The Lost Duchess (20 page)

‘Why are we sailing this course? You should be following the coast, not sailing away from it.’

She shrank against the bulwark as Kit stepped forwards on the poop.

‘Look ahead, Master. See the way the waves are breaking to the east? I think that might be a shoal around a hidden bight. We could be in danger of getting caught to leeward.’

‘Or it could be the inlet to Roanoke Sound and those waves could be caused by the flow out to sea. Get back on course!’

Kit moved to the steps and spoke to Ferdinando in an undertone.

‘There’s a treacherous cape in this region with a shape like a hook. I remember it well from my last voyage with Drake …’

‘Don’t give me Drake!’ Ferdinando’s voice cut him short, like a bullet blasting from the darkness. ‘Obey your orders. East by north, and closer ashore. Would you have us sail past the channel?’

Kit turned and Emme heard the shrill blast of his whistle.

‘East by north,’ he called. ‘Hands to the cables. Slacken the port top foresail sheet. Haul to starboard …’

His orders continued as Ferdinando climbed up from the afterdeck.

‘Who’s that with you?’

She edged towards the steps on the other side, thinking that she’d go down and leave by the mizzen hatch, but Ferdinando got in front of her first.

‘Mistress Murimuth! I see you are up on deck again when you should be below.’

His tone was light with a hint of mockery and nothing to suggest any apprehension of impending disaster. But his confidence did not reassure her.

She stepped back towards the stern, gripping the rail.

‘Do not let me distract you, Master Ferdinando. I was on the point of leaving after bringing some pottage for those on watch. I’ll not trouble you, save to ask you, please, to consider the warning I’ve just heard, because it seems to me that those waves ahead are indeed very rough. They appear to be foaming, wouldn’t you agree?’

He loomed closer and put one hand behind his back. She imagined it bunched tight in the shape of a fist.

‘The sea is as disturbed as I would expect at a confluence,’ he said loftily. ‘We are looking for Port Ferdinando, a passage named after me because I discovered it. No one knows this coast as well as I. We cannot risk missing the only safe way into the sound because we are too far away to spot it.’ He brought his fist down onto the rail, close to her hand, making her spring back. ‘Now I think I have justified my decisions quite enough. I shall be …’

A blinding beam of light cut him short, lighting him up like a spectre. He stared back, blanched white and startled.

The Bo’sun’s whistle made her jump again; then she heard Kit’s voice, urgent and insistent.

‘About! Hard to starboard. Turn about!’

‘Hard to starboard,’ the helmsman called, and the ship heeled as the whipstaff slid. Emme grabbed hold of a shroud, almost losing her balance. Canvas slapped and timbers groaned. The
Lion
turned against the waves, hull shivering as if kicked.

‘More sail! All hands! Spill and set sail!’

Kit’s orders rang out and men dashed to respond, darting up rigging, yanking at furling gaskets, freeing the sails to catch the wind from the land.

‘Haul the main halyard. Due south …’

‘South.’ The call was repeated. ‘Turn about.’

Ferdinando leant over the gunwale, looking to the source of the light, and Emme saw the stern lantern of the pinnace, much closer now, and another lantern swinging wildly as if in a signal.

‘Stafford!’ Ferdinando called. ‘What mean you?’

Stafford’s voice rippled back almost drowned by the roaring sea.

‘Turn away! Shoal ahead.’

Emme stared at the place where she had seen the foaming waves. Beyond them was another bank; she could see it rising like a cliff, a line of black above the seething white of breaking surf, a line which cut across the course they had been sailing. From the sea jutted a long timber like a skeletal accusing finger: the mast of a wreck on the shoal they could not see.

Ferdinando took up Stafford’s shouting.

‘Away! Shoal ahead!’

Orders streamed from him as if his commands all along had been to sail away from the shore.

‘Due south. Full sail.’

‘Due south,’ the helmsman affirmed.

The sea churned beneath the
Lion
and tossed her about like a feather caught in rapids, but Emme sensed the danger had passed; they were already sailing away from the ferment. Thank God for Stafford and Kit’s quick thinking. Her legs felt weak and she wanted to go down below and make sure everyone was all right. If she saw Kit she would thank him; she hoped to catch sight of him. But the
first man she saw was Ferdinando still on the afterdeck. She worked her way past him and as she did he turned his back.

He spoke to her, even so.

‘It is as well my orders were obeyed at the last.’

*

Kit felt behind his back and touched the hilt of his ship-knife, blunt at the point but honed razor sharp at the sides. He moved his free hand to his chest and over the strung charges on his cartridge belt, the looped match-cord at his hip, the strap of his provisions bag with his water-bottle, tinderbox and victuals; powder horn and bullet pouch on his right side; sword at his left. In his right hand was the stock of his flintlock caliver, its long barrel heavy against the padding over his shoulder, its curved butt smooth in his palm, trigger lever nuzzling at his jerkin. His scalp itched under his helmet and he was sweating in the glare of the sun. Was he ready to go? He looked across at the other men waiting to board Stafford’s pinnace from the deck of the
Lion
: forty in all, as many as the pinnace would hold. Were any of them ready? They did not know what they would face. This was as close to Virginia as he’d ever come with Drake: anchored outside the channel that led to Roanoke Sound. They were to look for the fifteen men led by Master Coffin that Sir Richard Grenville had left to guard the fort. But could fifteen have survived where Lane’s garrison of hundreds had failed? Jim Lacy should know since he’d been through whatever had finished it, but the Irishman would say nothing about that, and he didn’t look very comfortable about going back. When Kit spotted him, he made the sign of the cross over his chest.

Governor White blustered about, rooting through papers in a satchel that was in danger of disgorging. Ananias Dare hovered
nearby brandishing the flag of the new City of Raleigh. Why was he bringing that? There’d be few to impress and it would only get in the way. But a day’s carrying it on march should knock the swagger out of the man; he wouldn’t suggest it be left behind.

He turned to Rob, at his side keen and eager, armed with knife and pistol: weapons that were light but effective if used well. The boy had learnt diligently, and Kit had few qualms about bringing him. Better to keep him close than leave him with Ferdinando out of sight. Was Rob afraid? Kit’s gaze flicked to the dark purity of the boy’s face, the crimson scarf around his woolly locks, and the trappings of soldiering that he wore like trophies: bandolier and wide sword belt. No, Rob was too young to be fearful, too caught up in the moment, and too sure that with his master he’d be safe.

‘Ready?’ he murmured.

‘Yes,’ Rob answered, checking his natural smile, concerned to show he had the seriousness of a man, while some of the Planters who would cross to Roanoke japed and laughed like schoolboys.

Manteo clapped Kit on the shoulder and Kit looked him in the eye. He stood impassively with his tribesman, Towaye, a quiet shy man who had served as his manservant with a diffidence that had made him seem almost invisible when they were in London. Both had abandoned all trappings of English dress. They wore deerskin breechclouts and fringed aprons over their thighs, carried bows and quivers, and sported feathers in hair cut to a roach from front to back. On the right side, their scalps were shaved so their eyes would be clear for taking aim with bow and arrow. Their upper bodies were bare, save for necklaces of bone, and markings over their skin in great whorls of white and red-ochre. They seemed to have grown in stature with the casting off of their shirts. Kit
was proud to be with them and count them as his friends, but he noticed the way that a space had opened up between the two of them and the Planters on deck. Kit moved to fill it.

‘You’ll soon be home,’ he said to Manteo.

‘
Kupi
.’ Manteo nodded, smiling. ‘Yes, my land is close.’

Kit breathed deeply, catching the scent of pines in the warm breeze. He scanned the line of dunes nearest the inlet: a strip of sunlit white sand topped with soft green beach grass. It could not have looked less threatening: Manteo’s home, but a wilderness for the Planters, further from England than they had ever been before – a wasteland to men like the farmer, George Howe, who had given Rob an apple from his orchard outside Moor Gate. Kit cast his eye over those assembled while White began calling them to get aboard the pinnace. He knew some of their histories and recognised the signs of their apprehension. He was pleased to see those he had chosen standing calmly in the main: men like Jack Tydway, the debtor from New Gate gaol, and Tom Humphrey, the Christ Church foundling. He stepped out to join them; then Mistress Emme pushed forwards from the crowd looking on, her lovely chestnut hair blowing in ringlets about her face, her dark eyes wide and shining. She spoke to him earnestly.

‘God keep you and hasten you back.’

He gave her a bow, touched that she had singled him out for a farewell, even if he couldn’t understand the reason. Was it because she hoped he’d tell her first about what they found at Roanoke? He could hardly believe she was truly concerned about him, though the last time he’d been close to her some of her frostiness seemed to have thawed. He’d felt her responding when he showed her the cross staff, or had that been artifice? She’d made it clear that she
considered him beneath her: ‘a common mariner’, she’d said when they’d had their falling-out at Santa Cruz. ‘Little more than a pirate who has lived as an outlaw with renegade slaves’: that was what she really thought of him. In the heat of anger her prejudice had been revealed, and it had wounded him all the more because of what that meant for Rob. She would never consider the boy as other than inferior, and she would always see him in the same light, a friend of slaves and no better than one of them. She would have scorned him if he’d tried to woo her in England, so why was she being attentive to him now? Perhaps she thought that this was behaviour expected of maids. She was trying harder to appear like any serving girl, though it was obvious that her natural disposition was to be aloof and distant. Even so, he was drawn to her. She was undeniably beautiful, and he could do nothing about finding her attractive, only recognise it and be wary. He expected she wanted reassurance. She was plainly anxious to get to Chesapeake, and that, more than likely, was because she couldn’t wait for the voyage to be over. As a lady used to palaces, her illusions about adventure had probably ended months ago. She must be desperate to return to court. He’d try and reassure her.

‘We will only be gone a few days. Not much longer, now, Mistress Emme. You will be at Chesapeake soon.’

She brought her fingertips close to his hand and spoke softly but urgently.

‘Then you will stay with us, won’t you, Master Kit? You won’t go back to England?’

Her intensity surprised him. Why should it matter to her? Maybe she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t disrupt the rest of her journey. Perhaps she sensed his attraction to her and wished to avoid it.

‘I will stay,’ he soothed. ‘But you will return.’

‘No!’ She suddenly took his hand and as quickly let it go. ‘I shall be part of the new colony.’

He gave her a kindly smile, supposing that she still wanted him to believe the fiction that she would remain to serve as a maid like Maggie Lawrence and the other wenches.

‘I think you will go back.’ He lowered his voice for her alone. ‘I know Walsingham’s orders. I found out when he made me swear to tell no one who you really are. Ferdinando will make certain you’re on the
Lion
when he sails for England. I know you’ve agreed to this because Sir Walter has asked you. I expect he wants you back for your lady’s report.’

She shook her head, and bent her face close almost as if she meant to kiss him, but of course she did not. Then she looked up at him with imploring eyes.

‘I will not leave Virginia. Believe me …’

‘I must go.’

He gave a quick smile, stepping back, and looked round to the file of men still waiting to board. There were only about ten left.

Fleetingly, she touched his arm.

‘Please be careful, Kit.’

She held something out to him and, not wishing to offend her, he opened his hand to receive whatever it was. She dropped a small object onto his palm. It was an oval nut.

‘This comes from the finest oak in Richmond Park,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to have it for luck.’

He smiled at her and placed the nut in his pocket. The gift pleased him very much, probably more than she would ever know.

‘I’ll save it to plant at Chesapeake.’

He turned once to see her waving before he climbed over the gunwale and down to the pinnace. Ferdinando was nowhere to be seen, a surprise but not a disappointment. Perhaps he didn’t want to be present when White was giving the orders.

The Quartermaster unhitched the hawser, and the pinnace began to drift away. Kit settled in the stern and had the oars passed to the men on the benches. They would row through the shallow passage; he could see that the race from the outflow would make entering it difficult. They were fully loaded and low in the water; they would need to be cautious.

‘Let fall!’ he called for the oars to be lowered and for the oarsmen to prepare. ‘Make way together at my word.’

The oarsmen waited, eight on each side, their oars held level over the water, resting steady in the tholes.

Kit looked to Captain Stafford sitting at the helm with his usual poise, long legs stretched out, right hand on the tiller, left arm draped casually along the guard rail. Kit’s respect for him had grown after the incident at the cape when Stafford’s timely warning had averted certain disaster. The Captain was another veteran of Lane’s expedition, one of the few to have sailed to Roanoke before, and Kit trusted him. Stafford touched his hat; then the Quartermaster called from the
Lion.