The Lost Duchess

by Jenny Barden

‘Captain Spicer may yet find us,’ Kit said, picking up on Lacy’s concern. The colony would struggle without supplies; it was a worry he’d heard before, but fretting about it would achieve nothing.

  ‘It’s a pity Captain Stafford didn’t bring back any sheep as the Portugee said he would.’

  ‘You mean Master Ferdinando.’

  ‘The very one, the Portugee whoreson: our Pilot whose assurances I wouldn’t trust as far as spit.’

  Kit heard the plop of phlegm hitting the water.

  ‘I’d keep that opinion to yourself,’ he advised.

  ‘Too late.’ Lacy snorted. ‘It’s already shared. Ask Denis and Darby. No man who served with Lane at Roanoke has any respect for the swine. He’s not led us well so far, has he? Abandoned the flyboat with our victuals, set us on an island with savages and foul water, and thus far failed to find anywhere fit for taking on fresh food.’

  ‘There could have been sheep where he sent Stafford. The evidence was there …’

  ‘Old droppings,’ Lacy cut in. ‘He sent Stafford to capture sheep, and all the Captain found was shit.’

  Kit pulled up his oars and dipped his hand into the water, watching a hint of light shimmer around his fingers like the palest gauze. The brilliance was gone. The bloom had faded. The water felt cooler, almost cold. It was time to test the river’s freshness. Above his head trailed vegetation hanging from branches in ragged arches: trees that weren’t mangroves; he couldn’t tell exactly what. He felt as if he was floating in a watery maze, a branching gully almost completely overgrown, where the only visible elements were the sheen of the river on which he was drifting, and a strip of starry sky directly above him, crisscrossed by creepers as if in a bower. Had they gone far enough? He scooped up the water and drank.

  It tasted clean, not brackish, a bit earthy but that was no surprise, and if he used his teeth as a filter it was really quite good.

  ‘This will serve us,’ he said, then plunged in his leather water bottle and drank deeply.

  Lacy did the same.

  ‘Let’s tie up and get the barrel in. Over there,’ Kit whispered, pointing, seeing a place where the shine of the river met a shelving bank in a still line. They needed somewhere to ground the boat so the barrel, once filled, could be hauled aboard safely. But the little river beach was exposed and unfamiliar. Had he been here before? He couldn’t recall seeing anything like it during the past two nights of scouting for water. The river channels were a network of convoluted streams, gushing down ravines from steep limestone hills and tunnelling around mangrove islets near the sea in a matrix without clear banks. Would they be able to find the way back? Getting lost was an unspoken fear, greater than ever this night since it would be their last at Muskito Bay. Ferdinando had announced that they would weigh anchor at daybreak, and for once Kit was inclined to agree with his decision. Every day they lingered increased the chance of their discovery; the Spaniards knew the bay had been used by English seafarers before. They could easily be trapped. The water-boats should get back early so the Lion could leave undetected. They must be quick.

  He looked round for any sign of being watched but there was none, no glimmer of light, or snapping twigs, or tell-tale smell of smouldering matchcord from a musket. Even the frogs had quietened. He beckoned Lacy on and in silence they set to work.

  Not until they’d filled the barrel and stowed it, pushed off and got back under the trees did they begin to talk again, and then only in snatches. They put all their energy into rowing hard and getting into the flow, taking advantage of the current to race back downstream. Between strokes Kit listened, straining to hear the sloosh of the other boats amidst the clinking of the frogs, scouring the sheen over the water behind the black curtains of foliage but seeing no trace of movement beyond the shimmering ripples in their wake.

  Lacy eased on his oars. ‘Should we wait for the others?’

  ‘Just for a moment.’

  Kit pulled up his oars and they drifted in an eerie stillness. Then Lacy’s haunting cry rang out softly over the water. It was swallowed without answer by the silence.

  ‘Perhaps they’ve gone another way,’ Lacy murmured. ‘They could be ahead of us.’

  ‘Aye. Let’s carry on.’

  They’d been separated before and Kit’s instructions were to always keep going if that happened. The veterans wouldn’t tarry. He glanced up at the sky and saw cloud drifting over the stars. It was getting darker if anything, without any hint of dawn about to break. That was good. The other boats could well be near the Lion by now; he visualised them appearing around the next bend. He set the stroke again.

  ‘What brings you back to the Americas?’

  He wanted to settle Lacy as well as hear his story. He could feel the Irishman’s unease as much as the chill rising from the water. He’d wrap the question in a little warmth.

  ‘You must have more mettle than most. Few of Lane’s men were keen to see Virginia again.’

  ‘There’s no finer country,’ Lacy answered wistfully. ‘As green as Ireland, so it is, but without the bogs.’

  Kit chuckled at that.

  ‘Good folk live there too,’ Lacy went on. ‘It’s mainly for them I’m coming back.’

  ‘You mean the Algonkians?’

  ‘Some of them. The ones like your friend, Manteo.’

  ‘If the Virginians are like him they must be fair indeed.’

  ‘I didn’t say they were all like him.’

  ‘But you took to his tribe: the Croatans?’

  ‘They were kind to us, God knows; at least to me they were … I’d like to see them again.’

  Lacy was skirting around the question, Kit could tell. He’d have to dig to tease out the truth.

  ‘Them? Or do you mean one of them?’

  ‘Yes, I do, so help me God. There was someone I left behind who meant much to me.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘What makes you think that? But yes, ’twas a woman I left …’

  Kit breathed out deeply as he hauled again.

  ‘I too left a woman behind once, in Panama, a long time ago. I could never forget. I understand.’

  ‘I thought I’d be able to go back to my old life without her,’ Lacy said.

  ‘But you couldn’t?’

  Kit knew what it was like to try and pick up the pieces of a life. There was never any going back.

  ‘No,’ Lacy answered softly. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Alawa.’

  ‘I hope you find Alawa again, Jim.’

  ‘We’ll be stopping at Croatoan to take Manteo back to his kind. I aim to find her then and take her with me to Chesapeake.’

  ‘I’ll help if I can. Remember that.’

  ‘God bless ’ee, sir.’

  ‘So what White has promised is true? Virginia really is another Eden?’ Kit asked the question brightly, though he’d long suspected White of having a rather woolly grasp of material matters. ‘In which case,’ he went on, ‘why did Lane and his officers spread such bad reports about the region? They made Roanoke sound cursed.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ Lacy replied, grunting as he rowed. ‘To be sure things happened there that don’t bear dwelling upon. But we’re not settling in Roanoke, are we? We’re going to Chesapeake where everything’s much better.’

  ‘What things happened?’ Kit leant back after the next pull and paused for Lacy’s answer. He’d had an inkling that something terrible had blighted the last voyage. But what? He needed to know.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  He looked round and saw Lacy shake his head slowly. The man’s stroke faltered then picked up. He hauled fiercely on the oars before he spoke.

  ‘Lane’s way was to govern by fear. He believed in showing no weakness and setting examples. It was necessary, he said. But he repaid the Indians poorly for their trust. He …’

  The boat tipped violently and rocked back. Cold light burst like a spectral firework around the hull. A dark sw
elling wave raced towards them from one side.

  ‘Jesus!’ Lacy cried, letting his poles fall against the tholes and grabbing hold of the gunwales with both hands.

  Kit gripped his oars and leant towards the middle of the boat to try and steady it. Great bubbles rose around them bursting with light. More waves struck. They had to row or capsize, keep the boat moving forwards to stop it tipping.

  ‘Row!’ he shouted.

  He rowed frantically, struggling to turn the boat into the waves. Water was flooding in; they were rocking too much. With the weight of the barrel aboard, they were already half submerged. He rowed frantically. One of his oars skimmed the surface, sprang clear and beat air. It almost shot from his grip.

  Lacy seemed to wake from a stupor and took up the stroke.

  They both rowed, breathing hard; they rowed until their backs were breaking. The boat steadied, bobbing on waves that broke harmlessly, slapping against its bows. Whatever had come close to sinking them moved further away, trailing a hazy streamer of thin sulphurous light. Kit watched the lustre fade and then vanish.

  Darkness enclosed them. Kit shivered, drenched in spray and sweat.

  ‘Jesus,’ Lacy kept repeating. ‘Jesus. By all the saints that ever lived, that was close.’ Then almost timidly he asked, ‘What do ye think it was?’

  ‘Something big; it doesn’t matter. It’s gone and we have to get back.’

  He glanced up at the sky and saw a dull brown glow above the blackness of the trees, as if the cloud was a blind of leather that had been pulled open a chink.

  ‘Concentrate on rowing. We’ve got to hurry.’

  They were back in the labyrinth of mangroves, and where the branches formed tunnels it felt as though night was still upon them, but as the trees opened out the glimmer of sunlight was plain to see, like molten gold seeping through great rents in the hem of the sky.

  ‘Pull … Pull …’

  He quickened the stroke, glanced over his shoulder, and saw the bay beyond the river mouth like a pool of gold leaf, and the ship like a fletch on the arrow-straight horizon, only a furlong from the shore and at anchor as she had been left, though a top sail was uncurling.

  ‘There’s the Lion. She’s waiting.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Lacy cried with a crack in his voice. He turned round.

  ‘I can see a boat as well. The others must have overtaken us.’

  Kit felt relief wash over him, but he kept on rowing without letting up. As they neared the ship he heard the capstan working and the rhythmic chanting of men weighing anchor, shouts from the rigging and the flapping of canvas: all sounds that told him the Lion would soon be making way. A low cheer followed when he got to the hull, secured the water barrel for winching and began the climb to the deck. Then Ferdinando’s head and shoulders appeared over the bulwarks.

  ‘Not before time, Master Bo’sun. Get a move on.’

  ‘Are the others back?’ he called to Ferdinando, though he could hear some of the passengers jostling to greet him and ask questions.

  ‘Wright’s boat is with us,’ Ferdinando replied crisply. ‘We have enough water now and it’s time we were gone.’

  Kit carried on climbing.

  ‘What about the two other Irishmen. Are they here?’

  Ferdinando turned his back and called to the Quartermaster, giving him orders to stow the water barrel and haul up the boats.

  Kit knew it all meant the answer was no. He leapt over the gunwale and onto the deck.

  ‘You can’t leave yet. There are two men missing.’

  Lacy scrambled after him and almost fell to his knees, reaching towards Ferdinando as he pleaded.

  ‘Darby and Denis are back there. I beg you wait and send help. They could be in trouble. Something monstrous is in the river. It almost took us …’

  ‘Monstrous?’

  Ferdinando’s eyes widened mockingly as a thrum of unease rose from those looking on; then he waved his hand at Lacy as if to brush an irritation aside.

  ‘Get below or I’ll have you flogged.’ He turned to Kit. ‘Back to your post, Master Bo’sun. I’ve given the order to set sail. Get this ship under way.’

  ‘No!’ Lacy interrupted. ‘Master Doonan saw it too: something monstrous. Send out a search-party and I’ll go with them …’

  ‘Silence!’ Ferdinando snapped his fingers and called for Lacy to be taken away.

  The soldier was led down, writhing and protesting, in the grip of the Quartermaster and enough mariners to subdue him. As he was bundled below, he shot Kit a look of entreaty.

  Kit turned to Ferdinando and clenched his jaw.

  Ferdinando smiled grimly back at him.

  ‘To your post, Master Doonan. My instructions have been plain. We leave at daybreak; that means now. The two who are missing are Irish Papists who were pressed into service by Governor Lane. They’ve probably run away.’

  He turned to John White who was scanning the bay with his hand to his brow.

  ‘Do you wish to jeopardise this expedition by mounting a search for these Irish deserters?’

  White frowned and scratched his chin. ‘Well, I suppose that might be difficult as well as imprudent, given what we’ve just heard.’ He looked at Kit with a hint of accusation. ‘Though it grieves me to think of men being left behind. What if the Spaniards find them? Master Doonan, perhaps you would advise as to what you think might have happened.’

  Ferdinando’s look darkened and he took a step towards White. ‘Nothing happened except that two cowards fled. You’re wasting time, Governor.’

  White shuffled back a little and his eyes rolled towards Kit. ‘Nonetheless, I should like to hear from Master Doonan.’

  Kit sensed the whole ship’s company was looking at him: mariners, soldiers and passengers – all waiting for an answer; a decision; a show of defiance or submission, some resolution to the tension between the Governor and the Lion’s Master – an outcome that would allay their fears. Their questions rose in whispers like the buzzing of unsettled bees.

  ‘What was monstrous?’

  ‘What will we do?’

  ‘Should we stay any longer?’

  He noticed Mistress Emme watching him with a look of tense concern, and the Governor, frowning, glancing from him back to the sea. What would be gained by sowing more anxiety? They were in greater danger every moment that passed, especially now with the ship clear of shelter, though, God knows, the plight of the missing men was worse.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ he said. Then he squinted up to the crow’s nest and looked across to Ferdinando. ‘By your leave, Master, let us hear from the lookout.’

  Ferdinando gave a nod. ‘See to it.’

  Kit called up, and the boy in the tops cried down.

  ‘All clear!’

  Kit exchanged a look with Ferdinando and knew there was nothing more to be done. He gave the orders to get the ship out of the bay while he continued to scour the river mouth for any sign of the men. There was none. He hung his head.

  Then he sensed someone approach – Mistress Emme; he saw her when he raised his eyes.

  ‘I am glad you are safe,’ she said and smiled shyly.

  The greeting was meant kindly; he felt it and reached out to her on impulse, grateful for her small show of support.

  But then she drew back as if his shadow had burnt her.

  7

  Valiant Courage

  ‘… Only be you of valiant courage and faint not, as the Lord said unto Joshua, exhorting him to proceed on forward in the conquest of the land of promise; and remember that private men have happily wielded and waded through as great enterprises as this, with lesser means than those which God in his mercy hath bountifully bestowed upon you, to the singular good, as I assure myself, of this our Commonwealth …’

  From Richard Hakluyt the younger’s epistle dedicatory to Sir Walter Raleigh, in his 1587 translation into English of René de Laudonnière’s Notable History, urging Raleigh to proceed with his ambition to found an English co
lony in Virginia

  ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’

  Emme edged closer to Master Kit, keeping one hand on the gunwale so the roll of the ship would not dislodge her. In the other hand she carried a crock of pottage, sealed with a cork bung and still hot enough for her to feel the heat against her knuckles. She held the crock out to him.

  ‘Something to warm you,’ she said, hoping he would accept it despite the breach that had opened up between them. Kit might be overbearing and too cocksure of himself, but he’d been on deck for hours navigating the Lion through the stormy night and he must also be tired and hungry. She had brought food to the rest of the watch and it seemed unfair to exclude him, despite the fact that he still hadn’t apologised for the offence he had caused her with his unjust chiding. But she could forgive him for the moment. Whether he would appreciate her goodwill was another matter; she wouldn’t let that bother her. She wanted him to see the sort of person she really was, and that she certainly was not so proud as to be uncaring.

  ‘The crew have all had some,’ she said, anxious that he wouldn’t think she was showing him any special favour.

  He tucked away the instrument he had been looking at, and took the crock from her with a smile she could only guess at from the brief gleam of his teeth.

  ‘Thank you.’ He pulled out the stopper and inhaled deeply. ‘Turtle pottage?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  She let out a small chuckle and felt him near her, as solid and comforting as an oak in a storm, and warm like a cloak of fur that in another life she might have snuggled up to, though of course she would not, and had no desire to do anything of the sort.

  ‘Have you any idea where we are?’ she asked, not really expecting him to say he did. Master Ferdinando had admitted he had been mistaken about the location of their last anchorage, and if the ship’s Pilot did not know where they were, it was hardly likely that the Master Boatswain would know better.

  ‘I think we’re not far from Roanoke, don’t worry.’

  ‘But I do, I can’t help it.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? Couldn’t you sleep?’

  She hesitated, wondering whether to admit her apprehension, and then decided that she would, though it meant revealing a weakness and breaking her previous resolution to have nothing more to do with Master Kit. He must be lonely, staring at the starry sky in silence for hours on end. She would show him she could be compassionate.