Mistress of the Sea

by Jenny Barden

  With Marco’s help she came to appreciate the bounty the island offered. She discovered what could be eaten and how best to prepare the food. By watching the labourers on the island, she taught herself how to cultivate her own small fields. Life on the island was hard, but it was not unpleasant; the climate was tropical, often stormy, but never too cold. Though she longed for Will’s return, her loneliness was not unbearable. Friar Luis had become a friend; he left her a Bible in Latin and a book of chivalric romance in Castilian, and she loved little Marco as if he was her own dear child. She had no wish to leave Bastimentos; only by remaining on the island could she hope to be found by Will.

  Every once in a while, she would go with Friar Luis to the city, and make the crossing, about two miles distant, in a boat with a sail rowed by ten strong men. She would hear Mass and make confession in the large church beside the monastery, and try not to notice the people pointing her out, or turning their backs to huddle and whisper. Afterwards, she would leave the church with the friar, her face veiled by a mantilla, and make her way to the harbour front by the fastest route past the timber houses. Then, reassured of her piety, Friar Luis would return her to the island in the boat by which she had come.

  She never stopped believing that Will would come back. When that happened, she expected, he would want to know as much as possible about the city, and the ships and mule trains that sustained it. So she made an effort to be observant, and master some of the Spanish language, too. At the same time she schooled Marco in the rudiments of English, thus, in a halting way, they could both converse quite well. All this meant that she could follow Marco’s explanation, as they watched the ships leaving Nombre de Dios, standing together on the island’s beach.

  ‘Ellos van a Cartagena.’ Marco waved a thin arm to imply that the place lay far to the east. ‘They go to Cartagena,’ he translated and smiled. ‘In March they come back. Sometimes April.’ He flashed his white teeth again, plainly proud to have been able to impart this in English. ‘Then they go to Havana. After Havana, to Spain.’

  ‘Why do they come and go like that? Back and forth,’ she asked, making a similar movement with her hands.

  ‘Back and forth,’ Marco repeated, as if he was feeling the words with his tongue. ‘They do that because Cartagena is bueno. It is big city.’ He made an expansive gesture with his arms. ‘The ships come to Nombre de Dios. They bring things from Spain. Then here everyone is happy. The ships go to Cartagena. El trajín comes here from Panamá. El trajín has things for Spain. So the ships come back.’

  ‘El trajín? What is that?’

  ‘It is las mulas y la carga.’

  ‘Mules? The ships come back for mules?’

  ‘No, no.’ Marco grinned and wrinkled his nose.

  ‘The mules bring la plata.’

  ‘Plate? Silver? The mules bring silver from Panamá?’

  ‘Sí.’ His eyes bulged as he blew out his cheeks. ‘Mucha plata y mucho oro.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, nodding. ‘The mules bring a lot of silver, and they also bring much gold.’

  On her next visit to the city, Ellyn remembered what Marco had said about the mule trains. She smelt the dung from the beasts even before she disembarked from Friar Luis’s boat. There must have been two hundred beasts outside the counting house, lined up four abreast; she saw them when she reached the market place. Yet this was only one trajín, Marco assured her, the latest to come from Panamá. In the event she was not much interested since there was so much else to attract her attention. Friar Luis encouraged her to spend a few hours in the market, and she accepted the suggestion gladly. Tents and stalls filled most of the plaza displaying a wealth of fabrics in brilliant colours, and not only were there lengths of cloth hanging like flags in the bright sunshine, but taffetas made into gowns and lace into ruffs; bodices stuffed with busks and the bell-frames of great farthingales; painted fans and ornate headdresses; gilded leather girdles and mantles of fine lawn. These were just some of the things from Spain that were making her feel happy, not least because, through brave bargaining with Marco’s assistance, and the use of one of the pearls Will had left her, she had managed to purchase a few of the items she most wanted. She conversed in Spanish from behind her veil and, despite her awkwardness with the language, she was not rebuffed. Indeed, she felt something approaching comfort in the midst of so many people: gentlefolk and servants, women and children also, since many of the Spanish men had taken Indian maids as wives – and there were even a few ladies who by their look had come from Spain. After many quiet months on the island, she had come to miss the company of a crowd. And she missed having ladylike shoes – the sort of soft dainty slippers faced with blue watered silk that she glimpsed among many others arrayed in the centre of the square.

  ‘Marco, stop. I must look at these.’

  Marco’s eyes rolled when she tugged at his sleeve, pulling him to a halt in the thick of the throng. Piled in a basket, balanced against his chest, was a stack of glazed dishes, topped by a bird cage that was clamped beneath his chin. This made it difficult for him to talk. But he looked the epitome of the perfect page, with his hair neatly clipped to the shape of a ball, and dressed in the boy’s clothes she had once worn herself – except that his feet were bare. Since the pumps that had been her father’s were much too large to be made to fit, she had been left with little choice but to continue to wear Thom’s shoes, though they had split and were most ungainly. So in an instant her heart was set on buying the slippers, while she privately resolved that Marco should be treated as well. It also occurred to her that there had been a time when to have something respectable to put on her feet would have seemed the most ignoble of lowly ambitions. But that did not lessen her delight.

  ‘Cuánto?’ she asked, and made clear her interest by pointing. The trader at the stall held up the slippers in response, then launched into a stream of gabbling that Marco interpreted by extending three fingers. Her excited conclusion was that she might afford the price, so she offered two pesos, supplemented by a real when the merchant shook his head, though Marco’s expression left her wondering whether she had been overgenerous. The merchant’s jabber continued in the midst of the clamour. This was so much better than the ostracism she had felt on her previous visits to the city. No one was glancing at her furtively, or making her feel like a leper. So she could not understand why the trader holding the slippers suddenly fell quiet and backed away. She only sensed real shock when she heard the dishes fall and smash. Then someone behind her grabbed hold of her arms.

  The soldiers who seized her marched her from the plaza alone. They took her to the side of the market square that was nearest the sea. From there she was escorted through an archway, and along an arcade by a courtyard where men were training with pikes. It was difficult to take much in or keep her sense of direction. A soldier paced in front, while another marched behind, driving her into shadow and up a steep flight of steps. She emerged on the veranda of a large timber building. This was part of the garrison barracks, she realised at last, yet she was surprised to have arrived on an upper storey, when her apprehension led her to expect some sort of descent into gloom, certainly not the bright airy room that she finally entered.

  The room had a tall open window that overlooked the market place; she knew this by the hubbub that rose from below, and a glimpse in the distance of the roofs of the government houses. But that was soon obscured. Standing by the window was a man dressed austerely in a black silk jerkin over a wide-sleeved white shirt. A tremor of alarm shot through her as he turned. Immediately she recognised the buttress features of Captain Gonzalo Bastidas, and the solid black line of his thick arched brows. He bowed and beckoned her to a solitary chair. There was no other furniture at that end of the room. She sat uneasily while the soldiers stood beside her.

  ‘Welcome, Señorita Cook-esley.’

  In his accented speech, even her own name sounded strange. She pulled the veil of her headdress more securely across her cheeks. It was a
meagre shield. Bastidas fixed on her eyes.

  ‘I am glad you are well. I thought that on such a hot day you might like to drink.’

  She bowed her head. The heat was stifling in the room, trapped by the wooden walls and ceiling. She felt her skin prickling beneath her shift.

  He filled a silver goblet from a pitcher, and offered it to her in a way that seemed strange until she realised he was proffering it left-handed. She shook her head but he pressed the goblet into her grasp. There it remained. The guards were dismissed. She heard the door click.

  ‘Do you like our market?’ Bastidas asked while pacing around her.

  ‘I did, until your men took me away.’ She could not quite keep her voice as steady as she would have liked, and that added to her humiliation. She glared at him.

  ‘It is better than the market in Plee-mouth?’ he went on.

  She bit back the urge to deny and correct.

  Bastidas continued to circle her.

  ‘You may buy all you want here: silks, jewels, perfumes, things for the hair . . .’ He paused, and his lips twitched into a sneer as his gaze travelled down towards the hem of her skirts. ‘You may buy shoes.’

  Conscious of her colour rising, she quickly tucked her tattered footwear out of sight under her petticoats.

  Bastidas walked closer, and then hooked her veil to one side, leaving her with a snaking image of his dark-haired fingers.

  ‘Please drink,’ he urged, and guided the goblet to her lips.

  She sipped to end his harrying, inhaling a sharp metallic smell when she brought her face close to the wine.

  Bastidas carried on with his stiff-backed pacing, occasionally turning and unsettling her with a stare.

  ‘Perhaps now you think you would like to be here, not the Isla Bastimentos. Your father is dead, I have been told.’

  She did not speak.

  ‘I am sad with you.’

  There was no warmth in the remark, and she saw condescension in his look. She averted her face.

  He circled her again.

  ‘Why go back? There is no need to stay alone.’ He stopped and peered at her. ‘Do you still believe your English friends will return for you?’

  ‘It will make no difference, whatever I believe.’

  By keeping her attention on the goblet, she blanked Bastidas from her sight, until he took the vessel away and placed it on a table.

  ‘I do not want you to be . . . disappointed,’ he said. ‘So I wish your friends to come. We are ready to greet them.’

  ‘Have they been seen?’ she blurted out, as a faint possibility triggered a sudden thrill of hope.

  ‘Not yet.’ Bastidas regarded her with hooded eyes. ‘But we know where they will go. They left provisions in a place we found – the same place they left the good people they captured. But fortunately these people did not die. They got away.’ His tone softened. A shiver passed down her neck when she heard him murmuring close behind. ‘Are you glad?’

  ‘I wish for no one to die, English or Spanish.’

  The reaction was a short hollow laugh.

  ‘Your friends are stupid. If I had been your Capitán Draque, I would not have left prisoners.’

  She watched him move towards the window. She supposed he could only have meant Francis Drake by what he said. In Spanish, ‘draque’ meant ‘dragon’.

  ‘What would you have done?’ she asked, hoping he would say more about Captain Drake.

  Bastidas bowed his head, looking down at his feet in an attitude of intense scrutiny. Then he brought his heel down before a dark spot on the floor: a beetle, she realised when she saw it suddenly crawling. But then he rocked his foot forward until, with a tiny crunch, his boot was flat on the boards. Stepping back, he pressed his handkerchief to his nose and inhaled with a snort. That was all the answer he gave. His back was turned to her as he looked out over the balcony. After a while he spoke. ‘This place disgusts me.’ Stepping aside, he walked to the table, and filled another goblet from the pitcher. ‘I hope your friends come to visit us this year. If they do not, then I fear you will never see them again. Shall I tell you why?’

  Ellyn kept quiet; she expected to hear nothing that she wanted to.

  Bastidas raised his goblet, drank and smiled.

  ‘Your country and mine will be united in faith, very soon. The Pope and the king of Spain are cleansing heresy from the world. They have destroyed the fleet of the Turks. They will destroy your queen. And when Mary, Queen of Scotland, is Queen of England also . . . Vaya! English pirates will have nowhere to hide. They will be finished – Terminados. You wait on Bastimentos, but you wait for nothing. So, I think, we should help one another.’ He drained his goblet, set it down and folded his arms, half turning as he did, head down, as if he was rapt in contemplation. ‘Do you agree?’

  She did not answer, and he resumed his pacing, drawing gradually closer until he ended behind her. She jumped when his hand brushed her neck. The shock was worse for the touch being so light. But he merely swept back her veil, pushing it away so that she felt his breath on her ear when he whispered, ‘Do you agree, señorita?’

  With a shudder she twisted away from him, conscious of his smell all around, as cloying as ambergris, but powerful and sharp. A shiver of apprehension coursed across her shoulders and back, induced by anticipation as palpably as if he had stroked her, though he did not. His hand hovered by her cheek. She saw it when she started, and in that instant he withdrew.

  She tried to keep her voice level.

  ‘I have no need of your help, Captain. Friar Luis looks after me, and that is enough.’

  ‘Ah, yes. You are fortunate to have the protection of a Holy Father.’

  He walked to the table and proceeded to wash his hands, drying them scrupulously with a napkin. It made her think of what he had touched. She felt defiled.

  ‘I would like to go to Friar Luis now. I wish to be taken back to the island.’

  ‘Go then.’ His tossed the napkin onto the table. ‘And if your friends come back, I will invite you here to see them.’

  The abruptness of the dismissal made it seem like an insult, though she had feared he might not let her go. The sting made her snap, ‘I doubt they will stay here because you wish it.’

  His response was a smile as thin as a cut.

  ‘I disagree. I think they will stay.’ He walked to the window and pointed outside. ‘Their heads will be in the plaza, over there.’

  Rage and disgust overwhelmed her, made her stand on impulse and speak at the same time. ‘I beg leave.’

  Bastidas bowed.

  ‘Adios, señorita.’ He strode briskly to the door and opened it for her. ‘I hope we will have cause to meet again very soon.’

  She walked out, meeting his eyes as she passed, though she felt demeaned by his parting. In the cloud of her thoughts were the hailstones of guilt, because she had been tempted by the prospect of quitting the island for the city, exchanging degradation for comfort and isolation for society – but only for a moment. The heat of shame was now burning her back, made worse by the soldiers who marched her away, so denying her any show of leaving because she chose to. She kept her head held high, but she wanted to run, she was so desperate to be gone – to return to her island freedom, and as far from Bastidas as it was possible for her to get.

  15

  Fortune

  ‘Captain Drake, if you fortune to come to this port, make haste away, for the Spaniards which you had with you here the last year have betrayed this place, and taken away all that you left here. I departed from hence, this present 7th of July, 1572.

  Your very loving friend,

  John Garret’

  —The message inscribed on a lead plaque and fastened to the trunk of a great tree at ‘Port Pheasant’, the secret cove so named by Francis Drake where he had left supplies in 1571, and to which he returned on 12th July 1572, from Sir Francis Drake Revived, compiled by Philip Nichols

  Tierra Firme, the Americas

  J
uly 1572

  WILL STOOD ON the ridge with a commanding view of the bay, taking his turn as lookout, scanning the sea for sight of ships. He knew the Spaniards had been alerted and would be on the watch for Drake’s return. The white smoke rising was the first warning they’d received, the second was a caution left by another Plymouth captain. The message had been scratched on a plate left nailed to a tree. And, perhaps they should have moved on and found a better place to hide, but Drake had been against that because Port Pheasant suited them well; the cove offered fresh water and the fowl for which it was named. Moreover, as the Captain put it, ‘There’s no port more convenient for the building of our dainty pinnaces,’ and since the Spaniards called him ‘the Dragon’, he had to uphold his reputation. Drake would show no fear. But if any Spaniards came close, then the news would be out; what Drake was up to was plain to see.

  A fort was being built: a huge pentagonal structure, hard against the shore, fashioned from tree trunks shifted by pulleys and hawsers, with one side open to the water, and the rest as high as a house. In this their three pinnaces would be assembled: the Bear, the Lion and the Minion. It was a mighty undertaking, one that left the forest cleared for fifty feet round about, but it was eating up time. While the slopes echoed with the thud of logs, tackle squealing, blows and shouts, Will’s mind teemed with questions, and most of those were centred on Ellyn – Had she been found by the Spaniards? Was her father alive? Were they still on the island near Nombre de Dios? The questions buzzed in his head with the persistence of drunk wasps, and were stirred to a frenzy by the Captain’s arrival, though Will’s greeting was calm.

  ‘All clear, Captain. I have seen no sails.’

  As Drake shielded his eyes to search the horizon, Will looked down at the craft moored up in the bay. The Swan was dwarfed by the Pascoe, a carrack of seventy tons from the Hawkins fleet. Beside her was a ship brought in by Captain James Raunce, another seafarer in Drake’s confidence, who had arrived at the cove only the day after they had entered. Raunce was now allied with their venture, so his prizes were theirs as well: a caravel from Seville, and a small shallop little bigger than a fishing boat. This shallop was the vessel to which Will’s attention was drawn, for precisely the reason that it was wholly unexceptional. He could conceive a good use for it.