An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (20 page)

“No bottom,” he called.

Rodney looked over the side. He could see the clearness of the water and the fish swimming beside the ship. There was no danger anywhere, only sunshine and the still heaviness of the atmosphere unrelieved by a breeze. On the
Sea Hawk
Barlow was staring up at his topsails. Barlow would be itching to get under way, and suddenly Rodney was not certain that he himself did not feel the same way. He felt restless suddenly, though why he could not say.

He wondered what Lizbeth was doing. At this hour of the evening she usually came on deck. Rodney had grown used to seeing her there and he knew now that her presence no longer irritated him as it had done at first. He even looked forward to the meals at which they could talk together, and since he had captured the
Santa Perpetua
he had found frequent cause to be grateful for her presence.

It would not have been easy to sit alone with Don Miguel, eating his food at his table off his gold plate. Lizbeth’s presence had relieved the tension which he felt would have existed between him and his reluctant guest. Her suspicion and resentment of the Spaniard had been short-lived and soon they were all three talking together as if they were old friends.

Don Miguel told them of his life in Spain and Rodney had replied by describing his voyages round the world with Drake without dwelling too obviously on their battles with the Spaniards. Lizbeth had spoken of her horses and of her home and, with what Rodney thought was great cleverness, had avoided pitfalls which might have revealed her as having been brought up in a very strange way for a young man.

There was no doubt about it, Rodney thought now as he left the quarter-deck, meals aboard the
Santa Perpetua
had been uncommonly pleasant, and he was wondering as he opened the door of the aft cabin what there would be for supper that night.

It was then that he stood transfixed, unable to do anything but stand and stare. Lizbeth was in the Spaniard’s arms and he was kissing her. Rodney stood with his hand on the door for what seemed to him a long time but was in reality only the flashing of a second and then as if his presence made itself felt to the other occupants of the cabin without words and without sound, for they had not heard him enter, Don Miguel raised his head.

His movement released Lizbeth from his arms though whether she would have moved away without his interruption Rodney could not make up his mind and then they were facing each other, Rodney still standing in the doorway, Don Miguel and Lizbeth on the other side of the cabin waiting, so it seemed, for Rodney to speak first.

He closed the door behind him and then slowly advanced across the cabin. He appeared calm and rigidly self controlled, as he did when he went into battle but actually his anger was mounting hot and furious within him and he could almost feel the red fire of it burning behind his eyes.

With an effort he kept himself in check. He had a sudden wild desire to draw his sword to run the Spaniard through with it as he stood with what seemed to Rodney to be an insolent smile upon his face. His hand edged towards the hilt and then he remembered that this man was his prisoner – it was against every code of decency that he should attack him or even challenge him to honourable combat.

“You will oblige me, Senor de Suavez,” he said, “by going to your cabin and remaining there until I send for you.,

Don Miguel made what was to Rodney a mocking bow of obedience.

“ I will of course obey you, sir,” he said, “ but before I go, I would like to say that my love for your future sister-in-law is a very honourable one.

It seemed to Rodney as if there was deliberate defiance in the Spaniard’s words. How dare he refer to Lizbeth as his future sister-in-law – putting him, it seemed, in the dull and unimaginative role of a guardian brother, someone spiritless and of little importance in her life!

“ You will obey me without argument,” Rodney said sharply.

Again Don Miguel bowed, and then, turning to Lizbeth standing silent by his side, he raised her hand to his lips.

“My life is at your feet,” he said softly. Then turning, he walked across the cabin with his lips smiling, his head held high.

For a moment the eyes of the two men met as he passed Rodney. There was a clash of wills – a battle deeper and more violent than anything that appeared on the surface of their expressionless faces and then as Don Miguel turned towards the door, he waved his hand with a theatrical gesture towards the box of jewels standing on the table.

“Another offering for the Conqueror,” he said.

The cabin door closed behind him. There was a long silence – a silence in which it seemed to Lizbeth as if Rodney must hear her heart beating. She had never before seen him look so stern, and she thought for the first time that she was really afraid of him. And then hastily she told herself that such an attitude was ridiculous.

With an effort she forced herself to point towards the box on the table which Don Miguel had indicated as he left.

“There are jewels there, Rodney,” she said, trying to speak naturally, but her voice quavered. “Jewels that you had not yet seen.”

“I am not interested in jewels,” Rodney answered. “I am waiting for an explanation.”

He was like a stern tutor, Lizbeth thought suddenly, and despite the beating of her heart she managed to answer him,

“I am sorry that he should have discovered that I am not a boy,” she said. “I promise you that I did not tell him. He just knew it. I think perhaps that foreigners are more perceptive than Englishmen!

“How did he discover it?” Rodney asked.

“I have no idea,” Lizbeth replied. “He told me that he had known it almost from the first moment that he saw me.” She looked at Rodney’s face, and seeing the anger in his eyes and the tightness of his lips, added again, “I – I am sorry, Rodney.”

“ God’s words! Sorry!” He almost shouted the words at her. “So it appears when I come in here to find you in a Spaniard’s arms.”

Lizbeth had expected him to refer to this and yet, now he had done so, the colour came flooding up into her little face. It made her eyes seem vividly green, as with a tremendous effort she forced herself to face him and say in a low voice:

“I am sorry for that, too. It – it was quite unexpected – and uninvited.”

“I am glad to think that it has not been happening for some time behind my back,” Rodney remarked sarcastically. “No – never before,” Lizbeth answered. “ I – I had no idea that – Don Miguel was in love with me.”

“In love with you!” As if to relieve his feelings, Rodney unbuckled his sword and flung it down on the table with a crash. “ This is what comes of having a woman aboard a ship. In love with you! A Spaniard, a man who is our bitterest enemy, a man belonging to a nation which has tortured our people, a man you should loathe, despise and hate with a consuming bitterness! And yet, instead, what do I find? I find you in his arms!”

“I know I should feel all that,” Lizbeth answered, “but, Rodney, somehow it is impossible. I thought all Spaniards were brutes, devils in human form but you know as well as I do that one cannot feel that about Don Miguel. He is only a boy – a boy away from home for the first time in his life, lonely without his mother, missing his father and his sister, and falling in love with me, I dare say, because there is no other woman here for him to talk with.”

Lizbeth had come near to Rodney as she spoke, and now she stood looking up at him, her hands clasped together, her green eyes raised to his, her soft red lips parted. Rodney stared down at her. He had not realised before how lovely she was – her hair released during her embrace with Don Miguel was soft about her face, it seemed to glow almost like a fire against the dark oak of the cabin.

“You are lovely,” he said beneath his breath, speaking to himself and yet Lizbeth heard him.

Yes, she was lovely, he thought, and then suddenly the anger which had consumed him, the burning fury within his chest which had raged there since he first came into the cabin, could be controlled no longer. He stretched forth his hands and gripped her shoulders, dragging her closer to him so that he could look down into her face.

“You are very eloquent when it comes to pleading for some swine of a Spaniard.” he said. “But what about you? If it is kisses you are hungering for, cannot English ones satisfy you?”

His voice was hoarse and brutal and then, before Lizbeth could guess what he was about, one arm was round her and with his free hand he tipped her head back against his shoulder and his lips were on hers.

This kiss was very different from the one she had from him before. His mouth bruised hers, his arms were like bands of steel so that she must gasp for breath. He held her as if he would never let her go. He held her as if he was a man starved and hungry. His kiss was frightening and when at length he raised his lips from hers, he did not relax his hold upon her. For a moment she could not speak then, as he looked down at her, she saw the cruelty in his eyes and the hard savagery of his mouth; and then he kissed her again, kissed her until at last she must cry for mercy.

“Rodney, please – let me go! I beg of you!” But he was past hearing her.

This was not the Rodney she had known and liked, the Rodney she trusted – but another man, a stranger, a devil, it seemed, who had taken possession of the man she had thought of as a friend.

“Rodney, I pray you, God’s mercy, but – ”

She began to cry, tears of sheer fright and terror spilling themselves from her eyes and running down her cheeks so that his lips were salt with them. Then at last it seemed as though he awakened to a sudden realisation of what he was doing. With a cry, which startled her by the very violence of his voice echoing round the cabin, he flung her from him.

She fell on the floor, bruised and breathless, too blinded by her own tears to see what he was doing. Then she heard the slam of the cabin door and realised that she was alone. For a moment she lay there, sobbing almost broken-heartedly, and it was the sound of her own tears which restored her self-control, which brought her to her feet.

At any moment, she remembered, Hapley might come to lay the supper table. She could not be found in such a state. She felt for her handkerchief, mopped her eyes and forced herself to quell the sobs which kept rising in her throat; and then, unsteadily, as if the sea were rough, she made her way to her own cabin. There she locked the door and flung herself face downwards on the bunk.

How thrilled and proud she had been of her new quarters on the
Santa Perpetual
But now she hated them, hated the softness of her bed, the luxury of the linen sheets the feather pillow and warmly-woven blankets. She wished she were back in the
Sea Hawk
with its swinging hammock in an airless cabin which smelt perpetually of bilge.

There she had been happy. Even though Rodney had been angry with her at first, they had gradually become friends. She thought of how he had talked to her confidingly and easily as they sat alone at dinner and supper.

They had both of them thought excitedly of the adventures that lay ahead.

This was what adventures ended in, Lizbeth thought. This sense of unhappiness and misery, this sense of being degraded and humiliated by someone one loved. Lizbeth sat up suddenly. What was it she had said to herself? And then she knew, knew clearly and unmistakably – she was in love with Rodney! She must have been in love with him for a long time, she thought, perhaps even before she had left England; yet she had not known it.

How blind she had been, how idiotic, not to have guessed the true state of her own feelings .She thought now, as she raised her fingers to her bruised mouth, that she had loved him since that first moment when he had caught her among the rhododendron bushes and kissed her because she had spoiled his hat.

There was blood on her lips now, his kiss had been the brutal exhibition of a man who had completely lost control of his finer feelings and yet, Lizbeth felt she could understand. Like Don Miguel, he was missing the women he had known and loved and who had loved him; and unlike Don Miguel, he was incensed by her presence to the point of exasperation, so that he longed to hurt her and make her suffer because in some very different and obscure manner she was making him suffer by her presence.

If she had been a man and he could have punished her for annoying him. the whole episode would have been forgotten but because she was a woman, he must revenge himself upon her in a very different manner. Lizbeth began to cry again.

Her tears were not the fearful ones she had cried in Rodney’s arms, they were the gentle, wistful tears of a woman in love, a woman who knows that her love is unrequited and suffers the awful pain of loving, incurably, the man who does not want her.

Was there ever such a tangle. Lizbeth asked herself. Rodney in love with Phillida for she had no illusions about that and Phillida disliking Rodney and all men, wishing only to be a Nun while she loved Rodney as she had never deemed it possible to love anyone in the whole of her life.

She thought now that she had been waiting for this ever since she had begun to dream of love and of men and to imagine the type of man who would be her hero and to whom eventually she would surrender herself for all time. They had been the imaginative dreams of girlhood, dreams which ended with the sound of wedding bells, dreams in which no darkness clouded the face of happiness.

But reality was different. Lizbeth wept because she was, lonely, because her arms ached for the man who had thrown her roughly from him and who, she knew, hated her rather than returned her love. And in that moment it seemed to Lizbeth that she grew up. She was no longer a child, no longer the same wholehearted, happy girl who had ridden in the early dew at Camfield, who had played pranks on her stepmother and got into trouble because she would not do her tasks in the stillroom.

It was Lizbeth the woman who sat here in the cabin of a captured ship, far away in the Caribbean Sea, and saw that love was not in the least bit what she had imagined it to be, In a very short space of time this evening she had aroused love in a man she did not want, and lust in a man she loved.