by Karen Harper
“As invisible as Woden or the Hooded Hawk?”
“No jests. And walk your horse and go in on foot.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, dismounting.
She could tell he was disappointed not to be heading out to sea with her, so she said, “It will buck up both Piers and Meg to have you here today. Go now,” she urged, and turned her horse away.
Drake had hardly dared to believe she would come. And dressed as a lad! The boldness and bravado of Elizabeth Tudor never ceased to amaze him. He strode down the gangway to welcome her.
“I do have a gown in my saddle packs,” she greeted him, as he helped her to dismount on the wharf, “but I believe this garb might be better with the wind strong today on deck. The wind will be up beyond the coastline, will it not, and the ship will go fast?”
She seemed as excited as a child as he greeted her and assured her they would unfurl every sail. A woman after his own heart, indeed. He gave her three horses over into the care of his man Giles again, for he’d taken to keeping Giles and Hugh not only watched but separated after they’d gone into the forest without his permission.
Both men were silently fuming over that and because he’d relegated them to subordinate positions, for he’d ordered Hugh to be put on scullery duty to keep him belowdecks today. Drake could not fathom that they had actually shot at him or the queen—not with a longbow, anyway—but they could well be spies for John Hawkins, whom he was coming to trust less and less. Besides, Hawkins probably now considered Drake himself insubordinate for not racing this ship back to Plymouth as he’d been ordered.
Drake gave the queen’s tall guards, Jenks and Clifford, over to his first mate for a ship’s tour and made a joke about showing them the ropes at sea. He began to give his own orders while the queen stood at his elbow on the halfdeck.
“Square course mains’l only! Short sail, others fast to the yards’til we’re out of the river!” he shouted, as men scurried along ratlines above their heads.
The anchor cable creaked up; the ropes tethering the ship to the wharf were loosed and drawn aboard. The mainsail canvas flapped like cannon shots as it caught the wind and bellied out. Mostly for show, since they didn’t need the foremast or mizzen sails yet, sailors hung from the yards and the masts. Drake saw the queen clasp her hands together, looking up, then out as the Judith began to move.
“It will be slow and steady at first,” he told her, as they looked over the starboard rail to watch the ship clear the wharf. “Not a lot of rain lately means the river’s not as deep as when we came in. The Meon’s not much of a tidal river, but she’s always fast-moving. Her depth and flow depend on all these marshes that drain into her, so she has her own moods.”
“I remember you said that before.” She smiled at him before squinting up at the sails and waving to the sailors again. He and Haverhill had passed the word that they had a very special guest who was here incognito. They were not to speak of it off the ship, but, however much bad luck it supposedly was to have a woman at sea, the men were excited to have her aboard.
It touched him that she recalled what he had said before, and when she turned and smiled at him, he knew exactly why Elizabeth Tudor was not only queen but a great queen, his queen. Wily and wary, but willing to throw caution to the winds when she must. Her surface moods might vary like this river—high or low, calm or tempestuous. Yet she was deep like the sea and always, ultimately, in control, the leader of men he longed to be. And the impact of her personality and power, however slender she was with her thin but sturdy legs encased in man’s breeks and hose today, even with that feminine, almost flirty demeanor …
“It’s nice not to see a forest for a while,” she was saying. “I must tell you later what Hern the Hunter told me yesterday, but right now, I just want to feel safe at sea.”
“Safe at sea. But there’s always an element of danger at sea, Your Grace, from storms or hostile ships—or the unknown. As for forests here, there are hardly any trees along the Meon’s banks except right before the coastline at Hill Head where the river broadens to the Solent and the Channel. Then the Judith will roll a bit, and if there’s wind enough here to fill these sails, in open sea you’ll really feel her.”
“How wonderful,” she said, grasping the newly sanded railing again and leaning, stiff-armed, back away from it. “It’s one thing to be rowed in the royal barge up and down the length of the Thames, but I want to feel I’ve really been to sea. You must love it passionately.”
“I do,” he said, facing her again as they left Fareham behind, and their gazes met and held. “It is unlike anything else and to be treasured and remembered always.”
Soon, but not soon enough, Elizabeth thought, the river flowed into the Solent, the body of water between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, and they set sail eastward through a narrow strait called Spithead toward the broad English Channel. “That’s Portsmouth off the port side,” Drake said, pointing.
“That makes sense to me,” she said, and they both laughed. She’d been drinking his good wine again, though she noted well he stuck to plain ale while he captained his ship. “But where did you leave your wife? Surely you miss your new wife, if not the jealous and commanding Captain Hawkins.”
“Mary Drake, née Newman, is in Plymouth,” he said, squinting up at the trim of the sails again. “We wed earlier this summer, but she’s a good sailor’s wife and knows her duty when duty calls her husband.”
“I regret that my summons to join my summer progress took you away from her.”
“Your Majesty,” he said, his face and voice solemn now as he looked into her eyes, “whether you regret it or not, you will always take England’s men away from their wives, and rightly so. An island nation needs defending from such as the Spanish devils, but she also needs explorers and traders going out to bring the knowledge and riches of the world back to her shores—and to her queen.”
“It’s a good thing you are not of a political bent, other than for building the navy and your own career, Drake, or such speeches would outdo those of my parliamentarians who make endless and ofttimes pointless speeches. But the other thing is, if married sailors are at sea, does that mean their children are fewer? You do hope for children?”
“Truly, one of the reasons I wed,” he admitted. “I’d like above all a son.” He looked taken aback that he’d blurted that out.
“Always,” she said, putting her hand on his wrist where he gripped the rail, “when I ask a question, tell me the truth straight out like that, even if you think it will hurt me. I have asked the same of Cecil, for I need men like that. God knows, I’m surrounded with the other kind too much.”
“It seems to me Norfolk always speaks his mind, Your Grace, and he’s not to be trusted any more than a leaky ship.”
“Norfolk speaks his mind only on the surface, but he hides things. Southampton, too, although he doesn’t have Norfolk’s backbone or wit. You may have wondered why my Privy Plot Council includes several of my servants. It has taken them years, but they know to tell me the truth at any cost now. I need people I can trust, Drake!”
“Then I shall be so when I am near. And if I am at sea for queen and country, I shall be true to you yet.”
As the ship rocked, she almost toppled into him. She wanted to, and to tell him how much his friendship and this day meant to her, but that was both delicious and dangerous.
She took her hand back from his wrist. “Yes,” she said, looking away, “I’d elect you to Parliament. But in all seriousness, I rue the fact that perhaps I have endangered you by summoning you to me and keeping you close for a while.”
“Because you have given my cousin a second reason to hate me besides that I let him down at San Juan d’Ulua?”
“That, too, but what if that Spanish longbowman who headed south with a translator is loose in these parts? And he’s seen I value your presence and counsel and has decided to take shots at you as well as at me? Oh, Drake, I don’t know. Privy Plot Council me
etings or not, I keep trying to—to sail along, but I think I’m getting nowhere in solving these attacks and murders.”
They were silent a moment, staring out over the gray-green waves. She could tell he wanted to say something. He cleared his throat. “Your Grace, may I ask one question about your privy council of servants and courtiers, then?”
“Of course.”
“I assume you have never used the Earl of Leicester on it, and yet you seem to be close to each other.”
“Close enough to argue too often. You don’t in any way suspect him, do you?”
“Not really. We all have our boiling points, but he seems to continually seethe—at me, at you. But forgive me for suggesting that—”
“No, it’s a good question, for he has been—and is yet—dear to me, but he’s mercurial, and our tempers too often tangle. Besides, he is hardly shuffled off to the side. Since my ascension, when I named him master of the queen’s horse, he has sat on my public council of advisors. The thing is, Drake, I care deeply for him, but I cannot trust him fully—as I am coming to trust you.”
He nodded and bit his lip. Was he so moved he could not speak after all those fine, heartfelt words earlier? She saw him blink back tears and look out toward the horizon, where sky met only sea.
“Well,” she said, turning away and starting down off the halfdeck to the main deck, “enough philosophizing, I warrant. I want to stand on the very beakhead of the prow and see how this realm looks from far away instead of plop in the middle of it wherever I travel. Lovely to be in a place where arrows can’t come flying past one’s head.”
That long morning, Meg took a nap and stuffed sweetbags with lavender and rose petals while Lady Rosie Radcliffe embroidered on a huge frame nearby. Lady Rosie seemed fine, but Meg felt as if she were in prison. Her Majesty went riding out and even sailing while she was stuck in here, and on a lovely late-summer’s day. Secretary Cecil had popped his head in once to tell her that, at the last minute, Ned had not gone with the queen, so at least he was around to take care of Piers, but that made the walls close in even more.
“Warm day in here, isn’t it, Meg?” Lady Rosie asked, and stayed the steady thrust and pull of her needle.
“I just wish I could sneak Ned and Piers in here for a visit, that’s all.” Meg walked behind the embroidery frame to see what Lady Rosie was working on. It was a lovely needlepoint garden with white wild roses climbing a wall. “I’d like to escape to that pretty scene, my lady. Being queen is not all it’s cracked up to be,” she added, beginning to pace the length of the room as the queen often did.
Lady Rosie laughed. “I can tell you, from being close to Her Majesty, even as you, Meg, that is truer than true. On one hand, you can have everything, and on the other hand, sometimes nothing that you want. You are blessed to have Ned.”
“And now Piers,” Meg put in, as she watched Rosie knot her thread and reach for another in her sewing basket.
“But the boy’s not really yours. I mean, I thought there was some discussion that, when their home was safe again, the Naseby lads would return there and be apprenticed or some such—”
“No! No, I believe Her Grace has other plans for them, and if Piers is apprenticed it should be to Ned to become part of the court players.”
Rosie arched one graceful eyebrow. “I see.”
“I mean not to speak for Her Grace—even when I am Her Grace,” Meg amended, hoping she hadn’t sounded too forward. Lady Rosie was one of the women closest to the queen. After a disastrous romance with a man who had turned out to be a villain, Rosie had declared that she’d never wed and that she trusted men even less than the queen did. More than once, Meg had heard them laughing over that, however bitter their tone seemed.
“What’s that?” Rosie said, turning to peer out the window behind her.
“What’s what?”
“That ‘cuckoo’ sound. I haven’t heard a cuckoo anywhere hereabouts in these thick forests, and—Oh, it’s your Ned, master of revels, reveling in this day, I take it—and the boy Piers under this very window.”
“Are they all right? Her Majesty said I should not look out. I’ll just take a quick peek.”
Meg rushed over and peered out past the drapery, much as the queen had peered past the coach’s curtain when they’d been shot at. Ned and Piers both wore green capes and feathered hats, costumes Meg recognized from the Robin Hood drama Ned had done back in Farnham, and Piers carried a painted bow Ned had used in the play. She saw no one else. Since she was dressed like the queen, looked like the queen, surely she could show herself at the window briefly.
She thrust one arm out to wave, then stepped out and bent down a bit before popping back behind the drape. Then she heard what Lady Rosie had mentioned, the clearest, sweetest song of the cuckoo. Why, she realized, peeking out again, it was coming from Piers.
“And now, Your Gracious Majesty,” Ned declared in his deep voice, “a song to lighten your day and enlighten your heart from the Topside and Naseby Company of Players.”
Meg had to laugh. She showed herself again and mimed applauding as the two dearest males in her life began to sing.
Soft spring did a creep right in,
Loud sing cuckoo.
Sweet summer laughed and had its fling,
Loud sing cuckoo.
Windy autumn coming soon,
Where is cuckoo?
Wild winter then blows in next,
Cuckoo quiet in his nest.
Meg’s eyes filled with tears. Not only did Piers’s clear voice ring out, but he knew all the words and did the most charming gestures and motions with the song, not to mention mimicking the cuckoo call after each line.
Meg leaned out and blew them both kisses.
Then, to her abject horror, she saw that both the Earl of Southampton and the Duke of Norfolk were standing together and watching from behind the fountain.
Her first impulse was to shriek and dive behind the drape, but she boldly, grandly, waved to both of them, too, before turning back inside and hitting her hands hard on her forehead. When she had Rosie peek out later, they were all—Southampton and Norfolk, too—gone as if the gardens had swallowed them.
Late that afternoon in the Solent, the queen took the helm, gripping the big wheel with its spindles, fearing at first the ship would buck or veer. She felt the pull of the rudder, but it was not overwhelming, even as the Judith sailed into the wind.
“We’ll put her on a larboard tack,” Drake said, gesturing a zigzag path as he stood beside her. The helmsman had stepped away but had not gone far. Both men looked a bit nervous, but she didn’t care one whit. For now, this ship was hers. In past dark days, when she was in exile in the countryside, when she was imprisoned in the Tower, even after she was queen, there were no moments when she would have chosen to be other than Elizabeth Tudor. Nor had she wished to be a man, though it would have made ruling easier and safer. But now—in this instant—she could almost have thrown it all away to go to sea. To be a captain, like Drake, to command not only a crew but a great vessel in the very teeth of the wind with the wild waves rolling …
“Turn the wheel again, Your Grace,” Drake urged. “No, the other way, so by tacking, we can keep a steady course for the mouth of the Meon.”
“I’ m not ready to go back,” she said, pouting, but she shifted her weight to turn the wheel the way he indicated. “It’s going to be dusk soon, and my day of freedom will be over. I can see the forested shore already, the woods just off the coast at Hill Head before the marshes begin. You don’t need a cabin boy, do you?”
He laughed loudly, but the wind snatched the rich sound away. “You are that desperate to stay aboard, then?” he asked.
“Hardly that.” She laughed, too, as he put a hand to the helm to help her get the tack of the ship just the way he evidently wanted. “If I should sign on with your crew, Drake, you would have to worry I would want your position.”
He laughed again, more of a chuckle deep in his throat. Sh
e had seldom heard him laugh, not that there had been much to laugh about since they’d been together. Yes, this day at sea had done them both good. Even Jenks and Clifford seemed to be having the time of their lives, hanging about with the crew amidships, laughing at what she supposed were salty stories and jests.
“Actually, I mean,” she said, “one of the Naseby lads might make a good cabin boy for you, if he really wants to go to sea.”
“The older one, Sim,” he said. “He looks at me as if I were king of the world—well, you know what I mean. If things work out so I can patch things over with my cousin and can keep this ship, I’ll consider it, Your Grace. Otherwise, I’ll be looking for another command.”
“I’ll find you one if Hawkins proves untrue—or foolish, and I believe he is not the latter, at least.” She reluctantly gave up the wheel to the helmsman, who brought the ship about to swing into the mouth of the river. All too soon, they were headed up the Meon toward Fareham.
While Drake gave First Mate Haverhill orders about trimming sails, which the older man yelled to the crew aloft in the shrouds, Elizabeth climbed back up on the halfdeck, where they’d spent an hour earlier before they’d dined on deck and she took the helm. She had not wanted to be inside one moment of her day at sea. To think people complained of mal de mer, getting so sick to their stomachs that they wanted to die! Every moment of this day, every minute with Francis Drake, she had loved.
Heading upriver was slower than going out, for they bucked both the land breeze and the current. This was not a strong tidal river to give them a good boost from behind. The sea slipped away; the forest closed in, clear to the eastern river shore. Too soon, they’d see the stretch of marshes and the town of Fareham, and that man of Drake’s he’d demoted, formerly Hawkins’s sailor, would be waiting with their land-bound horses. Meanwhile, the crew was balancing on the yards overhead to furl sail as if they could walk on the wind.
