Humphrey, looking up at him as he stood there, wondered, not for the first time, under what strange conjunction of planets that quiet pair his stepfather and his mother had begotten and conceived this shining, tempestuous creature. Strength they both possessed, of the kind which is steadfastness, in light of which both had at different times risked death for the Protestant faith; but not this strength of Walter’s that was a two-edged sword of the Spirit, albeit not without surprising flaws. Certainly neither of them had given him the flaming pride which already showed in his eyes and the carriage of his head. They had not given him his ruthlessness, nor his power of dreaming, nor, most assuredly, his personal beauty.
Neither of them spoke for a while, for both had a gift for silence. Then Walter sighed, and stirred a little on his heels, as though coming back from the distant place that he had been to. And Humphrey produced the piece of news that he had been keeping for his young half-brother. ‘There was an old ship-master at the inn where I lodged last night, and we got talking, he and I. He had been something of a navigator in his time — serving with the Portuguese — and he was convinced that there is in truth a passage round the North of America to Cathay!’
Walter’s swift gaze came down to him in a flash. ‘Why was he?’ He subsided on to the broad sill, drawing one leg under him. ‘Tell, Humphrey.’
And Humphrey told. It was a familiar and beloved subject for discussion between them, and instantly they were enthralled in it, as he produced stylo and ivory tablets and began rapidly to draw coastlines and ocean currents. ‘See now, according to this fellow the current here below India and Africa, running thus — westerly — is so strong that the Portuguese in voyaging to Calicut have trouble at certain seasons of the year in making headway against it. The same current, still running its appointed course, comes up — here, against South America, and since the Fret of Magellan cannot carry it, turns northward along the coast, right up here to beyond Labrador. Well now, if there be no outlet for the water round the North of America, the current must strike over eastward on to the coasts of Iceland and Northern Europe —’
‘And it doesn’t,’ Walter said quickly, his eyes fixed on the tip of the other’s moving stylo.
‘No, it doesn’t!’
‘Humphrey — the open waterway that Sebastian Cabot found — the waterway he could not follow up because his men mutinied!’
‘Yes, my shipmaster was of the same opinion. About here: Latitude 67 ½ degrees under the Pole, and bearing in this direction — you see?’
Walter saw. ‘Is he going to search it out?’
‘No. A man must needs have letters patent from the Queen for such a search; also it is years ago that he worked out those currents, and he is an old man now; too old to go exploring again.’
Silence fell between them for a few moments. Both were looking with sombre eyes into that appalling wilderness of time when one was too old to follow the dream; not knowing that, one by drowning and one by the headsman’s axe, they were to be delivered from that time.
‘He said,’ Humphrey added at last, ‘that it was for younger men to carry on the search.’
‘Men like you,’ Walter said slowly. ‘And me, when I am grown.’ He looked up, his eyes blazing with eagerness, the chill of the past moment quite forgotten. ‘Humphrey! Let you and I go to find that passage one day! I shall have left Oxford in five years’ time; we will go then!’
‘We must needs get those letters patent from the Queen, first,’ Humphrey said. He looked at Walter, half smiling, yet with his own eagerness kindling to match that of the boy. ‘I wonder if we could do it.’
‘Do it? — Oh, the letters patent you mean.’ (To doubt that they could find the North West passage never entered his head.) ‘Of course we could! You shall make drawings like these ones — only clean — and copy out all the evidence you have collected, into a book, and call it “A Discourse for a Discovery of a New Passage to Cathay”, and I shall help you. And when it is writ, we will take it to the Queen’s Grace, and she will give you your letters patent, and maybe a ship as well! We can explore for new territories as we go — places where we can found colonies and set up ports of call for shipping going through to Cathay! We could —’
Steps came scurrying up the stairs, and Carew’s voice reached them, upraised in triumph. ‘Humphrey! Humphrey, are you there?’ The door burst open, and Carew appeared, his face flushed with pleasure, carrying a slightly ruffled spar-hawk on his gloved fist. ‘I’ve belled Cloe, and I’ve brought her to show you.’
Walter uncoiled himself and leapt from the window-sill to the foot of the bed, where he sat cross-legged like a tailor on his counter, squinting horribly at Cloe. There was no particular point in such a proceeding, but he had needed sudden action to shake something that had been uppermost in him back into the secret place where he normally kept it. The rose quartz mask was inside the breast of his doublet, where he had thrust it at the first sound of Carew’s approach. Presently, of course, Carew would want to know what Humphrey had given him, and he would have to show his treasure; but not yet. He did not want to show it to anyone, just yet.
Chapter 2 - The Island of White Birds
THE high west wind of April was blowing over Westminster, and on the trailing skirts of the wind came rain-squalls to damp down the smells of the open kennels and lay the dust along the narrow streets, and ragged bursts of sunshine that lit the steep wet roofs and swimming cobbles to silver-gilt.
In the gallery of the Sidney’s house, the windows had been shut against the April rain — shining rain that spattered on the panes of the oriel, blurring the view of the gardens and the River; but no closed window could keep out the flying bursts of sunshine that seemed to small Bess Throckmorton like a fanfare of trumpets such as one heard faintly echoing from the Queen’s tilt-yard on tournament days.
Lady Sidney sat in the curve of the oriel, retelling the story of St. Branden and his search for the Land of Heart’s Desire, to an attentive audience of three. That story had been a favourite with all the Sidney children, largely because of the incident in which the Saint and his followers, with regrettable lack of observation, landed on a whale under the impression that it was an island, and lit a fire on its back before discovering their mistake; and Lady Sidney had told it so often that she knew it by heart, and could follow the thread of her own thoughts at the same time, letting them move with her eyes over the three sitting side by side on a long stool before her. Tom, her own last-born, Robin Devereux with his crest of guinea-gold hair, and between them, Bess Throckmorton, her hands folded demurely in her orange-tawny lap, her eyes, bright as those of a harvest mouse, raised to the rain-streaked window that she was evidently not seeing.
But these three were not the only people in the gallery; a little beyond them, clearly conscious of being too old to listen to stories, yet well within earshot all the same, sat Mary Sidney, with Pipin, the little Italian greyhound cuddled on her feet: Mary in the green and silver of the Queen’s Maids of Honour, her pointed face under the cloud of fair hair down-bent over the mass of carnation damask in her lap. In three days Mary was to be married, and for weeks the house had been overrun by sewing women, engulfed in a billowing tide of tiffany and cambric, watchet satin sleeves, and undergowns of citron lutestring, point lace ruffs and curled feather fans and tinsel shoe roses; while Mary herself, normally a serious child, seemed to have few thoughts to spare from the two pairs of silk stockings in her dower chest. How would it go with her, her mother wondered — fifteen years old, and married to a man three times her age? But Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was a kindly and intelligent man; he would be good to his small Countess; above all, he would allow her the freedom of her mind. The marriage promised more of happiness, surely, than many of the made matches of the Court.
Still further down the gallery, two boys were playing chess. Of her own Robert, all that Lady Sidney could see was an angular back and a bent barley-coloured head; but the other Robert — Robert Cecil — was clear t
o her view in the tall light of a nearby window. He too was fair, but with a redder glint in the bent head, and his face cupped in one thin hand as he gazed down at the board, was sallow with the dull tinge of ill-health. A strange face, old beyond its years, brilliant, subtle; not, in Lady Sidney’s judgment, altogether trustworthy. Young Cecil would likely grow to be a fine statesman like his father, but she doubted his ever being the good man his father was. Well, he would have need of all the tortuous subtlety of brain that he possessed, poor lad, since his crooked body could never be other than a brake on him.
Sheer physical sympathy twinged in Lady Sidney, marred flesh feeling for marred flesh; and she was suddenly aware of the light pressure of the velvet half-mask that had become almost a part of herself in the years that she had worn it to cover the ravages of small-pox. For Lady Sidney, brave enough to nurse the Queen through the dread disease, catching it from her, had never been brave enough to show her scars to the world.
Somewhere near at hand, a door opened, releasing into the quiet gallery the notes of a carelessly strummed lute, and a burst of laughter from the chamber where Philip, the eldest son of the house, was entertaining a couple of friends of his Oxford days. Listening, a shadow of anxiety touched his mother, for she could not find it in her heart to approve one of the guests. Walter Ralegh was a wild, and, she greatly feared, Godless young man, who seemed to have brought home with him from his late service in Flanders more long-drawn foreign oaths and fantastic foreign garments than she could think seemly, and no reverence for anything under Heaven. She made excuses for him; the boy’s apprenticeship to life, served with the Huguenot army and culminating in the bloody horrors of Paris on St. Bartholomew’s Eve, was likely to set its mark on the man; but she could not consider him a suitable friend for Philip, and had had more than once to remind herself that Philip was a man now, and his choice of friends no longer any concern of hers. ‘Walter, a’God’s name drop it! We are all tired of the North West Passage!’ cried a laughing voice. The strumming lute had strayed into the popular air of Greensleeves; then the door closed again, and the gay young voices were cut off.
The story was drawing to a close. Lady Sidney always ended it with St. Branden’s homecoming, and did not continue, as did the written version in the Golden Legend, to his death in an overpowering odour of sanctity; for it seemed to her that that was the true end of the story. One found the way to the Far Country, and came home, with the scent of its flowers clinging to one’s garments for an earnest that the way was there. There was no more that needed to be told.
So the story ended; and Bess Throckmorton coming slowly back to her surroundings, found that the rain was ended too, and the sun turning the wet window-panes to a dazzle that almost blinded her with its too much glory. She blinked as though just roused from sleep, and saw that Lady Sidney was looking at her with a half smile curving her mouth under the pale velvet mask. Bess smiled back, with a small, cosy wriggling of her whole body. All children loved Lady Sidney, and Bess was no exception.
‘That,’ said Lady Sidney, ‘is the end of the story. And see, the sun is shining again! Run away, all three of you — run and play in the garden.’
The three slid obediently to the ground, and made the small bow or bobbing curtsey which custom demanded, after which the two boys departed at full speed, followed by Pipin, to call on a friend in the stable yard. Watching the little upright figure of Bess trotting away after them down the gallery, Lady Sidney saw her linger a moment in passing the chess players, and Robert Cecil look up quickly, his hand poised for a move, to smile at her. It was quite a different smile from the one he kept for normal use, lighting his sallow face with an unexpected sweetness; and the watching woman found herself wondering if that was where little Bess’s future lay. There was an old friendship between the two families. To be sure, the Throckmorton family was not one that any man ambitious of Court favour would be likely to marry into; and Lord Burleigh’s son, hunchback or no, would be able to choose a wife from among the most powerful families in the land. And yet she had an instinct that Robin Cecil, because he was a hunchback and Lord Burleigh’s son, might cut across Court custom, when the time came, and choose a wife for love, where a hale and hearty man, or one whose own family were less powerful, might choose for convenience or advancement of worldly position. Assuredly they were fond of each other, in the way of fourteen and ten, but who should say what might happen in the four or five years before Bess was old enough for marriage ... Meanwhile there were a thousand things still to be done in preparation for Mary’s wedding. She should not have taken time off to tell stories to the children. And with a small sigh, for she was very tired, Lady Sidney rose to go and do them.
Bess returned young Cecil’s smile joyously, but did not stop to speak, for she knew that one did not force conversation on chess players; also she was a child of few words. She reached the end of the gallery and made her way down the circular stair to a small side door, and thence out into a paved courtyard with a well in one corner. This she crossed on flying feet that skidded a little on the rain-wet cobbles to another door, of ancient silvery timbers, and opened it, slipped through almost secretly, dropping the latch into place behind her.
Instantly a sense of sanctuary enfolded her as with wings. The Sidney garden was not really a very secret place, for there was another door in the lower-wall, and the household and their friends were constantly coming and going through it as the quickest way down to the Strand; but the sense of sanctuary clung to it, none the less. And young as she was, there were enough complications and perplexities in the life of small Bess Throckmorton to make her glad of sanctuary. She came of a great house long out of favour and split between the old faith and the new. She could just remember her father, who had been one of Elizabeth’s diplomats, a sad man, eating his heart out in the seclusion that followed his own unmerited fall from grace, before he died at My Lord of Leicester’s supper table, reputedly of poison. Her mother she could not remember at all; and she and Nicholas had been brought up by a stepmother who, though far from being the stepmother of tradition, was inclined to be heavy-handed. Arthur and her two elder sisters were more fortunate, having been already brought up. They were married now, and Arthur had entered into his heritage, the old house in Northamptonshire; and only she and Nicholas were left. Bess was happy enough at home, but always conscious of the shadow lying over her and her people; and she had grown more conscious of it since coming on this long visit to the household of her father’s old friend Lord Burleigh. She did need sanctuary, and it was only here, in Lady Sidney’s garden, that she found it.
She gave the door a final push, to make sure that it was shut, and started down the path between formal beds edged with box and rosemary, unpausing until she reached the foot of the garden, and the more wayward loveliness of ancient, leaning fruit trees, where the white pheasant-eye starred the long grass. This was the heart of the garden, the inner sanctuary, and in it there lived a toad. A fat and freckled toad, to which she had been introduced by Tom Sidney the last time she was here. Presently she would look for the toad, but not yet. Bess was not a child to snatch her pleasures in handfuls; she took them delicately, a little at a time, careful to bruise nothing in the taking. Presently the toad; for the present moment there was joy enough without. High against the rain-washed blue, white cloud galleons sailed towards London; and around her feet the rain-wet stars of the narcissus swaying in the wind, and the first-fallen petals of the fruit blossom drifting down before every gust, like a snow-storm out of elfland. Overhead in a damson tree, a Jenny-whitethroat was singing — not the rather strident full song, but the little rippling under-song, very light and sweet — and Bess, standing close beneath and looking up through the blossoming boughs, could not see the singer, only the wind-swayed white blossom with the sun behind it, translucent, edged with pale flame, so that it seemed as though the blossom itself were singing ... surely the trees of St. Branden’s Isle had been like this; those trees on which the little whit
e birds gathered so thick that the boughs seemed clothed in blossom; and every bird singing ...
The spell of the story she had just heard was still upon her; and suddenly as she stood with the windblown petals drifting all around her, and the shining drops spattered into her upturned face, she was filled with the urgent longing to find something, some place, beloved and long since lost, to which all this — the damson tree, the wind-stirred shadows, the singing bird — were for an outer threshold. It was the oldest longing in the world, old as the Fall, the longing of man for the lost Eden; but Bess knew nothing of that; she knew only that she wanted to kilt up her skirts and run and run until she found it, whatever it was, and that if only she could find it, there would be nothing to be unhappy or afraid for, ever again.
The rippling song fell silent, and with a sudden flutter of wings the Jenny-whitethroat was gone to her half-built nest in the honeysuckle by the door. Only a little bird singing in the damson tree, after all. But the spell of the shining moment was still just a little with Bess, as she turned and went, trailing her dreams behind her like her skirts through the long grass, to find the toad.
She found him in the ditch that ran close under the wall, sitting under a dock leaf, very portly, like an alderman taking the air at his front door. Bess sat down on her heels before him, and they surveyed each other gravely. The toad was clearly of a friendly disposition, for he made not the least attempt to move, but sat there, his warty sides panting in and out like a tiny pair of bellows, and his bulging eyes jewel-bright in the shadow of the dock leaf. It was very damp along the ditch, but neither of them cared; they were in perfect sympathy with their surroundings and each other, and they were still improving each other’s acquaintance some while later, when the garden door opened and closed again, and one of Philip’s guests came down between the box and rosemary hedges.