SPRING 1557

The spring storms kept ships in port and made news from England late and unreliable. I was not the only person who waited every day on the quayside and called to incoming ships: ‘What’s the news? What’s the news in England?’ The spring gales threw rain and salt water against the tiles and windows of the house and chilled my father to his very bones. Some days he was too cold and weary to get out of bed at all and I would kindle a little fire in the grate in his bedroom and sit by his bed and read to him from the precious scraps of our Bible. On our own, and quietly, lit only by candlelight, I would read to him in the rolling sonorous language of our race. I read to him in Hebrew and he lay back on his pillows and smiled to hear the old words that promised the land to the People, and safety at last. I hid from him as best as I could the news that the country we had chosen for our refuge was now at war with one of the strongest kingdoms in Christendom, and when he asked I emphasised that at least we were inside the town walls and that whatever might happen elsewhere to the English in France, or to the Spanish just down the road at Gravelines, at least we knew that Calais would never fall.

In March, as the town went mad for King Philip who travelled through the port on his way to Gravesend, I paid little attention to the rumours of his plans for war and his intentions towards the Princess Elizabeth. I was growing very anxious for my father, who did not seem to be getting any stronger. After two weeks of worry, I swallowed my pride and sent for the newly licensed Dr Daniel Carpenter, who had set up an independent practice at a little shop on the far side of the quay. He came the moment that the street urchin delivered my message, and he came very quietly and gently as if he did not want to disturb me.

‘How long has he been ill?’ he asked me, shaking the sea fret off his thick dark cape.

‘He is not really ill. He seems tired more than anything else,’ I said, taking the cape from him and spreading it before the little fire to dry. ‘He doesn’t eat much, he will take soup and dried fruit but nothing else. He sleeps by day and night.’

‘His urine?’ Daniel asked.

I fetched the flask that I had kept for his diagnosis and he took it to the window and looked at the colour in the daylight.

‘Is he upstairs?’

‘In the back bedroom,’ I said and followed on my lost husband’s heels up the stairs.

I waited outside while Daniel took my father’s pulses and laid his cool hands on my father’s forehead, and asked him gently how he did. I heard their low-voiced exchange, the rumble of male communion, saying everything by speaking words which said nothing, a code which women can never understand.