“It simply does not make sense,” I said to Honey.
We made gowns for ourselves with speed; they were by no means elegant, but they sufficed. At times we were allowed to walk on the deck. I shall never forget emerging for the first time and standing on deck, high above the water. I was astonished by the rich decorations and the towering forecastle. To hold the rail and look out to the horizon and let one’s eyes run around that great blue-gray curve filled me with an excitement which I could not suppress in spite of my apprehension and my anger against the circumstances which had brought us here.
And as I stood there straining my eyes always I looked for a ship on the horizon. In my heart I said: It will come. He will come in search of me. And I was exultant because I was sure this would come to pass.
I only had to close my eyes to see him there. He would shout to our Captain. “Spanish dog!” he would call him and he would board the ship, though the decks were high and strong nets were stretched between the sides and central gangway that joined forecastle to quarter deck. I looked at the great cannon, which one could not fail to notice. Such cannons, I knew, could blow a ship out of the ocean. But not the Rampant Lion.
He will come, I told myself. Before we reach our mysterious destination, he will come.
A few days after our capture I saw a ship on the horizon. My heart leaped with delight I had rarely known.
Honey was standing beside me. “Look,” I cried. “A ship. It’s the Rampant Lion.”
There was pandemonium on deck. The sound of chattering voices filled the air. The ship had been sighted.
It was the Lion, I was certain of it.
“Inglés.” I caught the word.
“He has come,” I whispered to Honey. “I knew he would come.”
We stood there clinging to the rail. The ship had grown a little larger, but it was many miles distant.
“He must have returned,” I said. “He came back more quickly than he believed possible. He would hear what had happened immediately and he would set sail to find us.”
“How can you be sure?” asked Honey.
“Is it not just what he would do? Do you think he would let me go?”
The Captain was standing beside us.
“You have seen the ship,” he said quietly. “She is an English ship.”
I turned to him triumphantly. “She is coming this way.”
“I think not,” he said. “Merely a caravel. She’s limping a little. No doubt she is going into harbor.”
“She is the Rampant Lion,” I cried.
“That ship! I know her. Nay, it is no Rampant Lion. It is but a little caravel.”
Disappointment was a pain; my throat constricted and I felt a great anger toward this Captain and those traitors who had led the pirates to us.
“She would not dare approach us, that one,” went on the Captain. “We’d blow her out of the water. She’ll get away as quick as she’s able and when she’s having the barnacles scraped off her in some English harbor her crew will tell the tale of how they escaped from a mighty galleon.”
“It may not always be so,” I said.
“No,” replied the Captain, perhaps willfully misunderstanding, “they do not always escape us. But we have cargo of a certain nature on board and I do not wish it to be endangered.”
He was looking at Honey and then asked her how she fared.
She said that she felt much better and he expressed his gratification for that. They behaved as though he were a friendly neighbor paying a call rather than the Captain of a pirate vessel who was carrying us off against our will.
He bowed and left us. And when he had gone Honey said to me: “Did you really think it was the Rampant Lion?”
“I did! Oh, that it were.”
“It is such a short time ago that you said you would give anything to escape from Jake Pennlyon.”
“I would give anything to escape from these villains who now hold us captive.”
She said: “You should stop thinking of Jake Pennlyon. He is dead to you.”
Then I covered my face with my hands because I could not bear to look at Honey.
It was she who comforted me then.
The Captain was indeed a courteous gentleman. When we dined with him he talked to us, asking questions about England. He had successfully conveyed to us the implication that he had nothing to do with the raid on Trewynd. He had merely been carrying out orders. He was to take his ship to the coast of Devon; a woman would be brought to his ship and he would take her to a stated destination. He was merely doing his duty. He had taken no part in the actual abduction. One could not imagine his doing so in any circumstances.
Accepting this, we grew quite friendly.
For Honey he had a very special kind of devotion. I think he was falling in love with her.
Ever since he had learned that she was pregnant he had been anxious for her to have every care.
One day she asked him if he knew whether her husband could have lived even though she feared he could not possibly have done so; he said he did not know, but he would question those who had been at the house at the time of the abduction.
A few days later he told her.
“Your husband could not possibly have survived,” he said.
Honey nodded in a calm, hopeless kind of way. I felt quite differently. I wanted to rage. That good, kind man to be done to death by robbers and pirates!
Honey took my hand. She was reminding me of what we owed the Captain. His protection stood between us and we could guess what terrible fate.
I remembered and was quiet; but there was a sick despair in my heart and I mourned Edward deeply.
Then the storm overtook us. I am sure we were never so near death as we were in that wild sea. Our galleon was mighty; she was seaworthy; she rode the water in her proud, gallant, dignified way, but even she must falter before the fury of such an onslaught.
All day the wind had been whipping up the white horses. We heard the excited voices of the sailors as they lowered the sails and closed the gunports and hatches.
The Captain ordered us to his cabin and said we were to stay there. We staggered down. We could not stand and the stools on which we sat were flung from one side of the ship to the other.
Jennet clung to me. Her lover was busy at his tasks. He had no time to spare for her now.
She was terrified. “Be we going to die, Mistress?” she asked.
“I doubt not the Captain will save the ship and us,” said Honey.
“To die … without confessing our sins,” said Jennet. “’Twould be a terrible thing.”
“I doubt your sins were very great, Jennet,” I soothed her.
“They be, Mistress,” she said. “They be terrible.”
“Nonsense,” I retorted. “I wish there was something we could do.”
“The Captain said we were to stay here,” said Honey.
“We could be drowned like rats in a trap.”
“What else should we do?” demanded Honey.
“There must be something. I’m going up to see.”
“Stay here,” said Honey.
I looked at her, now so obviously pregnant; I looked at Jennet, filled with a fear of dying with her sins on her; and I said authoritatively, “You will stay here, Honey, and Jennet will stay with you. Make sure that the mistress is as comfortable as it is possible for her to be,” I added to Jennet.
They stared at me in amazement, but I could not remain inactive, just waiting for death.
I was flung against the sides of the ship as I came onto the deck. The galleon was groaning her protest. Fortunately I was on the lee side or I should have been blown overboard. It was a stupid thing to have done to come on deck against the Captain’s orders, but it was more than I could endure to stay in that rattling cabin. The rain lashed the decks mercilessly; the wind shook the ship as a dog might shake a rat. I was saturated, for as the ship dipped the waves broke over her; the deck was slimy and dangerous. I knew that it would be folly for me to attempt to cross it and although I preferred the fresh air to the depth of the ship I knew that it was doubly dangerous to stay up there.