Captain for Elizabeth

by Jan Westcott

 

Part I
Chapter 1

The anteroom was small. He came across its sixteen feet swiftly; he knelt.

"Madam," he said.

She used his surname: "Cavendish."

He stood with the grace of an animal. Without a word, she seated herself, spreading out her gown so that it flowed about her stiff chair, flower-like. The brocade rustled, sending its sounds into the room like the currents of excitement that the meeting aroused.

He was still standing, restlessly. She took joy from his presence. The small room caged him; it prisoned the essence of him, and she could taste it fully: the male recklessness, the strength, the cruelties and tenderness of which he was capable. For these moments he was hers, and she knew well enough there were many women who envied her.

"Sit, Cavendish," she said. "You've ridden from Plymouth."

He answered with his usual directness. "I'd as soon stand, Madam. For the reason that I've been in the saddle for hours."

She looked at him. From his fingers dangled the scarlet sea cap she had given him. On his feet were Cordovan leather boots, probably looted from a Spanish grandee. His eyes were blue, intensely blue; his thick hair was short and tinged with gray. He was thirty-one years old, and Elizabeth was as proud of him as though she herself had given him birth.

Both doors of the room were shut. Yet when she spoke her tones were low.

"You sail soon, then?"

"Thursday," he said.

"You have only two more days!"

Today was Tuesday. It was July, the 22nd of the month, and the day was hot. The afternoon air that fanned into the room was warm and heavy.

"I scarce love to see you leave," she said. "And I scarce think I can stay you. Yet I might try, even now."

"Do not try."

"Do not interrupt." She said it, not sternly, but as a wise mother to a child. And she paused.

"I like the men I have about me. And I need them. I have always needed them. I want them — for myself a little, for England much. I have brought peace to England. You and your kind are using peace to bring us closer to war with Spain. It is England, and not distant lands, to whom your allegiance should be offered!"

"My allegiance?"

She said, "I have perfect command of our tongue, Cavendish. Allegiance to me means staying home and guarding the shores that Spanish boots may be treading, because such as you dispute their claims to the New World. If there be war, it shall be a fault laid on your doorstep."

He was silent for a moment.

"I'll come back, Madam," he said, and there was on his face a rare appeal for understanding.

She was not appeased. Regrets nagged her. "You have been home but a few months."

"Five," he corrected, remembering his last voyage. He had an instant's vision of Roanoke Island, with its golden sand dunes, the giant oaks dripping with moss, the pines, the gardenias, the succulent grapes. It occurred to him that she had never seen the land they had fought for. What he had seen with his own eyes, she saw only with imaginative vision. "Madam," he said suddenly, "if you could see America!"

"I?" she said.

"Yourself," he said. A flash of humor crossed his face. "If I should ever take a woman aboard, I should take you. But if you could only see America, you would understand. Do you want, Madam, to let us leave it to the Spanish?"

"The colony you established there a year ago failed," she said.

"Certainly," he said. "Because there were a hundred men left on Roanoke, and not one wench among them. We'll try the colony again."

When he said it, like that, as though surely it were true that there would be more colonies, her fears were softened. She could see momentarily with his vision. . . . She would never lose all her doubts. But it was clear — the reasons for battle with Spain. As the risks were plain, so were the great gains, the prizes.

The uneasy peace between England and Spain was still peace, and it allowed her to let men like the one with her now sail forth on the restless seas and carry far, on their square-rigged vessels, the English flag.

"How long will it take you, this time?"

"The voyage? About two years. Look you, Madam. For the next twelve months I fight the Spanish in America, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. After that, I am free to explore. Find the routes, chart the courses, and trade. Trade! We shall build an empire on it. And on a little force, if need be."

As if his restlessness were somehow appeased by speech, he sat down opposite her — there was a table between them — as he leaned forward. It was not often he spoke his thoughts; with her he was free to do so. The expanding world of his own age belonged to him, and it was not a vision but a reality. The horizons of the world were lifting.

"And besides that, Madam, Philip of Spain has sent Sarmiento to fortify the Straits of Magellan and thus close the entrance to the Pacific. I want to see what he has done down there. If there are forts, they must be destroyed. Else they will bottle up the Pacific more than nature herself has done."

"Aye," she said, "and we still have peace."

He laughed. He laughed as if he were truly amused. And then he said, "You believe that. It is what makes your deception so marvelous, your strategy so vastly annoying to a man like Philip."

But the hazards ahead loomed very large to her again. And the length of the voyage. "It will take you two years to round the world?"

"Because I would explore, Madam." On the table in front of her lay a parchment. She picked it up.

"Ah, well," she sighed, "I like the men about me, but somehow I like better the men who will not stay about me. Captain, here is your commission."

The parchment would hardly protect him. If he were made prisoner, he'd be hanged for piracy. But that did not make the fact of the commission any less important. He rose.

"I'll bring this back to you," he said.

The Queen's eyes were ironic.

"You named your ship Desire?"

"Aye, Madam."

She held out her hand. His strong brown fingers took hers lightly and firmly. She was suddenly sure that if he lost his life for her, she would avenge it.

"Who strikes at you, Cavendish," she said, "strikes at us!"

His fingers left hers.

"God go with you," she said softly.

The audience was over. He went to the door; it closed behind him. In her chair she sat for a moment; her stomach ached painfully, and she leaned her head back against the hard wood. Her face was drained of all expression. She was mother to a country, and under her hands it was burgeoning forth; under her woman's fingers it was knowing a flowering of its arts; it was ripening, big with increase. And from its island shores, its ships set sail. Set sail — and caused her fear. In her chair she sat unmoving while outside dusk fell, summer dusk, sweet and sweet smelling.

In the courtyard of the palace three men waited. Cavendish, emerging, saw each face, and the figure of his groom. Cavendish absently laid his hand on the neck of his favorite horse. He spoke first to George Carey. "I have another errand, George," he said.

"You do, Tom?" Sir George Carey asked.

"Aye, I'll be two hours or so."

"I'll wait," Carey said, sending a sidelong glance at his companion. Cavendish turned his attention to the other man. "I thought you were at Trimley, David," he said.

David Cavendish had obviously been waiting for his older brother to speak to him, but now that he had, David replied instantly, "I didn't stay home, Tom."

Cavendish said one word. "Why?"

"Suffolk is dull," David said with easy defiance. Then he stopped. Both men were waiting for him; the groom was listening. David said, "Tom, I decided to see you again! I wanted to speak with you. I want to go with you."

"Now?" Cavendish said.

"Not now!" David said. "I want to sail with you."

"No," said Cavendish. "Impossible, David. I want you to stay at home. At Trimley. I've told you many times you must learn to manage the estates." The last sentence he added as though to explain his refusal.

"That's a most inadequate reason," David said.

Cavendish was already in the saddle. He looked down at his brother and Sir George Carey. "Good-bye, David. I'll see you later, George." He wheeled his horse and David and Carey watched him go. The groom followed hastily. They disappeared into a London street.

Cavendish's progress through the city was not unobserved. His great roan was a familiar sight, so was he and the scarlet sea cap perched on his dark head. The city of London knew he was leaving soon; they knew that in Plymouth harbor three ships, new built, formed the small fleet he would command and that those sturdy English ships would soon set sail. London had caught the fever of her seamen; islanders, too, they harkened to the restless seas.

Men called to him as he galloped past. They waved their caps at his retreating figure. They had seen him on Fleet Street, dressed in his heavy breeches and the seaman's leather jacket; they had seen him dressed finely at the theaters; they had seen him in the lowest of waterfront taverns, and the more he caroused ashore the more headlong a devotion they gave him.

He reined in opposite a stone mansion of imposing size, a mansion built with Spanish gold. He dismounted, and he stood for a moment, his hands still on the reins.

"Good-bye, boy," he said.

His groom stood waiting, while the Captain bid farewell to his favorite horse. Then he was handed the reins.

Cavendish said, "Sir Francis has offered you lodging for the night. In the morning you ride for Suffolk. Have that hired nag ready for me in two hours."

"Aye, sir," said the groom, a bit wistfully. The Captain was leaving soon; the hours were passing fast.

The men who had gathered on the street to watch and hear were close. "Good luck!" one called. "Good luck, Captain!"

Cavendish raised his hand to acknowledge the greeting.

"St. George for England!" another man shouted, just as a girl slipped through them and ran, long blond hair flying, to the stone steps Cavendish was mounting. He turned.

She looked up from the bottom of the steps, poised like a statue.

"D'ye remember me?" she asked breathlessly.

Cavendish swept off his cap and bowed. He grinned. "Your servant, mistress," he said, and was about to turn away when he swung around again, a coin in his fingers.

"Dolly," he called, and she nodded vigorously, curls dancing. He laughed down at her and tossed the coin. It glittered, and as he went in the now open doors, she whirled and held it up for the men to see.

"Gold!" she cried.

"Jesu, what he spends," one man said proudly, staring toward the house. But the big doors were closed now; the wench was walking away with the gold clutched tight.

Inside the house, Cavendish was grasping his host's big hand.

"Hungry?" Sir Francis Drake asked genially.

"I wanted badly to see you before I sailed," Cavendish declared.

Drake, just returned from another voyage to the Indies, released Cavendish's hand. He was short and stocky. Across his ruddy cheek a jagged scar gave evidence of his profession, and he limped a trifle from a bullet wound in his right calf.

Cavendish followed him into a long paneled dining room. Drake walked over and closed the near window. Cavendish smiled.

"Are you afraid the Spanish may be listening?" he asked. He sat down, stretching his legs out comfortably. Then he yawned and rubbed his chin with his brown hand.

Drake sat down at right angles to him, and lifted the already filled tankard.

"Your health, sir," Drake said.

"Yours," said Cavendish. He drank slowly; he set the tankard down empty. Then he yawned again, deeply.

"Sleepy?" asked Drake. "Been whoring again as usual, Cavendish?"

Cavendish laughed. "I rode all night," he said. "Captain Havers sent his regards, sir."

"Where did you meet Havers?" Drake asked.

"Christ's College, Cambridge."

"Could they stomach you there?"

Cavendish said solemnly, "I stayed but two years." He was laying a chart out on the table, when Drake suddenly let forth a stentorian bellow and banged his tankard on the table.

The door flew open. As two servants entered, Drake quickly rolled up the chart. The servants brought trenchers of beef and cheese and bread, and two smoking chicken pies. Then the door closed behind them, and Drake unrolled the chart again.

Cavendish had kept his eyes on the servants, rather to their discomfiture. "You don't trust them, Drake?" he asked.

"I trust no one," Drake said. "These are Magellanic charts."

"From Portugal," Cavendish said. "But as for secrecy — I have been followed a deal lately. In Madrid they know I'm sailing."

"As long as they don't know you intend to enter the Pacific."

"They might," Cavendish said. "Their intelligence is good." He helped himself absentmindedly to food. The pie was very hot, and he decided to transfer all of it onto his plate to facilitate its cooling. He began to eat.

Both men ate hungrily and at ease, washing their food down with drafts from the foamy ale. They interspersed their drinking and eating with talk, questions and answers, brief and knowledgeable. They talked of the Pacific, greatest ocean in the world, swelling endlessly blue, cradling its islands, guarded by continents — the Pacific.

They talked steadily.

"You are the only man who could tell me these things," Cavendish said. He accepted the long clay pipe Drake handed him. He drew a pouch and offered it to his host. The tobacco was softened and pressed into small cakes; it had been very slightly moistened and sweetened with molasses. Drake shredded a cake in his fingers; the tobacco spilled onto the table as he pressed it into his pipe.

"It's good, Cavendish," he said. He puffed gratefully at the pipe. "I could have sold a hundred cargoes of it," Cavendish said.

Drake studied the younger man's tanned face. Cavendish had discovered this way of curing and readying the tobacco for sale. "Have you always been wealthy?" he asked bluntly.

"Quite," said Cavendish, briefly.

Drake knew that Cavendish had come into his estates and fortunes at nineteen, when his father had died. The story went that he had spent all his fortune in two riotous years in London, but Havers had told Drake it was not true. Cavendish had spent only half of it before he went to sea.

Havers had said, "I've seen him go overboard after a favorite cap. But don't judge him by that, Drake. He wouldn't risk his life for it, and neither did he spend his last farthing. . . ."

"You're fortunate to have Havers," Drake said thoughtfully, breaking the silence. "I hear you're shipping a great many of my men," he added. He looked sharply at Cavendish.

"Aye," replied Cavendish.

"You had no difficulty persuading them to sail once more around the world?"

"Very little," said Cavendish.

"That's rather surprising."

"Why?"

"Come, sir, that's a mad question. To say it quietly, the world's rather large."

Cavendish's blue eyes lighted a little. "Not so large, Drake," he said. "You think not? I rounded it only because I could not return by the route I fetched the Pacific!"

"That was your reason?"

Cavendish smiled and stood up. One of his brown hands had lain protectively on the precious pieces of canvas-backed paper. His charts. Tenderly he began to roll them up.

"I've heard you are an arrogant bastard." Drake's square-bearded face seemed squarer and he had planted his feet wide. "I've heard you are a good seaman too. Perhaps you're not aware that England needs good seamen now, with the Spanish mayhap ready to send their fleets to the very shores of England. You must have a magnificent reason for sailing now; much more elegant than mine!"

Cavendish frowned, his eyes level under the drawn brows. The rolled charts were in his hand, and suddenly he gestured with them, looking directly into Drake's belligerent face. "When I look at these, it's as though I see the Pacific, the New World, islands and continents! I like to draw charts. When I do, I draw in the outlines of empire. And you forget, sir — it might be best to carry the fight to the enemy!"

He stopped, and then because he saw in Drake's face a glimmer of understanding and just a hint of admiration mixed with the skepticism, he said, "You know we're building an empire! You know it, because you're doing it. Drake, it doesn't matter why you sail around the world. It doesn't matter why I do. In the end, we are both striking at the Spanish Empire so that we can build an even greater one. For England. One so great that the sun will always be shining on some part of England's world."

Drake was silent, and the silence filled the room.

Cavendish bent over to secure the leather straps that bound the charts. "It's time for me to leave you, sir, I told my groom two hours."

Drake smiled. "And so exactly two hours it will be, eh? I have known you by repute, Captain. I know you better now. I wish you good fortune. And fair winds, sir — the fairest of winds."

 

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