The galleon's grave hg-3 Page 35

  She swept out and up the stairs, the men bowing their heads.

  Chapter 12

  September, 1588 London

  Mannion and two servants from The House had come downinto the dank chamber, empty now of its high-born visitor and with only the jailer present. The two servants were shivering, with cold or fear, or with both. Mannion was simply tight-lipped, eyes narrowed to slits. He visibly relaxed when he saw Gresham still in one piece. He helped dress Gresham with surprising tenderness, saying little. He made only one sharp movement, when the jailer came close in an apparent offer to help. Mannion's snarl was that of a wolf defending its young. The jailer recoiled against the dripping wall. Minutes earlier he had been willing to turn the wheel that would have torn Gresham apart, and Mannion knew it. Only at the very end, as Gresham was standing, balancing on his legs as if learning how to walk anew, was there any sign of relaxation.

  'Well,' said Mannion grimly, 'you could always walk without my help when you were plain Henry Gresham. Now you're Sir Henry Gresham, will you need a servant to help you walk as well?'

  'I'd walk on water if it meant getting out of this place,' said Gresham, whose world still tended disconcertingly to swim round him.

  The servants waiting for them at The House acted differently. Even more deferential. Scared, frightened at what they had heard — when a master was executed the servants had good reason to fear for their lives — yet proud of their master's knighthood, excited by the wild stories of how it had been earned. They gathered round in the courtyard, whether they had reason to be there or not, as the bedraggled figure of their master more or less fell off his horse, only just managing to stand upright.

  Anna was different. Even in his present state he sensed that. Where had the girl gone? This was a woman now, with immense authority. She bowed formally to him, and he to her, as best his body would allow. Then, at last, the three of them were together again.

  'When you told me all the truths I could not believe it! So much plot and double plot! And you so sure you would die!'

  ‘It's only luck that 'e didn't, Miss,' said Mannion, 'and 'e would have taken me along with him, of course. Not that that matters, of course. I'm just a servant.'

  They were in the library of The House, Gresham's favourite room. At long last he could lick his lips or place his tongue on the back of his hand and taste no salt. He felt clean, scrubbed, rejuvenated. Soon it would be back to Cambridge, the battle with the Fellowship, the back-breaking task of rebuilding Granville College in body and spirit.

  ‘I'm sorry,' Gresham said, i find this really difficult.' He had never said that to anyone. He finally dared to look at her. She was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He took a deep breath, i'm truly sorry,' he said. 'I've wronged you. You've been… great. I hated you because you made my life more complicated and because you forced me to have to think of someone else because your mother swore me to a vow. And because you were beautiful I decided to hate you, because all the beautiful women I know have used their beauty to ensnare and entrap men. Yet you're not like them. And…'

  I think I may have fallen in love with you. That was what he was about to say. And if it had been said at that moment, who knows that it might not have altered both of their lives? Instead it was interrupted. There was a clatter of horses outside, the sound of men shouting, the great gate being opened. Normal traffic in a great house? Had the Queen changed her mind, and sent her soldiers? Perhaps a collection of poets come to read their latest work to Gresham and to flirt with Anna. Who knew? A servant knocked on the door of what had become a private sanctum, and Gresham called him in. He bent low to whisper something in his ear, clearly not wishing the others to hear. Gresham's face went pale. He whispered something to the servant, sent him out of the room. He stood up from the ornately carved, high-backed oak chair, walked over to Anna who was seated in only slightly less splendour. She looked up at him, excited yet perplexed, sensing something in him.

  'Someone that I think you will need to meet has come. He announces himself as Jacques Henri. A French merchant.'

  Anna's eyes stayed open wide for a few seconds, then her face seemed to collapse. She stood so hurriedly as to knock the chair back, retreated to the comer of the room, as if seeking to hide in the dark.

  'Look,' said Gresham desperately, 'I know you gave your word to your mother. But things change… if this thing is too horrible for you, then we must change it…' He was stumbling, almost incoherent.

  'Did you break your word to Walsingham?' she asked in the smallest of voices.

  There was a clatter of boots and stirrups from outside, and another knock on the door.

  'Sir Henry, may I present Monsieur Jacques Henri?'

  A startlingly handsome young man in his mid-twenties stepped through the door, stepped under it, a giant of a man over six foot tall, with dark brown hair and wide-set eyes of striking honesty. He was dressed for riding, but the mud and dust on his boots and cloak could not hide the expense of his dress, nor the lean muscularity of his walk.

  'Sir Henry!' He had not seen Anna, hidden in the shadows, was not expecting her perhaps. 'I am so sorry! Word came to me from Lisbon and then from Flanders, yet each time 1 was too late…' The accent was French, but only very slight. 'I have led you… how do you say it… a merry dance, and I am devastated.'

  He bowed low. Gresham returned the compliment.

  'You… you are not as we were led to expect,' said Gresham, eyeing the young, muscled body and the overwhelming sense of youthful energy. 'We understood Monsieur Jacques Henri to be… rather older,' said Gresham limply. And ratter, he thought to himself.

  'Ah!' said the young man horror struck. 'You have not heard? My father died last year. His caravan was taken by brigands, and though they fought bravely and he with them he died of his wounds. The young lady has not heard? We sent messages to Goa immediately, and to Spain.'

  'The young lady has not yet heard,' said Gresham. 'The messages to Goa would find her gone, and those to Spain would cause no interest in the uncaring remnants of her family there, I guess.'

  'I come to say that the young lady is, of course, absolved of any duties to my family. Our circumstances have changed. My father was a wealthy man, and I have decided the life of a merchant is over for me. I have an estate, in France… that will now be my major concern.'

  'And you have a wife to share that estate with you?' asked Gresham.

  Jacques Henri blushed. It made him look strangely vulnerable.

  'My life has been one of travel, with my father,' he said rather lamely, and with some evident sadness. 'It has allowed me little time for matters of the heart, to my regret.'

  Gresham turned to look into the corner. Anna was standing there, gazing levelly at Jacques Henri.

  'May I introduce…' Gresham started.

  Anna advanced into the room like dawn. Up rose the sun, and up rose Anna. She had not taken her eyes off Jacques Henri since he had entered the library. He turned slightly, started to bow and then stopped the bow ludicrously, a few inches down, his mouth open. The two young things looked at each other for a very, very long time.

  ‘I am sure, Monsieur Henri…' he started to say. Then he said it again, much louder.

  I am sure, monsieur Henri I..' The young man jolted as if a shock had gone through him, remembered himself, finished the bow without taking his eyes off Anna, and then turned red-faced to Gresham.

  'I am sure that my ward here will wish to hear all the details of the sad loss of your father, for whom I know she felt great affection. Perhaps if I sent refreshments to the Long Gallery you might spare the time to regale her with the necessary details. But first, perhaps 1 might be allowed a few words with my ward?'

  Jacques Henri nodded, unable to speak. He backed out of the room, as if leaving royalty, and collided with the door. As they finally shut the door on his retreating frame, he was still looking at Anna. There was a long silence. It was broken by Mannion.

  'Well, I feel a real
urge. To be somewhere else.' He looked glumly at the young couple, and left.

  'He is a real baby, Jacques Henri, is he not?' said Anna, the slightest of smiles on her lips.*You saw how he could not take his eyes off me, and backed into the door.'

  'I'm not a baby,' said Henry Gresham. Then things went out of control.

  They were in each other's arms before either realised that they had moved. They held each other as if there was no tomorrow, their lips meeting in a hungry exchange. They both felt the rising tide of excitement, the sweeping urge to throw away all caution, to give in. In some way that neither understood, Jacques Henri's arrival had broken the flood gate, released the tidal wave of emotions and physical attraction that had been building up for so long now. Now. It had to be now. They had both waited too long. There was no chaperone there, merely two young bodies.

  And they both pulled back from the embrace. 'I'm sorry,' Gresham said, 'I…' 'I'm sorry,' Anna said, 'I…'

  Then they laughed, the two young voices together, a peal of laughter. Gresham bowed to Anna, stepping back but not releasing her arms.

  'I think I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you,' she said. 'On the deck of the ship, when I thought I was being so brave. And you stood up, among all those other men, and you were so young and so handsome and you took control…'

  'Control!' said Gresham years of care falling from him, 'You were the one in control. You were fighting. Against all the odds. You dominated Drake and the whole English fleet! And while I thought I hated you for being so much in control and so beautiful, all the time I was falling in love with you.'

  They kissed each other then, slowly, lingeringly.

  He wanted her more than he had ever wanted any girl. The bedraggled figure emerging half dead from a barrel, the girl who had fought Drake, fought him, met a Queen. Good God! She had even sailed with the Armada!

  'I put myself in that barrel, for you, you know,' she said, disengaging after what seemed a wonderfully long time. She was so beautiful, her hair in disarray now, stirred by his hands. 'I wanted to be with you. Silly. Stupid.'

  'Don't ever say wanting to be with me was stupid!' Gresham said, and pulled her towards him. They kissed again, and he felt the desire within him, the need to die within her. Yet he controlled it, somehow, using all the power over his own body he had taken so long to develop.

  'I've been so scared,' he said, 'so scared of committing myself. I'd decided I hated people, could only love a cause. Then I hated it when I found I was loving you…'

  What triggered it? Who knows? Who cares? It happened then. As it was always going to happen. As perhaps Anna's mother had known. Loss of control? A total, marvellous loss of control. A delirious, wonderful, extended loss of control, a blending of body and mind. Controlling everything always was overrated.

  Had they fallen asleep? It was possible. Suddenly she was standing before him, fully dressed, her hair somehow magnificently rearranged. Prim. Proper.

  'I love you very much,' she said, smiling at him. Yet why were there tears streaming down her face? Were they tears of happiness? Why that sadness in the smile?

  'And I must marry Jacques Henri,' she said. There was a break in her voice, a bleak intensity in her eyes, red-rimmed now, something like an occasional shiver seeming to shake her body.

  His world exploded. -

  'Marry… how can you… I thought we… We've just… The best I ever…'

  'Henry… my Henry… my very first lover…' The tenderness in her voice would have melted the frozen Thames. 'Please don't blame me. Please don't blame me!'

  She moved towards him, and gently drew him to her.

  He was sobbing! Henry Gresham was sobbing in front of a woman! The total shame! Crying on her shoulder, like a little boy reunited with his mother. Uncontrollably, as if a great wall had suddenly collapsed in on itself, the tears burned his cheeks, threatening to stain her dress.

  'How can you…,' he spoke through his tears.

  'You must listen to me,' she said softly. 'Now will you listen to me?'

  Gresham nodded, his mind a lightning flash of discordance. Never commit yourself, his mind screamed at him. Never depend on another human! Never fall in love!

  'I love you,' said Anna gently, 'as I believe you love me. And it is not only that I gave my word to my mother that means I must not marry you. It is more than that.'

  'What more can there be other than what we feel for each other?' said Gresham bitterly, biting back the tears, too ashamed to wipe them from his cheek.

  'I am all that is left of my family now. It dies with me, unless I make it live on.'

  'Could we not breed easily enough?' asked Gresham, flinching at his own harshness.

  'Children need a father. Henry Gresham could not give up his life of danger, not even for what we have between us. Henry Gresham has to push at the gates of death for him to feel alive. And we both know that one day soon the gates may close on him. And a woman needs her man, just as a child needs its father. I can love you, Henry Gresham. I can make love with you. But I cannot marry you, because you are not ready for marriage. You would chafe in marriage, feel imprisoned. It is not your time. Yet it is my time. Not my time to be a mistress to a man who has many more years of roving before him. My time to grow from being a girl and become a woman. To have children by a good man. A man for whom I will not have to drown, tell lies, be shipwrecked and spend nights in strange taverns. How strange that I shall miss it so much. You see,' she said, and there were tears in her eyes now, 'you have grown me up.'

  'You're so sure this man will marry you?' asked Gresham. 'When you have seen each other for minutes, and exchanged no words?'

  'I think he would walk out of a third-floor window for me, never mind backwards through a door. Women know these things.' She looked up at him from under her eyelashes, with the slightest hint of an impish grin on her full lips, at odds with the sadness and the tears in her eyes.

  So much certainty. So much control. Would Henry Gresham ever have such certainty?

  'And you will be content with him?' asked Gresham. He had not given up yet.

  'I think he seems to be a good man, a kind man. At least, that is what the servants of the father said the last time we met.'

  A terrible suspicion began to form in Gresham's mind.

  'Have you… did you… was this always a possibility in your mind? That you might marry the son?'

  ‘I remember the son, when his fat father came to visit us. I remember him being very handsome, and very kind to me, like a sister. Yet with respect. And so I asked the servants how he behaved to them. The servants always know. People reveal themselves to their servants.'

  Good God! Could any man ever understand the way a woman's mind worked?

  'It is a good match for me,' said Anna. She was speaking to convince herself. Yet the tears were still gathering and rolling down her cheeks, Gresham noticed. 'He has wealth, and I will make sure it grows and he does not squander it. He is handsome, and I will make sure he does not regret coming to the same bed every night. And I will give him good, strong children, and run his house for him so that he thinks he is doing it all. And he will obey me, without realising it. That is what men want, is it not?'

  'Will you allow us to meet again? If a certain Henry Gresham were to come calling in France…' whispered Gresham, placing his head close to her ear, feeling the warmth of her, smelling the delicious perfume, feeling her hair stroke his face.

  She did not turn away, but stared ahead, not turning to meet him. ‘I would remember a hero, the man I chose as my first lover. A man I will always love. And I would refuse him access to my bed, seek to calm my pulse and deny my desire. A good woman does not cheat on her husband, not when he is well formed and virile and gives constancy in return.'

  'So why did you sleep with me?' asked Gresham.

  'Because all women are allowed one secret. I chose you to be my first lover. I choose Jacques Henri's son to be my second, and last. Only two people will ever kno
w who my first lover was. And neither of them will tell the tale.' She turned and pushed him away gently. ‘I am sorry. We were two wild creatures, and I think we needed each other. You are still that wild creature. I cannot be so for any longer. All things have their term.'

  A red flush came across Gresham's face. It was as if she'd read his mind.

  'Used goods?' she chided him gently. 'How will Jacques. Henri know that he married a virgin? Oh, Henry Gresham…' it seemed as if he was about to giggle.

  ‘Sir Henry Gresham, please,' he said, trying to gain control of the situation.

  'Sir Henry,' she said with a decorous little curtsey. 'Men are so naive. A little blood and a little gasp of pain… He will believe what his heart and mind tell him he wants to believe.'

  Was it his imagination that recollected her small gasp of pain? Yet with him there had been no acting. He wondered at the vast clash of emotions in his head. A deep, deep sadness, a sense of an aching void that would never be filled. Anger, even, that someone he had chosen could reject him. And, despite it all, despite the void of loneliness that was his life, something of a slight sense of… relief.

  Relief.

  The irresistible force of his passion had collided with his immovable strength of need to be free of attachments, and had subsided. Rest in peace, he thought in a prayer to her dead mother. She has done what you wished. And I do not think I have harmed her in pursuing that wish.

  There was a tap on the door, and a gruff call. Gresham flushed and opened it. Had Mannion been standing there all this time? Guarding the door? Closing his ears?

  'Young Jacques Henri'll be having his ninth course for lunch unless you get a move on.'

  They left Jacques Henri and Anna to make their mark on each other, and strolled to the other end of the Long Gallery.

  'She's going to marry that Jacques bloke, ain't she? said Mannion.