Here Was a Man: A Novel of Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I - Softcover

Chapter One

Budleigh Point in the County of Devon
June 23, 1568

We've only one virginity to lose,
And where we lose it, there our hearts will be.

Old Harkess paused in his dragging of the boat to the water's edge, and listened. There were no sounds except the sighing of the summer sea and the swish of the wind through the rough grass at the cliff 's top, and he was not listening for those. He sighed, for he was an old man, and lazy, and a little help with the launching and the rowing was very welcome on these warm nights. He spat on his hands and took a fresh hold on the boat. Twice after that he paused, and the third time heard what he had been waiting for, the quick step, the hurried breathing, and presently the voice calling breathlessly, "Harky, wait for me. Harky."

Urgent as was the call, it was not loud, and the old man smiled in the darkness; a cautious one, Wally, for all his eagerness. He called back, quietly, "Ahoy, lad." Out of the shadows a figure came stumbling, threw itself silently upon the boat, and with the old man's apparent help, dragged it into the water. As they clambered in the boy said, with reproach in his voice, "I believe you were going without me."

"I didn't want to. I like a bit of company, as you know. But 'twas getting latish and the nights are short now. I thought they'd kept you in up at the house."

"They tried. Father locked me in, but thank God I'm still thin enough for the window, and light enough for the wisteria."

"You won't allust be. What'll you do then?"

"I'll be gone before then. I'm to go to Oxford this autumn."

"I shall miss you, Wally."

"Not as much as I shall you, Harky. Any boy who'll lend you a hand is the same to you. You're Odysseus to me."

"What's that?"

"A bald sailor who was always talking."

"Nice thing to call me!"

"High praise really. Where're you making for?"

"Straight out from the Point. 'Tis a French ship with a cargo of best Bordeaux. 'S' pity your father's so set against the night wine, Wally. Many's the cheap drink he might have."

"Oh, father." The boy's voice was a shrug. "He's got trouble enough without running foul of the Excise men. Devon men are always wrong; they upset Mary by being Protestant, and now Elizabeth is all against the privateering."

"Only when it's near home, lad. If your father and his friends were busy in the Indies she'd call them the brightest jewels in her crown."

The word "Indies" struck like a gong in the boy's mind.

"Here, I'll row, Harky. You take a rest. She'll be heavier coming back."

Nothing loath the old man drew in his oars and sat back.

"Why's your father so set against the sea for you, Wally? He's a seaman himself."

"That's just why. There's nothing in it, he says. I'm to study for the law or the Church, and then look for preferment. Kate Ashley's a cousin of father's, and she has the Queen's ear and will speak for me."

"Well, no doubt that'd be a steady safe thing to be. But you'd be wasted as a clerk, lad."

"Maybe. Still, learning can do you no harm. Anyway, I can't be a sailor like Humphrey, I'm always sick at sea. Nights like this are all very well. And oh, but I've a mind to see the Indies and all that vast country beyond them."

"Ah, it's fair enough, some of it, and rich too. But you ain't so welcome there as you was in my young days. Thick with Spaniards, and the Indians so savage with the treatment they've had that they're waiting behind every tree to put a poisoned arrow through your guts."

"They'll all be wiped out soon, though. Remember what you were telling me the other night."

"About the thousands that were driven into the silver mines and never came out again? Yes, I dare say you're right. Still anybody that sets foot in that continent from now on'll have to fight every step, I'm thinking."

They both fell silent, the old man thinking of the far countries that had held no romance for him, that had been places where one was hungry or thirsty or in danger, and the boy thinking of the far countries too, but as places that drew him as inexplicably as a magnet draws a needle. He knew that Harkess would mock at his thoughts, could he know them. Harky said that four thousand slaves were driven into a silver mine, but he didn't see them in his mind's eye. He couldn't see, in that driving, the gesture of the conqueror. He didn't see the silver delved for by dark slaves from the dark earth, pouring its silver stream into the treasure galleons that sailed with it, stately into Cadiz. He didn't want Harky to think like that. Enough for him to supply the fact, and to leave the image unsullied by his thoughts. And in Harkess's simplicity and realism may have lain the secret of the enormous influence of his casual words upon young Raleigh's life.

Presently the dark hulk of a ship loomed up; Harkess took his oars again, and they drew alongside carefully. The wine in its roped casks was stowed neatly in the bottom of the boat; money changed hands, a few sentences were spoken in the smugglers' peculiar tongue that was neither French nor English, and Raleigh and Harkess began pulling for the shore. They spoke little, for the laden boat demanded all their care and strength; once Harkess spoke, but only to say, "Second cave, Wally."

Within about a hundred yards of the shore Raleigh halted his oars and turned his head, listening. Harkess stopped rowing and said quietly, "What is it?"

"Somebody's at the cave if I'm not mistaken. Can you hear anything?"

"Hearing's not what it was. But there...there was a light. God's breath, it's that Trebor, he's been on the watch for weeks. We can't land, Wally. We must pull round the Point and hope to get it all under cover at Mother Shale's before morning. If we don't you'll have the pleasure of the sight of me in the stocks. As for you, your father'd..."

"Flay me," said Raleigh.

Already there was a hint of coming light in the sky to the east and they bent their backs, working the oars like slaves in the galleys. To get round the Point was always a hard task, currents met there, and at intervals a swirl of frothy water betrayed the presence of hidden rocks. By the time they were round they could see each other, they had both discarded all clothes but their breeches and the sweat was running off them in streams. Once round, however, they were out of sight of whoever had been watching the cave, and stood a reasonable chance of retaining both their cargo and their liberty. Mother Shale's stood in a dip in the cliff, sheltered from view on all sides except that facing the sea. It was a long, low, rambling building which could be alehouse, farm, smugglers' rendezvous or brothel according to who came inquiring. There were always barrels in her cellar, but seldom the same barrels two nights running, and the same might be said of the horses in her stable.

She herself was a villainous old woman. She bore on her back the marks of a whipping that she had received through the streets of Exeter for being a wanton, long ago. That whipping had put her definitely on the side of the lawbreakers, and many a smuggler, rogue, and wench in trouble had had cause to bless those stripes.

She came to the window in response to a shower of pebbles sped from Raleigh's hand. Ten words from Harkess informed her of the night's doings and brought her stumbling to the door. In a quarter of an hour the wine was in her cellar, and the boat a foot below the sand in the cove beside the house. Meantime someone within doors had stirred up the ashes of the fire that seldom died completely, and soon Harkess and Raleigh, shivering in the cold morning air, were crouched beside it, wooden platters of fat bacon on their knees, and horn cups of strong ale in their hands. The boy, who had been awake all night and subjected to unusual strain for some hours, could barely stay awake long enough to finish his breakfast. He roused himself for just long enough to say to Harkess, "I must be getting back," but he never heard Harkess reply, "You can't go in that state, lad. And anyhow, you can't get home before they miss you." His head had fallen forward and he was asleep.

When he woke he became conscious first of the scent of new hay and then of the red glow with which he was surrounded. Then he saw the girl who had waked him looking at him. She had red smiling lips, and she was laughing at him. He sat up quickly and began to pick the hay from his hair and clothes, blushing slightly at the indignity of being caught so by a laughing girl. She laughed again, and catching up a handful of loose hay, tossed it over him, and said, "Sleepyhead. You've been asleep all day. Harkess is having his supper."

Raleigh scrambled to his feet, shaking the hay from his head, brushing it from his clothes. But the girl was in a teasing mind, and fast as he cleaned himself she tossed more on him. At last, more to gain time than from any desire to play with her, he gathered a great armful and dropped it on her from his superior position on top of the heap. With a little squeal she threw herself on him, the hay flew wildly for several minutes. The red rays of the sunset danced with dust, and at last, spent and breathless, they dropped down beside one another on the tousled mound, and looked at each other, panting. He saw then that she was both older than himself and very pretty. Her hair that was black where it hugged her head had a web of reddish light over it where the loose strands stood up in the sun. Her skin was like honey, and her parted lips showed little white teeth, and a pink, pointed tongue. In her sharp nose and chin lay the threat that in a few years she would be unmistakably old Mother Shale's granddaughter, but for the time being she was lovely. She pouted her lips to blow away a wisp of hair that had fallen over her nose, and then she leaned back, back until she was lying on the hay, with her arms curved above her head. The rolled-up sleeves of her cotton frock revealed the little blue veins that ran, slanting, fr...