We were sitting slack-jointed around the watch fires as it grew dark, when we became aware of a disturbance in one quarter of the camp. It first it was no more than a murmur of sound, like a distant thrumming of bees. Then it was punctuated by shouts and what sounded like a kind of laughter, not a cheerful sound but the kind of laughter that escapes from men who are afraid or ashamed, a sort of nervous burst of hysteria. I rose to my feet and peered toward that part of the camp, trying to make out what was amiss.

‘It is nothing but some horseplay amongst the men,’ said Ruy Lopez.

For once, perhaps, he had grown weary of constantly dancing attendance on Dom Antonio and had joined Dr Nuñez and me, sharing our lumps of rock-hard stale bread, which we could barely break with our teeth, and what promised to be the very last scraps of the mouldy cheese.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

‘Let it be, Kit,’ said Dr Nuñez. ‘You can care for their bodies. There is little else you can do for them.’

I sat down again, but kept my eye on a growing tumult in that quarter of the camp. Gradually it began to roll toward us, a cluster of men, shouting. At the front was a pale, gaunt figure, stark naked. I knew the man by sight, one of the recruits who had joined us at Plymouth, but I had had no dealings with him. He was older than most of the men, probably in his middle forties, his dull brown hair touched with grey and his beard – as may sometimes happen – entirely grey, almost white. This beard had grown long and straggling since we had left England and hung now halfway down his chest, so that with his nakedness and his matted hair and long beard he seemed like some half-crazed prophet from the Old Testament. He was grown so thin that there seemed to be no flesh on his bones, only the knotted outline of wasted muscle and sinew. His joints at knee and ankle and elbow bulged grotesquely out of proportion to his limbs, and his feet were as prehensile as a monkey’s.

In my profession I am familiar with men’s bodies, but I had never seen one so wasted as this, not even amongst the London poor or the starved survivors of the siege of Sluys. It came to me that, under the rags that were all that remained of their clothes, the other men must look the same. My own body would be wasted. I had already noticed how thin my arms had become, the skin faintly traced with a quilting of fine lines where the layer of flesh beneath the surface had shrunk away.

The naked man stumbled in our direction, pursued by the crowd, who had begun to bay like a pack of hounds, shouting and jeering and giving way to that unnatural laughter I had heard before. The man’s eyes were wild as a hunted animal’s, and there were flecks of foam on the parched skin about his mouth. It crossed my mind that it was strange he should have even that much of the element of water in him, for we were all become as dry as the sands of the desert.

‘The Day of Judgement is come!’

He raised a withered arm and pointed at Dom Antonio’s tent.

‘The Lord God of Israel has brought down his curse upon you, yea, and all you sinners who are gathered here! He has laid upon you the plague of starvation, yea, and the plague of thirst such as those who dwell in the wilderness! Ye shall perish of fevers and your guts shall burn within you until ye be consumed utterly in the fire!’

His eyes glowed with madness as he staggered toward the tent which flew, even at the end of this exhausted day, the royal standard of the house of Aviz. From within the tent there came nothing but a listening silence. Reaching the tent, he tried to drag down the standard, but it was too high for him to reach.

‘See where the standard of the bastard king is ringed with blood!’ he cried. His voice croaked like the cry of a raven. ‘So it shall be. Ye shall all perish, drowned in your own life’s blood and the vengeance of the Lord shall be wreaked upon you!’

There was more foam at his mouth now, but the strength of madness which had filled his voice faltered as he fell to his knees.

‘Ye shall all perish.’

It was no more than a whisper. Then he rolled over on the unforgiving ground and lay still.

Dr Nuñez reached him before I did. There was still a faint irregular pulse from a heart which could not beat much longer. A thin watery trickle of blood ran from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Dr Nuñez looked at me and shook his head. The men who had pursued the madman had stopped in their tracks. Looking anywhere but at their prey, they shuffled their feet and began to sneak away. The group of officers and gentlemen adventurers beside the fire had been shocked into silence. There was neither movement nor sound from within the royal tent.

Less than an hour later, the man died.

We hollowed out a shallow grave for him at the edge of the camp, some of those who had been in the baying crowd being the most anxious to help. Then we withdrew our several ways for what little rest we could find, exhausted in body and troubled in mind.

In this desperate state we came, the next day, over a last rise in the ground and there, about three miles away, we could see the mighty walls of Lisbon, and beyond them its clustered roofs and towers. This was where we were meant to have sailed weeks ago directly from Plymouth, without our diversions at Coruña and Peniche. Had we done so, we would still have had an army, of sorts. Though lacking in provisions, we would not have been in a state of starvation, as we were now. And here, if we had come directly, we might have found the gates opened to us by the considerable body of nobles who supported Dom Antonio. My grandfather would still be alive and could have helped me to rescue Isabel. Now he and the other nobles were dead and the gates stayed firmly barred. And I would find no help for Isabel.

The gallant Essex emerged at last from his private convoy. While the rest of the army was barefoot, dressed in rags, and as emaciated as prisoners emerging from the custody of the Inquisition, Essex still carried amongst his luggage his finest armour. He had donned a gleaming breastplate, inlaid with ornamentation in gold and polished by some page. He was fully equipped with coat of mail under his breastplate, with greaves and cuisses protecting his legs, rerebraces and vambraces enclosing his arms. His helmet, burnished to reflect the sun and blind any opponent, was topped with three magnificent plumes plucked from some exotic African bird. A sword with a jewel-encrusted hilt hung at his side and in his left hand he carried upright a spear, from which fluttered a banner bearing his motto embroidered in thread of gold: Virtutis comes invidia.

He was a truly magnificent sight, like some Arthurian knight from an illuminated book of romances, if, that is, one could have banished from one’s mind – as I could not – the image of this gallant warrior emerging from the surf at Peniche, his head wreathed in seaweed and water streaming from every joint of his armour, while around and behind him, unheeded, men drowned. Accompanied by a bodyguard of his followers, and watched, dull-eyed, by the rest of us, Essex rode up to the nearest gate of the city and banged on it defiantly with the butt of his spear.

‘Ho, within there! I challenge you to come forth and surrender the town or else be prepared to meet your end on the bloody field of battle.’

No one responded.

Unsuccessful in provoking the garrison of Lisbon, Essex nevertheless rode back to the rest of the army with a complacent smirk displayed within his open visor. Had he no understanding that this was a real war, not some heroic and fanciful tale drawn from the pages of a book of romances, written for courtiers and ladies?

I slid from my horse and found my legs would not hold me. Sinking down on a tussock of dried and dusty grass, I put my head between my knees. I had been in the saddle for two weeks, first to seek Isabel and then on the terrible journey to come here, to look upon our capital city. My mind was almost numb. My only clear thought was that if we could take Lisbon and drive out the Spaniards, I might still be able to return and rescue my sister.