Текст книги "Lion Triumphant"
Автор книги: Philippa Carr
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In June her child was born. I had sent for the midwife who had attended me, so she had the best attention we could give her. She had a son—a healthy, lusty boy.
I went in to see her—she looked so young and frail and her green eyes shone more brilliantly than ever.
She thanked me affectingly for my goodness to her and I stooped over the bed and kissed her.
“A woman’s lot can be a hard one in this life,” I said, “and it is our duty to help each other.”
“He is a bonny boy, my son,” she said.
“The midwife praises him continually.”
“I have so much to be grateful for. What would have happened to me if the Captain had not come to St. Austell and brought me here?”
“He was concerned, for your father had died in his service.”
“I want to show my gratitude to him … and to you. Would you allow me to call my child Penn?”
I said: “That is a small favor to ask.”
So Romilly’s lovely little boy was christened.
Suspicions
IT HAD BEEN A year of exciting events. In January the Duke of Norfolk was brought to trial. He had been intriguing with the Scottish Queen and had hoped to marry her and set her on the throne after having deposed Elizabeth. He had little chance of survival if such were proved against him.
In May there had been a rumor of another plot, in which the Spanish ambassador was concerned, to kill the Queen and her minister Burleigh. As a result the Spanish ambassador was ordered to leave the kingdom.
An even greater animosity was growing toward the Spanish. In the last years, when more and more English seamen had been traveling the world, again and again they had come into conflict with the Spanish. Often the English had captured Spanish gold and brought it into English harbors; a fact which delighted the Queen while she made a feint of keeping up friendly relations with Philip of Spain and implying that the action of English pirates was something she deplored but which it was hard to correct. On the other hand, the Spanish had their successes. There were stories of how English sailors taken by Spaniards were shipped into Spain, imprisoned and tortured—not because they were pirates but because they were Protestants—and some were even burned alive at the stake.
John Gregory recounted the horrors of his imprisonment and how he had only escaped death because he had acted as a spy for Don Felipe.
The Duke of Norfolk went to the block that June and at the same time a new star appeared in the sky. As a sailor Jake was knowledgeable about the stars and he took Carlos and Jacko up to the highest part of the house and there pointed out the star to them. It was brighter than the planet Jupiter and could be seen in Cassiopeia’s chair.
People began to speculate about the star. It was an omen. When it appeared suddenly the theory was that it signified Spain, which had grown in might and had conquered so much of the world. That it disappeared while the well-known stars and planets remained was an indication that the Spanish empire was about to disintegrate.
On August 24 of that year, the Eve of St. Bartholomew, there occurred an event which shocked the whole world, and I could not believe it was only the Protestant world. I was sure that what happened in Paris—and was to follow throughout France—would have as deeply affronted Felipe and men such as he was.
In the early hours of the morning the tocsins had sounded all over Paris and this had been a sign for the Catholics to emerge and slaughter every Huguenot to be found. The slaughter was horrific. The streets of Paris were running with blood; the Seine was full of mutilated bodies and the slaughter continued. The great Massacre of St. Bartholomew had begun and the cry of “kill” was taken up throughout the provincial towns of France.
The effect of the massacre reverberated throughout England. In Plymouth people stood about on street corners discussing what would happen next. A rumor was in circulation that the French and Spanish were in league together with the Pope, and they planned to murder Protestants throughout the world as they had in France.
Many were saying that it was time we gave the Catholics in this country some of the medicine they meted out to others. “Let’s give them a little Paris justice,” they cried.
We heard that Lord Burleigh, who had been in the country, had hurried back to London. He feared chaos in the Capital and that there would be a repetition of the massacre in London—though in reverse. There it would be the Protestants taking their revenge on Catholics. The Queen appeared in public dressed in mourning and Lord Burleigh said, “This is the greatest crime since the Crucifixion.”
There was no doubt of the effect this terrible event must have on our lives. Such momentous happenings stirred the world and none of us could ignore the rumblings of impending tragedies.
Anger against the Catholics was increased. I knew that they would be hunted out with greater severity in Protestant lands, and in those which were manifestly Catholic the persecution would intensify. Increasing numbers would be taken to the torture chambers of the Inquisition; there would be more agonizing cries as the flames consumed the bodies of martyrs.
Jake came home the following year. His homecoming was similar to the last. There was feasting and we had the mummers in to entertain us.
He took scarcely any notice of Linnet although she was a beautiful child and amazingly like him; he was amused by Romilly’s fall from grace and showed a little interest in the boy. He was pleased to see Carlos and Jacko, though; and he was patient with them when they plied him with questions about his voyage. He would sit in the garden while they sprawled at his feet looking up at him admiringly, while he told them of his exploits on the high seas.
If Jake could have had a legitimate son he would have been a proud and happy man; as it was he was often brooding and resentful. I would often notice him as he glared at Roberto and his anger that I could have a son by Felipe and not by him infuriated him to such an extent that sometimes I felt he hated me.
It was after his return from his next voyage that the first of the strange events took place.
I had always followed the practice of visiting the poor of our neighborhood personally. Some women in my position would send their servants with nourishing things to eat and warm clothing, but my mother had always gone herself and I had often accompanied her. She had said that we wanted these people not to look upon the gifts we bestowed as charity but those of one friend to another.
One morning when I was about to go into the garden one of the maids came to me and told me that Mary Lee had asked specially that I should visit her.
She was an old woman who had had three sons, all of whom had been lost at sea. I used to visit her regularly. Jake was pleased about this, for he always liked the families of sailors to be cared for. Mary was in her sixties, crippled with rheumatism; she used to sit at her window and look out when she was expecting me.
I gathered together some food into a basket and set out that afternoon, but when I reached her cottage I was surprised that she was not at the window waiting for me.
Her cottage was one of those which had been built in a night, for it was custom here that if any could put up a cottage in a night the land on which it stood could be counted as theirs. It consisted of one room only.
The door was ajar. I pushed it open and said: “Mary. Are you there?”
I saw her then. She was lying on a pallet. The light was so dim that I did not at first see her face.
“Mary, are you all right?”
She spoke in gasps.
“Go, Mistress,” she whispered.
I went forward. I knelt beside her. “What is wrong, Mary?”
“Go. Go. ’Tis the sweat.”
I looked down at her. I could see now the fearful signs on her face.
I put down the basket and hurried out of the house.
I saw Jake in the courtyard. I wondered afterward if he was waiting for me.
I said: “I have been to Mary Lee’s cottage. She has the sweat.”
“God’s Death!” he cried. “You have been in the cottage?”
“Yes.”
“Go to your room. I’ll call a doctor. You may have caught it. He can see too if anything can be done for Mary Lee.”
I went up to my room and I kept thinking of that other occasion when I had pretended to have this fearsome disease to keep Jake away.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I had been close to Mary Lee. The disease was highly infectious. Perhaps already by now…
“Oh, God,” I prayed, “save me from that.”
I knew then how much I wanted to go on living, and in this house to see my children grow into women, to have grandchildren. Perhaps one of them would give Jake a grandson. Would that serve as well as a son?
Mary Lee had died three days after I had gone to her cottage, but the disease did not sweep through country towns as it did in crowded London.
For a week I waited in trepidation for some sign that I may have been infected, but there was none.
Jake said: “It would have served you right. Once you pretended to have it to flout me.” He laughed at me. “You really must have been determined to avoid me.”
“What good sense I had.”
“If I’d taken you and carried you off to sea with me you might have had my son instead of the Spanish bastard.”
“Don’t dare speak of my son in that way.”
“I’ll speak how I will.”
“Not of my son.”
“Stop harping on the fact that you got a son by that Spanish Don or I’ll do you a mischief. You goad me too far.”
“I know it well,” I retaliated. “Perhaps it was a pity I didn’t catch the sweat and die of it. Then you could have found a wife who would give you sons.”
He looked as though he had been struck in the face. At the time I thought the look meant he was horrified at the thought of losing me. Later—much later—I was to remember and wonder whether I had hit on the truth.
Jake was busily engaged in preparing for his next voyage. Sometimes he would stay on board until the early hours of the morning. Carlos and Jacko worked with him. He had promised them that they should accompany him on his next voyage.
It was on such a night that I awoke suddenly, and for a few seconds wondered what had startled me. Then I saw—or thought I saw—the door close slowly as though someone were determined to shut it with the minimum of noise.
Someone had been in the room.
I leaped out of bed and as I did so I was aware of the crackle at my feet. I looked down. The hangings about the bed were smoldering and some of the rushes were alight. At any moment they would burst into a blaze.
I picked up the heavy bedcover and beat out the flames until they were smoldering. I needed help so I rushed to the door calling that the room was on fire. By this time smoke was beginning to drift around the room and out into the corridor.
There were shouts throughout the house and in a short time servants appeared with buckets of water which they threw over the smoldering hangings and rushes. The smoke was becoming uncomfortable but the fire was out.
I heard Jake’s voice. “What’s going on?”
And there he was, his eyes a brilliant deeper color than usual.
“We’ve had a fire,” said Carlos.
“In our room?” said Jake and there was a strange note in his voice. He came to me and put his arm through mine.
“What happened?”
“Something awakened me,” I said.
“It’s not much,” said Carlos. “It could have been though.”
Jake ordered that another room be prepared and that wine be brought.
I felt a little better after taking that. Then he led me to that other room and held me gently in his arms.
The next morning I was anxious to discover how the fire could have started.
“Someone was careless with a candle,” said Jake. “You left it burning while you were asleep. It toppled over and then there was the blaze.”
“I did no such thing. Some noise awakened me.”
“Yes, the falling of the candlestick. Have done. It will teach you to be careful in future.” He laughed at me. “Have you got a charmed life, Cat? ’Tis but a short time you went near the sweat. And now your bedroom catches fire and you wake just in time to catch it.”
A charmed life, I thought. It would seem so.
I sent for Jennet.
“Jennet,” I said, “who told you that Mary Lee wanted to see me?”
She looked puzzled. “Why, Mistress, I don’t rightly remember. Much have happened since then. The fire and all.”
“Try to remember, Jennet.”
“I can’t rightly say. I was in a rush at the time. Someone called it down the stairs, maybe. Yes, that was it.”
“You’d know whose voice it was.”
She wrinkled her brows.
“It was one of the servants, was it?” I persisted.
She reckoned it must have been. I could get nothing out of her.
But the seeds of suspicion were sown.
I could not get a son. If he had married someone else he could have had his son perhaps. Was that the way he was thinking? I knew that once he had wanted me as he had wanted no other woman. But I was no longer fresh to him, no longer a challenge. His desire for me may have faded, but that for a son was as fierce as ever.
I tried to remember exactly what had happened. He could have told one of the servants to tell Jennet that Mary Lee wished to see me. It was possible. And the fire? Who had quietly shut the door? Whoever it was must have been in the room a few moments before.
What had come over me? It was too absurd.
Did he want to be rid of me? Was it possible that he had tried and failed?
If this were true while he was away I was safe.
Soon after that he sailed away. Carlos and Jacko went with him, though not in the Rampant Lion. They were to serve under one of his captains in another of the ships.
It was some three months later when Jennet rushed into my room to tell me that the ships were back. I gave orders for a feast to be prepared and went down to the Hoe.
But I could not see the Rampant Lion. The two ships which had accompanied the Rampant Lion were home, but where was their leader?
The story Carlos and Jacko had to tell filled me with apprehension. Attacked by four Spanish ships, they had given a good account of themselves and driven them off. Jake in the Rampant Lion had ordered the others to stay and fight while he pursued the biggest of the galleons which was attempting to escape. That was the last they had seen of him and the ship.
They had been unable to search for her, suffering much damage themselves, and so they had returned to Plymouth, expecting to find the Rampant Lion already there.
After that we watched continuously, but she did not come.
The Long Absence
TWO YEARS HAD PASSED, yet still we looked for the Rampant Lion. Day after day I would awaken with a feeling of expectancy upon me and each day when the sun went down I would feel a heavy despondency.
Not today, I would ask myself. Perhaps tomorrow.
And still he did not come back.
Every day we talked of him. We speculated where he might be. When ships came in we would go down to the Hoe to discover if there was any news of the Rampant Lion.
And gradually as the months slipped by, I was afraid.
What could have happened to Jake? It was impossible to imagine him as captive in enemy hands. Yet nothing but that would keep him away so long. Unless he was dead. That was even more impossible. I couldn’t believe that. I had never known anyone so alive as Jake.
Sometimes a terrible sadness settled on me. I used to think: If he is dead, is my life over? Can it really be that I shall never see him again?
Then some certainty would remind me that he was indestructible and I would watch the horizon with new hope.
“Let him come back,” I prayed. “Let us fight as we did. Even let him try to kill me. But let him come back.”
Had it taken this to teach me what he meant to me? For years I had let myself brood on Carey. Oh, yes, I had loved Carey with a girlish passion, but had I loved him more when he was lost to me than I had when I believed he was mine? I knew that I had loved Felipe more after he was dead than when he lived. Was it my nature to do this?
And now Jake!
There is no one for me but Jake, I thought. Oh, Jake, come back.
But the months passed and still he did not come.
Linnet was my great solace. She was lively and remarkably like Jake. She had the same startling blue eyes and coloring; more than that there was the same stubborn line to her jaw when she was crossed. I used to think: If Jake could see her now—he who so longed to see himself reproduced would realize that this had taken place in his daughter. She was more like him than either Carlos or Jacko.
We were constantly hearing tales of the rich treasures which our seamen were bringing to England—captured Spanish gold—so much of it. The rivalries between the two countries were being intensified as the years passed.
Every time I heard these stories I thought of Jake. I imagined him in all kinds of adventures. But I knew something terrible must have happened. Otherwise he would have been home.
There seemed now to be a general feeling in the household that we should never see Jake again, but I refused to accept this. So did Carlos and Jacko, Jennet too.
“Whatever has happened to him,” Carlos constantly said, “he’ll be back.”
There was a great deal of talk about Francis Drake, a Devon man born not far from Plymouth, in Tavistock, it was said. The Spaniards regarded him as a supernatural being, the Devil incarnate, who sailed the seas with the purpose of destroying those of the Catholic Faith and stealing their treasure. They called him El Draque, the Dragon.
It was on a December day in the year 1577 when we had the great excitement of seeing him sail from Plymouth. What a glorious sight it was. For some time Drake had been preparing for this expedition. We did not know then that he was to circumnavigate the world.
His own ship, the Pelican, was not unlike our Lion. (He was later to change its name from Pelican to Golden Hind.) With him sailed the Elizabeth, the Marigold, Swan and Christopher; and in addition to the ships there were pinnaces, some of them in pieces, the better to store them; they would be put together when needed. We were all amazed at the provisions which had been carried ashore and some of the plate for his table was of silver. He took with him too his band of musicians. It had been discovered how important music could be to men who were far from home and weary for it. A concert could turn men’s mind from the boredom in which are the seeds of mutiny.
I was caught up to some extent in the general excitement, but it reminded me poignantly of the occasions when Jake had left for his voyages.
“Jake, Jake,” I murmured, “when are you coming home?” I refused to consider the possibility of his death.
Carlos came in one day full of excitement. He had been talking to some of the seamen as he often did and had met the great man himself. Drake had been interested to learn that he was the son of Jake Pennlyon.
He was allowed to help load the stores and Jacko who was overcome by envy went with him and begged to be allowed to help. The outcome was, because of their enthusiasm and the fact that they were Jake Pennlyon’s sons, Drake himself came to the house to see me.
Such a man must always remain in the memory forever. He was not tall, but there was about him a sense of power. His limbs were strong and he was broad in the chest; he was a merry-looking man and his large clear blue eyes had what I called “the sailor’s look”—so marked in Jake—penetrating as though they could see farther than most. His full beard was fair as was his hair and there was about him a human quality. I was deeply moved that a man who had so much on his mind at this time could spare a few hours to come to comfort me. For that was what he was trying to do.
“I have met Captain Pennlyon once or twice,” he said. “A great seaman. England has need of such as he is.”
I glowed with pride and my eyes filled with tears, which he noticed.
“Many of us go off for years,” he said, “and most people give us up for lost. But some of us are not easily disposed of, Ma’am. Captain Pennlyon is one of them.”
“My great fear is that he has fallen into the hands of the Spaniards.”
“He’ll give a good account of himself, I’ll tell you that.”
“I firmly believe he will come back.”
“There’s a bond between you and you would know. That’s how it often is with sailors’ wives.”
He would find places, he said, for Carlos and Jacko in his expedition if I so wished. He had, in truth, come to ask me first.
The thought of their going off into danger sickened me, but I knew I must not stop their going.
And when he left Carlos and Jacko sailed with him.
It was a glorious sight to see them sail away—exhilarating but sobering.
Jennet stood beside me.
“To think that my boy Jacko should sail with mighty Drake,” she cried. “But I’d liefer it had been with the Captain.”
Then she turned away to wipe her eyes, but they were bright again almost immediately.
“Think what he’ll say when he comes back!”
Undoubtedly she, like myself, believed in the indestructibility of Jake.
The days passed and still no news.
The following spring Edwina came to Trewynd Grange. She was seventeen years old and was to come into her inheritance on her eighteenth birthday. Alice Ennis called at Lyon Court to tell me that she was expected.
“We shall stay here with her,” she said. “It is what her mother wishes. A young girl should not live as mistress of such a large house.”
She arrived with a band of servants, whom she had chosen from Remus Castle, the home of her stepfather. I was eager to see her and as soon as the news was brought to me that she had arrived I went to Trewynd.
I could never enter the hall there without memories flooding into my mind. I looked up at the peep and long practice told me from the shadow there that someone was watching me. I remembered how Honey and I had looked down and seen Jake come into the hall; I remembered the night when I had been taken away to the galleon. But that was a long time ago and now Edwina, Honey’s daughter, was here.
As she came into the hall I held out my hands to her.
She clasped them and smiled.
I think we loved each other from that moment.
Edwina was a frequent visitor at the Court; she had become as a daughter to me and she and Linnet were good friends.
I could never forget Jake. I dreamed of him often and when I awoke and found he was not beside me that overwhelming emptiness would sweep over me.
On a November day in the year 1580, Francis Drake sailed into the harbor.
What excitement there was! He had brought with him a marvelous quantity of treasure such as none had ever brought before. There was gold and silver, precious stones, and pearls as well as silks, cloves and spices.
He had also brought back Carlos and Jacko.
How they had changed! They were men now—experienced sailors.
The first one they looked for when they stepped ashore was their father. I shook my head sadly, but he was uppermost in our thoughts during the celebrations for their homecoming. We were all so much aware of the missing head of the house—even Linnet, who could scarcely remember him.
Carlos and Jacko talked a great deal of their adventures. There had been storm and calm; they had visited strange lands and come near to death. They had grown up and the sea was in their blood.
The expedition would be remembered throughout the years to come because although Drake was not the first man to discover that the Earth was a sphere, he had actually been the first to encircle it, whereas Magellan, who had known this was possible, had been prevented from completing the circle by his death in the Philippines.
Drake was the great hero of the West Country and very soon after his return he sailed the Golden Hind up the Thames and there at Deptford the Queen herself came to knight him.
Such men as Drake, Carlos and Jacko had become the heroes of our time because they would be the leaders when the time came to face the Spaniards.
Jake Pennlyon was such a man.
He had now been away so long that it was only because he was Jake that I could continue to hope. Carlos, Jacko, Jennet, everyone who had known him intimately, refused to believe that he was dead. Such was that magic aura he had always conveyed to us.
Sometimes I used to open the cupboard in which his clothes were kept and touch the cloth of a coat. Then I would imagine I heard his laughter. “Don’t dispose of them, Cat. I’ll need them yet.”
Once I opened a drawer and a moth flew out. I was concerned at once. I must care for his clothes and I did not want anyone else to do this. I decided I would therefore take them out, fold them afresh and put among them a powder made from herbs which my grandmother had given me and which she was convinced would preserve cloth forever against moth and insects.
It was then that I made the horrifying discovery. In the pocket of one of his jackets was a figure. As my fingers closed around it I was transported back in my mind to that occasion when I had found the image of Isabella in my drawer.
There was no doubt who this was meant to be. Myself! I could see the pinhead, a little rusty—where it had entered the cloth of my gown.
And in Jake’s pocket!
It could not be. I remembered how on more than one occasion he had raged against witches. But why? Because he believed in the evil they could create, because he believed that could kill, because he feared them?
And why should this image be in his pocket?
I studied it. The likeness was there. My thick straight hair, and the eyes were painted a vivid green. There could be no doubt who it was meant to be.
Had he consulted a witch? Had he been carrying out her orders? Not Jake! Yet this thing was in his pocket. It must have been lying there for years. Why had he left it there and gone away? Had he hoped that when he came back the witch’s work would be done?
I was going to destroy that figure.
I put it into the pocket of my gown and went out into the garden. There was a hut on the outskirts of the grounds. Few people went there. I buried the doll beneath some braken and set it alight. The grass was dry, as was the braken, and I had not thought there would be such a blaze. As the wax of the image spluttered, Jennet and Manuela, who must have seen the smoke, came running out to the hut.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Only a small fire.”
“How did it happen?” asked Jennet. I did not answer.
As the fire died down Jennet stamped on the last of it.
Manuela knelt down and picked up a piece of charred cloth. It was the piece with the pin sticking in it.
“People should be careful of fire,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “The ground is very dry just now.”
Carlos and Edwina were attracted from the moment they met and two months after the return of Drake’s expedition Edwina came to the Court and said she had something to tell me.
She and Carlos wanted to marry.
“You have known each other such a short time,” I said.
“It is long enough,” she answered. “And he is a sailor and sailors have no time to waste.”
I had heard that before, I thought with a smile.
“You see, Aunt Catharine, although we have only just met, we must have known each other years ago. We were together as babies.
It is interesting that we were both born far across the sea … both in the same place and it seems like fate that we were brought together.”
“Everything in life is fate.”
“But the manner in which we were brought together! Your being taken away with my mother and there was Carlos … and you found him and brought him to the Hacienda. My mother has told me about it.”
“Are you sure that you love Carlos?”
“Oh, Aunt Catharine, there could be no doubt.”
“It isn’t easy to be a sailor’s wife. There will be long periods when he is away and one day perhaps…”
I could not go on and she put her arms about me.
“Carlos’ father will come back,” she soothed. “Carlos is sure of it.”
“And I am too,” I said vehemently. “I know that one day I shall look from my window and his ship will be in the bay. But, oh, how the years go on … and no news … no news…”
There were tears in her eyes. Her love for Carlos made her understand my tragedy.
Manuela came to my room. Her great mournful eyes glowed with fear as they rested on me.
“Señora, I must speak with you.”
“What do you wish to say, Manuela?”
“There was wax. It was an image. There was what was left of the gown and I have the pin here.” She laid it on the table before me. “It was pierced here.” She touched her left side. “It was meant to go through the heart. It must have been like the image that was made of Doña Isabella. Such images are the same throughout the world. Witches are everywhere … they work together in the same way.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Someone burned that. They were burning the one who was represented by the image.”
“I burned that image, Manuela.”
“You, Señora! You wish someone dead!”
“That image was made to look like me. I found it in … I found it. I will not have such things in this house so I burned it.”
“But, Señora, someone made an image of Isabella and she died…”
“I don’t believe in such nonsense.”
She shook her head at me sadly.
When she had gone, I asked myself: Was I speaking the truth? How much did I believe? I remembered how I had been sent to Mary Lee’s house and how I knew someone had been in the bedroom, for I had seen the door close, and then I had discovered that my bed curtains were ablaze. I had found the image among Jake’s clothes, and since he had gone away there had been no more strange attempts on my life.
Was it possible that he had attempted to be rid of me and when he had failed had gone away, temporarily abandoning his plans until his return? I would not believe such nonsense. And yet … the suspicion was sown and it often came into my mind.
There was to be a wedding at Trewynd.
Edwina was very excited naturally. “My mother is coming,” she said. “My stepfather was not going to accompany her, but I have written saying that he must. It is after all my wedding.”
I thought then: I shall see Carey. After all these years, I wonder what my emotions will be.
At Trewynd the Ennises were preparing for the wedding. Everywhere there was the odor of burning rosemary and bay leaves to sweeten the place; I ordered that the same should be done at Lyon Court, for although our rushes were replaced regularly it was always necessary to sweeten the place at intervals. We did this at the Court by moving to different parts of the house while others were being sweetened and with so many guests coming we needed to sweeten all through. I was glad of the knowledge of herbs which I had gleaned through my grandmother in the old days and I was able to add all kinds of aromatic herbs to our sweetening.
