Mistress of the Sea (2 page)

Will tore off his cape and threw it on the pallet in his room. He might yet have time. Old Nan walked very slowly, and he had taken a shortcut back to the house. It had been his intention to avoid another encounter, keep Ellyn Cooksley second-guessing, and not let her think he was contriving to meet her. But, since seeing her in the bear garden, he had changed his mind. He had an engagement to keep later: an appointment that could affect his whole future – but let enjoyment come first.

He wiped at his face and peered at the polished steel on the wall. Another rub got rid of the last blood spots. Flinging the towel aside, he quickly pulled on his doublet, tying up the points and straightening his sleeves. What had Mistress Ellyn been doing at the bear ring? That she would go there intrigued him. He strode to the window and buckled on his belt, looking out at the steep terraces of her father’s garden below. There was no one about. The light was hazed with autumn smoke, throwing shafts through shade over the garden’s tiers. He reached for a pouch, and then twisted down around the old mast at the hub of the spiral stairs. The door at the bottom led out onto steps, and on these he waited. Peering up between branches, he watched for Ellyn Cooksley’s
approach;
then he saw her with her maid. The top of the stone staircase was the best place to intercept them. He moved that way.

‘Good day, mistresses, though ’tis drawing late,’ Will said casually. He could tell he had startled them.

Mistress Ellyn jumped back.

‘How? . . . I’faith!’ flapped Old Nan like a worried hen.

Ellyn bustled in front. When Will rose from his bow, she looked him straight in the eye.

‘Good-even’, Master Doonan. It is our pleasure to see you here
again
.’

Will smiled. Their game was unspoken but they had been playing it for some weeks: he would walk through the garden when he expected her to do the same. That she had not varied her ways had encouraged him. She would visit the Hoe Chapel before sundown and pass through the garden on her return. But today that had changed. She could not have expected him, and he was amused to have surprised her – and to know where she had been.

He held out the pouch.

‘And I hope by this small gift to ensure that a pleasure it is.’

He moved nearer, and was gratified to see Ellyn looking back rather than away. Her eyes were fixed on him so steadily he could appreciate the subtlety of their hue: a soft nutmeg-brown, but darker around the irises, each shadow-ringed like woodland pools. The looking meant much to him; her reply was crisp.

‘Master Doonan, I thank you, but in faith I cannot accept. I have done nothing to merit any token from you, and I would rather not it be supposed that I have.’

Will hesitated a moment while enjoying her attention. She was
the
daughter of a wealthy merchant, and he only a craftsman, yet she was studying him with an intensity that would have favoured a rich lord.

He held the pouch out to Nan.

‘Then this is for Mistress Nan, whose cooking is unsurpassed in all of Plymouth. The gift is hers for the tastes she gave me when I dined with your father yesterday.’ Whether Ellyn knew of the engagement, Will was not sure, but he judged it would do no harm to tell her. He pushed the pouch closer. ‘The finest spices from the Guinea merchantman just docked.’

Nan gaped wider, and then snatched the pouch out of his hands.

‘God bless you, Master Doonan. To think of us after what you’ve been through . . .’

Ellyn seized hold of her arm and spun her half round.

‘I hope Mistress Ellyn will let me use them,’ Nan cackled over her shoulder. She turned back to Ellyn, muttering. ‘It’s plain the gentleman means well, my dear . . .’

Ellyn raised her chin.

‘Pah! Let
you
be wooed with spices, if to charm is his intent.’

Stifling a smile, Will bowed low. How should he proceed? He had not considered wooing with any seriousness at all. The reward of the game was in the playing, and he suspected play would soon stop if he once showed real interest. He regarded Ellyn more carefully.

‘Well, perhaps we should know one another better, dear lady, since gifts should not be exchanged between strangers.’ He stepped to one side to counter a shift in her stance. ‘If Mistress Nan will allow us, she could rest indoors and see all is well from
the
window, while you stay with me and ask what you
will
.’ He emphasised the suggestion with a grin. ‘What say you?’

Ellyn did not look away, and her gaze told him what he most wanted to know – that she was at least entertained.

‘I say you are a saucy fellow, Will Doonan. What makes you think I want to know anything?’

Nan pushed past before he could reply.

‘Tush! My legs are too old to wait on banter, and my nerves all a-jangled after the calamity I’ve witnessed . . .’

‘Hush, Nan!’ Ellyn cried.

Nan mumbled and plodded on.

‘I am going in, and thank you, sir.’ She nodded at Will who answered with a wink.

Ellyn might have followed except that he moved to block her way. Above their heads, a medlar tree trapped a last fine trickle of gold-dust light. Around them was a battlemented wall, and below that lay the garden’s lower terrace. It could only be reached by steep steps winding down. He stood at their head.

‘So, sweet maiden, what can I tell you that you might wish to know?’

She stared back at him defiantly, chin raised above her ruff, since she was a good deal shorter.

‘
If
I wished to know you . . . I might ask about your family.’

He broke in quickly as her eyelids lowered.

‘Would you dislike me if you disliked my father?’

‘What has knowing to do with liking? I might know your father to be a knave and still like your looks.’

‘Do you?’ Will smiled broadly.

She tossed back her head, and that set a little pendant shivering
at
her throat. He realised then that her skin was quite pale, and, where the sun had touched her, tiny freckles had formed, like the flecking on a swallow’s egg.

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.