Without thinking, I reached behind me to the shelf where I had always kept my own keys to the codes our agents used and those codes of our enemies which we had broken. There they all were, just as I had left them late in the previous year. I felt a little jump of pleasure in my chest as I looked at the familiar sheets. Some of them represented many hours of work and I was proud of them. Despite my reluctance, despite my annoyance with Phelippes, I began to feel the old excitement of the hunt. Opening the first of the documents, I could see that it was somewhat water-stained. Hardly surprising, for the Spanish ship had been taken, it appeared, after a fierce though brief battle. A quick glance confirmed that it was written in a new cipher. I curled my toes inside my stockings, which were now nearly dry. A new challenge. I tipped my hour-glass over. Had I lost my touch?

By the time the sand had run through the hour glass I had cracked the code and started to decipher the first despatch.

‘This is from King Philip himself,’ I said, breaking the silence. ‘Addressed to the governor of Mexico. He is ordering the return of two thousand experienced troops by the next ships back to Spain. Also supplies of dried corn and vegetables, and salted fish.’

I rubbed the feather of my quill along the side of my nose.

‘A bit different from the usual cargo of gold and silver.’

‘Hmm,’ said Phelippes. ‘I expect his men in the New World send gold and silver anyway, as a matter of course. So. Troops. Experienced troops. He may just want them for the Duke of Parma in the Low Countries. Since the battle at Zutphen the Spanish are pressing ahead, trying to consolidate their gains in some of the areas that France claims, as well as crushing the Protestant Dutchmen.’

‘But?’

‘But I think it’s likely he may want them for what he has been calling for many years the Enterprise of England.’

‘You mean the invasion.’

‘Aye. You know that we have been watching him for ten years or more, slowly building up his trained army and the great ships of his navy. One of his reasons for seizing Portugal was to secure the Portuguese navy and all her excellent ports along the Atlantic coast. They have given him a much stronger hold over the western trading routes, even if Drake and Hawkins and the others manage to pick off his ships from time to time. We know that he set his heart on conquering England long ago. Even that scoundrel Mendoza has us in his sights. When we expelled him from his embassy here three years ago he said, “Tell your mistress Bernardino de Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms but to conquer them.” Arrogant bastard.’

‘What makes you suspect Philip is planning anything other than his usual trouble-making?’

‘Just a feeling in my bones. And the time is right for him. As I said before, if an invasion by the Scottish queen’s Guise relations had put her on the English throne, Philip would have feared the alliance against him. Now he has been named her heir and France is riven by civil war between the Catholic League and Henri of Navarre’s Huguenots, Philip has the ideal opportunity to bring his years of planning to fruition.’

‘These experienced troops of his?’ I pointed with my quill to the letter I was deciphering. ‘The Spanish troops in the Netherlands are a trained and experienced army as well, aren’t they? What troops do we have to fight them?’

‘Nothing,’ he said grimly. ‘Save our troops raised for the campaign in the Netherlands. The Queen will not agree to a standing army. Too expensive, and possibly risky if they grew restless. We could no more resist a Spanish army if they made landfall in England than your people in Portugal did. Our only hope is our navy, and that is small enough, God knows. Philip is unscrupulous. He has been seizing every foreign ship that comes trading into any Spanish or Portuguese port, and adding them to his navy. The Venetians are furious!’

Outside the window, the dark of the winter afternoon was drawing in. Thoughtfully I fetched a candle and lit it from Phelippes’s. When I had set it down on my table I looked at the packet of letters ordering supplies of food and troops to be sent to Spain.

‘So – it really is a crisis, then? Or could be?’

‘It could be. Or,’ he conceded, ‘it could be just more of Philip’s obsession about seizing England, playing itself out in his endless schemes. What we need is time, time to strengthen our navy against his monstrous ambition. Do you know what his motto is?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Non sufficit orbis.’

‘The world is not enough,’ I said.

So it was that, despite my determination to break away from Walsingham’s service, I found myself back to my old routine, spending half my time at St Bartholomew’s and half at Seething Lane. The reports and intercepted messages all conveyed a similar picture: Spain was building and seizing ships, buying in supplies of food and armaments, training soldiers, hiring mercenaries, purchasing slaves for its galleys from north African corsairs, and continually pressing the Vatican for money. It was rumoured that there were English and Welsh slaves serving on the galleys which would be used to attack England, as well as Spanish and Portuguese ‘volunteers’, that is, men who had been unfortunate enough to be press-ganged into service in the Spanish navy. Just like the slaves, they would be shackled to their oars. If a galley was sunk, her chained oarsmen would perish with her.

Once, for two years, I had lived under the brutal regime inflicted by Spain on Portugal, until my father and I had made our escape in a merchant ship belonging to Dr Hector Nuñez to join the exiled Marranos (as we were called) in England. Our community in London at that time probably numbered between sixty and eighty souls. We were all novos cristãos or New Christians, having been forced to convert in our native land, but we held Jewish services of a sort on the Sabbath at the home of Dr Nuñez, though we had no rabbi. Under English law, we must also attend church services on Sundays. The penalties for failure to do so were heavy. Although we all met together at our single makeshift synagogue, the churches we attended were scattered all over London. My father and I attended St Bartholomew’s beside the hospital – both church and hospital had once been part of the Priory of St Bartholomew, dissolved in the time of the Queen’s father. For myself, I was unsure where my faith lay. Although I had been born Jewish, I had found much consolation in the Protestant faith of England, with its belief in reading the Bible for oneself, as Walsingham himself had once urged me to do. It was a far cry from the rigid control of the Spanish Catholic church and its reign of terror under the Inquisition.

Our Marrano community tended to fall into two distinct groups. There were the professional men like my father and Dr Nuñez and Dr Lopez. They were all doctors, bringing with them to England their advanced skill in Arabic medicine. There were also a few eminent apothecaries and one or two lawyers who had been born in England and trained here. Many of this professional class, who lived mostly near the Tower, not far from Walsingham’s house, also had interests in the spice trade, some – like Dr Nuñez – owning their own ships, others – like Dr Lopez and my father – investing in the trade. My father’s investments were small, for we had lost everything when we escaped from Portugal. Dr Nuñez and Dr Lopez had chosen to come to England before the Spanish invasion with its accompanying Inquisition, so they were far more prosperous than we were. Dunstan Añez, Ruy Lopez’s father-in-law, had come much earlier. His grown-up children had been born here and thought of themselves as English. He was one of the leaders of our community, a wealthy man holding a distinguished position, as Purveyor of Groceries and Spices to Her Majesty the Queen, while Ruy Lopez was the queen’s personal physician.