‘The Queen’s gold?’ He shrugged. ‘Aye, well, she may grant them a little of it, when Drake returns from the Azores. Perhaps he will have increased his bounty there.’
I could not sleep that night for the gnawing hunger in my belly, as the ship yawed to and fro, as if she was uneasy, hove to. To my haunted mind it seemed that the ship herself was starving and dying, here on the last few miles of the sea. The pains in every one of my joints had grown even more acute. The thought that food was only hours away made it all the harder to endure, this final agonising wait. I was dizzy with hunger and thirst. From the gaunt faces I had seen around me in the ship, I could imagine how I myself must look. My doublet and breeches hung on me. They stank of sweat and dirt and sickness. Once I was home I would burn them, for they were so full of rents and tears that even a pauper would scorn them. My stockings gaped with as many holes as a fisherman’s net and my shirt barely reached my waist, for all the lower part had been ripped off to make bandages. Even my precious physician’s gown had suffered the same fate. The stuff was too thick for bandages, but in the end, no one cared. We used what we could.
I wondered whether Simon would recognise the ragged sunburnt skeleton I had become, but realised bitterly how little it mattered. I was nothing to him but a passing acquaintance, a male companion to share a meal or a visit to the playhouse. Why did I torment myself with foolish thoughts? I found myself longing to break out of my disguise, to become a girl again, Caterina, my father’s daughter, dependent, handing myself over to the guardianship of others. It would be nothing but joy to lay aside the burden of my manhood, my responsibilities and cares. I was nineteen years old, and I longed to abandon my travesty of a life.
All through that last night on board, I wrestled with my crowding thoughts, with the flashes of memory that ambushed me. Isabel, laying her cheek briefly against mine. The fires in the citadel of Coruña and the drunken soldiers lying in the streets below. Teresa holding the new babe. The snake and the taste of its venom on my tongue. The men dying and dying and dying on the march. The severed head of Father Hernandez on the walls of Lisbon. The heat. The thirst. The hunger. The wounded soldier dying in my arms on deck. And Isabel, Isabel. I felt such black despair I wanted to howl, and yet even to utter a sound would have cost me too much effort. In the morning we would see England. What did I care? My wits were so dulled that it no longer had any meaning for me. All through that last terrible night, I lay awake.
By first light I had crawled my way up on deck. It was our tenth day – or was it the eleventh? – out from Cascais. The second of July, Captain Oliver said. At least that was what he thought, for like all of us he was confused and weak from hunger and sleeplessness. The sailors were making sail, going about their tasks with maddening slowness, as if they were sleep-walking, yet they must have been as eager as any of us to quit the Victory and find themselves on dry land again. As we made our way slowly along the coast of Cornwall to Devon, one of the sailors pointed to a tiny village that seemed to climb vertically up the cliff and hang suspended over the water.
‘That’s Polperro,’ he said. ‘That’s my village, and I never want to leave it.’ Like the captain he gave a dry, rasping cough. ‘I’ll never set foot in a ship again. Once I get my feet on English soil, you never see me step off it.’
‘How far to Plymouth?’ I asked.
‘You see that break in the coast? Ahead, a little further along? That’s the mouth of Plymouth Sound. Not far now, God be thanked.’
And I noticed that he crossed himself furtively, as the Catholics do.
Plymouth Sound is a large and complex body of water, all inlets and small islands, and what look like the mouths of many rivers, but which may perhaps be deeper inlets running into the land. As usual it was crowded with huge galleons and smaller ships, which apart from their size all looked much the same as one another, for I do not have an eye for a ship. I could not have named any of them.
Dr Nuñez had come on deck to stand beside me, and the soldiers had limped and crawled their way into the light and air, looking anxiously around, as if they feared that England were no more than a mirage, sent to torment them. Even Dom Antonio and Dr Lopez had come on deck, and the Dom had insisted that his standard should be flown, which was unwise of him.
‘The harbour is very crowded,’ I said, to no one in particular. It seemed we would have difficulty finding anchor room. The Victory was too large to be able to berth at most quays, but I realised that we were feeling our way slowly towards the principal quay, where it seemed there was deep water, instead of dropping anchor out in mid harbour, as I had expected. All the sails had been furled but one foresail and the lateen sail on the mizzen. A pinnace with a towline had its oars out, though I do not know how any of the sailors found the strength to wield them. I saw that there was space enough for one large ship, beside another galleon, already trimly moored. We were gliding slowly toward it, without the need for the pinnace.
Suddenly Captain Oliver gave a cry, so agonised that I wondered for a moment if he had run mad in these last hours of our ordeal. He pointed to the other galleon moored at the quay and shouted. It was taken up in fury by the sailors.
‘The Revenge! It’s the Revenge! Drake never sailed for the Azores at all! He’s here!’
Drake had betrayed us once again. He had taken all the food and drink and sailed straight home to Plymouth, leaving us to starve and die on the high seas behind him.
Our reception in Plymouth was furious and frightening. The families coming to welcome home their husbands and sons had learned the truth of the expedition when Drake arrived the day before us. Instead of men with their pockets full of gold they found men weary and penniless, and news of many deaths. The men on Drake’s ships, however, were those in better health. The hopes of the families that their men had survived were kept alive until Norreys’s fleet made port. When the poor remains of our army stumbled or were carried ashore from our last ships, deathlike in their gaunt pallor, a terrible cry arose from the women and children crowding round the quays. I hope I shall never hear the like again. Then the despair turned to anger, and the anger to fury. Dom Antonio, trying to make a dignified descent of the gangplank in the tattered remnants of his finery, suddenly caught their attention. They recognised him from our triumphant departure in April.
‘Dog!’ they screamed. ‘Cur! Jewish thief! Liar! Bastard king!’ (Which last was true enough, though rarely mentioned.)
They picked up stones from the ground and hurled them at the never-to-be king of Portugal. He escaped unhurt, for their aim was poor, but one caught Dr Nuñez on the left cheek, and it bled a little. Luckily for me, I was no more than some unknown youth of the company, probably a midshipman, or someone else of no account. They did not recognise me as one of the hated Portingalls. As unobtrusively as possible, I made my way ashore with Dr Nuñez. Both of us, without exchanging a word, chose to avoid the company of Ruy Lopez and Dom Antonio.
In Plymouth I stayed at an inn (none of us could endure another moment aboard the Victory), where I ate and washed, but I still wore my threadbare clothes, for I had nothing else. I owed my lodging to Dr Nuñez, for I had no more than two Spanish reals left in my purse. He urged me to keep them in case I needed money on my journey home, so I changed them at the inn for good English coin, which jingled thinly in my purse with the handful of pennies and groats he had managed to give me.