Текст книги "Lion Triumphant"

Автор книги: Philippa Carr

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

I broke free from him. He was lying on his pallet laughing at me.

“God’s Death!” he said. “You don’t disappoint me. I knew it was meant from the moment I clapped eyes on you.”

“I knew no such thing,” I said.

“But you do now.”

“I hate you,” I said.

“Hate away. It seems it makes a better union than love.”

“I wish I had never come to Devon.”

“You must learn to love your home.”

“I shall go back to the Abbey. As soon as I reach England.”

“What?” he said. “Carrying my son? You’ll not do that. I’m going to be gracious. I’m going to marry you, in spite of the fact that you’ve been a Spaniard’s whore and mine too.”

“You are despicable.”

“Is that why you can’t resist me?”

He was on his feet.

“No,” I cried.

“But yes, yes,” he said.

I fought him; but I knew that I could not resist. I wanted to stay; but I would not let him know it.

And so I stayed with him and it was late when I crept back to the cabin I shared with Honey.

She looked at me as I came in. “Oh, Catharine,” she whispered.

“He was determined,” I said. “I knew it would come sooner or later.”

“Are you all right?”

“Scratched, bruised. As one would expect after a fight with Jake Pennlyon.”

“My poor, poor Catharine! It’s the second time.”

“This was different,” I said.

“Catharine…”

“Don’t talk to me. I can’t talk. Go to sleep. It had to happen. He was determined. It is not as though I were a young inexperienced girl like Isabella…”

She was silent and I lay there thinking of Jake Pennlyon.

The journey was long and not uneventful. Was any voyage on the unpredictable seas? The storm Jake had prophesied came and we battled through it. It was not as violent as that which had hit the galleon; or was the Lion more able to withstand the elements? Was it due to her Captain, the undefeatable Jake Pennlyon? The mighty and imposing galleon was unwieldy compared with the jaunty Lion. The Lion defied the seas as she was tossed hither and thither; her timbers creaked as though sorely tried, but she stood up defiantly against the driving rain. The wind shrieked in the rigging and she was shaken by the seething waters as gust after gust caught her top-hamper.

Jake Pennlyon was in charge. He it was whose seamanship made the Lion turn toward the wind So that the upperworks gave shelter to the leeward side, where he was shouting orders above the roar of the wind. Did everyone on board feel as I did? We are safe. Nothing can stand against Jake Pennlyon and win—not even the sea, not even the wind.

So we rolled in the Bay and the storm persisted through two nights and a day and then we were calm again.

When the wind had subdued there was a thanksgiving service on deck. How different it was from that other. There was Jake Pennlyon actually giving thanks to God for the safety of his ship in a manner which suggested that it was the ship’s Captain rather than the Deity who had brought us through the storm. He talked arrogantly to God, I thought, and I laughed inwardly at him. How like him! How conceited he was, how profane! And how grand!

That night of course I was in his cabin.

He had come to the cabin which I had turned into a nursery and there demanded of Carlos what he had thought of the storm.

“It was a great storm,” cried Carlos.

“And you whimpered, eh, and you thought you were going to be drowned?”

Carlos looked astonished. “No, Captain. I knew you wouldn’t let the ship sink.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s your ship.”

Jake pulled the boy’s hair. It was a habit he had adopted with Carlos and Jacko. Sometimes I thought he hurt them, for I saw them steel themselves to hide a wince. But both the boys were proud when he spoke to them. They clearly revered him. They were his sons and he reveled in the thought. Men like Jake Pennlyon passionately wanted sons. They thought themselves such perfect specimens of manhood that the more often they were reproduced, the better; and they always looked for signs of themselves in their children.

I could see it already in Carlos and Jacko. They had changed since they came aboard. They aped him in many ways.

“And you think I could stop it, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Carlos.

“You’re right, boy. You’re right, by Heaven.”

He pulled Carlos’ hair and Carlos was happy to bear the pain because he knew it meant approval.

Jake Pennlyon then gripped my arm.

“Come now,” he said.

I shook my head.

“What, would you have me force you here before the boys?”

“You would not dare.”

“Don’t provoke me.”

Roberto, whom Jake always ignored, was looking at me fearfully, and because I knew that Jake was capable of anything if he were, as he would put it, provoked, I said: “Give me a few moments.”

“See how I indulge you.”

So I kissed the children and said good night to them and I went to Jake Pennlyon.

When we were in his cabin he said, “You come readily now.”

“I come because I do not wish the children to see your brutality.”

“I am indeed a brute, am I not?”

“Indeed you are.”

“And you love me for it.”

“I hate you for it.”

“How I enjoy this hate of yours. You please me, Cat. You please me even more than I dreamed of being pleased.”

“Must I endure this…”

“You must.”

“As soon as we are home…”

“I will make an honest woman of you. I’ll swear I’ve got you with child by now. I want a son … my son and your son. That boy Carlos, he’s a fine boy. So is Jacko. They’re mine, you see … but mine and yours, Cat, by Heaven, he’ll be the one. I doubt not he has begun his life now. Does that not lift your heart to think on it?”

“If I should have a child by you,” I said, “I would hope I do not see its father in it.”

“You lie, Cat. You lie all the time. Speak truthfully. Was your wretched Spanish lover like me?”

“He was a gentleman.”

Then he laughed and fell upon me and gave vent to his savage passion which I told myself I must needs endure.

And I was exhilarated and exulted and I told myself no one ever hated a man as I hated Jake Pennlyon.

Through the treacherous Bay of Biscay into the almost equally treacherous Channel we sailed and what emotion we felt—Honey and I—when we saw the green land of Cornwall!

And then we were entering Plymouth Harbor.

So much had happened to us—I had become a wife, a mother and a widow. I was surely a different woman from the girl who had sailed away on that strange night five years before. Yet nothing seemed to have changed here. There were the familiar waters, the coastline. Soon I should be able to make out the shape of Trewynd Grange.

We dropped anchor. We went ashore with the children; Jake Pennlyon came with us. He had never looked more arrogantly proud. He was a sailor returning home with his booty, and he had taken his revenge on the Spaniard who had dared thwart him.

I was unprepared for what I found on the shore, for there was my mother.

She held out her arms and Honey and I ran to her; she hugged first me and then Honey and she kept saying, “My darling girls!” over and over again, while she laughed and cried and kissed us and touched our faces and held us at arm’s length to look at us before she held us again.

The children stood looking up at her wonderingly. We introduced her to them—Edwina, Roberto, Carlos and Jacko. Her eyes lingered on Roberto. She picked him up and said: “So this is my little grandson.” Then she did not forget to show equal interest in Edwina—her little granddaughter as she called her.

She was staying at Trewynd Grange, which Lord Calperton had put at her disposal. No member of his family had used it since the tragedy of Edward’s death. When Jake Pennlyon had set out to bring us back, my mother had prepared for the journey to Devon, so determined was she to be there to greet us as soon as we stepped onto English soil.

How strange to walk into the Grange again, to look up at that turret window from where I had first seen the galleon. My mother and I walked arm in arm, hands clasped. She could not speak of her emotion just then, though later doubtless she would.

As soon as the Rampant Lion had been sighted she had set the servants preparing a banquet, and the smells of savory meats and pies greeted us. It was so long since we had smelled such food and in spite of our emotion we were eager for it.

I went up to my old room; I stood at the turret window and looked out on the Hoe and the Rampant Lion dancing there on the waves.

My mother was behind me, and we were at last alone.

“Oh, my dearest Cat!” she said. “If you but knew.”

“I do know,” I said. “You were in my thoughts all the time.”

“What terrible experiences for you—and you little more than a child.”

“I am a mother too now.”

She looked at me anxiously. I started to tell her why we had been abducted, but she already knew. John Gregory had told her.

“And this man … you say he was good to you.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And you married him!”

“In the end it seemed the best thing to do. I had my son. Roberto was made heir to his estates. And I was fond of him, for he was good to me.”

She bowed her head. “I too married, Cat.”

“Rupert?” I asked.

She nodded.

“And my father?”

“He will never come back. He is dead, Cat. I have long known he was dead.”

“He was said to have disappeared mysteriously.”

“There was nothing mysterious about your father, Cat—at least no more than there is about all men and women. He was placed in the Abbey by the monk who was his father and so the legend was built up. He acquired his riches by selling the treasures of the Abbey and he died by an accident in the Abbey tunnels. That is all in the past and I have married Rupert.”

“You should have married him long ago, Mother.”

She said: “I am happy now. He wanted me to come here because he knows of my love for you, but he is eagerly awaiting my return.”

“And Kate?”

“She is as ever.”

“She did not marry again?”

“Kate does not wish to marry, though there are many who try to persuade her. She wishes to keep her freedom. She is rich, independent, she wants no man to govern her.”

“No man would ever govern her. She would govern him.”

“You still speak of her bitterly, Cat.”

“I still remember. And Carey?”

“He has a place at Court.”

“So you see him now and then?”

“Yes.”

“Does he speak of me?”

“We all spoke of you when we lost you.”

“Carey too?”

“Yes, Carey.”

“And is he well, Mother?”

“He is indeed. Now, Cat darling, what will you do? Will you marry Jake Pennlyon? I want you to be happy, dearest Cat. More than anything I want that. Jake Pennlyon brought you back. He plans to marry you. He was betrothed to you before and he has waited for you.”

I laughed aloud. “I think I may be going to bear his child.”

“Then you love him.”

“Sometimes I think I hate him.”

“Yet…”

“He insisted,” I said. “He was the Captain. He offered me marriage, but he was impatient.”

She took me by the shoulders and looked into my face.

“My dearest Cat,” she said, “you are changed.”

“I am no longer your virgin daughter. Twice I have been forced to submit. It’s odd, Mother. They both offered marriage.”

“Now you must build up a new life for yourself, Cat. Come home with me to the Abbey.”

“I thought of it. There I should see Carey perhaps. I do not want to open that old wound. Perhaps he will marry. Has he married?” I asked swiftly.

She shook her head. “You married the Spaniard,” she reminded me.

“I married him because I thought I would stay there forever. I wanted to assure my son’s position.”

“And this child you are carrying?”

I hesitated. Was I beginning to ask myself if I could overcome my grief for Felipe, which stirred sadly in my heart, by my hatred of Jake Pennlyon?

I said: “I will marry Jake Pennlyon. He is the father of the child I am carrying. I shall stay here, Mother, for much as I long to be with you I could not return to the Abbey.”

She understood as she had always understood.

Jake Pennlyon was triumphant. The preparations for the wedding began at once.

“We want our son’s birth to take place at a respectable time after the wedding day.”

During the previous year Jake’s father had had an apoplectic fit and died instantly. He had lived so lustily that he had shortened his span, was the general opinion. So Jake was master of Lyon Court and I was to be its mistress.

I made conditions.

The children were to remain with me. He wanted Roberto to go to the Abbey when my mother went. “For to tell the truth,” he said, “the sight of that brat makes my gorge rise.”

“He is my son,” I said. “He shall never be parted from me as long as I live.”

“You should be ashamed of consorting with our enemies. A brat that was forced on you!”

“That could be said of the child I am to bear.”

“Not so. You were willing. Do you think you deceived me?”

“It is you who deceive yourself. My son stays or there will be no marriage.”

“There will be a marriage,” he said. “Don’t think you’ll cheat me twice. No plaguey sweat this time, my girl.”

I laughed at him. “Roberto stays,” I said.

“And the other two,” he said. “By God, I’ve no objection to a nursery. We’ll fill it. Those two boys are game little fellows. I like them.”

“You would. They resemble you. Manuela and Jennet will take care of the nursery, but let me tell you this: There will be no more merry games with my servants.”

He took my chin in his hand and jerked up my face in one of his ungentle gestures. “You must see to it that there is no one but you. I warn you I am a lusty man.”

“I do not need the warning.”

“You need to heed it. You can keep me solely yours, Cat, and you will.”

“Do you think I can manage to retain such a prize?” I asked with sarcasm.

“If you are wise, Cat, you can.”

“Who is to say? Who knows I might welcome your lust for others? All I say is it shall not be in my house and with my servants.”

“I have never had difficulty in finding willing companions.”

“A pretty subject for a man about to marry.”

“But we are not as others, are we, Cat? We know that, do we not? It is what makes the prospect of our union so enthralling. Tell me how does my son today?”

“I am not at all sure that he exists. If he does not … there may not be the need for this wedding.”

“If he is not there rest assured he soon will be.”

I said: “I would like to see the house. There may be changes I wish to make.”

He laughed at me, exulting. I knew he was longing for our wedding with deep intensity.

The day dawned when I was married to Jake Pennlyon. The ceremony took place in the chapel where once Jake had spied through the leper’s squint. There was feasting in Trewynd Grange and afterward I went back with Jake to Lyon Court.

It is no use pretending that I was not excited by this man, and to enter that house of which I should be mistress, to go with him to our bridal chamber, and stand there with him. In those first moments I believe he was moved almost to tenderness. I knew that he had achieved that which he had long desired and when he put his arms about me he was momentarily gentle. This was different from those adventures which were familiar to him.

The moment did not last. His passion was fierce; and because I knew that there was a need in him to subdue, to fight, I resisted him.

But I shared his passion. He knew it. Yet I did not want him to realize how overwhelming were these encounters, how they drove everything from my mind but this intense physical satisfaction.

My relationship with Jake was entirely physical. I could not uphold my refusal to admit my pleasure in them, but it was always the pleasure of the senses and I did not attempt to hide this. If he had no tenderness for me, I had none for him. I was not going to pretend to love him. I was not even going to pretend I had need of him. I found him coarse, crude, arrogant and I was not going to pretend otherwise. I had married him because I was to bear a child he had forced on me. I was a woman with strong natural impulses and his tremendous virility matched a similar quality in me. It was possible to share a sexual encounter and yet not to love one’s partner.

I made this clear to him, but he laughed at me. He had always known, he told me, that I wanted him as he wanted me. He had always been aware that he only had to beckon and I would be in his bed.

“There was much beckoning,” I reminded him, “but I never was in your bed till forced to be there on your ship when there was no escape for me.”

“I could see you longed for me.”

“As silly Jennet did. I’m not Jennet, remember.”

“I know it well. But you are a woman even as she is and a woman like you needs a man like me.”

“Nonsense!” I retorted.

“Let’s prove it.”

And there was no holding him back.

Yes, I was exhilarated by our encounters. I could not hide it. “We were made one for the other,” he said. “I knew it. From the moment I clapped eyes on you on the Hoe, I said to myself, ‘That’s your woman, Jake Pennlyon. She’ll be the best you ever knew.’”

But afterward we would argue and I usually won and he was pleased to let me.

He had only to seize me and although I would often resist he would always have his way … at any time, anywhere.

I said he was shameless and he answered that I was equally so.

And so passed the first month of my marriage to Jake Pennlyon.

Then my mother said she must go home. She had left Rupert too long.

Honey would go with her. Trewynd had too many unhappy memories for her. She would live with my mother at the Abbey and they both said that this was a consolation for saying good-bye to me.

So with Edwina, she set off for the Abbey; Roberto, Carlos and Jacko stayed behind and in the nursery Jennet and Manuela were their nurses.

I was certain by this time that I was pregnant.

Soon, I promised myself, there would be another in my nursery.

Roberto was pining. His dark eyes grew larger in his little olive-skinned face.

“Madre,” he said, “I want to go home.”

“Roberto, my precious,” I answered him, “we are home.”

He shook his head. “This is not home. Home is not here, Madre.”

“It is now,” I told him. “Home is where I am and that is where you belong.”

He conceded this.

“I want my father. Where is my father?”

“He is gone away, Roberto. He is dead. You have a new father now.”

“I want my own father, Madre. Who is my new father now?”

“You know.”

He shrank in terror. “Not the Man…”

“He will be your father now, Roberto.”

He shut his eyes tightly and shook his head. I had said the wrong thing. I had frightened him.

I took him onto my lap and rocked him. “I am here, Roberto.” That did comfort him. He clung to me. But he was terrified of Jake, and Jake, who had no understanding of children, did nothing to alleviate the situation. Carlos and Jacko had been taken over the Rampant Lion; they played wild games which involved ships and captains. Carlos was always Captain Pennlyon and this pleased Jake. He was proud of those two … his boys. He didn’t seem to care that one of them was the son of a Spanish lady of high degree and the other of a serving girl. They were Pennlyons and that was good enough for him.

How different it was for my little Roberto!

I was so concerned about the child that I spoke to Jake about him. I even went so far as to plead with him to show a little interest and kindness to the boy.

“Interest in that man’s son?”

“He is mine also.”

“That does not endear him to me.”

“It should. I have taken your sons and cared for them.”

“You’re a woman,” he said.

“If you have any decent feelings in you…”

“But you know I have not … only indecent ones.”

“I beg of you. Be kind to my son.”

“I must act as I feel.”

“Oh, so you have become honest, have you?”

“In this matter, yes.” He turned to me suddenly. “I tell you, I hate the boy. When I see him I think of you with that Don. I want to break every bone in his body; I want to destroy anything that reminds me of that.”

“You’re inhuman. To blame a child.”

“You should have let him go with your mother.”

“My own son!”

“Will you stop talking of your son? Soon you’ll have mine and then that dark-skinned brat can be sent away. I might take him with me when I sail and drop him off at his old home. How would that be?”

“You dare touch that boy.”

“And?” he mocked.

“I’d kill you, Jake Pennlyon.”

“So we would become a murderess.”

“Yes, if any harmed my son.”

“Oh, come, what’s a bastard now and then? You’re going to have that nursery so full of real boys you’ll not miss this one.”

I hit him across the face. This sort of encounter always excited him. He had me pinioned and forced me down.

There was the inevitable ending, but it solved nothing.

He hated my son because of his father and I was worried.

When Roberto became ill I was with him all the time. I think it was the cold east wind which blew up suddenly and which was too much for him.

Jennet and Manuela were worried about him and I spent a day with them in the nursery.

He was a little better as the dusk fell.

“He do seem comforted to have you with him, Mistress,” said Jennet.

It was true, when I sat beside his bed he slept a little, holding my hand; and if I attempted to release it momentarily his hot little hands clung.

I decided I would stay with him.

When night fell Jake came to the nursery. Jennet and Manuela hastily disappeared.

“What means this?” said Jake. “I am waiting for you.”

“The child is sick,” I answered.

“Those two women can care for him.”

“He is uneasy when I’m not here.”

“I am more than uneasy when you are not with me.”

“I am staying here for the night.”

“Nay,” he said, “you are coming to bed with me.”

“I shall stay with my son tonight.”

“You will come,” he said.

He caught my arm and I stood up and threw him off. “You will wake the child.”

“Why should I care?”

“I care,” I said.

I stepped out of the room with him, for I greatly feared the effect a scene would have on Roberto.

“Go away,” I said. “I have made up my mind.”

“And if I have made up mine?”

“You must needs unmake it.”

“You are coming with me.”

“I am staying with my son.”

We looked unflinchingly into each other’s eyes.

“I could carry you there,” he said.

“If you touch me, Jake Pennlyon,” I said, “I will leave this house. I will take my son to my mother and never see you again.”

He hesitated and I knew that I had won.

“Go away,” I said. “Don’t shout. If you wake the child, if you frighten him now I shall never forgive you.”

“Are you not afraid that if you deny me I might turn to others?”

“If you are so desperately in need you must do so.”

“You would not wish that.”

“I tell you I care for nothing tonight but that my son sleeps peacefully and I shall stay with him to make sure that he does so.”

“Cat,” he said. “I want you … now … this minute.”

“Go away.”

“So you don’t care what I do?”

“Do what you please.”

He caught my arm and shook me. “You know full well that I have a fancy for no one but you.”

I laughed at him. Exultantly, yes. I had won of course. I went back to Roberto.

In the morning the child was better, but I knew that he was terrified of Jake Pennlyon.

The summer came. Tenerife seemed a long way behind. I had settled in to life at Lyon Court. Soon Jake would go away on a voyage. He had postponed this because of our marriage and I knew he wished to be with me; but of course he could not stay ashore forever. I think sometimes he planned to take me with him, but I was pregnant and the sea was no place for a woman in my condition. He was a sailor who loved the sea and his ship was near to his heart as any living being I was sure, and yet he lingered on shore. I laughed at him. He could not leave me.

He could never shut out of his mind the memory of the raid which had taken place while he was away. He was afraid that it might happen again. He was torn between his desire for adventure on the high seas and his life with me.

Often I would see him down at the Hoe; he would be rowed out to his ship and spend some time on her. He finally decided that he could stay behind no longer.

A Captain Girling came to visit us from St. Austell—a man some twenty years older than Jake. He was a keen man, Jake told me, one of the few whom he cared to trust on one of his ships.

Captain Girling stayed with us for a month and he and Jake went out to the Lion every day; and there was a great deal of bustle on the Hoe while her stores were taken aboard. She was taking out a cargo of linen.

At dinner the conversation was generally of the sea and ships and I became increasingly knowledgeable in these matters, particularly as I had firsthand experience of two voyages. They used to question me at length about the galleon and I could never resist praising her and pointing out her superiority over the Rampant Lion and English ships I had seen, which exasperated and intrigued them.

Captain Girling was as fierce in his denunciation of the Dons and Catholicism as Jake was and they were at one on this as on most matters.

They hated the Inquisition, which had seized a number of English sailors, submitted them to torture and even burned them at the stake. John Gregory was an example of a man who had been captured and only freed on condition that he spy for them. Oddly enough Jake seemed to have forgiven him although he had helped in carrying me off in the first place. He had, however, made it possible for Jake to bring me back.

“There’s good news from the Netherlands,” said Captain Girling. “There’s a rising there and by all accounts it’s a success. The Spaniards had set up the Inquisition there, and because of this the country is in revolt. By God, the sooner we blow them all off the seas, the better.”

Jake regarded me with some amusement. “I’d slit the throat of any Spaniard on sight … no matter who.”

“Throat slitting’s too good for them,” growled Captain Girling.

And I trembled for Roberto, who looked more like his father every day.

“If ever they attempt to come to England …” began Captain Girling.

Jake’s face was purple at the thought, yet his eyes shone with excitement.

“That would be the day!” he cried. “We’d see them finished off forever then. Why, Girling, do you think there’s a possibility the rascals would be so foolhardy as to try it?”

“Who can say? You know they’ve taken possession of lands all over the globe. They’re taking the rack and the thumbscrews among the savages and trying to make Papists of them.”

“Let them come here!” cried Jake. “Oh, God, let them come here. Let them bring their thumbscrews here. We’ll show them how to use them.”

“They fear us … they respect us. They prefer to play with savages,” Girling said.

“I swear they shall continue to fear us. When they meet one of my ships on the high seas they’ll show some respect too.”

“You talk much of what you will do if certain things happen,” I said. “We know exactly how they would act and how you would. But why should they come here? What hope would they have?”

“They would build a fleet of ships. They would come to our coasts. They would attempt to land,” said Jake. “Let them try it. Oh, God, let them try it.”

“There are traitors here,” said Captain Girling. “We must beware of the traitors within.”

“Plaguey Papists,” said Jake. “And now with this Queen above the Border! The Queen of Scots, recently Queen of France, could lead an army into England if she could find the support from traitors here on land and the King of Spain from the sea.”

“War!” I said. “Oh, I pray not war.”

“There are continual forages on the Border,” said Girling. “Our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth is shrewd. She seeks to cause friction among the Scottish nobles and, by God, they are a quarrelsome crowd. ’Tis said that she herself did all possible to further the marriage of the Scottish Queen with Lord Darnley, while pretending to oppose it. That fellow is no good to Mary. He’s a swaggering braggart, a lecher, a coward, and he greatly desires the Crown Matrimonial of Scotland. If the Queen of Scots is wise she’ll keep him in his place, which is not on the throne with her.”

“While I have been away,” I said, “the situation has become grave between England and Scotland.”

“It was so since Mary’s husband, the young King of France, died and she lost her position overnight,” said Captain Girling. “The Medici woman made it clear that she must get out and where could she go but to her own country of Scotland?”

“Let us not forget,” added Jake, “that she dared call herself the Queen of England. Our Lady Elizabeth will not forget that, I am sure.”

“For that alone she deserves to have her head cut off.”

“Mary’s point is that our Queen is the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whom the Catholics call a whore because they say she was never in truth King Henry’s wife, whereas Mary herself is descended legitimately through Henry’s sister.” I reminded him.

Jake threw me a warning glance. “You talk like a Papist.” He narrowed his eyes. “And let me tell you, I’ll have no Papist in this house. If I find any it will be the worse for them.”

I knew he was referring to Roberto, for he had been watchful of the boy. I trembled for my son, but I replied boldly: “I speak without religious bias. I merely state that this is the case.”

“Our Lady Elizabeth is Queen by right of inheritance, a true daughter of King Henry,” retorted Jake, “and we’ll fight for her. There is no Englishman worthy of the name who would not give his life for her—and keep the Papists from the land.”

We drank the Queen’s health—I as fervently as the others.

But I was uneasy. There would always be disquiet in the land I supposed. There would always be this conflict; and when I thought of the quiet determination and religious fervor of Felipe and those whom he commanded, and the might of the Spanish galleons, I feared the breaking out of a mighty conflagration.

In the night I awoke and Jake stirred beside me.

He said: “You know why I’ve sent for Girling?”

“He is going to command one of your ships, I doubt not.”

“Which ship think you?”

“That I cannot know.”

“The Rampant Lion.”

“Your ship?”

“Well, she is lying idle there in the Hoe.”

“I did not know that you allowed others to command her.”

“Nor have I till now.”

“But why so?”

“Need you ask? I have found a more desirable mistress than adventure. She is as unreliable as the sea, but by God, she can be whipped to sudden fury; she can be soft sometimes—though she tries to hide it. There are times when I am at the helm and she is as soft and gentle as any could wish—but I can never be sure of her.”

“Your fancies are beyond your imaginative powers to express. I should not attempt them if I were you.”