The Triple Goddess (44 page)

‘This tree had therefore become a symbol to us, of a point at which the energies of two worlds converge.

‘It was upon the fourth day of our inland journey, as I recall, that the chief of the Cimaroons took my Captain by the hand and prayed him, if he wished to see the sight for which he longed, to come with him to the topmost point of a high hill. And although I am not a man who remembers dates, that one is graven in my memory: the eleventh of February in the year of our Lord fifteen seventy-three.

‘By reason of my having just turned nineteen years of age, I was invited by our Captain to accompany him on our final day. So, leaving the remainder of the men to strike camp, we set off to complete the short trek to the summit of the hill. Such was our excitement, that we forgot our differences of station and the years between us, and talked like brothers.

‘He had long imagined, Captain Drake confided to me, a place where a new world might be contemplated whilst looking back upon the old.

‘The hill we ascended lay like a ridge facing east to west, in which steps had been cut so as to afford an easy ascent to a bower at the top, sufficient in size for the comfortable accommodation of a dozen men.

‘At ten o’clock we arrived at that great and goodly tree that was the object of our journey. From it we could plainly observe both the Atlantic Main and the South Atlantic, or Pacific Ocean, into which our travels were about to lead us; and after a period of quiet, Drake honoured me by asking that I speak a prayer, beseeching Almighty God of his great goodness to grant us life to sail in that new sea, just once and in an English ship.

‘As we descended, the clouds once more surrounded us. My Captain discovered that, when we had fallen upon our knees together in the bower, he had done his leg some slight injury upon a jagged edge of wood. After the sliver of it had later been removed, he kept it upon a chain about his neck to the end of his days, and asked that it should be buried with him.

‘Now that we had rejoined our company, Drake gave leave for the doctor to follow where we had been, with a few of the senior men followed by the remainder of our company. Though I had the opportunity of going again with them, I demurred: it would have been like seeing a glorious sunset a moment after its peak, when the bloom has gone out of the sky; or revisiting the places of one’s childhood in hope of recapturing the hope and innocence of those days.

‘I knew that I should never behold anything surpassing what had already been spread before me, and the picture that was in my head was already sharper than the reality.’

Ralegh lowered his gaze and fumbled with his pipe, but did not relight it.

‘On the passage home,’ he continued, ‘from the Cape of St Antonio we took the most direct and speediest way for wind and current, and in a mere twenty-three days without incident we passed from the Cape of Florida to the Isles of Scilly, and arrived at Plymouth harbour at about sermon time on a Sunday.

‘It was a strange feeling, as we, with our heads still filled with Cimaroons and Spaniards; jaguar, tapir, and crocodiles; exotic birds and fishes and tropical fruits, saw our home once more before us.

‘The townsfolk, alerted by the ringing of handbells, set up a pagan cheering and rushed to the Barbican to welcome us and search for their loved ones, followed by those whose religious devotions in church had been disturbed by the commotion.

‘Last to arrive was the preacher, who had been abandoned in mid peroration as the news of our return passed swiftly amongst his congregation.’

Arbella began singing, very softly, a song that she remembered from childhood. Possibly it had been the mention of the silver that triggered it:

‘Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to se-a,

Silver buckles on his kne-e;

He’ll come back and marry me-e

Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.’

Chapter Thirty

‘Bobby could afford more than silver buckles,’ said Ralegh, ‘with his share of the booty. Everyone got a share, and even the cabin boy became rich, for there was not only virgin silver but gold as it were growing to be gathered, as well as rubies, diamonds, and pearls. You shall have read that urchins played at cherry-pit with them, and country wenches threaded rubies for necklaces instead of rowan-berries. There were pearls to delight a queen...my Queen, for they were ever her jewel of choice.

‘We watched the natives harvesting the oysters from underwater beds. Our men, who thought such things grew on trees, refused to help them when they were invited. Oysters on trees! Strange as it might seem, very few sailors can swim; they would rather drown than learn, out of a superstitious fear of meeting Davy Jones. Amidst other preposterous things that they believed, were reports of headless men and Amazon women, and troglodytes, which would have to be smoked from the caves before they could be searched for treasure.’

Arbella pondered this. ‘There’s an affinity there: the word troglodyte contains the letters of “gold”, and “troy”, being its weight in ounces.’

Ralegh gave her an odd look.

‘I’m good at crosswords.’

‘From Plymouth I came again to London, where we were received by crowds who presented us with flowers, and hung tapestries from the windows in our honour. The Queen herself came to meet us, in an open horse-litter draped with silver cloth, drawn by two palfreys caparisoned in white damask. Four knights dressed in scarlet held a canopy over her head. Her gown was white and trimmed with ermine, her hair loose and interspersed with...’

‘Pearls, I would imagine.’

‘Little did I think that, years later on another such occasion, Elizabeth would invite me to step forward. Then, greeting me with a smile and commanding me to kneel, she declined the ceremonial weapon that the Lord Chamberlain was about to hand her, and asked instead for the handle of my own sword. She touched me lightly on each shoulder with the flat of the blade, and pronounced, “Arise, Sir Walter.”

‘Whether or not she had it in mind, on that occasion, to inspire me with the ambition, from that moment I was possessed with the desire to lay unlimited gold and pearls at her feet, and gifts of territories; to regale her with accounts of pirates and plundered galleons, and how the Spanish fled before us.’

Arbella nodded. ‘It is said that you wrote, with a diamond ring in a window-pane, the words “Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.” To which she added “If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”’

‘I had little opportunity to follow her advice, for eftsoons I found myself stripped of the offices and preferments that my Sovereign had heaped upon me. I was imprisoned in the Brick tower for marrying Bess Throckmorton, her lady-in-waiting, without permission.

‘In vain did I try to win back her favour by writing a collection of poems for her, my elegy to
Cynthia
,
the Lady of the Sea
, and serenading her when her boat passed by on the way to Greenwich.’

Arbella decided, as Ralegh was unlikely to mention it unprompted, that there would not be a better opportunity to broach the topic that she most wanted to learn about. ‘But you were released to lead other expeditions, on the last of which the most grievous misfortune of your life befell you. Might you tell me about it?’

Seemingly neither offended nor angry, Ralegh spoke mildly. ‘I was never so fortunate as Drake in my ventures abroad. First, by way of evil omen my men were sick of the calenture, a tropical affliction caused either by the alteration in climate from cold to heat, or the brackish water we were forced to drink.

‘The surgeon was trying to find a cure, when he died himself from the effects of an overly strong purgation he took to protect himself from the disease. He had just cut open a man who had been sick for weeks, to find his liver swollen and his heart sodden. Such was their delirium that sailors, fancying the waves to be the rolling fields of home, were overcome by desire to leap upon them. It was impossible to post sufficient watches to prevent those afflicted from drowning themselves, because so many were sick; and in one fortnight a dozen were lost in this manner.

‘One morning a galleon of above ninety tons bore down on us in the roads, and we were beset by Spaniards. The battle took place both on sea and land, on and around an island where we had been told a fortune in treasure was buried. There were rumoured to be above fifteen tons of silver, concealed in the burrows of giant land-crabs under a number of old trees that had fallen thereabouts, and in the sand and gravel of a shallow river.

‘The fierceness of the fighting gave us cause to believe that the enemy also had knowledge of the hoard; but when at last we had the advantage at the cost of many men, nothing was found.

‘There was a pathetic aftermath to the event. The next day, the French soldiers who were accompanying us discovered that one of their men was missing, and demanded we find out what had become of him.

‘Unable to bear the noise of their complaints, I agreed to send out a search party. It was determined that the miserable individual had stolen away from his detail, and laden himself with more than was his entitlement of our earlier pillage, which we had hidden. He then took to the woods and got lost. Having also provided himself with a number of bottles of wine, he made himself drunk and fell asleep under a tree, where a group of Spanish soldiers came upon him. Under torture, he revealed the location of the rest of our treasure, and the enemy seized it.’

Ralegh bit his lip before resuming, in a tone that was edged with harshness. ‘But that was of no consequence compared to the greatest loss of all, that of my dear and brave son Wat, as he endeavoured to defend my honour in an unnecessary skirmish with the Spanish.

‘Which calamity was followed by the news that my captain Lawrence Kemys had taken his own life, at the second attempt, on account of his feelings of guilt, and the abuse I heaped upon him for disobeying my orders to avoid a confrontation with the Spanish. I had been too sick to accompany Kemys, in whose care I had placed my son, up the Orinoco to San Thomé, where I intended to establish an armed barrier between the tiny jungle fort and a mine that promised to be richly productive.

‘Both lives were expended needlessly. Would that I had perished instead, or died fighting by their side! But there was no time to mourn, and I collected the remnants of my force and brought it home, duty-bound to face the consequence of my actions.

‘When a few weeks later the Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, burst into the Court and blurted before the King, “Pirates! Pirates! Pirates!”, my fate was sealed...or so I thought...in just punishment for the action that, although I had issued strict orders against it, had been conducted in my name.

‘Meanwhile,’ Ralegh said grimly, ‘my younger son Carew was leading a sheltered life, from which he emerged only much later when he embarked upon the ignominious dealings that he is still engaged in. He has survived while those three boys I accounted my real sons—Wat, Lawrence, and Prince Henry—dear Hal—died.’

Arbella was indignant. ‘How is such heartlessness towards your younger son consistent with the sincerity of your grief for the others? Most parents would be only too grateful to have another child to comfort them after such a loss; which he has attempted to do most assiduously, despite your animosity and belligerence towards him, for a very long time.’

Ralegh looked so uncomfortable that she relented, and, in breach of the warranty on his potential Lloyd’s contract, offered him a cigarette. He took one, stuck it in his mouth and leaned forward for her to light it. Puffing hard without removing the cigarette from his mouth, he went cross-eyed watching the end as it burned closer and closer to his nose.

Finally he spat the butt onto the floor, and Arbella retrieved it and threw it into the fireplace.

‘You may fill my pipe, if you like,’ he gasped; ‘in my age it was considered an honour for a girl to fill a man’s pipe.’

After he had run a reed thorough the silver stem to remove the tar and improve the draw, Ralegh handed it to her, and she went to the mantel and took down the jar; removing the lid she sank her fingers into the roughly shredded tobacco, which was cool and moist and tacky, and inhaled the aroma.

As she packed the bowl, which was ridged with charcoal after many reamings out, she saw that the amber mouthpiece was almost bitten through.

When she gave the pipe back, and Ralegh had gone through the palaver of lighting it, he nodded with approval at how she had packed the tobacco, neither too tightly nor loosely.

Shooting Arbella a humorous glance, Ralegh said, ‘Well, that is enough doleful matter for one day, so let us change the subject: to this business that thou hast offered to arrange for me.’

Arbella’s heart sank. She did not want to confess that she was off to a very rocky start. ‘Oh, Sir Walter, it’s not finished yet.’

The knight looked startled. ‘Finished? I was not aware that I had agreed to proceed with it.’

‘I know, and I don’t mean to pre-empt your decision, for there’s no undertaking on your part until an inception date has been agreed, the money has been paid, and underwriters are on risk. It being such a huge commitment, a contract there’s no going back on, there’s no cancellation clause.’

There was the glint of an eye through the haze of smoke. ‘Whereas I have no desire to bask in the public adulation that I was once so avid for, there’s life in the old sea dog yet. Memories have been awoken in me that I would not suppress. I have no objection to your proceeding.’