‘Why does that worry you?’ I said.

‘They are signalling the news now to Drake,’ he said, pointing up towards the string of flags that a sailor was hoisting. ‘And as soon as Drake hears of a treasure ship, to Peniche we will go.’ He banged a fist against his forehead.

‘Peniche cannot be much more than sixty miles from Lisbon,’ he said, ‘but it might as well be a thousand. By the time we come there, King Philip will have had warning enough to move his entire army from Spain to garrison Lisbon!’

I had taken my eye off the approaching ship while we had been talking, but now I saw that it was much nearer.

‘That’s an English ship,’ I said. ‘There is the flag, clear enough now, and another standard. I’m not sure . . . ‘

‘Can you see her name?’

I screwed up my eyes. ‘Swiftsure.’

‘Essex,’ said Dr Nuñez. ‘The Queen’s errant golden boy. That rash idiot. He will want to go galloping about the countryside, imagining himself one of King Arthur’s knights, and lose us the war in the process.’

He stamped off below decks and shut himself in his cabin.

Our commanders did not exactly welcome Essex, for they were carrying furious letters from the Queen demanding that he should be sent home at once. If they allowed him to join the expedition – and it would be difficult to say him nay – they would themselves incur a share of her wrath. On the other hand, he had a sound ship, provisions and arms, and well-trained regular soldiers. It was not difficult to foresee what decision they would make after our severe losses at Coruña.

Essex did join us, and demanded that he be put in charge of the next landing party. Dr Nuñez, as so often before, had been right.

I had never encountered Essex myself, but all that I had heard about him made me dread his addition to the leaders of the expedition. The spoiled and indulged favourite of the Queen – arrogant, wilful, accustomed always to grabbing whatever he wanted no matter at what cost to others – he was the last person to be given a part in the councils of the expedition. The Queen had forbidden him to come, yet he had defied even the Queen herself, no doubt envisaging some glorious heroic role for himself. He seemed to have no grasp of reality, but to live in an imaginary world of chivalry which bore no relationship to the nature of war as I had experienced it, both at first hand and through the suffering of men I had cared for. It was this mindless, hare-brained glory-seeking which had brought about such disasters when he had served in the Low Countries. I was full of dread at what further blight might be cast on our affairs by his presence.

Although it was not yet full summer, the southern sun soon became much stronger than Englishmen are accustomed to, particularly as in recent years our summers had been cold and wet, the winters bitter. The makeshift army, which had nothing to do while the seamen handled the ship, took to hanging about on deck, instead of staying cooped up below in the suffocating quarters they had been allocated. Most of the soldiers had overcome their seasickness by now, and they lay about, getting under the feet of the sailors, who tripped over them and kicked them and swore at them to move. Now that the food supplies had been augmented at Coruña, the soldiers were less apt to break out in open riot, but the quarrels between soldiers and sailors never ceased.

The soldiers stripped to the waist in the heat and – unlike the sailors, whose skin was permanently darkened by years at sea – their white English shoulders and noses turned the red of London bricks, then began to blister and peel. I found myself with some serious cases of sunburn to treat, and one or two of sunstroke. The worst of the raw red patches of skin I bathed with a cool infusion of urtica dioica and stellaria media, then I applied a salve of made from a strong decoction of calendula officinalis, stellaria media, and coriandrum sativum, blended with purified lard.

However much I advised them to keep to the shade, within an hour they would be back, lying in the sun, so I left them to suffer from their own folly.

A week after departing from Coruña, we were nearing Peniche. Another fishing boat had been sighted and detained, its crew apparently less ready than the first to pass information to the English fleet, despite the Dom’s huge standard at our masthead. I lingered nearby.

‘Aye,’ said the older man, while his boy glowered at us where he squatted, gutting sardines. ‘There was a treasure ship from the Spanish Main in Peniche.’

‘And?’ said Dr Lopez, giving a worried sideways glance at the Dom.

‘Well,’ said the fisherman, and spat over the side of his boat, ‘word got around that she was loaded with a million crowns in gold. If you believe what they say. Not that we’ll see one real of it in Portugal. But she isn’t still here.’ He laughed grimly. ‘Once they heard El Dracque was coming, they cleared out, heading south.’

On learning what the fisherman had said, Drake decided to put in to Peniche anyway, instead of proceeding to Lisbon. Why, I am not certain. Perhaps he believed that some of the treasure had been off-loaded there. Since the treasure ship had left, I would have expected him to follow it, even deserting the rest of the fleet, the way he had abandoned the English fleet during the early encounters with the ships of the Spanish Armada. However, Drake was in command of the fleet, and to Peniche the fleet would go. The agreed goal of our mission seemed to be retreating further and further from us.

Ruy Lopez and the Dom were asked to explain the lie of the land at Peniche to Norreys, who once again had come on board our ship. His brother was making a good recovery, which he partly attributed to the skill of Portuguese doctors, so Norreys was readier to take into account the advice and wishes of the Portuguese party

‘The town is loyal to me,’ the Dom asserted. ‘So this should prove an excellent landfall. There will be a small Spanish garrison, but the remainder of the inhabitants will be Portuguese, and loyal. There is opportunity here, at last, to begin rallying my people. We must move in swiftly, take the fortress, and plant my standard. As soon as word goes forth, my supporters will rush to my side and defeat the Spanish.’

‘Aye, aye,’ said Norreys, impatient with all this airy talk. He wanted hard information. ‘What is the position of the fortress, and where can we best land?’

‘The easiest place is the sheltered quay beside the fortress itself,’ said Ruy Lopez eagerly. I could see his eyes light up at the prospect of his moment of triumph. ‘The only other place is about a mile away, the Praia da Consolação, further to the east.’

‘Is there deep water there?’ said Norreys. ‘How close can we bring in the ships?’

Lopez and the Dom exchanged glances. They had planned for Lisbon. They had no real knowledge of Peniche, nor were they men of the sea.

Norreys watched them and sighed. ‘Very well, if you do not know the depth of the water, we will need to send the soldiers ashore in longboats. The loss of the Dutch vlieboten will cause us some difficulties here. We will try for the quay; failing that, we will make for this Praia da Consolação.’ He went off to signal to Drake and to Essex, who was to lead the landing party.

Before long we caught sight of the remarkable Nau dos Corvos, the Ship of the Crows, a strange rock formation which lies off the tip of the peninsula on which Peniche is built. From a slight distance it looks like a ship heeling over in the wind and I suppose crows may perch there, though as we approached it was a flock of gulls and terns I saw diving for fish. A pretty scene but a dangerous one, for more rocks lie hidden about it below the surface, stirring up whorls and spouts of spume, and it is a notorious wrecker of ships.