“Our fire ships forced the Armada out of anchorage, broke up their plan!” he said, talking to a group of officers.

“Put yourself on a fire ship,” he boomed. “You’re at the rudder. She’s aflame—flames are roaring aft! Your whole ship’s blazing but somehow you bugger her against a Spanish hull. You’re beaten off. They’re afraid you have a powder mine in your hold. There’s cannon shot! You dive overboard. It’s a long, icy swim. Most men never make it out of that water...

“What we needed was more gun shot, more ammunition, kegs and kegs of powder; then, by God, we’d have run them clean to Spain, run them, not waited, our guns useless. We had to sit it out, wait—no powder. We didn’t dare take a chance. Think of it, everything to our advantage but we dared not move. We had to bluff.”

I wrote down his words—but I still hear them, it might be five or six years ago, not thirty!

Deceptions of mind bother me: unrehearsed, the brain bedevils and stacks lie on lie...in the lays of time. I turn my glass and am alone, the cuckold of myself reflected in three hundred sixty-five mirrors. My spirits, as in a dream, are bound up, and like the Armada, strewn on shores and still more rocky shores...

Henley Street

May 18, 1615

Memory’s snowfall rattles every door and window in my house. Was it the once lost winter thirty years ago in London? From door to door, I begged for work: my hands blue, legs quaking, face frost-galled. Belly empty, pocket empty, I harried taverns, bakeries, homes. People mistrusted me, that wild-haired kid, goat-bearded—doors slammed in my face. Blinded by snow, I headed for the Thames, for the bridge—shelter there. On the way, I passed a tavern and opened a door: a crowd of young men faced me: I asked for work and was given a scul­lery job, supper and a mat by the stove: I’ll never forget the warmth of that mat by that stove: I wanted nothing more: cherry voices and warmth: it all comes back!

A piece of bread in one hand, I fell contentedly asleep. An elephantine man, with florid face and scraggly beard, wakened me roughly.