Mistress of the Sea (33 page)

Will waved them away.

‘Go back and wait for me.’

He held her arms gently.

‘Bastidas. You mean the captain in charge of the garrison?’

‘Yes.’ She shook in remembering. ‘He is coming. You must get away . . .’

‘When is he coming? Tonight?’

‘Tomorrow. Perhaps at daybreak. Please . . .’

He embraced her again.

‘Hush. We will be gone before he gets here. The wind is westerly and that will help.’

He glanced up, and she followed, seeing the pale disc of a rising moon and the faint glimmer of stars. He seemed satisfied.

‘We will sail through the night. Are you ready to go?’

‘Yes.’ She began to move away and he kept close by her side.

‘There is only Marco,’ she murmured.

‘The boy we saw heaping bananas on the beach?’

‘Yes, I asked him . . .’

Will took her hand and led her on past the fields.

‘He cannot come with us. He would have no life back in England.’

She felt the stiff strips of his bandage, and looked ahead into a
void.
The path was like a tunnel where it dropped down through the trees.

‘I know,’ she said quietly, and wiped at her eyes.

Two Cimaroons were at the doorway; they moved aside to let Ellyn pass. She entered her house to find Marco with a pike: the same great weapon that her father had once used. His posture was threatening though his mouth gaped open. Everywhere she looked, articles and clothes were strewn in chaos, and for a moment she was shocked, until she remembered how she had left them.

She stepped forward.

‘Oh Marco, put that down! These are friends . . .’ She glanced behind her. ‘Did you leave all the food on the beach?’

‘Yes, Mistress Ellyn.’

Marco answered politely, even attempting a small bow which sent the point of the pike thudding down.

‘Tell our friends they may help themselves,’ she said gently.

The boy frowned and set the pike by his feet. He edged slowly past the Cimaroons and then pelted away through the door. The two men laughed and took hold of her father’s chest, raised it with a grunt, and followed him into the night. That left her alone in the midst of her possessions, scattered like flotsam washed up from a wreck. She found the purse of pearls Will had left her and pushed it in her pocket; then she stooped by the remaining chest and began cramming in the nearest things: a blanket cloak and pewter cups, a kirtle and stockings.

Will joined her quietly, kneeling by her side.

‘How have you fared? I have thought of you every day. You seem . . . anxious.’

She saw that his face looked haggard despite the shine in his eyes. But while she took this in, she was folding a chemise very carefully, doubling it over and over. She only realised what she was doing when he placed his hand upon hers.

‘You were not afraid of Bastidas when I saw you with him last.’ He pushed down with his fingers until their hands were intertwined. ‘What has he done?’

Silently, tears rolled down her cheeks to land in dark splotches on the chemise. She picked it up and all the folds fell out at once. While she tried to refold it, she felt Will push back her hair. She looked up into his eyes, and his gaze was searching.

‘What has happened?’

She could not hold her feelings back. She felt her face crumpling and there was nothing she could do. Her tears fell as Will held her, kissing her hair, soothing and steadying, loosening her shawl as he stroked her neck.

Then he stopped and pulled back.

‘What is this? Have you been hurt?’

Pushing the shawl off her shoulders, he looked down at her bodice to see, just as she did, the spots of blood that stained her clothes. Straight away she covered herself up, grasping at the shawl to hide what was there.

Will sighed and bowed his head, leaning forward until his brow touched hers.

‘Has Bastidas done this?’

She touched Will’s hands.

‘I will kill him,’ he muttered. He pulled back and looked at her. ‘Why?’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘What sense could there be in it?’ He looked into her eyes. ‘What did he want from you?’

She hugged him and whispered, ‘I gave nothing.’

‘My message . . .’ Will was talking as if to himself. ‘Did he? . . .’

‘No.’ She leaned back on her heels. Will needed to know what Bastidas had told her. ‘He believes that the “English corsairs” have sailed away. He said you tried to ambush a mule train on the Royal Road. Then you attacked a town. You killed a friar . . .’

Will gave a nod.

‘So he hurts you. And that is just?’

She huddled against him, and he stroked her hair.

‘The friars were with soldiers who fired after we gave warning. We had no choice.’

Was that right? She no longer knew. She turned her head against his shirt.

‘Take me away from here.’

His reply was a kiss, on her head, then her brow, her temple and her cheek, one kiss after another, slow and then quick.

‘I will never leave you and never forsake you. I’ll never again let you go.’

He kissed her next as he had kissed her at first, when, over two years before, on an autumn night in Plymouth, she had leaned from a window to find him waiting in the cold, and slipped into his arms as she now fell into his embrace. The touch of his lips carried her with him without drawing away, taking her on and on, until at last she opened her eyes.

She saw the hollows that made his face look gaunt, scratches and bruises.

‘But what of you?’ she asked. ‘Where is Captain Drake?’

‘Gone west to find gold if he can. He wants a ship full of booty; more than that, he still wants a silver train. He’s determined on
another
raid.’ Will smiled and ran his fingers through his thick fair hair, and even that appeared changed to her, darker and rougher. ‘Ox has gone the other way to try and find provisions. Whatever happens we’ll be leaving soon. I had to get you back. There are a few of us left at Slaughter Island . . .’

‘Slaughter Island? What name is that?’

She watched a crease deepen between his brows, one that she had not noticed in his face before.

He looked aside.

‘Many have died. The Captain has lost his two brothers.’ His expression hardened as he went on. ‘We have gained few riches to draw the sting from that.’

She took hold of his bandaged hand, beginning to imagine what he must have been through.

‘You are hurt, too.’

‘A little cut that will soon heal.’ He spoke lightly and grinned when she pressed his hand to her face.

She kissed the bandage with care.

‘Let this help it.’

‘Now it is better.’

Delicately she probed the stiffened strips of frayed cloth, aware that whatever was beneath was almost black with dried blood. The wound must have been deep. It looked like the cut of a sword.

‘You will have a scar.’

He kissed her again.

‘And that will please me because it will remind me of this night.’

She met his gaze.

‘Then I hope it never fades.’

‘It will not.’ He smiled wryly, pressing his bandaged hand
against
her cheek. ‘It will be a lasting mark, like my brother’s.’

She frowned, wondering whether he expected her to know what he meant.

‘Kit has a scar on his palm like a sickle moon,’ he explained, ‘burned by a horseshoe in the smithy. A lucky mark, so our father said, though it did not protect him from the Spaniards.’

Turning her head, she let the bandage brush her lips. Will must have loved his brother deeply. He was talking about him again. Kit had a scar
like a sickle moon
. The words jarred in her thoughts. She looked up and away, staring at the little shell on a barrel top: the one in which Will’s message had been delivered, brought to her by the giant who had told her about the ‘Englishman of the Moon’. Who was he?

‘Kit . . .’ She breathed the name. Could the man be Kit? She clutched at Will’s arms, on the point of spilling out her suspicions. But what if she was wrong?

‘He might . . .’ she began.

What if she told him? Will would seek Kit out, of course, and Drake was preparing to leave having lost many of his men. What if Kit could not be found? It could finish far worse; Will might die in the attempt.

‘He could . . . still live,’ she said haltingly.

Will pressed her against him.

‘I cannot believe he does not.’

She hugged him, and shivered.

‘And I never believed you would not come back.’

For a moment they clung to one another, but then he released her.

‘We must finish here.’ He turned to the chest. ‘Shall I close this?’

In a daze she looked round. Heaps of possessions remained strewn about, and most were things she had once thought precious: bolts of kersey cloth and her pen and ink, a hat Marco had woven for her, but at a stroke they were all unimportant.

‘Yes . . . no.’ She picked up the shell. ‘Put this inside.’

The rest could be left. Then her eyes alighted on her old worn shoes: the pair that had been Thom’s, that she had worn when she had played the boy – though playing was all it ever could have been. She had kept them for use like clogs in the fields. She picked them up as Marco came back. She held the shoes out.

‘Here, Marco. I want you to have these.’

His face brightened, and his gratitude showed in the flash of his smile, but that soon faded as he turned his head, first to the chest and Will standing beside it, then towards all that was left in disarray about the house. When he looked at her again his brown eyes widened.

‘You are going without me.’

She went up to him and held him.

‘I have to. Stay here and go back with Friar Luis. When the soldiers come tomorrow, tell them—’ She felt his slight frame stiffen and sought the words to prepare him best ‘—that I have left with some
cimarrones
,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘You do not know where.’

Sounds of banging and shuffling made them both glance round, to see two Cimaroons in the process of lugging out her chest. They were the same men whom Marco had threatened earlier.

‘You must say I have left with the
cimarrones
,’ she repeated.

Marco hung his head.

‘This will be true.’

She bent and put her love into a kiss, whispering intently, making an earnest request, one only he could hear, knowing that this would be the last thing she ever asked him to do.

‘Wait for the fishermen, the ones who brought me the shell. When they come, tell them this . . .’ She gave him her message: news for the ‘Englishman of the Moon’, and if that man was Kit, then she prayed he would heed it.

Marco nodded and she held him, unable to bring herself to let him go until Will gripped her shoulder and the boy’s as well.

‘Come now.’

Will led her away towards the sea, past a group of goats, just visible in the moonlight, busily feasting on bananas by the beach.

19

Alliance

‘. . . As the pack-trains engaged in the overland traffic of this realm were proceeding under guard . . . from this city to that of Nombre de Dios, with gold and silver belonging to Your Majesty and to private persons, to be laden on board ships of the fleet, when they had arrived about a league and a half from that city, there came forth . . . a certain number of English, French and
cimarrones
, who are negroes who have run away from their masters, and advertise that they have allied and confederated themselves with the English and French to destroy this realm, a thing not until this year ever seen or imagined . . .’

—
From the report of the Royal Officials of Panamá to King Philip II of Spain dated 9th May 1573

WILL CLASPED THE
little bells in his fist. He did not want them jingling as he brushed by to enter the hut. He could see Ellyn was asleep. So he edged inside; then he settled on a chest from where he could watch her quietly. She sat with her head down, neck arched and turned to one side, eyes closed, lips parted. He took off
his
cap. He would share a moment with her, and the Cimaroon outside would make sure they were not disturbed. The fort was noisy but, in the place that gave her some privacy, a sense of calm made the hubbub seem less. She had only been on Slaughter Island a few days, and in that time she had hardly relaxed. He was glad to see her resting. Whatever trauma she had been through, rest would help in healing. He was content just to be near her; he would never tire of that.

The pleasure he took in being with her was like waking up in summertime in England, beneath a bright, cloudless sky. She was a landscape entire. Her body was curved like the coombes and there was promise in her folds. He thought of soft paths through meadow grass leading to field-strips of barley. He looked at her lips, red as poppy petals: lips he had kissed and would kiss again. Merely the imagining was enough to stir him. She was the heartache of home – yearning and joy all rolled into one.

He gazed at her face. No other woman could be as lovely. His blessing was to be with her as she was at that moment, in a time that was his, without sense of its passing. Asleep, her face moved. Her eyelids quivered and her lips curled slightly. She gave a little shudder and took a quick breath. He wondered where she was in her dreams; whatever the place, he would have liked to have joined her. She frowned, rolling her head, and he reached out to calm her. Suddenly she was awake, eyes open and fixed on him.

‘Will! What are you doing here?’

‘Considering you.’ He smiled. ‘Thinking how fair you are.’

‘Flattery will not excuse you. I prefer to invite people into my house.’ She frowned, plainly flustered, and brushed back her hair. ‘What did you see?’

‘You were asleep.’

‘I was pondering.’

‘You were pondering with your mouth open just so.’ He made a little ‘O’ with his lips as if he was blowing a bubble, but he had only mimicked her for an instant before she slapped her hand over his mouth.

‘Will Doonan, you are a heartless, mocking jackanapes. How could you think me fair if I was pouting like a fish?’