The Voyage of the Destiny

by Robert Nye

  She lost no chance either to keep showing me her little feet in the dance. She would kick off her gold satin dancing slippers and go barefoot up and down the Presence Chamber.

  Her feet were exquisitely tiny.

  She moved on them with the grace of a gazelle.

  Elizabeth did not so much walk as dance, and not so much dance as glide across the floor.

  I was becoming well bewitched, as you see.

  *

  Elizabeth’s habit of coquetry was remarkable in a modern monarch.

  I often saw her tickling the red beard of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, my most important patron at that time. She had tickled his neck also when publicly investing him with the collar of an earl, to the reported disgust of the Scottish envoy. On another occasion, riding one early morning in the park past the Queen’s apartments at Windsor, Leicester instructed his fool to make such a hullabaloo that the Queen came undressed to the window to see what the matter was. There was also the hot afternoon when he lay with his head in her lap in a barge on the Thames, and Quadra the Spanish bishop had to cover his embarrassment by offering to marry them on the spot.

  Leicester fell somewhat from favour when he did actually marry - but then his wife, Amy Robsart, was found soon after with a broken neck at the foot of a staircase. It was said that the Earl had come to regret his imprudence in face of the Queen’s displeasure. It was said that he had pushed Amy Robsart. Or had her pushed by his servants. Nothing could be proved.

  Leicester was now married for a second time, and was even less in the Queen’s favour than before. Yet now and again I heard her still addressing him softly as her ‘sweet Robin’. Men claimed that if Elizabeth had ever really contemplated marriage, then it was Leicester that she would have married. I doubt this myself, and not just because Leicester was a torpid impotent creature who had to drink dissolved pearls and amber to excite his lust.

  The truth is that however much the Queen loved any man, she loved England more. She held herself as wedded to her kingdom. She liked to flirt and promise and suggest - and to do more than that, in certain secret circumstances, as I must soon tell. But when it came to the ultimate gift of the person that is marriage then Elizabeth was queen first and a woman second. She regarded her coronation ring as her wedding ring. The realm could be her only lawful husband.

  So Elizabeth was wise as well as flighty.

  It was because she was wise that she could be flighty. It was because she belonged by choice to no man that she could choose to flirt with any who took her eye.

  I took her eye in my new splendid suits.

  That sounds somewhat less than honourable, yet it is the truth and I must admit it. The Queen was sufficiently a woman to be pleased by my body as well as my mind. I knew it, and I knew the sting of shame in appearing before her in clothes which she had given me, cut to declare my parts to the best advantage. There were plenty at Court who delighted to despise me because they were jealous. They saw me only as Elizabeth’s pet or gallant, the coming man. I bore their contempt by lengthening my stride.

  When I say that the Queen gave opportunity I mean that there were offices and properties of the State which it was of course in her power only to confer. It was well known which ones she liked to award to her favourites - licences, monopolies, houses taken from too worldly prelates of the Church, that sort of thing. She had given the freehold of Ely Place in Hoi born to Sir Christopher Hatton; it had been the London residence of the Bishop of Ely before that.

  That dank November of the beginning of winter of 1582 the Queen’s once precious ‘Mutton’ spent much of his time in moping in that house. When he showed his face at Court he reserved his darkest looks for me. Poor Hatton! He grew so depressed that he even turned to literature. His ability was not large in this direction. He succeeded in perpetrating the fourth act of a tragedy, Tancred and Gismund. The Thames was not set on fire, nor the Queen impressed.

  My own first token of the Queen’s approval - apart, that is, from the wardrobe of extravagant cloaks and close-cut doublets - came when she appointed me commander of a large band of soldiers to be sent back to Ireland.

  I thanked her for this indication that she had taken to heart my comments on English policy in that green wilderness, but in the same breath I announced my regret at having to leave her company.

  ‘Then do not leave it,’ she said, smiling.

  I do not understand your Majesty.’

  ‘Appoint a substitute,’ Elizabeth said.

  I obeyed. In this way, I had some small wages from the art of war, while remaining at Court and keeping in reach of the Queen.

  It was at one and the same time a definite sign of Elizabeth’s intention to have me advance in the world while wanting me near.

  Lord Grey, in Ireland, was much irritated, so I heard. So was Hatton, in London, as I saw.

  I went privately to a dancing master in the Strand.

  *

  Elizabeth’s nicknames were usually to the point. They might seem like mere verbal caresses, plays or puns upon the given names of her male companions, but there was often a deeper truth concealed in the joke. I am like water. There is something volatile in my temperament, unsteadily so. I need banks and limits to define my courses. I require some cause beyond myself to give my life direction. This I am finding again (at last) in the now reliable progress of the ship. They will say I am mad, for the ship bears me home to my death. Let them say what they please. I say that all voyages end in the same harbour.

  *

  Several times in the past week I have been disturbed in my own opinion of myself by some strange mistake on the part of the Indian. It is absurd - but his misunderstandings throw all my life momentarily into a cauldron of confusion. He can be obtuse when he speaks of things outside his own experience.

  ‘Elizadeath,’ he said once. ‘She set Guattaral free.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Queen of the North. She set you free to die.’

  I explained that he had it wrong. That it was King James.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Your enemy. Elizadeath.’

  It was useless trying to make him understand. Yet he seemed once before to have grasped this simple point.

  *

  The wind has dropped now, but the weed flows faster. I estimate that this Gulf Stream must itself flow north-east and then east at perhaps as much as 70 miles in a day. It is a phenomenon I have noted before in the wilderness of water which is the Atlantic ocean.

  So here I am. Locked in a current which runs on inexorably towards my death.

  North.

  Going north and then east. Hard comfortable words! We shall be sailing soon in colder sharper seas. And something there is in me which likes the cold. Respects it. Which welcomes the prospect of ice.

  Like a lodestone: the north, the cold, the finer definitions.

  *

  When I came full of fevers last November to the Guiana coast I sent at once to enquire for my old servant Leonard the Indian who had been with me in England in the Tower for three years.

  I sent also to find out about my other Indian servant, Harry.

  Harry sent back his brother and two cHicfs.

  I remember the letter I wrote to Bess the next morning, which letter I sent home by Captain Janson from Flushing who was trading on that coast.

  To tell you I might here be the King of the Indians were a vanity, I wrote. But my name still lives among them. They feed me with fresh meat, and all that the country yields. AII offer to obey me.

  My dearest Bess, forgive my lie which was only to comfort you. The truth is that I hadn’t been able to eat any meat for a month. Leonard never came to me. And Harry, when he did, had almost forgotten his English.

  19

  13 April

  At midnight, five days ago, on the 8th of April, every least breath of wind went out of our sails as suddenly as if a great giant had given up the ghost and stopped puffing into them. My flag hung straight down from the mainmast
like a long wet rag. I found that a candle would burn on the poop deck with its flame bolt-upright.

  Ordering all sails to be struck, I went below. I could not sleep. My spirit was possessed by the strongest sense of impending disaster and doom.

  My forebodings proved true. The storm hit us just before dawn.

  I never knew anything to exceed the sudden fury of that blast. Coming out of my cabin I found the whole ship shaking to her heart. In the next instant, to the accompaniment of an almighty crack of thunder, the sea swelled up to starboard and came rushing across our decks for all the world like a tower falling, a tall green tower of furious foaming ocean, sweeping sailors overboard in its roaring course, hurling us upon our beam-ends, smashing down below decks and tossing our great ordnance about like toys.

  My Destiny spun round and round like a crazy cork in a cauldron. We could not hear each other’s shouts and screams, for the force of the hurricane whipped all our words away the instant they were uttered.

  Then a second wave hit us, crashing with shattering force across the full length of the ship, breaking high up almost to the mainyards. Stunned by the shock of the water, I found myself, when I recovered, jammed in between the stern-post and the rudder. I regained my feet with difficulty. Vast traceries of lightning lit the sky.

  It was then that I saw the Indian.

  My first thought was that he had taken leave of his wits. He was high up on the mainmast, lashed to it with a white rope tight about his waist. I imagined for a moment that this was an apparition.

  We went plunging down in the trough of the boiling sea. My ears were full of the thunder, then the screaming of ropes torn loose and dashed through the pulley-blocks. Once more the before-dawn dark was split apart by lightning. I saw that the figure up there against the mast was no apparition. It was the Indian all right. His face was contorted in some cry which it was of course impossible to hear. Then his right arm shot out, finger stabbing. He was pointing down across our stern behind me.

  A third wave hit us, less frightful than the former ones. The Destiny pitched and staggered, but rose, after a minute, from the blow. I felt driving rain on my cheeks. I cried out at this benison. Somehow I knew that the extreme fury of the first two blasts of the storm was not to be repeated, and that this rain would never have fallen if that was not so.

  Confirming my conviction, the thunder now rolled away swiftly to starboard, the lightning ceased, and the sea swept over our bulwarks with less mountainous force than before. To be sure, the gale still made all our shrouds and ropes howl like devils in hell, but the vessel was holding her own, she was riding the storm, badly battered, but unbowed, undestroyed, perhaps inextinguishable.

  I gave thanks to God as the good rain ran down my face. I never tasted any wine so sweet as those great gouts from heaven. Then the sun inched up over the horizon. It was yellow and sickly, swathed in black clouds, but there.

  Remembering the Indian, I looked up.

  He was still perched high above, lashed to the mainmast. As I made out his shape in the gloom of rain and misty light he pointed again behind me with outflung arm. He was shouting something. The wind wiped the sound away. He called once more, taking advantage of a flaw in the blast. I heard him.

  ‘Your other ship!’ he cried. ‘Your other ship!’

  I spun round, clutching at the splintered wood of the stern-post. My leg had been lacerated and my arm crushed with the impact of that first tumultuous wave. There was blood soaking my sleeve and spurting from a gash in my hand. I barely noticed it. I had eyes only for what the Indian was pointing at.

  There, to our stern, about two hundred yards away through the hissing spray, the Encounter, her masts snapped, her framework shattered, was slowly tilting down into the sea. She looked like a great swan bending her neck to death. I saw men running this way and that way in panic, fighting to ascend to the poop deck which was still above water, some of them vaulting the bulwarks to take a last desperate chance in the sea.

  It was the Encounter’s heavy ordnance which proved her undoing. These cannons, torn loose from their trunnions by the deluge of the three great waves which had smashed holes in her hull, must have rolled right across to her port side, wreaking new havoc there. She sank in a matter of seconds. I saw her go under, half-rising again like a bird with broken wings still determined to fly despite all. Then she keeled over finally and disappeared into the deep.

  I scanned that treacherous sea. There were men down there in it. Mortal flotsam and jetsam flung this way and that by the waves.

  ‘Mr Burwick!’ I shouted. ‘Ropes! Ropes!’

  Buntlines and clewlines were snatched up and hurled overboard. They fell short, of course. In the gaps in the gale my ears were assailed by a torrent of demented shouting, imploring, and cursing from our men craning over the sides.

  I saw two heads appear for a moment in a trough between the waves. They were shrieking and babbling, lashing about with their arms. In a moment the next wave was upon them, sweeping them from sight. When that wave had spent its force, I saw that only one man was left there in the ocean. He was utterly exhausted. He looked like a half-drowned rat. But the whirlpool of the current was kind to him, for it swept him now in a vast concentric circle until he floundered almost within reaching distance of the furthest outflung of our trailing lines. He clutched at it. Missed. Clutched again. Missed again. I saw his eyes were glazed. They were blind and red with salt water. Wild. Raw. Rolling up towards death in their sockets.

  ‘Sam!’ I shouted. ‘Sam! For the love of God! Sam!’

  My old friend Samuel King made one last despairing effort. He grabbed at the rope. He got it. He held on.

  By noon on that same day the storm was gone. It had become but a distant smudge against the rim of the world where sea and sky meet. The sun shone fair, the winds blew mockingly moderate. Mr Burwick reported that the damage to our stern-post was of no material consequence. To be sure, my Destiny’s rake in the water is now more like a Frenchman’s, but this is no great matter for indeed it makes her give sharp way and keep a good wind and since she has a full bow she does not pitch her head to meet the waves. Apart from this, the breechings on six of our cannons are smashed, there are two gunner’s quadrants lost, the chained pumps stand in need of repair, and some of the yards are spent. We lost four men overboard: Jan S uff, Thomas Burough, Davy Howell, Ned Anger. (May God have mercy on their souls. Not even cockroaches deserved such a death.) Of the crew of the ill-fated Encounter, we saved only Sam King.

  *

  I asked the Indian why he climbed the mast and tied himself to it when he saw the storm coming. He said he felt safer so.

  ‘My people go into the trees when wild beasts come prowling or Spaniards come marching,’ he told me.

  Whether to believe this or not, I don’t know.

  He appears, at all events, unshaken by our narrow escape.

  As for myself: My wounds proved superficial. Which is just as well, since we no longer have a ship’s surgeon.

  *

  Since the night of the storm we have not been a day without wind, and only once have we experienced rain again. Then, thank God, it poured from the sky in such abundance that I was able to instruct the men to set every available empty cask about the decks, and especially under the dripping sails, with a result that we managed to fill 25 barrels with that precious liquid manna.

  Our position now is in 43° latitude north, with a longitude reading of some 57° west.

  The winds for the past 24 hours have been cutting through my ancient bones like sword-blades. I wear the chilly mists as another cloak. Elizabeth, you could not walk on this.

  *

  We run within two days’ sail of Newfoundland. But whether I will ever safely reach the harbour of St John there, or perish here at sea, I do not know. For my crew are plotting secretly to follow the example of Wollaston, Whitney, and the rest. I discovered this just yesterday for certain, but the rumour of it has been rife ever since the storm. My min
d is like a vat of boiling wine.

  To have come so far, to have risked so much, to have lost my son, to have saved my friend - and now to find such treachery in my crew!

  A disaffected soldier, Richard Head, would seem to be the ringleader of the rebels. His followers desire him to take command of the ship and turn pirate with her. Their assessment of the situation rests on the fact that they reckon I am sailing to my death, and most of them believe that they will be condemned along with me.

  Robin my page brought the first intimation of the plot. He burst into my cabin, poppy-cheeked, goggle-eyed, as if the devil himself was at his heels.

  ‘Master,’ he cried, ‘they mean to murder you!’

  I confess that I paid him scant heed. He is a bright but idle boy, his head always full of imaginary adventures.

  ‘Murder me? Who?’

  ‘All of them! They say they’ll put a dagger in your back!’ ‘The whole crew to wield one dagger? Why, how they must be weakened by the scurvy!’ Robin did not smile.

  ‘Be wary, master. I overheard them scheming down below. One of them said you were mad. It was the soldier who wears the black patch on his forehead. He told the rest that their only hope was to be rid of you.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ I promised. ‘Now, wash the curtains.’

  The green silk curtains that hang about my carved oak bed in the great cabin had been badly stained with sea water during the storm. Mumbling and grumbling, Robin went off to scour them.

  I know this soldier, Head, for a low-born scoundrel. The patch he wears is supposed to protect a wound got in Turkey. I doubt if the villain ever crossed swords with a Turk in his life. More likely, his patch hides a sore picked up in the greasy lists of lust.

  I said nothing to anyone concerning what Robin had told me. To be honest, I thought little about it. I knew that the greater part of my company had been faithless to start with, mere mercenaries, brands plucked from the burning. Now they were weary, despondent, a rabble of disappointed rascals reluctant to sail home without any of the plunder they had come for, and with only the prospect of unwelcome justice ahead of them. But it is one thing to mope and to curse authority in such circumstances, quite another to murder your lawfully appointed leader. I kept a watchful eye on Head, but noticed nothing more than sullen ill-humour in the man. This. was not new. I supposed that Robin had exaggerated, or even misheard or misunderstood a few empty expressions of discontent.