The Lost Duchess (43 page)

She skirted east along the edge of the reeds until the shore became a beach that she followed round. Then she took the well-worn track
leading to the tree-covered bluff, and from there she looked down on the pinnace, anchored close offshore, and up to the sandy knoll on which stood the fort. For an instant everything flashed white and amber as sparks streamed from a fire-arrow shooting high overhead. The fort pulsed orange, its palisade like a rusty saw-blade jutting up from the bare cliff face. A thundering report made her duck and she looked up to see the arrow bursting in a ball of violet flame, sparks spraying in all directions, fading to nothing as they fell over the water. Ears ringing, she hastened towards the fort as it merged once again into a silhouette with the trees, black against the sky but hazed by clouds of thinning smoke. The stench of sulphur caught at the back of her throat, and the sharp taste of nitre was acrid in her mouth. Her pulse raced though there was as yet no reason to be afraid; that would come on the morrow. She was blind again in the dark. The only light was an orange glow, one that became more distinct as she edged along the track. The light emerged from a tracery of leaves, about head height, by the trunk of a tall tree. It came from a lantern hung on a branch, and beside it were two men. One of them was Kit. She saw him as she negotiated a bend in the path, but then she stepped back. The other was Rob.

They were deep in conversation and something about the intimacy of their stance made her reluctant to intrude. They stood face to face, one perfectly proportioned beside the other as slim as a wisp. Through the foliage, she saw the gentle way Kit put his arm around Rob’s thin shoulders. The boy bowed his head and turned aside. She watched Kit catch hold of him. Then they embraced as if they were fighting, eyes tight closed as though to hold back pain, arms clamped around one another, crushing out breath. Kit’s hand circled the boy’s back as he shook and sobbed. She looked away.

Kit must have told Rob the truth. He must have told him he was his father and what had happened to the boy’s mother, about his life with the Cimaroons, and the search that had led him to the discovery of his son. Would Rob understand why Kit had not told him before? Would he forgive? It looked as if he did, and they seemed to have found some reconciliation for the hours left to them on the turbulent earth. Let them be: Kit, the father who, for the love of his son, could not let his love show; Rob, the son who, without knowing, would not be parted from his father. Would Rob now realise that his father had tried to spare him? Kit had brought his son to the New World to find a better place for him to live; instead, he had brought him face-to-face with an early death. What could they do now? Their only comfort was that they would be together at the end, and had shown the greatest love by laying down their lives for their friends. She longed to embrace them both.

She wiped at her eyes.

Rob turned aside. In another stark flash of light she saw him clearly, heading towards the houses behind their new defensive wall, his expression loaded with feeling but resolute and contained. He was there, then he was gone. The next blast slammed through the forest and the light dulled and guttered. Before the fireball burst, he was engulfed by darkness. She looked back at Kit sensing their lives playing out as haphazardly, blazing in intensity before flickering into oblivion.

The lantern on the tree still cast its paltry glow and by that she saw he was chiselling away at the bark, carving out letters as high as he could reach: ‘CRO’.

‘Are you leaving a message?’

She walked towards him, and he gave her a smile of welcome,
though the streaks of tears were like rills over his smut-blackened face.

‘This is for White,’ he said. ‘It’s to tell him those of us left here will be going to Croatoan if we can. Before we leave, if we’re attacked, I’ll mark the signs with a cross to show our move has been forced. He’ll know what that means; it’s what we agreed.’

She watched his hands fall to his sides.

‘Aren’t you going to finish it or tell White the others have gone to Chesapeake?’

‘There isn’t time, and I’d rather White go somewhere safe to begin with. We don’t know where exactly Harvie will site the new city.’ He slid nearer like a sleepwalker. ‘You saw nothing?’

‘No. The Planters were not followed.’

‘Thank God.’ He let out his breath against her neck as he took her into his arms, and his touch was tentative as if he felt it might break her.

She nuzzled against him, her lips brushing the prickles of the stubble above his throat.

‘You have told Rob?’

‘Yes.’

He swallowed, and she sensed it as the resonance of his answer flowed through her, wrapped up in a sound like a low deep groan.

‘That is good,’ she said softly. ‘You have done all you can.’

He shook his head slowly, his rough cheek rubbing against her.

‘It’s not enough, either for Rob or for you.’

She held him tighter.

‘It is enough for me to be with you now.’

‘Come inside,’ he said, taking her hand as if they were children, and he was urging her to go with him to some place of secrets. ‘We
have a few hours before daybreak and everything is ready beyond the wall.’

He drew her to the clearing around the tree trunks that had been felled and stacked to form a star-like barrier around the houses in a great ring that connected with the palisaded fort. He guided her by the light of his lantern, circuiting ditches and earthworks, bole-walled curtains and pointed flankers. They reached the gate at the east by which was another carved sign on one of the tree trunks in the wall: ‘CROATOAN’.

‘Might we get there?’ she asked, pointing to the letters as they passed.

He paused and kissed her hand, and she knew he did not want to tell her there was no hope. Perhaps the signs were there to give the others strength, perhaps they helped Kit keep alive the belief that there was always a chance for those he loved.

He pressed her hand to his heart.

‘I think we should say goodbye to one another, somewhere quiet.’

They entered by the gate, and Kit barred it shut just as another ear-splitting detonation sent her cowering against the wall. A fire-arrow followed that flooded everything with silver light, and when it burst, somewhere far over the water, the sparks were gold.

Kit put his arm around her, leading her across what had once been the city square, now made almost impassable with upended tables, barrels and other objects heaped together.

‘The boys are enjoying themselves.’ He pointed to the fort and his tone was almost bantering. ‘Jim and Jack are warming up the saker while Rob’s helping Tom with the fireworks. Do you like the colours?’

She guessed he was trying to buoy up her spirits and she answered playfully.

‘Yes, very pretty. Where did you learn how to make them?’

‘From Drake’s gunners, and Jim Lacy knows a few tricks. Iron filings made the gold you saw just now. The fireworks are only gunpowder in a paper casing wrapped around a stick and lit with a quick match. We’ve used all the prayer books we could find for cartouches.’

She pulled a face, though he probably couldn’t see it. She hoped her voice sounded suitably shocked. She was too numb for much humour, but it was always better to laugh than to weep when work needed to be done.

‘I hope our prayers are heard and we’re given a little help.’

He squeezed her hand and gazed back at the fort. She felt his mood shift, as if he was quietly thinking everything through.

‘The cannon fire should keep Wanchese’s warriors away from the north shore. The savages will come at us from the west: the quickest crossing from Dasemonkepeuc; then they’ll creep through the forest as soon as there’s a glimmer of light.’ He turned round to look at the mounds of earth that served as gun platforms behind the crude wall. ‘We’ll hold them off at first with our falconets and fowlers; after that, we’ll fall back to the fort.’

‘You expect all the houses to be lost?’

‘Yes.’ He ushered her on around the obstacles. ‘Everything will be lost; it’s only a matter of time. All we can hope to achieve is a chance to get to the pinnace while most of the savages are here on land.’

‘So we do have a chance?’

He pulled her closer to him.

‘So small you should forget it.’

He led her to the Dares’ house, a place she barely recognised because everything nearby was so changed, the vegetation smashed
down and most of the furniture piled up outside in a great barricade in front of the fort. Everything valuable had been buried, he told her; all White’s chests and the belongings the Planters had left behind, they had all been sealed in a trench and covered over. The room downstairs in the Dares’ house was empty but for scattered pots and crocks and the ladder leading to the upper floor which Kit climbed ahead of her.

The room upstairs felt strange, barely touched, almost as she had left it: pallets screened with canvas, clothes spilling from an abandoned chest. She took a few steps to the open window and looked out. On the timber sill, under her fingers, was the place where Rob had scratched his name, that time when he had stayed with her after Kit had left him on his first foray to the mainland. ‘Robert Little’ – she felt the letters and looked out at chaos: the disintegration of everything they had sought to establish in founding the city. But Kit was still with her, vital and alive; they had a few hours yet.

He put the lantern on the floor where it cast light through the shutter slits in expanding crescents over the walls. The glow filtered through the screens as if they were gauzy drapes in some fire-lit pavilion. It made the room seem warm, a place of safety in the midst of turmoil. Then he took something from his belt purse that gleamed as he held it out to her: a ring, a tiny, thin, gold ring. She looked at the lobe of his left ear and realised where it had come from.

She stared at him in confusion, wondering what he meant by it. They had already exchanged tokens, and the ring was plainly too small for a finger. The association with marriage slipped instantly into her mind, but she dismissed it as quickly. That could not be what he intended; he’d already said that marriage would be for the time when they could rest without fear.

‘Your earring?’

He nodded, smiling bashfully, then reached for her left hand and placed the little ring against her fourth finger.

‘Big enough to fit over the tip and that will have to do.’

She stared at her hand in shock, and then at him. He’d picked out her wedding finger. Did he really mean to wed her? Now? Here, with the blasts of cannon instead of wedding bells and Wanchese’s warriors about to fall on them?

He smiled more broadly and took a thong from his jerkin which he dangled in front of her. ‘You can tie it around your neck afterwards.’

‘Afterwards?’

‘After we are wed.’

There, he’d said it:
he meant to marry her now
. Her heart swelled fit to burst. She wanted nothing more, yet she stood petrified, looking down at the ring in the palm of his hand as if it had the power to cast her into hell. She could not wed him on the basis of a lie. He did not know that she was not a maiden, that there was another man in England who had already taken and claimed her.

He nudged the ring with his finger, looking down at it thoughtfully. Then he gazed up at her with a sweet shy look on his handsome face that was covered in sooty dirt and streaked with sweat and tears.

She began to cry, reaching for her handkerchief to wipe him clean, trying in vain, then dabbing at her own eyes though the linen was black.

He pulled a wry face and used his thumb to wipe at her cheeks.

‘I would like to marry you now, Emme. I wish to be one with you before I die. Wherever we are when the sun goes down tomorrow, we should be together, completely, man and wife.’

She wept. She loved him. More than her aching heart could bear, she loved him. But how could she tell him that she was not pure? If they were to be together as man and wife, here, in this room, then he would discover her shame, and he would go to his death believing she had deceived him. He would hate her. She could not do it.

She sank down on one of the pallets, turned from him and covered her eyes.

He sat quietly beside her.

‘I know this should have been better for you. We should have had music and a procession and all the pomp and ceremony fitting for one of the finest ladies of England. You should have had a beautiful dress. This ring should have been bigger.’ He made a sound like a chuckle that caught in his throat. ‘We should have been in a grand church before a priest, but our vows will be known to God. Surely that and our love is what matters most …’

‘It’s not that,’ she sobbed, ‘not any of that. I need no trappings to be your wife when in my heart I already am. It’s …’ Tears blinded her. She could not speak.

He put the ring back in his purse and placed his arms around her gently.

‘What is it? The time for talking honestly with one another is now. So tell me, Emme; there may not be another chance. Let there be no secrets between us. Whatever troubles you, I am sure it will not trouble me nearly as much. Nothing could make me love you less.’

‘I …’ she struggled. How could she begin?

With a soft kiss on her brow he reassured her. Then he tensed and drew back a little. ‘You’re not already married?’

‘No, not truly. I mean …’

She wiped at her eyes and saw him looking at her, frowning.
His voice hardened. ‘What do you mean by “not truly”? Were you promised before you promised yourself to me?’

‘Not properly, not in faith …’

Grief consumed her. She could not go on. Everything was falling apart: her hopes, the city, his love; she felt it all disintegrating around her.

He let go of her and looked down. ‘I suppose you are trying to tell me that you have already lain with a man.’

‘Yes,’ she said, fighting the impulse to hide behind more weeping. She had to tell him the truth. She held up her head. ‘A man took me against my will, after some jesting which I considered to be of no consequence, but he said it amounted to my promise to marry him.’