Bartholomew Fair (3 page)

The bed was soft, the linen scented with lavender, the feather bed and pillows surely filled with the finest goose down. Ruy was never one to stint himself on the little luxuries of life. I was sinking rapidly into sleep when I was jerked awake by a heavy weight landing on my feet. Rikki had always slept on my bed at home. It would be difficult to make him understand that the dirt and fleas he now carried might not be welcomed amongst the Lopez bedding. He turned around several times, lay down, got up, then padded along the bed until he could stretch out against my chest. I put my arm around him and pressed my face against his thick fur. Holding him close, I finally let my grief break free.

The next morning I had feared I would have to force myself back into my filthy doublet and breeches, though my shirt and hose had fallen apart at last when I had peeled them off. Yet before I was fully awake there was a light tap on the door.

‘Aye?’ I called sleepily.

With sound instinct, Rikki jumped off the bed and stood wagging his tail just inside the door.

‘I have brought you some clothes, Kit.’

Sara came in, her arms full.

‘They are some of Ambrose’s,’ she said. ‘They will be a little large, but better than those rags you were wearing last night.’

Ambrose was her eldest son, a grown man now and working for his grandfather, Sara’s father, Dunstan Añes. They would certainly be too large, for he was broad in the shoulder and at least six inches taller than I, but they would be wonderful after the horrors of the bundle in the corner. I sat up.

‘Sara, you are a marvel,’ I said. ‘Ambrose does not mind?’

‘He is living at my father’s house now, and does not need them. Besides, he would be glad to help.’

She laid the clothes on the end of the bed, then stirred the dirty bundle on the floor with the toe of her shoe.

‘What shall we do with these?’

‘Burn them!’ I said with a shudder. ‘Not even a beggar would welcome them.’

She picked them up fastidiously and held them well away from her.

‘I’ll give them to one of the men to burn. When you are dressed, come to my parlour. You and I and Anne will break our fast together. Ruy has already set off to deliver his letter in person to the Privy Council.’

‘Anthony is not yet on holiday from Winchester?’

‘He comes home next week.’ She looked anxious.

I knew that the Queen had sent the younger Lopez son to Winchester at her own expense, for he was a promising boy. Like her father, the Queen chose to raise men to serve her from amongst the middling sort, preferring them to the sons of the great families, who were petty kings in their own lands. Men who owed everything to the monarch could be counted on for their loyalty. Lord Burghley had once been simple William Cecil, from a minor gentry family, like my own employer, Sir Francis Walsingham. Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, John Norreys – so many of our distinguished men had risen by reason of their own abilities rather than their ancient lineage.

‘Anthony is happy at school?’

‘He missed his home and family at first, but now he has made friends and the masters think well of him.’ She smiled a little sadly. I knew she must be thinking that Ruy’s grandiose schemes for the Portuguese expedition might destroy the prospects of his children.

I climbed out of bed, reluctant to leave it after the first truly comfortable night I had spent in months.

‘These clothes of Ambrose’s will be loose,’ I said, ‘but I will manage well enough with them. I surely cannot wear his shoes!’

She laughed, for Ambrose was often teased about the size of his feet, which his sister Anne claimed would rival those of the African oliphant.

‘You shall have a pair of my plain house shoes. They are near enough like to a man’s shoe. I’ll bring them to the parlour.’

After she had gone, I dressed quickly. The clothes were indeed loose, but they were clean and comfortable, and made of good worsted cloth, the hose knitted of a fine silky yarn, better than any I had worn since those long ago days in Coimbra. I ran my fingers through my hair and realised again I would need to borrow a comb, for it was densely matted. All this Rikki watched with interest. Looking at him I realised that one of my first tasks would be to bathe him, if he was to be allowed to stay in this respectable house, for he was far from respectable himself at the moment.

Satisfied that I had done the best I could with my appearance, I made my way downstairs to join Sara and Anne in the parlour. Anne was of an age with me and had become, over the years, a kind of sister, though she still believed me to be a boy, just as her father did. Until now, Sara had kept my secret well. I hoped I could maintain the fiction while I lived cheek by jowl with the rest of the family.

The next two weeks I spent in a curious kind of limbo. Until I had respectable clothes which fitted me, I was confined to the house, and while I lived here I tried to make myself as unobtrusive as I could. I wanted to avoid Ruy, but this was clearly impossible, and matters were not helped when he encountered me the first morning bathing Rikki in the paved court behind the kitchen premises. We were both thoroughly wet, although Rikki was now clean and – as far as I could tell – free from fleas.

‘What is this?’ Ruy had come to stroll about his garden, of which he was particularly proud, having plans to emulate some of the great gardens of London. There was insufficient room for a sizeable garden here in Wood Street, and before the voyage he had been talking of moving to a larger house.

Now he frowned at the dog. ‘I did not know you had brought this cur with you, Christoval.’

‘I left him with my father while we were away,’ I said stiffly. ‘When I returned to discover my father dead and my home and all our possessions seized, I found Rikki turned out into the streets. As I was.’

At this, a faint look of embarrassment passed over his face, but did not linger.

‘What does Mistress Lopez say to this?’

‘Sara says that she is happy for him to stay as long as I do. He is well trained. He will be no trouble. And I trust
I
shall not trouble you for long.’

I could not keep the bitterness out of my voice, for I owed my present predicament largely to Ruy. It was he who had persuaded my father to invest in the expedition and to send me – as Ruy claimed – to ‘keep an eye’ on that investment. As if anything I could have done would have hindered the disaster. Had I remained at home, I could have cared for my father, perhaps even have prevented his death. I could have dealt with our creditors, for the thousand pounds my father had invested would have paid them off with ample to spare. Even had my father died, it was likely I could have kept my place as assistant physician at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, for the governors had good reason to think well of me. Instead, all was lost because of this man.

He ignored my words now, turning on his heel and strolling away down the garden. I dried Rikki on an old towel the cook had given me. I wished I could walk out of the house there and then, but I could not.

Since I could not leave the house at present to look for work, it seemed the most useful thing I could do would be to write up a full account of the entire Portuguese affair as I had witnessed it, from the time the raw recruits had run amok in Plymouth to the wasted siege of Coruña, and the disastrous decision to divide the army from the fleet at Peniche. I would recount in detail the horrors of the overland march from Peniche to Lisbon, with the men sickening and dying with every yard we covered. The
soi-disant
siege of Lisbon had been nothing but a despairing encampment before the walls, where more men had died. And then the final betrayal. Drake had loaded up all our food and sailed off to the Azores, while the remaining army had been left to starve and die on the return journey. On our return to Plymouth we had discovered that Drake had lied and sailed straight home.

The report was intended for Walsingham, for I had promised him to present all the facts when I returned, but writing out the entire account and sparing none of the leaders – Drake, Norreys, Dom Antonio, Ruy Lopez and the errant Earl of Essex – I was able to work off some of my anger, although I kept the tone as factual and distanced as I was able.

Since I thought he might wish to share this report with the Privy Council, I also wrote a second separate report intended for him alone, setting out how I had fared on the two missions he had set me to carry out. The first – the rescue of the agent Titus Allanby from Coruña – had been successful, as he would know already, since Allanby had returned to England directly from Coruña. The other, to ensure that his agent Hunter was freed from prison in Lisbon, had proved impossible, since we had never set foot in the City.

Writing these reports occupied several days, during the time when my new clothes were being ordered and made. Sara herself sewed me undergarments, a night shift and some new silk shirts, with some assistance from Anne. Even back in Coimbra I had not been very skilled with a needle, and since taking on my masculine disguise I had never had one in my hand, except to stitch wounds. Several pairs of hose were ordered from the stocking-knitter who supplied the whole Lopez family, and a Marrano tailor came to the house to measure me for breeches and doublets. Sara was more nervous than I that he might detect my sex, but I was accustomed to deceiving tailors and the session passed off without trouble.

The day came at last when I could don an entire suit of clothes at last, and I was outfitted in all but shoes.

‘I know a family of leather-workers in Eastcheap,’ I told Sara. ‘If you will permit me to wear your shoes long enough to go there to be measured and fitted, I should like to give them the business.’

‘Of course. Is this the lad who had the leg amputated, after the fall of Sluys?’

‘Aye. William Baker. He works with his brother-in-law, Jake Winterly. He was more fortunate than most injured soldiers, that he had a home and occupation to go to.’

I frowned, thinking of all the soldiers and sailors turned ashore at Plymouth after the recent expedition, with nothing in return for all their suffering but a paltry five shillings and a licence to beg their way home to their villages.

‘Before I left in the spring,’ I said, ‘William was learning the craft of cobbling with the shoe-maker in the shop next door. He’s sweet on the man’s daughter, I suspect.’ Thinking of William, my heart lifted, for he was one man close to death whom I had managed to save.

It felt strange to walk out of the front door of the Lopez house into Wood Street, free at last to make my way across London. My confinement had been comfortable and as pleasant as Sara and Anne could make it, but it had felt like a prison nevertheless. Anthony was now home from school and asked to come with me, but I persuaded him to stay at home. I wanted to be on my own for a while. The Lopezes had been more than kind, but I could not live on their charity for ever. Once I was decently shod, I would take my reports to Sir Francis Walsingham at his house in Seething Lane and discover whether there might be work for me again as a code-breaker with Thomas Phelippes.

August heat had ripened the stench of the London streets, which struck like a blow after a long period surrounded by the sweet herbs and well scrubbed rooms of the Lopez home. It brought to my mind the stark contrast between the confined quarters on shipboard and the fresh scents of the forest of Buçaco when I had ridden to find my sister Isabel. Was it really no more than three months earlier? I pushed thoughts of Isabel from my mind. I must have the courage to face a future alone in this great stinking City, for I knew nowhere else that I might find work and a livelihood.

When I stepped inside the leatherwork shop, William’s sister, Bess Winterly, greeted me at the door with exclamations of pleasure.

‘Dr Alvarez! You are returned alive and well from that terrible voyage! Come in, come in.’

She bustled about, pulling forward a stool for me and holding aside the curtain which divided the shop from the working premises.

‘Jake! Will! See who is here!’

Young Will, son of Bess and Jake, came through from the workshop with a half-finished belt in his hand.

‘Will,’ I said, clapping him on the shoulder, ‘I swear you have grown six inches since I saw you last.’

He blushed with pleasure. ‘Not six inches, surely, master, but I do b’leeve as I’m taller by an inch or two.’

Jake arrived, wiping neat’s-foot oil from his fingers with a rag before he shook my hand, grinning.

‘But where is William?’ I asked, with a momentary stab of fear. Had the gangrene returned?

Bess and Jake exchanged a glance, smiling.

‘Our William?’ Bess said, pouring me the mug of ale they always insisted on giving me. ‘Our William is quite taken with the shoe-making trade.’

Young Will snorted. ‘My uncle is quite taken with Liza Cordiner, you mean, Mother.’

Jake sat down beside me and poured himself a mug of ale. ‘Matters have gone well for us, Dr Alvarez, since we saw you in the spring. Ned Cordiner, who owns the shop next door, has decided to retire from business and join his sister on her farm in Essex. Her husband died of the sweating sickness four months ago and she finds it hard to run the farm alone while her children are so small. He has sold us the business and we will join the two premises together.’