The Lion Triumphant (42 page)

“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.

T
WO 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.