Lion Triumphant

by Philippa Carr

  Honey used to talk a great deal about the baby, which would be born in five months’ time. It was quite different now. She had dreamed of the child’s being brought into the world either in Trewynd or the Calpertons’ place in Surrey or perhaps she would do as my mother wished and go to the Abbey for the birth. That was all changed. Where would her child be born now? On the high seas or in whichever mysterious place for which we were destined?

  “Edward and I planned for this child,” said Honey. “We used to say we shouldn’t mind whether it was a girl or a boy. He was so good and kind, he would have been such a loving father and now… I dream of him, Catharine, lying there. I can’t get him out of my mind.”

  I soothed her, but how could I stop her grieving for Edward?

  As for myself I could not really believe in this life. It was too fantastic. If we had been ill used by crude sailors at least we could have understood what our abduction meant. But it was not so; we were protected and treated with courtesy by our abductors.

  “It simply does not make sense,” I said to Honey.

  We made gowns for ourselves with speed; they were by no means elegant, but they sufficed. At times we were allowed to walk on the deck. I shall never forget emerging for the first time and standing on deck, high above the water. I was astonished by the rich decorations and the towering forecastle. To hold the rail and look out to the horizon and let one’s eyes run around that great blue-gray curve filled me with an excitement which I could not suppress in spite of my apprehension and my anger against the circumstances which had brought us here.

  And as I stood there straining my eyes always I looked for a ship on the horizon. In my heart I said: It will come. He will come in search of me. And I was exultant because I was sure this would come to pass.

  I only had to close my eyes to see him there. He would shout to our Captain. “Spanish dog!” he would call him and he would board the ship, though the decks were high and strong nets were stretched between the sides and central gangway that joined forecastle to quarter deck. I looked at the great cannon, which one could not fail to notice. Such cannons, I knew, could blow a ship out of the ocean. But not the Rampant Lion.

  He will come, I told myself. Before we reach our mysterious destination, he will come.

  A few days after our capture I saw a ship on the horizon. My heart leaped with delight I had rarely known.

  Honey was standing beside me. “Look,” I cried. “A ship. It’s the Rampant Lion.”

  There was pandemonium on deck. The sound of chattering voices filled the air. The ship had been sighted.

  It was the Lion, I was certain of it.

  “Inglés.” I caught the word.

  “He has come,” I whispered to Honey. “I knew he would come.”

  We stood there clinging to the rail. The ship had grown a little larger, but it was many miles distant.

  “He must have returned,” I said. “He came back more quickly than he believed possible. He would hear what had happened immediately and he would set sail to find us.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Honey.

  “Is it not just what he would do? Do you think he would let me go?”

  The Captain was standing beside us.

  “You have seen the ship,” he said quietly. “She is an English ship.”

  I turned to him triumphantly. “She is coming this way.”

  “I think not,” he said. “Merely a caravel. She’s limping a little. No doubt she is going into harbor.”

  “She is the Rampant Lion,” I cried.

  “That ship! I know her. Nay, it is no Rampant Lion. It is but a little caravel.”

  Disappointment was a pain; my throat constricted and I felt a great anger toward this Captain and those traitors who had led the pirates to us.

  “She would not dare approach us, that one,” went on the Captain. “We’d blow her out of the water. She’ll get away as quick as she’s able and when she’s having the barnacles scraped off her in some English harbor her crew will tell the tale of how they escaped from a mighty galleon.”

  “It may not always be so,” I said.

  “No,” replied the Captain, perhaps willfully misunderstanding, “they do not always escape us. But we have cargo of a certain nature on board and I do not wish it to be endangered.”

  He was looking at Honey and then asked her how she fared.

  She said that she felt much better and he expressed his gratification for that. They behaved as though he were a friendly neighbor paying a call rather than the Captain of a pirate vessel who was carrying us off against our will.

  He bowed and left us. And when he had gone Honey said to me: “Did you really think it was the Rampant Lion?”

  “I did! Oh, that it were.”

  “It is such a short time ago that you said you would give anything to escape from Jake Pennlyon.”

  “I would give anything to escape from these villains who now hold us captive.”

  She said: “You should stop thinking of Jake Pennlyon. He is dead to you.”

  Then I covered my face with my hands because I could not bear to look at Honey.

  It was she who comforted me then.

  The Captain was indeed a courteous gentleman. When we dined with him he talked to us, asking questions about England. He had successfully conveyed to us the implication that he had nothing to do with the raid on Trewynd. He had merely been carrying out orders. He was to take his ship to the coast of Devon; a woman would be brought to his ship and he would take her to a stated destination. He was merely doing his duty. He had taken no part in the actual abduction. One could not imagine his doing so in any circumstances.

  Accepting this, we grew quite friendly.

  For Honey he had a very special kind of devotion. I think he was falling in love with her.

  Ever since he had learned that she was pregnant he had been anxious for her to have every care.

  One day she asked him if he knew whether her husband could have lived even though she feared he could not possibly have done so; he said he did not know, but he would question those who had been at the house at the time of the abduction.

  A few days later he told her.

  “Your husband could not possibly have survived,” he said.

  Honey nodded in a calm, hopeless kind of way. I felt quite differently. I wanted to rage. That good, kind man to be done to death by robbers and pirates!

  Honey took my hand. She was reminding me of what we owed the Captain. His protection stood between us and we could guess what terrible fate.

  I remembered and was quiet; but there was a sick despair in my heart and I mourned Edward deeply.

  Then the storm overtook us. I am sure we were never so near death as we were in that wild sea. Our galleon was mighty; she was seaworthy; she rode the water in her proud, gallant, dignified way, but even she must falter before the fury of such an onslaught.

  All day the wind had been whipping up the white horses. We heard the excited voices of the sailors as they lowered the sails and closed the gunports and hatches.

  The Captain ordered us to his cabin and said we were to stay there. We staggered down. We could not stand and the stools on which we sat were flung from one side of the ship to the other.

  Jennet clung to me. Her lover was busy at his tasks. He had no time to spare for her now.

  She was terrified. “Be we going to die, Mistress?” she asked.

  “I doubt not the Captain will save the ship and us,” said Honey.

  “To die … without confessing our sins,” said Jennet. “’Twould be a terrible thing.”

  “I doubt your sins were very great, Jennet,” I soothed her.

  “They be, Mistress,” she said. “They be terrible.”

  “Nonsense,” I retorted. “I wish there was something we could do.”

  “The Captain said we were to stay here,” said Honey.

  “We could be drowned like rats in a trap.”

  “What else should we do?”
demanded Honey.

  “There must be something. I’m going up to see.”

  “Stay here,” said Honey.

  I looked at her, now so obviously pregnant; I looked at Jennet, filled with a fear of dying with her sins on her; and I said authoritatively, “You will stay here, Honey, and Jennet will stay with you. Make sure that the mistress is as comfortable as it is possible for her to be,” I added to Jennet.

  They stared at me in amazement, but I could not remain inactive, just waiting for death.

  I was flung against the sides of the ship as I came onto the deck. The galleon was groaning her protest. Fortunately I was on the lee side or I should have been blown overboard. It was a stupid thing to have done to come on deck against the Captain’s orders, but it was more than I could endure to stay in that rattling cabin. The rain lashed the decks mercilessly; the wind shook the ship as a dog might shake a rat. I was saturated, for as the ship dipped the waves broke over her; the deck was slimy and dangerous. I knew that it would be folly for me to attempt to cross it and although I preferred the fresh air to the depth of the ship I knew that it was doubly dangerous to stay up there.

  I fell against a man who was struggling with a bag of tools in one hand and a horn lantern in the other.

  He did not recognize me in the gloom and must have thought I was a cabin boy, for he shouted something which I realized meant I was to take the lantern, so I did so and stumbled after him.

  I followed him down into the bowels of the ship. It was eerie down there. I had escaped the roar of the wind and the torrential rain, but the air was close and fetid; the rancid smell of food was everywhere, and the groans and creaking of the ship seemed to proclaim her distress at the treatment she was being given and her inability to go on if the torture did not abate.

  Men were working at the pumps. So we had sprung a leak; their faces gleamed in the light from the lantern.

  I stood and held the lantern high. The man who had led me here was, I discovered, a carpenter’s mate and was there to find where the ship was leaking and to patch her up if possible.

  The men cursed the ship and the sea and prayed for salvation all in the same breath.

  I watched the men pumping with all their might, the sweat running down their faces.

  They screamed at each other in Spanish, which I was beginning to understand a little.

  They were all calling on the Mother of God to intercede for them and as they prayed they worked the pumps.

  I saw Richard Rackell among them.

  He noticed me too and gave me that rueful smile which I suppose was meant to imply contrition.

  I retaliated with the contemptuous look I reserved for him and then I thought: This could well be our last hour on earth. I must at least try to discover what had made him deceive us so. I half smiled at him and the relief on his face was apparent. Someone shouted at me, for I had lowered the lantern. I was able to recognize what was required and held it high again.

  That nightmare seemed to go on for a long time. My arms ached with holding the lantern, but at least that was better than inactivity. The galleon had taken on a new character; she was like a living person. She was taking a furious beating and standing up to it. I realized then a little of what Jake Pennlyon felt toward his Rampant Lion. He loved that ship perhaps as much as he could love anybody, and witnessing the fight for survival the galleon was making, I could understand that.

  Two cabin boys came down to the pumps and one of them recognized me, for I heard him say something about the Señorita.

  One of the men came over and looked at me closely. My hair hanging in wet strands down my back betrayed me.

  The lantern was taken from me. I was pushed toward the companionway.

  All about me were the rhythmic sounds of the pump; the carpenters were patching parts of the ship with thin strips of lead and ramming oakum into the spots where the sea was coming in.

  I found my way back to the cabin.

  Honey was distraught and when she saw me her face shone with relief.

  “Catharine, where have you been?”

  “I’ve been holding a lantern.” I was flung against the side of the cabin as I spoke. I got up and clung to the leg of the fixed table. I told the others to do the same. At least we could not be dashed about if we could keep our grip on that.

  I thought the ship was going to turn over; she rose and leaned so that her starboard side must have been beneath the sea. She shivered as though she were being shaken and then seemed to remain in the position for minutes before she crashed down.

  There was the sound of heavy objects being flung about. There were shouts and curses. If I had been on deck at that moment I should certainly have been swept overboard.

  Honey murmured: “Oh, God, this is the end then.”

  I felt my entire being crying out in protest. I would not die. There was so much I had to discover. I must know for what purpose we had been abducted. I must see Jake Pennlyon again.

  After that, although the storm raged, it began to abate a little. It was terrifying yet, but the ship was still standing up to the storm and the worst appeared to be over.

  For hours the wind continued to shake us; the ship went on creaking and groaning; we could not stand up, but at least we were all together.

  I looked at Honey; she lay exhausted, her long lashes beautiful against her pale skin. I was overcome with a kind of protective love for her; and I wondered when her child would be born and what effect these terrible happenings might have on it.

  On an impulse I bent over and kissed her cheek. It was a strange thing for me to do, for I was not demonstrative. She opened her eyes and smiled at me.

  “Catharine, we’re still here then?”

  “We’re alive still,” I said.

  “And together,” she added.

  For two days and nights the storm had raged, but it was over now. The waters had lost their fury; they were smooth blue-green and only the occasional white horse ruffled them.

  There was cold food only—biscuits and salt meat—and we were hungry enough to enjoy it.

  The Captain came to the cabin while the storm was still raging and inquired for us. I noticed how he looked at Honey, tender, reassuring.

  “We are riding the storm,” he told us. “The ship has come through. But we shall have to put into port to repair the damage.”

  My heart leaped. In port. It would not be an English port, of course. No Spanish galleon would dare risk that. But the word “port” excited me. We might escape and find our way back to England.

  “While we are in port I shall have to keep you confined to this cabin,” he said. “You will understand the necessity of this.”

  “If you could tell us where we are being taken we could perhaps understand it,” I said.

  “You will know, Señorita, in time.”

  “I want to know now.”

  “It is necessary sometimes to wait,” said the Captain. He turned to Honey. “I trust you were not afraid.”

  “I knew you would bring the ship through to safety,” she answered.

  Something seemed to pass between them: an understanding; a rapport. I had never really understood Honey. It came of her connection with a witch and the strange way she had come into our household.

  Edward was dead, it seemed, and she had mourned him, but for not as long as might have been expected. He had been a good husband to her and she had grieved, but she was not prostrate with her grief as I had thought she might be. Her main preoccupation was with the baby and the Captain’s solicitude had brought her great relief.

  “As soon as the galley fires can be set burning there will be hot food,” he said.

  Honey murmured: “Thank you.” And he left us.

  “A maddening man,” I said when he had left us. “He knows where he is taking us and why, and he will not tell. I could shake him.”

  “He has been good to us,” said Honey, “and it is another’s secret he keeps.”

  “He has certai
nly found favor with you,” I said.

  She did not answer.

  The storm had died down; the ship, though battered and not quite her former dignified self, had come through. She was still afloat and capable of voyaging. It was a matter for rejoicing.

  The Captain told us that there was to be a thanksgiving service on the deck and as every soul on board had been saved all were commanded to attend.

  We should take our stand on deck with the others. John Gregory and Richard Rackell should stand on either side of us. We should come up on deck after the ship’s company were assembled and leave as soon as the service was over.

  There was a keen wind following the ship and it was an impressive moment when we mounted the companionway, John Gregory before us and Richard Rackell taking up the rear. The men were lined up on deck: men of all ages and sizes. A wooden box served as a pulpit and on it stood the Captain. He looked a fine man with his rather pleasant face, yet stern. He was a mild man, but one had the impression that if the occasion demanded he could be fierce and forbidding.

  It was a moment I would remember for many years—the chill wind billowing the sails, blowing our hair about our faces, ruffling our garments and seeming good after the stuffiness of the cabin; the sky a light blue with the clouds visibly drifting across; everywhere the smell of damp wood and sweating bodies and musty garments, to make one rejoice even more in that clean fresh air.

  Life was good; one knew that when one had come near to losing it—yes, even to captives on a pirate ship who were being carried to some unknown destination it was good to be alive.

  I knew in that moment that my zest for living would never fail me. Whatever was in store for me I should endure and remember that I intended to go on living to the full every minute of my life until I died.

  The Captain read from the Bible; I did not now know what but it was beautiful; and the silence broken only by the wind in the sails and the sound of his voice.

  I suppose everyone there on deck was giving his heartfelt thanks for life.

  Then I was aware of the glances which were coming our way and that in the main these were directed at me, strange, almost furtive looks, looks which implied a certain hatred … yes, and fear! What did this mean? I glanced at Honey, but she was oblivious of whatever it was and a tremor of apprehension ran through me. I was deeply aware of how vulnerable we were.