by Carola Dunn
Alarmed, Alicia jumped to her feet and clasped her hands. “Are you awright?” she cried as he came up spluttering.
He squirted water through the gap in his front teeth, grinned at her, and said grandly, “Us pirates do not care if we get a wetting.”
Pen promptly shoved him back down. While Drake was thus distracted, the Spaniards surreptitiously reneged on their parole. Led by Rupert, they scrambled over the rocks and surrounded Alicia.
“We’ve taken Queen Elizabeth captive!”
General battle once more ensued. Queen Elizabeth got her skirts splashed but suffered no other harm and was soon forgotten by most of the participants.
However, the pirate crept around the pool and sat down beside her, grasping her wrist.
“You are my prisoner now, Allie. I would make you walk the plank if I had one.”
“What’s that?”
“I shall show you the picture in my book one day. It has simply splendid pictures. Do you not mind getting your gown wet?”
“Not much. Not if it dries ‘fore Nanny sees.”
“Good for you. My sisters kick up a dreadful dust if they get anything on their clothes. I have three, and they have to be proper young ladies all the time. It is a dreadful bore. Maybe you don’t have to be so prim and proper ‘cause your father is only a baron. Mine is an earl.”
“Maybe,” said Alicia uncertainly.
“You are quite sensible for a girl. I shan’t make you walk the plank if you don’t want to.”
“You haven’t got one,” she reminded him, and he laughed.
* * * *
That summer, Alicia grew quite accustomed to being a captive of one sort or another. Lord and Lady Roscoe went straight on from the London Season to a series of country house parties, so the baroness did not see her daughter’s face turning brown as a berry, like any ragamuffin’s.
Whether Alicia was prisoner of the English, Spanish, French, Indians (Red or otherwise), Saracens, Vikings, or Jacobites, Peter Pendragon usually managed to insinuate a pirate into the game.
It was James Roscoe who first christened him Pirate. The nickname stuck. Soon it was used so generally amongst the children that Alicia almost forgot his real name.
Now and then the older boys ordained a day of fishing. It was always Pirate who baited Alicia’s bent pin for her. He would sit beside her on the bank and tell her marvellous stories from the Greek and Latin books he was beginning to study, and from the Arabian Nights, and of course from his pirate book. She didn’t mind never catching any fish.
The magic summer drew to a close. That autumn Lord Pendragon went away to Eton, and the others were kept busy at their lessons. Alicia started to learn her pothooks and hangers, practising diligently on a squeaky slate, while her first sampler garnered its share of bloodstains from pricked fingers.
Three times a week, she went to the stables to learn to ride on the moorland pony Edward had outgrown. She loved Whitefoot almost as much as she loved Pirate.
Oh, the triumph of the day when she was allowed to ride out with the boys! For Roscoes, Pendragons, and dogs still met on Sundays and holidays, avoiding the dank woods and chilly stream in favour of fields and moors. The stableboy sent to keep an eye on Miss Allie was the only fly in her ointment.
“You can go home now,” she told him when the Pendragons came in sight. “Pirate Pendragon will look after me.”
“I’ve got me orders, Missy,” he said indulgently, but he fell back, so that she rode to meet them alongside her brothers, as straight and tall in her sidesaddle as she could manage.
“Oh, you’ve got Ned’s Whitefoot!” said Pirate, blotting his copybook.
Alicia gave him a hurt look. “He is mine now. He’s a good pony, game as a pebble.”
“So are you, and your seat looks good,” he redeemed himself-- almost, “for a girl.”
“I hope you can keep up, Silly Allie,” said William, the eldest Pendragon now that his brother was at Eton. “If you cannot, your groom will just have to take you home.”
Grimly determined, Alicia kept up, following in the rear of the single file up the narrow, stony path between banks of golden bracken.
The others were all riding ponies not much bigger than Whitefoot, but not only was she smaller and new to riding, she had the disadvantage of the sidesaddle. If their mounts stepped on a loose stone and jolted them, they could grip with their knees. Alicia found herself grabbing Whitefoot’s shaggy mane more than once on the ascent. It was not fair. Why could she not have been born a boy?
Rupert, in the lead, stopped at the top of the slope while the rest caught up. As Alicia emerged from the shelter of the bracken, a blast of wind sent her hat flying. She hung onto Whitefoot’s mane again, afraid for a moment that she was going to fly after the hat.
“All right, Allie-oh?” asked Pirate.
“Yes,” Alicia told him breathlessly, pride making her let go of the mane and regain the upright posture which had earned his praise. “Oh, what’s that blue over there?”
It was a sparkling December day, the air as clear as glass. To the north, the brown heights of Bodmin Moor stood out against a pale blue sky. In the far west and south, a darker blue lined the horizon.
“That is the sea,” Pirate told her. “Have you never seen it? That is where I am going to sail away to be a pirate when I grow up.”
Alicia was dismayed. She did not see why he had to go away to be a pirate, when there was a perfectly good stream down in the valley. If he sailed off on the sea, how was she going to marry him?
“Do you got to go away?”
“You cannot be a pirate on land, Silly Allie.”
He had never used that horrid nickname before. She blinked hard, with trembling lips. “Don’t call me that!”
“Sorry, Allie-oh. I shan’t ever again. I did not know you minded.”
“I don’t much, not when it is just the others. Will you come back again after you sail away?”
“Sometimes. I’ll tell you what, when I capture a Spanish galleon, I shall bring you back some treasure. Would you like an emerald necklace?”
“Ooh, really?”
“I have already promised Ned some pieces of eight, because he is my best friend.” Pirate looked round. The others were trotting away up the wide track. “But now come along, hurry up, we are getting left behind. Can you canter?”
“Yes,” said Allie firmly, though she had only just learnt to trot and did not much like it.
Cantering was another matter. Whitefoot knew how so she just let him have his head to follow Pirate, and it turned out to be much easier than trotting. They all rode to a circle of rocks believed to be an ancient fort, where Alicia became an Ancient British princess captured by the Romans. She was getting good at being a captive.
* * * *
The following autumn, Rupert Roscoe and William Pendragon went off to Harrow and Eton respectively. With numbers diminishing, Alicia was occasionally allowed to be a warrior of some inferior kind. She was practically an honorary boy by then. When spring arrived, she was expected to bear her weight in a game of cricket.
Nearly seven, she had put on a spurt of growth and was taller than Johnnie, the youngest Pendragon, much to his disgust. She was also better coordinated. Thanks to Pirate’s coaching, she was a good, solid batsman and a fair fielder, though tight sleeves prevented overarm bowling and throwing.
That May she turned seven. The timid nursery governess was dismissed. Lady Roscoe sent a new governess, whose job was to begin Alicia’s training as a young lady. Not only history, geography, and French were added to reading, writing, and the modicum of arithmetic hitherto taught her. She must learn to sing and play the fortepiano, to paint in watercolours, to do delicate embroidery, to move with grace, and most of all, to behave in a ladylike manner.
No more hoydenish gallivanting with the boys, decreed Miss Porringe.
Alicia quite enjoyed history--she already knew a great deal about the wars of the English over the centuries,
from a captive’s point of view. In geography, she learnt about the places Pirate would go when he sailed away, so that was interesting if sad. French might be useful if he ever let her go on a voyage with him.
She did not mind learning to be a beautiful lady like her seldom seen Mama. She remembered what Pirate had told her about his sisters, and she wanted him to be proud of her when she married him.
But nothing could stop her gallivanting, if that long word meant roaming the woods and fields and moor with Pirate, not to mention her brothers and his.
“She will have to lock me up in a dungeon with chains and rats and bats and things,” she said passionately to Pirate, the first time she slipped away.
Fortunately Nanny still ruled the nurseries, and Nanny still liked her naps. Miss Porringe was only in charge during schoolroom hours. On holidays, half-holidays, and Sunday afternoons, she usually shut herself away in her room writing endless letters to far-off relatives, so Alicia did not find it difficult to escape.
Bread and water for supper was a small price to pay on the occasions when the governess caught her returning home tousled and grubby.
* * * *
Alicia was ten when Pirate’s turn came to go off to Eton. At thirteen, he was still quite small and slight, scarcely an inch taller than Alicia. As well as missing him quite dreadfully-- much more than she did Edward, who went to Harrow at the same time--she worried about Pirate. The older boys told horrid tales of the treatment meted out to juniors who could not defend themselves.
At last the boys all came home for Christmas. The weather was foul, with great gales sweeping in from the Atlantic and rain falling in buckets. It was not until the third day that the Pendragons seized a lull and rode over to visit, with tales of flooded meadows and downed trees.
Pirate and Edward, fallen to boasting of the hardships and joys of life at their respective schools, were equally lively and opinionated. Yet to Alicia’s anxious eye, Pirate’s heart was not in their tussle.
Edward was summoned by Rupert to support him in some contention, and Pirate came over to Alicia, where she sat in the schoolroom window seat, watching and listening.
“Did the big boys at school pick on you?” she asked fearfully as he dropped to the cushioned seat beside her.
“Lord no, not particularly. It helps to have two older brothers there. Pen is a prefect you know, in his last year. Besides, he had told everyone I was called Pirate, and they thought that was funny. They teased, but they did not torment me.”
“Do they call you Pirate at school, too?”
“Oh yes,” he said with a fine assumption of carelessness. Then his face screwed up as if he was trying desperately not to cry. “Allie, I found out I cannot go to sea.”
Alicia’s heart leapt. Though she was very sorry for his disappointment, she could not help but be overjoyed that he was going to stay at home. Perhaps they would be married after all, though she was old enough now to suspect such things were not simple to arrange.
“Why not?” she asked, hoping he saw only her sympathy, not her relief.
“I’m too old. Boys who want to go into the Navy become midshipmen by the time they are twelve.”
“But you do not want to,” she said, astonished. “You are going to be a pirate.”
“Oh, that was just a childish game!” he said with a touch of impatience. “The Navy is the only way to go.”
“You are not much too old.”
“No, and I daresay Father could arrange it, but I wrote to him as soon as I found out, and he said the Navy is not a suitable profession for the son of an earl. When I am old enough he will naturally make me an allowance sufficient to lead a life of leisure, or if I insist, I may go into the Guards or the Church. The Church!”
“I cannot imagine you as a vicar,” Alicia agreed. “Only consider, a vicar called Pirate!”
Pirate managed a wobbly laugh. He patted her hand. “I shan’t do that, and I don’t like the Army much better. I suppose I shall just have to be a gentleman of leisure. But I will say this for Father, he says he will buy me a dinghy so that I can go sailing on the Fowey next summer. Do you want to come out with me?”
“Yes, please,” said Alicia.
Cornwall 1786
Pirate never again spoke to Alicia about his disappointment. She was sure he did not forget it, but he appeared resigned. The following summer his stoicism was rewarded: Lord Orford kept his promise and bought a sailing dinghy.
The estuary of the River Fowey was a long, broad inlet reaching several miles inland from the port of Fowey at its mouth. Sheltered by hills on both sides, it was a perfect place for learning to handle a boat. The shallow stream which had seen so many battles opened into a creek, flowing into the Fowey, where the dinghy could be moored.
The next three summers, Pirate spent more time on the water than off it. Alicia joined him when she could, but now she was older, it was more difficult to get away.
Nanny had retired at last. In the big, empty schoolroom, Miss Porringe held sway, and Miss Porringe was not the sort of governess to make friends with her pupil. Alicia was bitterly lonely. She lived for the school holidays, but her brothers and the Pendragon boys were older too, and less ready to make allowances for a girl tagging along behind.
Sometimes the Pendragon girls’ governess brought the three of them to pay a morning call on Miss Roscoe. Miss Porringe and Alicia always returned the civility, but Alicia had little in common with them. As Pirate had told her years ago, they were very proper young ladies.
One day, in a spirit of daring, Alicia proposed a game of cricket. How wide their eyes, how round their rosebud mouths, how they oohed and aahed! Cricket was for boys. As for fishing...
Lady Cynthia fanned herself languidly and observed, “Good gracious, what a tease Miss Roscoe is!”
So Alicia went fishing with Pirate, reckless of punishment. When bread and water for supper did not work, Miss Porringe made her stand in a corner with a book on her head, for hours, thus improving her posture as well--the governess hoped--as her behaviour. Alicia stood patiently. And galloped off again on her little mare, Comet, as soon as Miss Porringe’s surveillance wavered.
Fortunately, the governess’s authority did not extend to the stables, and all the grooms were on Miss Allie’s side.
More and more often, though, Alicia would arrive at the creek only to be told she could not go sailing today.
“I am sorry, Allie,” Pirate told her, “but I’m going out past Fowey and it would be the act of a dastard to take a female with me.”
“If it is so dangerous, you should not either.”
“It is different. I am a man.”
At fifteen, though he would have been at sea for three years now had he been allowed to become a midshipman, Pirate still appeared a boy. Small and slight, as yet hairless about the chin, he was just about Alicia’s height, since in the way of girls she had put on a spurt. He was every inch a daredevil, though.
Failing a direct prohibition, which his father had not thought to give, he often sailed the Jolly Roger singlehanded out of the mouth of the Fowey. From Gribbin Head to Pencarrow Head, he knew every cove and bay, rock and inlet. But three miles of coast did not long satisfy him.
* * * *
The summer after her thirteenth birthday, Alicia rode down to the creek early one sunny morning. She had little hope, for she knew the tide was on the turn, perfect for bearing the dinghy out to sea, and a steady breeze blew from the west.
“I’m going to tack around Gribbin Head today,” Pirate told her, “into St. Austell Bay.”
“Let me go with you, pray! I can help you row if you are becalmed.”
“Rowing at sea is not like on the river. You get wet. All those petticoats would get tangled around you, and anyway, you cannot pull hard enough with those silly sleeves. Tell you what, we shall sail up the river to Lostwithiel tomorrow, if you can get away. I have plenty of pocket money. I’ll treat you to a nuncheon at the inn.”
Alici
a accepted gratefully, but she went straight home and tried to get into a pair of Edward’s breeches. Occasionally in the happy old days, she had dressed as a boy so as to ride astride.
Alas, her shape had changed, she realized sadly. Hips and breeches simply refused to cooperate. Whether she liked it or not--and she most emphatically did not--she was turning into a young lady.
That evening, after dinner, Alicia was allowed to join her brothers playing at battledore on the lawn in front of the house. As long as she did not run, Miss Porringe considered the game permissible for a young lady still in the schoolroom. Alicia had just made a flying leap and hit the shuttlecock a good whack, to cheers from her partner and rebukes from the governess, when one of Lord Orford’s grooms came trotting up the avenue.
Seeing them, he dismounted. They gathered round.
“Master Peter ‘a’n’t come home yet,” he told them. “Do anyone know where un went today?”
“He was going out in the Jolly Roger, I know,” said Edward. After being horridly seasick one breezy day on the Fowey, he had stopped accompanying his friend on the water. “I don’t know which direction.”
Alicia was torn. She knew Pirate’s voyages out to sea were surreptitious. If she told, he might be well and truly in the briars. On the other hand, suppose he had come to grief out there in the wind and waves, on the rocks and shoals that regularly claimed their victims.
Her nails bit into her palms at the thought. “He was heading down to the mouth of the Fowey,” she compromised.
“Thank’ee, miss.” The groom rode off, leaving Alicia to explain to her irate governess just how she knew of Pirate’s plans.
After a sleepless night, Alicia rose at dawn and rode down to the creek. No sign of the Jolly Roger. Her heart jumped into her throat and stuck there, choking her. What if he died, all because she had not told where he was going?
She turned Comet’s head towards Pendragon House.
The earl’s stablehands were already busy mucking out the stalls. They knew Alicia, and the head groom came to meet her as she rode into the yard. Even before he spoke, his grin reassured her.
