She said nothing for a moment, though the ground was soft and there was no clattering of hoofs on the unpaved road to drown out her words. 'You realise I am ruined now, twice over? As a wife, I mean.' There was an eternity of tiredness in her voice.
'What do you mean?' said Gresham, shocked. Why were girls so unpredictable?
'Who will believe I retain my virtue after having spent days at sea on a sinking ship with only men around me? Then a night with two men, in a stinking inn where men bring women for… business. You think I am blind as to where you took me last night? I am… how do you say it… ploddy goods? My fiancй will not wish to buy second hand, I think. So, guardian, the value of your package is nil.'
'Shoddy goods…' he began to murmur, then realised it sounded as if he was confirming her judgement. Gresham's first reaction was to feel deep offence at the thought that he or Mannion would ever damage a girl's reputation. Dammit, no married or single woman would ever sleep with a man if they thought he would blab on her! It was the basic rule of seduction, wasn't it? His second thought was that there was no one to tell the story, the other men on the Daisy being dead. Then, his heart sinking, he remembered Robert Leng, Drake, and all his crew, all of whom would know how Anna had reached England once they heard she was alive. He started to justify himself then.
'As far as I’m concerned,' said Gresham, 'whatever state you're in now is the same state as when I met you. I…'
His eye caught the movement of the girl's arm as it swung round incredibly fast to slap his face. The survival instinct cut in, beyond his control, and the girl let out a gasp as a steel-hard hand caught and stopped her swing.
'Do not laugh at me!' she cried at him, eyes sparkling with anger. The pride of her Spanish ancestry rose in her, and the devilment of her Irish. 'I am no whore, even if you try to make me one! How dare to imply that I had lost my virtue! It is not so! I tell you, it is not so!'
Here was a seventeen-year-old girl, who had never lived beyond the watchful eye of her loving parents and paid servants, cosseted and protected as all girls of her class were, protected because their virginity was their greatest asset. Suddenly this untutored creature found herself losing her father and then her mother too, left friendless in the company of her country's enemies, hurled by her mother into the hands of a wild young man who she probably hated and whose power over her she found humiliating. Shipwrecked, hauled across half the world with one dress and no servant, with no one to love her, her first night in a foreign country had been spent in an evil-smelling tavern with two men.
Gresham refused to let his heart be moved by her looks. But was she… brave? Gresham had never met a girl who was brave. Oh, girls were fun, and quite mysterious, but they were never brave. They never had to be, really, did they? Until it was too late, and the men had lost the battle, and the castle or the house was invaded. And then all their bravery was good for was to make them scream a little less than the others. He relaxed his grip, she fiercely resisting the overwhelming urge to rub her arm where his grip had left it white and burning with returning circulation. There was no sign of tears. He only vaguely understood and refused to listen to what his own brain told him it must be costing her simply to keep control, not to break down, not just now in this extraordinary environment but ever since her mother had died.
'Your honour is intact because we know it is so. We would both of us die before allowing anyone to impugn your honour’ he said grandly.
'And what's more,' interrupted Mannion, who Gresham did not recollect asking to speak but who had ridden up beside them, 'we'll kill anyone who says any different.'
'We'll protect you,' said Gresham. 'I have to. I gave your mother my word. That's what the dumb ox means. You're safe with us.'
She looked at Gresham, who suddenly seemed unforgivably innocent.
'I will never be safe again. Ever.' There was a terrible finality in her voice.
Gresham looked at her, matched her despair with his own at not being able to say the right thing, and spurred his horse on.
It seemed to take an age to reach The House. The facade was striking, imposing, magnificent even for London and even for the Strand. Such scurrying, such movements of people, such excitement at the return of the master! The ancient porter, seeing the young man, bowed his sleep-ridden head so low as to bang it against the cobbles. A cry of welcome sprung from the old man's throat, and then he caught sight of the man-mountain and… a girl. A very, very beautiful girl. Dressed in a vast cloak. The porter bowed to her, as deep as he had bowed to his master. Then came the hustle and bustle of a great household waking up to its duty, a neglected and forgotten household suddenly being given its purpose back. Henry Gresham, arms akimbo, stood foursquare in the courtyard, bellowing to a flocking horde of servants. *Now, hear this! I introduce to you the Lady Anna Maria Lucille Rea de Santando!'
It was the first time he had shocked her. Until now, he had not used her name. How had he learned her full name?
'The Lady is my ward, placed by the sacred word of her dying mother in my care and protection, off the Azores, after her fine vessel had been captured in fierce combat by Sir Francis Drake!'
My ward. My care, thought Anna. This was not about her. It was about him.
'She has survived sea battle, shipwreck and deep family loss! Now who will show her, a stranger on our shores, true English hospitality?'
The flutterings among the assembled servants! The talk in the servants' hall tonight!
Now this was a real challenge to The House. Young Gresham had never quite come to terms with his inheritance of one of London's most desirable mansions. Its cavernous cellars had too many memories of a childhood he would be all too happy to forget, of a person he regretted he had been. Yet The House had never lost its loyalty to him. So how could its formal hierarchy do justice to its young master, and welcome the romantic Spanish princess in a manner that would do him due credit? At this crucial moment, an elderly woman swept forward, hauling her skirt with practised ease above the muck of the courtyard. She had been chief maid to the late wife of Sir Thomas Gresham, retained in service as was the way of great houses long after the said lady had taken her sad parting into the next world, along with the two under maids. And now, the assembly of servants seemed to say with one voice, her time was come again.
'Madam,' she pronounced with kindness to this strangely foreign creature, 'will you care to follow me?' The woman had meant to be more formal, but the sight of the girl had made her realise how young she was, for all her grand name.
Silence fell over the courtyard. They were nearly all there now, albeit stunned by their early awakening and in varying states of dress. The steward, of course, and the manciple. The chief cook and the under cooks, the scullions from the kitchens, the porters, the parlour maids, the men who maintained and crewed the six boats dressed in the livery of The House, the ostlers who looked after the stable that was one of Henry Gresham's few real interests in the place, even the carpenter and the mason who from the outset Sir Thomas Walsingham had retained to carve out and care for his beautiful home. There were over fifty of them there now, the people who kept the complex organism of The House running even in the absence of its master. The truly frightening fact was that to maintain its fifty inhabitants and its huge fabric was but a pinprick in his wealth. And now these inhabitants were looking in the cold light of dawn to a girl dressed in working man's clothes on a dreadful horse. The Lady Maria Anna Lucille Rea de Santando.
It was the kindness that did it. All those defences, put up and so fiercely defended over so many months, crumbled away in the face of a few kind words. A single tear welled up, and hung poised over her extraordinarily long eyelashes. 'I thank you for your kindness,' she said, and curtseyed to them. Even the irritating bird that had sung welcome to the dawn as she had descended had decided to shut up.
One man started to clap slowly, and gradually it took off until a torrent of applause was echoing round the courtyard. Anna dropped exhausted from the
horse, the old lady put an arm round her and the line of servants parted, cheering starting now over the applause.
'Isn't it about time you stopped playing the field?' Mannion asked, unexpectedly, of his master. 'That one there, she's got the body and she's got the brains. She'll keep you in order. Give you what you want, on both counts. Why not get something going that'll last for more than a few nights?'
'So I have to apologise to someone all the time?' said Gresham. 'Say sorry because I can't guarantee being there when they want me to be? Sorry because someone claiming to love me has actually just become dependent on me? So dependent that I can't move, breathe or even live? I don't want attachments!' The passion in his voice was almost frightening. 'Don't you understand? I don't want people to depend on me! I want to be free!'
'We're none of us free,' said Mannion. 'It's just that some of us like to pretend we can be.'
Gresham looked into Mannion's eyes, for several long seconds. Then he turned away, and stormed into his living quarters. There were no dramatic gestures from Mannion. He had an attachment, one willingly entered into, though it was not with a woman. And he did not intend to depart from it.
The figure that met them several hours later was unrecognisable. Anna swept in, escorted by three women, paused to allow herself to be admired, then curtseyed to her guardian, who bowed a deep and appreciative bow back. Her hair had been brushed back to a lustrous frenzy, worn down as an unmarried girl's hair should be. The dress they had found was a deep black velvet, opened at the front with an intricate linear design picked out with tiny pearls, hugging the upper part of her figure and blossoming out gloriously in an excess of material from its high waist, the flowing sleeves seeming to emphasise rather than hide the fragility of her slender arms. Was it the looks, the perfect face, the promise of the figure beneath the velvet that made her look so hugely edible, wondered Gresham? Or was it the sense of raw energy, an uncontrolled life force that radiated from her?
'I need to talk with you.' His eyes took in the accompanying women.
'You may leave us,' said Anna regally. And then, reverting to the young girl, she flung out her arms to them. Thank you!' she said. 'Thank you for helping me!' Several hours of hugging and mutual female support then took place, most of which Gresham tried to ignore by looking out of the window. It was a pity he did not look more closely. It would have revealed a different woman to the one he thought he knew.
'Do you think of yourself as wholly Spanish? Or is there a part of you that is English?' asked Gresham. He spoke bluntly, told himself he did not care.
Anna looked at him as if he had started to burble like a madman.
'I hate Spain. It rejected my father, sent him to exile in filthy Goa and so brought about his death. My mother was taunted as a foreigner from the moment she set foot in Spain. What do I owe Spain? And England? At least Spain gave me warmth and sunshine when I was a child. England gave me nothing, except a mother whose family was rejected by their own country as my father's family was rejected by Spain. I despise them both.'
Gresham was uncertain. He was going to get no more help from her. But he plunged on.
'I need you,' said Gresham. 'I need to go to Lisbon, to spy on Spain. To do certain things that will help my country, England, survive an invasion by Spain. To destroy that invasion.'
She eyed him as a cook might eye a fish to see if the fishmonger was lying about its freshness. 'And how could I stop Spain destroying England?' The irony was so thick it could have been laid on with a trowel.
'Because I could use you as my cover. As your guardian I could claim to be visiting Lisbon to reunite you with your fiancй’
'You could,' said Anna simply. 'He is based in Lisbon, despite the fact that he is French. And what would be even more convenient for you would be that you could spend a long time finding him. He travels from June, sometimes until as late as December.'
Gresham took in her 'you could' comment. It was not an assent, merely recognition that his journey would be theoretically possible with her as cover. No surprise at his request. No shock even.
'What does he travel so long for, and part of it in the winter months?' asked Gresham.
Anna looked at him levelly.
'He is a stupid merchant. A stupid, fat merchant. He deals in spices. He sails out in June to Goa, where he spends a month, maybe two months, despatching what he ordered last year, agreeing his sordid purchases for the next year. Then he travels back by land, because he buys much wool from the far south, where they do not shear the sheep until October. And carpets. He buys carpets, from the Turks.'
The silence lay thick between them.
'Don't you still have family in Spain?'
'I have family, yes. Some very distant cousins. All my father's estates, they are gone, sold. My cousin has a large family, very many daughters. Another one will not be welcome, particularly if she already has a fiancй’ And my English family? What few of them are left cut my mother off completely.'
So the firebrand really was alone. No father, no mother, no family worth the name. In much the same situation, as it happened, as
Henry Gresham. Yet Gresham had wealth, the freedom of a man to plot his own destiny. She, in her own words, was just a package, a woman to be disposed of to the best bidder. A fat French merchant.
'Why do you want to stop this war?' asked Anna.
Why? The question, calmly asked by this ice maiden, shocked him more than anything else she had said or done. Since he was risking his life for the answer, surely he should know it? Yet he found himself having to produce an answer for the first time, fumbling with the unfamiliar words.
'Because… because we can all of us find reasons for doing nothing, for giving up. The easiest decision to take is that we're victims. I have to believe I can make a difference. That I can make things better.' He was surprised by the strength of his own passion. 'Otherwise fate makes cowards of us all, and we're little more than dumb beasts in the field who take the life they are given at birth, but can give nothing back to it. My life must be more than mere existence.'
'And?' said Anna.*You missed something out.' 'What?' said Gresham, startled.
'You are excited by the risk. By the fact that you might be found out, killed. Only when you think you might lose your life do you realise how valuable it is to you.'
'How can you say that? You who knows so little of me?'
'Because my brain works in the same way as yours!' she snapped back at him. For the first time there was raw, jagged emotion in her voice. 'Do you not think a woman fears that she is one of those beasts in the field you so despise, there to breed, with no other justification for her having been given life?'
'But… but the greatest fulfilment a woman can have, her bounden duty, is to have children…' Gresham replied in amazement.
'It may be so,' said Anna, 'but before that duty can a woman not feel she is properly alive, be inflamed by danger? Want to make a difference of her own! She swung away, looked out of the window. She spoke without turning. 'Yes,' she said suddenly. 'I will come with you to Lisbon.'
'Despite your being Spanish, in name at least? Despite the fact that your own country could execute you if we are found out? Despite the fact that you might end the trip… conjoined with your fat French merchant?'
She spun round. 'I will not ask why you do what you do, Henry Gresham. In return grant me the favour of not asking me why I do what I do!'
'As you wish,' said Gresham. There was respect in the short bow he gave her. So much the better. Mutual respect would help them do business. But who really knew what went on in a girl's mind? Wasn't it that very mystery that made them so attractive? The mystery that could appear to be present even in the most stupid? 'Do you like horses?' asked Gresham suddenly into the silence, and then wished he had not spoken. He had felt an almost uncontrollable urge to visit the one place in The House where he was fully at ease. Why on earth had he asked her to join him?
'I love horses,' she answered. Yes, tho
ught Gresham, as so many women love horses — until they rear and bolt, or snort too close to a fine dress, or develop sores that need washing and dressing…
'Then come with me to the stables of The House,' he said, making it an order rather than a request. It would have been better if he had slept with her, he thought. Then she would have been just like all the others. Perhaps he ought to bed her, to prove to himself that she was. But he had given his word to her mother. In his arrogance and his youthfulness, he did not consider that she might not be willing to bed him.
The stables had always been a different world to Gresham. As a young boy when all else had failed he would come here, sometimes just to nestle in the corner of a stall, saying nothing, feeling the companionship of the animal. That strange smell of horse, part musty, part acrid, yet warm and comforting, the smell of a world without lies and deceit, a world where the boundaries were finite and understood. The scuff of a hoof, the sound of easy breath through nostrils. A horse knew what it was on earth to do.
They entered the stables as a grinning lad bowed and opened a door. The sunlight dappled the stalls, and the smell of fresh straw hit them as the light suddenly faded and became warmly encompassing. There was a wide path between the stalls, raised and built out of the same brick as the walls, almost an avenue. The beasts had just been exercised, the rubbing-down just finished. They were superb animals. The older mares and geldings were put out to a farm near Cambridge, left to end their days peacefully rather than die in distress at the slaughter yards of Deptford. Every animal in the stable, from those who could haul Sir Thomas Gresham's cumbersome carriage if ever it were used again, to the finest hunters, seemed at the peak of their condition.
'I have never seen so many fine horses,' said Anna. Gresham sensed that she was moved, was not being sarcastic.
'The stables at Cambridge are even bigger,' Mannion spoke to her, in a low voice. People never raised their voices in the stables, not so much for fear of frightening the horses but rather out of respect for them in their temple.
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