Drake nodded, and Captain Fenner called out to the guard at the cabin door to request the presence of the girl. There was an awkward silence, broken only when a few minutes later Anna appeared. Her eyes were downcast this time, Gresham saw, her curtsey deep and formal.
'Sir,' was all she said, in a low voice. A stool was brought, and she sat decorously, eyes still downcast, by the bed-head and her mother.
'Sir Francis.' The mother had swallowed several times before speaking. Would she last the course, thought Gresham? 'Though I have married one of your enemies, I am as English as any person here.'
'Madam,' said Drake, 'I do not doubt-'
'Please!' Her tone was so desperate that it defused the rudeness of her interruption. More than words could ever do, it said. I am dying, I feel my consciousness slipping away from me at any moment and I must have leave to say what I need to say without interruption. All present sensed that this woman was shortening her life with the effort of making this final plea.
'My husband is dead. I will shortly be so too.' There was a sob from the corner where the girl sat, her head down. Then a snap of pride thrilled through her. There were no more noises, no snuffling. 'My husband's family and my own are impoverished. If they accept my daughter at all, it would be at little less than the status of a servant. My daughter has only one champion left in the world. Her fiancй, a Frenchman at present travelling.'
A fat pig travelling through Europe for trade! thought Anna to herself, the rush of hatred and anger for a brief moment over-whelming her grief.
'I have no power, no wealth, no great ships at my disposal. I have only the request of a poor woman, an English woman, that I be allowed to name a guardian for my only child, a protector who like a champion of old will guard, protect and keep her, and deliver her to her fiance’
There was an appalling dignity in the simplicity of the woman's words. Drake stuck his chest out even more.
'Madam, I am happy to accept the charge which you-'
'In which case…' For a moment the woman's voice was strong, riddled with authority, and those in the cabin saw what she had once been. 'I nominate as guardian of my daughter the man I believe is known as Henry Gresham.'
George! Surely if it was anyone it should have been George, Gresham thought! It was a mistake! It had to be a mistake!
The silence in the cabin was as painful as a kick in the stomach. It was madness, all there could see it. How long before the young man with the blood in him did what all young men do, succumbed to the demands of his flesh? How long before the wild spirit of the girl succumbed to the man, as God had dictated all women should do from the time of Eve? Madness! What man wanted used goods? What use would her fiance be when he realised his virgin bride had been deflowered, and that any child might not be of his blood line?
Gresham had spent years learning to control the reaction of his body — the sweat on the brow, the pulsing in the neck, the flickering gaze, the hand pulling at the beard, stroking the side of the nose or the chin. The give-away reactions that told an enemy the workings of one's mind. But totally out of his control, he felt the red flush rising from his neck, suffusing his whole face. Then he looked at the mother's face. All her breeding was in it. All her beauty. And also the lines of pain, drawn so finely round her eyes these past few months. And the neck beginning to sag, that sagging that soon would turn the proud swell of her breasts into drooping dugs. Yet on that face was the slightest of smiles. A smile for Henry Gresham, he knew. For him alone. For a fleeting moment Gresham wished that he had had a mother, such as her.
'Do you accept this charge?' she asked, her voice a tiny one now, as though receding from life.
The girl had looked up. Her face showed only hatred and anger. He made the mistake of returning her gaze. Those eyes! Huge, dark pools, the colour of fine amethyst, fathomless, endlessly mysterious… He tried to shake himself out of this spell, praying to God he had made no gesture visible to the outside world. I would rather be facing a Spanish galley at night with little more than a longboat and luck beside me, he thought. He drew a deep breath. Let them see that. He no longer cared.
'Madam,' he bowed towards her, 'I'm no fit person for such a charge. I'm young, I'm foolish, I've yet to learn to cope with my own life, never mind be responsible for someone else's life.' Her smile was unwavering. Was she in some sort of trance, or did she know in her heart what was coming? 'Yet you, clearly, you are a fit person for such a charge. You have experience. You are wise. You prepare to leave your own life with a dignity that no man can but envy.'
A ripple went round the room from the assembled men. They lived close enough to death to know how much that proximity Cost in courage.
'If you trust in me to perform this… duty, then perhaps I may grow in stature and prove worthy of your trust in time enough to honour it. With a heavy heart, then, my answer is yes.'
'Thank you,' said the woman, simply. Then she turned her gaze, wavering now as if she was having difficulty in focussing her eyes, to Drake. 'This is the wish of a dying woman, Sir Francis. If you are a gentleman, then you will honour it.'
A shrewd blow, all things considered. Drake was, above all, not a gentleman. He was a commoner whose daring and luck had brought him enough wealth to make him look as if he were a gentleman. Those who had the status through birth to call themselves gentlemen hated him for his jumped-up success, sought continually to humiliate him. A true gentleman might have rejected the woman's charge. One who was forever having to justify his claim to be a gentleman could not refuse it. For a brief moment Sir Francis Drake stood before a dying woman as himself. The ferocious ambition, the paranoia, the trappings of wealth, the endless complexities, hypocrisies and charades of command, the acting and the playing of roles, all suddenly dropped off. 'I will honour it,' he said, simply.
There was a crash at the door, and Robert Leng, gentleman adventurer and self-professed historian of Sir Francis Drake's triumphant expedition to Cadiz, broke into the cabin. Perhaps it was fortunate that all eyes went to Leng's flushed countenance, because at that precise moment, the compact with Gresham and Drake having been sealed with their eyes, Anna's mother allowed herself to die. The true dignity of death is to die alone. After all, we are born alone for the most part, and we are never more alone than when we die. Yet she was not truly alone. The only eyes that had not swivelled round to Leng as he crashed in were those of her daughter. When the curtain of death closed over her eyes, the last thing they saw was the startling, tear-stained blue orbs of her daughter.
'Sir!' Leng was clearly confused by the sight before him. 'I am… most… most sorry to interrupt… I had no idea… Yet I beg to inform you, I have news of treason. Darkest treason.'
Well, he had their attention now. And no one except the daughter had marked the passing from this earth of the mother.
'Treason, sir,' he said, warming to his part now, 'directed and engineered by the bastard Henry Gresham!'
Something dark, dull and leaden settled into Gresham's mind. He had never liked Leng, who had managed to ignore him throughout the voyage, while managing to emanate at the same time a distant sense of scorn. Yet this was not about dislike. As Gresham looked at Leng's sweating, pock-marked face, a cruel certainty formed in the cold, analytical part of his mind that he could not control but only read.
'These were found in Gresham's belongings. A rosary. A prayer book for the Roman Catholic faith.' Leng paused. He was clearly saving the best for last. 'And a letter from the Court of King Philip of Spain, authorising Henry Gresham as His Catholic Majesty's agent, and advising all to give him loyalty and support!'
Theatrically, he waved the letter in the air. Drake took it, with a leaden brow. Unseen by all present the girl closed her mother's eyes, whose face in death was still smiling, calm now. Drake glanced at the letter, directing a single glance at Gresham. He dropped it on the table. Leng picked it up. He was really enjoying this, thought Gresham. He paused, triumphant. Then he saw the dead woman in the bed.
'Dear God!' he muttered, and sat down on the deck.
The others looked towards the bed, their hearts aghast. The girl had placed her head on her mother's breast, and was sobbing, silently. There was no drama this time. Indeed, it was clear that for the girl the audience did not exist. There is no more powerful grief than private grief. The men present felt shamed, as if they had defiled the primal act of a child's sorrow for the death of its parent. Drake moved first towards the girl.
'We will bury her,' he said, a kindness in his tone that none present had ever seen or heard before, 'even according to your rituals. Roman Catholic rituals. For all that I could be hung on my return for recognising such
