“They are lovely,” Lizbeth exclaimed, not really listening to him. “I have never seen such big emeralds before.”
“There is a bracelet and ring as well,” Don Miguel told her.
“They seem to have a strange fire,” Lizbeth said.
“But that is true. Do you not know that the fire in an emerald is the reflection of the fire in a man’s heart when he sees the woman he really loves?” Don Miguel asked. “Rubies are for passion but in Spain emeralds stand for a love that is greater than passion.”
As he spoke. he drew the ring from the box a great, square-cut emerald with a shaft of gold carved in a strange, tortuous design. Don Miguel reached out and took Lizbeth’s hand in his, and before she realised what he was doing, he had slipped the ring on her finger.
For a moment she looked at it, and then Don Miguel raised her fingers and she felt the touch of his lips on them.
“It is yours,” he said. “Keep it somewhere secret because I have given it to you.”
With a violence that took him by surprise, Lizbeth snatched her hand from his.
“How can you think I would do such a thing?” she asked angrily, and pulling the ring from her finger, she threw it back into the box. “Do you not understand that everything in this ship belongs not to one person but to all? Part goes in prize money to those who man her, the rest to the shareholders who have financed the voyage. If I took the ring that you offer me. I should be stealing. What is more now you have shown me where it is, you must tell Rodney about the secret hiding place.”
Don Miguel seemed to hesitate.
“If you do not do so, I must.” Lizbeth said.
He smiled at her then and somehow she found her anger evaporating.
“Pray do not be angry with me,” he pleaded. “I did not think you had such strict ideas of justice. What is a ring, one way or another, in this great cargo, which is worth thousands of English pounds? I wanted to give you something that is mine. I forgot I have nothing.”
Lizbeth was touched then by the humility in his voice.
“I should not have spoken as I did,” she said quickly. “It was kind of you to wish to give me a present and I thank you for the thought even while I can take nothing.”
“But you have already taken something,” the Spaniard replied.
He shut the emeralds back in the box as he spoke and his voice was low and serious.
“What have I taken?” Lizbeth asked, puzzled.
“My heart,” he answered.
For a moment she could hardly credit what he was saying, and then, as her eyes stared at him in surprise, she saw the expression in his, saw the sudden fire behind the seriousness of his gaze – a fire such as she had seen in the depths of the emeralds.
“Oh, no! No!” she exclaimed impulsively.
“It is true,” Don Miguel affirmed. “Surely you cannot be so modest as to think that I could be with you day after day, that I could see you, listen to you, talk to you and not fall in love with you? Do you not know how attractive you are?”
“No, of course not.”
In spite of her distress at what he was saying, Lizbeth could not prevent the dimples appearing in her cheeks. “ You are lovely – you are entrancing – you enchant me every moment I am with you,” the Spaniard said. “You are English and, before, I believed that all English women were cold and staid and very, very dull, but you are like quicksilver, your hair draws me as the warmth of a real fire draws a man who is cold. I need your warmth, little Lizbeth. I am lonely and cold and far from home. I need you.”
Lizbeth put her hands to her ears.
“This is wrong. You must not talk to me like this. I must not listen to you.”
“Why not when we are both lonely people?” Don Miguel asked. He came a little nearer to her as she spoke, and now to answer him she must look up at him. He was very much taller than she, yet as she saw his face, soft and tender with his longing and his love, she felt a sudden desire to put her arms around him and hold him close. He was only a boy after all a boy like Francis, far from home, being brave and keeping a stiff upper lip under the most difficult circumstances in which a man could find himself – a prisoner in his own ship with no one of his own nationality to speak to or to keep him company.
For a moment Lizbeth forget that he was an enemy, forgot his secrecy about the jewels and even her surprise at hearing that he loved her. She remembered only that he was young and lonely and that she had thought not once but many times that he was making the best of an almost insupportable position.
“Poor Miguel,” she said, using his name for the first time before she could stop herself. “I wish I could help you.”
She spoke from the depth of her heart and only as she saw the expression on his face did she realise the construction he might put on her kindness.
Before she could say anything more, before she could prevent his doing so, he had swept her into his arms. She felt his strength for the first time and was surprised at it because she had not thought of him as a man; and then his lips were on hers, and he was kissing her tenderly, yet with a demanding passion which took her breath away.
9
On the quarter-deck Rodney was humming softly to himself as he walked to and fro. It was swelteringly hot and the ship was moving very slowly, for the breeze was almost indiscernible and most of the time the sails hung limp and empty, while the sea itself was so still that the water seemed to cling against the wooden sides of the Santa Perpetua.
The Sea Hawk about half a mile away was in the same plight. Rodney could see Barlow gazing agitatedly at his top-sails. Barlow always worried unduly when there was a dead calm; it seemed unnatural to him somehow, while a tempest left him unmoved and quite unperturbed as to what might be the result of it.
Rodney, on the other hand, rather enjoyed periods of calm seas and sunlit skies. There was nothing to do except wait until the wind blew again and at the moment it was a relief to be able to relax after the excitement and agitation of the last few days.
With two ships to worry about he found himself unable to sleep at night, rising half a dozen times to look for the lights of the Sea Hawk shining across the intervening water. He would not have admitted this weakness to anyone, but he felt that he could not bear to lose either of his ships after his triumphant success in capturing the Santa Perpetua.
Their position until they were well away from Nombre de Dios and the Panama Isthmus was extremely precarious. The Spaniards had a fleet of ships at Havana and nothing could be more likely than that two of them or maybe more might be sent in search of the Santa Perpetua. Don Miguel, too, was a person of importance. Rodney had learned that his father was one of the greatest landowners on the Spanish Main and master of many of the ships which sailed for home laden with the treasures brought down to Panama from Peru and the gold mines. It was not to be expected that the only son of the Marquis de Suavez could be lost without causing great commotion not only in Havana, but in Spain itself.
Don Miguel had, with extraordinary self-control, taken his capture with a dignity which had forced everyone aboard, even the fire-eating Master Gadstone, into an unwilling but sincere admiration of him.
But his compatriots might feel very differently, Rodney thought, and it was not until they were many miles from the danger zone that he began to breathe more freely and feel that he could move about without continually looking back over his shoulder to watch for a sail looming over the horizon.
It grew hotter and the vegetation on the mainland become more tropical and more exotic. Yet the birds of brilliant plumage could not equal the wondrous variety and colour of the fish which swam around them in the clear water – fish of every size and shape, of every pattern and hue.
Rodney felt he would never grow tired of looking at them, and it amused him to see the efforts of the big, rough sailors to capture some of these delicate, fairy-like creatures and keep them aboard. But in earthenware or pewter vessels they soon lost their beauty and their lives, and the
men had to content themselves with making a pet of a giant tortoise and with buying the vivid-feathered parrots, macaws and toucans which, when they went ashore, the natives were only too ready to sell for the smallest possible piece of silver, whatever nation had minted it.
There were flowers in great profusion; and Rodney, noting now a strange white blossom not unlike a lily lurked behind the ear of one of the native volunteers as he ran lightly up the rigging, thought suddenly of Phillida. He had compared her with a lily when he first saw her.
With that clear white skin and hair that was gold as the wheat when it first ripens in the sun, her loveliness had left him breathless and yet he remembered guiltily that it was a long time since he had last thought of her or even remembered her existence. It was difficult in the warmth of the Caribbean to recapture the thrill her beauty had given him.
Somehow he could only find himself remembering the expression in her eyes. They had nothing in common with the warm, glowing blue of the sea over which he sailed. They were the blue of the English sky in spring – a cold, rather chilly blue which made no effort to arouse and warm the blood in a man’s veins.
Mentally Rodney shook himself as he walked across the quarter-deck. Phillida was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he had seen a great many women one way and another as he wandered round the world with Drake. But there had been no one even in Whitehall to rival her – he was sure of it. Though he had spent but a short time in London, he had managed to see most of the acclaimed beauties – Lady Mary Howard, Elizabeth Throgmorton and the Countess of Warwick. Phillida was lovelier than any of them, and when he returned, rich and successful from this voyage, she would belong to him.
He tried to imagine what it would be like to hold her in his arms, to seek her lips, to feel the soft silkiness of her skin beneath his hands. Yet somehow, try as he would, his imagination would not serve him rightly and he could only remember Phillida pleading with him on the terrace at Camfield that their marriage should not take place too soon.
There had been fear in her expression then, and something else that he had not understood, something which made him feel vaguely uneasy.
He strode across the deck and back again, thinking how much more comfortable it was to have the greater space of the Santa Perpetua in which to stretch his legs rather than the more confined space of the Sea Hawk His brain raced away on this new subject as if glad to be released from concentrating on Phillida.
It ranged over the great guns of the Santa Perpetua which had never ceased to thrill the Master Gunner and at which the men practised every morning; and remembered the precious cargo lying in the hold. Now Rodney turned his head and looked back to where the Santa Perpetua trailed their last capture – a small pinnace. They had taken her yesterday from her Spanish owner with his crew of six natives.
She was laden with hens, hogs and honey, a cargo which had been rapidly transferred to the Santa Perpetua. Rodney was towing her now, meaning to use her if she could be of service while they cruised down the coast, and then intending to do as Drake had always done, break her up before he left for England. These small pinnace were useless in the open sea but useful enough to the Spaniards in their coast work and she could not, therefore, be left intact.
The Cimaroons coveted the ironwork and Rodney had already promised this to their friend the pilot. He had been hoping today that they would encounter a pearling lugger and get a chance of taking the pearls before they were deposited at Nombre de Dios ready for shipment to Spain. He would collect a necklace for Phillida’s white neck, he thought, and knew, even as he decided it that this was but a sop to his guilty conscience and then he smiled at his own self-accusations.
Men, when they were engaged on difficult and dangerous tasks, had little time for women. When he returned home, things would be different. He would teach Phillida then what love meant. He would waken her to a passion as warm and as ardent as his own. At the moment there were more important things to do.
He took another turn about the deck. The Santa Perpetua was almost still now. but Rodney knew that the wind would rise in the night. It was too dangerous to proceed far in the darkness, but they could always set sail immediately dawn broke and keep forging ahead until the heat of the day drove the breeze away and once again they rocked becalmed on a glassy sea.
He took a quick look at the Sea Hawk and at the empty sea – there was nothing they could do but wait for the wind. They were near the shore but the water was deep. The only real danger was from hidden coral reefs. The man with the lead was chanting the depth. Rodney could hear his voice.
“No bottom,” he called.
Rodney looked over the side. He could see the clearness of the water and the fish swimming beside the ship. There was no danger anywhere, only sunshine and the still heaviness of the atmosphere unrelieved by a breeze. On the Sea Hawk Barlow was staring up at his topsails. Barlow would be itching to get under way, and suddenly Rodney was not certain that he himself did not feel the same way. He felt restless suddenly, though why he could not say.
He wondered what Lizbeth was doing. At this hour of the evening she usually came on deck. Rodney had grown used to seeing her there and he knew now that her presence no longer irritated him as it had done at first. He even looked forward to the meals at which they could talk together, and since he had captured the Santa Perpetua he had found frequent cause to be grateful for her presence.
It would not have been easy to sit alone with Don Miguel, eating his food at his table off his gold plate. Lizbeth’s presence had relieved the tension which he felt would have existed between him and his reluctant guest. Her suspicion and resentment of the Spaniard had been short-lived and soon they were all three talking together as if they were old friends.
Don Miguel told them of his life in Spain and Rodney had replied by describing his voyages round the world with Drake without dwelling too obviously on their battles with the Spaniards. Lizbeth had spoken of her horses and of her home and, with what Rodney thought was great cleverness, had avoided pitfalls which might have revealed her as having been brought up in a very strange way for a young man.
There was no doubt about it, Rodney thought now as he left the quarter-deck, meals aboard the Santa Perpetua had been uncommonly pleasant, and he was wondering as he opened the door of the aft cabin what there would be for supper that night.
It was then that he stood transfixed, unable to do anything but stand and stare. Lizbeth was in the Spaniard’s arms and he was kissing her. Rodney stood with his hand on the door for what seemed to him a long time but was in reality only the flashing of a second and then as if his presence made itself felt to the other occupants of the cabin without words and without sound, for they had not heard him enter, Don Miguel raised his head.
His movement released Lizbeth from his arms though whether she would have moved away without his interruption Rodney could not make up his mind and then they were facing each other, Rodney still standing in the doorway, Don Miguel and Lizbeth on the other side of the cabin waiting, so it seemed, for Rodney to speak first.
He closed the door behind him and then slowly advanced across the cabin. He appeared calm and rigidly self controlled, as he did when he went into battle but actually his anger was mounting hot and furious within him and he could almost feel the red fire of it burning behind his eyes.
With an effort he kept himself in check. He had a sudden wild desire to draw his sword to run the Spaniard through with it as he stood with what seemed to Rodney to be an insolent smile upon his face. His hand edged towards the hilt and then he remembered that this man was his prisoner – it was against every code of decency that he should attack him or even challenge him to honourable combat.
“You will oblige me, Senor de Suavez,” he said, “by going to your cabin and remaining there until I send for you.,
Don Miguel made what was to Rodney a mocking bow of obedience.
“ I will of course obey you, sir,” he said, “ but before I go, I would
like to say that my love for your future sister-in-law is a very honourable one.
It seemed to Rodney as if there was deliberate defiance in the Spaniard’s words. How dare he refer to Lizbeth as his future sister-in-law – putting him, it seemed, in the dull and unimaginative role of a guardian brother, someone spiritless and of little importance in her life!
“ You will obey me without argument,” Rodney said sharply.
Again Don Miguel bowed, and then, turning to Lizbeth standing silent by his side, he raised her hand to his lips.
“My life is at your feet,” he said softly. Then turning, he walked across the cabin with his lips smiling, his head held high.
For a moment the eyes of the two men met as he passed Rodney. There was a clash of wills – a battle deeper and more violent than anything that appeared on the surface of their expressionless faces and then as Don Miguel turned towards the door, he waved his hand with a theatrical gesture towards the box of jewels standing on the table.
“Another offering for the Conqueror,” he said.
The cabin door closed behind him. There was a long silence – a silence in which it seemed to Lizbeth as if Rodney must hear her heart beating. She had never before seen him look so stern, and she thought for the first time that she was really afraid of him. And then hastily she told herself that such an attitude was ridiculous.
With an effort she forced herself to point towards the box on the table which Don Miguel had indicated as he left.
“There are jewels there, Rodney,” she said, trying to speak naturally, but her voice quavered. “Jewels that you had not yet seen.”
“I am not interested in jewels,” Rodney answered. “I am waiting for an explanation.”
He was like a stern tutor, Lizbeth thought suddenly, and despite the beating of her heart she managed to answer him,
“I am sorry that he should have discovered that I am not a boy,” she said. “I promise you that I did not tell him. He just knew it. I think perhaps that foreigners are more perceptive than Englishmen!
An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition Page 15
