Mistress of the Sea (22 page)

‘They have gone!’ she called brightly as she ran to her father’s side. ‘All is well!’ She stroked his brow to reassure him, but he continued to call loudly.

‘Go! Be gone! Out upon’t and good riddance!’ His face was contorted with pain.

She took his hand. What had been done to him? Surely they would not have hurt a helpless, sick old man?

‘Oh, Father . . .’

He gasped. But suddenly his hideous expression transformed into a look of delight as he rolled his eyes and released a sonorous fart.

‘Now let us sleep,’ he murmured while beaming back at her.

She tucked him up with a smile, but in her heart she was in despair. What would happen to them now? ‘If you live, you leave,’ the Spanish captain had said. Her greatest fear was for her father’s health, but she also feared for their continued liberty. What if they were taken away? Will could not yet have reached England, and already she longed for him to come back. But would they still be on the island when he did? And, if not, then how would he find them? The arrival of Captain Bastidas had angered as much as disturbed her. She had taken an instant dislike to him. He had said he did not want any disease in the city, and she supposed that was why they had not been removed forcibly, but it unsettled her to think she was beholden to him for their freedom. His arrogance had been insulting, and his men had behaved disgracefully. He had claimed she would ask for his help. She resolved she most certainly would not. But what if she had to beg him to leave her and her father alone?

13

Alone

‘. . . In solitude she lived,

And in solitude built her nest;

And in solitude, alone

Hath the Beloved guided her . . .’

—
From
The Canticle of the Soul and The Bridegroom,
stanza 35, by the Spanish Carmelite mystic Juan de la Cruz
(
John of the Cross
),
composed during his imprisonment

Panamá, the Americas

July 1571

ELLYN HELD THE
spoon to her father’s lips.

‘I have made you a potage. See how good it is! Please take a sip.’

He had been asleep, and his head lolled against her arm but, while his mouth remained closed, his eyes flickered open. The smell was working its magic.

She had caught a bird. It had happened quite by accident after her abortive attempts at fishing. She had slung her broken net over bushes, thinking she might as well throw it away, only to find,
after
a night of crashing thunderstorms, that a large pheasant-like fowl had become snared in the mesh. The bird was not one she particularly wanted to trap, since she enjoyed the greeting of its kind with their loud clacking every morning, but the catch was providential. She had made a stew.

Dealing with the bird had not been easy. She could not bring herself to wring its neck, and anyway she did not know exactly how; it was something she had never done before. So she had picked up the net and swung it hard against a rock. The desired result was instantaneous. The decapitation and cleaning had been attended to in the way she had seen Nan do, but the handling of the entrails, and the flies gathering as she had pulled them out, had troubled her enough to take the gloss from her triumph. She had buried the offal in the sand, under the place where she had lit a fire. She remembered Will’s advice: ‘The Spaniards will see your smoke,’ he had told her before he left, ‘but they will find you anyway, so let them. You must cook for the comfort it will give you.’

She was sure Will would have approved of the way she had used his tinderbox, arranged the brushwood on the beach, and set the fire burning brightly; then in its embers she had placed a crock containing the fowl chopped in quarters, and water from a stream, together with pieces of ship’s biscuit. And she felt he would have been doubly impressed by the means she had found to flavour the stew. Inspiration had come after she had decided to reward herself with a little grooming. While searching for her looking glass, she had found her sweet bag of posies, and in this, she realised, were all the herbs she could wish for. The dried leaves and blooms meant to protect her from infection had been picked from the garden of her father’s house in Plymouth. So she had removed as
many
of the tiny grey lavender flowers as she could distinguish, knotted the remainder in the linen bag, and left it to steep along with the meat in the pot. It was the homely aroma of this infusion that rose from the spoon she held under her father’s nose. Mixed with the smell of cooked fowl was a redolence of violet and thyme, rosemary and sage: the best of seasoning, and more than a hint of perfume as well.

Her father’s lips trembled as she held the spoon near his lips.

‘What goodly fragrance is this? Oh, my sweet Lynling, that taste doth bear me away.’

‘But you have not tasted anything yet,’ Ellyn protested, though in truth she was delighted by his reply. He appeared more alert than he had done for a long while. She dabbed with a napkin at his pockmarked chin, and listened as his voice strengthened.

‘In that fragrance is the taste. Let the broth cool. Do you touch my feet?’

She frowned. What was he saying? Only a sheet touched his feet. She saw the hump that they made and squeezed it.

‘I do so now.’

He closed his eyes.

She squeezed again, harder, first one foot then the other, but they remained inert.

‘Can you not feel this?’

She heard a faint sigh.

‘Oh, mercy!’ In consternation she reached for his hand. It was cold and limp. But his mouth was moving, and there was awareness in the way he kept his yellowed eyes upon her.

‘Be at peace,’ he whispered. ‘You will not have much longer to wait.’

‘Do not speak in such a way!’ Letting go of his hand, she patted the mound of his knees, and wondered whether he was conscious even of the gout that used to pain him. ‘You are weak, but you will recover if you will only eat. Oh, Father, please try.’

She continued with her coaxing, eager to keep him awake lest he again lapse into delirium, conscious that for weeks he had only sipped at water. Why, when he must be hungry, would he not swallow wholesome liquid that was placed in his mouth? She watched more of the potage dribble uselessly round his chin, and mopped it up as from a baby.

‘You must try,’ she insisted.

‘Enough.’ He groaned and turned his head. ‘So help me I am finished,’ he gasped.

She placed the spoon in the bowl at her side on the ground, resolving not to pressure him any more, but to be cheerful.

‘Your fever is gone and your look is brighter. And now the broth is cooled,’ she added, with what she hoped was a note of happy surprise. ‘So you must taste it.’

‘Be still and let me rest,’ he muttered. ‘You have been a good daughter.’

She felt humbled.

‘Not so good, truly.’

‘That is a comely dress, and you have made a home of this hovel.’ Since entering the shelter, her father had proclaimed himself to be in many places, but she had never once heard him describe his whereabouts as a hovel. She followed his lead and let her focus drift over the walls – across the rough coral stones, and the dark space beneath the low roof in which creatures scurried, though she was not sure what.

‘Do you see everything?’ she asked.

‘Yes . . . but not my jewel . . . where is that?’

Instantly she knew what he wanted. His ‘jewel’ was his locket: the ornament containing the miniature likeness of her mother that she had given him before the voyage. She found the pendant and brought it to him.

‘Here, Father.’

‘Ah . . .’ He opened the locket, and kissed the image inside.

‘You have given me comfort.’

He seemed lucid. Could this be the opportunity that she had hoped for all along?

‘Will you try a taste now?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

She sighed and stood, silently giving thanks, saying nothing lest he change his mind.

‘Put out two bowls,’ he wheezed as she turned to go. ‘One for Thom as well.’

‘But . . .’ She would not distress him more by reminding him that Thom was dead, instead she nodded and smiled down at him.

‘Fetch another,’ he mumbled, ‘and we will sup together. Thom is waiting for me.’

Crouching beside him once more, she brought her face close to his.

‘If I bring another bowl, do you promise to eat?’

His ugly features contorted in an expression of pathetic appeal.

‘Oh, Lynling, I am hungry.’

She dashed to the fire still smouldering on the beach and hurriedly ladled out another helping, then returned to set a second bowl beside the first. Both were placed where her father could see
them,
though she could tell he was no longer watching. She spoke to wake him up.

‘Here is your bowl, and the other as well. If you are ready, I shall serve you.’

He gave no response. She bent nearer to peer at his eyes. They were not quite closed, but they were focused on a spot that did not change as she moved.

‘Father?’

She placed her hand on his brow and swept it back over his wisps of hair. She watched his lips for the tremor of his breathing, and there it was, but very slight. Then a trickle of blood ran from his nose. He coughed suddenly, and she saw another bead of blood swelling in the corner of his mouth.

‘Oh, God!’

She raised his head and pushed up the pillow behind. He must not choke. His eyes did not move. She wiped his nose and left the napkin under his chin.

She raced outside to stare at the distant outline of Nombre de Dios. The sea was empty. Who would help her? No one could see if she waved or hear if she screamed. The she remembered Will talking. ‘The Spaniards will see your smoke . . .’ She had not wanted the Spaniards to come, but now she did. They had to come quickly. She pulled ferociously at the piles of tinder that were stacked near the shelter and dragged everything she could to the fire: sticks, branches and dry fronds. She heaped up the lot until flames leapt skyward in shimmering heat. She dashed back inside.

Her father was motionless. She crouched beside him. She tried to settle her own hoarse breathing so she could listen for his, though there was not even a trace of a tremble in his lips. Blood
was
drying under his nose and glistening below his ears. With her hands either side of his face she kissed his cool brow. She had fought with him all her life, but she did not want him to die.
Let him live
.

She got up and reached for his broadsword, and then darted back onto the beach. The fire raged, though the flames were lower. Wheeling round, she hacked madly at the undergrowth nearby. She cut and chopped, throwing vegetation onto the blaze, stems and vines, anything green. Smoke billowed and rose, making her splutter while her eyes streamed. The smoke became thicker. It spiralled at an angle in a sickly white plume to fade against the darker clouds that loomed overhead. A fat raindrop splashed her face. She let the sword drop and ran back. Huddling down by her father, she pressed her face against his chest.

When she was a child, walking with him in the garden, she would hide her head in his gown; she would bury her nose in the wool of his clothes and breathe their smell mingled with that of their home. And in the summertime, if the sun was shining, then this was the fragrance: violet and thyme, rosemary and sage.

‘Oh, Father . . .’

He had left without giving her a chance to make her peace, or say anything meaningful, or even goodbye, or that she loved him.

For all his faults she loved him. Her tears ran into his shirt.

His jewel was in his hand. She pressed his fingers around the locket, and then placed his hand over his heart.

It was pouring now, the rushing of the rain muffling the pounding of the sea, and the shelter was filling with smoke. Ellyn got up unsteadily and wandered out in a daze.

She could see nothing but smoke, it was like a mist all around.
But
in this there was light, shifting and swirling, and the shadow of the water before which other forms were darker: the suggestion of a boat and a man in robes, who had his arms held wide and was walking towards her.

The man was a Blackfriar – a Dominican. Ellyn knew what he was by his white hood and black cloak. His head was shaved and a crucifix hung round his neck. She accepted this. There was nothing about anything that could have shocked her any more. She stumbled towards him in a daze and clutched at his hand, then by gestures tried to show him that he should go with her to the shelter. He spoke, but she could neither understand nor answer. Her voice was lost in her throat. What could this man do? He looked too slight to be of any help.

Through the drizzle and haze, she made out the suggestion of others moving about, but further off, near the boat that must have brought them all to the island. None of this surprised her. She only cared about getting the friar to the shelter and close to the pallet on which her father lay; then all she saw was her father’s face when she fell by his side. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open with the defenceless serenity of a newborn’s sleep, nose upturned and lower lip drawn in.

His colouring was like a husk around a dry grain of wheat.

The friar began intoning; she did not know what. She could see what he was doing: holding the crucifix to her father’s mouth, then bringing a vial to his half-closed eyes, wiping the lids with a cloth, so drawing them shut.

‘
Per istam sanctam Unctiónem
. . .’

Her father was still. She watched as a wail swelled to bursting in her throat, caught and would not come. That his end should be
like
this – reduced to ignominy in such a place, far from her mother and his home, cut off from everything that gave him pride, blessed in Latin by a Spanish priest. But there was no one else to ease his journey, and this time, for certain, he was leaving her behind.

She tried to pray, but her fingers curled and tightened into fists.

The friar was kneeling at her side. She heard only the fuzz of noises outside the house: the pattering rain and soughing sea. Then in a voice that rumbled as if turning over stones, the friar led her with words she had learnt as an infant and used long ago.