by G. A. Henty
“But I could not have blamed you—I should never have dreamt of blaming you,” she said earnestly, “for losing it as you did.”
“I felt sure, Lady Claudia, that had it been absolutely beyond my power to regain it you would not have blamed me; but it was not beyond my power, and that being so had I been obliged to wait for ten years, instead of two, I would not have come back to you without it. Moreover, you must remember that I prized it beyond all things. I had often scoffed at knights of an order like ours wearing ladies’ favours. I had always thought it absurd that we, pledged as we are, should thus declare ourselves admirers of one woman more than another. But this seemed to me a gage of another kind; it was too sacred to be shown or spoken of, and I only mentioned it to Caretto as he cross questioned me as to why I refused the offer of ransom; and should not have done so then, had he not been present when it was bestowed. I regarded it not as a lightly given favour, the result of a passing fancy by one who gave favours freely, but as a pledge of friendship and as a guerdon for what I had done, and therefore, more to be honoured than the gifts of a Republic freed from a passing danger. Had you then been what you are now, I might have been foolish enough to think of it in another light, regardless of the fact that you are a rich heiress of one of the noblest families in Italy, and I a knight with no possessions save my sword.”
“Say not so, Sir Gervaise,” she said impetuously. “Are you not a knight on whom Genoa and Florence have bestowed their citizenship, whom the Holy Father himself has thanked, who has been honoured by Pisa, and whom Ferdinand of Naples has created a Knight of the Grand Cross of St. Michael, whom the grand master has singled out for praise among all the valiant knights of the Order of St. John, who, as my cousin tells me, saved him and the fort he commanded from capture, and who stood alone over the fallen grand master, surrounded by a crowd of foes. How can you speak of yourself as a simple knight?”
Then she stopped, and sat silent for a minute, while a flush of colour mounted to her cheeks.
“Give me my gage again, Sir Gervaise,” she said gently. In silence Gervaise removed it from his neck, wondering greatly what could be her intention. She turned it over and over in her hand.
“Sir Knight,” she said, “this was of no great value in my eyes when I bestowed it upon you; it was a gage, and not a gift. Now it is to me of value beyond the richest gem on earth; it is a proof of the faith and loyalty of the knight I most esteem and honour, and so in giving it to you again, I part with it with a pang, for I have far greater reason to prize it than you can have. I gave it you before as a girl, proud that a knight who had gained such honour and applause should wear her favour, and without the thought that the trinket was a heart. I give it to you now as a woman, far prouder than before that you should wear her gage, and not blind to the meaning of the emblem.”
Gervaise took her hand as she fastened it round his neck, and kissed it; then, still holding it, he said, “Do you know what you are doing, Claudia? You are raising hopes that I have never been presumptuous enough to cherish.”
“I cannot help that,” she said softly. “There is assuredly no presumption in the hope.”
He paused a moment.
“You would not esteem me,” he said, holding both her hands now, “were I false to my vows. I will return to Rhodes tomorrow, and ask the grand master to forward to the Pope and endorse my petition, that I may be released from my vows to the Order. I cannot think that he or the Holy Father will refuse my request. Then, when I am free, I can tell you how I love and honour you, and how, as I have in the past devoted my life to the Order, so I will in the future devote it to your happiness.”
The girl bowed her head.
“’Tis right it should be so,” she said. “I have waited, feeling in my heart that the vow I had given would bind me for life, and I should be content to wait years longer if needs be. But I am bound by no vows, and can acknowledge that you have long been the lord of my life, and that so long as you wore the heart I had given you, so long would I listen to the wooing of no other.”
“I fear that the Countess, your mother—” Gervaise began, but she interrupted him.
“You need not fear,” she said. “My mother has long known, and knowing also that I am not given to change, has ceased to importune me to listen to other offers. Her sole objection was that you might never return from captivity. Now that you have come back with added honours, she will not only offer no objection, but will, I am sure, receive you gladly, especially as she knows that my cousin Sir Fabricius, for whom she has the greatest affection, holds you in such high esteem.”
Six months later Gervaise again landed at Genoa, after having stayed at Rome for a few days on his way back. D’Aubusson had expressed no surprise at his return to Rhodes, or at the request he made.
“Caretto prepared me for this,” he said, smiling, “when he asked me if you might accompany him to Genoa. The Order will be a loser, for you would assuredly have risen to the grand priorage of your langue some day. But we have no right to complain; you have done your duty and more, and I doubt not that should Mahomet again lay siege to Rhodes, we may count on your hastening here to aid us?”
“That assuredly you may, sir. Should danger threaten, my sword will be as much at the service of the Order as if I were still a member of it.”
“I by no means disapprove,” D’Aubusson went on, “of knights leaving us when they have performed their active service, for in civil life they sometimes have it in their power to render better service to the Order than if passing their lives in the quiet duties of a provincial commandery. It will be so in your case: the lady is a great heiress, and, as the possessor of wide lands, your influence in Northern Italy may be very valuable to us, and in case of need you will, like my brother De Monteuil, be able to bring a gathering of men-at-arms to our aid. Have no fear that the Pope will refuse to you a release from your vows. My recommendation alone would be sufficient; but as, moreover, he is himself under an obligation to you, he will do so without hesitation. Since you have been away, your friend Harcourt has been appointed a commander of a galley, and Sir John Boswell, being incapacitated by the grievous wounds he received during the siege, has accepted a rich commandery in England, and sailed but two days since to take up his charge. By the way, did you reply to those letters expressing your thanks and explaining your long silence?”
“Yes, your Highness, I wrote the same evening you gave them to me.”
“That is right. The money voted you by Florence will be useful to you now, and there is still a sum sent by your commandery owing to you by the treasury. I will give you an order for it. However rich an heiress a knight may win, ’tis pleasant for him to have money of his own; not that you will need it greatly, for, among the presents you have received, the jewels are valuable enough for a wedding gift to a princess.”
Gervaise was well received at Rome, and the Pope, after reading the grand master’s letter, and learning from him his reason for wishing to leave the Order, without hesitation granted him absolution from his vows. A few months later there was a grand wedding at the cathedral of Genoa, the doge and all the nobles of the Republic being present.
Ralph Harcourt and nine other young knights had accompanied Gervaise from Rhodes by the permission, and indeed at the suggestion, of the grand master, who was anxious to show that Gervaise had his full approval and countenance in leaving the Order. Caretto, who had been appointed grand prior of Italy, had brought the knights from all the commanderies in the northern republics to do honour to the occasion, and the whole, in their rich armour and the mantles of the Order, made a distinguishing feature in the scene.
The defeat of the Turks created such enthusiasm throughout Europe that when the grand prior of England laid before the king letters he had received from the grand master and Sir John Kendall, speaking in the highest terms of the various great services Gervaise had rendered to the Order, Edward granted his request that the act of attainder against Sir Thomas Tresham and his descendant
s should be reversed and the estates restored to Gervaise. The latter made, with his wife, occasional journeys to England, staying a few months on his estates in Kent; and as soon as his second son became old enough, he sent him to England to be educated, and settled the estate upon him. He himself had but few pleasant memories of England; he had spent indeed but a very short time there before he entered the house of the Order in Clerkenwell, and that time had been marked by constant anxiety, and concluded with the loss of his father. The great estates that were now his in Italy demanded his full attention, and, as one of the most powerful nobles of Genoa, he had come to take a prominent part in the affairs of the Republic.
He was not called upon to fulfil his promise to aid in the defence of Rhodes, for the death of Mahomet just at the time when he was preparing a vast expedition against it, freed the Island for a long time from fear of an invasion. From time to time they received visits from Ralph Harcourt, who, after five years longer service at Rhodes, received a commandery in England. He held it a few years only, and then returned to the Island, where he obtained a high official appointment.
In 1489 Sir John Boswell became bailiff of the English langue, and Sir Fabricius Caretto was in 1513 elected grand master of the Order, and held the office eight years, dying in 1521.
When, in 1522, forty-two years after the first siege, Rhodes was again beleaguered, Gervaise, who had, on the death of the countess, become Count of Forli, raised a large body of men-at-arms, and sent them, under the command of his eldest son, to take part in the defence. His third son had, at the age of sixteen, entered the Order, and rose to high rank in it.
The defence, though even more obstinate and desperate than the first, was attended with less success, for after inflicting enormous losses upon the great army, commanded by the Sultan Solyman himself, the town was forced to yield; for although the Grand Master L’Isle Adam, and most of his knights, would have preferred to bury themselves beneath the ruins rather than yield, they were deterred from doing so, by the knowledge that it would have entailed the massacre of the whole of the inhabitants, who had throughout the siege fought valiantly in the defence of the town. Solyman had suffered such enormous losses that he was glad to grant favourable conditions, and the knights sailed away from the city they had held so long and with such honour, and afterwards established themselves in Malta, where they erected another stronghold, which in the end proved an even more valuable bulwark to Christendom than Rhodes had been. There were none who assisted more generously and largely, by gifts of money, in the establishment of the Order at Malta than Gervaise. His wife, while she lived, was as eager to aid in the cause as he was himself, holding that it was to the Order she owed her husband. And of all their wide possessions there were none so valued by them both, as the little coral heart set in pearls that she, as a girl, had given him, and he had so faithfully brought back to her.
UNDER DRAKE’S FLAG [Part 1]
A Tale of the Spanish Main
CHAPTER 1
The Wreck on the Devon Coast
It was a Stormy morning in the month of May, 1572; and the fishermen of the little village of Westport, situate about five miles from Plymouth, clustered in the public house of the place; and discussed, not the storm, for that was a common topic, but the fact that Master Francis Drake, whose ships lay now at Plymouth, was visiting the Squire of Treadwood, had passed through the village over night, and might go through it again, today. There was not one of the hardy fishermen there but would gladly have joined Drake’s expedition, for marvellous tales had been told of the great booty which he, and other well-known captains, had already obtained from the Dons on the Spanish Main. The number, however, who could go was limited, and even of these the seafaring men were but a small proportion; for in those days, although a certain number of sailors were required to trim the sails and navigate the ship, the strength of the company were the fighting men, who were soldiers by trade, and fought on board ship as if on land.
Captain Drake was accompanied by many men of good Devon blood, for that county was then ahead of all England in its enterprise, and its seamanship; and no captain of name or repute ever had any difficulty in getting together a band of adventurers, from the sturdy population of her shores.
“I went over myself, last week,” said a finely-built young sailor, “and I prayed the captain, on my knees, to take me on board; but he said the tale had been full, long ago; and that so many were the applicants that Master Drake and himself had sworn a great oath, that they would take none beyond those already engaged.”
“Aye! I would have gone myself,” said a grizzly, weatherbeaten old sailor, “if they would have had me. There was Will Trelawney, who went on such another expedition as this, and came back with more bags of Spanish dollars than he could carry. Truly they are a gold mine, these Western seas; but even better than getting gold is the thrashing of those haughty Spaniards, who seem to look upon themselves as gods, and on all others as fit only to clean their worships’ boots.”
“They cannot fight neither, can they?” asked a young sailor.
“They can fight, boy, and have fought as well as we could; but, somehow, they cannot stand against us, in those seas. Whether it is that the curse of the poor natives, whom they kill, enslave, and ill treat in every way, rises against them, and takes away their courage and their nerve; but certain is it that, when our little craft lay alongside their big galleons, fight as they will, the battle is as good as over. Nothing less than four to one, at the very least, has any chance against our buccaneers.”
“They ill treat those that fall into their hands, do they not?”
“Ay, do they!” said the old sailor. “They tear off their flesh with hot pincers, wrench out their nails, and play all sorts of devil’s games; and then, at last, they burn what is left of them in the marketplaces. I have heard tell of fearsome tales, lad; but the Spaniards outwit themselves. Were our men to have fair treatment as prisoners of war, it may be that the Spaniards would often be able to hold their own against us; but the knowledge that, if we are taken, this horrible fate is certain to be ours, makes our men fight with a desperate fury; and never to give in, as long as one is left. This it is that accounts for the wonderful victories which we have gained there. He would be a coward, indeed, who would not fight with thumbscrews and a bonfire behind him.”
“It is said that the queen and her ministers favor, though not openly, these adventures.”
“She cannot do it openly,” said the old man, “for here in Europe we are at peace with Spain—worse luck.”
“How is it, then, that if we are at peace here, we can be at war in the Indian Seas?”
“That is more than I can tell thee, lad. I guess the queen’s writ runs not so far as that; and while her majesty’s commands must be obeyed, and the Spanish flag suffered to pass unchallenged, on these seas; on the Spanish main there are none to keep the peace, and the Don and the Englishman go at each other’s throats, as a thing of nature.”
“The storm is rising, methinks. It is not often I have heard the wind howl more loudly. It is well that the adventurers have not yet started. It would be bad for any craft caught in the Channel, today.”
As he spoke, he looked from the casement. Several people were seen hurrying towards the beach.
“Something is the matter, lads; maybe a ship is driving on the rocks, even now.”
Seizing their hats and cloaks, the party sallied out, and hurried down to the shore. There they saw a large ship, driving in before the wind into the bay. She was making every effort that seamanship could suggest, to beat clear of the head; but the sailors saw, at once, that her case was hopeless.
“She will go on the Black Shoal, to a certainty,” the old sailor said; “and then, may God have mercy on their souls.”
“Can we do nothing to help them?” a woman standing near asked.
“No, no,” the sailor said; “we could not launch a boat, in the teeth of this tremendous sea. All we can do is to look out, and th
row a line to any who may be washed ashore, on a spar, when she goes to pieces.”
Presently a group of men, whose dress belonged to the upper class, moved down through the street to the beach.
“Aye! there is Mr. Trevelyan,” said the sailor, “and the gentleman beside him is Captain Drake, himself.”
The group moved on to where the fishermen were standing.
“Is there no hope,” they asked, “of helping the ship?”
The seamen shook their heads.
“You will see for yourself, Master Drake, that no boat could live in such a sea as this.”
“It could not put out from here,” the Captain said; “but if they could lower one from the ship, it might live until it got into the breakers.”
“Aye, aye,” said a sailor; “but there is no lowering a boat from a ship which has begun to beat on the Black Shoal.”
“Another minute and she will strike,” the old sailor said.
All gazed intently at the ship. The whole population of the village were now on the shore, and were eager to render any assistance, if it were possible. In another minute or two, a general cry announced that the ship had struck. Rising high on a wave, she came down with a force which caused her mainmast at once to go over the side. Another lift on the next sea and then, high and fast, she was jammed on the rocks of the Black Shoal. The distance from shore was but small, not more than three hundred yards, and the shouts of the sailors on board could be heard in the storm.
“Why does not one of them jump over, with a rope?” Captain Drake said, impatiently. “Are the men all cowards, or can none of them swim? It would be easy to swim from that ship to the shore, while it is next to impossible for anyone to make his way out, through these breakers.