The Portuguese Affair Read Free Page A

house of Aviz, claimant to the lost crown. We would drive the Inquisition, together with the Spanish, out of our country. Then Portugal, that great nation, once a power in the world, with colonies to east and west, with ships trading on every sea, and above all with tolerance of the Jewish faith, would rise again; the Golden Age of a century before would be restored.
    Part of their argument was based on the ancient Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, ratified two hundred years ago when John of Gaunt’s daughter married the king of Portugal, but dating back more than two hundred years before that. The alliance of perpetual friendship had begun when England helped Portugal to drive out the Moors, but it had been strengthened in the days when Portugal was the greater power, home of seafarers who explored all the world, discovering new lands. Back in those times, England was the lesser nation. Now the situation was reversed again and Portugal cried out for help from her ancient ally. And with such aid, Portugal would once again become great, free of her Spanish overlords. So they argued.
    These were the old men’s dreams. We who were younger did not share them. Anne Lopez and I discussed it one day towards the end of winter when I was visiting them.
    ‘I am glad, Kit,’ she said violently, ‘ glad that my proposed marriage to the banker of Lyons has been abandoned. I want to stay in London. My father talks of nothing but returning to Portugal in glory, as Dom Antonio’s chief adviser and courtier, but my mother is English and so am I. The Queen is going to pay for my brother Anthony to attend Winchester College. What interest have we in Portugal? It is nothing to me or my brothers and sisters.’
    I nodded. ‘I have no wish to go back,’ I said. ‘My memories are too bitter.’
    I did not tell her of unfinished business there, which filled me sometimes with hope, and sometimes with despair. And, always, there was the shadow of remembered terror.
    ‘Yet our fathers think differently,’ I said. ‘Even my father, after all he suffered, dreams these dreams of a free Portugal.’
    Anne’s mother Sara, too, shared her worries with me.
    ‘Ruy is drawn more and more into Dom Antonio’s affairs, Kit. He has poured every penny we possess into this expedition they are planning. Dom Antonio has pledged him fifty thousand crowns and five percent of the proceeds from the West African franchise when Portugal is freed, but what if the expedition fails? We will lose everything. Somehow they have even persuaded the Queen to invest five thousand pounds, but the greatest burden is being borne by Ruy and Hector Nuñez and my father and the others.’
    ‘Drake is a partner in the venture, is he not?’ I said. ‘And Sir John Norreys. The greatest sea captain and the greatest professional soldier.’
    ‘Drake,’ said Sara bitterly, ‘is a pirate. Everyone knows that whatever other men gamble and lose, Drake always manages to fill his pockets – nay, his very barns – with gold and precious stones. If there is profit to be made, Drake will find a way, and the freeing of Portugal will not be the first thing on his mind.’
    Yes, Sara was bitter, but she had good cause. Ruy was prepared to thrown away everything in this venture, destroying her peace of mind and risking her future in her homeland of England. She had never even trodden the soil of Portugal, for her father, Dunstan Añez, had come to London long ago. Like her brothers and sisters she had been born here and thought of herself as English.
    I was also growing worried about my father. Ever since our long weeks caring for the sick and wounded after the Armada, I had watched him becoming older and more frail before my very eyes. Of late he had turned forgetful, setting down a tincture half made and wandering off to some other task, and then to another. More and more often in the hospital I had to conceal some business he had left unfinished and finish it myself before anyone noticed. I