The Lost Duchess (36 page)

She picked up a napkin and wiped the table clean.

‘Be not troubled about finding us. We could easily agree signs with which we could alert you if we moved to another place, and tell you where we had gone. Through a signed document, the
Assistants could swear to safeguard all the belongings you leave behind. You could depart in good conscience knowing that this is the wish of all the Planters and with proof to that effect. They would see you as their saviour. Furthermore, let us not forget that Master Ferdinando has offered to receive you aboard his ships. Whether he would allow any Assistants to board is uncertain; he has previously denied them all that privilege. Once our Pilot returns –
if
he returns as I hope he will …’

White snorted and flicked ineffectually at the fly. ‘He’ll come back once he’s ridden out the storm. His Quartermaster and half the crew are still here on Roanoke. The swine won’t leave without them …’

She seized her chance. ‘Then you would be best placed to leave quickly without objection when he does. I beg you, sir: be ready to go for the sake of this city and its hundred and more souls, including your daughter and new granddaughter.’

White was silent. He placed the stripped quill neatly on the cleared table boards where a sliver of light cut tangentially across it. At length he spoke wearily. ‘I will consider all that you have said.’

‘Thank you, sir, for listening, though I am but a maid, and God bless you for all that you have done in founding this city. Virginia will be a testament to your vision as much as your observations and charts and most beautiful limnings.’

He made a noise that acknowledged he’d heard her but that was all. The wind whined outside and rustled the papers she had stacked under another weighty shell. Beyond that, nothing moved, though she fancied that White was closing his eyes.

She crept out quietly and made for the clearing, searching for Kit amongst the Planters repairing storm-damage to the buildings. After spotting him on a roof, she caught his attention when he came
down by waiting near a swaying ladder held in position by two men. She wouldn’t keep Kit or press him to do anything. She would be brief.

‘I think the Governor will leave,’ she murmured. ‘But he must be offered some written proof that he is acting at our request and exonerated from any censure.’

She outlined the terms of the document that White had intimated he would accept, and was gratified to see Kit nodding and looking very pleased with her.

‘We can do this,’ he said. ‘We have nothing to lose by trying.’ Then he regarded her steadily in a way that made her think he might have tried to take hold of her if they were not in the middle of the town, surrounded by a throng of busy people.

‘Now are you ready to go?’

She gave him a tight smile.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’

A warm flurry of wind snatched at her shawl and sent it whipping behind her as something clattered to the ground.

He turned to look and she stepped away. She had to get back to her mistress.

‘You will be safe,’ he said, calling after her.

She dodged around rippling puddles until the wind dropped suddenly and the sun blazed out; then the muddied earth steamed and she was dazzled by mirrored light.

Somehow she would keep near Kit and then, she was sure, everything would be all right.

*

This was a morning for setting sail. The sky was an intense blue with streaks of white vaulting under the heavens and a perfectly
clear horizon. A sweet warm breeze blew fresh from the southwest and the gulls were crying: ‘Come away. Come away.’ If he was to choose a day to be at sea then this would be it, with the call of freedom pumping through his veins, and the longing firing his blood: to hear again the slap of wind filling canvas and the thrum in the rigging, the creak of timbers and the deep booming in the hull, to feel the surge of a ship rising and dipping beneath him, the bows cutting through waves, leaping into life, full of the power of the skies.

From the shallow cliffs near the fort he looked out over the sound and saw the white trail of a wake and a small tawny sail. He recognised the pinnace instantly and was not surprised: Stafford was returning from Hatarask. Almost certainly that meant that Spicer was ready to leave in the flyboat, and probably the
Lion
was now offshore. Stafford would be coming for the mariners and whoever had been nominated to take the report back to Raleigh. The Governor would be leaving since he’d accepted that he should go. It meant that Emme would leave as well while he stayed behind. She’d be gone from him for good and, more than likely, he’d never sail the high seas again. A pang of remorse formed a lump in his throat and, though he tried to dismiss it, he could not shake his sense of loss. It was with a heavy heart that he turned to spread the word in the city. Everyone had to be ready who was going to leave with the ships. He had to be sure Emme was prepared and that might yet prove a trial; he still wasn’t convinced that she had accepted she was going. But the time for debate was over. The ships wouldn’t wait.

Perhaps his fears had been unfounded. When he alerted Emme to the probability that Stafford was coming to collect her, she thanked him for the news and left to prepare for the voyage. He got ready
as well, since he’d agreed to sail the pinnace back to Roanoke after Stafford boarded the
Lion.

White caused the most difficulty by continuing to vacillate over whether he would leave to summon help. It took further entreaties and a public rendering of the memorandum to which all the Assistants had set their hands and seals to get White reconciled to packing his bags. When Stafford brought the pinnace into the nearest mooring, a little creek close by the sandy bluff behind the fort, White was ready and waiting for him.

But Emme was not.

Kit looked at all the colonists gathered to bid White farewell and Emme was nowhere to be seen, yet the urgency was great, just as he’d supposed; Stafford confirmed it. Ferdinando was anchored off Hatarask and would brook no delay. He wouldn’t take the risk of getting caught in another storm. The flyboat was beyond the sandbar and the ships would sail before noon.

He had to ask Stafford to wait.

‘Mistress Murimuth should be here. I’ll go and fetch her.’

Stafford frowned but gave a nod. ‘Look lively about it, Kit.’

That set White into another bout of temporising.

‘But Mistress Murimuth is staying here, that is what I understood from her. If she is not staying I may need to reconsider …’

There was no time to remonstrate; Kit left Stafford to do that. He ran back to the Dares’ house where he found Emme as he had guessed. She was sitting by the crib, gently rocking the baby, and she couldn’t have looked less ready to go on a voyage. He clenched his jaw.

‘Get up now!’

She didn’t even glance at him but gazed down at the infant and carried on rocking the cradle.

‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘Virginia is sleeping.’

He strode over and hauled her to her feet. ‘You are going,’ he growled, letting some of his anger bubble out. He strengthened his grip on her. How could she do this?

‘You said you would go. Now is the time. You are jeopardising White’s departure. Ferdinando will not wait.’

‘I am jeopardising nothing,’ she said meekly, turning her head and looking at him with dark eyes, soft as a doe’s, and her look only inflamed him more because he knew she was deliberately appealing for his compassion, showing him a woman’s weakness. But he would not give in. She had to go now. He wrenched her towards the door.

She went limp in his hands, almost falling at his feet. He staggered in trying to hold her up. He would drag her away if he had to, pin her arms behind her back.

His hands tightened and he felt her begin to shake. That stopped him instantly. He didn’t mean to hurt her, only get her to leave. In a wave of remorse he released his hold, but his anger still raged inside him.

She backed away.

‘Listen to me,’ she murmured. ‘Governor White will not go unless I stay. I have agreed to look after his granddaughter. He knows that with me here Sir Walter will have to send relief; the Queen will make sure of that. Accept it, Kit. Let me be, and go and see the Governor on his way.’

The rage passed through him and left his hands clutching at air. She was throwing her chance away and all he could do was watch. He turned from her, choked with fury.

‘Very well, but I consider your defiance a poor repayment for my trust. You deceived me.’

‘I told you no lies.’

‘But a lie was what you let me believe.’

He marched out and didn’t look back. She had disappointed him and the tragedy of her fate would now be bound up with his. The chances were that, when relief finally came,
if
it came, they both would be dead. So be it. He had done his best to spare her.

But the suspicion still haunted him that he could have done more.

The wind was blowing stronger when the pinnace finally left. Stafford stood at the helm while Kit led the stroke and the mariners helped to row, and White still protested his reluctance to depart, arguing that he might yet remain even as Stafford gave the order to get underway. The Planters waved everyone off with a fanfare, and the pinnace left Port Ferdinando only two hours later, the flow being in their favour. After seeing White aboard the flyboat, the pinnace took Stafford and the mariners across to the
Lion.
Once there, Kit had the satisfaction of hearing Ferdinando vent his exasperation over Mistress Murimuth being left behind, an anger directed at the hapless Quartermaster. There could be no going back for her with the wind getting up.

Kit was left on the pinnace, with Rob and a few others who would stay on at Roanoke, briefly in command at the fringes of the ocean. He looked out to the northeast, to the crossing he would not make, then back to the ships that would undertake the great journey. He saw the
Lion
set sail and watched the flyboat prepare to follow, the men at the flyboat’s capstan labouring to haul up the anchor, backs bent as they strained to push round the bars, two to each of the six spars, turning the drum by degrees. But then disaster struck as fast as a bolt from the heavens. The next instant they
lay crippled, limbs shattered and broken; blood flooded the deck; screams rent the air.

He told Emme what had happened when he got back to the island.

‘One of the capstan bars broke. Those remaining spun round so fast they knocked the men down like skittles. The anchor must have snagged and the strain was too much. Even a second attempt wouldn’t shift it and that led to more casualties. In the end, Spicer cut the cable and lost the anchor to get away – not good for a ship without a boat, since all the tenders have been left here at Roanoke. Ten of the crew were badly injured, and some of them most likely won’t last out the crossing. Only five men and Captain Spicer were left fit enough to work the ship.’

‘Will they continue?’

‘They have little choice if they’re to get White back to England without any more delay. Ferdinando wants to go privateering once he reaches the Azores.’

Kit looked at her, hair haloed by the light from an open window, sitting at the table in the strong-house where White used to preside over meetings. They were in a room that seemed curiously peaceful after the heated arguments he’d heard in it recently, fists thumping the boards where now her hands gently stroked the wood-grain. He was still cross with her, but in an aimless way that left him more annoyed with his own lack of foresight. He should have anticipated what she’d do; perhaps deep down he’d always known she would try to stay. He was also, if he was honest with himself, exceedingly pleased that she had not left, and even more pleased that she seemed eager to talk. At least she’d not been caught up in the disastrous start to the flyboat’s voyage. Perhaps
good fortune had saved her from something worse than the present danger. Though the Dares’ baby and Georgie were undoubtedly the real reasons for her remaining, he still cherished the notion that maybe she cared for him a little, despite his chequered past, and his revelation about Ololade which must have upset her, and the anger he had shown her which he should have kept under control. Her determination to defy him and stay on Roanoke had been both brave and selfless; he could not fault her for that. In truth she humbled him.

She pursed her lips and tipped her head on one side. The simple clothes she wore suited her, though only a few months ago he’d admired her in ruffs and finery. He liked to see her in blue homespun with a shawl over her shoulders, the fabric loose about her and shaping her fine figure without wires and ties and all the paraphernalia of display. She looked like the goodwife he’d once dreamt of coming home to, before capture and escape to live as an outlaw and then as an adventurer. He’d make a poor husband now. But he must concentrate on what she was saying.

‘Haven’t you noticed?’ she asked him.

‘Noticed what?’

‘Misfortune seems to have dogged our enterprise with everything that Ferdinando has had a hand in. Consider all that has happened: the abandoning of the flyboat on the outward journey; the poisoning of the Planters on first landfall; the failure to take on board salt or find any livestock or fruit; the loss of the two soldiers at St John’s; the near wrecking off the cape to the south, and Ferdinando’s refusal to take us to Chesapeake. Don’t all these instances suggest to you that he’s been intent on our destruction all along?’

Kit put his elbows on the table and cupped his chin, studying
her closely from the place where he sat opposite her. Did she really believe that Ferdinando was to blame for all their trials?

‘I’m not convinced of that.’

‘I am. He’s a snake. Consider his behaviour towards me. What would he have done if I’d been at his mercy now?’

‘I cannot forgive him for offending you, but I don’t think he’d have seriously hurt you. He might have tormented you, that I will grant, which is not to excuse him.’

‘But why torment me?’

Kit wondered how much to share with her.
Everything
, whispered one inner voice;
Be cautious
, whispered another. Her mouth was irresistible, soft and sensual, vulnerably full in the upper lip. Whenever he looked at her lips he was seized with an urge to kiss them. He took a breath.