The Sea Beggars (34 page)

“Let us go in,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and rose and helped her solemnly to her feet. “Thank you for talking to me—you make me feel like an honest man again.”

Was this the end of it? Reluctantly she let go his hand. His size attracted her powerfully. What he had said worked on in her mind. To play the hero—to live in the world of deeds. Suddenly she thought him wonderful beyond all other men she had ever known, except William Simmons.

They walked back toward the house, silent, both of them, not even looking at one another.

In the courtyard was a noisy tangle of people and horses. Here they could not talk. They separated. Eleanor went slowly toward the kitchen, where she would have the supper to oversee. The wild yearning in her heart mixed with the suspicion that it were better if she never saw Jan van Cleef again, if one kiss could stir her so. She was hungry. Her hands were salty with sweat; she would have to wash. At the brick archway, she turned and looked across the courtyard.

He stood there by the wall, watching her. When he found her gaze on him, he smiled and raised his hand.

Her cheeks went hot as her feelings. Unable to keep still, she wheeled and ran like a child down the steps to the kitchen.

At supper, other people crowded the table, and Jan had no chance to talk to Eleanor. He watched her all the while, how she ate delicately as a bird, taking only the smallest morsels of the meat and breaking her bread into little pieces. She did not seem to pay much heed to him; only once she looked up, and then catching his gaze on her turned swiftly away.

After the meal he went out to the courtyard, not knowing where else to go, and stood around on the bricks watching the kitchen girls bring the scraps from supper out for the chickens. He thought of nothing but Eleanor. Her eager interest in him, her touch, the kiss, everything that had happened between them seemed to go on and on in his memory; his body ached all over from the exercise of his senses. But she did not care. She had gone somewhere else tonight.

Then, just as he was falling into despair, she came out from the kitchen.

They walked out along the lane again, talking about virtue and how one could know the right things to do. Everything that had chafed him since Mouse fell into the sea now poured out in a rush of words, how he longed for some great exalting work, how instead everything he did disintegrated into trivia and commonplaces and meanness.

The darkness deepened. He took her by the hand, to help her over the rough footing of the lane.

“I wish I were a man,” she said. “I'd go with you; we'd fight the Spanish together. But as it is—”

He lifted up her hand and kissed it. “You have the heart for it.”

Rain began to fall, and they turned their steps back to the house. Jan wanted to kiss her; he wanted to do other things with her. But there seemed no place where they could be alone and secure enough. He could think of nothing to say. He had never met a woman before who was so apt to his thoughts, to his longings as Eleanor, but perhaps she felt differently. A widow, too, with another lover's memory to honor.

The courtyard was empty; the rain was falling steadily now. She said, “Shall we go to the hall?”

“Whatever you choose.”

They went to the hall; the old man who had sat by Jan at supper was dozing by the fire, and two maidservants tittered and played cat's cradle by the window. Eleanor drew back.

“Not here,” she said.

“Come up to my room,” Jan said.

She moved away from him; they stood on the landing outside the door to the hall, in the dark. She said, “The others will know and they'll talk.”

He let go her hand. “Whatever you choose.”

Now she turned her face fully toward him; the rain had dampened her hair. She said, low, “Very well.” Swiftly she went by him up the stairs. He followed her.

They climbed up to the room under the eaves where he was to sleep. There was a fire laid on the hearth, and Jan knelt to light it. She lit a candle, put it on the mantel, and went to fasten the shutters over the window. Jan built the fire high, his hands trembling, his mouth dry with excitement.

She sat next to him on the hearth and he turned and kissed her.

“We ought not,” she said.

“Because of these other people,” he said, and went back to poking at the fire again.

She knelt beside him, tilted forward a little from the waist, her face bathed in the glow of the fire. Her lips were pressed tightly together. Her eyes glittered. He thought she was beautiful, not in the common way of beauty, but in her aliveness.

She said, “I do everything now, it seems, for what other people will think.”

He took her hand and kissed it, and she moved toward him and he put his arms around her and pressed his mouth to her cheek, to her forehead and eyes and lips. Her arms went around his neck. She lay in his arms, her breath warm on his cheek. He put his hand on her bodice. The thin cloth there was damp from the rain, warm from the breast underneath.

“We shouldn't do it,” she said.

“Do you want to?”

“I don't know. I am afraid. I want to but I'm afraid.”

“Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you. I'll never do anything to hurt you …”

His hand stroked over her, and she moved again, arching her back, her breast rising into the palm of his hand. He pulled the light cloth down and slipped his hand in against her bare flesh, and she moaned. With his mouth he searched out her kiss again, hungry now, her breast filling his hand as he would fill up her body soon, and she was letting him, eager, her hands pulling at her clothes, shyly seeking through his clothes until suddenly she touched his penis, and the surge of pleasure through him nearly made him shout.

He lifted her up. The bed was right behind him, under the window. He laid her down on it and unlaced her gown and her hands leapt past his, pulling away the encumbering dress, baring her round breasts in the firelight. He put his lips to one small erect nipple. She gasped, her hands on his hair, her legs moving, her hips against him. They pushed away her clothes. His hand stroked down over the soft skin of her belly, down to her thighs, where the thick curly hair grew, and when he touched her there she spread her legs apart. He had never handled a woman before, not there, and he groped, uncertain, surprised at the dampness, at the softness of her flesh, and slipped his fingers down between the tender folded skin, and reached up into her body.

She cried out; her whole body arched, letting him in deeper, her hands on his shoulders. Standing up, he shed his clothes and knelt on the bed between her knees, his penis jutting out in front of him. She reached for it; her hand enclosed it, and he quivered all over, his strength gone; led by her hand, he lay down on her, braced on his elbows, and she drew his power down and into her and engulfed him.

It was over for him almost at once. The warmth and pressure all around his organ brought him instantly to the point of bursting, and on the third stroke he gave up twenty years of waiting. He clutched her tight. She was whimpering under him; he knew she wanted him to go on, and he did, amazed at the power of his body, at the effect of his body on her. He held her face between his hands and watched her open like a blossom between his fingers, her eyes brimming with tears, her mouth slack and yielding, until finally her eyes closed and a rosy glow spread over her face, and she was quiet under him.

He kissed her closed, tear-filled eyes. The scent of their bodies was like a perfume in the air around them.

She said, “We've sinned.”

“Well, maybe.” He rolled to the side of the bed and looked at her body, subtly printed with his, the breasts flattened, the belly red, the wonderful curled place between her legs still a little ajar where he had been. “Are you cold?”

She sighed. “No. Open the window a little, will you?”

He opened the shutter enough to let in the air and the sound of the rain. Lying down beside her again, he touched her breast. In a few moments he would be ready to do it again.

“I haven't even kissed a man since my husband died,” she said.

Jan was playing with her nipple. He put his mouth on it, drawing the hard bud upward. “I know you are no wanton.”

“Only for lack of opportunity,” she said, and sighed again. “I have lain in my cold widow's bed, some nights, wishing—”

“I had never done it before,” he said; he did not want her wishing she had not done it. He kissed her mouth again. “If it is a sin it is a mild one.”

“How can you say that?” she cried. “A few hours ago we were talking of great deeds and heroes, and now we have fallen into sin again, dragged one another into sin—”

He put his hand over her mouth. Above his fingers her eyes shone with a desperate will to unhappiness.

“You are mine now,” he said. “I'll decide what is sin between us and what is not. I'll hear no more of this from you, not if you love me. Do you understand?”

He took his hand away; she lay still, her gaze on him, her mouth curled into a pensive line. His hand lay on her belly, where soon he meant to lie.

“Do you love me?” she said.

“Yes,” Jan said.

She put her arms up, to encircle his neck, and drew his head down to kiss again.

“I think it must have been a palace once,” Jan said, and jumped down from the great stone that lay in the grass before the stone gateway. “Now this entrance is all that's left.”

Eleanor laughed. “Perhaps some moralism could be drawn from that.”

“What?” He came over to her and took her hand, and they went on along the way to the village.

“I don't know—that everything wicked crumbles into dust.”

“Why do you think it was wicked?”

She shrugged, unwilling to lay open her thoughts about the stone gate. And someone was coming up the way toward them. When Jan tried to take hold of her hand she pulled away from him.

“What's the matter?”

She said nothing, smiling; they walked along the path, while the cowherd and his boy came toward them, an old man and a young, in identical brown broad-brimmed hats. The boy carried a long stick. Their dog loped along before them.

“Good morning, Jem,” she said. “Joe.”

They chorused, “Good day, Mis's Simmons.” Their dark eyes probed at Jan, beside her, as they passed.

When they had gone on by, Jan said, “Are you ashamed of me?”

“No, I—”

“Just of what we did last night?”

“Hush,” she said, firmly.

When she thought of the night before, she knew, unsettled, that she had lost power over herself, that he had taken mastery of her somehow; she was determined not to do that again—not to give herself up to him again. Carefully she did not think of the pleasure of his body. Her body.

“Do you want to marry me?” he asked.

That startled her. She looked up at him, his face still so new to her that every fresh angle showed her a stranger. “Do you want to?”

“I love you,” he said.

She faced forward again, her heart pounding. Now she wished he would take her hand; she would not pull away from him now. But they were coming into the village, where other people abounded. The moment was gone.

Crisply she said, “I am to the bookseller's. Will you come with me?”

“I'll meet you there,” he said, and went off.

She wondered if he were annoyed with her. They were still just barely friends to one another, and he was not English. Maybe it was foolish even to think of marrying him. At once her spirit lowered; she began to fret herself over the right thing to do. For an instant, her temper overflowed with fury at a God Who made everything so hard.

“Good day, Mistress Simmons.”

“Good day,” she said, not even knowing whom she answered, and went blindly on into the bookstore.

Maybe, she thought, staring at a shelf of books, she was only a whore inside, doing that with him, and so to marry him would drag an innocent down with her. He had said he was a virgin. She reached out for a little blue volume and took it in her hand. On the spine was written
Dido, Queen of Carthage
. She turned it over and over, feeling the leather smooth under her fingers.

At that moment the door behind her slammed open, and Jan like a great blond thunderbolt stormed into the shop.

“Eleanor.” He gripped her elbow and made her turn to face him. “She's seized the ships.”

“What?”

“The Queen of England. She's taken the Spanish ships for herself! Our prizes!”

Eleanor blinked at him, uncomprehending; then she remembered why he had been to London, and the irony of it struck her and she laughed.

“God, what fools we were, trusting in a crown—in a woman crowned, at that.” He rushed up and down past her, his voice shaking with fury. Eleanor gripped the book in her hands. His passionate energy fascinated her.

“I'm going,” he said. “I'm to Plymouth—to my ship. The other Beggars will be having a meeting, to decide what to do. I can't let them decide without me.”

Her insides contracted. “But—what about me?”

“I'll come back.” He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked solemnly into her face. “I'll come back, as soon as I can. Wait for me.” Already he was turning from her. Not even a kiss. Shocked, she could not move a step to follow him. Over his shoulder, he cried, “Wait for me. If you take another lover, I'll kill him!” And was gone out the door.

She lowered her eyes to the blue volume in her hand. Seduced and abandoned. Opening her fingers, she let the book slide to the floor.

Old Pieter said, “I don't see how you expected otherwise.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands on his stomach; his gaze ranged over the tavern, where the other Beggars sat or stood in groups and shook their heads and cursed Elizabeth.

It delighted him to see them thus, their hopes destroyed, their work turned to nothing. Now their phantom unity would fade, and he would fall free of the unwelcome cause. Already some were arguing, accusing one another of the fault.