Elizabethan Lover

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1The road was dusty and deep-rutted from the snow of the past winter. The horse had to pick its way warily, but his master raised his face to the green budding of the trees overhanging the road and drew a sudden deep breath as they came upon a wood carpeted with bluebells.

He had forgotten the miracle of spring in England, Rodney Hawkhurst thought. After months at sea it was breathtaking. It made him feel almost absurdly sentimental and at the same time excited as he had been years ago when he first set out on a life of adventure. Now at twenty-nine he thought himself old and blasé only to find that the spring could arouse his emotions as easily as a woman might have done.

He drew his plumed hat from his head and felt the breeze upon his forehead. He had ridden hard and fast and had long since left behind his servants and the packhorses carrying his luggage.

He felt the need to be alone. He wanted to think and to plan in his own mind what he was to say when he arrived at Camfield Place. He had heard many conflicting reports of Sir Harry Gillingham at Whitehall, but the majority had been reassuring. Sir Harry was rich and generous and there was no reason to doubt that, were a proposition put to him in a proper manner, he would agree to it.

It meant so much to Rodney, more than he dared allow himself to think, and if Sir Harry refused, where else could he turn for help? As he thought of failure, his lips set themselves in the hard line of obstinacy and his chin squared itself.

Failure was something he had not previously encountered in his life and he did not intend to anticipate it now. He must succeed, of course he must succeed, as he had done in so many other ways.

Deep in his thoughts he had almost reached a pair of high, imposing iron gates before he realised where he was. He had arrived – here was his destination and here was the beginning of his quest – a quest for gold!

The gates were open and the horse passed through them. The drive ahead was bordered by great trees and a profusion of flowering shrubs. There were lilac bushes heavy with purple and mauve blossom whose fragrance seemed to scent the air and made the traveller forget once again his anxiety as he glanced around him.

Laburnum trees were fountains of gold, chestnut blooms starred the trees like Christmas candles, pink and white. An early cuckoo called from the dark boughs of the cedars, there was a glimpse of lawns ahead, soft and lush as green velvet.

It was spring! and Rodney felt light-hearted and assured at the beauty of it.

Then, as his horse carried him forward slowly, something flew swiftly through the air, striking his hat and casting it violently from his head.

He turned startled, yet with that alertness to danger which comes to men who have lived close to it for many years. He looked not to where his hat had fallen in the dust, pierced by a fine arrow, but in the direction whence it had come. The lilac bushes were swaying as if someone moved behind their screening leaves.

With a swiftness that bespoke an athletic body, well trained and utterly subject to the man, Rodney Hawkhurst leapt from his horse and in three strides reached the bushes, plunging into them he seized hold of someone who was hiding there.

He had moved so quickly that he himself had not expected that the fierce hardness of his hands would encounter anything so soft as a white shoulder. But before he had time to consider, he had gripped it fiercely and dragged its owner out on to the grass which bordered the drive.

He saw then that it was a woman he held captive, or rather, a girl. She was twisting and turning in his grasp and for a moment it took all his strength to hold her. Then, as his fingers tightened against her struggles, she was suddenly still.

“Let me go!”

She raised her face to his, throwing back as she did so a cloud of golden-red hair which hung loosely around her small oval face. Her eyes were strangely green, set beneath arched eyebrows which were drawn together now in an angry scowl.

“Did you loose that arrow at me?” Rodney asked.

Her lips pouted for a moment and then suddenly she smiled.

“’Twas but a jest.”

Her smile was irresistible and Rodney found himself smiling back. She was a lovely, roguish child and he imagined she must be the daughter of some employee on the place, he could see that she wore a white apron and her loosened hair told him that she had no social position. But she was pretty – her breasts were round beneath the tightness of her gown, and at sea one had only dreams of fair women with which to relieve the loneliness of the long nights when one’s arms ached to hold something warm and soft within them.

“If it were a jest,” Rodney said severely, “’twas a costly one, for my hat is ruined and I bought in it Cheapside but a week ago.”

“I could perhaps mend it for you,” the girl suggested.

There was no apology in her eyes and her mouth still curved in a smile which had grown mischievous, and strangely enticing.

“By Heaven you shall pay for it!” Rodney exclaimed.

“Pay for it?” She echoed the words in surprise as his arms tightened round her and he drew her closer to him.

His kiss was something she did not expect, for his lips found hers unprepared, unarmed, and for one long moment she was still beneath his strength. Her mouth was sweet and very soft. He could feel the beat of her heart against his, and then with a little cry and with a sudden violence which caught him unawares she had wrenched herself from his grasp.

Before he could stop her, before, indeed, he realised what she was about, she had run away from him through the thick leaves of the lilac bushes and was gone.

He knew it would be impossible to follow her and he felt, too, that it might prove a little undignified. Smiling, he returned to the drive and, picking up his hat, drew the sharp-pointed arrow from the crown.

For a moment he held the arrow in his hand, undecided whether to keep it or to throw it away, then he chucked it down on the grass and, mounting his horse, continued his journey down the drive.

The interlude had been unexpected and amusing. If Sir Harry’s daughter was as attractive as the red-haired wench he had just kissed he would not regret the decision he had made before he left London. It was his god-father who had put the idea of marriage into his head.

“I have known Harry Gillingham since he was a boy,” he told Rodney. “He is, if it pleases him, as generous as he is rich, but he expects value for his money, and as far as I know he has always obtained it. If you want him to finance you, you will have to offer something in return.”

“He will get paid a good dividend right enough,” Rodney replied.

The Queen’s Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, smiled.

“Let us hope that you can give us the four thousand seven hundred per cent that Drake paid after his voyage round the world!”

“’Tis not as easy as it was,” Roger admitted. “The Spaniards are growing wary, the gold ships are guarded, but if I can get my ship, I will bring home the booty even as Drake has done. I have not sailed with him for these past ten years without learning something of the trade.”

“I would put up all the money myself if I had it,” Sir Francis sighed, his sallow, thoughtful face regretful. “The last venture in which I invested brought me ten thousand pounds, but at the moment I cannot spare more than two. You can have that with my blessing, and an introduction to Harry Gillingham, asking him to supply the rest.”

“What will he expect of me?” Rodney asked.

“Yes, we must not forget that.” his god-father said, smiling. “Harry has a daughter of marriageable age. There are rumours that he won’t bring her to London because his new wife is jealous of her. Try your hand there, my boy. A man with a young wife is always ready to be rid of the tangles and burdens of family life.”

Rodney Hawkhurst had not been displeased with the idea. Most men, when they returned from the sea, wanted a home to be waiting for them. They were not concerned with the long, weary months that a wife must wait, lonely and anxious, when her husband was away. They thought only of the peace and comfort of their own homecoming.

“Besides,” Rodney told himself, “when I am rich enough, I shall settle down.”

He was shrewd enough to realise that a corsair’s life was a precarious existence and though fortune might favour one for many years, sooner or later the tide would turn and one’s luck would run out. He was far-seeing enough to plan not only for the present, but for the future, Like Drake, he wanted to buy a house and estates. Like Drake, he would take to himself a wife, but unlike that intrepid sailor, once he was rich, he would settle down and make a good husband and an indulgent father.

A turn in the drive brought Rodney in sight of a great home built of red brick and glowing in the sunlight of the afternoon. It was a house of gables with an exquisite oriel thrown out like a wing, a house of high mullioned windows, each of their diamond panes sparkling iridescent as a jewel.

Before the house were well-laid out flower-beds, edged with rosemary, lavender, marjoram and thyme, while dark yew hedges were decorated with topiary work.

Someone must have been looking out for Rodney, for as he neared the front door servants came running out to take his horse and to assist him alight, and before he could enter the house, Sir Harry came out on the steps to welcome him.

Large and portly, Sir Harry cultivated his resemblance to King Henry VIII, not only in his appearance, but also in his private life.

He led Rodney through the rush-strewn Hall into the Great Chamber and introduced him to his Lady.

“This is my wife, Master Hawkhurst,” he beamed. “My third wife, as it happens, and who knows how many more there will be before I die?”

It was a jest that must have been made often before, for while Sir Harry shook with laughter, Lady Gillingham showed not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash that she heard what he said. She was dark and pretty, Rodney noticed, and could not have been a day over twenty-one. She glanced at him from under her eyelashes and it seemed to him that her hand lingered a little longer than was necessary in his.

There was something in the expression in her eyes and the faint turn of her lips that was familiar. He had seen that look and that expression on a woman’s face all too often these past months since he had been ashore.

He turned to look at Sir Harry again and saw that he was nearing sixty and knew that those at Whitehall who had called him an “old reprobate” were not mistaken.

“A glass of Charneco, my boy,” Sir Harry said. “Do you find the journey from London wearisome?”

“Not in the least, sir,” Rodney answered, taking a goblet of the dark red wine which a servant poured from a jug of Venice glass. “My horse was fresh and it took a surprisingly short time. I am afraid my servants and the luggage are left far behind.”

They will turn up,” Sir Harry said. “My wife has made every preparation for them, haven’t you, Catherine, my love?”

“Of course, my Lord,” Lady Gillingham answered in a voice which purred like a well-fed cat. “We only hope that Master Hawkhurst will be comfortable here, although after his exciting adventures with Sir Francis Drake, it is to be expected that he will find us country folk dull and staid.”

“On the contrary, Mistress,” Rodney replied. “It is a joy to be on shore again and more than that to see the countryside at this moment. I had forgotten how lovely England – and all it contains – could be.”

He looked boldly at Catherine Gillingham as he spoke. She caught the innuendo, as he intended that she should. Her eyes dropped before his. Rodney realised all too well what she wanted of him. A young wife with an old husband – how banal and hackneyed a plot it was, and yet his instinct told him he must be careful. He must get Lady Gillingham on his side so that she would not influence Sir Harry against him, and yet at the same time he must not arouse Sir Harry’s jealousy.