The Lost Duchess

by Jenny Barden

  They were deep in conversation and something about the intimacy of their stance made her reluctant to intrude. They stood face to face, one perfectly proportioned beside the other as slim as a wisp. Through the foliage, she saw the gentle way Kit put his arm around Rob’s thin shoulders. The boy bowed his head and turned aside. She watched Kit catch hold of him. Then they embraced as if they were fighting, eyes tight closed as though to hold back pain, arms clamped around one another, crushing out breath. Kit’s hand circled the boy’s back as he shook and sobbed. She looked away.

  Kit must have told Rob the truth. He must have told him he was his father and what had happened to the boy’s mother, about his life with the Cimaroons, and the search that had led him to the discovery of his son. Would Rob understand why Kit had not told him before? Would he forgive? It looked as if he did, and they seemed to have found some reconciliation for the hours left to them on the turbulent earth. Let them be: Kit, the father who, for the love of his son, could not let his love show; Rob, the son who, without knowing, would not be parted from his father. Would Rob now realise that his father had tried to spare him? Kit had brought his son to the New World to find a better place for him to live; instead, he had brought him face-to-face with an early death. What could they do now? Their only comfort was that they would be together at the end, and had shown the greatest love by laying down their lives for their friends. She longed to embrace them both.

  She wiped at her eyes.

  Rob turned aside. In another stark flash of light she saw him clearly, heading towards the houses behind their new defensive wall, his expression loaded with feeling but resolute and contained. He was there, then he was gone. The next blast slammed through the forest and the light dulled and guttered. Before the fireball burst, he was engulfed by darkness. She looked back at Kit sensing their lives playing out as haphazardly, blazing in intensity before flickering into oblivion.

  The lantern on the tree still cast its paltry glow and by that she saw he was chiselling away at the bark, carving out letters as high as he could reach: ‘CRO’.

  ‘Are you leaving a message?’

  She walked towards him, and he gave her a smile of welcome, though the streaks of tears were like rills over his smut-blackened face.

  ‘This is for White,’ he said. ‘It’s to tell him those of us left here will be going to Croatoan if we can. Before we leave, if we’re attacked, I’ll mark the signs with a cross to show our move has been forced. He’ll know what that means; it’s what we agreed.’

  She watched his hands fall to his sides.

  ‘Aren’t you going to finish it or tell White the others have gone to Chesapeake?’

  ‘There isn’t time, and I’d rather White go somewhere safe to begin with. We don’t know where exactly Harvie will site the new city.’ He slid nearer like a sleepwalker. ‘You saw nothing?’

  ‘No. The Planters were not followed.’

  ‘Thank God.’ He let out his breath against her neck as he took her into his arms, and his touch was tentative as if he felt it might break her.

  She nuzzled against him, her lips brushing the prickles of the stubble above his throat.

  ‘You have told Rob?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He swallowed, and she sensed it as the resonance of his answer flowed through her, wrapped up in a sound like a low deep groan.

  ‘That is good,’ she said softly. ‘You have done all you can.’

  He shook his head slowly, his rough cheek rubbing against her.

  ‘It’s not enough, either for Rob or for you.’

  She held him tighter.

  ‘It is enough for me to be with you now.’

  ‘Come inside,’ he said, taking her hand as if they were children, and he was urging her to go with him to some place of secrets. ‘We have a few hours before daybreak and everything is ready beyond the wall.’

  He drew her to the clearing around the tree trunks that had been felled and stacked to form a star-like barrier around the houses in a great ring that connected with the palisaded fort. He guided her by the light of his lantern, circuiting ditches and earthworks, bole-walled curtains and pointed flankers. They reached the gate at the east by which was another carved sign on one of the tree trunks in the wall: ‘CROATOAN’.

  ‘Might we get there?’ she asked, pointing to the letters as they passed.

  He paused and kissed her hand, and she knew he did not want to tell her there was no hope. Perhaps the signs were there to give the others strength, perhaps they helped Kit keep alive the belief that there was always a chance for those he loved.

  He pressed her hand to his heart.

  ‘I think we should say goodbye to one another, somewhere quiet.’

  They entered by the gate, and Kit barred it shut just as another ear-splitting detonation sent her cowering against the wall. A fire-arrow followed that flooded everything with silver light, and when it burst, somewhere far over the water, the sparks were gold.

  Kit put his arm around her, leading her across what had once been the city square, now made almost impassable with upended tables, barrels and other objects heaped together.

  ‘The boys are enjoying themselves.’ He pointed to the fort and his tone was almost bantering. ‘Jim and Jack are warming up the saker while Rob’s helping Tom with the fireworks. Do you like the colours?’

  She guessed he was trying to buoy up her spirits and she answered playfully.

  ‘Yes, very pretty. Where did you learn how to make them?’

  ‘From Drake’s gunners, and Jim Lacy knows a few tricks. Iron filings made the gold you saw just now. The fireworks are only gunpowder in a paper casing wrapped around a stick and lit with a quick match. We’ve used all the prayer books we could find for cartouches.’

  She pulled a face, though he probably couldn’t see it. She hoped her voice sounded suitably shocked. She was too numb for much humour, but it was always better to laugh than to weep when work needed to be done.

  ‘I hope our prayers are heard and we’re given a little help.’

  He squeezed her hand and gazed back at the fort. She felt his mood shift, as if he was quietly thinking everything through.

  ‘The cannon fire should keep Wanchese’s warriors away from the north shore. The savages will come at us from the west: the quickest crossing from Dasemonkepeuc; then they’ll creep through the forest as soon as there’s a glimmer of light.’ He turned round to look at the mounds of earth that served as gun platforms behind the crude wall. ‘We’ll hold them off at first with our falconets and fowlers; after that, we’ll fall back to the fort.’

  ‘You expect all the houses to be lost?’

  ‘Yes.’ He ushered her on around the obstacles. ‘Everything will be lost; it’s only a matter of time. All we can hope to achieve is a chance to get to the pinnace while most of the savages are here on land.’

  ‘So we do have a chance?’

  He pulled her closer to him.

  ‘So small you should forget it.’

  He led her to the Dares’ house, a place she barely recognised because everything nearby was so changed, the vegetation smashed down and most of the furniture piled up outside in a great barricade in front of the fort. Everything valuable had been buried, he told her; all White’s chests and the belongings the Planters had left behind, they had all been sealed in a trench and covered over. The room downstairs in the Dares’ house was empty but for scattered pots and crocks and the ladder leading to the upper floor which Kit climbed ahead of her.

  The room upstairs felt strange, barely touched, almost as she had left it: pallets screened with canvas, clothes spilling from an abandoned chest. She took a few steps to the open window and looked out. On the timber sill, under her fingers, was the place where Rob had scratched his name, that time when he had stayed with her after Kit had left him on his first foray to the mainland. ‘Robert Little’ – she felt the letters and looked out at chaos: the disintegration of everything they had sought to establish in fou
nding the city. But Kit was still with her, vital and alive; they had a few hours yet.

  He put the lantern on the floor where it cast light through the shutter slits in expanding crescents over the walls. The glow filtered through the screens as if they were gauzy drapes in some fire-lit pavilion. It made the room seem warm, a place of safety in the midst of turmoil. Then he took something from his belt purse that gleamed as he held it out to her: a ring, a tiny, thin, gold ring. She looked at the lobe of his left ear and realised where it had come from.

  She stared at him in confusion, wondering what he meant by it. They had already exchanged tokens, and the ring was plainly too small for a finger. The association with marriage slipped instantly into her mind, but she dismissed it as quickly. That could not be what he intended; he’d already said that marriage would be for the time when they could rest without fear.

  ‘Your earring?’

  He nodded, smiling bashfully, then reached for her left hand and placed the little ring against her fourth finger.

  ‘Big enough to fit over the tip and that will have to do.’

  She stared at her hand in shock, and then at him. He’d picked out her wedding finger. Did he really mean to wed her? Now? Here, with the blasts of cannon instead of wedding bells and Wanchese’s warriors about to fall on them?

  He smiled more broadly and took a thong from his jerkin which he dangled in front of her. ‘You can tie it around your neck afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘After we are wed.’

  There, he’d said it: he meant to marry her now. Her heart swelled fit to burst. She wanted nothing more, yet she stood petrified, looking down at the ring in the palm of his hand as if it had the power to cast her into hell. She could not wed him on the basis of a lie. He did not know that she was not a maiden, that there was another man in England who had already taken and claimed her.

  He nudged the ring with his finger, looking down at it thoughtfully. Then he gazed up at her with a sweet shy look on his handsome face that was covered in sooty dirt and streaked with sweat and tears.

  She began to cry, reaching for her handkerchief to wipe him clean, trying in vain, then dabbing at her own eyes though the linen was black.

  He pulled a wry face and used his thumb to wipe at her cheeks.

  ‘I would like to marry you now, Emme. I wish to be one with you before I die. Wherever we are when the sun goes down tomorrow, we should be together, completely, man and wife.’

  She wept. She loved him. More than her aching heart could bear, she loved him. But how could she tell him that she was not pure? If they were to be together as man and wife, here, in this room, then he would discover her shame, and he would go to his death believing she had deceived him. He would hate her. She could not do it.

  She sank down on one of the pallets, turned from him and covered her eyes.

  He sat quietly beside her.

  ‘I know this should have been better for you. We should have had music and a procession and all the pomp and ceremony fitting for one of the finest ladies of England. You should have had a beautiful dress. This ring should have been bigger.’ He made a sound like a chuckle that caught in his throat. ‘We should have been in a grand church before a priest, but our vows will be known to God. Surely that and our love is what matters most …’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she sobbed, ‘not any of that. I need no trappings to be your wife when in my heart I already am. It’s …’ Tears blinded her. She could not speak.

  He put the ring back in his purse and placed his arms around her gently.

  ‘What is it? The time for talking honestly with one another is now. So tell me, Emme; there may not be another chance. Let there be no secrets between us. Whatever troubles you, I am sure it will not trouble me nearly as much. Nothing could make me love you less.’

  ‘I …’ she struggled. How could she begin?

  With a soft kiss on her brow he reassured her. Then he tensed and drew back a little. ‘You’re not already married?’

  ‘No, not truly. I mean …’

  She wiped at her eyes and saw him looking at her, frowning. His voice hardened. ‘What do you mean by “not truly”? Were you promised before you promised yourself to me?’

  ‘Not properly, not in faith …’

  Grief consumed her. She could not go on. Everything was falling apart: her hopes, the city, his love; she felt it all disintegrating around her.

  He let go of her and looked down. ‘I suppose you are trying to tell me that you have already lain with a man.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, fighting the impulse to hide behind more weeping. She had to tell him the truth. She held up her head. ‘A man took me against my will, after some jesting which I considered to be of no consequence, but he said it amounted to my promise to marry him.’

  Kit looked stricken. ‘He raped you?’

  ‘Yes. He said it would join us as man and wife, even without a priest.’

  He hung his head. ‘O, God. O, my dear Emme.’

  He looked up and met her eyes and she saw a great hurt in him that she longed to heal, but she also knew that the hurt was her own. His manner was grave. ‘You did not promise yourself to him knowingly and freely as you did to me?’

  ‘No, never. I loathe him. I would never be his wife, duchess or anything else.’

  ‘Duchess?’ He gave her a sad half smile as if it pained him. ‘This rogue was a duke? Who? Are there any dukes left?’

  She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Nothing she said now could make any difference. Kit would know the whole truth, and perhaps, at least, they could part as friends.

  ‘The Earl of Hertford, Edward Seymour, son of the Duke of Somerset and first in line to the dukedom when that title is reinstated. The lord who was imprisoned for getting Lady Catherine Grey with child.’

  ‘That scoundrel! He should never have been released from the Tower.’

  He turned to her and took her hands, kissing them gently. ‘Forgive me for my hard questioning.’

  She cried silently. ‘Forgive? You do not need forgiveness. It is I who needs your compassion.’

  ‘For what? What wrong have you done? Is a lamb to be blamed for the cruelty of the wolf? No, Emme.’ He held her again and looked at her intently. ‘You are the best of women, the lady I wish to marry, and if I am the first to whom you have freely offered your love then I will be privileged above all men alive.’

  He fumbled in his purse and took out the ring once more. ‘So will you be my wife?’

  She drank him in, sight, sound and smell, the salt and the sea. They would never be parted in this world and the next. ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’

  She held out her left hand for him and he placed the little ring on the very end of her fourth finger.

  ‘With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee worship: and with all that I have I thee endow. In the name of God. Amen.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘It is done. I think we may kiss.’

  Dear God, but she wanted to kiss him, though she feared to. She pressed her lips against his like a desert traveller falling on an oasis whose mouth is too parched to drink. He was the essence that gave her life meaning, her soul’s milk and nectar; he was strength and sweetness, her rock and her succour; the fire of her desire. He made her complete, but he could also destroy her. Why fear that now? She put all her longing into her kiss, and when they drew back to breathe she whispered against his chest. ‘I should have told you before.’

  ‘And I should have told Rob before.’ He rubbed her shoulders. ‘We have both wrestled to set down the burdens we have carried from the past. But now they are shared; you are released and so am I, undeserving though I am.’

  ‘No, not undeserving, the most admirable of men, my angel …’

  ‘Hush.’ He put his finger to her lips. ‘Let me show you how much I love you. My body is yours to serve you in devotion to my last breath.’

  He rose and unbuckled his belt and all the accoutrements of
war, stripped off his jerkin and shirt, kicked away his boots, peeled off his hose and galley breeches until he stood before her almost naked, and the sight of his body in the lantern light was enough to melt her inside. He was perfect and powerful. She could see every muscle under his smooth bronze skin, and the curling hair that glistened like filigree over his legs and chest, and in a dark line down from his navel over his flat stomach. She bowed her head. What could she offer him but her innocence, her softness never fully seen before by a man?

  He reached out to her and drew off her shawl, untied her bodice and sleeves, ushered her to stand and took off her kirtle as she slipped out of her shoes. With his hands under her shift he rolled down her wool stockings, and the touch of his fingers around her bare thighs made her tremble with terror and longing. At that point he broke contact and waited, with his hands close to her hips but not touching. She was shivering, she knew, but she could contain that if she tried. She peeled off her own shift, and he got down on his knees before her, like a supplicant to her modesty, raising his palms as if in veneration. Then she drew his hands to her breasts, arched back her head and let him continue. His hands reached up as his head sank down sending sensation shooting through her, and together gradually his hands slid over her breasts as his mouth moved up over her legs, kissing and caressing.

  She knew him fully as more explosions made the small room rattle, filling their bower with flashing light and leaving a fuzz of drifting smoke, but they seemed distant and insignificant. Her being was with him, around him and through him. She could appreciate nothing else.