The Enterprise of England Page 4

  His words left a chill in the air.

  Walsingham took up Ruy’s idea, but kept the control of it in his own hands. A very deluge of plans and schemes rained down upon Mendoza in Paris, channelled through da Vega, who believed he was passing on genuine secrets garnered from his position close to Dom Antonio. At the same time, Walsingham sent secret dispatches to the Queen’s ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford, intimating that Sir Francis Drake was to make a pre-emptive strike on Spain’s possessions in the New World, to cut off her supplies of money, goods and men.

  I did not understand this, until Phelippes explained.

  ‘Stafford is a rogue,’ he said. ‘Constantly in debt. He is an inverate gambler and falls more and more into debt with every passing week. He needs money and will sell his soul to the highest bidder. Look at this.’

  He tossed a report on to my desk. It was in one of our own ciphers, one so familiar I could read it without recourse to the key.

  ‘It is from Gilbert Gifford.’

  ‘Aye.’

  I had worked with Gifford the previous year, when we had been unravelling the plot by Babington and his fellow conspirators. Gifford had posed as a Catholic sympathiser, though he worked for Walsingham. When the conspirators were rounded up, he was so afraid for his safety that he had fled to France and had been working there ever since. To maintain his disguise, Walsingham and Phelippes continued to pretend that they believed him to be one of the conspirators. He lived a dangerous life, threatened on all sides. I ran my eye quickly over the report.

  ‘He says he has followed Mendoza and seen him entering Stafford’s house secretly by night.’

  ‘Aye, and staying for some considerable time. Long, secret discussions by night.’

  ‘Stafford is a traitor?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘But why does the Queen not recall him?’

  Phelippes shrugged. ‘She has been warned. She refuses to recall him. Sir Francis is not sure why. Perhaps she does not believe Stafford is a traitor. Perhaps it is because he is the stepson of her aunt, Mary Boleyn.’

  ‘That has never stopped the Tudors in the past,’ I muttered.

  ‘You may think such thoughts, Kit. It were better you did not voice them.’

  Even so, I found it hard to believe that the Queen would allow a man known to be a traitor to continue as her ambassador in such an important posting as Paris. Sir Francis himself had been ambassador there many years before, at the time of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The horrors he had witnessed then had marked him for life. After such a distinguished predecessor in the post, why was the traitor Stafford not summoned home to answer for his conduct? Yet Walsingham, knowing Stafford for what he was, could now make use of him.

  Having taken Ruy Lopez’s plan in hand, Walsingham controlled exactly what misleading information was leaked to da Vega, and through him to Mendoza. I am not sure how he approached Ruy or let it be known that he knew about da Vega. Certainly he cannot have mentioned my name, for Ruy never gave any indication that I had passed on the information to Sir Francis.

  That flood of gossip, instructions, secret briefings and military plans which found their way to Mendoza must have had him scratching his head in confusion. Though, given his known arrogance, he may merely have assumed that it was all the result of his own cleverness. I felt no pity for him. While he was the Spanish ambassador in London he was dyed to the elbows in various plots to invade England, assassinate the Queen, and put the Scottish woman on the throne, all of which had been followed closely from Phelippes’s office. Mendoza had been expelled from England, but his skin remained intact, unlike those gallant if ill-judging boys like Babington. I hoped his Spanish master would eventually roast him alive for his false intelligence.

  Amid these flying rumours, on the twelfth day of April, Drake’s flagship, the aptly named Elizabeth Bonaventura, followed by his fleet, slipped away from Plymouth.

  ‘Sir Francis has had da Vega arrested,’ Phelippes told me, as we worked on a batch of papers sent to da Vega from Mendoza, intercepted at Dover. Ever since the increased concern about a Spanish invasion, I had been summoned to assist him for more hours in the day, despite my attempts to plead my hospital work.

  ‘What will happen to him?’ I asked. ‘To da Vega?’

  ‘Oh, nothing will happen to him. He was arrested before Drake sailed. And then he was questioned cunningly, as if we were not quite sure whether he was an honest follower of Dom Antonio or not. Sir Francis released him when he calculated that it was too late for da Vega to inform King Philip that Drake had sailed not for the New World but for Spain.’

  ‘But won’t he be a danger to us?’

  ‘Oh, no. The spy you know is not a danger. It is the hidden spy you must fear. Sir Francis wants da Vega to think he has fooled us. That way he can be used in future to channel false information to the Spanish king.’

  I nodded. The longer I worked in Walsingham’s service, the better I understood how these affairs were conducted.

  Sir Francis’s sense of timing was accurate, but a close-run thing, for some weeks later, Dr Nuñez told me that his agent in Cadiz had sent word that the Spanish king had received da Vega’s letter warning of Drake’s intention to attack Spain on the last day of April, that is, on the very day when Drake began burning the ships in the confined quarters of Cadiz harbour.

  ‘Before he set sail for home,’ Dr Nuñez said, ‘Drake destroyed half the Spanish fleet. He has bought us a precious year longer to prepare for invasion. Although,’ he added, with a wry smile, ‘he burnt my ship along with the rest.’

  Chapter Three

  Drake sailed home to a hero’s triumphant welcome. Drake the hero. Drake the pirate. Drake the Dragon, El Draque, as the Spanish called him. He hated the Spanish as much as I did, though for different reasons. And he had the means to avenge himself on them, which I had not. Soon the story of his attack on Cadiz was being told on every street in London, growing in extravagance with every retelling. The truth itself was astonishing, and I suppose what we knew at Seething Lane was as near as anyone would ever come to an honest account of one of Drake’s expeditions.

  Just before sailing from Plymouth, Drake had written to Sir Francis, mentioning his fears that nervous counsellors might yet persuade the Queen to forbid the expedition – men who would ‘keep their finger out of the fire’, though he believed God was with him. His letter, scribbled on board ship, ended:

  ‘The wind commands me away, our ships are under sail. God grant we may so live in His fear that the enemy may have cause to say that God fights for Her Majesty as well abroad as at home. Haste.’

  Drake was right to fear the Queen’s notorious ability to change her mind. A messenger was despatched post haste to Plymouth with orders to rein back the attack to a minor privateering expedition, forbidding a direct attack on the Spanish mainland, for she still clung – so Walsingham said – to a forlorn hope of peace with Spain. Burghley too was cautious, but Walsingham was convinced that the only thing that could withstand Spain was military action. The Queen’s messenger arrived too late in Plymouth. Drake’s fleet had already sailed. The Queen’s order was sent on by fast pinnace, but it was driven back by bad weather and returned to England.

  ‘Drake may well believe that God is with him,’ Phelippes said, with a grim smile. ‘For the storms of Heaven meant he never received the Queen’s message. Just how hard the various bearers tried to catch him we will never know, but most Englishmen are with him, heart and soul.’

  Soon Drake was being praised for singeing the King of Spain’s beard, a vivid picture particularly pleasing to every true-blooded Englishman. On the way home he seized a treasure ship packed with spices, silks and ivory, so the Queen herself profited from the expedition in money as well as strategy. No doubt she forgave him for not obeying her last minute order. She could always claim that she had been against it, if ever it came to peace negotiations with Spain. The attack on Cadiz had destroyed not only a large number o
f the ships in the harbour but most of the provisions and armaments stored in the warehouses of the port. The town itself had suffered, and not only through Drake’s activities.

  Two weeks after Drake returned, I was transcribing a report from one of our agents in Lisbon. As I reached the end, I could not stop myself crying out in horror.

  Phelippes looked up. ‘What is it, Kit? Not bad news, I hope.’

  ‘Despicable news,’ I said. ‘Most of the report simply confirms what we already knew about the attack on Cadiz, but this is new. It seems that when the mayor of Cadiz realised Drake was attacking, he ordered all the women and children to take shelter in Matagorda Castle. They rushed there in great numbers, but the captain in command of the castle slammed the gates in their faces. Nearly thirty of them, mostly children, were suffocated or crushed to death.’

  I could see the frightened and screaming children falling under the press of bodies, kicked, trampled and dying, the women panicking, the sound of the heavy door crashing against its frame, the terror of being trapped between the invading forces and the callous indifference of their own soldiers.

  ‘In war it is often the innocent who suffer,’ Phelippes said.

  ‘But we aren’t at war,’ I objected.

  ‘Are we not?’

  The Queen and her more cautious counsellors like Burghley might attempt to keep up the pretence of peace with Spain, and many citizens must have hoped for it in their hearts, but their heads would have told them that Walsingham and Drake and Admiral Howard were right. As soon as King Philip could repair his losses, he would once again undertake his Enterprise of England. War would come eventually, despite all efforts to stave it off.

  In midsummer I transcribed a despatch from our agent in Rome which contained disquieting news. We had known, since his earlier reports, that Philip’s emissaries had been seeking the support of the Pope, both ecclesiastical and financial.

  ‘Well,’ I said, laying down my transcription on Phelippes’s desk, ‘it seems Philip has got what he wants. The Pope is to give him a million ducats and grants him the right to bestow the crown of England on whomsoever he chooses. The Infanta is mentioned.’

  Phelippes grabbed the despatch and ran his eye over it.

  ‘So, the Bishop of Rome thinks he has the disposal of our crown, does he?’ He spat the words out.

  ‘It seems so. But look at the end.’ I pointed with the tip of my quill.

  When he had read the last few lines, he laughed.

  ‘Oh, very clever! His Roman Holiness is a shrewd fellow indeed. So Philip will not receive the Pope’s money in advance to finance the invasion. He gets half the money only after Spanish boots are on English soil, the rest of the money to be dribbled in, bit by bit.’

  ‘All we have to do is ensure they do not land,’ I said. ‘No doubt the Pope will thank us for saving his money.’

  ‘Indeed. That is all we have to do. Well, thanks to Drake’s fire party at Cadiz, we have until next summer to create a navy strong enough to withstand what Philip has been building up for years.’

  ‘If the Spanish troops do manage to land,’ I said quietly, ‘we have no hope, have we?’

  ‘None at all. They are a trained and battle-hardened professional army. We have nothing but the amateur militias and the Trained Bands, who are trained for nothing but keeping the citizens in order.’

  ‘So we must make sure they don’t land,’ I said.

  ‘That is all we have to do.’

  Although despatches continued to come in from our own agents, and letters passing between Philip and his various emissaries were regularly intercepted, the volume of work in Phelippes’s office diminished and I was able to spend far more of my time at the hospital, working at Seething Lane no more than once or twice a week.

  For the last year I had had little opportunity to continue my studies with my mathematics tutor, Thomas Harriot, but he still called in from time to time at Duck Lane, to make music with my father and me, and we had once supped with him, when I had a chance to play his beautiful virginals. Now in midsummer, he took me for the first time to Durham House, to one of the meetings of the group that gathered about Raleigh to discuss mathematics and astronomy and navigation, and also to consider the prospects offered by the new world of Virginia, the riches in both plants and minerals to be found in that country, and the customs and beliefs of its strange people.

  I had seen Raleigh in the distance, riding in procession with the Queen, but never met him or found myself in the same room before that evening. As well as Raleigh there was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, him they called ‘the wizard Earl’. Both Northumberland and Raleigh were patrons of my tutor and were eager to learn from him. There were others there – that strange man Dr Dee, necromancer and alchemist and the Queen’s own astrologer, amongst them – all gathered in a turret room overlooking the City and the river, so that I was frozen into awkwardness, tongue-tied by the presence of so many famous gentlemen.

  Northumberland did have something of the wizardly about him, his hair unkempt and his doublet buttoned awry, but he was eager and friendly. Raleigh was the quieter man, less interested in astrology and demonology, but passionate for his New World exploration. His second Roanoke venture had just departed, which was to plant a permanent colony in Virginia, but the Queen had forbidden him to accompany it. It was plain to see from his restlessness how much he longed to be on the high seas at that very moment. While Raleigh was not averse to a little privateering himself, he was not cast in the same mould as Drake. Instead of foreseeing an England living off plunder from the Spanish ships returning from the New World, he was urging the establishment of our own colonies there, so that we could benefit from such riches ourselves.

  I sat on a stool somewhat withdrawn and merely listened, feeling it was not my place to join in the discussions, although Harriot had told me he was taking me to Durham House because Raleigh liked to draw clever young men into his circle and open up new ideas and new worlds to them. We had been there about half an hour when we heard footsteps leaping up the turret stairs and the door burst open, without a knock. It was a young man in his early twenties with a high forehead and hair of a gingerish brown. He wore a young man’s small moustache and tiny streak of beard below the lower lip – the sort of beard and moustache which look as though the wearer has dipped his face too deep in a pot of brown beer and forgotten to wipe it afterwards. He was somewhat lavishly dressed and did not apologise either for his late arrival or his impolite entry. I thought him arrogant. His eyes swept over me and dismissed me as of no account. He was followed by another young man, and to my surprise I saw that it was Simon. He gave me one startled look, then smiled. I returned his smile reluctantly, wondering who his brash companion might be. Simon himself looked embarrassed and a little defiant.

  ‘Ah, here at last,’ said Raleigh tolerantly, motioning the two of them to chairs across the room from me. ‘You know most people here, except . . .’ he indicated me, ‘another Kit. Kit Marlowe, this is Kit Alvarez. And your friend?’

  ‘Simon Hetherington,’ said the other Kit, ignoring me and waving a careless hand. ‘Another man of the theatre. Or rather boy.’

  I saw Simon flush and pitied him. His skin was so fair it always betrayed him. The debate resumed. They were discussing some of the latest discoveries in celestial navigation, and before the evening was out I had the satisfaction of being asked by Harriot to explain some of the mathematical calculations, which Marlowe was compelled to attend to. As we began to take our leave at the end of the evening, Marlowe approached me, followed by Simon. He looked me up and down.

  ‘Quite the clever lad, isn’t he, Simon?’ He smiled maliciously and flicked me painfully on the cheek with a long fingernail.

  ‘A beardless boy, and invited to lecture grown men of learning. We shall have dancing dogs next, and apes from the Indies dressed in doublets and lace.’

  He looked me over again, and I was conscious of my drab physician’s clothes compared wi
th the finery he and Simon wore.

  ‘A Portingall, are you? A Jew? We all know what should be done with the Jews, bloodsuckers and heretics.’

  Bile rose in my throat and I clenched my fists, but dared not challenge him.

  At that he gave a mocking laugh, flung his arm around Simon’s shoulders, and propelled him out of the room and down the stairs, their feet clattering on the stone.

  I found this encounter deeply unsettling. I had never before seen this fellow Marlowe amongst Burbage’s company, yet he and Simon seemed to be on terms of very close friendship. Perhaps I had only myself to blame. Since we had watched Sidney’s funeral procession back in February, I had hardly seen Simon, my time being so caught up in the work of Walsingham’s service. Although I now had more freedom, I found myself reluctant, after meeting Marlowe, to seek out my friends amongst the players. Until that evening at Raleigh’s house I had been intending to visit them again at the Theatre out beyond Bishopsgate, perhaps to make music again with Guy Bingham, their chief musician and comic actor. Over the twelve days of Christmas last winter I had seen them nearly every day and felt myself at ease amongst their motley company. Like me, many of them concealed their past, living only for the moment. The playhouse was their home, the company of players their family. They lived in a variety of lodgings, ate and dressed well when they were in funds, went hungry and pledged their costumes to Marrano pawnbrokers in Bishopsgate Without when times were hard. They were apt to give little thought for the future. Money slipped through their fingers like water. Yet they were the most easy-going company of men and boys I had ever known.

  That is not to say they did not squabble, if one player was given a part that another coveted, or James Burbage tried to force them to play a part in one fashion, when they thought it should be played quite differently. But their squabbles flared up with great noise and drama, then were over in a moment.

  Now, however, I was afraid to visit them. Afraid I might meet the despicable Marlowe and suffer more of his taunting. So at first I was at a loss what to say when I met Guy buying oranges at a stall in Cheapside. Since the troubles with Spain, oranges were expensive and hard to come by.