Over the Seas

by Josephine Bell

  He said all this steadily, defying her to attack him for if. But though she grew stern she said nothing.

  When the parting came in September it was Alec who clung to her, weeping openly and Polly, white-faced, who held back her tears until the ship passed out of sight, carrying him away from her.

  ‘You’ll not see that fine lad again,’ Mistress Sugden told her. ‘If yon brat had been a boy now—’

  ‘Happen the new one will be so,’ Polly answered, drying her eyes.

  ‘The new… Thou means—’

  ‘Aye. I have the next within me. A son for him, please God.’

  ‘He knows of this?’ Mistress Sugden was inclined to laugh. ‘Minx, to secure him thus!’

  ‘Twas the Lord’s doing I should fall again so soon. Never mine. But I have not told him of it. When he returns he’ll see how it is with me.’

  ‘Not tell him! Then indeed thou’ lt never see him more.’

  ‘If he truly loves me now,’ Polly said with a set face, ‘he’ll return. If not, then not and the Good Lord keep me and mine!’

  Chapter Nineteen

  The first hazard Sir Thomas Gates’s barque met with on the long voyage home was in Thames mouth, where a light mist at the North Foreland deepened to a heavy fog as they crept carefully into Tilbury. So thick was it that their arrival was heralded by men in tugs and small rowing boats, announcing themselves with shouting and blowing of horns, appearing alongside or dead ahead so suddenly they escaped collision only by frantic sculling or rapid going-about in the very light airs.

  But their voices were music in the ears of the crew and passengers who had been absent so many anxious months in strange parts, that now seemed more frightful in retrospect than they had in actual experience. They shouted back, their several accents from many counties forming a counter-point to the raucous cockney of their willing helpers.

  In a couple of hours Deliverance, chosen at James Town in preference to Sea Venture as the more seaworthy of the available ships, was berthed, safely moored fore and aft in the river off Tilbury, with her boats down to take the ex-Governor, the quality and the ship’s master ashore. Alec, promoted to a gentleman’s privileges since his pardon, was one of them. There was no one on shore to meet him.

  His first feeling was of astonishment. His next of anger. Finally, with the rapid suppression of his temper and his new powers of experienced endurance, he accepted the unlooked-for neglect. It was more than three years since he was last in London. Why should anyone remember him? Since Sir Thomas and his friends had by now left the docks on horses brought there by his family servants, Alec decided to find a mount for himself and follow them into the city.

  But while he hesitated a voice hailed him from the water and turning towards the quay where he had lately landed he saw the familiar face of Olaf Henderson’s bo’sun standing at the helm of a shallop with a strong rowing crew of six young Scandinavians.

  ‘The master hath sent to find thee, Master Nimmo. Or be it still Master Jock Bridie?’

  He and his crew as well as Alec roared with laughter and as soon as his luggage was hoisted aboard the shallop, Alec followed and the boat sped up the river again, for the tide that had brought in Deliverance was still running in their favour.

  The Queen of Denmark was in the Pool at her usual anchorage. Alec met with a great welcome as he arrived on deck out of the surrounding fog. And there, standing next to the merchant-captain was Master Angus Leslie, to whom Alec dropped on one knee and kissed his hand in heartfelt gratitude.

  ‘Nay, lad,’ Master Leslie said. ‘I am not deserving of such homage! Tis thine own merit hath won thee the pardon. And thine own fortitude with God’s blessing, no doubt, that hath preserved thee. Get up, boy, and greet these other friends who rejoice in thy present deliverance.’

  Alec did so, to find, crowding round him, Olaf and most of his former crew, Captain Smithson of Sunflower, again discharging coal from Leith, and standing behind his master, Alderman Leslie’s manservant, Walter, who had done so much for Alec at all times.

  ‘But how—?’ The young man was still astonished that they knew of his arrival in time to arrange this scene. ‘In this weather we nearly missed the Foreland and next made to sail into the Medway, but saw our mistake in time before running aground.’

  ‘You were sighted at the Lizard,’ Captain Henderson said. ‘And again off the Isle of Wight and Beachy Head. Thence by calculation when these reports reached London—only yesterday—we came to expect you today and judged rightly.’

  There was a meal in his honour on The Queen of Denmark and many toasts were drunk. At last the alderman moved to leave with promises to meet again at the former’s house in Gracious Street. Horses were waiting for them when they landed.

  As they rode up the streets so well remembered. Alec’s feelings overcame him once more. His welcome had been wonderful, all that he could have wished, far more than he deserved. But for one thing.

  ‘And Francis?’ he asked, in a strained voice as they rode.

  ‘Is in Oxford,’ answered Master Leslie gravely. ‘With Dr Ogilvy’s son Richard and his wife and family. You remember the house?’

  ‘Very well,’ Alec answered, swallowing his bitter disappointment. ‘Richard Ogilvy, Francis’s brother-in-law and Celia and a fine babe.’

  ‘There be four there now. So Francis goes there often, for my lady—’

  ‘My lady?’

  ‘Francis had a knighthood bestowed for his work on the Bible. All finished now and ready to appear from the printers next spring.’

  Alec was silent for a time, then he said gently, ‘Kate will be pleased with her title,’

  To which Master Leslie replied shortly, ‘I see little of her. Less of her children. They shared a part of my house for a time and still have two rooms they may use whenever they wish. But Francis is much in Oxford, also the children. My lady visits widely, in attendance on my Lady Carr.’

  ‘That will content her even more,’ Alec said.

  Master Leslie made no answer to this but began to ask a multitude of questions about the New World as he called it. Alec had much to tell, giving a very fair picture of the failures and successes of his enterprise in the settlement. The alderman was astonished to hear of the great privations he had suffered since his arrival there.

  ‘At least I was a free man and no longer hunted as I was in the year of my outlawry,’ Alec answered, smiling.

  ‘Can it in truth succeed?’ Master Leslie asked. ‘Dost see a whole life for thee in such wild and barbarous conditions?’

  Alec looked about him; at the merchant’s wide room, high-ceilinged with carved plaster work; at the carved, decorated furniture, the rich hangings on the walls and at the windows, opening on to an extensive garden, planted in a formal manner. After the simplicity of his home in James Town he now found his surroundings oppressive, ostentatious, where before he had found them beautiful.

  ‘My life is where the sea is,’ he answered. ‘Besides, I have not yet told you, I have a wife there and a bairn, a wee girl. My Polly is daughter to the goodwife from Witton in the dales that I spoke of just now.’

  ‘Married!’

  Master Leslie stared. Alec’s manner of announcing his wife had come late in the conversation, almost an afterthought. Well, the lad was strong and lusty; he had never stinted the gratification of his desires when he came to London from Fife. Which made his apparent abstinence in his new life all the more remarkable and underlined the dangers and difficulties and sheer overburdening physical labour of that life as nothing had done in his description of it. But it did not wholly convince the shrewd old man of Alec’s total acceptance of the New World, nor of his happiness in his union. He discussed the matter later with his housekeeper, Mistress Butters, the widow who had looked after his daily wants for many years, together with her young daughter, Lucy.

  ‘Did Master Nimmo tell you he had a wife and child in James Town?’ he asked her, without preamble.

  He did so,’ M
istress Butters answered. ‘He said the little maid thrived, but her mother was still ailing somewhat from the great famine they endured over the past winter and so he had not wanted to leave her but the King commanded it.’

  He said that, did he?’

  ‘Aye and he said he would have feared to expose them to such a voyage and the babe so young.’

  ‘I understood the birth was in May, a week before the settlement was relieved by Sir Thomas Gates. Almost four months. Perhaps he had other reasons for not bringing them.’

  ‘Belike he had,’ said Mistress Butters, pursing her lips, ‘But he hath not told me of any.’

  ‘I would indeed rejoice if he came back to me here, to my business,’ the alderman ventured to say, for I grow old and he showed so much promise before—’

  ‘It was a blessing his fate drove him off,’ Mistress Butters answered, but she would not explain this further. Master Leslie, who did not agree, thought it wise not to press her. Time would show where Alec’s real inclinations lay, in England or Virginia.

  As the days passed while Alec waited for a summons from the King, his first feelings of unease, of distrust of the comfort, plenty and richness of his surroundings gave place to a new zest for living, based in fact upon the total recovery of his former health and strength. He had endured too much for too long. The present relaxation produced in him some of his old dangerous recklessness. Since Francis had not come from Oxford to greet him he would go and find him there.

  ‘Lucy,’ he said, finding the girl alone one day. ‘I may call you that, may I not, for you were scarce out of school when—’

  ‘Oh yes. Master Nimmo,’ she answered. ‘It is my name.’

  ‘Lucy,’ he began again. ‘Francis Leslie was my friend and I did him a great wrong. I think you know of this. I have tried to speak of it to thy mother and to Master Leslie but the words stick in my throat.’

  ‘It was not you did him the wrong,’ the girl said with downcast eyes.

  ‘My son,’ Alec said, seeing she knew and abandoning all further hedging. ‘Katherine’s first child, my bastard son. Tell me of him! I beg thee tell me of my son!’

  His agitation as he spoke was so great it frightened her and she was half crying as she tried to answer him.

  ‘We knew not, though my mother sensed her fear of her condition from the day of the marriage. Poor Master Francis was so bemused by happiness he suspected nothing. I was too young to understand.’

  ‘Go on, Lucy! Tell me more, child! Since I had the letter from Francis I have thought and wondered and suffered—’

  ‘He was born at Oxford in the house of Mistress Katharine’s brother. His appearance betrayed her. He had thy features and thy red colouring.’

  In spite of himself Alec let out a great laugh.

  ‘The rogue!’ he cried. ‘Like father, like—’

  Then he recollected himself and said in a more sober voice, ‘My poor friend accepted him of his charity. He wrote kindly that he regards the boy as his own. But he did not think then that I would ever return.’

  Lucy, who had been wiping her tears away and struggling to compose herself, now sat up very straight.

  ‘You would not upset him further!’ she exclaimed. ‘Master Francis loves the boy! You would not claim him and shame them both in the eyes of the world! Yourself too, sir, so lately pardoned! How would the King support a new scandal think you?’

  Alec stared at her. A right proper lioness, he thought, in her defence of Francis. The reason for it plain on her young, unhappy face. So that was why she had shown so much grief for his sorrow, his remorse. Not for him, truly, but for Francis. Poor child, she was no rival for Kate, unless …

  He said, very gently, ‘I came back because the King commanded it, Lucy. Not to claim my son. But I long to be reconciled with my friend and I would dearly like to see the boy. Advise me, Lucy. How can I do least harm?’

  ‘You should not come to me for advice! Ask my mother! Ask Master Leslie! Think upon thy wife! Or hast abandoned her as you abandoned Katharine Ogilvy to save your skin?’

  She jumped up and ran from him, leaving him in a very low, perplexed state of mind, but at the same time thankful to find that Francis was loved and hopeful for the possibility of his ultimate happiness.

  While he continued to wait on the King’s pleasure. Alec sought out the friends he had made upon the waterside in the old days. He found a rousing welcome. Encouraged by this he called upon his first friend and benefactor Dr George Ogilvy. Kate’s father. The door was opened to him by the servant, Giles, who gave a cry of surprise, overlaid by fear, at recognising him. Evidently the news of Alec’s pardon had not reached him or had not been understood.

  But Dr Ogilvy had heard his arrival and came quickly to the door, while Thomas the groom appeared, all smiles, from the yard to lead away and water the horse.

  ‘Welcome back, Sandy!’ Dr Ogilvy cried, clasping both of Alec’s hands. ‘We have but just heard confirmation of thy pardon. Come in! Come in! Mistress Ogilvy will be overjoyed to see thee. In such good health, too. There were rumours—’

  The good doctor scarcely stopped talking all the while Alec was in the house. He looked much older than the young man remembered him, but just as lively and interested in all that concerned fresh knowledge of the world and its wonders.

  ‘Discoveries!’ he said, leading Alec into his library and waving his hand round the shelves. ‘The ancients discovered the arts of sculpture, of architecture, of government, of religious faith, if it be not blasphemy to call that an art, though I hold the presentation to be such.’ He broke off his discourse with a smile. ‘Now tell me of the New World and its wonders.’

  He set Alec down in a chair by the window of his library and took one opposite. The window was open, the scent of gilliflowers and stocks came to them from the small garden. Where Katharine had begun her fatal seduction of him. Alec thought, as he began his story.

  Dr Ogilvy listened in astonishment to Alec’s grim tales of hardship and failure, clearly believing he exaggerated them. But he did not interrupt until a knock at the door brought Giles, with a message from Mistress Ogilvy commanding Alec’s appearance above stairs.

  ‘Go then, Sandy,’ Dr Ogilvy said. ‘There will be time enough in the coming months to hear more of thy strange tales.’

  ‘But Francis?’ Alec said, who had been waiting to ask news of him from the man who should know the most. ‘And Mistress Katharine, or rather my lady, his wife?’

  ‘In Oxford, staying with Richard, my son. You remember—’

  ‘Very well sir. His work—’

  ‘You will to Oxford, no doubt, after the audience with the King. Let Francis tell all.’

  So Alec had to go upstairs to Mistress Ogilvy’s parlour, unsatisfied in his quest for news of Francis. He concluded from Dr Ogilvy’s cordial manner that the old man had no knowledge of his own part in promoting his daughter’s marriage, nor of his grandson’s bastardy.

  Mistress Ogilvy, on the other hand, by her barely concealed excitement and frequent mention of her daughter, led him to understand that she knew all about it, but expected him to accept the fact the child was treated as a Leslie and that he must not disturb this situation with an embarrassing claim.

  ‘Sir Francis and Lady Leslie are very well received,’ she told him, with the silly laugh he remembered. ‘At Court, of course. I marvel you have not seen them there.’

  ‘I have been in London a little more than a week,’ Alec told her, ‘Waiting for my summons to the King’s presence. I mean to travel to Oxford to see Francis as soon as that obligation is discharged.’

  ‘Well, yes, Francis is like to be in Oxford,’ she answered. ‘His knighthood was bestowed for his long task on our Bible. He is still very much the scholar, indeed more so than ever. Richard also and Celia—you recollect Celia, Richard’s wife— doth nought but breed and play the scholar’s wife.’

  As Alec made no answer to this Mistress Ogilvy prattled on.

  ‘Katharine
finds her happiness in great company,’ she said. ‘Her beauty deserves it. You will understand if you see her, but there must be no return—no attempt—’

  ‘My Lady Leslie pursued that ambition from her youth, madam,’ Alec said, very stiffly. ‘I am indeed pleased she hath achieved it.’

  ‘Aye, great beauty should not be hid from the eyes of the greatest in the land. The Queen goes seldom to Court, but my Lady Carr—and there is a young brother to Sir Robert Carr—’

  ‘Robbie Carr? I’d have thought he’d disappear by now or else enjoy an earldom. But I understand they are costly decorations and the King is not over-generous in his payments for his own joys.’

  ‘Sir Robert hath a wife, sir,’ said Mistress Ogilvy, very coldly. ‘She is this Lady Carr I speak of in connection with my daughter.’

  She realised that the young man from the settlement, whom she had always admired for his appearance, but deplored for his Scottishness, was now laughing at her secretly, a former habit of his that infuriated her now as much as ever.

  ‘And I too have’a wife, madam,’ said Alec, rising to take his leave, a little ashamed for deliberately offending her.

  ‘Indeed?’ Mistress Ogilvy said. ‘An Indian lady, I presume?’

  Alec’s laughter now broke into his answer, overwhelmed his manners and sent hurrying away. A good tale for Will Trent, he thought, laughing again as he took his horse from the yard.

  ‘He was a raw Scot when he came first to us,’ Mistress Ogilvy told her husband later. ‘But now he is a savage, pure and simple. Quite unfit for any good society.’

  ‘He hath suffered much,’ Dr Ogilvy answered mildly. ‘He is not his old, lively self, gay and reckless. But a better man, with a fine future, I think.’

  ‘So he can recover his manners.’

  ‘He will recover them in time. We must be patient. In a year or two—’

  ‘Then he will not return to that dreadful place? He says he hath a wife.’

  ‘Now he hath his pardon, surely he will not return. As for a wife, I think he was teasing thee, Mary.’