Two weeks after Drake returned, I was transcribing a report from one of our agents in Lisbon. As I reached the end, I could not stop myself crying out in horror.

Phelippes looked up. ‘What is it, Kit? Not bad news, I hope.’

‘Despicable news,’ I said. ‘Most of the report simply confirms what we already knew about the attack on Cadiz, but this is new. It seems that when the mayor of Cadiz realised Drake was attacking, he ordered all the women and children to take shelter in Matagorda Castle. They rushed there in great numbers, but the captain in command of the castle slammed the gates in their faces. Nearly thirty of them, mostly children, were suffocated or crushed to death.’

I could see the frightened and screaming children falling under the press of bodies, kicked, trampled and dying, the women panicking, the sound of the heavy door crashing against its frame, the terror of being trapped between the invading forces and the callous indifference of their own soldiers.

‘In war it is often the innocent who suffer,’ Phelippes said.

‘But we aren’t at war,’ I objected.

‘Are we not?’

The Queen and her more cautious counsellors like Burghley might attempt to keep up the pretence of peace with Spain, and many citizens must have hoped for it in their hearts, but their heads would have told them that Walsingham and Drake and Admiral Howard were right. As soon as King Philip could repair his losses, he would once again undertake his Enterprise of England. War would come eventually, despite all efforts to stave it off.

In midsummer I transcribed a despatch from our agent in Rome which contained disquieting news. We had known, since his earlier reports, that Philip’s emissaries had been seeking the support of the Pope, both ecclesiastical and financial.

‘Well,’ I said, laying down my transcription on Phelippes’s desk, ‘it seems Philip has got what he wants. The Pope is to give him a million ducats and grants him the right to bestow the crown of England on whomsoever he chooses. The Infanta is mentioned.’

Phelippes grabbed the despatch and ran his eye over it.

‘So, the Bishop of Rome thinks he has the disposal of our crown, does he?’ He spat the words out.

‘It seems so. But look at the end.’ I pointed with the tip of my quill.

When he had read the last few lines, he laughed.

‘Oh, very clever! His Roman Holiness is a shrewd fellow indeed. So Philip will not receive the Pope’s money in advance to finance the invasion. He gets half the money only after Spanish boots are on English soil, the rest of the money to be dribbled in, bit by bit.’

‘All we have to do is ensure they do not land,’ I said. ‘No doubt the Pope will thank us for saving his money.’

‘Indeed. That is all we have to do. Well, thanks to Drake’s fire party at Cadiz, we have until next summer to create a navy strong enough to withstand what Philip has been building up for years.’

‘If the Spanish troops do manage to land,’ I said quietly, ‘we have no hope, have we?’

‘None at all. They are a trained and battle-hardened professional army. We have nothing but the amateur militias and the Trained Bands, who are trained for nothing but keeping the citizens in order.’

‘So we must make sure they don’t land,’ I said.

‘That is all we have to do.’

Although despatches continued to come in from our own agents, and letters passing between Philip and his various emissaries were regularly intercepted, the volume of work in Phelippes’s office diminished and I was able to spend far more of my time at the hospital, working at Seething Lane no more than once or twice a week.

For the last year I had had little opportunity to continue my studies with my mathematics tutor, Thomas Harriot, but he still called in from time to time at Duck Lane, to make music with my father and me, and we had once supped with him, when I had a chance to play his beautiful virginals. Now in midsummer, he took me for the first time to Durham House, to one of the meetings of the group that gathered about Raleigh to discuss mathematics and astronomy and navigation, and also to consider the prospects offered by the new world of Virginia, the riches in both plants and minerals to be found in that country, and the customs and beliefs of its strange people.

I had seen Raleigh in the distance, riding in procession with the Queen, but never met him or found myself in the same room before that evening. As well as Raleigh there was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, him they called ‘the wizard Earl’. Both Northumberland and Raleigh were patrons of my tutor and were eager to learn from him. There were others there – that strange man Dr Dee, necromancer and alchemist and the Queen’s own astrologer, amongst them – all gathered in a turret room overlooking the City and the river, so that I was frozen into awkwardness, tongue-tied by the presence of so many famous gentlemen.

Northumberland did have something of the wizardly about him, his hair unkempt and his doublet buttoned awry, but he was eager and friendly. Raleigh was the quieter man, less interested in astrology and demonology, but passionate for his New World exploration. His second Roanoke venture had just departed, which was to plant a permanent colony in Virginia, but the Queen had forbidden him to accompany it. It was plain to see from his restlessness how much he longed to be on the high seas at that very moment. While Raleigh was not averse to a little privateering himself, he was not cast in the same mould as Drake. Instead of foreseeing an England living off plunder from the Spanish ships returning from the New World, he was urging the establishment of our own colonies there, so that we could benefit from such riches ourselves.

I sat on a stool somewhat withdrawn and merely listened, feeling it was not my place to join in the discussions, although Harriot had told me he was taking me to Durham House because Raleigh liked to draw clever young men into his circle and open up new ideas and new worlds to them. We had been there about half an hour when we heard footsteps leaping up the turret stairs and the door burst open, without a knock. It was a young man in his early twenties with a high forehead and hair of a gingerish brown. He wore a young man’s small moustache and tiny streak of beard below the lower lip – the sort of beard and moustache which look as though the wearer has dipped his face too deep in a pot of brown beer and forgotten to wipe it afterwards. He was somewhat lavishly dressed and did not apologise either for his late arrival or his impolite entry. I thought him arrogant. His eyes swept over me and dismissed me as of no account. He was followed by another young man, and to my surprise I saw that it was Simon. He gave me one startled look, then smiled. I returned his smile reluctantly, wondering who his brash companion might be. Simon himself looked embarrassed and a little defiant.

‘Ah, here at last,’ said Raleigh tolerantly, motioning the two of them to chairs across the room from me. ‘You know most people here, except . . .’ he indicated me, ‘another Kit. Kit Marlowe, this is Kit Alvarez. And your friend?’

‘Simon Hetherington,’ said the other Kit, ignoring me and waving a careless hand. ‘Another man of the theatre. Or rather boy.’

I saw Simon flush and pitied him. His skin was so fair it always betrayed him. The debate resumed. They were discussing some of the latest discoveries in celestial navigation, and before the evening was out I had the satisfaction of being asked by Harriot to explain some of the mathematical calculations, which Marlowe was compelled to attend to. As we began to take our leave at the end of the evening, Marlowe approached me, followed by Simon. He looked me up and down.

‘Quite the clever lad, isn’t he, Simon?’ He smiled maliciously and flicked me painfully on the cheek with a long fingernail.