'Is the woman able to come on deck?' asked Drake. Well, at least he had not simply thrown George overboard. In fact, he was striking a pose, chest puffed out, one foot firmly in front of the other. He had donned his best doublet for the handover, richly bejewelled with fantastically slashed sleeves.
George looked at Gresham and Mannion. Both recalled the sweating woman and the closeness, the stink of the ship all around them. It was probably healthier for the mother to be here in the sunshine and fresh air of the Azores. But they also remembered the jolt of pain that had visibly gone through her as she tried to sit up, her sense of a mind held together only by determination.
'Sadly, my Lord,' said George, 'we fear it could kill her. We suspect she has only a thin hold on life as it is.'
A cloud of emotion flickered over Drake's face, but he was too pumped up by his own triumph to allow his mood to evaporate. And well he might be. It cost around fourteen shillings a month to feed and pay a seaman on board the Elizabeth Bonaventure. You could hire the ship for twenty-eight pounds a month, pay and feed its whole crew for less than a hundred and seventy-five pounds a month. You could build a new version of her for two thousand six hundred pounds. And the value of San Felipe and her cargo? 'One hundred and ten thousand pounds,' Captain Fenner had whispered to Drake when the first inventory was complete. 'Perhaps even as high as one hundred and twenty, even forty thousand pounds… and that does not include the value of the vessel itself!' No wonder Drake was happy.
The strangely assorted party went down to the cabin: Drake, Fenner, Drake's Secretary, sniffing disapprovingly, George, Gresham, and Mannion of course, who had the capacity to become indivisible from Gresham.
'Sir Francis. Thank you for your graciousness in coming to see me.'
There was active dislike in Drake's expression as he gazed at Gresham, for the first time. And something else? A nervousness, almost? As for the mother, she was conserving her strength, Gresham saw, not even trying to rise, saving her sparse energy.'
'Madam,' said Drake, bowing low, 'I am truly sorry to hear of your indisposition. As I believe you know, your daughter and yourself have my guarantee as to your safety.'
'I am grateful to you, Sir Francis. Might I request that my daughter be present here with us now?' Anna had been in constant attendance on her mother. The faint smell of her carefully-hoarded perfume still in the cabin suggested she had only left as the footfalls of the male visiting party had been heard on the deck.
Drake nodded, and Captain Fenner called out to the guard at the cabin door to request the presence of the girl. There was an awkward silence, broken only when a few minutes later Anna appeared. Her eyes were downcast this time, Gresham saw, her curtsey deep and formal.
'Sir,' was all she said, in a low voice. A stool was brought, and she sat decorously, eyes still downcast, by the bed-head and her mother.
'Sir Francis.' The mother had swallowed several times before speaking. Would she last the course, thought Gresham? 'Though I have married one of your enemies, I am as English as any person here.'
'Madam,' said Drake, 'I do not doubt-'
'Please!' Her tone was so desperate that it defused the rudeness of her interruption. More than words could ever do, it said. I am dying, I feel my consciousness slipping away from me at any moment and I must have leave to say what I need to say without interruption. All present sensed that this woman was shortening her life with the effort of making this final plea.
'My husband is dead. I will shortly be so too.' There was a sob from the corner where the girl sat, her head down. Then a snap of pride thrilled through her. There were no more noises, no snuffling. 'My husband's family and my own are impoverished. If they accept my daughter at all, it would be at little less than the status of a servant. My daughter has only one champion left in the world. Her fiancй, a Frenchman at present travelling.'
A fat pig travelling through Europe for trade! thought Anna to herself, the rush of hatred and anger for a brief moment over-whelming her grief.
'I have no power, no wealth, no great ships at my disposal. I have only the request of a poor woman, an English woman, that I be allowed to name a guardian for my only child, a protector who like a champion of old will guard, protect and keep her, and deliver her to her fiance’
There was an appalling dignity in the simplicity of the woman's words. Drake stuck his chest out even more.
'Madam, I am happy to accept the charge which you-'
'In which case…' For a moment the woman's voice was strong, riddled with authority, and those in the cabin saw what she had once been. 'I nominate as guardian of my daughter the man I believe is known as Henry Gresham.'
George! Surely if it was anyone it should have been George, Gresham thought! It was a mistake! It had to be a mistake!
The silence in the cabin was as painful as a kick in the stomach. It was madness, all there could see it. How long before the young man with the blood in him did what all young men do, succumbed to the demands of his flesh? How long before the wild spirit of the girl succumbed to the man, as God had dictated all women should do from the time of Eve? Madness! What man wanted used goods? What use would her fiance be when he realised his virgin bride had been deflowered, and that any child might not be of his blood line?
Gresham had spent years learning to control the reaction of his body — the sweat on the brow, the pulsing in the neck, the flickering gaze, the hand pulling at the beard, stroking the side of the nose or the chin. The give-away reactions that told an enemy the workings of one's mind. But totally out of his control, he felt the red flush rising from his neck, suffusing his whole face. Then he looked at the mother's face. All her breeding was in it. All her beauty. And also the lines of pain, drawn so finely round her eyes these past few months. And the neck beginning to sag, that sagging that soon would turn the proud swell of her breasts into drooping dugs. Yet on that face was the slightest of smiles. A smile for Henry Gresham, he knew. For him alone. For a fleeting moment Gresham wished that he had had a mother, such as her.
'Do you accept this charge?' she asked, her voice a tiny one now, as though receding from life.
The girl had looked up. Her face showed only hatred and anger. He made the mistake of returning her gaze. Those eyes! Huge, dark pools, the colour of fine amethyst, fathomless, endlessly mysterious… He tried to shake himself out of this spell, praying to God he had made no gesture visible to the outside world. I would rather be facing a Spanish galley at night with little more than a longboat and luck beside me, he thought. He drew a deep breath. Let them see that. He no longer cared.
'Madam,' he bowed towards her, 'I'm no fit person for such a charge. I'm young, I'm foolish, I've yet to learn to cope with my own life, never mind be responsible for someone else's life.' Her smile was unwavering. Was she in some sort of trance, or did she know in her heart what was coming? 'Yet you, clearly, you are a fit person for such a charge. You have experience. You are wise. You prepare to leave your own life with a dignity that no man can but envy.'
A ripple went round the room from the assembled men. They lived close enough to death to know how much that proximity Cost in courage.
'If you trust in me to perform this… duty, then perhaps I may grow in stature and prove worthy of your trust in time enough to honour it. With a heavy heart, then, my answer is yes.'
'Thank you,' said the woman, simply. Then she turned her gaze, wavering now as if she was having difficulty in focussing her eyes, to Drake. 'This is the wish of a dying woman, Sir Francis. If you are a gentleman, then you will honour it.'