Someone, somewhere, found a paltry dole for the men. I do not know whether Drake had loosened his grip on the gold, which he proposed to share with the Queen. Perhaps it was the City investors, who had hastened to Plymouth when they learned of Drake’s arrival, and who met us with grim faces and their account books under their arms. They would have been unwilling to part with yet more money, but if the troops were not dispersed quickly, there would be trouble.
There was a small amount of booty aboard the ships, the booty taken at Coruña, which was to be auctioned off and used to repay some of the creditors. In the event, the aftermath of the expedition proved to be months of legal wrangling between the investors, the leaders of the expedition, the ships’ captains, and the Mayor of Plymouth. Bitter accusations flew between them, but it was nothing to me. I knew my father’s thousand pounds would never be repaid.
Nevertheless, someone, somehow, did find that dole for the men. They were given one meal when they stepped ashore at Plymouth, handed five shillings each, and told to disperse to their homes, those who were fit enough to walk. This was their reward at the end of the glorious expedition which they had been promised. Norreys spent an evening writing licences for them to beg their way home. It did not take him long, there were so few men left.
‘Five shillings!’ I cried to Dr Nuñez, when I heard of it. ‘Five shillings for so many months of suffering! How can they be so unjust?’
He shrugged. His eyes were dull and the skin on his face sagged like soft old linen, washed till it has barely any substance.
‘It is more than you will have, young Kit.’
‘Oh, I have my memories,’ I said bitterly. ‘That is payment for this venture, and more than enough.’
My work with the expedition was not quite finished. The men who were too sick to be moved were quartered in one of the warehouses which had held the provisions for the fleet before our departure. One of those very warehouses, indeed, which had been broken open and looted by the raw recruits, some of whom now lay here in such a pitiful state. There were plentiful medical supplies to be had in Plymouth, so that Dr Nuñez and I were able to make our patients more comfortable. With careful feeding and further nursing, those who had survived the horrors of the death march and the voyage home would probably recover. Dr Nuñez managed to arrange for two local physicians to take over the work from us, for it was clear from our own physical state that we could not continue much longer.
He chose to remain for a time in Plymouth. As one of the major investors in the expedition, he would have meetings to attend. Certainly, there would be acrimonious discussions about how matters were to be resolved. Already we had heard muttered rumours about seizing certain of the largest ships in lieu of payment of debts. Dr Nuñez would try to see fair play, though I knew he would have preferred to return home to London with me.
‘Nay, I shall stay a little longer, Kit,’ he told me wearily. ‘I have written letters to Beatriz and to the manager of my spice business in London, if you will be kind enough to carry them for me.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Though I still wish I could prevail on you to come with me. I fear you will be able to do little here.’
He shook his head, and would not be persuaded. I do not think he believed he could do much good, but felt it his duty to try his utmost. For myself, I could not cast the dirt of Plymouth from my heels fast enough. Three days after we had landed, I set out to ride back to London. I might, indeed, have travelled in more comfort by ship, for some of the smaller ships were sailing to Chatham for repairs, but I could not stomach a single day more at sea.
The green and lush countryside of southern England looked inexpressibly beautiful after the wasteland of our overland march and the grey wilderness of the Atlantic. The full heat of an English summer seemed no more than balmy to my skin, parched and peeling as it was from the Iberian sun, and even that mild warmth was tempered by soft breezes that lifted my unkempt hair and rippled through my horse’s mane. All around me as I rode eastwards the land looked rich and bountiful. The air was filled with birdsong and the sweet scent of new mown hay. The fields of wheat and barley and oats were well grown and the crops plump and healthy. In the meadows half-grown lambs followed their freshly sheared dams. As I rode along lanes and high roads through Devon and Dorset and Hampshire, before heading north, cows gazed at me over hedgerows, placidly chewing the cud. In the villages, women nodded their greetings while small children hid behind their skirts and the bolder lads followed me, firing questions, guessing perhaps from my appearance that I came from the expedition. It seemed that word of our return had travelled ahead of me, reaching even the smallest villages.
Had I hurried, I could probably have covered the distance in three or four days, but in my weakened state I could not ride for long hours, as I had done in the past when on a mission for Sir Francis. He would have to wait for my report. News had already gone ahead of me by fast messenger from Plymouth to London, sent by the leaders of the expedition. How truthful it was, I could not say. And of course Essex’s ship Swiftsure would have reached London some days ago. There was no need for me to hurry. Each day I stopped before I was too exhausted and spent the night in some modest village inn. I owed my post horses, like my lodging in Plymouth, to Dr Nuñez, but the small purse of coin I carried would not lodge me at any great expense, and I feared it would barely last me all the way to London.
As I neared the end of my journey, I began to hear gossip in the inn parlours about the heroic deeds achieved by the Earl of Essex in Portugal. It seemed that, single-handed, he had captured the city of Peniche and driven out the Spanish garrison there, before personally crowning King Antonio. He had then led a victorious march south to Lisbon, where he had instituted a siege. The Spanish garrison quartered there had been too cowardly to meet him in single combat for the Queen’s honour, nor would they emerge from the city to settle the affair in pitched battle, like honest men. Nay, they had cowered behind their defences like silly girls and Essex had only been persuaded to abandon the siege because of the English army’s lack of supplies and the failure of the Dom’s Portuguese supporters to appear. Reluctantly he had returned to England, but he was ready, at a day’s notice, to set out once more and fight the Spanish hand-to-hand.
Had these stories not concealed the tragic truth of the Portuguese affair, I would have laughed. As it was, I came near to weeping.
Soon it began to be whispered that Drake had returned from Portugal with fifteen Spanish galleons, each and all loaded from bilge to deck with gold, silver and precious gems. Even the ballast had been replaced with weighty treasure. Men’s eyes gleamed.
It was more than a week after leaving Plymouth that I found the roads more crowded, busy with those on foot or on horseback, carts of produce heading north, empty carts returning, packmen with their laden ponies, and from time to time a gentleman’s cavalcade, before which all men must give way.
It was beginning to grow dusk as the crowds on the road drew together and slowed, forced together like a flock of sheep through a gate. A slow, gentle English summer dusk. There ahead of me was the Bridge. The gold of the setting sun flashed off the Thames, turning it to molten metal. The first lights winked out in houses and taverns, both in Southwark on this side of the river, and in the city itself on the far side. St Paul’s tower, which had once been topped by a spire, stood on the rising ground almost opposite me.