I decided I would stay with him.
When night fell Jake came to the nursery. Jennet and Manuela hastily disappeared.
“What means this?” said Jake. “I am waiting for you.”
“The child is sick,” I answered.
“Those two women can care for him.”
“He is uneasy when I’m not here.”
“I am more than uneasy when you are not with me.”
“I am staying here for the night.”
“Nay,” he said, “you are coming to bed with me.”
“I shall stay with my son tonight.”
“You will come,” he said.
He caught my arm and I stood up and threw him off. “You will wake the child.”
“Why should I care?”
“I care,” I said.
I stepped out of the room with him, for I greatly feared the effect a scene would have on Roberto.
“Go away,” I said. “I have made up my mind.”
“And if I have made up mine?”
“You must needs unmake it.”
“You are coming with me.”
“I am staying with my son.”
We looked unflinchingly into each other’s eyes.
“I could carry you there,” he said.
“If you touch me, Jake Pennlyon,” I said, “I will leave this house. I will take my son to my mother and never see you again.”
He hesitated and I knew that I had won.
“Go away,” I said. “Don’t shout. If you wake the child, if you frighten him now I shall never forgive you.”
“Are you not afraid that if you deny me I might turn to others?”
“If you are so desperately in need you must do so.”
“You would not wish that.”
“I tell you I care for nothing tonight but that my son sleeps peacefully and I shall stay with him to make sure that he does so.”
“Cat,” he said. “I want you … now … this minute.”
“Go away.”
“So you don’t care what I do?”
“Do what you please.”
He caught my arm and shook me. “You know full well that I have a fancy for no one but you.”
I laughed at him. Exultantly, yes. I had won of course. I went back to Roberto.
In the morning the child was better, but I knew that he was terrified of Jake Pennlyon.
The summer came. Tenerife seemed a long way behind. I had settled in to life at Lyon Court. Soon Jake would go away on a voyage. He had postponed this because of our marriage and I knew he wished to be with me; but of course he could not stay ashore forever. I think sometimes he planned to take me with him, but I was pregnant and the sea was no place for a woman in my condition. He was a sailor who loved the sea and his ship was near to his heart as any living being I was sure, and yet he lingered on shore. I laughed at him. He could not leave me.
He could never shut out of his mind the memory of the raid which had taken place while he was away. He was afraid that it might happen again. He was torn between his desire for adventure on the high seas and his life with me.
Often I would see him down at the Hoe; he would be rowed out to his ship and spend some time on her. He finally decided that he could stay behind no longer.
A Captain Girling came to visit us from St. Austell—a man some twenty years older than Jake. He was a keen man, Jake told me, one of the few whom he cared to trust on one of his ships.
Captain Girling stayed with us for a month and he and Jake went out to the Lion every day; and there was a great deal of bustle on the Hoe while her stores were taken aboard. She was taking out a cargo of linen.
At dinner the conversation was generally of the sea and ships and I became increasingly knowledgeable in these matters, particularly as I had firsthand experience of two voyages. They used to question me at length about the galleon and I could never resist praising her and pointing out her superiority over the Rampant Lion and English ships I had seen, which exasperated and intrigued them.
Captain Girling was as fierce in his denunciation of the Dons and Catholicism as Jake was and they were at one on this as on most matters.
They hated the Inquisition, which had seized a number of English sailors, submitted them to torture and even burned them at the stake. John Gregory was an example of a man who had been captured and only freed on condition that he spy for them. Oddly enough Jake seemed to have forgiven him although he had helped in carrying me off in the first place. He had, however, made it possible for Jake to bring me back.
“There’s good news from the Netherlands,” said Captain Girling. “There’s a rising there and by all accounts it’s a success. The Spaniards had set up the Inquisition there, and because of this the country is in revolt. By God, the sooner we blow them all off the seas, the better.”
Jake regarded me with some amusement. “I’d slit the throat of any Spaniard on sight … no matter who.”
“Throat slitting’s too good for them,” growled Captain Girling.
And I trembled for Roberto, who looked more like his father every day.
“If ever they attempt to come to England …” began Captain Girling.
Jake’s face was purple at the thought, yet his eyes shone with excitement.
“That would be the day!” he cried. “We’d see them finished off forever then. Why, Girling, do you think there’s a possibility the rascals would be so foolhardy as to try it?”
“Who can say? You know they’ve taken possession of lands all over the globe. They’re taking the rack and the thumbscrews among the savages and trying to make Papists of them.”
“Let them come here!” cried Jake. “Oh, God, let them come here. Let them bring their thumbscrews here. We’ll show them how to use them.”
“They fear us … they respect us. They prefer to play with savages,” Girling said.
“I swear they shall continue to fear us. When they meet one of my ships on the high seas they’ll show some respect too.”
“You talk much of what you will do if certain things happen,” I said. “We know exactly how they would act and how you would. But why should they come here? What hope would they have?”
“They would build a fleet of ships. They would come to our coasts. They would attempt to land,” said Jake. “Let them try it. Oh, God, let them try it.”
“There are traitors here,” said Captain Girling. “We must beware of the traitors within.”
“Plaguey Papists,” said Jake. “And now with this Queen above the Border! The Queen of Scots, recently Queen of France, could lead an army into England if she could find the support from traitors here on land and the King of Spain from the sea.”
“War!” I said. “Oh, I pray not war.”
“There are continual forages on the Border,” said Girling. “Our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth is shrewd. She seeks to cause friction among the Scottish nobles and, by God, they are a quarrelsome crowd. ’Tis said that she herself did all possible to further the marriage of the Scottish Queen with Lord Darnley, while pretending to oppose it. That fellow is no good to Mary. He’s a swaggering braggart, a lecher, a coward, and he greatly desires the Crown Matrimonial of Scotland. If the Queen of Scots is wise she’ll keep him in his place, which is not on the throne with her.”
“While I have been away,” I said, “the situation has become grave between England and Scotland.”
“It was so since Mary’s husband, the young King of France, died and she lost her position overnight,” said Captain Girling. “The Medici woman made it clear that she must get out and where could she go but to her own country of Scotland?”
“Let us not forget,” added Jake, “that she dared call herself the Queen of England. Our Lady Elizabeth will not forget that, I am sure.”