On my way down to Seething Lane past the disapproving portraits that lined the hallway and thence by the backstairs I came suddenly face-to-face with Poley. I stopped with a gasp. I had believed him still to be in the Low Countries. It was a shock, the way he could suddenly appear out of the blue, like the devil in a masquerade. Would I never be rid of him? Since he had been released from the Tower, doubtless he was once again busy about the darker side of Walsingham’s affairs. He would have had no scruples about killing the agent Titus Allanby. Indeed, he might have found it less inconvenient than trying to smuggle him out of Coruña.

‘So-ho!’ he cried, seizing me by both arms, so that I could not move. ‘It is our fine young gallant. Well met, Christoval Alvarez.’

‘I have no business with you, Robert Poley.’ I spoke coldly, keeping the fear out of my voice.

‘But I might have business with you.’ He stroked my cheek and I twisted away. ‘I’m off to Denmark. I could do with a fine young lad to run errands and share my bed.’

‘I too am away on Sir Francis’s business,’ I said, jerking myself free. ‘So you will need to find some other lad to suit your purposes.’

I pushed past him and ran headlong down the stairs and into the street.

On the final Sabbath before our departure I made my way to the Nuñez house to attend a service to bless the mission and pray for success. I went alone, for my father was weak and tired, and had taken to his bed. As I swayed to the hypnotic rhythm of the prayers, I wondered how many of those around me were saying their farewells, intending never to return if the attack on the Spanish garrison in Lisbon were successful. Sara’s father Dunstan Añez was there. He had invested heavily in the expedition, but would not be going to Portugal, for the Queen could not spare him from his duties as her Purveyor of Groceries and Spices. Dom Antonio, standing between Hector Nuñez and Roderigo Lopez, had come from Eton to attend the synagogue, though in Eton he was a regular Christian church-goer. The three of them were in a state of exaltation which turned me cold with apprehension. During the years since the Inquisition had come for us, I had grown fatalistic. Hopes too high, expectations of glory and triumph, seemed to me to invite a crushing blow from the hand of fate. I suppose my inherited Jewish pessimism had been further shaped by my own life and my education in the classics – a man who indulges in hubris must expect to incur nemesis.

I had been lax in attending our hidden Jewish services in recent years. Like the others in our Marrano community I was also a baptised Christian, and my mother’s father was a great Christian nobleman. As I had grown older I had become more confused about my faith, not less. Like every citizen of England I was obliged to attend church every Sunday, or else pay a fine as a recusant. The Christian services of Elizabeth’s largely tolerant church had become comfortingly familiar to me. Even suspected Catholics who compromised and attended the Protestant services would not be examined too closely, provided they kept their Catholic masses private and did not aid the missions of militant priests sent over from France. Even William Byrd, our most eminent composer, was widely known to be a Catholic, but he was tolerated. On the whole, I found the English church accorded much with my own beliefs.

Yet the services in our makeshift synagogue – the central hall of the Nuñez house – brought back memories of my childhood, before the Spanish came. Perhaps this expedition would help me to understand whether I was Portuguese Jew or English Christian. I had seen Anne Lopez climb the stairs to the women’s gallery with her mother. They would be here at Ruy’s urging, but from conversations I had had with her over recent months, I knew that she too was troubled by divided loyalties. For her the magnet of England was even stronger, since like her mother she had been born here. But for her father, she would hardly have counted as a Stranger any longer.

I joined in the prayers and responses as dutifully as ever, but I felt a stranger here myself, and my thoughts took me elsewhere, to my work and friends here in London and the unforeseeable prospects which lay ahead.

The night before we were to sail from London to Plymouth, on the first stage of our voyage, Simon appeared at our door, having somehow got word that I was leaving, though I had been careful to suggest to the players, whenever I saw them, that the likelihood of my joining the expedition was remote. I was half glad and half sorry to see him. I had come to value the friends I had made in these last few years, so his good wishes and prayers meant much to me, but I have never liked saying farewell. As for my most intimate feelings for Simon, I could hardly admit them even to myself.

I brought him into our inner parlour, where my father was dozing beside a small fire. It was a warm day outside, the spring weather having brought early and unreliable sunshine, but he had begun to feel the cold more often, so I had lit a fire to comfort him. I motioned Simon to a stool while I tucked a blanket around my father’s knees, then I poured us each a tankard of small ale.

‘So,’ he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, ‘you are off on this expedition against the Spanish in Portugal.’

I nodded. I did not ask where he had heard this. Actors are such very demons for gossip.

‘But why should you go? What has it to do with you? I thought you were done with that past of yours.’

‘Sometimes the past will not let you go,’ I said, watching the bubbles which formed on my ale as I swirled it round and round. ‘Besides . . .’ I hesitated. I was reluctant to admit my father’s folly. ‘Besides, my father has put money into the expedition. I am going to keep a watchful eye on his investment.’

‘Ah, so it is to be a raiding expedition. The treasures Spain has looted from the Americas!’

‘No doubt that is part of it, since Drake is to command the fleet,’ I conceded, without needing to reveal my knowledge of the plans Walsingham had shared with me. ‘But for my father and his friends, the principal purpose is to drive the Spaniards out of Portugal and restore Dom Antonio to the throne.’

‘Will he make a good king?’

I could tell by the expression on his face that he had heard something of Dom Antonio. I could say little in the defence of such a man. Indeed, the nearer the time drew to when we were to leave, the more absurd did it seem to commit so much money and so many men to put him on the throne. Would he benefit Portugal? I doubted it. But even Dom Antonio was better than the occupation of a hated foreign power and the imposition of the Inquisition on a previously more tolerant nation.

‘Perhaps not a great king,’ I said, as diplomatically as I could, ‘but we Portuguese are his people and he will rule as a Portuguese king amongst his own subjects. The Spaniards treat us little better than they do the savages of the New World. We exist merely to do their bidding and enrich them. If we resist, we are killed.’

‘Then why should you go back? Will you not be in danger?’

I made much of drinking my ale and thought of the missions Walsingham had set me, and of my own private plans. I could not answer that. I set down my ale and poked at the fire, which did not need it.

He gave me a troubled look and leaned forward to take both my hands in his.

‘Have a care, Kit. Your friends have need of you.’ There was something different about the way he looked at me, as though he were trying to peer into my very soul.

I felt a foolish tightening of my throat and hoped he would not notice the tears blurring my eyes. He must not find me out. He must not. It would be too dangerous by far. I must not weep or I should give myself away.

‘I shall not be fighting,’ I said. I drew my hands gently from his and got up to fetch more ale, my back to him. ‘I go merely to see Dom Antonio crowned, to watch over my father’s investment, and to lend my medical skills if they are needed.’