Mistress of the Sea (24 page)

Kit pulled off the helmet that had hidden his blond hair, and raked his fingers over his scalp. Soon he would be back with the girl who had made him a home. He yearned to be with her. Ololade would wash the animal blood from his skin, and bring him clean clothes that once other men had worn. She would feed him choice meats, and give him drink to dull the worst memories. With oiled hands she would rub his body, from his neck to his feet, until he relaxed and curled against her, nuzzling at her breasts like a baby, and she would give him a mother’s comfort, stroking his hair and singing to him gently. Then afterwards he
would
be proud to have planned for what the Spaniards would do, to have understood their thinking, and so help free their poor captives. He would have no regrets, and his sorrow would be less.

He clenched his hands to stop them shaking. It was as much as he could do to live for each day.

At a sound Kit turned round. His friends were approaching in file along the track, together with all the Negroes no longer bound. The procession was led by Sancho: the giant with torn ears who had once fought over Ololade.

‘
Ìyá
Kit, we salute you!’ Sancho bowed from the waist and Kit returned the courtesy.

‘These men give thanks,’ Sancho said. ‘
Gracias
.’ Kit watched as the freed men sank to their knees. He gestured for them to rise, but none did; they touched their heads to the ground.

‘They honour you,’ Sancho explained.

Kit walked up to the first man; there were half a dozen in the line. He stopped and touched the man’s shoulder. ‘Tell him to get up.’

Sancho and the man commenced a brief exchange that Kit could not follow until Sancho spoke again.

‘They ask you to go with them. They have a village in the mountains. They want you to join them there.’

The first man looked up and reached for Kit’s right hand. Kit did not resist. He let the man stare at his scarred palm and press the mark to his brow. Then Kit understood. He stared at Sancho.

‘Have they heard of me?’

Sancho conversed with the men rapidly.

‘
Sí
. They look for you, but the Spaniards catch them. They seek
“
el inglés de la luna
” – the Englishman who bears the mark of the moon. It is you they want.’

Kit looked askance at the row of naked bent backs. He shook his head.

‘Tonight you must eat in my house.’ Speaking quietly he moved along the line, allowing each man in turn to do the same as the first – to touch his hand. What did it matter?

‘Then tomorrow go back to your people.’ His voice hardened as he went on. ‘Tell no one where I am. I will not go with you. This is my place.’ He glanced up at the trees that rose sheer above his head. ‘
Este cerro
. This hill.’ From his hut, not far from Nombre de Dios, he could look out to sea – it was all he had left.

‘I will stay here.’

After months of rain and overcast skies, tempest-lashed days, and nights that languished in sultry stagnation, the clouds cleared at Christmas time, and, barely a week into the New Year, the fleet from Seville arrived at Nombre de Dios. Ellyn saw the white sails of the galleons and caravels as they entered the bay. Days later she saw them go. Since being left on Bastimentos, she had taken a keen interest in any ships passing by.

Marco had stayed with her: the small, black slave boy of the Spaniards who had worn red calico when she had seen him first, the day her father died and her world changed for ever. Marco had not left her since. With the exception of occasional visits from Friar Luis, the Dominican who had administered her father’s last rites, she and Marco were left undisturbed and untroubled by the servant gardeners who tended the island’s crops. Perhaps the Spaniards of Nombre de Dios feared she might give them her
father’s
disease. Perhaps she alarmed them, as a foreign lady, in a way they could not easily address. Whatever the reason, they left her alone, and that suited her well. She learned to be self-sufficient.

With Marco’s help she came to appreciate the bounty the island offered. She discovered what could be eaten and how best to prepare the food. By watching the labourers on the island, she taught herself how to cultivate her own small fields. Life on the island was hard, but it was not unpleasant; the climate was tropical, often stormy, but never too cold. Though she longed for Will’s return, her loneliness was not unbearable. Friar Luis had become a friend; he left her a Bible in Latin and a book of chivalric romance in Castilian, and she loved little Marco as if he was her own dear child. She had no wish to leave Bastimentos; only by remaining on the island could she hope to be found by Will.

Every once in a while, she would go with Friar Luis to the city, and make the crossing, about two miles distant, in a boat with a sail rowed by ten strong men. She would hear Mass and make confession in the large church beside the monastery, and try not to notice the people pointing her out, or turning their backs to huddle and whisper. Afterwards, she would leave the church with the friar, her face veiled by a mantilla, and make her way to the harbour front by the fastest route past the timber houses. Then, reassured of her piety, Friar Luis would return her to the island in the boat by which she had come.

She never stopped believing that Will would come back. When that happened, she expected, he would want to know as much as possible about the city, and the ships and mule trains that
sustained
it. So she made an effort to be observant, and master some of the Spanish language, too. At the same time she schooled Marco in the rudiments of English, thus, in a halting way, they could both converse quite well. All this meant that she could follow Marco’s explanation, as they watched the ships leaving Nombre de Dios, standing together on the island’s beach.

‘
Ellos van a Cartagena
.’ Marco waved a thin arm to imply that the place lay far to the east. ‘They go to Cartagena,’ he translated and smiled. ‘In March they come back. Sometimes April.’ He flashed his white teeth again, plainly proud to have been able to impart this in English. ‘Then they go to Havana. After Havana, to Spain.’

‘Why do they come and go like that? Back and forth,’ she asked, making a similar movement with her hands.

‘Back and forth,’ Marco repeated, as if he was feeling the words with his tongue. ‘They do that because Cartagena is
bueno
. It is big city.’ He made an expansive gesture with his arms. ‘The ships come to Nombre de Dios. They bring things from Spain. Then here everyone is happy. The ships go to Cartagena.
El trajín
comes here from Panamá.
El trajín
has things for Spain. So the ships come back.’

‘
El trajín
? What is that?’

‘It is
las mulas y la carga
.’

‘Mules? The ships come back for mules?’

‘No, no.’ Marco grinned and wrinkled his nose.

‘The mules bring
la plata
.’

‘Plate? Silver? The mules bring silver from Panamá?’

‘
Sí
.’ His eyes bulged as he blew out his cheeks. ‘
Mucha plata y mucho oro
.’

‘I see,’ she said, nodding. ‘The mules bring a lot of silver, and they also bring much gold.’

On her next visit to the city, Ellyn remembered what Marco had said about the mule trains. She smelt the dung from the beasts even before she disembarked from Friar Luis’s boat. There must have been two hundred beasts outside the counting house, lined up four abreast; she saw them when she reached the market place. Yet this was only one
trajín
, Marco assured her, the latest to come from Panamá. In the event she was not much interested since there was so much else to attract her attention. Friar Luis encouraged her to spend a few hours in the market, and she accepted the suggestion gladly. Tents and stalls filled most of the plaza displaying a wealth of fabrics in brilliant colours, and not only were there lengths of cloth hanging like flags in the bright sunshine, but taffetas made into gowns and lace into ruffs; bodices stuffed with busks and the bell-frames of great farthingales; painted fans and ornate headdresses; gilded leather girdles and mantles of fine lawn. These were just some of the things from Spain that were making her feel happy, not least because, through brave bargaining with Marco’s assistance, and the use of one of the pearls Will had left her, she had managed to purchase a few of the items she most wanted. She conversed in Spanish from behind her veil and, despite her awkwardness with the language, she was not rebuffed. Indeed, she felt something approaching comfort in the midst of so many people: gentlefolk and servants, women and children also, since many of the Spanish men had taken Indian maids as wives – and there were even a few ladies who by their look had come from Spain. After many quiet months on the
island,
she had come to miss the company of a crowd. And she missed having ladylike shoes – the sort of soft dainty slippers faced with blue watered silk that she glimpsed among many others arrayed in the centre of the square.

‘Marco, stop. I must look at these.’

Marco’s eyes rolled when she tugged at his sleeve, pulling him to a halt in the thick of the throng. Piled in a basket, balanced against his chest, was a stack of glazed dishes, topped by a bird cage that was clamped beneath his chin. This made it difficult for him to talk. But he looked the epitome of the perfect page, with his hair neatly clipped to the shape of a ball, and dressed in the boy’s clothes she had once worn herself – except that his feet were bare. Since the pumps that had been her father’s were much too large to be made to fit, she had been left with little choice but to continue to wear Thom’s shoes, though they had split and were most ungainly. So in an instant her heart was set on buying the slippers, while she privately resolved that Marco should be treated as well. It also occurred to her that there had been a time when to have something respectable to put on her feet would have seemed the most ignoble of lowly ambitions. But that did not lessen her delight.

‘
Cuánto?
’ she asked, and made clear her interest by pointing. The trader at the stall held up the slippers in response, then launched into a stream of gabbling that Marco interpreted by extending three fingers. Her excited conclusion was that she might afford the price, so she offered two
pesos
, supplemented by a
real
when the merchant shook his head, though Marco’s expression left her wondering whether she had been overgenerous. The merchant’s jabber continued in the midst of the clamour. This was so much
better
than the ostracism she had felt on her previous visits to the city. No one was glancing at her furtively, or making her feel like a leper. So she could not understand why the trader holding the slippers suddenly fell quiet and backed away. She only sensed real shock when she heard the dishes fall and smash. Then someone behind her grabbed hold of her arms.

The soldiers who seized her marched her from the plaza alone. They took her to the side of the market square that was nearest the sea. From there she was escorted through an archway, and along an arcade by a courtyard where men were training with pikes. It was difficult to take much in or keep her sense of direction. A soldier paced in front, while another marched behind, driving her into shadow and up a steep flight of steps. She emerged on the veranda of a large timber building. This was part of the garrison barracks, she realised at last, yet she was surprised to have arrived on an upper storey, when her apprehension led her to expect some sort of descent into gloom, certainly not the bright airy room that she finally entered.

The room had a tall open window that overlooked the market place; she knew this by the hubbub that rose from below, and a glimpse in the distance of the roofs of the government houses. But that was soon obscured. Standing by the window was a man dressed austerely in a black silk jerkin over a wide-sleeved white shirt. A tremor of alarm shot through her as he turned. Immediately she recognised the buttress features of Captain Gonzalo Bastidas, and the solid black line of his thick arched brows. He bowed and beckoned her to a solitary chair. There was no other furniture at that end of the room. She sat uneasily while the soldiers stood beside her.

‘Welcome,
Señorita
Cook-esley.’

In his accented speech, even her own name sounded strange. She pulled the veil of her headdress more securely across her cheeks. It was a meagre shield. Bastidas fixed on her eyes.

‘I am glad you are well. I thought that on such a hot day you might like to drink.’

She bowed her head. The heat was stifling in the room, trapped by the wooden walls and ceiling. She felt her skin prickling beneath her shift.

He filled a silver goblet from a pitcher, and offered it to her in a way that seemed strange until she realised he was proffering it left-handed. She shook her head but he pressed the goblet into her grasp. There it remained. The guards were dismissed. She heard the door click.

‘Do you like our market?’ Bastidas asked while pacing around her.

‘I did, until your men took me away.’ She could not quite keep her voice as steady as she would have liked, and that added to her humiliation. She glared at him.

‘It is better than the market in Plee-mouth?’ he went on.

She bit back the urge to deny and correct.

Bastidas continued to circle her.

‘You may buy all you want here: silks, jewels, perfumes, things for the hair . . .’ He paused, and his lips twitched into a sneer as his gaze travelled down towards the hem of her skirts. ‘You may buy shoes.’

Conscious of her colour rising, she quickly tucked her tattered footwear out of sight under her petticoats.

Bastidas walked closer, and then hooked her veil to one
side,
leaving her with a snaking image of his dark-haired fingers.

‘Please drink,’ he urged, and guided the goblet to her lips.

She sipped to end his harrying, inhaling a sharp metallic smell when she brought her face close to the wine.

Bastidas carried on with his stiff-backed pacing, occasionally turning and unsettling her with a stare.