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.
We dropped anchor. We went ashore with the children; Jake Pennlyon came with us. He had never looked more arrogantly proud. He was a sailor returning home with his booty, and he had taken his revenge on the Spaniard who had dared thwart him.
I was unprepared for what I found on the shore, for there was my mother.
She held out her arms and Honey and I ran to her; she hugged first me and then Honey and she kept saying, “My darling girls!” over and over again, while she laughed and cried and kissed us and touched our faces and held us at arm’s length to look at us before she held us again.
The children stood looking up at her wonderingly. We introduced her to them—Edwina, Roberto, Carlos and Jacko. Her eyes lingered on Roberto. She picked him up and said: “So this is my little grandson.” Then she did not forget to show equal interest in Edwina—her little granddaughter as she called her.
She was staying at Trewynd Grange, which Lord Calperton had put at her disposal. No member of his family had used it since the tragedy of Edward’s death. When Jake Pennlyon had set out to bring us back, my mother had prepared for the journey to Devon, so determined was she to be there to greet us as soon as we stepped onto English soil.
How strange to walk into the Grange again, to look up at that turret window from where I had first seen the galleon. My mother and I walked arm in arm, hands clasped. She could not speak of her emotion just then, though later doubtless she would.
As soon as the Rampant Lion had been sighted she had set the servants preparing a banquet, and the smells of savory meats and pies greeted us. It was so long since we had smelled such food and in spite of our emotion we were eager for it.
I went up to my old room; I stood at the turret window and looked out on the Hoe and the Rampant Lion dancing there on the waves.
My mother was behind me, and we were at last alone.
“Oh, my dearest Cat!” she said. “If you but knew.”
“I do know,” I said. “You were in my thoughts all the time.”
“What terrible experiences for you—and you little more than a child.”
“I am a mother too now.”
She looked at me anxiously. I started to tell her why we had been abducted, but she already knew. John Gregory had told her.
“And this man … you say he was good to you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“And you married him!”
“In the end it seemed the best thing to do. I had my son. Roberto was made heir to his estates. And I was fond of him, for he was good to me.”
She bowed her head. “I too married, Cat.”
“Rupert?” I asked.
She nodded.
“And my father?”
“He will never come back. He is dead, Cat. I have long known he was dead.”
“He was said to have disappeared mysteriously.”
“There was nothing mysterious about your father, Cat—at least no more than there is about all men and women. He was placed in the Abbey by the monk who was his father and so the legend was built up. He acquired his riches by selling the treasures of the Abbey and he died by an accident in the Abbey tunnels. That is all in the past and I have married Rupert.”
“You should have married him long ago, Mother.”
She said: “I am happy now. He wanted me to come here because he knows of my love for you, but he is eagerly awaiting my return.”
“And Kate?”
“She is as ever.”
“She did not marry again?”
“Kate does not wish to marry, though there are many who try to persuade her. She wishes to keep her freedom. She is rich, independent, she wants no man to govern her.”
“No man would ever govern her. She would govern him.”
“You still speak of her bitterly, Cat.”
“I still remember. And Carey?”
“He has a place at Court.”
“So you see him now and then?”