Peril on the Sea (3 page)

Baines set a bowl of apples on the table, small, worm-shot though they were—cider apples, most properly, and not sweet enough for ready eating.

“Will you be desiring anything else, sir?” Baines inquired, hovering protectively.

Anthony thanked Baines and said that there was nothing wanting. And in a way it was the truth. The dining chamber of Fairleigh Manor was a grand, pleasant room. The floor was covered with a mat of rushes woven with lavender and sage that even in its worn condition gave off a balmy perfume on this chilly night.

The hall was a treasury of fanciful wood carvings, doorposts and window frames ornamented with grinning imps and placid lions. The handles of the fireplace irons resembled
hunting dogs of some hard-to-determine breed, and the tapestry on the wall depicted a griffin—an animal half eagle, half lion—sporting on a field of lily flowers.

Both Anthony and Katharine had a special fondness for this woven artwork. The tapestry had been crafted in the Loire and bought for a song by Anthony's father from Saint Bridget's Priory when it was disbanded, along with all the other abbeys and convents, during the reign of Henry VIII. Along with the family griffin banner, this would be one of the last items either of them would part with.

Sir Gregory waited until the door had shut behind the servant.

“You owe Lord Pevensey,” said Sir Gregory, “several pounds of silver, a solemn debt which you promised to pay off completely by last Michaelmas, now nine months past.”

Anthony sighed and gave a nod of agreement.

Gregory continued, “This sum was invested in a ship. The
Rosebriar
, Walter Loy captain, returning from the West Indies with a load of cinnamon bark and dyestuff. The shipment would be valuable enough in ordinary times, but thanks to the disrupted transport in recent seasons, the cargo is incalculably precious.”

Sir Anthony gave a forced smile. “All true.”

“But the ship,” said Sir Gregory, taking a sip of his wine, “is more than two years out, and you have had no steady income all this while.”

“The sea is an unsteady mistress,” said Sir Anthony.

He had invested the loan in the ship, true enough, but he had also spent it on draining the stream near the windmill and repairing the stiles throughout Fairleigh. Furthermore, he had invested in books during his trips to the stalls of Saint Paul's in London:
Of the Heathens of Virginia and Their Practices
, and the weighty
The Healing of Wounds with the Grease of Fowls and Beasts, along with Other Marvels and Panaceas
, together with many pamphlets decrying Spanish lies and love of idolatry, and praising Sir Francis Drake for his bold raid on Cádiz. Sir Anthony loved to read.

“The ocean is hazardous,” agreed Sir Gregory. “But where can you win greater honor?”

Katharine believed that Sir Gregory quietly envied seamen and wished he had chosen a mariner's life. “Lord Pevensey gave you a generous loan, and then there were those gambling debts you owe him from last Christmas.”

“His lordship is a deft hand with dice,” admitted Sir Anthony.

“Lord Pevensey, it may surprise you to learn, has purchased the debts you owe to tradesmen all over the south of England.”

The scar on Sir Gregory's cheek resembled nothing so much, thought Katharine, as a third eye, closed tightly. He had a black short-cropped beard, with a mustache combed stylishly upward at the ends. He wore a large cuff at his wrist, folded back, as was the fashion, and held his
hands together in a gesture that resembled prayerfulness without looking at all benevolent.

“Has he indeed?” asked Anthony after a brief silence.

He tried to sound unconcerned, but Katharine perceived the pinpricks of red that appeared in her father's cheeks and saw the just-visible tremor of anger.

“The debt you owe the thatcher, for instance,” said Sir Gregory, “and the balance due the tiler. Not to mention the further debt you owe the goldsmith for that pretty little ring on Katharine's finger.”

Katharine folded her hands and put them under the table. The gift had been for her last birthday, an extravagance that had embarrassed but pleased her, and Sir Anthony had prided himself on keeping the cottages of the Fairleigh tenants whitewashed and freshly thatched, for the benefit of the farmers and out of love for the family land.

Katharine sometimes wished she possessed a sibling to confide in, although in an imaginary sense she did have one. Katharine had been born just after her twin sister, Mary. Her twin had died after three days, as though, as her mother explained, “a sprite had stolen her breath.” Katharine often felt this presence of Mary's companionship, a shadow so vivid it was alive. Surely such a sister would be helpful now, listening to this odious man with his broad Midlands accent.

“Adding these and other debts all together,” said Sir Gregory, “I doubt that even a treasure ship of Peruvian
gold would be enough to offset the debt you now owe Lord Pevensey.”

“I have every faith,” said Anthony, “that the
Rosebriar
will bring ample blessings from the West Indies.”

“Until last week you did not even know,” said Sir Gregory, “if the ship still swam the surface of the waves. But you have had good news.”

“Indeed, very good news,” agreed Anthony.

“The
Zephyr
,” said Sir Gregory, “touched shore here with news that the
Rosebriar
was dismasted in a gale and is being refitted in the Azores, and you expect the ship with its sweet-smelling treasure to our waters in a matter of weeks.” The Azores were Atlantic islands, nearly one thousand land miles west of Portugal, and celebrated as a safe haven for troubled ships.

“This is all as I understand it,” responded Anthony. “Why do you make these happy tidings sound so meager?”

“Because, my friend,” said Sir Gregory, “your debts to Lord Pevensey are so great that he will seek the Admiralty's permission to seize the ship and her cargo when she arrives in England.”

Anthony sat in unhappy silence for a long moment. “This cannot be!”

“The document is being written up in Lord Pevensey's best ink,” said Sir Gregory. “Cecil and I will carry the scroll to London.”

“Why does Lord Pevensey,” asked Katharine after
maintaining her own silence until now, “seek to ruin my father?”

“For profit,” said Sir Gregory.

“He sent you to tell us this?” asked Katharine.

Sir Gregory said, “My lady, he did.” The knight clasped his hands together thoughtfully. “You do know, Sir Anthony, that if you could tender me a gift, or even the promise of a gift, I would just as happily dispute on behalf of you and your daughter.”

“I don't believe,” responded Sir Anthony, with an air of pointed diplomacy, “that my daughter and I can afford your services.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Sir Gregory regretfully, and Katharine could see in his features a briefly younger, idealistic Sir Gregory, with hopes for his own destiny. “But fortune can surprise any of us.”

Katharine wondered if she was the only living thing with the sense that she was attended by an absent twin. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, every mortal has a missing sibling, identical but separate, absent and yet never gone. This awareness of her faithful, long-vanished sister gave Katharine a sensitivity to the spoken word that made her feel all the more acute.

Even now, at the table with the two men, Katharine knew what was about to be offered. She asked nonetheless, if only to have her suspicions confirmed.

“What,” she asked, “does Lord Pevensey really want?”

W
HEN SIR GREGORY had finished his visit, he departed into the night, taking the shadowy Cecil with him.

Baines reappeared, clearing away the untouched apples. Anthony reached for one, and took a second, and Katharine realized how hungry she was, too, and joined him in emptying the plate of the slightly wizened fruit, the remains of last autumn's harvest.

“Sir,” said Baines, “I'll not stand by and see you shamed, if you will forgive me for saying so.”

“You were listening at the door, Baines,” said Anthony in a tone of no great surprise.

“Truly, if I may say so, sir, the knight's voice carries,” said Baines in a tone of ardent respect. Baines was a former seaman, and had a sailor's way of standing even now, his feet planted flat, prepared for the floor to begin to rise and fall. “I can collect young Carter and that spirited lad Percy, with your permission, and I'll arm them with pikes.
If Sir Gregory ever shows his face at Fairleigh again, he'll regret it.”

Katharine was deeply moved by Baines's loyalty. His daughter, Eleanor, had been a playmate of hers, and a good friend. She had been married recently to a miller, and Katharine felt a certain good-hearted envy of Eleanor and her less ambitious, more peaceful existence.

 

“I WILL NOT have us ruined,” said Anthony when father and daughter were alone, “and I will not have you married to Lord Pevensey.”

That had been the offer, according to Sir Gregory—if she agreed to marry his lordship, the debt would be forgiven.

“Lord Pevensey is not such a brute of a man,” offered Katharine, not meaning the words so much as experimenting with how they sounded.

They sounded terribly false.

“He is a greedy beast, as you know,” said Anthony. “I should have seen these ill tidings before they arrived. I'll ride to London and bribe the Admiralty.”

“With what in your purse, Father?”

Anthony limped up and down the room, his injury troubling him even more than before. The veteran stallion had failed to leap a hedge last Candlemas eve, and horse and rider had fallen heavily. Anthony had heard a bone or sinew snap, and now a painful ulcer on his ankle was slow to heal. The horse had survived and had been sold to meet Fairleigh's many expenses.

Anthony flung open the shutters and gazed out at the stormy darkness. Not all the windows in the fine house were glazed, but this window was leaded and glazed like any church window, and the rain beat down on the glass. “Katharine, do you want to marry that—that scheming weasel of a lord?”

“No,” she said emphatically. “I believe I should have a favorable regard for the man I take as my husband.”

“And so you should,” agreed her father.

“I know that Lord Pevensey cheats at dice,” she added, “and bribes cockfight stewards—and if the Devil came to Devonshire, he'd feel at home at Pevensey Hall.”

“How does he cheat at dice?” asked her father.

“He pares them so they are off-weight—I saw him pocketing a little knife before you sat with him last Stephen's Day. I told you he cheated.”

“Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully, “you did.”

“I don't like his lordship, and could love him only out of Christian charity, but I'll marry him tomorrow, Father, if it brings you peace.”

“No, I'll outduel him before I allow you to share his bed.”

“Fight him with a sword?”

“I studied the rapier and the dagger when I was young,” said Anthony, “and I do believe that with Baines's help I could brush up my skills.”

“We must consider a better plan.”

She loved her father, and she had a deep respect for his resourcefulness. He had the energy to make a master
swordsman of himself, if he put his mind to it, but she did not think any fair fight could defeat a devious, grasping soul like Lord Pevensey. Besides, her father's nagging wound would sometimes not allow him to walk with any comfort, much less engage in combat.

“I'll hire murderers,” said her father.

“You are too gentle for crime, Father, except for the usual sort of half stealing from your creditors.”

“He won't be seizing any ships,” said Anthony, “with a new mouth cut out of his throat.”

“You are not a great sinner, Father,” said Katharine. “And to conspire to murder, you have to have a sinner's humor.”

“Maybe I'll develop such a character,” said Anthony.

“I pray not.”

“The truth is, Katharine, that unless I think of a plan, either you will marry this grasping peer of the realm or we will be more destitute than two houseflies.”

Despite her outward calm, Katharine felt bleak at their prospects. She was not one of those overly imaginative young women who thought wood pigeons spoke to them, but sometimes she did hear her name in the bells of the nearby Saint Simon's church,
Ka-thrine, Ka-thrine
, the first note higher than the second. Just now the sexton must be pulling on the bell, perhaps dislodging the swallows who liked to take up lodging in the belfry.

Hope soon,
said the ungainly music as it spilled through the evening,
hope soon
.

“You will devise a way around this misfortune,” she said encouragingly.

“Do you believe so?”

He was appealing, the way he needed to hear her express faith in him.

“Yes, you'll devise some cunning way out,” she said.

“I think I will, too,” he agreed with a laugh.

She joined him in quiet laughter. The truthful, objective alternative was too disheartening.

“By God,” he said, listening to the weather outside. “This is a fierce tempest—I would not be on a ship tonight for all the gold in Christendom.”

S
HERWIN SANK into the cold sea.

He looked upward at the shifting, unsteady silken surface of the water—the life that he was leaving behind. The ship's keel was a heavy apparition, bearded with sea grass and barnacles, and the sea quaked, all that windy tumult quiet from beneath the waves. His last breath broke upward, carrying with it a fragment of prayer.

 

THE RESCUE began like an intrusion, an unwanted trespass into his beckoning quiet. Some presence broke the surface, and circles expanded outward across the muted starlight.