Chapter Twelve

Portugal , 1589

It took me two days of hard riding before I neared Coimbra. Despite my need for haste, I did not dare to use post horses, even if any were to be had in this under-peopled part of the country. Besides, I needed to keep my identity and my purpose secret. My army horse was young and strong, but I must not overtax him, so I rode fast but circumspectly. There might come a moment when I would need to ride for my life, but I feared he would not have the same outstanding gift for speed as Hector, the beloved, ugly piebald I often rode from Walsingham’s stables.

As for myself, I hoped that I looked like a nondescript government messenger, or some nobleman’s servitor – not rich enough to be worth waylaying, but with the possible attendant risk of punishment for any assailant who might try to attack me. I wore no weapons but my light sword and my dagger. If it came to a fight, I had little hope of defending myself despite my training in swordplay at the Tower by Master Scannard. I could handle a sword now, but I had no experience of using one in anger. Beside, I had had no practice since we had left England, and I knew that my wrist was nowhere near as strong as a man’s. My sprained ankle was nearly sound again, though I would hesitate to put too much reliance on it. The burn on my shoulder had healed over with thin, pinkish, delicate skin.

As I rode across the isthmus from Peniche, I wondered whether I might encounter the soldiers of the Spanish garrison who had retreated when we arrived, but I saw no sign of them. Either they were lying low or they had made their way to some other strong point, perhaps Lisbon itself, or even back to Spain. At first I followed the Atlantic coast north, skirting the towns of Óbidos and Nazaré. I kept close to the shore to avoid Óbidos, which lay somewhat inland, and took a ferry across the river mouth. The ferrymen rowed me and my horse across the estuary together with a woman and small boy carrying two pairs of chickens tied together by their legs, protesting feebly, and a dour youth with a pig which nearly overturned the boat. Riding on from the other side of the river, I looped inland behind Nazaré, which lay on the coast. There might be Spanish garrisons in either of the towns.

Only twelve when I had left Portugal, I knew little of public affairs then, being absorbed in my narrow sphere of family and studies, until my world broke apart into shattered fragments. Although I had now worked for Walsingham more than three years, decoding and transcribing despatches (ours and those of our enemies), I was more familiar with the affairs of Rome and Paris and Madrid than with the current situation in small Portuguese towns. I did not even know whether the Spanish had established garrisons in such towns, or just how dangerous it might be to enter them. There had certainly been that Spanish garrison at Peniche, but Peniche was a major port. One of Philip of Spain’s principal reasons for invading Portugal had been to gain access to our Atlantic ports, so serviceable for him in plundering the riches of the New World. On my present journey I did not want to run the risk of discovering how widely the Spanish army was deployed, so I avoided all places larger than a village.

After steering clear of the towns, I headed toward the sea, threading my way through a series of small fishing villages along the low shore. The villages were all built to the same pattern: small zigzag clusters of wooden houses raised on stilts, erected directly on the sandy beaches at high water mark. The stilts provided them with some protection from the seasonal spring tides, but gave them a curiously mysterious look, like the fantastic dwellings from some fairytale. Somehow you expected the houses to gather up their fishing net skirts and walk away on their thin legs. The fishermen and their families lived in these raised houses amongst the sheds for their boats and the barns for the oxen which dragged the boats to and from the sea. It reminded me of Ilhavo.

In appearance these villages were very different from the fishing villages along the Sussex coast which Phelippes and I had searched back at the time of the Babington crisis, when word had come that two traitors were to land somewhere there. The houses in Sussex had been squat but comfortable, solid and timber-framed, infilled with wattle and daub and roofed with thatch. The fisher houses here seemed fragile by comparison, hardly more than temporary shacks perched atop their stilts. Yet the people had money enough to own oxen to launch their boats. In Sussex, the fishermen and their wives had dragged the boats down the beach to the sea themselves.

Some things united the villages, however different they might seem in appearance. Everywhere, the smell of fish and ocean and seaweed and tar and the peppery scent of rope. It was as if the scents from aboard the Victory had been boiled down to a concentrated essence which saturated everything. I knew that when I left these villages my clothes, my hair and even my horse, would carry the smell for hours. I think if you had to search for a fisherman through the streets of a strange town by night, you could find him with your nose.

By the time I reached the shore, the fishermen had already set sail for the day, leaving the villages populated by none but black-clothed women mending nets, or gutting and salting sardines, and half-naked children playing with shells and bits of driftwood. It all seemed peaceful enough, with no sign of the Spanish in these remote parts. The oxen were tethered above the high water line, where tough sea-grass grew in ragged clumps, working their way placidly over their circles of restricted grazing until the time should come for them to be harnessed to the boats again, to drag them up the beach.

Towards noon I stopped in one of these villages to rest my horse and let him drink from the narrow stream which ran down between the houses, before it fanned out into a dozen rivulets across the beach and into the sea. The women raised their heads, watching me cautiously until I gave them a friendly greeting. On hearing my native Portuguese, their faces cleared. What might have turned to hostility was transformed magically into smiles of welcome.

‘God be with you, Senhora,’ I said to a plump, kindly looking woman, who had left her netting to draw three rough loaves from the beehive-shaped clay oven outside her house. ‘Have you enough to spare for a traveller?’

I reached into the purse at my belt and drew out a small coin.

‘Put your money away,’ she said. ‘I would be ashamed to turn aside a traveller from my door. Sit, sit.’

She motioned me towards the log where she had been had just been seated, busy about her work on the nets. She bundled them courteously away to one side. I was glad of a seat, already beginning to feel saddle-sore. She disappeared into the house, which was hardly more than a hut, another of those ramshackle wooden dwellings on legs, and returned with a wooden trencher piled with sardines hot from the fire.

I shook my head. ‘I cannot eat your meal, Senhora.’

She waved my objections aside.

‘I am cooking more. The fishing was good last night. Eat, young man, and do not argue!’

At that I grinned and fell to. The sardines were wonderful, fresh from the sea and smoky from her open fire. As I mopped up the last welcome fragments with chunks of the warm bread, I looked up to see four little boys in a row watching me, with their fingers in their mouths. Behind them, two of their sisters peeped at me through their hair. Seeing me looking at them, they all scampered away like young deer, but not too far to keep me under observation. I suspected that I was eating their midday meal.