by Peter Tonkin
‘If you think he did then it’s probably true,’ she observed. ‘You know more than most, after all. I mean, who else in all God’s creation would have recognised Drake’s seal?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Talking of that … ’
‘Yes?’ Her whole body tensed, as though a cold breeze had penetrated the double glazing of the balcony doors.
‘That was Andrew Balfour on the phone. Apparently the palace have decided on their position.’
‘And?’ It was hard to keep her voice steady now and inside she was raging at his calm deliberateness. He was only doing it to tease, she knew. But was he teasing her with good news or bad?
‘Well, it seems that there is no doubt that the seal is Drake’s seal. The chest and all it contains was a part of the Golden Hind’s cargo. Historically, therefore, it is British property. They will fight all comers in any court to establish that and will defend it to the death — legally speaking.’
‘I see.’ This sounded bad to Robin and her tone was dull and flat. It was all going to the Crown then, like the rest of the Hind’s treasure had done after Hatton, Walsingham and the rest had taken their cut for fronting the royal backing of the deal.
Drake himself, with his son Harry, had been left alone with the remaining treasure secretly and he had taken some ten thousand pounds’ worth of it in the end; and then received another ten thousand pounds direct from Elizabeth for keeping quiet about her involvement in the venture. But these two sums had amounted to less than a twentieth of what she herself had taken, which had been valued at more than half a million pounds then and would be worth the better part of fifteen million today.
‘But Andrew said there was something interesting about the Hind’s manifest, which is still apparently held in the royal archives somewhere. Half a ton of assorted gold and silver, under the seal of the captain general, was put overboard with two cannon and a quantity of shot to lighten the vessel which was aground in the waters near the Spice Islands. There is a note in Drake’s handwriting attached, saying it was lost to God as the price of a wind, and it was a good price at that, for it brought the rest home safely. And whoever God gave it back to, for whatever reason, was welcome to it. The note was countersigned, would you believe, by Queen Elizabeth herself, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir Francis Walsingham.’
‘So?’
‘So they will defend to the death its right to remain in English hands, but it has specifically been refused by the Queen for whom it was destined. Therefore the Crown has no case of possession. It doesn’t belong to the Queen, or to Drake’s descendants, or to Hatton’s or anybody else’s. It doesn’t belong to the nation because the Secretary of State also signed the disclaimer in 1580. As far as the law is concerned, it belongs to God and God has given it to us. Pure and simple, it seems. Stripped of Elizabethan Protestant religiosity, Drake lost it, we found it, so we keep it. We do what we like with it.’
‘And have they put a price on it? Do they know what it’s actually worth?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest notion, I’m afraid,’ he said, and fell silent again.
Almost at once the phone started ringing again downstairs.
‘Your turn,’ said Richard, and Robin felt both a prickle of irritation to be taken thus for granted and a stirring of languidly delicious guilt that she could prowl around stark naked like this.
Richard looked out through the double-glazing, entranced as always by the breathtaking view of the Channel. Without thinking, he reached across and slid the big door back, stepping out on to the balcony, far too preoccupied to notice the chill of the autumn evening. Speeding across the still black water like a rocket was the late night jetcat heading for France. The sight of it ignited something deep within Richard and he was suddenly flooded with an excitement more poignant than anything he had felt in years. As he watched the sleek vessel skim across the surface of the water, attaining speeds close to one hundred knots, he felt like a prophet suddenly granted a glimpse of the future. Oddly, there was no conscious memory at all of the Macau jetcat and its tragic ending a mere six weeks ago. All he could see was the vessel of the future; a vessel Heritage Mariner should be running.
He sipped his tea and waited for Robin, bursting to present his vision to the one person he really wanted to share it with.
Robin came in through the bedroom door and stopped, struck by the chill on her naked skin. She looked across the big room to the open balcony door and the tall figure beyond it. A full-length mirror reflected her own slim figure as it hesitated. Had she looked she would have seen a thing of silver and pale gold. Like a Cellini nude; like Titania, Queen of the Fairies. But she did not look. She stared at Richard, struck by the way his body seemed a thing of shadow. Even in the light of the fat moon, he seemed cloaked in shadows; and the image was striking enough to call to her mind the games she had played with Daniel Huuk. For if she was Titania, ill met by moonlight, then there, outside the window watching his kingdom of the sea, was her Oberon.
But then he turned and the light caught his face. Robin knew that expression all too well of old. He had some scheme afoot and was bursting to share it with her. And the revelation drove out all thoughts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but not all thoughts of Shakespeare. She knew how things would go now. He would tell her of some madcap scheme and she would demur, but supportively, loving the boyish enthusiasm, supporting his vision, for things usually turned out well enough in the end, but fearing that he would dash off again aboard some ship, to some far-flung comer of the earth, about some mad adventure, leaving her here. Alone with the twins.
The phone call had been their school. She must pick the pair of them up in the morning; a measles epidemic had broken out at Amberley. No more love in the afternoon and no more nude tea-making for a while. But she knew that the brief idyll would not have lasted in any case. Everything about Richard’s dark vibrancy told her that, and she shrugged to herself and stepped forward.
As she moved, he saw her and she saw his lips begin to move, his enthusiasm spilling out even before she was within earshot. And she saw in his eyes the threat of distances and separations once again.
But she thought to herself, ‘Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more, men were deceivers ever; one foot in sea, and one on shore, to one thing constant never.’
And she smiled.
Acknowledgements
This novel was originally going to start with pirates. It now opens with Sindbad because I chanced upon Tim Severing wonderful The Sindbad Voyage. Sindbad’s presence gave me the idea of reinterpreting his First Tale from 1001 Nights having the ocean rising instead of the island sinking — and so the tsunami arrived; and with it the final shape of the plot.
Much research went into Sindbad’s literary background, but it was Mr Severin who introduced me to the ‘real’ Sindbad the Sailor. Drake’s adventure is based absolutely on historical fact. He did run aground on a rock pinnacle within sight of land. He did dump ballast overboard (but no treasure) and the wind did change at once. He did go at once to an island (Crab Island) but he met no tigers or tsunamis there. Also, as he had taken the outward passage, these things happened to him well south of the Rifleman Bank — and, indeed, well south of Java and Sumatra as well. To those interested in Drake’s subsequent adventures I can do no better than to recommend Garett Mattingly’s The Defeat of the Spanish Armada; my personal favourite of all works of Tudor maritime history. More details of the circumnavigation itself are available in Alexander McKee’s The Queen’s Corsair.
The island itself became influenced — as did at least one of the characters upon it — by Lucy Irvine. Anyone who finds Sally Alabaster too good to be true is referred to Ms Irvine’s Castaway — as is every other armchair adventurer who reads this. I would like to thank Sybil Woolfson for permission to use an agreed romanticisation of her name - I don’t know how the Sergeant became nick-named Sally when she started out as Sybelle, Sybil; I hope you don’t mind.
As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to
Steve Sawyer and Jenny Fenn, librarians at The Wildernesse School, and to the staff of the public libraries in Sevenoaks, Douglas, Castletown and Port Erin. I also owe thanks to John Wright and Paul Clark of the Geography department at the Wildernesse School who found me facts about modern China and tsunamis and showed me where to find more. I must also thank Roger Hood for trying to get the old laptop to run Works for me and I do not know what I would have done when it crashed had not Alec Rodden made me free of his own computer from 6am until 4pm every day for a month. You and Joan were lifesavers, Alec; I really cannot thank you enough.
It was the old Pirate Ship team who updated me on the Far East — Richard Atherton’s travel notes from Singapore to Western Australia; Ann and Graeme West’s holiday records; Kendall’s tourist documents; Simon’s maps and charts (ameliorated as ever by charts and Admiralty Pilots from Kelvin Hughes Ltd); and this time particularly I must thank Carey and John Bower for the (hopefully) telling little details about the MTR and especially the Macau jetcat.
Finally, I must thank my armaments officers without whom these books would lack a little something, to say the least. Peter Scurfield who, even from the depths of Fujayra, had input into Meltdown’s tank battles and Tiger Island’s hardware alike — but most especially, thank you Dale Clarke for breaking into busy film-schedules arming sets and series from GoldenEye and Rob Roy to Richard III and The Saint to advise me on a range of matters but most especially and effectively on the Russian BTR 80 Amphibious Armoured Personnel Carrier.
Peter Tonkin, Sevenoaks and Port Erin, 1996