Mistress of the Sea (7 page)

‘The occasion is for
your
enjoyment,’ her mother said, as she matched a new thread to the design. She was emphatic, though no louder; Ellyn strained to hear her. ‘Have no concern for me, rather be mindful of your father. The gout is but a symptom of a greater malady.’

‘What?’ Ellyn frowned, astounded.

Her mother slowly shook her head.

‘The physician has said he must stay calm. He must not be agitated or vexed.’

Was her father truly sick? Suddenly Ellyn was thrown into a spiral of worry. It had never occurred to her that, as between her parents, her father might have the more serious affliction. She had never really accepted that her parents were not immortal. Her father could be insufferable but she wished him no ill.

‘So, my sweet,’ her mother continued in a fading whisper, ‘I trust you will ensure that nothing
in you
will give him cause to be distressed.’

‘Of course not!’ How could her mother even think it? But Ellyn realised that assurance was what her mother needed; strong emotions only disturbed her. With an effort, Ellyn softened her tone. ‘Be at ease. I promise I shall give him no offence.’

Her mother’s trust was confirmed with a kiss.

The box was very fine. Its lid was inlaid with a chequered veneer, and around its sides was a pattern of tooled ropes with roses. If she could have been sure the box was empty, Ellyn might have happily admired it. But she knew that inside would be a present from Godfrey Gilbert, and about that she was miserably ill at ease.

She prayed the gift would not be too precious or personal, nothing that might be used to seal a betrothal – not a poesy ring in interlocking bands each inscribed with a motto of love, ‘
I am yours, you my choice
. . .’ Let it not be that. Gingerly she placed her hand on the lid and made a wish as she closed her eyes – not a portrait in miniature to be worn on a sash. (How romantically could Master Gilbert be painted, with his bald head and waxbill nose?) The gentleman was watching, so was her father. Ellyn
breathed
deeply, conscious that she had to be guarded. She steeled herself, opened the lid, looked down, and smiled.

‘A carcanet. How delightful!’

The choker Ellyn removed was made of enamelled gold flowers supporting a pendant of pearls cleverly fashioned in a gold setting. The pearls and the surround made the form of a lamb; it was really quite exquisite. Ellyn hooked the chain round her neck, suspecting that her mother must have known about the gift all along, since her partlet and high collar left her throat wholly exposed.

Master Gilbert turned to her father.

‘Does she like it much?’

Ellyn shivered with distaste. One of the gentleman’s most irritating habits was that of addressing her indirectly as if she was an object incapable of speech. But her father beamed approvingly.

‘Assuredly, Godfrey, though blessed if I thought she could be made prettier. Yet you have done it.’ Her father clapped his guest on the shoulder and raised his glass. ‘A toast to that!’

Ellyn watched them both from across the table.

Master Gilbert narrowed his eyes as he faced her, drawing in his chin to give a ferret-like prominence to the length of his nose.

‘The fairest maid?’ he suggested.

‘A maid nonpareil!’ roared her father.

Ellyn was left with the impression that the fortified wine the physician had prescribed for his gout was having too beneficial an effect on his choler. She worried about him less and smiled more.

‘I thank you.’ She looked at Master Gilbert and wondered what he and her father had been discussing. If their plans involved her,
then
she preferred to know. She decided to try a little probing. ‘I hope your business ventures will be successful.’

He responded with a laugh.

‘You speak of ventures lightly, as though the outcome might never affect you. But I can tell you, my dear—’ he looked pointedly at Ellyn ‘—that your father and I have been considering an enterprise that may well concern you as much as it does us.’

Ellyn tried not to frown.

‘Truly,’ her father joined in, then turned to his guest and murmured, ‘I think we may disclose this, Godfrey.’ His eyes twinkled in Ellyn’s direction. ‘If this enterprise yields even half the return of the last, there will be a
date to be fixed
, one that
you
may look forward to.’

Master Gilbert fiddled with his glass. Her father stifled a belch, and Ellyn’s hopes plummeted further. She was sure the ‘date to be fixed’ must be that of a wedding, but what was the enterprise that her father expected to be profitable? Suddenly a disturbing possibility occurred to her – perhaps it involved Francis Drake’s next voyage. It could do. Will had told her he had dined with her father, and Nan had said that Will had been seen on Drake’s ship. She thought quickly.

‘I wonder whether this enterprise might concern a ship called the
Swan
?’

The response was clear astonishment. Her father slapped his thigh and chuckled loudly.

‘By my faith! However did you arrive at that?!’ He entered a muttered exchange that Ellyn had no difficulty in hearing. ‘I swear, Godfrey, I have not breathed a word to anyone. Have you been putting ideas into her head?’

The coolness of Master Gilbert’s answer did not escape Ellyn’s attention.

‘I would never discuss business with a woman.’ He looked towards her and offered a buck-toothed leer. ‘But she is, perhaps, rightly curious, and the sailing of the
Swan
hardly secret. I have no objection to her being apprised of the essentials.’

Her father raised his glass again.

‘She has the mind for it, to be sure.’ The face he turned to Ellyn was ruddy and supremely merry.

‘Kerseys for the Spanish Main, my dear, and a very handsome gain! Ha!’

Ellyn strove to give an impression of happy interest while trying to make more sense of his remark. A kersey was a locally woven cloth, so she presumed her father and Master Gilbert had pooled resources to make a shipment (and no doubt Master Gilbert had advanced the credit since her father was notoriously tight-fisted). She could understand the trade’s attraction: the kerseys would be smuggled to the Spanish Main in the Americas and sold free of duty, to the mutual advantage of both suppliers and buyers, at the expense of the King of Spain. Such schemes were the basis of almost every undertaking from which the Hawkins family had amassed a considerable fortune, and her father was always trying to emulate their success. Her conclusion was that Will and her father’s cloth might both soon be heading west across the ocean. She touched the pendant at her neck and tried to remain outwardly cheerful.

‘I suppose the lamb is representative of the wool to be shipped?’

Godfrey Gilbert gave a nod, and Ellyn’s fingers moved to the
links
supporting the tiny animal: two fine chains each ending in two larger rings.

‘And the bonds may suggest a blackamoor’s manacles,’ Gilbert added.

‘Ah!’ Ellyn made a greater effort to preserve her smile. Would slaves be involved in the next enterprise they planned? Certainly John Hawkins dealt in slaves; a bound Negro was prominent in his new coat of arms. Was there a connection? But of more concern to her was whether Will would be in jeopardy.

‘I pray the enterprise does not meet with any difficulties such as those that beset the last voyage of Master Hawkins.’

‘That sorry catastrophe!’ her father exclaimed, with a wave of his hand. ‘Have no such fear, my sweet. The Spaniards will not be concerned by a single ship. The
Swan
returned from the last venture without any trouble at all.’ He thumped the table with renewed jocularity. ‘So be in good cheer! Excepting the wildest storm, you may begin to think of the date to be fixed. And no doubt Master Gilbert will be thinking of matters more material!’ At this he emptied his glass and chortled, while Godfrey Gilbert smiled thinly and rose to take his leave.

Ellyn had no choice but to allow Master Gilbert to drool a kiss over the back of her hand – something that reminded her of the trail of a slug. As soon as he was gone she picked up a napkin and vigorously rubbed at the wet of his touch.

Her father slumped in his chair, loosened his ruff, produced a voluminous handkerchief and mopped at his brow. Ellyn settled beside him and quickly dismissed the steward when he showed his head at the door; she wanted a few moments with her father undisturbed.

Ellyn had not the patience for sweet-talking him at length and launched straight in with the subject that concerned her most.

‘I trust, Father, that if you were to receive an offer for my hand in marriage, then you would discuss the matter with me first before intimating I might accept.’

He appeared flustered. His face was so battered by the effects of smallpox and corpulence, marked with pits and lumps, burst veins and blotches, that by all objective standards he was ugly. But to Ellyn, his looks meant nothing; his response was what mattered. She kissed him and he smiled.

‘Of course, Lynling.’

He used the pet-name he had given her from the time when she played on his knee. Ellyn suspected she was about to be coaxed and felt a little happier.

‘But if an eminently worthy man were to make such a proposal—’ he gave her a hug ‘—and if, in turn,
I
might be inclined to pay an appropriate dowry to that man’s father, one able to offer
you
a good jointure, why then, would it not be reasonable to expect you to look favourably upon such a union, most especially if it was desired by both families?’

Ellyn’s answer was crisp.

‘Most certainly, if the man be not Godfrey Gilbert.’

Her father threw up his hands in exasperation.

‘Then let him be Peryn Fownes!’ His face became redder. ‘But I wish you had made your preference plainer – ’twould have saved everyone much trouble.’

‘Nor Peryn Fownes!’ Ellyn retorted, bridling instantly. Why must it be either? A sudden recollection of the promise she had made her mother constrained her from further protest.
She
continued in a milder tone. ‘Dear Father, I have not yet decided . . .’

‘You must!’ he bellowed. Too late, Ellyn noticed his colour darkening and the fresh beads of sweat that appeared across his brow. His anger broke like a thunderstorm with violent noise.

‘Since you clearly cannot decide, then I will decide for you. A wedding
must
be arranged, and this dithering ended.’ He hurled his words at her. ‘You are twenty years of age and might by now have given me four grandchildren or more, if you had not been so obdurate.’

‘I ask only for a little time . . .’ Ellyn began to plead.

‘Your time has run out!’ Her father railed, his eyes started as he glared at her. ‘Do you suppose you will attract suitors for ever? A maid must be wed young if she is to bear a good crop, since not all her fruit will last a season, as you should know.’

She gasped and clutched at arguments like collapsing steps, desperately and without forethought.

‘There may be others, better—’

‘What others?’

‘The Queen is not yet betrothed,’ she threw out, but instantly regretted the remark.

His rage only worsened.

‘Might England go to war because of your choice?’

She shrank from his shouting but he leaned over her.

‘Am I besieged by legions of wooers? No and
no
! You must know your place, your bounds and your duty.’

She hung her head, though he only heaped more admonishment upon her.

‘You will wear Master Gilbert’s gift with pride, and await the
day
when good commerce persuades him to enter a commitment that is closer.’ Her father staggered to his feet, swaying while he leaned on his stick.

Ellyn caught his arm, but he shrugged her away.

‘Say nothing more!’ He thumped his stick down. ‘
I have spoken
.’

Aghast, Ellyn watched her father lumber to the door, banging into a cupboard before lurching and marching out, hose sagging around his swollen ankles. She was left in the company of abandoned trenchers and spilt salt, a dish from which a turbot head stared flatly back at her and the basin of water in which fingers had been washed. Its surface shone with a greasy film. She had not eaten but gulped at the sensation of something sticking in her throat. Awareness of the broken promise to her mother made her dejection more acute. Since she was a child, her father had never chastised her so forcibly. His censure stung deep, bursting the bubble of her pride, and reminding her of everything that constrained and oppressed her.

She was chill with the realisation that she would
have
to wed Godfrey Gilbert, and, if not him, then Peryn Fownes. What silly daydreams had she entertained? Her reveries of a knightly courtship, of being wooed like a lady in a classic romance – even the most agreeable of her musings about Will Doonan – all these fancies had been crushed at a stroke. Her only hope of reprieve was if some calamity befell the
Swan
: fire, storm, or attack – a total loss at sea. But how could she wish for that if Will was as much at risk as the cloth on which Master Gilbert expected to increase his fortune?

Ellyn gazed at her ringless hands, at her sleeves the colour of lush meadows and spring leaves: green for fertility and passion.
Her
cuffs were edged by the stitches her mother had sewn, neat and measured, each pulled perfectly tight – so passion was finished. How fitting.

She shook her head. Her father was a tyrant and she hated him. Didn’t he care about how she felt? Surely he could see that she loathed the idea of marrying either of the suitors he had encouraged for his own selfish ends? But that was an unworthy thought. She trembled with frustration and put her hands to her face. A fresh wave of guilt coursed through her. Her father was only acting with her best interests at heart. It was his duty to ensure she wed well, and hers to accept the guidance he gave her. She took a long breath and sat up straight. She would not sink into self-pity; she must not. She would pray for her father’s health and she would pray for Will. Next she would find out whether Will was actually sailing on the
Swan
– she did not know he was for certain, and how could she assume anything on the basis of Nan and Lettie’s gossip? She resolved not to tolerate any more tittle-tattle about him. There would be no more rumouring, and she would talk to him as soon as possible. Only then would she know the truth. But what if he was going? She stared at the window.