Mistress of the Sea (11 page)

She thrust the locket in her father’s hand as he embraced her,
and
she wanted to speak but the words would not come. The hubbub rose around her, good wishes merged with calls to board, the blast of trumpets and the beat of drums.

‘Sweet Lynling . . .’

Her father kissed her in a fug of smells, those of the press of people, the sea and fish, his fur-lined gown and the rabbit-skin cape, the sack that had fortified him and the ale that had washed it down and perhaps even the odour of the mermaid’s tail. Ellyn held him; then he was gone. She moved to the quay’s edge, but he was already in the boat sitting next to Richard Dennys. She turned to Godfrey Gilbert and noticed he was deep in conversation with the younger merchant’s associates. Will was nowhere to be seen; she supposed he was already aboard. The
Swan
lay at anchor in the Cattewater, almost invisible behind the teeming craft around the harbour mouth, and soon her father would be joining the ship. Old Nan, Jane and Lettie were clinging to one another as though they were in the midst of a raging storm.

‘I shall watch from the Hoe,’ Ellyn said to them crisply, though she doubted they heard her.

She pushed through the throng, trusting that the maids would understand she needed to see more clearly – to appreciate (when they noticed her absence) that she would want to be alone to follow her father’s departure. She hoped they would not rush after her. Other people were arriving, while a few, like her, were making for the cliffs. Children raced for the Lambhay, squealing, and behind them came the peddlers and conjurers, the quacks, mystics and ballad-mongers, who were drawn to any crowd. She passed street-sellers and loiterers before entering the back alleys, almost deserted, that led up steep slopes to the old castle towers.

What should she do? She looked at her feet and held her cloak wrapped tight as she climbed. This was the way in which decisions were made: not in fantasy, but reality – so she thought as she watched her own steps; decisions were made by proceeding in a certain direction, following a course until there was no going back. She could continue to the Hoe and later return to her home, retrieve the letter for her mother she had left in her room, and destroy it by burning. That would be easy. Or she could dodge inside the next empty passage, and go back by another way down to the docks. Her steps quickened. No one was about. She came close to a dark gateway in which she could see no sign of life.

She darted into the shadows and whipped off her cloak, revealing the clothes she had kept hidden beneath.

From her bag she pulled out a cap, hurriedly placed it on her head, and tucked her hair up inside. Stumbling and fumbling, she kicked off her slippers, rolled them up in the cloak, and stuffed everything in the bag, ignoring the fact that the cobbles were wet. The shoes she stepped into were flat and wide.

They were Thom’s.

With burning cheeks and panting hard, conscious of the dagger bouncing awkwardly at her hip, Ellyn raced down the hill. Her running was reckless in shoes that were too large for her. She tripped and almost fell. She pushed out at anything that appeared in her way: people and posts, buildings and barrels. At the waterside she called out.

‘Can someone take me to the
Swan
? A shilling for the
Swan
. Will anyone take me? A shilling to get me there . . .’

Jeers and laughter followed as she picked her way around the
quay,
together with a few comments she had no wish to understand clearly.

‘What ho, lad! Sheathed thy sword late, eh?’

‘Nay, he was all night long trying to find where’t should go!’

‘Yea! And he’d ’ad such a skinful that once ’twas in, he forgot where he was!’

Ellyn shrank inwardly, but continued her erratic progress along the ranks of moored boats, calling out with mounting desperation, until she heard a phlegmy voice.

‘The
Swan’s
crew left at daybreak, lad. Best look lively!’

The man who had spoken was already casting off. Ellyn saw him throwing a rope from the stern of a little boat that could only be reached by climbing across three others. She hesitated, looking round for a helping hand or some support, but of course there was none.

The man barked at her.

‘Quicken thy sticks!’

She almost fell as she scrambled down. The first boat rocked, and she lurched. She staggered like a drunkard and clung like an infant. Laughter rang behind her until she reached the last boat, and there she quailed at the sight of the choppy sea. The man leaned across, grabbed her shoulder, hauled her over, and sent her sprawling at his feet. While he rowed she avoided his eye, but busied herself by looking in her pocket and finding the shilling she had offered to pay. She pulled a face to suggest she was indeed feeling tipsy, in the event quite easy. Once a sail was raised to catch the sharp wind, the boat bobbed violently in the waves further out, but the craft was fast. She reached the
Swan
in good time, while the lighter with her father was still lashed to the leeward chains.

Ellyn was taken to the other side feeling sick.

‘I thank you, good sir,’ she mumbled, paid the boatman, stood, toppled and was unceremoniously shoved into a sling that pulled her up to the deck as effectively as cargo.

Fear set her shivering. She had hoped she might sneak aboard unnoticed, but plainly she would be seen as soon as the winch set her down. What would she say? Her legs felt naked without the wrapping of skirt. She was conscious of looking ridiculous. In wide-eyed panic she stared at a scene that twisted and rolled as the sling was raised then lowered. Everywhere she looked men were moving about, climbing rigging, setting sails, and gathering round to properly receive the important merchants who were boarding on the other side. Ellyn caught a glimpse of her father’s new rabbit cape, and the sort of outlandish hat-plumes she associated with vain popinjays; she had no doubt that Richard Dennys was sporting them. Only one man was close as she put her feet on the deck. But she had to speak.

‘Good—’

Her greeting was cut short.

‘Gurt below, thou clay-brained scut!’

A stinging blow to her ear sent her tumbling to her knees. The pain was so intense that tears filled her eyes. She was faint with shock. But then she became aware that whoever had hit her was probably approaching. She saw boots near her hands. She pushed up unsteadily, as startled and terror-struck as a field mouse in the open. Glancing round wildly, she tried to take in where she was. Then she did what field mice do: she made for the nearest hole her size and disappeared by squeezing inside.

8

Discovery

‘. . . They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea . . .’

—
From
The Advancement of Learning,
Book 2, Chapter 7, by Francis Bacon, 1
^st
Baron Verulam, adviser to Elizabeth I

FOR DAYS ELLYN
cowered in the darkness after burrowing mole-like into the deepest nook she could find. She did not dare show herself. The mariner’s blow had made her realise the enormity of what she had done. Nothing in her upbringing had prepared her for the predicament she faced: the isolation and disorientation, and the relentless physical discomfort. Her original, rather nebulous plan had been to play the role of a galley boy who might be accepted as useful before a joyous revelation. But the viciousness of the mariner had shattered that fantasy. She was ruled by terror: the dread of brutality should she be discovered, and the fear of condemnation should she make herself known – she could
barely
conceive of her father’s wrath on finding out she had stowed aboard the
Swan
. Her objectives contracted down to the simple necessities of sleeping and eating, and trying to stay hidden.

Ellyn discovered where she was mainly by touch at first. But even far below the main deck, with no portholes or lanterns to give any illumination, somehow, obliquely, light found a way inside. It suggested details haphazardly, either in splinter-sharp points or a vague shadowy haze, and from these fragments she made a picture of the place she inhabited.

She was in the sections of a ship, inside another that was whole.

There were timbers that arched over her and others that were stacked up, or made inaccessible by heaps of canvas and rope, planks and huge poles. Mingled with the odour of rot and festering skins was a foul and acrid vermin stink. She came across nets and anchors, blocks and chains, sacks of bolts and wooden nails and something she identified eventually as a rudder, cut in one piece from a massive block of oak. It was the rudder that made her realise she was amongst the parts of another vessel, though she had no idea why the
Swan
would be carrying such a load. She had expected to find cloth.

Her nausea settled slowly. She found it a comfort to sniff her sweet-pouch of herbs. The bag of posies that used to hang from her girdle proved just as invaluable as her looking glass and comb. She came to know the safest times for scavenging amongst the stores. With increasing desperation she searched for the food she found palatable as slowly but steadily it began to run out. She could not abide the hard biscuit or salt beef, and subsisted mainly on carrots and cheese. The thudding of feet was a warning to take
cover,
and she soon linked this with the changing of the watch. She made an effort to gauge what was happening elsewhere on the ship, and she began to develop an understanding of the daily routine. In particular, she listened out for her father; sometimes she was sure she could hear him on the deck above her lair.

Her father’s gait was distinctive, as was the tapping of his stick, and one night, after nine bells had sounded, she heard him lumbering about almost directly overhead. His steps appeared firm, and the thump of his stick had a regular beat. That was reassuring. Peering up through the grating that covered a hatch, she spotted a pile of firearms, secured by a net, obscured in part by a large moving shadow – one that could only be his.

The tapping became louder then, after a thud, it suddenly stopped. She listened with alarm. All she could hear was faint moaning. Who was there to help? However much she dreaded discovery, she could not leave her father alone and lying injured. She shinned up a ladder, pushed the hatch open and wriggled quickly out.

‘Alas, good sir!’ Ellyn called while picking her way to him. The words were forced between gritted teeth in an effort to rouse him without alerting anyone else, though in her anxiety she rather mangled the attempt to sound like a boy. ‘Are you much hurt?’

‘Ellyn?’ her father groaned, and so did she inwardly. He raised a shaking hand. ‘Can that be you?’

She noticed the lantern he must have been carrying, lying on top of a sack and still alight. Hastily she set it on the decking behind her, and then blew on her fingers since she had scorched them in the process.

‘Sir?’ she asked, managing to wince with a hint of enquiry.

With a trembling hand, her father traced the contours of a growing swelling on his balding scalp.

‘Where am I?’

Ellyn drew closer in consternation, but quickly shrank back in panic as he clutched at her sleeve.

‘Marry, boy! Me-thought I heard an angel!’ Eyes glazed and rolling, he gave a beatific smile and sank back onto the floor.

Ellyn made an effort to lift him but merely succeeded in bending his neck.

‘Be not troubled, uncle,’ she gasped. ‘Only try to get on your feet.’

In an endeavour to raise him further she moved her hands under his shoulders. His head fell back on her knees. She made another attempt but his head slipped between them: one of the drawbacks, she realised, of wearing breeches and not a skirt.

‘Get up, uncle, please!’ she pleaded.

The response was a bewildered gasp.

‘I’faith I hear my Lynling!’

Ellyn froze.

He looked up from her lap and gave a rapturous gap-toothed smile.

‘Is she not with you?’

Ellyn averted her face, momentarily at a loss as to what to do next.

Her father groaned again and writhed.

‘What place is this? I must be damned to be hearing her . . .’

In a few awkward movements, Ellyn extricated her knees. Then, by rolling up the fur cape that Nan had given him, she was able to put it to good use at last; she settled her father’s head on the
makeshift
pillow. What more could she do? She rose unsteadily and picked up the lantern.

‘Stay awhile, sir. I will fetch help.’ She backed away. ‘Do not move!’

‘Do not go!’ he called after her with a wail.

But she was already making for the nearest ladder. Ellyn climbed to the next deck and hailed the first seaman she ran into.

‘Aid and mercy! Prithee come quickly! Master Cooksley is hurt!’

The mariner’s shadowed torso loomed menacingly nearer, like a fantastic creature from a navigator’s chart: a fish-man with no arms, and eyes in his chest – until Ellyn realised that he had a blanket pulled over his head.

‘Where, boy?’ The fish-man’s question bubbled from a growl in his throat.

‘Here!’ She turned away and beckoned hurriedly. ‘Follow me!’ She dashed back, hoping that the jolting might help disguise her voice. ‘I would have carried him if I could . . .’

By swinging lantern-light her father became visible as an unmoving mound under a large fur cloak: a kind of tumulus, emitting ghostly moans, that blocked the narrow passage beyond the foremast of the ship. The fish-man discarded his blanket and pushed past her.

‘’Ods me, Master Cooksley! Taken a tumble ’ave ’ee?’ the fish-man exclaimed. Then he yelled so loudly that Ellyn jumped. ‘Ho! Help here!’

The response was immediate, as if a bee had signalled a threat to a hive; assistance came rushing from every direction. Ellyn sensed she was about to be trapped. She put the lantern down near
her
father’s feet, edged away and began to squeeze past the men just arrived. But, before she could bolt, a gurgling snarl from the fish-man reached her.

‘Hey lad! Not so fast. We ’ave need of thee yet. Light our way and show willing.’