“Enough of this,” he cried and at one stroke stripped my bodice from my shoulders.
I knew of course that the moment which I had resisted for so long had come. I was not the innocent girl I had been when I had first come to Devon. Already I had been taken in humiliation—for revenge not for lust—and later I had become accustomed to my life with Don Felipe. I had borne a child. Indeed I was no innocent.
But I fought as any nun might have fought for her virginity. I could not deny to myself that I experienced a wild exhilaration in the fight. My great concern was to keep my feelings from him. I was determined to resist for as long as I could as I knew the climax was foregone. He laughed. It was a battle which of course he won. I could not understand the wild pleasure that he gave me; it was something I had not experienced or imagined before. I was murmuring words of hatred and he of triumph; and why that should have given me greater satisfaction than I had ever experienced before I cannot say.
I broke free from him. He was lying on his pallet laughing at me.
“God’s Death!” he said. “You don’t disappoint me. I knew it was meant from the moment I clapped eyes on you.”
“I knew no such thing,” I said.
“But you do now.”
“I hate you,” I said.
“Hate away. It seems it makes a better union than love.”
“I wish I had never come to Devon.”
“You must learn to love your home.”
“I shall go back to the Abbey. As soon as I reach England.”
“What?” he said. “Carrying my son? You’ll not do that. I’m going to be gracious. I’m going to marry you, in spite of the fact that you’ve been a Spaniard’s whore and mine too.”
“You are despicable.”
“Is that why you can’t resist me?”
He was on his feet.
“No,” I cried.
“But yes, yes,” he said.
I fought him; but I knew that I could not resist. I wanted to stay; but I would not let him know it.
And so I stayed with him and it was late when I crept back to the cabin I shared with Honey.
She looked at me as I came in. “Oh, Catharine,” she whispered.
“He was determined,” I said. “I knew it would come sooner or later.”
“Are you all right?”
“Scratched, bruised. As one would expect after a fight with Jake Pennlyon.”
“My poor, poor Catharine! It’s the second time.”
“This was different,” I said.
“Catharine…”
“Don’t talk to me. I can’t talk. Go to sleep. It had to happen. He was determined. It is not as though I were a young inexperienced girl like Isabella…”
She was silent and I lay there thinking of Jake Pennlyon.
The journey was long and not uneventful. Was any voyage on the unpredictable seas? The storm Jake had prophesied came and we battled through it. It was not as violent as that which had hit the galleon; or was the Lion more able to withstand the elements? Was it due to her Captain, the undefeatable Jake Pennlyon? The mighty and imposing galleon was unwieldy compared with the jaunty Lion. The Lion defied the seas as she was tossed hither and thither; her timbers creaked as though sorely tried, but she stood up defiantly against the driving rain. The wind shrieked in the rigging and she was shaken by the seething waters as gust after gust caught her top-hamper.
Jake Pennlyon was in charge. He it was whose seamanship made the Lion turn toward the wind So that the upperworks gave shelter to the leeward side, where he was shouting orders above the roar of the wind. Did everyone on board feel as I did? We are safe. Nothing can stand against Jake Pennlyon and win—not even the sea, not even the wind.
So we rolled in the Bay and the storm persisted through two nights and a day and then we were calm again.
When the wind had subdued there was a thanksgiving service on deck. How different it was from that other. There was Jake Pennlyon actually giving thanks to God for the safety of his ship in a manner which suggested that it was the ship’s Captain rather than the Deity who had brought us through the storm. He talked arrogantly to God, I thought, and I laughed inwardly at him. How like him! How conceited he was, how profane! And how grand!
That night of course I was in his cabin.
He had come to the cabin which I had turned into a nursery and there demanded of Carlos what he had thought of the storm.
“It was a great storm,” cried Carlos.
“And you whimpered, eh, and you thought you were going to be drowned?”
Carlos looked astonished. “No, Captain. I knew you wouldn’t let the ship sink.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s your ship.”
Jake pulled the boy’s hair. It was a habit he had adopted with Carlos and Jacko. Sometimes I thought he hurt them, for I saw them steel themselves to hide a wince. But both the boys were proud when he spoke to them. They clearly revered him. They were his sons and he reveled in the thought. Men like Jake Pennlyon passionately wanted sons. They thought themselves such perfect specimens of manhood that the more often they were reproduced, the better; and they always looked for signs of themselves in their children.
I could see it already in Carlos and Jacko. They had changed since they came aboard. They aped him in many ways.
“And you think I could stop it, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said Carlos.
“You’re right, boy. You’re right, by Heaven.”
He pulled Carlos’ hair and Carlos was happy to bear the pain because he knew it meant approval.
Jake Pennlyon then gripped my arm.
“Come now,” he said.
I shook my head.
“What, would you have me force you here before the boys?”
“You would not dare.”
“Don’t provoke me.”
Roberto, whom Jake always ignored, was looking at me fearfully, and because I knew that Jake was capable of anything if he were, as he would put it, provoked, I said: “Give me a few moments.”
“See how I indulge you.”
So I kissed the children and said good night to them and I went to Jake Pennlyon.
When we were in his cabin he said, “You come readily now.”
“I come because I do not wish the children to see your brutality.”
“I am indeed a brute, am I not?”
“Indeed you are.”
“And you love me for it.”
“I hate you for it.”
“How I enjoy this hate of yours. You please me, Cat. You please me even more than I dreamed of being pleased.”
“Must I endure this…”
“You must.”
“As soon as we are home…”
“I will make an honest woman of you. I’ll swear I’ve got you with child by now. I want a son … my son and your son. That boy Carlos, he’s a fine boy. So is Jacko. They’re mine, you see … but mine and yours, Cat, by Heaven, he’ll be the one. I doubt not he has begun his life now. Does that not lift your heart to think on it?”
“If I should have a child by you,” I said, “I would hope I do not see its father in it.”
“You lie, Cat. You lie all the time. Speak truthfully. Was your wretched Spanish lover like me?”
“He was a gentleman.”
Then he laughed and fell upon me and gave vent to his savage passion which I told myself I must needs endure.
And I was exhilarated and exulted and I told myself no one ever hated a man as I hated Jake Pennlyon.
Through the treacherous Bay of Biscay into the almost equally treacherous Channel we sailed and what emotion we felt—Honey and I—when we saw the green land of Cornwall!
And then we were entering Plymouth Harbor.
So much had happened to us—I had become a wife, a mother and a widow. I was surely a different woman from the girl who had sailed away on that strange night five years before. Yet nothing seemed to have changed here. There were the familiar waters, the coastline. Soon I should be able to make out the shape of Trewynd Grange.