’s and all the better for the addition of the honey. ‘Do you carry
cochlearia officinalis
for your men?’

He gave me a puzzled look. ‘
Cochlearia officinalis
?’

‘Aye, scurvy grass. If you regularly give your men scurvy grass infused in ale, it will prevent all the unpleasant effects of scurvy, which so often afflict sailors. Bleeding gums. Loosened teeth. Swollen and painful joints. All unnecessary. Or you may eat the leaves like a salad.’

‘I thought lemons were the preventative.’

‘Oh they are, but expensive and not always easy to obtain. Scurvy grass is plentiful and grows abundantly in coastal areas. You would find it everywhere around the shore in
Kent.’

‘I will take note of that then, and see that we obtain a supply when we return to
England. As you say, scurvy is a foul affliction. In my young days with Drake I remember many men suffering from it on our long voyages to the New World.’

‘Many illnesses can be avoided by a careful diet,’ I said ruefully, ‘but sadly, as physicians we mostly see the results of a poor one.’

Our discussion was interrupted by one of the sailors coming in to say that the tide had turned and was set fair for heading up the canal to Amsterdam. We all went out on deck, where the captain and officers were soon occupied in directing the preparation of the ship for the next stage of the journey. The anchor was raised and the oars run out to manoeuvre the ship from the harbour into the mouth of the canal.

‘Do you think they intend to row all the way?’ I asked Berden in a low voice. ‘It would be quicker to ride.’

‘I suppose it must depend on the direction of the wind.’

There was not much wind at the moment, but what there was blew from behind us as we entered the canal. The question was settled when we saw the mainsail hoisted, then the staysail, and finally the foresail. Captain Thoms was taking advantage of every scrap of wind that would help us on our way. Once the sails filled and the ship stirred with that innate life that sails engender, the oars were shipped. Much to the relief of the sailors, I imagined.

The darkness of the previous day had prevented our understanding of the true manoeuvrability of the pinnace, but today was clear and bright, the winter sun sparkling on the snow-covered fields on either side of the canal, and it was soon obvious how well the small ship handled. She slipped up the canal as gracefully as a swan, her sails held in taut curves like the wings of a soaring bird. The waters creamed under her forefoot, spreading out to the banks of the canal and marking our path into the low, marshy country which stretched ahead of us, dotted with pumping mills to drain water from the fields and here and there a neat village of a few houses encircled by pastures. Once he was satisfied with the ship’s trim, the captain came to stand beside us in the bows.

‘I thought the Dutch canals were straight,’ I said, ‘but this one winds like a river.’

‘That is because it is a river,’ he said, ‘or at least it was. It connects the German Ocean with the Zuiderzee, and the Hollanders have widened it and straightened it in places, but it silts up constantly as new sand banks form. And that causes it to freeze all the more readily in winter. When it’s navigable, it provides a much shorter access to the town, instead of sailing a good way north, then turning east round the islands and coming in to Amsterdam that way. You will see that when we reach the Zuiderzee. It looks as calm as a giant’s duck pond on a quiet day, but it’s a treacherous stretch of water.’

‘Why is that?’ I asked.

‘Again, shifting sand banks, which are the greatest danger to ships, but also it is notorious for terrible floods which rush in and break down the banks the Hollanders have built to try to hold it back. Thousands of people have died in the floods, but the farmland round about is so rich and profitable that they keep moving back. It is a strange country. Water and land constantly changing every year, sometimes every month.’

I soon realised that what both Captain Thoms and Sir Edward Walgrave had called a canal was far from what I understood by the term. It was in fact a series of interconnected waterways, some of them natural rivers which had been widened in places or reinforced by raised banks, others short lengths of straight canal dug through spits of land to connect the rivers. At times we seemed to wander aimlessly through a flat landscape where reed beds towered as high as the ship’s deck. How the captain found his way through this maze, I could not imagine. A larger ship than our pinnace could never have followed this route. Three or four times we encountered bridges, which forced the crew to furl the sails and lower the mast on to a kind of wooden crutch, so that we could pass under them, using our oars. In some places the canal wound so sharply that it was impossible to use our sails.