The Lost Duchess

by Jenny Barden

  Kit settled to an easier stance, legs astride. ‘We’ve been held up by delays in provisioning and getting everyone aboard.’ He shot Will a tight smile. ‘Town dwellers don’t understand that tide, wind and current will wait for no one.’

  ‘And you’ve had a stay at the Isle of Wight to pick up men newly released from Colchester gaol, so I’ve heard.’

  Kit tensed. How had Will found that out?

  ‘News travels fast.’

  ‘Amongst seamen it does.’ Will raised a brow. ‘Do you have confidence in your fellow colonists?’

  Kit sucked in air between his teeth and clenched his jaw.

  ‘Freed prisoners can make excellent venturers, so can the dispossessed and homeless and anyone else down on luck. Everyone deserves a chance to start again if they’ve fallen into difficulties. Would you deny that charity?’

  His eyes burned as he looked at Will, but his brother regarded him calmly.

  ‘Some might call such recruiting desperate.’

  ‘There are good men and women amongst the Planters: decent, sober, hard-working, God-fearing people.’

  ‘Women?’

  Kit checked himself before rushing on. As ever with his older brother, he felt that Will was out to constrain him with reason, and he was halfway to resisting before he’d even thought through why. No one else had such a hold over him. But he was a seasoned campaigner, one of the few to have sailed around the world, a leader and hero to some; he could look Will in the eye.

  ‘Yes, there are women amongst the Planters, seventeen to be exact out of just over a hundred in total.’

  ‘Not many to found a city.’

  ‘Enough. We have families and we have children; they are the key. They will ensure the new life that will perpetuate the colony into the future.’

  Will rubbed his chin.

  ‘Perhaps a woman is the reason for your …’

  ‘No.’ Kit cut him short with a denial that sounded too loud. ‘No,’ he repeated softly. ‘That’s not the reason. There is no woman.’

  He thought of Emme Fifield who was travelling with the White family as Mistress Murimuth and whose true identity Secretary Walsingham had made him swear an oath to keep secret. If there was ‘a woman’ it would be her, but now he knew her real status it was clear he should forget her, except as a passenger he was bound to protect with his life: one of the Queen’s ladies who had to be returned safely back to England. Emme Murimuth would not be staying in Virginia; she would be gone from his life in just a few months.

  He sat down on the chest and clasped his hands. Should he tell Will about Rob? He wanted to. He ought to. Will was his brother. Someone should know.

  ‘There is …’ He bowed his head. How could he start? ‘… I have a son.’

  Will rushed over to him and pummelled his shoulders.

  ‘A son! God in Hell, Kit. Why didn’t you say so before?’ Will pulled up a stool and clapped his arm around Kit’s back. ‘I’m an uncle at last! Can I see him? Where is he?’

  ‘Aboard the Lion.’

  ‘Well, bring him here! Who’s his mother? Have you married without telling anyone, you rogue?’

  Will’s ebullience washed over him, until his silence led to a quietening and Will spoke more gently.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘His name is Rob. His mother was Ololade, the Cimaroon I left when I found you in Panama … You remember I told you about her. She was my woman when I lived as an outlaw. I searched for her for years, then on my last voyage I found out she was dead. She had been murdered by the Spaniards but her son had survived. I brought him back with me. I knew he was mine.’

  Will shook his head. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Ololade and I were as good as man and wife.’

  ‘I remember you talking about her, though it was a long time ago. Rob must be …’

  ‘Thirteen: old enough to pass for my page without anyone suspecting that he is really my son.’ Kit breathed deeply. ‘He does not even know it himself. He looks …’

  Will inclined his head, frowning. ‘Different, I suppose.’

  ‘Different, yes. His colour is like this.’ Kit picked up one of the cinnamon sticks and cradled it in his palm. ‘And he is fine boned and slight of build, not at all like me; no one would guess our affinity. He travels by the name of Rob Little.’ Kit put back the stick. ‘I want to find a place where he can hold his head up high and I can call him my son with pride without anyone singling him out as a blackamoor and a bastard.’

  ‘Virginia.’

  He nodded, glad that Will understood.

  ‘But Virginia might not be a haven for either you or your boy. It’s a raw, untamed land filled with savages liable to turn hostile. Roanoke was abandoned, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s been reoccupied since. Sir Walter’s supply ship reached the island only a few days after we’d left with General Lane and his men – that ship turned straight back on finding no one there. Then Sir Richard Grenville’s relief expedition arrived not long afterwards.’ He smiled grimly. ‘The efforts to help Roanoke seem to have amounted to a series of near misses. Sir Richard was loath to leave his entire company of over three hundred men on the island when what had happened to the previous garrison remained a puzzle and a mystery. He arrived back at Durham House in January to tell Sir Walter all about his shock on finding Roanoke deserted. Sir Richard left fifteen men behind to hold the fort under the command of a seasoned officer by the name of Coffin.’

  Will smiled grimly. ‘Hardly auspicious – and it’s a pity Grenville didn’t leave more. Fifteen men will be a poor match against the hundreds of savages in the region.’

  ‘We have allies, and the reports of animosity are probably exaggerated. One of the native leaders, Manteo, travels with us as a friend; a kindlier man you could not imagine. The reports of starvation and attacks have come from General Lane and his soldiers who’ve been keen to justify their conduct in leaving their post. In any event, we’re not heading for Roanoke but for the Bay of Chesapeake about eighty miles further north. The natives there are friendly and the land has more promise.’

  ‘You are sure of this.’

  ‘John White avers it. He is taking his daughter and her husband, and his daughter is heavy with child. Would he do that if he believed the region was dangerous? He has described it as a paradise.’

  Will looked down at the chest. ‘So you don’t need this?’

  ‘No. Everything I need is aboard the Lion and the flyboat that carries supplies for us, and that’s mostly victuals, tools and seeds. I’ve no need of treasure.’

  ‘Spoken like a Cimaroon.’

  Kit smiled back at him. ‘Perhaps, in my heart, that is what I have become.’

  ‘There’s gold and silver in that chest?’ Will grinned. ‘It felt heavy enough.’

  ‘And gems and pearls: the booty from thirteen years of privateering with Drake.’ He clasped the heavy key he wore on a thong around his neck and slipped it over his head. He placed the key in Will’s hand. ‘I’d like you to use what’s in the chest to buy a house in Plymouth, one with a garden and a view of the sea.’

  Will gave a nod. ‘I’ll do that for you, Kit.’

  ‘Buy the house and use it. If I don’t return in five years then the house will be yours.’

  ‘It’ll be yours when you come back.’

  Kit shook his head and stood, then Will rose too and clasped him in a great hug.

  He hugged Will back as hard as he could.

  ‘Goodbye, Will. Don’t expect to see me again.’

  *

  The boom of the ship’s guns sent another shudder through the deck and a shiver down Emme’s spine. In the aftermath came a faint peal of bells from the chapel on Plymouth Hoe, though whether in acknowledgement or by coincidence, Emme could not rightly tell; their final leave-taking had been quiet, with only a small crowd of well-wishers to bid them God speed. Even so, Emme waved her kerchief madly, leaning out from the Lion’s bulwarks, though they were al
ready too far into the Sound for her to see anyone clearly ashore, and she knew nobody in Plymouth anyway. All she could make out were the huddled houses fading from view behind the cliffs, and the round castle towers, and the green hump of St Nicholas Island receding bit by bit. She waved to no one and everyone: all the people she had ever known, her country and her past, while around her were men, women and children all calling, waving and crying their own farewells. A trumpet blared, gulls mewed and the chanting of men at the capstan gave way to ragged shouts as mariners scrambled up ratlines to unfurl the sails and hauled together to tighten the sheets. Pennants rippled, sails opened out, the wind caught and filled, and the ship blossomed white. Looking up, she felt dizzy, seeing the crow’s nest atop the mainmast swaying high above her, and the shadows of men balanced on ropes under the yards, while sunshine streamed behind billowing canvas until the sails were set in majestic petal curves. Gradually the wild whip-cracking of sailcloth was replaced by the settled creak of cable and timbers, and the slap and swoosh of waves against the bows. The Lion settled into an easier rhythm, released at last into open water, and Emme felt a power rising through her from deep within the ship, moving in harmony with wind and sea, a power that awed her.

  This was the moment from which there would be no going back. After weeks of buffeting close to the shore they were finally sailing from England for good. The wind picked up, blowing sweet from the land; she braced against the roll and pitch of the ship, and fixed her eyes on the only thing she could look at which was not blinding bright or in constant motion: the flat horizon, empty to the southwest – their destination and her future. She tasted salt on her lips, wiped spray and tears from her cheeks, then turned into the breeze for a last look at England.

  The coast was a rolling line of reddish cliffs and steep green coombs scooped out into bay after bay that disappeared into a white-hazed distance. The tiny hermitage on Rame Head seemed to remain no further away, only slide up and down with the heave of the ship. But Emme knew the land was slipping from her just as surely as she was being borne from everything she’d ever known, with just one chest of possessions, roped down on the deck below, and wave upon wave of memories breaking over her to wash up on the dwindling shore, conscious that the traces she had left behind would fade like footprints before the tide. She was leaving her old self behind. Emme Fifield was as good as dead. Emme Murimuth was who she must become. ‘Emme Merrymoth’ as she had been enlisted: an incongruous name for a person who felt like weeping with a heart as heavy as lead. No one aboard really knew her old self, apart from Master Kit who had only known a part of it. What had she done? She had destroyed her past.

  She pictured the manor house at Fifield and the visit she had paid her father to say her last goodbye. He had thought the voyage would bring her back and had been happy to bless her on her way, proud that she journeyed with the special dispensation of the Queen. She had kept from him the ugly rumours circulating about her at court and her resolve to remain in Virginia once she arrived there in the New World. Though her childhood had been blighted by his coldness after her mother’s death, yet she was sorry to mislead him. He would never see her again.

  Fifield had rarely looked more beautiful, with flowers festooning the hedgerows and the orchards thick with blossom; the scent of summer promise was in every bud and shoot. Down the lanes and pathways she saw fleeting episodes from her early years overlaid upon one another as if rising up to hold her back: visions of skipping in the courtyard over honeyed Cotswold stone; rolling the pall-mall ball down the passage by the kitchen; burrowing with a kitten into sweet fresh-mown hay; running through the ford until her petticoats were soaked; finding secret places in which she would never be discovered – she saw them as if anew – in the long grass behind the fallen-down sty and under the ox cart so long unused that old man’s beard grew like a curtain from its sides. Little remained, and what did seemed much smaller, yet the power of her recollections was stronger than ever.

  She returned in her thoughts to Broughton Castle where she had stayed as a young maiden in the charge of Lady Fiennes. She remembered the scented roses in the knot garden glistening with dew, and the autumn mist rising like smoke from the moat, hearing the bells chiming in the village, and a maid singing ‘Sweet Robin’ beyond a half-open door. The essence of England was in the memories that span through her mind: dancing around the maypole, watching mummers at Christmas, sharing the wassail bowl on Twelfth Night with laughter ringing around her and spiced cider warming her mouth. Even her visions of London were poignant, despite being shadowed by her shame with Lord Hertford and her betrayal by Bess whom she had considered her friend.

  At least she could now understand what had induced the unkindness, and she could try to forgive. It all seemed so much made of little now she was leaving everyone behind. Bess had been upbraided by Lady Howard for making eyes at Sir Walter, and she thought Emme had been the cause by claiming that Sir Walter had left her moonstruck. So Bess had told Lady Howard about Emme’s secret and the potential scandal involving Lord Hertford. Lady Howard had then spread worse rumours in an effort to protect the Earl, and Emme had suffered more because of the lady’s misplaced jealousy. O, to be breaking free from all that! Emme savoured the cleansing of the wild wind on her face, glad to have escaped the web of intrigue at court. She thought of happier times, picturing the magnificence of St Paul’s and the Great Hall at Hampton Court, the royal barge drifting by Whitehall and the Queen galloping through Richmond Park. They were all receding from her, the good and the bad. The swell and suck of the waves confirmed it; there would be no going back.

  But she was not alone, and the future that awaited her was as open as the sea, so full of excitement that she felt a tingle to her toes. Her life was starting afresh and everything was changing. The companions who would share her journey were brave and determined, even if they came from a strange mix of backgrounds. She felt Eleanor Dare close by her: the Governor’s daughter, now her mistress, who clung to the rail with bilious desperation. Mistress Dare was so far advanced in pregnancy she found it hard to keep balance against the roll of the deck. What courage must it have taken to embark on the voyage in such a state? She was a woman who had to cope with an inconstant husband and a visionary father, yet she was loyal to them both with absolute commitment. Her man, Ananias, had his arm around her, but his eyes were on young Maggie Lawrence, the prettiest of the serving wenches. From the silk-doubleted gentleman who styled himself ‘Esquire’, to the one-eyed gaolbird who could not speak without vilely cursing, through craftsmen and yeomen, a lawyer and jeweller, labourers and artisans whose names were not yet familiar, they were a mismatched band united in ambition – to begin a new life. It was an ambition she shared.

  Many of the colonists looked wan and queasy, were visibly shaking and unsteady on their feet, but everyone was on deck, and Emme could feel the exhilaration all around her, their fears and melancholy tempered by eagerness and hope.

  ‘There goes England,’ someone murmured.

  Emme heard her mistress sniffle and blow her nose; she glanced round and saw Ananias Dare offer comfort, taking his wife into his arms. At the same time she noticed Kit Doonan on the upper deck, standing by the mizzen mast with Master Ferdinando. Mariner Kit had hardly acknowledged her since the Lion had left London docks, but there he was, looking towards her: arms akimbo and legs astride, eyes narrowed against the glare, his hair wind-tousled and his tanned skin glowing. As Boatswain he seemed to control every action of the crew and to have settled into his natural element once the ship set sail. He moved at ease under way with lithe agility, and ordered the men in their duties with unforced authority. Perhaps he would remain in Virginia with the colonists; he had once spoken to her as if he shared that objective. Maybe she would get a chance to know him better, though he had seemed disinterested in her since she had shied away from him at Durham Place. More than likely he’d heard the rumours about her and considered her tainted. He wouldn’t wish to take her hand again. She w
iped at her hands and drew them down her skirts as if even the thought had dirtied her; then she turned from him in confusion.

  It was a momentary upset and her spirits soon rose. The mariners began singing to help with their hauling, and she watched them intently, listening to their bass voices melding together in rough harmony.

  Away we go to sea, to sea.

  Heigh! Lay a hold, heave ho!

  The singing swelled in unison, the bo’sun’s whistle sounded, Mariner Kit gave commands at the end of each verse, and the Planters joined in with the chanting. She saw smiles breaking across tear-stained faces and felt a bond of comradeship taking root. They would all be in this adventure in a small space for a long while: nearly two hundred souls, including officers and crew, aboard a three-masted barque of a hundred and twenty tons, with a deck that, at its widest, she could cross in six paces. She hoped they’d help one another with forbearance and goodwill; there’d be no room for dissent.

  Fresh orders broke into her thoughts:

  ‘Set course due west.’

  ‘To starboard, beam reach.’

  She saw Master Ferdinando address the first mate, and signal to Master Kit who had moved to the second deck.

  The whistle sounded again, and then she heard Kit’s soft but powerful voice.

  ‘Haul home the lateen. Yare! Sheet home.’

  Mariners rushed about. Some took hold of cable and heaved together, others scrambled up the rigging.

  The Lion was turning, she could feel it. The deck tipped and she reached for the rail. Settlers swayed and staggered while sailors dodged around them. Kit continued to conduct every action of the crew, until Master Ferdinando came down to the main deck and weaved through the passengers towards Governor White. The singing stopped.

  Ferdinando’s tone was so strident that everyone amidships could hear him.