hate him. The son of the Queen's Chief Secretary hates him. If you believe everything he says — and I tries to, 'cos I'm a good servant — the Queen, the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex could all be trying to get 'im killed. Oh, and I forgot. His College in Cambridge, England, they all hates him as well.'
Mannion gave up excavating his tooth. He had carried on throughout his little speech, causing some problems with comprehensibility.
'And now it turns out you hates him as well. Fancy that, join the club. Funny thing, now as it comes to mind, I've had nothing but trouble since I met him. I hate the bugger too. Shall we all take turns in trying to kill 'im?'
Anna looked from Mannion to Gresham, and back again. Gresham was looking at Mannion with an expression which intimated that he thought Mannion's colliding with a very heavy object would be a good thing.
'Why did God give you a mouth to match your belly!' he thundered. 'Why did he put your brain somewhere lower down and feeing aft than your belly! I swear…'
He turned. The girl had left, silently.
'That could 'ave been better,' said Mannion. 'If you'd left it to me…'
'If I leave a girl like that to you I'd be like a shepherd giving the flock over to a lion while he has a rest.'
'Me?' said Mannion incredulously. 'Me a lion? Give over! I'm the donkey. Problem is, sometimes a donkey 'as more common sense than a lion!'
Gresham had become used to the easy motion of the Elizabeth Bonaventure. The Daisy seemed to fight the water instead of working with it, recoiling when the light waves slapped her thin hull, seeing them as an insult rather than a caress. They left harbour with no fanfares, skulking out at sunset in the hope that the gathering gloom would mean that no one would notice. But even a crew such as this could set sail with a kind westerly directly behind them.
God knew how good a navigator the Captain was, in the rare moments when he was awake that is, but Gresham was gambling on his survival instinct. And if they headed west, they were sure to hit the coast of Europe, he comforted himself. Surely the coast of Europe was too big for even the Daisy to miss? Then all they would have to do was coast-hop back to England. Dodging angry Spanish ships, of course, bent on revenge for Cadiz. And supposing the beer and biscuit in their barrels was sound. And hoping the rot did not break the hull open at the first sign of a real sea, or the jerry-rigging collapse the masts. But of all the problems Gresham had anticipated, the one that first arose, barely half a day into their voyage, was one he had not dreamed of.
The Daisy had a planked-over waist, unlike many of the pinnaces which left their apology for a gun deck open to the elements. Because it was covered, they put stores there. It was Mannion who heard the tapping. A frail noise, coming from one of the barrels, marked as containing beer. Mannion patrolled the tiny ship as if haunted by the Devil, two throwing knives stuffed openly into his belt, a dagger there as well as a prohibited sword. Not the rapier of gentlemen, more the cutlass of a pirate. Mannion emanated threat, though this did not stop him from calling Gresham to witness the act as he broached the barrel. By then, the tappings had ceased.
So, nearly, had Anna's life. Half an hour more and she would not have been gagging her life up on the deck of the Daisy, but communing with her mother. The tiny portion of stores assembled for the Daisy had been put on the main deck of the San Felipe before they were lugged over to their final destination and left overnight. She had spotted them, seen the barrel of beer left by the chute designed to take sea water from the deck and back into the ocean. Somehow, using the last of the coin her mother had given her, she had persuaded her servant and the sailor she was sleeping with to knock two holes in the barrel so the beer leaked gently over the side and into the sea. Then, with more coin and the last of the wine in her mother's store, she had persuaded them to broach the barrel, replace its cover and nail her into it. Unfortunately, the holes that were sufficient to drain the beer were insufficient to let enough air in. The stench inside the barrel and the heat were beyond belief. For a moment they thought the pathetic, bedraggled, stinking and limp thing they hauled out of the barrel was dead. There was a mutter from the group of sailors as a long, slim leg emerged from under a tattered dress as they lay her body on the deck. Vulnerable. Defenceless. A strange compassion and pity filled Gresham's heart as he watched Mannion cradle the girl's head, turning it to one side to allow her to vomit.
'I will not leave this boat!' she declared firmly as soon as she came to, despite her voice being little more than a harsh croak.
'But this is madness!' said Gresham. 'Madness! We have no room on this sinking hulk for a… woman! And what could have prompted you to leave everything behind, your clothes, your jewels, your mother's jewels?'
'The San Felipe was a prize of war, was it not? Since when do passengers on a prize of war keep their jewels?'
She had a point, Gresham had to admit. A very small point.
'But I'm sure if you had approached Sir Francis Drake he would have listened to your pleadings…'
'I will not be brought back to England in triumph as a prize,' she declared, 'displayed like a Roman Emperor displays his captives.'
So it was pride that this was all about, thought Gresham. 'I must turn the boat around,' he muttered, deeply worried.
'You will not turn this boat round!' she hissed at him.
'And why not? You must understand one thing. Your beauty holds no allure for me. There are many beautiful women. Your hiding aboard will infuriate Drake and bring down even more trouble on my head. If you stay you are the only woman on board a ship whose crew think rape no more special than drinking off the contents of a mug. We have no clothes for you, except that ruined article you now wear. Your bodily functions will have to be performed behind locked doors…'
She gazed at him with scorn.
'You are my guardian. You will just have to protect me. I repeat, you will not turn this boat round.'
'And what is there to stop me?' he said, finding himself almost shouting at her. He suspected quite a lot of people ended up shouting at this particular young lady. He got control of himself.
'Because if you do I shall throw myself overboard,' she said, simply.
Something like despair clutched at Gresham. Was it a bluff? No, he decided, looking her up and down. She was daft enough to do it. 'But you will be so much more comfortable on board the San Felipe
'I am comfortable here, thank you very much.' She was sitting primly now, hands in her lap, in one of the only two, tiny cabins on the boat. 'I'm sure you've much to do with… winching sails or… heaving ballasts.' Clearly her grasp of matters nautical was hazy. 'You have my leaves to go and do whatever it is you have to do.'
'It's 'leave', not 'leaves', and thank you, my ladyship,' said Gresham sarcastically. 'I'm most honoured that your gracious majesty in her infinite wisdom and mercy grants me her permission to do what no one can stop me doing anyway.'
The Ice Queen said nothing. Gresham had clearly been dismissed the presence. In the final count God took the decision for them, as Drake might have said. The steady wind allowed no turning back towards Drake's fleet and the San Felipe, and seemed determined to blow them away from it as fast as possible.
'Could be worse,' muttered Mannion.
'How?' said Gresham. 'Just tell me how.' One of the sailors, a huge raspberry birthmark on the side of his face, who had just hurled a coil of rope in Gresham's path, stood there. Gresham looked at him. The smile faded from the sailor's face, and slowly he bent to move the coils.
'Just think, if Drake 'ad gone and got her pregnant. Any child from that pair'd be Anti-Christ.'
They left the captain to sleep in his noisome hole of a cabin, both men standing watch in turn, sleeping on a mattress outside Anna's door.
'This lot'd as soon cut our throats as look at us,' said Mannion. It was not simply that the crew seemed to blame Gresham and Mannion for their exile on to this leaking graveyard. They must have guessed that a man of Gresham's obvious wealth would have at least some gold stitched into his clothing. Robert Leng had clung pathetically to Gresham's side. Let him, thought Gresham. I have questions to ask of you, but later.
The crisis came three days into the voyage. The sky started to take on a hard, metallic sheen on the second day, though the wind stayed steady, and the heat was electric. 'Storm,' said Mannion. 'And she's letting in water faster than we can pump it out.' Two men had been permanently manning the Daisy's battered pump. It was numbing work, but the water level in the bilges was rising and the ship was riding heavily, the bow more happy to drive into the bottom of the waves than to rise up on their crests. Soon they could hear the thump and splash of the water as it surged backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards in the hold.
Then the wind dropped. There was an hour, a fearful hour in which the sailors looked always towards the far
