Chapter 4 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
SIR GERVASE
On a fair August day, Mr. Crosby made one of a numerous company assembled in a spacious panelled chamber of the palace of Whitehall.
It was a day of calm, and of blue skies, delusive interlude in the fury of the weather which had lately turned stormy, with frequent tempests that shook the earth and the heavens and made seamen thankful that they had turned back when they did from the pursuit of the Spaniards, and so had brought their ships in safety to the Thames before the change set in.
The sun shone radiantly through the leaded panes of the tall windows overlooking the river and the Palace steps, where the barges were now moored which had brought the Admiral and his numerous company to answer the summons of the Queen of England.
Mr. Crosby, in mingled pride and awe to find himself in so considerable and distinguished an assembly, looked about him with interest. The room was hung with pictures, all of which were veiled; there was an Eastern carpet of brilliant variegated colouring on a square table by which he was standing in the room's middle; against the panelling were ranged some chairs, tall-backed and carved, each bearing upon its scarlet velvet an escutcheon whereon the leopards of England, or on gules, were quartered with the lilies of France, or on azure.
These chairs were empty, all save one, which was taller and ampler than the rest and equipped with arms ending in carved and gilded leonine heads.
In this chair, placed between two of the windows with its back to the light, sat a woman whom at first glance you might have supposed an Eastern idol, so bejewelled and bedizened was she. Her leanness was dissembled by a bulging farthingale. Her red-raddled face was lean and sharp with a thin aqualine nose and a very pointed, ill-tempered chin. The darkness of her eyebrows had been supplied by a pencil, and her lips were of a startling scarlet, in which Nature had no hand. Above the brow, which was almost masculine in its loftiness and breadth, towered a monstrous head-tire of false yellow hair in which a bushel of strung pearls were interwoven. Rows upon rows of pearls covered her neck and breast as if to supply again the pearly beauty long since faded from her skin. From the summit of her gown a collar of lace of the proportions of an enormous fan spread itself upright behind her head. Pearls were slung from it; jewels blazed in it; more jewels smouldered in her gown, a cloth of gold wrought with an uncanny embroidery of green lizards. She made some play with a handkerchief that was edged with gold lace, and this served two purposes: to display a hand which, spared as yet by time, was extremely beautiful, and to conceal her teeth whose ageing darkness no art could yet dissemble for her.
Behind her and to right and left of her chair were ranged in line her ladies-in-waiting, a dozen women of the noblest and loveliest in England.
Mr. Crosby had heard the Queen described more than once by Lord Garth. In painting the portrait of the lady whom his ill-fated friend had loved, Roger Trevanion yielded to one of his few remaining enthusiasms, and out of this it may be that he coloured the picture over-generously. Hence, and forgetting that forty years were sped since the Earl of Garth had last beheld her, Mr. Crosby had entered the august presence in expectation of a radiant vision of feminine beauty. What he beheld dismayed him by its disparity with his mental portrait.
Her immediate supporters, too, added to the incongruity of the picture. The one upon her left was a tall lean gentleman all in black. His sharp-featured countenance ended in a long white beard which entirely failed to lend that crafty face a patriarchal air. This was Sir Francis Walsingham. In ludicrous contrast with him stood the Earl of Leicester on her right. Once reputed the handsomest man in England, he was now corpulent and ungainly of body, inflamed and blotchy of countenance. His gorgeous raiment and the arrogance with which he carried his head served only to heighten the absurdity of his aspect.
That the Queen did not find him absurd was instanced by the place he occupied, and still more by the fact that the land forces of England which were to have resisted Parma's landing had been under the Earl of Leicester's supreme command. As a deviser and leader of pageants, it is probable that he had not his equal in England, if, indeed, in Europe. But it was fortunate for England, and for Leicester, that English seamen had made it unnecessary for him to exercise those talents in attempting to withstand the Prince of Parma.
With these same valiant English seamen was this assembly now concerned. Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord Admiral, towering straight and tall before the Queen, was rendering her a first-hand account of those actions in the Channel which had delivered England from the awful menace of Spain. His lordship was brisk and succinct in his narrative. At moments too succinct to please her grace, who now and again would arrest him to crave more details of this or a closer explanation of that. This occurred when the Lord Admiral spoke of the difficulty in which they found themselves when Medina-Sidonia was at anchor in French waters, and related that having made a close survey of his position they sent in fireships to burn him out. He would have swept on with no more than that, to relate the morrow's action, but the queen checked him in terms of his own trade.
"God's death, man! Haul down some of your sail. You drive so fast before the wind that we cannot follow. This survey at close quarters, how was it made? You have not told us that."
He supplied the details in a silence of intense attention which may have inspired him to a certain liveliness of phrase. The Queen laughed. So did others, thrilled by the narrative of personal valour.
"Faith," she told him, "you're better as a sailor than a story-teller; you leave out the choicest morsels."
Then came a question that sent a quiver through Mr. Crosby. "What was the name of the man who sailed that pinnace?"
Gervase heard his own name. It terrified him. It seemed to his straining ears that Lord Howard rolled it out in tones of thunder upon the silence. He blushed like a girl, shifting uncomfortably on his feet, and saw as if through a mist the faces of some of those of his acquaintance who stood about him, as they now turned their heads to give him a smile of friendly satisfaction. Then his thoughts flew to Margaret. If only she could have been there to hear him named she must have accounted herself justified of her faith in him and her promise to become his wife.
The Lord Admiral's narrative drew to a close. The Queen pronounced it, in a voice made sonorous by the depth of her emotion, as brave a tale as the world had ever heard, and alluded to her thankfulness to God for this good and prosperous success to those who had fought this battle against the enemies of His Gospel. Not Spain alone, but England too—and, from the results, with better justification—might account herself the instrument of divine justice.
Followed the presentation by the Lord Admiral of the captains of the fleet under his command and other officers who had distinguished themselves in that great battle in the Channel. To each the Queen spoke some word of commendation, whilst upon three of them she bestowed the accolade with a sword supplied by the Earl of Leicester.
After that, Lord Howard's place was taken by the Vice-Admiral, Sir Francis Drake, upon whom devolved the duty of presenting the captains and some other officers of the privateers, nearly all of them West-country gentlemen of family, many of whom had fitted ships at their own charges. The sturdy seaman rolled forward on his short thick legs as if a heaving poop were under his feet. He was resplendent in a suit of white satin which gave his bulk the appearance of having been suddenly increased. His beard was newly-trimmed, his crisp brown hair sedulously combed and oiled and there were rings of pure gold in the lobes of his close-set ears.
He bowed low, announced his purpose in a voice that was like a trumpet-call, and began his presentations.
The first was a neighbour of Mr. Crosby's, Oliver Tressilian of Penarrow. He was half-brother to that Lionel Tressilian who came too much to Trevanion Chase for Mr. Crosby's peace of mind But you would have looked at the men in vain for evidence of relationship. Where Lionel was fair and mincing, elegant, soft and sleek as a woman, this Oliver, tall, resolute and swarthy, was of an almost overwhelming maleness. His mien was commanding, his bearing proud to the point of arrogance. To behold him as he made now his leisurely advance was to recognise him for one born to mastership. And although still young, his deeds already bore out the promise of his person. He had been schooled in seamanship at the hands of Frobisher; he had come to the support of Drake with a strong ship of his own, and to his audacity and resource as much as to any other cause had been due the capture of the Andalusian flagship, an event which early in the fight had put such heart into the English seamen.
The Queen's dark short-sighted eyes conned him with unmistakable admiration as he knelt at her footstool.
The sword flashed up and descended smartly upon his shoulder. "Such men as you, Sir Oliver, are to be considered as persons born for the preservation of the country." Those were the terms in which she dubbed him knight.
None grudged him the honour. He was one for whom a great future was predicted, and it was not to be foreseen that by the wickedness of men, the apparent inconstancy of his mistress and finally the operations of the Holy Office, the fame for which he was reserved was to be won under the banner of Islam. As a Moslem Corsair, Sakrel-Bahr, the Hawk of the Sea, he was destined to become one of the scourges of Christianity. It was a destiny none could have prophesied as he rose proudly from his knees that day, honoured and commended.
After him, one by one, came the other privateers. First the captains, and then those lesser officers who had served with more than ordinary distinction. And the first of these whom Sir Francis named was Gervase Crosby.
He stood forth, tall and supple. He had dressed himself—or rather, Killigrew had seen to it that he was dressed—in a brave suit of murrey velvet, with slashed cannions to his trunks and rosettes to his shoes. He wore a short cloak in the Italian fashion, and a. narrow white ruff sharpened the outline of his face. Excessively young for a man of his deeds he looked in his shaven beardlessness; for never since Margaret's condemnation of beards nearly a year ago had he suffered the hair to grow upon his face.
The Queen's dark eyes seemed to soften a little as they watched his approach, and they were not the only feminine eyes that pondered him with admiration. More than one of her maids of honour considered him with interest.
He went down on his knees to kiss her hand, and she frowned almost in perplexity as she surveyed the top of his head with its rippling auburn hair worn close. Having kissed her beautiful hand, he would have got to his feet again.
"Here's haste!" said she in her gruff voice. "Kneel, child, kneel! Who bade thee rise?"
Realising his fault he blushed to the nape of his neck and continued kneeling. She turned to Sir Francis.
"Is this he who went sailing in the pinnace among the Spanish ships in Calais Roads?"
"The same, your grace."
She looked at Gervase again. "God's death! Why it's a child!"
"His age is older than his looks; and his deeds are older than his age."
"They are so," she agreed. "By God, they are!"
Mr. Crosby was increasingly ill-at-ease and wished from his heart that she would 'make an end of this. But she was not minded to make an end just yet. His young comeliness gave his exploit a special heroism in her feminine eyes, stirred a little enthusiasm in her intensely feminine soul.
"That was a brave thing you did," she told him gently, to be gruff with him the next moment. "God's death, child, look at me when I speak to you." I suspect that she desired to see the colour of his eyes. "It was as brave a thing as I've heard this day, and God knows a feast of valour has been spread before me. Don't you agree, Sir Francis?"
Sir Francis drew himself up a little from his deferentially bending attitude.
"He was schooled by me in seamanship, Madam," he replied, as who would say: "What else do you expect from a pupil of that academy?"
"It deserves, I think, some special mark of favour, both to reward it and to encourage others to the like."
And then, a bolt from the blue to him who had been very far from expecting any guerdon, the flat of the sword smote him on the shoulder, and the command to arise, so long delayed to his discomfort, came in terms which made him realise that a man may be in too great haste to get up from kneeling to a sovereign.
Standing, he marvelled that he had not earlier observed her singular beauty; that upon his first glimpse of her he had wanted to laugh. What, he wondered, could have ailed him.
"God bless your majesty," he blurted out in his Intoxication.
She smiled at him, and there was something wistful in the lines of her ageing mouth and reddened lips. She was unusually gracious that day.
"He has blessed me richly already, lad, in giving me subjects such as these."
He effaced himself after that, and went to join Oliver Tressilian, who offered to carry him back to the Fal in his ship.
Gervase was in haste to return, to carry to the lady whom he pictured waiting there, this dazzling, bewildering news of his advancement. Drake permitting it, and excusing him from the great thanksgiving service that was to be held in St. Paul's, he departed on the morrow with Tressilian. Sir John Killigrew, who had been in London during the past ten days, went with them. Of the bitter feud that was later to mar the good relations between Killigrew and Tressilian there was as yet no sign. Sir John, however, was elated by the achievement of his young kinsman.
"You shall have a ship of your own, boy, if I have to sell a farm to fit it," he had promised him. "All I ask," he added, for with all his generosity there was a practical mercenary streak in him, "is a quarter share in the ventures you will undertake."
That ventures were to be undertaken was readily assumed, as also that they would be more than usually profitable now that the might of Spain upon the seas had been so signally impaired. And this was the subject of most of their talk during the voyage to the Fal on Sir Oliver's ship, the Rose of the World. He had named her so, it is to be supposed, in honour of Rosamund Godolphin, whom he loved, and upon the assumption—erroneous I believe—that her name was a contraction of Rosa Mundi.
On the last day of August, the Rose of the World rounded Zoze Point and came to anchor in Carrick Roads.
Sir John and his kinsmen took their leave of Tressilian and went ashore at Smithwick to climb the heights to stately Arwenack, whence on a clear day the view extended to the Lizard, fifteen miles away.
No sooner did they reach it than Gervase was away again. He would not even stay to dine, although it was already past the hour of dinner Now that Tressilian was home, the news of events in London might reach Trevanion Chase at any moment, and this was dangerous to the satisfaction which Gervase hoped to derive from being the first to announce to Margaret those details which concerned himself. Killigrew, perceiving the reason of his haste, rallied him upon it, but let him go, and sat down to dine alone.
Although the distance from door to door was less than two miles, the properties adjoining, yet such was Gervase's haste that, having called for a horse, he must ride it at the gallop.
In the avenue approaching the big red house with its tall twisted chimneys he found a groom in the blue livery of the Godolphins waiting with three horses, and learned that Peter Godolphin and his sister Rosamund, together with Lionel Tressilian, were at the Chase, having stayed there to dine. As it was already close upon three o'clock they would soon be leaving. Gervase was relieved. The sight of the waiting horses had led him almost to fear that despite the haste he had made he might have been forestalled.
He found them in the garden, even as on that day, two years ago, when he had gone to the Chase to take his leave of Margaret. Then, however, he had been an aspirant for fame. To-day he returned in the effulgence of achievement. Success had crowned him, the Queen had knighted him. His name would be repeated among Englishmen; it would be inscribed upon the scroll of history. The memory of that accolade at Whitehall invested Sir Gervase with a new assurance. The dignity of knighthood had entered into his blood, was reflected in his bearing.
He sent ahead the servant who received him, to announce him.
"Sir Gervase Crosby, may it please your ladyship." Thus did he break his news to them as he came briskly, in his brave murrey suit, his head high, in the servant's wake.
For a moment Margaret was breathless. The colour ebbed from her face to come surging back on a flood tide. Amazement smote similarly her three companions, those two gallants and the sister of one of them, the gentle, fair-headed, saintly-looking Rosamund Godolphin, still a child of not more than sixteen years, but already woman enough to have fired the heart of the masterful elder Tressilian.
Gervase and Margaret looked at each other, and for a heart-beat may have seen naught but each other. Had he found her alone, there can be no doubt he would have taken her in his arms, as he accounted his right by virtue of her last words to him at parting two years ago. The unwelcome presence of those others compelled some measure of circumspection. He must confine himself to taking her hand and, bending low, content his lips with that as an earnest of more to come anon when he should have driven out those intruders.
To this task he addressed himself from the outset.
"I landed less than an hour ago on Pendennis Point," he announced, so that Margaret might judge for herself with what eager speed he had sought her. He turned to the younger Tressilian. "Your brother brought us back from London in his ship."
Rosamund broke in with startled eagerness.
"Oliver is home?" It was the tall slim girl's turn to go pale and breathless, whereat her handsome brother frowned. Although prudence and expediency made him maintain a pretence of friendliness with the Tressilians, there was no real love lost between him and them. He found them in rivalry with him on every hand. His interests were beginning to clash with theirs in the countryside, and he viewed with anything but favour the affection which had sprung up between his sister and the elder of them. There was an unpleasant surprise in store for him from Gervase.
"The Rose of the World," he said, answering the lady, "is anchored in Carrick Roads, and Sir Oliver will be home by now."
"Sir Oliver!" both men echoed in a breath. And Lionel repeated the questioning exclamation: "Sir Oliver?"
Gervase smiled, almost with condescension, and hung upon his answer an account of how he had received his own honours.
"He was knighted by the Queen in the same hour as myself at Whitehall on Monday last."
Margaret stood with her arm about the waist of the willowy Rosamund. Her own eyes sparkled, whilst Rosamund's looked oddly moist. Lionel frankly laughed his pleasure at his brother's advancement. Peter Godolphin alone saw here no cause for satisfaction. This thing would make these Tressilians more insufferable than ever; it gave them an unquestionable advantage over him in local influence. He sneered. He was very ready always with his sneers.
"Faith! Honours must have fallen thick as hail."
Sir Gervase caught the sneer, but kept his temper. He met it by assuming a still, loftier condescension. He looked down his nose at Mr. Godolphin.
"Not quite so thickly, sir, and only where the Queen's discernment perceived them to be deserved." He might have let the matter lie upon that reminder that to sneer at honours is to sneer at who bestows them. But he pursued the matter a little further. Pride in the advancement which had come upon him so unexpectedly may have intoxicated him a little, considering his youth. "I quote, I think her majesty, or if not her majesty at least Sir Francis Walsingham. I will not swear which of them it was who said—but I know that it was one of them—that England's best make up the twenty-thousand that sailed out to meet and break the might of Spain. A score of knighthoods, sir, comes to but one for every thousand. None so thick a shower when all is said. Had every man been knighted, it would still have been foolish to sneer at a measure which could but serve to distinguish them hereafter from those who stayed at home, and—sheltered themselves behind their valour."
It made an awkward silence, and a little frown of perplexed annoyance descended upon the brow of the Lady Margaret. Then Peter stiffly answered him.
"You use a deal of words, sir, to say a little, and your meaning is obscured in verbiage."
"Will you have the marrow of it?" wondered Sir Gervase.
"In heaven's name, no!" It was Margaret who spoke, a determined resolute Margaret. "We'll have no more of this. My father, Gervase, will be glad to see you. You'll find him in the library."
It was a dismissal, and deeming it unjust, it made him angry. But still he veiled his annoyance. He smiled quite pleasantly. "I'll stay until you are free to take me to him."
Upon that, in secret resentment, and with the curtest of nods to Gervase, the men took their leave, and Godolphin carried off his sister with him.
When they had gone the Lady Margaret looked at her lover with gloom in her eyes and a wry little smile on her lips. Slowly she shook her head at him. "It was ill done, Gervase."
"Ill done? God Lack!" To remind her of the cause, he mimicked Peter Godolphin with an exaggerated simper. "'Faith! Honours must have fallen thick as hail!' Was that well done? Am I to be rallied by any popinjay for what my merits have earned me? Am I to kiss the rod of his providing and turn the other cheek? Is that how you would have your husband behave?"
"My husband!" said she, and stared at him. Then she laughed. "Remind me, pray, of when it was I married you. I vow that I've forgot."
"You'll not have forgot that you promised to marry me?
"I remember no such promise," said she in the same light tone.
He weighed the words rather than the manner. They set him breathing hard, caused him to pale under his tan. "Will you go back on your word, Margaret?"
"And now you are unmannerly."
"I am concerned with more than pretty manners, madam." He was growing vehement, overbearing, and she ever calm and cool, disliking vehemence either in herself or others, began to be seriously annoyed. He hectored on. "There was a promise you gave me in the hall, there, as I was leaving: a promise that you would marry me."
She shook her head. "As I remember it, my promise was that I would marry no man but you."
"Why what's the difference?
"It lies in that I may keep that promise and yet keep to my intention of following the Queen's example and continuing all my days in my maiden estate it I so choose."
He turned it over in his mind. "And do you so choose?"
"I must until I am persuaded to choose otherwise."
"How may you be persuaded?" he demanded, almost challengingly, wounded in his tenderest sensibilities and simmering with indignation at what he must account an unworthy quibble. "How may you be persuaded?"
She looked him between the eyes, standing straight and tense. "Certainly not in any way that you've yet chosen to pursue," said she, quite calm and cool and mistress of herself.
The elation in which he had come, the pride in his knightly rank so newly-attained, the swagger it had lent him, all fell from him now. He had thought to dazzle her—and, indeed, to dazzle all the world—with his honours and the echo of the deeds that had earned them. Realisation was so vastly different from his exalted expectations that his heart turned to lead in his breast. The auburn head which he had carried so proudly even at Whitehall, was lowered at last. He contemplated the ground. He became humble.
"I'll choose any way that you may desire for me," he said, "for I love you, Margaret. To you I owe my knighthood, for the deeds that won it me were inspired by you. In all I bore myself as if your eyes had been upon me, with no thoughts save to do that which should give you pride in me could you behold it. The reward I have won and all that may follow upon this are naught to me unless you share them with me."
He looked up, and saw that he had touched her, melted her a little from the smooth hardness of her mood. She was smiling now with a hint of tenderness. He set himself to follow up the advantage.
"I vow you use me ill," he protested, and thus introduced again contentious matters. "You give a chilly welcome to the eager haste in which I seek you."
"You chose to be quarrelsome," she reminded him.
"Was I not provoked? Was I not sneered at by that Godolphin whelp?" Again he became impatient. "Is all that I do wrong and all that he does right in your eyes? What is Mr. Godolphin to you that you espouse his quarrels."
"He is my kinsman, Gervase."
"Which gives him license to affront me. Is that your meaning?
"Shall we forget Mr. Godolphin?" said she.
"With all my heart," he cried, whereupon she laughed and took his arm.
"Come and pay your duty to my father. You shall tell him of your fine deeds upon the sea, and I will listen. I may be so beglamoured by the tale as to forgive you everything."
It did not seem to him in justice that he had need of forgiveness. But he desired no more disputes.
"And then, Margaret?" he asked her eagerly.
She laughed again. "Lord what a man it is for out-racing time! Can you not await the future in patience without ever seeking to foretell it?"
He looked at her in doubt a moment. Then he thought he read a challenge in her eyes. He took the risk of acting upon it. He caught her in his arms, and kissed her. And since she suffered it this time without resentment it would seem that he had read aright the challenge.
They went in to disturb the studies of the Earl.