"Nay, Captain." The fresh bread and cheese smelt delicious. It was torture to watch it disappearing down the Captain's throat.
"When did you eat last, Master Perkins?"
She shrugged. Was it yesterday, or the day before that? "Not since—oh, a while back, Captain."
He regarded her gently. "A long time ago, I should think. Come—share it with me, there's plenty for both of us. I hate eating alone." Seeing her surprised expression, he laughed. "Regard the victuals not so suspiciously, Master Perkins. The bread is fresh, given me this morning in Folkestone." For a moment his face clouded. "It is somewhat better fare than you might expect in the galleys this night. For we are not only at the mercy of wind and weather when we put to sea, we are also at the mercy of dishonest victuallers who make their fortunes out of our necessity. Ay, they grow fat and prosperous upon cheating us." He thumped his fists together angrily. "Before God, I would have someone's neck for the hangman's rope after the victuals I had just witnessed in the galley. We do not only have the Spaniards for enemy, for there are traitors and enemies enough in the Queen's realm, growing fat upon our distress."
"How do they do that, sir?" asked Beth, hoping that he would go on talking so that she might help herself unnoticed to a little more of the delicious cheese. She had not realised until she tasted the fresh crisp bread and butter how hungry she was. Hunger had been laid aside in the tempestuous events of the day, but now her stomach rumbled anxiously. If she kept the Captain talking, he would not notice her unladylike behaviour—
Suddenly she stopped chewing and smiled to herself. She must be careful. Sometimes she forgot her role of Ben Perkins, cabin boy. She frowned. It would never do to forget. However, now that the first shock of the Captain's identity had faded, she realised that the situation could be worked to her own advantage. Surely her rebellion, her running away had successfully put at an end any possibility of James Danyell ever wishing to marry her. Marry a maid who has run away to sea to escape from him—for that would be the world's interpretation—dressing up in boy's clothes, such a scandal. No respectable maid but a wanton.
If his pride were so afflicted, she thought with satisfaction, he would never wish to look her straight in the eye -as he was doing now. She summoned her wandering attention—
"And not content with such wickedness, the victuallers then slip in mouldy ship's biscuit along with the good, to make up the weight. Putrid salt beef is also added for the same reason, and even the beer is sour and undrinkable. Small wonder we have scurvy to contend with and the other strange humours of the blood on our long voyages!" He nodded towards the fast diminishing bread. "Take more, eat your fill, lad."
Beth felt momentarily ashamed of her greed, since she had been already taking full advantage of the Captain's preoccupation and anger.
"Eat up, Master Perkins, do. You look as if proper feeding would not come amiss. A growing lad should have regular meals and good nourishing food."
"Nay, Captain. I have eaten sufficient, thank you."
The eyebrows, dark against his light hair, twitched mockingly. "You call that eating? Before God, I have seen sparrows in the garden take larger helpings and come back for more." He wagged an admonishing finger at her. "Take heed, Master Perkins, you will never grow into a big strong man at this rate. Come," he wheedled, "just this last piece—we will share it." She needed no persuasion and as she munched contentedly, he continued: "Tomorrow, if by God's good grace we live, we will return to mouldy sea-biscuit and sour beer. I could not bear to die and leave such good bread uneaten."
He walked over to the desk and arranged the charts lying there. As he did so, Beth observed that his hand lingered for a moment on the miniature of the girl from Folkestone and she saw the tenderness, the melancholy in his eyes.
When she had cleared the remnants of the meal, he yawned, stretching his arms above his head. "I am for bed, Master Perkins. There will be no action this night. But by dawn the tide should have carried us alongside the Spaniards in the Calais harbour. Then only God knows what the day will bring."
"Will there be a battle tomorrow, sir?"
"Likely, ay—more than likely."
Beth felt the sudden onrush of fear. She had been hoping that somehow she could escape the clutches of the Sea Queen before they went into action with the Armada. She had not thought how she might achieve this miracle, but only that somehow, someone would arrive in time to save her. And that someone in her wild imagining had the face of Will Robb.
"We might be well to prepare ourselves for tomorrow's battle by seizing the chance of a good night's rest." Sitting down on the bed, James Danyell stretched out his legs towards her. "Come, you may remove my boots."
Beth managed this with considerable difficulty and much help from the Captain, who regarded her lack of strength with considerable forbearance. With a rather weary sigh, he stood up and held out his arms. "Now, lad, you may unbuckle me."
Beth took a deep breath and began to remove the sword belt and leather accoutrements from around his waist.
"Come, lad, how you do fumble," he said impatiently. "Have you never helped your master to disrobe before?" Beth realised that an honest reply would have shocked him, so taking refuge in silence, she unlaced the leather jerkin, trying at the same time to avert her senses from this close contact. Jerkin discarded, she undid the points of his shirt at wrist and neck, while he lowered his head so that she might remove the garment. As his naked chest emerged he began unfastening his breeches, and she felt the blood rush to her cheeks, quickly averting her eyes, for she had never seen any unclothed body but her own as she dressed and undressed each day.
While he washed at the ewer of water she brought, she stood by with drying linen and, fascinated, secretly observed his strong back, his long and shapely legs. Such closeness to him had a strange effect. Her heart hammered as if it sought to be free from the woman's body which burned inside Ben Perkins' restricting garments.
Despite arms pressed rigidly to her sides, her hands trembled as if they longed to caress James Danyell's long satin-smooth back, golden brown from more exotic ports than Hythe or Greenwich. Her lips twitched as if they longed to press against his firm warm flesh and she was appalled. Heartily as she disliked the Captain, his nearness so affected her senses, that her body took on an independent existence, betraying her with secret thoughts and urgent desires—
As he turned to take the linen from her, her forearms, with sleeve rolled to the elbow, came in contact with his damp flesh and she felt as if she had fallen from a great height into space. Endless space—where all time ceased.
Looking up she saw his strong neck above her, and where it joined the paler skin of his chest, a pulse beat. There was a dappling of freckles, like the gold dust of childhood on a summer's day, which added a vulnerable boyish aspect, totally unexpected. Ablutions over, his hair clustering in damp tight curls around his forehead, bringing softness and a gentle touch that defied the stern countenance. Their eyes met and she saw that the green-brown depths reflected by the lantern's glow were like pools in a tree-fringed wood, surrounded by shadows.
With a sigh, he stretched out long arms for her to lift the cambric nightrail over his head. Fire burned through her, as if they were locked in a lover's embrace. The timeless moment over, the Captain stood before her attired in a garment that barely—but safely - reached his knees.
With trembling hands, Beth tied the points at wrists and neck, while his eyes regarded her with strange sadness. It was another revelation, for she felt she saw his whole character laid out before her in that one penetrating look, like some rough path through a dark forest. She saw that James Danyell was strong and stern—she needed no reminders of that fact—but he was also a lonely man; stricken to the heart by loneliness and an intolerable burden of sorrow, despite the tender scene she had witnessed in Folkestone with the beautiful dark-haired girl.
He closed his eyes briefly. "You may remove the ewer." His voice was cold, strange, and she regarded him
fearfully, hurt out of all proportion that he had not shared the intimacy of vision with her.
Then she remembered in time who she was—or was not—Master Ben Perkins, cabin boy—
Briskly, she pulled back the bed covers for him and he clambered under them yawning like a sleepy small boy, so that the years between them diminished, as if the stern strong Captain James Danyell had been somehow laid aside with the garments he wore.
From the pillows, he grinned at her. "Well, Master Perkins, you are to be congratulated."
She wondered uncomfortably if he were reading her thoughts at that moment.
"Ay, lad, you have survived your first day at sea on the Sea Queen without being sea-sick, although you have had many other misadventures," he added hastily. "And we must not be too hasty, since the weather has treated us with moderate kindness." He smiled. "I fancy you will be an old sea dog in the years to come, Master Perkins. And you will tell your grandsons how you were a boy when the Armada threatened these shores, and how fighting with Captain Danyell made a man of you."
At his request she brought the lantern and placed it upon a hook to throw light over the bed. He took up his Bible and while Beth went about the cabin, tidying and folding clothes, she also observed that the Captain might be particular about the cleanliness of his linen and his decks, but a mop and duster regularly applied would not come amiss in his own cabin.
At last his even breathing told her he slept. Only then did she decide to retire to the trestle bed where she decided cautiously to sleep in her clothes. Blowing out the lantern, she found him in a pool of light, the Bible still in his hands. For a moment as she stood looking down at him, fascinated, since she had never before seen a grown man in bed asleep, not even Uncle Ephraim. She remembered the sleeping faces of her aunt and uncle nodding in their chairs before the fire at Craighall, and how their countenances seemed to grow meaner, more ignoble, as if sleep released the qualities in their characters that they sought most carefully to conceal during the waking hours.
And this, she realised, was in essence what had happened to James Danyell. Sleep was like a magic curtain, which had stolen over his countenance, touching it with gentle kindness, even with fleeting humour, replacing with youthful curves the angles of age and bitterness which he wore by day.
Sighing, she slipped into the trestle bed with its rough blanket. Staring into the dark, hands clasped behind her head, she listened to the creak of the ship's timbers, the gentle lapping of the water. The sounds were rhythmic and as comforting as mortal breathing, so that she began to understand a little of the fascination the sea had for men like Captain James Danyell.
As she lay sleepless, the day's events formed a nightmare procession through her tortured mind. With weary monotony scenes returned to plague her. The refugees on the Folkestone road flying before the advancing Armada. Her cousin Alys's deserted house at Sand Bay. The footsteps of the pressers, their leering faces as they seized her. And last of all, James Danyell, the Sea Queen's captain; the one man in the world she most wanted to escape, into whose hands cruel fate had relentlessly delivered her.
James Danyell. She saw the soft bare flesh as he bent his neck before her, the damp cluster of curls about his forehead, the gentle boyish grin.
James Danyell. She saw the tall man, grim-faced, stern and unyielding, the face contorted with anger, the hand raised to strike her—
James Danyell…
At last she fell into a fitful slumber, the little bed rocked by the ship's gentle motion.
She awakened with a start to find his face inches away from her own. The look of passion, the gentle smile too, had faded with the dream. The cabin was flooded with light and the Captain after shaking her shoulder, was struggling into doublet and hose.
"We have overslept, Master Perkins. Bring me my cloak and best ruff from the press yonder." Grim-faced and angry he added: "And look lively. We are for morning prayers."
"Morning—prayers," she stammered.
"Ay, Master Perkins. Or are you a heathen? This is the Sabbath and as master of the Sea Queen I lead my men in worship."
Five minutes later, having decided that he would dress faster without her help—and to her immense relief- they prepared to leave the cabin, Beth going ahead carrying the Bible, while the Captain followed, wearing the cloak with its insignia of the Queen's captain, the black velvet hat with its white plume, hiding his tawny hair. He also wore the Queen's colours in a white satin shirt and doublet slashed with green, and Beth had to admit, with reluctance, that he made an imposing and splendid sight that sunny morning.
Watching him lead the crew in prayers, kneeling on the decks with his men around him, heads bared to the sunlight, she decided that his prayers sounded sincere and devout. And that God's help, for which he earnestly prayed, would be greatly needed that day.
From her position by the rail, she had a fine view across the sea. And the sea was no longer empty as it had been last night. During the hours of darkness, they had drifted close to the Spanish ships. Now they faced them across the water, frighteningly near.
None could have failed to be impressed by the array of the enemy's galleons, whose close-packed numbers seemed countless, and endless forest of tall masts. Their height and majesty were breathtaking, perhaps even to Beth's ignorance, a little corpulent and top-heavy for fighting of any kind, but they were superb works of art, she thought, straight from the painter's brush, and unreal as a tapestry hanging in my lady's chamber—
"Oh Lord, deliver us, thy servants from our enemy—"
And Beth realised that the bells she heard tinkling were not from the angels declaring themselves on the side of the Queen's ships, but issued from across the water. They came from the Spanish ships, for this too was their Sabbath day, and upon each deck the soldiers and seamen knelt to receive the Mass. Strange indeed, she thought, that the same prayers rose from Spanish lips into that enigmatic cloudless blue sky above them, where they were told, Heaven rested.
So earnestly did the Captain pray that she almost expected the heavens to be rent and a thunderbolt despatched to smite the Spanish ships. And then she remembered that God was doubtless lending an attentive ear also to the prayers of their enemy, and which ever side He decided was most worthy of his blessing, there were good Christian men in both fleets who must die before the sun was set. Catholic men, Protestant men -and probably Muslims too, leaving behind them loving wives and weeping children to heartbreak.
It was a frightening, sobering thought that she, Beth Howard, might well be among them. Roundshot, accurately despatched, would pay scant respect to the fact that the Sea Queen's cabin boy, Master Perkins, was a girl in disguise.
"In Jesus' name, Amen."
Prayers over, the crew formed themselves into ranks for the Captain's inspection. As he walked along them she noticed that he had a kindly word of encouragement for each, and a smile. She saw that whatever her own feelings, the men liked and respected their Captain, with the exception perhaps of the imprested men. But even they, she observed, responded to his words. She saw shoulders straightened, sullen expressions disappear.
As the men dispersed about their tasks, she stood by awaiting the Captain's orders. He pointed to the Spanish ships.
"They are but two musket shots away from us, Master Perkins. Look well upon our enemy. What think you of them? Do we stand a chance of victory?"
She shivered. "They look in good order, Captain, after the week's fighting."
"We know not how badly they have suffered, except that they have not lost a single ship through battle. Only one galleon fell to our hands and that off Portsmouth, when a mutinous gunner with a grudge against his captain threw a burning brand into the powder barrel." Staring at the sky, he shook his head. "It is discouraging indeed to find them so perky this day, after all our squandering of shot and powder, chasing them through the Narrow Seas. But we will beat them yet, never fear."
Beth was not convinced, for the Queen's ships paled into insignificance bes
ide the Armada's brilliantly painted, lavishly-gilded galleons. Attired more for a regatta than for battle, they rivalled the morning sunshine, gay with the banners of all King Philip's empire, each galleon further denoting its holy purpose by a red saltire cross on a white ground, the Burgundian flag. Their numbers were so great, their close-set mass so deep, that all but the rooftops and distant spires of the town of Calais were hidden.
Calais. And Beth thought wistfully of another harbour, at Hythe. Oh to be home again this Sunday morning, to be safe within the walls of Craighall, its kitchens exuding the tempting smells of baked meats.
"There are the squadrons of Hawkins, of Frobisher -over there—and of Admiral Howard. See, how the flagship Ark Royal is to the fore, while our own squadron, with Drake's Revenge, stands already to windward. What think you of our chances?" he asked again.
Beth looked towards the Armada. "I know not, Captain, but the Spaniards are a pretty sight."
The Captain sighed. "The beauty of the devil, Master Perkins. England is in desperate straits this day and we have taken the ships away to fight the Armada and left our own shore unprotected. Over there, beyond the horizon, the Duke of Parma's army lies at Dunkirk - so rumour has it—awaiting just such an opportunity as this."
"How so, Captain?"
"Our absence, calm seas and suitable tides—just the chance they are waiting for to slip over the shoals to Kent and land their soldiers."
Beth shivered. "They hope that the Armada will join them?"
"Ay, unless King Philip's strategy is grievously at fault, that is the plan. The victorious Armada will lead the Spanish army to attack and invade England. Remember this day, Master Perkins, when you are old -this one day which, God knows, will perhaps decide the destiny of a nation."
Beth looked at the Queen's ships, a handful they seemed, far outnumbered by the might and magnificence of the Spanish galleons across the water.
"Then we must not let them meet the Duke of Parma, if England is to be saved."
The Captain smiled and rested a hand gently on her shoulder. "Ay, Master Perkins, that is the general idea. I can see you know little about warfare, but your heart is right set. I trust when the testing time comes, that it will also be a stout heart, courageous and undismayed, for this day we must defeat the Spaniards so completely that they will never again rise against our realm."
The Queen's Captain Page 6