Mistress of the Sea

by Jenny Barden

  She swooped on his question.

  ‘Liking is of no account. If I were an apple I would not like your teeth.’

  ‘You need not fear my teeth.’ He made show of them as he replied. ‘If you were an apple, I would not have you near my mouth; you would be too sharp.’

  She left him little time to think before she rose to the bait.

  ‘Then I am glad not to be sweet. If I was a bird I would not like your eyes, they are too much like the sky.’

  He let her look into his eyes, and smiled more.

  ‘Do not birds fly in the sky?’

  ‘They fly, but they need to rest. I see no land in your eyes.’

  What was she saying? There was jest in her answer, but her manner seemed earnest. He noticed a wave of her dark hair below the edge of her hood. When the light caught it, her hair glowed as rich as bracken.

  ‘You should not be troubled by my eyes.’ He shut them as he spoke. ‘If you were a bird, I would screw them closed; you might peck them out.’

  ‘So keep me away.’ Her response was indignant.

  Will smiled back, blinking happily as he saw her afresh.

  ‘You are not a bird, but a woman.’

  ‘A woman you do not know.’

  ‘You have told me sufficient. You are a woman as fruitful as an apple with the mind of a bird.’

  He laughed because she was blushing, and that became her well, he thought, checking his mirth at her pique. She raised a hand to her chest and the opening in her cloak, which drew his attention to her figure and the suggestion of her dainty breasts. She tightened her mouth, but even so he considered it pretty, perhaps better for being moulded by the feeling he had aroused.

  ‘And you a rascal to say so,’ she retorted. ‘Fruitful! How dare you judge me fruitful?’

  Her eyes flashed with a strength of temper he had not really meant to provoke. Again she moved to pass him but, as if they were in a dance, he mirrored her steps. Then he spread his hands as he offered her the truth.

  ‘You have a fruitful shape, and a goodly one, too.’

  ‘I am more than a shape, and I have more mind than a bird’s!’

  Will raised his brows.

  ‘Ah! But how much more?’ he said, attempting to soothe.

  She shot him a haughty look.

  ‘Save your questions on that, Will Doonan. You will waste your breath to ask them.’

  He bowed deeply, and, as he straightened up, said, ‘A pity, but no matter. I know your father and I like him. That should be enough.’

  The smile he gave her was not returned. Her eyes blazed as she turned on her heel. He sensed she was no longer indifferent; that was his triumph, but it was also his loss. She did not take the arm he offered her.

  ‘Goodbye, Mistress Ellyn. I trust you will enjoy your next dish.’

  She ignored his parting words and no answer came. He watched her descending: a neat figure cloaked in mulberry red. Then he followed her progress for as long as she remained visible up to the doorway of the house. The diamond window panes revealed nothing inside – if they had he might have lingered, and seen someone behind them looking out.

  He left the garden by the upper gate. Behind the Hoe, the houses nestled, overhanging like hill-lane hedges, steep gables almost touching over passageways and alley gutters that the sun never cleansed. He walked down near the harbour, not because it was the quickest way, but to escape the smell of pits and privies and catch a cold breeze from the sea, to hear the gulls and eye the ships, those spread across the Cattewater and crowding the nearer harbour quays.

  He strolled on to Sutton Poole beside the narrow rope-walks where cable was made, past the tanners and salters, smithies and coopers – passing his own workshop with the caulking-mallet sign, boarded and shuttered – dodging rusting chains and abandoned nets, drunk mariners and vagrants begging, and walking under the bowsprits of the grandest ships, over cobbles streaked with visceral smears, breathing the fish-stink of the docks and the coal-smoke sinking. He moved away through the east gate, where a body turned on a gibbet like a broken vane in the wind. The ditches became deeper, though cramped dwellings remained, dirt and straw, wood and reed, mean cottages by the pack-paths to the outer quays, each ground room filled with curing pilchards, or alum-soaked canvas, or barrels of wine on which no tax had been paid.

  Dusk had fallen before the watchman cried; mist blurred blue shadows around low chinks of light. He turned through an archway, one leading to a wharf, though it was a tavern he wanted, one with no stake and no sign to mark it as the ‘Saracen’ – only a door above a worn flight of steps that, for those who knew it, was the way inside.

  A dog growled as he entered. He trod cautiously on rushes, advancing in near darkness towards a dull candle-glow. The room reeked of mouldering ale. Silence settled. An eye turned in his direction, yellowed and clouded. As Will walked closer, the man watching him stood and spat.

  ‘What’s thy business?’

  The man had the arms of a mason, and a cudgel hanging against his hip. His shoulders rolled as he fingered his belt.

  Will carried on, searching the far end of the room.

  ‘I’m looking for someone. We have an arrangement.’

  The dog began whining. The clouded eye narrowed.

  ‘And who, pray, might that be?’

  Will had no wish to begin a fight, but that left him with a bleak choice: to give a name or be turned away. He gave the name.

  ‘Francis Drake.’

  Will heard a voice, but it came from behind.

  ‘Then you’re looking for me.’

  2

  Vengeance

  ‘. . . As there is a general vengeance which secretly pursueth the doers of wrong and suffereth them not to prosper, albeit no man of purpose empeach them, so there is a particular indignation, engrafted in the bosom of all that are wronged, which ceaseth not seeking by all means possible to redress or remedy the wrong received . . .’

  —From Francis Drake’s dedication to the account of his early voyages compiled by his chaplain, Philip Nichols, and presented to Queen Elizabeth I on New Year’s Day 1593 (later published as Sir Francis Drake Revived)

  ELLYN PRESSED A napkin against her face and rubbed at the sticky birch sap she had applied to her skin. It felt like glue, though the scent was that of a fresh spring coppice. Let it strip away her freckles and leave her as pale as alabaster. She scrubbed at the coating until it came away on the cloth, and then she could see it – balled up like mouse droppings and just as dirty: a film removed messily as from a boiled and peeled egg, and no doubt her looks would be left just as plain. She threw down the napkin in disgust.

  Standing in her shift, Ellyn looked over the fire screen, and peered towards the garden through the rippled panes of glass. She blinked to clear her sight. Shadows and sunlight raced over the terraces: the signs of a strong wind dragging clouds across the sky. Memories chased with them, unfolding and changing, of the garden when she was small, and her brother, Thom, springing over the medlar when it was no bigger than a bush, just after his thirteenth birthday. She had followed and broken a branch, not because her jumping was weak, but because her petticoats had snagged. Thom had taken a whipping for that, despite her father’s reluctance and her own confession.

  She donned the rope hoops of the farthingale that would hold the layers of her skirts; these were clothes she had come to accept. The hoops no longer seemed like fetters, and she had lost the compulsion that had once induced her to leap. Calloused bark had formed on the medlar where the broken stump had died back, like an opening for a missing sleeve, swelling each year while the tree had doubled in height. She regarded it sombrely, remembering the tree when it had borne its first fruit. The apple was to be Thom’s, Nan had announced, but it would not be fit to eat until the apple had begun to rot. The strangeness of that would never leave her. No one had wanted that first brown apple. By the time it was wizened, Thom was dead of a fever.

  ‘Are you ready, Mistress?’r />
  Ellyn turned and recognised that her maid Lettie was waiting. So, the time had come for her to dress for dinner, and Peryn Fownes, the double-chinned merchant who had been idly courting her, would already be discussing business in the parlour of the house. Ellyn felt her spirits sinking as she called Lettie to her side.

  ‘Your lady Mother said the bird partlet with the blue velvet gown,’ Lettie chattered, ‘but which sleeves . . . ?’

  Blue, red and black were held up for inspection. Ellyn shrugged. She cared less about her sleeves than she did about her freckles, but she supposed she ought to ask.

  ‘Do you notice anything different?’

  ‘They be different colours.’ Lettie smirked.

  ‘Look at my face, Lettie,’ Ellyn corrected her. ‘Do you see any change?’

  ‘You’re blushing . . .’

  Ellyn glanced down to hide her embarrassment. She brushed irritably at her shift, and waited for Lettie to confirm that her efforts had been in vain.

  ‘You look . . . a little feverish,’ Lettie answered at last, with an alarming tone of genuine concern.

  ‘I am not ill, Lettie!’ Ellyn waved her aside. ‘And do not fuss.’ She gestured dismissively to show she had made up her mind. ‘The black will do. I am sure Master Fownes will not be in the least interested in my sleeves.’

  ‘P’haps not, Mistress, but he most certainly is in you.’ Lettie whisked the sleeves out of sight, turning her back to work on the gown, and humming with a show of nonchalance.

  Ellyn sighed. What would follow? She would dress and eat, listen to the remnants of a tedious conversation about wool prices and shipments, and then, no doubt, Peryn Fownes would expect her to join him in a game of chess, treating her to a long discourse on how her playing might be improved, since this appeared to be his idea of flattering her intelligence while at the same time paying suit. Yet she lost to him because she was bored. She was sure she could win perfectly well if she wanted to, but what would be the point? She might offend the gentleman’s pride or worse: convince him of her interest.

  Ellyn’s wretchedness grew. Her freckles remained, and so did her guilt. She should be more grateful. Her parents had been considerate in trying to give her a choice, and within the bounds of their approval she owed them a duty to decide. Their house would become her husband’s, whether that was Peryn Fownes or Godfrey Gilbert. Ellyn tugged at her bodice, tight and stiff with willow-slats and bone, as an image of sour Master Gilbert contended with that of smug Master Fownes. Neither suitor could offer a better house. Her future would be in the same place, confined within the same walls. Her children would run round the garden and jump from the steps while she, like her mother, would watch from inside, and little by little lose the desire to go out.

  Lettie came over to help with the laces, continuing her babble with mischievous delight.

  ‘. . . And Master Gilbert, too. I believe they would fight over your sleeves . . .’

  Ellyn shuddered. The idea of crow-like Godfrey Gilbert fighting for her was even more distasteful than that of podgy Peryn Fownes.

  ‘How perfectly silly that would be.’ She could have said more, but held back. Any remark would be the subject of kitchen gossip, even to sweet-tempered Lettie whom she believed too slow-witted for any guile. She could no more talk freely than she could leap over the tree.

  Because they were so close, Ellyn noticed that the oils in Lettie’s hair had soaked through her coif. And while the farthingale was secured with a multitude of ties, she was aware of Lettie’s smell: suet and onions, lavender and musk. Such physical intimacy with a gulf between their souls. Ellyn listened with a sense of imprisonment while Lettie stooped, her mouth close to Ellyn’s hips, as if she was addressing the island on which Ellyn was locked in a tower.

  ‘And I am sure Will Doonan would fight them both if they would do him the honour.’

  ‘Lettie!’ Ellyn slapped Lettie’s back, but not very hard; the indignation she felt was too much to contain. Why should Lettie be thinking of him?

  Lettie rushed into a denial.

  ‘Though they would not, of course. And I do not mean to suggest that Master Doonan might hope to win you either. He’d be above himself even to try.’

  The gown was raised with a sweep, the black sleeves fastened in place. Lettie held it before her like a robe for the condemned.

  ‘But maybe these sleeves will taunt him as well?’

  Ellyn snatched the gown away.

  ‘I doubt it, since he will not see them.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can be so sure. Every time you come back from church, Master Doonan seems to be waiting.’ Lettie darted to Ellyn’s side, lifting the gown at the shoulders while Ellyn inserted her arms. ‘There’s another maid in this house who’d swoon at his feet for one of his smiles. Jane is looking forward to your walk out today.’

  What relationships had been developing without Ellyn being aware? A sudden concern caused her to respond.

  ‘I trust he’s not been troubling her?’

  ‘Marry, no!’ Lettie giggled, and that did not calm Ellyn at all. ‘But while he’s gazing at you, we maids are deciding who’ll be his real choice.’

  Ellyn was shocked.

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘Because we women have ways of making up a man’s mind without him even guessing he’s not done so himself.’

  Ellyn did not care to imagine what ploys Jane might stoop to use. But had she been encouraged? The question was vexing, though Ellyn had already decided to walk along the cliffs, rather than visit the chapel, precisely with the object of keeping clear of Will Doonan. His comments still rankled from their last encounter – ‘Fruitful . . .’, ‘Mind of a bird . . .’ – and the conviction that he had insulted her was enough to fix her resolve. She would not think of him and neither should Jane. She might perhaps meet him the next day, but most certainly not in Jane’s company. If she saw Master Doonan, it would be with Nan.

  ‘Jane will be disappointed. I have other plans for this afternoon.’ Ellyn noticed Lettie’s quick smile; then her mind reeled before the onslaught of a more alarming thought.

  ‘You would not consider him?’

  Lettie answered primly while bending to arrange the gown.

  ‘’Twould be only natural for him to wed a maid such as me.’ She straightened and cast Ellyn a defiant look, but without the pluck to keep it sustained.

  Ellyn stared back, and the effect was like cooling on freshly risen dough.

  Lettie retreated to the dressing table with another coy remark: ‘He brought me a present this morning.’

  ‘What present?’ Ellyn was appalled; she knew she should not have been, but the feeling could not be helped.

  ‘A sweet pear. And one for you, too, Mistress,’ Lettie added, with the sort of haste that left Ellyn certain she was meant to be appeased. Lettie returned with a comb. ‘He said you were to have the best, and the remainder were “for the other fair maidens of the Cooksley house”, a droll gallant he is, and that included Old Nan. “One apiece”, he said. There was a pear for everyone.’

  Ellyn sat. Did Will Doonan suppose he could win her with fruit, while at the same time pandering to all the household maids? She pulled hard against Lettie’s grooming.

  ‘He is overbold.’

  ‘I think he has a good heart. Nan had no mind to tell you, so do not say I did—’

  What new revelation was this? Ellyn’s anger was rising even before Lettie had finished.

  ‘—she means to poach yours in wine with some of his cloves so you might enjoy his gift in all innocence.’

  ‘Pah!’ Enjoy it, she would not. Ellyn shuddered to think of the servants observing and winking, assuming they knew more than she did herself.

  ‘Jane says she will eat her pear raw and let the juice run round her mouth, thinking of his lips when she does,’ Lettie continued confidently, as she stitched tight the braid she had made of Ellyn’s hair. Her snickering drew a curt comment from Ellyn.

&nbs
p; ‘Ridiculous!’ Such licentious fancy, thought Ellyn. The girl was depraved. With an image of a pear against wet lips, she pursed her own tight, as if they had been drawn and knotted rather than fulsomely shaped. A cawle was pinned over her hair, and Ellyn gazed down at her partlet with its embroidery of birds. Most had been covered over, but two remained visible either side of an opening in which the faint shadow between her breasts almost showed as a line. She pressed her arms close to deepen the effect, but with little result; her bosom was too small. Why would a lusty man like Will Doonan be interested in a woman with small breasts? The idea was preposterous, the more so since he was unworthy and she had resolved to give him no further thought. ‘A man on whom to wager, but not trust’ – that was how her father had described him. They had been eating soup the previous night and the broth had been seasoned with Will’s spices; because of that her mother had mentioned his name. ‘I might back him with my coin,’ her father had said cryptically, ‘but no more than I could afford to lose. He is a venturer.’

  Ellyn had been mystified by the opinion. What did her father know? They had certainly met recently, Will Doonan had told her as much, but what had they discussed? Will Doonan was a craftsman who worked with tar to caulk ships’ seams; how could a caulker be considered a venturer? She had tried to find out, but in her father’s baffling reply a warning had been clear: ‘Will Doonan is not what he appears. Men like him are like rolling dice; they never settle. He might leave tomorrow and be gone for years. He might return a fabulous profit, or make a total loss. If he survives one venture, there will be another, and always another, until fortune turns against him and he does not come back . . .’

  So he would be leaving for the sea, that had been Ellyn’s conclusion, all the more reason to blot him out of her mind. She imagined Will Doonan’s blue eyes looking back at her from a lighter-boat in one of those scenes she had often witnessed at the harbourside: the sailors boarding in their thick, greased jackets; the ships in the Cattewater festooned with banners and flags; trumpets blasting; drums rolling; wives weeping. It would never happen.