The Lion Triumphant (52 page)

And so it went on. People came to the house and we entertained them and over the table the talk would all be of Spaniards—of the wretched man in the Escorial who had sought to be master of the world and was now defeated in such a way that he could never rise again. And how they laughed when they heard tales of the anger of those Spaniards who had stayed at home and who were demanding why the Armada which had cost them so dear to build, did not return. Why did the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had boasted of the victory he would win over the English, not come home to be honoured? What had happened to the mighty Armada? Was it so pure and holy that it was too good for this earth and had wafted to Heaven?

“Wafted to the Devil!” cried my father, banging his great fist on the table.

Then he would recount the action in which he had taken part and all would listen eagerly and Carlos and Jacko would nod and agree and so it went on.

I did not wish to write of this in my journal. It was common knowledge. It was what was happening in thousands of homes all over England.

“How is your journal getting on?” asked my mother.

“Nothing happens,” I said. “There is nothing to record. So many things happened to you,” I added enviously. “That was different.”

Her face clouded and I knew she was looking back to the days when she was young.

She said: “My darling Linnet, I hope you will never have anything but happiness to record.”

“Wouldn’t that be rather dull?” I asked.

Then she laughed and put her arm about me.

“If so, I hope your journal will be a very dull one.”

It seemed it would be; and because of this I forgot it. It was only when the ship
Trade Winds
came sailing into the Sound that I remembered it and began to write regularly.

The
Trade Winds
was built in the style of the great Venetians with four masts, fore, main and mizzen and a small one on the poop—the bonaventure.

My father, who was always restive on land and nowadays did not seem so eager to go to sea, was constantly on the lookout for the ships that came and went. I was on the Hoe with him when the ship was sighted. There was a shout and all eyes were on this one.

My father said: “She’s a carrack. Looks as if she’s a trader.”

He spoke contemptuously. He had been a trader of sorts, for in his heyday he had brought home many a cargo which he had taken from a Spaniard. My mother often told him he was nothing more than a pirate.

“What sort of a trader?” I asked him.

“Following the Dutch,” he said. “Carrying goods and trading them and bringing back a cargo. Fishing in the Baltic and bringing back the catch. Trading!” he added disparagingly.

Then he stood, legs wide apart, watching, and when the little boats brought her captain ashore my father roared: “By God, if it’s not Fennimore Landor. Welcome to you, man. How fares your father?”

That was the first time I saw Fennimore—with his fair bronzed skin and his hair bleached with sun and his light blue eyes crinkled as though they had faced miles of wind and sunshine; he was tall and strong, a man of the sea.

“This is my girl Linnet,” said my father; and he laid his hand on my shoulder in a way that lately had begun to thrill me. It meant he was proud of me and although he was often intolerant and often crude it was wonderful to please Captain Jake Pennlyon. “And this is Fennimore Landor, my girl. I knew his father well. A better captain never sailed the seas. Welcome! What brings you to Plymouth?”

“The hope of seeing you,” said Fennimore.

“To see
me
. Well met then. You must come to the Court. You’ll be welcome. That’s so, eh Linnet?”

I said he would be very welcome.

We looked at each other rather searchingly and I wondered whether he liked my looks as much as I liked his.

I hoped so.

“The Court” was Lyon Court—the house which had been built by my great-grandfather when he began to amass his fortune. It was a little ostentatious compared with older houses like Trewynd, the home of Edwina and Carlos. I heard my mother say once to my father when they were battling together that the Pennlyons not being used to money for long had to make sure everyone knew they had acquired it. The centre of the house was its Gothic hall as high as the roof and its grand staircase led to the gallery where we had a few family portraits—the founder, my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my father. If I had been a boy I dare say I should have been beside them. Our living quarters were in the east and west wings. There was plenty of room for entertaining and the house was often filled with guests.

As we walked up to the Court from the Hoe, Fennimore Landor and my father talked of seafaring matters. I glanced sideways at the newcomer, and once or twice I caught him doing the same to me. When the house was in sight with the stone lions guarding the doors I said I would go and tell my mother we had a visitor.

She was coming down the staircase to the hall. She was very sprightly and had a wonderful vitality which was more attractive than beauty. She must have been about forty-eight years old but because she had had an adventurous life this had somehow preserved her youth.

“Father is bringing a guest,” I cried. “His name is Fennimore Landor. A captain I think. Oh, here they are.”

Fennimore Landor bowed to my mother and when the introductions had been made she led the way to the small winter parlour which was more intimate than the hall.

They drank Malmsey and talked mostly of the sea and Fennimore was to join us for supper before he was rowed out to his ship. He mentioned that
Trade Winds
would be staying in the Sound for a few days. My mother and I left them drinking together, then she went to the kitchen and I to my room to make an entry in my journal.

Later when we were at the great table in the hall, Fennimore sat beside my father and I could see that he was trying to arouse his enthusiasm for some new venture in which he believed wholeheartedly. I liked his enthusiasm. It shone in his eyes and it was in the lilt of his voice too. I thought: he is an idealist and if he cared about something he would do everything of which he was capable to make it succeed. This matter in which he was trying to interest my father was trading to various parts of the world. I enjoyed listening to him and I was a little angry with my father because he sat there with his head to one side looking, I thought, faintly sceptical.

Fennimore was saying: “From now on the Spaniards will offer little rivalry. They’re crippled.”

My father nodded. “Crippled by God and blasted off the seas.” He was launching out on the well-worn theme of how we had defeated them, how they had boasted they would vanquish us in a day or so. Fennimore was faintly exasperated. He did not want to talk of the past but of the future.

He interrupted: “They can no longer have their galleys going out from Barcelona and Cadiz. Where are their galleys?”

“At the bottom of the ocean,” chuckled my father.

“Of course, there are the Dutch.”

“The Dutch!” spat out my father.

“Worthy seamen,” put in Fennimore.

My father puffed his lips impatiently. “There’s no seaman like an English one and preferably a west countryman at that.”

My mother laughed with that touch of tender derision she so often showed towards my father. “You will find Captain Pennlyon a little prejudiced,” she said.

I looked round the table. We must have seemed a strange family to Fennimore—if his own was a conventional one, which I imagined it was. There was my father with his wife and daughter and his three illegitimate sons and the mother of one of them. Of course it was clear that my father was no ordinary man, and for that matter, my mother was no ordinary woman. We were a small party because no one had known that we would have any special guest but there had been time to ask Carlos and Edwina to join us. In any case they often did.

Carlos’s mother had been Spanish but he had inherited scarcely anything of hers, he was clearly my father’s son. His hair was darkish brown and his eyes light hazel colour; he swaggered when he walked in a manner similar to that of our parent. He had been brought up under my father’s influence from an early age and the great aim of his life seemed to have been to grow up as exactly like him as possible. He was a great favourite with Jake. So was Jacko, the son of Jennet, my mother’s maid who had been with her for years and had shared many of my mother’s adventures. She was a lusty irrepressible woman and had had a succession of lovers. At the time it was one of the gardeners. We all knew, because for Jennet love-making was so natural that she made no secret of it. She was now in her forties and I had heard my mother tell her that she was just as lustful as she had been in her twenties. She was enormously proud of Jacko and delighted that he had been brought up in the household to follow his father’s profession. She thought there was no one quite like the Captain and was very proud that Jacko provided living evidence that he had once glanced her way. Then there was Penn—also with a look of the Captain, and his presence at the table with his mother was perhaps the most difficult to understand. Romilly Girling had come to the house when she had been destitute after her father had been killed in one of my father’s ships; and, during one of those periods of dissatisfaction with each other which had occurred in the past between my parents, my father out of pique or lust had got Romilly with child. Penn was born and was brought up in the house as Romilly had nowhere else to go and it was only later that my mother had discovered who the boy’s father was and it was inconceivable that she would turn them out of the house then. My father would never have allowed it in any case, and I think my mother liked to remind him now and then of his infidelities.

However, there we were on this day when Fennimore came to Lyon Court, all assembled at the table, the only absent one being my little sister Damask who was too young to be of the party. I think it was after her birth that my father realized that my mother would never have a boy and became reconciled to me.

Fennimore, I am sure, was too full of his own project to waste much time thinking about our household. It was clear that he wanted my father’s backing for his project. It seems from what I could gather that he was hoping for some sort of partnership.

I listened to him with pleasure. He had an unusually soft musical voice for a sailor. I could not imagine his shouting to sailors on the deck. There could not have been a man less like my father. It was amazing how I compared them all with him.

“If we had entirely neglected trading,” Fennimore was saying, “we could never have beaten the Armada. We shouldn’t have had the ships.”

“Traders!” cried my father. “Nothing to do with it. We beat the Dons because we were better seamen and we were determined not to let them set foot on our land.”

“Yes, yes, Captain Pennlyon, that’s true of course. But we had to have the ships and by good fortune we had them.”

“Now, young man, don’t you make the mistake of thinking this victory was due to luck. Good fortune, you say. Good seamanship, say I.”

“It was that, but we did have the ships,” insisted Fennimore. “Did you know that in 1560 we had but seventy-one ships trading on the seas and in 1582 we’d increased that number to one hundred and fifty? Why, in 1560, sir, our merchant navy was almost nothing … we weren’t among the maritime nations. What were we doing? Our coastal trade was insignificant. We did a little with the Baltic ports—just with the Low Countries and perhaps a little with Spain, Portugal and France … a few Mediterranean calls. That will not be so any more. We, Captain, are going to be not
one
of the foremost trading nations in the world but
the
foremost. There’s coal to be carried … coal and fish. This has been done in the past, but now that we have driven the Spaniards off the seas we have to take advantage of it.”

My father was listening now. Any method of worsting the Spaniards appealed to him.

I found it fascinating to listen to Fennimore. It was obvious that he had studied the matter; he believed in it wholeheartedly. Carlos was inclined to support him, while waiting for the cue from my father, of course. Jacko watched with bright eyes so like his mother’s; if the family was going into trade he wanted to be in it too. Penn’s eyes never left our father’s face. And watching him there, his startling blue eyes fierce at the mention of Spaniards, I was never more conscious of his intolerance and there was a great yearning in me for him to like and approve of Fennimore Landor. I realized that Fennimore in his way was as determined as my father was in his; but while one was noisily vociferous the other achieved as much impact by his quiet insistence.

I sat listening to his voice and it was as though he created before my eyes the fulfilment of a dream. He was going to make our country great—not through war which to my father had always seemed the way to do this, but through trade. To ply peacefully throughout the world practising legitimate trading would prove more profitable, Fennimore was implying, than riding the high seas armed with guns and cannon, boarding, robbing, fighting, killing—sometimes acquiring a prize of great worth and as often suffering loss as well as death.

“The time has come,” he cried. “The troubles between the Low Countries and the Spaniards have crippled them both. What fools men are to kill when they might trade peaceably! At one time Antwerp was a centre of great wealth—one of the greatest in the world. The closing of the Schelde three years ago finished that. We have still to contend with Amsterdam. They’ll be our rivals for a while. That is good. Rivalry is necessary. It is the spur.”

He leaned his elbows on the table and contemplated my father earnestly.

“I prophesy that in the next decade we in this country will build a merchant fleet which will be the envy of the world. We have come through a great ordeal victorious. It is not for us now to gloat over our enemies but to go on to greatness. Our derision cannot hurt them—our trading ships will. We have to beat the argosies of Venice, the tartanes of Marseilles. God and our seamen have taken care of the galleys of Barcelona.”