‘Well?’ said Sir Francis.

I looked at him, and my own hand holding the paper was shaking.

‘The Armada has set sail.’

The fleet had left Lisbon on the twenty-eighth of May. It was now the fifth of June.

For the next few days, I went very early to the hospital each morning, when the pre-dawn light was filtering through the river mist. Since that first message from Dr Nuñez’s agent, Walsingham had told me that I was to report to Phelippes every day, but I could not abandon my patients altogether, nor could I allow them to become a burden to my father. On that particular summer morning, less than a week later, I had given permission for two women to be sent home, applied fresh dressings to half a dozen injuries, fixed a new splint to a broken arm and given Peter Lambert instructions about medicines to be dispensed, all before I hurried away to Dr Nuñez’s house to collect any despatches which might have arrived on the previous evening’s high tide.

In Phelippes’s office I began to sort through them before I even sat down on my stool. ‘There is one here from Bordeaux,’ I called to Phelippes, ‘I’d best transcribe that first.’

He came across the room while I warmed the paper at my candle. As it was written in Dr Nuñez’s familiar code I could read it straight off, as easily as if it had been written in English:

The fleet is seven miles across from end to end, like a gigantic crescent of huge ships bearing down towards England.

I stared blindly at him, trying to envisage a fleet seven miles across – the distance from London to . . . where? I could not even begin to imagine it. And already the fleet had been sighted off Bordeaux. A sick panic seized my stomach. The Spanish, the loathsome Spanish! They had robbed me of home and family, imprisoned me, driven me into this life of lies and deception, and now they were pursuing me inexorably again.

No! I shook myself. Ashamed. What was I? Some insignificant creature, a mere beetle beneath the Spanish boot. England was their prey. England and our Queen.

Phelippes said nothing, but even he, usually so severe and contained, turned pale.

‘Seven miles across,’ he said softly. ‘Is there anything else of note?’

I sorted through the remaining four despatches Dr Nuñez’s manservant had given me.

‘There’s one here from Antwerp.’

Walsingham had informers even in Spanish-controlled Antwerp, but only rarely were they able to slip a message through enemy lines. It appeared, from several superscripts on the outside of the paper, that it had travelled via Paris, and then also on from Bordeaux.

I trembled as I read it out, deciphering as I went:

Here in the Spanish Netherlands, the Duke of Parma is preparing a second fleet, a fleet of barges, which will carry a trained army of thirty thousand men across the Channel to invade England, under escort of the warships now sailing up from Spain.

‘That perfidious scoundrel!’ I cried, forgetting for once to hold my tongue and hide my feelings. ‘All these last months he has been pretending to treat for peace with the Queen! How could she be so deceived?’

Despite the fact that Burghley himself, diplomat and peace-maker, had warned her that this time there was no escaping war with Spain, we had known in Walsingham’s office since early spring that the Queen had been negotiating for peace, offering in secret (as we discovered through our intelligencers in the Duke of Parma’s camp) to sacrifice the Protestant Netherlanders who were our allies, and even to surrender to Parma England’s own holdings in the Low Countries. I remembered the Penders family at the Prins Willem, the minister Dirck de Veen, and Sara’s cousin Ettore Añez. What would become of them if we deserted them? It was shameful. Shameful of the Queen, who had ignored both Burghley and Walsingham. I knew my words and my thoughts were disrespectful, but more than Parma were prepared to act treacherously in this affair. I had no doubt that Parma had never intended to make peace in the Low Countries, but merely used the Queen’s overtures to gain time for the Spanish invasion.

Phelippes did not answer me, but went at once to fetch Walsingham so that he might read the despatches for himself.

‘At last,’ Sir Francis announced grimly as he cast his eye over my hastily written transcriptions, ‘at last, our preparations against invasion have begun, but it will be a mighty scramble if we are to be ready in time for this.’ He tapped the papers with his finger.

He picked up the Antwerp despatch and held it at arm’s length, the better to read it.

‘Thirty thousand trained soldiers.’ There was a look of near despair on his face. ‘Thirty thousand in addition to those aboard the Spanish fleet. We cannot possibly withstand such an army.’

‘The string of warning beacons is being set up?’ said Phelippes.

‘Aye. All along the south coast from Cornwall to Kent, and on up here to London.’ Walsingham shrugged and sighed.

‘I heard,’ I was hesitant, for I did not usually put myself forward in Sir Francis’s presence, ‘that the citizen militias have been ordered to ready themselves. But have they the arms to defend us?’

Walsingham gave a snort of disgust.

‘Armed with their pitchforks and flails, their ’prentice clubs and tailors’ yards, and their stout English hearts, they stand ready to repel a professional Spanish army equipped with muskets, cross-bows and cannon! Nay, Kit, if our navy cannot prevent the Spaniards from landing, you will soon be able to speak Spanish to our new masters.’

He paced back and forth across our small room, then paused, looking out of the window over the neighbouring roof tops toward the docks and gripping the sill with his long, fine hands.

‘At any rate Drake and Howard and Hawkins are ready with our small but skilful navy, waiting at Plymouth and the other ports along the south coast. If they cannot repel the Spanish fleet, I hold out little hope for us.’

He turned to face us. ‘What concerns me most at present is that we have had no word from Amsterdam for several weeks. We need to know what is afoot in the Low Countries. Who do you have out there at present, Thomas?’

‘I have been concerned as well,’ Phelippes said. ‘Mark Weber went out soon after Berden and Kit returned and he was sending regular reports until about three weeks ago. He was reporting on the morale of our soldiers, which is not good. He had also traced van Leyden to a village outside Amsterdam, apparently lying low. In addition, he said that Cornelius Parker had disappeared for a time, apparently on a buying mission to Constantinople, but had returned on one of his ships to Amsterdam. That was in his last despatch. There has been nothing since.’

‘We must send someone else to discover what is happening with our army there, and to find Weber, if possible. He is part Dutch, is he not?’

‘Aye, his father was Dutch and he speaks the language.’

‘Is Lord Willoughby not reporting regularly?’ I asked.

‘Lord Willoughby tells us what he thinks we want to hear,’ Walsingham said. ‘What I need to know is the mood amongst the men themselves. How prepared they are. Whether many are likely to desert. Whether we are now on better terms with the Hollanders, as Willoughby claims, or whether he is asserting this merely in order to claim greater success than the Earl. Most importantly, whether we are in a position to harry the Spanish army so that they cannot spare thirty thousand men to be sent across the Channel. Whether, if we recall our men, the Hollanders can hold out against Parma, or even attack him, so that he will be unable to fight on two fronts.’

We were all silent for some minutes.

‘Sir John Norreys is there,’ I said at last. ‘Can he not keep Parma’s army occupied, so that it cannot be sent to join the forces sailing up from Spain?’

Walsingham shook his head. ‘The Earl of Leicester is to command the land forces here in England to resist the Spanish attack. As soon as I send him this latest information, which I will do today, he will want to summon Norreys back from the Low Countries. He will not confess to it, but he knows he cannot command a military campaign as Norreys can.’